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From Edna
Ferber’s Cimarron to Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit:
a Survey of Indians in Oklahoma Oilfield Fiction
The first
novelist to take up the challenge of showing the effect of oil on the
people of Oklahoma was Edna Ferber. Fresh from her Pulitzer Prize for
So Big in 1926, Ferber set out to chronicle the early history
of Oklahoma with her saga of the Cravat family, Cimarron (1930).
Ferber, a Jew, is concerned with racial and religious intolerance of
several kinds. The central figure of the novel is Sabra Cravat, and
she lives in Wichita, Kansas, but she has learned racism from her parents,
who are from Louisiana and Mississippi. They have black servants who
hardly know they are free. She has married Yancy Cravat, a lawyer, newspaper
editor, gunfighter, former cowboy—indeed a larger than life figure,
one said to be modeled on Temple Houston, son of Sam Houston. It’s
1889, and Yancy has returned from the first great run into Indian Territory
with nothing but a good story and a plan. He will take his wife and
young son, Cimarron, to the new town of Osage near the Osage reservation
and start a newspaper and practice law. Her family is appalled. How
dare he think of taking his highly cultured Southern lady into the land
of the heathen Indians! In spite of her family’s protests, she
goes with her husband, is appalled at the conditions there, and heroically
sets out to change things—and does so for the next forty years.
The young black servant Isaiah hides away in their wagon and is allowed
to live with them in Osage, apparently as an unpaid servant, almost
a member of the family. Shortly after they arrive in Oklahoma, the Cravats
meet Sol Levy, the Jewish peddler who begins a mercantile store in Osage.
Both Yancy and Sabra show no prejudice toward Sol, but everyone else
does. Yancy, the highly feared gunmen, protects Sol on one occasion
from a gang of saloon hanger-ons who were making him dance by shooting
around him. Yancy is a true democrat. He likes everyone, particularly
Indians, so he frequently takes his young son, Cim, to the Osage village
to visit. Sabra on the other hand hates the Indians, calling them “dirty
savages.” She
has Indians work for her, all the while considering them stupid, slow,
and insolent. Yancy does many heroic deeds over the years and is even
considered a likely appointee for Territorial Governor, but he writes
a strong editorial for Indian rights and loses any chance for the governorship.
Isaiah gets the Osage servant girl pregnant, and because the Osage do
not allow marrying between blacks and the Osage, the girl, her baby,
and Isaiah are all killed by her father. No-one is arrested for this
act.Yancy disappears from time to time, once being gone for five years.
During this time, he goes on a land rush and on the Alaska gold rush,
even goes into the Roughriders and is a hero in Cuba and the Philippines.
The new Indian servant girl is Ruby Big Elk, daughter of one of the
chiefs of the Osage. The Cravat children have taken up their parent’s
views of the Osage. Donna, the Cravat’s daughter, who takes after
Felice, Sabra’s mother, doesn’t like Indians:
“What
are you staring at, Ruby?” Donna would cry, pettishly. Ruby would
walk out of the room with her slow scuffling step, her body erect, her
head regal, her eyes looking straight ahead. She said nothing. “Miserable
squaw!” Donna would hiss under her breath. “Gives herself
the airs of a princess because her greasy old father runs the tribe
or something.”
But Cim, like
his father, likes the Osage a lot, even learning the Osage language and
songs from Ruby. People even think he walks like an Indian. Pete Pitchlyn,
the old Indian scout, says, “Every time I see that young Cimarron
Cravat comin’ down the street I hear a tree snap. Walks like a story-book
Injun.” Soon Yancy disappears again, and Sabra has to go to Ruby
Big Elk’s house to pull Cim from a peyote ceremony. Cim is sent
to Colorado School of Mines to study geology, and Donna is sent to New
York to a finishing school. Statehood came to Oklahoma in 1907, and about
the same time—oil. Ferber describes its effect on Oklahoma:
Oil.
Nothing else mattered. Oklahoma, the dry, the wind-swept, the burning,
was a sea of hidden oil. The red prairies, pricked, ran black and slimy
with it. The work of years was undone in a day. The sunbonnets shrank
back, aghast. Compared to that which now took place the early days following
the Run in ‘89 were idyllic. They swarmed on Oklahoma from every
state in the Union. The plains became black with little eager delving
figures. The sanguine roads were choked with every sort of vehicle.
Once more tent and shanty towns sprang up where the day before had been
only open prairie staring up at a blazing sky. Again the gambling tent,
the six-shooter, the roaring saloon, the dance hall, the harlot. Men
fought, stole, killed, died for a piece of ground beneath whose arid
surface lay who knew what wealth of fluid richness. Every barren sun-baked
farm was a potential fortune; every ditch and draw and dried-up creek
bed might conceal liquid treasure. The Wildcat Field—Panhandle—Cimarron—Crook
Nose Cartwright—Wahoo—Bear Creek—these became magic
names; these were the Seven Cities of Cibola, rich beyond Coronado’s
wildest dream. Millions of barrels of oil burst through the sand and
shale and clay and drenched the parched earth. Drill, pump, blast. Nitroglycerin.
Here she comes. A roar. Oklahoma went stark raving mad.
