Chief Grey Wolf took a sip of his single malt and said to his longtime friend, Ed Swallowtail, 'Long knives, bad shots but generous to a fault', this said in reference to his great grandfather, Comanche hero, White Wolf who slaughtered incompetent Union soldiers and white settlers in equal numbers in defense of his homeland, and citing the legal easement give to his descendants to open a casino on former Indian land.
Grey Wolf, 'Wolfie' to his friends had been a silent partner in the development of the Mohegan Sun Pequot casino in Connecticut, investing just enough to stay below the radar of the state's overseers but enough to give him influence and a high rate of return on his financial backing of what had become the most profitable gaming operation on the East Coast after the slow demise of Atlantic City.
'Genocide? Fuck no', said Wolfie after his second Lagavulin. His great grandfather had been one of the most feared Indian chieftains in American history, but was not alone. Running Bear, Rising Cougar, and Blue Lion, heroes of the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole tribes, each with a thousand white men's scalps and the virginity of ten thousand daughters.
The Indians were beaten fair and square, not an idler among them, all tarted up in feathers and warpaint, spears and arrows at the ready, waiting for their opportunity to kill anyone who intruded upon their native land.
'Redskins?, Sure enough', Wolfie sent on, and imagine five hundred of them thundering over the prairie like Genghis Khan and his Mongol armies of the steppes instilling fear and panic in all in their path.
And so it was of particular pleasure that Wolfie took the white man's money hand over fist at the casino. He loved the stack of tour busses lined up in the parking lot, waiting for their riders to return empty-handed but happy to have been fleeced by Native Americans. So what if the odds seemed more stacked against them than usual. It was a day away from scratchy wives and union jobs, so who cared who won or lost, it was the thrill of the chase that mattered.
This too gave Wolfie a chuckle, remembering the tales of his grandfather about the buffalo hunts when Comanche braves riding bareback on their palominos and paints culling the herd, whooping and hollering with the sheer joy of the kill. It was a pleasure to take money from white men who had nothing in their quivers or their rifle chambers than the desire to hit the jackpot - a jackpot which Wolfie and his partners parceled out in very limited numbers.
This was not to say that the Indians had not been deceived by the white man. The credulous Choctaw and Chickasaw had taken Andrew Jackson at his word of sharing in the spoils after victory over the British in New Orleans in 1813 and for their courage and loyalty they were marched across the Mississippi and told to never again cross back.
Montezuma was promised that they would reign supreme, wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and with undisputed power if only he would tell the conquistadores where to find El Cerro de Oro for which information he was imprisoned by Cortes and died a miserable death.
The Wampanoags met the Pilgrims, treated them well, and gave them the provisions to survive the harsh Massachusetts winter and were sent packing in the Spring. Although Chief Massasoit rallied his tribesmen to overrun the new colony of English, he was convinced by his Council of Elders that these newcomers could arm them and give them tools and wartime implements they had only dreamed of.
The western Indians, used to a free, wild, and untamed life on the plains were no such dupes, and resisted the Union soldiers to the last man. The battles were fiercely fought, and the valor of the Indians unparalleled. Their bows and arrows were no match for the Remington rifles of the soldiers and they were gunned down by the thousands as they tried to take army encampments.
To call it genocide was an insult to native Americans, a heresy, a complete distortion of history and a demeaning travesty. The Indians were never rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps in cattle cars like the Jews. They were heroically defiant, determined, and indomitable.
The whole guilt-ridden, woke, ignorant program to remove all traces of Indian heritage to eliminate any possibility of racist discrimination was laughable. 'Imagine', said Grey Wolf, 'a football team sporting a logo out of racism and hate'. Relatives of the man John Two Guns White Calf, whose profile served as the face of the Washington, D.C., football team for 48 years, wants his likeness returned to the franchise. The image signified courage, valor, strength, and honor, White Calf said, and to remove it and all traces of native American heritage is a disgrace.
Early Indian tribal representatives who went to Washington to seek amnesty and recourse, and referred to themselves as 'redskins' and thought nothing of it, White Calf added. The name was not an insult, only an observation. On the contrary, Indians had always been respected and feared.
'How'd we do?', Yellow Feather asked Grey Wolf about the casino take over the Fourth of July weekend. 'Marvelously', said Grey Wolf and made a show of pouring a bucket full of silver dollars all over the counting room of Mohegan Sun.
Grey Wolf hated to go back to northwestern Texas, his old stomping grounds. He hated to see old men selling turquoise trinkets on the roadside, billboards featuring teepees and beautiful squaws. He had a number of Frederick Remington paintings of Indians in his home. For a white man, Remington had captured the spirit of the plains Indians and painted them out of respect and admiration. The paintings were reminders of his storied past, and not a day went by without him stopping to look at them and remember.
The Biden Administration had invited Grey Wolf to represent the Native American community and complete the circle of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He would join black men, gays, Mexican farm workers, Bernal Heights lesbians in a rainbow coalition, and would express the pride of identity that the group represented.
Needless to say he refused and felt the old tribal instincts rising up. He wanted to take scalps, not smoke a peace pipe with these fools and be folded into their absurd cant like egg whites into a meringue - to be used, shown off like a bearded lady in a freak show, wearing a feathered headdress and warpaint, his shirt off to show his red skin.
He quickly calmed down - he expected no less of a freak show from these idiots and should have known better than to let it all get to him even for a moment. Yet, he was only human, and years of looking at the Remington braves only consolidated his pride and defiance. Scalps it had to be.
Grey Wolf retired to St. Tropez. The French fawned over him and saw him as The Noble Savage, and he could always be found at the Cafe du Port surrounded by the glitterati of the Cote d'Azur telling stories of the Great Plains.
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