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In the beginning there was the word,
the naming of things,
and in the end too, all we have left.
All we find and still know we’ve found something
more than a handful of dust
Your name,
Mourning E Dance
is all that I have left of the mountain that was you,
a pebble, I turn and turn for clues,
marveling in its evocative shape,
climbing each face with my eyes
Mourning E Dance.
And what does the E stand for,
more than the sound, Eee, that is mourning itself,
the mourning you have left to me,
and for a moment I forgot the second part,
panicked to think that all I’d held on of you was mourning,
having forgotten, for a moment, the dance
You are such a small piece of the mountain that is me,
a pebble
The rest of me, the most of me, is from someplace else.
Would I too have run with the stampede going west, overrun you,
had I been here like the rest —
been one of them, the rest of me?
There is nothing left of you but this pebble that is your name great-great-great-great grandmother,
still somehow you sent me clues to seek you out
I didn’t mean to eat you, grandmother,
my ancestors swallowed you up,
and now your name
sits down deep in me like a stone
Thank you for commenting. Like trying to find those clues and sifting alone, it can feel a little like throwing your voice out into the universe, a stone on the water, that sinks, without a ripple, otherwise. Call — response.
Hard to tell whose doing the calling and who’s doing the responding with ancestry research. There are the quiet ancestors, one for instance, who seemed like he’d been old all his life, who worked 60 years at the railroad, doing the same job every day. Slumbering. Just quietly, competently living. I’m sure he would have been a kind grandfather if I’d known him, but he doesn’t call the way others, like Mourning and Quinney do.
The poem feels unfinished. Stopped. And doesn’t saying anything about how I felt to come across that name and say, wow, maybe the stories were true. And what a perfect name for that feeling. Mourning, and Dance. Is it true that for many tribes the mourning dance is the one with scarves?
The other part of the feeling — at the moment of finding the name, Mourning Dance, and thinking — well, well. Maybe. This is kind of a New Agey, hairy-fairy thing, but what popped into my head were a couple of folksongs my mother used to sing that were my favorites and gave me that same feeling. One was a song about turtledoves, or mourning doves. The other was the line from the Shoofly song that says, “I feel like a morning star.” When i was a kid I thought it meant both kinds of mourning, the kind where you’re sad and also a star in the morning. Anyway, both of those things popped into my head and I had a moment of thinking that my gggg-grandmother had been sending hints. Silly, I know but some part of me believes it.
(Turns out, btw, that she may not have been the only ndn ancestor of mine. Where I least expect it, hints have been popping up on other family lines.)
Well, if it’s silly, it’s something silly I believe too. These are VERY noisy ancestors. The question of “who’s doing the calling and who’s doing the resonding” is very well put.
One comment on your poem. The line
“I didn’t mean to eat you, grandmother,
my ancestors swallowed you up,”
assumes you must identify with the cannibals, that’s not her intention for you. And to say “my ancestors swallowed you up,” implies that they are your “real” ancestors and she’s something other than that. It’s only a centuries old, stupid human construct that’s caused her to be defined out of existence this way. Another human construct can just as readily define her back into existence. Claim her, she’s all yours.
Or as someone else has said, “We are our ancestors.”
Yeah, I guess I was just playing with mixed feelings and some sadness about some of the facets of finding out about one’s history. And really, my Anglo ancestor is the one she married, so it’s not like there’s any guilt there. I kind of identify with all these folks, the good and bad, and am getting a better sense of how a lot of this — a lot of history — just kind of happened, without any bad intention.
I guess one of the things I think about is whether it makes sense to identify with the minority rather than the majority of my ancestry, but at this point, there are so many mysteries in various lines, that I don’t even know what the majority of my ethnicity truly is. And I guess I can identify with whatever I damn well want to! Mostly I like to uncover those hidden things, and accept them and understand them as best I can.
This is a little off-topic but it’s been fascinating to me to find out how similar to each other the places my family decided to settle were. For instance, the Woodland area of NC where Quinney and Mourning and Zachariah are from looks very similar to the place their kids settled in Texas. They found the pretty green Hill Country. The only place in Texas that looks like that. Which looks very like the area of Oregon my parents and sister moved to. Thats one of the reasons I like doing this research, it gives hints about the present, too.
