For you Teres: My Great-grandmother, Bessie Broncheau Rickman had power. She was born in 1889, only 12 years after the Nez Perce war. Her mother was a part of that journey from Oregon through Idaho and Montana during that long escape route before finally being forced to surrender only 40 miles from the Canadian border. Almost there, to Canada where the Nez Perce had hoped to join up with Sitting Bull and his people who had also fled there before them. Gramma saw the end of tipi life, and told me that she hated living on the Nez Perce Reservation, telling me it was a place of internment, a prison where in her youth only a good Indian could travel freely--with a pass from the Indian Agent. She told me that if a Nez Perce was caught off the Rez without a permit he could be killed as a hostile, such was the lingering hate against the Nez Perce in her youth. She married Leonard Rickman, a white man - and as my cousin pointed out, he spoke 5 of the Columbia River Dialects and was often called upon to be an interpreter for the Indian Agent. Gramma Bessie and Grampa Leonard moved to Yakima, WA hauling all of their possessions on a buckboard. Grampa Leonard worked for the railroad, until he was injured and had to retire. Due to his back injury he could not sleep laying on his back, and always sat up in his bed to sleep, that is eventually how he died, he rolled over onto his back and could not breathe. She saw the first cars, airplanes, electricity, telephones.. all of it. She never learned to drive.. she tried, but when she wrecked, she decided she wanted no part of driving a car. She was quite a horsewoman, and in turn so was my grandmother Rachel, and my mother Vi. She had the gift of prophesy, but she rarely used it, saying that was the old ways. She spoke Nez Perce fluently and taught her two daughters Rachel and Elsie, as well as her only son Frank how to speak it, but she never taught her grandchildren because she said was the old ways and they would not need to know it. Gramma was a devout Catholic and she used to walk the nearly two miles to St. Joseph Church in downtown Yakima every Sunday until she was in her 80s and her eyesight was fading, as well as her legs swelling up on her. Despite Grammas arthritic hands and fingers she used to make corn husk bags, some she sold, and others she gave away to family. I remember watching her bead things when I was little, the patience she had, sitting there for as long as the light lasted by her kitchen table. She used to tell us stories about the old days, many of them I am only now remembering.. my little brother and I sit and talk about it, and we remind each other of what she told us. Those were the best of times when I was a kid and listening to my gramma. She also told me about what it means to be a man, how I should act, and what is expected of me.. things I am ashamed to say, that I ignored for nearly half my life, but I try to live by today and to teach my son and daughter what she taught me. But, it was not just my great-gramma, my grandmother Rachel, and my mom also taught me and I know it is what they also learned from Bessie.. so the lessons I learned are still being learned. Gramma was born in 1889, and she died in July 1990, she was nearly 101 years old. This is a part of my connection to who I am as an American Indian, a Gros Ventre, Nez Perce, Nooksack descendant. Pictured below, are Bessie Broncheau-Rickman, Rachel Hansen, and My mom, Viola McJoe-Shilow. — feeling blessed.For you
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 00:25:40 +0000
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