Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  But there was none of that high business at that first United Nations assembly. There were only things written into the minutes that were not spoken on the beaten ground of the assembly; there were rulings that this man might not speak, and this other man might; there were things not even discussed, and written down as voted on and settled.

  The preacherman who gave the invocation had spoken out of the Psalms:

  “My heart hath uttered a good word, I speak my words to the King; my Tongue is the pen of the scrivener that writeth swiftly.” But many of the words there were not good, and sometimes the pen wrote too swiftly words that had not been spoken at all.

  Most of the honest Indians got mad and went home. A few remained to try to add their leaven to the mass. The meeting broke up without any decisions, and with only a loose promise of future meetings.

  But immediately it was published that the Six Tribes of the United Nations and all their members present had declared for the Confederacy. Even the hundreds of honest Indians who favored the Confederacy were outraged by the high-handed operation.

  With the Choctaws, the matter had already been thrown into the fire in March of that year. For the Choctaw-Chickasaw meeting at Boggy Depot, Choctaw Chief George Hudson had prepared a neutrality message. Copies of it had been passed around, and most of the leaders had read it and agreed with it, but it was never delivered.

  Robert M. Jones arrived and put a stop to all that. Jones held no office, was not a delegate, did not need any office. He owned five hundred Negro slaves, but he owned many more Choctaws than that. He was a great moneylender, and most of the delegate Choctaws had acquired a taste for luxury. Jones reminded them on the floor of the assembly that they all owed him for the very finery they wore, for the houses that they lived in, for the education of their children sent to eastern schools. He told them that he owned the very shirts on their backs and the breeches on their flanks, and in most cases he did. He owned a majority of the delegates by his judicious moneylending, and he owned them damned completely.

  He had had the big Texas men there to back him up. These were the men who paid the Choctaws and Chickasaws ten cents per steer driven through their territory, who sold them the illegal whiskey, who rented their lands for grazing, who would be coming into the land in force. The Indians had better get right in their thinking, the big Texas men said.

  Robert Jones was a furious, stumbling, stuttering man, but he owned the Choctaw delegates except for the freehold men of the North. The Colbert families cracked the same whip over the poor Chickasaw delegates. The two tribes made treaty with the Confederates. Hannali and others rode home in seething fury, but there were so few of them who were not owned by Jones.

  2.

  You can buy a lot of Indians with that. Who forged Opothleyahola's name? Brutus is something out of Dumas.

  Albert Pike, when he began his operations as Confederate Commissioner of the Indians, had a slush fund of one hundred thousand dollars with which to reason with those Indians. It was the Indians' own money which had been withheld from them by the Indian agents who had defected to the Confederacy, and was comparatively small payment due on old land adjustments. This was only the opening ante given to Pike. A half year later (January 28, 1862) Pike wrote to Elias Rector, superintendent of Indian Affairs at Fort Smith: “I have $265,927.50 in specie.” You can buy a lot of Indians with that if you are as close-fisted a man with money as was Albert Pike.

  There were no U.S. government men in the Territory at all. All the agents had gone Confederate, and Texas and the Arkansas territory were Confederate. A fourteen-year-old boy on a horse could have ridden through the territory with a proclamation and a sheaf of forms and signed every tribe to the Confederacy within a month, if a straight game had been intended. That was all Albert Pike had to do, but he was not capable of playing a straight game. His aim, the aim of all the men of his sort, was the total destruction of the Indians.

  Pike began his mission in late June of the year 1861. He visited many Indian tribes and made a number of treaties. When it is stated that Pike made a treaty with a certain tribe of Indians, it is always that he made a treaty with only one faction of that tribe or with a single subchief (then to be accepted by the Confederates as the full chief), or that he somehow got names on paper to bind one faction, and sent the other faction away angry.

  On July 10, 1861, Pike signed a treaty with the Creek Indians that they would adhere to the Confederacy and would raise troops in her support. The Creeks who signed this were Samuel Checote, Motey Canard, and a variety of men of the McIntosh families. It was not signed by the Creek chief himself, Opothle Yahola, nor by the second chief, Oktarharsars Harjo. These men and their names are found on the treaty in addition to the others.

