Hole in the Day was eager to serve two countries. He was a warrior at heart and could not wait for the United States to enter the war. So, by political omission our cousin enlisted at once in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces and served as a private in the Ontario Regiment in France.
Private Hole in the Day was a distinguished native warrior in Canada and the United States. Sadly he was wounded, poisoned by mustard gas near Passchendaele in West Flanders, Belgium. He was a fancy dresser and world adventurer, and he died at the Canadian General Hospital in Montreal, Canada, on June 4, 1919.
Ellanora Beaulieu, our cousin, enlisted as a nurse and served in the American Army of Occupation in Germany. Theodore Hudon Beaulieu, her father, was the spirited editor of the Progress, the first newspaper published on the White Earth Reservation. Ellanora served as a nurse for only about five months and then she died in the influenza epidemic. She was buried on the reservation in the Episcopal Calvary Cemetery.
Aloysius had carved a blue raven medal for our cousin, but at the end of the war we were in Paris, France. We placed the pendant on her gravestone when we returned to the reservation. Ellanora was four years older, a loyal cousin who respected our secrets, ambitions, and always appreciated my native stories and the original blue raven art of my brother.
Private Charles Beaupré was killed in action at Saint-Quentin, France, on October 8, 1918, on the very same day that our closest cousin, Ignatius Vizenor, died nearby in Montbréhain. Charles was trained in the American Tank Corps and served with the British Expeditionary Forces.
Private Ignatius Vizenor was the son of Michael Vizenor and Angeline Cogger. Ignatius was trained at Camp Dodge, Iowa, and Camp Sevier, South Carolina, before he boarded a troop ship on May 16, 1918, for duty in France. Hole in the Day and Ignatius were always dressed to the nines on the reservation. They wore suit coats, smart shirts, ties, and fedoras. Aloysius honored them with blue raven medals.
Private Fred Casebeer, son of Joseph Casebeer, was drafted on March 30, 1918, and trained at Camp Dodge, Iowa, and at Camp Mills, New York. He was wounded in combat and died the same day on September 30, 1918, in France.
Becker County selected more than twelve hundred soldiers out of some four thousand who were registered for the draft under the Selective Service Act of 1917. Sixty native soldiers were drafted from the eastern part of White Earth Reservation. The soldiers were sent to more than thirty camps around the country, and most of the soldiers were trained with units of the National Guard from various states, and those units became the first divisions of the American Expeditionary Forces.
Becker County lost more than fifty soldiers in the First World War, and five of the war dead, four soldiers, Charles Beaupré, Ignatius Vizenor, William Hole in the Day, Fred Casebeer, and one nurse, Ellanora Beaulieu, were natives from the same community on the White Earth Reservation.
Father William Doyle, the Trench Priest, died in the Battle of Ypres on the very same day as our uncle Augustus. The priest was the chaplain for the Eighth Royal Irish Fusiliers and served soldiers in the trenches. He was killed ten years after his ordination while he brought spiritual comfort to the wounded. The saints in the trenches were anointed by chance in military uniforms.
Odysseus arrived that early summer with Calypso and Bayard on the Soo Line Railroad at the Ogema Station. The trader and his loyal horses were old and weary of the noise and risks of the trade routes. Some of the old trails were fenced, or had become highways crowded with motor cars and machines, and crossed by railroad tracks.
Calypso followed the wagon road from the train station to the livery stable at the Hotel Leecy. We heard the hearty voice of the trader at a distance as he rounded the mission pond. The tone of his voice was heartfelt, and melancholy, as he sang the chorus of “Over There” by George Cohan. The music was appropriate for the serious mood of the reservation, the war, and selective service.
Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming….
We’ll be over, we’re coming over,
And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.
Aloysius had carved thirty blue raven medals for the trader, and we carried ten medals into combat in France. Odysseus secured his wares in the stable, and then surprised us both with two perfect presents. The trader gave me a Hammer Brand Elephant Toe pocketknife with a red pick bone handle. Aloysius was given the same knife with an amber pick bone handle. Naturally, my brother would carve blue raven medals with his knife, but the trader stressed that we should use the knives as weapons in close combat. Our conversations that summer were dominated by the war.
