Lawrence asked Henri if he had ever met any other natives or enlisted infantry veterans on the classy Capitol Limited. The train rushed into the night of tributes, and his huge face reflected on the window between the pale lights of passing stations. “Gentlemen,” he said with a slight bow, and then he moved closer, smiled, and continued, “you are the first Indians, but not the first savages to dine on this train.”
My brother burst into laughter, and told the steward, “Now that we are actually wild citizens of this country, we plan to march with veterans and sentence the congressmen who voted against the quick bonus to live on reservations until the end of the Depression, and with the communists.”
Henri turned away to welcome other passengers to the dining car. He directed two genteel older women to a nearby table. We were out of place by name and manner, of course, but our native stories of art, war, and literature were more creative that night than the social rank, gasps, and cultural blather we heard in the dining room and later in the lounge car.
The Capitol Limited was not a puppet train.
John Leecy, Salo, Messy Fairbanks, the chef de cuisine, and our relatives were celebrated in our stories on the road that night. Our stories were the continuation of the many versions of native road stories, and similar to the canoe stories of the fur trade. The versions and revisions of our truth stories were native traditions, not the mere recitation or pout of liturgy. Plucky mocked the rank and category stories of the burly men in the lounge car, the empire bluster stories, business associates in tailored suits, discovery of treasures, double dares of the stock market, and then he cast an ironic revision of the double prohibition stories on federal reservations.
We listened to lounge stories into the night and lightly teased each other over the disparities of the market values of government schools, and overstated the virtues and worth of the old hotel, the state bank, and dark depression theater on the reservation. Lawrence noted in a secretive voice, that he intended as a tease to be overheard, when he mentioned the understated value of the white pine stumpage, and then we returned to our bunks in the sleeping car as the train rushed through the dark heart of Ohio.
‹| 4 |›
DOUBLE PROHIBITION
The Capitol Limited clattered over the bridge on the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry. The sunset raved in the oak and dogwood, turned the broken factories into hues of rosy bricks, revealed the fine white weave of tablecloths in the dining car, and two hours later the train arrived on time at Union Station near the United States Capitol.
The Capitol Limited never outran the misery.
Henri opened the carriage door and escorted the old women to the platform with a courtly manner, they were tourists and probably not aware that the city was occupied by thousands of veterans. We were the last to leave the train, and ready to start our road and totem stories in the Bonus Expeditionary Force. Henri saluted, leaned closer as we stepped out of the train, and then chanted a catchy line from a song in a musical, “Fifty million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong.”
Plucky, always canny and ready with a tease, returned the salute and crooned back a line from a musical he created overnight, “Four tricky warriors over there, and over here we are native veterans in the Bonus Army.” The notions of the musical were delivered much earlier in the smoky lounge car when we overheard entitlement tales about the musical, Fifty Million Frenchmen, which first opened on Broadway a few weeks after the stock market crash. Two heavy barons of the lounge had free tickets to the witty production and recounted some of the scenes. The Paris of sex, art, wine, literature, music, and dance after the war was compared to the conservative monitors, churchy manners, prohibition, and tidy censors in the United States. Plucky was excited by the theater small talk, and with no knowledge of the musical, he cut in with a comparison of Frenchy lust and liberty to the tyranny of federal agents and the double prohibition of alcohol on reservations, and then chanted, “Ten Million Indians Can’t Be Wrong.”
The cadence of his voice quieted the dressy loungers. They probably had never considered natives in the public exchange of ideas, or cultural banter, certainly not about alcohol, and plainly reasoned that natives had a genetic weakness to firewater. No doubt they surmised the ten million vanished natives was a dummy boast. One rather stately man, who smoked thick cigars, and seemed to be connected in some way to the government, broke the silence with a simple inquiry, “Why a double prohibition?”
“Truly, sir, the prohibition was tripled because the agents outlawed alcohol on reservations long before the national prohibition.” Plucky became the native courier of second thoughts, and with the sway of the train he held the attention of the other men for only a few minutes, probably because they were preoccupied with how a native could purchase a ticket on a luxury passenger train, and maybe they were distracted by our earlier tease talks in the lounge car about investments in timber stumps, banks, hotels, and theaters on the reservation. The white pine had been cut decades earlier, of course, and the bank and tiny theater had been closed for many years. Slowly the businessmen turned away, obviously not interested in the comparison, but the stately man asked one more question, “What then was the third prohibition?”
“Well, sir, you can drink, but not make or sell booze, but we were forbidden to drink hooch, make, or do anything with alcohol, unless, of course, you were a priest on the reservation.” The other lounge men laughed about priests and altar wine.
Altar wine was a native communion.
Four veterans marched two abreast down the platform with the spirit of ravens at the very heart of the nation, and we were ready to overturn the delayed Tombstone Bonus. The steamy platform was a perfect scene for a silent movie as we emerged that night, the mysterious natives ready for political combat with the government. The Bonus Army was just one more adventure of native resistance to federal agents and government policies. Natives mocked the bloody quantum bunk, conspired to overturn the allotment of native communal land, declared the obvious with each breath, that natives were the first citizens of the continent and would outlive the pose and pack of the federal government.