  Pike forged the names of the two men to the treaty. Even for astute frontier politics it was a little raw. Perhaps the two men would have signed if they had been present, but in that case there would not have been created a civil war among the Creek Indians. These two were not such men as would accept the forging, and Pike knew that they would not.

  Opothleyahola (the name is written joined about as often as separated) was like a man struck by thunder when he returned and saw his own name signed to the treaty. He said that he had had a bad dream when he was in the Antelope Hills. Perhaps he had flown back those two hundred miles when in the grasp of the bad dream, signed his name, and returned to the hills. In cases like this, he said, it is really the Devil, and not the man himself, who signs. Opothle Yahola was correct in this latter guess. Opothle said that he would not be bound by his name signed by the Devil to a paper.

  On July 12, Pike got his full treaty with the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The agreement wrung from them in March by their own Robert Jones and by the big Texas Men had compelled them to accept the Confederacy as the government in fact, the continuance of the Union authority. This July treaty forced the two tribes to raise troops for the Confederacy, and to make war on Unionist Indians and white men, and also on neutral Indians.

  A few hundred of the Choctaws and Chickasaws rode off by night to join the Union Army in Kansas. Others of the Choctaw North believed that they could remain neutral and that nobody would break up their strong houses. But most of the men of the tribes, now that the agreement was made, went into war with enthusiasm. They were strong fighters and would never be beaten by equal numbers of white troops.

  On August 1, Pike got his treaty with the Seminole Indians. This was signed by John Jumper, George Cloud, Tacusa Fixico, and others. But it was not signed by Billy Bowlegs, Alligator, or John Chupco. These three men had been ready and willing to sign, they were old enemies of the Union (they had fought it in the old days through the swamps of Georgia and Florida when the tamer Seminoles had submitted); but somehow these three were shuffled off and insulted. Jumper, Cloud, Fixico, men of no standing, were invited to sign in place of them and were accepted as chiefs in place of them. If this was some mishandling or clumsiness on Pike's part, then it was a clumsiness that would be repeated twelve times with other tribes. If it was a deliberate pattern, then it became a most consistent one.

  But Pike served two masters, one of them still secret. His first aim was to raise up exterminating civil wars in every Indian tribe. Only secondarily did he care about binding a majority to the Confederates.

  Pike made his rounds, riding in a carriage, always dressed in his bewildering pseudo-Sioux Indian trappings, which mystified the Territory Indians, and with Brutus, his top-hatted, frock-coated Negro servant at his side.

  Brutus would remain in the carriage when Pike descended. Whatever sort of servant Brutus was, he was not a footman or groom. Pike would provide the hard work and high oratory for swaying the Indians, and Brutus would sit in state the day through. When they consulted, it was Pike who came to Brutus, not Brutus to Pike. Pike was the florid front. He was the Moses who brought the wilderness to the people. But there had to be a committee behind that front, for Pike never showed enough intelligence to carry
such a double thing through by himself. Brutus was the custodian of the money boxes, and he may have carried their other asset in a box of his own. There is a Dumas-like suspicion that Brutus and not Pike was the master. It did seem to all observers that Albert Pike took his instructions from the enigmatic Negro Brutus.

  The treaty with the Kichai Indians (August 12, though it is given mistakenly in history books as July 12) was signed with one Ki-is-qua, the second chief of the tribe. Angry and insulted tribesmen rode off to find the first chief who had been decoyed away from the meeting. Another civil war was created.

  On the same day, Pike got one Ochillas to sign a treaty for the Tawakoni Indians and to become puppet chief. So there was civil strife among the Tawakonis.

  On the same day, at Wichita Agency, Pike obtained a number of other Indian treaties. Four of them are of interest.

  He signed a treaty with Jose Maria for the Anadarko Indians. But Jose Maria was only the leader of a minority faction, the Mexican Consensus, of the tribe. There was now civil war made among the Anadarkos, for Jose Maria by his unconsulted act seemed to be setting himself up as leader above Pock Mark and Jim Pockmark.

