people I have known

[doodlebug]

Message deleted by doodlebug.

[doodlebug]

I met Anna in fall of 1977 but the story starts in 1967.

[doodlebug]

Christmas eve of that year Anna was a 5 month old baby. In Wapato,Washington her mother left her in a van to go into Franks Tavern for one quick drink. An acquaintance of the family called her father who was over on the Columbia River in the small Indian town of Celilo at his mothers house and said they had taken Anna home after her mother had spent two hours in the tavern and was showing no signs of leaving. Arnold drove to Wapato and took Anna into his care and started home. Outside of the town of Goldendale on the steep grade down to the River he hit black ice and rolled the car a long ways down the sagebrush hill.They figure she was ejected in her cradle board on the second flip and the cradle board with her strapped in it ended up a good 100 yards from the highway. A typical cradle board has a piece of wild rose branch as a front guard of sorts and are very strong. She was wrapped in a piece of pendleton blanket. No one saw the accident happen but a truck driver spotted the car when the sun rose the next day as he was headed down the grade and called the closest police department which was in Goldendale. The man who took the call was a wonderful man named Earl.He is the one who told me the first part of this story.Later he and I were business partners and friends until his death in '99. When they went to investigate they found Arnold,very much dead, and a diaper bag. Looking around in the sagebrush ,just in case, Earl spotted two coyotes down the hill with something colorful between them. As he approached the animals just sat there until he was almost on top of them.They walked slowly away but only an unusually short distance. He said the frost was thick around the spot except where the cradle board lay with two coyote sized clear spots up against where Anna was resting peacefully. she was completely unharmed. As Arnold's family had been searching for him Earl soon reunited Anna with her grandmother. Her mother was never heard from again for whatever reason.I don't know about that situation.

[doodlebug]

I moved to Washington in Feb.1976 from Kentucky. Fall of '77 Earl was taking me for my first trip to the Columbia for salmon season when we passed that spot and he told me about the little Indian girl that lived through an incredible ordeal and was taken care of by coyotes on a freezing winters night. We stopped in around Celilo so he could show me the different techniques of fishing which is very interesting if you've never seen them. You have hoop netters, gill netters and dip nets. Dip nets are on long poles and in certain reaches it is dangerous and the men often tie off something on shore in case they fall in.
anyway, while looking around we noticed ,away from the crowd,a little girl sitting beside a man that appeared to be asleep and he was tied with a rope around his waist to a large rock behind him. The little girl was smoking a cigarette and just sorta looking around. While we're watching the man sat up suddenly and tried to stand. She gave the rope a jerk and he sat back down real hard. He turned to look at her and then lay back and was out again. Earl asked a man there what was the deal with the kid down by the water with the man with the rope around him. The guy said"oh that's just Speelyia Watches looking after her Uncle. He's drunk and she comes with him any time he fishes and shes gonna smoke all his cigarettes."

[mmhmm]

What a lovely story, doodles. Not the first I've read of supposedly wild animals watching over a helpless baby human. Perhaps, there's a recognition of helplessness and need. Who really knows? What's important, I guess, is that the baby girl lived and you were fortunate enough to meet someone who knew the story first-hand. It meant enough to you that you've remembered it. That's how the important stuff gets passed on.

[doodlebug]

I decided to walk over there and have a look for myself and just check the situation as to me it really looked like a dangerous scene for a kid. As soon as I started in her direction she fixed her eyes on me and never took them off.I felt weird.self conscience I guess. When I got close enough she spoke."wanna buy a fish?" She had two nice salmon laying on the rocks beside her.She had already eaten the eyes.Kids that are raised on the river like them as much as candy. I never tried them. I didn't want to buy a fish but for some reason I said yes and how much?" Ten bucks for you" I asked "each?" She said "you pay ten each or ten for both if you help me get this old guy home.We live just across the highway.You do have a car,right?" I said yes and agreed to help. Earl wasn't found of the idea and told me so. For one thing it was illegal to buy the fish and for the other "you don't mess with Indian doings."

