Okla Hannali, Page 6

  They began to lay out the districts in their talk — how it would be if they were really forced to move here.

  The Cherokees would be north of the Arkansas River.

  The Creek Indians would be between the Arkansas River and the south (or main) Canadian River.

  The Choctaws would be between the Canadian River and downstream Arkansas River line and the Red River. The Chickasaws did not see any land they wanted at all. It was agreed, if it ever came to it, that they would somehow share land with the Choctaws.

  The Choctaws talked of their three divisions, for there would always be three. One district would take the Canadian River as its north border and extend as far south as the watershed — the Winding Stair Mountains and the Jacksfork Mountains. South of the mountains, there would be two districts: one east of the Kiamichi River and one west.

  They found a little better land in the South in the valleys of the streams that feed the Red River: the Washita (in those early days called the False Washita to distinguish it from the similarly pronounced Ouachita River in Louisiana), the Blue River, the Clear Boggy, the Muddy Boggy, the Kiamichi, the Little River, the Mountain Fork.

  “It is better, but still not very good country,” said Peter Pitchlynn. They returned to their homes and gave a bad report on the land.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1.

  Old Indians in the new country. Masked men and bull whips. Nineteen thousand five hundred and fifty-four Choctaws.

  How did it happen that the Indian Territory was not already settled by Indians? — that it could be considered as a new home for the Five Indian Nations of the South? Were there not Indians living there already?

  There sure were. Three times the men of the Pitchlynn-Colbert Expedition had been surrounded by very large bands of Indians. These had treated them well, and their leaders had smoked and talked with the leaders of the Expedition. But these resident Indians had laid it out quite plainly that if the intruders should come in significant numbers they would all have to be killed.

  And always the Expedition was followed, but so silently that even sharp-sensing ones like Hannali were hardly aware of it. The Plains Indians especially would come walking barefoot on the grass, talking hand talk among themselves and uttering no sound. They controlled their breathing, and when they practiced the easy-breathe rather than the hard-breathe it was said that their scent nearly vanished. They were everywhere, there were a lot of them.

  There were the splinter tribes, Anadarkos, Wacos, Kadohadachos, remnants of the great Caddoan Confederacy. There were some Pawnees, Wichitas, Comanches, Osages, Quapaws, and Kiowas in residence. Those great travelers, the Shawnees and Delawares, were to be found. There were Utes in the far West of the Territory. There were Poncas and Kickapoos and Tonkawas, and fragments of many tribes whose main bands dwelt hundreds of miles away.

  But there were very few farming Indians in that country. This was hunting country, two thirds of it buffalo country, all of it deer country. As such it was adjudged as country not in intensive use. A country should support ten men farming where it will support one man hunting. So bring the southern Indians in and let the land support them. Let the hunting Indians hunt elsewhere, change their ways, or die.

  But there were natural reasons why much of this land could never be farmed successfully.

  Hannali Innominee returned to his old home and made preparations to move to the new Territory if it had to be done. His father Barua would not move. Barua had been a middle-aged man when he got his first sons, almost an old man when he got Hannali, and he was quite an old man now. The mother Chapponia was dead.

  Brother Biloxi said that he would remain in Mississippi. He knew that he would be done out of his farm one way or another and must remain as a poor laborer or renter, but he would stay. Biloxi Innominee was a good-natured, simple, big-bellied man. The brother Pass Christian once said it correctly: that Papa Barua had left his brains to Pass Christian, his vigor to Hannali, and his pot to Biloxi.

  Hannali found that things had been getting rougher in the Choctaw country and still worse in the areas of the other tribes. There were Chocs who said that all the Indians should rise even now. But there was a reason why it would be insanity for them to revolt.

  There was not one Indian in ten who had a gun, not one in fifty who knew how to use one properly. Hannali learned that if he carried his own carbine openly in the Choctaw country he would soon lose his life. But every white settler had a gun and knew how to use it.

  What store of guns the Indians did have was systematically dried up. One by one, Indian settlements were surrounded by large bodies of hooded men. These men hooted and howled like Choctaws, but they didn't have the same tone or timbre. They had white man boots and pants below their hoods, and they rode known white man horses.

  These were not the first hooded men in the South. The Choctaws themselves had hooded-man and masked-man ceremonies and societies. And also, at an early date, the white-hooded Cagoulard society had crossed from old France to French Louisiana, and visitations by their men had been made on certain persons of bad behavior. Now the Peckerwoods of the South took it up in an extreme form to cow the Indians.

  An Indian found with a gun was whipped to death. The Choctaws had more meat on them than other Indians and were able to endure longer under the lash. There were cases of a man taking a thousand lashes before he died, and the bull-whip wielders could deliver a blow with one of those things that was capable of shattering bones.

  Were the Indians somehow effete to let this happen to them? Were they less men than the white men? No. Man for man they were more man than the whites. But they were unarmed except for bow and lance, and the white men had rifles and courts and sheriffs and armies. Though the United States in the person of its President Andrew Jackson had announced itself powerless to oppose the states in their assaults on the Indians, yet its army was quickly available to put down any countermoves by the Indians against the states.