Plucky marched directly into the central interior of the station and wheezed, wheezed, wheezed over the massive arches of marble, the empire center of worldly travelers, but we arrived that night ready for active bonus duty, not a tour of ancient architecture.
The station was crowded with hundreds of veterans, and almost every long bench was occupied with weary bodies, already slanted over for the night. We could easily recognize the veterans by their bags and packs, and many wore regimental insignias. Naturally we searched the rows of benches for natives or any veterans we might have served with in France.
We emerged from the station in the capitol night, with no idea of directions or a place to stay. The breeze moved the leaves and street trash, and with a strong scent of wood fires in the distance. We had no directions to name, and other veterans pointed to the south, so we started our walk toward Capitol Hill.
Plucky, the bold leader of our first bonus platoon, continued the merry march down Louisiana Avenue to Constitution and then to the National Mall. There were veterans camped in every direction from Capitol Hill to the Washington Monument, tents and shanties, fires, flags, dugouts, slogans and signs. We marched slowly through the thick smoke, canvas and cars, past state signs, and at last discovered five native campers under the banner of Oklahoma. The Cherokee veterans had arrived a week earlier by motorcar, a dusty 1929 Ford Model A, and staked a native claim on the grassy mall.
The Osage were nearby in two luxury cars.
Star Boy, our cousin, fought with Cherokee soldiers in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, and now teased the veterans about the reverse of the Oklahoma Sooners, native land claims on the National Mall. We sat on the footboard of the car and on boxes and shined our stories for several hours that night. Plucky started to sing a chorus of the “March of the Hungry Man,” and with original lines about veterans.
Give ear for the sound is
growing
From the desert and dungeon and den,
The tramp of the marching millions,
The march of the hungry men,
And natives from the reservation
Ready to march with the hungry veterans,
And overturn the bonus tombstones.
The Tombstone Bonus could have been the enemy way, a bogus bonus concocted by senators to deceive the veterans, but the capitol party hoax was revealed and became a great cause and union of veterans. That poetic tombstone would mark the political graves of the senators who had lost honor in the stories of veterans.
The First World War in France was never the same for natives, circles of race, breed, and colonial brands in combat, but the casualties increased with the hues and tones, and at the end of the war most native veterans returned to double exile on separatist reservations, and other veterans lost their jobs to younger men who were never mustered to serve in the Great War.
The Great Peace turned a blind eye to veterans.
The Cherokees were crowded under heavy tarpaulin, pitched and open at the sides, and the seats of the car were converted to beds for two native boys from New Mexico. Sergeant Counts, the father, was a veteran and native artist from Santa Fe, and his paintings were secured in the trunk of the car. He displayed his work every day at the Washington Monument, and in the previous few days he sold two portraits of Popé, the inspiration of the great Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
Counts praised our cousin Star Boy for his courage in combat and loaned him a heavy woven blanket for the night. The rest of us borrowed sections of double corrugated cardboard, not as cushions but as barriers to absorb some of the ground moisture that first night on the National Mall. Not the same as cold nights in the trenches, or the autumn forests of the war. Now we traveled with light clothes, no blankets, ammunition, thick coats, or rain cover.
Star Boy, Blue Raven, and I were awake most of the night, and so were hundreds of other veterans in the area. Counts had served in the same combat infantry regiment as our cousin. We listened to the stories nearby, and the sound of laughter in the distant encampments reminded us of the war, only the best memories of camaraderie and combat in France.
The footboard was more homey than a lounge.
Blue Raven never presented the hand puppets on the Capitol Limited. The stewards and porters were obsessed with service, and there were no children on the train. The upstart travelers were consumed with manners, not the right audience to imagine the slights and gestures of puppets in motion, but the children of veterans were ready to be doubly teased on the National Mall.
Herbert Tombstone pushed his tinny head above the car door and surprised the two boys in the back seat. The boys, ages six and eight, covered their mouths and giggled when the puppet shouted out that he was the only white man from New Mexico. “You know,” moaned Tombstone, “the veterans kicked me like a can down the road to the White House.” Blue Raven was perched at an angle on the footboard with the puppet over his head, and the open back window of the car became a perfect stage. “I lost my real head at a rodeo, and can you boys find me a place to stay?” His tin head knocked three times on the door frame. “Do you have a tiny bed for me in the back seat?”
The Counts boys were generous that night.
Thursday, June 2, 1932, was a cold and hazy night, and we counted the hours to dawn. The first glance of sunlight rescued our bodies from the overnight moisture, but the sun did not end our hunger. The camp was crowded and there were no spaces for the new veterans, only enough room for friends and family. Star Boy returned the blanket, the cardboard was dried out in the sun, and we were directed to a camp breakfast near Capitol Hill. Coffee, thick bread, and jam were barely enough to survive, but we were duty bound and ready to march or work for a meal at any kitchen on the road of the Bonus Expeditionary Force.
Counts named two camps nearby, a department store and a theater where bonus veterans were camped, and other veterans we met on the road mentioned Camp Marks on the Anacostia Flats. We set out to discover the veteran camps, choose our company, and connect with the skinny booted leader of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, Walter Waters from Portland, Oregon.
