White Like Her

by Gail Lukasik

  My mother was left to be raised by her great-grandmother and then her cousin Tessie, having no idea that her father Azemar wanted custody of her.

  Whichever side of the color line they chose to live on, black or white, I suspect color was only part of their decision. Something, I’ve yet to understand in how they viewed themselves, said this is where you belong or this is where you want to belong.

  Could Ursin have married a white woman? I don’t know. In terms of legality, during his lifetime interracial marriage was illegal in Louisiana. Would his altered baptismal record pass muster with the Catholic Church considering it was recorded in the register for slaves and free people of color? What I do know is he sought out women of color and sired children with them, contributing to the three-tiered racial system in New Orleans. Ursin knew that his children, as free people of color, would be hemmed in by the legal system and would be held in a lower status than whites.

  When America took over governance of Louisiana, as early as 1808, the legislature curtailed the rights and privileges of the free people of color, making it clear that they were legally inferior and subordinate to whites.8 And yet, this was the world Ursin chose for his children, if he did have a choice. However diluted his “colored” blood was from his “mestista” mother, he felt most comfortable with women of color like his mother.

  Or maybe I’m looking at Ursin incorrectly. Maybe he felt wholly white and like so many white men of his time he was enjoying plaçage arrangements with none of the burden of matrimony, indulging in the white patriarchal system.

  Ursin’s mother, Luison/Louison/Luisa Santilly/Jantilly was the daughter of a Captain of the French Marine Troops, Pierre Santilly (sixth great-grandfather), and an unnamed Indian slave. When Pierre Santilly married Marie LaTourneur on March 10, 1760, Santilly’s wife brought to their marriage half of her first husband Jean Gueydon’s estate, which included seven slaves, three of whom were Native American.

  Santilly notes in the inventory that a runaway Indian female slave was believed to have died running away. The three remaining enslaved female Native Americans are:

  Angelique, Indian, twenty-five, and her daughter, Henriette, ten; Catin, Indian, twenty

  Based on the ages of the three females, any one of them could have been Louison’s mother (my seventh great-grandmother). Within five years of Pierre Santilly’s marriage, he fathers Louison with one of these Native American enslaved women. Louison is born into slavery in 1765.

  In 1773 Pedro Francisco Santilly, native of Paris, notarizes his will, stating that he is thirty-eight years old and has been in the service of His Majesty for nineteen years. He promises freedom to six slaves, five of whom are mestisas, after his and his wife’s death. There’s no reason given for the manumission.

  The Indian slaves are:

  Henrieta

  Maria

  Suzana

  another Henrieta

  Maria Luiza.

  Of the five mestisas, Suzana, Henrieta, and Maria Luiza are the daughters of the deceased Indian woman Angelica.

  He mentions in his will that if his wife should need to sell them, he revokes their freedom, which would have been illegal during the Spanish period.

  In June 1783 Santilly records a second will, just prior to his death. He declares in the second will that he has no children with his wife, Maria LaTourneur, and leaves all his property to her. He names for his universal heirs his nephews and nieces who reside in France. He can’t sign because of a “shaky pulse.”

  Shortly after the 1783 will, Pierre Santilly dies in New Orleans. An inventory of Santilly’s first estate dated September 30, 1783, lists several Negro slaves and the last slave is a “mestisa” named Luison, aged eighteen, with her son Adelard, aged two, and an unbaptized daughter aged two months. It’s unclear if Luison is Maria Luiza from Santilly’s first will. In neither the first nor the second will does he acknowledge Luison as his daughter, possibly because Santilly’s white wife outlives him.

  Marie LaTourneur Santilly dies in 1787, four years after Pierre. In her will she declares that she owns a Negro named Valentin, thirty-eight, a Negress Naneta, twenty-eight, and a Negress Marana, twenty-two or twenty-three. She doesn’t mention any Indian slaves, possibly because she freed the enslaved Indian women as per her husband’s request.

  Like so many enslaved people, there is little else in the records about Luison. The history of Native American slavery in Louisiana is almost as murky and troubling.

  The first record of Native Americans being held as slaves in Louisiana is in the 1708 census, which counted eighty Indian men and women among a total population of 278.9

  From the early 1700s French colonists engaged in Indian slavery either by purchasing or rescuing slaves captured in local Indian wars or by participating in slave raiding expeditions. The French colonists usually killed the men and enslaved the women and children.10 Although Louisiana Indian slaves belonged to several tribes—Panis, Alibamon, Taensa and Chitimachas—“the Chitimachas of Bayou Lafourche were the most significant ethnic component in the early slave population of lower Louisiana.” As the largest tribe in the Mississippi Delta at the time, the Chitimachas were engaged in war with the French who were trying to colonize the area.11 Possibly Luison’s mother was a Chitimacha.

  As in many of the New World colonies, efforts to enslave the Indian population were less than successful, leading to the importation of enslaved Africans. The French explorer, Nicholas de la de Salle, wrote in 1709 that Indian slaves “only cause trouble and from whom we receive very little service since they are not appropriate for hard labor like the blacks.”12

  Demographics of Indian slaves in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century support the failure to enslave Native Americans.

