Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  “No you will have to give them to me,” said Hannali, “who could buy a hundred hog animals out of hand like that I need my money for other things in setting up in the new country you will have to give me at least one hundred.”

  “Your friends said that you had been acting funny, young boy Hannali. Is there anything else you would like me to give you?”

  “Yes the little girl your daughter Natchez have you looked at her lately do you know that she is old enough to get married although she is so little I want to marry her and take her to the new country with me.”

  “Go ask her,” said Strange.

  Hannali went to ask the little girl Natchez.

  “I am going to the new country,” he said, “I will need hogs I will need something else — ”

  “Maybeso,” said Natchez.

  “ — to take with me what I want is a wife I was not think I would want a little scrawny one like you then I see you standing behind the torches — ”

  “Maybeso,” said Natchez.

  “ — I want you to go with me be my wife maybe you will get fat and not always be so scrawny John T and Albert Horse say I act funny now I know why I act funny.”

  “Maybeso,” said Natchez.

  “If you would say yes I would go to your father to tell him if you was say yes we would settle it now.”

  “Maybeso,” said Natchez.

  Hannali went back to Strange Choate.

  “What did she say?” asked Strange with an odd glint. He was not a chuckling Choctaw, this man. He was a twinkling Cherokee. “She says maybeso what does it mean she keep say maybeso.” “She said yes,” smiled Strange. He liked Hannali.

  “Take the hogs and the girl in the morning and be gone. But come back often. We are now of one family.”

  They stood apart in the starlight. Choate — an odd, old, gray Cherokee of the given name of Strange — seemed to have some of that star sparkle on him. It was a bit like the aleika, the magic, that sometimes shone on a rare Choctaw. Strange was but a private man, and Hannali said of him later, “He is a Mingo.”

  In the morning, Hannali, John T, Albert Horse, and the little girl Natchez started to the new country with one hundred hogs, pigs, shoats, and weanlings. They were into the new country by midafternoon.

  At Three Forks of the Arkansas, near Fort Gibson, Hannali married the little girl Natchez. Then he went with her and the hogs toward the stead he had picked for his home.

  John T and Albert Horse angled off south to seek out homes for themselves. Hannali gave each of them a dozen of his hogs to get started in the pig business.

  3.

  Of three-forked lightning. What am I, an old boar coon? How Skullyville, Boggy Depot, and Doaksville became the capitals of nations.

  And that is the story of the way Hannali Innominee took wife?

  No! It is not! It is only one third of the story.

  The rest of it is so amazing that we hesitate as to how it should be presented. Whoever heard of such a thing happening?

  Listen to it! Let one ear droop for a moment and you'll miss it.

  For two days later, coming to his black people set up at his homestead on the South Canadian River, Hannali married Martha Louisiana and made her people more completely his.

  And, on the following day, he went around the bend of the river and married Marie DuShane.

  That is it. It was like three forks of lightning striking down. Hannali was triply done for and he couldn't understand it at all. Just one week later he sat on a log and talked to himself about how it was:

  “I am marry to three women and how did it happen to me I was not intend to marry at all Marie DuShane thinks that Martha Louisiana is my slave and Natchez is my cousin Natchez I don't know what she thinks only Martha Louisiana knows she says she will knock their heads together if they don't like it what am I a herd bull to have three calves coming all the same season God help me I don't know how I get into this I'm so dumb what am I a jack I get three colts in one year damn this is bad why was I not think what am I a cob turkey to have three hens they point me out boy you old jack you they say how you go to unfry fish how you go to unbake bread how you get out of this one Hannali what am I an old boar coon.”

  Spring had come very late to Hannali Innominee, but then it came in a torrent. What was there about the three girls that struck him like three-forked lightning? We have only a hint of the quiet acquiescence and sunny resiliency of Natchez, of the black-earth passion and blood friendliness of Martha Louisiana, of the sullen storminess and aura'd mysticism of the encounter with Marie DuShane — that white lady who turned into a breed Indian every time she blinked.

