Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  The Confederate Indians could not comprehend the decision to withdraw. Many of them would have given it up and ridden off home in disgust had they not been held in line by the “Blue-Eyed Company” — the white-blood Choctaws. They were all soldier Indians, they said, and they would obey orders. They joined the withdrawal to Gibson. Only a small group was put on the tail of the Snake Creeks, not to give battle to them, but to harry them a little and to give an account of their movements.

  Jeremiah Judd and Sudden Scott rode the tail end of the last of the Creek wagons, and with them was a small Snake girl — happy in the morning and already forgetful that her parents had been killed. Sudden Scott had a bugle which he had taken from a dead Confederate, and with this he mocked the bugling of the following party. They bantered each other, and said some defiant hard things back and forth by bugle.

  “What does the other buggle say?” asked the Snake girl who had learned camp English in a week from Jeremiah Judd, “does he say he is our friend come to help us?”

  “I will be kicked by a grasshopper with a wooden leg if he says that,” growled Jeremiah. “He is no friend of ours.”

  “Is the other one a real buggle animal, or is he only a little brass horn like ours?” asked the Snake girl.

  “Oh, he's a regular bugle animal that they have,” said Jeremiah. “Sounds like about a nineteen-year-old male. A real big one.”

  “And we have only a little horn to make the buggle sound,” said the girl. “They think we got a buggle animal too. We fool them.”

  “We fool them, Snake Girl,” said Sudden Scott, but they fooled nobody. Their every action was noted and followed. They could not travel any great distance before they would have to lay up and treat the wounded, and any camp they made would be known. Nevertheless, they had a respite, even though it was a forced flight with many of them dying on the way.

  3.

  Almost to bitter words. House divided. Famous Innominee and the Cherokee Pins.

  Opothle Yahola had won twenty days of grace — November 19 to December 9. He went into another camp to try to restore his stricken people to life. He also reached out in diplomatic attempts; and there was much unofficial scurrying about the Territory. The Innominee family was involved in some of this scurrying.

  Hannali — for all that he fought to remain a complete neutral — was in bleeding sympathy with Yahola. He knew the man well from early days. Twice Hannali had been to Tukabatchee Town, that closed mecca of the Snake Creeks which none but Snakes could enter. Hannali entered as special brother of Yahola. He believed Yahola to be as great a man as Pushmataha or Moshulatubbee. Though not a Choctaw, the Fox had the aleika magic on him. He was somehow the Fox-Hard-to-Kill of the Choctaw fables. He was the Fox-Know-the-Way, the Fox-Come-Again, the Fox-Laugh-in-the-Sun from which he had his modifier name. It was full blood calling to full blood, for all that Hannali still swore to remain the most neutral Indian who ever lived.

  It was for this reason that Hannali did not go into a fury when Rachel Perry said that she was going to ride to find her husband Travis among the Snake Creeks. She was indeed a Creek girl, but of the lower white-blood-mixed Creeks, of the Checote kindred.

  “So I will no longer be your daughter-in-law, Papa Hannali, since my Travis may not be your son for the while. But I go tonight.”

  “No you go tomorrow and not tonight,” said Hannali. “I let you not ride off unguarded like a night witch you were never my daughter-in-law do not use white-people phrases to me you are my own daughter and forever you will not go alone and in danger I have other great sons to see after you.”

  Hannali knew that all the rising sympathy in his household was not for the Snake Creeks nor for the North to which they were fleeing for their lives. The news of the massacre of Round Mountains had an unusual effect on Alinton Innominee. Alinton felt that — as they were Choctaws — they should stand with the majority of the Choctaws, for the South. He had ridden up and talked to many of the Chocs on their withdrawal from Round Mountains to Fort Gibson, and he had come to their rough way of thinking. If you are given the task of hunting down the things, they said, you do not inquire whether they are good foxes or bad foxes, good snakes or bad snakes. The Choctaw soldiers believed their officers that all the Indian troubles were due to the government of the North, and that the South would deal benignly with the Indians after the war was over with.

