Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  The Choctaws and Chickasaws have always lived adjacent to each other, often in tolerable friendship. Some blood they spilled, but it was not as though they were enemies or strangers.

  The forbidden fruit of the Choctaws was the sand plum. By eating it, they lost the easy way and must climb the hard hill forever.

  The Noe or Noah of the Choctaws was Oklabashih the great raft builder. The Flood was a Mississippi River flood of unequaled magnitude. It was at the time of the Flood, or as an immediate consequence of it, that the Choctaw Indians followed their brother Chickasaws across the river, from the west to the east side.

  The Mound, the Babel, of the Choctaws after the Flood was Nanih Waiya (the Bending Mountain) in the Tallago Valley of Mississippi. There had been another Nanih Waiya in the old land before the Choctaws crossed the river to their new home. That one was the Mountain from the Beginning, this latter one was a memento of it built by hands.

  The magic men of the Choctaws were the Alikchi. But the magic itself, the Aleika, could surround even a private man, and he then became a man of a special sort.

  The patriarchs of the Choctaws were Homostubbee, Puchshenubbee, Pushmataha, and Moshulatubbee. The Choctaws were still in the Age of the Patriarchs when we begin our action.

  The foregoing is the history of the world up to the point where we begin our tale, at the start of the nineteenth century as the White Eyes count the hundreds.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1.

  The birth and raising of Hannali Innominee. How was it go to be a child then? Barua resigns from the Pushmataha.

  Should we not now get a man to going? Chronicles are all very well, but an epic-and we aspire to no less-has to have a man in the middle of it.

  The man is going. He is already born. He will be going it for a long time.

  In an unknown year (either 1800, 1801, or 1802 according to the later recollection of his brother) was born Hannali Innominee of the Okla Hannali District of the Choctaw Nation. Hannali would be a big man and would almost exactly fill a century.

  The Innominee family was of the Mishoweia town or clan, but had now removed some distance from most of the Mishoweia. They were of the Hundred Families, an odd minority along the Mishoweia.

  Hannali's father was Barua Innominee. His mother was Chapponia. His brothers were Pass Christian Innominee and Biloxi Innominee. The names of the Choctaws had already begun their evolution into their mixed form. Hannali was the third generation of Innominee. He had, of course, ancestors going back further than that, but the Choctaws had not used surnames further back than that. He was raised on a south-flowing river in what is now the state of Mississippi.

  Hannali was a bulky boy, a Choctaw chuckler. And that is a thing that must be understood before we go on. Other peoples laugh or smile, some giggle. The Choctaws chuckle. An Indian agent, of a little later date, tells of a row of Choctaws sitting on a log for an hour, all as blank-faced as though they were dead. Then one of them began to quiver and shake, another, and still another. And all of them quivered and chuckled till they shook the leaves off the trees. They were the chuckling Choctaws.

  They may have remembered a joke they heard the day before, or a week before; they may not all have been chuckling at the same thing. But it is a thing that distinguishes the Choctaws from other people, that they will sit silent for a long time, and will then begin to chuckle as though they would rupture themselves.

  When very young, Hannali would sit on the black ground and chuckle till it was feared that he would injure himself. Whatever came over him, prenatal witticism or ancestral joke, he was seldom able to hold in his glee. In all his life he never learned to hold it in.

  What did he look like? An early story tells it. Once when he was very small, Hannali was found in the company of an old she-bear. Papa Barua tried to get the boy away from her and was badly mauled. Then Mama Chapponia had to come in and smooth things over. She explained to the she-bear that this was not a bear cub however much it looked like one. It was Chapponia's own child and the bear made a mistake. You had but to snuffle the boy to tell that he was not a bear. They both tried it, and they both doubted the test. Hannali smelled like a bear cub and he looked like one. In a short time he would come to look like a great hulking he-bear.

  The old she-bear remained around the farm for years, until she died, and became an intimate of the family. When the brothers would call to Hannali, “Your mother is looking for you!” he never knew whether they meant Mama Chapponia or the she-bear until they chuckled.

  “How was it go to be a child then?” Hannali's son Travis asked him years later.

  “Everything was larger then,” Hannali would tell his son, “the forest buffalo were bigger than the plains buffalo we have now, the bears were bigger than any you can find in the Territory today you call that a bearskin on that wall it is only a dogskin I tell you yet it's from the biggest bear ever killed in the Territory the wolves were larger and the foxes the squirrels were as big as our coyotes now the gophers were as big as badgers the doves and pigeons then were bigger than the turkeys now.”

  “Maybeso you exaggerate,” his son Travis would say.

  “Of course I do with a big red heart I exaggerate the new age has forgotten how I remember that the corn stood taller and the ears fuller nine of them would make a bushel and now it takes a hundred and twenty that doesn't consider that the bushels were bigger then the men were taller and of grander voice the women of a beauty to be found nowhere today except in my own family the girls sang so pretty with voices they walked so fine when they carried corn they could soft-talk you like little foxes those girls.”

  “You are joking it all, Father.”