  Hannali was married to Natchez by an Indian agent at Three Forks of the Arkansas.

  He was married to Martha Louisiana by an itinerant preacher of one of the sects, a man who had with him an Indian orphan child whose language he could not understand and who was of a mother dead somewhere along the trail.

  He was married to Marie DuShane by himself and herself in an old, and sometimes disputed, rite much employed by the back-country French, conditional to which was the requirement that the marriage be confirmed by the priest should one ever come.

  The whole thing was wrong and Hannali knew it. He was not a savage man. Though he excused himself to himself as being a poor clay-foot Indian with no instruction, yet he knew what he had done and that it contained a fundamental canker in its spring bloom.

  But in the eyes of the world he had done well. Like his father Barua, Hannali drew material prosperity from his follies. By Natchez he had the gift of one hundred hogs, an alliance with an established frontier people of some wealth, and entrée into the nation of the western Cherokees.

  By Martha Louisiana he had a people, and the beginnings of a settlement. He had the artisan blacks, the smiths and mechanics, and more of them would now accrete to him.

  By Marie DuShane, Hannali had Poste DuShane. For Alinton DuShane did die quietly after turning things over to Hannali. With the post there went a good extent of bottom cornland and an excellent location. There was the downstream connection to the Arkansas River and thence to Fort Smith and Little Rock and Arkansas Post and all the way to New Orleans. There was easy access to Three Forks and Fort Gibson by both water and land. It would be, and Hannali was astute enough to see it, the crossing of the Texas Road (already in existence) and the California Road.

  Here would be the meeting place of three Indian nations, for Hannali was also astute enough to see that the Creek-Cherokee border would be adjusted and that the Cherokees as well as the Creeks would be right across the river from him.

  This was also the Three Forks of the Canadian River, not so clear as the Three Forks of the Arkansas, it is true, but within nine miles both the Deep Fork and the North Fork came into the main Canadian River.

  Hannali had become a Cherokee Indian by his marriage to Natchez, and he would soon become a McIntosh Creek Indian by formal adoption. Through Major Levi Colbert he was close friends with the whole Colbert family, and Colberts would be chiefs of the Chickasaws for most of the following half-century. He was close to Peter Pitchlynn, still a young man and the greatest of the Choctaws. He held the friendship of other men, such as Chizem, who were men with a future.

  In the spring of the year 1830, Hannali Innominee had three sons:

  Famous, by Natchez.

  Travis, by Martha Louisiana.

  Alinton, by Marie DuShane.

  By this time he had his second corn crop in the ground. He was the biggest hog man in the Territory, and he had begun to build the Big House. Hannali also had another second crop working at the time when he left off doings in that field for the saving of his soul.

  Hundreds of Choctaws arrived that year (1830), though their main migration would not be till two years later. Those who arrived now set up their territories and settlements by the names that would endure. And, as always, there were the three divisions of the Choctaws.

  The Moshulat
ubbee District (that to which Hannali Innominee belonged) set up between the Arkansas-Canadian River and the Southern Mountains. The main settlements of the Moshulatubbee were Skullyville and Fort Coffee. Joseph Kincaid was the first district chief in the Territory, which old Moshulatubbee would never enter. He would be dead before removal was completed.

  The Pushmataha District (that of which Nitakechi was chief) set up south of the mountains and west of the Kiamichi River. Its principal, hell, its only town, was Boggy Depot.

  The Oklafalaya District retained its name, for Greenwood LeFlore couldn't impose his name on a district as Moshulatubbee and Pushmataha had done. It located south of the mountains and east of the Kiamichi River, and George Harkins was the first Falaya chief in the Territory. LeFlore remained in the old country, turned white man, and somehow had become possessed of sixteen sections of good farm land. Removal and despoliation were for others, not for himself.

  The Oklafalaya was often called the Red River District. Its principal towns were Doaksville and Old Miller Court House. I am told that there never was any courthouse at Old Miller Court House. The settlement was named from the pretentious residence put up by an old half-breed named Miller. It looked like a courthouse, and the Choctaws called it Old Miller Court House.