Btw, the stone metaphor is kind of a personal one that has other meanings to me. A name I made up for myself when I was a child was Phoenix Stone. Not knowing this, it turns out there is a strong ‘stone’ connection in this family line. We’ve been collectors, stone masons, etc. My grandfather got fire agates declared a semi-precious stone and mined them. Apparently, my gg-grandfather even brought some stone with him when he came from NC to Texas, and put it in the wall he built on the property.
Someday I’d like to find out if there is a tribe up there around Wake (or Henry Co in VA) that worked with stone a lot. At this point, I wouldn’t even know what question to ask or where to look.
Anyway, thank you for listening.
Hana,
I just want to tell you, your poem is very beautiful. And Linda is right, it’s not silly. I believe, too. Signs, symbols, hints, like shadows sometimes faded or twisted askew, they are what they are and what we have to do is listen to them, pay attention and find the meanings. We have to ingest the meanings and accept them for all their worth, then bring them into light for others to experience as well. You’re doing a bang-up job and please continue doing so, because you are a special gift and we all appreciate you. Love & Light, Lynella.:cool:
Thank you for your warm words. Sending out poetry can be a bit like putting a message in a bottle — and wondering if it ever landed. So it’s really nice to hear someone else is out there, and to hear encouraging words.
The poem feels unfinished, just like this trek. And sometimes all the dates and names with no flesh behind them can be so dry. Not even bones, just numbers and letters on paper. That’s why seeing that name, even though Mourning was such a popular name for Anglo girls at the time and many of the Dances were not Indians, and it’s possible she wasn’t either… it just sounded like such a perfect name for how I was feeling about ‘her,’ whoever this mysterious ‘Blackfoot’ ancestor was. Stumbling across her gave me a little feeling of light in the clearing.
It feels like i’m looking for the Grandmothers. Like they, their spirits, are all there. I saw an old picture of one grandmother whom I always knew as an unhappy, nagging and proper woman. In the pic she was young, out camping, her arms around her girlfriends, all of them mugging for the camera, my Grandma in argyle socks, knickers, a newboy hat, and pretending to smoke a cigar, her eyes twinkling at the camera. That’s how I see her now.
My Native-American gggrandma, whomever she is, I can just see putting on a bonnet, a somber country dress, and moseying into town, hiding in plain sight. Nope, no Indians around here! They’ve all gone Extinct!! Pay no attention to my tan and strong features — I’m a good Christian woman, and they grow ’em strong around here. I can just see her determination to raise a whole bunch of kids, passing on her ancestry but making those kids safe and ‘white’ until it’s safe for them to come out. It’s safe now.
Hugs,
Hana
Hana says>>> raise a whole bunch of kids, passing on her ancestry but making those kids safe and ‘white’ until it’s safe for them to come out. It’s safe now.
It may not yet be totally safe in all places but it is time for the truth to be known by all.
peace
Ken
The truth will set you free they say but the folks that decide who you might or must be will always keep you down.
My family has always passed on who we are and I hope that others do aswell.
Years back my g. Grandmothers generation used to powder thier hands and face in order to go to town, wearing gloves when the gloves were not in vogue, I have photos to prove it!
We all seacrh for that esoteric name evoking the mystics, well sometimes we may never find them.
There was once a lady named Sarah Van Cruchtfield, not an NDN name at all, but she left a legacy of art and tradition that is a pillar in my research, not related to me that I know of, but very much a traditional person, hiding in plain sight, means “sounding” in plain sight.
Here’s something to think about; Blanche, (white woman) William (Aquilla, Eagle) Charles, (Lichen, stay close), Conastolla, (the pestle) and others many ending in a long “E” sound indicating the smaller relative element .
Hana,
I know what you mean about sending poems out being like sending a message in a bottle. I began getting mine published in various publications in 1986. The waiting and wondering can be agonizing, but that’s part of it. I wish you the greatest of luck because you are extremely gifted. Keep up with it. Love & Light, Lynella.:cool:
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