The Dying Grass, page 58
Well, we don’t have any reservations left. They were absent when those were being given out.
That’s right, general. They say—
They’re all Dreamers, aren’t they? Look at their hair!
That’s so,
the squaws smiling at us as if we ought to like them,
several braves bearing the silver medal-likenesses of bygone Presidents in hopes of being allowed to ride back to their hunting grounds
(they’re just like little children).
Jim, if we sent them to Kamiah, how would they get along?
Their Agent over there, he’s pretty darn strict, I know. He’d make ’em be good. Cut their hair, make ’em go to church,
as Red Heart
(canted eagle feather in his topknot, loose hair down to his blanket-wrapped breast, downpointing bearclaws circling his throat)
narrows his eyes, staring at us almost unwinkingly, one side of his mouth curving down and the other up, as if he might be ready for either extremity of fortune:
most likely this man has lived through an apoplectic fit; his mouth reminds me of Uncle Stillman’s.
Ask them if they were present when Captain Whipple tried to arrest Looking-Glass.
General, he says: Yes, they were there. He don’t understand why soldiers started shooting—
Well, you know why, don’t you, Jim?
I sure do, general.
How do you feel about it?
I don’t feel much of anything, general.
They said before that they were in the Buffalo Country.
Yessir.
Fletch, get me Captain Throckmorton.
Right away, sir.
Good afternoon, captain. You’re to convene a military commission at once. Try these Indians for the Salmon Creek murders.
Yessir. Shall I pull James Reuben from scout duty to be my interpreter?
No. Unfortunately, we can’t expect the Indians to be unbiased in a matter which concerns their kin. The only white man of use is Ad Chapman, apparently. Entre nous, he bears watching.
So I’ve heard, sir.
Come to think of it, send him here.
Yessir.
Hello, Chapman.
Hello, general; I ain’t seen you since yesterday.
Yes. Are you acquainted with Red Heart?
Sure am, sir. He and his bunch are real bad Indians.
How so?
Well, general, I interpreted for ’em one time at Lapwai, last year it must have been, and they kept asking me why the white people were taking their land. Stealing was what they called it.
And you set them straight.
General, they had their minds made up hard! Couldn’t care less about the facts.
So what did they want?
O, they meant that Agent Monteith should defraud the Government, and I’ll tell you frankly, general, sometimes things run pretty loose at Lapwai.
This is not to the purpose,
but might be useful in case Monteith seeks to turn General Sherman against me, although I should not descend to such intrigues no matter what my enemies may do.
Cross my heart, general, but one time Agent Monteith paid me five dollars cash money to sign a paper saying he’d delivered beef and blankets to the Indians, and he never did it.
Mr. Chapman, are you familiar with this circular from the year before last? I happen to carry it with me. Wilkinson, you know which paper I want. Yes, thank you. Now listen, Mr. Chapman: Clause sixteen. Agents, or others, making authorized presents to Indians, should have the bills witnessed by the Interpreter, with certificate that he saw the article delivered.
Never saw that one, general, but I guess I’ve signed a few blank papers in my day—
Blank papers! My word! I’d better read to you from clause nineteen of the same circular: Signing or certifying vouchers or receipts, IN BLANK, is fraught with evil, and is strictly prohibited.
Well, general, now I know.
That’s right. Can I count on you to interpret fairly for the commission?
Sure, general.
Swear on this Bible.
I swear I’ll tell folks how it is, so help me GOD.
Captain Throckmorton, I expect you to reveal the true doings of these Indians.
I’ll get started right away, sir.
3
Well?
General, we adjourned for want of witnesses.
And Chapman couldn’t dig up anything to exonerate or convict them?
Frankly, general, he sometimes—
Well, he’s the only reliable interpreter we have!
Yessir. We could get Mr. Pambrun from Lapwai.
Captain, I’m disappointed. Did you fail to reach any judgment?
Not at all, general. Red Heart confesses that his two elder sons have gone with Looking-Glass.
More to the point, was Red Heart on Looking-Glass’s reservation this month, or was he in the Buffalo Country? He told me two stories.