[doodlebug]

Nevertheless we helped her get her Uncle home and I got to meet her Grandma who treated me to my very first fry bread and huckleberry jam and very strong coffee. Anna played with a cat while we sat on an overturned boat in the yard and talked. She found my southern accent funny and when that lady smiled it warmed you all the way to your insides. Over the years I visited with Rose many times.She told me the word Speelya was their word for coyote. She told us a story about her being watched over by coyotes and Earl told her about being among the people that found her and they had a good visit about other people I didn't know but that they knew in common. She said Anna preferred her first(birth) name.
AS we were getting ready to leave Rose said I shouldn't worry about "that kid". She knew how to live and was "very much headed on a way to being something." Then she said the cat Anna was playing with had been hit on the road just two days ago. It belonged to neighbors.They had pulled the cat off the road,examined it and threw it into the ditch. Rose watched Anna go out and get it and brought it to the porch. There was blood coming from its nose and some of it's guts were coming from it's rear end and it had "crossed over" Anna stroked the cats body very gently and sang a song over and over ,getting louder and louder. At last the cat jumped up and ran int the woods behind the house. The next morning Rose found Anna and the cat sitting together under some fish nets stretched over and old fence. The cat seemed perfectly fine."that is how I can see she will be something."
I left there kinda freaked out and wondering if I was being messed with. Earl just laughed it off.

[doodlebug]

It would be another few years before I ran into Anna again and it was in Montana.things got on a personal level at that meeting.

[doodlebug]

Hi mmhmm!! I will finish this when I've rested and checked a date with my ex in the morning. I hope you're well and feeling great!!

[toomuchreality]

Nice story! I want to know/read more. I hope you will share more of it with us!

[GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl]

Add me to the list of folks who want to read more. Anna certainly had an interesting start to life and I want to know how it is turning out for her.

On a related note, I am not Native Americans, nor do I profess to know a great deal about Native Americans, but what I have read and heard tells me that they are very attached and connected to the Earth and nature. I believe animals are far more intelligent that we give them credit for and in ways we don't necessarily appreciate. I am sure the coyotes recognized the child as an Native American child and, so, took such good care of her.

So, please doodle, share more of the story with us.

[doodlebug]

In 1983 several things happened that sent me on a two week camping trip to the Bitteroot Valley of Montana. two were books. L.V.McHorters book"hear me my chiefs" about the Nez Perce Indian war was one.I wanted to follow the "lolo Trail" and view the battle grounds that are scattered over the pass and down the bitteroot river valley over to the "Big Hole" battle sight. The second was a book by Bennett H. Stein"Tough Trip Through Paradise" about Andrew Gracia,an early settler in Montana. The book was written from Garcia's journals.The book covered a year of Garcia's life and in the forward Stein says that he has boxes of loose leaf papers and that they were hard to read,blah,blah,blah.I intended,after trying repeatedly to contact Stein, to go to University of Montana and do some research.That turned into another story all together.
thirdly ,my hunting buddy had moved over there and had property right on the river where we could "base camp" from.So, my wife and 4 of our kids packed the suburban with gear and headed out.We left the two youngest(my step kids) with their Dad.
My buddy's wife worked at the Conner Job Corp facility over there. As soon as we got there she was talking to me about a young Indian girl at the facility she wanted me to meet. Said everyone called her Coyote but her name was Anna.This girl had started a mini"revival" of traditional Indian religion among the other Indian kids there and Lori had helped her set up a sweat lodge on the river and had been in the lodge with her a couple of times. Lori knew I was involved with Indians back home and enjoyed a good sweat. Her husband and I had been in the lodges together over in the Yakima Valley as well.
the second day we were there we had a plan to visit the center where the kids were going to play basketball in the gym,come back by the hot springs for a dip and end up on Crazy Creek for some great trout fishing. Lori had planned on getting me together with Anna just for a talk if Anna consented. Lori , filled me in on a little history first.
Anna had joined up with some older guys in the "Radical"American Indian Movement(A.I.M.) and moved to White Swan out on the Yakima reservation. She ended up,to make a long story short,getting arrested for the bombing of a white guys place who was known to be unusually abusive to Indian women. Mostly drinking women who were in the bars in Toppenish and Wapato. between her social worker and public pretender she had worked a deal,maybe her age helped,to enter Job Corp and if she completed a training program she would have all charges against her dropped and taken off her record. She chose Conner mostly to get away from other people she knew.The course she chose was Masonry,of all things. She told me she thought that it would keep her outside more and would build her muscles.( she DID complete the course but as far as I know never used the knowledge)
Lori said Anna spent any free time she could in the fields and hills mostly singing and studying plants.She seemed to have a way with critters and had on several occasions made sick or injured animals well. She shared a lot of plant knowledge with Lori and Lori taught her some that she knew. She was also known to break up fights between kids and did it by staring at them but speaking very little.
The kids got busy in the gym with their game and I sat in the bleachers waiting to see if Anna showed up. After a while she came walking in the gym,saw me,waved for me to come with her and I joined her on the lawn.incredibly,at least to me,she hugged me very warmly and laughed. She said I expected you last week.( and I HAD intended to go the week before but had to change plans because of an illness in my family)No one knew about that but my wife and I. Then she smiled and told me my dog was fine. Some one had taken him but he escaped and would be home when I got back.now THAT blew me away.My dog had gone missing a good 8 days before we left and I had given him up for dead. He was a beautiful Queensland Blue Healer. All I could do was sit there wondering what Blue would eat till I got home. Then I thought" this is nuts. How could she know?"
For the next two hours Anna took me through her life from the point we last saw each other to present. She talked slow and deliberate. I had to admit to her I couldn't believe she remembered me at all and that I had seen Rose twice in those years since. She told me "i don't forget things because I store them properly"(i don't know what she meant to this day).that afternoon she invited me to sweat with her and the others on Saturday and bring my family if I want."It is a big lodge" she said. I told her I'd love that and we planned for Saturday.