  1708

  Eighty Indian slaves, mostly women

  1721

  161 Indian slaves, 17 percent of all colony slaves

  1771

  120 Indian slaves, less than 3 percent of colony slaves

  1808

  Several hundred Indians held as slaves, descended from Indian families.13

  In comparison, the rise in African slavery tells a different story. In a 1726 census of the Louisiana territory, enslaved blacks totaled 1,540 compared to 229 enslaved Indians. By the Spanish period the number of enslaved blacks was five thousand while the number of enslaved Indians remained about the same as four decades earlier.

  Unlike African slaves, Indian slaves and their descendants seem to have been assimilated into Louisiana’s larger white and black populations. The last slave child clearly identified as an Indian in a baptismal record was in 1792 at Natchitoches. The same year Ursin was born.14

  Other than property in a slave inventory and her name on Ursin’s baptismal record, I could find no other record for Luison/Louison/Luisa Santilly. I can only guess at the Native American tribe she descended from and what were the circumstances of her mother’s enslavement. How she met Joseph Lestinet remains another mystery.

  I’d like to think that her mother was the nameless runaway Indian female slave listed in the inventory for the 1760 marriage contract between Santilly and LaTourneur who was believed to have died running away.

  In my version she doesn’t die. Though she has to leave her daughter behind, she considers it the price she has to pay for her freedom. Luison will learn by her example.

  My genealogical quest is complete. And none of it is what I anticipated and all of it is welcome. I glance again at the artwork that hangs over my writing desk. The Native American man still waits patiently in his canoe among the reeds, gazing off into the distance, his back to me. A slight breeze ripples the water. But he is so still, lost in his thoughts, ready for whatever comes.

  I look at the other artwork over my desk—a poster of an ancient Native American woman. “The Navajo are so skilled, they can actually weave themselves into a rug,” the poster reads, reminding me that in every rug the Navajo women wove they included a flaw. Art is not about perfection but th
e creative journey. For over seventeen years her beautifully etched face has stood resolute, her photograph bordered by the rug she wove with its one flaw.

  As if I need more proof of my affinity for Native people, on my desk there’s the hero woman kachina, the coyote turquoise fetish, the white buffalo fetish; on the bookshelf, the medicine bag and the books about Native American culture; and finally the mystery novel, The Lost Artist, that I wrote about the Trail of Tears, the Timucua Indians, and a fifteenth-century lost art treasure.

  It’s as if I’ve known, without knowing, that the story of my family would start with a Native American woman.

  29

  Going Public

  January 20, 2015

  THE EVENING THE show airs, that night I dream of my parents. Mom and I are in my girlhood bedroom, that aerie above the small Cape Cod house in Parma, Ohio, sorting through papers, drawings, and a box of mementos from my childhood. A warm yellow glow fills the room, which is both different and the same. Gone is the door to the attic behind my bed that frightened me as a child. I imagined demons and ghosts emerging from the attic intent on haunting me in the night.

  In the dream, my mom is generous and pleased, wants me to have these things. Then my dad comes into the room with another box, which he abruptly drops on the floor. “Here you can have these,” he says brusquely. Before I can open the box, he turns and leaves. True to his nature in life, that tinge of anger just below the surface.

  To my surprise, the box is overflowing with our old home movies—those visual links to my childhood.

  When I wake in the dark room from the dream, I realize I’ve never dreamed about my parents together since their deaths. Staring into the dark, I feel that same warm glow from the dream lingering as if their spirits were hovering nearby. The dream seems to be about my coming to terms with revealing my mother’s secret on a national TV show. My mother’s uncharacteristic generosity, letting me take what I want, and my father’s willingness to part with the old movies represent their bequeathing me my past, letting me choose what I want to claim. Finally, I have come into my inheritance.

  The next day, in a flurry of emails, strangers across the country reach out to me via my website. Over coffee, I read their emails quickly, holding my breath against any hurt they may contain. But in an overflow of understanding, most of the emails are glowingly positive.

  I loved your desire to connect with your past, and was touched by your reaction to learning more. Our nation—wonderful as it is—has not made it easy for people to accept an Other who is perceived as different, an outsider. I admire your Mom for her courage and for making the very difficult decision to hide such an integral part of her being, and I admire your courage to seek, to find, and to reconcile with your amazing history. Haydee Rodriguez

  Another person encourages me to write about my mom’s story: “I absolutely loved your fascinating family history as seen on Genealogy Roadshow. What a quintessential American story! How wonderful if you could write a book about this real-life mystery.”

  Then there are the emails from people offering me help in my research.

  I wanted to say, Bless you and your loved ones, deceased and living. It was so brave and humble of you and your family to share your experience on Genealogy Roadshow. Keep searching, because as a semi-retired librarian and archivist, you may find wonderful surprises. We have free people of color in antebellum America that moved to Ohio before the Civil War, including USCT veterans. I have been a volunteer genealogist and family historian for over thirty years. The ancestors will guide you! P.S. You may email me, because I do not answer phone numbers I do not recognize, or if you ever want to call, send the number for me to note. Mrs. J Thomas

  Over the next year, Ms. Jeanne Thomas and her daughter Abby Grace Iona Djama-Adan will be invaluable resources for my research, giving me links to Fold3 for military records, articles on free people of color and passing, and even suggesting the names of two friends in New Orleans who would be willing to offer me lodging. Each of her emails cheers me on with its positivity: “You could find many more wonderful surprises!!!!”

