Rockwell and his companion rode into town with the
children straddled in front of them, their nervous faces scanning the landscape
as the neighbors stared. They rode straight
past Main Street and into the round about in front of President Young's house.
Later that day the children emerged cleaned and fed and dressed in white man’s clothes: Two boys and a girl. The story unfolded of their parents’ massacre miles away, caught, supposedly, in the crossfire of the Blackhawk Indian War. Orphaned and starving, the small ones made their way upstream, surviving on berries, bitter root and raw fish.
President Young commissioned Porter Rockwell to take the children on up to Wood’s Cross in the newly established Davis County, north of Salt Lake City.
“Take them out to Sister Peninah. She’ll know what to do with them.”
Peninah Cotton was an Indian;
half Cherokee. Her mother was daughter of a Cherokee Chief, which in family
lore made her an Indian Princess. Back in Illinois she had heard missionaries
speak of Christ and when the throbbing in her heart would not leave her content
to remain where she was, she became the first Indian in the latter-days to lay
her body down in the waters of baptism and become a member of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She crossed the plains with the rest of the saints after they were driven from Nauvoo, married a white man named Daniel Wood, settled Davis County Utah, and
bore a passel of children. Her good heart, the same one that embraced a living religion, welcomed the orphaned children without hesitation. She knew, even if their hearts did not meld, that they
would be extra hands for the plowing, and besides they had been sent by the
prophet. She felt a surge of pride that
he would think her worthy to nurture them.
They were thereafter raised by Peninah, who is my grandmother's grandmother on my mother's side.
Each Memorial Day my family and I
visit the graves of Peninah and Daniel and those adopted Indians in the tiny
plot of grassy land preserved in the middle of commercial development along 500
West in Bountiful Utah. We lay token flowers atop their graves and try to imagine who they
were. Our bloodlines keep us connected,
as do our testimonies.
We have always, in our family,
had a particular soft spot for Native Americans. Maybe it’s our ancestors speaking to us. Maybe they are pounding in a massive drum
circle in the heavens and our heart beats align with their calls.
When my mom was a child she
accompanied her father to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation for their annual Sun
Dance Pow Wow. Mom’s dad was the only white man allowed to attend. He was respected
and trusted, and the ice from his ice house kept the watermelon he supplied
crisply chilled. Mom, as a small girl,
travelled beside him, their load of melons filling the bed of their wagon. While her father set
to his duties she sat quietly on the rim of the circle, her bony little girl
knees drawn up to her flat chest, her chin resting on them, as she watched the
men jump in pulsating circles through the night. A ring of dark braided natives
took turns pounding on the tight vibrating piece of elk hide stretched over the rim
of a massive drum. Their mouths opened and chins quivered as they sang,
wordless melodies rising from their ample chests. The dust of the Idaho sandy soil rose up like
wood smoke around the beaded moccasins of the braves as they danced, tiny metal
bells stitched to the fringe of their soft deer hide loin cloths ringing through
the beat. Their feet touching toe, then heel, toe then heel, their heads
bobbing, their bodies moving in and out from a central pole, the earth stirring into a swirl of dust as the night wore on. The eternal beat never changed. The little brown-haired white girl sat close
enough to hear their panting, the occasional grunt of exhaustion as they
pushed themselves through the night until the rising of the sun. She laid her head against her knees and,
mesmerized by the repetition, soon fell into a sleep undisturbed until her
father picked her up and set her on the buckboard of the wagon.
Years later, when I was a child of
that child, our mother took us back to the Pow Wow. The reservation had changed, and so had the
pow wow. Pride stripped and forsaken,
the natives opened the perimeter of the ceremony to white men and women, welcoming their quarters
and nickels and solid silver dollars that were laid down for the beautiful
handiwork of bead and hide. Pushing her way through the masses of people on that hot July night, we trailed behind our mother. She stopped occasionally to ask questions. I could not hear her for the
cacophony of sounds, the thick pulse of the drum underscoring all else. My brother and sisters and I held hands and
scurried behind her like a bevy of baby quail. We wove our way through the
crowd until she stopped, facing an old weathered red man who stared at her as
she spoke. I watched as his face lit up,
his lips rising on the edges as he returned conversation. She took our hands
and pulled us in front of her, introducing us one by one. He was tall and ancient and authentic. I might have been afraid of him, except for
the obvious love that shot from his deep set eyes and landed on our mother.
His name was Willie George. Mom had known him as a young dancing brave in
those early Sun Dances. He had been
charmed by her as a girl, and the affection obviously remained after all those
years. I caught the passing spirit of some ancestral native whisking by and
gave my whole imagination to the whim: I was a Native American girl, my feet
knew the softness of this ground pounded by Indian feet, and I belonged right
there next to Willie George. My mother backed up with her Polaroid camera as Willie
George lifted his arm and drew us in. I laid
my blond haired head against his waist, inhaling the scent of smoke and sweat and
sage, all earthy and sweet. I stood there
beside him in that dark Idaho night, when other little white children are sound
asleep in their beds; my dark tanned ripe-with-summer skin looking so pale next
to his, my white cropped pants and pale pink shell contrasting against his denim
and leather and braids. Still, he made
me feel like I belonged. And I suppose I
did. I am, after all, 1/32 Cherokee.
I have kept a little newspaper clipping
in my small box of memories in the basement.
There’s a photo of Willie George in it, and an obituary. He died at 101 years of age, having witnessed
first hand the agonizing evolution of his people under the hands of the imposers.
Still, he had put his arms around mine.
*******
“Ahhh, she’ll be fine. Those feet are part Indian, you know.”
She held her arms around David’s neck as he lifted her into her chair, her bare feet twisting on the frozen ground beneath her. “Let’s go!” she insisted.
Mom may not be one who can dance anymore, but she can sense the beat, and her feet are weathered enough from the eternal dance to withstand whatever kind of earth she finds underneath them.
