(Continuing from “The French Scout”)
We’d gone into a loop: the family was in the U.S. for hundreds of years…. the name was DeRock…. they were in New York, always…. prior to 1900, they weren’t there. I had both too much information and too little. We were Delaware? Seneca? Mohican? We came from Western NY? Eastern NY? Northern NY?
Too frustrating!
I began questioning the stories more closely: Who, exactly, was the Native American? At what point in the oral history did an ancestor’s description include “full-blooded Indian”?
In my mind, it was my grandmother. There were just so many whispers, all centering up on her marriage to my grandfather, whose choice of wife led to a big break with his father. I heard about the KKK, and southern Ohio, and bigotry that extended to anyone not “white”.
In my father’s memories, the “full-bloodedness” started with his grandfather. Chester’s story was so sad: a scout who led expeditions in his region of New York, but also an alcoholic who died alone in a men’s flophouse.
In my uncle’s version, it was Chester’s grandmother, Sophronia Little — a further 3 generations up the tree from my own starting point, and 5 generations removed from me. The only information we had of her came from her tombstone, erected posthumously by her son. No mention of a spouse, or the family name as I knew it.
My uncle’s story, in particular, caused some cognitive dissonance. Just how bigoted would my German great-grandfather have had to be, if it was my grandmother’s great-grandmother who was Native?
Obviously, I’d waited too long ask my questions; the whisper game had been played across too many years. There was no-one left from my grandparents’ generation, and we’d all internalized different versions of the story.
The research on this line stalled, and it stayed dormant until I moved to upstate New York in the 1990s.