  The courthouse building was not old. Old Miller was old.

  It is the small town of Millerton today. They will not let a good old name stand.

  One day Hannali believed that he saw a Creek Indian named Checote riding away from Hannali's Big House, and at no great distance. This was odd, since Hannali had not seen Checote earlier nor spoken to him, and it was not like the man to pass close without stopping.

  Then Hannali noticed — from the way that the man sat the horse — that he was not Checote. Hannali had never seen this man before, and now he saw only the back of him as he went away on horseback.

  But Hannali knew who the man was. He had heard vivid descriptions of this unmistakable man by Choctaws who had encountered him.

  The man was Whiteman Falaya. He was riding away on Checote's bay horse. Hannali's blood ran scared and his liver knotted up.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1.

  White-man Falaya. Hannali House. Twenty-five big Indians and some generals. A Widdo were with three Wifes.

  Hannali had been sitting on a massive bench, cleaning a gun on his knees, and perhaps he had dozed. The bench was in front of the only door to a certain strong room which he had constructed. This was the place where he kept his gold and paper money, his guns, his whiskey, several fine pieces of furniture when the house had come to that point, and other valuables.

  The door of the strong room was open, for Hannali had just gotten two guns from it, one that he was cleaning, the other which was loaded and leaning against the wall beside him, for he often potshot game without ever getting off that bench.

  Hannali knew that there was something wrong with his strong room. He went in. He found a rough piece of paper stabbed into the pine slab wall with a sharpened hickory spear piece. It was lettered with a curious message, and Hannali knew what it said.

  Hannali at that time could not read to a great degree, and the man who had left the message could not write. But it is no great trick to get the meaning of a written message. Shulush-Homa, a Choctaw chief of an earlier day, would run written messages against his cheek and announce to all present the meaning, though not the exact words, of the writing. And Hannali, holding the paper, held its meaning.

  He took it to one of the blacks who could read. The words were: “Fat Man Hannali you have nowt but three bull calfs this year I will spoil you of one of your heffers when you have one I will spoil you of outher things I mean to cut you down your friend Whiteman Falaya.”

  Hannali Innominee was afraid of few things. In scuffling, whether friendly or serious, he had never been bested. He could kill a buffalo bull with a little one-handed club not half as long as his arm, and could drive a hand knife through eight inches of pine wood with a snap of his wrist. He had a good precision rifle at hand, and was the best shot of the Choctaws.

  Was he afraid of Whiteman Falaya? He was afraid of no man else. But everybody was afraid of Whiteman, and Hannali came very near to being afraid of him. If this was not fear, then it was a new and exasperating emotion that left him breathing hard.

  So Whiteman Falaya was in the Territory, and Hannali and others had believed him dead back in Mississippi.

  Whiteman Falaya (three or four years younger than Hannali) had been born in Mississippi of a loose Choctaw woman. When asked the paternity of her boy, the woman had only said that the father had been a white man, and she named the boy Whiteman. But Whiteman was darker than most Choctaws, and it might not be fair to ascribe the evil in him to the whites.

  Whiteman killed and looted and raped and burned because he had a passion for those things. And he left written documentation of his acts, both before and after they happened. The written notes are curious as coming from a man who could not write. They are in at least six different hands, and the writers of none of the notes ever came forward. The notes would be in one hand for a year or more, and then change to another hand. This leads to belief that the notes in each hand were all written at one time, and that the raids and murders of Whiteman were carefully planned and were not impulse things.

  The fearful thing about Whiteman was his ability to enter and leave places unseen and unheard. He had walked past Hannali Innominee who would have shot him on sight and gone into the strong room, stabbed the note onto the wall, and walked out again. Hannali believed that he had dozed for a moment, but how had Whiteman known that he would be dozing? Hannali could see miles from his bench, far across the river into the Creek and Cherokee nations. He could clearly see the house and pasture of the Creek Indian Checote whence Whiteman had stolen the horse.

