Grant had been studying the wall above Meacham’s head as if he had been reading something inscribed there. But then he tucked his chin down and raised his shoulders like a prize-fighter looking for an opening. The jab, when it came, had been tentative.
There had been this thought: There was this other entity that needed to be included because it had a legitimate stake in the running of things. The Civil Service, the providers of the army of reservation agents. And with them, the contractors. Entrenched interests with agendas inside agendas. Purveyors of stuff for the Indians and its transportation. Another problem to be faced. Lucrative. With insider jobs. Food, yes. Often rotten. Unhealthy. Meager, bug-infested. Clothing, yes. Shoddy. Threadworn. Tools and implements, yes. Substandard. Broken. Non-existent. And of course liquor, yes. Whisky, yes. As always, yes.
Civil-Service. The third arm. It would always need surveillance, recognizing it for what it is: a magnet of shady-dealing. But it, too, would be given its charge to be accountable and regulated.
And where the Indians were concerned, Grant had told Meacham, there was to be a change in the Civil Service. Within the month, in fact. Grant intended to appoint Ely Parker. An Indian. The first non-white officer in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. To be Secretary. Grant’s trusted aide -- wrote the transcript of the surrender of Lee at Appomattox.
“So things are moving, Mr. Meacham,” Grant had said. “I said I had a story to tell you, and that was it. About this three-pronged attack on this ‘Indian Problem.’ Mounted by the Christian denominations, the United States Army, and the Civil Service.”
Meacham finally was sure of the meaning of Grant’s invitation, the words he himself had fumbled for in his introduction to the president. Finally, he knew what they meant.
“Having told you all of that,” Grant had reminded him, “I said I had a question. Since you have heard me out, here it is: Will you take a position if I offer it to you?”
Thinking of it now, Meacham shoved the curtain aside to watch the snowy scene and its anticipatory bonfires. Three months of these Oregon Big Talks, and the job far from finished.
“In light of your Republican party affiliation, your Methodist Church membership, your experience in moving Indians, I would like to put your name forward to be Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the State Oregon. If you accept, you will replace Huntington. You will report to Ely Parker in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”
How could he refuse what he already desired, especially when it was offered by the battlefield strategist par excellence? Of course, he had been ready with his response to all that he had just heard, so eager that he had stopped listening. There was a bit more to the president’s invitation. A caveat.
“Excuse me, Sir,” Meacham had said, “I thought you had finished speaking.”
Grant had gestured as if to say it was nothing. “I was just going to add that I hope that it will not be dispiriting for you to feel the responsibility of leadership…. I’m sure you will find a way to lead the Indians without ostentation.”
This morning, he was less than sure what that meant.
The boxer metaphor describing Grant seemed inadequate. Meacham needed a sharper one as he watched the converging procession of Indians. Here, in this movement of all these responding people, he could see tangible proof of someone’s or something’s intention.
He had watched his commander in action, deploying his troops again, triangulating. Figuring his moves. Calculating in the face of enfilading fire his possible gains, probable losses. Meacham wondered what metaphor would cover that.
#13
And now he had run up against this reluctant petty official. Unable to wait longer, Meacham crossed to Knapp’s door, but as he started to knock, it swung open and Knapp brushed past him. He disappeared into the kitchen, a towel over his shoulder. Knapp’s narrow face was as drawn as before, but now in the fresh light Meacham had at last read it. He knew the look -- the sallow skin and moist redness around the eyes -- and understood the stale air about the man and the possessions that littered his room. So this was the individual he must rely on, one assigned to him out of the wisdom of Washington and the army. Meacham felt the weight of misgivings displace the weak hope he had nourished all the way from Yainax. The man didn’t want to be here; nor did he care one way or another about the people who now would depend on him. That much was clear. And, Meacham now realized, Knapp knew how to escape. Day by day, night by night, he would drink his way to freedom -- or do worse. He wondered who owed Knapp. Like so many of the other agents, he was probably being carried along on the books because of some long-standing debt chalked to his credit in some distant past. This place was just a convenience. The look Meacham had found difficult to interpret on his arrival made sense now: it was simple resentment. Suddenly Meacham missed the teetotalling Lindsay Applegate, all the transparent hedging in his report notwithstanding.
“There are just three things,” Meacham said to Knapp later as they sat at the table. The remains of the meager breakfast had been shoved aside, and the agent tipped back in his chair, waiting, indolently doodling in a notebook, as if to say he was ready to write down any important thought that might happen by. So far, however, he must not have heard any, for the page was nearly full of rambling figures. “Three things,” Meacham repeated.
Knapp found a clear space, wrote the number ‘1’ and put a period after it.
The trouble was, everything Meacham said to him came out sounding like dictation. He could hear it himself, yet there was nothing he could do about it. Knapp would have to make the best of it, thought Meacham, for he couldn’t risk misunderstandings about who was superintendent, who was agent. Knapp looked up from his notebook, still waiting.
“First, there are the reservation practices that must cease.” Knapp’s hand resumed its sketching. “Second, and related to the first point, there is the issue of the military.” Knapp’s head snapped up at that one, and his eyes focused on Meacham more sharply than they had all morning. “Third, there is the matter of this Captain Jack. Keintpoos, I guess he calls himself. You choose, Knapp. Where would you like to start?”
The superintendent could have added a fourth: the performance required of any agent. But Meacham foresaw that would be a discussion carried out at a rather higher level of authority, some other time, not now.
“You seem interested in the military question. Is that so?”
Captain Knapp, no doubt soon to be retired, who probably had known his closest, perhaps only, brush with glory fighting against the secessionists, looked back at him and nodded warily. Decorated twice for bravery -- at Missionary Ridge, wasn’t it? Brevetted a Captain. The prospect of civilian life no doubt had the aspect of demotion about it. And so did having to listen to a civilian superintendent. Knapp was already showing some galled spots where things didn’t rub right.
“What is there to discuss about the military?” he asked.
“There is the matter of Fort Klamath.”
“That! I thought you meant some larger issue.”
“Well, we will come to that. But for the moment I would settle for some address of our neighborhood problem. The fort is worse than useless, right on our doorstep. At best it’s a nuisance, but it’s far
