A Tribute to Chief Joseph (1840?-1904)

By Duane Niatum b. 1938 Duane Niatum

Never reaching the promised land in Canada,

HIN-MAH-TOO-YAH-LAT-KET:

“Thunder-rolling-in-the-mountins,”

the fugitive chief sits in a corner

of the prison car headed for Oklahoma,

chained to his warriors,

a featherless hawk in exile.

He sees out the window

geese rise from the storm’s center

and knows more men died

by snow blizzard

than by cavalry shot.

Still his father’s shield

of Wallowa Valley deer and elk

flashes in his eyes

and coyote runs the circles

and a cricket swallows the dark.

How many songs this elder

sang to break the cycle

of cold weather and disease

his people coughed and breathed

in this land of drifting ice.

Now sleepless as the door-guard,

the train rattles like dirt in his teeth,

straw in his eyes.

Holding rage in the palm of his fist,

his people’s future spirals to red-forest dust,

leaves his bones on the track,

his soul in the whistle.

Duane Niatum, “A Tribute to Chief Joseph (1840?-1904)” from Drawings of the Song Animals: New and Collected Poems. Copyright © 1991 by Duane Niatum. Reprinted by permission of Holy Cow! Press.

Source: Drawings of the Song Animals: New and Collected Poems (Holy Cow! Press, 1991)

Biography

Born Duane McGinness in Seattle, poet, fiction writer, playwright, and editor Duane Niatum adopted the name of one of his S’Klallam tribal ancestors early in his career as a poet. After his parents’ divorce when he was four, he studied S’Klallam tribal ways with his maternal grandfather. At age 17, Niatum joined the Navy and was stationed in Japan. He received a BA from the University of Washington, where he studied with

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