Chocolate And Chickens

Family History

8:44 AM

Have you ever read the book or watched the move BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE? The protagonist is a young Sioux man who was torn between two worlds and who did not belong in either world. Its a compelling and tragic story; the not only end of a way of life for an entire race of people, but of the young man as well. I know for a fact, he was not alone: there were many who walked between worlds, trying to find their way. My paternal great grandfather was Osage, and being torn between two worlds was his life as well.

I never really knew my biological father, George Schwarz, as he and my mother divorced when I was about 3 years old. I was lucky to enjoy time with my father's mother, who was called 'Dinny'. My mother never knew why or how she got this unusual name: she was just 'Dinny'.

One of the great joys of my very young life was sleeping in Dinny's bed on a rare visit with her. Usually I was asleep when Dinny came to bed, but one night I was still half awake. Dinny sat down in front of her chipped dressing mirror and starting removing the pins and un-weaving the braids to let down her silver crown of hair.

As the white waves of hair tumbled down Dinny's back like angels' wings, I recall saying 'I wish I had hair like yours', for my own hair was at the time, a bold and alarming red. Dinny stopped, looked at me in the mirror and replied in the slow way she had of speaking; 'You have my mother's hair...'

Dinny's story will never really be told, for so little is know of it. George wrote a nice bit of family history, which matched the bits and pieces I'd heard over the years, but neglected to write anyone's actual name in his writings. He carefully noted that his grandfather, Dinny's father, was full Osage American Indian, and had been removed from his own family as a young child. The boy was placed in the Carlisle School for Indians in Pennsylvania during the times when the government felt the best hope for the vanishing Indian people would be to somehow convert the children into the modern times.

Save the blood line but destroy the culture.

The family stories go that Dinny's father (his name is lost forever) did well at the school and completely embraced the new ways. He graduated with a medical degree, and set off into the world.

Hanging up his shingle, open for business, dressed in white man's clothing and his hair cut short, he quickly discovered that the whites would not let an Indian be their doctor. At some point, he gave up, and headed to the reservations, to treat the Indians confined there.

There he found that the Indians thought he was 'too white'. They did not trust him and did not welcome him.

Trapped and lost between two worlds. And in this strange, small place, he stayed, it seems, the rest of his life.

The stories vary here: some say he worked for a time with a man who doctored animals. Some say he immediately headed out West.... as the mass migration was on the move in the late 1800's. The stories all agree that he met up with what is now called a Traveling Medicine Show, where he played the part of the Indian sidekick, and learned the trade.

I can only imagine his humiliation, his bitterness, his scorn. Maybe even his secret joy in bilking whites with snake oil medicine. Not all was lost though, for at some point in his travels, he met up with a young woman of Scottish descent (again, name forever unknown), and they had my grandmother, Dinny.

Dinny herself told me stories of being very young, and living in San Francisco, “right after the earthquake” she said. They were comfortable enough to have a Chinese houseboy. Dinny shared that she was fascinated by the houseboy's long braid. Life was good, life was easy, until Dinny's mother died.

Was the loss of his wife the trigger that put Dinny's father and herself back on the road again? They left San Francisco behind and made their way slowly eastward. Dinny told of working in small, traveling circuses and Wild West shows; her father took care of the animals and she learned the trapeze. It was a vagrant and hard life; her father once again, using his talents and skills to take some back from the whites. They did anything needed; George wrote of his grandfather’s juggling skills, and how he used to entertain my father juggling anything imaginable.

Dinny never told me, but George wrote that at some points, when they had to, Dinny would dance and sing in various small bars as they traveled. I can only imagine those were desperate times and her father had to cringe to have this happen. My father wrote of Dinny's deep shame of their vagrant life.

At some point in their journey, Dinny's father met up with an English woman, who joined the two of them. This woman (again, name unknown) had family in Georgia, and it was decided to send a now teenage Dinny to live with her family to be schooled. Dinny never talked about those times. Somewhere, somehow, she and her father were reunited and the English woman was gone.

Dinny's vagrant lifestyle ended when she married a quiet German-Jew widower who had a young son (my Uncle Lew). The widower was an accountant, and they had a lovely little home north of Chicago, complete with white picket fence (so reported by my mother). I can only imagine Dinny's joy of finally having a home, a neat and tidy life, and a respectable lifestyle. She and her husband has just the one child, my father, George.

George wrote of how his grandfather would come to visit every Sunday, his hair long and braided. At times, he would coil his braids up under his hat, and sometimes he'd show his braids proudly. In my imagination, I’d be thinking he might have had an 'in your face' attitude at times: how could he not? The stories told of his fine taste in clothing, which to he would add Indian touches. A man caught between 2 worlds.

My great grandfather purchased an automobile, and he'd fight with it religiously. (this, I'd guess, would be how most any man would view then new contraptions) George wrote of how his grandfather could never get the thing in reverse, and how his temper would flare trying to maneuver the automobile to get it parked.

My great grandfather doted on his grandson. George wrote of how he harangued his grandfather to take him to see a cowboy movie. His grandfather obliged, purchasing popcorn for the two of them to enjoy. George, being young, didn't think it through. When the eventual Cowboys versus Indians battle scene started, his grandfather got up, took the boy's hand and walked quietly but quickly out of the movie theater.

George wrote that, the light bulb went on and he never asked his grandfather to go to a cowboy movie again.

My mother would tell me she recalled seeing my great grandfather: a tall man with a straight back, always dressed so nicely in a black suit with the tall, doomed, wide brimmed hat decorated with a band of beads and sometimes feathers. She described him as a quiet man, staying in the background at any family gathering.

As the Carlisle School for Indians burnt down years ago, there are no written records of my great grandfather's time there. Even if there were records, as no one wrote down the man's name, there is no way to find him in history’s records. Dinny had no birth certificate, and her death certificate does not show her parent's names. She died when I was about 10 and I had no contact with my father, George, who died about 2002.

How wonderful it would be, to have really known Dinny, to get to know her, the person she became, and to know her fascinating life. Did she find happiness with her quiet husband and stable lifestyle? Or at times, did she long for the travels she lived through as a child?

And my great grandfather: did he ever find contentment, a feeling of belonging? It seems not: a man, one of so many, trapped forever between 2 worlds.

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