I am you, Sarah speaks

I lived in a small world. While I was a privileged wife of a landowner, my horizons were small. We dwelled on a  farm run by changing seasons and trauma. We wived on the Rolling Fork of the Nolan River in west Kentucky near what is now Louisville. The community was close, having migrated from Fredricksberg Virginia immediately after the American Revolution, we lived among the same families for over almost 150 years until your great grandmother, Annabelle left in 1919. Our family lived in and around LaRue and Hardin County Kentucky from 1781 to 1918. We fought to create a place in these wilds, a stable place where we could prosper. We were good people, pillars of the community. We held positions of authority and helped build and maintain status quo.

And Carole, maybe like you, the status quo made me angry. My husband was cruel, a monster of a man. I could not divorce him. I did not have birth control. I did not have power to control my own destiny.

Maybe this is why I run parallel to you, in your blood. Why of all my descendants, I have chosen to express myself in you. You could fall in love with a person of color. You could divorce someone who did not know you’re worth. Maybe I am reliving through you some of the choices I would have like to have had.

You heard my voice in your teens when Kevin, the the not so good looking black friend in your class, who was so funny, crushed on you, and you were horrified. Kevin was not attractive. Was that because of the color of his skin you wondered (I wondered). You looked around. David, in your French class, he was the best looking dude in your class. His light skin and fine features were attractive. He sat next to you. You helped him with French everyday. You asked yourself, “can I like him?” Then you initiated a relationship with him that lasted over a year. 

Where did that curiosity come from? It came from me. It came from the forbidden, never consummated relationship I wanted with Alex, an enslaved son of my husband. Lewis, my husband,  had been raping the enslaved women on his plantation since he was 14, unbeknownst to me for many years. 

When Alex returned from Mississippi without Lewis and found me undone, with a newborn child, an untended farm and children, he behaved compassionately, rolled up his sleeves and took care of what needed taking caring for. He showed me what kindness looked like. He gave of himself in ways that went far beyond what his bondage called for.

I loved him. As a brother, a friend and I often wished I could know him as a lover. I wished I could kiss him and bed him. I wished we could extend our evening fireside chats to the bedroom. Alas, this never happened.  We tended this farm, the smaller children, and we grew hemp and vegetables. We survived together and created a thriving farm after awhile. We were always watched and were never allowed to expand into the real family we had the potential to be.

Yes Carole, my blood flows in your veins and your curiosity, your daring, your choices often were made because they were choices I did not have and longed for. 

Sarah LaRue Castleman 1808-1904

Cease and Desist

 Dear Granddaughter,

The other day you finally asked for the consent of your grandmothers to write about them how you choose. In your imagination, every maternal grandmother lined up behind you and said, oh yes, dear, you interpret our lives through your lens - except me. I did not give you permission to rewrite my story your way. Oh I see your imagination stirring.

I won’t have it. You can’t have my life and call it terrible, colonizing, patriarchal. You can not tear down what all of your grandmothers and grandfathers have built. I do not stand behind your libel.

I have heard you. You aren’t even sure what side me and my esteemed husband were in the civil war. You suspect we supported the south. 

Likewise, you suspect several things based on my husband’s last name. I do not appreciate your judgements one bit. Because I married a Mather you suspect of us of being witch burning puritans. With absolutely no evidence to support this, you decided since these Mathers were only one generation into America in the late 1800’s, you have gone and assumed we are related to the Mather who was part of the esoteric group the Golden Dawn. 

Which ever way you look at it, you want to tarnish our name.

We, LaRue and Castleman descendants, are good people. Why you want to make my dead father off as some horrible bigamist when the record clearly shows he died the year I was born. You have no sense of pride in family name, do you? Saying he raped slaves, faked his own death and married again is a horrid thing. I wish you would shut up. I have no idea how you could imagine any of us support you here in Ancestral Land.  

My granddaughter, Jesse, is your grandmother. I have had more time to talk to her since she died in 1984 then you did while she was alive. You weren’t her favorite grandchild, As I am sure you must know. But she is really happy you want to highlight that she was a woman’s suffragist and fought for the New Deal in a touching and hilarious way. She loves those stories and tells you to imagine more of them. She loves that you realize she took her father-in-law, who lived in her house, down to the next county, to campaign for the New Deal. He sold fruit tress and she gave out New Deal fliers. They had to do it a county south of them because they couldn’t let their own community know what they supported. Jesse’s husband had a politically sensitive job. 

