Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Marie DuShane come quick it is come what we wished no longer be we a deprived family Martha Louisiana find the children all this is promised since before they were born Natchez you would not believe it Christ has come to our house.”

  The arrival was dying of tuberculosis, and what his horse was dying of is not known. Neither of them would live to see another full moon, and already it was well crescent. The man was a priest from Vincentian Seminary (now Perryville), Missouri. He had been traveling his large parish on horse for nine years and only came to this extreme end of it in the week of his death.

  He administered the sacraments to the whole family, to some of the blacks and mixed Indians from the landing at the bottom of the hill, to Creek Indians who swam their horses over the river — called they did not know how, to Osages who always appear from somewhere when a priest comes. Many of the Indians had had only a tenuous connection with the Church for a hundred years and whole generations could pass without seeing a priest; but they were what they were.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” the Latin was like rain on parched sod. Did you know that the Innominee family had their name as a mnemonic of the first words of the blessing?

  The priest ate with them but would not stay the night. He had too many families to see in the time that was left to him. He went to mount his horse, and gazed bewildered when he discovered that the horse had died in the interval. Hannali gave him another horse, and the priest rode away just before dark.

  He died four days later in the home of a Choctaw family named Durant thirty miles south. It would be ten years before another of them came.

  5.

  Aleika. Peter Pitchlynn was two different men. The men in Falaya have drunk mules' milk and are sterile.

  Peter Pitchlynn came to the Big House in the year 1843 and stayed a week. It is time that we knew more about this man — who he was and what he was who reconstituted the Choctaw Nation. But we run into mystery in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.

  Pictures show him as a long-haired man, not very dark, with a great beak of a nose on him and yet not quite an Indian beak. He is handsome, the nose notwithstanding. There is something feminine in his features, though he founded and first led the Light Horse Indian Police in the Territory, and years later became (though against his inclinations) a competent military leader. He was certainly slim and probably tall. Even from a picture of him it rubs off on you, the aleika, the magic, what theologians call the indwelling of the spirit, and what others call personal magnetism. He was a special sort of man.

  Pitchlynn is a white man name. All the historians who touch on the Choctaws, McReynolds, Grant Foreman, Angie Debo, and Cushman, I believe but I'm not sure, say that Peter Pitchlynn was the son of John Pitchlynn (white) and Sophia Folsom (Choctaw), and that he was born in 1806 in Mississippi. The worst of it is, for the outlandish theory that we are about to propose, that Peter Pitchlynn himself always referred to John Pitchlynn as his father. But we believe he was his father by adoption only.

  Have we anything to base our theory on? Only one sentence by an English writer, and the feel that Peter Pitchlynn was not a white man, at least in the years when he was the Choctaw messiah. He was not a white when he appears from nowhere at assemblies, nor when he summons men in dreams. But later, it seems that he may have been white after all.

  Peter told the English writer Charles Dickens (they met on an Ohio River boat) that he had not learned English till he was a “young man grown.” This couldn't be the case if he were son of white man John Pitchlynn. John Pitchlynn was not the sort of white man who becomes more Indian than the Indians. He wanted to turn the Indians into white men. He advocated educating the Indians and teaching them English. He himself taught English to the sons of dozens of other men. How could his own son not have known English till he was a young man grown?

  There is a suggestion. This John Pitchlynn adopted or sponsored several Indian boys who seemed to him to be of unusual intelligence. Often in such cases, the Indian youth took the family name of the man who had aided him, usually having no family name of his own. It is certain that John Pitchlynn paid for the education of several Indian youths, and one of these could have been Peter. The first mention of Peter (other than an apocryphal story that as a young boy he refused to shake the hand of Andrew Jackson and gave a precocious criticism of his policies) checks with this.

  In 1825 the first students arrived at new Choctaw Academy — twenty-one Indian boys arrived at Great Crossing (in Kentucky) led by Peter Pitchlynn. Peter was nineteen years old if his birth date of 1806 is correct, and he would have been a young man grown when he began to learn English at the Academy. These twenty-one boys were thought to be the most intelligent and promising in the Choctaw Nation and had been so selected.

