Westward Ho

“Go West, young man, but pack your grandmother’s handkerchief and a treaty or two. Out here, the roads are rough, the questions are tricky, and the only thing more unpredictable than the prairie wind is your own mouth.” ~ The Clown (with a hat tip to Horace Greeley)

The westbound mail train to Bismarck from Minneapolis took twenty hours, stopping along the way in St. Cloud, Fargo, Valley City, and Jamestown. Clutching a dog eared copy of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, and surveying a prairie pockmarked with dusty, dirty snow, Mamzer thought about Indians and what legal problems they might possibly have. It seemed very simple. Indians had land and government schools. They were becoming more like white people. That had to be a good thing. 

Wiping his forehead with the lace handkerchief he’d filched from grandma’s dresser, he inhaled her perfume. Toilet Water she called it. His thoughts raced ahead to what he would say when he got to tribal headquarters in Elbowoods. Should he be bold? Should he project lawyerly probity? Should he make them like him by being funny, too? Maybe the dean was right, and he’d say the first thing that came into his head and screw the whole thing up. He had no idea what lay ahead.

Mamzer’s ride to Elbowoods was waiting for him at the Bismarck depot. “Antelope Ears was searching the crowd for a lawyerly type disembarking from the train. He had left the rusting 1934 Plymouth Six running outside the terminal to be sure he wouldn’t have to try to restart it in the subzero morning. Besides, who would steal a car from an Indian? Nearing sixty, Antelope Ears’ belly swallowed the belt buckle he had won at the 1924 Sahnish Rodeo for bareback riding. Tucked low on his jeans, he couldn’t see the red glow it emanated when Mamzer Hearsay came into range. Mamzer saw it and stood staring, transfixed by its size and obscuring the eyes of its owner.  Those eyes gleamed with the sly wit of a reservation as judge, former police officer, and head of his clan.

“Are you Mr. Hearsay?” Antelope Ears asked the small sweaty man in the overcoat.

“Yes. And what’s your name?” Mamzer said.

“Pleased to meet you. Albert Antelope Ears, Chief Tribal Judge and chief bottlewasher for the Three Affiliated Tribes. We’ve been corresponding.” his eyes darted to the pink plastic satchel Mamzer had appropriated for his trip unbeknownst to his grandmother. “You got everything?”

“I do,” Mamzer said, noting this host’s smirk and nodding to his handbag. “It’s my grandmother’s, she lent it to me for this trip. She knows I have it. It’s OK. Honest.” Changing the subject quickly, Mamzer asked “how many bottles do you Indians wash every week? I know you drink booze all the time, so that’s a bunch of bottles, right? Must keep you busy.” Walking toward the car, Antelope Ears shrugged. The one hundred miles of rutted gravel roads leading to Elbowoods lay ahead.

Driving to the Bottomlands

There’s no known cure for psychopaths—except, perhaps, a long drive on a gravel road with someone who knows all the old stories and isn’t afraid to tell them.” ~ The Clown

The drive north was uneventful until Highway 8 began the long descent to the Missouri River bottomland. Leaving the fence lines adorning the stark prairie behind, the old Plymouth edged down the gravel road passing stands of cottonwood trees, tall grass, and ravens.

“Where did you go to law school,” Mamzer asked.

“I didn’t. I’m not a lawyer like you. I studied law on my own and learned enough to be appointed tribal judge. 

“A judge that isn’t a lawyer? Wow. How would you ever understand the complexities of the law, like me? I graduated at the top of my class and so my command of the law is limitlessness and very much second nature. Your understanding must be very simple.”

Antelope Ears smiled to himself and said nothing. He was used to long silences.

“What crops to you grow here?”

“Same as our ancestors. Corn, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers,” Antelope Ears replied. We’ve been growing that stuff longer than anyone can remember.”

“I thought you Indians ate only meat. You know, buffalo, deer, and cattle you rustled from White people.”

“We eat meat, yes, but you can’t always get it when you want it. There’s an occasional stray that some lazy rancher doesn’t know about roaming on our land. Those critters are fair game,” Antelope Ears said. “There aren’t many fences around here and their cows sometimes ruin our crops. Our farmers have the right the right to kill any animal that strays into their fields.” Antelope Ears took a long drag on his cigarette and looked over the cows huddled on frozen fields near the entrance to the reservation. White cows. Hope they don’t become eligible for slaughter. 

“That’s why we’re looking for a smart lawyer to argue for our property rights, enforce rules, and help all sides keep peace around here.” Rolling his eyes, Antelope Ears said, “And, by the way, understand that Indians never rustle cattle.” With a twinkle, he said, “Oh, we occasionally eat human flesh, but that’s only what we scrape off the bones of psychopathic strangers who come to the Rez to plunder.”

Mamzer thought about that. Farmers. Peaceable. Women with spears. How quaint. Cannibals? Not likely. “When’s the last time anyone was killed around here?”

“What do you mean, killed?” Antelope Ears asked. “We get an occasional fight, a car or two driven by the wrong people crash, and occasionally someone steals some squash or corn or maybe honeys up with someone’s spouse and there’s bad blood for a few days. But murder? That hasn’t happened since the Missouri river traders packed their steamboats with smallpox infected blankets. Long before we were forced to live here and nowhere else.”

Mamzer’s head began to throb. “I was reading that you Indians call yourself the ‘Three Affiliated Tribes.’ That’s interesting. What do you mean by ‘affiliated?’”

Antelope Ears took another long drag on a Marlboro and looked out over the prairie. “We came together for survival. The Sioux were after us and the smallpox wiped out eighty percent of our people. Plus, the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa people were similar. We all knew how to trade and how to grow our own food. So, we were ‘affiliated’ a long time before the federal government said we were.”