You Never Can Tell by KATHLEEN EAGLE

Author:KATHLEEN EAGLE
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks, Inc.
Published: 2012-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

10

Heather’s reporter’s instincts had gone dormant.

They ought to get back on the interstate and head into the wind, she muttered as the motley caravan of “Indian cars” made its way down the neatly manicured Midwestern Main Street, drawing curious stares like a parade of motorcycles in pickup country. Story or no story, Canton, South Dakota, simply felt like a risky place for Kole to show his face.

The little town, perched on the bluffs of the Big Sioux River not far from the three-way demarcation of Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota, enjoyed a clear view of forever across the prairie sod, where the West began. The sky billowed on a blue day, pressed and pushed when it turned gray, and promised next-day miracles with the glorious pinks and purples of a setting sun. To the west lay the memories of the Great Sioux Nation.

While most Americans were unlikely to have any connections or associations or even any knowledge of Canton, South Dakota, many Native Americans, especially the elders, shuddered when they heard the name. Canton had once been the site of the Hiawatha Insane Asylum for American Indians. Only the cemetery was left now, and the presence of its ghosts, the lure of their secrets, was almost palpable.

Heather had never heard of the asylum, and she considered herself well versed in American Indian history. Established by an act of Congress, it was run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1902 until 1934, when the Roosevelt administration overhauled Indian policies. Little had been written or published about the institution, but Kole explained as they drove into town that the institution was remembered by the older generation as one of many places to which people were “sent away,” never to be seen again. They were as likely to be committed to the asylum by the Indian agent, later known as the agency superintendent, or by the principal of an Indian boarding school as by a medical doctor.

After the asylum was closed, the facility had been used for, among other things, a minimum-security prison. Eventually it had been demolished, and the grounds were given to the community of Canton. Now the burial place for 128 former patients of the asylum, surrounded by a rail fence, was the centerpiece of a nine-hole golf course.

A small group of people who were determined to have the grounds designated a historical site regularly held memorials to honor the dead and call attention to a forgotten chapter in America’s history. At the moment, no one seemed to be listening, but it was the kind of political issue that might attract Kole’s friends to gather. It could also attract his enemies. The real trouble was—and this Heather noted without remark—he didn’t always know the difference. But Jack had intended to cover the memorial ceremony for Native Drums anyway, so the event was on the caravan’s itinerary.

After the mourners and the grounds had been purified with burning sage, after the drums had been played and the prayers had been said

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