  How fast can even a young man of genius come along with so late a start? Very fast if he is a special man. In 1830 at Dancing Rabbit Creek, Peter served as chairman of all the Choctaw representatives and his “father” John Pitchlynn was present as government interpreter, but not as a Choctaw national.

  Peter was twenty-four years old then. It was to him that the Choctaws turned to bring them together. He presided above the chiefs Moshulatubbee and Nitakechi and Greenwood LeFlore. Who else could have got Moshulatubbee and Greenwood LeFlore to sit down in the same assembly? Peter was already recognized as a special sort of chief of all the Choctaws, though he would not become chief in name till thirty-four years later.

  Two white men of genius have given us descriptions of Peter. The painter George Catlin gave it in a picture, but also in words. It is from Catlin that we get the information that Peter's Indian name was Snapping Turtle or Ha-tchoo-tuck-nee. This may be near right, for Catlin gave Peter's white man name as Pinchlin which is close. The fetish for exactitude of names was never a weakness of the finest painter of Indians.

  The second white artist to meet and be impressed by Peter was Charles Dickens. This was in 1842 on a steamboat between Cincinnati and Louisville. American Notes (Chapter 12):

  “I asked him what he thought of Congress?” (Peter was returning from seventeen months of fruitless lobbying for justice for the Choctaws in Washington.) “He answered, with a smile, that it wanted dignity in an Indian's eyes… answered… that his race was losing many things besides their dress, and would soon be seen upon the earth no more… a remarkably handsome man… with long black hair, an aquiline nose, broad cheek bones, a sunburnt complexion, and a very bright, keen, dark, and piercing eye… as stately and complete a gentleman… as ever I beheld; and moved among the people in the boat, another kind of being.”

  Dickens was impressed by few things in the America of the day, but he was impressed by Peter Pitchlynn.

  Peter was in admiration of the self-sufficient Manor House culture set up by Hannali and others in the Moshulatubbee, but he believed it should be only one of several elements of the reconstituted Choctaw Nation.

  “The white man had this eight hundred years ago, Hannali,” he said. “It was not enough, but they lost it in reaching for other things and became warped in a different direction. We need both the self-sufficiency and the wide-reaching commerce and manufactory. The merchants in Doaksville progress in trade, the Planters in Falaya will provide export surpluses with their bulk crop system. You are a merchant as well as a farmer, Hannali, and as a merchant you should work for the more open system.”

  “I chew the other side of the hog friend great man Peter,” said Hannali, “too much trade is a bleed to death business what other storekeeper will tell his people do not buy this dress for your wife your wife already have a dress what other storekeeper tell his people go home and put that money in a safe place it will be a hard winter.”

  “You're unique in this, Hannali,” said Peter, “but you may be mistaken when you discourage the people from buying. That is not the way of the white people nor of the Doaksville merchants. They say that trade will generate more trade and that dollars can be made to gr
ow like corn.”

  “I am a banker and you are not Peter Pitchlynn you have no idea how rich I could be if I desired it's an irony thing that those who love the stuff so much have not mastered the simple arts of obtaining it I could be very rich and it would mean that other people would become very poor I say that no dollar can generate more than one hundred cents and I know more about giving and taking interest than do the men in Doaksville I say that they rub off a little bit of their soul every time they produce unusual surplus and have to buy back necessities.”

  “We will find truth between the two systems, Hannali. There is much to be said for the Manor system of the Moshulatubbee, and much for the open mercantilism of Doaksville and the giant cropping of the Falaya. I work always for Choctaw prosperity but I have trouble fitting the pieces in.”

  “There are more things than prosperity great man Peter let a man build up his own house it is the rind of his soul the men of Falaya have drunk mules' milk and are sterile theirs is not the way.”

  They disagreed on this, for Hannali could see no good at all in the runaway mercantilism of Doaksville or the slave-based cotton cropping in Falaya. Peter wanted to find a way to combine the two systems, and nobody has found it yet.

  Peter Pitchlynn spent a week at Hannali's Big House in 1843. They entertained him royally, for he was their royalty.

