Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part five. William and Tuberculosis

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This third novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

This part of the book tells the story of a forgotten portion of American history. William Hicks was highly refined and educated, having especially fine handwriting. But somehow he got tuberculosis. This was during a half century of American history when people knew all about bacteria but not what to do about them, the half century before antibiotics. If you got TB, your death was almost inevitable, though slow; and it was dangerous to let you circulate in society.  You would be sent to a sanatorium, where you would rest in dry, cool air until you expired. And this is what happened to William.

As a reader, I wonder if there might have been more to the story. How can you prove that someone has TB? A white government official could declare that a Cherokee, with a minor respiratory ailment, had TB and this would make him forfeit his allotment. This story is told through the eyes of William, who apparently does not suspect this possibility.

The Great White Plague is now almost forgotten, but it killed millions of people. So many that, in fact, Europeans decided to make the best of it. They called it “consumption” and praised the delicate pink features and frailty of the victims, featuring them in operas such as La Traviata and La Bohème in which the divine consumptive soprano sings an aria and falls over dead. It is central to several stories by Andrea Barrett.

Another aspect of history that is almost forgotten is that, when it first became a state, Oklahoma was almost socialist. Today, while most states have become a little more progressive, Oklahoma is as red as a state can get. The test of a true Oklahoma politician is how beloved he or she is of Donald Trump. But one of the great Oklahoma heroes of the early decades of the twentieth century is Kate Barnard (see A Life on Fire by Connie Cronley), openly socialist. She would absolutely not fit into any conceivable modern Oklahoma administration.

What is left today in Oklahoma of the lives and deaths of people, like the four brothers in Rice’s novel? We get some idea of this from the epilogue, written in the voice of the author’s mother Nina Rice. All that remains in Oklahoma is a legacy of corrupt politicians, such as the congressman who takes a bribe to give a postmaster position to an unqualified person. And what remains of all the strife and blood experienced by the Cherokees? The federal government paid the Cherokee tribe for its expropriation of Cherokee Strip land (mostly the panhandle of the state). Nina says that the money she got from this, which was all that remained for her from her tribe’s strife and blood, was just enough money to buy a new pair of shoes.

Race and History, As If You Needed Another Example: Jackson Barnett, part two.

Jackson Barnett was an easy-going, illiterate, uneducated Creek Indian who lived near Henryetta, Oklahoma. The federal government forced him to accept an allotment in Drumright, near Cushing. Boy, did they regret doing that, as you will see. Barnett did not go and live on his allotment, because he wanted to be near family and friends in Henryetta. Some whites considered this to be a sign of incompetence, but it just sounds like he wanted to live near the people he knew and loved. My grandfather did not live on his allotment either.

But it turned out Jackson’s land was right over the Cushing oil field, one of the biggest in the world. Cushing still calls itself the oil capital of the world. There was so much oil that it seeped up in Barnett’s land. Jackson Barnett even looked a little bit like Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies; only, unlike Jed, Jackson did not have to go “shootin’ at some food, and up from the ground come a bubblin’ crude.” It was just bubblin’ by itself.

Suddenly, Jackson was very rich. We are talking millions. Or he would have been, except his county-court appointed guardian Carl O’Hornett controlled the money. And from there things started to get complicated. I am writing from memory, based on my reading of Tanis C. Thorne’s excellent biography, The World’s Richest Indian.

The federal government controlled Native tribes not through the Department of Justice, but the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA, which could also stand for Bossing Indians Around), as if Indians were natural resources, not people. When the BIA started hearing about guardian abuses (as described in the previous essay), they wanted to bring the situation under control. Actually, the federal government also wanted part of the action. So the BIA wanted to prevent O’Hornett from having so much power over Barnett. Eventually, the Department of Justice and Congress got into the fray also.

The state of Oklahoma got into the fray. Kate Barnard (see previous essay) was driven—I mean driven—by the purest of motives, which led to her breakdown and premature death. But other members of her staff also had careers to build. And the state legislature got involved also.

Oh, and the Baptists. They talked Barnett into promising them a bunch of money.

Of course, the county where Jackson Barnett lived—Okmulgee County—wanted to keep control over Jackson’s money also.

The feds fought the state which fought the county which fought the Baptists in all possible combinations and in a series of laws and lawsuits that this here poor Injun can’t keep track of. The game piece was flying around like it was a game of stickball.

Of course, there was more. There was the woman Anna Randolph Lowe Sturgis who got a taxi ride down to see Jackson Barnett. She told the driver she was going to marry Jackson Barnett, whom she had never met. Now, Jackson was a nice but rather clueless guy, who either did not recognize Anna as a gold-digger or else thought a gold-digger was as good of a wife as any other woman would be. Anyway, they got married right away, though they had to drive real fast over the state line to Coffeyville, Kansas, to do so. So now, by law, she was entitled to half of Jackson’s worth. The other people mixed up in all this were not pleased. To her credit, Anna stayed with Jackson the rest of his life, even or especially when she bought them a mansion in Los Angeles. She made sure he stayed clean and well dressed and kept his Jed Clampett stubble shaved off.

Of course, nobody could actually say that Barnett was mentally incompetent, because that would make their contracts with him (for example, his marriage to Anna, but also his promise to give the Baptists a lot of money) invalid.

Everybody was upset about everything, except Jackson Barnett, who just rolled in a blanket by the fire and stayed happy. He had what he needed, more than he wanted, and was puzzled that everyone was so upset, especially Anna. After Jackson died, Anna went insane or close to it.

The point of this essay, as of the last, is that racism has no scientific basis. Jackson Barnett did some things—and seemed to enjoy doing them—that made people think he was incompetent to handle his money. But if he had been white, nobody would have questioned his right to do anything he wanted with his money. Examples abound, such as Donald Trump, but let me use a fictional example you might know about: The Great Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. Of all of the empathetic things that Fitzgerald wrote about Gatsby, he never once said Gatsby did not have the right to spend his money as he did. Probably most of the white people who were criticizing Jackson Barnett’s strange expenditures were spending their own money in an even more reckless fashion. Everyone, that is, except Kate Barnard, who died intestate.

Now suppose you wanted to move to another county. Jackson (and Anna) decided to move from Okmulgee to Muskogee County within Oklahoma. But they were almost not allowed to do it, because O’Hornett would not have authority over Barnett outside of Okmulgee County.

Isn’t it just like white people (including most of my ancestors) to think they know what everyone else should do with their money or their lives.

The Jackson Barnett case generated a lot of negative publicity about Oklahoma grafters, because so much money was involved. But there were tens of thousands of lesser Native victims, very few of whom ever had their fortunes restored.