An Afternoon with a Legend

It was 1971. She was six years old.

Krista Bennett
4 min readNov 3, 2021
Photo by Michael Aleo on Unsplash

While visiting my dear friend Alicia, I was admiring her beautiful living room full of weaved baskets, furs, and earth inspired décor.

Alicia is a full blood Mohawk Indian, a naturalist and medicine woman on the Onondaga Indian Reservation.

My visit was in the hopes she could conjure up something to put me in labor.

While she was doing her thing, I had the opportunity to wander around her living room. I stopped in front of a framed black and white photo of a long white stretch limousine. Native American children were standing in front of it with two adults sitting on the ground in the middle. Children in their laps.

I moved in closer, squinting.

“Do you know who that is?” she asked as she walked up behind me.

Startled, I looked at her with my my mouth open and my eyes as big as ping-pong balls.

I was staring at an iconic photo of history.

“It was the summer of 1971, I was six years old”, she began.

My brother and I were riding our horse “Surprise” when we saw limousines pull up to the longhouse which was right across the road from where we were riding.

--

--