Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  One day, Marie DuShane harnessed up a spring wagon and took the thirteen Innominee children over the Ferry to North Fork Town. The town was five miles from Hannali's Landing, on the North Fork of the Canadian just below the branching off of the Deep Fork. It had become a large town with three stores. None of them had the bulk business of Hannali's own store, but they were longer on trifles and variety. They had things from the states — licorice, tea, snuff (Hannali had only tobacco twist and plug, and black-leaf cigars, and crimp cut), and coffee that was already ground. They had slippery elm for chewing and manufactured toys. Marie DuShane bought slippery elm and snuff for the children and many odd things for the house.

  “Not Choctaw dollars, not Choctaw dollars,” they told her, and Marie only smiled and laid out gold coin and watched them scurry up enough Mexican and U.S. silver to cover it. She even accepted two Choctaw dollars as part of her change, saying that Hannali knew how to redeem them.

  “Choctaw dollars” were put out by a store in Doaksville, were impressively lettered in Choctaw and English (the Choctaw lettering on them said “One Dollar Honest” or “Five Dollar Honest”), and were generally considered as worthless. When Indians would get a few of them together and take them down to Doaksville, the men in the store there would say that they didn't know what they were and it must have been some other store in some other Doaksville that put them out.

  Some of Hannali's friends had once been stuck with these, and he had redeemed them, being himself a banker. When he had a hundred dollars worth of them he rode down to Doaksville. Not wishing to waste time, he rode his horse right into the store building and sat there, a big Choctaw on a big horse and with a devil grin on his face and a rifle across his saddle horn. The men redeemed the Choctaw dollars for him. He didn't even have to get off his horse. That had been the year before.

  Marie DuShane and the thirteen children rode home from North Fork town at night in the spring wagon. They were most of them huddled in back with the merchandise and under the buffalo robes. It was snowing, and the ice tinkled when they drove the wagon onto the ferry and broke the ferry loose from its moorings. The children sang songs like “chikkih chikkih,” and they gobbled like turkeys. It was a night to remember.

  The wife of Pass Christian Innominee was Marie Delessert. She had been startled and silent when she first came to the House. But once she understood them, she accepted the strange arrangements of the Hannali Innominee. Previous to her visit, she had known of Marie DuShane only and had corresponded with her. On very first encounter, Marie Delessert was shocked by what appeared an unnatural situation, a Negro woman and an Indian woman sharing the place of her French sister-in-law.

  Later, she became closer to Natchez and Martha Louisiana than to Marie DuShane. If it were possible, then Marie Delessert at the same time resembled both of them. She had the sudden wit of Natchez and the compassionate good humor of Martha Louisiana, the apparent weightlessness of Natchez and the certain bulk of Martha. She began a thought at the Martha depths and ended it in the Natchez trees. She was fair, for she was a white woman, and she didn't tempt the sun much.

  She would never, like Natchez, have run out barefoot in the first snow to do the snowbird dance. She wouldn't, like Marie DuShane, have risen on a sleep-eluding midnight to mount and ride horse till after daylight. Like Martha Louisiana, she practiced the conservation of energy.

  It was a big season and a big Christmas, for all that there could be no Mass and there was no priest within two hundred miles. The families exchanged gifts, they had been exchanging gifts for weeks, and feasted. And after a few more days, the visiting Innominee had to go.

  The Pass Christian Innominee left Hannali's Landing on Epiphany of the year 1845, and returned down the rivers to their home. The children parted with weeping, for they were still Indian.

  3.

  The Year of the Big Thunders. Down the Texas Road. The clan thing Devil.

  A year flicked by. It was a good year for Hannali and his family, the year when his three sons became men. They were coming onto sixteen years old.

  The Indians later referred to this year as the Year of the Big Thunders. Meteorologically it was a very stormy year, one of floods on the Canadian and Arkansas rivers, or tornadoes ripping out of the Pushmataha and raking into the north, of lightning and thunder such as had not been seen nor heard since the days of the grandfathers, of hailstones as big as Ishtaboli balls. But it was a fertile year in all respects, and was the year in which the transported Indians finally got well.

  There were gathering storms other than the physical ones. Schism of nation came to plague the Indians just as they came into their new prosperity. It rived every tribe in two. In the Choctaw country, the division was between the feudal, mostly full-blood, self-sufficiency Indians of the North; and the slave-owning, liberal, speculating, mostly breed and white-blood Indians of the Choctaw South. It was not that even one Indian in twenty in the South districts owned slaves; it was that a score of them owned from one hundred to five hundred slaves each, and they set the tone of that society.

  At the same time, there came external war. In 1836, Texas had declared herself independent of Mexico. However it be falsified (and the falsification remains one of the classic things), there was only one issue there: slavery. Slavery was forbidden in all Mexico (including the province of Texas), and there were men who wished to turn Texas into a slave empire for themselves.

  Mexico did not recognize the Texas independence. She was outraged by the bringing in of black slaves and by the murdering of thousands of Indians to make a place for them — for Mexico was of that same Indian blood. Between the years 1830 and 1845 there were nearly as many Indians who fled for their lives from Texas into the Indian Territory as had been brought from the old South to the Territory.