I think he was on the reservation, sir.
Keep them under guard. Captain Throckmorton, come with me.
Yessir.
Captain, whether or not we can obtain witnesses to their acts, these Indians must be held as prisoners of war for the duration of this campaign. They were with Looking-Glass, a known confederate of Joseph’s. Keep them to-night, and march them to-morrow to Fort Vancouver.
You bet I will, general! Shall I clap irons on the bucks?
That’s your responsibility.
Yessir. Glad to finally clean up a few reds.
4
Who’s officer of the day?
Lieutenant Wood, sir.
Bring him here.
Well, Wood, how does it feel to be in charge?
Pretty good, general.
Then you have the makings of high-grade officer. Now, Wood, until to-morrow these prisoners are your responsibility. If they escape, I’ll have to punish you.
I understand, sir.
Any questions?
None at all, sir.
Wood, they cannot be permitted to roam about as they used to do. You’ve seen how Looking-Glass turned evil.
Yessir.
And the fact is that given the current temper of the white people, Red Heart’s band will not be safe on their reservation.
I certainly see your point, general.
Finally, we need to reassure the doubters back East. They will expect us to have captured prisoners after all our exertions. Do you understand?
Yessir.
Wood, don’t look at me like that! If we had infinite dedicated troopers to protect Red Heart forever, and keep him out of mischief, then we could ring him round on his reservation, and all the best to him. But I will not have their blood on my conscience.
5
Not a very pleasant thing, confining these redskins, who appear sincerely innocent:
seventeen warriors, counting Red Heart and this Three Feathers; twenty-three squaws and children: all accounted for
while some old soldier slowly, carefully fashions three buffalo-skin hats from what must have been one of Mr. Joe’s tipis.
Fletch, who grew up riding a chestnut Arab horse, an elegant animal with the typical curving neck of that breed, finds little to praise in these confiscated Nez Perce horses. Which one was Red Heart’s? No, he’s definitely not as straightbacked as an Arabian.
Captain Pollock,
who served quite happily on this trial commission and agreed with Captain Throckmorton on Red Heart’s guilt,
acts proud that I am carrying out this duty with what I hope comes off as easy imperturbability:
By GOD, Wood, someday you’ll be Inspector-General of Prisons!
—laughing at me, only because he likes me
(how lucky I have been in my superiors!)
And now the can-makers have gone on strike in Baltimore.
That city was half Seccesh anyhow. Why even read the paper? It’s never good news.
If you don’t want it, I’ll take it to Wood. He looks pretty bored over there.
I’m ashamed when they look at me. Red Heart offers me a smoke of his pipe; his daughter reddens when I try to give her hardbread. Her brothers are cool to me; well, how can I blame them? But of course the general is correct; the very fact that they rode in here (and surely passed Joseph at Weippe) is suspicious. If we don’t confine them, they’ll give him aid and comfort as they’re able.
Besides, I yearn to be promoted
(closing his weary burning eyes, and instantly seeing again projected upon his eyelids the court-martial’s officers sitting behind two tables:
C. E. S. Wood, officer of the day, frankly proud of the sheen of his brass buttons):
Wood showed a lot of heart at Clearwater. The way he crawled to that spring all by himself, well, all I can say is he’s a credit to the Army.
He’s as crazy for excitement as that Ad Chapman,
and had I argued with the general, Red Heart’s band would be no better off, while I’d be worse off. And Joseph did burn Mrs. Manuel alive; her daughter has sworn an oath to that effect, and Chapman asserts the same.
Red Heart keeps gazing at me. What is he thinking? He wears a copper band as I do, but high up on his biceps,
as an owl hoots far away,
the locusts singing tekh-tekh-tekh!
and the moon rises.
What’s on Red Heart’s mind? If I could but hear the whispering thoughts of these Indians—
As I have leisure perhaps I will ask Jim to teach me some Chinook, or at least the Indian sign language, which must be a valuable accomplishment for any officer out here in the West.
