Post by Spirit of the Owl Woman on Dec 17, 2009 19:47:27 GMT -5
Excerpt from: SINGING FOR A SPIRIT; A PORTRAIT OF THE DAKOTA SIOUX
By
Vine Deloria, Jr.
SASWE
By
Vine Deloria, Jr.
SASWE
The story behind The People of Tipi Sapa goes back to a time when France had not yet been deprived of its North American colonial empire. According to my father, around the 1750s two orphan boys from a good middle-class family in France, Phillipe and Francois, were brougt to America through good friends of their parents. The family were Hugenots, and their friends became increasingly worried about the religious persecutions in France and believed the family should begin again in the New World.
When the boys were in their late teens, Francois decided to make his mark in the West while Phillipe decided to remain in the New England area. Some time ago, when trying to do a family genealogy, I discovered a large number of Delorias in upstate New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont, leading me to believe the Phillipe had continued the family in good fashion and left numerous descendants.
Francois drifted to Quebec and signed on with a fur trading expedition that was headed through the Great Lakes country to the area around Lake Winnipeg to trade with the tribes of the Canadian plains. Francois and another young French boy were hired to take care of the horses and do the loading and unloading while the adults of the party killed game and traded with the tribes they encountered.
One day several horses got loose and the boys were sent to fetch them. They traveled quite a distance from camp before they caught the horses, and it looked as if they would barely be able to return before dark. When they arrived at the camp, they found a bloody sight. All the men had been killed, the goods and furs stolen, and whatever was not taken had been destroyed and rendered useless to anyone else. The boys believed the party had gotten on the wrong side of a band of Assiniboines, and the Indians had evened the score.
They faced a real dilemma. They didn't think they could get back to eastern Canada safely with no weapon or provisions. But they knew that the French had settlements in St. Louis and parts of the Illinois country. Having a vague idea of the geography of the region gained from conversation with the men during the journey out, they decided to head due south with the hope of reaching the Missouri River, making a raft, and floating down to St. Louis.
Being young and inexperienced, they had little to eat except berries and the few edible plants they recognized. Soon reduced to near starvation, the boys wandered through the Dakota country in search of the Missouri River. At the Big Bend of the Missouri, south of present-day Pierre, South Dakota, their luck ran out. The other boy died of starvation and illness, and our ancestor collapsed on the point of death. A band of Yanktonais Sioux discovered him and nursed him back to health. Francois stayed with the band for the rest of his life and became a valued member of the tribe because he could speak French, a commonly used trade language on the river.
An old winter count of the Lower Yaktonais Dakota known as the John K. Bear count includes this fact for the year 1785: "Dakota winyan wan wasicun hiknayan," or "Dakota woman married a white man." In James Howard's commentary on this winter count, he suggests that the man was a French Canadian coureur du bois, or fur trader. I have always liked to believe that this man was my ancestor and that this notation marked his in entrance into the Sioux Nation. Of course, there is no way of verifying this match. But my ancestor did stay among the Lower Yanktonais, did marry into the tribe, and had a son, Francois Xavier, who was born around the same date.
The Yanktonais bands roamed up and down the river from around present-day Yankton, South Dakota, to near Devil's Lake in North Dakota. The western most bands often crossed the river and aligned themselves with the Hunkpap, Two Kettles, and Blackfeet bands of Teton Sioux for hunting, horse stealing, and trading. What is certain is that Francios Xavier, when he was of age, did court and marry during a year when the Yanktonais were living with these other bands. He married Mazaicunwin, a prominent woman from a good family from the Blackfeet band of Tetons. They had at least three children. Mary was born in 1802, Julia in 1804. A son, Francois, who was my great-grandfather, was born in 1816. The children were three-quarters Sioux and were raised in the traditional Sioux ways. Julia, who lived until the age of ninety-three, became an important part of my grandfather's life since she could tell him what had happened long before his father was born. She died in 1897.
In 1819 there was apparently a des Lauriers Island just below the Big Bend; Francois Xavier might have established a trading post there at an early date. No records indicate how the island got its name, but a French settlement did exist there long before Fort Tecumseh (later Fort Pierre) was established further north on the river. Perhaps another child of Francois Xavier returned to his French heritage and became a trader. There were a few people of that name in St. Louis. Francis Parkman describes a rather surly individual named Deloriers who took care of Parkman's pack animals on his journey west. A Deslauriers is briefly listed as partner in one of Pierre Choteau's companies on the Missouri, but he is hardly significant as a historical figure. It appears that there were many members of this family active in all kinds of occupations during the first several decades of the nineteenth century.
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COMMENTARY: Could the name Deloria have been just as well derived from Delorme or Desjorlais as from des Lauriers?
I have found a Francois Delorme dit Henault, born 1767 in Bertheir, Quebec and in 1785, the year of the winter count, he would have been close to twenty yrs old. He was employed by the NWC and stationed on the Lower Red River. He married an Indian woman by the name of Madeline Saulteaux and they had a half-breed son, Francois Delorme born abt 1805, who can be found on the Metis National Council, Historical Online Database, listed in the census of St. Francois Xavier parish.
