Living by the Word by Alice Walker Read Free Book Online Page B

last man, had never been.
    Prominent among the people I was now scrutinizing was Miss Bessie, long-haired and high-nosed, whom everyone in our community automatically called “The Indian.” She was very poor, like most of us, and a great believer in sharing, but to a greater extent than even my parents, who were very generous; she would give you anything she had. You had only to admire something sincerely, a spool of thread, a plant, or a kitchen object, and it was yours. In fact, to me, Miss Bessie, still alive and nearing a hundred, remains a primary symbol of human generosity.
    In my apartment I lived with Edward S. Curtis’s photographs of Indians on every wall; I began to feel that the faces he photographed spoke directly to me. I studied the people’s clothing, their adornments, their hair; I noticed particularly their sense of aesthetics, their sense of style. I could see that of all the clothing styles created in or imported into North America, theirs was still the most intrinsically elegant. Over a period of months I made a thorough investigation into the merits of the teepee and stopped only a little short of buying and living in one. No other structure seemed so sensible for the landscape and for the nomadic life style Indians enjoyed. I needed the reading of the folklore, I needed the photographs around me. Especially the photographs. Indians do not live in history books; every one encountered there is dead. But in the folklore Indians are still acting colored and telling jokes, and in the photographs they are still looking out at the world and at the white man with infinitely expressive faces and not managing to keep all that they are thinking to themselves. Of what devastation, to the environment and to other human beings, we are now witnessing did their incredulous expressions forewarn!
    After meeting Bill Wahpepah that day in Custer, where signs of the exploitation of Indians still abound (wooden “cigar-store” Indians, fake war bonnets, and “Indian” silver-and-turquoise jewelry fill the store windows along the main street), I stood in front of the courthouse where the trial was to be held and waited for the doors to open. When they finally did open, after a very long time, the white Southern-looking and Southern-sounding officer advised us that only a fraction of the large crowd outside (several hundred women, children, and men, including three Buddhist monks—although I discovered months later that at least one of them was a woman—who were beating gongs) would be let inside. A few family members, a few of the elders, a few of the press. I was none of these. I was merely a witness, at the moment rather feeble from the blows of oppression that, in the case of the Indians, I could see were presumably unending; I was only a pair of eyes, a body, a flagging though faithful heart. But out of the crowd Big Bill appeared. He seemed enormous, and was—two hundred pounds at least—very dapper in vest, long braids, headband, and beads. And, taking me by the shoulders with his large hands, he propelled me forward until I stood in the midst of the elders, a group of ancient, intricately wrinkled Indian women, wrapped in blankets. I was remarkably content to be there, as we all settled in, huddled together, to wait.
    Eventually both Belvie and I were admitted to the courtroom, but only for a short portion of the trial. No one, beyond the family, the elders, and the white men who represented the press, was to see this carriage of “justice” from start to finish. We were at least able to see Dennis and Kamook and their children, their love for one another announced in every movement of their bodies and every glance of their apprehensive eyes. Dennis was especially beautiful in a red robe, with feathers in the long braids that hung down his back and with sneakers on his feet, though his face had the haggard pallor of one whose fate has for generations rested in the hands of his enemies.
    Shortly after the