Well, didn't that burn the very rind off him? Not very often. He handled the flame well, he was weathered and tough, and many Indians did it that way. I know an Indian who still does it with a flame, and this is more than a hundred years later.
It was still early autumn of 1861, following the summer that had simmered with heat and hatred. When Hannali had shaved, he would put on a frock coat and sit at a full dinner with New Orleans wine on the table. One of Hannali's sons was riding away that night, perhaps to be gone forever, and they would see him off in quiet style.
Hannali had sat up in his watch tower for most of that day, dropping rifle shots singing at the feet of trespassers half a mile distant. He scared them liverless with his shots; they weren't sure he was as good a shot as all that.
Hannali had had a hundred cattle stolen, and knew that he would lose most of the remainder. A neutral Indian was now fair game for anybody. There was no use getting excited about it. Albert Horse had gotten excited about his own livestock being stolen, and Albert had been killed for it. Hannali missed him.
And also during the day Hannali had watched his own cornfields burning in three directions. It would have been a good crop. No matter. He had enough in his granaries to last. Corn nearly ripe for picking burns with a pleasant odor. Holy Mother of Corn, but it does smell good burning in a field! No oven gives that aroma.
Men had burned Hannali's boats and his ferryboat; they had sent them drifting downstream aflame to great shouting. Next day, the same men who had burned the boats came to Hannali and asked how they were going to get across the river to North Fork Town when there was no ferry.
“By and by I build another boat,” Hannali told them.
“If that you could hurry,” they said, “this is inconvenience.”
Men had kidnapped five freeborn Negroes from the settlement at the foot of the hill and taken them off to slavery in Oklafalaya. Some then signed work contracts that were the equivalent of slavery and started off south. Others slipped off by night north to Kansas.
There were many things going on to fret a Freedom Indian and make him rue his neutral stand. Now the son Travis and one son-in-law would be riding off to the aid of a fox named Yahola.
2.
The Laughing Fox. Were Billy Bow-Legs and Alligator comic strip characters? The panoramic God raises fifty-five or sixty men.
A hundred miles west, Opothle Yahola was gathering his people into camp to move them he knew not where. These neutral troops had received three warnings to sign with the Confederacy and contribute troops. There would be no more warnings. The neutral Creeks were marked for total extinction, to be an example to any other tribe or faction that remained neutral.
These Upper Creeks were the least warlike of the Territory Indians. They were a simple people and had a childlike dependence on their leaders. This dependence would not be a weakness if they had strong leaders or one very strong leader. And in Opothle Yahola they had a man who had been one of the strongest leaders ever.
Yahola was still vigorous in the council and in the saddle. He was the Laughing Fox who used to slip out of traps in the old Georgia-Florida days.
Had the man changed? No, not as some other men changed in that period. He had only changed naturally. The closest I can come to it is one early reference that he was born about 1778, so he was about eighty-three years old. He was still an inspiring leader, but he might not be able to cope with the massive attack that was being launched against his people. Who else was there?
The second man of the Upper Creeks was Oktarharsars Harjo (called Sands by the white men). Harjo had now become number one man in name, declared chief by Opothleyahola, and immediately the Confederacy had put a five-thousand-dollar price on his head. He was a good man but not a great man. And who else was there?
Nothing but a bunch of comic strip characters, it seems. There was Alligator, a Seminole renegade with a mouth as big as an alligator's and with a skin scaled and mottled green with disease. There was Billy Bow-Legs, a waddling dwarf whose legs made a complete capital O. There was Jim Ned, “a person half Delaware and half Negro,” a mouthy coward whose eyes bugged clear out of his head with fright whenever a real man approached him. There was Halleck Tustennuggee, another Seminole who lived so far back in the tangled country that he had to wipe the owl dirt out of his eyes to see daylight. They were all clowns, cowards, and crud.