The Sears Roebuck Military Equipment Catalogue was distributed early that year in time for the war. We ordered two olive drab wool sweaters with no sleeves for $13.50 each, and a chamois money belt for 65 cents. The catalogue was for officers, but no one checked our rank before the order was shipped to the Ogema Train Station. The prices were rather expensive even though we earned a good wage at the Hotel Leecy. Hats, uniforms, collar ornaments, canvas and leather puttees, holsters, waterproof matchboxes, and hundreds of military wares were illustrated on twenty pages of the catalogue. We were amazed that anyone with the money could easily order a Colt Machine Gun for $865.00, and for $16.50 a Colt Automatic Pistol. Naturally, that machine gun came to mind many times in combat with the Germans.
John Clement Beaulieu and his younger brother Paul Hudon Beaulieu, our cousins, were among the first to register for the draft early in the year. We registered at the same time with our cousins and many friends, Lawrence Vizenor, Ignatius Vizenor, George Jackson, Everett Fairbanks, John Roy, John Razor, Louis Swan, Patch Zhimaaganish, and others. Ignatius and his brother Lawrence were activated on February 25, 1918, and sent to Camp Dodge, Iowa, and then for more infantry training at Camp Sevier, South Carolina. They were in fierce combat a few months later in France.
Reservation natives were listed on the Registration Card as “natural born” at White Earth, Minnesota. Height, marital status, color of eyes and hair, and occupation were noted on the card, and most natives were listed as “laborers.” There was no designation for reservation or natives. The government decided there was no reason to record race, but the class category of laborers was necessary. So, we may not have been considered citizens of the country because we lived on a federal reservation, but our distinct culture was apparently not relevant on the Registration Card for the Selective Service Act in Becker County.
The Tomahawk published a letter about native citizens and the draft by Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Johnson of the War Department on August 30, 1917, a few weeks after the death of our uncle Augustus. “Tribal Indians, that is Indians living as members of a tribe, are not citizens, and are not covered by the provisions” of the Selective Service Act. “The Indians should be advised of this, and that they can present the claim of exemption prepared for aliens, as they are to be considered such for the purpose of this act.”
No native “aliens” prepared an exemption, or at least no native boasted the claim of exemption from the draft on the White Earth Reservation. Younger natives were ready for the adventure of combat, not for a passive alien exemption of service in the Great War in France.
The federal government decided, after a wrangle between the War Department, eager wardens, unbearable protectors, guardians, federal agents, and progressives, that natives should serve as regular soldiers and not in segregated military units. Augustus would have railed at the post office, at the bank, over dinner with friends at the Hotel Leecy, and in the Tomahawk against the very idea that natives would be separated from other soldiers.
Black soldiers were segregated in special military units and were mostly deployed behind the battle lines in support units. In spite of the obvious prejudice and segregation black soldiers demonstrated their loyalty and proved their bravery in every combat situation. No soldier who had ever fought in the same combat areas as the Ha
rlem Hellfighters, otherwise named the Fifteenth New York National Guard Regiment, would ever doubt that the soldiers were spirited, strong, and brave warriors. The regiment was awarded the Legion of Merit by the War Department. The French presented the Croix de Guerre to the Harlem Hellfighters.
Aloysius could not convince the draft board that he was a native artist not a laborer. We were both designated as laborers, mere stable boys. My brother painted a blue raven and in the talons the word “artist” was boldly printed on a Registration Card.
› 10 ‹
GAS ATTACK
— — — — — — — 1918 — — — — — — —
Augustus arrived at the livery stable one early morning last spring, a few months before his death, to talk about the war. He was aware that we had registered for the draft, and several cousins had already been mustered for service. Our uncle was worried that so many young native men, and mostly our relatives in one generation, would be at risk of death and serious wounds in the war.
