Cahokia Jazz: Syncretism, symbolism and realpolitik

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

Cahokia Jazz is a detective novel, set in 1922 in the city and state of Cahokia, USA. Police detective Joe Barrow and his partner Phineas Drummond are called up onto the roof of the Cahokia Land Building in the middle of the night, where they find the mutilated corpse of a takata—a European-American–posed like an Aztec sacrifice, its heart removed. In most cities, this would simply be bizarre, but in Cahokia, this makes the murder a flashpoint for unrest in a city and state governed largely by the takouma, or original native peoples. Joe Barrow, who is native, although not Cahokian, must decide who he is and where he stands, as he struggles to solve the murder, along the way confronting plutocrats, unionists, subversives, corrupt journalists, and his own doubts and desires.

It turns out that Fred Hopper, the victim, was a clerk at the Cahokia Land office, which oversees the state’s leases and easements. In Cahokia, still ruled by the Cahokian people, no one can own land, they can only lease it. Barrow soon learns that Fred Hopper owed a loan-shark money, and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

I loved Cahokia Jazz for the character of Barrow and his struggle. Since growing up in the Boys’ Orphanage that gave him his name, Barrow has drifted. He drifted into the army in WWI, which was where he met Drummond, and afterward, followed him into police work. Barrow comes to life when his fingers touch the piano keys, playing and composing jazz. He is also a native, although he doesn’t know his family or his tribe. In Cahokia, where the primary language is Anopa, he is frequently confused. Still, some impulse drives him to follow the facts, rather than merely identify the first native suspect they can reasonably arrest. In this, Barrow is mysteriously aided by Sebastian Cuauhtemoc Hasti, the Man of the Sun, who is the city’s unofficial, undisputed ruler.

As the story continues, we see an early 20^th century USA that is like and unlike ours. Warren Gamaliel Harding is President, but there is no state of Utah. Instead, the state department is negotiating with the government of New Deseret to join the union. The USA never bought Alaska from Russia. In Mississippi, white supremacy has been defeated and the taklousa—people whose ancestry is African—can live in peace, equality and prosperity. And yet, megalomaniacal tycoons still scheme, racism is alive and well, and plenty of oligarchs resent Cahokia and the firm hold the Hasti clan has upon its wealth.

Francis Spufford

A further twist is the role of Christianity, specifically Catholicism, in this place. In the early 18^th century, Catholic missionaries came to the kingdom. Instead of bringing brutality and disrespect, early priests listened to the locals, and two hundred years later, the city has a syncretism of traditional religion and Catholicism. Next to the sacred Great Mound, they built the Cathedral. By 1922, of course, factions in the European and American Catholic church are fighting this model. It also incenses the mostly-protestant Klan, who intend to take down the city.

I loved the world-building as much as I loved Joe Barrow. While Spufford does not give the “decision point” of change in the book directly (he does in the afterward), it’s easy enough to do the arithmetic and see that there was no large die-off of native peoples after their contact with Europeans. It’s also clear that Cohokia, while stable and wealthy, is vulnerable. The only place slightly similar is the Dinetah homeland farther west. Firmly anchored in the Midwest, Cahokia is more powerful and more valuable in several ways, and white men in power want that power for themselves.

Spufford matches his prose perfectly to the story, engaging all the senses, whether the scene is a smoke-filled precinct room, a fancy dinner or a visit to the killing floor of a slaughterhouse. The story follows the lines of a bleak detective story beat for beat, with well-carved out secondary characters. I loved the world-building, and I wanted Barrow to solve the mystery for his own purposes. I really wanted to see him get on a train and leave, joining the jazz band he’d played with. Cahokia, while thriving and successful, is built on blood, compromise, and decisions that are strategic, not moral. By the end of the story Barrow’s eyes are open to those truths, and worse ones.

In style, vision and scale, this reminded me of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon. The Cahokia of the book doesn’t exist, but it could have. If it had, the people in it could have made these decisions, whether it’s a terrible act of realpolitik or a ceremonial welcoming of the sun to help the crops grow.

Cahokia Jazz absorbed me. It touched my heart and left me thinking. For that, it gets five stars.