Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  “How can a bird move through the air and not be two places at one time?'' Hannali asked his brother Pass Christian. “If it is one place one time and another place another time how does it move unless there are times between the times.”

  “I also wondered about these things when I was a boy,” said Pass Christian. Hannali was nine and Pass Christian twelve years old.

  In a laurel grove on a hill lived an old bear who was supposed to possess all wisdom. Hannali went to question the animal. The bear was sleeping, and Hannali hit it on the snout with a rock to wake it up.

  “Old bear who know everything,” Hannali sang out, “tell me what is the first order of business in the world.”

  The bear came out of the grove with a rumble, and Hannali was in the top of a tree without remembering how he climbed it. But he had his answer. “The first order of business in the world is to save your own skin,” the bear told him, and not in words.

  They smoke. Another voice takes up the linked stories of the Man and the Family and the Nation. Be you not restive! It is a hundred-year-long story they spin out, and it cannot be told in a moment. Take the pipe when it is passed to you, or light up a stogie. The pipe was sacred to all the Indians, but even the cigar was to Choctaws. Both tale and smoke are from the lips of great men, and some of them were Mingos.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1.

  When the Innominee were Choctaw rich. We are not indolent we are lazy. Slave is for seven years.

  The thumb slips a bit, and we have riffled over a dozen years of a life. Hannali Innominee was now a young man in his teens, and he had come to a certain appearance. He would not change greatly in looks for the rest of his life. He was a bulky Choc, and they are the stockiest Indians of the Five Tribes.

  Stocky! They are the fat Indians!

  “There's a lot of them,” a Chickasaw Indian said of them once. “Not so many,” someone protested, “only a few thousand of them left.” “I didn't mean in numbers,” the Chickasaw said, “I mean the way one of them's heaped together. Man, there's a lot of them!” There was a lot of Hannali Innominee. Even when he was a boy he was a lot of boy.

  It is sometimes said that the Choctaws are indolent. “It is a lie,” the Choctaws say. “We are not indolent we are lazy there is a difference.” There is a difference, but those who see things as all white or all red are not able to understand it.

  The Innominee family had become Choctaw rich in those years. Barua Innominee did not seem an astute man, and he committed folly after folly. But after each of them, somehow, he ended up richer.

  “Let us go ahead and build it,” he would tell his three sons, “if we cannot use it for what we intend maybe we can use it for something else.” They were great builders.

  Barua built a grain mill on the south-flowing river on which he lived, but the Indians would not bring him their corn to grind. What were they, white men, that they needed somebody to grind their corn for them? They had their hand querns. Barua turned the mill into a dock and landing. He built flatboats and rafts and floated produce down to the Gulf. He built a station on the Gulf where pickups were made by coaster boats out of Pass Christian and Biloxi.

  The Innominee were among the first of the Choctaws to put iron plows into the south sand soil of Okla Hannali. They were among the first to use draft oxen, and then mules. They were of the first to acquire Negroes.

  There is a point about the Negroes to be cleared up. The Choctaws did not buy their Negroes. They acquired them. The white men said that they stole them. These were the slaves who escaped from the white settlements to the Choctaws.

  All the Indians had had slavery, but not on the same basis. Slavery with them was almost never for life, and certainly was not hereditary. An indifferent or inferior slave would be run out of the tribe and back to his own Indian people, a superior one would eventually be adopted as a full citizen. Slavery of Indian by Indian in the old South usually observed the biblical limit of seven years, a limit that amazed early missionaries and was cited by cranks as proof that the Indians were the lost tribes of Israel.

  2.

  Hound is dog. Who pass law pigs can't run too? Is not a proper fox hunt.

  Pass Christian had brought his father Barua a bright red coat from New Orleans. It was such a coat as a Mingo might have worn. People, that coat was scarlet and splendid beyond believing!

