The Fisherman
“Fisher of Men” is a poem based upon the writings of controversial Catholic priest canonized as a saint named Junipero Serra. The poem is written as if from Serra’s perspective, describing with an almost lascivious repetition how he saw indigenous tribes “naked as Adam.” Serra is controversial because his ascension to sainthood was constructed upon the back of notoriously brutal treatment of these “savages” needing to be brought to Jesus. He is the fisher of men who had no place being trapped in a net.
Adobe Bricks
The raw material required to make the bricks used to build missions is abundant and cheap. This is why adobe brick houses are so iconic in their association with the American southwest and beyond and below. It is not just houses that give this material its immediate recognition, but all those Catholic missions which populate the region. While the material is abundant, it is a slow process and requires time and planning and, most of all, collective strength to position each sixty-pound brick. Each adobe brick is thus, in a way, a symbol for all the deaths of indigenous men who had little choice but to contribute to the massive mission-building project.
Bells
The missions require bells, not for the mellifluous music which can be made from them, but to toll loudly enough to bring the newly converted people to duty. Bells bring them to the mission to pray. Bells alert them to when it is time to go to work. Bells signal the end of the working day. The bells of the missions are symbols of authority and oppression.
Davy Jack’s
Davy Jack’s land covers a good twenty-something miles in distance at a width of maybe six miles. Such a massive property requires hundreds of workers. The property deeds don’t have much to say about title purchase and such stuff. It is assumed that Davy Jack’s parents arrived, spotted some land and claimed it as theirs. After, it was a merely a process of using the power of ownership already enjoyed to rig the bidding system to gain more. Davy Jack’s becomes symbolic of the systemic manner in which immigrants to this “New World” took what they wanted without legal backing and then cooked the system afterward to make it retroactively legal.
Bad Indian
The title of the text is a symbolic counterpoint to the infamous assertion by General Philip Sheridan that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Implicit in the assertion is that all living Indians are bad. The author extrapolates from that unspoken assumption the idea that what keeps an Indian alive is rejection of the oppression of interlopers who have invaded their land, stolen their birthrights, subjugated them into slavery, and tried to take away their identity. Bad Indians are, therefore, those who rebel against in any way against such treatment.
