pony races and music by the native White Earth Band. Augustus raised his whiskey bottle and praised our success as hawkers of his newspaper. We smoked a peace pipe for the first time that summer at the reservation anniversary, and we ate with the adults at the Feast of Good Cheer.
Soo Line Railroad tickets were more expensive than the cost of travel on the old Red River Oxcart Trail that ran four hundred miles from Winnipeg or the Selkirk Settlement through the reservation near the trading post at Beaulieu and White Earth to Detroit Lakes and the final destination in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The deep ruts of the oxcart wheels were evident on the entire route north to south across the reservation. Aloysius was always ready for an adventure. We were eight years old the first time we walked several miles in the old wagon ruts on our way to another world. The weather turned out to be the adventure, however, not the route of the oxcarts. A severe thunderstorm, lightning, thunder, and heavy rain, changed the rutted course of our adventure to rivers. We took cover under a huge white pine and waited for the storm to pass. The oxcart wagon ruts overflowed, natural tributaries of an obsolete time, and our great adventure ended with stories of a memorable thunderstorm.
The new railroad, station, and the weekly newspaper became our sense of the future, although later we actually earned more money mucking out the livery stable at the Hotel Leecy. Yes, at the time the muck of horses provided a better salary than hawking newspapers with patent cosmopolitan news stories about the nation and the world.
Aloysius painted two solemn blue ravens seated on a bench at the railroad station in Mahnomen. The huge beaks of the ravens were covered with dark blue spots. A copy of the Tomahawk was on the bench next to the blue ravens. The banner headline was a single word, SMALLPOX. Wisely we never hawked that scary headline of the newspaper, and there was no reason to reveal the actual story that smallpox had been reported at Munroe House in Mahnomen. The Minnesota Board of Health had released the same report that “smallpox was increasing” in the state.
That afternoon we announced instead that the “Japanese landed more than thirty thousand troops in Wonsan, Korea,” and expected to “advance on Vladivostok” in Russia. We sold three papers with that headline, and four more copies with the report that “annuities due under the old treaties will be paid to the Mississippi and Lake Superior bands by Agent Michelet.” The annuity payments started on Monday, May 29, 1908, and each person received $8.40 in cash. Naturally our families were there for the carnival of treaty payments. Our relatives danced and told stories about the fantastic new worlds of railroads and automobiles.
The Great White Fleet was news that week in the Tomahawk so we hawked the story at the station. President Theodore Roosevelt had ordered the fleet to sail around the world for about two years to demonstrate the naval power and mastery of the United States. The great fleet left San Francisco on July 7, 1908. Not one paper was sold in the name of the ironic pale peace voyage.
Aloysius painted blue ravens on the mast of ships and named the Great White Fleet the Great Blue Peace Fleet. The chalky color code of the fleet was an obvious contradiction of sentiments. The color of peace was not the same as the notion of naval power. The Blue Fleet would have been a more humane and enlightened color in Australia, New Zealand, Philippine Islands, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and San Francisco. The blue ravens represented a greater sense of peace than the voyage of dominance around the world by sixteen white battleships of the United States Navy.
William Jennings Bryan was nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention that summer in Denver. Clearly there was no need to shout out that story because the mere mention of his name sold nine copies of the Tomahawk, more than any other person, place, scandal, or political story. Bryan ran three times for the presidency. He never won the electorate but he was greatly admired by natives on the White Earth Reservation.
The next train arrived later that afternoon from Winnipeg and we hawked the newspaper story about an absurd prison sentence. Emma Goldman, considered the antichrist of anarchism, touched the very hand of an army private and that single touch became news around the world. The private was sentenced to five years in prison. The train passengers were apparently not interested in the story and turned away. We hawked the name of Emma Goldman down the aisle of the passenger car but the ironic news of a soldier and the touch of a great anarchist was not good enough to read on the train.
The passengers were particular about news stories, and the greater the stories of shame, coincidence, and native victimry the more newspapers we sold at the station. The travelers wanted to read about adventures, crime, war, storms, cultural turndowns, political corruption and rebuffs, and the ironic survival of ordinary people.
These newspaper stories about public experiences were our best tutors. I imagined these scenes later and created my own ironic stories. We were persistent, persuasive, and pretended to be at the very center of the worldly stories that were published that summer in the Tomahawk.
The Ogema Station was built near the grain elevator at the very edge of the woodland and the peneplain. The new station faced west, warmed by the winter sun, but in the summer the platform was not shaded. The Soo Line Railroad provided a residence for the agent and his family in the two-story station. The observation site and ticket office were located in the bay window near the main tracks, and a second building to store freight was attached to the side of the station. The railway mail and “wish book” catalogue orders were stored in the freight house. Montgomery Ward shipped the famous Clipper steel windmills to farmers. Many years later several houses, the entire precut materials, planks, windows, doors, siding and shingles, were ordered by mail from Sears, Roebuck and Company catalogue and shipped by train to the Ogema Station.
The station agent was a stout, silent, serious man who sat in the bay window and waited for the next train from Detroit Lakes or from Winnipeg. He encouraged and protected our newspaper business and allowed us to board the trains to hawk copies of the Tomahawk to passengers. The sound of his whistle was absolute and we never abused his trust. His wife provided water on hot summer days, and sometimes she would make sandwiches. The station agent, his wife, and our mother were very close friends. They had once lived near Bad Medicine Lake.
The Mogul engine sounded the whistle and came to a slow stop at the station. The building and platform shuddered from the weight and coal-fired rage of the mighty engine. Steam shrouded the station windows. We waited inside to avoid the heat. Patch, the assistant agent, a smartly dressed native in uniform, greeted every passenger with a salute. He wore gray work gloves and his military coat was properly buttoned, even in the heat and humidity of the summer.
Patch Zhimaaganish, our good friend, was not paid for his service and dedication, but the station agent was sympathetic and allowed him to practice the manner and courtesy of a railroad conductor. Patch was the only boy to survive in his family, and so his given name was a tease of fate. The translation of his surname was “soldier” in the language of the Anishinaabe. His mother tailored a dark brown uniform for him with bright brass buttons and told her son to find a future on the railroad. So, he reported early every day to the station agent and proudly carried out his unpaid railroad duties with dignity.
Patch was taught to play the bugle by his grandfather who served as a bugler in the Civil War. His grandfather was badly wounded, lost a leg, and was given the nickname zhimaaganish, or soldier, when he returned from the war. That nickname became a surname when the reservation was created by treaty in 1868.
Patch Zhimaaganish was an ecstatic singer with a rich baritone voice. The government teachers praised the soldier but the students only mocked his manly voice. He sang native dream songs when the trains arrived at the station, and sometimes he sang in the rain and to the sunset. The Soo Line Railroad agents at other stations on the line told passengers to listen for the great voice of the young agent at the Ogema Station. Patch was honored for his voice, dream songs, and for his courtesy.