My own daughter, Annabelle, can’t wait for you to explore her story of leaving Kentucky in 1919 after her family settled there over a hundred years before. Like you left Georgia to become a farmer, she and her husband left a lifetime of being morticians among families they had lived with since before the American Revolution to become  diary farmers on the Gulf Coast in their later years. She loves that you see the pattern there from your own leaving of family territory. She likes the way you tell the story tracing it back to patterns beginning thousands of years ago, as our ancestors moved west with herds of domesticated animals, devouring the forests and eroding local cultures with patriarchy. Y’all too moved west (Annabelle moved south, I gently remind her). It goes to prove you are doing all the same things you whine and moan and want to change in the world. 

I can’t even get over what my own mama is happy for you to tell stories. She still hates my daddy so badly, she is ready for you to tell about him raping slaves and leaving her with practically nothing - barefoot and pregnant with me. She has no loyalty to the Castleman name.

I am so done with the lot of you.  Even my grandmother, Jane, is glad for you to expose the Indian Killing of her father. She is also glad to let you explore all the LaRue’s history, the Hugenot family she married into.  She wants you to look into the marriages between cousins and was horrified when I married Henry because he is my cousin on the LaRue side being the grandson of her husband’s brother. 

You all can just go to hell. Stop trying to tell these stories. Nice people don’t air their dirty laundry. We are patriots and proud of our heritage. I need you to cease and desist all these writings.

Your great, great Grandmother,

Melissa Castelman Mather

Sarah, May 1842

I was hugely pregnant when he showed up late one May afternoon. I was hoeing in the kitchen garden. I had waited until evening to get out so it would be cool. I saw a figure coming towards us. The dogs set up a ruckus, ran to the man and jumped joyfully on him.

I didn’t know whether to hope it was Lewis or not. It sure looked like him from a distance, but where was the rest of the travel party?  I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to see him again, since he left me last October with most of the Negros to go down to the Mississippi River and sell some of our goods. They had harvested the hemp and tobacco from the fields before leaving and took most of the crop and household into the deep South. 

Lewis said he’d be back Christmas at the latest. Here it was May and I was keeping my own gardens and children and the entire farm. I had my family - six of seven children still home, most of them old enough to do chores, 2 older Negros helping me best they could. The older children helped in the household and gardens.  James at 16 was doing the work of three men. 

Our farm was taking a beating. We didn’t get a spring crop of tobacco in the ground. We did manage to plow one field and get hemp in the ground. 

We didn’t have the manpower or the will to plant tobacco with nobody to buy the seed and nobody to plow the lands. It was all we could do to keep the household running. 

Here I am seven months pregnant because that cruel husband of mine had to spill his vile seed before leaving. My last baby was five years ago - Arabella. She’s a sweet handful. Nancy and Sarah keep up with her mostly so I can get other things done. 

It looked all the world to be Lewis walking towards me, silhouetted by the sun. My anger and my need to have some help warred each other as he approached.

Then there was Alex striding up, the mulatto negro man who had been a boy when I first married Lewis so many years ago. It was as veils lifted from eyes as I saw this young colored man, strikingly similar to Lewis. I wondered why I had never seen this before. How could I have not understood their relationship - father to son…

Alex saw the alarm spreading across my face, halted and waited for me to acknowledge him.

"Miss Sarah Jane", he said when I asked him where in the world was Lewis and why was Alex here without him?

"Miss Sarah Jane, Master Lewis been kilt in those swamps in Louisiana from yellow fever. I came back to tell you."

"Where are the others, Alex?" I asked, not comprehending what he was telling me.

He looked at me, naked pain tearing at his features. "He sold them, Miss Sarah, he sold them." 

Alex’s face broke into a million pieces and slowly rearranged itself in a placid acceptable look for a negro’s countenance near their owner. I was torn asunder. 

I had been listening to the Presbyterian abolitionists. My ideas and attitudes were shifting like sand blowing in the wind. I could see the costs paid by this man, who I now understood was Lewis’ son, fathered during Lewis’ young teens. I now understood several things which had never been clear to me before. 

I wanted to throw up as I silently named to myself the ten negros who traveled with Lewis down the Ohio to the Mississippi into the Deep South. He went to sell “household goods”,  also the two pigs, tobacco and hemp. Not the Negros. He had never said he was selling the negros. 

I reached across a great gulf and touched Alex's arm and I said I was so sorry. So sorry.

Alex backed away from me, looking terrified of my concern. "I am sorry for your loss", he countered, somewhat unconvincingly.

I realized he had told me Lewis was dead. Me and all these children and another one on the way, this farm, hardly any help, all mouths to feed. I was furious. Furious unto tears. I felt no sorrow at the loss of the man. He had been a cruel person and hell to live with. I was glad I’d never have to smell his stench again.  

I also was afraid, afraid of all the uncertainty and work lying ahead. And humiliation. The Negros would be in mourning when they heard news of their own being sold. This was a day of sorrow in this household, but not about Lewis’ demise. Our son James, the children might grieve. I would have to be careful, not unlike Alex, in naming my grief.

