The Coup de Grâce

“Step right up, folks! Today’s show features lawyers who shed their skins, secretaries who sign away souls, and a parade of progress where the only thing higher than the dam is the pile of broken promises. ~ The Clown

The anteroom to the Secretary of Indian Affairs Office reeked of cigarette smoke, Vitalis Hair Tonic, and Bay Rum Cologne. Thursday, May 20, 1948, was not just warm in the Capital City of the All the White People, it was stiflingly hot. Armpit drenching. It was also just as hot in Hell. The appointed hour had come to get the damn dam on the road, so to speak.

Mamzer came striding into the room. He immediately spied Robert Dudley, head of the Keep North Dakota Just Like North Dakota Always Was Coalition, an early 

conservationist group, and tried to dodge out of the room. Dudley blocked his path.

“This is a sad day for America and its relationship with Indians,” Dudley hissed.

“Listen. I know these Indians. I lived with them for four long months and in an earth lodge with snakes. They’ll holler. They’ll cry. They won’t be happy at first. But when they get their grubby mitts on the new dollars we’re throwing their way, they’ll be just fine. And quiet,” Mamzer said. “I represented them. They loved me. They still love me.” They called me He She, he thought to himself. Bastards. Today the worm turns.

“But the dam will decimate the whole state of North Dakota! We don’t want it and we don’t need it” hissed Dudley, “Think of the ecosystem. You read the Army Corps of Engineer’s fine print, right?”

“Do you really think a top notch government lawyer wouldn’t have read that? But those warnings were mostly bullshit. The Corps got somethings very right but warning about environmental harm isn’t their job. It’s not a federal job, it’s a state prerogative and North Dakota still hates sneaky Indians. Progress is good for all of us. We got to have it and we will have it. Indians and Indian lovers like you be damned.”

“Then you understand that your dam means a significant decline in plant and animal diversity, right?”

Blah, blah, blah thought Mamzer. How much more of this would he have to endure? “Well, we’ll stock the new reservoir with game fish, Walleye and Northern Pike, I’m told. They don’t live there now but they’re very diverse. Win some, lose some.”

“Win some, lose some? That sounds like something a sociopath would feel proud of saying. What the Hell are you talking about, Mr. Mamzer?”

“Well, they were worried that we’d flood Williston, so we lowered the height of the dam by twenty feet. That means we lose two million acre feet of water, that’s a lot of valuable water resources in those acre feet but it shows the World just how much we care about rural North Dakota. I’d let them swim.”

“How about lowering the lake to zero, if you care so much about North Dakota? The Indians are North Dakotans, too.”

“In name only. Those damn treaties made them think they were equal. Not true. I’ve read them and I don’t like them. They don’t say a damn word about ecology or water. They just coddled Indians and gave them the chance to be perennially drunk. I know how they think from first-hand experience. Time to pay the piper.”

“You’re a real sociopath, sir. A dumb one, too.”

The Deputy Secretary strode across the room and whispered in Mamzer’s ear. “The Secretary wants to see you. Boy, is he pissed.”

“I’m not a racist. I’m a all American Boy who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made something of himself. I got to the top by not lying. Unlike people like you. Everyone is entitled to their own facts. Just relax, those Indians will be just fine, and your crowd will get over it someday. Excuse me, I got to go, the Secretary is here and ready to sign.” Mamzer beat a path to the Secretary’s door. He knocked.

“Come in.” Secretary Krieg was a man of small stature and a bad temper. “Mamzer, what in the Sam Hell have you done? There were a fucking lot of things you didn’t tell me that are now in this bill,” he began. “No wonder I’ve gotten all this flack. It looks like you changed the whole thing!”

Mamzer reddened. Spittle formed on the corner of his lips. “But it was the best thing for the Indians! They need to be reeled in. The Keep North Dakota Like North Dakota Always Was Coalition and the tribal council made our lives rocky back there. They got uppity and so I fixed them.” Mamzer’s knees started to wobble. If only the Secretary hadn’t looked.

