Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  On July 14, 1865, with only two followers, a Union major walked a tired horse into the Chickasaw encampment. The major mouthed a dry cigar, and he seemed to be a very dry man himself. Governor Colbert identified himself. The major presented the papers of surrender, and rudely asked Colbert if he could read.

  “I can,” said Colbert. He read the papers and then signed them, and the major put them back in his pocket. He lit his cigar with one of the new sulphur matches, and walked his horse out of the camp again.

  The Civil War was over, and the date was July 14, 1865.

  The Civil War itself was over, and yet its last battle was not fought till seventeen years later, in 1882, near Okemah in Indian Territory. The Indian Civil Wars did not end with the white man peace; in all those seventeen years there was desultory fighting. The last phase of it was called the Green Peach War, between two Creek factions: the full-blood group led by Isparhecher (in whom the ghost of Opothleyahola walked); and the mixed-blood group of Chief Checote. The bitterness did not die until the last Snake Creek with childhood memories of Round Mountains and Bird Creek and Shoal Creek was dead.

  2.

  They drove the nails they had forgotten. Apache to Waco. To reward enemies and punish friends.

  The Indian Territory was in very bad shape at the formal end of the Civil War in 1865. Twelve thousand homes — 80 percent of those in the Territory — had been burned and destroyed. Every town and settlement had been destroyed. Somewhere between one third and one half of the Territory Indians had been killed — this before the disease epidemics hit in late 1865.

  Almost all livestock was gone from the Territory; seed corn and seed wheat were not to be had; there were no plows, no horses, no food, no money, no credit — and no man outside the Territory cared whether the Indians lived or died. The thriving civilization that the Territory Indians had built up in the thirty-year period following the relocation of the tribes was gone forever.

  Fortunately there was still game in the Territory. It had reappeared in unremembered abundance. Most of the Indians reverted, threw away their civilization, and became hunting Indians again in order to live.

  Though his crops had been burned for four straight years, Hannali Innominee had planted more corn than ever in the spring of 1865. He was one man who still had seed corn; the raiders had never been able to find all his caches. He had plows and mules — wherever he had kept them hidden. He and a few others led the comeback in the Choctaw North.

  Hannali, Natchez, Hazel, Famous-George, Peter-Barua, Charles-Chitoh, Martha-Child, Thomas-Academy, Helena, Anna-Hata — ten of them (and seven of them were children of ten years old and under) were left to reconstitute a clan. But would not the great sons be coming home?

  Travis Innominee came home first, but he did not remain. He said that he did not wish to see his brother Alinton — not till several years had passed and they might be easy with each other again. Travis went across the river to North Fork Town in the Creek Nation to live. He built a house on a town lot that had been willed to him by his uncle Pass Christian Innominee — for Pass Christian had bought property here and there on that long ago visit up the river. Travis had some money that he had picked up as a card shark during his Union service. He opened a store, and for a long time he did business on promise of future payment.

  Alinton Innominee came home, a crippled man who walked with a cane but who still rode horse easily. Alinton said, as had Famous-George and others, that his brother Famous Innominee would not be coming home. Famous had visited Alinton just after he had died, and they had a long talk into the night. Famous was in contingent form and could not take either coffee, tobacco, or whiskey, although he said he still enjoyed the smell of all three.

  “How is it with my great son where he is now?” Hannali asked.

  “Oh, he says purgatory is not the best land beyond the world, a little better than Texas, not at all up to the Moshulatubbee.” They grinned, but Alinton had told his father, even in a riddle, that he knew his brother Famous was dead.

  “So now I have but one brother,” Alinton said, “I'll go over and see him and won't put up with this reluctant business of his what are we white men that we should be enemies and we brothers?”

  Alinton stayed with Travis a week, stayed at the Big House a further week, then rode off to Texas to buy cattle with gold that Hannali dug up from one of his hordes. Man, you can't stand around and let the world do nothing. When the bottom is out of everything is the time to go back in business.

  “We are a twice-crucified people,” said Hannali, “but this second time they have nailed us up on the cross grotesquely by one hand and one foot and flopping like a caught turkey let us not be impatient I am feel that very soon they be along to drive the nails they have forgotten.”

  Yes. They came. They drove the nails they had forgotten. It had been an oversight. A full crucifixion had been intended.

  The two nails now driven by the federal hammer were these: First, all Indian treaties and all Indian rights to Territory land were voided because of the adherence of the Indians to the Confederacy (though only half of them had adhered to her). Second: The Five Tribes Indians must forfeit one half of their land for punishment.

  The white men of the southern states did not have to forfeit one half of their land. It was different with Indians. Well, what would they do with the one half of all the land then? Bring in other Indians on it.

  Indian tribes were uprooted in every portion of the United States and piled in on top of the Territory Indians. Mostly they were looted of their old land without payment. Most of these new Indians were civilized and settled, had forgotten that they were Indians, in many cases were prosperous farmers of three-quarters white blood who fell victim to the new rampant racism.

