Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  Then he began to act as factor for other Indians — taking their cattle on commission or outright purchase and trailing them north. And in the spring of 1884, his father Hannali was in Dodge City, Kansas. He had ridden west to meet a trail drive conducted by certain friends of his, and he had gone on up to Dodge with them.

  Do we not skip too many years here, going suddenly from 1870 to 1884 with no explanation? No. It will be all right. We will perhaps come back to some of those years several times, and to some not at all. The fact is that years do not follow a consecutive order after a certain number of them have been piled up. It was not that Hannali was confused in his thoughts and no longer mindful of the years, but when a man has finally become full and mature, then he is lord of the years and can move through them as he wishes. And he was in Dodge in the spring of 1884.

  The twenty-year dust cloud was nearly over with. A slim white man, a fat white man, and fat Indian man sat and talked together, for they found each other interesting. The slim white man was David L. Payne, the king of the Boomers. The fat white man was the foremost immortalizer of the Old Wild West Days on canvas, in bronze, and on paper. The fat Indian man was Hannali Innominee.

  “A man without land is not truly a man,” said David Payne. “He is only an unbodied abstraction of a man. A man does not properly have either a body or a soul until he is set down on his own plot of land.”

  “Land is the people,” said Hannali.

  “No. Land is a person,” insisted Payne, “the person who is the other half of man. If they are not one, then neither half can have a meaning. God created man to stand six feet tall and to own one hundred and sixty acres of land.”

  “You fall quarter inch short,” said Hannali.

  “You have a fine eye; so I do. And you stand six inches over. Do not blunt my point. Man is of a certain general measure, and so must his land be. Wherever there is one hundred and sixty acres of land that is not occupied by one man in his full rights, there is laid up one hundred and sixty acres of injustice.”

  “The land you talk of is Indian tribe people land,” said Hannali with good humor, “Go file on your own tribe people land.”

  “God did not make any land to be forever Indian land or white-man land,” said Payne. “He made land so that every man might own one hundred and sixty acres of it. That the Indians have suffered injustices I know, but that has no point of contact with the present subject. There are three million acres of unassigned land in the Territory; there would be thirty million acres unassigned if every Indian were compelled to accept one hundred and sixty acres, no more and no less, in severalty. Two hundred thousand men might file on that land and so be complete men.”

  “Where have God say this to mete and measure all the land,” asked Hannali.

  “It's shot all through the unwritten testament in golden colors,” flamed Payne. “It's proclaimed by the sign in the sky.”

  “The sign in the sky it say one hundred and sixty acres no more and no less,” Hannali chuckled.

  “Yes. The sign in the sky, the sign on the earth says that man does not properly have either a body or soul till he is set down on his own plot, and the one quarter section, the one hundred and sixty acres, becomes that natural plot. But I am mocked when I try to convey God's truth, and my enemies surround me.”

  “You do not know your enemies,” said Hannali. “They are not the Indian men name me one Indian man who oppose you strongly or unfairly name me the name of one.”

  And David Payne could not name one, for oddly Hannali was right in this. The opening of the Territory to white homesteaders — sometimes given as the culmination of all the wrongs to the Territory Indians — was opposed by those Indians hardly at all. Some of the Indians believed that they should receive fifty cents an acre for their land, and some of them would receive half that. But the Indians did not oppose white settlement.

  Then what men did oppose the settlement — even to the point of murder? There is no doubt that Payne was murdered. We come to that.

  This man Payne, who had the mystique of the land, was born in Indiana in 1836. He came to Kansas early. He believed so strongly in the Homestead Law — that a man could file on one hundred and sixty acres of land — that he availed himself of it twice, once in Doniphan County, Kansas, and once in Sedwick County. He saw service in the Union Army during the Civil War, and later service in the disputes with the Plains Indians — as captain in the 18th Kansas Cavalry, and with Custer as captain in the 7th U.S. Cavalry. During this cavalry service he became obsessed with the shoulder-high grass in the B.I.T. and believed it should all be broke to the plow. He went with the opinion that the unassigned lands in the Indian Territory, those taken from the Territory Indians for penalty after the war and never assigned to other Indians, were public lands subject to the Homestead Law.

  Five times David Payne organized parties of homesteaders in Kansas, took them down into the Indian Territory, filed claims on the land, settled them and broke land, and announced that they were there by law and right. And five times Payne and his followers were arrested by U.S. troops out of Fort Reno and thrown out of the Territory.

  Who were the men who opposed David Payne's Boomer movement? Who came to the defense of Indian rights so vehemently and so late and under such peculiar conditions? They were the cattlemen of the Cherokee Strip Livestock Association, cattlemen of other associations, and of no associations at all.

  The point is this: Those white men were already in illegal possession of all the unassigned lands in Indian Territory. They had come into possession and use of the lands by fictitious leasing arrangements with paper Indians (names put down on leases to which there were no corresponding live Indians), and by connivance with the commanders of the U.S. Army posts. The Indians had already been excluded completely from these unassigned lands. The cattlemen would fight to the death for the exclusion of the white homesteaders also.

