Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  They were still bow and arrow and lance Indians. Not one man in a dozen had a rifle, and not one rifle in a dozen was a good one. The Snake Creeks had big fires going in their buffalo camp now, so it could no longer be considered as hidden. They were drying and jerking beef and buffalo meat to carry on their journey, making wheat flour and corn flour and hominy, roasting and eating carcasses so they would be fat Indians when they began their hunger march, cobbling up their wagons and equipment, preparing new buffalo robes and blankets.

  The elites set up a gun shop and did what they could for the ancient weapons of the Snakes, and gave them instruction in rifle fire. But it was Opothle Yahola himself who gave them all instruction, elites, Snakes, Seminoles, Chocs and Chocs, and Plains Indians, in tactics. The Fox had defeated regular army units of overwhelming numbers before most of those present were born. He knew about the siege-town camp, the feint, the breakaway, the running fight.

  But always the defense must be a circle one, the cows and calves in the center, the bulls on the outer ring. It would restrict their mobility; but if the men had wished to abandon their families, they could have been away and to safety long ago, and nobody ever could have caught them.

  It is said in some sources that Opothleyahola had three thousand men when he made his break to the North. He did not; he had three thousand people, men, women, children. He had about a thousand men, counting half-grown boys and old men, who could be counted as a fighting force. So he would be outnumbered about two to one by the regular Confederate forces, white and Indian, brought against him. He would be outnumbered at least ten to one in weapons.

  On this afternoon, the Upper Creek Indians built their roasting fires larger than ever and spread out the new carcasses. They outlined their sundown camp with the rows of fires, and made more noise than was common to them. The time was overripe. They had learned that the head of the Confederate columns was only a day's ride away. So the wagons began to rattle north as soon as it was dark, and the livestock herds to move along driven by women and children and old men.

  5.

  Gentlemen, that is shooting and that is talking. My brother is the wind.

  The old Fox Yahola held his last peace court at a big campfire with a hundred men around him. It was a loud-talking thing. They had to make noise to make it seem that there were more of them, to cover the fact that the women and children had stolen away and there was only the men left. You might, if you spent a life in looking, find one hundred men as good; but you would not find one hundred men as colorful as those around the fire that night.

  There was Oktarharsars Harjo (Sands), the acting chief. You think he wasn't a good man just because he didn't know all about shuffling troops? All right, you ask him to wrestle. There was the man Tracks — the finest scout ever and a fabulous rifleshot. There was a German man named Blau from St. Louis who had been traveling to find whether buffalo hides might not make as good shoe leather as cowhides. He was a strong man both in body and opinion, and he had a gold medal he had won for rifle shooting at a St. Louis club. “It's big enough,” joshed Alligator. “I could shoot one of them too if I knew where they roosted.” There was Jeremiah Judd, a mighty, black-bearded white man who spoke bitter and who spat green. But it is always the children who first dive below such surface appearances. The small Snake children had known him as theirs, and climbed all over him as though he were a mountain.

  There was Alligator himself and his brother Bolek who now accepted the name Billy Bow-Legs with complete good nature. There was Jim Ned. Jim Ned could pick out a duck high overhead, clip off its wings and tail feathers with rapid shots, pluck even its pinfeathers with closer approaches, decapitate and draw the bird with accurate angle shots, and then shoot so rapidly and hot as to roast the duck perfectly brown, and catch it as it came to earth. He had a new roasted duck in his hand for proof that he had just done it, and he tore off duck pieces and passed them around.

  The man Tracks said that he could do the same trick with a refinement. While he so treated the duck with the rifle in his right hand, Tracks would load the bird with salt and pepper with a shotgun in his left hand. Moreover, he'd hold a trencher plate in his mouth and would catch the bird so deftly on the plate in its own gravy as not to spill a drop. Gentlemen, that is shooting and that is talking!