  On December 29 of 1845, President Polk signed a resolution making the Republic of Texas a slave state of the Union. On January 13 of 1846, General Zachary Taylor was ordered to lead troops down to the Nueces River for an invasion of Mexico, and to create incident thereto. The admittance of Texas and the promise of war against Mexico were two parts of a package deal; no honest man doubts that now.

  It would be exactly three months (all the while assuring Mexico of peaceful intent) before the United States would declare war on Mexico. It was the three months that had been calculated as the time necessary to mount the assault.

  We are concerned with it here only because most of the army groups came south through the Indian Territory, and the most used road was the Texas Road that ran within sight of Hannali's Big House. There were raw-acting men in that army. Some of them were unruly, and some of the Indians were unruly in their turn. There were brushes.

  On February 19, President Jones (the last president of the Republic of Texas) turned office over to James Henderson (the first governor of the state of Texas) — and already a United States Army was inside the new state and marching to create incident in the suddenly claimed and never seen Territory between the Rio Grande and the Nueces rivers.

  In May when President Polk said that “American Blood has been spilt on American Soil,” he lied grandly. It was the blood of the first Americans ever to see that soil, and they spilt it as they began their incredible invasion of that Mexican land.

  One afternoon Sally was not to be found.

  Her own mother Natchez was not worried about her. She said that nothing could ever happen to that girl, and indeed Sally often rode off at random. But her other mothers, Marie DuShane and Martha Louisiana, became unaccountably worried. They told Hannali that Sally had not been seen for some time, and that there were rough men in the neighborhood.

  Hannali was standing rigid with apprehension and terror. He hardly heard them. He had already gotten the message in another manner. He cried out, and bolted from them to one of the fields. Already he knew what had happened to Sally and where he would find her. Several times in his life he would have such true dark visions.

  He found Sally in a
rock waste between two oddly shaped fields. She was badly mauled and torn, conscious though in shock. He carried her back to the house and gave her to the women. He knew that she wasn't to die from this.

  He went to find what he knew would be in his inner room. It might give a clue, in its taunts, to the direction taken. He read the note, half with his eyes, half out of his intuition:

  “Fat man I have had your heffer calf you will follow me at your perell I mean to cut you down I leave my notice and you sitting here sleepy in the same room and not even see me I hurt your heffer calf but not to die I will be back many times for her fat man you follow me you better trembel for your life Whiteman Falaya.”

  It was onto dark. Hannali calculated his way, and his intuition would carry him to the point of the showdown. Soldiers had been passing through the country all day. They would be bivouacked not much more than a dozen miles from there, south on the Texas Road. One thing Hannali knew — how Whiteman Falaya would be dressed.

  Hannali mounted horse and rode off late in the night. He intended to come on the camped troopers a little before dawn.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1.

  Pardon my break in on you like this Commander but I have come to kill one of your men. “Be gone in five minutes or hang!” This bull will still toss. Take you all at once or one at a time.

  In his senses Hannali was almost too Indian to be true. It is a question at what point very acute sensing and subliminal impressions will pass over into intuition. Many of the intuitions of Hannali's life may have been no more than this very sharp sensing.

  He read the country like a newspaper as he rode over it in the night. Indeed, to him it was yesterday's newspaper. He knew where deer and cattle and horses had crossed his way. He knew which had been the light Creek horses, which the Chickasaw steppers, which the heavy Choctaw ponies, which the U.S. Cavalry mounts. He knew just where John T had sat a Choctaw pony and warily watched the cavalry soldiers pass the afternoon before.

  Down near Gaines Creek, Hannali knew that he was near a concentration of men and horses. He caught the heat and scent of horses, and the emanation and disturbance of men. Nearer, and he heard the stir of predawn cooks and the clumping of a man walking a post through the brush. But the real sentinels for such a bivouac are the horses. They react to any intrusion and alert the guards. Only a horse Choctaw could have gone through the horses so easily without stirring them.

  It would be a raggle force of men, but not a soft one. These weren't the reluctant recruits who would follow down the road a month later. They were the rough volunteer men who had jumped into the war with both feet.

  “Be you at ease,” said Hannali to the sentinel, coming behind him noiselessly on horse, “do not cry out do not turn around do not try to gun me I'd have you dead I want Whiteman Falaya.”

  “We've no man named that,” the sentry croaked.

  “He is with you under another name then we will wait here till the morning muster then I regretfully must kill a man of yours.”

  “Then we kill you, old bugger. We killed two Indians here last evening, and I didn't hear any regret. You have the drop on me, but I don't scare. Blink once, and I'll have you off that horse.”

  “I blink I still sit my horse whose are the footsteps who is it who comes.”

  “The sergeant. He is one man you won't take. He's rough.”

  “There are footsteps when he comes then he is gone again without footsteps he is the ghost what is his name.”

  “That is nothing to you.”

  “That is everything to me I will have his name from you easy or I will have you flat on your back and the snout of my rifle in your mouth when you say it what is his name.”

