Blue Ravens: Historical Novel

by Gerald Vizenor

  Calypso was the spirited companion of the trader and she remembered the way after so many summers on the same trail from Onigum on the Leech Lake Reservation, to Cass Lake, Bemidji, Lake Itasca, and the headwaters of the gichiziibi, the Great River in the language of the Anishinaabe. Calypso ambled that memorable summer on the old trails near Bad Medicine Lake, the village of Beaulieu, Bad Boy Lake, and at last to the popular Hotel Leecy on the White Earth Reservation.

  Bayard, the bay mare packhorse, was loaded with marvelous and exotic trade goods, precious stones, turquoise, silver jewelry, magic mercury, flamboyant cloth, spirit bones, peyote, absinthe, cigars, and white, red, and bright blue bird feathers from Florida, Mexico, and South America. We untied the two bundles cinched on the sides of the packhorse, and then provided feed and water for both horses in separate stalls. We were lucky to be working at the livery stable that summer when the trader arrived. The past summer we hawked newspapers at the train station and the trader commonly stayed at the Headquarters Hotel.

  Augustus understood our reasons to leave the newspaper and work in the livery stable. Month by month we hawked fewer copies of the Tomahawk, and the newspaper had lost subscribers. Radios were more common on the reservation and could be purchased, along with guns, sewing machines, bicycles, entire houses, and even motor cars, by mail order from Sears, Roebuck and Company. The sound of radio news was more communal, the necessary gossip and native stories of the reservation, and many readers missed that ordinary hearsay as a community service of a newspaper. Our uncle was worried about the decline of subscribers to the Tomahawk but he was involved in many other enterprises on the reservation.

  Augustus forever teased us about the stench of muck chucker stable boys. We were determined to learn more about horses, even though horses were spooked and out of place in the new world of motor cars and trains. Horses were spirited, loyal, and most of the new motor machines were unreliable and noisy. We loved horses, the shiver and nudge of horses, and sometimes stayed in the stable overnight. At the same time we had been to the city and were excited by gasoline engines, electric street cars, washers, and the hearty promises of new machines.

  Calypso was a native blue healer.

  Odysseus needed a reliable livery stable, and the two horses walked directly to the Hotel Leecy. Mostly the trader needed the doctor to treat his shoulder and broken ankle. Aloysius asked John Leecy, the proprietor of the hotel, for permission to deliver the trader by wagon to the White Earth Reservation Hospital.

  Odysseus was a giant compared to my brother and me, and his head, neck, arms, hands, and feet were enormous. He was friendly, brawny, darker and much larger, maybe even smarter, than anyone on the reservation.

  Odysseus was fully licensed by the federal government to trade with natives on reservations, and he had every right to stay at the hotel. The federal agent, however, was suspicious and refused to recognize the trader, and the agent never greeted native visitors from other reservations.

  The trader leaned to one side in the back of the wagon, and smiled even in agony, but he never said much to us on the way to the hospital. The road was rough near the entrance to the hospital, the horse lurched twice, and we worried that the sudden motion of the wagon would cause more pain in his shoulder and ankle. The trader turned and smiled in silence.

  The White Earth Hospital was constructed and expanded many times by the Episcopal Mission. Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple and the federal agents competed with the Order of Saint Benedict and hurried to build a school, sawmill, and the first flourmill on the reservation. Native men were hired, and families moved closer to the schools, but the choices of native solace were regularly undermined by the federal government. The federal agents and clergy shunned native healers, brushed aside shamans, and derisively named them the causes not the healers of disease. The White Earth Hospital was the only trustworthy medical sanctuary on the

  reservation.

  Misaabe, his son Animosh, and five mongrel healers were on duty at the entrance to the hospital. Damon Mendor, the medical doctor, trusted shaman healers and sniffer dogs trained to detect diseases. The doctor seldom relied only on the common practices of hospital medicine, and the nurses never doubted the diagnosis but forever waved the mongrels away to avoid dirty nose prints on their uniforms.