“See here, Mamzer. I can’t sign this. It’s murderous. You’re telling the Indians that they can’t fish in their own waters, can’t remove their own trees for firewood. According to your language, their cattle wouldn’t be allowed to drink from the lake or even graze by it once the lake is full . They won’t even be able to fish it or even draw any water to irrigate their crops. There’s no provision for them to buy any goddamn electricity at our cost of production. Topping it all off, they can’t use any of the money we’re giving them to hire attorneys to fight this. Did Colonel Pick help you write this? Either way, you’re a rotten, devious son-of-a-bitch!”

“Secretary Krieg,” Mamzer hissed, “you have to sign off on this. Congress passed it and your signature is but a formality. Besides, you dumb bunny, the construction work started two years ago.”

“Two years ago? You hid this from me?” bending over his desk Krieg sobbed. “You and that shithead Pick! But you I can fire you immediately, and that’s exactly what I’m doing right now. You’ll get yours either from God or from the Indians. Maybe both. Get out of my sight.”

Tears came to Only Man’s eyes. He licked his ancient lips and watched Mamzer shuffle out of the Secretary’s Office, slamming the panel door. It was still rocking on its hinges five seconds later. Odin rejoiced. The Clown celebrated the unmasking of mendacity.

Slithering down the hallway to the exit Mamzer felt a wave of regret wash over him. Not because he’d just shafted the Three Affiliated Tribes. But because he couldn’t watch that clownfish Krieg sign his morals away. Mamzer knew he’d have to pay a price for mendacity someday. But, why today, his day of triumph over the Indians? Those who called him He She? Still, he let himself feel pride and watched the skin on his arm molt to purple snakeskin.

With his connections, he’d find new a new job. He knew all the bad hearts; they recognized a fellow slink. In the meanwhile, he’d given the shaft to those Indians from the Valuable Bottomlands. They wouldn’t forget him any time soon. He She will ride again! More to come! Noticing the billboard, he noticed that the schlock flick They Died with Their Boots On was playing at the new Senator Theatre. Perfect! Cowboys and movie Indians! Their boots would soon be soaked in Missouri River water! First, though, he sought the bushes. The wretch retched.

He wasn’t in the room where it happened when it happened. Before Krieg affixed his signature to Mamzer’s work, Pete Storm Walker, Chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes, bedecked in a new pinstripe suit held court, “The members of the tribal council sign this contract with heavy hearts,” he managed to say. The crowd turned ashen. Most stared at their shoes. “Right now, the future does not look good to us.” Odin rejoiced and blew his Gjallarhorn when Krieg reached for a bundle of commemorative pens to sign the feted bill. Chairman Storm Walker cradled his face in one hand and began to cry. The warm embraces and shared tears of Only Man were felt by the Mandans, Arikara, and Rees who still were in the room. No one else would or could notice.

1954, The Natives Get Soaked

“Mortals build towns on borrowed time; the river remembers what they forget.” ~ The Clown

The Missouri River water was rising fast, and the air smelled like snakes. The family outhouse sat on the crest of its own island near the main house. The house wasn’t faring as well. The water was lapping at the second step. Every 24 hours it lapped against the wood stairs, rising another inch. Outhouses were always supposed to be built lower than other structures and the fact that the house had reeked occasionally was proof that the Bureau of Indian Affairs agent hadn’t made himself clear in the 1910s when the Antelope Ears family scrapped together enough rough lumber from the Bottomlands to build their farmstead. No matter now. In several days they’d be on the move to the new government town, Mandaree. Albert’s grandson Johnny Junior stared out the door.

“Grandpa. That water is coming way quicker now. I wanna go fishing”.

“I don’t think there’s fish in that water. At least not yet.”

“How about I go swimming, then.”

“There’s no time now for fun and games, Grandson. We gotta keep packing.”

“How about them snakes? Will they drown?”

“If they don’t move quick enough.”

“Where did you say we were heading?”

“They named the place Mandaree. Quite a name.”

