Читать книгу Shaman's Dream: The Modoc War - Lu Boone's Mattson - Страница 17

And now he had run up against this reluctant petty official. Unable to wait longer, Meacham crossed to Knapp’s door, but as he started to knock, it swung open and Knapp brushed past him. He disappeared into the kitchen, a towel over his shoulder. Knapp’s narrow face was as drawn as before, but now in the fresh light Meacham had at last read it. He knew the look -- the sallow skin and moist redness around the eyes -- and understood the stale air about the man and the possessions that littered his room. So this was the individual he must rely on, one assigned to him out of the wisdom of Washington and the army. Meacham felt the weight of misgivings displace the weak hope he had nourished all the way from Yainax. The man didn’t want to be here; nor did he care one way or another about the people who now would depend on him. That much was clear. And, Meacham now realized, Knapp knew how to escape. Day by day, night by night, he would drink his way to freedom -- or do worse. He wondered who owed Knapp. Like so many of the other agents, he was probably being carried along on the books because of some long-standing debt chalked to his credit in some distant past. This place was just a convenience. The look Meacham had found difficult to interpret on his arrival made sense now: it was simple resentment. Suddenly Meacham missed the teetotalling Lindsay Applegate, all the transparent hedging in his report notwithstanding.

“There are just three things,” Meacham said to Knapp later as they sat at the table. The remains of the meager breakfast had been shoved aside, and the agent tipped back in his chair, waiting, indolently doodling in a notebook, as if to say he was ready to write down any important thought that might happen by. So far, however, he must not have heard any, for the page was nearly full of rambling figures. “Three things,” Meacham repeated.

Knapp found a clear space, wrote the number ‘1’ and put a period after it.

The trouble was, everything Meacham said to him came out sounding like dictation. He could hear it himself, yet there was nothing he could do about it. Knapp would have to make the best of it, thought Meacham, for he couldn’t risk misunderstandings about who was superintendent, who was agent. Knapp looked up from his notebook, still waiting.

“First, there are the reservation practices that must cease.” Knapp’s hand resumed its sketching. “Second, and related to the first point, there is the issue of the military.” Knapp’s head snapped up at that one, and his eyes focused on Meacham more sharply than they had all morning. “Third, there is the matter of this Captain Jack. Keintpoos, I guess he calls himself. You choose, Knapp. Where would you like to start?”

The superintendent could have added a fourth: the performance required of any agent. But Meacham foresaw that would be a discussion carried out at a rather higher level of authority, some other time, not now.

“You seem interested in the military question. Is that so?”

Captain Knapp, no doubt soon to be retired, who probably had known his closest, perhaps only, brush with glory fighting against the secessionists, looked back at him and nodded warily. Decorated twice for bravery -- at Missionary Ridge, wasn’t it? Brevetted a Captain. The prospect of civilian life no doubt had the aspect of demotion about it. And so did having to listen to a civilian superintendent. Knapp was already showing some galled spots where things didn’t rub right.

“What is there to discuss about the military?” he asked.

“There is the matter of Fort Klamath.”

“That! I thought you meant some larger issue.”

“Well, we will come to that. But for the moment I would settle for some address of our neighborhood problem. The fort is worse than useless, right on our doorstep. At best it’s a nuisance, but it’s far worse than that. Some things have to be straightened out. For instance, there is the matter of liquor being sold to the Indians -- or, rather, of liquor being bought for them by the soldiers.”

Knapp shrugged at the inevitability -- and insignificance -- of that one.

“It has to be addressed. As does the trafficking in women.”

He knew Knapp would wonder what was expected of men so far outside the reach of civilization.

“Even the officers are at it: They pick up Indian women, do what they will with them, then drop them. After that, even their husbands won’t touch them. I won’t have it. I won’t have an agent that stomachs it.”

Knapp could disregard him. Meacham might lay down the law to his agent, but he couldn’t enforce it. It would take an action by the military to do any firing, and that was unlikely. He would have to insist as far as he could that Knapp accept his ideas, but he wasn’t sure any of his army superiors would back him up. No wonder at Knapp’s arch attitude.