  Before the whole removal was completed, the Creek and Seminole Indians would have proved that their poorly armed men were the match for double or triple their numbers of regular white soldiers. But the odds would be raised still higher against them to the breaking point.

  Nitakechi was the only Choctaw capable of leading a revolt. He could have found a dozen men of the caliber of his brother Opiahoma, of Peter Pitchlynn, or George Harkins, or Joseph Kincaid or Joel Nail as second echelon. Nail was Nitakechi's rival, but rivalries would cease on the call for an uprising. Nitakechi could have found a hundred men of the caliber of Hannali Innominee or John T or Albert Horse for third echelon.

  Nitakechi was as brave as his uncle Pushmataha had been. He was better educated but less intelligent. He lacked the incredible speed of body and mind that old Push had possessed. And he had his poor people to consider.

  Nitakechi threw the matter up to Moshulatubbee, and the old man threw it back to him. The old Mingo Moshulatubbee said that — old as he was (he was then more than eighty years old) — he would raise his people and give battle if Nitakechi would lead; but he would not himself give the word to rise. His hand and his mind had lost their craft, he said, and he did not know what to do. He said that it was a problem without an answer and had been so from the beginning. The day was past when a just peace could be maintained by strong men with staves.

  It wasn't done. Revolt wasn't the answer. There was no answer.

  When Hannali was convinced that there wouldn't be revolt, he put his alternate plan into action — that which his brother Pass Christian had planted in his mind the year before in New Orleans.

  He would go to the new Territory and take along such founding men as he could get to go and establish themselves there. They would set up posts. They would plant all the acres of corn they could handle. They would amass droves of hogs and cattle, establish shops and smithies, plant cotton and set up spinning and weaving, and have turnips and potatoes in the ground. And Pass Christian Innominee and severa
l of his associates would arrange for such financing as they were capable of.

  When the Indians came to the new Territory there would be some food for them. The first settlers could carry the new arrivals over and get them started. It might work for a year. The second year, who could say? But when came the real flood of the refugees in the third and fourth years, then God help the poor Indians!

  How many Choctaws are we talking about? The census of September 1830 (and it is believed to be accurate for all that it was made of bundles of sticks turned in by heads of families to town leaders and by them to the District chiefs) would give the numbers:

  7505 LeFlore's District (Okla Falaya).

  6106 Nitakechi's District (the Pushmataha, Okla Hannali).

  5943 Moshulatubbee's District (Okla Tannaps).

  Not quite twenty thousand Choctaws in the old South, and by then about a thousand had already emigrated.

  2.

  Of John T. Albert Horse, a gray-eyed Indian, and the little girl Natchez. Strange Choate and the star sparkle.

  The only people that Hannali could call his own was a group of Choctaw blacks. There were about a dozen of these. But somehow the blacks numbered more than twenty when Hannali started them toward the Arkansas Territory. There was a good blacksmith among them, for instance, and Hannali hadn't had a blacksmith before. There were others of useful talent. Hannali had enticed several superior slaves to run away and go with his band to the new Indian country.

  Hannali started them toward the Arkansas West in wagons, and he appointed the young Martha Louisiana to be matriarch in charge. He gave her casual instructions how to find the stake he had driven to mark his new homestead: to follow the river to the branching, to follow the new river to another branching, to leave the shore where three cottonwood trees form a certain cluster, and to look for the stake fifty yards back from the river bank. He gave Martha Louisiana one hundred dollars American money, enough to carry any party through any eventuality.

  The blacks, some twenty of them, slaves by law, went through five hundred miles of slave country and direct to the stake with never a question of their not being able to find it. Their wagons and livestock were of value, as were they themselves, but they were not taken along the way. They had quiet assurance; they were challenged often but never overawed. It seemed impossible that they should get through untaken, but Hannali was a fool for luck and some of it rubbed off on his people.

  Hannali then rode through the Choctaw country for a few days, conferring with the big men, becoming something of a big man himself as he accepted responsibility. He got a dozen capable men to promise that they would follow quickly with what parties they could raise; that they would set up farms in the new country and grow corn for the multitudes who would soon be coming over the trails.

  Then Hannali himself started toward the new Territory accompanied only by two close friends: his cousin John T, and a strong, silent Choctaw man named Albert Horse. Hannali's cousin's name T was a name and not an initial. He himself pronounced it Tay. Later, in the new country, men would pronounce it Tee and John would have to accept it.

  The three of them moved easily through Mississippi on horseback. They crossed the river and went into the Arkansas Territory up the Boeuf Valley. They were only a few days behind Hannali's blacks, and they had news of them from blacks of the land there and from Arkansas Indians.

  The riders never met open hostility. They were three big armed men who always called out in friendly fashion when they approached cabins or clusters of cabins, and they avoided any large settlements. They could tell whether a cabin cluster was an Indian or a white man settlement, though perhaps they would have been unable to explain how they could always tell at a distance.