  The word misaabe meant “giant” in translation, and animosh was a “dog” or mongrel in the native language of the Anishinaabe. Misaabe, a miniature man not much higher than the reach of the mongrel healers he had trained to detect diseases, was an obvious ironic reservation nickname. Misaabe tutored the most perceptive mongrel healers in the history of reservation medicine. Animosh was raised with mongrels.

  The native nurses, dressed in white from cap to sturdy shoes, could hardly support the giant trader out of the wagon and into the hospital. The scene was comical as he hopped between the two nurses and the mongrel healers to a vacant treatment room. The nurses were tiny at his side, but their voices and directions were not weak or hesitant. The nurses waved the mongrels out and at the same time ordered the trader to remove his shirt.

  Odysseus removed only one thick sock and revealed the monstrous swollen ankle. The nurses told us to immediately fetch the doctor who was out fishing with friends that afternoon at nearby Bad Boy Lake.

  Doctor Mendor, who had been drinking more than fishing, tied his horse to the back of the wagon on the return to the hospital. The doctor, who served three reservations in the state, was acquainted with the trader, and he seemed to appreciate our basic description of the wounds. We learned much later that the good doctor traded peyote for medical care.

  Biitewan, the new federal agent, dismissed native healers, and he was aware of bad health and poor nutrition, decayed teeth, diseases of the lungs, and ruinous alcoholism on the reservation, but had no obvious concern about peyote. The agent was concerned only about federal health services and that the trader, who was licensed but not a resident of the reservation, was treated as a native at the White Earth Hospital.

  Biitewan, a descriptive native nickname, meant “foamy” in translation. The agent forced his words, and foam collected, soured, and curdled at the corner of his mouth. No one on the reservation, not even the priest who was a native speaker, revealed the actual translation of his nickname.

  Biitewan was told that his native name was sacred, a word that described the rush of water, or a great wave.

  Odysseus removed his shirt in the end but not the peace medal around his neck. He held the medal in his hand as the doctor and two strong medical assistants pushed his shoulder back into place. We heard the bones move, thump, crunch, and smack. The doctor pushed the trader back on a bench, examined his ankle, and then pressed his fingers deep into the swollen flesh to feel the bones. The trader was silent, and in great pain.

  Odysseus wore a wide blue sling to protect his shoulder, and the nurses packed his ankle in chunks of ice. The doctor could not determine if the ankle was sprained or a bone was broken, so the trader was ordered to remain in the hospital for several days. The trader resisted, the doctor insisted, and the trader agreed but only if he could sleep on the porch at night.

  Aloysius told the trader that we had cut most of the ice that winter on the lake. The ice, buried in straw, was stored near the hospital and had slowly melted. We returned the wagon to the livery stable, watered and fed the horses, and then walked back to the hospital. The trader had eaten dinner and was seated on the screen porch in an oversized leather rocker. His ankle was wrapped in a blanket packed with ice and raised on a bench.

  Odysseus described the scene of the accident at the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca. The lake was cold, as usual, and the breeze carried the scent of red pine. That chilly morning the flies were slow to move. Calypso, startled by the sight of an animal or snake, whinnied, lurched, and reared back. The trader lost his balance and landed hard on the rocks.

  Calypso nosed me, pushed me awake, the trader explained and then mimicked his horse. The nur
ses were amused by his gestures. Calypso leaned forward and lowered her head, he said, and waited for me to mount. My shoulder was dislocated, and my ankle was swollen badly.

  Aloysius told the trader stories that we had heard many times from our father about the Fleury sur Gichiziibi, an ancient monastery established near the headwaters many centuries ago by wayward brothers of the Order of Saint Benedict. The monks created the Manabozho Curiosa, a mysterious erotic manuscript that described sex between monks and animals, and especially the mongrels with two feathery tails.

