Bad News

11

You hardly know you’re leaving the United States. On your way to Dannemora in upstate New York, near the Canadian border, famous as the home of Clinton State Prison, you turn left at the big billboard covered by a not very good painting of a few Indians in a canoe on some body of water, either a river or a lake, surrounded by pine tree–covered mountains. It’s either sunrise or sunset, or possibly the mountains are on fire. Printed across this picture, in great thick letters speckled white and tan and black, apparently in an effort to make it seem as though the letters are made of hides of some kind, is the announcement:

WORLD-FAMOUS

SILVER CHASM CASINO

Native American Owned & Operated With Pride

5 Mi.

This billboard is brightly illuminated at night, which makes it seem rather worse than by day. At its top and bottom, arrows have been added, also lit up at night, which point leftward at a well-maintained two-lane concrete road that curves away into the primeval forest.

You are deep in the Adirondacks here, in the state-operated Adirondack Forest Preserve, but once you make that left turn, you have departed the United States of America and entered the Silver Chasm Indian Reservation, home of the Oshkawa and the Kiota, and until recently, also home of the Pottaknobbee. This is a sovereign state, answerable to no one but itself.

As you drive along the neat curving road, at first you see nothing but forest, beautiful, silent, deep, unchanged for a thousand years. Then you round a curve and all at once, in front of you, flanking both sides of the road, are suddenly a pair of competing shopping centers, with big signs promising tax-free cigarettes, beer, whiskey, or whatever you want. Indian blankets made in Taiwan are also available, and illustrated editions of Hiawatha, and miniature birch-bark canoes made in a factory outside Chicago and stamped in red “Souvenir of Silver Chasm Indian Reservation.” Both shopping centers do very well.

Then there’s more forest, as though the shopping centers had only been a horrible mirage, until, around another curve, you come upon a development of small neat tract houses on grids to both sides of the road, surrounded by forest; this is Paradise, home of most of the Kiota. (Most of the Oshkawa live in another part of the forest.)

Beyond Paradise, there’s another bit of undisturbed forest and then a vast clearing, which is a parking lot. Signs direct you to enter, to park your car in any available slot, lock it, and wait beside it. Small buses constantly circle the parking area, picking up the new arrivals and driving them the last half mile to the casino itself, a low black-and-silver construction that makes a halfhearted attempt to look like an Art Deco log cabin.

The casino building is enormous, but because it’s low, mostly one story high, with some upstairs offices toward the rear, and because it’s surrounded by trees and tasteful plantings, it’s hard to get a clear idea of just how big it is. But once inside, you begin to realize that the wide, bright, low-ceilinged spaces just go on and on. What seems to be acres of slot machines and poker machines spread off to infinity in one direction, while craps tables and blackjack tables march in long green lines in another. Then there are restaurants, poker rooms, baccarat tables, lounges, bars, and a number of playrooms where the kiddies can be looked after while Mom and Dad are losing the farm.

The casino is not itself a hotel, though there are four motels spaced nearby, and all do well, even in the depths of winter, though they’re expected to do better yet once the casino management completes its plan for a motorized subway system to link up parking area, motels, and the main building.

Casino management these days consists of two men. One, Roger Fox, is Oshkawa, while the other, Frank Oglanda, is Kiota. Both are sleek, smooth men in their fifties, their thick black hair slicked back, cigars in their blazer pockets, heavy rings on most of their thick fingers, a smile of contentment almost always visible on both their round faces.

And why not? The casino mints money, they have no government to look over their shoulders, the tribes are happy so long as they all get their “shares” regular as clockwork, and nobody in the world has any reason or desire to examine just how Fox and Oglanda manage casino affairs.

But that happy situation all began to change on Monday, November 27, when a letter arrived from the United States, addressed simply, “Casino Managers, Silver Chasm Casino, Silver Chasm Indian Reservation.” Fox was first in the office that afternoon—neither man was ever in the office in the morning—and he read the letter with surprise, unease, and distaste. Twenty minutes later, when Oglanda arrived, Fox carried the letter from his own office to his partner’s, and said, “Look at this.”

Oglanda took the letter, but kept his eyes on the unwonted frown on Fox’s face. “Something wrong?”

“You tell me.”

Oglanda removed the letter from its envelope, opened it, and read:

Sirs,

My name is Little Feather Redcorn. I am fifty percent Pottaknobbee, through my mother, Doeface Redcorn, who was born in the village of Chasm in upstate New York, near Dannemora, on September 9, 1942. My mother’s mother, Harriet Littlefoot Redcorn, left Chasm in 1945, when word came from the government that her husband, my grandfather, Bearpaw Redcorn, was reported missing in action when his destroyer was sunk in the South Pacific.

My grandmother lived in the West for many years, mainly around Los Angeles, where she worked as a waitress, and raised her daughter, my mother, Doeface Redcorn. I believe Harriet Redcorn died somewhere in California or Oregon around 1960, but I don’t know the details.

Doeface had a brief marriage with a full-blooded Choctee in 1970, of which I am the result. They lived together on the reservation for a while, but the marriage was not a good one. My mother soon got a divorce and went back to her maiden name, and she never saw Henry Track-Of-Skunk again.

My mother and I didn’t get along well when I was in my teens, I’m sorry to say, and eventually I left her in Pomona and went away to Las Vegas to live on my own. I had some success in show business in Las Vegas, but I had no more contact with my mother. I later heard that she had died, but I don’t know the circumstances or where she is buried.

However, I do know that I am Pottaknobbee of the Redcorn clan, through my mother, Doeface, my grandmother Harriet Littlefoot Redcorn, and my great-grandfather Joseph Redcorn.

Recently, I read an article in Modern Maturity at my dentist’s office about the casino at Silver Chasm and how the Pottaknobbee are part of the owners of the casino, except there aren’t any Pottaknobbees anymore. But I am Pottaknobbee. Shouldn’t I receive something from the casino?

I have come east to learn more about my situation at Silver Chasm. I am staying now at Whispering Pines Campground outside Plattsburgh, where the phone number is 555-2795. I will phone you Tuesday afternoon, by which time you should have received this letter.

I am very excited at the idea of being united at last with my own people, after having lived my entire life far away.

Sincerely,

Little Feather Redcorn

“It’s a phony,” Oglanda said when he’d finished reading. Disdainfully, he dropped the letter onto his desk.

“I certainly hope it’s a phony,” Fox said.

“No, Roger,” Oglanda said, “listen to me.” Tapping the letter with a hard finger, he said, “This claim is a phony, a definite phony. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because,” Oglanda told him, “if this woman is telling the truth, and she’s even fifty percent Pottaknobbee, we’re going to have to show her the books.”

“Oh,” Fox said. He picked up the letter, frowned over it. “You’re right,” he said. “No question. An absolute phony.”