It all began around 6 a.m., when the 49 reached its apex. Things get fuzzy at these powwow after-parties around that time. The sun rises following a long night in the woods spent singing, drinking beers, laughing. You see people’s faces again after viewing them mostly in the dark, and your party buzz has leveled up (or down) to a different vibe, not so much celebratory, more of a forward momentum, drinking Coors beer like in some Rance Hood painting. In my day, the ABV of beer in Walters, Oklahoma, was lower than in most of the United States, and we had to drive south, across the border to Wichita Falls, Texas, to procure what we called 6-point beer (it was probably 5.2). In hindsight, it was always better when we didn’t; a weaker beer made for a more pleasant 49.
This article appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
SUBSCRIBE
There were people fighting, as they do at a 49 around that time of the morning, so I decided to bust out my plastic disposable camera to document the occasion. I had been carrying these cameras around with me a lot that summer, and I had the bright idea that it would be great to take pictures of the 49 as it happened, in real time. People singing 49 songs (our version of country music), fighting, loving, Comanches being Comanches in the moment. A beautiful idea but maybe not so much—again, in hindsight.
Bat noticed me taking pictures of her and her friends in a fight near my car. Dust rose as people wrestled one another to the ground and swung their fists. At first, she yelled at me, “What are you taking pictures of?” In my head, I thought for sure she’d understand that this was a deep Comanche artistic moment that we all needed to document.
Those words did not come out at all as I had intended. I’m not sure I even articulated a sentence, actually, as a result of my inebriation.
I knew enough to know that once you get into it with one person, you end up fighting with their whole family—brothers, sisters, cousins, close friends who might as well be related—out at Sultan Park at 6 a.m. It’s the Wild West out there, or Indian Country unfiltered, depending on how you view the world.
Bat kept yelling at me, and I backed up, probably with a goofy grin on my face, and at some point it was just me and her in the trees, me walking backward and her yelling at me, daring me to throw a punch at her. I understood in my haze that she thought I was taking pictures of her friends fighting around my Monte Carlo SS—on loan to me from my dad for the summer—for insurance purposes. Insurance purposes! Again, in my head, I properly articulated that I was on an artistic mission to document our people. But the words that came out of my mouth failed to communicate this noble purpose.
I continued walking backward as she stepped toward me. It was just me and her at dawn in this clearing in the woods in Sultan Park. There were people camping in their tents and teepees, people fighting in other areas of the park, hopefully some people falling in love, but no one really around us. At one point, I swear she had a bat—her goddamn nickname was Bat, after all. Where did she pick it up? For a brief moment, I imagined taking a swing or giving her a shove—she wanted to fight, we were Comanche…when in Rome—but I knew that once I did, three of her brothers (not literally her brothers), would magically come out from the trees. Plus, who fights a woman? I wasn’t there to fight; I was there to document. I was an artist.
This scene straight out of a Coen brothers movie eventually resolved itself, and I can’t honestly remember how it ended, only that it did. No punches were thrown, no bat was swung, and Bat and I would later become related via marriage; one of her nine sisters married one of my cousins, another story that is just as dramatic as this, but we won’t go there at this time.
That night happened about 25 years ago. It remains my strongest memory from a Comanche Homecoming powwow.
Back to Oklahoma
It’s approximately an eight-hour drive from my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Walters, and these days I like to break up my journeys to Oklahoma or Texas with a stop in Amarillo. I’ll eat a great big steak at the Big Texan Steak Ranch and luxuriate in all the Lone Star kitsch. I like to think that my ancestors would appreciate how I do this trip, being a meat-eating people. The route is similar to the one they would have traveled, chasing buffalo or white people or trading with Pueblos in New Mexico. On this stop, as I belly up to the bar to order the Fort Worth cut steak with sides of green chile creamed corn and a baked potato, Hulk Hogan is ripping off his shirt at the Republican National Convention on the TV. I text my Navajo friend back in New Mexico about the ridiculousness of it all. I am deep in the heart of Republican country and keep my leanings close to the vest. A Comanche again surrounded by hostiles. They most likely think I’m Mexican.
The plan is to check in and meet my parents at the hotel near the Comanche Nation Casino in Lawton, and later in the evening we’ll drive to the powwow together. Growing up, I went to Comanche Homecoming every year. This will be the first one for me in about a decade. I’m a bit anxious and also excited about all of it. How many familiar faces will be there? Who might I know? Do I actually have it in me to try to go to the 49?
I arrive before my parents and quickly realize the hotel has not been upgraded since I was last there. In fact, it has, for the most part, fallen into disrepair, and I should have expected that from the cost of the rooms. What I thought was a steal is, upon observation, about the right price for a hotel such as this.
I hug my parents as soon as I see them. They have aged, as everyone does—hell, I have aged—yet here they are, still traveling, still taking care of each other. I am the only “child,” as it were, and we three have a routine that has evolved through the years as I’ve grown from small child to teen to college-aged adult to a man in his 30s to a man in his 40s to, now, whatever this is, a man at the beginning of his 50s. The closeness to them that I feel, an unmarried man without his own children, is immediate, a bond that may seem surprising for a man of my age. My immense respect for both of my parents and all that they have been through in their individual tribal identities: my father Comanche and my mother Muscogee, an Indigenous couple who have dealt with the trials of the world and their own relationship and have managed to have each other’s back for over half a century.