  “Whitman Long.”

  “It is the same his translate name is he a Choctaw Indian like me.”

  “I can't tell one of you buggy barstuds from another. He's Indian.”

  “I see the morning muster is called while we talk I will ride over to them and tell them my business do not shoot me in the back a young man whose voice shakes when he says he doesn't scare shouldn't try that one shot wouldn't do me.”

  “No. I don't believe it would, you old bull.”

  Hannali rode through the camp and up to the files of the muster. He dismounted and bulked up to the astonished major.

  “Pardon me break in on you like this Commander,” Hannali said, “but I have come to kill one of your men I will do it quick and then be on my way.”

  “That so, you bleeding Indian? Any particular man you have in mind?” The major didn't remain astonished for long.

  “He is on your list as Whitman Long his Choctaw name is Whiteman Falaya I will kill him and then be on my way.”

  “I ought to throw the two of you in a pit together to see what happens. You're two of a kind,” the major said.

  “It would pleasure my heart to have him there or anywhere I cannot thank you enough Commander where is the pit.”

  “You mud-faced stallion. Do you think I'd let you at one of my men? Look yonder at that fresh dirt. Do you know what is there?”

  “It is not fresh dirt it is last night's dirt two graves are there two Indians who are better than any men you have.”

  “Two sniveling Indians who came in with silly stories of their wives or daughters being assaulted by my horse soldiers. The fools believed that I should punish my men. There is their answer.”

  “I do my own punishing give the man to me now and I kill him.”

  “Look you here, bullhead; here is a noose. I know it is a good noose, for last night it did its work twice perfectly. And yonder is a tree branch that also knows its business. Do you understand me?”

  “You waste my time mouth soldier I want that man now.”

  “Thunderation, you offal-faced ogre. Are you such a fool, or do you believe me one? I have two hundred men here. Do you think you can take them all?”

  “All at once or one at a time I try it I want that man.”

  “You rot-headed fool! It is you who waste our time. There is room for just one more grave in that little hollow.”

  “True for the grave of the lean man I have in mind not for me it would crowd me I want that man now.”

  “You crock-headed Choc, I talk straight. Be gone from this camp in five minutes or we will hang you.”

  “Who have a watch,” Hannali asked softly.

  The major took out a fine gold watch and laid it on the tree stump that served for a muster table.

  “There it is, you old bluffer,” the major roared. “The noose is getting itchy. When that hand gets to there — ”

  “I know time,” said Hannali.

  Hannali stood with his hands in his pockets and gazed at the watch. They played the minutes out. A dozen men, on a nod from the major, loaded and leveled rifles at Hannali should he do something rash. Three men stretched out the line and the noose and made it ready. A lieutenant studied the hanging tree and gave it a shuffling kick as though to tell it to get ready. The time was running.

  The major chewed his moustaches as seriously as though he sat at poker, but he was playing poker with a Choctaw. Hannali stole the game by his presence. They didn't know when it had happened, but for several minutes now they had all drawn back from his menace, and only Hannali could see the watch.

  The time seemed triply long. The men lost their edge as they waited and doubted the thing, and they fell into frustration. The only sound was horses clanking their hobbles as they grazed.

  “Five minutes go,” Hannali announced.

  The Adam's apple of the major bobbled, but he voiced no order. It was balanced on the edge there. A ripple ran through the men, but they did not quite come to action. Hannali continued, with his hands in his pockets, to gaze at the watch; and the fascinated men still gaped at Hannali.

  “Five minutes a little bit more,” said Hannali heavily, and the men stood dry-mouthed and nervous.

  “Five minutes quite a bit more,” said Hannali after a while.

>   He spit on the watch. He looked as though he would spit on the nervous major, but he did not. Instead, he seemed to wake with a start.

  He shook his head in bafflement. He smashed a big fist into his palm so loudly that it echoed.

  “Today I have lost give me another day,” he said. He turned and walked wearily to his horse, his face slack with defeat.

  “That man have tricked me,” Hannali announced sullenly with the bridle in his hand and one foot in a stirrup, “I know something have changed and I do not understand it that man is no longer in your camp he is no longer in the dress of a horse soldier he may be in a Creek turban or a Pawnee slouch hat he has slip away while I played a boy's game with boys I am a fool not to know what it meant when his scent was gone he is nine miles gone now and he is the man that nobody is able to track I will have him one day today I have miss him.”

  Hannali went to mount, then paused once more.

  “This bull will still toss,” he announced to the soldiery multitude, “this bear will still smash the dogs what I say stands I take you all at once or one at a time which man make move.”

  He gazed at them out of his powerful face for a long time. No man made a move. Then Hannali mounted slowly and walked his horse out of the camp, eaten up with frustration.

  2.

  Welsh Indians. Robert Jones and the five hundred slaves. The man named Six-Town is the other pole of it.

  There is a whole recondite literature grown up about the “Welsh Indians.” It will bulk nearly as large as the literature connecting the Indians with the lost tribes of Israel or with the people of Atlantis.