Okla Hannali

by R. A. Lafferty

  It was no graven rock Indian, it was Peter Pitchlynn, a great man among the Choctaws. He stood and waited for them, and a score of other Choctaws sat and lay about the mountain.

  “Is this the place,” asked Hannali, “we have ridden all day this white boy it is all right that he be with us he is a good boy and wants to see the Falaya country is this the place we are called to.”

  “I believe we are near the place,” said Peter Pitchlynn. They were in a saddle between two low peaks. Then they heard a sharp whirring noise above them, and they knew which peak it was. They went up.

  It was a rattlesnake, seven hundred years old and blind. Its sounding had been feeble, but they had been able to hear it. A very long time before this, the Choctaws had been a rattlesnake-clan people, before they had been a crayfish or deer or bear people. The rattlesnake was the oldest uski or clan of them all. This old rattler had been there many centuries, waiting to show them the place when they returned. Now, like the biblical patriarch, he looked on them and died.

  Was this indeed the Mountain from the Beginning? The Choctaws, centuries before, had gone east across the Mississippi River, but they had come from a country of mountains. In the low pine country of Mississippi they had built (and it took them a hundred years) an artificial mound as memorial of the Bending Mountain — Nanih Waiya.

  Were the Choctaws actually back in their original homeland? Or had a very shrewd and intricate man with a mystic involvement with his people contrived it all? Whether or not this was the Mountain from the Beginning, he had contrived it. He had sent out a manifold dream to a number of Choctaw men, and none had had that power for fifty years. He was the last of the Alikchi, the Choctaw magic men. He had called them to the mountain, and his name was Peter Pitchlynn.

  They lit the fires in a pattern at dusk and kept them burning all night. These fires, from the top of one of the most westerly of the Winding Stair Mountains, could be seen by people in all three of the Choctaw districts: The Moshulatubbee, the Pushmataha, the Oklafalaya. All would know what the pattern of the fires meant, that the Friendly Mountain, the Bending-Down Mountain, lost for seven hundred years, had been found again.

  But it wasn't in any sort of religious ritual that the men spent the night on the mountain. They passed it away with mule whiskey and fiddling and a great lot of shouting and hooting.

  The Missouri boy named Robert Pike was in quiet ecstasy. He had become brother of wild Indians. He had seen the hills of Oklafalaya before the sun went down, and he would enter the district the next day.

  The mountain, of course, was not a convenient place to set up a nation's capital. The site chosen was nine miles from there, but it could be spoken of as in the shadow of the mountain. It was near present Tuskahoma in Pushmataha County, Oklahoma. This would remain the real capital of all the Choctaws, even though the administration was moved at times to Armstrong Academy, to Doaksville, to Boggy Depot.

  The mountain was as close as one could get to the indefinite junction of the three Choctaw districts. It was on the land between the Kiamichi River and its Jacks-Fork — where the main river begins to break up — and the Kiamichi was the dividing line between the Pushmataha and Oklafalaya. From the north slope of the mountain, all streams drained to the Canadian and Arkansas rivers; and all land that drained north belonged to the Moshulatubbee. The mountain was in all three districts and was not peculiar to any of them. If it were not the original mountain of the Choctaws, it was very much the sort of mountain they had retained folk memory of.

  It was accepted. However you contrived it, Peter Pitchlynn, you contrived it well. It was the turning point. The Choctaws believed they were back in their original homeland, and they began to reconstitute themselves as nations.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1.

  Fun in the old Moshulatubbee.

  Three Indian boys are running a young buck in the jack-oak thickets on the south shore of the Canadian River. They'll catch him too.

  But can mere boys catch a thing as swift and strong and enduring as a young deer buck? They can if they stay with it; they had stayed with it four hours. If three boys harry a deer and intercept him on every turnback, the deer must run three miles for every two of the boys, and he will have two boys ahead of him and one behind him every time he breaks back. Boys are smarter in pursuit than wolves. They are near as smart as coyotes.

  The three boys are nine-year-old brothers: Famous, Travis, and Alinton — the sons of Hannali Innominee. They are of a size, and when you look at their faces you cannot tell them apart. Travis (of Martha Louisiana) is not darker than Famous (of Natchez) or Alinton (of Marie DuShane). All three have their father's face, but they have not his great broad head. Even though they have his face they are handsome, and he is not.

  They will soon have their father's height, but not his bulk or great strength. They look so alike that Hannali can hardly tell which is which when they line up in front of him. But now he watches them from a mile away and he can easily tell them apart. They are three Indian boys, but when they run one is Indian, one is Negro, and one is white.

  You may have noticed the thing about football players. There are crazy-legged white boys who can fake as well as any Indian, but they don't do it in the same manner. There are Negro blacks who are faster on the start, faster on the break, and faster on the straightaway. But nobody with eyes is ever confused as to which sort of boy is running. Watch a good Indian runner float down on an end who waits nervously wondering which way he will break. The Indian back will be by that end without breaking at all, and leaving him looking foolish. The runner changes pace without changing motion, and changes direction without seeming to. It is as though he ran a preordained course, and how did the tackler happen to be so far off that course? This quality of running can only be called floating deception. Louis Weller of the old Haskell Indians had it, Billy Vessels had it, many have had it.

