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PEYOTE OPERA

— — — — — — — 1912 — — — — — — —

Odysseus was sentimental at times about the old traders and chantey music. His trail stories and songs about soldiers and war were picturesque, slightly romantic, original by every recount, but never mawkish. Even so the winsome trader was teased for the first time last summer about the many songs he chanted from the American Civil War.

Foamy, the federal agent, mocked the popular war lyrics and reminded the trader that the War Between the States was ancient history. We were astonished by the taunt because no one had ever observed the agent at play. Augustus, our uncle, was convinced the agent had taken to government whiskey.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah.

Odysseus raised his white hat, gestured to the testy agent, and then turned to several students near the government school and sang a few lines from “Alexander’s Rag Time Band” by Irving Berlin. The students were silent, but the agent shouted the same lines right back at the trader.

Come on and hear! Alexander’s ragtime band!It’s the best band in the land!

So natural that you want to go to war.

Foamy never seemed to grasp the tricky tease of native stories, or the creative run of irony. Honoré, our father, said the agent had no sense of natural reason or presence, and no totemic associations in the world. Foamy was separated by name and disconnected by war and culture. He abided with the wrong sides, against emancipation and natives, and against the Union in the American Civil War. His new teases and greyback taunts were no more trouble than slow water over the smooth stone at the headwaters.

Calypso raised her ears, neighed, and ambled past the vested agent, the mission, post office, the bank, the gray wooden walkways, and straight into the livery stables at the Hotel Leecy. Bayard the packhorse waited in the shadows to be unloaded. The trader stacked the huge bundles of goods in a locked cage at the back of the stables, and then whispered to his horses. We listened every summer, year after year, but we never heard or understood what the trader told his loyal mares.

Odysseus walked with a limp.

John Leecy had invited the trader to display his curious merchandise in the hotel lobby that Sunday. Naturally, we were there early to assist the trader and to watch natives and others negotiate the unstated prices of exotic goods. Expensive cigars in sealed boxes, decorative feathers, cloth, jewelry, and many other curious wares were stacked on large tables in the hotel lobby.

Odysseus traded secret reserves of peyote and absinthe by discreet names. Night Visions and Morning Star were the names for peyote. The French absinthe was mentioned only as la fée verte, or The Green Lady. Only the doctor and our uncle were aware that the trader carried absinthe and peyote. The Green Lady became very expensive that summer because the heady spirit had been banned as a poison by the Department of Agriculture.

Augustus bartered for cigars, absinthe, and mercury.

The bank manager bought snowy egret feathers. The wispy crown feathers and other exotic bird plumage were very expensive, more than the price of gold. The trader presented oriole, common tern, snow bunting, northern flicker, cedar waxwing, and, of course, snowy egret feathers. Rumors spread that the banker, a distant relative, used reservation deposits to buy feathers for a white woman. He fancied one of the government teachers, but she had never been seen in an aigrette or any other fashion feathers. The banker actually bought the feathers for his fancy grandmother.

My mother said women were the enemy of sacred birds, and likewise men had been the enemy of the beaver centuries earlier. The decorative plume trade decimated the showy birds, and our ancestors in the fur trade brought the beaver close to extinction. Natives and most of our relatives once hunted beaver for no other reason than the fashion of expensive felt hats in Europe.

Odysseus insisted that he only sold dead egret feathers that were gathered by the Seminoles in the Florida Everglades. Augustus doubted that the egret feathers were dead, or shed in a natural way, and then rescued by natives, and he was not convinced that natives would have better protected the snowy egrets or any other totemic birds. He reminded us that our ancestors and fur traders slaughtered sacred totems for the money.

Augustus reported in the Tomahawk that the New York State legislature passed the Audubon Plumage Bill. The trade in bird plumage was banned in the state. The plumage laws were ignored on the reservation, and the secret trade continued.

Augustus never revealed his use of quicksilver.

Aloysius painted several blue raven scenes, and the ravens were encircled by traces of white plumes. The snowy egrets were portrayed as faint outlines with enormous blue crown feathers, and the eyes of the egrets were touched with a trace of red.

