Okla Hannali Maps, Okla Hannali Title

Hah-NAH-lee? HAH-nah-lee? Well, either, depending on your place in the time stream. Late in Okla Hannali, Lafferty writes:

Should anyone ever wonder how the “Hannali” in the title of this study is pronounced, it is this: If you read it before the end of the Civil War (some hundred years before it is written) you accent it on the second syllable. If you read it at a later date, you accent on the first.

Did you read the novel before Lafferty wrote it, before he was born, before much of its story had happened and Hannali was reacting to world loss? Neither did I. What is Lafferty getting at here?

First, he is telling us how he pronounced the name of his novel. You can break with him, if you want. Second, he is giving us a very sly reason for following him. But wait! That is insensitive. Why would one want to “mispronounce” the name? Because it is part of the work’s meaning, given when Lafferty wrote it and why he wrote it. When did you read it? Probably after someone told you how to say Hannali, someone well-intentioned and well-informed, but perhaps a little deaf to the novel and its doctrine of names.

The important passage comes during the rebuilding after the Civil War. The Innominees are growing numerous again. Hannali has money, and the family prospers. It seems possible to recreate the life they had before the war. Yet something troubles Hannali. At first, he can’t put his finger on it. Eventually he knows: the younger people are no longer Indian.

Natchez agrees:

“No, they are not Indian people,” said Natchez, “they are now come to be white-people people even the darkest of them. Maybeso we are the last of the Indians, Papa Hannali.”

Then Lafferty does something pretty cool. Certainly something powerful. He brings us into the intradiegetic sonic space that we cannot access without the ear of his narrator:

And there Natchez herself let it slip that she was no longer completely Indian. When she said “Papa Hannali” she intoned Hannali on the first syllable—as the white people and the new Indians and the children pronounced it. She had been the last one who accented the name in the old Indian manner on the second syllable, and now she had slipped.

Natchez thinks she is describing what has happened to others, but her pronunciation betrays that it has happened to her too. She thinks of herself as among the last survivors of the old world, but she is somewhere outside that world, in another version of Flatland. Related to this is something Lafferty once told Sheryl Smith: In a Green Tree is Okla Hannali but about white people. It is about world loss and the transformation and partial continuities that go with it. This is this kind of thing that can offend both contemporary Choctaws and Catholic trads.

The double pronunciation! What an astonishing thing to do with a title. Has any writer ever done something like this—given the reader two ways to pronounce it, and then told the reader that the conditions for using one of them are impossible to meet? Try. You will fail. Even Natchez fails.

In the University of Oklahoma Press edition, Geary Hobson’s foreword gives both Hannali and Innominee second-syllable stress, teaching us the older pronunciation before the novel begins. I think this weakens one of the book’s strongest moments. I like the idea of readers unknowingly using the later pronunciation while following Lafferty’s reconstruction of the old world, then discovering that, like Natchez, they are already on the far side of its destruction and suffering historical amnesia. Lafferty counts on our ignorance to break our hearts.

Names are, of course, a major theme in the novel. At one point Lafferty, or his narrator, anticipates impatience with his long lists of people, but he says he isn’t going to stop:

Names are magic, for the name is the same as the soul. Name rolls is Indian stuff. They are woven into the fabric of this thing, and it will ravel if we tear them out.

A proof text of this doctrine of names:

