Aloysius opened his art book and painted a raven with wings widely spread over the studio easels, misty feathers tousled and astray, beak turned to the side, a blue raven bow of honor and courtesy. My brother presented the watercolor to the artist of the Women in the Garden.
Baske mounted the blue raven on a separate easel. Young man, he said, you perceive the natural motion of ravens, and only by that heart, by that gift of intuition, and distinctive sensibility create the glorious abstracts of impressionistic ravens.
Aloysius was moved by the curious praise, of course, but he was hesitant to show his instant appreciation and sense of wonder. The blue ravens were in natural flight, and the studio was silent. We heard only our heartbeats and the muted screech of streetcars in the distance. The mighty scenes of new totems were gathered on the easels. No one had ever raised the discussion of blue ravens to such a serious level of interpretation or considered the abstract totems with such critical sensitivity.
Aloysius invited the artist to visit our relatives on the White Earth Reservation. Baske smiled, bowed, and accepted the invitation. He walked with us down the stairs to the entrance of the library. Outside he paused, turned to my brother, handed him a tin of rouge watercolor paint, and suggested that he brush only a tiny and faint hue of rouge in the scenes of the blue ravens. Baske told my brother that a slight touch of rouge, a magical hue would enrich the subtle hues of blues and the ravens.
Baske was a master teacher.
My brother painted blue ravens over the train depots on our slow return to the Ogema Station. He practiced the faint touch of rouge, the hue on a wing or in one eye of a blue raven, and a mere trace of rouge in the shadows.
› 5 ‹
PEACE MEDALS
— — — — — — — 1910 — — — — — — —
Odysseus arrived as usual on horseback that early summer but his familiar songs were faint and unsteady. In the past summers we could hear the sonorous voice of the trader at a great distance. His hearty songs were gestures of amity on the reservation.
Mine eyes have seen the glory
Aloysius listened for the trader and created blue ravens as a present, an original totem of native respect. The scenes were finished by the time the trader arrived and raised his cowboy hat, as he had for more than ten years, to the banker, federal agent, newspaper editor, priest and nuns, and then dismounted at one of three hotels, the Leecy, Hiawatha, or the Headquarters. Most of his lively summer songs were familiar and reminiscent of the American Civil War.
Glory, Glory Hallelujah,
His truth is marching on.
That summer my brother painted a raven perched on a blue-spotted saddle. The raven and the saddle were in magical flight over the train station. Aloysius always created an original painting to celebrate the coming of our great friend the singing trader, and later my brother carved the fantastic image of a blue raven on a wooden pendant.
Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
His soul is marching on.
Odysseus traveled and traded with natives in many parts of the country, from Santa Fe, Navajo Mountain, Oklahoma, and Omaha, to Pine Ridge, and, of course, the White Earth Reservation. He raised his white cowboy hat, smiled, and waved to everyone on the wooden walkway as his two horses walked slowly past the government school, the mission, the post office, the new house of our uncle, Theodore Beaulieu, and past the Chippewa State Bank.
Odysseus arrived that summer at the livery stable with a dislocated shoulder and a broken ankle. One shoulder was hunched forward, and his right ankle was badly swollen. He winced with pain as he tried to unsaddle the horses. Finally he moved on one foot to rest on a hay bale. One boot was fastened to the saddle horn.
Aloysius loosened the cinch, and together we heaved the heavy saddle over a wooden horse. The brown leather skirt of the saddle was decorated with precious silver peace medals. Odysseus wore a similar peace medal on a thick leather band around his neck.
Calypso, the blue roan mare, had carried the wounded trader more than forty miles from the headwaters of the gichiziibi at Lake Itasca to the Hotel Leecy. She ambled past two other hotels directly to the very best livery stable on the reservation, a natural choice of horses and traders.
Calypso was the spirited companion of the trader and she remembered the way after so many summers on the same trail from Onigum on the Leech Lake Reservation, to Cass Lake, Bemidji, Lake Itasca, and the headwaters of the gichiziibi, the Great River in the language of the Anishinaabe. Calypso ambled that memorable summer on the old trails near Bad Medicine Lake, the village of Beaulieu, Bad Boy Lake, and at last to the popular Hotel Leecy on the White Earth Reservation.
Bayard, the bay mare packhorse, was loaded with marvelous and exotic trade goods, precious stones, turquoise, silver jewelry, magic mercury, flamboyant cloth, spirit bones, peyote, absinthe, cigars, and white, red, and bright blue bird feathers from Florida, Mexico, and South America. We untied the two bundles cinched on the sides of the packhorse, and then provided feed and water for both horses in separate stalls. We were lucky to be working at the livery stable that summer when the trader arrived. The past summer we hawked newspapers at the train station and the trader commonly stayed at the Headquarters Hotel.
Augustus understood our reasons to leave the newspaper and work in the livery stable. Month by month we hawked fewer copies of the Tomahawk, and the newspaper had lost subscribers. Radios were more common on the reservation and could be purchased, along with guns, sewing machines, bicycles, entire houses, and even motor cars, by mail order from Sears, Roebuck and Company. The sound of radio news was more communal, the necessary gossip and native stories of the reservation, and many readers missed that ordinary hearsay as a community service of a newspaper. Our uncle was worried about the decline of subscribers to the Tomahawk but he was involved in many other enterprises on the reservation.
Augustus forever teased us about the stench of muck chucker stable boys. We were determined to learn more about horses, even though horses were spooked and out of place in the new world of motor cars and trains. Horses were spirited, loyal, and most of the new motor machines were unreliable and noisy. We loved horses, the shiver and nudge of horses, and sometimes stayed in the stable overnight. At the same time we had been to the city and were excited by gasoline engines, electric street cars, washers, and the hearty promises of new machines.
Calypso was a native blue healer.
Odysseus needed a reliable livery stable, and the two horses walked directly to the Hotel Leecy. Mostly the trader needed the doctor to treat his shoulder and broken ankle. Aloysius asked John Leecy, the proprietor of the hotel, for permission to deliver the trader by wagon to the White Earth Reservation Hospital.
Odysseus was a giant compared to my brother and me, and his head, neck, arms, hands, and feet were enormous. He was friendly, brawny, darker and much larger, maybe even smarter, than anyone on the reservation.
Odysseus was fully licensed by the federal government to trade with natives on reservations, and he had every right to stay at the hotel. The federal agent, however, was suspicious and refused to recognize the trader, and the agent never greeted native visitors from other reservations.
The trader leaned to one side in the back of the wagon, and smiled even in agony, but he never said much to us on the way to the hospital. The road was rough near the entrance to the hospital, the horse lurched twice, and we worried that the sudden motion of the wagon would cause more pain in his shoulder and ankle. The trader turned and smiled in silence.
The White Earth Hospital was constructed and expanded many times by the Episcopal Mission. Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple and the federal agents competed with the Order of Saint Benedict and hurried to build a school, sawmill, and the first flourmill