Were they really like that, or was this only a part of that defamation that had been sent across the Territory in a calculated wave of hatred? The names of these men, but not the descriptions, are familiar if we rack our brains. There were men of these very names, thirty years before, who had saved the Creek and Seminole nations from complete extinction by their fantastic resistance. Neither the whiteman Indians nor the full bloods of the two tribes would be alive had it not been for men of those names.
They were the same men grown older. There were the two great Seminole brothers who had joined these refugee Creeks: Alligator (hereditary king of that clan), and Billy Bolek (Bowlegs to the white men), the sons of the first Bolek who was the son of CowCatcher who was the last of the real Seminole kings. Alligator did not have a grotesque large mouth, nor was he mottled green. In that earlier generation he had been described by a U. S. Army officer, “Alligator is a most sensible, shrewd, active, and jocose man, worth all the Indians I have seen.” And Billy Bolek was not a waddling dwarf, but a fine tall man.
The half-Delaware half-Negro Jim Ned was not a mouthy coward. The descendant of two persecuted peoples, he had become a soldier of fortune who threw in with the underdogs in every conflict. He was said to be the best rifle soldier in the Territory bar none, and he would give a spirit to any defense.
Halleck Tustennuggee, however far back in the tangled country he lived, had fought in deeper country. He was one of the old Seminole battlers of Florida who had held out so long and so valiantly that the tide of public opinion in the states finally turned and the total murder of the Seminole Nation was not permitted. Halleck had made many last stands. Of course he had lost them all, but the Seminoles would not have survived if he and men like him had not made them.
But the leaders were old, and such arms as they had were equally antiquated. Against them were coming all the Confederate Lower Creek Indians, all the Seminoles of the Confederate Faction, the Confederate Creek and Choctaw nations, several units of the regular Confederate Army headed by the Fourth Texas Cavalry. They were going fox hunting in a big way.
Opothleyahola sent up an appeal for men of the sort he did not have, to an old acquaintance and sometimes friend.
“It is myself, Yahola. Plead ye not ignorance, you know who I am. The Laughing Fox! I recall that you always had trouble with Indian names. I ask a favor, not for myself, for my cows and calves. Twice before you granted me peculiar favor when I was in death need, and once I aided yourself when you knew not where to turn to find a defender. I ask for one thousand men, such men as was I in my youth, and with the guns that were not made then.
“You laugh! Yes, it is a joke. I have my humor and you have yours. In all the world there have never been one thousand men such as I was then. But give me a hundred! This is not a joke. Give them to me now, or I will be at the doorway of your lodge within one week — that much against my will — and we will settle this with more than words.”
Opothle Yahola was not a Christian Indian. He was a sort of panoramic deist. But where could even the God of a panoramic deist find one hundred such men? As a matter of fact, He could not find that many, and He tried. He called on His every resource, and finally he came up with fifty-five or sixty. He summoned them to the aid of Opothleyahola the Laughing Fox.
There were no better men anywhere; there was something special about every one of them. They were smart as steel, swift, strong, intelligent, with the best rifles and horses anywhere; knowing men and motives, belligerent as bulls, crafty as coyotes, they were the best. It bothered those men that the most peaceful and pleasant nation in the Terr
itory, the Upper Creek Indians, had been sentenced to death.
Some few of them were out of Stand Watie's own killer Cherokees. Some were from the pledged Confederate Choctaws of Oklafalaya. There were young men from the Chickasaws, those most stylish fighters.
There was a young man of the Colbert family whose father would squeal like a stuck shoat at the news; there was even a McIntosh. There were Comanches and Caddoes and Anadarkos of the plains, the elite of their young men, five white-man buffalo hunters, a handful of intelligent freeman Negroes, two white-man gamblers, Quapaw Indians, Mexican-blood men from the Santa Fe run, men who simply could not be classified at all.
There would be a capable young man named Travis Innominee and his brother-in-law Jemmy Buster. And four other men would be riding with those two when they arrived.
3.
Who eats Comanche potatoes? From Tukabatchee Town to Round Mountains. Kiowas smell like mares' milk. What do white men smell like?