  Halleck Tustennuggee stated that he was a better shot than either of them, but that he was a modest man and not given to boasting. He believed, however, that he could do the same thing, and that he could at the same time — with his third hand — bake up a batch of corn bread and have it hot before the bird came to earth.

  Travis Innominee was there. Travis, as Hannali used to say, could shoot a rifle and tell a story better than most boys and as good as some men. When Travis had first appeared in the camp, Opothle — mindless of the years — had first believed him to be Hannali whom he knew long before. He had cried when he saw that it was not Hannali; he believed Hannali to be invincible. Then he had cried no more. “It is the same thing,” he said. “He has sent his son, his spirit.”

  Charles Checote was there. Not all of that family were sworn to the Confederates. There was a big Negro man known only as Saint Peter — a man to have beside you in a scrap. There was Silver Saddle — a blue-eyed, dark-brown man who could translate for all the Plains Indians and who might have been anything. These new men who had come to the aid of the Snake Creeks were all jocose and loose, and they had the finest rifles that God ever made.

  “An old friend will be coming to visit me tomorrow,” said Opothleyahola, “but he will not be coming very close. He is a valiant man, so he will be riding in a buggy far behind the fray.”

  “Who will come in a buggy, father-cousin?” Alligator asked.

  “Chilly McIntosh, may he have his eternal rest and that damned soon. He is so fine, even his spit is sweet.”

  “It is the white man McIntosh I worry about,” said Alligator.

  “So odd that a white man should be better than an Indian man of the same name,” said Yahola. “But the white man McIntosh will be coming on the next month's road, not on the tomorrow road.”

  They were talking about Chilly McIntosh, a Creek chief by the grace of Albert Pike; and about Colonel (soon General) James McIntosh in command of Confederate forces at Van Buren, Arkansas — so good a fighting man that fighting men everywhere had intuitive knowledge of him.

  “It is time; it will have to be time now,” said Oktarharsars Harjo (Sands) when they began to smell the coming morning.

  “Not yet,” said old Yahola. “I know the wind. He is my brother.”

  The wind there is almost always out of the Southwest. But sometimes, just before dawn, there is a great carrying blast of it out of the North, and Yahola said that it would be coming now.

  “Their advance guard, and we do not know how many others, have ridden all night instead of sleeping up. I hold my breath that we will hear the bugle to sound their charge.”

  “Breathe easy, Harjo. Soon there will be times when you must hold your breath indeed. My brother the wind — does not an old man speak flowery, Harjo? — will also hear the bugle. He waits for it.”

  It came, the bugle call to sound the charge of the Confederates who had ridden all night to surprise the camp of the Snake Creeks. The wind heard it, and gave out the great carrying blast from the North. The Snakes and the Elites were on their feet like jumped deer, bringing brands from their half-mile-long row of fires to a brushworks they had prepared. And instantly there was a grass fire and a brush fire sweeping like a blade at thirty miles an hour and setting off the dry November plains like an explosion.

  The bugle call changed to a retreat, and now the Confederate Indians and whites must ride out of reach of the holocaust. The Snakes and their Elites vanished north behind the smoke screen. They would overtake their main body within four hours. They had gained a day of grace by their trick. They would have time to make a river-crossing ambush in the North, and to erect ea
rthworks where they could make a stand.

  6.

  A ring of bulls. A nation was being murdered that afternoon. Who knows the snake-hair plant?

  It was the afternoon of the following day (November 19, 1861) that the Snake Creeks made their stand at Round Mountains. The marker of the battle is set up a little southeast of Stillwater, Oklahoma, probably four miles too far north, but close enough. It was north of the Cimarron and south of the Arkansas River, in easy rolling country, and was surely more wooded then than now. There were no Round Mountains at Round Mountains; there are several theories of the name, none of them very good.

  The Snake Creek Indians crossed the Cimarron River on the afternoon and evening of November 18. This was near Perkins, Oklahoma. The Cimarron (then called the Red Fork of the Arkansas) is not a great river, but it cannot be crossed just anywhere. A river-crossing ambush was set up, and positions dug in several miles to the north of this.

