Authors: Lalita Tademy
An eerie quiet except for the cow’s distress folded around them
in the barn as they waited for the second stage of labor. Rose couldn’t make herself speak, concentrating on the cow instead, and Kindred didn’t push. Two hours passed, the cow contracting but showing no further progress.
Finally, Rose rolled up her sleeves, lathered her hands in the wash bucket, soaped her arms to the armpit, and slathered on petroleum jelly. She soaped the cow’s hindquarters as well, speaking in a gentle voice. The cow delivered the water bag and began straining. She reached inside the cow with both hands, feeling her way until she found the calf in the birth canal, pinching lightly. Movement. The calf was alive. She felt a leg, and ran her finger down the bones. Only one joint between hock and hoof. A back leg, not front. She’d delivered posterior before, trained the first time by Grampa Cow Tom. The effort had been hard on all three, cow, calf, and Rose, and she’d lost two calves this way. She centered the calf in the birth canal, clasped her hands, and moved her arms in and out for several minutes to speed delivery.
Rose was drenched with sweat. She worked steadily the next half hour, pulling in steady motion whenever the cow pushed, advancing the calf down the canal. With the next contraction, both the calf’s hind feet emerged. Rose continued to pull and guide, and on the next push, the calf’s body came into view, and finally forelegs and nose. Rose picked through the gummy gore to pinch the calf’s tongue. The tongue retracted, the calf fine. Rose stepped back into the shadows to let the cow finish her work on her own.
The cow found her feet again, afterbirth hanging, and began to lick her baby. Her calf shook its head, wet ears slapping, and kicked its feet, and the mother continued her raspy-tongued cleaning. The calf stood unsteadily, then fell, again and again until balancing upright, seeking first milk.
With calf sucking, and cow in satisfactory health, she and Kindred were free to return to the ranch house. But Kindred hesitated, scratching at his owl tattoo, stalling, looking to her.
Rose could not bring herself to open her mouth to speak.
She despised herself this weakness, but the weight of the promise trumped the need reflected in her son’s eyes.
She was so tired. She’d try again some other time. Maybe tomorrow.
The moment was past.
Chapter 61
WHILE THUNDERSTORMS BUILT
to the east and the west, and the wildflowers in the meadow competed, coming into their own dazzling displays, Rose dozed in her rocking chair in the full of the day, protected by the shade on their wraparound porch, beans unsnapped in the big bowl at her feet. After her long night in the barn, up to her bloodied elbows in the cow’s delivery, only raw will and stubbornness prevented her from locking herself in her bedroom, drawing the shades tight across the windows, climbing under the quilt, and giving in to sleep until she felt herself again. And she couldn’t erase the image of that last yearning look on Kindred’s face before they walked back to the house in silence.
The thump of horse hooves and squeal of wagon wheels signaled Jake’s arrival from the dry-goods store in Haskell. Only one week gone this trip. She watched him roll barrels of salt and syrup off the wagon, and then shoulder two bags of sugar before one of the hands arrived to help. Together, the men unloaded the rest, toting all to the storehouse in several trips. The wagon emptied, Jake dug out a parcel wrapped in newspaper under the buckboard plank, tucked it under his arm, and joined Rose on the porch.
Jake smiled a knowing smile. “For those beauteous feet,” he said.
He handed her the package, and she carefully unwrapped it, smoothing out the newspaper and folding the edges into a neat square for future use. Inside was a pair of women’s black shoes, new,
the style slightly different from her last. They were leather, high-topped, with four small buttons on each shoe and black corded laces. Rose was tempted to kick off her old shoes, run-over at the heels and scuffed, to try on the new, right there on the front porch, but decided to wait until she was behind locked doors, where she could enjoy them at her leisure. Jake watched her.
She nodded her acknowledgment and put the shoes aside, bringing the bowl of beans once again to her lap. She began to snap them into bits.
“The calf?” Jake asked.
“Calf and cow are fine,” answered Rose. She thought again of the long stretches of anxious waiting amid the soak of blood and gore in the barn last night. The moment beforehand when she almost pulled down the walls of the safe house where she kept her memories of Grampa Cow Tom. “For a time, I thought I’d lose both.”
He dragged a chair over close to hers and sat, taking off his leather hat and shaking off some of the dust, running his fingers through his hair. Rose noticed a strand of gray mixed in with the brown. Jake wasn’t so young anymore, but still closer to young than to old, and he yet exuded a powerful attraction. Her husband was eager to talk.
“There’s news,” he said.
She waited for him to get to it. News meant interruption, interference, an unwelcome reaching from the outside world into what they’d built. Rose wasn’t partial to most news.
“Everyone’s in an uproar about the Dawes Roll in Haskell.”
“What’s that?” asked Rose.
“The government wants us to come in and register on the Dawes Roll. They’re listing each person in the nation, every member recorded, child or chief. In town, some are for, some against.”
“We’re already on the list,” said Rose. “Been listed since I was nothing but a girl.”
“That’s Canadian Colored Town payroll,” Jake corrected. He shrugged. “This is different. Payroll is our fair share of tribe money
from Washington. Tribal Council decides who’s on that list. Full-bloods tried to outfox the government by refusing to turn over names. Foolish. Now Washington sidesteps the tribes to make their own list. Payroll is by Creek Nation government, the Dawes Roll is United States government. Showdown’s coming.”
“Can’t we sign up on both?”
“Full-bloods claim the right to decide who’s enrolled and who isn’t. They say this is another step by white men in Washington to break down the Indian and take power away from the tribe.”
“Break down the Indian?” asked Rose. Her mind was quick to see the trap in any plan. “Indian or members of the nation?”
“So far, members of the nation,” said Jake. “But the Dawes Roll is to be all citizens of the nation too. Full-bloods, mixed-bloods, and freedmen, according to treaty. Even adopted citizens.”
“Full-bloods would gladly shed us.” She picked out a worm in the bowl of beans and threw the wriggler into the dirt. “More for them.”
“But your grandfather’s treaty holds so far,” said Jake. “Full-bloods aren’t the only ones against. Big cattlemen and land companies weigh against the Dawes Roll too, hiring marplots and boodlers and lawyers to slow the census down, to keep things as they are. But it isn’t working. Agents from Washington swell the towns. Flyers everywhere you look setting dates for enrollment, and men out surveying, making maps of all the land. I tell you, Washington will carry the day this time round.”
“Land maps?”
“That’s what I been trying to tell you. The Dawes Roll comes first, then Washington uses their list to give out land to the people. An allotment. Land not to the tribe like always, but direct to each person, free and clear, belonging to us by name and no other.”
“Free land? What do they need from us to give out free land?”
“Proof. Proof of citizenship in the nation. That’s the only way to get the land. The allotment goes to citizens only. The call’s out to members of all nations, but they start with Creeks first. Some full-
bloods threaten harm to anyone accepting allotment.”
“What do you think?” asked Rose.
“That the old ways are done,” said Jake. “One by one Washington will break tribes down and take what we have away. We best make good while we can. First enrollment, then allotment. Government will give out bits of land and keep the rest, surround us with immigrant boomers, and then fold us into their country, force us to give up our territory. That’s the talk, anyway.” He paused. “We’re Indian, and we’re freedman, both. But no one, Creek or government, will look after us better than we look after ourselves.”
Rose admired her husband this. He might not possess formal education, he might have a heart so soft he gave away too freely what was theirs, but his mind was keen and penetrating, and he understood large-scale motivation and trickery long before others did. Things even her suspicious mind didn’t always grasp.
“So we’d do best under a United States list?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Whites always been treating us worse than Indians. Full-bloods are stalling. Not likely to do much good though. Not against Washington.”
“What of allotment?” Rose asked. She tried to shake off a wave of pure panic. “What about the ranch?”
“That’s the root of the fever sweeping town,” said Jake. “For each and every person in a family on the roll, babe or gray-head, the government promises one hundred sixty acres.”
“One hundred sixty acres?” Rose asked. “But we number thirteen, with babies and Laura’s man.”
She sprang from her chair and into the house. Beans spilled from the bowl onto the porch, but she didn’t care. When she returned, she wet the tip of the pencil she’d brought and made the calculation on the reverse side of an old store receipt.
“That’s more than two thousand acres,” Rose figured. “Added to what we already have.” She was dizzy with the thought.
