Waiting for wovoka, p.1
Waiting for Wovoka, page 1
WAITING FOR
WOVOKA
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Middletown CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
© 2023 Gerald Vizenor
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed and typeset in Parkinson Electra
by Eric M. Brooks
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available at https://catalog.loc.gov/
cloth ISBN 978-08195-0042-7
paper ISBN 978-08195-0043-4
ebook ISBN 978-08195-0044-1
5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Hand Puppet Parleys
1 » Slight Hesitations
2 » Literary Mercy
3 » Royal Liberty
4 » Snow Ghosts
5 » Madama Butterfly
6 » Postcard Hearsay
7 » Heart Stories
8 » Whitey Dwighty
9 » Stray Shadows
10 » Noah Le Gros
11 » Castle Bravo
12 » Tumble Names
HAND PUPPET PARLEYS
CHAPTER 4 » Gazetteer and Snow Ghost
CHAPTER 4 » Cinderella and Bunker Boy
CHAPTER 7 » Dummy Trout and Prometheus
CHAPTER 7 » By Now and Baron of Patronia
CHAPTER 7 » Trickster and Prometheus
CHAPTER 8 » Whitey Dwighty and Georges Dukson
CHAPTER 8 » John F. Kennedy and Sitting Bull
CHAPTER 8 » Tallulah Bankhead and Sacagawea
CHAPTER 9 » Aristotle and James Baldwin
CHAPTER 9 » Rachel Carson and Migizi
CHAPTER 10 » Noah Le Gros and Robert Frost
CHAPTER 11 » Edward Teller and Lucky Dragon
CHAPTER 12 » Sitting Bull and Estragon and Vladimir
CHAPTER 12 » Dummy and Samuel Beckett
WAITING FOR
WOVOKA
» 1 «
SLIGHT HESITATIONS
Truman La Chance was a contrary heir of the ancient fur trade and a native orphan stranded in the dreary ruins of civilization. He was silent, solitary, and learned by nature how to sidetrack the crafty circle of separatists with heart stories and dream songs, and how easily he could turn aside overnight healers, federal agents, and timber barons with tricky queries and spontaneous mockery.
Later he mocked the ethnographic commerce of native dream songs and creation stories as arrogant, greedy, and slanted translations of natural motion, and yet every night he mourned the atrocities of totemic animals in the fur trade and the constant deadly lure of nisidizo, the catch of suicide on the White Earth Reservation.
The crave of beaver hats revealed the breach of totemic unions and cultural desperation of native trappers. Colonial empires of the enlightenment plainly pardoned the massacre of totemic animals with political apologies, literary conceit, liturgical stealth, and pious reasons for the rush of fancy fur fashions. The natural totemic presence of animals, native creation stories, and healing songs were barely conceivable in heart stories after the blood wealth of beaver, marten, muskrat, otter, lynx, and other woodland peltry in three centuries of the mercenary fur trade.
La Chance created concise images as dream songs to overcome the ancestral shame for the slaughter of totemic animals, and at the same time he teased at a distance the crude native horde of deer and bear hunters rigged out in frayed camouflage costumes every autumn in the brush.
chorus of wolves
bear totems in the white pine
shouts of beaver
bundled as fancy fashions
La Chance embodied the misery, somber memory, and native shame for the slaughter of totemic animals and was mocked and bullied by students at the government school for his poetic tributes to the sound of animals and birds in natural motion, the pounce of bobcats in the snow, the dance of sandhill cranes, and the evasive bounce of blue ravens in the birch.
The government teachers tried in vain to humor the sentiments of his dream songs that honored curious totemic unions with cedar waxwings, killdeer, polyphemus moths, kingfishers, spiders, praying mantis, bats, moccasin flowers, and the consolation of reservation mongrels. He was more secure with the sound of natural motion in the willow trees and disguised his sense of abandonment with dream songs of the deceptive killdeer, dart of hummingbirds, the elusive flight of cedar waxwings, and bold maneuvers of ravens.
