Following Traces and Imprints

What I long for most these busy December days is the horizon of Dakota skies at sunset when the sun’s dying blaze meets the dark edge of the earth. As the sun travels through veils of thin clouds, a cool dim palette of blue peaks through. These days from Advent to Epiphany are my spiritual journey through the color blue and the horizon of Dakota. Twilight comes already at 4:50 p.m., the sun setting on the evening of a busy day. The hours of daylight recede each day by a minute or two until we close in on the winter solstice. After the celebration of the solstice, the sun will become stronger, adding a few precious minutes to each day. But that length of day and moments of light are barely enough to sustain Dakotans through the brutal winds and chill of January.

We burn candles and decorate our houses with strings of lights to ward off the darkness. Though the lights shine, the darkness does not go away. While the sky’s darkness seems overwhelming, the starlit constellations and planets ablaze in the night sky remind me that change will arrive soon enough in the spring.

The blues of winter night skies beckon me into their starry paths. I wonder where I’d end up if I followed them. These cosmic skies point out my human insignificance. Whether we have used massive telescopes or our naked eye, we have learned about our place in the cosmos from observing these skies. For at least 2000 years, Lakota elders studied the nighttime sky, following the patterns of the constellations. Lakota elders reminded tribal members that whatever is done in heaven is accomplished on earth. The Lakota believe they come from and return to the stars, following their final path along the Milky Way.

Mountain skies and frigid nights remind me of growing up in Montana. My father was an air traffic controller and he used the markings on the land to orient him to the skies. When my parents and I would drive from Bozeman to Belgrade, the beacon at the airport would sweep the skies like a blazing flame. I’d watch the beacon’s luminous arc wax and wane as it spun, in careful revolutions against the outline of the Bridger Mountains. On a rare arctic night, my dad would get permission and we’d drive down the runway late at night to look for jackrabbits. With our headlights on dim, we would creep down the runway and wait for the long ears and large hind legs to appear, only to dart away into the nightfall.

Advent blue, like the midwinter sky, brings promises of something new. Given our current, fractious political situation, hope seems dark, cold, and lost for so many people whose lives are shattered. Advent: where earth meets sky, and spirit becomes flesh.

Christmas and Slaughter of the Holy Innocents

On August 21, 2017, the contiguous United States was in the path of a total eclipse. This experience of celestial darkness and light brought our fractious country into a moment of unity as we all watched together. My husband and I were returning from  two weeks in British Columbia and Montana to enjoy our last three days of vacation in the Black Hills. We considered driving to a site where the coverage of the eclipse was 100% but we didn’t want to deal with crowds. So, we decided to go to the most southern and western point in South Dakota where the eclipse would be at about 98% coverage. We headed to Oelrichs, South Dakota, a town so small that you have to really look to see if it exists as you drive by it on the highway. Originally, the town was the site of a meat packing business in the late 1800s, run by Henry Oelrichs, a local cattleman. But another site in Hot Springs became more prominent and Oelrichs faded to its current size of approximately 125. According to Wikipedia, its population is approximately 80% white and 20% Native American.

When we reach the intersections of Highways 18, 79, and 385, we knew we had arrived. As we turned onto the road leading into town, we drove past old storefronts and houses that were once painted white, were now worn down to a brittle gray. Spiny, crooked bur oaks cast their shadows in the mid afternoon sun. We kept our eyes open for the Office Bar and Grill where we had decided to settle in to watch the eclipse.

We joined the lineup of about 10 people gathered on the lone picnic table and benches in front of the Office. Not too far from Oelrichs, is the historical site of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I sat down next to a Lakota woman who was speaking about the origins of her people, that they came from the stars of the Milky Way, and how spiritual this event of the eclipse was to her. The woman’s husband, a big-boned, older white man sitting in a red lawn chair, kept laughing about those Indian “tales” and told her that he’d rather be watching the eclipse on the television at home.

Other people, at least as old as us and some a good twenty years older, stood outside, sharing eclipse glasses and smoking cigarettes. We all talked about the way the air turned cooler, how the skies turned an eerie yellow-gray, and how suddenly it was over. We got in our car and headed north.

Traditionally, the Lakota, along with other Native Americans, studied the stars and celestial events to learn about the rhythms and patterns of their life and to find their place in the world. They did so with “naked eye” observations, without fancy astronomical tools. They knew the difference between Star Day and Sun Day, and saw the Milky Way as a path to their return to the skies when they died. The star world provided the big picture of their smaller world on earth.