  The next year an equally intelligent man spent more time with Hannali. In the year 1844, Pass Christian Innominee brought his family up from New Orleans to visit.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1.

  Pass Christian Innominee. “Have I signed a paper says I must swallow a kettle?”

  The children of Pass Christian Innominee were Peter, Marie Chapponia, Joseph, Catherine, John Barua, Therese, and Louis Christian. Some of them were older and some of them younger than the Hannali Innominee, for Pass Christian had not had all his children within one twelve-month period. They had become French, but they were still Indian also; and the cousins got together well.

  Many other children came to the Big House in the weeks of the visit: John Sapulpa and Emily Sapulpa and Ophelia Checote — McIntosh Creek children from the north side of the river; Josephine Horse, Amanda T, Robert Harkins, Seoma Big — Choctaw children. There came Mary Choate and Lavaca Choate, nieces of Natchez, over from Sebastian County, Arkansas, for a visit. There were so many children and young people staying at the House that Hannali didn't have ponies for them all. Some of them rode around the country mounted on mules.

  In one of Hannali's south fields there was a scarecrow that could talk and whistle. The children became partisans of the thing and carried to Papa Hannali its complaint that it needed a new coat now that winter was coming on.

  “No I will not give him one,” said Hannali, “my record show his field have suffered more crow damage than any other the crows call it Crow Haven it is all right a scarecrow learn to talk and whistle but first he must learn to scare the crows.”

  All the Innominee children of both families and Hannali himself were straight-faced in such daily carrying-on as this, for they were Chocs. But the two little Cherokee Choate girls would whoop and dance and giggle. They found all Choctaw jokes funny.

  It was the snoot end of winter just coming in and you could have fun in the Territory. As in Hannali's own childhood, affairs came to the big focus. They were the bright, sharp days. The young people from New Orleans, having been on boats for many hundred miles, still could not get enough of boats. They learned to take Hannali's ferry across the river and back. They rode the keel boats and the barges for a dozen, twenty miles, and then walked back along the wooded banks. They were even allowed to fire up Hannali's big boat, the Bashih. They were not as you would imagine city children to be.

  They were river rats. They could swim better than their Territory cousins. There was ice along the banks, and the water was very cold when the children swam in it. They lied through their chittering little teeth, they turned blue from the cold and nearly perished, but they swore that they weren't cold at all. Pass Christian had told them never to vaunt themselves, but to be as tough in all things as the Hannali children. Oh, they were all tough! It's fun to be tough.

  The Pass Christians could ride well, though not so wildly as their cousins. They couldn't climb the big pecan trees as well as the Hannalis, but then none of the Hannali sons could climb them as well as John Sapulpa or George Hewahnackee. The Creek Indians were always the best pecan tree climbers.

  Seoma Big could see through trees, and could say which trees had possums holed up in them and just where they could be found. Robert Harkins could knock squirrels out of trees with throwing sticks; he never missed.

  The children drew the possums and squirrels and stuffed them with persimmons now turned purple with the frost, and roasted them till the juice squirted a mile. They noodled out Canadian River catfish as long as your arm. They chased bear cubs and Hannali's forest pigs. They nipped on stolen mule whiskey and told stories.

  Luvinia told the one about the panther who swallowed the girl.

  “The panther didn't like it, after he had swallowed her, and the girl sure didn't like it,” Luvinia said. “It was a big panther, but there wasn't very much room in there.

  “ ‘I'm hungry, I have to have some corn,’ the girl said after she had been in there all night. ‘I can't eat the rats and things you eat. Swallow some corn.’

  “The panther swallowed some corn but he didn't like corn very well.

  “ ‘How am I going to eat this hard corn?’ the girl asked him. I forgot to tell you it was hard, dry, last-year's corn. ‘You got to swallow something to grind it with,’ the girl said.

  “Why didn't he dissolve her in his paunch and shut her up?” asked Nakni Pans-Hata. “That's what I'd have done.”