  Honoré, our father, explained that the ghosts of the monks wandered in the woods near the headwaters and frightened animals and birds. The ravens circled and croaked over that spooky place but never perched in the red cedar, and never landed near the headwaters. Sometimes the howl of wolves was a strange tremulous sound, and even chickens, rabbits, and skunks were nervous, weird, and bouncy near the headwaters.

  Calypso was spooked by the ghosts of the monkery.

  Odysseus smiled, saluted, but said nothing about the ghostly monks. He was a mighty storier that night, and no one, not even the spirits of the shamans and monks, would have dared tease or voice a word of distraction. The trader told stories about his names, the peace medal he wore around his neck, and the dance of the dead in memories of the American Civil War, his service as a cavalry soldier, and his experiences as a trader, that night on the screen porch of the hospital. We were enchanted by the great stories of his adventures. The doctor, nurses, and three other patients gathered around the shimmer of the lantern to listen. Yes, that was a special moment on the hospital porch. The trader was stimulated by the audience, the northern night sky, and by the weather, a gentle summer breeze. Every gesture of the trader created a huge shadow on the porch.

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  Odysseus Walker Young raised the peace medal and told stories about his three names. Aloysius, the doctor, nurses, and several patients in turn leaned closer to examine the silver medal, an image of General Ulysses S. Grant. The name of the president was not embossed on the medal. Grant is pictured on the front of the medal with twelve curved words around his image: United States of America, Let Us Have Peace, Liberty Justice and Equality. The earth, a tablet, and farm implements were embossed on the back of the medal, and with these words and the inauguration date of President Grant: On Earth Peace, 1871, Good Will Toward Men.

  Odysseus was born in the leap year 1864, on February 29, the very same day that President Abraham Lincoln nominated Ulysses S. Grant for promotion to Lieutenant General in the Army of the United States. A year later, on April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee signed the documents of surrender in the village of Appomattox Courthouse that ended the bloody Civil War. Grant, a great soldier, was later elected the eighteenth president of the United States.

  Odysseus was named in honor of the heroic literary character and the famous general who ended the Civil War. Jefferson, his father, and his grandfather had been steady traders at Ganado, Keams Canyon, Tuba City, and many other native posts on the Navajo Reservation. They had obtained in trade several peace medals issued by many presidents including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Polk, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant.

  Odysseus explained that his father, Jefferson Young, had read a translation of The Odyssey by Homer and favored the Greek name in the epic poem to the Latin Ulysses. Odysseus said his father revised familiar classical myths. He created his own versions and adventure stories to serve the moment around a campfire, and in the marvelous union of native storiers at trading posts.

  Jefferson, as his son the trader explained that night on the screen porch at the hospital, taught him how to chant and sing on the road, to create memorable stories, and to privately praise the tricky arts of the native tease and irony. Natives trusted him as a trader because he was a singer and a creative storier.

  Odysseus, for instance, could chant sections of The Odyssey and of The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. Teachers at the government school had read out loud selections of the same two books, but not with the same dramatic mastery as the great renditions of the trader.

  Jefferson was the saint of irony among natives and traders, but not among federal agents. Odysseus praised his father for his humor, courage, and generosity in the company of natives, and then chanted a few poetic lines about the sense of place and family from The Odyssey.

  So, as welcome as the great show of life again in a father is to his children, when he has lain sick, a mighty trader, suffering strong pains, and wasting long away, and the hateful spirit of the dead has brushed his shoulder, but then, and it is welcome, the gods set him free of his sickness, and a welcome was heard in the desert and forest now for my father.

  Odysseus was an enchanter and a teaser among natives and traders, and we were captivated that night by a master storier. The doctor lighted a narrow cigar. The nurses were teary, not so much by the descriptive mastery of scenes but because of the emotive sway and natural pace of the chant. Later, he told us that he had revised a few lines in the heroic poem, and created the reference to the “mighty trader,” the mention of “shoulder,” and the view of his father in the desert. His stories were created for the moment, for the trail, for the wagon, for the porch, and always with some local rumors, personal notices, and situations.

