Love to Water My Soul (Dreamcatcher) Read online

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The words in this work of fiction are mine alone, but whatever depth and delight they convey is the result of many minds and hands.

  As with A Sweetness to the Soul, I am again indebted to the Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute people who have shared themselves and their stories with me. I especially thank Wilson Wewa, director of the Culture and Heritage Department of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, for elder stories about the times in Harney County and life at early Seekseequa; linguist Henry Millstein and the Paiute language class and teachers Pat Miller and Shirley Tufti; Dr. Terry Tafoya, Taos Pueblo and Warm Springs tribal member, for the story of the old shards mixed with new clay giving strength; elders Bernice Mitchell, Olney Patt, and Margaret Charley for stories of Sherar’s Bridge; and numerous others who have indirectly added to this work: Winona Frank, Leah Henry, Vivian Wewa, Lucinda Green, Normandie Phelps, Pauline Allen, Sylvia McCabe Selam, Gladys Squiemphen, Bobby and Becky Bruno, Nola Queahpama, Faye Waheneka, Sue Matters, Elaine Clements, Versa Smith, Nancy Seyler, Nancy Yubeta, and others, who I hope will forgive me for not including all their names. I thank Bo and Mary Macnab of Sherman County, Oregon, for loaning me an original court report of the 1931 testimony taken from elders in a land claim between the “Warm Springs Tribe of Indians of Oregon and The United States,” and the people of the Sherman County Historical Society, and especially the von Borstel family. I thank GIA Publications, Inc., of Chicago, Illinois, for permission to quote lines of their published song “If You Believe and I Believe,” copyright 1991 by WGRG The Iona Community (Scotland).

  My efforts are supported by previous works such as The First Oregonians published by the Oregon Council for the Humanities, and especially Minerva T. Soucie’s writings about the Wada’Tika Burns Paiute Tribe, and Henry Millstein’s article about the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Patricia Stowell’s Faces of a Reservation, published by the Oregon Historical Society; Eugene Hunn’s work, with James Selam and family, called Nchi’i-Wana: Mid-Columbia Indians and Their Land, which is not only a treasured gift but was my first awareness of the 1872 earthquake and an unusual prophet from the past; and O. Larsell’s 1945 article printed in the December Oregon Historical Quarterly titled “History of Care of Insane in the State of Oregon.” Thanks belong to the people of the Harney County Historical Society, their museum, and their book Harney County: An Historical Inventory by Roy Jackson and Jennifer Lee; to Margaret M. Wheat’s Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes, published by the University of Nevada Press and the Frenchglen community in Southeastern Oregon who carry this fine book in the shadow of Steen’s Mountain. Thanks to Gae Whitney Canfield for Sarah Winnemucca and to Keith A. Murray for The Modocs and Their War, both books published by the University of Oklahoma Press; to the Museum at Warm Springs for access to their research library; and to Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins and her autobiography published in 1883 by G. P. Putnam, Life Among the Piutes. I am grateful to Catherine S. Fowler for her book In the Shadow of Fox Peak: An Ethnography of the Cattail-Eater Northern Paiute People of Stillwater Marsh and to Judith Hunnel Budd, whose loan of this research and whose constant support and encouragement are blessings beyond measure; to her daughter Christine Kelly, whose Reno bookstore cheerfully accessed a variety of materials on my behalf; and to Canyon City residents George and Nancy Zahl and the people at the Grant County Historical Society who led me to newspaper accounts of Indians in the 1880s. I thank them and many other friends for their research and interest in my work.

  I am also very grateful to the people of Oregon and throughout the nation who have set aside 185,000 acres that include the Malheur, Harney, and Mud Lakes, ponds and alkali flats, desert and rimrocks as part of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the lands once roamed by Wadaduka people. I am especially grateful for the staff’s stewardship of grasses and waters, animals and waterfowl, for adjoining ranches that are managed with wildlife habitat in mind, and for the U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service’s museum, whose preservation and explanations allowed me to step inside the past with greater authenticity. The encouragement I receive at the Warm Springs Early Childhood Education Center where I work and at the Moro Community Presbyterian Church where we worship is deeply valued. I am grateful to Alice Archer and Carol Tedder for early manuscript copyediting and agents Joyce Hart and Terry Porter for their belief in me. Rod Morris’s encouragement and editing are gifts I treasure. I am grateful to the Questar family for valuing quality and believing in this series. And finally, I acknowledge Jerry, my best friend and husband, who lovingly supports my efforts and who, without complaint, endures a houseful of dogs and dirty dishes so I can spend my days in the 1800s. Thank you all.

  Based on a true story,

  these riveting novels probe the depths of

  faith, community, and the human spirit.

  Spirited young Emma Wagner chafes at the constraints of her 1850s religious community, which values conformity over independent thought, especially in women. Skeptical of the colony’s growing emphasis on preparing for “the last days,” Emma clashes with their increasingly autocratic leader—and faces the unexpected consequences of pursuing independence.

  Determined to raise her children on her own terms, Emma finds herself alone and pregnant again, struggling to keep her family secure in the Washington Territory. As despair closes in, she must decide whether to continue in her own strength or to humble herself and accept help from the people she so eagerly left behind.

  In 1861, Emma chooses to bring safe harbor to her young family and to face her own fears. But she struggles to find her place in the new communal society of Aurora, Oregon, and wonders if she’ll ever weave a unique legacy from the threads of her ordinary life.

  Live history through Emma’s eyes – available at your favorite bookstore or online retailer!

  A rare look at how

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  shaped the American West.

  Novelist Jane Kirkpatrick deftly weaves her storytelling with engaging photographs and historical details to craft a portrait of a mid-1800s Christian community stitched together by compassion, commitment, and remarkable creativity.

  Be inspired by the legacy …