Excerpt (PDF) - Heyday Books

EXCERPTS 39From Chapter One, “THE COMING OF THE FIRST WHITES”Lela Rhoades: I will tell a story about my grandfather, mymother’s father, and about my people. His name was JackNefice. His Pit River name was Jwasdee janay ju. Thatmeans “man from where the young trees grow.” He wasraised in Goose Valley, one of five brothers. They livedthere when they were young children. They hunted andfished. Goose Valley is a good hunting place, and they hadplenty of ducks. That’s how they made their living. Thereused to be a swamp there, and in the summer it wouldalmost dry up, but still be swampy. All their food grewright in that field there, tule plants and all kinds of roots.They lived there until my grandfather married mygrandmother. Her name was Nancy Charles, and she wasfrom where Pit One [a PG&E power plant] is now. She wasreally young when they got married. They lived there untilthey started having trouble with the white people.We had known that strangers were coming, becausea prophet told us. “Coming in a boat,” he said. “Strangepeople. They’re bringing black water, black water andsome food. Don’t eat it.” That was the hog meat. And theblack water—whether it was coffee or whiskey, I’m notsure. Must have been whiskey, because he said, “You’regoing to die. Lots of you are going to die. Don’t eat theirfood. Some of these people will be good, and some willbe bad.” (“Some will be good”—probably that means thecommon people, the Christian people.)“Don’t do things their way, don’t copy them. They’regoing to do a lot of things to kill themselves. Look out foryourselves, do what is right and keep your mind on it all thetime.”This was way before my great-grandfather’s time that theprophet said this. Indian doctors are prophets. I never was toldthis one’s name; his name was forgotten. And the whites arekilling each other with guns and in airplanes and car wrecks.When we traveled afoot we didn’t fall and break a leg or killourselves. We’d just stumble and get a little scratch. And wedidn’t kill much of our own people: Hat Creek people didn’tcome and kill the Goose Valley people; Goose Valley peopledidn’t attack the Pit Rivers. Big Bend, Pit Rivers, Hat Creek,and Maidu were all friendly. Except distant people, strangers,like Shoshone, maybe they weren’t friendly; they might kill youfor something.This Wintun prophet said not to copy the white people,but still the Indian people did copy them…They did…Why?Because they had to, I guess. Everything’s too destroyed, andwe can’t mend it up now. It would be too impossible, even if wedid get a piece of land. Oh, we could raise a little garden, farma little, but that’s about all. We can’t go back and live like wedid years ago. No game now and hardly any fish. You can’t goout and fish—they’ll arrest you. Everything’s all tied up.There was enough land then for everybody, if the whitepeople had acted different. There still is enough land for all ofus. Look at the land they wasted, and is wasted now. Look atthe people who are hoggish. Some people own so much, andwe have nothing now.For book information, see p. 17.(510) 549-3564 www.heydaybooks.com