Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (14 page)

Odysseus described Julius the trader as a showman because he wore native
clothes, a double dresser, and posed in paid photographs with eminent native leaders, such as Swift Bear and Spotted Tail. The Pawnee teased the fancy trader and gave him a native nickname that described his curly hair.

Julius, Jefferson, and Odysseus were invited more than once to native dog feasts on the Great Plains. The natives had learned to respect the curious dietary laws of the Jews and served boiled eggs to Julius. Jefferson teased the trader and the natives that the nickname for curly hair might better be related to boiled eggs.

Augustus raised his heavy glass of whiskey and declared in a loud voice, Let them eat deviled eggs. The doctor laughed, but the others at the table were silent about the nicknames. Our uncle explained later the intended irony. The French expression, “let them eat cake,” should have been translated as “let them eat brioche,” or bread that is light and sweet. Marie Antoinette never made that statement about hungry peasants, and the reference was more irony than contempt. So, we learned that night at the high table that the satire was in the trade stories of deviled eggs and brioche.

Julius was an energetic trader and sponsored a company of natives to attend the Paris
Exposition Universelle
in 1889. The natives lived and traveled for about a year in France. The trader had met the army scout and impresario William Frederick Cody, Buffalo Bill, several times in Nebraska Territory, but he had never seen the circus show of the Wild West until he attended the Paris Exposition.

Buffalo Bill, Julius, and the natives gathered that afternoon at the spectacular Eiffel Tower. They teased the stately attendant in uniform that the tower was an iron horse in the sky, but only the natives leaned back and smiled on the second level, the only level completed for the Exposition.

Odysseus collected paintings and ledger art by natives and especially the art by prisoners at Fort Marion. As a young trader he bought several paintings at the Indian Wigwam in Omaha. A decade later traders, galleries, and museums were in search of more native ledger art. Bishop Whipple bought several books of paintings, but since then native paintings had become valuable and rare. The artists were released from prison but not many continued painting.

Julius and the natives that he escorted to the Paris
Exposition Universelle
were invited by chance to visit an art gallery in the Luminous City. Nathan, the gallery owner, first met the natives at the Eiffel Tower, and then traveled
with them to the reconstructed Bastille. Odysseus told stories about the curly haired trader and the natives as if he had attended the Exposition and gallery that summer. The Galerie Crémieux was the very first to market traditional and original native arts in Paris.

Nathan Crémieux owned the art gallery and had displayed native art for more than twenty years. Henri Crémieux, his father, and his uncle were traders on native pueblos and reservations in the Southwest and the Great Plains. Odysseus had actually met the father and uncle of the gallery owner several times at the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado, Arizona.

Fine whiskey smoothed out the rocky details of conversations and stories that night after dinner. The candor and trail stories were entrusted to the old trader. Doctor Mendor was mostly silent that night, but never remote in his appreciation of trade stories. No one could easily escape his intense dark eyes. Catherine was caught in his gaze several times across the dinner table. Augustus was always candid, critical, instructive, and ready to comment on the tease and gist of ironic stories. John Leecy was reserved, and always the generous host of high table dinners.

Odysseus told the most stories and the others were generous listeners and drinkers. Leecy first served Wiser's, a fine rye whiskey distilled in Ontario, Canada. Much later he served Chivas Regal, an imported Scotch whisky, one of the best and most expensive in the world. Aloysius smiled and mocked the salutes, soughs, and husky murmurs over the taste of the aged mellow whiskey.

Odysseus related stories about Joseph Sondheimer, the trader in hides and furs. At the end of the Civil War the Jewish immigrant rode a white horse from Saint Louis to Muskogee in Indian Territory. He became a distinguished citizen of the territory and later the state. The natives and others voted to become the State of Sequoyah in 1905 but the petition was denied and two years later the new state became Oklahoma. Joseph bought deer, bear, beaver, otter, and other hides from natives and shipped them to markets in the east, and in Europe.

Odysseus and his father rode and traded in Indian Territory, the Southwest, and the Great Plains, and were never menaced by natives. The traders who learned to speak some native languages, who told stories with a sense of presence and irony, and who sang on the trail were not considered the enemy.

