Miko Kings

After a few weeks of visits from Ezol, Lena has come to expect a ritual from the spirit each night she appears. Ezol walks through Lena’s office, looking at the photographs on the wall and only asking about one: a photograph of Lena’s mother, Kit, as a little girl. She then settles into a 19th-century wingback chair that belonged to Lena’s grandmother, which seems to help her settle in again.

Ezol comments that the house they are in must have belonged to her Uncle Henri and Cousin Cora. Lena disputes this, saying that she has papers to prove that the house belonged to her grandmother and was part of her allotment land. Ezol calmly reminds Lena of the “75,000 white people [who] applied to the U.S. Dawes Commission for a place on the rolls of Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations” because they knew they’d receive free land if accepted (29). All of them were admitted, “but the Cherokees and Choctaws contested the inflated numbers and appealed to the government for a review. It’s still pending” (29). Ezol tells her that this is just one example of why documents can’t always be trusted to accurately reflect history.

The women review the book they’ve been writing.