not native fruit

history of bucks county/early spanish presence middle atlantic states

i'm finally reading 'the history of bucks county,' one of the resources i downloaded in the past two and a half years since i've begun researching my mother's family's background.  my great-great-great grandfather, william whittingham, is listed on the 1790 census as residing in bucks county.  his wife, rebecca livezey, is a descendent of the original Quaker Thomas Livezey, through his son Jonathan, who were 'First Proprietors' in Pennsylvania, so the history of bucks county is partially my family's history as well.  i'm interested in their history, and especially in the intersection with the local native american people which occurred, at the very least, when my great-grandfather, Alfred, married Mary Carney, a 'Moor' in 1872.  his parents were both deceased at that time, but alfred's brother refused to visit the home of alfred and mary, according to the civil war pension deposition filed on her behalf.

the so-called moor indians are usually given very little credence even for having existed in the past, so i've found it interesting to look into it a little.  i've found evidence for their existence in brewton berry's 1961 classic 'Almost White,' and also in 'Delaware's Forgotten Folk' by C.A. Weslager.  Weslager also wrote a book called 'The Delaware Indians' and in that book he states that the southernmost clans and bands, who spoke a Lenape (Algonquian) dialect similar to Unami, disappeared early by being absorbed into 'many peoples.'  In 'Delaware's Forgotten Folk,' Weslager makes the educated guess that the Moors were actually a remnant of the Lenape (Delaware) Indians, and I would assume he means the southern people, the Unalachtigo.  So, why was this remnant population known as 'the Moors'?

keeping all this in mind, it's interesting to read in different sources that there was a fairly strong Spanish presence all along the eastern coast of North America, at least as far north as the Hudson River as early as 1513 and throughout the 1500's.  In most of the American historical tradition and literature, a claim is made for the pre-eminent presence of the Dutch and English in these areas, but as we say, history is written by the victors, and I guess that's how the English wanted it to look.  An anti-Spanish, pro-Anglo bias has dominated American culture up until very recently, so I think it's important to keep that bias in mind.  Apparently, the Spanish - and their 'Moors' - were more present in the middle-Atlantic states than has been acknowledged up til now.

Paula Gunn Allen writes that Jamestown was situated 40 miles up-river in order to avoid Spanish ships as late as 1609.  According to the 'History of Bucks County,' the mouth of the Hudson River was first glimpsed by Verrazana in 1513, also a few years later by Stephanus Gomez who called it 'Rio de Gomez.'  "Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch East-India company, discovered [for the English] Delaware bay August 28, 1609, but he made no attempt to ascend the river.  Captain Cornelius Jacobson May ascended the river some distance in 1614, and two years afterwards Captain Hendrickson discovered the Schuylkill.  In 1616 three Dutch traders struck across to the headwaters of the Delaware, down which they traveled to the Schuylkill.  Here they were captured by the Minquas (Susquehannas) but were rescued by Captain Hendrickson at the mouth of that river."  All of this takes place a full hundred years after the Spanish first began exploring the region.  The Spanish also had two aborted colonies in the Chesapeake Bay region in the 1500's.

Historical record shows that many people came to the area and it is likely that there were more whose recorded names have been lost to the corrosive effects of time or who were never noted down in records to begin with.  The people we have records of are mostly those who were associated with one of the big trading companies who were all excellent record-keepers.  "About 1624-25 the West India company established a trading house on a small island (in the Delaware River) just below Trenton Falls, and located upon it three or four families of French Walloons.  The post was broken up about 1627, and the Walloons returned to New York.  In March 1685 Peter Lawrensen stated in a deposition that he came into that provice a servant of the West India company in 1628 (and) that in 1631, he, with seven others, was sent into the Delaware, where the company had a traditing house, with ten or twelve servants attached to it; that he saw them settled there.  A considerable body of Waldenses and Huguenots were sent to the Delaware in 1656-1663, but it is not known what became of them."  These are just people we can keep some kind of track of, thanks to the written record of these trading companies, but how likely is it that there were more who did not come under the auspices of an official institution?