They raised me in the tiny town of Walters, as part of a small Comanche community. We were outnumbered by white people. I didn’t know any Black people. I didn’t recognize what racism was because no one was there to tell me. My basketball coach disparaged me and my Comanche friends for playing a less formal type of basketball, what he called “Indian Ball,” to which I shrugged; our way was more fun. Comments like his would not fly today. During Trump’s presidency, I was unfriended on Facebook by about 95 percent of the people I went to high school with. One woman wrote to me that I used to be “such a nice guy” before she clicked the unfriend button. Apparently, I had made the mistake of heading off to the University of Oklahoma and becoming an educated Comanche. I maintain solid friendships with two people from high school who also left for faraway places: one, for Manhattan; the other, Minneapolis. Meanwhile, my relationships with my Comanche friends from Walters are unbroken.
That evening, I make the 20-mile drive from Lawton to Walters with my parents. We catch up in person on drives like these, and I often learn more about them. My mom tells me how, when I was a boy growing up in this area, she worked as a copywriter for the radio station in Lawton. I’d never known this about her. Another layer of my own origin story: She was a writer too! This information, coupled with my father’s influence—he’s a painter—helps me understand a little more why I’m a writer attracted to the moving image.
The Dance
After a last-minute stop to procure a powwow chair (it’s been so long, I forgot to bring one), we arrive at the 71st annual Comanche Homecoming powwow, mark out our territory, and drop our chairs. We’re hungry, so I take off immediately for some Indian tacos.
The dance itself is about the same size as I remembered, a small-to-medium-size powwow, more than 500 people—a good turnout considering how out-of-the-way Walters is and how hot it can be. The weather is warm but comfortable, about as decent as you can ask for on a mid-July evening in southern Oklahoma.
My parents and I sit and watch the dance with hubcap-size Indian tacos in our laps. Small mountains of beef, beans, cheese, and other fixings are heaped on the fry bread. I glance at the oak tree my grandma Jane Caddo Asenap used to sit underneath during the powwow. She could always be found near that tree. She spoke fluent Comanche. I used to sit and listen to her talk to my uncle Butterball, Comanche language mellifluously flowing back and forth on those afternoons. I wanted to learn it and wondered how I would be able to. There was no formal way back then, and the government did its best to discourage its being taught after my grandma’s generation, to try to break our culture. I would try to learn it a few times later in life but came to my own understanding: To know a language, you have to speak it with people. That was hard in New Mexico. I’ve made my peace with it and thrown my energy into other pursuits.
At the dance, the drum sounds different to me now. A good southern powwow drum used to make me want to go to war, or to dance, or to find a woman to make love to. Now it humbles me. It makes me happy to be alive with my parents, eating Indian tacos, an act that is so simple and unremarkable yet I am so thankful to experience it. My dad finishes his taco, and it doesn’t take long for him to head off with his camera. He’s forever on a purposeful mission to document dancers to paint. I walk around the powwow arena and run into one friend after another and sadly learn that Marty, one of my old Indian Ball pals, is in the hospital. He is a few years older than me, was already in shaky health, and he hit it too hard at the 49 last night. At my age, I’m glad to have skipped the party. I make a mental note to visit with Marty in the near future.
The formal portion of the powwow—the dancing and singing—ends, and things start winding down. It was a simple and glorious gathering. My parents and I call it a night and return to our hotel. In the morning, we’ll drive both cars to our next destination: the Comanche Red River Hotel Casino, to the south in Devol, on the way to their home near Dallas.
Before leaving Walters, I make it a point to go to the swinging bridge. As a boy, I used to meet up with other Indian kids there. It’s where we hung out before we got older and got cars, drank, fought, fell in love. It looks different in the daylight, and it appears to have been given a makeover. The metal-grated floor and rails have a nice, shiny silver sheen to them now. The bridge makes me recall not just my times there but also my many trips to Walters for the powwow. I think of the two Native girlfriends I brought to the event (on two different occasions, of course), wanting to share where I came from. One of them practically dragged me into a round dance, and she acclimated instantly. The other one sat unimpressed, surrounded by judgmental Comanche girls who probably thought she was acting too good. She did not have a good time.
I think back to when I was a young man, attending this powwow out of boredom, and how I didn’t want to be Indian because it seemed the white people had all the land, the money, the resources (they still do). Now, people practically make up identities to be Indian—“pretendians,” they’re called.
Standing on the bridge over the pond in Sultan Park, the water still and peaceful, I realize it’s taken me too long to come back here. I begin to understand what I’ve sacrificed—family, friends, a sense of belonging, a sense of myself—by moving away to become a writer and filmmaker. Albuquerque is where I live, but Walters is where I’m from. I make a pact with myself to return every year from now on.
A few days later, back in New Mexico, I learn that Marty has passed away. I missed my chance to visit him, and I won’t ever see him again, not in this lifetime. I am very sorry for that. Marty liked it in Walters, in our small Comanche community. My relationship with the town, and the powwow, has been more complicated, but after this trip it does feel like home. It feels like a homecoming.•
Jason Asenap is a Comanche and Muscogee Creek writer, critic, and filmmaker based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
