CATY SAGE INDIAN MAIDEN

     caty sage memorial, elk creek


I was looking at the photograph I took of Caty Sage's grave site in the Turner section of Kansas City, Kansas. I grew up across the river from the cemetery, exactly five miles by road on account of the location of the bridge, and maybe 2 miles by crow. Had I known about the cemetery in the time of childhood, I could have seen it easily from Monkey Mountain the river made a bend around, the highest point for looking at distant landscape, maybe a half mile from the house. About the same distance as the waterfalls I live near now. I'd seen the sign beside the road at Elk Creek, Virginia, the next town after Independence on hwy 21 going north. It's 20 miles from my house to Independence, and Elk Creek is between 5 and 10 miles beyond Independence. In her childhood, Caty was snatched by evidently a trader in children. It happened then as it happens today. Snatching children goes back so far in our development that women probably have a gene for keeping an eye on their children, keeping them close in public, from countless generations of mothers carrying concern over losing a child in such a way. I've an idea Caty's mother never stopped grieving her loss.


Caty's brother eventually found her in Ohio before her tribe, the Wyandotte's, was removed from their land by the white genocidal enemy to the Turner region of Kansas, next to the river. Brother wanted to take her back to mama to ease her grieving heart. But Caty had a life. She'd been sold to the chief of the Wyandotte tribe, goldilocks, white jungle goddess. She was raised as the daughter of the chief. When the old chief died, the warrior who filled in the role of chief married Caty. When he died, some twenty or so years later, the next warrior who became chief married her, too. I think it was during her last marriage that her brother found her. Of course she's not going back. She is the tribe's matriarch. Her role in the tribe was the equal of the chief's. She couldn't be going off on a major journey through forest trails. It would take a caravan to carry her and all the warriors in the tribe to protect her. She may not have had but very few snapshot memories, if any, of life on the farm with her birth parents. Her life was with the tribe that evidently held her way up high. From the start with blond hair, the chief's daughter, other kids wouldn't pick on her so much. They must have been in a kind of awe of her at the very beginning. The chief adopting her was her shield of protection for being different.


You know she must have been scared out of her wits from the moment a strange man put his nasty hand over her mouth and carried her away running through the woods. A highway system of trails ran through the mountains in that time, days and days walking trails. By the time they reached the Wyandotte territory in Ohio, I'd guess she was depending on her captor to feed her and protect her. He was not a church kinda guy, for sure, and more than likely not an outgoing personality. He had to keep her looking pretty to get high dollar for her. That may have protected her somewhat from him. But I'd lay odds he had his way with her at will along the way. Maybe not penetration, but fondling, breathing his rotten breath on her. There came a time she knew she'd never be rescued and never see home, about the time she stopped crying. Along their travels northwest, maybe through Cumberland Gap, up through Kentucky into Ohio. He was surely good to her to keep her healthy for the long walk and to look good at the other end. If an Indian out on a long-distance hunting trip snatched her, her terror might have even been worse than with some white man traveler. There's no telling. Her snatcher might have treated her ethically. No. Somebody who snatches a child to sell it doesn't think ethically.


All we know is she survived the overland journey from Elk Creek, Virginia, to western Ohio. The man she was with surely was a hunter, a man who knew the mountains, knew the trail system well. Possibly, by the time they reached their destination she'd learned something about hunting and preparing the food. It seems like it must have been an Indian possibly of the Wyandotte tribe. Maybe he knew the chief had no heirs of his infertile seed, thought this blond jungle goddess would suit the chief and maybe get the kidnapper a significant reward. Evidently, the chief had no heirs and Caty became his prize babydoll. It may not have been very long before they had her feeling at home, the chief's wife her new mother, the chief and his wife both elated to have such a beautiful child to raise as their own. She probably grew up into a knockout, and evidently the hot thang of choice since the next man to be chief married her. And 20 years later in her late 30s probably, her husband died and the next man to become chief married her. By this time she surely was the tribal matriarch. They must have thought a great deal of her. Shaman may have divined a good story about her being sent from heaven to be the chief's heir, or whatever. I can't see a white man carrying her that far when he could have sold her probably several times along the way.


