Sack Of Billies

by Allen Kinchen

It was near the turn of the century..1896 to be exact, and there were not too many Choctaws left around Man Chac Louisiana.. Man Chac was a Choctaw fishing village that sat on South Pass, right next to the Railroad line .. And of course that was between Lake Maurepas and Lake Ponchatrain. Just look at the map and find the pass that is between the two lakes in Louisiana and you now know where we were at ..

There was about 25 families, or around 100 people, who scratched out a living in this quaint little village ..It was a time of change and a time and place to be forgotten by everyone, except those isolated Choctaw who seemed somehow able to cope and accept the harsh life in that sultry climate ..

They spoke the Choctaw language, and English, and some French, but somehow they were different from the mother tribe .. It didn't matter anymore ,, cause nearly all the Choctaw were gone anyway .. And anytime we felt like it and could afford it, we could get on that train and head north all the way up to Chicago Illinois, or get off anywhere along the way ...If you asked them what kept them there, they really couldn't tell you ,, well,,, maybe some of them could .. But it was simply hard to leave a life that people had known for such a long time ..

The blood line was not pure Choctaw anymore .. For now among them lived whites who had taken Choctaw wives and had children.... In fact half the kids in the village were now half breeds .. My cousin Rabbit was like me,,,,, a half breed. His mother and mine were sisters .... We both had fathers who were white and had French Names .. Because we had French names, we were allowed to stay and no one seemed to push us out of the area like our ancestors..

We had school also. We learned how to read and write and many other subjects. School was three days a week unless it rained too much, which sometimes it did. A white Lady,,, Sister Paulette Dupree, would make the trip from the closest town, and we all had class together .. Everyone in the same room .. Even the adults who wanted to learn were allowed. The summers were too hot for her, so as soon as it got hot,,, school ended ..

The Catholic church supplied our education, it was part of the Christian teachings to educate us to read and write ... I loved learning, it was kind of like dreaming , you could just let your mind fly into the clouds of all kinds of thoughts..

For a boy, life was pretty good. We were seeing small ships nearly every day now at our village to unload cargo.. And me and Rabbit had a blast ...

Rabbit was bad ,, he was always getting into trouble .. Sneaking aboard the small ships, stealing, jumping on those rail cars and getting free rides ..

Several times having to be found and brought back to face punishment .. Rabbit was 10 years old and I was 11 .. Our camps were built onto the stumps of the cypress trees, an entire village system on top of the water built high,,, away from gators and snakes .. It rained a lot down here,, so cisterns provided our fresh water ,, and the swamps provided nearly all of our food, and a source of income..

Cypress trees were giants, 10 ft in diameter everywhere ,, Fish and game were so abundant, it was a paradise for hunters .... But it took a special hunter to hunt in these swamps ....

My favorite person was the Shaman, or what whites called the Witch Doctor .. She was a tuff old woman, but very smart ,, she was very tall and had a scar across her face .. Her skin was like leather, and very dark and wrinkled ....They say she got the scar from fighting a white man once, she slit his throat and they never found his body ... She told us she was hunting with her blow gun and the man surprised her and tried to hurt her, she proved too strong for him, she hit him and slit his throat .. She then pulled him in the swamp for the gators to feast on .. I called her Scar Face.

Scar Face and I became very good friends.. She was great at making blow guns. Blow guns were the best way to kill small game ,, they were accurate and deadly. And used with the poison that Scar Face made, rabbits, squirrels, birds, and other small game never had a chance ..She made
her poison from snakes ,, frogs urine, and crushed plants .. Then she cooked it down and made a paste ,, and dried it on her dart arrows .. She said it was not strong enough to kill humans but great for stunning small animals .. They always ran a little ways after she shot them, but for sure they would go to sleep very quickly ..

Scar Face, me and Rabbit were best friends. When you are only 11 years old, things seem so different .. But I swear even now that Scar Face was a woman who had supernatural powers ...She left an impression on me for the rest of my life ..

The swamp had its own world, it had four seasons , unlike other parts of the south that did not.. and not all parts were wet. The swamp only stayed wet in rainy season or during bad weather.

There were wild hogs, giant birds big enough to carry a small child away, wild cats, giant bull frogs, 12 ft long alligators, giant gar fish, catfish so big you could put your head in them .. Living there was a daily adventure ..

Scar Face was not only a great small game hunter, but she could tell the best stories and make the best medicines for just about anything ... She told me about Kwanokasha, the little spirit man, who tempts children to choose among good and evil things . How children can be stolen by Kwanokasha and be given a choice of either a knife or good or bad herbs. Good children always choose good herbs, choosing bad herbs will yield nothing but trouble, and choosing the knife will yield a terrible future.

She taught us about Aba the good spirit, and Nanopolo the bad spirit .. The evenings were always exciting ,, camp fires, and the smell of smoke mixed with food, the laughter of something funny ..