  “Not like we joked then all the stories were funnier like the man who laughed till he split open one lung went flying out you think that stopped him his stomach and his little stomach came flying out then his liver out came all his entrails and the organs that an honest man doesn't even know the names of them should you not attend to him somebody asked his wife wait he stop chuckling said his wife I put them back before he stop chuckling then I have it all to do over again who will tell a story like that now you tell that and they look at you and say what is this a witless Indian things were funnier then my son.”

  Hannali did not speak in that manner because he was a clod, but because he was a Choctaw. Whether in English or Choctaw, all Chocs run sentences together with no intonation for either period or question. The educated Choctaws of that day — those who wrote in their own hands — punctuated either not at all or excessively. In official depositions one will find page-long screeds with no break at all. Or one will find random punctuation, with commas between almost every word, and perhaps a colon or semicolon between an article and its following noun. Someone had told them that they must punctuate, but nobody would ever be able to tell them how.

  It is so even today with the removed Choctaws. Go to barrooms where Indians abound (First or Second Street in Tulsa, Reno or California Street in Oklahoma City, Kickapoo Street in Shawnee, Sixth Street in Okmulgee, Callahan Street in Muskogee) and you will hear a man talk like that. Ask him. He will be a Choctaw.

  “Mama Natchez says that you see with long time ago eyes and they magnify,” said son Travis.

  “True they magnify now we have forgotten how I know that I look back through the glasses of a boy who needed none a lens-grinder man has told me that this is an effect he cannot duplicate.”

  But that is the way it was in the early days. Everything was larger and was drawn with the old clear lines.

  It was when Hannali was still a small boy that his father Barua Innominee changed the nationality of his family. Barua went to the tough chief Pushmataha and told him that he was resigning from his district. He said that Pushmataha had sucked the white men's eggs and still had the froth of them on his mouth. That was partly true. Pushmataha had become General Push to the white men. He held a general's rank for service in the War of 1812 and at other times. He had a general's un
iform and he liked to wear it.

  But he was a Medal Mingo for all that, a king, and a real king. Whether he was Mingo-Pushmataha or General Push, he was not a man to cross.

  Barua Innominee was a very big strong man. There were no bigger men anywhere except for those few slow-minded, slow-moving giants who were sometimes born to the Choctaws. But Pushmataha could strike right through big men like that.

  Pushmataha is described in a dozen accounts as of towering height and of great bulk. Indeed, he has described himself as such, and perhaps he believed that he was. But an early Indian agent has given it that Pushmataha was no taller than the average man and was on the lean side, that it was his burning intensity, his incredible speed and striking power with knife or short club or hand, his fabulous voice and his exciting mind that made him so outstanding and feared a person.

  Nobody could kill a man faster than could Pushmataha. He made lightning seem slow, and thunder was a whisper beside his voice. He had hypnotic talents and great acting ability, and he seared men who didn't scare easily. To many he must have seemed of towering height. You don't call a man a giant unless there is something giantlike about him. And Barua had told him that he had sucked white men's eggs.

  When crossed, Pushmataha would swell up and turn purple. Then he would either strike dead the man who had crossed him, or he would break into echoing laughter and it would be all over with. This time he did neither.

  He finally let all of the air out of himself when he saw that Barua was unafraid. He told Barua that he accepted his defection, and to get out of his district at once and forever. This was the old Kunsha Okla Hannali Six Town District.

  Barua told Pushmataha that he would not get out of his district physically, that he would get out only by declaring himself out, that he would continue to live on his same land, and that he would announce that land annexed to whatever district would have him.

  Pushmataha told Barua that he would kill him and drag him out of the district by his dead heels. And Barua turned and walked away.

  One does not turn and walk away from a Mingo without being dismissed.

  Barua was in the saddle and a half mile gone when he heard the giant laughter of Pushmataha bouncing around the hills. Old Push was a fine fellow for all his fearsome aspect, and the Choctaws would remember him with affection after he was dead. Had he lived forever, the Choctaws would have done the same. And he later wiped that white man's egg off his face and became Indian of the Indians again.

  Barua Innominee rode to Moshulatubbee, the Mingo of the old Okla Tannaps District, now named after him the Moshulatubbee.

  Moshulatubbee was another very large man, and he had never sucked white men's eggs even to deceive them. He did not blow himself up and turn purple in the Pushmataha manner, but to one who had done wrong his appearance was equally disturbing. Moshulatubbee had a great grin that could not be fathomed. “It is like that of the nuthatch that has just swallowed a wild cat,” one Choctaw said. Moshulatubbee wore that grin even when he killed a man with his own hand. As Mingo, Moshulatubbee was executioner for his district. He didn't love the job but he didn't shirk it. Mostly he was a pleasant man, and he was so now.

  “You have ride slow the story have ride faster,” the old Mingo said, “I hear you have call the old bull an egg-sucking possum now you have join our club.”

  “I have resigned from a district how have I joined a club?” asked Barua.

  “It is a very small club,” grinned Moshulatubbee. “It has maybe twenty dead members and you be only the fourth living one.”

  “What is make the club?”

  “Those who have defy our good friend to his face Homostubbee did it and lost no sleep over it remember that about Homostubbee Puckshenubbee did it and it aged him ten years but it aged Pushmataha too I did it and my wifes have to burn my clothes after it I sweat so foully do you know what he was say about me after it.”

