Owl

Being a white kid on the reservation had some advantages. Especially if you were little when no color mattered. All your friends had at least six grandmas, most of who were actually great aunties, of course what each of them had, was a big heart, and a quick tongue. I would spend a night or two every summer, (when my folks would go out for Friday and Saturday’s), at this or that hot July pow wow, sitting with my friend and his cousin, eating fry bread and drinking Cool-Ade, listening to the drums and the bells on the dancer’s costumes on the tail gate of his uncles old seventy chevy pickup. For bedtime we would toss every extra blanket we could find in the back of that pickup, kick off our cowboy boots, lay back in our socks and stare up at the blinking stars, our denim coats as pillows. Grandma Sally would go from truck to truck, car to car, to check on all the little ones. She wasn’t any one’s grandma, she was every one’s grandma. She seemed especially fond of our little gang, she would jump up swing her little body around and plunk down on the tail gate, then shimmy in, lean against a wheel well pull a blanket up, she would point up and tell us this story.

Grandma Sally would begin.

“Way before there was any one there was just one,” she would point, “He lived there where those two teepees sit” the teepees sat side ways but she would say, “To him they were always level”. I later found out it was the constellation Cassiopeia.

“He would walk about from place to place, to visit the animals she would point out the bears big and little, “they were brothers he would sit with them and talk about this and that.” She would stop and point to the other animals the rabbit, the wolf, the fox, the otter she would point past the edge of the earth and down and tell us we could only see the coyote and the owl, when it got later in the night. We never questioned her about how she knew and how they had come to be named, she would sometimes say the names in her tongue Mato for bear, would warn us we should be mindful of “Hinhan Tanka” the great horned owl. She was one to be honored, that you could not hear her when she came, she was a night hunter, we should respect her and become her friend.

She would start again, “Once before everything, as he walked about on one of his visit’s he spoke to “shungila” red fox and said

“I’ve decided to make more”

red fox was sly and asked, “what is more.”

the only one said “you shall see.”

Grandma Sally would get very serious at this point. “So, the only one created one other, just like him, only lesser, a son “chinjka” and taught this one about all things, gave him power to make and told him to start. So, the son began, he added more to the stars, and named them, he made his own chinjka, ones like him they live there” she would sweep her hands at the sky and say” they counted more than the stones of the earth”. Grandma would sit up straight very proud, and would say quietly

“Then he made what we have” a big pause “ our spot, with its blue skies, and rivers where the fish swim, the mountains that have beards of snow, the lakes clear, the “whanaca” flowers”, and then she would smile excitedly “then the son made all the animals just like them in the heavens”

It was here that she would shake us awake. “Wake up Wake up” she would whisper, then she would take a big big breathe. “The chinjka of the only one made” it seemed to take her forever to mouth the most important words,

“The son made us” and she would grin her toothless grin and laugh

“Yes us! he made us! you and I, to watch over all of the water and all of the birds and creatures. To walk and run and play, ride our ponies and dance under the stars at night if we wanted to”. Grandma would then scootch to the edge of that chevy pickup and roll over on her stomach and slide off to find the earth under her feet. Then she would point at the edge of the earth and say.

“Here comes Hinhan Tanka” she would giggle as she walked away, I think so we wouldn’t just dream of running and playing, but be awake all night waiting to hear nothing fly past our bed.