La Chance mocked aristocrats, bankers, politicians, cowboys, gangsters, and film noir movie actors who wore furs and costly beaver felt fedoras, and he declared at every churchy moment of repose that the poseurs of caste, colony, and culture never once honored or mourned the millions of totemic animals put to death in the colonial fur trade for a fedora or fur coat. He wrote a pithy dream song about the poseurs in fedoras.
native white pine
hewed for settlers in the cities
bankers and barons
deadly poseurs in fedoras
La Chance was silenced with the death of his parents in an automobile accident on an icy curve near Pine Point on the White Earth Reservation, Sunday, February 22, 1942, two days after his father enlisted in the army. He survived the early morning rollover and was treated for cuts and bruises by native nurses at the White Earth Hospital.
He was five years old that winter of deadly separation and carried on in silence with a wounded heart. He was denied the chance of secure names and easy stories but not the memories of his parents, the tender glances and touch of his mother, and his father dressed in a military uniform, his tease of ravens, buoyant whistles in the early morning, and double winks of devotion in the rearview mirror. The trust of heart stories and natural motion became the sounds and sources of his solace, and every day he braved the solitude of a native presence and the decoy of nisidizo, native suicide, and he was always ready to escape from foster homes.
Once curious with a spirited nature, he became an anxious and hesitant native fugitive and lived by chance in the creative world of totemic sounds and memories. He scarcely spoke in more than whispers and gestured to others with only two or three murmured words at a time. The haughty students at the government school mocked and teased him every day with nicknames, Beaver Breath, Tick Totem, Salt Lick, Skunk Pelt, and Chancy Murmur.
autumn favors
elusive cedar waxwings
sound of sumac
totems in the clouds
Ten years after the death of his parents, the scrawny orphan with blue eyes came to rest at the Theatre of Chance and learned how to sidetrack the snow ghosts of suicide in the silent mercy and generous teases of Dummy Trout, the miraculous mute puppeteer of Spirit Lake.
The curse of nisidizo started shortly after the death of his parents and became more serious in the foster homes. The ghostly echoes of suicide increased with the nicknames at the government school, and he could not overcome or escape the doubt and unease around students. Solitude and slight hesitations became an artistic manner, and he learned how to create stories and dream songs about the dignity of hesitation, sound and silence, and natural motion.
He described the slight hesitations of his speech as the unexpected silence between a flash of lightning and crash of thunder, or between the torments of memory and sudden bursts of laughter. He waited at the tree lines in summer storms for the lightening and chancy sensations of silence and fury. The solitude and hesitations became the creative source of dream songs, and later he was enchanted with the silent, gawky gestures of marvelous hand puppets at the Theatre of Chance.
La Chance counted on natural motion, the sincerity of silence and slight hesitations, as the source of wisdom and native liberty, and his resistance to hearsay traditions was necessary to overcome the lures of suicide. His sense of caution and solitude as an orphan was chancy and called for wit, courage, and resistance to endure the bullies and daily betrayals of the government school. He chose silence over sophistry and contention, hand puppets over government teachers, and quit school at age fifteen to become a native farouche and poet of concise dream songs in the marvelous company of clever mongrels and a mute puppeteer.
Dummy Trout survived a deadly firestorm in the late summer of her eighteenth birthday. She walked in circles of heartache for several days, covered her body with ashes of the native dead, and since then, she has not uttered a name, word, or song. She grieved alone through that long winter, convened the raucous ravens in the dead birch, teased the beaver, rounded up forsaken reservation mongrels, and on the snowy backroads taunted the seductive blue shadows of snow ghosts and the wiindigoo, a cold and vicious woodland cannibal. Nookaa, her beloved lumberjack, and hundreds of other natives and entire families were burned to bone bits and ashes and forsaken in the history of the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894.