  The Reverend Isaac McCoy had said that Whiteman was sick, and should be regarded with compassion as one would a sick animal. Most of the Indians believed that the most compassionate thing they could do to Whiteman was to kill him as soon as possible, but they had never been able to do it. Whiteman Falaya was under permanent sentence of death by the Choctaw Nation, the Chickasaw Nation, the states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, and by the Ross Cherokees.

  Hannali took his best rifle and mounted horse. He did not ride to the south after Falaya. Instead, he swam his horse through the river and rode to the home of the Creek Indian Checote. He said that he had seen, from a distance, a man riding on Checote's bay horse, and the man did not sit the horse like Checote. “Did you loan the horse Checote is everything all right?”

  No. Checote had not loaned the horse and didn't know that it was gone. Maybeso it was another bay horse. But that of Checote could not be found. They raised a group and rode after the horse thief, trailed him (they believed) for fifty miles, and lost him. Hannali did not tell them that the man was Whiteman Falaya.

  Nevertheless, from other depredations, it was soon known by all that Whiteman Falaya was in the Territory. There was a new cloud over the country.

  George Washington once slept at Hannali House. This was Captain George Washington, the Caddo Indian chief. The only President of the United States who certainly slept there was Zachary Taylor, then General Zachary Taylor (it was in 1842). But there were personages greater than either of these who stopped over with Hannali at his Big House.

  There were the great Indian leaders who visited him through the years: Peter Pitchlynn who was a special sort of man, Israel Folsom, Pitman Colbert, Winchester Colbert (he looks like Abraham Lincoln in one picture of him in a top hat), Joseph Kincaid (when he was chief of the Moshulatubbee he had made Hannali his closest friend), Thomas LeFlore (a better man than Greenwood, he won back the chieftainship of Okla Falaya for the family and brought back respect to the name).

  There was Nitakechi himself who said he had Moshulatubbee and Pushmataha for his two fathers. He was the last of the Mingos. There has been some dispute as to the meaning of the i
ndefinite title Mingo. It meant to be a man like Nitakechi and his fathers. Not all chiefs were Mingos. The title had to grow on a man till one day the people would say, “He is a Mingo.”

  There were great Indians by the dozen come to Hannali House: Ya-Ya-Hadge, John Jumper, Captain Robert Jones, Roley McIntosh, Benjamin Perryman, Roman Nose Thunder, the great Cheyenne warrior. There was Gopher John — but he was a Negro, and not an Indian, you say — who started on a removal trek as a black slave and ended it as a Seminole Indian chief. That was one removal party that suffered unbelievable hardships, and had not Gopher John assumed leadership not one of the party would have reached the Territory alive. Gopher John later founded the city of Wewoka in Oklahoma.

  Man, these were all big Indians, not the little Indians like you see every day. There were important Indians of the Plains tribes, Buffalo Hump, Pock Mark, Placido. There was John Ross who was chief of the Cherokees. There were good Indians and bad Indians who came to Hannali's: Benjamin Love, George Lowrey, Black Dirt, Bolek (Billy Bowlegs), Pliny Fisk. And Chizem, the gray-eyed Indian.

  Prominent white men stopped at the Big House. Charles Goodnight was there several times. There was General Philip Henry Sheridan and Albert Pike with the black secret which he took to his grave. Devoted missioners such as the Reverends Isaac McCoy and Samuel Worchester were entertained by Hannali for weeks at a time, but only seven times in thirty years were Jesuits able to come. There were the Indian agents and the superintendents: Rutherford, Garrett, Drennen, Browning, many of them. Hardly a week went by that Hannali did not have guests at his house.

  For, in the whole period before the Civil War, there was but one inn or hotel in the Indian Territory — that set up by Israel Folsom in Doaksville in the 1840s. Travelers had to stay at the houses or at the Army posts. In the Choctaw North the Big Houses were seldom more than ten miles apart, and most of the owners enjoyed having guests.