Blue Ravens: Historical Novel

9 Shadow Draft

› 9 ‹ Shadow Draft — — — — — — — 19 1 8 — — — — — — — Augustus Hudon Beaulieu died on August 8, 1917. The news hurt my heart, but memories of his tease and confidence would last forever. He was praised for his integrity, humor, and for his dedication to native rights and liberty. Our favorite uncle was honored by hundreds of friends and thousands of readers of his newspapers on the reservation and around the state. There could have been more than a hundred reverent pallbearers that summer day at his funeral. Augustus decried in the Progress and later in the Tomahawk the General Allotment Act that divided the treaty reservation into individual barren cuts and parcels of land. He encouraged natives to be inventive, progressive, productive, but not for the government or as the mere assimilation of native stories and culture. “Gus H. Beaulieu Dies at Barrows.” “The call was sudden and occurred at 3 o’clock P.M. on Wednesday, August 8th,” the Tomahawk reported eight days later on the front page. Augustus was living in Barrows, Minnesota, near the “extinct village of Old Crow Wing.” Clement Hudon Beaulieu, his father, once lived there before the treaty that established the White Earth Reservation and “had long been the agent in charge of the fur trading business conducted by the American Fur Company.” On the “day of his death he and his wife and son decided to spend the afternoon fishing. Shortly after luncheon they embarked in their car and drove to a lake on the west side of the Mississippi River where as a boy he had fished often.” The road was rough near the lake, “so the three disembarked a few paces from the waters edge and proceeded on foot to the shore.” Augustus “had a fishing rod in one hand and a can of bait in the other, suddenly he fell forward at full length and crashed to the ground.” Ella and Chester rushed to his side and tried to “revive him from a faint, for as he fell they thought he had simply stumbled.” The cause of death was B l U e r a v e N s 89 apoplexy, and the doctor “expressed the opinion that life had flown before the body reached the ground.” The Tomahawk concluded that the loss of Augustus is “distinct and great to this community and to all the Chippewas of Minnesota.” Aloysius placed a blue raven medal in the coffin. The body of our uncle was returned to his residence on the reservation, and then moved to Saint Columba’s Episcopal Church for an informal service. Augustus was a member of the Catholic Church, but his brother Clement Hudon Beaulieu, the younger, was an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church. Augustus was honored in death by the two great religions on the reservation. Episcopalians and his brother, however, never mentioned the critical stories of churchy power on the reservation. Father Aloysius conducted the actual interment rites at Saint Benedict’s Catholic Cemetery. The Tomahawk continued to publish newspapers once a week with a new editorial writer. The character of the “editorials will in the future be as nearly alike to those of the past,” wrote the editor, Clement Hudon Beaulieu, on the front page, August 23, 1917. “The Tomahawk now makes an appeal to all Chippewas and progressive Indians everywhere, to place supporting hands under its arms as it fights for rights both tribal and racial.” “Gladly in memory of a departed loved brother, he contributes his services as editorial writer, and with this fraternal memorial goes also affection and sympathy for his people.” Augustus, Odysseus, and Misaabe encouraged me to become a writer, but in separate and distinctive ways. The trader was precise and directed me to create stories with a sense of presence that teased and healed by adventure, luck, and irony. My uncle published some of my stories and visitor notes on the back pages of the Tomahawk. Wisely, he never printed my name as the author, although at the time his decision seemed punitive . Augustus did not want me to be the critical focus of newspaper stories about natives on the reservation, and my name never appeared in the Tomahawk. Misaabe told stories and created shadows that converted the obvious and changed the world. The scenes in his stories resided forever in my imagination , and his marvelous presence was in every flash and faint flicker of light, and in every explosion during the war at night in France. [18.119.213...