My brother listened to the stories and at the same time created a crude new hand puppet with a white button nose, black eyes, and a curved smile scratched under the cameo image of a bald eagle on the tin of Union Leader Smoking Tobacco. “Pozark Commie” was printed on a red banner over a soiled canvas cape, and a shoe tongue headdress was attached to the top of the tobacco tin. The bottom of the tin was cut and bent open, and the cape was stuffed into the space so a finger could move the head of the puppet. My brother carried the hand puppets in a narrow case over his shoulder. Bonus veterans were never turned away, so we decided to stay for several nights in the ruins of the Federal Triangle.
William Hushka, the first veteran we met in the ruins, watched my brother create the puppet, and he applauded the first gestures of Pozark Commie. Hushka had emigrated from the Republic of Lithuania and served in the infantry in France. Puppets were everywhere when he was a boy. He told my brother about puppet shows in the parks of Kaunas.
Pozark Commie looked around, bowed to Hushka and the other veterans, and then the puppet turned around and watched my brother thrust his other hand into the tin head of Herbert Tombstone. At first the two puppets shunned each other, and then with a clank of tin heads, argued about war, revolution, money, labor, and peace.
Herbert Tombstone declared the Federal Triangle a new treaty reservation, a secure place to hunt and fish in the remains of the fur trade, and to chase rabbits, commies, and federal agents.
Pozark Commie shouted that Herbert turned his back on veterans but never resisted the touch of a rich man, not for any reason. The Tombstone tin head turned around and shouted that the commies were evil and destroyed democracy. “Look around you, this is our great rutabaga democracy,” said Herbert. The veterans laughed, and then taunted the president, and others shouted back that they fought for democracy but got nothing back at the end, nothing but the deception of a Tombstone Bonus.
“I’m lookin’ around and there are hungry veterans everywhere, cheated out of home and work by rich bankers and corrupt politicians, the bagmen of the democracy,” shouted Pozark. Some veterans groused, and others might have agreed with the bit about rich bankers, but the veterans were patriotic and would never be coaxed by a tin head commie hand puppet to denounce democracy.
Pozark Commie jerked and turned away.
Herbert Tombstone waved to the veterans.
The Communist Party was not right about the war, or about democracy. Maybe some of the protests about the rich were right, but the commies were wrong about revolution and democracy. Most of the bonus veterans joined the Bonus Expeditionary Force to protest the delayed bonus, and never hesitated to shout out about the rotten policies of the government, but the veterans saluted the Constitution and democracy, and always carried at every march the Stars and Stripes.
Pozark waved the shoe tongue headdress and slowly looked over the few veterans that had gathered around the puppet show, but they were not yet ready to laugh, cry, or wrangle over the wacky statements of either tin head hand puppet.
POZARK: Andrew Mellon owns the country.
HERBERT: Joseph Stalin is a butcher of liberty.
POZARK: Mellon owns stock in a distillery.
HERBERT: Communism causes famine.
POZARK: Hoover only rings bells for the rich.
HERBERT: America is a country of opportunity.
POZARK: Wall Street corrupted the world.
HERBERT: France is always fussed with commies.
POZARK: America could be great again.
HERBERT: Not with a mob of commie veterans.
POZARK: Better the mobs than a money Mellon.
HERBERT: The Mellons built this country.
POZARK: The monuments of poverty.
President Herbert Hoover and other elected officials and military officers used the very same word, “mob,” to describe the veterans, a mob of agitators. Several veterans shouted back at the tin head puppet president, “The commies were chased out of our camps,” and one veteran waved his arms and hollered in a southern drawl that when commies were caught they were tried, lashed, and banished forever from our bonus camps.
Pozark Commie stared down at the veterans.
Herbert Tombstone wagged his tin head.
The Communist Party was very active at the time in labor movements and protests, and veterans were warned that revolutionary commies might take over parades and demonstrations and turn the peaceful marches into violent protests against the government. “Our Bonus March is for the money, not a commie overthrow of democracy,” said a veteran in the front row of the makeshift puppet theater in the ruins of the Federal Triangle.
POZARK: Charles Curtis is a corrupt Indian scout.
HERBERT: Never for the commies.
POZARK: Curtis scouts for bankers and breeders.
HERBERT: Soviet agents are your bankers.
POZARK: Curtis is your bagman.
HERBERT: Stalin is your bogeyman.
Charles Curtis was a senator and then vice president of President Herbert Hoover, and was a native descendant of the Kaw and other native cultures in Kansas Territory. He never opposed the president, of course, but he faked support for the veterans and the demands for an immediate payment of the bonus money. Indian Charlie, an early nickname, did not inspire natives or the veterans.
“William Hushka is my good friend, he never was a commie,” said Pozark, and turned to wave his arms under the canvas cape. The veterans laughed, and then shouted several last insults at the two tin hand puppets. Pozark Commie and Herbert Tombstone were returned to the puppet case.
