It was 1901. No-tats was sitting there in a room with plain walls painted white like the outside of the small building. It was the Indian Agency and there was an Old White Man with spectacles, his name was Baker, the Indian Agent. Next to him sitting stiffly straight was a white woman with her hair tied up in a ball on top her head, it made her eyes narrow slits; some said she came from back East giving up on looking for a man to take her in and wanted to bring God to the Indians. The only thing was she was afraid to be alone with them, and so she became the agents' writer for the big books. She had a hard face and listened to every word that was said writing it down in the book. The book was a big leather one with red colored cloth pages, there were a few of them on the shelves in the office. The old ones said those books brought bad luck to those who went into see them when they were called by him, Baker, when somebody died. It was during the time of the allotments when Indians were moved from their ancestral homelands, for these people who had lost the forests of Colorado in 1865 and then again in 1880 and moved to the high deserts of Utah. What is your name? No-tats. How old are you? 68 winters. The lady with a stiff face pointed at the ration books, and told Baker, the record shows he is 78 years old, not 68 and the two them talked quietly to each other. The old man, No-tats, sat there and remembered a day long ago, when he was a young man, a long time ago, when the forests were green, and the water pure, a place called by his people Buffalo Pass, Cochopah, it was a beautiful place and their people lived there.It was where he was born and grew up riding a horse stolen from the Spanish, it was time when there was only them Nuch, the People the called themselves, the whites called them Utes, they lived there with Arapahos and Comanche who roamed the mountains back then. He remembered a woman, a young Indian girl back then. Tagah, she was called. She was born near a place they call Peno, later the army called the place Los Pinos, up North of what is called Saguache. The tipis were buckskin and elk hide, the buffalo many and the hunting was good. In those days, Nuche could break camp and disappear into the forest within minutes when danger was near, but it had been some time since the Spanish came to fight, now the Mexicans brought wares to trade. In the midst of all this he grew up with Shavano and Uncsam. It was Shavano who met this young girl, Tagah. Her family camped up high to the North, in the way of the going to the mineral springs of what is now Glenwood, in the those days it was called, Where the Ferns Bend Near the Water by the Nuche. It was named for the ferns that grew even in the dead of winter when the heavy snows fell, because the hot waters gave them life. This is where she came from. Did you know this woman, Tagah, who died at Bitter Creek last winter? Yes, I have known her a ll my life. Did you know her before the allotments? He nodded his head and the woman wrote it down in the book. How many times was she married? By the law or by Indian Custom? He remembered how a group of them had ridden across the plains, from the Garden of the Gods east, 7 days to the Red Earth people, Commanches, and how Shavano had stolen good horses from them. In those days they were as quick as lightning, and could ride day and night. They brought back the horses, he No-tats, rode so hard his hair was all bushy and so he came to be known as Mexican Hair in those days by everyone. Shavano rode up the mountain with eight of those horses, paints they were and gave them to her people and she became his wife. They camped below the pass and made their home there, until the wagon loads of people came to cut the trees for homes below the pass down toward Saguache. Then the white men came who were strange, outcasts from their own people, they wanted to share the land with them and took it away one day in 1870.. Tagah, was married just one time. How many children did she have by Shavano? She had some children. A boy named Yagah, one called Moav, and Voo- muw-watch, in the English was of speaking she is called Maggie. Are those children still living? It was winter, the snows were deep and Tagah was going to have a baby. It was bad time to have a small one, those looking for gold were pushing them back deep into the forest away from the hot springs they loved, their winter camp. A boy was born, his name was Yagah, because that is the sound he made when he was born. His head was full of thick black hair, his arms swinging at the air. The old folks shouted out with an old song about him growing to be like Tall Trees, a name he would receive when he was of age. He died after one night, a winter night long ago, and No-tats when up high on the mountain to a ridge facing the sun with the boy's father and they put him in a cleft of rock at the pass so the sun would shine on him and he could see the whole country below him. Yagah, died long ago, way before the allotments, he said. What about Moav? Moav was a boy or girl? Moav was born in the place of mosquitos, the word means mosquitos because his people had retreated to the lowland rivers to hide from the settlers pouring into the valleys and mountains, killing on sight any of the Nuche they saw, his people, they were on the run. Along the wide river the boy was born, but he was small and not able to grow to be a man. He died after four winters on the trail to the North Country, seeking refuge in the Uintahs. Moav was a boy, he died many winters ago, he lived 4 winters. Are there any other children that Tagah had? Yes, she had 7 children all together, Moav and Tagah, and the one girl sitting over there, now she is called Maggie, but her name is Voo-muw-watch. She is the only one left. She is the only child from that time. He remembered her as a child growing up with them, learning to stay away from the trails they knew, knowing life in a containment camp set up by the cavalry and had been sent to boarding school for a while until a sickness called the Flu killed many of the children there and she went to live with her mother and never returned to school. She grew up in the high desert valley of Bitter Creek, far from any gold and good land. She grew up knowing the taste of bitter water. She was the only one who carries the songs from that time when they knew the taste of mountain streams. Notats told Baker, "There were 2 other children that were born to Tagah and Shavanaux, but Tagah had told him they died when they were babies". What were their names? I don't remember, it was long ago. They were buried in Colorado on Blue Mountain, near what you call Steam Boat, a place called by us, Topanas, Tagah said. It was winter time and their people were starving, and the soldiers were sent out after the Meeker Massacre to find them and bring them back. The winter was too hard on women with small children and it was said by a Holy Man, that food would be found to the East, high on the mountain, an elk would lead them there from that place. The trip was too hard for small children, and so Tagah was left them behind. She told No-tats that the children had died from the cold. She said this as she caught up to them where what we now call Steamboat Colorado is. It was years later and after a long time, maybe six or seven winters she told him the real story of how she left them at the steps of a log cabin a white man's cabin and left them at the place called Woman Cuts With a Knife, an Indian woman had killed some Arapahos who tried to attack her there and so they knew the place by that name. She never spoke of them again. She never went that way anymore after then; no one ever knew if they survived or were left to freeze. What were their names? I don't remember them they were too small and it was long time ago. Is that all you have to say about Tagah? I have nothing more to say. Notats then got up and left the room, going outside and getting on his horse to ride back to Pino Nuche and wait for his name to go into that big leather book. The Stiff Woman wrote in the book, Two children died before the allotment, Names Unknown In my work I have come across old files, some in big leather books that document the stories and struggles within Indian families, real people with real problems and no where is it written from their perspective. At times I can sit there and see the thumbprints they left on these pages of big leather books, where they were assigned allotments, rations and food allotments. In some cases I get a chance to talk to some of the elderly and by listening to them they tell me stories of things they saw and in these I find glimpses of past lives of natives who have long since gone on. In this case I remember that in all this one child lived on, Maggie, who had a child named Seegits, and a daughter Henrietta, and a from her seven grandchildren who live on and continue to survive and their legacy and ours is survival, of their name, their family and the hopes and dreams of those that came before, that is the legacy of natives born in this country. In those clefts of cliffs, mountain vistas, highlands and lowlands our fathers and mothers walked and for their efforts those of use that remain have been given the gift of life. We have survived despite all these things we go on. Johnny Rustywire