Burn Man (ReSet) by Mark Anthony Jarman

Author:Mark Anthony Jarman [Jarman, Mark Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2023-11-21T05:00:00+00:00

Skin a Flea for Hide and Tallow

I never want to leave this country;

all my relatives are lying here in the ground,

and when I fall to pieces I am going to fall to pieces here.

— Shunkaha Napin (Wolf Necklace)

Schultz and the drunken Orangemen chased me out of Fort Garry with horsewhips and bayonets. I lit out for Pembina and St Joseph, worked as a scarecrow gravedigger down around Fort Snelling and Sacred Heart Settlement.

Dig graves or starve. I could have eaten a folded tarp. I dug dirt for six years and now six seasons later I’m in a blue uniform riding into Montana Territory with that horse’s ass Custer and a thousand arrows coming at me. Men I ate pork with last night twitch strangely on the ground and Brûlé children try to kill me in a thicket, laughing at me. More damn graves for someone to dig. Flint arrowheads and cut-tin arrowheads break bones, open in you like a flower. Tin arrowheads are the worst.

After the bitter bad Sioux raids we moved warily on the troubled road between pillars of smoke to bury anyone we stumbled on. Could not tell sometimes if they were white or otherwise, bodies stripped and heads mangled or cut off or eyes scooped out with horn spoons. It takes a long time to bury a dozen or two dozen bodies, to dig holes for whole German or Norwegian families. Their pets or animals we threw into the high grass or into lakes with weights.

None of us on the side of angels. Both sides plunder and rape and both sides kill children (nits make lice). Both sides scalp, especially the escaped convicts and Missouri bushwhackers and veterans of the war between the States; they are tough old dogs with knives hidden and nothing in life spooks them anymore.

The hangman was happy to hang dozens of Indians, charcoal and pigment still smeared on their faces; happy to hang almost anyone since Sioux had recently killed all of his children and his young wife.

I saw the merchant John Bozeman and his freighters and scouts killed by strange roving Blackfeet on his own road to Virginia City, the Powder River trail, the Bozeman trail, John Bozeman killed on the trail named after him, killed by his prosperity and industry in fur and gold. Sioux and Blackfeet didn’t want him barging through the choicest parts of their beautiful country. They’d already seen it happen.

I could tell John Bozeman something about that, about losing my country.

The Orangemen with bayonets and horsewhips made me flee Fort Garry up in Canada, made me leave my family behind. The Ontario volunteers and the Schultz faction tried to kill me in the river with rocks. Goulet was murdered, murdered as if we were the intruders.

They chased Fenians and Métis and hillsiders, chased anyone they didn’t like the look of. Guilmette was murdered, they shot a priest, bayoneted Nault. They drank the country dry looking for wagon men to stab or shoot or beat or turn

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