What interesting faces those Nez Perce women have! I respect squaws’ hard hands, scarred in the battles of digging and flensing and pounding and dragging and shall I say life? So why do I so rarely seek their contact but turn to the velvety touch of idle hands? O, their lovely texture, and the cream and rose tints and graceful movement when Nanny lays her hand upon my arm,
and now for some reason the necklaces on Red Heart’s daughter
(whose name delicacy forbids him to ask Umatilla Jim:
the two sons, however, are called Nenetsukusten and Tememah Ilppilp)
remind him of the cross on the black velvet band around Grace Howard’s neck, and the way her throat pulses so sweetly when I compliment her piano playing;
the instant he laid eyes on this fetching young squaw he knew what he would be doing to-morrow night on his return to “D” Company
(“Taps” and the evening gun and then when we all lie down in the dark on our rubber blankets . . .),
because three years ago, when he wrote away to Doctor Jacques of the Central Medical Institute on Chestnut Street, who can treat spermatorrhea, or sexual weakness, especially when caused by secret habits of youth
and also longstanding cases of gonorrhea, syphilis, orchitis
(he even offers adult male visitors a private tour of his Museum of Anatomy),
Wood,
who when he was a cadet used to cut off the cylindrical brass button over his heart to give to his lady of the minute at Flirtation Wall,
read the circular and took the medicine, but it turned out there was no help for cravings as bestial as his.
6
In the morning, the prisoners are despatched to Kamiah en route to Fort Vancouver,
the general in private conference in his tent:
And a copy to General McDowell, with the usual salutation. Have you got that, Wilkinson? All right. Now this will be a telegram to General Sherman. Are you ready? Majority of hostile Indians have fled by Lo Lo Trail eastward to Buffalo Country. Thirty-five men, women and children have voluntarily surrendered themselves. Gen. Howard is in pursuit in a direct line . . .
and Jocelyn’s four-man detail now shoveling earth over the sinks:
And then, right before the outbreak, one of White Bird’s Indians came by Chapman’s place and offered him double for an old Navy pistol.
So what did Chapman do?
. . . called out the Maryland National Guard.
Whipped him out of there, so he says.
That’s chickenshit. I say the National Guard is chickenshit.
What do you say?
Well, he ran away at White Bird Cañon, he turned tail at this little ambuscado of Mr. Joe’s, but you and I saw him flying down the hill at Clearwater, as brave as George Washington. He’s a puzzler,
the squaws, who evidently had expected different treatment, weeping pitifully as the guards form them up into a convoy,
and Wood, although now relieved by Parnell, stands watching,
hoping that Captain Pollock will not call him imminently
(really I should lie down for an hour),
writing in his diary: Musings on the unhappy people. Thoughts on the Indian as a man and a brother. Inability to fuse with the white man. Similarity of some of these men to the Roman type,
as one of the younger women, sobbing, removes her beaded ornaments and gives them to Umatilla Jim, asking him to find her little daughter somewhere about Kamiah and present them to her
(I’ll bet that villain will sell them to a souvenir hunter!)
and an old man cuts bead ornaments off his moccasins as a remembrance for his wife:
significant that neither of them will trust Chapman or James Reuben! And I lacked the brass (except on my buttons) to offer myself!
Now the men are paired off, the women and children allowed to straggle along any old how,
no need for irons until Lapwai:
a hundred degrees to-day and sixty miles to walk; I wonder if white children would fall out of the column and die?
But let me restore to mind that picture of Joseph’s squaws squatting down in the grass at White Bird Cañon, stripping and scalping our dead boys and very occasionally clubbing a dying trooper in the face:
Chapman swears that’s what they do.
I must ask the general.
No, boys, this is serious. Now the railroad men have struck in Pittsburgh.
It’s them Irish Catholics that done it.
I’d sure rather be out here.
Just as any significant quantity of silver can bleach the gold with which it has been alloyed, so horror and shame now begin, but only begin
—for like Red Heart’s squaws, he cannot yet entirely dislodge himself from a thicket of mere astonishment—
to dull down Wood’s lustrous notions
(I suspect that after the campaign the general will never speak of this:
—what if every campaign must comprise such operations?