Dummy has mourned, roared, shouted, tittered, and teased in silence for more than fifty years. She was silent and strange, a respected outsider, and cared for the spirit of children, mongrels, animals, birds, and puppets, and never shouted into panic holes. The mute puppeteer with white hair was an opera aficionado and far more memorable than most natives on the reservation. She teased mongrels with the favor of operas, cut short the curse and cruelty of bullies and federal agents with silent gestures. She never revealed sacred or given names, and never responded to the hearsay that she had chased down a fur trader in the canoe country to secure the f
La Chance created a dream song about the great fire and the mute puppeteer of the Theatre of Chance. Churchy natives and missionaries once prayed over a rusty dented coffee canister of coarse white powder, convinced by their devotion that the paltry share of ashes came from the actual sifted bodies of dead native relatives. The Great Hinckley Fire started after a long drought on Saturday, September 1, 1894, and the firestorm destroyed at least six small towns, logging camps cluttered with slash and woodchip debris, and hundreds of thousands of acres of pine forests.
silent puppeteer
teases the spirit of natives
new dream songs in the clouds
ashes of memory
Dummy composed scenes of sorrow, the gentle shows of silence and sensuous enticements of suicide, the ironic episodes of puppet parleys, original dream songs, and notes in four blank books that were shelved near a narrow bunk along with many other books, including American Indian Stories by Zitkala Sa, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Wynema, A Child of the Forest by S. Alice Callahan, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Walden by Henry Thoreau, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Animal Farm by George Orwell, three boxed volumes of The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 published by the Bureau of American Ethnology, and the comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding.
Dummy was a serious reader, and every night by the warm wavering light of an Aladdin Mantel Lamp she read books, out of date newspapers, and magazines. The blank books were bound with leather and contained selected quotations and concise notes from the books she had read. The primary sources of the eclectic stack of books were favors from the many visitors, politicians, ethnographers, teachers, artists, and authors who had stayed at the Leecy Hotel on the White Earth Reservation.
books at peace
abandoned in libraries
stacked in silent rows
dead authors
come alive overnight
Dummy created dream songs in five lines, never three or four lines, and some songs teased the cant of traditions, ruins of culture, snow ghosts, suicide, totemic unions, and others were poetic tributes to opera divas. She once printed dream songs on note cards and presented them at afternoon radio operas at the Leecy Hotel.
Dummy lived with four mongrels, divas Hail Mary, George Eliot, Dingleberry, and one divo, Trophy Bay, at the Theatre of Chance, a roomy ramshackle cabin covered with tarpaper near the shore of Spirit Lake. She has mimed, teased, and gestured in silence the visionary presence of great sopranos of the opera with hand puppets and loyal mongrels at her side for more than thirty years.
Dummy wrote notes and dream songs on two chalk boards, one inside and the other on the outside of the entry door. The outside notes lasted only a few days in fair weather, and on the inside board she wrote dream songs.
silent memories
heart of natural motion
totemic secrets
massacre of the fur trade
native fear and fury
Trophy Bay, a mongrel coonhound, was ostracized for his haunting melancholy baritone bays during services and sacred recitations at the Benedictine mission. He continued to bay at a distance to torment the mission priest. Hail Mary, an elusive spaniel and husky mongrel with a clear melodic bark, pranced with the heartbeat of opera music. George Eliot, a racy greyhound and retriever mongrel, raised the hair on the arms of lonesome natives with the singular grace of her soprano moans, magical soughs, and spirited sighs. Dingleberry, a spotted black and white terrier danced in circles as she yodeled around the cabin with the arias of great sopranos of the opera.
divas chase dreams
graves of diva mongrels
bounty of melancholy
moans and bays
native theatre of chance
The Theatre of Chance was a quirky court of operatic mongrels and hand puppets, and almost everyone on the reservation remembered the first five mongrels as great singers, Papa Pius, Miinan, Queena, Makwa, and Snatch. The loyal mongrels were buried with ironic sacraments in separate grave houses near Spirit Lake. La Chance created a dream song about the operatic mongrels and the puppeteer.
dummy trout
shrouds of wild white hair
chance and cedar smoke
graves of diva mongrel
Miinan was a great blue mongrel singer with a glorious sonorous bay. Queena was a basset hound and retriever mongrel with a gentle operatic moan, and she was one of the marvelous voices of the great operas conducted by the hand puppets. The moans and bays of the operatic mongrels were more totemic and memorable than the beat, mood, and tone of singers on the noisy overnight radio road shows.