For example, between 1623 and 1634 there was a group known as "The Albion Knights" who settled along the Delaware.  "Colonists were actually introduced and made their homes on the Delaware, but neither the number nor exact location can be told." (p.9)  This group is sometimes referred to as 'Plowden's Colony.'  William Rawle, who has studied the colony, "believed that some of those who welcomed Penn to the shores of the Delaware, were the survivors of the Albion Knights." (p.10)

It's no secret that these early Europeans started mixing their stock in with the Indians.  "During the early period, the river of the Sickoneysincks at Lewes, Delaware, received a new and vulgar name - Hoeren Kill (Whore's Creek), "From the liberality of the Indians in generously volunteering their wives or daughters to our Netherlanders at that place." (p. 294, Weslager, Dutch Explorers) "Evidence of miscegenation was soon to be seen in some of the Delaware villages when dusky-skinned females gave birth to lighter-complexioned, blue-eyed infants.  The process of Europeanizing the Indians had a subtle beginning, and unplanned cross-breeding preceded the technological changes." (p.109 Weslager, The Delaware Indians)  This sharing of the bed was part of Indian hospitality.  The Europeans were, by and large, Christian men (with the exception of the early Moors in America) and due to Christianity's emphasis on the sacredness of virginity, and their patriarchal slant on monogamy, there was very little understanding of a society where sexuality could be more liberally shared. Certainly such an offer implied a very close tie, a real acceptance of the Dutch or the Moors into the tribal network, and not just 'casual sex' which was more likely to have been the assumption made by many of the sailors or their captains. The name the Dutch gave to Lewes reflects their distorted view of what was going on.  But the subject of sexual distortions in Christian society could be a lengthy discussion, as we all know by now.

If people-making was happening among the Dutch, why not also with the Moors? 

alvin ailey metal horse

i'm actually about a month behind in posting the june bio, but i'm including it here because i find alvin ailey interesting, both as an individual and as a part of my own family's saga.  by the way, the four element theory (sometimes a five element theory) is a very ancient and well-respected way of understanding natural phenomena.  The ancient Greeks, fathers of western civilization, used this method of understanding the world, and it is at the base of modern science as well.  Therefore, let us not eschew it!

i actually first came across the theory in the writings of c.s.lewis, medievalist among other things, and also in some of my early explorations of chinese philosophy when i was in high school.  i also wrote my theology thesis on the four elements back in 1985, so I have a long history with this stuff.  Naturally I'm going to share some of my thoughts on this subject here.

*      *      *
born on January 5, 1931, Alvin Ailey, master choreographer and founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, is a Metal Horse with high aspirations and a strong desire to 'arrive' even without any great clarity as to the goal.  Metal Horse just 'has the stuff' to make himself successful, and success and responsibility came early to Ailey, who took over the artistic directorship at age 22 of his mentor Lester Horton's Dance Company after the unexpected death of Horton.  Ailey's Earth Mouse month would make him someone others view as a natural leader, and that seems to have been the case at this moment in Ailey's life.

Wikipedia writes, "Horton's sudden death in November 1953 left the company without an artistic director. The company had outstanding contracts that required new works. When no one else stepped forward, Ailey assumed the role of artistic director. Despite his youth and inexperience (Ailey was only twenty-two and had only choreographed one dance in a workshop) he began choreographing, directing scene and costume designs, and running rehearsals."

Ailey's Metal Monkey day gives him the sparkle, charisma and verve necessary for stardom, and the combination of Mouse and Monkey offer him Water Trinity karma.  In his pillars, Water represents self-expression and creativity, in addition to Water's usual qualities of influence, intimacy, grace and flow.  Witness the flowing lines typical of Alvin Ailey's dancers.

Ailey came into his own in 1953, during Metal Rabbit period, with his assumption of the helm of the Horton Dance Company, and during that period and the Water Dragon period following, created many original compositions, including his most famous work, Revelations, performed in 1960.  He continued to work and create during Water Snake period, and died in 1989 during Wood Horse period.  Wood Horse is notorious for extreme forward movement, and changes in direction.

Known for his eclectic style, Alvin Ailey was born during Earth Rabbit hour.  The presence of Earth Rabbit in the Four Pillars often signals an unusual sense of ethnicity.  It may indicate issues with belonging, or, more often, a movement toward reconciling disparate elements within oneself or one's community.  Paula Gunn Allen, a mixed-native American author, who wrote extensively on native american history and literature, with an eye always focused on the blendings of culture that are a part of that history and literature, was an Earth Rabbit, as was my grandfather who was a member of the Moorish Science Temple in Philadelphia, even though he was perceived by most people as white.  These people are not localized in a single ethnic, racial or cultural identification.  Sometimes they feel lonely and isolated as a result of this lack of any kind of clear 'belonging.' 

