The Turtle's Beating Heart

by Low, Denise;

  In public schools and mainstream media I learned a conqueror’s narrative that erased surviving Native people, including Delawares, who persist long after the Manhattan Island days. Like Hogan, I grew up inarticulate and barely able to be understood when I dared speak aloud. Like Hogan, I discovered some lost threads through the medium of the written language. She describes the empowerment of language: “One day the words came. I was an adult. I went to school after work. I read. I wrote. Words came, anchored to the earth, to matter, to the wholeness of nature. There was, in this, a fall, this time to holy ground of a different order, a present magic, a light-bearing, soul-saving presence that illuminated my heart and mind and altered my destiny.” Reading and writing help me learn the “wholeness of nature.” I wish my grandfather were alive now to appreciate the shared community of other Native peoples who find ways to speak. Writers help me sort out possibilities. Gerald Vizenor’s “fourth dimension” is another axis that informs wholeness, a historic accounting of experience. He uses mapping as a more precise documentation of history—“virtual cartography.” He describes how the past is a presence, beyond language, memory, and culture. It exists within the present as “transmotion.” This is a distinctly Native idea of time and history, and it helps me find peace in a town where the past is so visible.

  I honor the lives my relatives endured by learning as much as I can about them. I will pass forward a larger story, and in the stream of time I hear more stories. They add to a more complete counter-narrative.

  Land is a continuous anchor. Some cloudy mornings the hillside where I live slips backward in time. Again it is a large farm with vast fields, not houses. Cattle are outside the window, and then it shifts backward again to the time of the Oregon Trail. My house sits squarely on the former trail. My husband swears he hears people moving about when it is dark. I imagine that time and before. I see the slope, the slight depression where water collects, and the tiny rill that becomes a headwaters during rainstorms. In winter snow covers everything except the roll of land against sky and bluestem grass. This is what is most real. My grandfather joins me. We exist connected to the unfailing elements beyond words—soil, water, air, and sun.

  *

  When Native and European people met at L’Anse aux Meadows, about the year 1000, already a protocol for trading existed—the Native inhabitants had furs to offer, and they wanted guns in exchange. At first language was a problem, but then, without explanation from the chronicler, they communicate. Indigenous Newfoundland people trade for milk instead of weapons. This is the first recorded incident of contact. Because of the established trading etiquette, they must have had previous meetings. Europeans and North Americans are not opposing, partitioned people. Interconnections have occurred beyond recorded times. But this moment at L’Anse aux Meadows is a written record in the greater shared history.

  Another first contact is a toddler’s encounter with mysterious objects, like magnets. My grandson came to visit yesterday. His blond hair sticks up all over, so his mother cuts it in a Mohawk. He is an adorable little man—Menominee, German, and Irish on his mother’s side and Lakota, Norwegian, and German on his father’s side. His hair will darken as he grows older. Although both his parents are tribal members, he is eligible only for descendancy status in the Menominee Nation, not formal membership. The politics of identity are complex and often exclude people with Native heritage and history, like my grandfather and like this little boy.

  My grandson has not visited for a month, and he has a moment of surprise as he recognizes his surroundings. He runs to his favorite corners: the aromatic shelf where coffee is stored; the cupboard of plastic bowls; and the playroom of stuffed teddy bears. His mother is Bear Clan, which he inherits. His name is Keso’, the eternal Sun. His ancestor namesake, like the Sun, was not moved from his course easily.

  This little bear allows grandparents to bestow some hugs. Then he is again in motion, exercising his mind as well as his sturdy legs. He is interested in magnetism. He and I take large magnets from the refrigerator, not small ones that would be dangerous if swallowed, and then experiment with wood, glass, and paper. He wants to learn. Even though he does not repeat the word magnet, he remembers everything.

  He collects memories of me, his grandmother, a figure who will shift among many images in his mind and add to his identity. How I hold him, how I speak to him, my squishiness—all of these are mastered already. He looks at me gravely and then shifts attention to novel objects that must be learned. Magnets.