Augustus might not have appreciated the adventures of war that we two imagined at the time. Our uncle was eighteen years old at the end of the American Civil War and had never forgotten how the nation was ravaged by savagery and lasting misery. The war ended just three years before the federal treaty that established the White Earth Reservation in 1868.
Sadly, our favorite uncle died before we went to war, and before the creation of my first stories. That quiet morning in the stable he promised to publish in the Tomahawk the stories of my experiences as a soldier, and to designate a weekly section in the newspaper for my war stories. Augustus had already created a new series headline, French Returns by Basile Hudon Beaulieu. A heady moment, of course, but my uncle insisted at the time that my stories must be written with a first and second person voice, and contain some historical information and descriptive scenes of soldiers and combat, and with the horror, humor, and irony of war.
That glorious promise by my uncle was the start of a native literary presence and lingered in the moist air that spring morning, and stayed with me, and the saddles, straw bales, and cobwebs on the windows. The horses were silent, and seemed to wait for my response. My brother turned and answered for me, “Basile will create war stories.” I came to my senses and told my uncle that my stories would never be written with an omniscient point of view.
Augustus considered monotheistic creation an ironic story, at best, and argued that critical view many times with Father Aloysius. The two were good friends, and the discussions between a priest and an editor with strong ideas were always lively, especially over a bottle of sacramental wine. I was present several times when the subject of monotheism was “resurrected,” as my uncle exclaimed, only to provoke the necessary examination of polytheism, churchy liturgy, and original native stories and literature. Augustus declared that monotheism spawned the farcical notion of omniscient points of view by authors, and without any sense of irony. Tricky shamans, my uncle told the priest, were more clever healers than disciples, scripture, and omniscient authors because shamans devised the practice of irony to overturn separatism and singular stories of creation. Even a dunce could imagine stories with more chance and wriggle than an omniscient author with no sense of irony.
Clement Hudon Beaulieu had not been told about the promise his brother had made to publish my stories in the Tomahawk, and he worried as the new editor about the financial success of the weekly newspaper. A few months later, just before we were activated for military service, he revised that golden promise and agreed only to publish my stories about the war as a separate newsprint pamphlet, but not in the Tomahawk. The change of the promise bothered me, of course, but the decision was practical and actually a protection. My stories would be complicated to compose on the patent pages, and should the newspaper be discontinued after more than twenty years of publication on the reservation, my stories would continue to be published as a pamphlet. My stories would be set in type, printed and folded on a single sheet of newsprint, and circulated on the reservation as a series. So, the newsprint pamphlets of my original stories were published, and my family continued to print the series for many years after the war and the termination of the Tomahawk. The French Returns stories were always free on the reservation and remained in my name.
I started my series of stories the minute the train departed from the Ogema Station. The war for every soldier starts at a train station, and our war started one balmy morning that summer. Aloysius painted a scene of several soldiers with the wings of blue ravens, and later he gave a blue raven medal to Patch Zhimaaganish. John Razor, Robert, Allan, and Romain Fairbanks, Louis Swan, and Johnson King had been mustered and were on the train to war. The mighty engine surged and steam shrouded the platform.
Patch Zhimaaganish, our good friend, saluted the station agent and was the last person to board the train. Patch, the soldier, who had been hired as a real assistant station clerk a few months before he was drafted, wore a smart new uniform ordered from the Sears Roebuck Military Equipment Catalogue. Patch waved to his mother, and we waved to our family and friends on the platform, adieu, au revoir, goodbye. Aloysius turned away with a wistful smile. We were native brothers by heart and honor on our way to war.
The Soo Line Railroad made the usual stops at Callaway, Detroit Lakes, Alexandria, and soldiers boarded at every station on the line. We had boarded the very same train nine years earlier, our first adventure outside the reservation. Aloysius remembered similar scenes on our first journey to Minneapolis.
