The Heirs of Columbus Read online

  THE HEIRS OF COLUMBUS

  THE HEIRS OF COLUMBUS

  GERALD VIZENOR

  Wesleyan University Press

  Middletown, Connecticut

  Published by

  Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459

  © 1991 by Gerald Vizenor

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6

  CIP data appear at the end of the book

  Originally produced in 1991 by Wesleyan/University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755.

  The characters, scenes, stories, and construed histories in this novel arise from imagination; any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  We are no longer with those who want to possess the world, but with those who want to change it, and it is to the very plan of changing it that it reveals the secrets of its being …

  The most beautiful book in the world will not save a child from pain; one does not redeem evil, one fights it; the most beautiful book in the world redeems itself; it also redeems the artist. But not the man. Any more than the man redeems the artist. We want the man and the artist to work their salvation together, we want the work to be at the same time an act; we want it to be explicitly conceived as a weapon in the struggle that men wage against evil.

  —Jean-Paul Sartre, “What is Literature?”

  CONTENTS

  Part One BLUE MOCCASINS

  Santa Maria Casino

  Stone Tavern

  Storm Puppets

  Conquistador Club

  Bone Courts

  Part Two POINT ASSINIKA

  Miigis Crowns

  Wooden Head

  Genome Pavilion

  Mute Child

  Parthenos Salon

  Blood Tithes

  Moccasin Game

  Epilogue

  PART ONE

  BLUE MOCCASINS

  SANTA MARIA CASINO

  Christopher Columbus saw a blue light in the west, but “it was such an uncertain thing,” he wrote in his journal to the crown, “that I did not feel it was adequate proof of land.” That light was a torch raised by the silent hand talkers, a summons to the New World. Since then, the explorer has become a trickster healer in the stories told by his tribal heirs at the headwaters of the great river.

  The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, confirmed in the name of the curia and the crown, was an obscure crossblood who bore the tribal signature of survivance and ascended the culture of death in the Old World. He landed at dawn with no missionaries or naturalists and heard the thunder of shamans in the coral and the stone. “No sooner had we concluded the formalities of taking possession of the island than people began to come to the beach,” he wrote in his journal on October 12, 1492, at Samana Cay.

  Columbus unfurled the royal banner, and the green cross of the crown shivered on the wind over the island the tribe had named Guanahaní. He was blinded by the white sand, the broken sun on the water. He showed his sword to a painted servant on the beach, “and through ignorance he grabbed it by the blade and cut himself.”

  “In order to win their friendship, since I knew they were a people to be converted and won to our holy faith by love and friendship rather than by force, I gave some of them red caps and glass beads which they hung around their necks,” he wrote about his first encounter with tribal people in the New World. “They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them,” but he misconstrued a tribal pose and later traced his soul to the stories in their blood. “They all go naked as their mothers bore them, including the women, although I saw only one very young girl.”

  At Samana Cay the great adventurer was touched by a hand talker, a silent tribal wanderer, who wore a golden braid in her hair and carried two wooden puppets. That night she danced with the blue puppets on the sterncastle. The Santa María was brushed with a blue radiance.

  Columbus and the sailors were haunted by the wild puppets and roused by a golden shimmer on the night water. Samana was an island in the ocean sea that would be imagined but never possessed in the culture of death. Five centuries later the crossblood descendants of the explorer and the hand talker declared a new tribal nation.

  “Samana swam out to touch the man from heaven that first night in our New World and here we are on radio,” said Stone Columbus.

  Columbus was a seasonal voice on late night talk radio because of his surname and the curious stories he told about his inheritance. “She was a natural healer, a tribal hand talker, blessed with silence, and she discovered the incredible truth that the great explorer was tribal and he carried our stories in his blood.”

  The Heirs of Christopher Columbus are serious over their names and resurrections; the heirs come together at the stone tavern each autumn to remember the best stories about their strain and estate, and the genetic signature that would heal the obvious blunders in the natural world.

  The stone tavern, that wondrous circle of warm trickster stones, has been located for more than a hundred generations on a wild blue meadow near the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

  The Anishinaabe, the woodland tribe that founded this obscure tavern, the oldest in the New World, remember that Naanabozho, the compassionate tribal trickster who created the earth, had a brother who was a stone: a bear stone, a human stone, a shaman stone, a stone, a stone, a stone.

  Naanabozho was the first human born in the world, and the second born, his brother, was a stone. The trickster created the new earth with wet sand. He stood on his toes as high as he could imagine, but the water rose closer to his nose and mouth. He could dream without a mouth or nose, but he would never leave the world to the evil gambler and his dark water. The demons in the water caused him to defecate, and with pleasure, but his shit would not leave; several turds floated near his mouth and nose.

  Naanabozho was at the highest point on the earth and could not move, so he invented meditation with trickster stories and liberated his mind over his own excrement. The trickster created this New World with the sand a muskrat held in her paws.

