By John Snider

sniderrex68@gmail.com

The Quilt

The historian, Benjamin Madley, estimates that from 1846 to 1873 the Indian population of California declined from 150,000 to 30,000.  He documents 14,703 killings of California Indians by White vigilantes and White militia.  History, art, and courage converged one day in 1864 on the Little Cow Creek Farm.  The linguist, Jeremiah Curtin, recalls that day.  White vigilantes “found three Yana men threshing hayseed in a barn,” and killed them.  They then went for their Yana wives in the farmhouse.  Then the pregnant “farmer’s wife hurried out with a quilt, threw it around the three women, and stood in front of them, holding the ends of the quilt. ‘If you kill them you will kill me,’ she said, facing the party.’ ”  The men then left without killing the women.

She reached for what was at hand

The strongest thing she knew

The squares stood guard

As they were stitched together on the quilting frame

Not a grid on a map

Not fields at 20,000 feet seen below the bomb site

A patchwork of cloth

that laid down covering fire

All wars are about belonging

They thought it all belonged to them

The land, the gold, the streams, the forests

But she stood to say the women belonged

In her house, beneath her quilt

Did they leave because they were shamed?

or because they remembered reaching up to touch

the thin fabric of their mothers’ skirts?

or just because they were tired and hungry

and knew of places where killing was easier?

Did she tell her neighbors around the quilting frame?

Did the Yana women know she was pregnant?

Did her child stir inside her?

and hear the tale later,

Feeling the quilt like a precious robe?

A quilt: 360 squares

Each square five inches by five inches

Ten stitches per inch

Maybe as many as 36,000 stitches

Did she count?

Did she count to 14,703?

Did the sun go behind a cloud then?

Did the next three stitches leap to life from her fingers?

When will we learn to count?

Not shrouds–baby blankets

or the number of days until our daughter’s birthday?

or the times we stood to say, No?

The men who left

The curtain came down

Their play was over, at least for a while

As for the Farmer’s Wife

History knows, women know

And she knew for she carried the knowledge inside her

And we know

when we see love and courage

Stretched out over a wooden frame