[He has filled graves with our bones] Charlot page 385

Charlots’ father had an agreement with the American government to allow the tribe to live on Bitterroot Valley, but the government did not keep the agreement and sent the tribe somewhere else. Charlot wouldn’t leave the land; he stayed without violence until the white man made him leave. This speech given by Charlot was about the white mans’ greed in wanting the Indians to pay him taxes. Charlot felt it was outrageous. I could hear and feel the pain and concern for the people in his tribe through his tone.

Charlot states that this land that they live on is given to them from their God and their forefathers, not by the white man. It was never his so why should they pay the white man for it? Charlot seems to be amazed that these men are not even shameful for demanding this of the Indians. The white men see nothing wrong in wanting, possibly even forcing the Indians to pay him.

Charlot, like Cochise, is questioning why the white man is doing this when they were always kind to him. “No; we did not refuse him in his weakness; in his poverty we fed, we cherished him- yes, befriended him, and showed [him] the fords and defiles of our lands.” (p.386) He goes on to say that the Indian people fed them their own cattle on their own land. The white men swore to God and to the president of the U.S. to give the Indians land that he has not given them and never intended on giving them.

Charlot compares the American government to an “unsatisfied beggar” (p.386). He is always needing and wanting more. “He is cold, and stealth and envy are with him” (p.387). Charlot tells his people, “We owe him nothing; he owes us more that he will pay, yet says there is a God” (p.387)

There are two stories in his speech that stand out in my mind. The first is an old Indian man who was refused shelter by four different white men. It was cold and they left the old man out there to meet his fate. The second story was an Indian man, wife, and their daughter who welcomed two white men into their lodge because they were out in the cold and pitiful. The wife and daughter gave them new shoes to keep them warm, soup to eat with deer and beaver meat. They had saved these men because they were kind people. They left the lodge, only to return that night and kill all three of them and take their beaver skins and horses. I was so disappointed when I read this. I had to tell myself, “This could not have really happened. Did it?” What was the point of this? Were power, control, money, and the growth in land honestly more important than friendship, integrity, loyalty, and trust? I had feelings of embarrassment for the white men, for the American people. I can see the view point of the Indians feeling that they did not owe the white men anything. They gave them all they could! They opened their house and land up to them for the soldiers to run them out and kill their tribes. He ends his speech by saying, “His laws never gave us a blade not a tree, nor a duck; nor a grouse, nor a trout” (p. 387). They had good reason for feeling the way they felt of being used and taken advantage of.