Yancy returns from one of his trips, exulting over the sudden riches of
the Osage:
“Sabra!
Here’s news for you. Jesse! . . . .
“Oil, my children! More oil than anybody ever thought there was
in any one spot in the world. And where! Where! On the Osage Indian
Reservation. It came in an hour ago, like the ocean. It makes every
other field look like the Sahara. There never was such a joke! It’s
cosmic—it’s terrible. How the gods must be roaring. ‘Laughter
unquenchable among the blessed gods!’”
Sabra tells him that the story is old and that he should calm down, come
home, and take a bath. He says:
“Hot
bath! Hot hell, honey! Do you realize what this means? Do you understand
that two thousand Osage Indians, squatting in their rags in front of
their miserable shanties, are now the richest nation in the world? In
the world, I tell you. They were given that land—the barest, meanest
desert land in the whole of the Oklahoma country. And the government
of these United States said, ‘There, you red dogs, take that and
live on it. And if you can’t live on it, then die on it.’
God A’mighty, I could die myself with laughing. Millions and millions
of dollars. They’re spattering, I tell you, all over the Osage
Reservation. There’s no stopping that flow. Every buck and squaw
on the Osage Reservation is a millionaire. They own that land, and,
by God, I’m going to see that no one takes it away from them!”
“Oh, Yancey, be careful.”
He was driving his pencil across the paper. “Send this out A.P.
They tried to keep it dark when the flow came, but I’ll show them.
Sabra, kill your editorial lead, whatever it was. I’ll write it.
Make this your news lead, too. Listen. ‘The gaudiest star-spangled
cosmic joke that ever was played on a double-dealing government burst
into fireworks to-day when, with a roar that could be heard for miles
around, thousands of barrels of oil shot into the air on the miserable
desert land known as the Osage Indian Reservation and occupied by those
duped and wretched !”
Sabra tries
to stop him from printing it, saying that it’s treason and anarchy.
He says that it’s truth and history and that he can prove it. He
also says, “They’ll be down on these Osage like a pack of
wolves.” The Osage become richer and richer. Ferber stops the action
to write an essay about the change:
A
stunned government tried to bring order out of a chaos of riches. The
two thousand Osages were swept off the Reservation to make way for the
flood of oil that was transmuted into a flood of gold. They were transported
to a new section called Wazhazhe, which is the ancient Indian word for
Osage.
Agents appointed. Offices established. Millions of barrels of oil. Millions
of dollars. Millions of dollars yearly to be divided somehow among two
thousand Osage Indians, to whom a blanket, a bowl of soffica, a mangy
pony, a bit of tobacco, a disk of peyote had meant riches. And now every
full blood, half blood, or quarter blood Osage was put on the Indian
Roll, and every name on the Indian Roll was entitled to a Head Right.
Every head right meant a definite share in the millions. Five in a family—five
head rights. Ten in a family—ten head rights.
She tells
about how poor they had been and how they had traveled on their wiry little
ponies. Then she describes how they traveled after they became rich:
Up
and down the dusty Oklahoma roads at terrific speed, up and down Pawhuska
Avenue, went the blanketed figures in their Packard and Pierce Arrow
cars. The merchants of Osage liked to see them in town. It meant money
freely spent on luxuries. The Osage Indian men were broad shouldered,
magnificent, the women tall, stately. Now they grew huge with sloth
and overfeeding. They ate enormously and richly. They paced Pawhuska
Avenue with slow measured tread; calm, complete, grandly content. The
women walked bareheaded, their brilliant blankets, striped purple and
orange and green and red, wrapped about their shoulders and enveloping
them from neck to heels. But beneath this you saw dresses of silk, American
in make and style. On their feet were slippers of pale fine kid, high-heeled,
or of patent-leather, ornamented with buckles of cut steel, shining
and costly. The men wore the blanket, too, but beneath it they liked
a shirt of silk brocade in gorgeous colors—bright green or purple
or cerise its tail worn outside the trousers, and the trousers often
as not trimmed with a pattern of beadwork at the side. On their heads
they wore huge sombreros trimmed with bands of snakeskin ornamented
with silver. They hired white chauffeurs to drive their big sedan cars
and sat back grandly after ordering them to drive round and round and
round the main business block. Jewelry shops began to display their
glistening wares in Osage, not so much in the hope of winning the favor
of the white oil millionaire as the red. Bracelets, watches, gaudy rings
and pins and bangles and beads and combs and buckles. Diamonds. These
the Indians seemed instinctively to know about, and they bought them
clear and blue-white and costly.