Catherine Heady, the prudish literature teacher, was there to buy calico and cotton lace. She gestured with a tight smile, but never said a word to students outside of school. The trader measured a length of lace for the teacher, touched his gray hairy cheek with the cloth, and then invited her to do the same. The teacher blushed and turned away.

Foamy bought a square yard of red velvet for a chair cushion, and the testy negotiations lasted for more than an hour. The trader met with other customers, and then returned several times to bargain over the price of velvet. Finally, the price was settled quickly when the doctor arrived to secretly barter for a sack of peyote. The agent was not aware that the trader carried the magical cactus.

Odysseus complained to the doctor that his ankle had not healed, and he was not able to walk without some pain. He was treated at the hospital two years earlier, and we were there to hear his marvelous stories. The trader handed the doctor a small canvas sack of peyote. Luckily we heard the doctor direct the trader to meet that very night at a site near Bad Boy Lake.

John Leecy loaned us a horse that afternoon, but we were too late to follow the trader to the secret location near the lake. Most peyote ceremonies started at sundown, so we waited and listened near the lake. We were too young to use peyote, and we had no obvious need to be healed at the time, but we were curious about visionary stories. There were several cabins in the woods, so we slowly ambled around the lake and listened for any sound of the ceremony. Finally, several hours later we heard an eagle whistle and the fast sound of drums.

The peyote ceremony was held in a wigwam in the woods a short distance from the lake. The mongrel healers circled the horse when we dismounted in the dark, so we walked to the nearby cabin and tied the horse to a post. Misaabe, the old healer, invited us into his tiny cabin, and at the same time the mongrels pushed through the rickety door. We had been there only once last summer. The cabin was dark, lighted by a tiny kerosene lantern, and the oil was scented with cedar.

Misaabe sat naked on a plank bench near the cook stove. He seldom wore clothes in the summer, and only covered his body in winter, and when he was on duty with the mongrel healers at the hospital. Doctor Mendor paid the old healer for the services of the mongrels at the hospital, and always brought food, sometimes even dog food, and chocolate when he gathered nearby for a peyote ceremony.

No other public health doctor had promoted the mongrel healers on the reservation. The mongrels detected by the scent of urine, bare skin, bad breath, sweat, and by muscle tension various diseases. The mongrels were not shy about pushing their noses into the crotch of a human, and they had learned how to quickly pitch the hem of a dress and sniff the genitals of a woman. The doctor was amused by the disease detection practices of the mongrels, but the nurses tightened their dresses and sidestepped the mongrel healers.

Liver, kidney, pancreas, thyroid, and stomach diseases were detected and treated by the doctor, but most tumors were not treatable by ordinary medicine. Surgery was dangerous and the last resort. The mongrel healers detected and now and then healed the most serious diseases.

Misaabe trained the mongrels to sing, smile, nudge, nuzzle, and heal the patients in the hospital. Some patients resisted the healing energy of the mongrels because they could not accept the natural spirit of animals, and because they could not imagine the presence of a disease.

Misaabe once told a federal surveyor, a man who had marked and divided reservation land into government allotments, that the ice woman caused his tumors. He encouraged the surveyor to locate by imagination the tumor in his body as a chunk of ice and then slowly day by day concentrate on the location and melt the ice away. The man could not imagine a chunk of ice in his body. He could not create or envision a scene or story to survive.

Misaabe and his mongrels healed serious diseases of more natives than the hospital doctors. Most of the government agents could not create stories, and could not imagine a disease. The ice woman stories were sources of fear and caution. That very sense of fear in stories of the ice woman could be imagined as the power to heal a disease.

