Grandma Nellie~A True Story

     "My great-grandmother was 111 years old when she died, the same age as the tatoo markings on her chin.
     Grandma Nellie, as everyone called her, lived across the Klamoth river on Blue Creek. The only way  you could get to her house was by a long journey through the ancient redwoods, through the prairies to the river, then across by boat.  It was a very dangerous section of the mightly Klamath River where Blue Creek, which ran down from the saced High Country mountains, merged into the river.  Blue Creek is still the purest, clearest, and most beautiful creek in the Yurok tribal territory.
     Grandma Nellie was both a Seer and a Ceremonial Medicine Women.  She healed with herbs, was considered clairvoyant because she could see into the future with accuracy, and she could find lost objects and lost people.  She was able to solve murder cases, tell people's fortunes, and could read people's minds.  That is why a lot of people feared her and why she lived alone, across the river, up on the side of the forested small mountain that eventually leads up to the higher mountains known as the Siskiyous.
    The old farmhouse that was built years ago still stands there, and behind it you can find the traditional Yurok-style, redwood plank house our people lived in for centuries before European influence.  Grandma used the old style Indian house to dry, sort, and store her herbs and as a place of meditation and prayer.  Not too far from it was also the old-style, semi-subterranean, sacred sweatlodge she had used for doctoring hard cases, and the old salmon-fish smoke house that she used for making salmon strips, deer jerky, and smoked eels.  She did not have electricity, modern plumbing, or conveniences.  She had an old outhouse, a water system in the house based on gravitational flow, and an old wood heater for the kitchen and front room.
    For years she lived all by herself in the old house, at the old village site.  Different relations would come to visit and bring her food and some modern supplies like kerosene for the lamps, clothes, pots and pans, and toilet paper.  She grew her own tobacco, cultivated her own teas, and lived close to the land, drawing upon berries, plants, fish and deer for her survival.  She also had a garden that usually provided her with more food than she could use, and she canned a lot.
    Her property was one of the most highly desired pieces of allotted Indian land on the reservation and Klamath River.  So there was always someone trying to buy it from her at a steal, or tying to intimidate her to sell or threatening to take it from her.  But she always stood her ground.  Because of her reputation as a Medicine Women, and maybe due to her choice of property, the different local church representatives were always trying to get  Grandma to join their denomination.
     Grandma Nellie was already mad at the government, the large corporations, and the BIA for ripping hundreds of acres of her land under the notorious 1887 Dawes Act, then the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, and the so-called state rights of way.  She didn't have much tolerance for a group of people who called themselves Christians and who kept pestering her to come to their church services.  But one day she decided to take them up on the offer.  She went with a group of their congregation to Crescent City and attended their service, supposedly as a guest speaker about the "Indian Religion."  As she stood up in front of the congregation she heard the scream of a Hawk.  It flew into the church and sat on one of the pew-type chairs.  With tears in her eyes she suddenly changed her tone of voice and the topic of her discussion.
     "I can't do this.  I can't be a part of what you people want me to be.  You see the Hawk.  It was sent by the Great Creator in the same way that God sent a burning bush to Moses, the Whirlwind to Job, and a Cloud to Noah.  These are the religious leaders you teach us about, the ones you claim you learn from.  Well, we Indians have our leaders too, and God speaks to us in a mysterious way.  I know why you're trying to be nice to me.  I am not saying that all of you have bad intentions, but I do want to warn you that all of Nature is witness to your thoughts, actions, and deeds.  I cannot change for you so that you will accept me.  I cannot and will not give or sell you my land.  My ancestors are buried there.  It is sacred ground.  The old Indian trail that I use for spiritual pilgrimages to Red Mountain, to pray for the people, and speak to the Great Creator is on that land.  It starts from my house and it is full of spirits, or what you white people call angels.  But now I know why I finally agreed to come here.  I came to bring you a message.  You say that the book you study and believe in, The Bible, is the word of God?  Why don't you follow it?  We Indians are different than you people.  We are not what you call hypocrites.  Our women do not attend religious services whey they are on their moontime, their monthly cycles.  That is against the Indian custom and laws, the Natural laws, and the Creator's Laws.  Isn't that same law in your holy book?  Isn't that same law all around the world in all cultures?  You can't hide from the Moon.  She sees everything.  You can't change the law by calling it a curse, or demon worship, when it is a sacred and holy time for women.  Your ways are destroying our Indian ways and the Earth along with it.  You are creating imbalance and a lot of sickness.  And in the future, a lot of strange and terrible diseases will come from problems with blood.  So be forewarned.
    "I want to leave now.  I want to go back to my home where things are not so strange to me.  There I can pray and feel good about it.  But I tell you this.  I had a dream.  The great water serpent from the Klamoth River came and talked to me.  He said he is angry at what people are doing to his home.  Cutting all the trees, destroying the land, trying to catch all the fish and sell them without following ceremony.  He said people are no longer following the old ways by making payment to him and the Creator.  He doesn't like the way our Indian people make a mockery of the ancient and sacred dances by coming there drunk, women on their moontime, and everyone throwing garbage all over the sacred grounds.  So he said the Great Creator is going to send him down the river to purify it, by the next full moon."
    Grandma Nellie then went home and prayed.  She went into the forest and found a small sacred tree, the dogwood, and did a ceremony on it.  She took the sapling down to the front yard of her house, facing the river.  She faced upriver, then downriver.  She offered her pipe and tobacco and prayed to the water serpent: "I am an old lady, this is all I have left.  My ancestors are buried here.  I have food planted here.  I respect everything here.  To me the land is sacred.  The river is sacred, and we cannot live without it.  That is why I pray to the Great Creator and all my relations here this morning at sunrise and every evening at sunset.  Now I offer tobacco to the Moon, the spirit of the river, the water serpent, and all my relations.  I cry out to the Great Creator and say thank you for the dream and warning.  I ask that you not hurt me or my people.  I plant this sacred tree here, in this spot, only ten yards from the front door of my house.  Do not let the water go any further than this." 
     A few days later, in 1964, a flood raged down the mightly Klamath River.  It devastated the entire area, taking away homes, livestock, and human life on both sides of the river.  It flooded Crescent City and destroyed the church in which Grandma Nellie had stood just a few days before.  It was the worst flood ever recorded in California history.  My Grandma Nellie is now dead and buried at the old village site.  As you get out of the boat and begin to walk up to the old trail, leading up the side of a steep bank toward the old farmhouse, you can see that a flood had hit the place at one time.  The first house on the trail is totally destroyed, with only bits and pieces of wood scattered around an old foundation.  The second house, halfway up the trail, is mostly filled with mud on the inside.  The third house, where Grandma Nellie lived, is still standing.  It is wedged between five trees.  The water did not go any higher than the sapling she planted, and you can see that it has now grown into a young tree."--Tela Star Hawk Lake The Last Female Shaman
     The last I heard, the BIA is trying to divide the property up among all the different grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and as a result nobody can live on the land.
      When I heard this story, it touched me very deeply.  My own granfather once told us, "some people always have to have someone else to look down on, to make themselves feel better, more important."  In my mind, Grandma Nellie was special, not only in her abilities as a Medicine Women, but in her devotion to her life, her ways. We should all live as Grandma Nellie did, in pure honesty, devotion and strength.  Live with the Three R's: Respect, Relationship and Reciprocity...........live in kindness.