Augustus had encouraged us to discover the world, and he paid our train fare, and had reserved a hotel in the city. We visited the great public library, the West Hotel, the Nicollet Hotel, and the Orpheum Theatre. Aloysius was inspired by the Woman in the Garden, a painting by Yamada Baske. The
Japanese artist was an instructor at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts.
Late that afternoon the train arrived at the Milwaukee Road Depot in Minneapolis. We walked two blocks to the Great Northern Depot on the Mississippi River with hundreds of other soldiers and boarded the Oriental Limited for Chicago. The exotic train crossed the Stone Arch Bridge, roared through the countryside, and my melancholy face was reflected on the window that night between the stations.
Soldiers boarded at every town on the route, and the train arrived the next day in Chicago. The houses in the city had been built with white pine from the White Earth Reservation. Our reservation was never the same, and most of the houses were in need of paint. We waited for more than six hours at the crowded station and then boarded the Norfolk Southern Railroad for Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Camp Wadsworth, a new divisional cantonment, one of many recent military training sites in the country, was located about three miles from Spartanburg. The city was overrun with soldiers on their way to war. The camp was in the foothills of the mountains south of Asheville, and west of Charlotte, North Carolina. We arrived late at night, tired, hungry, and forlorn. Hundreds of other soldiers had just completed their training and were departing for war from the station at the same time. More than thirty thousand soldiers were at the camp in various stages of combat training.
The First Pioneer Infantry was constituted that early summer at Camp Wadsworth. Soldiers who were hunters and had experience in nature and woodcraft were selected to serve in advanced combat infantry units to clear and construct roads. Most reservation natives were hunters and lived closer to nature than soldiers from the city.
Aloysius was associated with art, the abstract images of art, but he was not a heavy hunter or timber cutter. I was considered a writer, and that was true, but never by the separation of nature. So, the officers encouraged me to teach illiterate soldiers how to read and write. Some soldiers thought that was a racial contradiction, that a backward reservation native would teach others how to write. My brother worried at the time about the absolute selection of soldiers for road construction in combat.
Later, however, we were nominated for even more dangerous duty as scouts
in several combat battalions and regiments. The native artist and writer were chosen to infiltrate enemy positions at night and gather strategic information. Patch was selected to play the bugle and sing with the Regimental Band. Robert Fairbanks and Louis Swan were selected and trained for combat construction in the First Pioneer Infantry.
Aloysius was elated the next morning when he saw the Blue Ridge Mountains. The trees had created a blue haze, and the scene was an inspiration of natural art. He carried a small notebook and drew blue ravens over the haze of mighty trees. Catawba natives, we learned later, had hunted in the nearby mountains, but the only natives we met at the training camp were soldiers from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York.
The soldiers were inoculated, examined by a doctor, and the next day ordered to complete an army intelligence test. No one had ever heard of a brain or mental test. The scores were not revealed to the soldiers, so we created smart scores as a tease. My practice of reading the Tomahawk and memorizing a few paragraphs to hawk the newspaper at the train station must have increased the score of my intelligence. There was nothing on the test about natural reason, the seasons, horses, plovers, peyote, mongrels that detected diseases, or ironic stories. Surely native artists and descendants of the crane totem and the fur trade were smarter than federal agents and the reservation police.
Reveille was at six in the morning, and after our first assembly, mess, and fatigue detail we reported to the quartermaster for new uniforms, wool shirts, trousers, brogans, canvas leggings, and other equipment. The shirts, shoes, and trousers of hundreds of soldiers were sized by eye. The sergeant who sized us was a tailor from New York. He never made a mistake. We were truly restyled as soldiers in campaign hats with blue cords. Naturally, the color of the hat cord was notable. By seven in the morning some soldiers reported to the stables, others to fatigue duty. We had experience with horses but that would not matter in the schedule of fatigue duty, company drills, and combat training. We were there to be trained as infantry trench soldiers, not to ride horses. Once we were issued our equipment, canteens, mess kits, canvas backpacks, first aid packet, wool blankets, ponchos, identity tags, and practiced to march in a military manner, it was time
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