She called her mother from her room, after she ordered dinner, and reported on everything she’d seen so far, and she was sorry her mother hadn’t come with her. Marguerite was grateful that Brigitte had made the trip on her behalf.
“I couldn’t have gone anyway,” Marguerite said practically. “I have a bridge tournament tomorrow.” For a woman who had worked hard for twenty-five years and had never expected to before that, she enjoyed her leisure days, and Brigitte was glad she did. She had earned them. And if their genealogy was so important to her, Brigitte was happy to use her own research skills to help the project along. She had a feeling the Mormons were going to advance the project considerably. With two billion names in databases, two and a half million rolls of microfilm, and 300,000 books with information gathered from all over the world, Brigitte was sure that she would find records of some of their relatives in France. Her mother wanted to go back as far as she could. It would have been a thrill for her if the de Margeracs turned out to be important players in the history of France. She had been a history buff since college. There was certainly no harm in that, and it was coming to mean more to Brigitte than women’s suffrage, which had seemed so vital to her before. This was far more personal, and she felt as though she was just blocks away now from where the history of her family lay.
She ate dinner in her room, and wished she could share what she was doing with Ted. She knew he hadn’t left Boston yet, and thought about calling him, but she realized that hearing his voice when he was already lost to her would upset her too much. He would be leaving for Egypt soon, for the excavation that had replaced her.
She tried to look up her old friend from school that night, and discovered that finding her was hopeless. Her husband was a direct descendant of Brigham Young, she had said, and Brigitte found page after page of Youngs in the telephone book. His first name was John, and there were hundreds of those too. She was sorry not to see her, and wished she had kept track of her over the years. All she knew of her before they lost sight of each other was that her friend had ten kids. It was hard for Brigitte to imagine, but it seemed to be a fairly normal occurrence here, where large families were common.
Brigitte slept well that night in the big comfortable bed. She had asked to be woken at eight o’clock, and when they called her, she was dreaming of Ted. He was still much on her mind, and it was hard to believe he had left her life forever, but it was obvious that he had. Six years gone up in smoke, and now she had hundreds of years of her family history to pursue for her mother. She was suddenly grateful for the distraction. She felt the thrill of the hunt as she got up, showered and dressed, and ate a quick breakfast of oatmeal, tea, and toast before she left the room.
She knew the way to Temple Square now after her reconnaissance mission the night before. She saw the familiar buildings, and walked into the Family History Library, and then followed the signs to the orientation that would help her find her way around. There were hundreds of library assistants throughout the building, just waiting to offer their expertise and help. After seeing the brief presentation, Brigitte knew exactly where to go, and went upstairs to a desk, where she knew she could find records for Europe. She explained to the young woman at the desk that she was looking for a family in France.
“Paris?” the young woman asked her, grabbing a notepad.
“No, Brittany, I think.” Brigitte wrote down her mother’s maiden name, de Margerac, which was her own middle name. “They came to New Orleans sometime around 1850.” It had already been an American territory by then, having been sold by Napoleon to the Americans sometime during his reign, for fifteen million dollars. “I don’t know anything before that. That’s why I’m here.” She smiled at the librarian, who was helpful and pleasant. She was wearing a name tag that said her name was Margaret Smith. She introduced herself as “Meg.”
“And that’s why we’re here, to help you,” the woman said warmly. “Let’s see what we have in our records. Give me a few minutes.” She indicated a sitting area where Brigitte could wait, in front of one of the film reader stations, where later they would look at microfilm together, poring over lists and records and birth and death certificates from the region, photographed by the researchers who traveled around the world to film them.