  For a few days Barua wore the coat only on special occasions — to weddings, to Istaboli games, to bear hunts, to pig geldings. He wore it with a white man top hat and with a red man turban. He wore it barefoot and booted, and when he felt particularly expansive he wore it to bed. But he did not wear it at trivial times, for he understood that it was a ceremonial thing.

  Then an old memory of what he had seen or heard about came over him. He assembled his family and people to make an announcement.

  “A red coat is a Master of the Hunt Coat,” Papa Barua said. “I will wear my red coat I will make a brass trumpet nine feet long all assemble here in three days with horse and hound we will have a fox hunt.”

  “What is hound?” asked Biloxi Innominee.

  “Hound is dog,” said brother Hannali, but he was damned if he could understand what horses and dogs had to do with hunting their fox.

  Papa Barua made a trumpet nine feet long. It took him two days. He had never made a trumpet before, but he had worked in brass a little, and he had a small trumpet of white man manufacture to copy. He finished it off, but it wouldn't sound. Undefeated, he modified it. He inserted the small white man trumpet as mouthpiece, and the great nine-foot length gave it resonance. He could play a lively tune on it, and it had a muted richness that the smaller trumpet had not had by itself.

  Barua had sent for a certain man to instruct them in the fox hunt. This man, an Indian who had traveled much, had himself seen a fox hunt. That was in the Virginia country, and he had watched the hunt from a hilltop.

  The women were up late the night before the hunt dyeing the coats of their men red, but not one of the coats was the equal of the New Orleans coat of Barua.

  They assembled at dawn of the hunt day.

  “Pass Christian get the fox,” Barua said — they had but one fox in their town, “put a strap around her belly and a leader to that and drag her along to get her running Hannali and Biloxi get six dogs each belt them in like manner and drag them to get them started explain to them that it will be fun then the men on horses will start after them and who knows what the day may produce.”

  Pass Christian, the educated one of the Innominee, was at first embarrassed for his father and family. He knew that this was not the proper way to conduct a fox hunt. Then he laughed and went about it.

  “What am I a white man,” he said, “that I should be ashamed of my father and my family in their ignorance what am I somehow abashed for them who are bone of my bone and liver of my liver hell I want to have a fox hunt too I don't care if it is a proper one what am I get to be too educated to have fun.”

  Pass Christian went and got Fox, an old vixen who had born many whelps and was now old and cranky and deserted by her mate. He found her in the shade of the stump where she spent her mornings, and gave her a piece of pork to entice her. He put the strap around her belly and dragged her to get her running.

  But Fox got hysterical at this treatment, and leapt up face high on Pass Christian and snapped him up on nose and cheek in an uncommon way. He ran hard to drag her along and take the slack out of her, but she bounded and yipped and turned over in the air snapping and gnawing at the line.

  “They are going to have trouble with Fox,” said a wise one among them.

  Hannali and Biloxi had their dogs, but it is hard for a man to drag six dogs at any speed when they do not wish to go.

  “Biloxi is too fat for it,” said the man who had seen the fox hunt, “he will be out of wind before he is able to drag the dogs as fast as a horse is able to run.”

  “Biloxi is not so fat,” Hannali told the man, “he is mostly
feathers if you should see him plucked you would see that he is not fat at all.” That was a joke, but the man was not a Choctaw and did not understand it.

  Hannali and Biloxi dragged the dogs at such a rate of speed that the very ground smoked. It must be understood that these were not hunting dogs, nor had the Choctaws any such. They were little round yellow dogs that the Chocs kept and fatted to eat. Nobody understood the part of the dogs in the fox hunt, but the man who had seen a hunt swore that there had been hounds running.

  Papa Barua gave a trumpet blast that almost lifted the ears of the horses off their heads. The red-coated huntsmen, there must have been twenty of them, were off after Fox and hounds.