  When no settlement was to be found near night, they killed fowl and piny deer, and ate and slept in the open.

  One afternoon, Hannali was riding alone, and a mile or so ahead of the other two, when he came on a white man afoot who blocked his path. This man was possibly younger than Hannali, and he had a certain steeliness in his look.

  “Get off that horse, you lout, and give me that fiddle!” the man snapped out in words that cracked like a mule whip.

  Hannali was not about to get off his horse and give up anything he had, but there was something here that truly startled him. You'd look at a thousand men and you wouldn't see one like this. He was not a man to fool with, and he sure didn't seem to be fooling.

  The man had a carbine, almost the twin of Hannali's, asling. Hannali was not at all sure which could unsling the faster. Many white men are very fast.

  They locked looks, and locking looks with that man was like standing up to a lance thrust. But something drew a corner of Hannali's glance from the boiling gray fire of the man's eyes to lower down. Well, what do you know about that? There was something the matter with the man's stomach. It was as though he had swallowed a kicking pig.

  By and by there was something the matter with Hannali's stomach also, much the same thing. Swallowed laughter can be held in only so long. The two of them erupted at the same time, and Hannali tumbled off his horse, chuckling and howling and talking all at the same time.

  “You are no white man you are only white outside you be as much Indian as I am you are a clay-footed chuckler you could have hang me for a hog if I was onto you at first your by hokey gray eyes is what had me spooked you're no more a white man than I am what do you want my fiddle for.”

  “Show you how to play the clay-footed thing,” the man chortled, and Hannali smothered him in a body press. Boys they were, the two of them. Who wants to be a man yet? They bear-hugged each other like brothers and became friends for life.

  The big bluff was a game that Indian boys played when they met as strangers. They posted their dire threats and glared, and whoever broke and laughed first lost.

  The gray-eyed Indian said his name was Chizem. He was not, as Hannali had believed, a Choctaw. His mother was Cherokee Indian and his father was Scottish. How could a Choctaw chuckler come out of a nest like that?

  John T and Albert Horse rode up after a while, and they were not fooled as Hannali had been. They knew an Indian when they saw one. Hannali had been distraught that day or he would have known. It came on evening, and Chizem said that they should ride to the farm of friends of his.

  “Yes I think that we should be with settled people this night,” said Albert Horse, “it is that Hannali is act funny he talks funny and he rides off by himself there is something the matter with Hannali's head.”

  “Maybe there is nothing wrong with my friend Hannali,” said Chizem. “Maybe Hannali is all right and the rest of the world is funny.”

  “That is not so,” said John T, “I think he acts funny Albert think he act funny even his horse think he act funny there is something funny with his head.”

  They rode to the farm of the friends of Chizem. It was a cluster of cabins at night and the area was ablaze with pine torches. There was a hog scalding going on. This was the settlement of an old Cherokee Indian named Strange Choate and his wife Sarah and their family of four grown boys themselves with families; and of the little girl named Natchez.

  There were a dozen slaughtered hogs strung up. A hog scalding should have a fiddler, and Hannali fiddled for them. It was funny music he made, though, not the sort he usually played. There was no doubt of it, Hannali was acting funny.

  The Cherokee Strange Choate told them a little about himself and his business. He was of the western or early-removed Cherokees, as was Chizem. For a while he had lived over the line in the western Arkansas Territory, the new Indian country. Now he was back in the old Arkansas Territory, but barely over the line. (Hannali and his companions had not realized that they were so near their destination.) Strange Choate raised hogs. He provided salt pork for the garrison at Fort Gibson and for settlers generally. He had lived at the Grand Saline in the western country and still had a brother there. It was at the Grand Saline (Salina) that the little girl Natchez had been born.
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br />   “How has she her name,” asked Albert Horse, “how is it be that a little Cherokee girl have the name of the faraway Natchez people she ought to have a different name.”

  “It is because she is small and scrawny like the Natchez that I call her that,” said Strange Choate.

  Chizem played Hannali's fiddle for the pig scalders. He had not been boasting when he told Hannali that he could show him how to play the clay-footed thing. On this night he played better than Hannali, for Hannali had indeed been playing funny.

  It was early in the springtime. But spring had just come to Hannali Innominee and very late. There was something the matter with his head or with his liver, which the Choctaws believed to be the seat of the affections.

  Hannali watched the little girl Natchez standing behind the torches. He noticed about her that, though she was quite a little girl, she was not as young as she had seemed at first sight. She was marriageable. Hannali went to her father Strange Choate to give him this information and to ask him two things.

  “How many do you have all together of pigs hogs shoats weanlings all of them together how many do you have,” he asked Strange Choate.

  “About three hundred,” Strange Choate told him.

  “I need a hundred of them to settle in the new country with,” Hannali told him, “I will need that many to have pork for the new Indians coming over the trail and to have a drove of hogs growing for the Indians who will come the next year and the next I need one hundred.”

  “I will sell anything if we can agree on a price,” said Strange.