  The new transported Indians began to arrive before word of the declarations came to the Territory. Most, it is true, were from the immediately surrounding territories and states — Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, and were of tribes which already had clans living in the Territory. But others came from both the Atlantic and Pacific coast and from the Canadian border.

  Skip the following if you want. It is but a partial listing of the tribes uprooted again and loaded in on newly stolen land, the names of nations going to their extinction and absorption.

  Chiricahua Apaches, southern Arapahos, Cahokias, Cayugas, southern Cheyennes (from Colorado and elsewhere), Chippewas (from Kansas), Conchas, Quadhadi Comanches, Delawares (from Kansas, from Missouri, from Illinois, from everywhere), Illinois (from Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois), Nemaha Iowas (from Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas), Kansas, Wildcat Kickapoos (most of them from Texas, but also from New Mexico, all these Indians had to come from somewhere else), Kiowas, Lipans, Miamis, Michigameas, Modocs, Nez Perces (from Oregon and Idaho), Osages, Otos, Ottawas, Pawnees, Peorias, Poncas, Prairie Band Potawatomis (from Iowa), Woods Band Potawatomis (from Kansas), Quapaws, Sac and Fox Indians, Senecas of Sandusky, Mixed Band Senecas (this was now made into an omnibus tribe for government convenience, to include remnants of Wyandots, Ottawas, Peorias, Kaskaskias, Weas, Piankashaws, Eries, Conestogas, Cayugas, Oneidas, Mohawks, Onedagas, Tuscaroras, and smaller groups from twelve states), Shawnees, Stockbridge Indians, Tamoroas, Tawakonis, such Tonkawas as had not already fled from Texas into the Territory, Wacos.

  That's the most of them. There are others, but they are cousins of those listed here. Many of the new Indians had no idea to what tribe they had belonged when they were really Indians, and they would be added to whatever group of Indians was then being transported and told that they were that sort of Indian.

  It couldn't have happened at any other time, but there was a hatred in the United States at the close of the war and it took the form of rampant racism against the Indians. It was the modern doctrine then that the Indians were the unfit who must be extinguished to make room for the manifest destiny race.

  But in the robbery of the lands of the Five Tribes Indi
ans to make room for the new arrivals, there was one most peculiar thing. The Chickasaws and Choctaws had been officially for the Confederacy; they did not lose one acre of their land. All that was taken from them was the western region, called the Leased District, which had been vaguely reserved for their future use, but upon which they had never built expectations.

  But it was the Seminoles, Creeks, and Cherokees, of whom either a huge minority or a majority had been loyal to the Union, who were robbed of much more than half of their land. The Cherokees had 2220 men in the Union forces, and about 1400 in the Confederate. The Creeks had 1675 men in the Union Forces, and 1575 in the Confederate.

  But the Seminoles were robbed of 80 percent of their land. All the land of the followers of the Alligator and Bolek and Tustennuggee — those who had thrown in with Opothleyahola's Creeks and whose remnant had later fought for the Union — all their land was taken. Only the solidly Confederate Seminoles were permitted to retain their land.

  The Cherokees lost two thirds of their land. It was the land of the full-blood Pin faction, either neutralist or Unionist, that was taken. The Confederate Cherokees did not lose any land at all.

  All the land of the Upper Snake Creeks was taken. None of the land of the Lower Confederate Creeks was taken.

  Who won the war anyhow? It was to punish friends and award enemies that the land was divided.

  There had to be an explanation to this selectivity of the robberies. There is one. It almost seems a just one, if the robberies had to be carried out, and if no protests were to be heard or modifications permitted after it was drawn up on paper.

  The eastern, mixed-blood, slave-holding, Confederate-adhering Indians held their land in severalty — they held individual titles to their individual acres.

  But the western, full-blood, freeholding, neutral or Union-allied Indians held their lands in common as belonging to the tribe. A man would have life tenure to as much land as he needed, occupied, and used; his heirs could have the same land, or more if needed. But these western Indians did not hold individual title to land, no written title at all.

  The land administrators could say truthfully or half-truthfully that only the land owned by nobody was assigned away, and that every Indian title to specific land was respected.

  3.

  Whatever happened to all those Ottawa Indians? When saw you a Fort-Snelling Sioux?

  But would there not now be intolerable crowding in the Territory, with more than fifty other Indian tribes and remnants brought in? As a matter of fact, there would not be, even though there would be deaths by starvation for a full decade while the Indians tried to get things going with no help at all from outside.

  But compassion finds its own tools, and the Territory Indians — now completely destitute themselves — adopted and somehow provided for the new Indians. Besides, there weren't so many of them.

  The estimate has been given that more Indians died on these removals after the Civil War than had died on that earlier removal from the old South. If so, then more than half of them died on the removal, for there were only about twenty thousand new Indians who came into the Territory after the Civil War. But, somehow, the states had gotten rid of three or four times this many Indians. Many of them, of course, hid in the white communities and ceased to be Indians.

