You Shoot Me Now: Based on the True Story of Walla Tonehka

By Howard Burman

In 1897 in the Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma) the young Choctaw Indian is convicted of murder and is sentenced to be executed, but he is allowed to go free and play baseball for his team if he promises to return after his final game to be shot.
He agrees.
His story garners national interest and is reported by newspapers across the country. Questions abound. Will je honor his promise and agree to be executed? Should he? If he does, is he a hero or a fool? At the last minute will he run off? Is the Choctaw sense of honor stronger than that of others? Is the greater sin preferring life to honor and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Howard Burman
• Release date: Dec 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310794438

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Acknowledgments

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Ken Meifert at the Baseball Hall of Fame for bringing the incredible story of Walla Tonehka to my attention and to my wife, Karen, for her invaluable proofreading and suggestions.

I had not the least doubt in the world but that when the day appointed for Walla Tonehka to die arrived, he would be on hand to meet his fate like a man. Nor would he ask for any clemency. He would meet his death like a stoic Spartan, without flinching. I know the Indian well enough to be perfectly free in making this statement without any reservation.—William Wild Bill Cody

One

As he rounds third with his long loping strides, he could be going anywhere. Anywhere. But Walla Tonehka is heading straight for home.

An unearthly quiet falls over the spectators. Everybody knows the story. Knows about the dance, the fight, the trial. Everybody knows about Tonehka, the orphan, the athlete, the convicted murderer. What they don’t know, not for certain, is what comes next. Only Tonehka knows that.

So many floating voices. Most respectful. Some reproachful.

He is the best ball player on the Eagletown team. Everybody says so. Tall, gracile, fast. He's always been fast. As a kid he would chase rabbits through the hardscrabble fields of Eagle County, Indian Territory. Quick as a snake he is. Everybody says so.

A little wild, though. Rambunctious.

I wouldn't say a trouble maker. Not really. Just a little ... wild.

I’d call it untamed. Savage.

Don't know what we'd do without him. Probably wouldn't win but five games all summer. Maybe not even that. Maybe we wouldn't even have no team.

Damn, he can run.

He is playing baseball as he has never played before. In simple breech-clout, with his swelling muscles ridging his lithe frame and cording in forearm and biceps, he is a figure for Choctaws to swear by in championship contests.

Tonehka is going full out but you looking at his face wouldn't know it. The game comes easy to him.

Never looks like he's straining or nothing. A natural, that's what I'd call him.

The play at the plate is going to be close.

The ball comes in from center like a frozen rope right to the catcher's head. He braces himself as he deftly snatches the ball out of the air, immediately bringing it down to within inches of the plate.

Without breaking stride, without slowing, the runner slides, upending both a cloud of brown Kansas City dust and a grizzled catcher. When both come back to earth, the umpire, craning his neck to get a good look, doesn't say anything. He moves to the side looking to see if the ball is still in the catcher’s flat glove. It is. OUT he finally bellows.

Maybe. Hard to tell really.

The runner gets up, dusts himself off, walks back to the bench. Sits.

Tonehka doesn't speak, doesn't change his expression, doesn't move. If there is a shadow in his heart he doesn't show it. Doesn't show regret. To him there is nothing beyond today and today's measure is heaped full of things that concern today.

Looking on are paler faces browned upon the splintered seats of the bleachers watching the player whose face is etched in a determined grim sensuality. Behind it, though, is ... what? The savage love of savagery? Yes, that must be it, but with a stoicism that will prevent him from flinching when the pain comes. Still, there is something akin to the braggadocio of the prize ring—to the spirit of the fighter who comes up smiling through his own blood, who comes up time and time again with a face that masks his suffering simply because he is not expected to feel or to wince or to cry out.

Men in other rings have not done so.

What, we ask, is behind that inscrutable face? Everything or nothing?

There will be other games on dusty fields, other wins, other losses. But maybe not for Tonehka. He says he will neither bring shame down on himself nor his family. There will be no stain of dishonor. Honor isn't about making the right choices, it’s about dealing with the consequences. Isn’t that so, Tonehka? Isn’t the greater sin to prefer life to honor and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having?

If he thinks these things he doesn’t speak them. He doesn’t know how. Not in Choctaw and certainly not in his limited English. Walla Tonehka is a fatalist.

Stoicism such as long ago ages gave to the world pales before this spectacle of the young Choctaw full of bounding life, who is taking that life in all its fullness into the very shadow of death. There is no penance for him. There is no regret. Grim, nerveless, emotionless, he seems to accept death as inevitable, as the very epitome of life. To him it is the grand climax into which the whole of creation moves.

It is this spirit which will turn Tonehka toward the long, brown sweeps of Territory prairies, where the brown grouse drum and whirr, and where the mule-eared rabbit leaps, poises, and listens suspiciously; where the blue mists hover like a veil over sand hills fringed with scant forests. There, unless the mercy of a higher court intervenes, Tonehka will stand with his face to the rising sun with his coffin and an open grave at his back. And when the echo of the rifle shot fades, Walla Tonehka will have started toward the famed hunting grounds of his dead ancestors and savage justice will have been satisfied.

Friday he is to present himself to Sheriff Watson to be shot.

