“They will not give us powder and bullets.”
“Reckon not. Might be the Lakota could use those powder and bullets on Major Dye’s soldiers. Why did Red Cloud come? So his young warriors could buy whiskey?”
“I hate whiskey. My father, Lone Man, loved whiskey more than he loved his son. Whiskey killed Lone Man. Washitu will give the Lakota all the whiskey they want.” Red Cloud stirred the coals. “Washitu gifts are like a blade sharpened on both edges. As you cut your meat you cut your hand. We are few and they are many. Should we fight?”
Plenty Cuts said, “If it was just you and me, I’d say yes. We wouldn’t win: there’s too many of them and some are clever bastards. But it’d be some satisfaction to kill a few. But it ain’t just you and me. It’s all the Lakota.”
Red Cloud said, “I am a warrior. How much humiliation must a warrior eat?”
Plenty Cuts said, “I reckon you’re about to find out.”
THE NEXT MORNING, while Major Dye was explaining that part of the treaty where the Washitu and Lakota promised to never make war again, a soldier delivered a telegram.
Ulysses S. Grant had defeated Horatio Seymour for President of the United States. All the soldiers seemed happy at this news and when Red Cloud asked why, Plenty Cuts told him Grant was a great chief who had been willing to sacrifice many warriors in battle.
Red Cloud asked again for powder. He said the blackhorns had run away and the Lakota needed more powder and lead.
Major Dye’s officers smoked and the chaplain took notes with his scratchy pens.
That evening, Major Dye honored Red Cloud, Big Bear, and Old Man Afraid of His Horses with a feast. Plenty Cuts went to the sutler’s for a beer.
A drunken corporal lifted a hand, palm outward, and said, “How.”
“How, what?” Ratcliff replied.
“Hey,” the corporal said, “we got us a squaw man, here.”
Ratcliff stepped so near, the corporal took an involuntary step backward. “You’ve got Sergeant Major Edward Ratcliff, 38th United States Colored Troops. The Crater, New Market Heights, Five Forks. Might be you’d like to buy me a drink.”
“Siddown, Corporal Peterson,” a veteran sergeant spoke up. “Top, I’ll buy you a drink. Least I’ll buy your medal a drink. Can’t say I ever saw a Lakota wearin’ one. Can’t say I ever saw a red-faced nigger either.” The sergeant put out his hand and Ratcliff shook it awkwardly. He was out of practice.
“I was with the Bucktails myself,” the sergeant said. “Thought I’d stay in the army for the pension and maybe settle out here.”
“It’s a big country. Might be room for everybody.”
“That what you tell Red Cloud?”
“Red Cloud’s no fool. He’s looking for a treaty whites can’t break.”
The sergeant examined Ratcliff. “Ain’t many niggers on the plains. Scout name of Shillaber was here in August. Said a nigger friend of his was in the Hayfield scrap.”
“Shillaber say where he was bound?”
“Nope. He quarreled with a robe trader name of Meredeth and the night Shillaber left, Meredeth disappeared too. Talk is Shillaber did for him.”
Plenty Cuts remembered when he’d been a different man with a different name: five white men and one black in a steaming pool surrounded by untracked snow that stretched to distant, sawtoothed mountains.
MAJOR DYE PROMISED that the Montana Road would never be reopened, that no new forts would be built, that annuities would be provided and instruction for those who wished to become farmers.
Red Cloud laughed. “We Lakota have already learned as much as we wish to learn about farming.”
Major Dye agreed to Red Cloud’s demand that the treaty could not be changed unless three-quarters of the Lakota wanted it changed. All the land between the Missouri and the Rockies would be reserved for the “absolute and undisturbed use” of the Lakota.
For the first time Red Cloud smiled. “Until the rivers do not flow,” he added.
“Yes.”
“And the sun no longer rises in the east.”
“Just so.”
“Until men cease to make war.”
“Yes, the absolute, undisturbed use.”
“Until all the Lakota cross over into the Shadowland.”
“Yes.”
Red Cloud laughed and washed his hands in the dust and took the pen the chaplain gave him and made his mark. The other chiefs made their marks. Major Dye passed out cigars.