  People, that was the best fox hunt anybody ever saw. Pass Christian was remarkably fast of foot. He had to be to stay ahead of Fox who kept lunging up and taking pieces out of his rump till finally the whole seat of his doeskin pants was gone and he was exposed bloody to the world. Hannali and Biloxi went so speedily that their six dogs each stood out behind them flying on the ends of their tethers. At other times they bounced along the ground and high into the air, turning over and over and making a continuous complaint. The Choctaw horses set up a chortling neighing and horsey laughing and carrying on. They picked up the rhythm of Papa Barua's trumpet, “Whoopa, Whoopa,” for Barua grunted into the trumpet every time he bounced on his horse. But he kept the nine-foot instrument clamped in his powerful jaws, and the brass caught the sun like a banner.

  The Innominee pigs joined in, running between the dogs and the horses, and they were the runningest pigs in the whole country. The children got in the way too, for the hunt doubled back on itself time and again to keep in the rough brambled area and not to trample the standing corn.

  “It is not right,” called the man who had seen a fox hunt, “they did not use pigs they did not let the children get in the way they had only the fox and the hounds and the horses and the horsemen.”

  “Let them alone,” ordered Papa Barua taking the trumpet from his mouth, “pigs like fun too children like fun too who pass law pigs can't run.”

  Hannali running hard blared like a bull moose and whirled his yipping dogs around his head on their tethers; somebody let the mean bull out of the corral and he began to toss horses and riders together; the boars tusked the horses after they were tired of chasing Fox and dogs; the girls began to throw throwing sticks at the hunters — all in fun, but those things can knock a man unconscious; the boys who had no horses ran tripping ropes across the course; Mama Chapponia loaded a shotgun with rock salt and let wham at the whole bunch of them not sparing her own man; the smaller girls threw rotten squashes into the faces of the hunters as they went by.

  It was not a proper fox hunt. After a while it no longer pretended to be. But it was loud and violent and soul-filling. The three Innominee brothers, Pass Christian and Biloxi and Hannali, had not even begun to give out after hours of it. It would have lasted till dark if Fox had not taken matters between her teeth. In her crazy somersaulting on the end of her tether she finally worried that leather piece in two.

  Then she cut back under the hoofs of the horses, throwing them all into a mill. Riders were toppled and horses fell on riders. Hardly a man of them but was trampled by the churning hoofs. Women came out and belabored their fallen men with swinging pots and pans, not from enmity, but just for the fun of it. A black girl named Martha Louisiana gathered Fox up in her arms to save her from further damage.

  “Is the hunt over,” roared happy Papa Barua, “how do we tell when the hunt is over?”

  “I think it is over,” said the man who had seen a fox hunt.

  “If they have no grand gesture for the end of it then we ought to find out one for ourselves,” said Hannali. “Who knows how to end it big how to put a crown on it?”

  “They cut off the tail of the fox and wave in the air,” said the man who had seen a fox hunt, “they call it the bushcht.”

  “I will cut it off and wave in the air,” said Papa Barua. “I am the Master of the Hunt.”

  “No you will not,” said the black girl Martha Louisiana, “the fox has been abused enough. Sooner I let you cut off my own head than the tail of the fox.”

  “Is an even better ending,” howled Hannali with kindly malice, “cut off Martha Louisiana head put it on the end of a spear it is the best ending of all.”

  “No. I joke. Better the fox than me. Have the dedamned little animal. Is not a proper fox hunt anyhow.” Martha Louisiana had lived with the Choctaws most of her life, but often she did not understand their humor.

  But Fox sent up such a whimper when Papa Barua began to cut off her tail that he cut off only the hair of it, bound it together with itself, and waved it in the air. And old Fox slunk off, shorn and shamed and disgusted, back to her tree stump.

  Then it was late in the afternoon, and the Chocs had a very fair of it living over the events of the day: how Pass Christian the educated one of them had the seat of his pants eaten out and was exposed bloody to the world; how Papa Barua had lost his big nine-foot trumpet and had it bent and stompled on by hoof; how one man was thought to have been killed but later he got up and walked; how dogs and Fox had bounced along in the air; how this man had suffered a broken leg and another had his ribs cracked when a horse had fallen on him; how the pigs had kept on running after it was over with, and maybe the Chocs would never see them again — all such hilarity kept them occupied for a long time.