  “I don't know. I forget that part,” Luvinia said. “ ‘I don't know anything about grinding corn,’ the panther said, ‘leave me alone.’ ‘All you got to do is swallow two stones,’ the girl said. ‘I'll grind it myself.’ So the panther swallowed two stones and the girl ground the corn. ‘Now swallow some water,’ the girl said, ‘I got to make the corn into cakes.’ The panther swallowed some water, and the girl made the corn into cakes.

  “ ‘Now swallow some sticks,’ the girl said. He did. ‘Now swallow some live coals,’ she told him, ‘I got to make a fire to cook the cakes on.’ The panther swallowed some live coals, and the girl made a fire and cooked the corn cakes. But the panther began to feel he had made a bad bargain.

  “ ‘Corn cakes are all right for breakfast,’ the girl said after a half day had gone by, ‘but what am I going to eat for dinner?’ ‘I don't know,’ the panther said, ‘let me alone.’ ‘I want some pishofa,’ the girl said, ‘swallow a pig.’ The panther swallowed a pig.

  “ ‘Now swallow a kettle,’ the girl said. ‘This I will not do,’ the panther told her, ‘have I signed a paper says I must swallow a kettle?’ ‘How I go to make pishofa without a kettle?’ the girl wanted to know, ‘I will give you no peace till you swallow it.’

  “The panther swallowed a kettle, but by that time he wished he'd never swallowed the girl. She built a real hot fire under the kettle to make the pishofa. Then she began to ask for a lot of things.

  “She really needed some of them to put in the pishofa, but she just asked for the rest of them to drive the panther crazy.

  “By that time the panther had enough. He reared back and brought up the girl and the corn and the two stones and the sticks and the fire and the pig and the kettle all in one big heave.

  “ ‘Be careful, you crazy panther,’ the girl said, ‘you'll make me spill the pishofa.’ ”

  “That is not a true story,” said Marie Chapponia, for her own best story had been topped, “the panther couldn't swallow the girl all in one piece, and she couldn't talk after she was swallowed.”

  “Oh, but it is a true story!” cried Luvinia, and it was. “Top it, you children, try to top it!” Nobody could top Luvinia on a story. She'd learned t
o tell them from her mother Martha Louisiana.

  2.

  Can you bed down one hundred people at your house? Five Dollar Honest. Chikkih Chikkih. Weeping at Epiphany.

  It was coming to the Christmas season, and the Indians had now begun to celebrate Christmas. They had always held potlatches at the four seasons, feasts with much visiting and gift giving. Now they made the winter one the biggest of the year. This was the year when everybody visited Hannali House.

  Whole families came in — Choctaw families from all over the Moshulatubbee and even the Pushmataha, Creek Indian families from north of the river, several Chickasaw families recently arrived over the trails. White officers and soldiers came on holiday from Fort Smith and Fort Coffee, and from Fort Gibson at Three Forks of the Arkansas. Early cattle drovers (for the word “cowboy” was still unknown in the country) used the Texas Road and stopped at Hannali's for holiday visit. There were all sorts of visitors, many of them with no legal right in the Territory.

  Can you bed down one hundred people at your house? Hannali could at his. For some there were proper beds, for others there were cotton ticks filled with corn husks, or straw on the dirt floor (for only a few of the rooms of the Big House as yet had timber floors) and buffalo robes for warmth.

  Hannali brought a hundred wagonloads of wood up to the House to keep all the fires going. He killed a heavy pig every day and three steers a week. He brought three hundred pumpkins over from the Creek country. He even brought loads of wheat down from the Osage and Pawnee regions. The Choctaws had lately discovered the excellence of the unleavened wheaten bread of the middle Indians.

  Hannali and his horse-crazy friends managed to drive two dozen wild buffalo into a corral that would hold anything. The animals were crashing around in there for weeks, foaming and heaving and hardly touching the hay tossed to them. They had a roomy space and a stream running through it, but they spent all their time crashing into the oak fences and rolling their bloodshot eyes up into their heads. Hannali had designed a spit that would turn a two-thousand-pound buffalo as easily as though it were a turkey. Many of the visiting Plains Indians would eat no meat but buffalo.