  I realize that by sharing my mother’s story publically, I’ve been taken in by another family, the family of genealogists.

  When I ask Jeanne her opinion on writing a nonfiction book, her answer is resoundingly positive:

  We would both buy and recommend you do a nonfiction book about your family experience, including PBS’s Genealogy Roadshow. This could encourage and give courage to others who seek their true origins. Each book ever read about one’s discovery of ancestors has been enlightening and inspirational. There are regrets for some who find out revelations, and the wonderment of why decisions were made, etc. remain with ancestors.

  Kenyatta Berry emails me as well, saying our story was her favorite of the entire series. “I find your ancestry fascinating and hopefully you will continue on the path to discovery.” She too encourages me to write a book. “I am thrilled you are writing a book about your family.”

  My daughter, Lauren Robinson, who teaches English at Andrews High School in Tinley Park, Illinois, receives an email from another teacher who taught To Kill a Mockingbird recently to her English literature class and saw our segment of Genealogy Roadshow.

  We had a really great conversation about race and the motivation behind your grandmother’s decision to live as a white person. A very Caucasian-looking student revealed that his father is black and his mother is white. Students were dumbfounded because you’d never guess by looking at him. And then Tracy Sukalo popped in class to explain the genetics behind skin color.

  Tracy Sukalo, my daughter explains, is a science teacher at the high school.

  The most moving email I receive is from a young mixed-race woman who lives in a Chicago suburb.

  I come from a very racially mixed family. Some of us are blonde, some are extremely light, some are brown. As for me, I am pretty fair and have long thin hair. Most of my life people have asked me, “What are you?” especially black people. Uuhh!

  People usually think that I’m Hispanic or at least mixed, and sometimes they’re just unsure. I do come from a very bi-racial or multi-racial family. As a result I definitely have a few of my own racial issues to be honest. Looking the way I do I have personally never been accepted by the black community for the most part, a concept called colorism, you may have heard of. Kids teased me and called me white (though I don’t look white to most white people I don’t think, but by black standards definitely not black enough).

  Most black people would say that I am completely politically incorrect but I understand your mother better than many black people might. I understand. I believe that she fully believed that she was ultimately giving a better life to you and ultimately she likely did. Unfortunately, I know that she paid a huge price in doing so—having to deny her entire family and not even being able to be fully proud of herself and who she really was. However, I surmise that she thought: “For one generation there will be a price. Nevertheless, for my children and their children and all my generations they will have an opportunity for the best of life.” Coming from her time I’m sure she was right and I totally understand! Even in this time, there are clearly advantages. It’s sooo complicated.

  I wish you luck finding your relatives. Paris L. Smith

  Her email stops me in my tracks as I try to absorb the layers of meaning and emotion this young woman has shared about being a mixed-race person. I reread her email and start to cry, seeing my mother in a different light. To have someone else, a stranger, so eloquently understand my mother, the bittersweet price she had to pay to better herself and her children and in the process hide who she really was.

  The good wishes and attention are reassuring and welcome, and also uncomfortable. I feel exposed. I’m not a public person. I’m a writer who spends a bulk of her time in a small upstairs bedroom creating fictional characters, solving murders I create, emerging for an afternoon walk. What did I expect? I tell myself.

&
nbsp; I respond to every email except the two negative emails I receive. One person clearly has an agenda related to a book she’s written about race, and the other person seems unbalanced and fearful, harboring the same kind of fear that inspired the one-drop rule and my mother’s decision to pass and hide her racial identity.

  Besides emails from private individuals, I receive emails from people representing public institutions, librarians and genealogical societies, inviting me to speak about my mother’s story and Genealogy Roadshow. One email was sent at 11:43 p.m., almost immediately after the show aired.

  With a heady glee, I accept all of the invitations, naively oblivious to the consequences of talking about race in a public forum. Like talking about love, none of us really knows how to talk about it or what we’re talking about. Though we all have so much to say.

  30

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Race

  Audience Participation 2015

  “The truth is that, for most of our nation’s history, many of the people who we consider to be ‘white’ today, would be ‘colored,’ ‘Negro,’ or ‘black’ in times past.”

  —Stephanie Jones-Rogers, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley.

  WHAT ARE YOU anyway?” The bluntness of the woman’s tone puts me on edge.

  In the dimly lit library auditorium I can barely make out her features: dark hair, blue top, middle-aged, a face as pointed as her question. I’ve been talking for an hour, telling my mother’s story and how it became a segment of PBS’s Genealogy Roadshow, sharing that intimate moment when I confronted my mother with the truth of her racial identity, trying to convey (and hoping the audience understands) the poignancy of her reaction.