Jews were considered by natives to be the most honest traders on reservations. Joseph Sondheimer was respected for the fair prices he paid natives for hides, more than any other trader, and he even bought domestic animals that had died in bad weather. He was determined, reliable, and a trader with integrity.

Odysseus touched his nose as he told the hide story. I could smell the hide on that trader a mile away, and his house, horses, and family smelled the same, a sharp, sour stench that lingered on everything he touched and owned. We could smell the old trader in his story that night. Naturally, another sip of whiskey changed the scent and the story. Natives were more tolerant of the stench of dead animals and bundles of hides.

Solomon Bibo was a marvelous and eager trader in the New Mexico Territory. Jefferson and Odysseus visited Bibo and his native wife, Juana Valle, at Acoma Pueblo. The Jewish immigrant was born in Brakel, Prussia, and got his start as a trader with the generous support of Solomon Spiegelberg who was an established merchant in Santa Fe. Bibo was elected a Governor of Acoma Pueblo and named Don Solomono. Incredibly, he was the first outsider to be elected to the native government. Bibo, Juana and their children moved later to San Francisco, California. He ran a food store in the city. Odysseus and his father visited Don Solomono and Juana several times, and never tired of the wistful trade stories from the New Mexico Territory. The food store was destroyed in the earthquake of 1906.

Jefferson Young, one of the great traders in the history of the native west, died on the trail close by the Hubbell Trading Post in Arizona Territory. Odysseus told us that night that his father died in the early morning on April 18, 1906, the very same day as the earthquake in San Francisco. He buried his father in the desert, and then returned to grieve with his family in South Carolina.

Jefferson actually died in his sleep in the Palace Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory. Odysseus truly honored his father with a creative and more memorable story of the desert and the Hubbell Trading Post. The trader told us later that his father suddenly could no longer ride long distances, so he boarded with his horses the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad from Gallup to Lamy and Santa Fe. He died near his friends in Santa Fe.

Odysseus recounted his return to San Francisco four years after the
death of his father to visit with the trader Don Solomono, and repeated the captivating scenes at the Christmas Eve concert with the coloratura soprano Luisa Tetrazzini. The old trader took another sip of whiskey and then sang a few lines from his favorite road song, “The Last Rose of Summer.” Doctor Mendor and Catherine Heady were moved to tears by the mercy and memory and the music.

Odysseus leaned closer and promised that one day he would introduce us to Don Solomono and Juana. Suddenly, he turned back to the high table and continued his stories about Solomon, Levi, Elias, Emanuel, Lehman, and Willi Spiegelberg of Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory. Solomon was a Jewish immigrant and established a trade business, groceries and dry goods, near the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe in 1846. A few years later his five brothers arrived to work in the store.

Jefferson and his son were treated as family, and always welcome at the store. Odysseus was touched by the memory of the time with his father. He told us about the spirit and generosity of Solomon Spiegelberg. During the Civil War the Confederate army actually occupied Santa Fe and seized thousands of dollars of merchandise from the family store. The Spiegelbergs at the same time rescued a slave girl who had been abused and wounded by the greyback soldiers. A month later the militia drove the Confederate soldiers out of New Mexico Territory, and the slave girl was emancipated and educated by the family.

Odysseus remembered his great father as a freedman by heart, sorrow, and ironic stories. South Carolina was a state of slavery at the time. Father and son were forever grateful to Solomon Spiegelberg for his compassion, protection, and charity.

Aloysius raised his hand and told the last story that early morning about our cousin John Clement Beaulieu and his friends who tried to out drink a mission priest. The Irish priest was a regular visitor to the reservation, and invited natives to drink for salvation and country. Whiskey inspired some priests to become instant theologians. The natives could never out drink the priest. He was the last standing at the end of the night.

So, John Clement and other natives conspired to under drink one night, tease the priest to over drink, and then bury the priest in a fresh grave at Saint Benedict's Catholic Cemetery. The priest actually toppled over drunk for the first time. The natives lowered the priest into the grave and
waited nearby for the priest to awaken. At dawn the priest stuck his head out of the grave, looked around, and said, Bejesus this is resurrection morn and I'm the first to rise.

