Blue Ravens: Historical Novel

4 Carnegie Totems

› 4 ‹ Carnegie Totems — — — — — — — 19 0 9 — — — — — — — The Minneapolis Public Library was only ten years old that summer of our migration, a massive stone building with magnificent curved bay windows. The turrets on two corners resembled a baronial river castle, but the books inside were never the reserved property of the nobility. Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy industrialist and passionate philanthropist , donated more than sixty million dollars to build public libraries, and more to establish schools and universities around the country. A slight portion of his great treasure acquired from the steel industry and other investments was used to construct the Minneapolis Public Library. Carnegie was a master of steel, stone, railroads, and the great bloom of libraries. More than two thousand libraries were built in his name, but he would not give a dime to build even a bookrack on the White Earth Reservation , our uncle explained, because the federal agents were not reliable and the government would not promise to support the future of books for natives. Carnegie was a new totem of literacy and sovereignty. The libraries he created were the heart and haven of our native liberty. No federal agents established libraries on reservations, and not many robber barons constructed libraries and universities. Aloysius painted a huge blue raven, our great new totem of honor and adventure, in one of the turret bay windows of the library. The beak of the raven almost touched the sidewalk and stairs near the entrance. My brother never painted humans, but some of his great ravens traced a sense of character , a cue of human memory. Carnegie was portrayed as a stately blue raven with a bushy mane and great beak in the turret windows. We could not believe that the books were stacked on open shelves and available to anyone. We walked slowly down the aisles of high cases and touched the books by colors, first the blues, of course, and then the red and black books. In that curious hush and silence of the library the books B l U e r a v e N s 37 were a native sense of presence, our presence, and the spirits of the books were revived by our casual touch. Every book waited in silence to become a totem, a voice, and a new story. The books waited in silence, waited for readers, and waited for a chance to be carried out of the library. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper was tilted to the side. The novel was illustrated by Frank T. Merrill, and in one picture a couple with fair skin watched a native wrestle with a bear. The couple was dressed for a dance, and the native wore leather, fringed at the seams, and three feathers on his head. The book waited to be recovered by a reader, but not by me or by my brother. That novel was introduced by our teachers at the government school, along with that nasty poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but we were never obliged to remember the loopy cultural fantasies of literary explorers. The elaborate frontier of The Last of the Mohicans was a snake oil story. Augustus teased the reservation native police with the name Chingachgook , and he sometimes used the name Natty Bumppo, both characters in The Last of the Mohicans, in stories about the missionaries and federal agents. So, we had a tricky sense of the characters in the novel by the time our teachers wrote the names on the chalkboard. Aloysius touched The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Augustus celebrated our thirteenth birthday with two new books. Our uncle always celebrated our birthdays with books, first picture stories and then literature. The new books were wrapped in the current edition of the Tomahawk. He gave me a copy of The Call of the Wild, and Aloysius received a copy of White Fang. Augustus knew we were inspired by native totems and animal stories, and he knew we would talk about these scenes in the novels. My uncle was a teaser, and he teased and coaxed me to become a creative writer, to create stories of native liberty, and a few years later gave me a copy of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Jack London was a great writer but he was mistaken about dogs and natives . Buck was a natural healer and would never return to the wolves, never in a native story. London was not aware that wolves...