  Stories of Delawares in New Jersey and their copper pipes and jewelry are far away, in time and in geography, yet they also are present as we touch a steel measuring cup—which sticks to the magnet. We learn electromagnetism, a powerful force that cannot be seen yet has undeniable strength, like love.

  My own grandfather also is present as I watch the youngster’s ravenous curiosity. Once, years ago, I first met Grandfather, and at that moment I grafted his presence onto my own sense of self. I have spent the rest of my life with him nearby. His life resonates, along with other ancestors, as I hand Keso’ a large green magnet that once held a sage wreath to the front door. He remembers the front door and notices the portability of this green object. His mind is an electrical field like the magnet. Many stories orbit. Some will stick.

  In warm months his family will take him on hikes and teach him to touch and taste rocks, distinguish the color patterns of sunfish, smell the lairs of chipmunks, and translate the chatter of squirrels. In this way the boy will learn subtleties possible through his senses. With his eyes, hands, and nose, he will learn mulberries, sunflowers, elderberries, echinacea, mullein, yarrow, and the square stems of mints. He will hear about the Water Being that lives in the spring across the river from his great-grandmother’s house on the Menominee reservation. He will attend school and learn addition tables and writing. Most of all he will learn habits of observation and how to relish each moment. This style of approaching experience continues the tradition handed down for generations, whatever language is used.

  As I touch my grandson’s hand, I also touch my grandfather’s hand. I remember how he lifted me when I was a child. I remember his aroma of aftershave, tobacco, and damp hair. His flannel shirt is scratchy like his whiskers. His eyes are soft. Each memory is the first time I have ever seen him. This is the grandparent who talked to me seriously and entrusted me with important teachings. My poet grandmother of British Isles and German heritage also shaped my future, and I am grateful to her as well. The influences blend together, not as opposing forces.

  If only I could end the story here, with the cycle of losses healed through magical memories and the life of this grandchild. In a European fairy tale this is the “happily ever after” moment, closure. Instead, I must be truthful and report a continuing cycle. Too frequently, my extended family sends news of children lost to despair and addiction, like my niece.

  My Cherokee friend Linda Rodriguez gives me permission to describe a family story, and I could recount dozens more from personal experience. Linda’s Cherokee grandmother was denigrated by her daughter-in-law. The non-Native mother hid letters and gifts intended for Linda. The girl was not allowed to visit the beloved elder. That negativity, however, did not prevent Linda from treasuring the memories she did have of her grandmother, nor did it prevent her from recuperating her birthright. She has become a powerful Cherokee writer and person.

  Some reconnections occurred after I began researching my grandfather’s story. Cousins sent stories about our family, and we reflected on how our parents and grandparents responded to historic patterns as well as they could. Even distant cousins reported eerily similar stories, and the shared narrative is comforting. They confirmed the Native identity and offered more photographs. People my parents never allowed into family discussions came to life through these conversations.

  This process has healed me. I better understand my mother’s barely suppressed anger in terms of generalized cultural trauma, not personal failings
. Bitterness eases. I ask my husband if he notices any difference since I began this inquiry into my grandfather’s past. “You enjoy things more,” he says. His perspective surprises me, but yes, the shared stories help me feel a deeper range of joy. Humor is funnier. I am more able to shake off criticism and more able to focus. I now see myself as a flawed yet valued person in my family and communities. Flaws are part of the process, not irrevocable impediments.

  My grandfather was absent most of my childhood. He had imperfect, sometimes broken relationships with his parents, his brothers, his cousins, his daughter, and his grandchildren. Nonetheless, he left an important legacy. He sustained his marriage through fifty years and never deserted his family through abandonment or suicide. He taught an attitude to words, the importance of language and stories. He valued history as a continuing aspect of daily experience. He stayed true to a homeland, the Kansas prairies where skies, rivers, winds, and the earth’s body rearrange themselves daily in intense colors and forms. This is the source of our breath, blood, bones, and flesh. Those of us descended from Frank Bruner have a living connection to his life.

