Dedication
For CAROL MAE BUTLER
who counted white horses from Butte to the Falls
Epigraph
For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;
A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;
A land wherein ye shall eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.
When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hast given thee.
—DEUTERONOMY 8:7–10
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
PART ONE: THE GREAT DAY OF HIS WRATH
Prologue: How a Man Is Made
1. TWO TAN EGGS
2. LETTER FROM SAMUEL GATEWOOD
3. LOW DOG DREAMING
4. A BIG PLUM
5. INDEPENDENCE DAY
6. A HINCTY NIGGER
7. THE ATLANTIC, MISSISSIPPI & OHIO
8. ADDRESS FROM THE COLORED CITIZENS OF VIRGINIA TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES
9. THE COCINERO
10. LETTER FROM MRS. DUNCAN GATEWOOD TO MRS. SAMUEL GATEWOOD
11. COURT DAY
12. RAINY DAY STEW
13. THE LOYAL LEAGUE
14. SON-OF-A-BITCH STEW
15. AN OPIUM EATER
16. WHAT RAVEN SAW
17. DISPATCH FROM COLONEL HENRY CARRINGTON
18. LETTER FROM EDWARD RATCLIFF TO JESSE BURNS
19. A FORMER LOVER
20. THE SUPPLICANT
21. MILITARY DISTRICT #1
22. INCIDENT ON THE RICHMOND & DANVILLE RAILROAD
23. TERRAPIN À LA DELMONICO
24. IN THE HAYFIELD
PART TWO: THE ATLANTIC, MISSISSIPPI & OHIO RAILROAD
25. A PHILADELPHIA SANITARIUM
26. LETTER FROM JESSE BURNS TO EDWARD RATCLIFF
27. LETTER FROM THOMAS BYRD TO SAMUEL GATEWOOD
28. THE IRONCLAD OATH
29. KI YA MANI YO
30. MENU FOR A BANQUET HONORING MR. CHARLES DICKENS
31. LETTER FROM EBEN BARNWELL TO MISS PAULINE BYRD
32. IMPEACHMENT
33. A HAPPY OCCASION
34. CIRCLING THE KETTLE
35. LETTER FROM MRS. EBEN BARNWELL TO MISS MOLLY SEMPLE
36. A SQUAW MAN
37. MR. STUART ARGUES FOR COMPROMISE
38. LETTER FROM THOMAS BYRD TO SAMUEL GATEWOOD
39. THE CANDIDATE FROM MARSHALL WARD
40. GHOST-OWNING
41. GENERAL MAHONE’S SIGNAL VICTORY
42. IMMIGRANTS
43. BLACK FRIDAY
44. WASHITU STRAWBERRIES
PART THREE: IN THE VALLEY OF THE GREASY GRASS
45. LIGHT BROTH AND A CODDLED EGG
46. IN THE TERRITORY
47. A TREASURE TROVE
48. A CADAVER
49. RATION DAY
50. ON THE SCOOT
51. PANIC
52. MRS. S. T. GATEWOOD’S BOARDINGHOUSE BRUNSWICK STEW
53. OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE
54. THE BONE GAME
55. IN THE MOON OF RIPENING BLACKBERRIES
56. HOKA HEY
57. LETTER FROM RANDOLPH HOWLAND TO MRS. EBEN BARNWELL
58. ORDERS TO GENERAL GEORGE CUSTER, JUNE 22, 1876
59. KILL SONGS
60. AMERICA’S TEMPERANCE DRINK
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
More praise for Canaan
Praise for Jacob’s Ladder
Copyright
ALSO BY Donald McCaig
PROLOGUE
HOW A MAN IS MADE
Before he was hanged, my father gave me his Low Dog cape and his dreaming.
We Lakota honor dreamers; dreamers show us the way. But Red Leaf’s dreaming was too big, covering the people like a blackhorn robe over a newborn. His dreaming was as vast, beautiful, and bleak as the moon when the boughs break with snow.
Low Dog—coyote—is the unluckiest medicine animal a Santee Lakota can have. Low Dog took Red Leaf’s dreaming wherever Low Dog wished to go, to see whatever Low Dog wished to see. Low Dog is curious about everything.