Of the big Cheyenne men, Hannali knew Black Moccasin, High Wolf and High-Backed Wolf, Painted Thunder, Gray Hair, Dull Knife (“So tough he dull the knife” his name meant), Seven Bulls, Limber Lance (the name was given him by his wife who was an earthy humorist, but for all that he sired seven sons who were strong warriors), Left Hand Shooter, Wooden Leg, Walking Rabbit, Hail (Autsite), Wild Hog, White Elk, Sun Maker, Little Wolf (the Cheyenne, but Hannali also knew the Sioux Little Wolf), Roman Nose and Roman Nose Thunder, Walking Coyote, Crazy Mule, Crow Indian (who was a Cheyenne and not a Crow Indian), Raccoon (Mats-Kumh), Little Horse and Panther his brother-in-law, Porcupine Bear and his son Porcupine, Rolling Bull, Plenty Camps, Island, Black Moon (his name really meant Black Sun, but it must be translated as Black Moon from some old reluctance or taboo), Bad Face, Wearing Horns (Lahika), Lean Bear, Dry Throat, Six Feathers, Stone Calf, Tobacco, Gray Beard, Whistling Elk. Hannali knew every leading Cheyenne in their grand decades. Hell, they were nothing but a bunch of horse Indians, you say. But from one view, there were no greater men ever than the horse Indians. They were the first All-American athletes, and they haven’t been surpassed. They were the astute country-boy politicians whose wards ran from the Cross-Timbers to the Shining Mountains. They were the poets who could chant the empty plains full of buffalo, and who can do it now? They were the legendary lovers and clowns and storytellers. The Indians were seldom baptized or formally named. A name grew on a man, and he might have several successive names in his lifetime.Hannali knew the Sioux: Black Leg, High Backbone, Bloody Knife, Red Cloud, American Horse, Crow King, Crazy Horse, Spotted Tail, Cut Belly, Little Big Man. But he was never a Sioux man. With the Sioux, you like them or you like them not.He knew the fine Arapahos: Left Hand (Nawat), Little Raven, Storm, Flat War Club, Crane, Bull.And the Crows: Big Prisoner, Kit Fox, Standing Alligator, Plenty Coups. But the Crows were not his special people.He knew the Anadarkos—Pockmark and Jim Pockmark and Jose Maria. And Nez Perces—Looking Glass, Tap-Sis-Li, White Bird, Joseph, Hush-Hush-Cute. The Comanches—they were as fine as the Cheyennes—Bull Hump, Shavehead, Horseback, Paha-Yuca, Ten Bears, Traveling Wolf (Ishacoly), Shaking Hand, Morning Voice, Katemsie, Sun Eagle, Coyote Droppings (Ishatai), Mo-Wi, Black Horse, Toshaway, Quannah Parker.Lean Apaches: Leading Bear, Thin Man, Taza, Zele, Victorio, Red Sleeve, Goyathlay (best known by his variant name Geronimo, but he hadn’t that name yet when Hannali knew him, about 1860). Serene Caddoes: Chowaw-hana, Quina-hiwa, Red Bear, White Antelope. Pawnees with their eyes always watching you: Sky Chief, Pita-Leshar, Kokaka, Dusty Chief. Kiowas—they were real men, and yet curious men: Satanta (White Bear), Satank (Sitting Bear), Little Mountain, Thunder Man, One Braid, Stiff Neck, Guibadai (Appearing Wolf), Light Hair, Big Tree, Eagle Tail, White Cowbird, Poor Buffalo, No-Shoes, Kicking Bird (Tene-Angopte—Striking Eagle was really his name), Timbered Mountain, Lone Wolf, Gotebo, Funny Man. The Kiowas were all funny men, but no one ever called them women. They could whip their numbers in anything. It was with such Plains Indians that Hannali lived his other life—in the off-season weeks and months and years—for much more than half a century. He learned a dozen Plains tongues, he learned hand talk, he learned custom and medicine. He went to war with the Plains Indians and feasted with them. He taught them smithery, and what they taught him was more intangible and intricate. There was Indian in Hannali that could never be satisfied with the settled life, with a single world, or half a dozen worlds. But some of the nations in him made satisfying contact with the nations of the Plains. Buffalo meat piled high as a man in rows fifty feet long!Comanche scalps fresh on poles before Cheyenne lodges!Five hundred ponies taken in one night’s raiding! . . . They smoke and they talk, and the Big Man is among them. Who else has taken the pipe from the lips of Timbered Mountain? Who else has passed it to Jim Pockmark?