by Win Blevins
The lake looked violet in the half-light, and perfectly still. The mountain air breathed crisp, not yet cold. We walked in delicate silence, Daniel first, then Sun Moon and me, Sir Richard bringing up the rear. I tried to pay more attention to the scene than the cajoolies cavorting in my stomach.
We followed the trail left through the giant pines toward the Truckee. When we came out into the river valley, I sucked in breath to hold the sight. The Truckee flowed like a shiny silk ribbon away from us, exactly the blue of the sky. Tawny grasses and wine-colored willows ran beside the river like grace. I thought, Not a bad place to live. Mighty good-looking home.
We kept the silence all the way to the camp, maybe quarter of an hour, and I bet everybody had serenity but me. As we came in, people smiled at us. We walked among the children, between the running dogs, amid the many, rich smells of a camp, a place where human beings live, breathe, cook, eat, sleep, and do all things that make human smells. I was eating it up with my eyes.
Giver was sitting behind a fire talking with Paiute Joe, and he bid us join him. We did. He passed the coffee in friendly fashion, and we sipped sociably.
The dinner came quick. Those of us around the fire were served where we sat, and the women and children ate behind. They treated Sun Moon like a man—she sat with us. We were complimented by being served first, a privilege usually reserved for elders.
The food was blood sausage made from deer and cooked on the coals, a kind of biscuit made of acorn flour, and a sweet paste of some kind. When I asked with quiet fingers, Joe said the paste was made of grass seeds. Told myself this was eating the fruits of the earth. And truth to tell, it tasted good.
When we were done, everybody looked at each other like, ‘What comes next?’ Making conversation with signs is slow and awkward, and takes the fun right out.
I was going to wait forever, but sudden-like Daniel ups and out with it. “We believe Asie here”—he nodded at me—“is a Washo.”
The cajoolies scampered like mice in my belly.
Paiute Joe signed it.
I thought maybe Giver would roll his eyes, or laugh out loud, but he simply looked at me long with his kind eyes. Then he said some words to one of his wives. She called to another old man who came over. The old man sat in the circle, and the woman, too. Giver said, “We have some elders now who remember way back. Tell us the story, my friend.”
I took a breath and let it out, and another. I decided to tell it full out, for the sake of my friends there, who hadn’t heard it all. I knew Joe wouldn’t sign what the Washo didn’t need to hear.
“First I know for sure about me is when I was maybe seven. It was the year the Mormons came across the plains to the Great Salt Lake. On July 7, 1847, they stopped and camped at Fort Bridger. I know it was July 7 ’cause my adopted folks ever after said that was my birthday, July 7, the day when I came into their family. And all the Mormon stories say they were at Fort Bridger July 7.
“Way it happened was this. A lot of mountain men and Indians were camped at Fort Bridger that day. One ’em, name of Taylor, was dying. Unconscious half the time already, and not making sense the rest of the time. He’d clamp his hands on his belly and moan once in a while, then he’d sleep, then he’d talk. But no one was ever sure what he was saying.
“I was with him. A Shoshone woman had been with him, with us, but she’d died before. When we came into Bridger, it was just the two of us. Some of the mountain men and their women knew the Shoshone woman, but she wasn’t my mother anyhow, not my belly-button mother.”
I took a pause for some deep breaths.
“That’s what Mrs. Pfeffer called it, belly-button family, the one you was blood of.
“The Pfeffers wanted to take me in. Otherwise, what would I a done, a seven-year-old kid at Fort Bridger? Woulda been underfoot at the fort, and wors’n underfoot on a trapping expedition.
“The Pfeffers asked old Taylor if they could take me in. Nobody was sure what he answered, but everybody interpreted it as yes. The mountain men didn’t know what to do with me anyhow. Way the Pfeffers saw it was, they were helping out, making a barbarian into a Saint. Mormons been doing that with Indians from the start.
“Nobody knew, though, even whether I was full-blood or half-blood. Some that the Pfeffers talked to said I was son of Taylor and a Digger woman.
