Excerpted from the new memoir Poet Warrior, by Joy Harjo with permission from  W. W. Norton & Company.

◆

Girl-​Warrior perched on the sky ledge
Overlooking the turquoise, green, and blue garden
Of ocean and earth.
From there she could hear the winds
Lifting from their birthing places
She could hear where sound began.

The winds carried the murmuring of lovers
On Earth to Girl-​Warrior’s ears—​

He was a tall, handsome man whose sensitivity
Was threaded with ancestral love.
He came from tribal leaders who had the humility and heart
To lead through the most difficult striving.
He was water.

She came to his shoulder, her dark auburn hair
Made a halo for her beauty.
She wrote and sang songs that called
What she needed into her hands.
Her heart had room for all growing things,
And she knew her way around a stove.
She was fire.

We want to share all this with a child, they whispered.

The Council dressed Girl-​Warrior’s spirit for the journey
To enter the story, to make change.
They placed the map in her heart.
You will forget, they told her.
When you ask for our assistance you will find us
In the quiet, in the silent places
Of the earth garden.

Because you are Girl-​Warrior you have chosen
A path of many tests. You will learn how to make
Right decisions by making wrong ones.
Those whom you love most will abandon you.
You will find yourself again.

She took a breath, then she was gone.

I return to the stories that I was told, the stories that I can’t seem to remember or keep straight to the telling, like the ones I heard when I used to drive my aunt Lois around the Creek Nation to visit our relatives—​all her age and older, which is the age I am now. This was when I was in my twenties and thirties, when she lived in her apartment on West Eighth Street in Okmulgee, before she was disabled with a stroke and taken to a nursing home to live out the last few years of her life. Every day I miss her cultural knowledge of our people, her insight and humor. I miss the historical documents and family artifacts that crowded her small apartment that told of our family’s part in the forced march from the South to Indian Territory, to what became known as Oklahoma. These stacks contained written accounts of family stories of bravery and justice, but left out the stories she told me, of favorite black dogs, horse magic, bending time, how to avoid the places where known conjurers lived, and of the Spanish man accompanying the people on the trail, who wore a diamond pin that glittered as he sat tall on his horse. One of her paintings accompanies me through my life since her passing. It is the painting of a Taos man pulling a piece of pottery out of the fire. She used to make many trips to the Southwest and was friends with many of the Pueblo people, including Maria Martinez, the San Ildefonso potter. I am now friends with their grandchildren.

When I was with her, I knew I belonged, and that in this circle of belonging I had a place in the stories. Everyone needs this kind of place, this feeling of kinship; without it we are lost children wandering the earth our whole lives, without a sense of belonging. Even a country can be like a lost child because it may have no roots in the earth on which it has established itself.

I miss being in my aunt’s tall physical presence, her graceful and private bearing. Her spiritual presence remains, urging me forward to understanding and love, to knowledge given by her example. She was an artist: a painter, a lover of the arts, of Native arts and cultures. She worked at the Creek Council House and taught art classes in Okmulgee.

Sometimes my aunt was thought of as strange, in the manner that Natives are thought of as strange because they are not effusive in unknown company or have different customs. When I was born, she drove the Okmulgee Beeline to Tulsa to see me, to bring me gifts. My mother puzzled that this aunt of my father’s stayed in her car and would not come in. I understand. She was being respectful of my mother. She did not know my mother or of any birth rituals on her side of the family. I am the same way. I will stand apart at the periphery, watching. I might be seen as cold or shy or strange. It has more to do with a kind of sensitivity, honed by experiencing an invading culture and figuring out how best to move to save your life.

I am writing in an apartment in downtown Tulsa. I was born before cell phones and computers, before the proliferation of devices installed with memory, which prompt the user to forget. I do not want to forget, though sometimes memory appears to be an enemy bringing only pain. There are so many memories. One returned my mother to me. That memory opened up in a dream. There she was sitting on the roof of a house in red shorts, not long after she gave birth to me. She was stunning in her youthful health. She was laughing. She was my sun.

I often wish that I had written down everything my aunt and all the elders told me, so I could have their wisdom, their struggles, their hard-​won stories right here for referral, to provoke and even cultivate new stories. Growing memories and the ability to access memory is a skill that allows access to eternity. It is within all of us. I do not have the best memory, I often tell the circle of Old Ones when I speak with them—​​and I do speak with those whom I love who have moved on from this earthly realm, especially when writing poetry or any kind of story or music. They remind me, here’s your opportunity to practice memory. I am not the best listener or speaker, I tell them. Take your opportunity with grace, they tell me. You are here to learn, learn how to listen, how to walk into each challenging story without fear, fearless.

I have asked my aunt, uncles, cousins, and others, all those with whom I sat, listened, and shared throughout this life, to be with me as I write. It is a very different world within which you make stories, share, and participate, they tell me.

“Too many words,” I heard one sixth great-​grandfather remark.

“What is it with you and all these English words?”

