The Story Teller (3 page)

A ledger book! The idea that an intact ledger book written by an Arapaho warrior might still exist sent a
thrill coursing through Vicky like an electric current. She had heard the elders tell about the ledger books drawn by the Plains Indian warriors—the story of actual events recorded in detailed pictographs. She had seen pages from ledger books in museums. She had even seen framed pages for sale once in a gallery in Denver. But she had never seen an Arapaho ledger book.

Vicky glanced at the cultural director. His expression reflected her own excitement. He said, “Almost every warrior had a ledger book that he drew in. It was his own personal journal where he kept a record of all his deeds and honors. Some of the warriors, like No-Ta-Nee, were chosen by the elders to write about tribal events. Used to be hundreds of ledger books on the plains.”

Vicky smiled at the thought. Hundreds of books drawn and prized by people the whites had considered illiterate and uncivilized.

The cultural director shifted against the desk. “Unfortunately most of the ledger books were destroyed. There’s only a handful of intact books that survived, and they’re in museums. Point is, Vicky, we wouldn’t know about No-Ta-Nee’s book if Grandfather hadn’t seen it. How many other valuable artifacts are the museum people holding back, hoping we don’t know about them?”

Vicky was quiet. The elder had seen the ledger book in 1920.
1920!
NAGPRA required museums to account for artifacts in their posession only as far back as 1991. In her courtroom tone, she said, “There is no legal basis upon which we can ask the museum to account for something it may have owned eighty years ago.”

Dennis shrugged. “We’re fully aware of that, Vicky.”

Quiet filled the small room. Vicky sensed the warmth of the elder’s gaze on her. This was not about following the letter of the law. This was about trust. The
elder had seen the ledger book. He wanted to know where it was. She said, “I can inquire about the ledger book, but it may be difficult to get an explanation. Museums prune out collections all the time.” She was grasping, but she plunged on: “Some curator might have decided the museum had enough objects decorated with Indian art. Maybe the museum sold the ledger book to another museum.”

“Oh, sure,” Dennis said, tapping a pencil against the edge of the desk. “Museums sell history books by Plains Indians every day.”

“Maybe they didn’t know the pictographs told of actual events,” Vicky persisted.

The cultural director stared at her fixedly, as if he were trying to see into her mind. “You’ve become like them,” he said. “You believe whatever they tell you.”

Vicky flinched. It was true. She had been away from the reservation for ten years. Had become an attorney,
ho:xu’wu:ne’n,
like a white woman. Maybe she had even learned to think like white people, but she was still Arapaho. “Come on, Dennis,” she said, making an effort to ignore the insult. “It took a while for scholars to recognize that the drawings on tipis and shields had deeply religious symbolic meanings and that a lot of other Indian objects were more than decorative art.”

“And as soon as they figured it out, they wouldn’t let any objects with pictographs out of their hands,” Dennis said. “No way would they sell a ledger book.”

“Maybe it was too late. Maybe the book had already been sold.”

The cultural director thumbed through the inventory pages, peering at each one, as though the spaces between the lines might tell him what else was missing. “If the museum sold the book, we got the right to know who bought it so we can get it back.”

Vicky interrupted. “NAGPRA doesn’t give us that right, Dennis.”

“If the museum people won’t tell us what happened to the ledger book, we’ll know they’re holding out on us. They can’t be trusted.” Dennis lifted the folder and slapped it onto the desk.

The old man thrust out both hands, a sign of silence. Turning to Vicky, he said, “You must take care of this, Granddaughter. Your ancestor—the grandfather of your father—was a baby still on his mother’s back when the people left Colorado. It was a hard time. My ancestor wrote it all down so that the younger generations would know, young people like you. You must get our story for us.”

Vicky could hear the sound of her own breathing in the quiet seeping through the small office. Outside somewhere a car door slammed—a muffled sound, enveloped in the heat. There was no evidence the museum had ever owned the ledger book—only the story of an old man. But Charlie Redman was the storyteller, trained as a boy, just like his father and grandfathers back to the oldest of times, to be a living archive of the people’s history. She had heard him tell the stories many times at tribal gatherings. He could speak for hours, hardly drawing a breath. His memory was prodigious. Prodigious and accurate.

But an old man’s story in the white world? About what he had seen as a boy? The museum curator would laugh her out of the office. She glanced up at the cultural director still perched at the end of the desk, a look of satisfaction crossing his face. He knew she would have turned him down had he come to her office with such a request. So he had brought her here. How could she refuse the elder?

A sense of frustration roiled inside her: what they expected was impossible, a waste of time to ask the museum to account for an artifact outside the requirements of NAGPRA. Yet her frustration was tempered by an
odd sense of pride. Maybe the very impossibility of the task was a measure of what her people thought of her.

She got to her feet and faced the old man. “I can’t promise anything, Grandfather.”

Charlie Redman held her eyes a moment. “You must do your best for your people,” he said.

2

T
he man in the black suit paused in the doorway of the old school building—a giant black beetle caught in the rectangular frame. He stepped inside and swung around, scrunching his bulbous nose. “Musty odor,” he said.

Father John Aloysius O’Malley, pastor of St. Francis Mission on the Wind River Reservation, followed his visitor, Father James Stanton, through the doorway. The other priest stood gazing down the wide corridor to the right. Then he turned his face upward, as if he were studying the high ceiling, the glass fixtures dangling from thick, black cords, the sunlight slanting across the stairway that climbed the far wall.

