Who is this woman
dressed in white folks clothes
and staring from the cover
of a book of native tales?
not the gifted storyteller
the one whose words give us the text
but an elder from the Clatsop tribe
wife of Chief Illga - Tsetseno
Nehalem Tillamook

The book notes give her name
as Maggie Illga though
her husband would have known her
as Koshtewah
born in 1800
lived a hundred years
a hundred years!

The photo
taken late in life
is striking for the wide awake
expressive eyes that look
with equal parts of sorrow
and outrage
as if to lay her losses
at the feet
of the poor cameraman
as if his camera shot were one more
deeply felt indignity

Yet it's no candid shot
it seems to catch
either her fixed expression
or a gesture meant to say exactly
what it says
I see you
you destroyers of a world
that in the time before you came
was whole
a world that when
I was a girl
I knew and loved