My father was hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, the day after Christmas, the Washitu year “1862.” It was the second year of the Washitu’s Southern war, before the Lakota pushed the Crows out of the Powder River basin, before the Washitu found gold in Montana and Red Cloud became a great chief fighting them. On the last day I was with my father I had sixteen summers and knew much I don’t know now.
My father sat cross-legged, daubing vermilion from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. He dipped a forefinger in the paint pot and lined his other cheek. “Daughter, I had a dream . . .”
“Anyone can dream,” I replied.
Although it was ten below zero, the stone building’s small windows were open against the fug of cheap tobacco and the sweat of men soon to die.
My father raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t JesuChrist come to you in dreams?”
When I shook my head my starched collar scratched my neck. The sore on my father’s right ankle was broader than his shackle. “JesuChrist speaks in his book,” I said.
“And you can read his book? Daughter, how clever you are. What a Santee you would have been.”
The Christian converts prayed aloud and beseeched one another with glances. They sang “Nearer My God to Thee.”
Mita wani kiya,
I ma cu ye
te hi a wa ki pa
Esa na kun
kici ciun wacin
mita wani kiya
I ma cu ye.
The Old Way Santee sat apart, seemingly indifferent. Chaska packed his pipe; Tazoo prayed to his medicine animal. Cut Nose unrolled the brown muslin hood down over his face so his inhalation sucked the cloth back against his mouth and cheeks. When he rolled it up, he smiled at his joke.
The Santee prisoners had refused to wear their hoods until Father Ravoux showed them how to roll them like french voyageurs’ caps.
Red Leaf painted a green stripe above the vermilion. “Low Dog came to me in my dream. Low Dog promised he would guide me across the Shadowland.” At an unbidden thought, the mockery left my father’s eyes. “Daughter, you will care for my body?”
Old Way Santee lay their dead on platforms so nothing can impede the spirit’s escape and its journey across the Shadowland. A warrior’s bow, his knife, some food are laid beside the body, and sometimes a favorite dog is killed to guide the wanderer; but the Santee had eaten their dogs last winter when the Washitu’s promised annuities did not come.
“Mary”—I was “She Goes Before” to the Santee and my father had never before used my Christian name—“that is your father’s wish.”
My hands were scrubbed red, but they were clean. “JesuChrist was killed and three days later he came back from the Shadowland and ascended into heaven and when we Christians die we go to be with him. Father, please accept JesuChrist as your savior.”
Thirty-eight condemned warriors were shackled to the wooden floor. The two hundred and seventy others Father Lincoln had pardoned were kept in a pole stockade. Others had escaped with Inkpaduta. My half-brother, White Bull, had fled with his family to the Dakotas.
I was an accomplished convert. I could read a little, write a little. I could sew, card, spin, and weave. I knew how to iron the Reverend Riggs’s shirtfront and starched collars and I had learned to cook oatmeal porridge. After several failures I understood the mysteries of the soft-boiled egg as Mrs. Reverend Riggs under
stood them.
Four years ago, missionaries came to Little Crow’s band on Spirit Lake. Many Santee spurned their preaching, but I was moved by the promises of their powerful God. A year later, when they came again, I followed them to the mission at Yellow Medicine, where Reverend Riggs baptized me “Mary.”
Santee grandfathers said life had been better before the Washitu came. Blackhorns—buffalo—had been plentiful and no Santee went hungry. Old Way Santee like my father prayed the blackhorns would forgive the offense of the Washitu presence and come back to us again.
These prayers made me angry. The Old Way was gone forever. “Father, how many years has it been since you last saw a Real Dog [wolf] or heard him howling in the night? The seed corn the Washitu gives us—that seed sprouts into corn when we tend it as we have been taught. The blackhorns have fled west with our Brulé and Oglala cousins. Your blackhorns are dream blackhorns. Can we eat dreams? Perhaps Washitu annuities are not as much as the White Father promised and perhaps they are slow to come, but they are better than ghost blackhorns or Real Dogs you only meet in dreams.”
