macheveant an old allotment

He came into my office, his hands were rough and dark. His glasses
were taped together and his straw cowboy hat had seen better days.

Macheveant


Macheveant, he said.


My grandmother, I have come to check on her land.


He stood there with some yellowed papers in his hands. Under the brim
of his hat I could see his eyes, they were brown and he was a quiet
talker.


There were a touch of gray in his long hair jammed under this hat, but
his eyes were clear.


He said when I was small I used to stay with her, she didn't talk
English, we used to go the store with her and tell her what was on the
cans and she would choose which ones to eat.


At the store counter I put my thumbprint next to hers on the bill. He
held the old papers on the table and rolled his thumb showing me how it
was done.


You see I know she couldn't talk, and I want to know what happened to
her land. To know how the road and irrigation canal got on there. I
want to put water on there but the white man's irrigation company won't
put any pipe on there and the way they have changed the ditch the pipe
runs up to the border of our land and then stops. It doesn't line up
with the ditch and they came to me and said they were going to put a
pipe across my land so I could water it. It never has had water on like
it was supposed to.


The old house where she lived is still there, the water pump is dry
now, the water goes next door to those white guys that moved on there.


All we have is sage growing and they put the road across there. I want
to know did they get it get done, how did they do it?


We talked for little bit, I was busy with other things and looking at
him I wanted him to go away, I am too busy to help you. Maybe you could
come back later I said and we could go over it.


He looked at me and I could see his eyes under the brim of his hat,
they were clear and bright. The woman I went to she told me you know
about these things, and I would like to konw about it. These papers
come from way back to 1934 or so, I want to know how those things got
on our land and if she was paid for it.


I looked at him and had to really listen, to put out of my mind the
paperwork in front of me and listen to this grandson as he told me
about how he wondered how she, Macheveant could have given permission
when he was her eyes and ears so many years ago.


He had to have been 8 or 9 when she was old. He told me about their
place, about the spring and how the ditch came across the land and the
men who knocked their fence down to cross the land. They never put it
back up and it is nothing but pieces of old wood now. The land is no
longer fenced.


The house is abandoned and is just wood siding. Asking a few questions
I looked at the map and found the area he was speaking about. It was
going to take some effort, he could not offer me anything more than his
time and a glimpse into the life he knew as a child.


Now he had interest in the land with his brothers and had been
wondering about the road and ditches and the fence that was taken down
many years ago and never put up.


We went through old records and after some time found a paper she had
put her thumb too. There it was Macheveant, and it was witnessed by
some government man who signed it.


About half way down it said she was paid $12.00 way back then. He just
stood there with his bony knuckes and felt the numbers with his
fingers.


How could she have sold it, she talked about the place all the time.
She could not read, and she must not have known what it was she put her
mark to. He studied it for a long time. She got cheated. They took the
land.


I guess a lot of things like that happened back then. He held the paper
and his lips curled back and he said she would not have sold it for
$12.00. I didn't say anything, but let it sink into him.


I could see that he was thinking she must have been called in and after
some talk which sounded good to the ears, put her mark on the paper and
received cash money for it. She probably went to the store to settle an
account or bought some peaches.


In time she learned she had sold her birthright, the land of her
father, Indian land and they put a highway next to her house. Through
the middle of it, the irrigation cut across it, and after time had
eaten the soil down making a ravine 30 feet deep and the water still
ran through the bottom of it. Deep Creek they call it now, the Deep
Creek ditch.


He talked for a little bit about a man, his grandfather, he could
barely remember but said he walked through waist high grass carrying
him on his shoulders many years ago, more than a lifetime ago. He
played out in the area in front of the house, and remembered a wagon
trail and the people would wave when they went by. The place had
cottonwood trees then and was all green, no whitemen lived by them
then. I could see this as he talked about it.


I have been to that place now it is without water, the trees died and
the old house leans in the wind just a shell of what it once was. The
Deep Creek ditch cuts like a scar on this land and he said I own a part
of it still, just the corner where the house sits, the rest is gone. He
looked at the paper and rubbed his finger across her her mark made many
years ago and then he stood up and said, if she knew what it was for
she never would have sold it. He pushed his hair back under this hat,
and I could see his cheekbones were high and his skin dark brown.


He didn't say much, just turned and walked to the door saying thanks,
but there was not thanks in his voice. He walked out the door and went
home, thinking about that indian land, the place......way back there...


rustywire