"Alex, you may go and talk to the other coloreds and let them know. I need some time to figure out how I am going to manage" - and I waved weakly around at the fields, garden, orchard and house.

Alex looked at me, like he really saw me. "I will help, m'am.  I am back. I can’t goes nowhere. I’ll help you get this place squared away". 

"Thank you", I breathed as waved him away. I slowly made my way back to the house, walked in and through the kitchen and made my way to my bedroom. I laid down, fully clothed and stared at the wall. Tears made tracks down my cheek onto the quilt. 

Princess of Swords

 1.29.22

Looking deeply into my ancestors includes researching what was happening around them, where they resided, what ideas upheld the circumstances of their lives and their socio-economic circumstances.

The stories I tell of my grandmothers are intuitive and researched based. I research, find out a few details about an ancestor, and at that point,  my imagination begins a story.   These are stories I co-create with what I can know and imagine. They are not strictly factual. I am one of a great many people descended from the LaRues. My grandmothers were often second wives and it may be the middle or youngest daughter joining me to this tree of life. I am sure these same forebears have different tales to lend themselves for other descendants. I hear what I need from my perspective

I attempt to reconstruct the lives  of those who still existing in my DNA -  and  the institutions and structures my ancestors  built, The past leaves remnants and these remains become stories. Thus our creations live in our imaginations, our bodies (DNA), our languages, social constructs and institutions and even the land and structures on them.

I am 65 as I write these words - as I begin this journey into the wilds of my family’s colonial experiences, my European roots and ultimately the inception of humanity. This lifetime has been devoted to thinking about the journey we humans have traveled this planet. In college, I studied anthropology. At age twenty, I determined a western world view is a toxic stew of mismatched concepts which boil down to exploitative and oppressive life ways. I began my search for an intact indigenous belief systems which could inform my thinking.

Thus began my adventures in consciousness. One cannot begin learning another worldview and other society’s precepts without changing how one perceives the world. I studied Native Americans, reading Creek myths and drawing their symbols. I lived in Central Georgia where huge monolithic pyramids loom, reminding me I lived in an area regarded as sacred by past inhabitants. The area is alive with their ancient spirits and energies. I wanted to claim them, be them, channel them. 

Also in my twenties, I began an exploration the Chinese oracle, the I Ching. My anthropological background led me to see the I Ching as a creation story holding an ancient civilizations precepts and values. My mystical self seized on it as a personal assistant for navigating my life.

I steeped myself in the metaphors of nature, the binary ideas, the archetypes and the relationship between heaven and earth and human. I began to become familiar with the concepts of right relationship, cardinal directions as category containers for ideas. This decade excursion into the I Ching altered the way I see the world and it remains in my bag of alchemical gizmos to aid me in navigating life.

Besides studying the I Ching and basic Native American concepts, I also traveled the Goddess path. Eventually, in my fifties, I became aware they had cracked the MesoAmerican glyphs and we now could read and begin to understand these civilizations. In 2012, I decided to see what all the hullabaloo was about. I immediately understood, the Mayan Calendars, much like the I Ching encompassed the Mayan Creation Story and also the key concepts by which these people constructed their reality. The Mayan Calendar could be studied as a key to the indigenous beliefs populating this continent before it became contaminated and destroyed by European immigrants.

I dove into those strange glyphs and hard to grasp concepts, living each day bringing in the Mayan concept of time and the human journey through time. For nine years, I remained immersed in the concepts and time frame of the Mayans.

Within a few months of beginning this study, my cousin introduced me to the ideas:

• cultural appropriation
• ancestral work should be done with one’s own ancestors 
• and the declaration that the Mayan culture was not mine to embody. 

To say I wasn’t ready for this message is an understatement. I’d been searching for the key to the 1st Nations’ minds - for this map of concepts, all of my adult life.

I am a colonizer. My DNA reflects a journey from Turkey 12,000 years ago moving westward, either spreading or running from the toxic world view  that was spreading westward  This worldview contained ideas that land/people/animal are expendable and to be dominated. These exploitive values have traveled the earth over and landed us all in a world of trouble. 

Despite my cousin’s good advice, I learned and lived and prayed with the Mayan concepts for more than nine years.  Sometime in the last year, the messages of decolonization coming from people of conscience finally reached critical mass within me, and I began putting away my Mayan charts and calendars and turned my attention to my own ancestors and cultural history.

I now study those from who I descended - in all their toxic glory.  I look to my grandmothers in particular and their exploitation in our colonial system. This helps me to understand more how we can be perfectly great people while also be the worst humans on the planet.

