There was, I suppose, a certain poetic justice in painting an Indian agent’s house with cow shit. And I have to admit that, in my darker moments, I liked to imagine Uncle Leroy as an avenging angel, riding around the countryside with his bucket and brush, painting the exteriors of residential schools and churches, charging up Parliament Hill and redecorating the walls of government offices.

No, it was not a generous thought.

“So, Leroy painted that house three or four more times. By then, Nelson or Wilson could hardly stand living in it, but everyone agreed that it was a nice shade of brown.”

“He ever get caught?”

“Sure,” Bernie told me. “That agent wasn’t no fool. He pretended that he was going off on a trip, but then he doubled back and caught Leroy with the bucket in one hand and the brush in the other.”

There weren’t any photographs of Uncle Leroy, so I had to imagine what he looked like, and what I saw was a tallish, slender man with a face like an axe, broad shoulders and no butt, standing next to a clapboard house, holding a beat-to-shit zinc bucket.

“Nelson or Wilson had Leroy dead to rights, and he told Leroy he had a choice to make. One, he could stick around, in which case the agent was going to go to the RCMP post at Fort Macleod and swear out an arrest warrant, after which he’d come back with a couple of officers, throw Leroy in leg irons, and send him to the penitentiary at Stony Mountain.”

I tried to imagine what it must have been like to be an Indian in those days with the power that Indian agents, the RCMP, and the church had over your life.

“Or two, there was a Wild West show that had landed in Calgary. Captain Trueblood’s Wild West Emporium. And they were looking for Native performers.”

Mimi had gone to the Glenbow in Calgary and found a couple of old posters from the show and a newspaper story. Trueblood’s was a modest affair, thirty performers tops. And it spent most of its time in Europe, playing the smaller venues, places the larger shows such as Buffalo Bill and the Miller Brothers didn’t go.

“Wasn’t much of a choice,” Bernie told us. “Go to jail or join the circus.”

Bernie was right. It wasn’t a choice at all.

“It was only after he left that we discovered he’d taken the Crow bundle with him.”

WE DON’T FIND the Kafka museum right away. First, we get lost and wind up walking in a circle.

“You have the map upside down.” Mimi turns the map over. “See. The museum is right here.”