“So I was a half-Digger, which could mean any of the tribes live in the desert.”
I looked around the circle and saw that every eye was on me. No people are like Indians for letting you talk yourself all the way out, no interruptions.
“For a long while after the Pfeffers took me, I wouldn’t talk to anybody, nothing, not a word. But after a few weeks I began to sing, Mrs. Pfeffer said—join in the hymns at the meetinghouse and the songs around home. So Mrs. Pfeffer set the family to singing real regular, to take my tongue back from the cat that got it, and in a coupla months I was talking. English. Way she told it, I never said a word in Indian.
“The Mormons speculated about this. Some said old Taylor hadn’t let his woman talk Indian to me, so I never learned it. Some thought maybe something bad happened, I’d been stole away or the like, and the language got scared out of me.
“Anyhow I had no memory of it, and have none yet. Or recollection of anything that happened to me afore I was adopted at seven years old. My first memories are of the family singing together in Salt Lake City.
“Because I took to music, Mrs. Pfeffer encouraged me hard in that. She give me piano lessons right along with her kids, and made me a present of an ocarina one birthday and a wooden flute another. The Mormons love music, and I have always loved it.
“When I got old enough in their opinion, twelve, the Pfeffers told me about how they came to adopt me. I had never guessed it, that I was adopted, didn’t know I wasn’t blood kin. I knew I was different, ’cause I got treated different, worse, but I thought I was just a kinda black sheep.
“I got mad about them not telling me, and I stayed mad. Took to calling the Pfeffers Mr. and Mrs. instead of Mom and Dad. Dropped the name they called me, Earl Pfeffer, and took Taylor, after Old Taylor, and Asie, from the name his woman called me in Shoshone, Sima Untuasie. Afore long I started trying to find out who I was, or at least where I come from. Trouble was, didn’t have much to start on, just the name Taylor, hints about Diggers, and two mystery words. I’ll tell about those soon.
“Our family had a general store at Brigham City, and that was a good place to ask questions, ’cause everybody comes to a store sooner or later, even mountain men and some Indians. I guess one time or another somebody from every territory in the West came within range of my questions. I got keen about asking, even learned sign language so I could talk to any Indian that come by.
“I started with the Shoshones, the ones live on Bear River. What I found out from them made things a lot harder. Shoshones, they told me, were spread clear from the Wind River Valley east of the divide, north to the Clearwater, all the west to here at Washo, and even way south of here.”
Giver and Joe nodded.
“So if I was Shoshone, I could be from anywhere. I learned the names of a bunch of different bands—Salmon Eaters, Root Eaters, Buffalo Eaters. Even these names made me disheartened, ’cause they showed how many countries the Shoshones lived in, and how far-flung they were.
“If I was a Digger, that was worse. Turned out Digger wasn’t even the name of a band of Indians, it was a name the whites gave all the Indians live between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, on account of they eat roots. Diggers even included Shoshones. Whites didn’t understand these bunches was different Indians with different languages, Shoshones, Paiutes, Washos, and more.
“My questions didn’t lead to nothin’. After a while, discouraged, I came up with two ideas. One was that someone would come into the store one day and speak an Indian language and I would know it. Just like that. From that day I asked every Indian to say a few words in his language, and mountain men to say a little in w
hatever language they knew. But I never recognized any of it.
“The other idea was that someone would recognize the mystery words. Rock Child, Taylor called me. Rock Child.
“Seemed odd, even for an Indian name. The Pfeffers thought maybe that was part of the name of my people, or where my people lived, or maybe something about them, but it being my name seemed the most likely thing. I would ask strangers what came in the store, ‘You got any idea what these words mean?’ No one ever did.
“Until Daniel. He did, and he told me on the way in here. You live near the Rock Child, and honor it as a miracle. To me that’s wonderful.”
I looked at them with my heart in my eyes. “So maybe I am yours.”
Giver let it sit a long time, pondering. He looked back and forth at Paiute Joe several times. Finally he says a bunch of words I couldn’t understand.
I just sit there, mute.
Giver spoke soft to Joe, and signed.