[doodlebug]

On Saturday the kids and my pard,Denny,went fishing at Lake Como while Lori,my wife and I headed out to Job Corp property for the sweat. The wife borrowed a long dress to wear from Lori and extra towels and some blankets. (At this point I'd like to say,for the record,that it is NOT proper to do a lodge ceremony nude in mixed company no matter what some new ager tells you. For one, it isn't sanitary and for another some one is just wanting to look at your body. enough said.Also if some one wants to charge you for doing a sweat, steer clear. That is just not right and leads to deaths and other problems in sweat lodges.)
The fire was going when we arrived and I found it confusing that there were so few rocks on the fire. At the side of the fire were four rocks of the four sacred colors. These were naturally colored and yet all "volcanic" rocks full of holes. When we walked up Anna smiled and hugged both women and then took a pitchfork and sat the four rocks along side the other rocks in the fire. "There,those are a gift from the Spirits at medicine Tree". I was familiar with the Medicine tree as it stood across the road from Denny's house. ( in the mid 90's a semi-truck ran into this tree and knocked the mighty Ponderosa pine to the ground.)Indians passing through this area had stopped here to pray and leave gifts for many many years. It usually had items hanging from it and often bundles of prize ribbons won at pow wow dance competitions. I've seen bus loads of travelers going to events stop there to place gifts on their way through and stop again on the return trip to leave Thank You gifts.The tree spoke to me once and I almost had a heart attack. today they've marked another tree to take its place.
While the rocks heated we sat and everyone sang some songs from their respective tribes and talked about one thing or another. By the time we entered the lodge I felt comfortable with the group who were going to be inside with us. A young man was chosen to "pour" the sweat and another to be fire tender.The tender would pass the rocks in through the door with a pitch fork and the "pour" would place them in the hole in the lodge using deer antlers. When everyone was seated and the first rocks were passed in and the flap closed, prayers were said by anyone who had a reason around the circle and some sang songs. After the prayers were done the young man poured the first water on the rocks and the steam rose and so did the temperature. I always liked the hissing or singing of the rocks. Sometimes it can get intense.Once the glow is off the rocks it is total darkness inside.The minute the darkness closed in a Coyote began to sing up on the hillside above us.Everyone seemed to expect that and they kinda giggled like it was an inside joke or something. Then I hear Anna's voice sing back ,sounding exactly like the Coyote. Again everyone laughed and then they all settled back in silence. after about 30 minutes the flap was opened and the pour guy asked if any one wanted to go out. No one did and the fireman passed another two rocks in.I've never before, nor since, experienced a lodge getting that hot so quick or with so few rocks. On the third set of rocks I thought maybe I had had enough heat for one night and started to go out for air when the door was raised. Anna spoke across the fire and asked if I couldn't wait."Her rocks were coming in." I settled back down and the four rocks were passed in. After the door was closed again she began a song and two or three others joined her all keeping a beat by lightly pounding on the ground. outside the lodge others that were cooling in the air ,some having dipped in the river already, joined the song too. At first the rocks glowed white as others do but when the water was poured they all shown their vivid red,yellow,black and white like they were lit up by lights inside them.They stayed that way for a while then dimmed as the song died away. When everyone was quiet I could hear drumming way off in the mountains.Looking into the darkness at the place Anna should be ,slowly the form of a giant Coyote appeared but I felt very comfortable. It seemed too large to even be inside the lodge. The eyes were deep green and gave you a loving feeling like my grandmothers eyes. I woke up outside by the river with a blanket over my body and Anna looking down at me. She was all one big grin.behind her my wife sat with a worried look on her face. All I could do was smile back and I winked at the wife. She relaxed. Anna whispered some words I didn't understand and then said "all my relations. You will remember when you should."
Before leaving Montana I visited with Anna two more times and had some very interesting conversation. When we parted she called me Uncle and said we'd see each other later.