  Aloysius painted a blue raven with enormous wings.

  The stars were brighter that night of the new moon, and every star shimmered in the leaves of early summer. The nurses and patients waited on the porch to hear more stories, the dramatic sway of memory and descriptive scenes of literature.

  Odysseus reached over his head with one hand to touch the stars, and to tease the shimmer of light. His hand cast a shadow across the porch. Then he turned to the nurses, smiled, and recited poignant war scenes from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.

  When the youth awoke it seemed to him that he had been asleep for a thousand years, and he felt sure that he opened his eyes upon an unexpected world. Gray mists were slowly shifting before the first efforts of the sunrays. An impending splendor could be seen in the eastern sky. An icy dew had chilled his face, and immediately upon arousing he curled farther down into his blanket. He stared for a while at the leaves overhead, moving in a heraldic wind of the day.

  So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly….

  The American Civil War endured in memories, the sublime scenes forever wanted in a chant or chorus of honor, and the slightest trace of death, or gesture of gruesome disability, torments the soldiers, the sole survivors of disunion, national duty, and the lonesome families, without grace, cover, or ordinary dignity. The bloody bodies of so many young men have never withered in memory, and were summoned to stories over the years as the clover of tranquility.

  Dead soldiers were the clover of tranquility.

  Aloysius painted scenes of abstract blue ravens in natural motion, the traces of visual memory, and especially the mighty stories and recitations of the trader. The Civil War stories were unbearable scenes, stories of misery and heartbreak at the time, and yet the poignant recitation by the trader that night inspired me to create stories of soldiers. My perception and recollection of those stories that so enchanted me on the porch of the hospital that summer night were written several years later. My stories were mostly silent at the time, waiting at night for a clever origin, and almost ready to be created as scenes of memory.

  Odysseus was conscientious about his ancestors, and included them in most of his stories. Captain Charles Young, for instance, a graduate of the Military Academy at West Point, was a direct relative. The trader recounted that night on the porch the service of Captain Young in the Ninth Cavalry Regiment and later the acting Military Superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant National Park. He paused and raised the peace medal as a gesture of respect when he mentioned the name of President Ulysses S. Grant. The world of generals and p
residents always seemed more congenial when the trader told personal stories about his relatives. The nurses were pleased, only the doctor turned away.

  Odysseus was entrusted with a middle name in honor of a career soldier, Sergeant William Walker of the Third South Carolina Volunteers. The trader recounted that night how the eminent soldier had rightly incited others to resist duty and renounce the military over the lower wages paid to freedmen. The soldiers had been promised equal treatment when they enlisted in the Civil War.

  Sergeant Walker was convicted of mutiny at a court-martial and was unjustly executed by a military firing squad on February 29, 1864. Odysseus was born on the very same day, a great legacy of coincidence and a cruel injustice. The United States Congress voted four months later to provide equal pay for black soldiers. There were two great epochs of memory on the day of his birth—the execution of Sergeant William Walker and the executive promotion of General Ulysses S. Grant.

  Odysseus raised his peace medal once more and recited the glorious words of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Abolition of Slavery. The trader declared that the amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865, less than two years after the tragic execution of Sergeant William Walker.

  Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

  The nurses and patients shouted out their devotion to abolition and then saluted the trader who was disabled by a shoulder sling and an ice pack. The trader was always a memorable storier, but that night on the porch he was at his very best, a glorious raconteur. The spiritual strength of his entire body seemed to arise in his sonorous voice, as a whisper, chant, and the mighty shouts of justice.

  Jefferson declared that he would forever remember the soldier and so named his second-born son in honor of Sergeant Walker. The black soldier was executed only because he protested the injustice of slavery and the inequity of military pay. He should have been honored not executed. So, that night on the porch of the reservation hospital the soldier was honored by name, remembrance, and stories.