My story later that night was about the native who once again had lost his wooden leg. Pepper was a warrior in the American Civil War and wounded by cannon fire. He was held back from the direct combat areas because his loud sneezes attracted enemy fire. And even at a safe distance he became a target with a loud sneeze. As a boy on the reservation no one wanted to hunt with him because he scared the game away.

Pepper was seventeen, a short man, and even shorter when his left leg was shattered. The army surgeon immediately amputated the leg above the knee. He and the surgeon drank whiskey to kill the pain and dull the sound of the handsaw.

Pepper was given a straight wooden leg, but he always limped around and used a cane because he had hollowed out the leg, sealed the interior with a hot poker, filled the cavity with moonshine, and covered the hole with a wooden plug. The leg contained at least two large jars of drink.

The hollow limb was once again missing for several days, and then a friend found the leg in the crotch of a white pine tree. Several stories returned with his found leg. The one that lasted the longest was about the black bear who stole the leg, got drunk, and came back to steal the leg several more times. That was a much better story than the one about his woman who stole the leg at least once a week and drained the moonshine for a quiet night at the cabin.

Augustus praised my brother and his version of a family story, and my uncle praised me for another original version of the ironic native lost limb stories. Odysseus raised another glass of whiskey. Catherine was enchanted with the doctor who hardly spoke a word that night. Messy continued to laugh about my lost leg story, and shouted, True, too true. John Leecy told everyone that he was a lucky man to have so many good friends on the White Earth Reservation.

› 9 ‹

S
HADOW
D
RAFT

— — — — — — —
1918
— — — — — — —

Augustus Hudon Beaulieu died on August 8, 1917. The news hurt my heart, but memories of his tease and confidence would last forever. He was praised for his integrity, humor, and for his dedication to native rights and liberty. Our favorite uncle was honored by hundreds of friends and thousands of readers of his newspapers on the reservation and around the state. There could have been more than a hundred reverent pallbearers that summer day at his funeral.

Augustus decried in the
Progress
and later in the
Tomahawk
the General Allotment Act that divided the treaty reservation into individual barren cuts and parcels of land. He encouraged natives to be inventive, progressive, productive, but not for the government or as the mere assimilation of native stories and culture.

“Gus H. Beaulieu Dies at Barrows.”

“The call was sudden and occurred at 3 o'clock
P.M.
on Wednesday, August 8th,” the
Tomahawk
reported eight days later on the front page. Augustus was living in Barrows, Minnesota, near the “extinct village of Old Crow Wing.” Clement Hudon Beaulieu, his father, once lived there before the treaty that established the White Earth Reservation and “had long been the agent in charge of the fur trading business conducted by the American Fur Company.”

On the “day of his death he and his wife and son decided to spend the afternoon fishing. Shortly after luncheon they embarked in their car and drove to a lake on the west side of the Mississippi River where as a boy he had fished often.” The road was rough near the lake, “so the three disembarked a few paces from the waters edge and proceeded on foot to the shore.” Augustus “had a fishing rod in one hand and a can of bait in the other, suddenly he fell forward at full length and crashed to the ground.” Ella and Chester rushed to his side and tried to “revive him from a faint, for as he fell they thought he had simply stumbled.” The cause of death was
apoplexy, and the doctor “expressed the opinion that life had flown before the body reached the ground.” The
Tomahawk
concluded that the loss of Augustus is “distinct and great to this community and to all the Chippewas of Minnesota.”

Aloysius placed a blue raven medal in the coffin.

The body of our uncle was returned to his residence on the reservation, and then moved to Saint Columba's Episcopal Church for an informal service. Augustus was a member of the Catholic Church, but his brother Clement Hudon Beaulieu, the younger, was an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church. Augustus was honored in death by the two great religions on the reservation. Episcopalians and his brother, however, never mentioned the critical stories of churchy power on the reservation. Father Aloysius conducted the actual interment rites at Saint Benedict's Catholic Cemetery.