“The school’s more than a hundred years old,” Father John said. “It has the right to smell a little musty.”

The other priest emitted a sound that registered somewhere between a
hrmmp
and a snort. A hard man to convince, Father John thought. He’d felt a stab of disappointment an hour before when the blue Buick had pulled into St. Francis Mission and the bulky, gray-haired priest in black clericals had emerged from behind the wheel.

He had been expecting the provincial, who had promised to stop by on his visit to the Indian missions in the Wisconsin Province. Instead, he had sent his assistant—a man with a reputation as a financial genius.
The provincial had been detained in Denver on important matters. What was it Father John had wanted to see him about?

So instead of convincing his boss that it made sense to convert the old school building into a museum devoted to the history and culture of the Arapahos, Father John had found himself trying to convince the man in charge of keeping the purse strings tightly knotted.

“The building’s in excellent condition. Strong foundation, thick walls.” Father John wished Charlie Redman or one of the other elders were here to tell his visitor how the old building was sacred; how it had once held the fragile dreams of children; how such a place should hold their history.

Father John led the way down the corridor, stopped at the first doorway and waited as the other priest followed. “The director’s office would be here,” he said.

“Takes money to hire a director.”

“Yes, of course.” Father John had spent the last month, while he was on retreat in Boston, going over the obstacles. There were many. But the easiest to overcome was the matter of the director. “There’s a young man,” he said, “an Arapaho by the name of Todd Harris, just finishing a master’s degree in ethnohistory. He’s willing to take a small salary for the experience of starting a museum.” He hoped that was still true. His assistant, Father Geoff Schneider, had said Todd came to the mission last Saturday. He’d seemed upset about something, disappointed Father John wasn’t around. He didn’t get back from his retreat in Boston until Sunday.

The other priest made a circuit of the empty room—a classroom where Jesuits a century ago had taught Arapaho children how to read and write, how to add and subtract and divide—necessary skills for their new life on the white man’s road. “Museums need a lot of staff,” he said.

“We have volunteers,” Father John said. That was a
fact. St. Francis Mission depended upon volunteers to teach the religious-education classes, the adult high-school classes, to visit the sick and the shut in, to help maintain the grounds, clean the church, and launder the altar cloths. The jobs were many, but Arapahos were generous.

The other priest let out a guffaw. “Volunteers! Unreliable, in my view.”

Father John said nothing. This was a political game, and after almost eight years at an Indian mission in the middle of Wyoming, he no longer knew the rules. Although he did know the first rule was probably to wear clericals when meeting a superior. He’d worn blue jeans, plaid shirt, and cowboy hat—what he usually wore. A serious mistake, he saw by the disapproving look in the other priest’s eyes as he’d lifted his bulky, black-clad frame out of the Buick. Undoubtedly another was not to antagonize the opponent by challenging his views. That rule Father John resolved to follow.

“The archives and library will be on the first floor,” he said, leading the other priest down the corridor to another classroom that had once rung with the voices of children. “Scholars and students can use our materials for research.” He was thinking of the cartons of old records and documents crammed into the closet-sized archives next to his office in the administration building. It was time they were sorted, made available to the public.

Father Stanton glanced through the doorway, then slowly turned and started down the corridor. Father John followed. “Exhibit halls will be upstairs,” he went on, sensing the lack of interest, the made-up mind. Finally he stepped around the other priest, forcing him to a stop. “The Arapahos need the museum,” he said. “They’re starting to reclaim some of their sacred and cultural artifacts from museums around the country.
The elders are anxious to have the school turned into a museum.”

“I’m sorry, Father O’Malley.” The other priest shook his head. “What you suggest would require a large outlay of funds.”

Another obstacle, Father John realized, but one he had been turning over in his mind the last few weeks. He said, “We’ll need start-up money. But then we’ll obtain grant money. And there will be donations.” He stopped himself from adding, “And unexpected miracles.” Hardly the kind of financial plan to impress a number cruncher.

“I see,” Father Stanton said. “You have no operating funds. Yet you expect the province to risk a considerable amount of start-up money. Even if we put up the money, Father, how long could the museum operate without funds? Two weeks?” He gave his head a hard shake and walked toward the door.

“You’re wrong,” Father John said, breaking the rule he had resolved to follow. “Once the museum is operating, once people know about it . . .”

The other priest stepped out onto the porch. “Another matter,” he said when Father John joined him. “I didn’t want to bring it up.”

Here it comes,
Father John thought. The biggest obstacle, the hardest to overcome. He said, “I haven’t had a drink since I left Grace House almost eight years ago.”

“Yes, yes.” The other priest shrugged. “But an undertaking of this magnitude. The financial risk and worry. So much pressure, Father O’Malley. And isn’t it true? A recovering alcoholic is never far from the next drink.”

Father John walked past the other priest and set both hands on the porch railing, staring out at the mission grounds: the white stucco church with the belfry jabbing into the sky, the two-story brick residence, the yellow stucco administration building. Sunlight
sparkled on the wild grasses and danced through the branches of the cottonwoods that shaded the buildings. It was quiet, except for the shush of the wind in the trees. Eight years, he was thinking, and he had begun each day with a prayer that it would not be the day he took the next drink.