Jackpot Blood: A Nick Herald Genealogical Mystery

by Jimmy Fox

  Nick had heard about the peculiar murder of Tommy’s brother, Carl, from Chief Claude, before Tommy arrived at the casino.

  No wonder he’s touchier than a moody teenager.

  Nick’s dealer was a young woman with gingerbread skin and jet black hair in bangs. He’d been flirting with her and was under the delusion that he was making some progress.

  “Maybe you should think of this as charity, not gambling,” she said. “Don’t you like helping out a worthy cause?” She dealt cards around the table with beautiful fluid movements, keeping her hands visible for the surveillance cameras hidden in tinted hemispheres on the ceiling and for the stern Vegas pit bosses cruising the aisles. “We’re just one big happy family here, sir.”

  “If you say so,” Nick replied. “But I’ve never had a relative pick my pocket before. Hit me.”

  Busted again, over twenty-one.

  Chief Claude had given him a twenty-five dollar credit; within an hour he’d lost that and twenty of his own. Now nearly out of chips, he was more eager than ever to tackle the job he’d been hired to do: helping Tommy’s tribe sort out the dozens of requests for enrollment that were coming in as a result of the federal recognition. Lots of people wanted a seat on the gravy train.

  Proving individual Indian descent was one thing, difficult enough even in the most clear-cut cases; but proving the heritage of a whole tribe of individuals whose collective history had been mostly forgotten . . .

  Well, we’re talking BIG genealogical bucks.

  The thought brought a slight smile to Nick’s face, despite his losses. Since he was going to be rolling in cash soon, he blithely shoved the last of his chips forward.

  The dealer gave Nick a queen on top and a ten face down, “in the hole.” A strong hand—twenty. He motioned that he would stand with these. She had a six of hearts showing. When she flipped her hole card, Nick saw a ten of hearts.

  “Dealer must draw.” She dealt herself a five of hearts. “Twenty-one,” she said with chirpy dispassion. She collected Nick’s chips.

  “Great,” Nick said, disgusted. He hopped off his chair. “Tommy, pull me away from her table right now, before I lose any more and have to start calling my losses expenses.”

  He waved at the pretty dealer. She smiled back, still dealing. Maybe another heart awaited him in a different kind of game.

  “Chief Claude’s office is this way,” Tommy said.

  “Yeah, I know where it is. I should have been there fifty dollars ago.”

  Tribal Council Chairman Rafe Claude’s quiet office was a welcome haven from the low-level but nerve-racking pinging and dinging that was the sound of millions being made every hour.

  Chief Claude had thrown lots of genealogical projects Nick’s way, mainly research for individuals wishing to enroll in the Chitiko-Tiloasha tribe. Two hours earlier, over lunch in his office, the chief had told Nick, “Carl Shawe didn’t die in a hunting accident, like people thought at first. Sheriff Higbee says it was murder, and a real strange one at that.” Tommy had been found wandering delirious in the forest near the crime scene. All he claimed to vaguely remember was being hit by a blowgun dart. The murder weapon was apparently an atlatl—a spear thrower used in ancient times by many American Indian tribes. And the atlatl had belonged to Tommy; he had confirmed that damning fact, even though he couldn’t explain it.

  Now the three men sat at the round conference table where Nick and the chief had eaten their corned-beef sandwiches. Pictures of Chief Claude with Louisiana governors and other officials vied for wall space with paintings and drawings of Chitiko-Tiloasha life and history.

  The chief had served twice as commissioner of the state Office of Indian Affairs, but he still looked like the man who had spent most of his sixty-four years on the bayous and the marsh of South Louisiana. He was short, stocky, and bowlegged, with tobacco-colored, leathery skin and just enough white hair to form a long ducktail. His facial features were fleshy and elongated, typical of many Chitiko-Tiloasha. He wore a dark-gray three-piece polyester suit, and a bolo tie with a handsome silver-and-turquoise clasp, a sixtieth birthday gift from the tribe. Medallions of beadwork decorated his cowboy boots.

