Mail Order Bride: The Navajo Medicine Woman & The Civil War Vet
By
Vanessa Carvo
Copyright 2016 Quietly Blessed & Loved Press
Synopsis: A Navajo woman decides to become the mail order bride of a wounded vet, but she hasn’t told him she’s Navajo and when she arrives at the train station, she has no idea what effect her appearance has on him because he has a severe case of PTSD from the war, and what happened during it.
Frank could hear voices yelling before he opened his eyes. He had learned early on that this was what he needed to do every time he awoke. There was no more waking up, sitting right up, stretching and having a moment or two to wake up. This was a completely new way of life.
He heard some Navajos speaking in what sounded like an angry argument. Why hadn’t he ever learned this language? It might tell him exactly what they were about to do, and whether or not there was going to be any more torture or worse yet, death.
Lately, he began to think that it would be better to die than to be tortured anymore. By the sound of the voices, he could tell they were pretty far away from his location. Whether or not there was a man close by him, he had no idea. He opened his eyes slightly to see who might be close by. There was no one.
What he saw was the empty room that he was in. It looked like he was in a cave somewhere underground and it was dark and damp. He was extremely hot and hated the feeling on his clothing sticking to him. This wasn’t as bad as he thought. If he could just sneak out quietly, he’d have a chance to escape from the captivity that he had been held in for days.
In fact, it could have been weeks, he just didn’t know. Time slipped away when he was in a place with no windows, clocks or any way to tell the time of day. He stood up but was quickly pulled back down. He looked around and saw that his ankle was chained to the wall, not allowing him to go anywhere.
Blood stained his army pants and his white shirt was no longer white. It was stained brown with dirt and in some spots an even deeper color, which he knew was blood. Someone must have heard the chain rustling because the voices stopped and he heard footsteps approaching.
He closed his eyes and hung his head, hoping they’d believe that he was still sleeping. His luck wasn’t so good. Four men came into the bare room and stood directly in front of him. He didn’t need to open his eyes and could feel the men standing in front of him.
Suddenly, he felt the men grab him and pull him up to a standing position. They continued to shout at him in a foreign language, which he couldn’t understand a single word of, despite his best efforts. In the past days, however long he had been there, he had been beaten severely, with his hands tied behind his back.
He would pass out because of the pain and they’d wake him up by splashing cold water on his face and then commence to beat him again when he regained consciousness. They had broken all of his fingers one by one. He had no idea how to stop the torture.
All they kept doing was screaming at him in their foreign language. During the worst pain ever, he’d scream at the men inflicting the pain on him, “I have no idea what you’re saying. How can I give you what you want when I can’t understand what you are telling me.”
No matter how bad things got, he never gave up hope that his group would come through and find him. He didn’t cry or whine, or beg for his life. He knew better because he had training.
About a thousand miles away, there was a twenty-year-old woman named Rebecca who had a completely different lifestyle, but was equally as lonely as Frank.
Rebecca had a great upbringing. Her mother was the main part of her life and was such a good woman. She worked with other Navajo Indian woman, finding the best herbal remedies, and their cures. She was able to cure anything of the common cold and headaches, to major aches and pains and insomnia.
No matter what ailment anybody had, her mother would mix some herbs together and make sure that they felt more pain by the time she was finished. She was never your common doctor, but among the Navajo community, everyone would come to her for their aches and pains.
She was also classified as their midwife. She loved to help women in the last few months of their pregnancy, and she also would help in the birthing process. The use of sagebrush would help the woman during childbirth. Some woman called her a God, especially if she saved someone from a life-threatening situation, such as steak bites, bee stings, or even a severe fever.
Others just called her their doctor. Those who used herbal remedies seemed to live longer than everyone else. There were many different ways to make these herbal medicines. At home, she’d cook with these herbal medicines to prevent the family from getting heartburn and indigestion. Other times she would use them in hot teas, boiled teas, tinctures, using alcohol and water extracts, cold soaking so that they could make the powders into ointments, and salves.
When Rebecca’s mother would make medicine for someone outside of her tribe, she’d make sure that she made her medicines before she went to them. Then she’d place the medicine into her medicine bag and carry that with her wherever she went. She didn’t want others outside of the tribe seeing how she made her herbal medicine and steal her ideas.
The one person her mother did share all of her secrets with was Rebecca. They had a garden in their backyard, and to an untrained eye would just look like flowers, plants, and even weeds; but to a Navajo woman it would look like a medicine cabinet.
At the age of twenty, Rebecca’s father had been killed on a fishing trip with friends. This had been a big blow for her family. She was an only child and the only one who was as close to her mother as he was. After his death, however, her mother didn’t want anyone close to her anymore.
She sank her every waking moment into her plants and finding new cures. Rebecca knew that she needed to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, and fast. A few of the other woman on the reservation had been talking, and they were going to be mail order brides.