  The Heirs of Christopher Columbus created one more New World in their stories and overturned the tribal prophecies that their avian time would end with the arrival of the white man. The heirs warm the stones at the tavern with their stories in the blood. The tavern is on the natural rise of a meadow, and tribal panic holes are sown near the mount. The House of Life is on the descent to the headwaters, the burial ground for the lost and lonesome bones that were liberated by the heirs from museums.

  The stones create a natural theater, an uncovered mount that is never touched by storms, curses, and disease; in the winter the stones near the headwaters are a haven for birds, animals, humans, and trickster stories of liberation.

  Stone Columbus heard the summer in the spring once more on the occasion of his third resurrection. That season the rush of aspen touched him as a child on his first return from a furnace in a government school; he came back a second time in the arms of the notorious ice woman, and then he drowned in his bingo caravel and heard the push of bears. None of these stories would be true if he had not inherited an unwonted surname and the signature of survivance from the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

  The Heirs of Columbus celebrated the quintessence of their inheritance that season; a blue radiance warmed the tavern stones. The heirs told their stories about creation, the bear codex and hand talkers, the ice woman and moccasin games, panic hole tricksters and saints, the bingo caravel, and the third death and resurrection of the sovereign mariner Stone Columbus.

  Christopher Columbus appeared in the dreams of the heirs; the stories that were told at the headwaters were bounden ceremonies, remembrance in the blood, because the bear codex, the last record of their signature of survivance, their blood histories, had been lost at sea. No others on the reservation were visited in dreams or stories by the great explorer; rather, those who revealed their dreams in his name were shunned at first. Later, when the caravels turned a fortune on sovereign bingo, the heirs were embraced as the cash would flow.

  Stone Columbus was heartened by his esoteric genetic signature and the stories in his blood; he was a crossblood and his spiritual distance from the tribe seemed to be as natural as the reasons his namesake lost gold, gods, and glories, in the radiance of a hand talker. To be sure, the personal miseries and public troubles with white men over the centuries were blamed on the visions of the crossblood shamans and the estranged stories the heirs told at the stone tavern. The heirs were burdened with the withering ironies of those who had never beheld resurrections in their stories.

  The Santa María Casino, the decorated bingo flagship, was anchored on the international border near Big Island in Lake of the Woods. The casino was an enormous barge that had been decked for games of chance on the ocean seas of the woodland. The Niña, a restaurant, and the Pinta, a tax free market, were simulated caravels anchored and moored on the border near the casino.

  The Santa María was christened and launched as soon as the ice broke in the spring. Stone built a wide cantilevered sterncastle and a cabin that overlooked the spacious casino; on one level he heard the seasons on the lake, and on the lower level he watched the players in the lounge. The two caravels were fitted and christened by early summer in time for the tourists and their search for gold and tribal adventures.

  The Fourth of July that year was not a celebration of tribal liberation or independence. Stone was arrested at dawn and detained on warrants that charge
d him with violations of state tax and gambling laws; the flagship and the caravels were confiscated and towed to a public dock. The next morning, however, a federal judge reversed the state court order; she agreed to review the issues of tribal sovereignty. Our tribal mariner of chance was back on the ocean sea, anchored once more to his stories at the border.

  In the first two summers on the water he made a fortune on games and waited for the court to rule on his right to operate a casino as a new reservation moored to an anchor as long as the waters flow in the New World. Border patrols from both countries circled the “dirty mary,” copied boat and airplane numbers, estimated the tax free cash flow, and anticipated the court decision that would sink the savage Santa María Casino.

  Beatrice Lord, the federal judge, ruled in favor of the unusual casino and sanctioned the reservation on an anchor; she so admired the imagination and certitude of the founder that she announced the court decision from the wild sterncastle of the Santa María Casino on Columbus Day.

  “The federal court finds in favor of Stone Columbus,” the judge said over a loudspeaker. Thousands of people in canoes, pontoon boats, and launches heard the voice of the court waver over the water. “The notion of tribal sovereignty is not confiscable, or earth bound; sovereignty is neither fence nor feathers. The essence of sovereignty is imaginative, an original tribal trope, communal and spiritual, an idea that is more than metes and bounds in treaties.” The court vacated the claims of the state and ruled that an anchor and caravel is as much a tribal connection to sovereignty as a homestead, mineral rights, the sacred cedar, and the nest of a bald eagle.

  “The Santa María and the other caravels are limited sovereign states at sea, the first maritime reservations in international waters,” the judge announced. “Moreover, the defendant was wise to drop his anchors on the border, knowing, as he must, that future appeals and other remedies could reach the International Court of Justice at The Hague.”

  The sovereign casino was a natural sensation that summer. Network television reported on the court decision, “the tribe that was lost no more,” and pursued the genetic theories of the crossblood founder of the “new casino tribe” who traced his descent to the great adventurer Christopher Columbus.

