"To Please the Taste Buds of the Southern Ladies"

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The Waldensian Heritage Wines Winery in Valdese, North Carolina, is well worth checking out. The wine is tasty and quite reasonably priced (as in $8/bottle at the time of this posting). The folks who run it seem to be very much enjoying their work, their wine and the history of the Waldensians. Their polyglot phrasing at times reminds me in its peculiarities of Amos Tutuola's "Complete Gentleman." For example: "Villar Rouge Sweet . . . with extra sugar to please the taste buds of the Southern Ladies and the Southern Gentlemen." And: "Millennium Deux . . . Sipping it reminds one of memories gone by and memories to come." How cool is that? Believe me, it's even cooler after a little on-site wine tasting . . . 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Fort San Juan (North Carolina): 1567-1568

Here are a couple more quick shots of the Joara/Fort San Juan site outside of Morganton, North Carolina, taken yesterday. Joara may have been established as early as 1000 A.D., with different (but probably connected) groups of people living there over the centuries. The Catawba Nation was the latest incarnation -- and still exists elsewhere. There was once a large human-made mound at the site, mostly leveled by mid-twentieth century farmers who may not have truly understood its significance at the time. 
  

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Joara

A trip to the mountains from Saxapahaw to Valdese and then above Morganton, North Carolina, culminated in a visit to Joara, a key Catawba Nation concentration in the 1500s. Joara was reached in 1540 by a Spanish expedition into the interior led by Hernando de Soto. The current Berry Site is an archaeological investigation ongoing since 1986.
 

A later Spanish expedition under Juan Pardo established Fort San Juan among the Catawba -- in 1567. He left thirty soldiers in Fort San Juan, one of a chain of small forts established during the expedition. This one, so far as I know, is the only one that's been found and surveyed as of this posting. By 1568, The Catawba (or equivalent) inhabitants of Joara apparently decided they'd had enough of the intruders. They attacked and destroyed this particular Spanish outpost, well before a fledgling English settlement was set up -- and similarly lost -- on the Atlantic coast of North Carolina.

Today's Rune: Journey.

Family Time Capsule: Second World War

On the left, drinking a beer, is my great uncle Curtis (Curt) St. Bonnet, brother of Richard in the previous post. Born before the Great War, he led an adventurous life. From Monroe County, Pennsylvania, he "yondered" for years, first heading west on a motorcycle. He joined the Merchant Marines and travelled around the world, and during World War Two he joined the US Army and became a sergeant. I visited him with my immediate family when he lived in Mexico in the 1970s, and, with one of my sisters on a long road trip, when he lived near Portland, Oregon (Vancouver, Washington) in the 1980s. Loved hearing his stories, of which there were many, including of him working on a railroad in the 1930s, and sailing a boat from Acapulco to Hawaii in the 1960s.

No idea who the soldier on the Jeep is, or even where they are. On the bumper: PAC-SEC. X-85. Asia-Pacific Theater, or that way bound? On the back is a note: wherever they were, beer cost fifty cents a pop. 

Today's Rune: Defense.   

A Family Time Capsule: 1929

Here are members of my family with French and Irish backgrounds in 1929, just before the Great Depression. Setting is probably in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, possibly at Vineyard Cottage. On the far left stands Margaret Theresa (family name Moriarity). She was born during the American Civil War (1861-1865) on or near the frontier, either in Kansas or close by. Her parents (Moriarity) came over from Ireland -- probably not long before. On the far right is her husband Nicholas, son of parents (Saint Bonnet/St. Bonnet) who came to the US from France. He was born in Connecticut in 1859 but moved to Kansas with his family after the Civil War. To Margaret's immediate left is her daughter Mae, and in the back is Margaret and Nicholas's grandson, Richard St. Bonnet, whose father Warren St. Bonnet died in the Great Influenza of 1918 in his thirties, working as a postman. Here in this picture, they look happy, and I'm glad for them.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.     

Survival of the Caddo

Two watercolors by Lieutenant Lino Sánchez y Tapia, late 1820s: Comanches (above) and Cados/Caddos (below).

Cecile Elkins Carter describes this picture in her Caddo Indians: Where We Came From (University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), pages 260-261: "The woman wore a calf-length cloth coat over a skirt and long blouse. Her blouse had a ruffled collar and was pinned on the front with silver discs, graduating in size from the largest at the top. Her hair was nearly hidden by a turban; she wore moccasins and cloth leggings." On the right side of the watercolor: "The Caddo man wore a long cloth shirt with ruffles at the cuffs and a V neck. His leggings were buckskin, and garters of ribbon or yarn were tied below his knees . . . his face was painted with charcoal, and he wore a gleaming nose ornament."

Though the Caddo may have already lost as much as 75% of their 1700 population base by the 1820s and 1830s, there was more loss to come in the form of "Americans." As Carter puts it, "Apaches, Osages, Chickasaws, and Choctaws stole their horses and killed or made captives of some of their people, but no tribe lived on Caddo land without their permission. The French and Spanish had claimed to possess Caddo country, but neither denied tribal rights. . ." Such would not be the case thereafter because "Americans intended to dispossess . . . and permanently occupy their lands" (page 241). Above is a map indicating (to the right, or East) parts of Texas once inhabited by the Caddo. Much of this land was not incidentally buffalo/bison country, too.  

Today's Rune: Possessions.

The Caddo People

Beginning to get a handle on the Caddo people thanks in large part to a very nicely written book -- Cecile Elkins Carter's Caddo Indians: Where We Came From (University of Oklahoma Press, 1995). Through page 203, the Caddo have yet to directly encounter or have to deal with English people of any stripe. So far, it's other First Nations (allies like the Wichita, enemies like the Apache and Osage), Spanish and French. It's a very complex story, as much so as Game of Thrones and with as much at stake existentially. As mentioned in an earlier post, Texas derives its name from the Caddo. Up until the American Revolution, they managed to keep their basic way of life, a settled one, mostly intact, despite disease and conflict between the European-based powers.The Spanish empire took one approach, the French another. The Caddo and other people accepted Europeans among them, but did not adapt to Spanish way as the latter, through Catholic missions and small contingents of soldiers attached to presidios, imagined and hoped they would. The French, in even smaller numbers than the Spanish on the frontier, were more pragmatic, and the Caddo got along with them better. The French were more willing to adapt some of the Caddo way of life, and some members of the two groups had children together, tying them more closely together -- especially in Louisiana. But over time the big European wars began to have more of an impact. In 1763, the Seven Years War -- or French and Indian War, as its North American component is often called -- resulted in the British takeover of the far East and North, and Spanish control of (or claim to) the South, including Louisiana Territory.

As far as Caddo autonomy, matters would get much worse after the American Revolution. On that, more to come. The Caddo do remain in 2012, but no longer live as a group on the same ancestral lands they inhabited in the 1600s and 1700s. After the severe trials and tribulations of the 1800s with the coming of Anglo-Texans and other settlers out of the United States, it's amazing they survived at all.

Today's Rune: Partnership.