Ferber, showing
Sabra’s views, goes on to tell about the gourmet foods the Osage
bought. All of this excess of course upsets Sabra, who already detests
the Osage. Soon she has more to worry about. She discovers that Cim, back
from college in Colorado, has been spending most of his time with Ruby
Big Elk, their former servant, now a millionaire. One day when she comes
home, she finds Big Elk and his wife at her house. He is dressed in all
his finery, and he tells her and Yancy that Ruby and Cim were married
that morning and that he has come to bring the Cravats to a party. Sabra
manages to pull herself together to go to the party. Yancy says, “God
A’mighty.” And he calls in an announcement of the wedding
to the paper before he leaves for the ceremony.Shortly after the wedding,
Yancy disappears again. Sabra survives the wedding, manages the paper,
and gets into politics. She succeeds in getting elected to the House of
Representatives. She meets opposition in Washington, but she brings her
family to support her:
In
Washington she was quite a belle among the old boys in Congress and
even the Senate. The opposition party tried to blackmail her with publicity
about certain unproved items in the life of her dead (or missing) husband
Yancey Cravat: a two-gun man, a desperado, a killer, a drunkard, a squaw
man. Then they started on young Cim and his Osage Indian wife, but Sabra
and Donna were too quick for them. Donna Wyatt leased a handsome Washington
house in Dupont Circle, staffed it, brought Tracy Wyatt’s vast
wealth and influence to bear, and planned a coup so brilliant that it
routed the enemy forever. She brought her handsome, sleepy-eyed brother
Cim and his wife Ruby Big Elk, and the youngsters Felice and Yancey
to the house in Dupont Circle, and together she and Sabra gave a reception
for them to which they invited a group so precious that it actually
came.
Sabra and Donna, exquisitely dressed, stood in line at the head of the
magnificent room, and between them stood Ruby Big Elk in her Indian
dress of creamy white doeskin all embroidered in beads from shoulder
to hem. She was an imposing figure, massive but not offensively fat
as were many of the older Osage women, and her black abundant hair had
taken on a mist of gray.
In the next
Oklahoma oil novel, the author had no need to do any research, for he
had lived most of the experiences of his protagonist, Challenge Windzer,
called Chal. Like Chal, Joseph James Mathews was part Osage and grew up
on the Osage reservation. His Sundown (1934) is concerned with
the life of the full and mixed bloods, particularly how they relate to
the influence of the whites. He covers almost the same years as Ferber.
But here we find out what Chal, one Osage mixed blood, thinks. We see
how he is pulled between the two cultures. Chal is always concerned with
what people will think. The novel begins with his birth and during the
first part the reader learns of tribal politics from the naïve viewpoint
of the boy. Occasionally though we hear from a narrator, here telling
about Chal’s father:
John
Windzer was almost continually thrilled these days in the atmosphere
of growth and progress; that atmosphere which indicated that something
momentous was about to happen, something cataclysmic and revolutionary,
but which never quite happened; that something indefinite that would
change the whole existence of people who lived at the Agency.
He had become a member of the Osage Council and was proud to be one
of the Progressives, who were mostly mixedbloods with a few weak-spined
and easily led fullbloods. They employed all the tricks of their white
brothers to get what they wanted and had fought hard and long for allotment
of the reservation, until, with the influence of the ubiquitous whites
waiting on the borders, they got the consent of the Council for allotment.
In reality the allotment was forced upon the tribe by people outside
the reservation who had no particular interest in the welfare of the
tribe. John and the other councilmen took much pride in their progressive
principles and were pleased when government officials patted them on
the back and approved of their work.
As a child,
Chal is happy—dreaming and riding. He likes being outdoors, observing
whatever is happening and turning these events into stories. Even the
Blackjack oaks of the countryside are characters in his stories. But he
has to go to school and learn the ways of the whites, too. Throughout
his life, he has trouble getting beyond the dreaming stage. He has trouble
talking to anyone. Often he thinks of something to say but then doesn’t.
He grows up and goes off to college. By this time, the Osage are beginning
to get some oil lease money. He seems to have no trouble having enough
money to go to the University of Oklahoma and be in a fraternity. He also
plays football. Two of his Osage friends, Running Elk and Sun-On-His-Wings,
go to the university with him, but they don’t stay long, and he
is relieved, because he no longer has to worry about what they will say
or do. He has romances, but enjoys them more in his dreams than reality,
and he is happy with that. Following his first year in college he returns
to the reservation, but he feels ill at ease because he doesn’t
seem to fit in. No one rides horses any more or walks. He decides to go
out to his ranch:
Chal
set out afoot, but he did not take the road. He slipped into the postoaks
back of the house and went out across the hills. When he had climbed
to the prairie through the blackjacks he suddenly had a feeling that
this was what he had wanted. On his way the blackjacks caught at his
clothing and he remembered how he used to play that they were the enemy;
how he had run through them, dodging and whooping to scare them, and
occasionally gashing one with the hatchet which he carried in his belt.
As he walked, the thought of his boyhood didn’t disturb him today;
he wasn’t ashamed and it didn’t seem so crazy after all.
Standing there at the fringe of trees where the prairie began, it seemed
that the world was filled with meadowlark singing, but he could hear
the weak, persistent voice of the dickcissel, and could see them swaying
on the tops of weeds.
He stood for a moment, then backed up against a great postoak. It was
an unconscious action and he didn’t know why he had done it. For
some time he stood there absolutely motionless, thinking of nothing
in particular but looking out over the emerald prairie. A coyote came
trotting down the ravine that led through the blackjacks, stopping occasionally
to test the air currents. “I’ve got the wind,” Chal
thought. Then he realized that he had on a white shirt and became slightly
worried. Then he smiled to himself to think that he placed so much importance
on the possibility of a coyote’s seeing him. It occurred to him
that he was being very silly, but he was enjoying the whole situation
immensely.
