Execution Hill

Execution Hill

(“Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.’” Luke 23:34a)

We pretended to walk across the river,
we made fun of the way others swam.
We filtered our sarcasm through a dozen
courtrooms filled with hungry spectators.
We expected a show, we expected to know
how the day would end and why we held on so long.
But we let loose of our story and demanded dancing
from a one-legged dog. We were not cruel,
just vastly misinformed.

We never expected the sky to storm from noon until
three, we had been told to expect sunshine on our sublime faces.
We were informed that we were born for this;
we believed it like a phone call from the government.
But we put our trust in iron, we put our hope in blades
of steel; we outsourced our future to magazines full of powder,
to derisive wars of words. We nailed the truth
to the wood.

We followed the dark procession,
we were there for the show.
We had nothing more to do that afternoon
than watch the slow execution of a trio of criminals,
(or so we were told.) We had heard the stories,
and met a few fellows who said they knew the
man in the middle
from an encounter along the road. They were
convinced they were healed. They were convinced
he didn’t belong hanging naked in front of the world.

We didn’t expect him to speak,
we expected little from him at all. He saved
those fellows along the road,
surely he could save himself like a king on a throne.
But we heard, quieter than the breeze, and loud as a
man innocent by degrees. It was forgiveness he eased
from his throat as we watched his life ebb away over those
hours.
It didn’t matter if we knew beforehand, now we knew
exactly what we had done. We stopped our talk and dice games,
and lost our exuberance for parades to execution hill.

Manifest Litter

Manifest Litter

(“Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but the discerning man controls his comments.” Proverbs 11:12)

The landscape is littered with treaties made with
the first nation and its people. Brown and foxing,
burnt around the edges, some from lighting arrogant cigars,
and only a few used to light flaming arrow once the
chiefs and braves
finally understood their true value.

303 Santee were sentenced to be hanged found guilty
by poisonous mouth-talk of rape and murder;
no one stayed to further state the obvious: fierce led
sliced the shoulder blades of the first chief riding to
meet a small army regiment with peaceful hands extended.

303 Santee, with starvation rations and water full of sickness,
waited for the promises, repeated the treaties, a word meant
to say to both parties: We will treat each other this way and no other.

303 Santee, some with ancient wounds and withered arms, were
lodged in a hot log prison, while defense was denied them,
attorneys refused them, and one man believed them

Sending

The words of each trial and hearing, the saliva mixed with ink
as the hated first persons spoke without representation; sending
the entire proceedings to the Great Father, the Great Emancipator

Who read every word, hired great counselors to read every word,
delaying the waiting massacre a moon and another longer than
the captors desired. 39 would hang, said Mr. Lincoln, “Ordered that
of the Indians and half-breeds sentences to be hanged by the military commission
…you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December.”

And so the proclamation listed 39 records of the condemned.

Quickly, upon the twenty-sixth of December, thirty-nine of the 303
convicted Santees, were marched from the prison to the scaffold.

They sang the Sioux Death song; original words hung close to frozen ground.

Soldiers pulled white caps over each man’s head; dry snow settled up their shoulders.

Their nooses were placed around their necks; now the death day had no more sound, no more breath.

The control rope was cut; an army officer gave the command, the last man to act on their behalf

And

39 minus one (a late reprieve for one) lifeless Santee bodies dangled lifeless in the air.

The prairies were stolen, men were burned like potash or frozen from exposure;
the wise, the young, the brave, the fool, were seen as simple savages, Satan’s army

By which a Christian nation would Manifest its Destiny upon broken agreements
and false religion.

38 Santees legs and arms hung as limp as backyard linens on the line. May the
chill still run its line from the scaffold to our own baffled hearts in the same way
one bystander said that day,

“This must be America’s greatest public execution.”

"The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state."  Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey