[or-roots] Fort Laramie, Wyoming (aunt Charlotte Book)

[D. J. Brotherton]

Walt:   I am fairly new to the mailing list.  When did you start your Aunt Charlotte  notes.  I would surely like to get them all to read it is very interesting.  Do I go back  to the Archives? or what.

Dolores
djbrtb at kci.net

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: DAVIESW739 at aol.com 
  To: or-roots at sosinet.sos.state.or.us 
  Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 2:22 PM
  Subject: Re: [or-roots] Fort Laramie, Wyoming (aunt Charlotte Book)


  When we reached Fort Laramie , we saw Indian camps everywhere. Some distance away from the fort, we children found a place where the very ground itself, was glistening with bright colored, tiny beads. The others picked up large quantities of them, but Mother told me to leave  them alone. She explained that it was an Indian graveyard, and that ants were bringing the beads from the graves underneath. They were all small anyway and I did not care very much  about them, though, of course, they would have been better than nothing.

    Later several women took me with them when they went for a walk. It was on this walk that I  saw the string of beads that stands out from all other beads in my memory. They were on a buck-string and hung in a great loop through a crack in a rude platform that stood five or six feet  from the ground. They did not seem to belong to anyone in particular. Here at last were the very  beads for me. 

    So I caught the string in both hands and pulled with all my might. They seemed caught on  something, so I tugged this way and that and jerked till my breath came in gasps. I was  determined to have them. I took my  feet off the ground and swung with all my might on the  string, but still the thing above that held it, would not give way. So I called for Mrs. Athey to help  me. That was my undoing. She screamed at me: "Charlotte, Charlotte, come away from there at  once. Don't you know those beads are around a dead Indian's neck? " I let go, but not because  of the Indian, I let go because she told me to, and I did it reluctantly, even then. Oh! they were so  beautiful, yellow and blue and black. Such a fine long string too.

    They took me back to camp at once and told Mother about it. She scrubbed me with everything  that she had. She would have boiled me, if she had dared, and I am sure that she did not kiss  me for a week without afterwards wiping her mouth. She treated me exactly as she treated  Jasper after he had met his first skunk. 

    I wanted those beads, and I seem to want them even yet. I have never owned a string of them,  though I see them now on everyone. I sometimes wear a lorgnette that hangs from a chain,  fashioned to look like tiny gold beads. I wear it, because it pleases my family, but I do not like it.  The clasp bothers me, it is very intricate and my fingers have grown old.

  Walt Davies
  Cooper Hollow Farm
  Monmouth, OR 97361
  503 623-0460 
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