  Quinahiwi signed as chief for the Caddo Indians. But the Caddoes had a dozen chiefs and no high chief. The other chiefs made war on Quinahiwi and his followers.

  The name “Cashao” was written in as signing for the Aionais or Hainai Indians, but we don't know who wrote it. It was intended to represent the man “Kutchaw” who was chief in fact and who was literate enough to write his own name — always as Kutchaw, not as Cashao. Someone with a tin ear for Indian pronunciation had signed that one. It was Kutchaw who led the Union side in the Hainai Civil War that followed.

  Isadowa signed for the “Ta-wa-i-Hash people of Indians, now called by the White men Wichitaws.” But Isadowa had the right to sign only for the Leeper Creek settlement of the Wichitas, and his signing for all caused some hard feelings. The Wichita Civil War was a fizzle, however; one of Pike's failures. The different Wichita clans had affection for each other and could not be induced to make war, though a second later attempt added fuel to it. In all, Pike secured treaties with eleven tribes or factions on August 12 at Wichitaw (the final W of the name was still used officially) Agency.

  The big man Albert Pike had hardly begun. His next big bag — though he had good hunting all along the way — was at Park Hill in October of 1861. He had a new advantage working for him: On August 10, the Confederates had won a solid victory over the Unionists at Wilson's Creek near Springfield, Missouri. This assured the Confederates a free hand in the Territory, and confirmed the prevalent belief that the South would win the war.

  On October 2 at Park Hill, Pike got a treaty with the Big Osages. It was the sort of double victory that Pike enjoyed, for the Little Osages were rejected and alienated. So the Little Osages became fanatical Unionists. This Osage Civil War was important to Pike for there were more Osages in Union Kansas than in the Territory, and this ensured terrible raids and extinctions across the border for years.

  Also in October at Park Hill, Pike got a treaty with the Sandusky Seneca Indians with two odd names signed to it. These were Little Tom Spicer and Small Cloud Spicer. Someone with that tin ear for Indian pronunciation had been forging again, for the first of these should have been Little Town Spicer. These were not names (though Spicer has now become a Seneca surname in the same manner that King became a surname); they were titles and meant approximately “Chief of the Little Town Band” and “Chief of the Small Cloud Band.” But they served the purpose of names on treaties whether they were names or not and whether the men were present or not.

  On the same day or the next, Pike got a treaty with the Mixed-Band Senecas and Shawnees, signed by Lewis Davis and Joseph Mohawk — two men ambitious to be given the command of troops. Two thirds of the Sandusky Senecas and the Mixed-Band Senecas and Shawnees escaped from the trap of the Confederates and their new quasi chiefs and got to Kansas. Some were permitted to remain neutrals there, others were pressured into becoming Unionist.

  Most of the Absentee-Shawnees (that was the going name of one tribal division) had already got to Kansas before the Mixed-Band Senecas and Shawnees. A John Linney had signed them to the Confederacy back at Wichitaw Agency (one of the eleven treaties procured by Pike on that memorable August 12), but the Absentee-Shawnees did not recognize the treaty. Linney was a hanger-on around Wichitaw Agency and no more a chief of the Absentee-Shawnee Indians than you are.

  On October 7, Pike pulled his master stroke. He got the two mortal enemies, Chief John Ross and Stand Watie, to sign a treaty binding the Cherokee Nation to the Confederacy. It was a triumph for Watie who was a Confederate to his bones. It was a triumph for Pike. And it was complete defeat for Ross; not only was he forced to give up his neutral position, but he was forced to take in his blood-enemy Watie as a sort of co-chief. This created the slickest civil war of them all. It is possible that Ross could have been forced to adhere to the Confederacy without Watie. Now he was compelled to break away from it, to be on any side that Watie was not on, and he could be branded as a traitor when he broke away.

  The work of Albert Pike was essentially completed. He had signed Confederate treaties with more than twenty Indian nations, and he would represent to the Confederacy that he had bound twenty great tribes to the cause. But he had not bound any tribe completely, and he hadn't intended to. Every one of those treaties was touched with fraud, since Pike worked for divided ends. There was one man (not an ardent supporter of his) who said that Pike poisoned every spring he passed. But it must be admitted that he did it skillfully.

