Go West!

I just returned from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Whenever I am in the west, I feel as if history is just around the next corner. Seeing a man with a long white beard in a cowboy hat, boots and spurs entering the Santa Fe Walmart helped me along. In school, we were told that our nation was discovered in 1492, settled in 1620, and born in 1776. It wasn't until I first traveled to New Mexico in 1999 that I learned that Taos Pueblo was built between 1000 and 1450 and has continuously been in use ever since. In the 50's and 60's, we did not learn about the ancient way of life of the Native Americans that was destroyed as the armed pioneers pushed and shoved their way west, laying claim to any land they liked. The fact that these rugged, beautiful mountains and plains were already the sacred homes of many people did not stop white Americans from their pursuit of land. That pursuit cost the Native Americans a way of life. Yet, those pioneers who came west also paid a great price. When I look at the vastness of the western plains and feel the dizzying height of the mountains, it seems impossible that anyone in a covered wagon made it to California.

One recent book realistically describes the hardships faced by a woman going to California in 1846. It is "The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride" by Daniel James Brown. Mr. Brown chose to tell the story of the Donner party by focusing on just one of the survivors, Sarah Graves, and gathering every bit of information he could find about her. By concentrating on one person, Brown manages to convey what all pioneers faced during such a journey. Even before the Donner party was halted by the early and terrible snowstorms that winter in the Sierra Nevada, they were tested to the very limits of physical and mental endurance. Brown made me feel the filth of the journey, the boredom of the food, and the backbreaking work that was all part of going west. Everyone knows the tale of the cannibalism that some members of the Donner party engaged in to survive. But because Brown has so vividly portrayed the horrors of the journey, the hopelessness of life buried under mountains of snow without adequate shelter, clothing and with a complete lack of food, the reader can almost believe that what the members of this group did was valiant. By the time Sarah takes her first bite of human flesh, we know her very well. She is a good and kind woman, filled with love for her family and fiance, yet, like all pioneers, determined to survive. If that means she must eat human flesh, so be it. When I flew over the great plains of the United States late Monday night, we were all warned of turbulence and the pilot apologized for having to suspend the beverage service. As I looked down into the vast blackness that people like Sarah Graves walked across, step by painful step, I was amazed at the boldness of the journey.

In 1971, another man named Brown, Dee Brown, wrote a book that changed how many of us viewed the history of our country. The ground-breaking book was "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, An Indian History of the American West", and Brown eloquently and sensitively tells us what happened to those Americans who were in the way when the pioneers decided that the people already there didn't matter. Each chapter is heartbreaking...and each story is similar. The tribes are approached, representatives of the U.S. government make promises, the promises are broken almost immediately. After the broken promises, Indians are killed...not just warriors, but old people, women, and children. White people take the land the tribes have called home forever. Brown ends his book with the 1890 massacre by the U.S. Cavalry of approximately 300 of 350 freezing and hungry men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

A few years ago, I spent a week as a volunteer for Mission of Love, a non-profit group not affiliated with any religion or other group. Mission of Love builds and repairs homes for the Lakota people who live on the Pine Ridge reservation, the poorest place in the United States. One cold night, as the sun was about to set, we went to the site of the Wounded Knee massacre. I was fortunate to be there with Lakota people, who gently guided me around this sacred place and told me the story of the slaughter of their ancestors.

After my volunteer work, I visited two more places in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore, and the amazing work in progress...the monument to the courageous Lakota leader, Crazy Horse. Begun in 1948, and without any government funding, this is the largest mountain carving in the world. While I stayed barely half an hour at Mount Rushmore, I spent almost an entire afternoon gazing at the carving of Crazy Horse. As far as it is known, Crazy Horse never was photographed. After he was killed, his family made sure that no one would ever know where his body lay....but his heart is buried somewhere near the creek at Wounded Knee. The motto of those who work on the Crazy Horse carving is "never forget your dreams". In the two books by both Mr. Browns, any reader will be moved by the hopes, dreams, and heartbreak of these Americans.W