Anyhow, we didn’t kill them),
although I never imagined that we would be setting out on our endless soldier-trails to become keepers of innocent Indian convicts.
There are American secrets which I must now begin to gather like snowberries in pale half-dozens. If my brother officers only possessed the courage and kindness to withstand my own questioning and explain to me why this is right, I would be grateful. Perhaps I’ll approach Fletch,
after I get promoted
—Wood not at all wishing to resemble that forty-nine-year-old major about whom Captain Pollock regularly soliloquizes:
married to some pretty little Clarabelle, the “Belle of the Embarcadero,” who has espoused herself six times now and sounds ready for a seventh, probably with the quartermaster;
so the major came down with a case of melancholy and got confined to the hospital,
staring and staring as if waiting for the cottonwood leaves to turn yellow,
and Pollock first swore at him, then told him (rightly as it seems to me) to flux himself of that GODd——n whore
as I must flux myself of sentimentality,
not that I care to be like Perry or Umatilla Jim
(although who knows what Jim thinks?)
In the strengthening sun-glare our soldiers lead them steadily down through the cottonwoods to the wide river,
which is wide and dark grey-brown with a narrow shore of white stones,
and just before the column loses itself in roses and thistles, Wood sees that old man,
exemplar of the Roman type,
who cut the beadwork off his moccasins now glancing over his shoulder at Kamiah, or perhaps past Kamiah at the dome of yellow-grassed hill between forest ridges
(do we march that way to Weippe? I should ask somebody in Mason’s bunch
or wait until the general permits me to examine Colton’s map);
then they disappear and reappear:
another old squaw is evidently weeping now, her head as heavy as a branch of elderberries
—unpleasant to see, so he turns away, sickish from lack of sleep, peering (just to see something other than the prisoners) at the slanting red hills,
the nauseating scree-threatened trees always hiding his view:
Where are the enemy? It’s so hot;
he feels bewildered by the chokecherries and birds; the sun is burning his back; his eyes sting with sleeplessness
and Pollock’s batman, Wally Scanlon, strolls up with a black eye from fighting, laughingly wheedling him: Please, lieutenant, would you do me a kindness and plead my case with the captain so I don’t have stable duty forever?
PERTAINING TO MRS. THELLER’S BONNET
JULY 21
—and that d——d Trimble, just because he’s a brevet major, always tried to lord it over me; Theller saw through him! And because he abandoned from the command at White Bird Cañon and I never said a word, he can’t stand me. I would have let him alone: JESUS; nearly everyone else funked! But he means to bring me down. Well, that don’t scare me. I ought to call him out some night when we get back to Lapwai. We can settle it with fists. But if he wants to be a shit and testify against me, I’ll show him daylight. I’m watching him. He’d better not go courting Chapman. Chapman’s the one that fired on Joseph before I gave the order. Then he turned tail. He was yellow at White Bird, yellow at the Clearwater, and from what Mason tells me he was no d——d different out there by Weippe. No wonder I saw him with Trimble. They’re the same kind. Actually, Chapman’s worse. He ought to be gelded and locked up at Leavenworth. He’s influencing the general against me. He’s poisoning this campaign. He killed Theller, and he knows it. If I told the general about that Blackfoot squaw he knocked up right here in Kamiah who miscarried, maybe on purpose when he went back to his Umatilla bitch, that would sure make his nigger-loving Christian eyes pop out! Soon as we get back to Lapwai I’m going to look up Mr. Pambrun, because he’s seen her come whining to Chapman, wanting money. He’ll be my witness. Maggie, that’s her name. Why any white man would fuck her is beyond me. She stinks, like all reds and niggers. And that other Umatilla cunt that pooped out five of his brats—JESUS CHRIST!—if I lined her and Maggie right up before the general, that would be one hilarious day, especially once my wife got wind, GODd——n her because she’s the reason I’ll never see Delia untying her snow-white bonnet.