When Rebecca had first heard about this, she laughed at the girls. “Who would want to travel far away just to be forced to marry some man who just bought you? Why would anyone sell themselves for marriage? Are you all that desperate,” she asked, astonished.
The women laughed at her. “For one, you never know how far you’re going to travel? Plus, you aren’t forced to marry anyone. If the man you meet isn’t who you want to be with, then you can come home. Most of the time, he’ll be a gentleman and send you home; other times your family will have to send for you.
Worst case, you’ll have to find work to come back home. Lastly, you aren’t selling yourself, nor are the men buying you. They are simply paying for you to travel to them. You don’t have to marry him, especially if either of you don’t like each other.
Women who don’t know the facts are the reason why there’s a bad name for mail order brides,” one of the women told her.
She apologized to the woman and turned around and went back home. She couldn’t stop thinking about it, and the more she thought about it the more it made sense. When was she ever going to find someone who was like-minded as her, but not necessarily a Navajo like her.
If she stayed here on the reservation, she would have to pick from other Navajo men that also lived here. She never had left the reservation a day in her life. Did she want the rest of her life to be as close-minded as to staying here forever?
She spoke to her mom about her feelings. She expected her mother to tell her she was crazy, and if she did this, she’d be disowned. To her surprise, her mother listened to all of the facts while sitting close to her daughter in their living room.
When Rebecca had finished telling her mo
ther everything, she sat watching her mother’s reaction. She couldn’t read her mother’s feelings; she never could. After a few minutes of silence, her mother finally spoke. “I think you should go for it,” her mother said softly.
“Wh…What,” Rebecca asked, surprised at her mother. She had never expected in her wildest dreams that her mother would approve of her traveling far away to meet a man and marry him, let alone meeting and possibly marrying a man who wasn’t Navajo.
“Just because a man isn’t Navajo doesn’t mean that he’s not a good man for my daughter,” she said, seeing the look on Rebecca’s face turn in confusion.
After about a week of thinking about this situation, she went and found those same girls who she had spoken to. When she told them that she wanted to put her ad in the paper as well, they looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“I thought girls who were mail order brides were desperate and crazy,” one of the girls mocked her.
“That was before you all taught me what the business was all about. I thought about it, and I don’t want to stay here on the reservation for the rest of my life. I want to see the world and meet new people. Can you help me, or not,” she asked the woman.
They were quiet for a moment and then agreed to help her. She chose to not add into the ad that she was a Navajo female. She wanted a man to like her for who she was, not for what her race was. A few of the woman disagreed with her decision, but it didn’t matter to her. She had already made up her mind.
It was 1870 and since the end of the civil war, the period was still in conflict with the Navajo. Four years before, the Navajos were forced to do their long walk, when they surrendered and were captured by the soldiers. In certain areas, because of the way the Navajos had rebelled on American’s later, caused Americans to hate Navajos.
In turn, this caused Navajos to have a bad name. Some American soldiers hated Navajos because there were some Navajos who took soldiers hostage during the war. Most were never found. Rebecca found this sad, but she was angry at the same time. It wasn’t her fault, or anyone in her family or tribe.
Therefore, why would so many Americans hate her just because of the color of her skin when the Navajo could bring so much good to the American culture?
Against the advice of the other woman, she sent in her application. After she sent it in, she forgot about it and went on with her everyday life. She helped her mother in the garden and learned as much as she could about traditional Navajo herbal remedy medicines.
Frank now lived in Kansas. He was no longer physically held captive, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t held hostage in his mind. During the day, he didn’t leave the house often. He stayed inside, struggling to get through each day. At the end of the day, the struggle was even worse to get through the night.
Not only did he struggle from flashbacks and images in his mind that he wished he could erase, but also he struggled because of his loneliness. His friends would attempt to bring woman around, but he never felt any kind of connection with any of them.
Finally one day, his best friend, a man he called his brother, came over waving an envelope. “Look, buddy, I an answer. I mean, I got a few responses before, but I wrote them back for you and they were crazy. This one, though, this one is the real deal,” he called as he rushed into Franks home without knocking, like usual.
“Whoa man, it smells in here. You need to open up some windows and get some fresh air flowing through here; air out the stink you know.” David stopped dead in his tracks before going any further, wrinkling his nose.
“I don’t need to air it out. I can’t smell anything. Who cares what anyone else thinks,” Frank replied, sounding grumpy as ever.
“Well at least open up the curtains. I can’t see a damn thing, especially through this thick smoke. God, what are you doing in here, smoking a cigar the moment you put one out? Those are going to kill you, you know.”
David was only trying to help, but Frank didn’t want the help. He didn’t want to be bothered at all by anyone. “Frank, listen, don’t be mad, but I did something to help you,” Frank interrupted David in a gruff voice.