If it were an Indian, he probably would have treated her ethically, possibly having in mind getting her to the chief and himself becoming a big man for finding her and bringing her back. Her brother who spent his adult life looking for her, following every lead he could find. By the time he finally found her, he surely knew the nature of her kidnapping, who did it and why. That knowledge died with him and everyone else concerned. I can't see a white man who would kidnap a child would carry a child that far, in probably a bee-line over the landscape, and the child survive him. An Indian hunter taking her through the trails with purpose to make her the chief's prized daughter would be good to her, feed her well and more than likely be respectful with her as if she already were the chief's daughter; he's just delivering her. She may have had very little terror except when she began to realize she'd never see home again. Not to say this is how it was, I doubt if anything I'd imagine could be the case. But it's fun letting the mind run and do some investigative thinking from what I've learned of walking in these mountains, and what I've learned living among human beings all my life.


I can't see a white man of the time, a hunter, kidnapping her and delivering her overland so far away, for money, in any kind of good health, certainly not good mental health after what he'd have done with her along the way. She'd have been unfit for a chief's daughter by the time she arrived years later. If it were a Wyandotte Indian hunter who found her by chance and took her with solving the chief's problem in mind, I'd guess he surely carried her on his shoulders or made a device of straps she could ride in on his back. It wouldn't be far along the way that she would be dependent on him, not knowing where she was or how to find the way home. After a certain point, she probably took him for her protector. An Indian could strap her to his back and make some time. I can't see a white man condescending to that, or even thinking to. By the time they reached the tribal settlement, she was probably curious to see what new life she was being carried into, maybe even ready to assimilate, for survival. Caty's first day in the tribal setting, seeing and meeting people inside an Indian village, must have been an eye opener.


I learned about Caty Sage reading Bill Bland's book, Yourowquains: A Wyandot Indian Queen, the story of Caty Sage, that I found in the Alleghany library. I went to amazon and saw they have some there, too. At amazon I saw a book published 2009, The Saga of Caty Sage, by Jerry L Haynes. Both books were rated 5 star and the reader reviews of the Saga of Caty Sage made me want it now. But I'm reading something else at the moment. Can't buy everything I think I want in a gotta-have-it moment. The library probably has a copy. It must be known, then, how Caty was taken from here to there. The Jerry Haynes book looked awfully good. He evidently did a great deal of research and put it all together as a "novel" probably because so many of his sources couldn't be verified. It tells me it is written as a story, which gives it a good chance of being what I'd want it to be. She was buried in an unmarked grave, maybe originally marked with wood, in the Indian part of the big cemetery, the part with very few headstones. She was driven west with the remains of her tribe after white encroachemnt. Not by war. They were told to leave. The survivors of disease evidently took up in Turner, Kansas. This is speculative, so don't be taking notes. Faulty memory sprinkled with imagination. It amuses me since I learned where she was buried that she and I did a reversal. She went to where I grew up and I went from there to where she originated, just 25+ miles from where I am now. We made a circle. 


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THE RIVER OF MIND

     katy sage's grave unmarked in the old indian part of the cemetery

I'm beginning to see the writing in this blog is something like putting a kayak in a river at a certain point and riding it to a getting-out place. It's a different place along the river each time. It's always the same river on its way to the ocean. Different scenery along the same river. It is a daily paddling to the sea. As long as there is river, I'll be recording the scenery, unless the river runs through a nursing home and all I see after that is ceiling, the movie screen for memories. Like the Chinese philosopher who questioned if he might be a butterfly dreaming it's a man, maybe I'm in the nursing home now and my everyday life is memories seen on the ceiling above the bed. Maybe not. Macro is as interesting a fractal to investigate as micro. It seems the more I investigate, the more I come to see motivation in karma, and the components of the illusion we call reality are entirely subjective. We agree collectively on some aspects of reality, the objective. We're on our own where the subjective is concerned.


In childhood, one of the many subjects I could not talk with adults about, or other kids, was seeing the subjectivity in everything, that there is no objective but in our minds. Years later, a decade and a half ago, I went to see a psychotherapist for two reasons, and both were satisfied. First, why I was attracted to controlling women? Second, there was something I knew in childhood that had been taught out of me and forgotten. What is it? It turned out to be the absolute subjectivity of everything. When that came forward, it was a major find. It had, indeed, been taught out of me. I remember a big field that had once been meadow, where the realization came to me initially, big sky, no trees on the unpaved road to Monkey Mountain that looks over the Kaw River, a good smoke signal place for Indians. Monkey Mountain was my favorite playground. I found fossils of sea shells and creatures that once lived on the floor of the ocean. I didn't take them seriously as a big deal find, rather as evidence for me and me only that this part of the world had been ocean floor. Nobody at home cared when I showed up with fossil sea shells. If I could waste my time at such foolishness I could wash the car, mow the grass, whichever. Taught me early to keep wonderment to myself, to guard that which was precious to me from the indifferent context of my life, from certain punishment.


