Prozac Cowgirl: A Place for Indians

Once the tribes were free. . . they roamed everywhere, beating up the trails with hooves' tracks; they settled in new territories at will, fought hard and took few prisoners. Their ways were derived from nature--from the diurnal settings of sun and moon, from the marks of the tides and habits of the animals; they were contented in the knowledge their lives and families operated from natural patterns and the traditions of the Old Ones.

We all know the middle and end to this story. Trails, thousands of trails of tears withered away once they passed by; spirits were broken systematically, one by one. They were broken not by failures of the sun or the moon, but by immigrants who came to own the same land the natives knew was free and part of life's bounty--land could not be owned, they said. They were proven wrong time and time again--wrong by one set of standards, not their own.

Sometimes, as in the case of Quanah Parker, the half-blood son of Cynthia Parker, captured in childhood by the Comanches, and her husband, the chief Peta Nocoma, an Indian chief would understand both sides of the arrowhead, and would wish to integrate his people into the new ways of the white people, as they were called. Quanah broke ground with the whites, leasing the land of the Comanche and Kiowa to cattle ranch owners for grazing rights, and founding the Native American Church, which was based in both Christianity and the Indian tradition of philosophy.

"The white man goes into his church and talks about Jesus," said Quanah. "The Indian goes into the tipi and talks with Jesus." Yet he helped his people to integrate, to read and write, to make their livings as the white tradition dictated. It was no longer Quanah's country, and he knew this. Acceptance came at a huge price, but it did come.

When I was very young, my grandmother (on Dad's side) took me to the Alabama-Coushatta reservation in Livingston, Texas, not far from her Lufkin home. I don't remember why we were there, but I remember her dropping off some bags of supplies, and assume now that she was carrying out some errand of church work. That place for Indians was desolate at that time--early 1950s. It was deathly quiet and I felt no one could possibly live there--a series of wooden structures leaned against the pines. This place of shambles could have been only the portion that I saw. But I'll never forget the experience. Looking at the website today, the reservation appears active, lively--full of promise--that reassures me a lot.

The Alabama-Coushatta came from the Creek people, and though they had little contact with British settlers, they eventually avoided war and troubles by settling on reservations in Louisiana, and finally Texas; they also became Christian. Interesting that in their present-day gaming casino, no alcohol is allowed because of their beliefs. Continuous operation of the casino was a legislative fight; the facility has provided relief from unemployment in the Louisiana tribe only, however, aside from any moral aspects of gambling. The tribal leaders advocate gaming as their way of earning a living for all members of the tribe, via its shared funds. The Texas tribe has been left to fend in other ways, without this resource.

This piece has become incredibly sad and somehow dry--I didn't intend that--but the green wood was long ago spent in these indigenous tribes. The dry wood is all they have left. Their places in the forests and fields, mountains, mesas on both sides of what we now see as the "border," between the U.S. and Mexico, were conquered by the immigrant "whites," their families either dead or kept in the new places. The Comanche, the Cherokee, the Alabama-Coushatta and hundreds of other groups--have come to accept and to cope with their appointed place.

What will happen now, with immigrants from Mexico being targeted as culprits for a system fed by business interests, we can only pray about. Talking about Jesus, or about whatever entity our Gods take these days, will certainly not be sufficient action to provide enough places to go around.