The New York Metropolitan Opera broadcast the first live performances on radio during the Great Depression, and natives and guests once gathered around a radio console to hear weekly operas at the Leecy Hotel. Queena listened to the broadcast of the soprano Queena Mario in the opera Hansel and Gretel and raised her golden head and bayed in perfect harmony with the opera scenes and gestures of the hand puppets.
Dummy listened to great opera divas on a Silvertone hand crank record player from Sears, Roebuck & Company and silently directed the mongrels to bay and moan with the gestures of hand puppets. Dummy had carved from fallen birch the wooden heads of the great sopranos Geraldine Farrar and Alma Gluck, and the mongrels delivered divine bays and operatic moans.
The Theatre of Chance was not connected to electrical service, and the only source of light at night was the steady glow of a flat wick Aladdin Mantel Lamp. Several times a week the unwound phonograph slowed the sound of the opera singers to moans, mumbles, and slurs, and the loyal mongrels mimicked the drowsy pitch of voices with weary and dreary moans and bays. The mongrels seemed to wait for the perfect moment to mock the voices of great opera singers.
The Theatre of Chance was a curious sanctuary for runaways. The strange stories of the mute puppeteer and operatic mongrels were more worrisome for some native fugitives than outright neglect, abuse, and desertion on the reservation. Nothing was ever the same after two world wars. The ordinary spirit, gestures, worries, and communal care of relatives were barely dependable or secure despite the charitable hearsay of native traditions. Many native runaways were abused at home and teased at school but found solace at the Theatre of Chance.
native fugitives
favored by the loyal mongrels
teased by the hand puppets
spirit lake stowaways
Truman La Chance, Big Rant Beaulieu, Master Jean Bonga, Poesy May Fairbanks, and Bad Boy Aristotle were the only runaways who endured for more than a few days the teases, diversions, and silent mockery of the mute puppeteer and the decisive slobber of the four loyal mongrels. The mongrels favored some runaways with buoyant operatic moans and sloppy chins on the thigh and slowly nosed the others, the poseurs of tradition and bullies of scorn and separation stories, out the door. The chosen runaways were regarded by the loyal mongrels as totemic stowaways at the Theatre of Chance.
Master Jean Bonga was a runaway with a historical namesake, and he arrived with Daniel, a loyal black spaniel with an ironic service name for Captain Daniel Robertson the opportunistic slaver of the fur trade who owned Jean Bonga in the late seventeen hundreds when Captain Daniel was the commander at Fort Michilimackinac.
Dummy raised and waved her hands to applaud the ironic genealogy and learned later that his mother created the ironic nickname of a monarch or slave master. Hail Mary barked and pranced with favor, and Daniel responded with a gentle bay for the first time at the Theatre of Chance.
Big Rant and Poesy May stayed in the main cabin with Dummy Trout, La Chance, Bad Boy, and Master Jean were consigned to the smaller cabin nearby. The stowaways came together with a similar sense of natural motion, sounds and heart stories. They concocted two meals a day, breakfast was always oatmeal and thick maple syrup that had been tapped in the spring, and dinner was a mound of beans and wild rice, bass, crappie, and northern pike from the lake, and in summer, vegetables from the garden, and every morning fresh eggs from more than a dozen loyal chickens in the lath house or those that nested under the two cabins. Sources of food were always a desperate game of chance in the winter, and the poseurs of native traditions who mainly hunted for bear and deer hardly ever returned with more than an exaggerated overnight story. There were a few natives with agency connections who never missed a meal of salt pork and commodity cheese.