“Then there’s the question of what the military is responsible for and what it’s not. You and I both know Washington is a wrestling mat on that one. The Secretary of War says the army should run these places. The Secretary of the Interior says otherwise. It can’t be solved at this level, I know that. But it has to be worked out that we can at least rely on the army’s help. The settlers think the post is there to enforce the settlers’ will on the Indians. The officers think the military will is what counts.” Here, he knew, he drew close to something Knapp might finally find interesting. “I believe you number yourself among those who think that the military should be running these places. Isn’t that the case?”

Knapp tipped his chair upright and viewed Meacham down the length of his aquiline nose. “It is,” he said. “For good reason. The military’s clear when it deals with the Indians. It is, under the proper conditions, willing to feed the Indians rather than fight them; not so the settlers. They’re willing to round them up and slaughter them or ship them off, no questions asked. And I also find good sense lacking on the reservations. For our part, we treat the residents like children instead of grown-ups.”

“Not here, I hope,” Meacham said. “That is not what I will ask of you.”

“Good,” Knapp said, “because that only confuses them. They should know what they can expect from us at all times, the same way any foot-soldier does in the army: firm, swift judgment whenever they do wrong; tolerance only when they allow themselves to be regulated. We shouldn’t disappoint them.”

Meacham felt relieved that the dam of silence seemed finally to have broken. He said, “That should be the order of importance, I suppose: punishment first, tolerance later? And you would use the troops to bring them in.”

“I would use the troops to bring them in,” Knapp repeated. “Good way to ‘civilize’ them.”

“That would be a mistake, my friend, even though the weight of opinion is with you. You’re in prestigious company. Some big people say the same thing. But I’ll put it to you squarely: How is this? In this matter, the army’s not the answer. The Bible and the plough are the only civilizers of the human family.”

There was no point in waiting for Knapp to respond; the line was drawn between them.

“Just so you are clear about it, let me say that so long as I’m superintendent it will be the position here that the military should first of all not represent a problem where reservation behavior is concerned. I don’t want our Indians learning deportment outside the saloon from some drunken soldier passing out whisky. It will secondly be our position that the military should assist us -- they assist us -- in persuading, not forcing, the Indians to come in. When they get here, they will be treated with whatever Christian charity dictates. Use of force would only be a matter of last resort.”

There was no response from Knapp, nor did Meacham expect one.

“By the way, this place looks pretty impressive,” Meacham said, trying to ease up some on his man. “I would put it up there with Umatilla Agency. Those Indians have crossed the great divide already and are leading useful lives.”

“Yes. Lindsay Applegate made this all look pretty ship-shape, didn’t he? Sort of a welcoming gesture to the new order, I would guess. Something along those lines. Meant to make a good impression, I imagine, though I’m not sure when it got this way. Rather recently, I believe, if I can trust the smell of fresh paint. And you wouldn’t want to look inside the barns, not if it was tools you were after -- or animals for doing the farming.”

Knapp tossed the notebook onto the table and rose to look out at the agency for himself. “While we’re on that subject,” he said, “what do you think I should do with regard to the rest of them?”

“‘Them’? Oh, you mean the Applegates?” Meacham replied. “Keep them! You could do worse. With Ivan as commissary and Oliver and…. What’s the other one?”

“Lucien.”

“… and Lucien teaching and generally helping out, with farming and such things. They know the Indians. The Applegates have their flaws -- not the least of which is their belief that they own the place. But you’ll overcome that in time. They at least seem to be able to keep their personal affairs separate from the Indians’. That’s something of an accomplishment in itself at an agency.”

Knapp’s question put Meacham in mind of the agents he had found in his travels. They had made their own personal efforts to bring the blessings of civilization to the tribes -- by doing their utmost to help them increase and multiply. He didn’t bother to mention that; Knapp’s more immediate problems, so far as he could tell, lay in another direction, and at least the Applegates he knew of stayed off the bottle. That much he could rely on: Oliver had even shown up at Salem temperance meetings. Considering Knapp’s evident proclivities, more than ever it seemed important to keep the Applegates, one way or another.