I remember the line of the Lord’s Prayer where I learned to say: “On earth as in heaven.” The Lakota received spiritual and soulful wisdom from the stars, not unlike wise men who came to visit Jesus in Bethlehem. During this month of December, when I returned to read the story of Jesus’ birth, the visit of the Magi and the massacre of the Holy Innocents, I hear and see parts of the story now in a completely different light now that I have been to Oelrichs for the eclipse. The Lakota elders would have understood those three wise men who came to find the star at Bethlehem as beacons of celestial grace and wisdom: “On earth as it is in heaven.”

My experience of the eclipse, a powerful celestial event, helps me to see in new and startling ways the power of the Christian Christmas stories. So many people cherish the myth we have made from the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke: angels sing, shepherds visit, Jesus is placed in a manger, and for those of us in northern climates we add some gently falling snow. But the story of Christmas in Matthew’s gospel is different: it’s harsher, more chilling, like those blue and white lights on Christmas trees. Angels come with strange messages to Joseph in the deep dark of his dreams. Wise men follow a single star, bringing extravagant and strange gifts for the baby Jesus. The menacing monarch, King Herod, upon hearing about the birth of Jesus, orders the slaughter of all the two year old and younger males in the region. Joseph, Mary and Jesus escape his edict by fleeing as refugees into Egypt. The Magi, who like Joseph warned in a dream, return to their home by another way. Nocturnal warnings, strangers with odd gifts, massacres of tiny children and hasty flights into another country–this is the story of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew.

On December 28 in the Western Church and on December 29 in the East, the Church remembers the massacre of the holy innocents and the wailing of their mothers. Coincidentally, at this same time of remembrance, a massacre happened at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The US Government had sent troops to squelch the last Indian uprisings on the plains. A small band of Lakota were camped in the frigid snows and winds near Wounded Knee Creek. When the troops came to disarm them, a deaf Indian accidentally shot off his gun and the troops fired back killing at least 151 people, mostly women and children. Others put the count closer to 300 dead. It happened on December 29, 1890.

Soldiers pursued women and children at least two miles in the cold snow before shooting them at point blank range. The US military awarded medals to soldiers for their “bravery.” Four infants survived the massacre. One had been covered by the corpse of her frozen mother. She was eventually adopted as a “souvenir” by one of the officers and named Lost Bird. The infant’s legacy is marked by a small highway marker in Sioux Falls, SD.

The soldiers hired civilians to bury the hundreds of bodies in one mass grave. Today, the site is a National Historic Landmark. The desolation of the massacre is mirrored in the landscape of the site: a small sign, a cemetery on the hillside, a few barren buildings. On December 29, I’ll light a candle in memory of the slaughter of all innocents. May its small, brief flame cast some hope into the darkness of the wintry Dakota skies.

Epiphany: January 6

Amos 5: 8 “The one who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name.”

By January 6, I will likely not notice the few extra minutes of daylight that will appear at sunrise and sunset. I will still be lighting candles and sitting by the fireside to ward off the chill of the midwinter. January can be an interminable month in Dakota, day after day of below zero temperatures and wind blown snow.

I stood outside a couple of frigid nights and would look for the bright three stars of Orion’s belt ablaze against the blackness of the Dakota skies. These three stars also known as the Three Kings or Three Sisters line up in a row as the belt of the hunter, Orion. They are brightest during the early part of January, around the time of Epiphany when the Three Magi visited the baby Jesus.

I forget that these Magi or Wise Men were outsiders, foreigners, and Gentiles. Yet, they are the first in the Gospel of Matthew to “pay homage” to Jesus, the Jewish infant. The star of Bethlehem draws together those who are most likely to be enemies into a moment of grace, peace, and light. If I have a prayer for Epiphany, it would be this: that the Creator of both light and dark will turn our enemies into friends, will shatter our fear with love, and turn our darkness into light.

On a hazy summer morning, Sheila and I drive 30 miles to the east end of Canton, South Dakota to see a fence. The fence in the distance holds one of South Dakota’s most painful secrets. Located between the fourth and fifth holes of the Hiawatha Golf Course, the fence surrounds a cemetery where 121 Native Americans are buried who were held at the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians. The only memorial is a large granite stone with a bronze plaque naming the individuals. The Indian Office decided that individual grave markers were too expensive.

The grounds of the asylum are now home to the Hiawatha Golf Course, a gun club, and a 4-H fairground. The cemetery is very close to Sioux Falls where I live. To get to the cemetery, Sheila and I borrow a cart from the local golf shop. We head out on a paved path, past the first hole, and over a little bridge. Then straight up the hill when we finally see the worn, weathered split rail fence in the distance, we pull over.  Signs warn the golfers not to play within the boundary of the fence. Black, red, white, and yellow strips of ribbon blow in the summer breeze. Each ribbon on the fence is left by tribal members to remember and honor their ancestors. The ribbons mark the four directions.

The Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians opened in 1903 and closed its doors in 1934. Some current researchers call the asylum the “little Dachau” of the Dakotas. The large brick building, with pointed roofs, a grand front porch, and a swing set on the front lawn, appears hospitable at first glance. But reservation agents once shipped hundreds of Indians from reservations to the asylum and warehoused them within its walls. Many inmates never saw their family members again.

The asylum’s first director had no medical background and in 1929 when the US government sent Dr. Samuel Silk to inspect conditions he filed a report:  “Three patients were found padlocked in rooms. One was sick in bed, supposed to be suffering from a brain tumor, being bedridden and helpless…a boy about 10 years of age was in a strait jacket lying in his bed…one patient who had been in the hospital six years was padlocked in a room and, according to the attendant, had been secluded in this room for nearly three years.”  Really, it was a prison, disguised as a hospital. It was a warehouse for the “crazy” Indians. However, few Indians were crazy; most were forced off the reservation and sent to Hiawatha because they were viewed as troublemakers by the Bureau of Indian Affairs agents.

Back in the early 1900s, railroad cars would stop at the great iron gate and fence so visitors could see the “crazy” Indians paraded in front of them. Approximately 374 Indians were brought to the Asylum; most could not communicate with each other because they couldn’t speak each other’s language. Women were strapped to beds, children neglected, and men left in their own filth. Chamber pots filled to the brim and were left in hallways to fester. When the asylum closed in 1934, the Canton Chamber of Commerce pleaded to keep it open because it provided revenue for the town.

I go to this spot two or three times a year. The juxtaposition of golf course with cemetery gives me the creeps. The US Government cared so little for these 121 inmates that they were buried en masse and never given proper funerals.

The proximity of the burial site only intensifies the horrors of its distant past. Would I have done anything differently than the residents of Canton did?  I come from Scandinavian ancestors who populated towns just like Canton, and I work at Augustana University where at least one of the buildings contains bricks from the original asylum. What would I have known about this place? Would I have heard the cries of those who came to find their relatives among the inmates?

Sheila and I walk around the faint outlines of plots where individuals were buried. Crosses made from simple branches strapped together with twine mark two of the graves. The deaths of these people are not shadows of a distant past. Family members visit every year to honor their loved ones. They are reminders to me of the present–of feeling the horrible dissonance of walking around a cemetery located on a golf course. We watch someone tee off. We take a few more pictures and decide to return to the clubhouse.

The fence recedes from our view as we drive away in our borrowed golf cart. The fairways are bone dry; we need rain to bring life back to the brown, brittle grasses. The house of the asylum’s superintendent has been moved and renamed the Newton Hills Lodge in Newton Hills State Park. It can be rented for large gatherings. Nothing but the cemetery remains to remind people what happened.

Listen to Confluences, by Gary Pederson, joining the sounds of Native American flute and the harmonica in both harmonious and dissonant ways.  It is based on the Hiawatha Cemetery painting and uses folk and hymn tunes to evoke both comfort and distress.

“Loss is a cousin of loneliness,” Olivia Laing. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

My mother and Lost Bird, a Lakota woman who died at the age of 29, share at least one thing in common. Both have lived at All Saints, the Sioux quartzite building in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Touchmark Corporation has transformed the old Episcopalian school into a senior citizen retirement community. My mother, who is 95 years old and suffers from dementia, resided in the locked memory care unit at Touchmark at All Saints.

The four-story pink quartzite building sits atop a small hill overlooking downtown Sioux Falls. White settlers quarried the stone to build several buildings that are on the National Historic Register. In 1884, the Episcopalian Bishop William Hobart Hare founded the All Saints School. The building, styled in Prairie Gothic, still has the original Tiffany stained glass chapel windows.

The All Saints grounds slope gently down to 17th Street. Years ago, when I first walked around the building with my mother, we noticed a small metal sign at the bottom of the hill. It commemorated the life of Lost Bird and points out the role she played in the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Born in the spring or summer of 1890, Lost Bird was the only surviving infant of the Massacre at Wounded Knee. On December 29, 1890, US Cavalry troops were sent to the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian reservation to disarm the Lakota. When an Indian’s gun went off, the army responded and shot men, women, and children. Reports vary but at least 150 to 300 Lakota were slaughtered and 51 were wounded. About fours days after the massacre, soldiers discovered the infant, covered by her mother’s frozen body. General Leonard Colby and Clara Bewick Colby, a famous suffragette, adopted the baby. The Lakota survivors of the massacre called her Zintkala Nuni, or Lost Bird. Eventually, General Leonard Colby abandoned Clara and Zintkala and began a long affair with the governess of Zintkala.