These times were predicted, a time in which the birds would be confused about which direction to fly to migrate, a time in which the sun would darken with pollution, a time in which there would be confusion and famine. In these kinds of times, we are in great danger of forgetting our original teachings, the nature of the kind of world we share and what it requires of us. In this world of forgetfulness, they told me, you will forget how to nourish the connection between humans, plants, animals, and the elements, a connection needed to make food for your mind, heart, body, and spirit. You were born of a generation that promised to help remember. Each generation makes a person. You came in together to make change.

They tell me that if I had come into their houses with pen and paper or recorder, sat on their porches or at the table drinking iced tea, writing instead of listening, I would have made myself a stranger, separating myself from the story. Too many with pens poised over paper wrote down laws that robbed millions of acres of our lands, that stole children, homes, and legacies. That part of our history is still going on, they said, and now, like then, they use our tribal members and relatives for their work to divide the people and steal. They will not be satisfied until everything is gone. Native peoples will be here when they are done, and when the earth and waters are renewed.

Life never goes in a straight line in our Native communities. Time moves slower. Someone might ask us to sit down and eat, or another cousin could go in the back room to get the medicine we need, their gnarled brown hands carefully folding the top of the paper bag with the roots that have Creek names and songs. Or someone might tell a memory that would bring everyone together in tears and laughter, or the memory of someone passed would rise up in that song.

They all agreed that we are being brought to a place where we will once again remember how to speak with animals, plants, and life forms. We will once again know our humble place as two-​legged humans. Humans are not the only ones with a spirit, they reminded. Nor are we more important than everyone else.

And besides, they laughed, if you had written everything down, you wouldn’t have been able to read your handwriting anyway. We sure can’t read anything you write longhand.

We always laugh, even about the worst. That’s when we laugh hardest.

And, they added, we were telling these stories for each other, not to be put in a book. However, times have changed. We resisted change because so much has been needlessly destroyed. We are fiercely protective of those teachings that were given to us. However, we must adapt.

The Old Ones opened the ears of Girl-​Warrior
Tempering the frequency before she left
On her mission.
We are sending you, they said,
To learn how to listen.
There is good in this world.
There is evil.
There is no story without one and the other.
You will be gravity.
You will be feather.
Send each story to the heart,
Each word before you act or speak.

When my aunt Lois and I used to visit our cousin George Coser Sr., my favorite stories were often about our great-​grandfather Monahwee, one of the beloved leaders of our people, a man who with his warriors stood up against Andrew Jackson and the U.S. government against the illegal move from our homelands. The story did not end in triumph. The bodies of our warriors, women, and children littered the grassy curves of Horseshoe Bend of the Tallapoosa River. Monahwee’s first wife and children were killed there along with hundreds of others, by Jackson, his troops and allies. We did not have the numbers, guns, or laws to stand up to the immigrants who believed that everything of the earth was given to them because they were God’s chosen people.

Some of the survivors went south with Seminole and Miccosukee. Others, like Monahwee, went west with their families, crossed the Mississippi to Indian Territory to where they were promised peace. A few stayed because their loyalties shifted. Half did not make it. They were killed by sickness, the leaving, the heartbreak.

I’ve read personal historical accounts that assert that Monahwee never made it to Indian Territory, that he died in Alabama or somewhere unknown on the trail. The emigration records tell a different story. We have the map of his journey on the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory. He and his family traveled with the Fish Pond Mekko and his family from Talladega, Alabama. The emigration agent wrote of his frustration when his charges wouldn’t keep to a schedule. They were somewhere along the Arkansas River camped outside Memphis. As the agent urged departure, Monahwee refused to leave because he was having one of his legendary parties. His parties often went on for days.

Before removal, our people were walking the tightrope of history. Immigrants were flooding illegally into our homelands, staking claims to our lands and houses even as we occupied them. Tecumseh had come down to the South and met with our warriors. The Red Stick warriors aligned with Tecumseh in an attempt to hold on to home and culture, to make a stand for what rightfully belonged in our care. There was much negotiating going on over every kind of human transaction. The community needed some relief.

Monahwee decided to have a celebration for his warriors in his camp, when one afternoon an Indian agent from Washington, D.C., arrived on horseback on official business. He was sweaty in his wool uniform as he walked up to Monahwee’s home. Monahwee told his warriors that he would be right back, as he pulled a light deerskin wrap over his shoulder. He excused himself from the party to speak with the officer. I can hear some of the warriors singing drinking songs. I hear laughter and can smell the sputter of meat cooking over a fire. Monahwee was very polite with the government official, telling him, in the official manner of English that he had learned from government officials, that he was conducting business with his warriors and to please come back in four days. At that moment some of the warriors could be heard whooping, making yahke cries, probably louder than usual, specifically for the agent’s ears. The agent protested, as he had ridden for more than a few days to get there, and he had other business in the area. Monahwee called a younger warrior to take care of the agent’s horse, directed the agent to the cooking house, then turned back to join his party of warriors.

I consider that a healing story. It heals the stereotype of Natives greeting visitors with the word “how” and woodenly shaking hands as if they were mascots, primitives without manners and not human beings.