Clear to me, like rattlesnake's tale

Steam rises from the hot swirling water to soften philosophy in front of me

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

 It became clear to me. Simplified. Like the Navajo woman staring out to the west in a R.C. Gorman painting. It is not what you say that is important. How do you say it?
The woman, of course, has big feet and hands, abnormally so, as she stares off the page. An inverted sphere, or bowl, describes the light to me. A faint shadow, back on the unseen wall behind her jet-black hair, fills in the detail. The geometric design on the bowl reminds me that not all of life is a circle.
The steam rises from the hot swirling water to soften philosophy in front of me. It is an intended, programed, planned softening.
Folklore says the Ute figure Ouray spent a lot of time in the latter part of his life, languishing in his namesake springs. Utes thought of the springs as sacred ground. Others say the waters softened the edges on his Arthritis, or aches and pains from the strange path he followed.
Ouray popped up like a Forest Gump figure, from culture to culture. From family connections with the Jicarilla Apache, to the French, Spanish and Mexican traders of old Santa Fe, to the negotiations (perhaps with no authority) in Washington ... with Otto Mears, Kit Carson, and the "great white father" Abe Lincoln. Being an Indian was more complicated then. Choose your battles, careful who you befriend. Choose your enemies.
My own family struggled with it. Enemies or friends? Great-grandmother Minnie Buce Carrigan described the horror in her book, "Captured by the Indians."
"My father began talking to the foremost Indians. My brother has told me that father asked them to take all his property but to let him and his family go. But the Indian replied in the Sioux language, "Sioux cheche," (the Sioux are bad.) He then leveled his double barreled shot gun and fired both barrels at him. He dropped the baby--she was killed--and running a few yards down the hill, fell on his face, dead. The same Indian then went to where my mother had sat down beside a stone with little Caroline in her lap, reloaded his gun and deliberately fired upon them both. She did not speak or utter a sound, but fell over dead. Caroline gave one little scream and a gasp or two and all was over with her. The cry rang in my ears for years afterward. My father was thirty-three and my mother thirty years of age when they were so cruelly murdered by the Indians."
She was captured, and then finally liberated 10 weeks later.
Yet, she later worked as a cook on the Rosebud Sioux reservation. My Granddad Owen, grew up there.
Though, in those days, they didn't give you much time to grow up. He worked as a cowboy with a cattle outfit moving herds from the Dakotas to Arizona with the seasons, from age 12, until a horse threw him and he broke his leg. He later homesteaded here in Colorado.
Growing up and Southwestern Colorado, I had some experiences myself with Navajo, Ute, Hopi and the Pueblos of New Mexico. I saw a measure of racism toward Native Americans. Things that were just not fair, not right.
 Listen to me... I will tell you more.
As the Navajo proverbs says, "There is nothing so eloquent, as a rattlesnake's tail."

 

Don't shoot the piano player

While you are waiting, be sure to confirm your source

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Language, its meaning, and the way it travels about, has always been fascinating to me. And Colorado may claim its share of the responsibility for coloring some of that language.
For example, during his 1883 tour of the United States the world-renowned author Oscar Wilde, reportedly noted a sign hanging in Leadville saloon.
“Don’t shoot the piano player; he is doing the best he can,” it read.
The phrase became a colorful western variation meaning roughly the same as “Don’t kill the messenger.”
Mark Twain (Sam Clemons) liked the reference so much he adopted it in some of his lectures, but neither Wilde nor Twain claimed it was their’s originally.
Though it has no known Colorado origins, everyone understands what you are talking about when you use the phrase, “rule of thumb.” It is a rough measure, a general policy and universal guideline.
But if you look hard enough, you will likely find an argument on the origins of that phrase. A commonly repeated story harkens back to English common law and determines the diameter of the stick allowed in wife beating: “If a stick were used, it should not be thicker than a man’s thumb.”
English Judge Francis Buller made a public statement to that effect in 1782, resulting in public outcry, satirical newspaper cartoons and his legacy forever being attached to the statement biographically.
Thumbs, in fact, were used to gauge a lot of things. Tailors once thought, “Twice around the thumb is once around the wrist.” People held up their thumbs to measure distance on the horizon, and as a personal favorite, brew masters stuck a thumb in the batch to determine temperature and readiness.
In the Internet age, tracing a phrase back to the original source can be very tricky. I once mentioned a saying that multiple references placed responsibility for in the hands of Hopi elders in Oraibi, Ariz.
The saying: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Shortly after referencing that in a magazine piece, Bertha Parker, Hopi Press Officer for the Hopi Tribe, contacted me and asked if any tribal elders had said that to me directly.
“A reporter asked me to verify the statement and I have been unable to do so,” said Parker.
“I haven’t been able to pin it down and have checked with religious and traditional leaders. Not each and every individual. The portion you attribute to Hopi seems to be something Hopi may say but the rest of the poem is far from the manner Hopi speaks,” she said.
“Hopi is not insulted or upset. The poem refers to swimming etc. No rivers here. Swimming in foot high mud or clay of gray color,” she noted in an email.
“We appreciate the thoughtfulness and the mention of Hopi in a positive manner. I really am trying to find out who wrote the balance of the poem. It would not surprise me to learn that someone has taken a Hopi statement and added other versions.”
Of course I told Bertha that I was sorry if the reference was incorrect. “No offense taken,” she graciously replied.
Other than that, I don’t what to say, except perhaps “Don’t shoot me (the piano player), I am doing the best I can.”
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