Wikipedia writes, "Horton's school taught a wide range of dance styles and techniques, including classical ballet, jazz, and Native American dance. Horton's school was also the first multi-racial dance school in the United States. Ailey's choreography was a dynamic and vibrant mix growing out of his previous training in ballet, modern dance, jazz, and African dance techniques. For his signature work, Revelations, Ailey drew upon his "blood memories" of Texas, the blues, spirituals, and gospel.  Ailey was proud that his company was multi-racial. While he wanted to give opportunities to black dancers, who were frequently excluded from performances by racist attitudes at the time, he also wanted to rise above issues of negritude. His company always employed artists based solely on artistic talent and integrity regardless of their race."  This is the stuff of the Earth Rabbit.

Ailey's forward-moving, creative Horse, in combination with his gentle but masterful Earth Mouse, and the eclectic, eccentric Earth Rabbit made him sexually attractive, yet Horse and Monkey made him Lonely, Horse and Mouse gave him 'Attract and Clash,' and Mouse and Rabbit 'Two Penalties,' a karma of mental unrest, so that while a great deal of creative energy was indeed there, everything was not a bed of roses for Ailey in his personal life.  In terms of his element balance, Power (Fire) is weak, and there is nothing in the literature to suggest that Ailey was one of those autocratic artistic diretors.  In fact, his strong points were Resources, Friends and Self-expression.  Wealth was not great, but certainly adequate, and Power is his least dominant element.  Wikipedia writes, "Though Ailey created 79 works for his dancers, he maintained that his company was not merely a showcase for his own work."

I chose to write about Alvin Ailey as my example of a Metal Horse birth at least in part because my former neighbors, who were good friends with my mother, had been modern dancers before she was struck down by myasthenia gravis, and every year, when the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater came through town, they would attend and rave for weeks.  They often took my mother to these performances, which represented to her, not only the beauty of a rarified aesthetic sensibility, but also an ideal of racial harmony in America.

 

poetry of ancient/indigenous language

shelly de paul, a teacher of the lenape language in pennsylvania and online, has said that she finds the ancient languages powerful.  Words have power.  And that she began her study of lenape in order to write poetry. 

this is a sentiment I can definitely get behind.  i've also been wanting to find my poetic music in lenape.  i'm sure it will come.  in fact, it's already happening.

also, i've had a breakthrough in terms of communicating my feelings about my connection with the lenape.  i've been a bit sensitive to intimations on the part of 'others' that i may be a lenape wannabe, etcetera. 

what i've realized is that i've realized how much more our native heritage meant to my mother and my grandparents, and their parents.  it meant a lot to them, enough to keep it a secret from me, but to enjoy the secret secretly among themselves.  i've realized how much more it meant to me than i ever recognized or acknowledged, surrounded as i was by the land and the community of the lenape remnant in the philadelphia area. 

i can't not acknowledge that. 

not only have these realizations, recognitions and awakenings filled in many of the blanks in my story, but they have reduced my anxiety and my need to please others.  there's some way in which this experience has made me more whole, so it must be good.  therefore i will continue on this path.

that's simple, that's clear.  this clarity helps me.

'weli kishku' ~ have a nice day!

the beet queen by louise erdrich

this book is the sequel to Love Medicine and chronicles the tale of three children abandoned by their mother in a rather comical fashion, of how they separate and eventually come back together again over the course of forty years.  it also the story of three women and a child - two cousins, an in-law and her daughter - living in a farming village in north dakota.  the native americans in this story are more or less peripheral, yet powerfully portrayed, and there is one main character, the part-native gal, Celestine, who becomes an in-law to the two cousins.  while i didn't enjoy this novel as much as love medicine, i will say that l.e. writes at times some of the most outrageously funny material i've ever read, including the scene where Aunt Mary teaches her niece's first grade teacher a lesson, and another scene that must be the funniest death scene ever written (probably) - and not disrespectfully so - I would imagine the deceased would never have wanted it any other way.

love medicine by louise erdrich

i've just finished reading Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.  this was her first novel, i believe, and as such, it is rather raw yet extremely beautiful and powerful at the same time.  this book has got to be a classic.

part of the reason i feel it has been so important for me to read, is because it's given me a chance to process a lot of my feelings about the native american element in my own life: my feelings of loss, because my life took me away from 'native america' for so many years and yet has brought me around full circle back to it.  so there is wonder, grief, regret, joy and appreciation in the experience for me.