  The white runner dodges, the Negro breaks, the Indian floats by with no hand laid on him. Alinton could dodge, Travis could break, but only Famous had the queer floating deception. Alinton was the quickest; Travis was the fastest — not at all the same thing; but it was Famous who brought down the young buck. It looked as though the animal broke back sharply and ran right into the boy, but it was really an amazing capture that Famous made.

  They threw the young buck down and killed him. They skinned him out, drew him while he was still hot, bled him and quartered him, built a hot fire, roasted him, and damn near ate him up in an hour.

  Wherever could anyone have so much fun as in the old Moshulatubbee District on the Canadian River?

  2.

  Sequoyah and Moses. Ground to death between a slate and a slate pencil. A cloud I had forgotten.

  Marie DuShane decided that her nine children should learn to read and write. Since the termination of their marriages, she had called Hannali her father, and Natchez and Martha Louisiana her sisters, and the six children were the children of them all. But now all nine of them became her children for the hours of instruction.

  One day one of Hannali's boatmen brought a strange package consigned to Marie DuShane in a cargo from Tamaha Landing. When the package was opened, the first thing to strike the eye was ten red-trimmed school slates.

  There were the slates and slate pencils. There were ten penny catechisms. There were other books for the time after the catechism was learned. There was letter paper, and wax and quill and such, but these were put away carefully. They would spoil no paper till they had first learned to write on slates.

  Many Indians could already write. It was time that a great family like the Innominee learned the art. Hannali already knew something of the thing, though he would pretend not to and would learn along with the other “children.” At least he understood the theory of it better than most. He explained the advantages that the Choctaws who had no alphabet had over the Cherokees who had one.

  Before the removal of the tribes from the old country, a Cherokee named Seq
uoyah did something that has been done only one other time in all history. He invented an alphabet or something that was very nearly an alphabet.

  Sequoyah's invention was midway between an alphabet and a syllabary; but due to the peculiar construction of the Cherokee language they were the same thing in this special case. The eighty-five symbols of Sequoyah (representing either a vowel or a consonant and vowel combination) took care of every possible syllable of Cherokee speech. It was an absolutely perfect vehicle for the Cherokee language, and no other language anywhere has ever had a system of writing that fitted it so well. It was the real and perfect alphabet — for one language.

  All other alphabets in the world (except that of Sequoyah) derive from one that was invented near lower Syria about twelve hundred years before Christ. A fundamental preacher once gave the theory that God himself invented that first alphabet, and that the Ten Commandments given to Moses on the tablets was the first alphabetical writing. Wherever he had his theory, it is near correct as to time and place. It happened about the century of Moses and in the Moses region.

  But whether invented by God or not, that first alphabet had nearly everything wrong with it. It was a rough and uncertain thing, not to be compared with the perfect instrument that Sequoyah invented. The early alphabet had only one advantage: Any language on earth could be written in it by adapting it slightly. The Cherokee alphabet had one disadvantage: Only Cherokee could ever be written in it.

  Hannali said that the Choctaws should leave off being jealous of the Cherokees (for they were jealous of them) for having a written language; the Cherokees were in a dead end and they would be surpassed in literacy by the other Indians. The Choctaws only had to learn to read one system and they would be able to read any language they could speak, Choctaw, Creek, English, French.

  So now (about 1840) the Innominee learned to read and write. The six who were children in years were quick, and Marie DuShane seldom had to be impatient with them. She was afraid to show impatience with Martha Louisiana, but that woman displayed great aptitude for the reading and writing business. It was Natchez who was kept after school every evening, slaving over her slate and making the words again and again. It wasn't that she couldn't learn them, she learned faster than any of them. But every day she had forgotten what she learned the day before, and had to start at the beginning again.

  “Is it maybeso I will have my death sitting on this stool and making the letters?” she would ask. “Is it that I will be ground to death between a slate and a slate pencil?”

  If you are less than a hundred years old you won't know what a slate pencil is, but it doesn't matter. Commercial chalk had not yet come to the territory. The slate was like a small trimmed piece of blackboard and was made of slate indeed. The slate pencil was of softer slate, and would mark gray or nearly white on the harder slate, and could be wiped off with cloth or grass.

  Hannali had no trouble with the reading or writing. Likely he had already partly educated himself in these arts, but in all his life he had never had trouble learning anything. But now he wished to make a bigger jump.

  “You should have given me warning Marie DuShane,” he said, “now it will be three months before I can get them here they should have come in the packet with the things for the children now I waste three months.”

  “What do you waste? What do you need, Hannali?”

  “Eyeglasses a silver ink-horn paper with a crest printed on it quill pens from England they are the best all these things I need you should have let me know what you were doing how can I write to my friends till I have them.”

  “You need eyeglasses no more than does Natchez. So send for the rest.”