  This was the only fox hunt those Chocs ever had. But they did have a lot of fun together in those years.

  3.

  The magnified years. The other end under your chin damn boy damn.

  The Innominee became large farmers, and they had something of a trading station. They dealt in hides, pelts, pecans, corn, and cotton. Pass Christian became a boatman who went as far as New Orleans. Biloxi and Hannali remained with the father Barua in the expanding cultivation, in the saltworks, in the tannery. They lumbered, and floated it down. They imported both by wagon and water. Their landing became a store and depot, and they brought in a Frenchman or French Indian to run it for them.

  This man was Silvestre DuShane, one a little beyond Hannali's age. He had connections in Louisiana, in Arkansas, and in the Arkansas West (later to be called Indian Territory). He was French, or he was Shawnee Indian, or he was both or neither. But he became a Choctaw and the Choctaws never repented of receiving him. He was the close friend of Hannali's young manhood.

  They had high times — but we have to get on with it. These were the magnified years, and we are compelled to slide over them and enter the disturbed years that follow.

  We riffle over a few more years of the lives. Hannali had now attained his majority. He was the best farmer in the Choctaw country. He was a mule man, a corn man. He was now in actual charge of all the Innominee production.

  Into his notice at this time had come Martha Louisiana, a young girl of the Choctaw Negroes. It must be explained that Martha Louisiana was a strong, slim, rapid girl at this time. Those who knew her only in the middle years of the century, at Hannali House in the Territory, must be reminded that she was not always heavy and ponderous and measured of speech. You should have heard her sing while Silvestre DuShane played that little Louisiana mouth horn of his. And at this time they got a new music.

  Pass Christian brought a fiddle back from New Orleans. He offered it to Biloxi, but that big young man would have none of it. Biloxi was slower of wit than the rest of the Innominee clan — a huge, slow-moving young fellow, almost but not quite one of those dim-witted giants who were sometimes born to the Choctaw families. Oh, Biloxi was all there, but he would never be one to play an instrument.

  Pass Christian offered the fiddle to Papa Barua, but that older man said that his fingers had become too coarsened and stiff from the saltworks and the tannery.

  “Give it to Hannali,” said Papa Barua, “he will be the fiddler and do us honor why can't a muleman be a fiddler too Alapa Homa skins mules and plays t
he fiddle in Falaya we have not got no fiddler in our town at all the other end under your chin damn boy damn cut rushes spread them on the sand we will have a dance tonight go tell everybody my son plays the fiddle like nobody else in Okla Hannali I got the best sons in the country hear how he plays he never saw a fiddle before in his life kill the sick ox roast it we have a feed for everybody hustle out the fast pony spread the news man listen to my boy play.”

  And Hannali could play. He became a Choctaw fiddler. Not all Indians can play the fiddle. There are even some Choctaws who cannot, but the Choctaws were known as the fiddling Indians.

  4.

  Of fiddle tunes and larger events.

  Did you know that whole years can go by like verses of a fiddle tune? A half-dozen years did go by as rapidly as that for Hannali, and they were good years. Martha Louisiana complained, it is true, that the tune was always the same one — that tune whose ending swirls up and breaks back to the beginning strains so that it goes on forever. Martha Louisiana had some idea about altering that unchanging tune, but it was altered by others.

  But Hannali was as contented as he would ever be in his life. He was a muleman and a fiddle man and a corn man. He passed those early years in the hard prosperity of the sandy soil of Okla Hannali. There he was rated as a solid man of good family.

  Then larger events plucked him out of all this. He was taken away on a long journey with his adopted brother the French Indian Silvestre DuShane, with Peter Pitchlynn of the Choctaws and Levi Colbert of the Chickasaw Indians, with men of other tribes, with several white men of official and unofficial status. When he returned, his old world would have been wiped out as though it had never been.