This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text and photographs copyright © 2019 by Charlene Willing McManis and Traci Sorell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without written permission from the publisher.
TU BOOKS, an imprint of LEE and LOW BOOKS Inc.,
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Cover art by Marlena Myles
Title hand lettering by Michelle Cunningham
Map illustration © 2019 by Tim Paul Piotrowski
Edited by Elise McMullen-Ciotti and Stacy Whitman
Typesetting by ElfElm Publishing
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EPUB ISBN 978-1-62014-840-2
MOBI ISBN 978-1-62014-841-9
First Edition
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress
For all the Native Nations and their citizens
who suffered the terrible impact of termination and relocation.
Table of Contents
A NOTE FOR READERS
GLOSSARY
The Walking Dead
Rez Life
Divisions
The Oregonian
Southbound
Courtesy of the Government
Meeting the Neighbors
The Wrong Kind of Indians
Plankhouse People
Bows, Arrows & TV Indians
Summer in the City
A Different Style of Cowboys & Indians
Budlong Blues
Miss Elsie’s House
Pork Chops for Dinner
Halloween Carnival
Trick or Treat
An Indian Like Tonto
The Jacket
Pilgrims & Indians
Thanksgiving Day
Living the Dream
No Service
Indian No More
Beaver
Umpqua Always
DEFINITIONS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CO-AUTHOR’S NOTE
EDITOR’S NOTE
THE BEAVER AND THE COYOTE
OUR AUTHORS
A NOTE FOR READERS
Indian No More focuses on an Umpqua family in the 1950s and includes both words and sayings in Chinuk Wawa — the language of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde — and a number of historical references. If you would like help with or want to know more about anything you encounter in the text, please check the list of Chinuk Wawa words below or the glossary and pronunciation guide. Thank you for reading. GLOSSARY
Chich (chitch): grandmother
Chinuk Wawa (chah-nook wah-wah): a jargon used by tribes in the Pacific Northwest to communicate and trade with one another. The nearly thirty tribes that form The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community spoke various languages, so the use of Chinuk Wawa helped everyone be able to speak and interact with one another after their forced removals by the federal government to the reservation.
Chup (choop): grandfather
khwiʔim (kwa-eem): grandchild
khɘpít (kah-bit): Stop!
mimɘlust·r (mee-maah-loos): to die
sax̣ali-tayi (sah-HAH-lee tah-ee): Grandfather or High-up Chief, similar to God
tɘnɘs-man (tuh-nas-mon): son
t’siyatkhu·r (tsee-yat-koo): a tall, hairy creature that lives in the coastal woods, often referred to as Sasquatch or Bigfoot in English
wawa-lax̣ayam·r kitɘp-san·r (wah-wah thlah-hyam kah-bit-saan): to greet the sunrise
1 The Walking Dead
Before being terminated, I was Indian.
Now I certainly don’t mean I was killed off or anything. It was 1954. The United States government didn’t do that anymore. They just filed away our tribal roll numbers. Erased our reservation from the map.
What were our tribal roll numbers? They were the numbers the tribe assigned to its citizens and used by the federal government to see who belonged to the tribe. So my number verified that I was Regina Petit (roll number 3669), daughter of John Petit (roll number 858), granddaughter of Maude Petit (roll number 25) and Sid Petit (roll number 18).
And that was what made you Indian to the US government — numbers.
Even after all that counting, the government chose to terminate us. I really don’t know all the reasons why, but my chich, my grandmother, said this much: “Termination means we’re the walking dead.”
Now I ask you, how can we be dead if we’re still walking?
2 Rez Life
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. I was born on the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation, just over thirty miles west from the state capital in Salem, Oregon. I had lived there all my life. I didn’t know any way to live other than as an Umpqua Indian. My family was Umpqua. I was Umpqua. That was just how it was.
Living on the rez, I played outside with my younger sister Peewee. (Her given name was Theresa, but nobody except our school teacher ever called her that.) We ate wild blackberries and plucked blue larkspurs without any adults watching. Ours was a small reservation compared to others in Oregon. My people didn’t bother the whites that lived around us. Our rez owned a cramped trailer that housed our health and dental clinic, a post office that used to be someone’s house, and an “everything you need from canned beans to carpenter nails” store on the corner of Highway 22 and Grand Ronde Road.
My elementary school was painted yellow, and we had an old cemetery down the road. Our ancestors were buried there like, Chup Tim-Tim, my grandfather, as well as Daddy’s five-year-old sister Bertha, who died from the flu epidemic of 1934.
Down from the cemetery was the Petit family home. Our house, with chipped white paint and warped boards, was surrounded by acres of tall grasses, plots of fragrant mock orange, and a forest filled with chirping squirrels and robins. We had three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a mudroom, and a newly built bathroom with an indoor toilet. Getting a toilet inside was one of the happiest days of my life. When I was little, I dreaded stepping off the back porch to the outhouse before bed. It was too close to the woods! Daddy would have to coax me to go out.
“But Daddy, I’m scared. What about t’siyatkhu·r?”
I’d peer out into the woods as Daddy grinned.
“Old Sasquatch won’t bother you. First, he’s shy. Second, he’s over six feet tall and smells like a wet dog. And third, well, if he does bother you, you must’ve been misbehaving.”
I wasn’t too sure about the shy part.
Regardless, my trips to the outhouse at night were few and far between — and extremely brief.
Daddy’s cousin Harlin’s house was just a half mile away from us. Cousin Harlin and Daddy were really close. Like brothers close. They talked story all the time, especially about World War II.
“It was right after Pearl Harbor,” Daddy began, “when I conned Harlin into joining the navy