also, this book allows me to vicariously live the life i might've lived - or something close to it, since our tribe does not have any reservations anymore - if my coloring had been a little different so that i was more obviously a part of our group, or if my mother had given me more instruction in the correct etiquette to observe.  i really do understand why she may have hesitated to tell me the truth in the first place.  you had to be there, perhaps, to know what i mean.  but the book allowed me to imagine what may have happened in the lives of Angie, Philip, the Hammonds, Andersons, Strausses and Moores.  It allowed me to remember Ronny R, Christine K, the Scul---ys, and others.  not that i would have wanted to have their lives, because, in fact, they were very difficult.  i've had my problems too, but i've also had the way out.

in the book, there is a character who doesn't know his parentage.  he's been adopted and raised by the woman who is really his great-aunt, a woman known for taking in strays.  the reader is clued in from the beginning as to who his mother is, so the reader knows he really is a part of the family, but the character doesn't learn the identities of his mother and father until the end of the book. his process, while somewhat different from mine, is also somewhat similar, and i found it helpful to walk through that process with him. 

one of the important lessons for me in his story is to recognize, along with him, that the child (of his mother) who was acknowledged has had a very tough road to tread, while he, who was her secret child, slipped under the radar and was allowed to live his own life, be his own self, and find his own way back to his parents and ultimately to himself.

i found the whole book really healing for me to read.  not always easy, by any means.  but extremely rewarding.  i highly recommend it to anyone interested in native american lives, or just in human life, or simply in the most masterful level of writing.

grandmother's gift / nostalgia

my grandmother katie, gnarled with arthritis, sat in her rocking chair - orange-painted in the moorish style - on our front porch nearly every evening in the summertime and on, into the early fall.  She gently rocked herself just a little bit, looking pensive, sometimes bitter, and always very far away.  Loud sounds, sudden movements, racket from the neighborhood children could disturb her reverie.  

after i'd grown up, i sometimes wondered if she had been mentally ill or just plain mean, but after i did some work with an emdr therapist, i realized that she was simply more identified with an earlier time and place in her life, and she wished to 'be there' in reverie so much that she was very much put out when she was brought back to the present by one of us.

this realization led to the awareness that both she and my mother were very much identified with the mountains, with the people there, and with all their secrets.  at any rate, ever so much of my mother and grandmother's reality was kept a secret from me, but being a part of them, i could feel a lot of it, just couldn't put it into words.  out of frustration at my constant feeling of exclusion, i tried to reject them.  at different times in my life, i've realized that i can't reject them, because they are just too much a part of me.  they belong to me, and i belong to them, and i might as well accept that fact.

and now, wonder of wonders, i find myself feeding on nostalgia in my later years, just like grandma.

to help me understand my own experience, i'm reading a book about nostalgia called "Yesterday's Self" by Andrea Deciu Ritivoi (Philosophy, Sociology, Literary Studies).  the author considers how nostalgia may play a role in helping us to integrate our ongoing identity especially when there has been a rupture of some sort in our process like becoming a refugee, a war-bride, an exile, or experiencing a trauma in relation to immigration or some other major change of place. 

at one time nostalgia was indeed considered to be a medical (psychiatric) condition, at another time it indicated that you were a person of superior sensibility, an artist perhaps.  the book goes on to discuss all sorts of interesting aspects forming the notion of identity.  can you believe there are people spending their lives thinking about 'identity' and getting paid to do so? 

i've only read the first couple of chapters, but in them the author promises to share with us from the stories of two women who immigrated to the united states from poland after the second world war, one of whom felt that her identity was indissolubly linked with poland and with the person she had been there, while the other woman finds links in her new american life with the self she once was in poland, thus carrying her polish identity forward into its new form in america.  sounds like this comparison will be interesting.  the author loves literature and wishes also to look at two literary figures, odysseus and robinson crusoe, to further explore the notions of identity and nostalgia. having been, at one time in my life, a philosophy major at uc berkeley when the mind-brain identity theory was hot, i find this book riveting.  i will keep you posted.

primordial fourth of july

my partner, g, and I went for a hike this morning in wildcat canyon park.  i won't name the trail, because i don't want it to be swarmed.  it was pure magic.  the trail was embedded in a tangle of eucalyptus, flowering buckeye, live oak and bay trees, many of them slithering across the ground like mossy snakes.  their ancient boles were twisted, gnarled, buckled, gapped and crazed.  We came upon a large hole in a tree with a shelf of scalloped white tree lichen inside the size of a cake-dish, and the shiny sap-sided hole was abuzz with busy honey-bees. 

