Holding History

When I got married and left home, my dad gave me a gift. He handed me the beaded necklaces that my grandmother's classmates had made for her when she attended the Santa Fe Indian School. Although this is not the beginning of this story, it is a convenient entry.

I will never really know why it is that my dad thought that this was a fitting token to give me as I packed up my truck to drive cross country. Some people who have heard the story seem to think that it is because I was going far away from home. Perhaps, in some way, these necklaces were an anchor ... something to hold on to when I was homesick or questioning identity. It would have made more sense if he had given them to me when I left for college. I guess I could ask my dad why he did it, but I not always sure that the words that come out are really the ones behind the meaning.

I learned about the necklaces (and saw them for the first time) when I asked my grandmother about her family history for a family tree project I was doing for school. I had long admired the names my mother had recorded in the big family bible. I would pull it out as a child and ask her questions. This assignment required that we go beyond the names. We were supposed to interview a relative to get the information. At the time, 1979 or 1980 I think, my grandmother (my father's mother) was the only grandparent I had left. My mom suggested that there was something my grandmother might want to share with me. I assumed I was going to get the typical information -- maybe some interesting anecdote.

I got a whole piece of my family tree that I would never have seen in the pages of that bible.

My grandmothers' parents both died sometime between 1910-1914 (as far as I can tell) and my grandmother along with her sisters (Margarita and Corina) and brother (Aureliano "Pete") were orphaned. I knew that my grandmothers' sisters had both died sometime in the 1930's or 1940's -- and I knew her brother as Uncle Pete. At the time, I didn't even know that he had another name -- a really beautiful name. Though this should not have come as a surprise. My grandmother had a lovely name, Enriqueta, that she did not use. She went by Katie. My grandfather also had a wonderful name, Sabino, and he went by Sam.

I don't know who filled in the blanks, my mom or my grandmother -- but somehow I got the story that the Mexican Revolution had caused her family to lose everything. I believe it was my mother who said that my great-grandfather had died of a broken heart after losing everything he had. My great grandmother died, too, but I didn't get any details. All I knew was that as a result, my grandmother and her siblings became wards of the state in New Mexico -- not where they were born, not where they had lived of with their parents.

At the time, 1912-ish, if you were brown and orphaned, you must be Indian, so they were all shipped off to the Indian School in Santa Fe. A place my grandmother claims not to remember. She told me to ask my Uncle Pete, but since the girls were sent to one place and Uncle Pete to another, that would not have helped.

Perhaps in an attempt to not have to talk about it, she took out her treasures and showed them to me. Slowly she unwrapped the necklaces, as vibrant as the day they were made, and handed them to me gingerly as though they might fall apart. She had wrapped them in paper towels and they lived in a long white cardboard box. One, two, three and then a buckle, hand etched, and a belt. She said I could take them to school and use them as part of my report.

Foolishly, I let her off the hook and didn't press for more details -- fascinated at the prospect of being able to hold the treasures and show them off.

Shortly after this talk, my grandmother passed away. My father "inherited" the necklaces, belt and buckle. They came to live in our house and promptly were locked away in my mother's cedar chest -- site of all the family treasures. Every once in a while I would get my mom to take them out and tell me the stories she knew.

My father started at that time to encourage me to investigate my grandmother's time at the Santa Fe Indian School. He wanted me to go there and find out if they had registered my grandmother as some kind of Indian and if that might help me get a scholarship for college. I knew that tribal affiliation didn't work that way, so I never took up the research from that question, but I did try to find out more about what it would have been like for her to be there.

I wanted to know why she would claim that she couldn't remember anything about her time there.

And so began the quest... it has taken me to the Native American Museum (where it first lived in New York City and then in Washington DC), online to University of New Mexico resources and now, physically to the place.

This Wednesday my parents and I will start our trek -- first to El Paso to visit with an elderly relative -- and as a base from which to make some trips into Juarez, the city of my grandmother's birth, and then to Santa Fe to see the school and do some research.

I am starting this blog to document the trip.

I hope to add some photos, but my camera is feeling ill at the moment...