The River Etowah

My name is Toltec and I am from Guatemala. Since the gods created my people, I and my ancestors have lived free from the bondage of men. Many of my people have died bravely fighting other tribes and white men. And many of my people have died from spirits brought by the white men and rarely by their weapons. I was raised poor, unlike my ancestors, who ruled over my land. But as a child I knew I would bring my people back to greatness and lead them to a new epoch of prosperity and autonomy.

I left my land last year to drive a taxi in Rome. It was not the Rome of the great civilizations but a different Rome, one of men who lived off the land but in a harmony different than that of my people and culture.

Many times I would drive my taxi to the river to pick up those who had let the current carry them far from their origin. Many would be intoxicated by the native firewater. Many were women who would try to steal my seed and royal bloodline.

I lived with 3 men from my village and all were loyal to me. We drove two vans and never ceased working. We purchased the two vans for $4,000 and they ran well; the white men told us they could not run but we fixed them with very little effort.

It was a Saturday and it was warm and the sun was to set in three hours. I received a call from a white woman who spoke my language. I picked her up 30 minutes from my home by the entrance to the river.

She handed me a cold drink and I accepted. It was warm in my van and she was pretty. Several minutes later I felt dizzy and pulled aside the road.

"You look tired, mudvein. Your nigger skin looks darn near white."

"I feel very tired and cannot drive," I told her.

The white woman pulled me from my driver's station and pushed me to the back of my van. I could barely move. She sat in the seat that I had found in a junk yard and installed with my three village friends. She drove off..

When I awoke I was in a canoe on the Etowah river, the same river where I had met this white woman.

My leg was chained to the canoe and she she sat with her back to the current of the river. We drifted down the river and she handed me a paddle and told me to begin to work.

"I don't want to see you drown. It would be such a waste of a slave," she told me.

I paddled down the ancient river. We reached a muddy bank and I pulled the canoe up the steep slope. She walked ahead as I pulled the canoe. As she walked across an old log, it snapped and she fell. Even though I was in chains, I felt for her and asked her if she was injured. I could not break myself free of the ankle chain and come to her aid. But like a brave princess I knew in a past life, she brushed off her injury and told me not to delay the portage of her canoe.

She walked ahead of me and led me to a field.

A great deer danced across the field.

"I have seem you run. I have seen your brown skin. You run like that animal. You are an animal, why I've got you chained. You will make us shelter now."

I took the paddles of her canoe and took her clothes to bring them together to make us shelter. Even though I was her captive I felt close to her, as if we had met at a mountain filled in its valleys with the blood of men I had killed when I was king.

But we did not, at first, go into the shelter I had built for her. I took the pale skinned woman and pinned her to the earth the gods had made for me. I pressed my lips to her and rid her of what remained of her garments. We joined and I put my people's spirit into her.

"I am free. Who is the man who has freed me from this curse of a river?"

"I come from warriors who have filled these rivers with the blood of brave warriors."

I threw my chains into the dark waters of the river.

I kissed my native princess. I carried her to my canoe and we drifted into the waters, now full with the rain and spirits of the river gods.

We arrived at the new shore and men came to our canoe and offered their fish and berries and bowed to us.

"There were men who were called Niggers who were said to eat anything. What is meant by this is that they were men of the river and of the earth of the gods. They could take the mud vein and turn it to life and food as did the gods when they made man and woman from the soil of the earth and mixed such life with the rain of the heavens. We now see the gods have returned to give new life to this river and this earth. We, as humble creatures of the gods, thirst for a new life and a new world. We will eat anything you, as our king, and she, as our princess, will give us."