“I don’t any help. I want to be left alone,” he growled. “This lifestyle that you’re living isn’t healthy. I know you are lonely, you’ve told me before. What would you say if I told you I found a young woman who is willing to come live here with you?
“She’s willing to cook, clean, God knows you need that, and keep you company.” David held his breath, not knowing what Frank would say back to this proposal. He thought that Frank would either be angry with him and throw him out of his house or be grateful in what he had done, but probably not show it.
Frank was never the kind of man to show his emotions, but when he had come back from the war, he was worse than ever. He was only a twenty-one-year-old man, but he acted as if he was at least fifty by locking himself in his house, never coming out, and having poor hygiene and housekeeping skills.
“You did what,” Frank asked, his voice rising. “I put an ad in the paper for mail order brides. I was receiving letters back from a woman and I would write them back to find out more about them. I know that even if you agreed to do this; you wouldn’t have known the questions to ask these women to find out who was crazy or worthwhile to come and live here with you,” David told Frank.
Frank opened his mouth and closed it again, not knowing exactly what to say.
David took this opportunity to continue speaking to him, telling him what he had done, and what he had found. “So, after many crazy women writing me back…er… should I say writing you back...” He paused and sat down on a couch close to where it looked like David was. It took his eyes a bit to adjust to the dark room, but when they did he could see David’s silhouette sitting alone in a chair.
“I finally found this woman who sounds amazing. Gosh, if you don’t accept her, I will.” David laughed, hoping the old Frank would come out and laugh right along with him. Frank didn’t make a sound. This could be a good thing or a bad thing.
“Her name is Rebecca, and she’s from Kansas. She’s twenty years old. She cooks, cleans, loves to talk and work in her garden. She is really into herbal medicine. I didn’t give much personal information about you, but I did say you have anxiety and depression.
If I didn’t, she would arrive and be in for a shock. She said that was fine; she’d bring her herbal medicine, add it into the food, and have you drink a few teas a day and you’d feel better in about three days.”
David paused, waiting to hear Frank say something, whether it get out or tell him more. He heard nothing. “Come on Frank, tell me something. I did this for you,” David pleaded.
Finally, he heard him reply. “I didn’t ask you to do anything for me,” Frank growled, anger rising in his voice.
“I know you didn’t, and if you’re angry with me I understand. All I ask is that you read these letters. I’ve numbered them one through six. One is the first one I wrote to her and six would be the last one she wrote to me... well you,” David said, as he set the letters down on the table piled high with junk mail and garbage magazines that Frank would never read.
He thought about the location of where he just put these at and realized that if he kept them there, they’d be soon completely lost, never to be seen again. He grabbed the letters again, rubbing his thumb over where she had printed his name and address. He didn’t know why, but he was feeling something strong for her and was afraid that allowing Frank to take over would end up getting her emotionally hurt.
“Where can I put these letters where they won’t be lost? I have been writing her back the same down, or the next day at the most. If you sit on these letters for a month and don’t write her back, she’s going to think you don’t care. She probably has other offers, as amazing as she is, and if you wait you’ll lose her,” David insisted.
Frank became angry. “I don’t write letters. I don’t read letters. I don’t want a wife, and I especially don’t need some out of the country wi
fe, who only wants to come over here so she can become a legal resident.” David cut him off.
“You’re wrong Frank, she lives in Kansas, weren’t you listening to me? I will write her back for you if you’d like, but she wants to come here and meet you face to face. There’s no way I’m going to allow her to come here if you are going to be mean to her, that’s why I came to you.” David was getting angry at the same time.
He had become quite fond of this woman during their correspondence and didn’t want her to get hurt because Frank wanted to have a pity party. David didn’t have to go to war because of personal illness problems, so he had no idea what Frank had gone through during the way, but he didn’t think there was any reason for this.
Frank and he had both been orphans when they were growing up. Neither of them had ever been chosen to be adopted because of their age, so they found family in each other. They schooled together, played together, and got into typical boy mischief together. He was thrilled after four years when he returned from the war. He had missed him and couldn’t wait to show Frank his new home.
He worked hard from the time Frank had left doing construction. He saved up his money and soon he had moved into his own house and was able to pay his bills on time and put some money, saving for his future. The problem was, when Frank came back, he used the money the military had given him and got a modest home of his own and locked himself away inside, refusing to come out and converse with anyone.
Of course, he had no family, but some of his friends from the orphanage wanted to come and say hi but got the door slammed in their face. “So, what do you say, Frank? Be angry at your friend, the man you call your brother if you want.
“If that’s the case, I’ll take these letters, tell her that something came up with you, and I’ll bring her over here and I’ll marry her.” David stood up with the letters in his hands and walked towards the door. He took a deep breath to say something else, but Frank stopped him.
The Navajo Medicine Woman & the Civil War Vet Page 1