◊◊◊◊

WILLIAM R. DRAPER News was being fashioned into a crude, queer form and trigger action when I began covering the Indian Territory in the 1890s. As a cub reporter among the Indians of that frontier, I saw and wrote of many unusual people and events. Chieftains, outlaws, medicine men and train robbers. With my trusty camera I shot these men and talked with them in their hideouts and houses. Over many a lonely trail I rode horseback, or on my bicycle, seeking this frontier melodrama.

There was no shortage of colorful material about which to write—a never-ending procession of unusual persons to see and photograph. I hope the facts related in these stories, gathered on the spot and often under trying circumstances, provide a revealing glimpse of a country and a people.

Many of the tips for my articles came to me at the White Horse, a trading post deep in Indian Territory. At White Horse, while waiting for something to break, or for an assignment, I worked at the big general mercantile store owned and operated by the rich Indian chieftain, Strike Axe, and my father, Luther C. Draper.

During those years I compiled and sold hundreds of articles to the best newspapers and magazines in the United States and London. Perhaps the most fascinating of those was the incredible story of the orphaned Choctaw Indian, Walla Tonehka.

He was a typical Indian of his tribe—dark, with piercing black eyes, coarse hair, high cheekbones, and heavy Roman nose. He was maybe six feet tall, broad shouldered, and walked with a slight slouching stoop.

Figure 1

Walla Tonehka

His dress was essentially modern, with no odor of the blanket about him. He could usually be found wearing a blue and white cotton shirt tucked into coarse trousers of loose fit. His shoes were rough and heavy.

Since his baseball team didn’t have real uniforms, this is also how he appeared when he was playing ball.

Tonehka had not a bad face for a Choctaw Indian. It was the face of a stoic rather than a criminal. A face with a certain grim sensuality to it.

◊◊◊

PETER HUDSON I have always devoted myself to the interests of my race and the preservation of our history and lore. The story of Walla Tonehka will forever remain an important part of that history and one which I followed closely.

But in order to understand Tonehka and the situation he faced, one has to look back to earlier days.

The first meeting of our people and the whites came about in the sixteenth century in the area that eventually became Mississippi and Alabama.

When discovered by Hernando DeSoto, we were essentially a hunter-gatherer society. But the Spaniards didn't stay long. In the early eighteenth century the French moved in. First came white traders, then settlers, and after that, missionaries.

It was the time when intermarriage between white men and Choctaw women began to lead us down the long road to adopting the European culture.

Some of the early traders remained and many became adopted citizens of the Nation and founded families with European surnames. Families who most aggressively pursued the adoption of the white culture assumed many of the leadership positions, and it was they who in turn invited the missionaries to come down to preach and teach the ways of the whites.

It has to be said that in large measure, the conflicts that we experienced were driven by the mixed-bloods who were largely pro-European and the full-bloods who resisted any change.

After the Europeans arrived we began trading with them and learned to plant European grains and garden vegetables and to raise horses, cattle, hogs, and barnyard fowls, and we became primarily an agricultural people.

We adopted constitutions and legal codes similar to the white Europeans, and like them some of our leaders began to operate plantations worked by Negro slaves.

Many of these slaveholding mixed bloods came to dominate the Choctaw society in much the same way that the white slaveholders did in the South as a whole.

That was the situation we were in, when in 1830 we signed a treaty with the U.S. government. Called the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek under its terms the Choctaw would become the first tribe to be removed from the southeastern United States, because the federal and state governments wanted to take the Indian lands in order to accommodate the growing agrarian American society.

The area to which we were to be sent became known simply as the Indian Territory, but it was never a territory in the political sense. Rather it was an area to be occupied by the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Choctaw. We were called this to distinguish us from the wild—that is, the less civilized Indians of the plains.

The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek spelled out many promises claiming to promote perpetual peace and friendship. Included among them:

Transportation in wagons and steamboats would be provided for the removal and paid for by the U. S.

Ample food was to be provided during the removal and for 12 months after reaching the new homes.

Reimbursements were to be provided for cattle left in the Mississippi Territory.

Autonomy of the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma was guaranteed and was to be secured from the laws of U.S. states and territories forever.

The U.S. would serve as protectorate of the Choctaw Nation.

Any Choctaws engaging in violent acts against U.S. citizens or property were to be delivered to the U.S. authorities.

Offenses against Choctaws and their property by U.S. citizens and other tribes were to be examined and every possible degree of justice applied.

Navigable streams would be free for Choctaws, U.S. post-offices were to be established in the Choctaw Nation, and U.S. military posts and roads were to be created as needed.

Intruders were to be removed from the Choctaw Nation.

Choctaw property stolen by U.S. citizens was to be returned and the offender punished. Any Choctaw violating U.S. laws would be given a fair and impartial trial.

Choctaw Warriors who marched and fought in the army of U.S. General Wayne during the American Revolution and Northwest Indian War were to receive an annuity.

The Choctaws would be entitled to a delegate on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The treaty would cede about 11 million acres of the Choctaw Nation (now Mississippi) in exchange for about 15 million acres in the Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma.)

◊◊◊

REV. LLOYD-SMYTH With the coming of the missionaries, the Choctaws became a thoroughly Christian nation. The New Testament was translated into Choctaw and the Christian religion was taught in the schools. This being said, many Choctaws found ways of reconciling their new god with the traditional Maker of the Universe.

Yes, Walla Tonehka