This is one
of the few times in the novel that Chal is happy. When he is, it is when
he is out in nature. He arrives at his father’s ranch, and there
he gets his horse and starts out. While riding, he sees someone walking
across the pasture toward him. It turns out to be his geology professor
from the university, Mr. Granville, an Englishman. He is out scouting
around the territory for a nearby oil company. This professor is much
like Chal. He doesn’t say much, but observes nature closely. After
sitting for a long time in silence, they have a brief but very fulfilling
conversation about nature—trees, flowers, and birds. Had he been
at the university, Chal would have been embarrassed to be seen talking
to the professor because the professor was considered by the students
to be quite an odd duck. While at home, Chal sees his two friends, Running
Elk and Sun-On-His-Wings, neither of them seem to be doing well. Everyone
is talking about oil: “anticlines, Carsonville sand, Mississippi
lime and the lease sales that now reached hundreds of thousands of dollars.”(161)
There are lots of new faces and businesses, particularly automobile dealers.
Running Elk wrecks his very expensive roadster and is confined to the
hospital while he recovers from a case of delirium tremens. Sun-On-His-Wings
just sits around the village talking. Their lack of ambition disturbs
Chal.
Chal returns to the university in the fall, but he decides to join the
army. He has already decided that he wanted to fly, and Professor Granville
arranges for him to go to pilot training. Chal manages to survive the
rigorous and dangerous training. Many of his fellow cadets wash out of
the program, and others die in crashes. He is surprised to discover that
his old professor is a colonel and a British ace. Colonel Granville supervises
part of his training, observing Chal from the ground. When Chal returns,
Granville comes up to him and, instead of talking about the flying, starts
talking about a flower he has just found: “I say, this is the Yucca
Elata, I had been wondering about.” A little later, after a confrontation
with two stupid arrogant officers, Chal considers people like Granville:
He
recalled Major Granville striding up to him carrying a flower, and about
General Allenby studying the flora of Palestine in the middle of the
greatest war in history. Then his thoughts came back to Colonel Beggs
and to Tad and he mumbled as though he would drown the thought. He turned
over on his bunk with the vague idea that if he turned over the thoughts
might leave him, but they persisted. He thought for some time of these
things, and he finally came to the conclusion that England must be a
kind of slow country without any “get-up-and-go” like Americans.
Americans were too busy doing things to waste their time on flowers.
He guessed the reason why he had liked Major Granville, and the idea
of a great general writing a book on flora, was because he was queer
himself.
After night-flying
training, Chal is given the job of training and misses any combat. He
decides to stay in the service, but after a while the flying becomes routine.
He receives notice that his father has been killed. When he gets home,
his mother tells him what happened:
“He
said that guv’mint would not let white mans come here, but white
mans did come here. He said that this civilization was here now. He
said that bad white mans would not come here now, ‘cause this
civilization is here now. I said here is your pistol, but he said, this
is not a wild country no more. But I said, you read in papers every
day that bandit comes here to hide in hills. But he said, no, it is
a civilized country now. He took that pistol, though. Now he is gone.
Those white mans took that new car. That pistol is here. He had that
pistol in his hand and one of those white bandits is not here, either.”
They
sat silently while the clock ticked, then Chal saw his mother draw herself
up proudly. “When they found him, they said he had that pistol in
his hand.” Chal resigns his commission and returns home. He likes
the new larger town with paved streets and large brick buildings. The
oilfield had been growing:
The
black derricks had now passed on to the west; out beyond the blackjack
fringes onto the high prairie, where they stood like sterile forests
against the sky. Everyone talked of the Salt Creek field. The oil world
had turned its eyes toward Salt Creek, they said. People from the town
drove out to the end of the pavement, then over the dusty roads that
twisted into ravines and climbed the prairie hills from all directions,
and entered the forest of black derricks where they became lost in the
maze of roads crossing and recrossing each other. A near-sighted Sunday
driver from Kikekah, taking his family out to see the greatest oil field
in the world, would lose himself hopelessly.
And
Chal loses himself in the oil wealth. He loafs, talks, drinks, parties,
and drives about the country in the new cars paid for by his oil money.
He tries to make something of himself from time to time, but he always
falls back into the unambitious way of life. Running Elk like his father
was killed by a white man seeking his wealth. At the end of the novel,
the wells are not flowing, and the amount pumped grows less each day.
Chal even finds himself out of money. The townspeople become depressed:
Chal
felt the atmosphere which was charged with depression, and he felt almost
disillusioned at times. The representatives of civilization changed
from jovial blackslapping, efficient people, around whom he had placed
an aura of glory, to dour, reticent people who seemed afraid. The many
ways which they had found to share in the wealth of the Osages became
less practical as the methods formerly used, now loomed in the quiescence,
which before had been drowned in the frenzy. There was an attitude of
waiting for something, and they told each other repeatedly that the
Osage payments would become larger again.
The glamour was dimmed and Chal found that even corn whisky and home
brew parties were of little aid in lifting his spirit from the effect
of that strange atmosphere which had settled over the little town in
the valley.