CHAPTER 37
MR. STUART ARGUES FOR COMPROMISE
We now look with extreme aversion on negro suffrage, but may we not find upon actual experiment that it is not such a bad thing as we have been accustomed to believe?
The inherent inferiority of the race, and their want of education and property, will necessarily put them in a position of subordination to the superior race. Knowledge is power, property is power. Would it not therefore be strange if the superior intelligence and accumulated property of the superior race should not exercise a controlling influence over the ignorance and penury of the inferior?
—Alexander Stuart, in the Richmond Whig,
December 19, 1868
CHAPTER 38
LETTER FROM THOMAS BYRD TO
SAMUEL GATEWOOD
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
JANUARY 21, 1869
Dear Grandfather,
I have met with President Grant! On the 4th of January, I accompanied Mr. Stuart and his committee to Washington City. The tyrannical Underwood Constitution had been approved by the House of Representatives and was due for Senate consideration: hence our urgency. Mr. Stuart’s compromise—universal suffrage for ex-Confederates as well as negroes—is bitter medicine, but Mr. Stuart believes (and I concur) that we will gain more than we lose.
We trod the halls of Congress, singly and in concert, trying to persuade Radical Republican senators that Virginia has no desire to secede again, nor to re-enslave its negro population. In this we were greatly assisted by Mr. Walker and Mr. Stearns. These moderate Republicans impressed skeptics within their own party.
Grandfather, I thank God Thad Stevens no longer sows his grapes of wrath. The author of the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States has been interred—as per his wishes—in a negro cemetery. If Stevens had chosen to be interred in Stratford’s front hall, I would not quarrel—so long as he was interred.
We Virginians were treated so courteously on this occasion, I nearly forgot the humiliation Stevens inflicted at our last visit—was that only three years ago?
Wherever we went, we were dogged by Mr Chepstow and his Radicals chanting that only Radical Republicans can be trusted, that if white Virginians are enfranchised we will undo all the blessings of Confederate defeat and swiftly re-enslave our negroes by fair means or foul!
At Stratford, when a dog killed a chicken we tied the carcass around the dog’s neck until it rotted and fell of its own accord. Grandfather, I understand how that dog felt!
From courtesy we met with President Johnson. Poor man! So beleaguered, despised, and powerless! He was grateful for our commendations.
But the man we most hoped to influence was the President-Elect, and General Grant kindly consented to an interview.
Grandfather, I had never thought to meet another to rival General Lee in my esteem, but Grant is that man. He received us in his rooms at Mr. Willard’s Hotel, explaining that until inauguration, he remained strictly a military man and thus unable to comment on policy. Nonetheless, he was interested in hearing what we had to say.
Mr. Stuart and Mr. Walker made a compelling case—that should the Underwood Constitution be submitted to Virginia voters in its present form, it would be voted down, and that depriving Virginia of the services of her natural leaders was pernicious. “Must we give our Commonwealth over to the illiterate and unpropertied?” Mr. Stuart inquired.
Virginia’s military government has had notable difficulty filling posts with literate men who can swear the Ironclad Oath
and General Grant has a soldier’s respect for worthy adversaries.
Mistaking the time of our appointment, two of our committee who meant to attend failed to attend. Chepstow promptly spread misinformation that Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Mayre had snubbed General Grant.
I was dispatched to seek a second interview. Two armed Treasury agents were stationed outside Grant’s rooms and they searched my person for an assassin’s pistol. When Colonel Porter, the General’s aide, admitted me, they made to follow.
“I am sure the young man intends the General no harm,” Porter said.
Nervousness prompted my impolitic reply, “Not since April 1865.” Colonel Porter dismissed my raillery with the faintest smile.
The General was dressing for dinner and greeted me in shirtsleeves. They say Grant is so tenderhearted he cannot abide to see a horse mistreated and eats no meat until it is thoroughly carbonized. Yet this tender man ordered twelve thousand Union soldiers to make hopeless charges at Cold Harbor!
I explained my mission and assured the General that every member of our committee held him in the highest regard, that Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Mayre had simply misunderstood the time of their interview.
With Colonel Porter’s help he attached his collar. “I bear no animosity toward the South,” he said, “and intend to be President of every region.”
I cannot predict what General Grant will do when he becomes President Grant. He seemed to feel that universal suffrage for negroes and ex-Confederates is a worthy compromise, but I was more confident in his presence than the next morning when I woke realizing that he had not actually promised more than due consideration.