  Splendid examples of traditional tribal crafts, some ancient, some modern, lay on tables and shelves and the chief ’s desk, accessible to curious hands. Chief Claude encouraged this kind of direct contact with his tribe’s past. The office was clearly not a personal preserve, but that revered term in the modern Indian lexicon, a public trust.

  Chief Claude had told Nick once, “The knowledge of our past is more fragile than these relics. We are not them, but they are us. I want them to be handled, as long as it brings one person closer to our past. If we lose one now and again, so it goes; if we lose the knowledge, we are truly dead.”

  A young, pimply waiter with glittering braces on his teeth distributed coffee from a tray.

  The chief said to his two guests, “Stu, here, is over at USL studying to be an engineer.”

  “UL at Lafayette, Chief Claude,” Stu corrected.

  “That’s right. UL Lafayette . . . I’ll never get used to that. We’re awful proud of Stu.” As if grading him, the chief eyed the obviously embarrassed Stu. “Thank you, son.”

  When the young man had gone, the chief continued. “He’ll come back to the tribe with new skills this casino paid for. Because there’s something for him to come back to. Today, gambling is our buffalo; it provides for us in many ways. And now it’s the Katogoula’s turn to join us.”

  “Chief Claude says Indian gaming accounts for almost ten percent of gaming revenue in the U.S.,” Tommy said. “We want to get in on the party before someone yanks away the punchbowl.”

  “Your casino’s going to put us over ten percent,” said the chief with complete conviction. “Since the great victory we won in 1988, with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the white man has tried to take even our gambling away from us. Just another treaty to break.” Chief Claude sipped his coffee, shaking his head as if in disappointment at a friend who had double-crossed him once too often.

  He continued: “Most states are at war with us over reservation gambling. They talk about ‘states rights’ and ‘devolution.’” He gave a wise old grin. “Greed, that’s what it is. Now some in Congress are scheming to ambush us, kill the spirit of the IGRA. And the Supreme Court decision against suing states that don’t make compacts with us hurt, too. See, they all want to get at our tax exemption somehow, they want those tax dollars. Well, I tell them, every dollar we make is taxed 100%—by us! We’re a sovereign nation and decide how to help our people with our money.”

  Federal law stipulated that tribal income earned from reservation sources could not be taxed; individual Indians paid income tax, like all Americans, but most reservation-derived income was exempted, with the exception of per-capita distributions of casino profits, a big gray area that cloaked constant experimentation—critics called it questionable accounting—by tribes partnered with non-Indian casino companies.

  Chief Claude was one of the first American Indians to realize the potential of the tribal-tax-exemption loophole when combined with the landmark 1988 legislation, which required states to negotiate the issue of reservation gambling. In succeeding years, he led his tribe from small-time weekend bingo to big-league casino profits.

  “My genealogist friend here,” Chief Claude said, “is one of our great weapons against the envy of the white man. He helps us in our rebirth. We call Nick the Midwife-of-Yesterday Man.”

  Nick had never been overly fond of the title. But in spite of the slight revulsion he felt at being the midwife of anything—the sight of blood made him queasy—as a former teacher of literature he admired the chief ’s evocative style.

  Tommy had lapsed into a reverie over his coffee cup. He shifted in his chair and sat up straighter. “Chief Claude—”

  “‘Chief ’ implies power that’s hereditary or oligarchic,” the older man interrupted. Nick knew him to be unflappable, sometimes
irritatingly dogmatic and didactic, but good natured in even the hottest debate. “These days we’re democratic. I’m elected, and any adult can be. Your tribe ought to be set up the same way, like a business with a board of directors accountable to the stakeholders. People are supposed to call me ‘chairman,’ but nobody does.”

  Nick said, “It’s a sign of respect, Chief.”

  “Respect, my foot!” the chief exclaimed. “You ought to sit in at one of our council meetings.”

  The three men laughed.

  “As far as your business analogy goes,” Nick said, “the titles ‘chairman’ and ‘CEO’ have become synonymous with ‘crook’ in my mind. Every time I look at my IRA statement, I feel less like a stakeholder and more like a ‘shameholder’! You might want to stick with ‘chief,’ after all.”

  This amiable interlude seemed to help Tommy vocalize what was on his mind.