It took about twenty minutes for her to return, carrying the film, and she and Brigitte sat down together. She turned on the machine and they began looking at what she had found. It was a full ten minutes before Brigitte saw anything that looked familiar to her, and then suddenly there it was, de Margerac, Louise, born in 1819, followed by Philippe, Edmond, and Tristan, all born within a few years of each other, and in 1825, Christian, who died a few months later, as an infant. The records were from a county in Brittany. It led them to look back further to the previous generation. It took another half hour, and there were three of them, boys, born between 1786 and 1789, right before the French Revolution: Jean, Gabriel, and Paul, brothers born of the same parents. This time, searching forward again, there were records of their deaths in Quimper and Carnac, in Brittany. All three of them had died between 1837 and 1845. Brigitte made careful note of their names in a notepad she had brought for that purpose, and the years they had been born and died. And by moving farther forward on the microfilm, they found the deaths of Louise and Edmond de Margerac, sister and brother, in the 1860s. But nowhere could they find records of the deaths of Philippe and Tristan. The young library assistant suggested they might have moved away and died elsewhere, and Brigitte knew they were the de Margeracs who had come to New Orleans circa 1850 and eventually died there. She knew that was the part of the research her mother had already gathered. Brigitte had written down everything so far to share with her, although she was planning to buy copies of the microfilm documents for her mother as well.
They went back to an earlier generation, and found the births of both Tristan and Jean de Margerac, names that had been used again in later generations. Jean had been born in 1760, and Tristan a decade before that. There was no record of Jean’s death, but it showed that Tristan, Marquis de Margerac, had died in 1817, after the abdication of Napoleon, and the Marquise de Margerac a few months later, but there was no record of her birth in the area before that. Brigitte wondered if she had come from another part of France, and as they checked the date of her death again, only two months after her husband, Brigitte scribbled the information down and was struck by her name. It didn’t sound French to her.
“What kind of name is that?” she asked the librarian. “Is that French?”
“I don’t think so.” The woman smiled at Brigitte. Like all families, or most of those she helped research, they had uncovered a mystery in hers. The first name of the Marquise de Margerac was listed as Wachiwi, in the careful scrolled hand of the county clerk at the time of her death in 1817. “It’s a Native American name actually. I’ve seen it before. I can look it up for you, but as far as I know, it’s Sioux.”
“How weird to give a French girl a Sioux name.” Brigitte looked intrigued.
The librarian left the reading station and looked it up while Brigitte checked her notes again, and then returned to confirm what she had said. “It’s Sioux. It means ‘dancer.’ It’s such a pretty name.”
“How odd that a French noblewoman would have a Sioux name.” It sounded a little eccentric to Brigitte, although who knew what the fashions had been then, or where Wachiwi’s mother had heard the name?
“Not really,” the librarian explained. “I’ve heard that Louis XVI was fascinated by Native Americans before the Revolution. I’ve read stories about how he invited Indian chiefs to France, and presented them to court as honored guests. Probably a few of them stayed, and the most common ports of entry then were in Brittany. So perhaps a Sioux chief and his daughter remained in France, and she married the marquis, your relative. She wouldn’t have come alone, and most likely one of the chiefs brought to court was accompanied by his daughter. The Revolution was in 1789, and if she came to France before that in t
he 1780s, that would make her about the right age. Assuming she was somewhere in her teens when she came into France in the 1780s, she would have been in her fifties when she died in 1817, which was considered a great age for a woman then. The three boys born between 1786 and 1789 were undoubtedly hers. More than likely she was a Sioux woman who came to Brittany from the States, and captured the heart of the marquis. I’ve never come across a Frenchwoman called Wachiwi—all of the women I’ve read about with that name were Dakota Sioux.
“There were definitely Sioux in France in those days, and some just never left. It’s a little-known piece of history, but it has always fascinated me. They weren’t brought in as slaves or prisoners, they were brought over as guests, and several were presented at court.”