  The Ottawa Indians were given twenty-three sections of land in a region southeast of present Miami, Oklahoma. Twenty-three sections of land for a tribe which not too long before had numbered seventeen thousand persons? What will you do with them? Stack them on top of each other? No. That would not be necessary. There were not now seventeen thousand of them; there were not seventeen hundred; there were not even one hundred and seventy. There were one hundred and forty-nine of them, and no more of them left in the world; twenty-three sections of land were plenty for such a small group. Sometimes we wonder whatever happened to all those Ottawa Indians.

  And what happened to all the Minnesota Indians, for Cyrus Aldrich of Minnesota was the most avid of all U.S. congressmen for removing and extinguishing the Indians. Most of those Indians were surely swept out of Minnesota, and just as surely most of them did not arrive in the Indian Territory. Some Ojibways (Chippewas) came into the Territory, but most of them came from Kansas — having arrived there from Minnesota fifteen years before. Where are they and the Fort-Snelling Sioux? Where are the Ouiskonche, Songeskiton, Manchokatonx, Mantantan, Assiniboin, Menominee? Along the way, they lost their names or they lost their lives.

  The Territory Indians had built up a thriving civilization between the years 1828 and the time of the Civil War. This Indian civilization Teton, Yankton, and Santee Dakotas? Where are the Nadoues-Sioux — parallel to and friendly to the white culture — was yet a thing utterly Indian. It was a solid civilization that had been built up in about thirty-five years.

  It had been built up and destroyed. Could it be built again?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  1.

  The Children's Decades. Underground thunder in Congressional Cemetery. Poor Peter Pitchlynn!

  It had come an Indian summer to the Territory — that frostbit second spring that is the end of things and not the beginning. But the community of that period was a youthful one rather than aged.

  The Indian summer was the Children's Decades. A people faced with extinction will either die, or they will reproduce lavishly. More than one third of the Territory Indians were killed in the war years. More than one half of the men of the prime years were dead. But in anticipation of this disaster — for both nature and human nature are prescient in these things — there had been a great number of children born just before and during the wars; it was like a wave. And the children lived through all the hardships; the Territory orphans were cared for. Families took strange children whose language they could not understand, and raised them up. And the new Indians coming into the Territory seemed to be made up entirely of children and old people. The old people were passing over the hill, but never had there been such a children's world.

  Let us put it into context. This was the beginning of the Old Wild West Days. In most ways it was a retrogression. The lawlessness of the Old Wild West Days was a new lawlessness following on the extinction of old civilizations. Many of these civilizations appear small from our own eminence, but they were real things. The Indian Territory civilization of the Five Tribes had been the genuine article. The thin-spread civilizations of New Mexico and California had been real. The prairie peace of the Plains Indians had actually obtained. They became warlike now — as a new thing — only when threatened with final extinction. The old French and Spanish veneers had represented real civilizations. The great trading empires — the Bent St. Vrain and others — had stood for something. The Old Wild West Days came in an interlude following civilizations, not leading them.

  Abilene and Dodge City and Wichita had not yet become the raucous towns of the trail ends. Texas longhorns had not yet been driven north in their millions nor had they been introduced onto the Montana and Utah ranges. The great spreads had not been developed, the Montana column had not marched, Custer had not pursued the Sioux, the banditti of the Plains had not gathered, nor the vigilantes. The great wave of homesteaders had not begun. But the Territory civilization had already built itself, lived its short life, and been murdered.

  That old civilization was gone, and another would attempt to push up through the ashes. Let us veer off a little into the then future and bury the man who — more than any other — had been the symbol of that Five Tribes civilization of the Territory.

  After the Civil War and his term as chief of the Choctaws, Peter Pitchlynn lived out the remainder of his life in Washington, D.C. He lived quietly, though he had many friends. He sometimes served as an expert to Congress on Indian affairs. He was a tireless — though some said tiresome — advocate of justice for the Indians. But he had become a white man.

  There is an interesting question
in the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas and also in an old science fiction story, the name of which I forget, concerning the paradox of free will and predestined fate. It asks whether a man in making a great decision that will forever set the seal on his future does not also set the seal on his past. A man alters his future, and does he not also alter his past in conformity with it? Does he not settle not only what manner of man he will be, but also what manner of man he has been?

  Peter Pitchlynn died in Washington, D.C., January 17, 1881, a white man, the son of white man John Pitchlynn. But — by an alternate recension — he had been born a full-blood Indian named Ha-Tchoo-Tuck-Nee.

  There was another aging man in Washington in those days. He was the Moses emeritus who still wore monstrous Indian trappings. Men had either forgotten or never known what had happened earlier.

  The old man asked for it, and none of the friends of Peter Pitchlynn understood who that man really was or what he had stood for. The man had some old Indian connection, and he was said to be a great orator.

  Albert Pike preached the funeral eulogy over the grave of Peter Pitchlynn. Peter was buried in Congressional Cemetery, and the second Devil of the Indians boomed sonorously over his clay. There was an angry crumble from under the ground and nobody understood what it was. They had forgotten that old Pushmataha was also buried in Congressional Cemetery.

  Peter Pitchlynn had been the Choctaw star all of whose rays had pointed upward. And Albert Pike had been what he had been.