“It is understood that you cease to be my son for the while of it,” Hannali Innominee told his son Travis, “you now take sides in a conflict you cannot return to this house while there is still war.”
“I do not cease to be your son or the son of my mothers,” said Travis. “If you say that I may not return then I may not, but I believe you are wrong. These are Freedom Indians like ourselves. They wish to remain neutral, and they are besieged.”
“They are not quite Freedom Indians,” said Hannali, “they are combat Indians when they gather together and arm if each man remain on his stead and armed he may be neutral if they gather together they are not it is a hard distinction when you go from here you join the northern faction.”
“They do not even know what the North is,” said Travis, “they have never seen northern men.”
“Never mind they will see them,” said Hannali, “it is your last evening here and we will not argue you have decided and I have decided but there cannot be divided feelings here at the table what am I a white man that I should play the heavy father nevertheless you cannot return here while there is war.”
“Maybe Travis will return, and your eyes be dimmed so that you cannot see him,” said the voice of Robert Pike.
“The ghost is talking the man we cannot see,” said Hannali, “no we will not play the spook trick twice we are not so shallow as that Travis goes and Jemmy and they can not return all pretend we are merry now pass pig mush pass buffalo rib pass hot bread pass sand plum pass wine pass whiskey pass snuff and cigars somebody make joke make merry you ghost voice make joke.”
“Maybeso ghost Robert will tell us a funny ghost story,” said Natchez. She glowed like a lantern from the wine and whiskey, and seemed younger than her daughters, almost younger than her granddaughters. She was a Territory beauty with a difference.
“I'm only a second-rate ghost,” said Robert Pike. “I'm bodied, though I have, in this house, the gift of invisibility. Maybe Alinton can tell a ghost story from his wander year.”
“Pickens the green Indian bought a ghost skin once,” said Alinton. “He had had a good year out with the Skin Indians. He had bought a snow-white buffalo skin. He bought a green panther skin. It was a fake and the green came off when it got wet in the rain, but he got it cheap. Then a Skin Indian told Pickens that he would sell him the most rare skin in the world for nine dollars American.
“ ‘If it is really the rarest skin in the world, then I will buy it,’ said Pickens. ‘I can double my money on it.’
“So the Skin Indian brought him a skin and said ‘Here it is, it's a ghost skin.’ ‘But I cannot see a ghost skin. I can't see anything at all,’ Pickens told him. ‘A real ghost skin, would one be able to see it?’ the Indian asked. Pickens agreed that one would not be able to see a real one, so he bought the ghost skin and took it home with him.”
“What did he do with it?” asked Philip-Nitakechi.
“Nailed it up on his wall,” said Alinton, “since it was so valuable, he decided to keep it for himself.”
“Can he see it on his wall?” asked Charles-Mexico.
“No. But he can see the nails. That way he knows it's there.”
“I tell you a story about Creek Indians,” said Hannali, “when first the Creeks came to the Territory the Plains Indians took them out and showed them the buffalo hokeys lying around on the ground they told them that those things were Comanche Potatoes Man the Creeks have it made then they live on those things for years they pick them up right off the ground no people ever had it so made then they find out what those things really are and they won't eat them any more that is when the Creeks go into their decline those things were nourishing.”
“Where is ghost story in buffalo hokey?” asked Martha-Child.
“Was I say it was ghost story,” protested Hannali, “I was only say it was story.”
“Besides is not nice to tell buffalo hokey story to children,” chided Mama Natchez, “Papa Hannali knows better.”
“Is nobody know a real ghost story?” asked Charles-Mexico. They pretended they were merry, passed the whiskey, and told jokes and supper stories. It was the last time they would all be together in this world. But they were serious too.
“How has the Fox called for you, a man he doesn't even know?” Famous Innominee asked his brother Travis.
“Yahola didn't call me. Another did it for him,” said Travis. “It was a summons dream like our father once had. Ride to the aid of the Laughing Fox, he said in the dream.”
