The Amish Seamstress (51 page)

Zed scooted away, gesturing for me to do the honors. Hands trembling, I reached inside and swung the little door wide, thrilled to see that behind it had been stashed a very old and yellowed cloth bag. I carefully removed it from the hiding place and brought it out into the light.

“Well, would you look at that,”
Mamm
whispered. “What is it?”

The bag had a drawstring top, so I set it on the desk and worked the strings apart. Once I had it all the way open, I peeled back the fabric so we could all see its contents. From what I could tell, we were looking at a very old and neatly folded bundle of buckskin. It looked like Indian buckskin, and it was small and obviously fragile.

Holding my breath, I slid my hands into the bag and pulled it out, hoping the chapbook might be underneath, but there was nothing else there.

“Check the hiding place,” I said to Zed. “Is this everything?”

He took another look and then met my gaze. “That's it.”

He got to his feet and we were all silent, just standing and looking at the folded buckskin in my hand. A part of me was so disappointed that
we hadn't found the chapbook after all, but another part was thrilled just the same. Whatever this was, it was really, really cool. And just the fact that it had been hidden away had to mean
something
.

Zed reached for the buckskin, and he and I were about to unfold it together when my mother stopped us. “Didn't you tell me Frannie's daughter from Europe is an expert in textiles?”

We nodded.

“Well, then, if I were you, I wouldn't do a thing with this except bring it to her to examine. It might fall apart if you even try.”

She was right. I slowly slid the buckskin back into the drawstring bag and then clutched it to my chest as Zed and I headed out.

“
Danke, Mamm
,” I called as we flew down the steps.

“You're welcome,” she replied, coming to the door. “
Danke
to you too. For the…uh…adventure.”

By the time we got back to Klara's, the crowd had thinned. Will had taken the children home, although Ada had stayed with Lexie and James, who could drive her home later. They sat at the kitchen table with Ella and Luke, their hands wrapped around mugs of tea, still talking about Zed's film. Klara and Alexander had gone on to bed. Marta was also asleep, dozing upright in a chair in the corner.

Giselle was on the couch, her eyes on Frannie, who was resting.

“We have something to show you.” Zed said, sitting down beside her as I gently pulled the bag open so that she could see the buckskin inside.

“Oh, my goodness,” Giselle said. “That looks ancient. I need those gloves just to touch it.” She left quickly and then returned a couple of minutes later with the white cotton glove liners on her hands. “I'm thrilled to do the honors,” she said, sitting back down on the couch and taking the bag from me.

Slowly she pulled out the buckskin and then carefully began to unfold it. I watched how she did it, and I was paying so much attention to how she was protecting the creases that I didn't even notice something was in the middle. Zed gasped, and then I looked down and saw that it was a packet of yellowed paper. It had been folded up inside the buckskin.

I was thrilled, but Giselle's voice indicated she wasn't. “That can't have
been good for the buckskin all these years.” There was a discolored area on the leather, but it didn't seem to have been made by the paper.

Giselle pulled off the gloves and handed them over, telling me to put them on. After I did she gestured toward the packet and said, “Your turn.”

My heart pounding, I picked it up and sat on the couch on the other side of Zed. For a long moment I stared down at the documents in my hand, hardly able to grasp that we had uncovered the truth at last.

We decided to go through the items one by one, starting with the one on top, which was a letter dated July 1876 and written by someone named Odette Kanagy. That name sounded familiar, and then I remembered seeing her name on my family tree.

“I'll be right back,” I said, standing and leaving the packet with the letter on top on the couch. As soon as I was out the back door, I ran to the
daadi haus
, went swiftly down the hall to my room, and grabbed the paper with the chart. Then I ran back to the house and over to the couch.

“What do you have?” Zed asked as I picked up the packet and sat back down.

“A family tree.” I followed down the list of my ancestors with a gloved index finger, coming to a stop on
Odette
. She was my great-great-great-great-grandmother, and Abigail's great-great-granddaughter.

Now I remembered. When I was on the bus coming home from Indiana, I had tried to calculate the number of generations in my family that had lived during a time of Indian unrest. Odette was the ancestor who would have been in her thirties during Custer's Last Stand, which I had figured to be the end of the worst of it.

Zed nudged me. “Read it out loud.”

“It's not addressed to anyone in particular,” I said. I handed him the family tree, held the letter where I could see it, and then began to read.

To Whom It May Concern
,

If you are reading this letter, then that means you have found the bundle of buckskin and papers I am now about to hide away. My hope is that enough years have passed between my putting it here and your finding it that the world will have changed in the ways that are so troublesome in these present times
.

In truth, I have chosen to hide these things not because I am ashamed of the truth or of the Indian blood in our past, but because I fear repercussions against me and my own children. Though I could not bear to destroy my great-great-grandmother's chapbooks, I have removed the telling parts of the three remaining copies and kept only the fourth fully intact, which I will hide away in the hidden compartment of my husband's new desk. With it I will include the bishop's letter regarding the situation and the buckskin that was my great-grandmother's only remaining possession from her family of origin
.