Chal’s mother and her relatives have maintained the more traditional
way of life and have been little affected by the great wealth or loss
of it. His uncle, Fire Cloud, often sits with Chal’s mother under
the postoak and talks. Chal thinks he is like the postoak in a way: “It
had been standing there as long as he could remember; standing there in
the shrill excitement of the frenzy, and standing there now with the same
indifference under the pall of the dimmed glory.” He returns from
one last party, one he can’t remember, and he tells his mother,
“I’m going to Harvard law school, and take law—I’m
going to be a great orator.” She sees in him the dreaming child,
the little warrior, killer of sparrows. She leaves without comment. The
book ends with a vivid description of nature:
Chal
sat down again in the chair and slid down on his back. He was filled
with a calm pleasure. There was nothing definite except that hum of
glory in his heart, subdued by the heat and the lazy tempo of life in
the heated yard.
His heavy head lolled back and he fell asleep. The leafshadows made
bizarre designs on his silk shirt, and moved slowly to the center of
the table, then to the edge, and finally abandoned the table to the
hot sun. The nestlings in the nest above settled down to digest their
food. A flamewinged grasshopper rose in front of Chal’s still
form, and suspended there, made cracking sounds like electric sparks,
then dropped to the grass and became silent. The flapping and splashing
of the mother robin, as she bathed in the pan under the hydrant, was
the only sound of activity.
We
are left to wonder whether Chal will be able to reform and make something
of his life, whether he can quit being concerned about what other people
think of him, worrying about being too white or not white enough, or too
Osage or not Osage enough. The scene of nature may be to suggest the more
Osage way, a way of patient observing rather than of rushing about. In
this novel there is nothing about the drilling, discovery, or production
of oil. It is about the negative effects of the oil wealth on the whites,
the halfbloods, and some of the fullbloods. Joseph James Mathew, like
Chal, rode his horse around the agency as a child, attended the University
of Oklahoma, and left to become a soldier and pilot during and after the
Great War. Unlike Chal, he went back to the University of Oklahoma after
the war and got a degree in geology. He paid his own way to Oxford and
received a degree there in 1923. After attending the University of Geneva,
he returned to the reservation and worked to record the stories and culture
of the older generation. He served on the tribal council and wrote a history,
a biography, and this novel, Sundown, which is the first published novel
by an Indian. The Osage probably had the greatest per capita oil wealth
of any Oklahoma tribe. But they were not the only tribe affected by the
discovery of oil. The Cherokee are in the next Oklahoma oil novel, Augusta
Weaver’s Oklahoma Wildcat (1938). In her introduction she
reveals her attitude toward the Indians she describes:
The
story of Oklahoma Wildcat is based upon the history of the development
of oil in Oklahoma. The places, the equipment, the methods of drilling,
handling men, and getting the oil out of the earth which held it, unknown,
for centuries, are all as these things were. With the exception of the
man who promoted the first Indian Territory test well in 1895 (whose
real name was Amos Steelsmith), and Sam Weaver and John Wicks, who were
the actual drillers of this wildcat well, the characters are fictitious.
In those early days the American Indian, often proprietor of some of
the richest oil lands, was considered simply an annoying obstacle to
progress, and worthy of no consideration as a person. He was bought
off, scared off, shunted aside—anything to get him out of the
way. The Indian characters in this book are symbols of that early attitude
of misunderstanding and injustice, and if, in my sympathy for them,
I have erred in my portrayal of their harsh treatment, it has been on
the side of understatement. Oklahoma history, from the days of the land
runs, the theft of state records at night from Guthrie, then the capital,
and the establishment of a new state capital at Oklahoma City, until
today, when hundreds of blackened oil derricks surround the very capitol
building, casting spidery black shadows on its sheer white walls, has
been a record of adventure, high enterprise, courage and cowardice,
forthrightness and subterfuge.I have seen much of it. I was born in
the Ohio oil fields, the daughter of a Pennsylvania Dutch oil driller,
was taken in childhood to the Oklahoma oil fields and there received
my education. The incidents of this book, even though they are put into
the lives of fictional characters and are arranged in fictional sequence,
are incidents which I know to be true, for they are a part of my own
life.
The
protagonist of Oklahoma Wildcat, Ludwig June Zeltner, Jr., is a second-generation
oil-field worker. The driller he works for is Cherokee Choc Mason, half
Cherokee and half white. Neither of them talks much, and they get along
well, drinking and fighting when they have time off in town. On one occasion
when they are in a dance hall, Choc sees his sister, Renie, and he grabs
her and slaps her around and takes her home. He refuses to allow his sister
to cheapen herself in a dancehall. After drilling two wells together,
Wildcat, as he is now called, becomes a driller. When they complete a
particularly important well, they are invited to a dance at the home of
a rich half-blood woman. At the party, Wildcat sees Renie again and decides
that he will escort her, even take her home. He almost gets in a fight
with Choc. After that he sees her often when she comes to the well. Two
years pass, and Wildcat decides that he will return home and marry Marie,
his fiancée. But word comes that there is a new big field in the
Creek country to the south. It’s the monstrous Glenn Pool. So he
decides not to go home, but to go to the boom. Choc decides not to go
along. Wildcat is able to get a job easily. His reputation as a fighter
and driller has preceded him. One day about a year after he has been drilling
there, Renie shows up and says that she is staying there with him. He
had almost forgotten her, but, an old-fashioned guy, he asks her to marry
him, and she accepts. He regrets having to write his family and Marie,
who has been faithfully waiting for him. For a while, Renie and Wildcat
live happily in a shanty he builds in the oilfield. Then their child is
born on the day that Oklahoma becomes a state. So he names her State.