Blue Raven was obviously excited about the playful responses of the veterans to the spontaneous puppet show. He chanced a few stories by the first hand puppet, the great present from Dummy Trout. The Niinag Trickster leaped out of the case and looked around for a few minutes at the veterans. Some veterans raised their fedoras because the trickster wore a green fedora and was dressed in leather chaps and a breechclout. The tin heads were retired for the day, and the veterans seemed more enthusiastic about the carved birch and painted head of the trickster hand puppet.
Trickster jerked his head to the side.
Plucky and my brother created a lusty trickster poem earlier on the train, and the hand puppet was ready to reveal the poem for the first time in public. Plucky pretended to be a ventriloquist and slowly recited the poem as my brother moved the head and body of the trickster puppet.
some god created this
heaven and earth
light and night
water and land
adam and eve
teases and totems
birds and animals
beavers and bears
cranes and cockatoos
snakes and snails
and a giant trickster dick
that keeps the whole thing going
The veterans heard the tricky lines of creation and watched the hand puppet gesture and move with the words, and at the end when the trickster raised a giant wooden dick several times, the veterans roared with laughter and slapped their thighs, and two veterans threw their fedoras at the trickster. Plucky chanted the trickster creation poem once more. The hand puppet jerked around with the words, and the veterans were ready for the trickster encore of the giant trickster dick.
Dummy Trout, the native shaman of silence and hand puppets, came to mind that afternoon. She created scenes of silent words in motion, a hand puppet pantomime, and with the barks and bays of mongrels. Dummy could move an audience with precise puppet motions, and create a sense of presence in the silence of poetry, but the trickster dick was a gesture of the sublime.
Dummy Trout inspired my brother to create hand puppets with the character of silence, and the gestures were visual and more memorable than poetry. My brother was an artist with the motion of hand puppets on the road, and a writer was necessary in the new world of native puppetry.
‹| 6 |›
ANACOSTIA FLATS
By Now Beaulieu rode th
e old wagon horse named Treaty for more than a thousand miles over two months that late spring to march with the other veterans of the Bonus Expeditionary Force at Capitol Hill in Washington.
Most of the bonus veterans traveled in open boxcars, coal cars, livestock cars, others in rickety motorcars or farm trucks, and a few veterans rode motorcycles to the march. Some Oklahoma native veterans drove fancy cars, the oil discovery cars, and wore ceremonial feathers. By Now, no doubt, was the only veteran and nurse mounted on a horse along the dusty country roads to Capitol Hill.
Treaty was spirited and ready to tread, slow lope, and canter out of the stable and south along the river, and then east on the section borders of family farms. By Now and her steady mount were treated to supper and a stable almost every night on the back roads. Many farm boys had served as infantry soldiers in the war, some were wounded, and the families proudly supported the veterans and the Bonus Expeditionary Force.
Treaty pitched her head on parade.
The Anishinaabe were hunters and fur traders with canoes. We were not a horse culture, but that did not stop federal agents from sending treaty horses to natives on the White Earth Reservation. Fur traders teased the agents that they had cut holes in the bottom of canoes for paddle horse voyageurs. Mostly the horses were used to tow white pine logs and wagons, but not many plows. Our cousin easily learned how to ride and shoe a horse.
By Now toured the entire reservation on a Morgan, a chestnut wagon horse named Stomp, and with the doughty company of Torment and Whipple, two loyal mongrels. She was twelve years old at the time and trotted through rows of white pine stumps from Bad Boy Lake to White Earth Lake, Naytahwaush, the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca, Bad Medicine Lake, and Pine Point, then returned by way of Callaway.
By Now was born late, more than a month late on the conception calendar, so late that her father boasted that she could speak several languages by the time she was delivered one warm spring morning. “That child should’ve been here by now,” her father shouted over and over, and she was born a few hours later. By Now was her native nickname at delivery, of course, and later the catchy byname was entered as a given name on the federal birth certificate, By Now Rose Beaulieu. She has told variations of the same story, that there was no reason to start out in the world on the last few cold days of winter, so she held back her native arrival for a month to the first warm and friendly day in March.
By Now was born in a tiny house on Beaulieu Street in Ogema, and lived there most of her life, but she decided to name Bad Boy Lake, located a few miles away, as home when she was an army nurse because the soldiers were curious about unusual place names, and that was always an invitation to create unusual stories about the lake. She related the sudden turn of seasons, the spectacular natural scenes on the reservation, the mysterious healer Misaabe and his incredible recovery mongrels at Bad Boy Lake. Later, she declared that the old natural healer had inspired her to become a nurse. Misaabe was a small, easy, and elusive native who moved with the sound of whispers, and he encouraged my brother and me to create new stories to overcome the nightmares of war. The stories included the shadows of other creatures, the totemic dance of flies, the loyalty of ants, the steady wave of birds, and the inevitable teases of his healer breed of mongrels.
By Now was a veteran of the Army Nurse Corps and had treated hundreds of soldiers with combat wounds, and at the same time she had treated and shoed a few military packhorses in the First World War in France. Black Jack was the name of the horse she rode many times into combat near the Hindenburg Line, in violation of direct military orders, to treat scared soldiers with severe facial wounds from the heavy enemy artillery. Black Jack learned how to high step over the mounds of debris on the roads, the obstacles that blocked the ambulances.