Mr. Stuart returns to Staunton next week and I will come home to Stratford. Mr. Stuart is urging me to run for the legislature.
Duncan is determined to quit General Mahone. Apparently Duncan has long dreamed of breeding horses, and Sallie is encouraging him to do so—in Montana Territory.
Relay my warm regards to our dearest cousin, your new wife, now my new dear grandmother.
Your obedient grandson,
Thomas
CHAPTER 39
THE CANDIDATE FROM MARSHALL WARD
AFTER HE LOST HIS JOB AT THE NEW NATION, JESSE SOUGHT work at the Richmond Whig, the Examiner, the State Journal, the Dis-patch, and the Inquirer to no avail. The State Journal’s editor told him, “My printers would quit me if I hired a nigger for white man’s work.” Sudie’s washing paid their rent and Jesse lined up for rations at the Freedmen’s Bureau. The little family was lucky to have a home: many unemployed negroes lived in derelict canal boats or abandoned warehouses. Jesse found occasional work unloading freight or mucking out livery stables at fifty cents a day.
When President Grant scheduled the long-postponed Virginia election, Jesse Burns ran for the legislature from the Marshall Ward, as did Robert Patterson, a white, and Lewis Lindsey, the negro who in April celebrated the third anniversary of Richmond’s fall with a rally and march through the city. Next evening the church where the march had originated burned to the ground.
Virginia male citizens would elect its state legislators, its governor, and they’d vote on the Underwood Constitution—as amended by Alexander Stuart.
Jimson quit his gang. “Politics ain’t different than the Knockabouts, but there’s more money in it,” Jesse’s new canvasser informed his candidate.
Jesse campaigned energetically, but Lewis Lindsey seemed to be everywhere. Though Jesse appealed to conservative negroes, Lindsey’s rhetoric fired the young men. Robert Patterson’s small bribes and whiskey won friends. His political barbecues drew a hundred voters at a time.
After the New Nation shut its doors, Charles Chepstow bolted the Radical Republicans (some say he was pushed) and campaigned among negroes for Robert Patterson.
Duncan clapped Jesse on the back and said, “You should have come to me sooner.”
Thanks to Duncan’s money, Jesse’s barbecues and speeches began outdrawing his rivals’.
If he won, Jesse would vote General Mahone’s interests. Had Duncan asked him to vote against the Underwood Constitution or negro suffrage, Jesse would have refused. But Jesse didn’t care which railroad dominated Virginia.
Jesse had planned his last political barbecue for the first Sunday in July until Jimson reminded him Sunday was the Fourth, a holiday Virginia negroes ought not be seen enjoying too much. Jesse rescheduled for the last Sunday in June. Duncan Gatewood provided the barbecued hog, five dozen chickens, and a demicask of brandy for Jesse’s two hundred guests on a beautiful afternoon beside the James River.
Boys fished in the lee of the small island while their mothers sat on blankets and gossiped.
Lewis Lindsey claimed Jesse Burns was the “white man’s nigger.” Since Lindsey hadn’t fought in the war, Jesse wore his United States Colored Troops uniform to every rally.
The day was warm. Seagulls fluttered above the rapids.
Some whites had come to Jesse’s barbecue, but they kept to themselves except at the cask, where Jimson ladled brandy and political exhortations with a balanced hand.
Jesse slipped five dollars to voters expecting to be paid.
Duncan Gatewood stretched, yawned, and turned to Jesse. “Thank God this will soon be decided. Lord, I’m sick of politics.”
“You still going to leave Virginia?”
“There’s nothing for me here. I’ll resign after the election. I’ve bought twenty brood mares—approved by Aunt Opal. If Opal’d been born white, she’d be the richest horse trader in the Commonwealth.
“Good horses are scarce in Montana. The cavalry will pay a hundred fifty dollars for a clean-limbed gelding. Jesse, this is what I’ve always wanted to do. I often wonder why I ever did anything else.”
Jesse said, “You might run across my army friend, Sergeant Major Edward Ratcliff, out there. Fine soldier, went west with a cattle drive and now he’s living with the indians. He sent me a telegram from Fort Laramie. Edward Ratcliff has become Red Cloud’s interpreter.” Jesse laughed. “God works in mysterious ways.”
