Even More Loose Ends

My last few posts have been as disconnected as usual so I'll try to desribe to you the thoughts that were going through my mind that led to such chaos.

After telling how important our heritage was to my mother in "Our Indian Heritage" and "Aristocrats," I wanted to follow up with some details, so I put down most of what I know about my great - great - great - great - great grand uncle, John Paul Jones, the first in a long line of colorful characters in the Paul family.

Just after writing about John Paul Jones I got my copy of the Chickasaw Times which contained my mother's obituary, so I just printed it as the next post. That got me thinking about my mother's last days and how much suffering she went through. She had told me about saying a prayer for her older sister Kaliteyo when she died, the same childhood prayer that they had said together as children before going to sleep. It was also the only thing I could think of to say for Jim when she died.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

It's hard to explain how I felt when my mother died. When I said that prayer for her I had spent the better part of two months sharing her fear, her apprehension, and finally her suffering. During that time, memories or our lives together had been going through my mind, so much to understand, so many questions left unanswered. When it was all over, that overwhelming confusion and tension that I had felt were gone, and in their place was just a gaping hole. I felt so helpless and afraid, like a child. At the time I said that prayer for Jim, it was just as much for me as for her. Finally I understood how she had felt when she had said the prayer for her sister Kaliteyo.

That was about as much writing about Jim's death as I could stand, so I returned to our family's story. The first story that came to mind was the one about Smith Paul running away from home as a small boy, and being taken in by the Chickasaw Indians. I love that story. We don't know many details, but there's so much food for the imagination: The boldness of an eleven year old boy in striking out on his own; the hardships of those relatively primitive times; the incredible distances they traveled on horseback or in a wagon, when 15 or 20 miles was a day's journey; the hospitality of the Chickasaws; the experience of growing up with people of an entirely different culture; how the bonds of friendship and loyalty grew that caused Smith Paul to stay with the Chickasaws and to share their fate.

After telling the beginning of the story of Smith Paul, I just had to write something else about the Chickasaws. I wish I had another life to spend learning more about native American history. While most of what we know is through the writing of white men, the story you can piece together of the native Americans in general, and of the Chickasaws in particular, is fascinating.

In my opinion the Chickasaws' encounter with Hernando De Soto is one of the most incredible stories in history. The Chickasaws, instead of being awed by the advanced technology of the Europeans, were able to see them for the selfish, arrogant bullies they were, and the Chickasaws were able to prevail by using their own native intelligence and ingenuity.