  On the evening of November 27, 1884, Payne addressed a rally of his adherents in Wellington, Kansas. He would be able to mount one more Boomer homesteader invasion of the Territory, and likely it would be successful. National opinion was behind him now. The law had been on his side through all his five arrests and deportations. The unassigned lands were U.S. public lands by every legal definition, and they were subject to the Homestead Law.

  After the rally, Payne went to bed in the Barnard Hotel in Wellington. In the morning he arose, ate breakfast, and then died in excruciating agony. He was an active man forty-eight years old. His enemies boasted openly that they had poisoned him, and this is likely the case.

  But in dying he won his battle. Not only were the unassigned lands in the Indian Territory thrown open to homesteaders, but lands in a dozen states that had been held out of it by cattle interests were now thrown into the homestead stream. The trim man with the trim moustache and the mystique of one hundred and sixty acres of land had finished off the Old Wild West Days.

  It didn't matter much to the Territory Indians. Their peculiar civilization had ended twenty years before, and they had never taken the Wild West Days seriously. They would as soon be farmer fencers as ranchers.

  2.

  Is it the Kiowas or is it far thunder? The last night but one of his life. “Hell, let's swim it,” said the horse. The old Adam voice.

  In those latter days, Hannali usually lived in the Big House alone, or with only the ghost of Robert Pike for company.

  “It is good to have someone to talk to in the evening Robert Pike,” Hannali said, “there were the years when I could not see you now there have come the years when I cannot hear you well unless I force my voice on you why are you so unclear Robert and we friends.”

  “It is that I am not here save in your mind,” said Robert. “The stories are that I haunt your old house, that I am a ghost. Everybody fears the ghost of Robert Pike except yourself and Anna-Hata, but nobody feared Robert Pike very much while he was alive. What you see of Robert you see in your mind.”


  “Was it only in my mind that two white men came last Friday sundown and they were scared silly they had seen that crazy coot of a Unionist ghost others have seen you also ye be a haunt Robert but a friendly one I knew you had died when you did not come back to visit us after the years.”

  “You should go and stay with some of your people, Papa Hannali, or have some of them stay here with you,” said the ghost of Robert Pike. “It is dangerous for you to be alone at your age.”

  “I be not alone spook Robert think ye that ye are the only familiar ghost that I own Robert do you know that I thought to see the new century just for the hell of it three weeks ago then Anna-Hata says no you have not done it Papa Hannali the first day of 1901 is the beginning of the century not the first day of 1900 damme but she is right now I have to stretch myself to make it.”

  “When you are dead there will be no more Indians,” said the ghost of Robert.

  “It is true they are almost all gone,” said Hannali, “Quannah Parker is now a tame Indian at Anadarko Agency why do I laugh Hannali Innominee is now a tame Indian in his own house where are they all who have seen Buffalo Hump or Dull Knife or Gray Ghost who have seen Pock Mark or Roman Nose Thunder or Powder Face or Black Kettle where are my friends Opothle and Bolek and Alligator where is strong Nitakechi and good Pitchlynn where is my own father Barua and my good brothers where are the Tribes Indians where are the Plains Indians is it all a good thing that even the terror have gone out of the Indian name was one time when even Indians were in terror of Indians when they would listen at night and say is it the far thunder or is it the Kiowas is not the world weaker when we lose the terror where is the fun to be always tame people on tether.”

  It had been those terrifying Kiowas sixty years before who had named Hannali “The Man with the Talking Horses.” This was because of a device that Hannali had created for the amusement of his own children, and because the Kiowas (those terror raiders) were a very childlike and credulous people. Hannali, a consummate horseman, was able to flick any of his animals on the side of the throat and the beast would always give out with a good-natured nickering or neighing. Hannali's trick was to ventriloquize words to go with this carrying neigh so that it would seem that the horse spoke. Of course Hannali's young sons understood the trick for what it was, but visiting Plains Indians were sometimes fooled. One day one of the Kiowas watched and listened fascinated.

  “If that horse is so all red smart let him talk Kiowa,” the Kiowas finally said. “Then we will know whether there is a Choctaw throat in the middle of this.”

  “My horse has never been in the Kiowa country,” said Hannali. “Let us see how well your own horses talk Kiowa.”

  “Our horses do not talk at all,” said the Kiowa. “Never in our country have we had a talking horse.”

  The Kiowa language is like no other Indian tongue. Hannali could speak it, but not like a Kiowa would. But he had more devices than one.

  “Kiowa horse let me hear you talk Kiowa,” he said as he went up to one of the animals and flicked it on the throat, “your masters say that you do not talk at all surely your masters have something the matter with their ears how would a fine horse like you not talk.”

  “I am no Kiowa horse at all,” said the Kiowa horse in imperfect Kiowa, “I am a Creek horse and I was stolen two years ago by this Kiowa man down below Tukabatchee Town it is a devil hard language the Kiowas have I wonder that they can talk it themselves.”

  “Oh, that horse lie!” howled the Kiowa. “He is no stolen horse, he is born a Kiowa horse and no part Creek horse. The Creek horse stolen was twin brother of this horse and have same markings. Oh how I beat this horse when we are alone! Horse must learn not to blurt out damaging things like this.”

