You would never guess it was a cemetery. Death had not spoiled it at all.
It was full of trees and bushes except in one corner where the graves were. Even they were fast being covered with greenery.
Bushes almost hid the raw, split-log fence and the gate of cedar strips with a cross above it, which told you that the enclosed space belonged to the dead. The land about the cemetery might change owners, but the ownership of the cemetery would not change. It belonged to the dead for all time.
Persistent growth pushed up through the earth of it–on and on eternally–growth that was the richer for men’s bodies helping to build it.
The Indian settlement was small. Not many new graves were required each year. The Indians only cleared a small bit of ground at a time. When that was full they cleared more. Just as soon as the grave boxes were covered with earth, vines and brambles began to creep over the mounds. Nobody cut them away. It was no time at all before life spread a green blanket over the Indian dead.
It was a quiet place this Indian cemetery, lying a little aloof from the village. A big stump field, swampy and green, separated them. Birds called across the field and flew into the quiet tangle of the cemetery bushes and nested there among foliage so newly created that it did not know anything about time. There was no road into the cemetery to be worn dusty by feet, or stirred into gritty clouds by hearse wheels. The village had no hearse. The dead were carried by friendly hands across the stump field.
The wooded part of the cemetery dropped steeply to a lake. You could not see the water of the lake because of the trees, but you could feel the space between the cemetery and the purple-topped mountain beyond.
In the late afternoon a great shadow-mountain stepped across the lake and brooded over the cemetery. It had done this at the end of every sunny day for centuries, long, long before that piece of land was a cemetery. Dark came and held the shadow-mountain there all night, but when morning broke, it was back again inside its mountain, which pushed its grand purple dome up into the sky and dared the pines swarming around its base to creep higher than half-way up its bare rocky sides.
Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. The earth welcomes the body–coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption.
Opening the gate I entered and walked among the graves. Pushing aside the wild roses, bramble blossoms and scarlet honeysuckle which hugged the crude wooden crosses, I read the lettering on them–
SACRED OF KATIE–IPOO SAM BOYAN HE DIDE–IPOO RIP JULIE YECTON–IPOO JOSEPH’S ROSIE DI–IPOO
Even these scant words were an innovation–white men’s ways; in the old days totem signs would have told you who lay there. The Indian tongue had no written words. In place of the crosses the things belonging to the dead would have been heaped on the grave: all his dear treasures, clothes, pots and pans, bracelets–so that everyone might see what life had given to him in things of his own.
“IPOO” was common to almost every grave. I wrote the four-lettered word on a piece of paper and took it to a woman in the village.
“What does this mean? It is on the graves.”
“Mean die time.”
“Die time?”
“Uh huh. Tell when he die.”
“But all the graves tell the same.”
“Uh huh. Four this kind,” (she pointed separately to each of the four letters, IPOO ) “tell now time.”
“But everybody did not die at the same time. Some died long ago and some die now?”
“Uh huh. Maybe some year just one man die–one baby. Maybe influenza come–he come two time–one time long far, one time close. He make lots, lots Injun die.”
“But, if it means the time people died, why do they put ‘IPOO’ on the old graves as well as on the new?”
Difficult English thoughts furrowed her still forehead. Hard English words came from her slow tongue in abrupt jerks. Her brown finger touched the I and the P. “He know,” she said, “he tell it. This one and this one” (pointing to the two O’s) “small–he no matter. He change every year. Just this one and this matter” (pointing again to I and P). “He tell it.”
Time was marked by centuries in this cemetery. Years–little years–what are they? As insignificant as the fact that reversing the figure nine turns it into the letter P.
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