My comment was actually going to be that even in the middle of Indians on the warpath, an honest and true friend stayed honest and true. His being an Indian was not portrayed as someone who was a traitor to his friends or his community. He helped to keep more weapons from getting involved, saving the lives of white settlers and Indians alike.

I have non-LDS ancestors (Ruddle) who had sons kidnapped and raised, by Indians, as young boys after their settlement was raided. While the raids were brutal, they were in retaliation for horses that had been stolen and the rape of several Indian women, one of who died. Even though the boys were kidnapped in the raid, they were treated as children of the tribe, and both took Indian squaws as teenage wives. At 16 and 14 they were “rescued” and returned to their families. Stephen, the older brother remembered speaking English and became a translator.

The younger brother who had been barely four when they were taken never did settle into white society. He kept his Indian wife, and they sometimes lived at Ruddle station, and other times with the tribe. His wife did learn some English and insisted their children go to English school to learn their father’s culture. Both brothers, and several of their sons worked as translators, negotiators and Stephen’s oldest son, (from his white wife, both of his children with his Indian wife were daughters) was a federal Indian agent for most of his life. His cousins’ tribal connections helped him be very successful in creating cooperative sharing of resources in the Kansas/Arkansas Territory.

(Although not LDS, it is not clear exactly what his relationship with his Indian wife was after they were saved. He obviously “saw her again,” because she was pregnant with their first daughter when they were rescued. His second daughter and oldest son are two months apart, with his son being two months older. There is a family “rumor” that his white wife made him take a complete shower everytime he came home from doing business with the Indians, so that he wouldn’t “smell of Indian.”

There is a lot of speculation about whether she condoned the polygamy or not, but while her husband and son attended the funeral of one of his Indian daughters, his white wife did not go. Whether it was out of tender feelings for her “sister wife” in her time of grief, letting that mother have the comfort of their shared husband is the most charitable version I have heard.

*And I have only heard it from a distant cousin whose family have been LDS since the early 1890s. I suspect that since those LDS descendents practiced polygamy, this became a sister wives myth, and isn’t founded in fact.*

For almost three years after the funeral his white wife and their two youngest daughters were living with her parents about 50 miles away. They must have “made up” since a census three years later shows them living as husband, wife, 3 white children and one mixed race woman, who is unnamed but the right age to be his surviving daughter. His Indian wife died about 16 months after her daughter.)

Okay, that is a long way of saying that I appreciate the story sharing the complexity of relationships with groups of Indians, and the strength of the bonds of loyalty and friendship that was sometimes forged.

I also like that there are no victims in this story. Unfortunate things happen, challenges are met, fear is faced, but no white knights or angelic miracles save the day. Instead intelligent people, relying on the inspiration of the Holy Ghost when they are out of ideas, and people who make do with what they have at hand.

I so wish they would write stories like this for Primary children today. My 10 year old twins asked not to have our subscription to The Friend renewed because it was just to silly and they felt like they were being talked down to. So, two copies of The New Era, one for my son and one for the twins to share. We will see if they get more out of it.

I decided I am going to print out this series as part of my Christmas presents for several preteens, and a couple of literary history buffs. Anyone else interested? I am going to add some questions to think about at the end of each chapter, especially asking them to liken the story unto themselves. Besides giving you credit as my source, and citing where you got it, are there other things I need to include to keep things on the up and up? Do I owe anyone any royalties if I make a dozen or so? (I can make more if there is interest.

I see I have droned on again. Maybe I am just trying to forget comment #1. Lol

I am thoroughly engaged in this story. I drive through Tuba City several times each year, and it’s a beautiful place to cruise through, but might have been quite desolate before paved roads and speedy cars. also, I don’t have a problem being charitable about the anachronistic (for our time) racial attitudes. The author is reflecting accurately the times in which she lived.

Thank you, Ardis, for letting that one slip through the net, as it were, just to show what kind of by-catch teh interwebz can produce. Sigh.

Back to reality, here, we finally did get something about the dams on the Little Colorado, but not one bursting. And finally, Prudy and John Wayne got around to spilling their secret to their aunt and uncle. It would only be fair to let Simon and Aggie share their secret as well, but then there wouldn’t be a final episode 12, would there? Where….nah, I can’t spoil the ending for you all.

I am not happy with the steretyping of Native Americans in this story, which purports to be an LDS blog. For this reason I am removing “LDS Blog” from one of the Twitter accounts I follow.

For the TRUTH about Native American migration from the land of Israel, see the reprint of [edited] In 20 months there has been no objection raised to this report of migration routes, which destroys the history presented by the diviner, Joseph 156 Smith 510 = 666.

But the stereotyping in this purported “blog” works against the reunion and reconciliation of a legitimate candidate for Ephraim (if LDS will exert influence to defend the BIBLICAL birthright sought as part of a Palestinian state) with Native American Joes.

My five-part review of the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants put forth by Smith also concludes him to be a fraud based on his conviction for “glasslooking fraud” at Bainbridge County, NY in 1826, four years before the Book of Mormon divined with the same stone was published, and the fraud he got away with until the Rosetta Stone was found. Then the Egyptian papyri traveling with a mummy show, which he acquired and claimed to translate as the Book of Abraham within the “Pearl of Great Price,” the source of much strange LDS Doctrine, was proven to be fraudulent. It is actually a funerary text from the Egyptian Book of Breathings, as I conclude in the only review of the BoM and Doctrine and Covenants commissioned by Native American spiritual leaders.

Gah geh you e,
K’alijah Lioneagle (Jr)
Maggid ben Yoseif (son of Joseph)

This is the sort of madness I have to cope with all of the time. I ordinarily wouldn’t let it out of the moderation queue, but offer it here as a bonus to those of you who bother to read the fiction posts. — AEP