  *

  My grandfather probably never knew his Delaware traditions from the Atlantic Seaboard. Delaware elders tell me that most oral tradition of that time is gone. Colonial documents preserve suggestions of the Delaware past, from a European settler point of view. Historic silence has been the fate of the overwhelmed Delaware peoples, so most of our history is absent from the national narrative. A few borrow words from Algonquian languages survive: moccasin, powwow, persimmon, and terrapin.

  Many of today’s Delawares are Turtle band. The land turtle group went south to Oklahoma, an elder told me, and the water turtle group went north to the woodlands, a land of lakes and rivers. In both places Delawares thrive.

  Turtles are hard to kill. Their hearts keep beating long after separation from their bodies. I met an Arikara woman whose grandmother once gave her a beating heart to swallow, along with broth. This was an old ceremony for a woman’s coming of age. The woman never forgot the lesson of Turtle’s strength, as she felt the sensation of the moving heart in her mouth, throat, stomach, and gut. She still enjoys a long life.

  Turtles survive because of their strong hearts and also because they can adapt to many environments. English has three categories for turtles: tortoise, a sea dweller; land turtle; and terrapin, for freshwater turtles. Delaware language points to yet more niches for Turtles. Bands within the Turtle Clan are “Bark Country,” “Beggar,” “Brave,” and “Snapping.” The words suggest rich narratives of geographies, behaviors, and turtle species like the snapping turtle.

  Anyone who fishes muddy inland rivers has stories of great snapping turtles that clamp bait and cannot be removed. I have met people who have lost fingertips.

  In my early teens I enjoyed the solitude of fishing in a small lake formed from an oxbow of the Neosho River. This was one of the gifts of a Flint Hills upbringing. I spent hours wandering the lake, marveling at sunfish colors, dragonflies, and placid painted turtles. I caught stringers of pan fish and cleaned them for my mother.

  One day I tossed in my line beyond the range of snags and watched the bobber tip in the current. Suddenly, an underwater fury attacked the worm. I pulled hard against an unseen surge of power. Finally, I could see the prehistoric beast’s razor-sharp talons and beak. I did not know this kind of animal existed, but I knew I was outmatched. I cut the line.

  I remember that first snapping turtle as though it were still next to me and its ferocity. I remember my Delaware grandfather’s power. Turtles can be both dormant and active, like memory itself. When turtles burrow into mud in the winter, they wait but do not die. They have their seasons and migrations.

  Turtles help me understand my own identity. Recently, a non-Native friend asked me why a minority of my own heritage should make any difference. Shouldn’t the majority of my bloodline sources, she reasoned, be my sole identity? She followed a majority rule paradigm, which subtracts the lesser sum and discards it.

  To answer, I used an example from my Menominee husband’s experiences as a deer hunter. He explained to me how exact fractions seldom exist in nature. When hunters apportion a deer’s quarters, the shoulders and haunches differ. Also, the heart beats extra blood to the dominant side, so that half is larger. No fourth is equal. This exemplifies the issue of blood quantum, or abstract fractionalization of Native ancestry for federal “Indian preference” regulations. Many tribal membership requirements echo this federal model. A deer or a turtle or even a human may be quartered, but living beings are not symmetrical masses. Like a turtle, a human’s single heart is critical to existence, no matter which quarter holds it.

  In overt and subtle ways my grandfather’s intangible teachings impact my family profoundly, first through his direct descendants, my mother and her brother. Further, he changed the course of my father’s life, in terms of occupation, political identity, and religion. Like a turtle’s enduring heartbeat, my family has a living legacy no matter how far we live from the Atlantic or how long ago Delawares and Dutch formed a trade alliance on Manhattan Island. We are thankful for the land, wherever we live, and the food that ties us to it. We listen to our hearts, which are always at the center.

  Notes

  1. A Twentieth-Century Native Man

  His ancestor William Walker: Connelley, “Kansas City, Kansas.”

  I realize, after Obermeyer’s talk: Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio, 161.

  Diné (Navajo) poet Luci Tapahonso: Blue Horses Rush In, xiv.