Francois Desjorlais is another French Canadian with half-breed children born in the Northwest Territories in the early 1800s in which the name could have been changed down the line.
Here is a fine example of how a French name became mis-pronouced or mistranslated from the original:
In 1815 or 1816, Jacques La Ramee and a small group of fellow trappers settled in the area where Fort Laramie would later be located. He went out alone to trap in 1819 or 1820 and was never seen again. Arapaho Indians were subsequently accused of killing La Ramee and putting his body in a beaver dam near the mouth of Sybille Creek. Among other places (including a Wyoming city, river, and mountain), the fort was named “Laramie” in his honor.
Oral tradition is good to have but it must be realized that the earliest Sioux women of our families who married these French Canadian fur trappers and traders most likely could not communicate well with them to derive familial lines of their husband's families. Even though in those days, for the Sioux, kinship was most important and everyone knew who their families were. But, that was Sioux relating to Sioux and these kinship ties were very important when it came time to marry. If anyone could remember the grandparents or great grandparents being related of the two wishing to marry, the marriage could not take place. I am sure during those long winter months the Sioux men and women would probably recite who beget who stories over and over; just like the Jews did until the Torah or Old Testament could be written down.
By putting myself in the place of a Sioux winyan who became the wife of a white man in those early days, knowing what my training would have been all my life as to my place in the tribe, my familial relationship duties and the daily work I must do and perform; I must confess that I am very innocent, modest and naive; fluent in my own Sioux dialect but still able to understand dialects from relations from other territories and that my total cognition is of my collective relations and the survival therein. My understanding and knowledge of the world outside my own is not sufficient to relate to my white husband on any other terms than Sioux way of life. As we are able to communicate, I am able to gather some information of were my husband came from and his people but truly not knowledgeable enough to comprehend his other life. I tell the stories I have heard from my understanding to my children, and they pass on these stories with their knowledge and their understanding to a generation with a different knowledge and understanding from the past generation and so the story in the end may be different from the original telling.
In our oral tradition of today, the stories may have, in some families, been told and re-told over and over to each generation but those families more than likely have retained an Indian identity and tradition. For many of my people, like myself, who are the product of Indian boarding, mission and government schools, our stories are fragmented with bits and pieces retained here and there. This is because the two generations before us were the victims of that education and those schools. So finding the origins of some of the white patriarchs maybe difficult, if not impossible due to the fact that our people did not have a written language per se, and we had no tradition to forbid marrying "outside" because at the time, we did not know we need one. Our tribal leaders could not conceive that once we played "host," similar to a cell that a virus enters, we were doomed to a most treacherous disease and that the days of traditional Sioux families and identity, as they knew it, were to be no more.
I admire and respect the Deloria family for their contributions not only to their Yankton tribe, but to the Whole Sioux Nation. I am deeply grateful that Vine Deloria, Jr. had the inspiration and the insight to write Singing for a Spirt. As I watched a video of him speaking, very casually smoking a cigarette, as he was interviewed one on one, I realized his heart spoke to mine. Since then I have deeply regretted not knowing him in this life time. For if I did know him, I would have hounded him for all of his knowledge about our people until he had nothing left to give. Suffice to say, I have his books and am grateful. But I digress...
In this re-telling of his families oral traditions he tries to find the true facts in the clues of the story. Unfortunately, he was unable to connect the story with any of his genealogical research. He goes on to say that as much as he would like to be able to say the winter count was a true fact for his family, he could not.
But, the story is alive and will continue to thrive as an oral tradition for as long as his family tells and retells the story. The story he relates is the story of man who got lost and could not find his way, in a country he did not know, his companion died along the way and he too, almost died. Just in the nick of time he was rescued, taken care of and nursed back to health. And, in that rescuing, he found a new family, a new way life and a new country. In the end, he never desired to leave this new found life to return to the one, as he stayed.
The "Truth" of this story is that it has profound philosophical and spiritual meanings, if only one would read between the lines. These simple truths can be told to any generation and have the same meaning. For all of us on this path called "life" have gotten lost, seen friends and loved ones die and even thought we might die, but we didn't. Something or someone intervened - we were rescued just in the nick of time. Perhaps because of this enlightening experience, we were put on a new path or endeavored to find a new direction or different way of discovery, with a new family or new friends, in new and unfamiliar territory, because in your heart of hearts, it felt right. The meaning of the story rings true with the verse in the song Amazing Grace, "I once was lost but now I am found. Was blind but now I see."
The intended point to my commentary here is that we as family historians, must use our oral traditions not as fact unless based on fact, but as clues to our origins, encoded with a deeper meaning beyond face value. And, if we are lucky researchers, we may find what we are looking for; if not, then let us hope these stories continue to have a more traditional, spiritual, meaning and purpose--and that of leading us back to the one who originally told it.
Dakota Tribe--Lavanah