The Bones of the Ancestors

Where do I come from? What are my ancestral roots? What was “working” my parents

and grand-parents that had us kids moving in the World to end up where we are?

On my return from retrieving The Great Grey Goose, I wanted to visit Pipestone,

Minnesota and Howard, South Dakota.

Grandmother Pearl was born in Pipestone, sometime in the late 1800s. Not too much

longer than “Indian Uprising” and “Massacres”.

Visiting there was a step back in history; re-matched. The visitor’s center was a replica

stockade/fort, to protect the settlers from the up-raising. The attendants and pipestone carvers all Native Americans.

The sad statement of fact is that soldiers came in and massacred whole populations of Native Americans.

My mother always had a great interest in Native Americans and brought back from her

stint in teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in the Bad Lands, a collection of beaded

artifacts, including some with history and some that were created just for her. Perhaps her mother having been steeped in that culture. Questions of her mother maybe being Native American? Regardless, the prevailing energy of her birthplace most certainly had an effect on her and my mother.

As kids we were always looking for and finding arrowheads; and, other artifacts. In

1945 I found a beautiful wood-fired bowl about 4” in diameter with petroglyphs of

hunting deer painted on the sides. Wow!

My father was born in a farming community. His parents came from a consigned

marriage that had more to do with property expansion than with love. Or, at least, that is

my idea sense of it all.

The population of Howard is pretty much what it was when visited 70 years ago. About

500 people. The gas station pumps had been changed . . . and, I am sure buildings

were built, etc. However, Howard has not changed much, as a teller assured me, in 70

years.

I left feeling depressed and "heavy", glad that my mother had come to teach in Howard and met my dad and managed to spirit him away. 

Maybe I would be a better person had I been born into and lived in Howard, although I can’t imagine, being a World Traveler, how bored I would be in this time; if, I lived in Howard.

Somewhere along the road, I began chanting, singing this song:

“I welcome the guidance of the bones of the Ancestors,

I welcome the manna of the bones of the Ancestors,

I welcome the healing of the bones of the Ancestors,

Guide me on,

Help me well,

on the trail of bones of the Ancestors

Help me home to the Healing Ways

Aho."