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TO DREAM KALAPUYA

BY KARL YOUNG

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to leave
addition
to sleep
to dream
Kalapuya language

@

river, creek
root, alder tree
to dig
uprooted
broken

@

parting of the hair
landing place
grouse
to be hungry
to want

@

to wake up
berry basket
pupil of the eye
fish basket
wood
to strike
scales

@

sole of foot
money
to live, to sit

@

thunder
snow
interjection
tight

@

together
bitter, sour
ripe

@

make noise
catch fish
fish hawk
summer
western ocean
to go over
waves

@

bed
dance
horns, antlers
stove
chief
dam

@

tomorrow
invite
eagle
to be dry

@

a silent person
to rain
salt clouds

@

daybreak
to comb one's hair
to shine
space between knuckles

@

neck
waves, breakers
back of head
fishing basket
rotten
frost
to steal

@

to look
to be glad
to break

@

house
man
wildcat
hair
to start

@

eyebrow
sinew
star
spoon
blackberries

@

desire
blue
jealous
grow
growth
murderer
scraper

@

low tide
to feel sleepy

@

fair, festival
to be tired
to hear, to understand

@

sand-beach
red fox
codfish
morning star

@

hail, beads
crane, heron
yesterday
ant
ankle
wagon
always

@

lazy
mirror, window, glass
ashes
anus

@

ice appears
ice
to scare
today
proud
dog

@

twig
brain
to join

@

salal berries
to twinkle
bluejay

@

to shut one's eyes
shoulder
to hunt
wells, springs

@

nose
salmon berries
to paddle
wings
hand
to fan
a light
proper name

@

a green place
a place that does not burn
elk
right away, quickly, soon
fire
to come, to approach
to pass by, to pass out
spring
sturgeon

@

grave
to tie the hair in a knot
knot in the hair
trout

@

to be warm
a little while
nephew
grandson
to eat
food
to name
cougar

@

willow
somewhere, anywhere
to lean back, to lie back
to hit with a club

@

to throw
to dive
to join
grizzly bear

@

smoke
piss
smoke
shout

@

west wind
high tide
high tide

@

to start
ear
to hear, to listen
down, below
chicken hawk
up, above, high, loud
knife
face

@

black swan
white swan
knee
out in the water

@

upper lip
to move
in a circle
in a circle
to think
to move

@

my     our two    our     our
my     our two    our     our
our two    we two    we    we
if, then     to me      on me
for me   with me    to us two
to be cold  crab  to be sorry
to be poor  to be downhearted
to start out   to start again
we                        two

@

open feathers
feathers
eggs, acorn
hazel wood
perforation in the ear
to neigh
thin
a cut
otter

@

north wind
dam
to take care of, watch

@

to watch
fire-drill
the wind blows
wind
to go back
hazel-wood
post, wall

@

shirt
fish net
to tie, to fasten
mouth of the river
down the river
far
mortar
deep
to get tired of waiting, to
wait in vain
it is dark
darkness, night
east
a Kalapuya Indian

AUTHOR'S NOTES

I used a simple and relatively spontaneous method of composition in writing To Dream Kalapuya. My source for the work was Leo Frachtenberg's Lower Umpqua Texts. The book contained stories in Lower Umpqua, translations of the texts, and ended with a Lower Umpqua/English dictionary of the words used in the texts. In composition, I used strings of English equivalents of Lower Umpqua words found in the dictionary. I started and stopped wherever a string of words made poetic sense. I always stuck to the sequence of words in the dictionary (a sequence dictated by the roman alphabet) except in the last poem in the book.

Frachtenberg collected the stories in his book just at the moment when Lower Umpqua culture was coming to an end. I don't have the book with me, so I don't remember Frachtenberg's exact demographics of these native inhabitants of what is now the North West U.S., but I believe there were 5 or 6 people left, all senile, mentally ill or dying of consumption. The stories are the pathetic last attempt at articulation of a dying race.

The subtext to my poems is that the remaining scraps of these people's language could make a memorial to them, and, to some extent, even recreate some of the delight, decency, and sanity of their original way of life if left more or less to its own devices.

to be warm
a little while
nephew
grandson
to eat
food
to name
cougar

The Kalapuya, however, have proved wiser, and more durable, and, oddly enough, putting this book on the web has brought this to my attention. Reports of their extinction have been greatly exagerated. E-mail from a number of Kalapuyans sets me straight on that.

To Dream Kalapuya was first published in book form by Truck Press, St. Paul, Minnesota. Copyright © 1977 by Karl Young.

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