  Famous was contemptuous of this theory as Alinton tried to put it in all its catchwords. Famous paraphrased a saying of their uncle Pass Christian, that from Grandfather Barua, Pass Christian had received the intelligence, Hannali the vigor, and Biloxi the pot. Famous said that from Papa Hannali, he Famous had inherited the brains, Travis the bravery, and Alinton the bluff and bluster. They came near to blows, and Hannali had to interpose his bulk.

  “I remember three brothers who were very different,” he said, “and their names were Hannali myself and Pass Christian and Biloxi these three never in their lives had quarrel of any sort nor ever one angry word I doubt if it can be said of any other set of brothers since the first two sons of Adam had their misunderstanding I will enforce that you love one another if you will not do it in a willing manner.”

  And yet they had come almost to bitter words in that morning argument. Then they parted, never to meet again in life. Famous took his sister-in-law (no, his sister) Rachel Perry in his fancy buggy to find Travis with the Snake Creeks.

  Could they find the hidden Snake camp? In the upper Territory country, they always said that the news traveled by Cherokee creeper — a ground-growing vine — and Famous was Cherokee as well as Choctaw. It was no secret where the old Fox had gone. He had crossed the Arkansas near the mouth of the Cimarron (the Red Fork) River. The country north was full of Confederate-allied Big Osages, and the Fox veered east to avoid them. He made camp where his people were unable to travel farther. He buried two hundred who had died on the way. Some had held off dying till they came to a peaceful place for it. Here he found good grass and water. And here he found friendly Indians where he expected enemies — among the Cherokees.

  These were the Pin Indians, the full-blood faction of the Cherokees. The Pins befriended the Snakes and saved the lives of many of them before the issue was joined again. For this, more than half the Pins would be killed by the white-man faction of their own tribe. The controversial Stand Watie would hunt them down like rats. The Snake recovery camp was on the south bank of Bird Creek, just northeast of present Tulsa. Famous brought Rachel Perry to Travis there.

  Famous was often threatened on his two-day drive, but nobody risked trying to take him. Famous had not more steel in him than Travis, likely not more than Alinton. But he was better known up through the Creek and Cherokee country, and he was known as a man and not a boy. He had the voice and the command that his brothers lacked; he scared men.

  Famous and Travis did not speak at their meeting. Travis was a combatant; Famous was a flaming neutral who would not be compromised. But Famous spoke to the old Fox Opothleyahola — for some time, and privately. Famous undertook a commission for the old man, and among the Cherokees it would be partly successful, as would be seen later. Of course, Yahola had other ambassadors working for him.

  Famous undertook a rambling journey on behalf of the Fox, and of his own neutrality. He visited big men of the Cherokees, the Lower Creeks, his own Choctaws. He even rode into Fort Gibson (now the Confederate stronghold), spent half a day, and rode again free — although there were orders out for the arrest of himself and his father Hannali. The pleading of Famous and others for the Fox and his people did have some effect with the Cherokees, and probably with the Choctaws.

  4.

  Chusto Talasah and Chuste Nahlah. Fox is still fox.

  General McCulloch of the Confederates had Colonel Douglas Cooper and his Texans and Indians readied for further assault against the Snake Creeks. He didn't need any help from them in watching the Union General Hunter do nothing. But he
did give Cooper more help, though Cooper already had the edge of more than two to one in fighting men, and his regulars and the Fox's irregulars. McCulloch gave Cooper a substantial force of Cherokee Confederates under Colonel John Drew. By the conduct of a few of the Cherokees of Drew (and only a few of them, though the number and impression has been magnified) this second assault against the Fox would fail.

  There is confusion — due to the names of the actions — about the second and third stand of Opothleyahola and his Creeks against the Confederates, and some histories make one battle of them. The two latter battles were fought four miles and seventeen days apart.

  The first of them, Chusto Talasah, also called the Battle of Caving Banks, was fought on December 9 at Little High Shoals on Bird Creek. This is the Battle of Bird Creek.