“If he’s riding with Red Cloud, I’d rather not make his acquaintance,” Duncan said.
An old black man approached decorously. “Deacon Hanley, First African Baptist, Mr. Burns. You prolly seen Hanley’s rigs ’round town.”
“Surely have, Deacon Hanley.”
“Mr. Burns, us respectable niggers, we don’t want no trouble. That Lindsey nigger, he’ll get our churches burned. I’m votin’ for you.”
“That’s good of you, Deacon,” Jesse said. “You ate any of our fine barbecue?”
“No, no. I didn’t come to eat a thing. I come to say I supportin’ you.”
“Always glad to see you, Deacon.” Jesse shook the man’s wizened hand. “Mr. Gatewood and me, we was young’uns together. Mr. Gatewood’s with General Mahone.”
“Good to meet you, sir. Mr. Burns, he’s got my vote. He’ll have my teamsters’ votes too.”
At Duncan’s inquiring glance, Jesse grinned. “No sense givin’ money to a man who’ll vote for you without it. That’s what my canvasser, Jimson, tells me. That boy is cut out for politics.”
Sudie Burns and Sallie Gatewood sat on the riverbank while their infants cooed and gurgled at one another and Aunt Opal trailed young Catesby, who was splashing in the riffles at the water’s edge.
Sallie Gatewood said, “My father Uther was a schoolmaster and taught Jesse, Duncan, and me. We were like brothers and sister.”
“Jesse don’t talk much about them olden times,” Sudie said. “Ain’t it funny how we’uns and you’uns come up in the world together and when we growed up you all go one way and we go t’other?”
Sallie sighed. “Perhaps it will not always be so.”
Sudie shook her head. “Nothin’ gonna change this side of River Jordan.”
Impulsively, Sallie took the other young woman’s hand. “Mrs. Burns, isn’t this a beautiful day? Can we not set aside for one day all that divides us?”
Sudie sm
iled her fine gap-toothed smile. “I can see why Jesse favors you, Miss Sallie.”
Sallie replied, “Jesse is a fine man. A credit to his race.”
“Duncan a credit to your race, Miss Sallie?” Sudie drew back.
“Oh, dear. I meant to praise your husband and instead I offended you. I am sorry. Mrs. Burns, I’d like to be your friend.”
“Grand white lady like you befriendin’ a washerwoman?”
Sudie’s infant Sojourner and Sallie’s Abigail inspected one another as solemnly as two buddhas.
“You are my old friend Jesse’s wife,” Sallie said softly. “If that position isn’t grand enough, you may soon be the wife of a Virginia assemblyman.”
Sudie had grown up expecting to live her life as a slave, to lie with Master when he insisted and to marry whoever Master chose for her. Jesse, who’d fought with the Union Army and might be elected to the Virginia Legislature, was pure miracle. To Sudie, Jesse was the unlikeliest thing that ever happened, and sometimes she studied him so avidly it made her husband uneasy.
Now Sudie said stubbornly, “Ain’t gonna think about that!”
“Things will change as they must. Our children will know a different world than ours. I pray our animosities and misunderstandings will become mere curiosities like those in Mr. Barnum’s museum.”
“There’s this ju-ju man back on the plantation. An’ that man could prophesize. I asked him onct what would become of us and he said we’d have trials for a hundred years. Miss Sallie, what we done to deserve such tribulations?”
“If you call me Miss Sallie, I must call you Miss Sudie.”
Sudie laughed. “You crazy as a bedbug, Mrs. Gatewood. ’Deed you is.”
CHAPTER 40
GHOST-OWNING
IN THE MOON OF RIPENING CHOKECHERRIES IN THE YEAR THE sun died, at White Bull’s village on the Powder River, Plenty Cuts gave a good horse to Blue Cloud the healer, who painted a square of soft buckskin with Red Leaf’s face and hung the buckskin on a spirit pole at the rear of her ghost lodge. Blue Cloud then crossed spirit poles in front of the lodge and draped a fine buffalo robe over the poles. White Bull set his chief’s war bonnet on the buffalo’s head, and the fine moccasins, leggings, shirts, and parfleches the women had made were laid beside this mock buffalo.