[doodlebug]

AH,coffee. I love you.

[NancysSummerSip]

What a wonderful saga, doodlebug. I can almost hear you tell it in your own voice, unwinding the story's folds and layers.

[doodlebug]

Summer of '83 Anna was 16 and I had turned 30 in Jan. I had been raising kids since right after I turned 18 having married at 17. So,though I was young I did have some life under my belt. Looking back I realize now this was a turning point in a lot of my thinking. I also began to mysteriously meet more Indians and started hanging out on the reservation more and more. Sometimes I would visit and others I would just watch hawks. There were Red Tailed."split tailed",Sparrow hawks, Swampies, Owl hawks and great horned owls. Sometimes Eagles and many times I'd study the ever patient Herons.

[doodlebug]

I learned that communication with critters isn't really a hard thing nor does it take any magic. Peoples big problem is wanting everyone to speak human language. That isn't normal for them so you have to learn their communication style. you also learn to see their world instead of yours. You become a part of the picture as opposed to just being in it. Some of them see much farther and some hear much better. Some know when weather is coming to change and even the severity of the winters. Using these types of gifts from each other is a secret to life. Like every one having each others back. There are clans of predators and groups that are prey. It isn't Disney world but the more you watch the more you see it all being a part of the everything of life. You see all of us in a family ,born of the same Mom. I began to have more compassion and less sarcasm toward human beings. Often I would find myself witnessing a scene and just breaking down like a little girl and sobbing. This was ,at first, a bit strange to a guy who tried all his life to be tough as the other construction workers I was around.

[doodlebug]

1986 was the year of the unexplainable. Up to now I had seen some things I couldn't particularly explain yet they remained in my own realm of what is real.(to me I guess I should say.) The fall run of Chinook salmon was on and I had asked Rose to call me when there was fish I could get for smoking and canning. I would bring jars and salt and some apple wood from my place to hers. We could work the fish together,have a good visit and split the fish with who ever showed up to work on it and bring fish. When I got the call it was Anna on the phone making the arrangements. I was happy to hear her voice and told her we could catch up when I got over there.My wife and I and my oldest son arrived early Saturday morning and we got right to work. Besides Rose and Anna there was another young lady with a couple of very young children and her uncle. The lady, I'll call her Doris, was a skinny little thing and obviously had been through either a beating or a car wreck in the last few days. Anna noticed me looking at her "too long to be polite" and sorta raised her eyebrow at me but then smiled softly. I could hear her telling me inside that she would explain later. clear as day. We made good progress with the fish. Some we cut for the brine and some we canned with just canning salt,unsmoked. When it was just getting dark a van rolled into the front yard and shut off the engine. Rose looked out through the curtains and then turned around with trouble written all over her face.

