cocky little plover with the most sensational wounded wing dance, so impressive that the evasive motion of the plover dance was easily perceived and imitated by envious dancers and predators.
My second story was about the plover with an irregular hobble, an intricate dance that feigned a broken foot and a wounded wing. The elusive dance was so decisive that the plover could only reveal the artistry of the dance to escape the envies of a predator.
The third story was about a plover with a variety of trivial vaudeville performances, feigns, guises, blue raven masks, acrobatic, and deceptive plover dances that entertained and completely distracted and deceived the intruders and predators. The most evasive plover dances were the crafty and clumsy practice of tricky entertainment.
My first three written stories were visionary, and the stories demonstrated by specific metaphors of three plover dances the actual and familiar experiences of natives on the reservation. My last story was the dance of the trickster plover of liberty.
Native saints and secrets were blue, the blue of creation and visions of motion, not deprivation, the conceit of sacrifice, or the godly praise of black and tragic death. Blues were the origin of the earth and stories of creative energy. The mountains emerged from the blue sea and became that singular trace of blue creation and the hues of a sunrise.
Blue morning, blue seasons, blue summer, blue thunder, blue winter nights, and the irony of blue blood. Blue snow at night, blue shadows in the spring light, blue spider webs, and wild blue berries were natural totemic connections. Some nations were blue, coat of arms blue, blue flags on the wind. The chances of native stories, memories, conscience, and the sacred were a mighty blue. Blue ravens were the saints forever in abstract motion, and the traces of blue were eternal in native stories. Blue ravens were the new totem of native motion.
› 2 ‹
OGEMA STATION
— — — — — — — 1908 — — — — — — —
Aloysius painted seven gorgeous blue ravens seated as passengers in a railroad car. The enormous wings of the spectacular ravens stretched out the windows, bright blue feathers flaunted at various angles. The passenger train seemed to be in natural flight that summer afternoon over the peneplain. Great blue beaks were raised high above the windows, a haughty gesture of direction, or a mighty military salute.
The Soo Line Railroad a few years earlier had laid new tracks and built new stations at Mahnomen, Ogema, and Callaway on the White Earth Reservation. The passenger trains arrived twice a day from Winnipeg and Saint Paul. Every afternoon in the summer we heard the steam whistle in the distance, that evocative sound of a new world as the train stopped at the Ogema Station.
Winnipeg, Thief River Falls, Mahnomen, and Waubun were familiar places in one direction of the railroad line. Detroit Lakes, Minneapolis, Chicago, Sault Ste. Marie, and Montreal were not familiar in the other directions. We envisioned many other places, marvelous railroad cities. Places without government teachers, federal agents, mission priests, or reservations.
Blue ravens were our totems of creation and liberty.
Aloysius told the priest that the blue ravens were the only totems that could convey his native vision. No other totems were as secure as the blue raven, not even the traditional crane totem of our ancestors. The stories of native totems were inherited and imagined, but the blue ravens were original and abstract signature totems. My brother created totems as a painter in almost the same way the first totems were imagined by native storiers, by vision, by artistry, but not by the tricky politics of shamans and warriors. The first totems were painted on hide, wood, birch bark, and stone.
The priest would never associate with the creation of native totems. Nature was a separation not an inspiration of holy faith or godly associations. The priest glanced at the blue ravens and then turned away in silence. He seemed to regard the personal creative expressions of my brother as a private and necessary confession or sacrament of penance.
Augustus, our favorite uncle, celebrated the visions of a thirteen year old, or any totemic vision that provoked the priest, and hired us to paint blue ravens and other totems on the outside of the tiny newspaper building. His praise was conditional, as usual, so we returned with our own strategies and agreed to paint the building if he would hire us to sell his newspapers. Our uncle paused to consider our adolescent tactics, and then consented but with more conditions. He would pay only a penny a copy for the newspapers we sold, and we must find new customers and ways to increase the circulation of the reservation weekly.
We painted the newspaper building white a few days later but not decorated with blue ravens. The paint was thick and lumpy, not an impressive cover. The next day we started our first positions as newspaper hawkers, news salesmen with a commission. No one, not even our younger cousins, would work for only a penny a newspaper. The venture, however, was worth much more than the mere penny income.
Augustus was a heavy drinker, at times, and that was both a problem and an advantage. He was more critical of the federal agent when he had been drinking, and that troubled Father Aloysius. Our uncle was always generous when he drank alone or with others, but he seldom remembered promises. One night we easily persuaded our feisty publisher to pay the cost of two train tickets to promote the weekly newspaper at every Soo Line Railroad station between Ogema and the Milwaukee Road Depot in faraway Minneapolis.
The Tomahawk sold for about three cents a copy by annual subscription, and everyone on the reservation who wanted the paper had already subscribed, so we decided to hawk the newspaper to strangers on the train at the Ogema Station. The trains arrived twice a day and we earned about ten cents in a day.
Hawking the Tomahawk was easy because there were no other newspapers published in the area, and because we were directly related to the publisher. I tried to read every issue of the newspaper and to memorize a few paragraphs of the main stories, enough weekly content to shout out the significance of the news stories.
I actually learned how to write by reading the newspapers we sold, by memory of selected descriptive scenes, and by imitation of the standard style of journalism at the time. I learned how to create scenes in words, and to imagine the colors of words, and my brother painted abstract scenes of blue ravens. Most students at our school had learned how to mimic teachers, to recount government scenes, federal agents, and native police, but we were the only students who hawked newspapers with national stories and learned how to write at the same time.
The Progress was the first newspaper published on the White Earth Reservation, and the news was mostly local, including a special personal section on the recent travels, experiences, and events of reservation families. The newspaper reported that our grandmother, for instance, traveled by horse and wagon to visit relatives in the town of Beaulieu. The Progress published reservation news and critical editorials about the ineptitude of federal agents and policies of the federal government.
Major Timothy Sheehan, the federal agent, and native police confiscated the very first edition of the Progress, the newsprint and the actual press, and ordered my relatives to leave the reservation. Agent Sheehan must have thought he was the deputy of a colonial monarchy. Augustus was publisher of the Progress and Theodore Hudon Beaulieu was the editor and printer at the time. The first edition of the Progress, critical of the federal agent and the policies of reservation land allotment, was published on March 25, 1886.
Our relatives refused to leave their homes and newspaper business by the order of a corrupt political agent, and instead sought sanctuary at Saint Benedict’s Mission. Father Aloysius Hermanutz, the mission priest, provided a secure refuge for some of our relatives, and protection from the arbitrary authority of the
