“Got any idea where I can buy a couple of pounds of eagle feathers?”
      Marshbaum apparently thought phone chimes and his voice at 5 a.m. was the best way to get my attention.”
      “Marshbaum,“ I explained groggily, “It’s illegal to own, buy, or possess eagle feathers.”
      “What if I went to Jersey?” he asked. “You can get anything you want there.”
      “It’s a federal law,” I said, yawning. “Makes no difference where. You even touch an eagle feather, and they’ll slap you in prison faster than defeated congressmen becoming lobbyists.”
      “Moccasins,” he said. “Maybe a pair of deerskin pants. I’d been thinking about Revlon for the warpaint, but—”
      “Marshbaum!” I interrupted, “not only isn’t it Halloween, but Indians are now wearing three-piece suits.”
      “You think I’d look good in basic black?”
      “Only if there were a power failure. If you’re trying to claim to be an oppressed minority just to get another job, you should know that the new Administration will probably trash affirmative action.”
      “I’m just trying to reclaim my Indian heritage,” he said proudly.
      “I doubt any American Indians a hundred years ago were named Marshbaum.”
      “There had to be some intermarriage somewhere. Maybe a great-great grandmother on my 3rd cousin Irving’s side. He always—”
      “We both know you have a scam going. I doubt you suddenly got a revelation and now have a liberal need to be part of a race of people whose land was ripped from them, whose tribes were slaughtered, and the few remaining women and children raped?”
      Marshbaum was offended. “Don’t put me down until your moccasins have walked a foot in my shoes . . . or some such Indian saying. By the way, got any bags of the new state quarters lying around? I’ll split my winnings with you.”
      “So that’s the scam!” I said, as if divine truth had just knocked me upside the head so early in the morning. In 1992, the Mashantucket Pequod Indians opened the Foxwoods High Stakes Bingo and Casino in Connecticut. Four years later, the Mohegans opened the Sun casino. Foxwoods currently takes in about a billion dollars, with each of the last 600 Pequods earning an annual six-figure income if he or she works at the casino. The Mohegans currently number about 1,600. Inspired by the Indian heritage—and the possibility of profit-sharing income from the casinos—more than 24,000 Connecticut residents now claim Indian heritage; the 2000 Census reveals that 9,600 Connecticut residents claim they are “full-blooded Indians,” up 50 percent from the 1990 census.
      “You’re scamming the Pequods and Mohegans!” I challenged. “Isn’t it bad enough that we still treat the Indians as second class citizens, and now you’re going to try to steal their source of income?”
      “Being a Connecticut Indian is the last thing I’d want to do,” said Marshbaum piously. “Besides, it’d interfere with my genealogical plan to be descended from the Narragansetts.”
      “They have a casino?”
      “Big one on their plantation in Rhode Island, or whatever it is that Indians live on.”
      “You’ve never even been to Rhode Island,” I said.
      “My great-aunt Harriet’s family used to vacation in Newport. They probably abused Indians.”
      “It’d be easier for you to become an Indian by marrying into the tribe,” I said sarcastically.
      “Would have, but there’s already 35,000 greedy White guys ahead of me.”
      “I doubt you even know anything about the Narragansetts,” I challenged. Once again, Marshbaum was offended.
      “Largest Indian tribe in southern New England at one time,” he said smugly. “More than a hundred thousand of them were here before the Mayflower. Now there’s only a few hundred left. Something about diseases and massacres by the Army.”
      “Even if you do manage to find a distant Narragansett in your lineage, what you’re doing is still a sham and disgusting.”
      “No worse than anything the government’s already done to the Indians,” said Marshbaum.