[doodlebug]

"It's Frank." was all Rose said as she hustled the kids and my wife into the back room and shut the door.I could hear the sound of furniture being jammed against the door followed by the unmistakable sound of a pump shotgun being worked. Anna walked over to me and said hold still. She quickly tied my hair in braids in front of me as is the style of the washat men(the Dreamer religion). then she pulled a red lipstick from her pocket and made a mark on the back of my neck and one on my forehead. She said,"please Uncle, do as I ask." I was already kinda freaked out but said I would. She said "go stand on the porch,keep your gotdamned Irish down and don't say or do anything. I'm still sorta nodding when she gives me a push and says"get." I walked out the door into the headlights of the van and stood there trying to act relaxed. I lit a smoke. Frank is standing behind the lights and I couldn't really see what he was doing. My gut was telling me to either just go back inside or step over to my rig and get my .38 out from under the dash. My brain was telling me to trust Anna because these are her people and she knew best. Either way I thought for a minute I was going to throw up. Frank started yelling then, telling Doris to get her ass outside and bring his ------kids. Anna and Doris walked outside and Anna told Frank to turn out the headlights before he ran the battery down. She said it rather softly and calm like. Frank did as she asked but when he stood up out of the rig and shut the door he was holding a big .45 auto pistol and headed towards the women. Anna raised her hand and held it like a traffic cop saying stop Frank. He did stop and I could see him weighing some kind of odds in his head. "I'm done with this " he hollered. "those are my kids and they're going with me!" Anna took a step towards him and said"Even if they were yours,you're too drunk to be having kids with you when you crash. We are not allowing this. Go home,Frank."Frank started to speak again but Anna just interrupted with"I've asked you nicely ,cousin." Frank looked down for a minute then fixed his eyes on Doris,raised the pistol and fired twice. Anna's hand flew in front of Doris when Frank raised the weapon and when he lowered the gun Anna was holding her hand outstretched in front of her with two bullets in her palm. I could see her eyes reflecting in the windshield and it was frightening.Frank shook his head and raised the gun again but before he could get it level Anna threw the two bullets at him. One passed all the way through his shoulder and then other took a chunk out of his upper arm. She then stomped over to Frank and said,"are we done Frank?" There is blood spurting out of Frank and all he could say was "help me,Anna." She pushed him into the van through the side door and hopped up in the drivers seat and says"Be back." Off she drove towards Goldendale. Law requires bullet wounds to be investigated. When the law asked Frank who shot him he said it was a drive by and he didn't know.They had never heard of a "drive by" happening in this area.

[doodlebug]

After she left with Frank I went back inside and told Rose it was ok to come out now. They moved the blockade and opened the door. My wife was standing there with a kid in her left arm and a 12 gauge shotgun in her right hand. Rose was smiling. It struck me odd and I asked her "while the smile?" She said"no one died,my friend." "lets eat. the kids are hungry."
about 4 in the morning the front door opened to me laying on the floor under a blanket covered with dogs ,a cat and some ones pet raccoon. A huge raccoon at that. Anna comes in helping Frank along and says "let's fix the couch up for Frank"I was not awake but I was amazed. The memory I personally had was of Frank trying his best to kill some one. Now he was quiet and meek and sore and looked like a lost puppy who got his tail cut off by a train.Rose came out of her room and started fixing coffee and heating a skillet on her wood stove. I'm still confused. Anna looked at me and says "I need a smoke." She motioned for me to follow and we walked out into the fall air. I handed her my zippo and sat on a box.I looked up at her and said"how the hell did you do that?" She smiled at me and said "I didn't.Spirit works in very strange ways I've found." We are tools if we are willing to be.That is all I know." I then asked about the braiding and the lipstick marks. She started chuckling and her eyes watered. She said"Me and Frank had a good laugh over that.He ,even drunk,saw through that bluff. I was hoping he'd take you for a visiting holy man but he said he "never saw any injun with as long of a beard as that so I ignored him. But nice try." The marks though were there in case. The one on my forehead protected me from harm from weapons and the one on the back of my neck would make me invisible in case I had to run.
Anna then got quieter as she told me Frank had been "sick" for a little over two weeks. But,he's gonna be fine now.art least for a while. Doris was already checking his bandages and treating him as if he was the best husband a woman could have. "This is how it is. This is family.This is all we have left. Perhaps tomorrow I will be a mean spirited but on Tuesday I am well minded. We forgive.It is our gift to each other."
I left there with three cases of nice fish and an amazing look inside the world of the modern day Indian.
"

[doodlebug]

