By Gary White
The history of my father’s family is filled with dead ends. As much as I have tried to search it out I can get only a few generations back. I am also in a somewhat unique position in that family. My father had one brother, Vernon, and two sisters, Fern and Sylvia. Fern never married and the other two siblings had no children, leaving me the only grandchild of my paternal grandparents.
One day in about 2000 I was visiting with Sylvia Smith, my one remaining aunt on my father’s side (my father and the other two siblings having already died) at her residence in the nursing home in Sedan, Kansas. We were talking about our family when Sylvia suddenly made the following startling pronouncement in her inimitable Kansas farm woman style: “You know, we have Indian blood in the family. . . . (whispered) but I’m not ashamed of it!” Well, that is the first I had heard of it, although my father and his siblings must have known all along. Sylvia proceeded to tell me what she knew about this Indian ancestor and I took careful note of what she described.
As soon as I could do so, I began to search the records and sure enough, there in a birth record for my great, great grandmother was the notation: “Mother unknown.” The father, John Wheeler, born in 1792 in England was carefully noted, along with the vital statistics for my great, great grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Wheeler, born 9 April 1826 in Bellefontaine, Ohio. How, I ask you, could the name of the father and child be known, but not the mother? As many ways as I have tried to search out the records for this great, great, great grandmother, she remains a mystery. I do know that she was a Native American because Sylvia had described to me exactly where I would find her.
Now that I know of our Native American heritage I look at my grandmother’s face in family pictures and clearly see the facial characteristics of her Indian heritage. That nothing had been said to me in all those years speaks volumes about how Native American heritage was viewed in the early 20th century in my corner of Kansas. That Sylvia had to whisper conspiratorially that she wasn’t ashamed also speaks volumes.
I, on the other hand, am proudly 1/32nd Native American and I think of my great, great, great grandmother quite often with love and affection whoever she might have been. It may only be a romantic fantasy, but when I visit the Native American pueblos in my area of New Mexico and hear the drums and witness the dancing, there is a subtle trilling in my veins. I like to think that it is my great, great, great grandmother coming back to enjoy the culture she was so proud of. I, too, am proud to carry her blood and happy to send it along to the coming generations. Nothing is ever lost in this human family, so long as we choose to remember. If we choose to forget, we all lose.
3 comments:
Quite interesting, Gary ... and I would suppose that your family might share this situation with several others in the general area around Cedar Vale. It would seem that my family has similar circumstances in that my Great-Grandmother (according to my deceased Uncle Ray) was a "half-breed". After retiring Ray did significant research and turned up much family history. (He didn't reveal details of resident horse thieves or such but it wouldn't surprise me that some family secrets will be forever lost.)
Actually, it's not clear in my mind whether Indian heritage was embarrassing or that the folks living in the depression years were made numb to all but the senses necessary to survive. At any rate I share one of your family "secrets". Unless my Cedar Vale math instruction fails me I would proudly have 1/16 of rich heritage.
Welcome to the tribe, Phil! Yes, it may be true that the numbing of the depression years would have taken their toll, but I would have thought that in all the months and years I spent riding around in a tank wagon with my father (which reminds me that I should write about that) he never mentioned it. I think we talked about nearly all of his life on those trips.
Phil, I guess it is your wild Indian heritage that enabled you to fight-off the intruder in your home. We really should pass along unknown facts to our heirs, as in some instances they may be very important, as in illnesses that may be genetic, etc. My children and grandchildren may like to know that my father was a memeber of the Ku Klux Clan in Miltonvale, Ks.
in 1920. There were no Negro/Black/coloreds/AfroAmericans there, but it was a social club.
Post a Comment