  “Old Man came from the south”: Chewing Black Bones, “Blackfeet Creation Tale.”

  The local histories: Bruner, Days to Remember; Handle, Clark, and Obee, Burns, Kans.

  “Mrs. F. L. Bruner presented”: Burns Monitor, quoted in Bruner, Days to Remember, 29.

  “Among those who developed”: Mooney, History of Butler County, 113.

  “children chose it as a favorite”: Jensen, “Passing Era of a Kansas Small Town,” 80.

  “Chauquecake”: Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio.

  From beadwork designs: Lyford, Ojibwa Crafts (Chippewa), 142.

  “double curve” design: Speck, Double-Curve Motif.

  These stems are a type: Mihku Paul, private conversation, 2012; Tantamidgeon and Fawcett, “Basketry Designs,” 135.

  Later I will find: Speck, Double-Curve Motif.

  After 1900: Yost, “History of Lynchings in Kansas.”

  The Ku Klux Klan became a major threat: Sloan, “Kansas Battles the Invisible Empire.”

  Moulton also had: Reports of Cases Argued and Determined.

  Gretchen Eick, a Wichita: Gretchen Eick, email message to author, August 20, 2013.

  A 1782 mob killing: Farrar, “Moravian Massacre.”

  “Chief,” as he was called: “Frank Lindley,” in Buller, Can’t You Hear the Whistle Blowing, 9–20.

  A checklist of historic trauma: Wesley-Esquimaux and Smolewski, Aboriginal Historic. An early scholar in the field is Judith Hermann (Trauma and Recovery). Scholars who identify “a legacy of chronic trauma and unresolved grief across generations” for American Indians are Maria Y. H. Brave Heart and Lemyra M. DeBruyn (“American Indian Holocaust,” 60).

  2. Cutting Ties

  This patchwork of communities: Perry and Skolnick, Keeper of the Delaware Dolls, 51.

  Delaware tribal member Lynette Perry: Perry and Skolnick, Keeper, 64.

  eastern edge of the Flint Hills: With, King, and Jensen, “Remaining Large Grasslands,” 3152.

  Gregory Orr writes about: Orr, Poetry, 4.

  Dolls were fed ceremonial: Jones, History of the Ojibwey Indians, 111–15.

  Lynette Perry describes how: Perry and Skolnick, Keeper, 202.

  My sister and I: Perry and Skolnick, Keeper, 202.

  An area seed keeper: Dianna Henry, email message to the author, December 19, 2011.

  “Delicious cakes were baked”: Johnson, Wonder-Working Providence, 1654.


  In 1683 William Penn: Penn, Letter to the Free Society of Traders.

  Leslie Marmon Silko writes: Silko, Turquoise Ledge, 226.

  3. A Haunted Life

  One Delaware game: Bragdon, Native People, 222.

  Delawares had a dice game: Bragdon, Native People, 222–23.

  Louise Erdrich writes about: Erdrich, Bingo Palace, 143.

  “No person was anywhere”: Stafford, You Must Revise Your Life, 8.

  “Upon hearing that a parent”: “History.” Ramapough Lunaape Nation

  “They lived in longhouses”: Bruchac, Roots of Survival, 190.

  Geary Hobson, a professor: Hobson, “Folks Left Out,” 344–49.

  American Indigenous people have: “Fast Facts for Youth in Indian Country.”

  4. Today

  “rectangular in ground-plan”: Harrington, “Preliminary Sketch of Lenápe Culture,” 217.

  They used deep-bowled spoons: Harrington, “Vestiges of Material Culture,” 408.

  A record by a government agent: “Abstract of Stock Stolen by Whites.” Although the abstract title suggests a longer period, the original document only covers three months.

  “In a treaty”: Ewing, Early History of North Lawrence, 8.

  One oral tradition story: Caron, “Tribe Has Historical Ties.”

  The Delaware “big house”: Caron, “Tribe Has Historical Ties”; Speck, Study of the Delaware Indian Big House Ceremony, 17.