Wendy Rose's Three Thousand Dollar Death Song

The Concept of Cost and Cooly Articulated Rage

Feb 15, 2009 Savannah Schroll Guz

Poet, illustrator, and anthropologist Rose communicates the magnitude of her pain at seeing a museum's monetary valuation of Native American skeletal remains.

Originally published in the 1980 Pulitzer Prize-nominated collection Lost Copper, Three Thousand Dollar Death Song, an example of free verse, was inspired by a 1975 museum invoice, which prefaces the poem. The invoice reveals how the anthropological world--a world dominated by white men--puts a monetary valuation on Rose’s ancestral bones, artifacts that were once living people.

Rose, herself an anthropologist and storyteller, identifies with both the Hopi and Miwok nations and, consequently, maintains a strong emotional connection to Native American remains, which have, in a century, become scientific specimens.

The Concept of Cost

The word ‘cost’ appears repeatedly and bears multivalent meaning. Not only does it refer to the monetary valuation of the Native American bones, as evidenced by the museum invoice. It refers to the literal and figurative cost of their harvest. In line 36, she indicates that the bones were harvested from pits, a reference to archeological digs. But perhaps most dramatic is her figurative allusion to cost: the disturbance of potentially sacred Native American ground and the suffering that preceded the death of the people whom these bones once comprised.

Pain and Preparation

In lines 11 through 15, Rose describes the physical effect of learning the contemporary world's monetary appraisal of once living objects she identifies as invaluable. It is knowledge that incites a visceral response: “Assessing each nerve/running its edges along my arteries”. Here, Rose indicates that this knowledge has its own hurtful power. It can estimate her capacity for pain and subsequently traces its sharp ends along her the vital biological pathways--pathways that, if wounded, could cause fatal hemorrhaging.

The Focus on Currency and Reckoning

Following the prefatory citation of the museum invoice, which values the Native American bones at three thousand dollars, Rose begins the poem with a question as to how the bones were paid for. She references the money of the Caucasian world: cold silver coins, bills, or checks, which she calls ‘paper promises’—a phrase that calls up associations with treaties, paper promises that were often disregarded. Here, Rose indicates that if a check is cancelled or funds are insufficient, then the Native American bones have been disrespected further, devalued, stolen once more.

By the end of the poem, Rose makes reference to Native American currency: clam shell beads, steatite, dentalia shells, turquoise. At this point, the power fulcrum has shifted. As the bones and sacred artifacts reanimate, shaking off their museum catalogue numbers, an army assembles. Now, will the lingering debts the white man owes injured and victimized Native American tribes be paid in this Native American currency or in human blood? Rose references an imagined reckoning.

Closing Commentary

Often anthologized, Rose brings conscience to the anthropological field, and like her many other poems, expresses some disbelief and outrage over the monetary valuation of human remains. Her belief that the bones hold residual spirit and are capable of reckoning a cost for their disturbance and the expropriation of their sacred relics is evidenced by her ending, which indicates that both bones and relics will come together and exact retribution for their debasement. Rose’s tone alternately indicates her disbelief, composed questioning, and eventually, a coolly articulated rage.

The copyright of the article Wendy Rose's Three Thousand Dollar Death Song in Poetry is owned by Savannah Schroll Guz. Permission to republish Wendy Rose's Three Thousand Dollar Death Song in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Lost Copper, 1980