It was only a few months before I talked to Anna again. She called me from Warm Springs ,down in Oregon. She had been in a wreck with five other people in a van. They were hit head on by a two ton farm truck hauling sheep. Anna and a two year old child were the only survivors. She was in the Rez clinic and they were trying to get her to take an ambulance ride to the hospital. She insisted on not going and the local people weren't going to disrespect her wishes. All she wanted was for me to come get her and take her to Celilo. She wasn't all that far from there and a whole lot closer than I was to her from the Yakima Valley. I tried to think of someone closer to her that I knew and trusted as I was in the middle of an important job and really needed to get it done so I could get paid and pay some bills. My mind was completely blank and after a pause Anna laughs a tired laugh and said,"just come get me before some one gets me to a damn white witch doctor who you know will kill me. Even if it is a mistake,again,I'll still be dead and you won't have anyone to skin you an elk." I couldn't argue with reason though it made NO sense to me a day later. We took the kids to my sisters house and the wife and I drove to Warm Springs. I found her in the clinic barely awake. Both eyes were black but she was reclined in a chair with an old red and gray cotton blanket around her. The nurse complained that she wouldn't let anyone look under her blanket and she wouldn't let them pick the glass out of her upper arm which was just a mess. Anna said something to the effect of let's get out of here, I need a Pepsi. She stood up then like she was spring loaded but I could see the pain in her face. We set her down in a wheel chair and told her to enjoy the ride and we pushed her out to the curb. She looked at the nurse watching us and told her she was a real attraction for worry and she should go and talk to the old women before she made a small person grow inside her guts
I was glad when we pulled out and got back on the road. Less than a half mile away from the clinic Anna suddenly let out a scream and proceeded to cuss a blue streak. A moment later she was quiet.It scared me so bad I stopped and got out to look her over. When I opened her door she looked up and asked me if we were going home or had I planned to camp right here. If an Indians vote counted here she was for home. I shut the door and we drove to Rose's place.

[doodlebug]

the trip down the Columbia was a long one. It wasn't so far in miles but in" feeling" it was simply torture to me. Anna was apparently asleep in the back. I knew she was alive because of the groaning every now and then. I gave up and turned the driving over to the wife about 40 miles away from Rose's place. I drank coffee from the thermos and smoked enough cigarettes to choke anyone. At one point the wife said" you know,we should probably drive her into Hood River to the hospital.I think this is just crazy." I thought for a moment and closed my eyes.then I told her "I'd rather saw my hand off with a rusty knife." The wife said" So, you're undecided then?" and laughed.
When we pulled off the road into the yard there was little room. Several rigs were there and the porch was crowded with people.It was bitter cold outside and as we stepped out of the Suburban I noticed the Northern Lights were visible running from the Northern sky all the way over to the east. That shook me more than anything had so far. The Native people up here and all the way through Canada and into Alaska call the lights "Spirit Bridge". I had to try hard to put death out of my mind as we helped Anna inside. The house was busy. Rose was in the kitchen with a couple of younger ladies boiling water in one of the large fish kettles and grinding some herbs in an old burl bowl. Rose pointed to her room and said"In there."
Rose room smelled of disinfectant and sage. The bed was turned down with fresh sheets on it and a small table was scootched up beside it. One of the young ladies came in and told my wife to not let her lay down until they got her undressed and shooed me from the room. I went to my rig and pulled on a down vest and my carhart jacket and joined the people of the porch.I recognized "little" Jim Bacon. and spoke to him.It's damn cold ,Jim." Jim nodded and said "o.k." and walked off.Over his shoulder he said "I'll start a fire." Soon we had a fire in the pit out back and the crowd pulled up stumps and wooden boxes to sit on. Two hours after we had arrived, a van marked Warm Springs Elders Program pulled in to the yard. Four elderly women were ushered out of the van and into the house by four younger women. The man who drove them joined the fire.

[doodlebug]