As we hiked along the trail with blue sky visible in a thin path directly above our heads, we occasionally noticed brightness in the distances beyond the trees - sunshine on the grassy hills around us, dry in july and brilliant with the sheen of sun on straw.  Under our feet we turned up ocean-rolled black stones and the layer directly below the surface of the trail was pure sand. 

Later on our stroll we came upon a sort of natural amphitheatre on a miniature scale.  The lower half of the terraces were papered in large deep green ferns and black rocks.  The upper layer was dark with criss-crossed and roiling boles and boughs of trees with heavy canopies of leaves.  Through the ferns and boles of the thick tree cover roamed unfettered cows, eight of them, some of them with young.  We never think of cows as primordial, but of course they are - sacred in many cultures - and these beautiful bovine presences, gigantic and rounded, surrounded by forest, ferns and vines, seemed ancient and majestic in my eyes.  Black, chestnut brown with white, golden and pale, they were slowly, gracefully making their way along a narrow switchbacked trail down the arboreal slope to the creek below for water.  A community, yet each one clearly individual in its motion and consciousness.

In the warm air above us, buteos hovered for many minutes before flapping briefly to move on in their hunt.  We saw a group of five wild turkeys, two adults and what looked like three teenagers, in the brush.  On our return walk we sniffed the sweetly fragrant blossoms of the buckeye tree standing near the short overgrown bridge across the tiny creek near the trailhead.  Our noses pressed on either side of the blossom, it only made sense to kiss beneath the blooms.  What a sweetness~!  You should definitely try this sometime.  I recommend it. 

darkness

darkness,
at the hub of things,
don't let me forget you.
darkness,
womb of every thought,
don't let me shut you out
with light.
silence,
in the darkness,
our true home,
welcome me,
comfort me,
center me
in all that we are.

*    *    *

i'd like to say a brief word in prose here about darkness.  a spiritual-minded acquaintance of mine once said that my love of 'darkness' scared her.  her spiritual tradition favored light.  it seems to me now that some spiritual traditions demonize the darkness.  therefore people might get the totally wrong idea that i am somehow singing the praises of evil-doing, which is far from the case.  i do believe that our misapprehension of darkness might be at the root of more evil-doing than we care to admit, since so much of that is done in the shining, blinding light of day, in the shimmer of success, wealth and glory.  we often can't make peace with the darkness and the silence, and seek something else.  but then there's all kinds of wrongness and some of it is darkness-bred, too.  but evil-doing is not partial to either darkness or light, it makes use of both and itself operates on another principle altogether.

some of my happiest memories have to do with darkness.  the darkness of the ocean at night.  driving along the old two-lane road that skirted the beach in south jersey, with the sparse colored lights in the distance, before and behind, of tiny resort towns with their small modest boardwalk piers.  the only sound was the soft soughing of the waves, and the tiny distant lights were white, yellow, occasionally red, green or blue, trailing out into the sea. well, it was another time and place.

the darkness of my childhood garden at night, lit by stars and fireflies, ringed by the black canyon of our brick two- and three-story houses.

now, the darkness resting on the trees outside my bedroom window, their leaves lit only by the moon.

one of the things i particularly have loved about my spiritual beacon, Amma, is that while she can radiate intense decibels of light, she also has a profound darkness about her.  her skin and hair are dark, true, that's part of it.  she is mysterious and unknowable, that's another part of it.  but perhaps especially, for me, it is that her story has so much darkness in it.  she grew up along the seashore in south india, in a place without electricity until perhaps the late nineteen-seventies, and then very little of it. there was the poverty and 'ignorance' of the fishing-folk she grew up among. the 'darkness' of living in a remote, primitive, unknown little place in a swamp.  yet she grew and developed her intensely compassionate and wise spirituality in that desolate marginalized place.

for so many years, she sang devotional songs at night in the family shrine-room, and still to this day, she walks along the seashore there at night singing her spiritual songs.  the workshop of her spiritual life was the darkness of the night and of the vast and unknowable sea. 

when i visited amritapuri during its early days, i too had the chance to experience the qualities of her home-place, and i am sure that this helped me to evolve in terms of my own relationship with darkness.  but that's much more than i can write here, today.