My father asked me why I was so angry.
“You aren’t guilty. You didn’t kill Myrick.”
Reverend Riggs had translated the New Testament into Lakota. Because Riggs had lived with the Santee, he knew which man lied and who told the truth. The Reverend Riggs had interrogated the Santee at their trial and through him many were condemned that might otherwise have gone free.
“Has your father accepted his Savior, Mary?”
“Red Leaf is proud.”
“Pride has kept many worthy souls from salvation.”
Red Leaf smiled. “When the people came to the Agency for their annuities, trader Myrick sent them away saying, ‘If they are hungry let them eat grass.’ When we Santee returned to our lodges our children asked when would they eat and where were the annuities our White Father had promised us. So we Santee returned to the Agency with our weapons and after I killed trader Myrick, we stuffed his mouth with all the grass he could eat.”
“And the innocent women and children you murdered? When did they harm your people?”
“It takes many moons for children to starve. Their faces change as the hunger eats them and they become their bones. When they ask their father for food he has nothing to give them. The Washitu children were fat as puppies when they died.”
Reverend Riggs was tall and spindle-shanked; my father was built like a bear. Reverend Riggs’s thin hair was slicked back over his skull. My father’s hair dangled beneath the hangman’s rolled hood in thick braids. Riggs wore a black suit, a gray waistcoat, a black foulard; Red Leaf, leggings, breechclout, moccasins. He sat cross-legged on his folded Low Dog cape.
“Red Leaf, when the Great Spirit looks down on his Santee children and sees what they did to his white children, he is very angry!”
“I do not believe it. In your Southern war, Washitu are fighting Washitu. You are killing more people than Red Leaf could count all the days of his life. Does your JesuChrist look down and say, ‘Good Washitu. He has my book! Washitu go to heaven when he die. Santee does not have JesuChrist’s book and kills a few Washitu. This makes the Great Spirit angry? I do not believe it.”
“Mary, time is short.”
“My father did not harm the trader Myrick. Red Leaf lied.”
“I’m sure Red Leaf is entirely innocent.” Riggs encompassed the prisoners with his gesture. “So many unjustly condemned! How can such injustice be?”
Red Leaf smiled. “Inkpaduta killed seventeen Washitu. I am ashamed I killed only one.”
“Father! You didn’t kill anyone!”
“Red Leaf, you are condemned from your own mouth.”
“It was a whiskey boast. Dear Reverend Riggs, do you think the real murderers waited for soldiers to come and arrest them? Little Crow and Shakopee and Inkpaduta have fled to the Grandmother’s land.”
“Each man has been properly tried and condemned; and had matters been left to General Pope, every one would have been executed. Two hundred seventy murderers pardoned—President Lincoln is apparently loath to sign a death sentence.”
Red Leaf chuckled. “Father Lincoln overcame his loathing thirty-eight times. I pray to meet Father Lincoln in the Shadowland.”
“Red Leaf, would you spend eternity in hell?”
“I pray we will meet the traders who starved our children. Cut Nose and I will make them cry.”
Reverend Riggs closed his eyes to intone, “Repentance, though it be with the last breath of life, is pleasing in the eyes of the Lord.”
When Red Leaf rolled the hood down over his face he became a mute, faceless statue.
Reverend Riggs said, “Mary, there are other souls,” and left us.
Red Leaf’s chest rose and fell with his breathing. He rolled his hood back up. “Why do the Washitu want us to die blind? Are they afraid to look in the eyes of men they kill?”
“Father, we can be together one day in Paradise!”
“Raven came to me in my dream. Raven flies everywhere and sees everything. Raven had something to show me, so I climbed on his back and we flew away.”
“Those are foolish stories, my father.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Daughter? You reprove your father?”
The converted indians were singing again and I had to lean close to hear my father’s words.
“Raven and I flew many days and nights. We were flying over the Shadowland. It was green like the Moon of Ripening Blackberries and the waters ran fast and so clear I could see fish swimming. There were blackhorns in the forest and I heard Real Dog calling his songs.
