𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟/Wahzhazhe/Osage

^{Wa-zha’-zhe, name of the Osage tribe . . . who came from the stars.
—“The Osage and the Invisible World: From the Works of Francis LaFlesche”}

                                                   The first language

𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 which Eliza,

                                                                              her grandmother, spoke.

                                           I try to learn

              the words 𐓣𐓟

                                                     from a book, a dictionary.

What was my mother taught

                                                                              as a young girl sitting

                                          on the front stoop

              of her grandma’s house

                                                      inhabited by half-brothers

she revered. Her favorite,

                                                                             Hunky, hand outstretched,

                                           showed her how to catch

             the wild horse

                                                       𐓤𐓘𐓷𐓘 𐓷𐓘𐓲𐓟𐓸𐓣

unbridled in the pasture.

                                                                              She knotted a paisley

                                            bandana around her

             neck. This language

                                                    for throat 𐓰𐓪𐓲𐓟

and tongue 𐓵𐓟𐓺𐓟 –

                                                                                words she learns

                                            to speak but then

               forgets. She loosens

                                                     𐓷𐓟𐓵𐓣͘ the rope

from the horse’s crest. 


 

^{The Osage orthography}

^{𐓏𐒰𐓓𐒰𐓓𐒷 Osage
𐒻𐒷 words
𐒼𐒰𐓏𐒰 𐓏𐒰𐓊𐒷𐓐𐒻 wild horse
𐓈𐓂𐓊𐒷 throat
𐓍𐒷𐓒𐒷 tongue
𐓏𐒷𐓍𐒻͘ rope}

Copyright © 2024 by Elise Paschen. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 12, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast 

  

“This poem is a language origin story which imagines my mother as a child hearing Osage. Her father, conditioned by Indian boarding school, spoke only English even though his mother conversed in Osage. The poem, originally part of a long sequence titled ‘Heritage,’ arrived quickly, eventually becoming its own poem, which sustains the stanzaic structure of ‘Heritage’: indented staggered lines in fives. For many years, I have explored our language in Osage dictionaries. In this poem’s initial drafts, I incorporated the phonetic translations of the Osage words from Carolyn Quintero’s Osage Dictionary. The Osage Nation recently created its own online orthography dictionary, so I translated the phonetic spellings into orthography and then confirmed my work with Christopher Côté of the Osage Nation Language Department. I believe my great-grandmother, [Eliza Bigheart] Tallchief, would be proud to see our language resuscitated today.”
—Elise Paschen