It was still dark when the wife came to the fire and told me they needed me to move something. She hooked her arm in mine and sorta herded me into the kitchen.There one of Anna's young cousins, Marybeth, stood wrapped in Rose's black shawl, a huge cedar hat on her head and her eyes on the floor. On the table was a large trough shaped wooden feast bowl with a pile of canned deer meat,a pile of canned salmon ,some huckleberry jam and a pack of camels.Around the outside it was surrounded by pennies and an antique copper necklace that I knew was a family heirloom that belonged to Rose. The young lady held out a cigarette to me and asked politely if I would take her across the highway to the fish scaffolds. I accepted the gift and picked up the huge tray and headed to the door.As we stepped out onto the porch we were joined by another cousin, named Mike. "I'm suppose to go." The Warm Springs van was parked behind me so Mike went to the fire to get the driver. When he came up he said he would drive us over and I accepted.
I tried to strike up some sort of conversation but Marybeth just looked at the floor and said "I am concentrating ,Uncle.I don't want to forget." So I shut up. At the scaffolds we got out and she pointed to the bowl. I picked it up and followed her. She was singing low and soft a song I'd heard before in ceremonies though I couldn't tell you what the words meant. Every seven steps she would stop, turn to the four directions and the start again until we had done this four times. There she asked me to set the tray on the ground. She handed the necklace to Mike .He walked to the waters edge and threw it as far as he could out into the Columbia,saying "all my relations." Then she took the pennies and scattered them all around. next she opened the pack of camels and set one at each direction saying again "All my relations." the bowl was then carried to the water and set adrift .the Spirit Bridge was fading as we got back to the house.

[doodlebug]

when we pulled into the yard the wife was sitting in our rig with the motor running and the heater on.I got in and she immediately started bawling.I just waited,She finally blew her nose and looked at me and said"Rose crossed over." I remember saying"what? You mean Anna?" "no,Rose."she replied.I left her sitting there and walked to the house with my mind spinning around stories of Roses life. At the door some lady turned me away with"those women are dressing some ones body.You'll have to wait."
Back at the rig the wife filled me in. Rose had dug her grandmothers elk hide dress from her trunk,got the girls to help her dress.She walked into the living room and announced to the Warm Springs ladies"Memaloose is calling my young one but I made a trade." then she sat down in her recliner and died.Memaloose is "the island of the dead", an island that has been a traditional burial place for generations out in the middle of the Columbia.
I knew Anna would live.

[beags]

I'm confused, but the story was good.

[doodlebug]

good morning Beagsy! I'm sorry you're confused.Perhaps I'm not clear? what has you confused?

[doodlebug]

Rose was born in the late 1890's. She lived wild and free for 9 years. the Agency at Fort Simcoe was determined to get all kids in school and hunted them like animals. She was finally caught while hiding in rolled up tulle mats at her uncles place on Rock Creek inside his lodge made of poles and heavy pillow ticking. She spent the first few months in and out of a state of being chained to her bed in the dormitory. If you got caught speaking your language,or Chinook,or sign you were punished. She could never understand how to make the transition to English if it couldn't be translated by some one else. She did learn to read and write well and recorded legends that she collected in her early years. Picking hops and cutting beets she met people from other tribes that traveled with the harvests and enjoyed hearing legends that were the same,with small differences to her own. She liked the story of Noah because her people have a similar legend where only the mountain peaks were left dry.She thought Jesus was kin to Coyote and surely one of Creators sons("because aren't we all from Creator born from our mother?" and she would point to the ground with one hand and the sky with the other.)as when his own crazy white people killed him, he tricked them and came back to life. She said,"I wouldn't tangle with a man like that!"
close as I can figure she married at 15, had a total of four kids,two grandkids. Gus died in Viet Nam,Arnold died on the road,her daughter Celia was taken by cancer at 31 and her son Robert was a mostly worthless drunk. He is the man with Anna when I first met her.I'm pretty sure she was close to 95 when she crossed over. She looked 70ish and acted 50. Her pronunciation of words was often like you would read them by the sounds of the letters. Eagle was the funniest to me and to this day, my self and my children pronounce it the same from habit. ee-AG-uhl.
She always said she felt sorry for "those people over by where Columbus landed.they sure made a mistake in not sending him packin' to where he come from. That is their shame."
Rose could find humor in almost everything and liked to act shy when you knew better.It was a joke with her.
She was buried traditional, wrapped in four white deer skins and covered with a nice Pendleton blanket in her cedar coffin all packed in sage. Some men made the box from hand split cedar siding boards they removed from her basket working shed. A quiet burial was done on private property close to Milk Creek. She was placed facing the rising sun and overlooking the big River.

[Jaguar]

Namaste doodlebug, This saga of Anna is so beautiful. I'm feeling this tapestry, this weaving as the saga progresses. Jai Sat Chit Anand.

[NancysSummerSip]

Amazing story. A floating cloud of a saga, doodlebug. Just wonderful. So glad you shared it.

[toomuchreality]

doodlebug, you have serious talent! Ü