Joe says to me, “He gonna say something to you in his language. See maybe you understand anything.”
Giver laid out a bunch more words, soft and kindly-like.
I shook my head. Heckahoy, I couldn’a told hello from good-bye.
Joe explained, “First he said, ‘Can you call me Grandfather? Can you call him Father? Can you call her Mother?’ Then he said, ‘Do you know of Ong? Do you know of the Water Baby Spirit? Of the sacred cave in the great rock above the camp?’”
Joe just looked at me.
Finally I says, “I don’t understand a word.”
Giver explained gently. “My friend, it is a little difficult. Suppose you were born to a Washo woman and a white-man father. Suppose even you were born to Washo mother and father. You do not speak our language.
“Our language is far different from any other language.” Paiute Joe paused in his translating to confirm that. He knew several Indian languages, and the little Washo he knew showed it was way different. “That is because it is the tongue of the spirits. They gave us these words that we may talk directly with them.”
Giver looked at me kindly but oddly. “How strange, a Washo who could not speak with the spirits. I think such a person would not be a Washo.”
We all sat in silence.
It was Sir Richard who finally spoke up. “It is possible to learn a language,” he said softly.
“Yes,” said Giver, and seemed to consider that seriously. “Would you do that?”
“Yes,” says I.
Yet I had the feeling he was holding something back. Joe knew it, too. I could see it in his face.
“Your name,” he says, “Asie. White-man name?”
“No,” says I. “Shoshone. Short for Sima Untuasie, which means ‘first son.’”
“Maybe he is Shoshone,” Giver said to Joe.
Joe nodded. “Many Shoshone women call their first sons that,” he said.
After a while Giver came out with, “What do you want, my friend? If you are Washo, or become Washo, what do you want?”
“I want to live here,” says I. “I want to find out what my people are like. I want to be with you, one of you.”
Giver nodded. Held silent. Nodded again. “Maybe you cannot go white and be Washo again.” He just looked at me. “I don’t know.”
Finally he decided. “First, we will talk about it, the ones who remember back. I will send my grandsons to the Pine Nut Hills, ask questions. Maybe find your relatives. Then we talk more.”
He let it sit again. “Six nights,” he said, “you come to us again, eat supper, all of you, Asie and your friends. We talk then.”
I stood up and looked at him, feeling naked. Maybe he is going to give me a welcome-home feast. My body tingled.
Sun Moon. Daniel, and Sir Richard got up, too, and we shuffled our feet and murmured things the way people saying good evening and thanks for supper do. Then we walked home through the cold night air, brilliant with stars, saying nary a word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Six days felt like a long time to wait. Lucky for me, Sun Moon said right off she would stay and rest up and not go on to San Francisco till after. Sir Richard said the same. That only left me, what had ants in my pants, bees in my bonnet, and willywoollies creeping around in my stomach.
Fortunately, Daniel had a project. “Asie,” he said over the last coffee of that night, “some people are coming by stage tomorrow. As a favor to an acquaintance, I’ve agreed to give them accommodations and show them around. Would you be willing to help me?”
“Who?” says I.
Daniel smiled. “That’s best a surprise. We will ride around a good deal of the lake and see many sights. Why not join us? It will take less than the six days.”
“What acquaintance?” says I.
“Oh,” Daniel says phony casual-like, “the man who was surveying here last summer. Surveying a possible route for the transcontinental railroad, in fact.” He looked at me sharp. “A good man to do a favor, I thought. He said the railroad may go up the Truckee River and over Donner Pass. I’m sure he was pulling my leg. It will go the easy way, south of the lake.”
Daniel and his schemes. Well, his visitors sounded curious, and I didn’t want to go back to the Washo camp before they had answers for me. I was too nervous. So I says, “OK.”
And the rabbit path took another zigzag worth remembering.
The Reverend Mr. Harrison Lake Thomas descended from the stage on the Placerville Road about noon with an air of being a sun with moons circling around him. His moons of the moment were Jane Wearing, who appeared to be an assistant, and a Japanese man named Kanaye, whose place I never did figure out. They were all intent on their reverence for the Reverend, and that troubled me.