Misaabe and the mongrels were natural healers. Sometimes he told natives to concentrate and imagine scenes of the ice woman and then melt the disease away with a song or story. Naturally, natives and others worried when the mongrels sniffed too closely. Any lingering scent could be the detection of disease. Harmony, a spaniel mongrel, had a nose much colder than the stories of the ice woman. The four other mongrels were distinct healers. Shimmer nuzzled and her body glowed when she sang. Nosy was skinny, tender, curious, and could heal anyone with her dark, watery eyes. Ghost Moth was so named because of his faint and misty coat. Mona Lisa was an artful healer by secretive smiles, a poser, and her gentle furry paws were crossed at rest. Misaabe named the young mongrel healer last summer when the Tomahawk reported that the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci had been stolen from the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Aloysius sat near the kerosene lamp and painted great blue ravens in magical flight, and with abstract blue mongrels on the wing. The color blue had the power to heal in native art and stories. Misaabe used the blue ravens my brother painted to encourage natives to imagine a disease healed by blue ravens, blue totems, and by blue mongrels.

The moths bounced on the lantern, roused by the light, and left traces of wings on the globe. Gnats and other insects died on the wick. The mongrels moaned in the dark corners of the cabin. The lofty sound of an eagle whistle and the fast beat of peyote drums wavered in the distance. The peyote songs surged in the night, and we waited by the lantern for the old healer to move with the spirit of the music.

Misaabe murmured on the bench, and then chanted and gestured with his hands. His shadow became a wave of music, a natural motion with the moths, and yet he had never used peyote. The mongrels were observant, heads raised, ears turned to the music, and they watched the shadows of the great healer circle the cabin. Mona Lisa panted and crossed her paws.

Aloysius painted by the lantern.

We were secure with the moths, mongrels, and the old healer that night. The peyote music wavered and enclosed the tiny cabin. The lantern light shimmered and then fluttered with the sound of the drums. We were captivated by the music, and by the shadows of the healer. We had no need to move closer to the wigwam.

Much later we were startled by hearty shouts and the chanted names of totems, crane, raven, beaver, bear, and other birds and animals over the sound of the peyote music. The ceremony in a wigwam that night was not traditional, and not the same as the ancient native peyote practices in the desert. There were singers, peyote songs, the sound of rattles, drums, and eagle whistles, but no formal prayers, no peyote chief, no cedar man, sagebrush, and no sense of a supreme creator.

The peyote ceremony in the wigwam inspired natural visions, more individual than communal or churchy. The ceremony was dangerous, and the singers were brave visionaries. The singers were inspired by the liberation of personal and solitary visions. Later we learned that peyote created strange sensations of independence, a sense of visionary sovereignty, and the magical power of flight. The new burdens of time, masters, manners, cultures, and communal conditions were trivial in the peyote visions of magical flight. The creative stories were natural coveys, heartfelt, true scenes, and with an overwhelming native sense of liberty.

The shouts and chants roused the mongrels. Mona Lisa and Nosy circled the old healer in the cabin and waited for directions. Misaabe gestured with his lips toward the peyote wigwam and the mongrels rushed outside. We followed the mongrels into the night and recognized the voice of the chanter and trader. The mongrels nosed and bumped him back to the cabin.

Calypso neighed at the post.

Odysseus, once inside, handed each mongrel a piece of dried meat. He limped toward the lantern and sat on a rough chopping block. He raised his arms, waved his huge hands near the lantern, and reached for the shadows.

Odysseus suddenly turned to the old healer and sang “The Last Rose of Summer” by the poet Thomas Moore. We were moved by the great voice of the trader, and the mongrels turned their ears and howled with the singer. The voices of the trader and the mongrels resounded in the cabin. Shimmer nuzzled the ankle of the trader. Mona Lisa smiled and moved closer to the lantern, and she crossed her paws at the feet of the trader. Ghost Moth sat directly at the side of the trader. He raised his head in the shadows and bayed with the music.

The last rose of summer

Left blooming alone.

Odysseus told stories about the creation of the melody and then recounted the story of the great opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini who sang “The Last Rose of Summer” two years earlier on Christmas Eve on the streets of San Francisco, California. He remembered the night was bright and

clear.

The trader recounted the great San Francisco earthquake, on April 18, 1906, as a personal experience. He must have read the news reports in the Tomahawk that more than three thousand people died from the earthquake and fire. He created a sense of natural presence in stories, more memorable than newspaper accounts, but he never experienced the earthquake or the actual outside concert by Luisa Tetrazzini.