Zintkala lived in Washington DC with her mother most of her early years. When she was about 13 years old, her mother sold many of her belongings so she could send Zintkala to All Saints. Since she was once again one of the only Lakota children in the school, she missed her mother and wrote frequent, lengthy letters begging her mother to come and take her home. The historical marker says: “she did well in her first year but Colby failed to pay her tuition after that so she could not continue.” Clara Colby begged the General to pay her tuition, but he adamantly refused.

Not long after her time at All Saints, Lost Bird went to the Indian Training School at Chamberlain. While there were other Lakota students like herself, the living conditions became the subject of two federal investigations. At the age of 17, Zintkala was sent to live with her father and his second wife. Not long afterward, she was pregnant and General Colby sent Zintkala to the Milford Industrial Home Nebraska. Young girls were sentenced to at least a year in the “reformatory school” no matter when they gave birth to their child. If the young girls, like Zintkala were at all rebellious, they were disciplined. The superintendent sent them to the small attic room and confined the girls in leather straitjackets. Zintkala gave birth to a stillborn boy and remained at the institution for another year. General Colby refused to come and get her.

Lost Bird struggled her whole life to reconnect to her Lakota roots. She eventually married but suffered from the syphilis that her husband gave her. They moved to Hollywood and she played small parts in Vaudeville and in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. On February 14, Valentine’s Day, she died from the epidemic influenza virus. In 1990, her remains were ultimately returned to Wounded Knee, where she was buried atop the small hill overlooking the area of the massacre.

Many of the students’ memories from their school years at All Saints are preserved in one of the second-floor sitting rooms, in the chapel, and along the hallway walls. Photographs and various items line cabinets and dolls dressed in period clothings from the years when the school opened in 1885 to its closing in 1986. My mother moved to Touchmark in 2008, at the age of 85, after being diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. When she was 90, I took her on her last trip to Montana so she could hike in her home state that she loved so much.

She lived at Touchmark for almost 10 years, first in independent living, then assisted living, and most recently in memory care. Before she went there herself, she always avoided visiting friends who had moved to memory care. She told me that family members simply emptied the residents’ apartments, escorted them down the hall, sometimes willingly and other times not, dragging them, to the locked section.

Finally, my mother moved to memory care. I remember walking with from her assisted living apartment to the new room in the locked unit. As we crossed that threshold from what she thought was freedom into what she would call her prison, I felt like I had betrayed her. The freedom on the other side of the locked door, once her own apartment in assisted living, had become her bondage. Most of the time she couldn’t find her way back from dinner to her apartment, she got confused in the hallways, and she would call me 15-20 times a day, anxious and angry. I joked with a friend that I had PTPD: Post Traumatic Phone Disorder. I dreaded those calls so much that finally one day I shut the phone off and didn’t respond. It didn’t matter because she couldn’t remember that she had called. One day I received a call from the staff that she needed move to memory care for her own safety. After the move, she yelled at me and told me she was in prison. More often than not, I still feel sick at heart and deeply sad about the pain and loss she endures. However, I know that the staff take very good care of her. The locks on the door have provided some freedom for both of us.

My mother and Lost Bird have more than the building in common. Both have felt lost (and lonely). Lost Bird was caught between the white and Native cultures, my mother between her old self and her dementia self. Both were moved against their will and cared for by strangers. Both have felt betrayed by a dominant culture that has told them it has had their best interests at heart.

When my mother was still healthy and could find her way, she would walk the perimeter of Touchmark every evening. One time a little neighborhood boy stopped her and asked her if “they had let her out.” He was convinced that the people in that place on the hill were locked up and that my mother had escaped. She laughed when she told me that story.

Another time I went to a picnic in the new memory care section to celebrate its opening. The residents from the old memory care came to this section for the picnic. The staff provided  hot dogs, potato salad, and ice cream. I sat with four other women and my mother. She was restless and spent the whole lunch wondering why they had moved her again, where her room was, and if she had done something wrong since they had taken her to a new part of the building. After she had asked the same questions repeatedly, at least 5 times a minute, one of the other women from memory care said: “Stop worrying. None of us know where we are and we don’t worry about it.” Another woman laughed and said, “I have no idea where I am but I know the staff will take me back to my room.” My mother didn’t find the remarks amusing or comforting and she was eager to return to her familiar space; she couldn’t eat her lunch.

All Saints is not only the name of a building but also the name of the day in the Christian calendar that celebrates and remembers all the saints. This year on All Saints Day, I will commemorate and remember both Lost Bird and my mother, both patron saints of those who are lost and lonely. May they find their place in all the company of saints.

Listen to Confluences, by Gary Pederson, joining the sounds of Native American flute and the harmonica in both harmonious and dissonant ways.  It is based on the Hiawatha Cemetery painting and uses folk and hymn tunes to evoke both comfort and distress.