  3.

  Fashions in Hatred. The Territory Indians die fifty-two times. Thirteen Civil Wars.

  It had been a hot summer. And riding on the simmering heat there were waves of hatred for the neutralist, full-blood Indians; the Territory was poisoned by it. There are fashions in hatred, but this sudden and explosive hatred of the white-man Indians for their full-blood cousins remains inexplicable. It had been instigated and fanned, and the catchwords of it were of known white man coinage. But it was not like the Indians to be taken in by such transparent fraud. The full bloods had always been called the Pins, the Sticks, the Snakes; but now these traditional names took on livid overtones. The whiteman Indians came to regard the full bloods as less than human. Stand Watie would report several times that he had killed so many men (white men or white-man Indians) and so many Pins. Watie did not kill women and children of the human species, but he killed those of the Pins wherever he found them. He killed all the Pins he came across, the armed and the unarmed, the neutrals and the Unionist. He drove off horses and cattle, he burned hay and barns and wagons, he killed men, he slaughtered pigs and Pins and left them to rot.

  The inhuman heat and hatred hung over the Territory all the summer and into the autumn of 1861. On November 19, a Territory-wide lightning flash broke open the building storm, and it began to rain blood. This was at the horrifying Battle (Massacre) of Round Mountains, that avowed attempt to extinguish the neutralist and peaceful Upper Creek Indians to the last person of them. The sticky red rain continued for four years.

  After Round Mountains, the Territory Indians died at Bird Creek, Shoal Creek, Locust Grove, Spavinaw Creek, Fort Davis, Sugar Creek, Fort Gibson (three actions there), Honey Springs, Fort Wayne, Hitchiti Ford, Oktaha, Tuchi Town, Elk Creek, Perryville, Backbone Mountain, Tahlequah, Park Hill, Edward's Post, Wilson's Creek (Oak Hill), Cowskin Prairie, Lee's Creek, Salina, Sallisaw, Gray Horse, Wolf Creek, Bayou Bernard, Carthage, Cane Hill, Shirley's Ford, Newtonia, Bird Springs, Webbers Falls, Poison Creek, Dwight's Mission, Dutch Mills, Prairie Grove, Manus, Wichitaw Agency, Barren Fork, Poteau Bottom, Middle Boggy, Tonkawa Encampment, Tulasie Burying Grounds, North Fork Town, Huff's Mills, Pleasant Bluff, Massard Prairie, Flat Rock. And there were the skirmishes and raids that are not given the name of battles.

  So? There was slaughter in the Territory? Was there not greater slaughter in th
e states? Was there something special about this?

  Yes. There was something discrete, unique, and special about the affair in the Territory. There was the main Civil War that God allowed, and the twelve Indian civil wars that Albert Pike created. In the hardest hit of the states, one tenth of the women were left widows. In the hardest hit of the tribes, three quarters of the women were left widows. The fractions would have been larger had not so many women been butchered in the Territory, a thing that had no parallel in the states. We have an estimate that half of the Territory Indians died in those four years, but we have statistics only for the Choctaws — and those rough ones. An estimate of their numbers for two different years by the U. S. Indian Office gives an idea:

  In the year 1861, 18,100 Territory Choctaws.

  In the year 1865, 12,500 Territory Choctaws.

  The more fortunate Choctaws lost only one third of their people killed in the war years. But the Choctaws avoided their own internal civil war, and their Territory (farthest South and under the Confederate shield) was less subject to raiding than any other. Generally only their men died and in regular battle only. But it bit them deep.

  And after it was over with, and when all the blood had been let out of them, such Indians as were left had been turned into white men. Hannali Innominee had once said that an Indian is only a white man with more blood in him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1.

  Shave by candle. It does smell good burning in the field. By and by I build another boat.

  Hannali Innominee was shaving by candle — not by candlelight — by candle. Like most full bloods of whatever tribe, Hannali was lightly whiskered. Once a month or so he ran a flame over his face to singe off the paltry growth.