  The second of them, Chuste Nahlah, was fought on December 26 on Shoal Creek, not on Little High Shoals of Bird Creek. This is the Battle of Shoal Creek.

  It isn't known to what extent the forces of Opothle Yahola recovered in physical and military health at the camp on Bird Creek. It had come on an early winter, and dozens of the Snakes were dying every day. The Pin Cherokees contributed food and skins to these refugees. For medicine and doctoring, the Creeks had the Seminoles among them. In all the five tribes, the profession of medicine had been carried on by the Seminole Indians only — and by Seminole families in other ways the most backward. They were the herbalists, the fever breakers, the bone setters, the psycho-healers, the curers generally. They understood about infection, they could probe and remove arrowheads and bullets, and could amputate expertly; and their herbals were good ones. Most of the “old Indian remedies” peddled by white men medicine wagon operators in the following decades were Seminole remedies. Opothleyahola's camp had doctoring near as good as that of the Union and Confederate camps of that same Civil War time.

  Then the Confederates of Cooper came to the attack once more. They were reinforced by more white companies out of Fort Gibson, by further Choctaw forces, and by the Cherokee forces of Major Pegg and Colonel Drew. Cooper now had an advantage of more than two and a half to one in fighting men. It should have been enough. It wasn't.

  The first Confederate troops to reach the Bird Creek camp were men of the portion of the Cherokee regiment that was under the command of Major Pegg. But they did not attack. They asked to parley instead, and they walked into camp.

  The news that had traveled by Cherokee creeper, the tendrils of which had been Famous Innominee and many others, was not the same as the official news. These Cherokees now insisted on finding for themselves whether the official version was true; they discovered it to be a complete lie.

  These Snake Creeks were not Unionist Indians commanded by Unionist officers and built into a giant force to smash their brother Territory Indians. They did not have a camp filled with booty; theirs was a starvation camp. They owned no great guns nor cannon the capture of which was essential. They hadn't wagons laden with gold. They hadn't white men followers with measuring chains to measure and divide and steal the land of the Territorials. Most of the Snake Creeks were bow-and-arrow full bloods driven to the last extremity.

  About a third of this Cherokee band — some hundred and fifty men of them — declared for Opothleyahola at once and announced that they would remain with his forces and fight with him. The other Cherokees withdrew from the parley and returned to meet the Confederate Army of which they were the advance guard; but they were full of doubt now, and they spread that doubt.

  The Cherokees were a little naïve about dissuading the main Confederate force from the battle, however. Almost every man of the advancing Confederates, and certainly every officer, knew the true state of affairs. All who had been at Round Mountains knew it. They had maintained the lie for their own amusement and for the public consumption, but they knew what sort of people were the Snake Creeks whom they were returning again to murder.

  Nevertheless, a portion of the Cherokees did refrain from the battle, and there was no time to compel them to it. They would be punished later. This Cherokee defection was not important in numbers, but it would be used as an excuse for the failure of the Confederate assault.

  And the assault did fail. For four hours on that December 9, the Confederates charged the Snake Creek camp, and every time they were thrown back. Opothleyahola had established strong position here. He could maintain a solid front, and Colonel Cooper seemed committed to the same massing tactics that had ruined him at Round Mountains. If Colonel Cooper had learned anything at Round Mountains, it was only how to lose more decisively. The murderous flanking raids of the Confederate Indians at Round Mountains were not repeated; it is suspected that they were malingering and saw no reason to argue with Cooper's policy. It was all frontal assault — mostly with white troops — and the Confederates could not break the front at all.

  There were some signs of Snake exhaustion; some sectors of the front that had first answered with rifle fire, now answered with arrow. They were running out of ammunition, and holding what they had left for the climax.

  It has been charged against the Choctaw and Chickasaw Confederates — the only time this charge was ever brought against them — that at Bird Creek they didn't press the issue as vigorously as they might have. They had been shamed by the Cherokee band naïvely blurting out the truth of the affair, and they saw that the ordered tactic was suicidal. They could have raided around and cut the old Fox's forces to pieces. The tactic of the open charge which had failed at Round Mountains was repeated at Bird Creek for the entire battle, though at Bird Creek there was always some cover and the charges could not be completely open.

