Mele had always been some mythical character in the far distant past. I’d heard bits and pieces of her story from family members.
Her mother’s name was High Feather, or maybe Little Feather; no one knew for sure. She was part of the Ponca Tribe and may have been raised by the Sioux. Her father, a French trapper with a roguish reputation, had traded her off to a man in payment of a gambling debt. Her daughter, one of eleven children, had married my great grandfather.
I did not grow up near the Ponca people. I had heard Mom tell stories about Nebraska, but I was too immature to pay much attention, and I had no idea that she had grown up only eighteen miles from Ponca lands.
Fortunately, I met a cousin last summer who knew where Mele had lived. We traveled there with my brother and sister-in-law to visit the site. When I viewed the area where a small house had once stood, I wanted to stay and connect with the past. I wanted to see what she would have seen. I could have camped there for days, but the rancher had been gracious enough to interrupt her busy day to take us there, so I couldn’t linger too long.
I walked down a trail leading to the Niobrara River, hoping this was the same path that Mele had walked as she fetched water. I picked up a broken piece of white ceramic and imagined it belonging to her milk pitcher. The rancher told me that recent rains had washed away a lot of dirt, bolstering my hope that it had once graced her table. I felt like an archaeologist discovering a long-sought-after pottery shard.
Later that day, I sat on a ridge overlooking the Missouri, near the site where Lewis and Clark had first met the Ponca people. I imagined what the village would have looked like, laid out above the white-chalk bluffs on the other side of the river. A soft cool breeze flowing up from the valley whispered through the silence; the land looked just as it would have 200 years ago. I imagined hearing the shouts of children playing and women talking over the crackle of campfires. How I wanted to travel back in time to meet my family.
We toured the small Ponca Museum outside of Niobrara and heard more of the tribe’s history. I even saw Mele’s name on a large wall map, showing her placement on the land. She was there; if only I could reach back far enough through time and embrace her. Like a runner in a relay, I could reach back far enough to know and love her grandson, my grandfather.
As an older man, my grandfather began homesteading in South Dakota, so I never knew any of the family in Nebraska. He died before I had the maturity to ask questions.
I thank my wonderful Lord for allowing me to have a little Ponca heritage spelled out in my DNA strands. He created my inmost being; He knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise Him because each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made—no matter what tribe or people we come from. (My paraphrase of Psalm 139:13-14)
And I still smile when I get to be part of the Ponca Tribe.