  But Hannali had recognized the peculiarly marked horse and remembered where and when it was stolen.

  Now it was sixty-four years after that, and Hannali sat in the back room of a drugstore in Eufaula and talked and drank with friends. He had ridden into town and had supper with his daughter-in-law (daughter), the second wife and now widow of his son Travis — with her and with her small daughter Catherine. And later he had sat in the back room of the drugstore — which room also served as saloon, for the blight of prohibition was early on the Territory — and played cards and drank with several men.

  Hannali sat late that night — the last night but one of his life — and enjoyed the pleasant company. There were eight of them. All were of some Indian blood — Hannali found it out of the eighth that night — but only Hannali and one other would have been taken for Indian.

  It was after they were far along and had become somewhat slushy with the drink that Hannali learned that the eighth man of them (a tow-headed heavy man with a German name) was a Kiowa Indian in his one-quarter ancestry. On learning this Hannali laughed and told the old story of the talking horses that he had not thought of for more than half a century.

  And later as Hannali rode his big horse home he chuckled over the thing and flicked the horse.

  “Horse my horse,” he said, “talk to me see if I can still make horses talk.”

  “Man my man,” said the horse, “maybe I flick you with a foot some day then I make you talk horse and not talk man.”

  “Horse my horse,” said Hannali, “do you know that there is a wonderful tonic to be had for two bits a bottle it is print on the bottle ‘Is not alcoholic’ and under is Choctaw words that look like a motto ‘Oh the hell it is not’ they say I tell you horse that this stuff put you clear over the edge I tell you with pride it is made and bottled by one of my own grandsons Hey that boy mint money out of it even the bottle will test one hundred proof when it is empty.”

  Hannali was as ripe as a fall pumpkin and as round. He was tall as a tupelo tree and wide as a False Washita swamp. He had a bucket of the old juice in him, and he was one hundred years old by the count of his grandchildren. More likely he was only ninety-six, but he had lived more than four years while others slept. He was Senator Innominee on a big plow horse, for a riding pony could no longer carry him. He was clay-footed Hannali, the Choctaw fiddler. He was the son of Barua who had told Pushmataha that he sucked white men's eggs, he was the father of Famous Innominee who had been afraid of nobody. And the old Hannali vine itself had enjoyed a third and fourth growth. He now had more than fifty great-grandchildren they told him. He was a full man in every way possible.

  They came to the river. The ferry did not run at night; in any case it was an inferior ferry, not like the one Hannali used to have there. There was a raft that Hannali could have used to drift himself and horse across, but he did not.

  “Hell let's swim it,” said Hannali.

  “Hell let's swim it,” said the horse, for horses still talked to Hannali when he wished them to. Hannali dismounted, and man and horse swam separately. It was easy ice on the river, hardly more than paper thin, and it broke and tinkled for them as they swam into it. People, that was a pleasant night!

  But as Hannali — dripping and crusted lightly with ice and all aglow — bulked through the great door of his own Big House, the old Adam voice told him that this was the last time he would ever walk through that door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  1.

  It bedevils me if I can even think of a witty way to die. What are we, white people that we kid each other? He was a Mingo.

  Hannali was taken by sickness in the night and he knew that it was all over with him.

  “It bedevils me if I can even think of a witty way to die,” he told himself, “shall I die like everybody else it is that most people die with no imagination at all it comes to me that I cannot joke about it how big is a man all his life how he blow and carry on but how does he go through that last door how does he die.”

  He chuckled, and it choked him up.

  “I die all right,” he said, “not a big show just do it neat and proper.”

  He sent out a call that one of his people must come to be with hi
m. He sat up in his big bed — the buffalo bed — and worried that he was not heard. Then he lay back with his mind eased of that care. Twenty miles away, a forever-young matron lady of the Territory — a blue-eyed girl, by some not known to be an Indian — slipped out of bed.

  “I start now, Papa Hannali,” she said, “I be there in the pretty early morning.”

  “Is no big hurry, Anna-Hata,” said Hannali, “only that you be here by noon I cannot guarantee to wait longer.”

  In this extremity, Hannali and his granddaughter Anna-Hata were old Choctaw Aliki people who could talk at a distance without apparatus. So Anna-Hata went out to hitch up horse and buggy and drive down to the Big House. It was still several hours before dawn.

  Had they not a telephone? No. Hannali had talked on a telephone only once in his life — in the previous year — and had not been impressed by the instrument. “It is not a man talking on that thing,” he said, “it is a bunch of birds talking whoever will pay out money for an instrument that carries only the voices of birds who needs telephone.”

  Hannali and his granddaughter did not need one. Sure she heard him; sure she was coming; sure she understood what was wrong. “All right old grandpapa bear I come I come be you behave till I get there.”

  Anna-Hata told her husband — a white man (did you know that there were now more white men in the Territory than Indians?) — to get a priest in Muskogee and bring him down to the Big House. There was then no priest resident in Eufaula. The husband did not grumble, nor did he wonder any longer how Anna-Hata communicated with her grandfather.

  She was down at the Big House well before the middle of the morning, coming up with a music of harness and buggy bells and a clear voice that she had from her grandmother Marie DuShane: