Page 106 of The River We Remember

“It’s not the old days, Noah. Things are going to change, and I want to be part of making that happen.”

Bluestone studied him in the way he might have a piece of land in order to figure what would grow best if he planted seed. “Tell me what you want to know.”

“What was it like growing up Sioux in Black Earth County?”

“First off, I’m Dakota. Sioux, yes, but Dakota Sioux. Other Sioux are Lakota or Nakota. There are differences, but to white people it’s all the same. So call me Dakota.”

“All right. What was it like being Dakota here?”

“Have you read Anne Frank’s diary?”

“I have.”

“Then you have everything you need.”

“Are you saying that’s what it was like? Trying to hide?”

“There aren’t many full-blood Dakota left in this county and most do their best to look white. It’s just too hard to be Indian, obviously Indian. So we cut our hair, wear the clothes everyone else wears, go to church on Sunday. Art Garrison owns the feed store in Jefferson. Bob Odegard drives forklift out at Peterson’s Concrete. Maggie Green teaches kindergarten at Morningside. You’d hardly notice them on the street. And there are others, not necessarily full-blood. I could name a dozen who’d rather cut their throats than admit they’ve got Indian blood in them. Because what happens when you show you’re Indian? You get called all kind of names. You get beat up maybe. Hell, you even get arrested for murder. There’s hatred in a lot of hearts here. It goes way back.”

“You could have stayed away, but you returned,” Wicklow pointed out.

Without hesitation, Bluestone said, “In spite of everything, it’s home.”

“Are you saying you love this place, then?”

“A big part of growing up here was working the land with my father. I loved that. He was a good man, kind, strong. He taught me to pay attention.”

“To what?

“Everything. The beauty of it all. The way the earth smells wet and raw when it’s first turned in the spring or after a summer rain. How the wind bends a field of tall grass into a moving sea. The creak and moan of trees, like they’re talking to one another, or to us if we listen. Everything about the river, the Alabaster. I grew up fishing it, swimming it, watching it flood the fields again and again. My father had great respect for that river. He had great love for the land that he tended, and so do I.”

“Why work for Jimmy Quinn? Do you love his land, too?”

Those dark eyes, which had been focused on the blue sky outside the cellblock window, shifted to Wicklow. “A lot of white folks in these parts, their ancestors were killed in what your history books call the Great Sioux Uprising. In schools, they teach that the Dakota were savages, that we rose up against our neighbors and slaughtered them. The only thing the history books don’t have is a photograph of John Wayne leading a cavalry charge against Little Crow.”

“The Sioux—Dakota—here probably have ancestors killed by whites.”

“But the Dakota didn’t win that war. In the end, a war is always about who wins. My people had no chance. It doesn’t matter that they had every reason to be angry and desperate. They’d been lied to, cheated, starved, their land and everything on it stolen. So they fought. And they lost. But the history has been written by the whites. In Black Earth County, it’s the whites who believe they were set on unfairly, cruelly, and have the right to carry all that hatred in their hearts.

“You asked why my father and I worked for Quinn. It’s because there was a time no white person in this county would hire an Indian. It was that way when I was a kid. But Quinn would. The man had his reasons, I know, and they weren’t about tolerance and being Christian. The bottom line was that he paid my father and he paid me, and we needed the money. My mother was real sick and required treatments. It was Quinn’s money that paid for those treatments.”

“One of your ancestors first owned the land Jimmy Quinn’s family owns now. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“We have never owned land.”

The answer seemed to confuse Wicklow. “You own that farmstead outside town, don’t you?”

“Do you know what Crazy Horse said? He said, ‘How can anyone own the land we walk?’ It’s like owning the air we breathe. I have a white man’s document that says I own the land, but that’s not how I feel about it.”

“All right. But this ancestor of yours, he farmed, didn’t he?”

“His name was Takoda. It means ‘friend to everyone.’ He was my great-great-grandfather. He understood the white ways and saw the future and knew everything was changing for the Dakota. He farmed, farmed well.”

“I’ve heard that Quinn’s family stole the land he farmed. Is that true?”

“I can only tell you what I’ve been told. Takoda, as his name implied, had many white friends. When he learned that the intent of some Dakota was to kill white settlers, he left his wife and children and went to spread the warning. He never came back. His family was among those rounded up and sent to Fort Snelling. And then the trials began. You’re a lawyer, Charlie. You know the truth about those trials?”

She knew only too well, and although it was long ago, that cruel miscarriage of justice still made her angry.