  Hannali asked a preacherman visitor to write down the books that an educated man should have on his shelf. But when he scanned the list, he had some doubts.

  “Swift he sounds fine Montaigne he is French Marie DuShane can tell me the hard words Shakespeare sounds like a Grasshopper Creek Indian doing the spear dance Plutarch is the man Peter Pitchlynn reads Peter says that Plutarch invented great men and they have not yet appeared in life living he was a civil and well spoken man when he came to the Territory the Collected Sermons of Absalom MacGreggor the preacherman thought he would slip one in there but I caught him a History of Rome for the Young Student I will get most of them.”

  Hannali rode thirty-five miles each way to Three Forks of the Arkansas to buy such paper and pens as a man of importance might use. Those Marie DuShane had obtained were not of excellent quality. Then he sat down and wrote a letter to his brother Pass Christian in New Orleans. He labored all night over it. It was a good letter, and he spoiled only a few sheets of paper before he made his final draft.

  He asked Pass Christian to send him such books as an educated man should have, and mentioned some of those that the preacher-man had listed to show that he was not entirely ignorant of these things. He told the news of the Territory Choctaws — how it seemed that they might come out of their slumber and make new nations after all. He suggested that Pass Christian should bring his family and come up the river to visit, reminding him that families are sacred things and it is not right that their members should go a long time without seeing each other. He finished it up at dawn and gave it to a downriver boatman.

  We will tell a secret — Marie DuShane herself could not read and write well. She spelled all languages by ear, but so did most of the frontier people of every color. It didn't matter with Choctaw — it was never to have a standard spelling. Choctaw tended to be spelled according to the English, and not the Continental, sound of letters. For this reason they came to write their own name as Choctaw, though linguists say that the original sound should be transliterated as Chatah.

  The writings of Choctaws of that time in English have a humorous quality because of the spelling. But was it their fault that the English-language people had not had the diligence to update their own tongue?

  About this time (1840) Hannali found in a private room of the Big House a starkly lettered note from Whiteman Falaya.

  “Fat man now you have three heffer calfs I mark one of them for myself in tow years three years I will have her I kill anyone else who touch her you can nou way prevent me fat man Whiteman Falaya.”

  Hannali was shaken by this.

  “How can I kill a ghost who comes and goes and nobody sees him how can I protect my daughters from Whiteman Falaya it is a cloud I had forgotten,” he said.

  3.

  Sally for a Week, Hazel for Life, Luvinia Forever.

  Already at nine years old the three Innominee daughters were noticed. In the following years their fame would come with a rush. Almost everybody in the Territory would know of the three pretty, bright-talking, little girls. It was increasingly because of them that so many visitors stopped at the Big House.

  Unlike their brothers, the three girls did not greatly resemble each other. Marie DuShane said that Saily sparkled, Hazel glowed, and Luvinia burned, and she did not know which of her three daughters was the most attractive. Marie DuShane maintained that all three were equally everyone's daughters and that all in the family were of one flesh.

  A crude-talking white trader said the same thing in his own words: that he'd like to have Sally for a week, Hazel for life, and spend forever in Hell with Luvinia.

  But Sally would be anyone's first choice — so pretty and lively as to be sensational, as beautiful as her own mother.

  As who? Natchez? Was she beautiful? That sound you hear is made by one thousand white men all rolling their eyes at once. Hannali had never suspected that scrawny little Natchez was beautiful, though his affection for her was boundless. Her father and family hadn't known it, and Martha Louisiana hadn't realized it at all. Marie DuShane, of course, had always known it. She would have been intensely jealous had not Natchez become her sister in the family arrangement. Indian scrawny is sometimes white man perfect.

  Traveled visitors to the Big House, and they were men who knew what they were tal
king about, said that there was nothing like Natchez in all the Territory and that her equal would hardly be found in St. Louis or Washington, D.C. And Sally was coming to be very like her.

  The others would have an attraction even deeper, though not so suddenly striking. There was really not anything like the three of them anywhere.

  4.

  A dead man on a dead horse. Christ has come to our house.

  In the year 1842, a skeleton man on a skeleton horse rode up to Hannali House. He dismounted with difficulty, and he tied his horse to the wind as they called it. It had no need to be tied or hobbled, it wasn't going anywhere.

  The sight that greeted the skeleton man would have affrighted anyone who had not been looking death in the face for some time. It was a monstrous huge man with a face more ugly than that of the Devil. The monster was barefoot, and the skeleton did not wonder at that. What shoes would go on those colossal feet? The giant wore pants of buckskin — and surely it had taken the skin of many bucks to provide them — and he was bare and near black from the waist up. He was a long-haired Indian monster man, and on his head was an incredible green turban that was bigger than some whole people.

  The skeleton man continued his examination, and saw that the monster was reading Plutarch.

  “You are Hannali Innominee,” said the skeleton, “I am well met.”

  This was no poor traveler who would be fed in the off kitchen and then bedded down till he was able to travel. Hannali knew at once what sort of man this was, and he bawled for his family to come.