“No,” said Jake. “Allotment starts with land where you already
made improvements. They transfer those to your name, and for the rest, you choose plots not belonging to anyone else. No guarantee where additional plots are, but everybody gets their full allotment.”
Rose’s mind was already at work. The oldest boys, Jacob and Kindred and Eugene, would soon need plots of their own to work until the time came to go off to live with their wives’ families. Maybe a distribution of land in the boys’ own names could keep Jacob, a self-declared businessman with an aversion to the manual practicalities of ranching, closer to home, could bind Kindred to his freedman family instead of chasing after the ways of the full-bloods, and could vanquish some of Eugene’s restlessness, a man-child caught between Rose as mother and her sister, Elizabeth, as birth mother. Eugene’s increasingly frequent trips to see Elizabeth left him off balance and resentful. Rose worried about slipknots of connection loosening between brothers. Between each of them and the rest of the family. Between them and her.
“You sure? Each?”
“That’s the talk.”
“Under our name? Nobody can take it?”
“Not unless we sell.”
“What of the tribe? We’d be members still or no?”
Wasn’t Grampa Cow Tom’s last official act to ensure inclusion of the freedmen? For decades, her family had been solid members of the tribe.
“Members still,” said Jake.
“There’s some hitch,” Rose said. She couldn’t yet conjure the trick, but whenever something was offered to the Indians by the United States government, something else was sure to be stripped away. “Is our ranch safe?” she asked again. “Can they turn us out?”
“The Washington man said we lose the ranch if we don’t sign up on the Dawes. That once we enroll with them and get allotment, the land is ours,” said Jake. “Unassigned land won’t belong to the Creek Nation in community anymore. Or the Cherokee Nation.
Or any of the tribes. That land falls back to Washington, to turn over to white boomers, or do with as they will.”
“We can’t lose the ranch,” said Rose.
“We’re in a trap,” Jake said. “Washington wants more land, and they’ll get it. The Indian is used to giving up land, and in the end, they’ll do like always. My worry is how they treat freedmen. There’s talk of registering by blood quantum. Once they separate us out, they could decide to treat us like State Negroes or too-lates, like we haven’t lived here all our lives.”
“We’re already separated out by town,” said Rose. “We manage.”
“They left us be, and we always got our payroll share. But we need to sign the Dawes. No Dawes, no land. Simple as that.”
In this, Rose trusted Jake’s instinct.
“Times change too fast,” said Rose. Immigrants, both black and white, threatened everything they’d worked to build. More people stopped by the ranch each year that passed, and Jake reported a crush in the cities at least ten times increased from just a few years before, people buying bags of salt or shovels or packets of seed. Visitors told stories of non-Indian settlers on civilized tribe lands, staking out land claims, as if entitled.
“And talk of turning us into a state grows louder,” Jake said. “Mark my words, it’s coming. At least this way we have something official. Something harder to take away.”
There was no good to come from turning Indian Territory into a part of the United States, Rose thought. At least nothing good for freedmen. But land in their own name. She wished her Grampa Cow Tom could have seen the coming of such a day.
“How do we enroll?” she asked.
“No plan yet, but the agent in town said word will come. Next year. Or year after.”
Rose nodded. “Whenever,” she said. “We’ll be ready.”
Chapter 62
THEY CLEARED THE
full day, leaving shortly after sunup, once the boys milked the cows and the most pressing chores were done. They clambered into the wagon, Rose and Jake on the buckboard with Lady between, Jake driving the horse team, the rest in the dusty bed behind. Rose wore her best dress and a beaded jacket for the big day, and though her fancy shoes pinched her feet, she would wear no other.
“Kindred?” Rose asked. Rose put her hand on Jake’s wrist before he put rein to horse. “Where’s Kindred?”
“He said he’d see us in Okmulgee,” Jacob answered from the back. “That he’ll get there on his own.”
Rose last saw Kindred at supper the night before. He’d mentioned nothing about breaking away on his own. This trip was planned for weeks. “Why isn’t he going with us?” she asked.
Jacob just shrugged. The time of brothers covering for one another was past. Her sixteen-year-old son kept his own council, but he didn’t shut her out the way Kindred did of late. Possibly Jacob really didn’t know why Kindred absented himself on this important day. There was nothing to gain by pressing. Rose let it go.