“The Lord and the Center of the Farthest”: Ezol’s Journal as Tribalography in LeAnne Howe’s Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story

In the documentary Playing Pastime, Choctaw author LeAnne Howe says, “For two centuries American Indians fought genocide, negotiated Indian identity, and struggled against cultural assimilation, all the while playing ball in the fields of their ancestors. How did American Indians become the mascots for a sport they may have invented? This is the story of playing pastime” (Fortier and Howe). Comparable themes run through Howe’s novel Miko Kings, a story of Indian Territory baseball set in Ada, Oklahoma, covering a nonlinear period from 1888 through 2007.

Introduction to Miko Kings

Multiple narrators from the past and present relate the story of the all-Indian baseball team, the Miko Kings, their triumphs, losses, loves, deaths, and survival. A spirit from the past, a postal clerk, Choctaw Ezol Day, visits a modern-day freelance journalist, Choctaw Lena Coulter, in 2006 to tell her about the history of Ada and its citizens. Ezol, a theorist of relativity according to Choctaw time, explains to Lena how life in the past, present, and future has already happened: “‘Ada is an event in which I isolate myself now and again,’ she says. ‘The circus that came to town, the moving picture producer, the fire, the ballgames—they all happened here. But then, everything, even the farthest universe, has already happened. They’re stories that travel now as captured light in someone else’s telescope. No?’” (Miko Kings 35). Some of those stories are in Ezol’s journal, which Lena discovers while remodeling her Choctaw grandmother Mourning Tree Bolin’s house. The journal and Ezol’s visits become the catalysts for uncovering the history of the Miko Kings baseball team as well as that of Lena’s own family.

Among the numerous characters in Miko Kings are several who directly affect Ezol’s life, appear in her journal, and have prominent roles in the novel. In 1907 Choctaw Hope Little Leader is the twenty-five-year-old pitcher for the Miko Kings who falls in love with his teacher, Justina Maurepas (Dusky Long-Gone Girl/Black Juice), at the Hampton Normal School for Blacks and Indians. Justina’s cousin, Beauregard “Bo” Hash, convinces Hope to throw the last game of the Twin Territories Series against the Seventh Cavalry Baseball Team for $5,000, so Hope will have enough money to take care of Justina. Ezol’s love interest is the Miko Kings’ manager-player, Chickasaw-Choctaw George “Blip” Bleen, who carries out justice by chopping off Hope’s hands in retribution for throwing the game. Ezol’s Choctaw Uncle Henri Day owns the Miko Kings, and his daughter, Ezol’s cousin, Cora Day (Mourning Tree Bolin), colludes with Bo Hash and seduces Blip to persuade him to take the bribe and throw the baseball game. Cora becomes pregnant by Blip and gives birth to Lena’s mother, Kit Bolin. Ezol’s spirit appears to Lena because she should have been her grandmother: “Lena, I may not be your blood grandmother—but I should have been. And I have always been with you in spirit. That is the true story I came to tell” (221).

The front matter of Miko Kings opens with several pages of visual images; first, an 1891 map of Indian Territory, signifying the importance of the land, place, time, and space, all key aspects of Ezol Day’s Choctaw philosophy of time. Next follows an image of Ezol’s journal, discovered in the walls of Lena Coulter’s house, which chronicles the story of Ezol’s life, Ada’s citizens, and the Twin Territories Series between the Miko Kings and the Fort Sill’s Seventh Cavalry Baseball Teams. The third image is a photo from the film His Last Game, in which Ezol plays the role of a male gravedigger, a fitting representation as she is the one who guides Lena to unearth the history of the Miko Kings. In fact, Lena’s narration, which frames the novel, claims, “the voice of this story is [Ezol’s]” (24). As part of the motivation for...