And of course Rabbit always made us laugh .. Rabbit loved to go naked, despite my Mother telling him to put something on .. I remember once when the men went hog hunting in the early winter .. Well that evening was a feast of roasted pigs, and they are great to eat .. Rabbit like normal took off his clothes and danced around the fire naked ,, he was chewing on a big peace of pig .. He sat down to finish his pig and the fat was dripping down his front .. Well we had two large Tom cats, one of them ran over and started licking his legs where the fat was running down ,, and before anyone knew what had happened Rabbit was laying down screaming.. the cat was latched on
to something and would not let go.

The cat had loved the fat juices from the pig and it had dripped down on Rabbits private parts, and now he was screaming .. And the cat would not let go. The cat was clawing and determined to keep his meal and scratched at Rabbit when he tried to pull him off .. Finally two men ran over and got the cat off .. But not before Rabbit got the attention of everyone .. I felt very sorry for my cousin, but we could not stop laughing .. The next day the men had a new name for Rabbit, but I better not tell it to you..

Rabbit loved pulling pranks, his mind never stopped working .. Sugar was a very popular item, and expensive .. One day the men came home with a new kind of sugar .. It was white, it looked just like salt ..

Rabbit decided he would trick the men one morning .. In the middle of our camp was our big cooking lodge where we shared everything .. Every morning the men had coffee and flat cakes and syrup .. the new sugar sat right next to the salt. Rabbit took the sugar and mixed it with the salt in one of the bowls ,, and he told the men to try it, it tastes great, but never told them he mixed white sugar and salt together. Well the men tried it and could not figure out what kind of taste it was .. Rabbit burst out laughing and went running off ....

Of the many things that Rabbit did growing up, some were down right dangerous .. Once Rabbit was missing ,, and that itself was not strange, but when he did not show up for the evening meal, we knew something was wrong .. Everyone set out looking for Rabbit, and we knew finding him was not going to be easy ... We looked everywhere around the camp, but no Rabbit ..

Did he catch the train and go north? Did he sneak aboard a schooner and head back out into the Gulf? Did he fall in quicksand some place while exploring the swamp? Was he attacked by an animal in the swamp? .. Well,, his mother was crying her eyes out, his father was really mad, and we all were scared for him. We looked for several hours around the camp but found no trace of him .. Finally everyone figured he must have snuck aboard the train and headed north .. So the next day we would go into town and look for him.

The next morning Scar Face surprised everyone and said she knows where he is .. How can she know that??? asked Rabbit's father. But he did not know Scar Face like I knew her. Scar Face had somehow put herself in a state of sleep and she said her Spirit had left her body and went looking for Rabbit and she found him .. Well it would not hurt to listen and do what she said ..She said he was up in a tree, above alligators, very tired and hungry, and wanted to come home .. But where? Then I remembered about two months before,, me and Rabbit found a big alligator's nest quite a ways deep into the swamp.

I became excited and said, I will lead you to Rabbit!!!! It was quite a walk.. We slogged through mud for a long ways ,, we began to hear the sound of gators, big ones,, bulls, croaking, two of them .. That was a normal sound, but what did it mean? We quickly found out.. Scar Face also had eyes
like an eagle .. She saw him, up in a tree above two bull gators ,, big ones,14 footers. They lifted
their body up off the ground and opened their mouths, displaying their teeth .. -----POOWWWW----- with one shot above their heads the gators were gone into the water.. And poor Rabbit was clinging on for his life. He had spent the night in that tree and was eaten by mosquitoes and bugs. But he was alive and glad to see us.

That night was a celebration, something to really be happy for .. We danced and danced, we smoked Lion's Tail, most of the men got intoxicated, and I did too .. But we never forgot that day.. Scar Face had seen her dream, she had the power.. Rabbit was alive and home ..

Now you would think an event like that would make anyone straighten up .. But not Rabbit ,,, The following summer was really hilarious .. One day the train had stopped to take on cargo, mostly cypress wood. Well you simply never know what will be on board a train .. Rabbit had never seen goats before. At least not that many for sure. There were four car loads of goats,, Goat meat was a delicacy in New Orleans.. Somehow Rabbit managed to get the rail car door opened. And out the door and into the swamp went about 40 goats. Of course Rabbit quickly disappeared along with everyone else. Cause we knew someone was going to be in trouble.

Well the Railroad Company simply did not have enough people to go looking for every goat. But they did try anyway .. We heard shouting and all kinds of screaming, those white guys went crazy looking for their goats.

But it did not take long and all three of them came running back out of the swamp .. One white man ran past me and said, Forget the goats, I just saw the biggest gator I ever saw in my life with a full size goat in his mouth ..

That day we all became goat Farmers ... And Rabbit became known as Sack of Billies.