“So,” Meacham said. “As for a cleaning up of the reservation that amounts to more than a coat of paint and some raked-up leaves, there’s a lot to be done. I couldn’t help thinking about it as I watched the Snake women. They haven’t been corrupted. White men haven’t gotten to them yet. But they will, soon. Same way they have gotten to other Indians -- here, and with our friends the Modocs, I understand. We must pull together on this, Knapp. I will expect you to second me. This place is better than many I’ve seen in the state, but still it must be cleaned up.

“I refuse to lure the Indians in here only to have them corrupted. The squaw-men must go, leave the reservation or else marry their women. The gambling must stop -- with the soldiers, but even among the Indians themselves. It’s not just horses and beads that get bet. Their wagering amounts to trafficking in women. Besides, even if that weren’t so, the games defeat thrift. And the shamans. They may be the worst influence of all.”

Knapp turned to face Meacham squarely: “You’re not too ambitious, are you, Superintendent?” he asked. “Do you mind if I just watch this dismantling from a distance? There is a far better chance that I and the army could keep them sealed up here for eternity than there is that you could kick out the whites who have bought themselves these women. Or stop those games. Or take down the shamans ….”

“… who dish out mumbo-jumbo and drown the Indians in superstition.”

“… and drown the Indians in superstition. So what? You aren’t going to stop them.”

“I am, Knapp. And you are going to help me.”

“Don’t count on that, Meacham. I’m no missionary. I’m willing to round them up. Tie them down if you wish. But what they do with their heads is strictly up to them. Not my territory.”

“It can’t be up to them any longer,” Meacham said flatly.

“Why not, if I might ask?”

Meacham sighted down his line of reasoning before he continued. He had worked out his thoughts all across the continent as the train from Washington rolled its uninterrupted way west. He had glimpsed once again parts of the territory he and his brother had driven their oxen through twenty years earlier. This time, however, the landmarks had slid past his window, one after another, in too-easy succession. As the quick miles unreeled behind him, he knew it was the future which rushed him ineluctably to the new land. It was tomorrow -- and its hordes of people -- that breathed down his neck.

“Because unless the Indians change what they believe in, they won’t be like us,” he said. “And if they insist on being different, we won’t let them do it.”

“That’s drivel.”

“No, it’s not. I volunteered to help save them. I believe what we offer is right. I believe in peace, in the brotherhood of the races, the equality of all men -- all that. I would lay down my life for those ideas. But all that aside, I’m certain the Indians -- our ‘Wards of the Nation’ -- have to give up what they believe in -- and their shamans with it. They must embrace what we bring them: a higher understanding of life’s purpose … .”

Meacham stopped and measured the agent with his eyes.

“… because otherwise we will kill them. It’s as simple as that. We are a wave cresting, I’ve been told. And when we break, we will sweep everything before us. You may hear the same strains I’ve heard: We are going to exterminate them.”

Knapp watched him in silence for a moment, then he said:

“I must apologize, Meacham; I had you wrong. I read you for a Bible-thumping, teetotalling, hand-wringing Christian for a moment there. But I see I was way off. Instead, you are a cynic like I am.”

“No,” Meacham replied. “I’m not.”

“What are you then?”

“You would best call me a ‘meliorist,’ I think. I fix things. I make them better.”

“Then you’re worse than I thought! A do-gooder by profession, not belief! You better be good at it, Mr. Meacham. God help a lot of people if you’re not.” Knapp stopped and heaved a great sigh. “All right,” he said. “So you fix things. So let’s go on to your last point, Superintendent. How do you plan to handle Captain Jack?”

“I don’t know yet,” Meacham said. “Let’s get through the coming week with the Klamaths out there under the trees. When that’s over, get us Ivan.”