He is such a doting parent that Renie becomes jealous. Renie doesn’t
like being a mother and shanty keeper. She wants to go out to dance halls
and drink and dance. She does this once, and she and Wildcat have an argument,
and he almost hits her. He decides to move her and State to Sapulpa to
get her away from the bad influences of the boomtown. But when he returns
to Sapulpa unannounced, he finds her in bed with a cheap gambler, Dude
Early. He takes State away and says that he is divorcing Renie. He finds
a family to take care of State, but Renie discovers her there and takes
her away. Wildcat tracks her to Dude’s gambling hall, and in a confrontation
Dude tries to shoot him. But Renie throws herself between the two and
is hit by the bullet. She dies instantly. Wildcat is charged with the
murder but is easily acquitted. His father comes and takes State back
to Ohio. Wildcat’s friend from Bartlesville days, Dirty Sam Reynolds
offers to go into a partnership with him. Reynolds has acquired a good
lease in the new Cushing field. He wants Wildcat to be the driller and
drilling supervisor. Wildcat has no money, but Reynolds tells him that
he doesn’t have to put anything up, just provide his expertise.
They find another partner to provide the drilling equipment. Someone hires
their other drilling crew away from them, so Wildcat goes into Drumright
looking for another one. He goes to the wildest joint in town, The Hump,
and has the good fortune to find and hire his old drilling buddy, Cherokee
Choc. Wildcat is afraid that Choc may not want to work with him when he
finds out what happened to his sister, but Choc is understanding and takes
the job.
Choc is disturbed when he finds out that Wildcat and Dirty Sam are planning
to drill their well in the Cimarron River:
Suddenly
Choc’s searching eyes caught a glimpse of the towering crown-block
peeking over the small hills lining the river. He peered at it intently,
saw they were headed toward it. “Say,” he yelled above the
noise of the rattling car, “you ain’t drillin’ that
well in the Cimarron, are you?”
Wildcat nodded confirmation.
“I’ll be eternally damned,” he roared. “Here
I’ve been feelin’ proud of you, and you’re just makin’
a damn fool of yourself. Don’t you know you can’t drill
a well in the Cimarron?”
Wildcat says that he is doing it because it is a real break for him,
and then Choc tells about a kind of sabotage:
“It’s a real break for Reynolds, you mean,” snorted
Choc scornfully. “He’s the one gettin’ the breaks.
He’s gettin’ one of the squarest drillers in the field to
drill it for him; and maybe you don’t know—but Reynolds
does—just what a crooked driller can do to a producer. I’ve
even”—he lowered his voice to exclude the tool dressers—”throwed
a few such deals myself since the days when you and me worked together.
Course it goes against the driller, if it gets out about bits bein’
dropped and logs doctored; but if you’re smart you can make a
damn sight more by takin’ the pay-off from a lease hound than
you can from one of these shoestring promoters.”
Wildcat
asks him how much of the money he still has. Choc says none. And then
Choc vows to hang in and drill even though he is afraid of drilling in
the river: “But I’m startin’ all over this time, even
if I am afraid of that damn river.” His voice gathered enthusiasm.
“I’ll stay in and pitch to the finish on this well. I ain’t
had a hell of a lot of reason for playin’ square the last few years,
but I have now. I’ll be doin’ it for you!” Dirty Sam
does not like or trust Cherokee Choc, but Wildcat insists on keeping him
on the job. When the spring rains start and the water starts rising around
the floor of the derrick, Wildcat hangs around the well, but Choc insists
that he leave:
“You
give me the creeps!” Choc glowered. “You and Dirty Sam both
act like you think I’m going to drop a bit, or run off and leave
in the middle of a tour, or do some other damn thing.” He scratched
his chin with a pawlike, canvas-gloved hand. “Ain’t I drilled
as many wells as you have?” he demanded. “And didn’t
I tell you I was goin’ through to the finish on this?”
Wildcat
agrees to leave.So, of course, a storm hits during Choc’s tour.
The floor of the derrick is flooded, and Choc is washed away. Wildcat
searches for him, but he only finds his body the following day:
When
the flood tide receded, Wildcat was the first to wade through the red
mud to the wrecked derrick. Muddy sediment covered the foundation timbers.
The bull wheels, imbedded in a thick mass of twisted driftwood, lay
a short distance down the river. Wildcat’s searching eyes suddenly
picked out the muddy plaid of a mackinaw amid the debris. He waded toward
it. Cherokee Choc, coated with the reddish silt left by the Cimarron’s
angry waters, was imbedded among the flotsam of the flood. Still clutched
in his arms was the driller’s bench which he had carried with
him when the Cimarron washed him from his post.