Brigitte was enthralled by what she said. She had found a piece of history in her own family that had sparked her interest. Somehow, somewhere, for some reason, the Marquis de Margerac, who would have been the grandfather of her mother’s great-grandfather, had married a young Sioux woman and made her a marquise, and she had borne him three sons, the eldest of whom was named for the marquis’s younger brother, who had died somewhere along the way. They found a record a few minutes later of two other of the marquis’s children, born earlier than Wachiwi’s three sons. Their names were Agathe and Matthieu. The marquise listed as their mother had a different name than Wachiwi, and she died in 1778, on the same date their youngest child was born. She had obviously died in childbirth, and Wachiwi had been a second wife to him. It was fascinating piecing it all together from the ledgers the Mormons had photographed in Brittany.
“How would I find out more information about Wachiwi?” Brigitte asked Meg with a look of delight over the information she’d been given and that they had unearthed together. It had far exceeded her expectations and surely even her mother’s. She had gone back another hundred years from what her mother had been able to learn, and now they had some really interesting things to work with, like a young Sioux woman married to a marquis in Brittany.
“You’d have to go to the Sioux for that information. They keep records, not as detailed as ours, or as varied geographically obviously. But they’ve transcribed a lot of the oral histories. It’s not as easy to find people, but sometimes you do. It’s worth a look.”
“Where would I go to find that? To the Bureau of Indian Affairs?” Brigitte asked her.
“No, I think to the Sioux historical office in South Dakota. Most of the material is there. It might be hard to find a record of a young woman, unless she was the daughter of an important chief, or had done something illustrious herself, like Sacajawea, but the Lewis and Clark expedition was about twenty years later than our dates for Wachiwi,” Meg said thoughtfully. They both felt as though they had a new friend, and Brigitte felt suddenly bonded to the ancestor who had married the marquis. “You look a little Sioux yourself,” the librarian said cautiously, not sure how Brigitte would react to that information, and she looked wistful as the librarian said it.
“My father was Irish. I always thought that accounted for my black hair, but maybe it’s not him at all. Maybe it’s some kind of throwback to Wachiwi.” She suddenly loved that idea, and wanted to know everything she could find out about her. They pored over the records at the Family History Library for another hour, but for now there was nothing more. She had discovered three generations of relatives, all descended from Tristan and Wachiwi de Margerac, and a mystery she had never known of before that felt like a gift. She thanked Meg profusely and it was midafternoon when she got back to her room at the hotel and called her mother. Marguerite sounded in good spirits and said that she and her partner had won at bridge.
“Have I got a fascinating piece of family history for you!” Brigitte said victoriously, in a voice of excitement that delighted her mother.
“You found something?” Her mother sounded thrilled at the news.
“Lots of somethings. Three generations of de Margeracs in Brittany, and two who have no death dates, Philippe and Tristan, and since Philippe was the eldest, he would have been the marquis at that time. I was able to trace back three generations.”
“Those are the two who went to New Orleans in 1848 and 1850!” Marguerite said excitedly. “Ohmigod, you found them, Brig! Who else was there? I know all about those two. Philippe was my great-grandfather, my father’s grandfather. His brother Tristan moved to New York after the Civil War, but Philippe died in New Orleans before that. I’m so excited you found their birth records. Who else did you find? The Mormons are amazing, aren’t they?”
“They’re incredible. I found their sister or cousin Louise and brother Edmond, who died in France, and a baby brother Christian, who died as an infant. And in the generation before that, Jean, Gabriel, and Paul de Margerac, whose father was the Marquis Tristan de Margerac, and I found his two earlier children as well, and both his wives, one who died in childbirth, and the other who died around the same time he did. We should probably go to France and look at records there to discover exactly who was married to whom. Sometimes it’s a little hard to figure out who are siblings and who are cousins, unless they make it very clear. They don’t always, but the really exciting piece of history I discovered was the second wife of the marquis at the time of Louis XVI.”
“That’s amazing for one day’s research!” The two women sounded elated, especially Brigitte’s mother, who that day had acquired another hundred years of her family history that she had been pursuing for years. What was available at the local branch of the Mormon library wasn’t as extensive as what Brigitte had access to in Salt Lake.