Harrison Lake Thomas was a slight fellow, maybe forty, slender and pale. Yet he came equipped with a preacher’s essential gear, massive eyebrows, penetrating eyes, patriarchal beard, and a booming voice. It struck me funny from the start, this reed of a man talking like the Burning Rush. His disciples had no such sense of humor.
They came, the lot of them, from San Francisco up through the gold country to our remote stage station, and quickly let us know that they had toured through hell by the name of the Isthmus of Panama to get to the West Coast.
Daniel had showed me Thomas’s letter at breakfast. It said they were Christian communalists name of the Brotherhood of Life, with a colony on Lake Erie in New York State. “Having concluded that we shall not be permitted to live in the way God hath revealed to us in New York,” the letter said, “and having determined to find a place far from prejudice, prying eyes, and gossiping tongues, we seek land in the unsettled regions of the Golden Shore.”
“Utopians,” Daniel said with a look of dry humor.
I said to myself that Brigham Young might have written something very like that letter. I’m sure he did, and got mocked as a utopian, too.
Mounting, the Reverend Harris gazed all around us and said from the summit of his horse, “Solitude and beauty.” He could make anything look like a summit, and sound like a pulpit. “It is by probing the Mystery of Solitude that the Seeker finds, in the end, the path into the Spirit of Society.” He also had a way of speaking in capital letters.
It was a day to appreciate solitude and beauty. Even now, with autumn getting on, the day had come warm, nearly seventy degrees on Sir Richard’s Fahrenheit machine, and the air was alpine grace.
The Reverend announced that they wanted to head to the lodge, spend the rest of the day recovering from their journey, prepare during the “forenoon,” and begin their “circumambulation” of the lake at noon tomorrow, looking for likely property. Those were roughly his words. As we rode along, he offered tidbits of oratorical wisdom, too, but I couldn’t get my memory around them. By the time we got home, I was good and tired of sanctified company.
So was Daniel, but he’d promised them a tour of the lake, so we were stuck for several days.
I did have some curiosity. When Sun Moon walked down to the lakeshore to meditate,
I went along and took with me a little booklet called The Brotherhood of Life the Reverend gave Daniel to explain the inner mysteries of his future utopia.
Heckahoy if it didn’t turn out right curious. The Reverend was a Swedenborgian, whatever that was. Also a spiritualist, which I put together to mean a live person in direct communication with the dead. Also a communalist. After some puzzling through long sentences, I judged that meant that everybody in the utopia put all they owned into one common pot. Which naturally reminded me of the United Order of Enoch, Brigham Young’s common ownership plan, so there was another similarity. The Reverend Thomas’s version was called Theo-Socialism, and its goal was the New Harmonic Society.
The last principle of the Brotherhood of Life was one Brigham Young wouldn’t subscribe to. It was celibacy. Though I was pretty sure I knew what the word meant, I did considerable reading before I let myself believe that’s what the Reverend was actually talking about. In the end I was sure but stupefied. “Only when free from the libidinous urges of the body,” wrote the Reverend, “are we free to approach God.” He said God was bisexual (the first time I ever saw or heard that word) and that “God Himself is the only Bridegroom and God Herself the only Bride.” He did allow marriage for those “not yet attained to the higher planes,” which I thought was good of him. I supposed that with celibacy, his program for making new converts needed to be right pert, lest the Brotherhood die with the present generation. However, the booklet shed no light on that subject. Of course, I’d never sorted out my thoughts on even Sun Moon’s celibacy.
There were two more points of particular interest. One was Divine Respiration. The Reverend had come up with some method of breathing supposed to bring the disciple to direct perception of God. I wondered if that was something like Sun Moon’s meditation.
The other was the Pivotal Man. The Second Coming of Christ, said the Reverend, would be announced by the Pivotal Man, within whom the cosmic forces of good and evil did battle. I got a little lost here, but did note that the Pivotal Man was none other than Harrison Lake Thomas.