An Afternoon with a Legend
It was 1971. She was six years old.
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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.
There was a buzz in the air, but being children, we paid no attention.
We were little then and needed help getting on our horse, so we had led Surprise over to my cousin Pete’s house where we would use his stairs to mount and dismount our horses.
Without warning Pete walked up and took Surprise away from us and walked him across the road to where the limousines were parked.
We watched as he offered our horse to the man who had gotten out of the limousine.
I was in a fit of tears after being pushed out of the way and having Surprise taken from me.
No one was paying attention to me except a woman who had also emerged from the limo.
She approached me and picked me up to calm me down.
She carried me into what we called the “Mudd House” which is a cookhouse where after I stopped crying, we sat and she talked with the others.