  “It’s all sort of overwhelming,” he said. “I mean, I’ve worked in a lumber mill all my life, and now I’m supposed to be, well, the chairman. How do I get started? I’m not really sure we are a tribe, now that the government says we’re one. Some of my people are having second thoughts. They’re saying recognition isn’t a good thing. Especially since my brother was”—he looked down at his work-toughened hands—“since Carl died. I’ve had some requests to get our congressmen to reverse the recognition bill. Most of us didn’t even know about the old pending application.”

  Chief Claude grinned at Nick. “We Louisiana Indians are a superstitious bunch. You mix the old Indian ways with Catholicism, see what you get? A mighty jumpy critter, that’s for sure. They had a meeting, Nick. It was a slim margin to go on with establishing a proper tribe and start looking into building a casino.”

  “Irton and Grace Dusong broke the tie,” said Tommy.

  “That close, was it? I remember good old Irton from Korea. Nick, we used one of our ancient languages, Yama—the Mobilian Jargon, you whites call it. Used it to talk in code over the radio, like the Navaho Marine Code Talkers of World War II. Except we never got as good a press as they did. Maybe you can write up one of your articles on us.” A twinkle in his eyes, he turned to Tommy. “How’d you vote, son?”

  “For, of course,” Tommy stated, slightly offended. “But my wife, she voted against. Brianne’s kind of a headstrong girl, worries about what gambling will teach our kids about life.”

  “They should learn from all of this,” Chief Claude said, “that fighting a bear needs a trick or two.”

  Nick hoped Tommy was only momentarily dispirited; he felt yet another handsome paycheck slipping away. “I’ve heard of tribes being terminated by the government—the Miami of Indiana, the Menominee of Wisconsin, dozens of tribes in the fifties and sixties.”

  “The Menominee got it back, though,” Chief Claude interjected.

  “Right. Nineteen seventy-three, I believe it was,” Nick confirmed, silently admiring the chief ’s depth of knowledge about Indian matters. “But I’ve never heard of a tribe refusing recognition. Does recognition have to mean a casino? If it were my tribe, I’d take the BIA assistance money and run, and worry about the casino issue later.”

  “You have good people on your side,” the chief said to Tommy. “It will all fall into place. Some of us Chitiko-Tiloasha were afraid, too, at first. Now, as far as being an Indian, if you think you are, that’s a big first step. The Census Bureau says that anyone who asserts they’re an Indian, is an Indian. But to get into a tribe, or to form one, you got to prove it to the BIA. Y’all got lucky; that limited research your daddy commissioned didn’t tip the scale. No, I believe somebody pulled strings up in Washington.”

  “Do you know who?” asked Tommy.

  “No, not even with all my connections. These politicians can hide inside their legislation or get out front when it suits ’em. You’ll find out, I guarantee,” answered the chief. “He’ll hit you up for a big contribution to his reelection campaign, his party, and his favorite think tank. Could be a her, for that matter. That’s how they do. Anyway, I wanted to be in on this first meeting to help you and Nick get acquainted, since I recommended him. He’s proven the lineages of many of our tribe members. Once he gets going, you won’t need me anymore. But I’ll be here, all the same.”

  “I guess I’d better ask you, then, Nick,” Tommy said. “What do I do first?”

  Nick said, “The classic approach is to start with the known, Tommy, your own family, and follow the line back. Once you’ve done that, you move on to the others who’ve remained in the traditional tribal group. One important thing is to begin getting the testimony of the oldest tribe members, to learn what they remember.”

  “Six families I know of go pretty far back,” Tommy said. “They all hid out in the forest during the Removals. I can start with the elders of those. The ones that are left.”

  “Meanwhile, I’ll tackle the written records,” Nick said. “I’d like to review the documents from the previous effort to get recognized.”

  Tommy cleared his throat. “I did have them. They’re . . . missing. We think somebody got into a closet out in my garage. Stole some other stuff, too.”

  “I’ll check with the BIA acknowledgment branch,” Nick said, making a note. “Maybe they can send me copies of what’s on file, though they always tell me they’re swamped by recognition cases and legislative mandates. You’ve had a rough time of it, lately. Does the theft of the records have anything to do with the death of your brother?”

