|
The Artist’s
Almanac
October 2009
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
- Tennyson
I don’t shed tears
with the poet; October is my favorite month, the beginning of my
favorite season. There are football Saturdays, reunions, street
fairs, days of plein aire painting, and long walks along the bluff
above the lake, when the searchlight sun picks out a golden maple on
the far bank and immortalizes it in luminous memory. The poet’s “days
that are no more” are lit in golden remembrance, safe there
from harm or alteration, for us to enjoy when we will. We see things
clearest in October’s golden light.
We celebrate these
memories at All Saints, El Dia de los Muertos, All
Hallows Eve and Halloween, a favorite of the marketers that now
rivals Christmas. This year, if it does not rain, we shall have
a full moon to light our Halloween memories.
October days have
a mystery all their own. We enter a new world, without leaving
our own. Far vistas, the smells of mulching leaves beneath our
feet, sounds clearly heard from horizon to horizon, the feel of
the creek’s cool water rippling bright leaves downstream, and
the taste of frost-nipped turnip greens: all combine to sharpen
our senses in October. We know it is too beautiful to last.
Indian Summer above Desha’s Station – Bill Puryear, Artist
October opens our
sense of time. Distant memories haunt me as I tread the leaf-strewn
floor of a grove of mighty beech and maples looking for shiny
buckeyes. My father first brought me here seventy years ago and I
have come back since to search for what some say are good luck
charms and others call boy makers. For me, they were both.
We call October
Indian summer and the name has a clear derivation: the
pioneer settlers wrote of it in the 1790s. It is the time after
first frost when summer returned long enough for settlers and
Indians both to travel to the others’ villages to make war.
(Adam Sweeting, Beneath the Second Sun: A Cultural History
of Indian Summer, University Press of New England, 2003, p.
16) The trails were dry, the rivers and creeks were fordable,
and a war party could travel fast, leaving no tracks. The
Indians came for horses and hostages and killed settlers who got
in their way. The settlers went to the Indian villages for
revenge, and wreaked it aplenty.
The Captives – David Wright, Artist
Living subject to
nature and the seasons, the Indians were more than just hunters and
savage warriors – they were natural pantheists. Their lunar calendar
was rational and their months, unlike ours, were equal. Observing
all that surrounded them and lacking a written language, their
spoken tongue was filled with natural images and metaphors and
sometimes rose to poetry. The most eloquent of them carried the day
in tribal councils and often became their chiefs.
In these councils all might be heard, warrior or female. Appeals to
custom, memory or mystery often prevailed. Here Katteuha, the
Beloved Woman of the Cherokee at Chota, addresses Benjamin Franklin,
President of the Continental Congress in 1787, pleading for an end
to the killings and a lasting treaty of peace
I
am in hopes that if you rightly consider it that woman is the
mother of all and that woman does not pull children out of trees
or stumps nor out of old logs, but out of their bodies, so that
they ought to mind what a woman says, and look upon her as a
mother - and I have taken the privilege to speak to you as my
own children and the same as if you had sucked my breast.... The
great men have all promised to keep the path clear and straight,
as my children shall keep the path clear and white .... The talk
you sent to me was to talk to my children, which I have done
this day, and they all liked my talk well.
Tennessee is an
Indian name and its map is filled with streams bearing names as
musical as the waters rippling down their valleys - Nolichucky,
Hiwassee, Chatata, Sequatchie, Watauga, Loosahatchie and Warioto.
Only the names survive, as the people who named them have been
forced to abandon their fields and villages and move westward.
But a tincture of their blood survives here in a few, many of
whom do not even know it.
Yet, in a land
filling with developments there are still places where one, late
of a fall afternoon, may imagine warriors on their stalk. As we
tread the dank woodlands this month, the trees above us blazing
with glory, we may sense the presence of those who walked here
before us and ask Great Spirit to help us treat this land with
the same love and respect for its beauty as did they, this
Indian summer.
Bill Puryear
Upcoming Events
-
Book
Launch and Signing Parties, The Founding of the
Cumberland Settlements: The First Atlas 1779-1804, at
Gallatin Public Library on the Square, Thursday , October 15th,
4-6:30 PM and Saturday, October 17th, 12 Noon -2:30 PM. Hosted
by Sumner County Historical Society, with authors Doug Drake,
Jack Masters, Bill Puryear and artist David Wright signing books
and art. Prints and Giclees of nationally-acclaimed pioneer
artist David Wright will also be displayed and available. For
further information see
www.cumberlandpioneers.com.
|