For
a cable tool driller, the driller’s bench is a symbol of authority
and skill. Here it is a tribute to his faithfulness.Remarkably similar
to Weaver’s, Oklahoma Wildcat in plot is another generic
oilfield novel, Robert Sturgis’ Men Like Gods: A Novel of Men
and Oil (1944). Once again there is a poor, hard working, hard fighting,
ambitious young man who succeeds in becoming extremely wealthy in the
Oklahoma oilfield. The novel begins in 1906 with Bill Branning, the hero,
jumping off a freight in Cholusa, Oklahoma. Cholusa, a fictional place,
probably based on Tulsa, is already in the midst of an oil boom. Since
Branning is an experienced driller, roustabout, and tool dresser, he has
no difficulty finding a job, but, like Wildcat Zeltner, he runs into an
irascible driller immediately.One evening, he sees a large oilman beating
and kicking an Indian. He steps in to stop it and has to fight and defeat
the oilman. Then he checks on the Indian:
“Here,
let me see,” Bill ordered. He ran his hand up the Indian’s
side lightly, his fingers pressing and probing. The rib wall moved loosely.
The Indian’s lips tightened in pain.
“Hey, you got two—three ribs broken, old-timer. You better
see a doctor.”
The Indian’s eyes continued to blink in solemn fashion. His hand
touched Bill’s shoulder. “Me Charley Big Horse. You save
my life.”
“Sure. Forget it. You better go home.”
Charley Big Horse stumbled forward. Slowly, he bent over and
picked up the high silk hat and the whisky bottle which, miraculously,
had remained unbroken during the fray. Carefully and solemnly, he brushed
off the silk hat and sat it firmly on his head. With the long black
braids of hair hanging down either shoulder, his face bloody and covered
with dirt, the silk hat gave him a grotesque, ludicrous dignity.
Solemnly, he pulled the cork from the bottle and held it out to Bill.
“You save Charley Big Horse’s life. Him no forget. Here
you take drink. Take um big one.”
Bill hesitated. Then his great, booming laugh rang out and he reached
for the bottle. He tilted it to his lips and threw back his head. The
liquor gurgled as it poured out of the bottle.
“You said take a big one, old-timer.” He passed the bottle
back to the Indian.
“What yo’ name?”
“Bill Branning.”
Charley Big Horse repeated the name three or four times in his solemn
fashion. He gave a sudden smile and his hand touched Bill’s shoulder.
“Me no forget. Bill Branning. You my friend.”
Bill
learns that Charley Big Horse hit it lucky when the field came in and
that he spends some of his money feeding his fifty or so dogs. He comes
to town every Saturday and buys a quart of liquor. Someone tells Bill
that he has probably made a friend for life. Branning says that he will
probably never see him again. But every Saturday after that Charley comes
by Bill’s rooming house and insists that Bill take a slug of whiskey.
One Saturday night, Charley asks Bill if he is going to play cards that
night. Bill says he is, and Charley hands him a little buckskin bag suspended
by a string. Charley says, “Here. You take um amulet. Him much powerful.
Him bring you luck. Wear um around your neck.” Then Charley Big
Horse comes by to give him his weekly slug of whiskey:
“Hello,
Bill Branning.” His lips parted in his quick smile. “Charley
Big Horse miss you before you leave. He wait until you come back.”
There were still two good drinks in the bottle. Bill took one and Charley
the other. Glass tinkled as the bottle crashed in the street.
The two men looked at each other, grinning a little. Both were swaying
unsteadily.
“Me hear you have trouble with oil well, Bill Branning.”
“Yes, Charley. Quite a bit of trouble.”
“Me hear you need money.”
Bill flushed. “Maybe I do,” he said shortly.
“How much you need?”
“Oh, a hell of a lot, Charley. Three thousand.” He realized
suddenly how weary he was. He turned away. “Goodnight, Charley.
See you next Saturday.”
“Wait, Bill Branning.” The Indian stepped forward quickly.
His hand touched Bill’s shoulder.
“Oil wells bring Indian much money. Too much. He only need enough
to feed dogs and buy whisky. Me give um money to you.”
Bill’s spine stiffened. Some of the fuzziness left his brain.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You save um Charley Big Horse’s life. You my friend. Fine
good friends, you and me. Me give you money.”
“Oh, hell.” Bill grinned. “I can’t take it,
Charley. Thanks just the same but I can’t.”
“Huh? Why not?”
Bill tried to explain, as he had explained to Ben Killiam, the reasons
why he couldn’t accept the offer. The Indian listened blankly.
“You save my life,” he repeated slowly, stubbornly. “Now
you no let Charley Big Horse help you. Me thought we was friends.”
Hurt and disappointment were stamped on the Indian’s face.
“But Charley—you don’t understand—”
“If you my fine, good friend you take um money.”
“Jesus Christ, Charley! Friendship hasn’t got a thing to
do with it. If I took it, maybe I couldn’t ever pay it back.”
Again Charley shook his head stubbornly. “Indian got too damn
much nohow. Either you my fine, good friend or you not.” Proudly,
he drew himself to his full height. “What you say, Bill Branning?”
“But Charley—if only you—don’t you see—”
He realized then the futility of argument. “All right, goddamit,
I’ll take your money—if you’ve really got it and want
to get rid of it so damn badly.”
The illuminating smile broke over the Indian’s bony face. His
hand gripped Bill’s shoulder.
“You my fine, good friend! You come to Indian’s cabin in
morning.”