‹| 5 |›
BAGMAN CIVICS
Walter Waters was our guiding light and regarded as the mysterious premier of the Bonus Expeditionary Force. We were told he only attended large gatherings, and set aside more time for senators and sympathetic citizens than the veterans, but no one forgot that he secured most of the food for the Bonus Army. The veterans saluted the premier over the rutabaga soup and hard bread.
Waters worried most about the communists.
We were warned several times by veterans and police to resist the Communist Red Brigade, and especially John Pace, the Red Weasel, a leader of the commie workers and league of servicemen. He was a veteran poseur with a ready accent out of the Ozark Mountains. Blue Raven mocked the finger waves and empty words about commies. He drew a huge rosy head of a hand puppet and a red banner with the printed words, “Pozark Commie.” Pozark, the creation of a hand puppet, was a combination of two words, poseur and Ozark.
Star Boy was in charge of our platoon that morning in search of overnight quarters, and aimed us in the direction south of Capitol Hill. We marched and played soldier down Pennsylvania Avenue to Eighth Street near the Navy Yard. The Bieber-Kaufman department store was in ruins, and fully occupied by hundreds of veterans. Bricks were stacked in the yard, barrels crowned with trash, and every room and crevice in the abandoned building was a strategic center of some veteran activity in the Bonus Army.
My brother searched trash bins and gutters on our patrols of overnight quarters in the city for tins, boxes, and scraps of cloth to make new hand puppets, and found everything he needed in the department store refuse, a red shirt sleeve, two shoe tongues, a bright tin of Union Leader Smoking Tobacco with the image of a bald eagle, and Bears’ Elephant Cigarettes, a matchbook holder, and various bits, buttons, shards, a necktie, and string to create the red hand puppet named Pozark Commie.
The Bieber-Kaufman veterans, an integrated band of southern infantry soldiers and Harlem Hellfighters, were invited by the owner to occupy the ruins of the building. Most of the windows were out, entire walls had collapsed, and yet the cracked cement and red brick dust was paradise compared to the cold tamped grass at night on the National Mall.
The duty veterans at the store were concerned when they saw my brother searching through the camp trash, and thought we were desperate and hungry. The veterans had no idea that we had traveled to the city on a luxurious train, and had camped on cardboard for two days. Grin Burns, a wiry veteran with a crooked smile, ordered us to rest, eat, and smoke, and in that order. When he learned that we were natives from the White Earth Reservation he shouted out to the other veterans, “The Indians have arrived for the fight.” Our presence was cheered, and that became a natural bond, a residence, and regular meals for several days. The dinner was an indescribable soup with rutabaga, cabbage, corn, beans, carrots, and traces of stringy meat or some strange vegetable, and the grain was earthy, but tasty, lasting, and truly a promise of survival in a tin bowl. I was content with the trench soup, and the taste reminded me of rough and ready meals in combat, prunes, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, and weevils in the mushy oats.
Plucky traded cigarettes for four narrow sections of threadbare canvas to cover the straw, enough to sleep on the concrete near the old loading dock, and a few nights later we moved inside, to the second floor of the department store. The toilets were slit trenches and covered dugouts behind the building. Actually the second floor was not the best location because the only access was a makeshift ladder, at night the only way to the trenches and dugouts.
Star Boy was out at first light the next morning with several other veterans. They waited in silence, backs against a brick barrier, for the sun to warm their bodies. Our cousin started the sun ritual when he was a boy, and every clear morning since then he has faced the sun. He once told me that
enemy soldiers sought the same solace at first light, and then turned back to continue the war. “I might have killed the same soldiers, but not at first light.” Star Boy named the sunrise ritual the Enemy Way.
Pelham Glassford, the uniformed superintendent of police, arrived shortly after breakfast that morning on his blue Harley-Davidson motorcycle, part of a regular tour, we were told, of every veteran encampment in the city. He had provided tents, cots, and food, and truly worried about the hundreds of bonus marchers that arrived every day in the city. The veterans gathered around mostly to admire the motorcycle, but my brother saluted the former general and asked him about the other camps in the city. Glassford named Anacostia Flats, the National Mall, the Federal Triangle on Pennsylvania Avenue, and dozens of deserted buildings, and, for a few hours of sleep, he suggested the Gayety Theater on Ninth Street. He revved the motorcycle engine and continued his tour of the camps.
Plucky led our reservation platoon a few days later to the Federal Triangle, the first camp of veterans in the city, and where the veterans were mostly from southern states. Camp Glassford became the name of the encampment because the superintendent had directed the veterans who had arrived by foot and freight cars to that area of razed buildings and new construction. Hundreds of veterans were encamped there, and we met dozens of veterans who trained at Camp Wadsworth near Spartanburg, South Carolina, for combat infantry service in the First World War. Naturally, we told stories about the many pets, dogs, pigs, chickens, raccoons, and donkeys that some soldiers brought with them to the cantonment, the “Dere Mable” fictional letters in the weekly magazine named the Gas Attack, the simulated trench combat, and no rural boy would ever forget the peculiar gestures and military manners of the trench training officers from Britain and France.
Native Tributes Page 4