Astrology and Tarot  help me to glimpse the archetypes we hold in Western civilizations. The numeric relations, the correspondence to astonomy - the concepts populating our minds mostly originate in ancient middle east and Egypt and are carried in the symbols one finds in the tarot and astrology. This is where the roots of a Western worldview began developing. 

People on horses, riding in wheeled chariots,  wielding medal, coming from the Caucaus mountains began invading the Middle East, disrupting grain and husbandry cultures long in the making,  spreading invasive enslaving techniques to control existing socieities. These sky god societies began spreading around 4000 BC changing myths, resource allocation and building patterns  in  southern Turkey  the Fertile Crescent and down into Egypt. These civilizations developed exploitive  ways of living on the land and began a campaign of oppression and violence. It was my people, my DNA that moved westward across Europe with sheep and goats and cattle eating forests and civilizations, conquering and changing life ways formerly in harmony with the earth.

The first house in Astrology correlates with the phrase - I am.

I am a southern white woman who is 65 in the year 2022.  I am telling you stories about who I am, who my grandmothers were and the lands we have occupied.  How can a white person whose people are responsible for this mess look into her past and find ways to heal the world?

First, I can stop pretending the hallmarks of our civilization benefit the planet or her inhabitants. I believe those of us with of colonizing descent lines can take a good look at the ancient precepts underlying our culture and co-create a better future. We allow the voices of women, indigenous people and people of color to join and lead us in a circle of sustainability and sacredness.  We white people can step back, stop pretending our control is all that can save us, when in fact, it has been what has ruined this garden of a planet. Instead of seeing ourselves as saviors, it is time to humble ourselves into a flow of radical equality.

Generations of Colonizers

 I am Carole, daughter of Frances, daughter of Jesse, daughter of Annabelle, daughter of Melissa, daughter of Sarah, daughter of Jane, daughter of Nancy.

 I laboriously chased one maternal mother after another back until Jane's birth in 1776. It is a colonist’s privilege, this tracing of bloodlines and has a lot to do with promising purity and inheritances. 

Nancy is Jane’s mother. Jane is my seventh grandmother and the first to be on this continent.   I believe Nancy was born in Wales, married a Morgan and he moved to the wilds of Kentucky as soon as the first fort opened, and  was killed by Indians on Bear Creek. Jane remained in Fredricksberg, Virginia until she married a well to do colonist, Jacob Warren LaRue. She became his second wife and gave him three more children late in life. 

I have not been proud of my colonizing family roots. As far back as I can see on my family tree, I have been riding the wave of the patriarchal, oppressive westward movement characterized by killing forests and indigenous people. 

I can get all the way back to Turkey in the 12,000 BCE. My DNA is farming with livestock. There is indication we were settled goddess worshippers and lived in societies with an equitable distribution of labor and resources. 

----

I have wanted to be an Indian ever since my brother and sister began the family story that the Indians paid them to take me. Or that Willie B, the famous gorilla in the Atlanta Zoo was my real father. 

I attempted to study social work when I got to the University of Georgia during the last four years of the seventies. My mama, Frances, was a social worker and it seemed a noble profession.

My professors did not think much of me, We tangled on Patrick Moynihan- - I thought  he had a point when he spoke of culture of poverty in the United States. My professor thought as a social worker, it was not polotic to speak of cultures of poverty.  It seemed to me, after listening to my mama come home from work every day telling me that the social inequities in this country were too large - that  there would be a reckoning one day. “There will be a revolution,” my mama  would say sometimes. Nothing about my peaceful middle class existence looked very unstable, nevertheless, I internalized the idea that maybe the world would look quite different when I was older woman and maybe I should live my life with that in mind.

Back to the culture of poverty, somehow acknowledging differing cultures was the wrong answer. We couldn’t talk about the differences in society that way. It didn’t fit in with the curriculum.  I was denied admission to the social work club and I traipsed down to the anthropology department where they believed in different cultures for my degree work.

Alas I am not an Native American and my indigenous roots, as I mentioned, are far far far in the past. 

Therefore I adopted a few other world views along the way to help me overcome my Westernism. There was a decade long journey thorough the I Ching, and an 11 year excursion into the Mayan calendar. 

After resistance, I have come to understand that cultural appropriation sits squarely on my shoulders.  I do not get to pick and choose from the world’s histories as a consumer. If I want to tell stories, I really need to tell my own. 

So here I go, here we are together, exploring what it means to be white, a settler, a colonizer and to try to understand how in 2023, the world the colonizers built is splitting apart at its seams. What are my responsibilities? How do I need to evolve, move over, save carbon, do as little harm as possible and be of service?

Damn if I know, but at 66, typing and writing and imagining are about all I am good at besides gardening. But I will tell you about gardening another time and how Annabelle and I both did something real similar relating to gardening later in our lives.