“Did the dream come to you too, Jemmy?” Famous asked.
“No. I'm not Indian enough to receive a summons dream. The cattle aren't driven north this year, but we drovers still have our telegraph. We know what is happening.”
Robert Pike wished to ride out with Travis and Jemmy, but Hannali wouldn't permit it. Ghost or no ghost, Hannali would kill Robert if he attempted to leave. Hannali could dim his eyes to one thing to save a life, but a truly neutral Indian couldn't harbor a man and then allow him to rejoin the fray. So Robert Pike must stay on — frustrated and invisible and with his parole given — in Hannali House.
A little after dark, Travis Innominee and Jemmy Buster rode away from the House, swam their horses across the river, and rode right through the Confederate Indians posted in North Fork Town. They rode as invisible as the ghosts themselves.
At about half-dawn they met four white men. Travis was startled, and Jemmy was not. These four men, Texas by their talk, were waiting for Jemmy and his brother-in-law. They also were riding to the aid of Opothle Yahola.
The panoramic God to whom Yahola had appealed had not been able to find one hundred men equal to the Laughing Fox in his youth, but he had found more than half that number, and some of them in unlikely places. These four were such men as other Texans only boasted of being: Jeff Merriwether, Sudden Scott (Scioto), Eneas Evans, Charles Bethany. They weren't riding just for the trip.
They rode carefully that day and the night, avoiding Confederate patrols. They came to the hidden buffalo camp of the Upper Creek Indians at second dawn. It was the entire nation of the Upper Creeks, men, women, children, dogs, horses, and cattle. It was a busy camp, staging for a great march to safety somewhere. There were the dissident Seminole men there too, and the more than half hundred of the elites of every sort, men whose consciences would not allow them to stand aside and allow a nation to be murdered. It was only a wayside camp set up by the Creeks who had fled in terror from their own Tukabatchee Town, and were on their way — though they did not know it — to Round Mountains.
Hey, do you get the smell of that old camp? An old Territory trader and plainsman has written what the Indians smelled like to him. The Osages smelled of pig weeds, the odor always clinging to their legs and persons as though they had run through a thousand miles of weed patches. The Choctaws smelled of fat ponies fed on big bluestem and run till they lathered. The Seminoles smelled like embattled badgers, musky with anger. The Poncas smelled like butchered beaver, and the green skins of those anim
als pegged out. The Comanches smelled like the tea they made of mesquite pods. The Kiowas smelled of alkali dust and mares' milk. Lower Creeks smelled like last year's wheat in an unventilated granary. The Upper Creeks smelled like the glue made from buffalo hoofs. All those Indians were present, so it was a pleasantly smelly camp.
What did the white men smell like to the Indians? The Plainsman becomes coy here, but leaves the impression that it was an obscenity word.
4.
Take a Snake Indian as old as the rocks.
Cross with Coyote — and he is the Fox!
This was foreign country to Travis Innominee and Jemmy Buster, to almost all the men who had joined the Upper Creeks. It was even foreign country to the Lower Creek Indians.
Take half a man with an empty head,
Cross with a blind wolf, and get you a Red.
Take a Horse Indian with mud on his beak,
Cross with a polecat, and get you a Creek.
Take a Creek Indian about half awake,
Cross with a buzzard, and get you a snake.
That was a jingle that the men of the Texas Fourth Cavalry made up about the Upper Creek Snake Indians and their leader Opothleyahola, the Laughing Fox. The various Confederate Indians who rode with them may not have appreciated the first stanza, and the Lower Creeks may not have liked the second.
But the Snake Creek Indians were not really a low people. It is said that they were the least civilized and the most civil of all the Territory Indians. They have been called the Puritan Indians, but they had none of the fanaticism that belonged to the Puritan whites. They were absolutely honest and could not abide vulgarity of any sort. When they were under siege at Round Mountains, the thing that wounded them more than rifleshot was the shouted obscenities of the attackers. That the women should hear such things!
Okla Hannali Page 17