Naming the new communities had not been a simple task even though the task was left to simpletons. The higher ups didn’t want the ancestral Bottomlands communities ti find new life up top. White settlers, lonesome for their European roots, had perpetuated their memories by appropriating familiar names and placing “New” in front. New England, New Leipzig, New Rockford, and New Salem adorned the prairie. Shadow towns with no visible connections to their European namesakes. No attempts at Indian nostalgia would be permitted.

There would be no New Elbowoods or New Sahnish or New Like-A-Fishhook Village. The new agency town—the reservation’s governmental seat—was simply named New Town, a full display of the government’s lack of geographical imagination. If the government needed a defense, it was noted that Elbowoods was not called Old Town and if anyone were sentimental, they were doomed to be waterlogged. Elbowoods would soon be under 90 feet of water.

Naming the other brand new towns was more complicated. To promote unity among the three tribes, the name Mandaree was chosen for the western most community. By mashing up the what the white government had chosen to call tribes many years before, Mandan, Ree, and Hidatsa, and presto, the town of Mandaree was born. For native people it was more to do with simple phonetics. Albert’s grandson got it right away.

“Grandpa, you told us that we’re Sahnish, but the government calls us Rees. You even said that others call us Arikara and Ricarees.” Shouldn’t it be called Mandasahnish? Or, Mandaricarees?”

Albert sighed. His seventy plus years were wearing on his shoulders. “It’s even more basic than that, my grandson. The Hidatsa were called GrosVentre by the French explorers because of our corn-fed stomachs. The Mandan called themselves Numakiki or ‘the people’.”

The government took the easy way out, using the first names at hand. Like the swirling undercurrents of the new lake forming underneath its feet, more research and understanding of ancient culture may have produced different options and different names. Divorcing itself from creativity, the next names for the new resettled communities came quickly and obviously, White Shield and Twin Buttes.

Junior pondered this, “If they put all those names together, shouldn’t all the tribe live there? If it’s Hidatsa only, why didn’t they name it “Da” or even “Big Belly?”

Albert shrugged. The Arikara were headed to White Shield and Parshall on the eastern edge of the Rez while the Mandans would get–not Mandan, North Dakota–a white town next to Bismarck, but the name Twin Buttes.

“What would be wrong with naming Twin Buttes, ‘Real Mandan?’ Or White Shield something like ‘Ree’?”

There were fewer Mandans among the members of the Three Affiliated Tribes, the hundred year inheritance of virulent smallpox passed to the tribe by trading blankets. Fewer of them meant they wouldn’t get their own high school in the brand new Twin Buttes like White Shield and Mandaree. Instead, Mandans would need to venture off the Rez to white towns for secondary education and to rub elbows with the sons and daughters of white ranchers. Assimilation. Nefarious, but obviously not mysterious, the way the government agents operated Albert thought. Mamzer was now one of them.

Albert’s thoughts turned to the rumors of oil underneath the Rez. Several years before, oil was discovered in North Dakota near Tioga. Maybe things would be OK with more money he mused. Money never served the tribe like love did but it was a close substiute. There was also the arrival of the television stations in North Dakota. Their weak signals wouldn’t reach the Rez without relay towers and already radio towers to speed the government’s communication were being constructed near the new communities. Maybe we’ll get TV, too, he thought. But when would tribal families have enough money to buy those newfangled television sets? His reverie was put on hold by another question from his grandson.

“Grandpa, are they going to dig up our ancestors and take them up top? I saw that they took all our relatives buried in Christian graveyards on the Bottom Lands to the new Saint Anthony’s and Congregational graveyards. How about those relatives in our clan’s resting places? Won’t their spirits drown?”

Somewhere behind the bleachers in the old Elbowoods gym a cardboard box with basketball jerseys, a leather basketball, the 1942 Second Place Class B trophy was left floating behind. When confronted later about this loss, the government said it was just as well because, after all, which of the new schools would be the custodian? Would cut up the trophy three ways? The jerseys? There were bigger things to move and to worry about. No infighting necessary. What was done was done. Later it was said that once it was covered with sixty feet of water, the trophy erupted like a Poseidon missile launched from a submarine lurking the bottom of the lake, parting the new waters, and vanishing in a cloud of purple smoke in the stratosphere. The Clown loved him some fireworks.