“We came to a black lake. The shore was dark with trees and between big rocks upright on the shore was the entrance to the Washi-tu’s heaven. Blanket indians waited there—I did not know them and since they wore Washitu clothing I did not know their tribe. They were shivering and downcast because they were indians and had been turned away from Washitu heaven. Since they had given up their medicine animals to JesuChrist, no medicine animal would guide them across the Shadowland. They were forever lost, not of one people nor of the other. They would wander forever. Daughter, I wept to see them.” My father continued, “Daughter, JesuChrist has powerful medicine and has made the Washitu mighty. He has given them our land and our lakes. He has told them to kill the Real Dogs and drive the blackhorns from our land. He has given them guns which kill farther than Santee arrows. JesuChrist has given them all these things. But I am Santee and when I go to the Shadowland I will find your mother, my father and mother, and all my brothers too.
“Do you wish to spend forever with the Washitu? You dress like Washitu, you have learned Washitu talk and taken his ways.” He sniffed. “You even smell Washitu!”
I remember that I blushed.
“But to the Washitu you will always be Santee and if the Washitu cannot mistake you for one of their own, how can their JesuChrist mistake you? My daughter, you will spend forever with the blanket indians who can never cross the Shadowland and cannot enter Washitu heaven.”
“Your words hurt me, Father,” I said.
He looked at me for a long time. “Daughter, today I will die. Is that not a good time to say what a man is made of? Until the day they die these Washitu will see Santee warriors in their dreams.”
“But you killed nobody.”
He sighed. “Daughter, I would be proud if I had killed Myrick. If I had taken as many scalps as Cut Nose or Inkpaduta, I should be singing today. But my medicine was weak, so I counted no coups and took no scalps.
“When we found the whiskey and drank it, I was filled with unhappiness. While the others danced around the fire, I boasted. Last winter when I sold my pelts, trader Myrick cheated me and I ate my shame. So now I boasted of killing Myrick and as soon as I boasted falsely, every Santee turned his back, for they knew Shakopee had killed Myrick and stuffed grass in his mouth. Daughter, when the Washitu condemned me, they restored my honor.”
The door w
as flung open and blue-coated Seizers rushed in.
As Reverend Riggs raised his arms in blessing, Seizers broke leg chains with hammer and anvil. After they could move freely again, the Santee began visiting with one other.
“Tazoo, your wife. Is she well?”
“Your daughter, Many Ponies, has she birthed her child?”
A Seizer officer said, “Mustn’t keep the hangman waiting. Corporal, bring ’em out singly; we’ll chain ’em together outside.”
“Goodbye, Father.”
My father gave me his Low Dog cape and, though I did not know it, his dreaming. “Let this keep you from cold,” he said. He began to sing the triumphant notes of the death song and other Santee took it up.
“Stop that racket! Stop it, I say!”
All the indians sang. Even the converts sang. The death song sheltered them.
Reverend Riggs clamped his hands to his ears. Father Ravoux was smiling and weeping.
The Seizer officer cupped his hands to his mouth. “Stop that!” he bellowed, and the Santee fell silent.
As the prisoners stepped outdoors, each was chained again and his hood jerked over his eyes.
Their scaffold was Mankato’s largest structure. A tall pole thrust through the center of the hanging platform with thirty-eight ropes spread out like cords from the Sun Dance pole.
Armed Seizers surrounded this scaffold and many Washitu had come to watch. The Reverend Riggs stood beside me shivering. I was warm inside my Low Dog cape.
A Seizer drummer thumped, but the chained and hooded Santee couldn’t march to his cadence. The condemned men bumped into each other and stumbled. Each had to be helped up the stairs and guided to his proper trap.
The Santee began singing and stamping their feet and their medicine was very strong, so the Seizers cried for them to stop. They stopped stamping but continued singing.
In his deep voice, Cut Nose sang his kill song:
At New Ulm, a body will be found.
A Dead Washitu at New Ulm.
Why, see it has no head!
Washitu’s head is where his prick used to be.
Cut Nose did this deed!
It was I, Cut Nose!