Sincerely
,

Odette Kanagy

My eyes fell back to the beginning of the letter. “Indian blood? What does she mean?”

Zed nudged me again. “Look in the packet for the chapbook.”

I pulled out the next item. Sure enough, it was an intact copy. I felt a chill just looking at the cover. At the border design and the feather. At the words printed there:

A Reflection of My Experience Concerning the Indians of Long Ago

Abigail Vogel Bontrager

Overcome with emotion, I took off my gloves and handed them to Zed. Seeming to understand, he slipped them on and then took the chapbook from me.

“Read it,” I whispered. “So we can find out whose Indian blood she's talking about.”

T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

Z
ed settled back against the couch, and with a final glance at me began to read the chapbook aloud. I couldn't bear the suspense, so I stopped him on the first page and made him flip forward, to where the first half had ended. He started with the last few paragraphs on that page.

All along, father insisted to any who would listen that the Conestogas were not involved in the conflict between the settlers and the Indians and that we could trust them completely
.

How very wrong he had been
.

In the end, they were involved in the conflict between the settlers and the Indians, through no fault of their own, to tragic results
.

He paused and we looked at each other, eyes wide. This wasn't a story of broken trust between friends. It had only seemed that way until we had the next part of the story. Zed took a deep breath and kept going.

The autumn of that year started out with great joy, but by winter a horrible tragedy changed all of our lives forever
.

I married my beloved Gorg in September 1763. He farmed with my father, and besides the uneasiness swirling around the Indians and many of the settlers, our lives were good. For a while, both Gorg and Father had thought it unsafe for me to visit Indian Town, so I had not seen Konenquas for months, though she was often in my thoughts
.

Then, on the morning of 14 December of that year, a neighbor came running across our field, shouting at my father that a group of militia had attacked our friends, the Conestoga Indians. Gorg and I had been breaking up the ice in the trough and understood our neighbor's words before Father did. We ran to hitch our horse to the buggy and then took off toward Indian Town as fast as we could
.

What we saw when we got there has haunted me to this day
.

Six Indians had been in the village that morning, including Konenquas and her husband. Six Indians, and the Paxton Boys had massacred all of them
.

Unable to believe my eyes, I rushed to my friend's side, but I knew before I got there that I was too late. I had not seen my old friend in nearly a year, and now she was dead. I collapsed to my knees and sat weeping beside her lifeless body. But as did, I began to hear an odd, muffled sound coming from beneath her, almost like the mewling of an infant
.

Stunned, I pushed her body so as to roll her onto her side, and that's when I realized that there was a babe—a live babe—kicking and crying from inside a basket that had been strapped to Konenquas's chest
.

With shock I realized my dear Indian friend must have recently given birth. I had not seen her for so long, I hadn't even known she was in the family way. Now, of this whole tribe, the only one here that day who had survived the massacre was this infant. In the chaos of the attack, Konenquas was fatally stabbed in the back and had fallen down, trapping
the baby beneath her. If not for the stiffness of the basket's edge, the child would probably have suffocated
.

I wanted to cry out to the other settlers who had come to help, but I was afraid of their reactions. Not knowing what else to do, I waited until no one was watching and then discreetly pulled the little one under my cape and rushed away. Father later told me that those in the group who noticed my quick departure thought I was merely overcome with emotion and could not take any more of the horrible sight
.

Gorg brought me and the baby home right away. I fed and changed and cleaned her, and then I dressed her in some of the clothes I'd begun to make in hopes of having our own child now that we were married. I stashed away the infant's buckskin wrap, stained with the blood of her mother, in a cedar trunk in the attic. I knew I should destroy it, but it was the only remaining possession of the orphaned infant, and I couldn't bring myself to do so
.

Together, we decided she looked to be less than a month old. I named her Helen, after the helenium blossoms Konenquas and I had picked together as girls
.

We kept the infant hidden, terrified if the Paxton Boys learned of her existence that they would come and kill her too. Already they had grown more determined and violent, and on 27 December of that year, they killed fourteen more members of the tribe. Thus, Helen was one of the last surviving Conestoga Indians on earth
.

On 3 January, 1764, we learned that the Moravian Indians being held for their own safety on Province Island in Philadelphia would be setting out for New York the next day. We decided to give over the baby to an Indian friend, a baptized Christian, who was among those in the group. We took her to our friend on 4 January and he agreed to take the child
.

The Moravian Indians set out from Province Island for New York on 5 January, but when they reached New York,
the governor refused to let them in. He sent them back to Pennsylvania, and they arrived in Philadelphia on 24 January. This time, they were housed not on Province Island but in the city barracks for their own safety
.

The Paxton Boys were still on the rampage, and I was terrified the Moravian Indians, including Helen, would be killed by them as well. I talked Gorg into going into Philadelphia and retrieving the baby from our friend. He managed to do so, discreetly bringing her back home to me. But beyond that we were in a quandary as to what we should do
.