“Wachiwi? Is that French?” Marguerite sounded confused. “I don’t think it is. What nationality was she?”
“She was Sioux. Can you imagine? In Brittany. Apparently, Louis XVI invited several Sioux chiefs to the court as honored guests. Some of them stayed. She must have been related to one of them, or got to France herself somehow. But the librarian at the Family History Library said there’s no question. She’s Sioux. Wachiwi means ‘dancer’ in Sioux. So we have a Sioux woman in our family history, Mom, way, way back through the generations. And she married the marquis, and had three sons. One of them must have been the father of the Philippe and Tristan who went to New Orleans, and the older Tristan and Wachiwi were their grandparents. That means she was the grandmother of your great-grandfather, Mom. I want to find out more about her. Apparently I have to go to the Sioux nation to find that. I think I might fly to South Dakota from here. I want to see what I can find.” Brigitte hadn’t been on a hunt like this since school, but it was what she loved about anthropology. And finally she had come across one of their ancestors who truly grabbed her interest. Suddenly both women’s passions had converged, brought to light by this one Sioux woman in their ancestry. Brigitte hadn’t had this much fun in years. Even her name was romantic. Wachiwi. The dancer. Just thinking about it made her dream.
“It’s hard to believe that a young Sioux girl could get all the way to Brittany, and marry a marquis. That was an incredibly long way in those days. It must have taken months to get there, on some little tiny ship.”
“Imagine what it must have been like to be a Sioux woman at the court of Louis XVI. That’s pretty amazing,” Brigitte added. “I hope I can find something about her in the oral histories. The woman at the Family History Library said it was unlikely, unless she was the daughter of an important chief. But she might have been. She must have been someone important to get all the way to France, and to be presented at the court of the king—if that’s how she met the marquis.”
“We might never know, dear,” her mother said reasonably, but Brigitte was on a mission. She wanted to discover whatever she could find about a Sioux girl called Wachiwi, who was part of her history. Brigitte suddenly felt a bond to her like no other, and she was going to do all she could to find out about her. Wachiwi, the Marquise de Margerac, wife of the Marquis Tristan de Margerac. Brigitte felt a powerful pull to find out who she was, as though Wachiwi herself was calling to her, taunting her with the mystery. It was a challenge Brigitte found impossible to resist.