Overzealous belief in punishment is the only parenting skill I know. I never wanted to pass it on to another, to have it coming FROM me to somebody else I would not want to do that to. That is why the thought of reproduction has mortified me all my life. My sister and I fought physically parallel our parents fighting emotionally, every minute of every day. The tension in the air inside the house was so dense as to need a password. It terrifies me to think of living like that again, by choice. I took the deep plunge once and it didn't work. My head was so full of ongoing arguments, television, debts, tension, I looked ahead and saw that I cannot live like this much longer. Somebody else might have taken 12 years to be able to cut the chain, but once I saw what was happening, I could not, would not live the rest of my life like that. I wanted a good life for myself, not one tangled up in psychic tension with somebody I didn't even like anymore, and somebody else's kid. By good life, I mean with a possibility that I not have arguments going in my head all the time with my "better half," who is going through the same thing with me. I could not live my life according to the social formula my mother, who never gives up attempting control, would attempt to enforce all the rest of my life.


I've chosen to stay beyond the bounds of her radar screen, out of control's way. By now, she's given up, is actually allowing me to be myself making my own decisions. She's caught on there's no other way. Ask anyone who knows me. I will live my own life. Some say, I want you to be like this. Some say, I want you to be like that. I say, y'all go ahead and be like this and that yourselves, you be the ones to reap the benefit, if it's so great. Leave me out of it. I think so often of Jacques Prevert's poem, JE SUIS COMME JE SUIS, I am as I am, I was born this way....  It's in an anthology of French poetry in the other room on a shelf, probably online too. It's kind of like a Parisian whore's answer to, What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? It is Jacques Prevert, himself, the rooster saying, Cock-a-doodle-doo!!! Here I am. I am I. I man. Jah rule. I think of Prevert's poem the ultimate answer to the ongoing question, Why don't you conform? Answer: I am I. I don't care to be a robot concerned with playing the assets game, the status game. I don't like to golf. I like to have room in my mind to get in the kayak and see what's ahead.


I didn't know it then, but the cemetery Katy Sage of Elk Creek, Virginia, is buried in--white girl kidnapped and sold to the Wyandotte Indians of Ohio---was directly across the river. Katy Sage grew up the blond princess, then the blond queen. Raised as the chief's daughter, she married the next chief who died young. The next chief married her. The tribe was pushed westward to what is now the Turner section of Wyandotte County in Kansas City, Kansas. I grew up in Wyandotte County. The school I went to, Ben Franklin, was directly across the river from Katy Sage's grave, in Argentine, an easy crow flight. By road, it's five miles because it's a couple miles to the bridge, then a couple miles back to the cemetery, a very long bridge and complicated ways to get on and off it (for somebody doing it the first time). The sign at Elk Creek, Virginia, by the side of the road, reminds me of seeing her grave, feeling an interesting connection with her by proximity.


I grew up identifying with Wyandotte County, named after Katy Sage's tribe. Her brother found her after several years searching. He wanted to take her back to see mama. She declined. That wasn't her life any more. If I had known about Katy Sage then, I could have seen the cemetery from Monkey Mountain. Now, that big meadow on top is a subdivision as far as the eye can see. I didn't even want to find what developers had done to Monkey Mountain. The place seemed to me to have a life of its own, or you might say its own spirit, like I believe the mountain I live on has its own spirit. For me, Monkey Mountain was a connection with Indians of that region of the Plains states. I knew for a certainty, just by it's location above the river, the river making a bend around it, that Indians made smoke signals there. I imagine they believed it had powers, a consciousness, a name other than Monkey Mountain. I never knew where it got the name. Possibly a traveling circus monkey escaped and got lost in the woods around the sides of the mountain. It was a tremendous acreage of woods, especially in the time of traveling circuses, if indeed, that's the case, which I doubt. There are not too many ways a monkey could have got there in the time the "mountain" got its name.


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