  “No I know nothing of that,” said Barua.

  “Pushmataha say that I leave my grin there grinning at him and walk out from behind it and take a ramble and a drink and a nap all the while he was hold his breath and swell up and turn purple and then I come back rested and slip into my grin again and so have him tricked I did not know to do this with him but since then I have done it with other men you want call me Mingo.”

  “I will join your district if you will have me if you will not then I will join Puckshenubbee if he will not have me either then I will be a man without a district.”

  “I will have you now you are my man I am your Mingo whoever touches you touches me you are now of the Moshulatubbee now you listen man Barua with every ear you have nobody ever resigns from my district I am not Pushmataha neither is Pushmataha Moshulatubbee I do not boast I do not blow up and carry on I tell you no four men no two men no one man ever cross me and live it is all a dead man club who have stood up to me you come see me some time tell me I have sucked eggs then we see some fun man.”

  The position of Barua Innominee was an awkward one. He had been hereditary town chief of Mishoweia Town though he had lived apart from that region. Even there he had been one of the Hundred Families — a minority faction. Now he announced himself to be a citizen of the Moshulatubbee, though still an Okla Hannali forever. He became almost a minority of one. Actually, five or six families, kinsmen and close friends, followed him in his new allegiance. But he set a pattern.

  Later, his son Hannali would indeed become a minority of one, and he would maintain that he represented the correct and main line and that all others were following the eccentric.

  2.

  Where are your own horses' bones? Okla Falaya, Okla Tannaps, Okla Hannali. Incomprehensible ways. Even the stogie was sacred.

  It was only yesterday that the nations scattered through the world, and less than yesterday that several of them returned to the homeland from over the sea, and greatly changed by their wanderings. Three of these nations were the Spanish, the French, the English. Interplay was set up between these returning nations and the Indians of the South.

  The Choctaws were the central and most numerous tribe of the South, and their language (in its own form, and in that of the Mavila-Choctaw trade tongue of pidgin) dominated a wide region. The Choctaws were farmers, which is to say that perhaps one acre out of ten of their land was under the plow or the hoe. They had good hunting, good farms, and good livestock.

  It is maintained that the Indians had no horses till the Spanish brought them. But this is a lie, one of the Chocs told me.

  “The Choctaws always had horses,” he said.

  “Where are their bones then?” I asked him.

  “Hog hominy hell how do I know where their bones are where are your own horses' bones the Chocs had horses as long as they had hoot owls.”

  The Chocs were the greatest Ishtaboli ball players in the world. They played with sometimes a hundred men on a side, and rival factions would bet whole towns on a game. When they scored a point, they gobbled like turkeys.

  They had strong towns of timber and earth houses. They were such hardy warriors that they seldom had to go to war. Their presence imposed a basic peace on the old South during the Indian centuries.

  So the Choctaws were the Okla, the People, until the white men returned to the land.

  This is the chronology of that return:

  In the year 1528 in the neighborhood of Mobile Bay, they made contact with Spanish men of the Narváez Expedition. They threw stones but did not really fight.

  In the year 1540 in the same neighborhood, the Choctaws under Tuscalusa met the Spanish under De Soto, and they did fight. In their chronicles, the Spanish claim to have won, and the Choctaws were not keeping chronicles.

  In 1699, the French founded Biloxi in Mississippi. The Choctaws got on well with the French during the French century that followed.

  In 1721, the first African slaves were landed in Mobile. Within a week, some of them escaped to the Choctaws and hid with them. For the next hundred years, Negroes from
the white settlements would be slipping off to join the Chocs.

  In 1726, the Jesuit Mathurin le Petit came among the Choctaws, the first priest of whom we know the name. The French missioners failed with the Choctaws, with one exception. In the Six Town District of Okla Hannali, One Hundred Families of the town of Mishoweia were converted. One of the Hundred Families was the Innominee.

  The Three Nations of the Choctaws, coming from their ancient history into their confused medieval history, were these:

  Okla Falaya, the Choctaws allied with the British.

  Okla Tannaps, the Choctaws allied with the French.

  Okla Hannali, the Choctaws confused unto themselves.

  But their internecine wars were slight ones, only family affairs or town affairs.

  In 1767 was born the particular Devil of the Indians. He would be responsible for the deaths of many thousands of them and for the dispersal of the remainder. The birth of the Devil was known to the Indians like an omen, and a shudder went through all the Indian South.

  In 1786, the Choctaws made their first treaty with the new United States, the first of between thirty-five and fifty treaties depending on the way you count. None of the treaties was successful.

  All Indians are philosophers but not very good ones. They ask all the questions but they do not find the answers.

  “Where do I come from where do I go what is the purpose of it who thought of it?” Hannali asked his father Barua.

  “God thought of it,” said Barua, “and the ways of God are incomprehensible.”

  “What is incomprehensible is not a Choctaw word.”

  “Is French people word used by the priest,” Papa Barua said. “I do not know what it means I believe the priest did not know what it means I believe the word itself means not know what it means.”