Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (15 page)

The
Tomahawk
continued to publish newspapers once a week with a new editorial writer. The character of the “editorials will in the future be as nearly alike to those of the past,” wrote the editor, Clement Hudon Beaulieu, on the front page, August 23, 1917. “The
Tomahawk
now makes an appeal to all Chippewas and progressive Indians everywhere, to place supporting hands under its arms as it fights for rights both tribal and racial.”

“Gladly in memory of a departed loved brother, he contributes his services as editorial writer, and with this fraternal memorial goes also affection and sympathy for his people.”

Augustus, Odysseus, and Misaabe encouraged me to become a writer, but in separate and distinctive ways. The trader was precise and directed me to create stories with a sense of presence that teased and healed by adventure, luck, and irony. My uncle published some of my stories and visitor notes on the back pages of the
Tomahawk
. Wisely, he never printed my name as the author, although at the time his decision seemed punitive. Augustus did not want me to be the critical focus of newspaper stories about natives on the reservation, and my name never appeared in the
Tomahawk
.

Misaabe told stories and created shadows that converted the obvious and changed the world. The scenes in his stories resided forever in my imagination, and his marvelous presence was in every flash and faint flicker of light, and in every explosion during the war at night in France.

The sudden death of my uncle last year had obliged me to write more directly about Augustus, Odysseus, Misaabe, the
Tomahawk
, the government school, federal agent, and my family on the White Earth Reservation. Augustus told stories with precise rage, and concise irony, and he would never accept more than casual regret for the dead, and he would conspire from the grave to overturn romantic notions of eternal memory. He told me, and my brother, when we painted the newspaper building that life was not a liturgy. He always encouraged us to confront the obvious and create stories by natural reason.

Odysseus told me to create native scenes in six books inspired by the memories of my uncle, by his eternal tease, by his stories, and, of course, by his great sense of integrity and irony. The trader convinced me that great stories were best recounted in sixteen scenes. He meant, of course, the twenty-four books or sections of
The Odyssey
. Augustus traveled with me in memories and in many stories, and he must have favored me with a native tease to survive the First World War.

››› ‹‹‹

William Hole in the Day was the first native of the White Earth Reservation to become a sailor and then later a soldier in the military. He enlisted in two distinct branches of the armed forces, in two countries, and waged his name in three separate wars. He served as an honorable warrior on land and at sea, and with a great sense of adventure, humor, and bravery.

William was our distant cousin, and much older by experience, blood, and stories. He participated in the annual celebrations on the reservation, and we remembered him as a fancy dresser in a dark suit coat, wing collar, necktie, and fedora.

Private Hole in the Day first served in the United States Navy in the Spanish American War. He had paddled on Lake Itasca and Bad Medicine Lake but had never seen the sea. He returned to the reservation in uniform and with incredible stories of other cultures and countries that we would read about in the
Tomahawk.

Augustus and others were surprised to learn that Hole in the Day had enlisted in the North Dakota National Guard and served on the border with Mexico. Minnesota and North Dakota guard units had been activated during the Mexican Revolution. The
Tomahawk
reported at the time
that General John Pershing commanded the Eighth Cavalry Regiment in search of the revolutionary Pancho Villa who had boldly crossed the border and raided citizens of Columbus, New Mexico.

Hole in the Day never explained why he crossed the state border and enlisted in the North Dakota National Guard. Augustus was convinced that our cousin would never march with the Minnesota National Guard because the unit had joined forces with federal soldiers to attack his relatives and other natives at Sugar Point near Bear Island on the Leech Lake Reservation in 1898.

The Minnesota National Guard sent one company of mostly young farm boys and recent immigrants to fight against the liberty of natives. The Third Infantry Regiment of the regular army and National Guard soldiers raided the vegetable garden and cabin of Bugonaygeshig, or Hole in the Day, an eminent warrior and spiritual healer, and stole sacred medicine bundles and eagle feathers as war booty. William, our cousin, was the nephew of the great Bugonaygeshig.

President Woodrow Wilson at first ventured to preserve the peace and neutrality of the United States in the First World War. He posed as a moralist, and seesawed between the politics of militarism and the denunciation of war. Augustus had mocked the slogans of the war pacifists, and examined statements by the socialist Eugene Debs, “I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.” Our uncle consented to the earth as a country, and to natives as world citizens, but he shouted that only a vagrant would not fight for his country, and natives have fought for centuries to be citizens of the earth, the reservation, and of the country. Augustus declared that the president was a milksop and could not understand the forces of evil in the world. Some readers were surprised that his actual editorial comments published in the newspaper were more reasoned and particular.

The
Tomahawk
published an editorial, for instance, on the front page, April 12, 1917, about the declaration of war. “The Democratic campaign early last year was ‘He kept us out of war,' but since the election President Wilson has had such a strong pressure brought to bear upon him that he finally used his influence to secure a declaration of war by Congress.”

President Wilson finally moralized the cause of the war and condemned the evil Germans. Later, on April 6, 1917, Congress declared war with Germany.
General John Pershing was named the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in France.

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.