  Stone was pleased to pose on television with Felipa Flowers, the trickster poacher who repatriates tribal remains and sacred pouches from museums, and Miigis, their luminous child, but he would never speak to a camera; however, he was eager to be heard on national talk show radio. Felipa, Miigis, Stone, and Admire, the mongrel with the blue tongue, lived on the Santa María Casino. The mongrel was a healer, she whistled and barked on radio, but she shied at television cameras.

  “Radio is real, television is not,” he reminded the radio listeners. His grandparents listened to talk radio late at night on the reservation; the bold lies and arguments over the truth that he heard as a child hurried his sense of adventure, imagination, and the stories in his blood.

  Stone was heard by millions of people late at night on talk radio that wild summer. The crossblood of the northern air told his stories about the stone tavern, his resurrections, and the genetic signature of the heirs that would heal the nation. He spoke from the sterncastle of his casino; a flotilla of canoes, powerboats, and floatplanes from the cities circled the Santa María. The gamblers were white, most of them were on vacation, urban adventurers who would lose at bingo and slot machines with pleasure on a moored reservation.

  “Admiral Luckie White is on the air…”

  “Stone Columbus is here as usual, and who you hear is what you see,” he said that summer night from the sterncastle of the Santa María Casino.

  “Admiral Luckie White is on the air, your late night host and voice of the night on Carp Radio.” The radio was heard in four directions from enormous loudspeakers on the masts of the casino and the caravels. “Columbus is back to answer your questions and mine tonight. Here we go once more with the truth in the dark, so, how do you expect our listeners to buy the stories that your brother is a stone, a common rock?”

  “Stone is my name, not my brother, and we are not common,” said Stone Columbus. His voice was a primal sound that boomed over the black water. “The stone is my totem, my stories are stones, there are tribal stones, and the brother of the first trickster who created the earth was a stone, stone, stone.”

  “Really, but how can you be a stone, a real stone, and be talking on radio?” she asked, and then paused for a commercial. The talks from the casino two or three times a week had attracted new listeners and many eager advertisers. Carp Radio had discovered a new world on the Santa María Casino.

  “Stones hold our tribal words and the past in silence, in the same way that we listen to stories in the blood and hold our past in memories,” he said, and waved to several people boarding the caravel.

  “Stone, listen, our listeners know you were born on a reservation, and we understand how proud you are to be an Indian, so how can you claim to be a direct descendant of a stone and Christopher Columbus?”

  “Columbus was Mayan,” said Stone.

  “You must be stoned,” she said, and laughed on the air. Her voice bounced on the water, and the boats rocked with laughter near the casino. Admire barked at the boats and healed the night. “Really, you must be stoned on that reservation boat, Columbus was Italian, not a Mayan Indian.”

  “The Maya brought civilization to the savages of the Old World and the rest is natural,” said Stone. “Columbus escaped from the culture of death and carried our tribal genes back to the New World, back to the great river, he was an adventurer in our blood and he returned to his homeland.”

  “His homeland, now wait a minute, this is serious radio.”

  “My stories are evermore serious, serious, serious,” he said and teased the sounds of the words. Admire whistled a tune from a familiar symphony based on tribal themes. Felipa laughed and inserted a tape cassette in the recorder and played the New World Symphony, by Antonín Dvoák.

  Stone posed with Miigis that night as an orchestra leader on the sterncastle of the Santa María Casino. The mast was decorated with spirit catchers that held the wild beads of light from the boats on the lake. Felipa touched them from behind, the wondrous trickster on the ocean sea in a scarlet tunic, and her daughter in a blue robe. Admire heard her own bark echo on the loudspeaker; she bounced in a circle on the deck of the casino.

  “Mayan genes, give me a break,” said Admiral White.

  “The truth is in our genes,” said Stone.

  “Right, we are what our genes must pretend.”

  “We are the tribal heirs of the great explorer,” said Stone.

  “What are you playing?”

  “The Santa María Overture,” said Stone.

  “No, that’s Dvoák,” said Luckie White.

  “Dvoák was at the headwaters,” said Stone.

  “Please, tell our listeners why.”

  “Dvoák heard tribal music in the stones,” said Stone.

  “What about Columbus?”

  “He sought gold and tribal women,” said Stone.

  “So, what did he find?”

  “He found his homeland at the headwaters.”

  “Really, so what’s the real story?”

  “Samana, the golden healer,” said Stone.

  “The truth at last, but first a commercial announcement from those wise companies that buy our time and make the truth possible in the dark,” said Admiral White.

  “Samana is our hand talker, the golden woman of the ocean seas and sister to the fish, and she touched his soul and set the wounded adventurer free on October 28,1492, at Bahia de Bariay in Oriente Province, Cuba,” he said, and smiled over the dates and names.

  Felipa danced on the deck that warm night; she was touched by the memories of his stories, the sound of his creation. She could hear the end of the culture of death on the sterncastle of the casino, and she sensed the last of the heartsore stories of a broken civilization.

  “Stone, wait a minute, you leap from stones, to genes, to goldfish, to dates and places, and back again, so take your time now and spell it out in your own words to our listeners,” said Admiral White.