Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (3 page)

Ignatius of Loyola was the mastermind of the Society of Jesus, otherwise named the Jesuits. Basque born more than four centuries ago he waived nobility, his knightly fortune, and by vows of poverty and chastity became a hermit, priest, and theologian. Ignatius was inspired by many reported visions of the saints, sacred adventures, and holy figures, and these marvelous ethereal contests in his dreams determined the stories of his divine service. He was canonized and declared the patron saint of soldiers.

Ignatius Vizenor was never secure with a saintly name.

Father Ignatius Tomazin was the first priest delegated by the abbot of Saint John's Abbey to establish a mission at the White Earth Reservation. Federal policy at the time favored the mercy and politics of the Episcopal Church over the secretive papacy of Rome. Father Tomazin was a testy immigrant from Ljubljana, Slovenia, with a great vision of political resistance,
and he spoke the language of the native Anishinaabe. He was provoked and criticized by Lewis Stowe, the nasty federal agent, who had been appointed by the Episcopal bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple. Stowe was actually the agent of the bishop, not the federal government, and he maligned Father Tomazin.

The Catholic natives on the reservation defended the mission priest and united to resist the arbitrary authority of the agent and the policies of the federal government to designate a minority religious functionary.

Father Ignatius Tomazin, in February 1879, accompanied a delegation of five principal native leaders, Wabanquot, or White Cloud, the head chief, Mashakegeshig, Munedowu, Shawbaskung, and Hole in the Day, the younger, to discuss the crucial issues of native liberty on the White Earth Reservation with federal officials in Washington.

Father Tomazin was eventually removed from the White Earth Reservation because he rightly goaded the federal agents and chosen Episcopalians. The feisty priest protected native political liberty. Some thirty years later he served as the pastor of a church in Albany, Minnesota. Tragically the nasty parishioners of that mingy and disagreeable community challenged the priest, beat and cursed him in the parish house, and chased him out of town. Father Tomazin, then in his seventies, was badly wounded in spirit, and deceived by his own resistance, wandered to Chicago and “jumped to his death from the sixth floor of a hotel,” according to the
New York Times
, August 27, 1916.

Ignatius, our coy, courteous, and elegant cousin would not survive the saintly names or priestly patronage. He was born premature, so tiny as an infant that he was swaddled in an ordinary cigar box. Partly to overcome the constant teases and tedious stories of his hasty birth and chancy presence he became a fancy dresser on the reservation. He wore smart suits, ties, and a dark fedora, but his courage and costumes were not enough to survive the horror of the First World War. Ignatius was killed in action on October 8, 1918, at Montbréhain, France, and buried in Saint Benedict's Cemetery on the White Earth Reservation.

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Aloysius revealed his visions in the creative portrayals of blue ravens, and the abstract ravens became his singular totem of the natural world. He was
convinced that his totemic associations were original, and there were no other blue raven totems or cultures in the world.

Aloysius forever soared with ravens and never wholly returned to the ordinary world of priests, missions, communion of saints, the strains of authenticity, newspapers, manly loggers, salt pork, or the mundane catechism, recitations, and lectures on civilization by lonesome missionaries, teachers, and federal agents. He became a blue raven painter of liberty.

My brother actually inspired me to become a writer, to create the stories anew that our relatives once told whenever they gathered in the summer for native celebrations, at native wakes, and funerals at the mission. Our relatives were great storiers, and natural leaders with many versions of stories and reservation scenes, and for that reason they were associated with the crane totem, the orators of the early Anishinaabe.

Frances Densmore, the musicologist and curious explorer of native cultures, recorded native songs and stories on the reservation. She was mostly interested in the translation of the songs and oral stories. My interests were in the actual creation of the songs and stories, and the totemic variation of stories, not in the mere concepts and evidence of culture. The specialists forever collected native stories and concocted a show of conceptual traditions. The culture was ours, of course, and the show was never the same in the studies by outside experts. Similar stories were told over and over with many personal and communal variations at native festivals, funerals, and summer celebrations. The heart and humor of native stories and cultures are never in the books of outsiders.

Aloysius inspired me to create visionary stories and scenes of presence, stories that were elusive and not merely descriptive. The scenes of blue ravens in court, ravens balanced on the back of a black horse, and seven blue ravens perched in a caboose were memorable. He created abstract ravens in motion, the very scenes of his visions and memory, but words were too heavy, too burdened by grammar and decorated with documented history to break into blue abstract ravens and fly. My recollections of the words in stories were not the same as artistic or visionary scenes, not at first. Dreams are scenes not words, but one or two precise words could create a vision of the scene. That would be my course of literary art and liberty.

Frances Densmore visited the reservation that summer and indirectly provided me with the intuition and the initial tease of visionary songs and
stories. Yes, we were twelve-year-old native amateurs at the time, so the actual memory of my inspiration is much clearer today. Densmore recorded hundreds of native singers on a phonograph, a cumbersome machine that recorded sound directly onto cylinders. We had heard the songs of shamans and animals, of course, but we had never heard the immediate recorded tinny sound of a human voice.

Densmore recorded singers and the song stories, the situation, cultural significance, and descriptive meaning of the song. The stories of the songs inspired me, and by intuition the actual creation of written scenes and stories became much easier for me.

Densmore, for instance, recorded this song by Odjibwe, the traditional native singer,
little plover, it is said, has walked by
. Only eight words were translated, nothing more. The song scenes were active and memorable because the listeners understood the story. The song story is what inspired me to create the presence of listeners in the story.

The song dancers imitated the natural motions of the plover, elusive motions to distract intruders and predators. The little plover was alone, always vulnerable near the lakeshore. That sense of motion was portrayed in my three written stories that were inspired by the native song of the plover dance. The listeners and readers must appreciate the chance of the plover.

My first three stories were neatly written on newsprint, and my brother painted two blue abstract ravens for the cover of the plover dance scenes. The first stories were gathered by my mother but were lost in a house fire, never folded or signed on the corner. The fire destroyed the early box camera photographs of my brother and me when we sold newspapers at the station, when we worked in the livery stable of the Hotel Leecy, and the only photographs of us as soldiers in the American Expeditionary Forces. Ignatius was the first to leave for the war, and we were pictured arm in arm at the train station.

The first story was about the 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.

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O
GEMA
S
TATION

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1908
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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.