Black Jack, named in honor of General John Pershing, was her favorite mount between the combat areas and the medical aid stations, and she rescued many other horses with combat fatigue. She trained the horses to carry out the wounded, and the soldiers reported that the steady sway of a horse was the calm after a storm, and much more curative than the noisy and bouncy ambulances overloaded with bloody bodies.
The soldiers teased her about the native equestrian style because she hunched so close to the withers and crest, and many soldiers were ready to mount and ride with her on any weary packhorse in the company. The farm boy soldiers were forever beholden to the nurse who rode a horse into combat with tourniquets, splints, compress bandages, and native medicine stories to treat their bloody wounds.
By Now should have been decorated for her courage, obviously, but the distant commanders avoided any official mention of the native nurse, the name of the horse, and the unauthorized combat duty. The French Army commanders, however, honored the unique medical services by a native nurse on horseback and awarded her the French Croix de Guerre.
Black Jack was a standard army horse.
Treaty was a wagon horse of liberty.
Treaty was a direct descendent of the original federal treaty horses, and was given to my cousin as a native tease. Treaty was once a wagon horse named Orchid, the last of the breed to serve overnight guests at the Leecy Hotel. Treaty was sidelined in the hotel stable, and with the arrival of motorcars and no wagon to tow or children to carry in circles, she was ready to escape the outdated wagon duty as a new native mount of favor on the country roads to native liberty.
By Now was the first veteran to leave the reservation for the Bonus March. She read about the move of veterans from around the country and could not wait to depart, but the tour by horse was much slower and safer than jumping boxcars. She departed shortly after the exhibition of blue raven art at the Ogema Train Station, and two months later we traveled by train to march with the Bonus Expeditionary Force.
By Now related later that Treaty had raised her head and cantered over the Potomac River on the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and then resumed a slower gait through the campsites on the National Mall toward Capitol Hill. She dismounted to talk with three veterans near a shanty named the Dug Out. We recognized the place, and the veterans told her about the schedules of the bonus marches, and warned her several times to watch out for the communist troublemakers in the camps.
By Now walked and Treaty clopped at her side down Constitution Avenue in search of water and a shady place to rest. Pelham Glassford, superintendent of police, drove by on his blue motorcycle, and then a few minutes later he circled back and parked on the sidewalk. He asked where she hailed from, and naturally she said Bad Boy Lake. My cousin was reminded that horses were not allowed on the National Mall or Capitol Hill. Glassford explained there were plenty of other places in the city to park a horse.
By Now was directed to the veterans at the Federal Triangle a few blocks back on Pennsylvania Avenue, or even better she could ride over the wooden drawbridge to the bonus camp at Anacostia Flats. Glassford told her that Anacostia was a real native place, with a river for Treaty.
The dopy guards at the entrance to Anacostia Flats waved Treaty and my cousin straight through the gate with no doubt or fear of commies. The guards were convinced that commies would not ride horses, and were only men, and they were probably right about the horses. Most of the commie veterans were big city boys, and the only horses they saw were in movies or the mounts of policemen.
Treaty was reined to a bench outside The Hut, a huge green canvas sanctuary that was started by the Salvation Army. The Sallies, dressed in neat uniforms, had set up a library, provided tables to write letters and play games, and gave away shoes, clothes, playing cards, and tobacco to veterans.
By Now seldom read literary stories or novels. She would rather create her own stories, and yet she was an obsessive reader of newspapers. She read twice every single page of the Tomahawk, the very newspaper our relatives had edited and published on the reservation, and later on she read every article in the newspapers cast aside by travelers at the Ogema Train Station and Leecy Hotel. The news stories were a rush of gossip, she
said, and with “no tease or humor.” By Now was a true native storier because she envisioned the scenes of the newspaper accounts and then related a more ironic and memorable story.
Charles Curtis, for instance, was on her mind about four years ago when he was elected as the vice president. Herbert Hoover was the moneyman and food huckster, and hardly noticed natives or the distant ancestor of the vice president, White Plume of the Kaw. By Now read the stories in newspapers about the candidates and the election and created new ironic stories. Curtis was born in a territory not a state. By Now teased that his mother was a prairie caption of the Kaw, Osage, Potawatomi, and French, and his father was a migrant merger of the Scottish and Welsh, a territorial fur trade rivalry on the run in the blood, bone, and beard of Charles Curtis. He raced horses, rode bareback, and learned how to whisper native promises in the ears of the horses, and with enough oat mush, rich grass, and prairie liberty to win money at races. He whispered and the horses would canter or dance. The political whisperer could have been a circus barker.
Curtis was named a senator, and his strategic whispers of legislation amounted to nothing for natives but an empty chair of manners. He shouted out an act in the Senate that overturned treaties and natives lost their rights to horses, land, timber, and minerals. White pine reservations became timber stump estates.
I became a writer partly by reading and imitating the style of some stories in the Tomahawk, and encouraged By Now to write about the war and her service as a nurse, but she was a creative storier not a solitary scribe, and she was more vital on the back of a horse than cornered in a library with echoes of editorial chatter, grammar, and literary points of view.
Native Tributes Page 5