  “I don’t know,” Tommy said. “Some say that all that important stuff going missing is another sign recognition is going to cause us more grief than it’s worth.” He pushed his cold coffee away. “Look, if you don’t mind, let’s stick to the genealogy. How long will it take? I mean for all the Cutpine folks to be enrolled. We have thirty-five families, twenty-three with men who lost their jobs when the sawmill closed. When the BIA payments start, I want everybody to get their share as soon as possible. Maybe that’ll change some minds about recognition. We all got doctors’ bills to pay, house notes, car notes . . . this is real tough on us.”

  Tommy had recently been informed, by way of an onslaught of paperwork, that the federal government provided assistance payments to needy Indians. And, it turned out, some of Tchekalaya Forest was tribal land still held in trust by the United States, a bizarre arrangement lately discovered to be riddled by bureaucratic mismanagement and political manipulation dating back to the late nineteenth century. As a result of the recent recognition and the subsequent discovery of a dusty packet of apparently authentic documentation, the Katogoula were in line to receive accumulated logging and natural-gas revenues. No one was sure yet how much was forthcoming. And the divvying up of the proceeds all depended on who was in, and who was out, of the tribe.

  “You got to get off on the right foot with a system, son,” the chief advised. “Today the government allows you a lot of freedom to say who’s Katogoula and who’s not. But even so, you’re going to find that some of those families won’t qualify. Either they should belong to another tribe, or they’re just plain wrong about having any Indian heritage. I know from experience, it’s a painful thing. . . .You need a Katogoula system, not anybody else’s, so there’s no room for favors and abuse—or anger. Nick will help you with the blood-quantum technicalities.”

  “What’s the deal with that?” asked Tommy, frustration evident in his voice. “I been studying up on it, but . . . well, it’s confusing.”

  “Simply put, blood quantum is the percentage of Indian ancestry in an individual,” Nick said. “It’s just a mathematical result. But political and emotional elements are even more important and need to be factored into the equation. Requirements vary from tribe to tribe; by and large, it’s their call.”

  “25 CFR Part 83,” Chief Claude said. “That’s the code of federal regulations dealing with tribal acknowledgment. The BIA works with this authority and uses seven mandatory criteria to decide what teams are in the league. But—and this is an impor
tant ‘but’—the tribes pick the players.”

  “Good analogy, Chief,” Nick observed. “The Ute Mountain Ute of Colorado require a blood quantum of five-eighths; but the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma requires descent from any person named on the 1906 Dawes Commission roll. Today, with all the casino development, blood quantum is a hot topic.”

  “And a hornets’ nest,” Tommy said, “from what I been reading on the Internet.”

  “Exactly,” Nick agreed. “The controversy is causing the Indian community to turn on itself. Some tribes hate the idea as the government’s patient, sneaky plan for ultimate Indian assimilation. Other tribes use it as bureaucratically approved racism to keep rolls small and gambling payments large.”

  “This man speaks his mind,” Chief Claude commented with a chuckle. “No offense taken.”

  “None intended,” Nick said. “Blood quantum for federal tribal recognition—which has already happened in the Katogoula’s case—is different from blood-quantum enrollment issues at the tribal level. The BIA uses blood quantum to establish the ‘purity’ of some base tribal roll or petitioning group. Personally, I think you’re spinning your wheels if you go to the BIA these days for initial recognition with a tribal blood quantum of less than one fourth. But the old one-quarter rule for individual enrollment in an established tribe seems to have fallen by the wayside. There have been successful court challenges and some tribes have unilaterally lowered blood-quantum requirements; some have done away with it altogether. The BIA still has tremendous authority on what tribes get recognized, and it still has the power of the CDIB—”

  “The what?” Tommy asked.

  “Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood” Nick said. “But now tribes seem to have the upper hand in deciding who can be a member.”

  “Won’t be so easy for us Katogoula,” Tommy said, “deciding on membership rules and blood quantum and all. Nobody ever took a census of our tribe, that I ever heard of. The tribal leaders refused to cooperate with the white officials, didn’t trust them on anything. I want every Katogoula to benefit, no matter what his CDIB might say.”