  By this river-crossing ambush, Opothleyahola set the time of the battle itself (late afternoon of November 19), and bet on the Confederates trying to wind it up before dark. He meant that they should be hurried. He knew how they would act when they were short of time — with a great white man charge, not with an Indian infiltration. The Fox knew that he must shatter that charge when it came; there would be none of them left alive if he did not.

  The Confederates came to the Cimarron Crossing about noon and ran into the sniping, delaying action. The attacking force was a sound one, and they forced the crossing vigorously. They crossed into a mild sort of trap which they did not recognize. The defenders could have held them up longer and punished them more, but if so the battle itself might have been postponed till the following dawn. This the Fox did not want. He had no chance at all against an unhurried day-long attack. So the attack on the dug-in positions came in the late afternoon.

  And it went badly for the defending Snakes from the first. The Confederate Chickasaws, working the wings, were flashy and valiant. The Confederate Choctaws, ramming the center, were relentless. The men of the Texas Fourth Cavalry were not gun-shy, but most of them were held back from the early fighting. Groups of them were picked to follow through on any real penetration. The rifle fire coming from the Snake Creeks was stronger than the Confederates had expected, but it was not of any great depth.

  The Snake Creek defense was of necessity the ring of bulls — with the cows and calves shielded by it. As such, it was not maneuverable. The attackers wore down the flanks and breached them, opening pocket after pocket of slaughter for the Texas men who liked that kind of stuff. There were not enough old Creek bulls to maintain everywhere the ring around their dependents. There was merciless massacre of women and children at the break-through points.

  A nation was being murdered that afternoon. The intent was to murder it to the last individual. And something happened during the easy slaughter that had become only a memory to the Territory Indians: scalping, shocking clumsy scalpings, not at all in the old Indian manner, and not done by Indians.

  In certain Texas homes there are still curious relics to be found. They are darkened plantlike things of long fine filaments, and with a dark clot at the roots of them. They are the rare snake-hair plant, and they were taken at Round Mountains.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  1.

  The withering fire. Was it the father of Travis Innominee or was it his other body beside him in the dusk? I thought we broke them of that boy's trick thirty years ago.

  It was late when the Confederate Texas Cavalry assembled to finish the affair. Colonel Douglas Cooper, the white-bearded old Indian agent and new colonel, decreed that the white troops should attack with a massed cavalry charge; and the Indians were aghast at the idea. “It were better to hold up the parade stuff till we finish off the Snakes,” they protested, “men you bunch up like that they cut you down like cane.” But the Colonel insisted on his all-sweeping cavalry charge.

  The regular white cavalry would form the center, backed closely by the fearless Choctaw horsemen, and with the intrepid Chickasaws sweeping on the flanks. The charge should break the desperate ring of the defending Snakes who were now shredded to pieces and hardly able to maintain their lines or close their gaps. The ring had already been broken, in fact, unbeknownst to the attackers. The Elite fighters in particular, who had been ranging everywhere to close up gaps, had now moved to one central spot by the orders of the Fox, and the gaps were allowed to go unplugged.

  The attackers drew up in massed formation just out of rifle range. Just out of rifle range? How did they know the effective range of rifles in the hands of the Elite? The men and horses tensed, and then broke forward — to run into a wall before they had completed that first lunge.

  It all happened within a minute, one has said. Within thirty seconds, another. For the charge began from open ground, supposedly out of effective range. Then it came in a simultaneous blast like an explosion, the most withering, murderous, unerring, concentrated rifle fire ever seen or heard in the Territory. Three hundred of the attackers fell within a minute. There had never been such shattering volleys.

  Were the Elites really that good? They were as good as men could get with the rifles of the day. Whether or not Jim Ned could sear the pinfeathers off a high-flying duck, he could hit those Texas boys in the middle. Saint Peter, the man Tracks, Alligator, Billy Bow-Legs, Jeremiah Judd, Sudden Scott, Travis Innominee, Halleck and Harjo, Jemmy Buster and Charles Bethany, something over half a hundred of the Elites, something over two hundred of the sharpest striking Snakes, they broke that thing as it started its surge. And in the middle of them was a form so sudden, so giant, so thunderous, that it seemed to be one of those sky heroes who often came down and took part in Indian battles.

  What was the great form that was seen at the time of the volleys, and then was seen no more? Who was it who grinned so garishly that it flashed the whole evening sky with November lightning? What old Mingo form with a repeating rifle three times as long as any rifle ever seen? What fearsome whooping thing who toppled men from their horses with the mere blast of his voice? Of whom did the Fox laugh out, “It is himself and not the cub who is here now”? Had Hannali Innominee broken his parole and come with the incredible repeating rifle that he had made with his own hands?

  More likely — the men said much later — it was the fetch or double of Travis Innominee which had taken the form of his father. The fetches or other bodies of Choctaws could often be seen fighting beside them in battle. The men of the Snake Creeks would set up the fiction that they had not really seen Hannali — just as Hannali had set up the fiction that he could not see Robert Pike — for Hannali was known as a sworn neutral; and who would doubt a man's oath because of something that fooled the eyes when the light was failing? Later they would set up the fiction — but it was still right now with the attacking cavalry going down like sickled barley.

  Charles Checote and Silver Saddle, Jeff Merriwether and Eneas Evans, the kraut named Blau and the old Fox himself, they cut down that Fourth Cavalry with their murderous blast. The attackers never recovered from that furious fire or from the pall that came down over them.

  There are days all through the summer and into autumn when the twilight lingers forever. Then there will be a day — and the number of it is November 19 — when the winter is coming with a rush and there is hardly any twilight. Sundown, then darkness. The attackers had waited too long, and then moved too hurriedly to wind it up before dark. Opothleyahola had timed it all perfectly. The November night was his brother as well as the wind.

  “A massed cavalry charge, and some of them twirling sabers!” exclaimed Alligator in wonder. “I thought we broke them of that boys' trick thirty years ago.”

  2.

  The battle everybody lost. Banter of bugles. The Gibson Road.

  There are many battles in history which both sides claim to have won. Round Mountains was the battle that everybody lost. Both sides retreated with panic spe
ed.

  The Snake Creeks had lost a thousand dead. Many of these were their women and children slaughtered at the breakthrough points, but several hundred of their fighting men had been killed also.

  The Confederates had lost one hundred killed and two hundred hurt from the withering rifle volley that had caught them gathered brainlessly in the open for a charge, the volley which actually finished the fighting. About a hundred other men, mostly the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian Confederates, had been killed in the tangled afternoon fighting in the woods and thickets, the only real fighting of the day.

  The count would show the Snake Indians badly beaten. But they had held the field and driven off the attackers so decisively that the attack could not be renewed.

  Both retreats began at dark. Opothleyahola ordered everything loaded up, the wounded stacked into wagons or slung over horses, everything unessential left behind, and the dead abandoned unburied. They started north in disarray, and a strong pursuit would have annihilated them. The old Fox had gambled, by his shrewd insight of men and of a man, that there would not be a pursuit. And there wasn't.

  Opothleyahola could not know, of course, just what justification Colonel Cooper would seize upon, but he knew what it would amount to. For it was just at the time of the night panic following the breaking of the cavalry charge, that Colonel Cooper began to worry that he was needed elsewhere. It was an unaccountable worry, for his superiors had not seen fit to worry about it; and Colonel Cooper had not worried about it ten minutes before.

  Now he worried that he might be needed back at Fort Gibson. What if General Hunter should invade the Territory with U.S. troops? Rationally the thing could not happen till the following spring, but night panic isn't rational. Colonel ordered an immediate forced march back to Fort Gibson, and already hundreds of Texans were strewn out far ahead of him on the Gibson Road.