“The librarian was incredibly helpful, the records are all there, and I was lucky. Maybe I was destined to find it.” She was beginning to feel that way. There was something almost mystical about it. She had come across more anthropology in the last three hours than she had in the last ten years. “The name of the marquis’s second wife was Wachiwi,” Brigitte said as though she were handing her mother a gift.
“Wachiwi? Is that French?” Marguerite sounded confused. “I don’t think it is. What nationality was she?”
“She was Sioux. Can you imagine? In Brittany. Apparently, Louis XVI invited several Sioux chiefs to the court as honored guests. Some of them stayed. She must have been related to one of them, or got to France herself somehow. But the librarian at the Family History Library said there’s no question. She’s Sioux. Wachiwi means ‘dancer’ in Sioux. So we have a Sioux woman in our family history, Mom, way, way back through the generations. And she married the marquis, and had three sons. One of them must have been the father of the Philippe and Tristan who went to New Orleans, and the older Tristan and Wachiwi were their grandparents. That means she was the grandmother of your great-grandfather, Mom. I want to find out more about her. Apparently I have to go to the Sioux nation to find that. I think I might fly to South Dakota from here. I want to see what I can find.” Brigitte hadn’t been on a hunt like this since school, but it was what she loved about anthropology. And finally she had come across one of their ancestors who truly grabbed her interest. Suddenly both women’s passions had converged, brought to light by this one Sioux woman in their ancestry. Brigitte hadn’t had this much fun in years. Even her name was romantic. Wachiwi. The dancer. Just thinking about it made her dream.
“It’s hard to believe that a young Sioux girl could get all the way to Brittany, and marry a marquis. That was an incredibly long way in those days. It must have taken months to get there, on some little tiny ship.”
“Imagine what it must have been like to be a Sioux woman at the court of Louis XVI. That’s pretty amazing,” Brigitte added. “I hope I can find something about her in the oral histories. The woman at the Family History Library said it was unlikely, unless she was the daughter of an important chief. But she might have been. She must have been someone important to get all the way to France, and to be presented at the court of the king—if that’s how she met the marquis.”
“We might never know, dear,�
� her mother said reasonably, but Brigitte was on a mission. She wanted to discover whatever she could find about a Sioux girl called Wachiwi, who was part of her history. Brigitte suddenly felt a bond to her like no other, and she was going to do all she could to find out about her. Wachiwi, the Marquise de Margerac, wife of the Marquis Tristan de Margerac. Brigitte felt a powerful pull to find out who she was, as though Wachiwi herself was calling to her, taunting her with the mystery. It was a challenge Brigitte found impossible to resist.
Chapter 4
The trip from Salt Lake to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was long. Brigitte had to fly to Minneapolis first, kill time in the airport, and then finally get a flight to Sioux Falls. She arrived there six hours after she left Salt Lake. She could hardly wait to go to the university the next morning to begin her research. The university itself was in Vermillion, South Dakota, sixty-five miles from Sioux Falls, but she had decided to spend the night in Sioux Falls, and travel the rest of the distance in the morning. And the only accommodation she could find was at a clean, brightly lit motel, located across the street from a park. The town was situated on the bluffs above the Big Sioux River. And after settling into her motel room, Brigitte went outside for a walk. She found an appealing-looking diner while she was walking and stopped for something to eat. She loved watching the people come and go as she ate.
She noticed that there was snow on the ground when she left the diner. The temperature was freezing, and she was anxious to get back to her motel. She wanted to get up early to drive to Vermillion the next morning. Brigitte’s destination was the University of South Dakota, where the Institute of American Indian Studies housed the Dr. Joseph Harper Cash Memorial Library. There books, photographs, films, and videos referred to the oral histories Brigitte was seeking. The Sioux referred to their myths and legends as “lessons.” She hoped that the mystery of Wachiwi would be solved there.
Legacy: A Novel Page 6