  Then the Confederate error was compounded in one massive incredibility. Cooper drew his entire force up for one massed charge in extreme depth, and ordered them onward so closely grouped that they could not maneuver.

  Like a nightmare that has been dreamed before and must be dreamed again, came the great withering volley from the Snake Creek lines, and the Confederates broke in total panic. They didn't stop till they had reached Fort Gibson sixty-five miles away, though the Fox couldn't have followed them with a single man. There had, indeed, been a difference between this volley and that at Round Mountains. This had the same initial roar; but just as the attacking mass broke, the volley choked down, coughed, and turned into a whispering slither of arrows. The Snakes had shot their wad, had almost no ammunition, and could have been taken easily if the charge had held for another fifteen seconds.

  5.

  The skeleton force. There were no ordinary persons there. The sick lion hunts down the mice. Oh the smoke that will not rise again!

  Opothleyahola had seventeen days of grace, but he had no illusions. He knew that the assault would now be put into the hands of a competent man, and in that case he was lost. He knew that at Bird Creek he had been defeated forever, regardless of the apparent outcome.

  He began to send his people off to the free country of the North whether they were able to travel or not. Several hundred of the women and children would literally freeze to death on the journey, but other hundreds would get to Kansas.

  There was real fury among the Confederate commanders at the news of the disgraceful retreat from Bird Creek. The man selected to wipe out the disgrace was Colonel James McIntosh (“It is the white man McIntosh I worry about,” Alligator had said before Round Mountains. “He will come on the next month's road,” said the Laughing Fox) brought from his command at Van Buren, Arkansas. It was all up with the Snake Creeks now.

  They smoke and they talk. The pipe goes from last lips to last lips of all the men who will be dead tomorrow. The only women left in the Creek camp were frenzied harpies who refused to leave, or certain cool ladies (as Rachel Perry) who were mistresses of their own fate. The only children left were the children of these. Actually Opothleyahola had won one battle. He had fought two delaying actions and near half his cows and calves had arrived or would arrive in free country. It was something.
Rachel was with her husband Travis on the last night, but the brother (brother-in-law as the White Eyes call it) Jemmy Buster was dead. So many good men had been killed!

  It was now one of those end-of-the-world affairs, and there were no ordinary persons in the camp. There were old men still fighting this peculiar war after they were dead, for the great wars of their lives had been fought thirty or forty years before. There were the allies of all nations, but their ranks now so thinned that they were no more than symbolic. It was a skeleton camp, a shell camp, near empty on the inside. It had been moved about four miles, the old camp standing with dead men propped on the rim rocks as though still guarding to serve as a decoy.

  The white man McIntosh came up the Verdigris River from Fort Gibson with sixteen hundred white troopers — the South Arkansas Mounted Riflemen, the South Kansas Regiment, and large bodies of Texas Cavalry. The Confederate Indians were still under the nominal command of Colonel Cooper who was no soldier, but under the actual command of Stand Watie who was one.

  “Can you keep up?” white man McIntosh asked Stand Watie, and Watie laughed without humor. With his “big-man” Indians, the best mounted and finest man in the Territory, he could keep up with anybody, he said.

  But he couldn't, though he moved rapidly. McIntosh drove his own men hard over the snow and ice; they were superior men and they moved steadily up the Verdigris and up Bird Creek from its Verdigris mouth. The Indians of Watie meanwhile came up the Arkansas River to its Big Bend, left the river at Lutchapoga (this is the Lokar-Poker town of later Territory days, it's within present Tulsa), and raced to be behind the Snakes at Bird Creek and cut them off. But Watie didn't come behind the Snakes; he blundered face-on into what had been their camp and was greeted by white man laughter. The battle was over with. The last Snake and allied remnant had been wiped out.