The
next morning Bill goes out to Charley’s shack. Charley hands him
thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. Bill makes out a note agreeing to pay
Charley ten per cent interest, but Charley burns the note when he lights
his cigar. He blows a puff of smoke and says again, “You my friend.”
The various characters in Blackjack (1948) by Joseph E. Kelleam
are also having to learn how to live with oil wealth. Unlike in Oklahoma
Wildcat and Men Like Gods, there is no single dominant character.
It is about the people of Blackjack, Oklahoma. Blackjack is not a typical
oil novel because of its lighter tone, its eccentric individuals, its
humor, all this even as the author is describing serious events. The novel
begins with a history of the town: “The town of Blackjack Oklahoma
was like the twisted, stubby trees that gave it a name. It was of no apparent
use to anyone and it had suffered all the ills that a town can suffer.
Still it clung to life stubbornly—tough, twisted, gnarled, defiant.”
The central characters of the novel are those who are there when Boom
Town McGuire arrives and says that he is going to make them all rich.
The town had once been somewhat prosperous, but then the land played out
and the cotton crops became increasingly scant. The people are wonderfully
eccentric. Nothing much is happening in Blackjack when Boom Town arrives,
fresh from losing most of his stake in his previous oilfield. Two loafers
of the whittle-and-spit variety, Kentucky Allison and Sam Payton, notice
Boom Town’s arrival. He drives up in a jalopy, well-dressed in worn,
loud clothes: plaid suit, lavender shirt, crimson tie, and diamond stickpin.
Boom Town is looking for Caleb Hornubby and finds him at Sadie’s
hamburger place. Red Allison, daughter of Kentucky and a beautiful, flashy
redhead, works there and directs him to Caleb, who hangs out there, eating
hamburgers and reading trashy novels. Caleb is one quarter Indian, what
tribe we are never told. When Boom Town offers Caleb fifty dollars to
lease his land for drilling oil, Caleb pockets the fifty and signs without
reading the lease agreement.
Caleb Hornuby likes being rich at first. He buys more things than he can
put in his cabin. Pianos and other valuable items are left out in the
rain. He moves to town, but all of his Indian relatives come to live at
his place with his grandmother. They are allowed to buy anything they
want on his credit. He doesn’t worry about or bother with keeping
up with his expenditures. Unfortunately for Red, when she tries to sue
Caleb, she finds out that Caleb is in debt. The government appoints a
banker as his guardian pending his payment of the $30,000 he owes. She
does get the jewelry, $10,000, and the house. The lawyer and Red begin
squabbling. And soon she is destitute again.
Caleb marries Sadie when he is drunk one night. After he thinks about
it, he decides he did better drunk than he would have sober. She sells
her café to the bank to pay part of his debt. She gets him a job
as a crumb boss, the lowest job on a pipeline. He has never worked before
but is willing to try. He manages to burn down the tents he is supposed
to be taking care of. He then gets a job at a service station attendant
and holds it without any more difficulty.William Humphrey in his A
Time and a Place. has a short stories with an Indian character. In
“Good Indian,” we have a story told from the point of view
of a car salesman, one who sells cars to rich Indians. It is both about
their excessive conduct and about the salesman taking advantage of them.
He particularly tells about John, an Indian who sold his oil land for
$8,000. He comes to the salesman and spends half of it on an expensive
yellow Cadillac. He likes to let out on the clutch real fast so that it
will buck. He also gets in on the right side and talks to his car as he
would a horse. He crashes one car and comes back for another. He is not
paid for a trade-in. In fact, the salesman takes the remaining $4,000
and his horses and wagon for a trade-in. This time John rolls the car
at high speed and is killed. His wife has to borrow the wagon and horses
to bury John and to move. The salesman finishes with the line from Sheridan
about the only good Indian is a dead one. This is a good example of a
short story dripping with irony as the naïve narrator condemns himself.
Another oil-field novel set in the depression is Oklahoma Crude
(1973) In it the protagonist, Lena, is trying to drill an oil well with
the help of one loyal Indian. They are attacked by the agents of a large
oil company and carried off, and beaten up. The Indian is hung. The sheriff,
a friend of big oil will do nothing.
In C. W. Smith Buffalo Nickel (1989). In Eastern Oklahoma, a
Kiowa inherits land from an old couple he has nursed through illness.
Oil is discovered on his land. He fails to communicate with the Kiowa
girl he loves and marries a White show girl who, with the help of a banker,
tries to kill him for his money. He avoids her schemes and stays with
her as they move to Hollywood where he becomes an actor.The most recent
oil novel about Oklahoma covers the same events as Joseph James Mathews’
Sundown. It is Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit (1990).
It is a loosely plotted work in which various Osage oil heirs are systematically
killed off by a supposed friend of theirs, the rancher, oilman, John Hale.
Stace Redshirt, a Lakota Sioux, is a federal agent who helps bring Hale
and his cohorts to justice. The novel has nothing about the discovery
or production of oil and adds little to the information by Mathews about
the effects of oil on the Osage. It does introduce several interesting
characters, one of whom is Michael Horse, a diviner and friend of the
Grayclouds, the family most directly affected by the murders and thievery
of John Hale.
Oilfield
Fiction |
A Cavalcade
of Oilfield Novels
Fountain
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