[Dalyia]

Chapter 4
The trip from Salt Lake to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was long. Brigitte had to fly to Minneapolis first, kill time in the airport, and then finally get a flight to Sioux Falls. She arrived there six hours after she left Salt Lake. She could hardly wait to go to the university the next morning to begin her research. The university itself was in Vermillion, South Dakota, sixty-five miles from Sioux Falls, but she had decided to spend the night in Sioux Falls, and travel the rest of the distance in the morning. And the only accommodation she could find was at a clean, brightly lit motel, located across the street from a park. The town was situated on the bluffs above the Big Sioux River. And after settling into her motel room, Brigitte went outside for a walk. She found an appealing-looking diner while she was walking and stopped for something to eat. She loved watching the people come and go as she ate.
She noticed that there was snow on the ground when she left the diner. The temperature was freezing, and she was anxious to get back to her motel. She wanted to get up early to drive to Vermillion the next morning. Brigitte’s destination was the University of South Dakota, where the Institute of American Indian Studies housed the Dr. Joseph Harper Cash Memorial Library. There books, photographs, films, and videos referred to the oral histories Brigitte was seeking. The Sioux referred to their myths and legends as “lessons.” She hoped that the mystery of Wachiwi would be solved there.
If not, she had no idea where else to go. The Institute of American Indian Studies was the definitive resting place for oral histories about the Sioux, with nearly six thousand recorded interviews in their archives. But the woman she was seeking had lived more than two hundred years ago, closer to 230, and she wouldn’t be easy to find. She was the proverbial needle in the haystack, and it was only with great good fortune that some story about her would have been passed on from generation to generation and been preserved. Maybe the fact that Wachiwi or her father had gone to France had made them noteworthy. She must have been remarkable in some way to have gone so far from her Dakota home.
The artifacts at the institute were ancient and fragile, and had been carefully preserved, and once again Brigitte was able to find a librarian, who in this case was not just helpful, but fascinated by the story Brigitte told. As Brigitte did, the librarian at the institute loved the idea that Wachiwi had wound up at the court of the King of France, or close enough if she had stayed in Brittany and married a marquis. It seemed more than likely to both of them that she had been one of those rare, early Americans who had been guests at the French court, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. And maybe Wachiwi de Margerac. Why else would she have gone to France? How had she gotten there? Who had invited her? Who had gone with her? And how had she stayed on another continent so far from home? Brigitte wondered if her relatives had traveled with her, her parents, maybe siblings. It was inconceivable that she had journeyed to France alone, particularly as a young Sioux girl.
The librarian introduced herself as Jan and explained to Brigitte that the mores that applied to young Sioux maidens had been extremely strict for a long time. They were kept secluded, their virginity was essential, and they could not look the men in their tribe directly in the eyes. One could only assume that Wachiwi had been carefully surrounded and protected when she went to France. It was hard to imagine her family’s reaction to her marrying a French marquis, or that of the French marquis’s family to her. It was hardly an ordinary match. Finally, Brigitte had found an ancestor who not only excited her imagination but captured her heart. It made the whole project come alive for her at last.
The woman in charge of the library showed Brigitte countless photographs of young Sioux girls, and this time they both noticed that Brigitte bore a faint resemblance to some of them. Brigitte was older and modern in style, her features were less pronounced, but in more than one of the photographs, there was a similarity between her and some of the young girls. And her long black hair made the resemblance easier to discern. If so, Wachiwi’s genes had been strong, or perhaps it was only coincidence, but Brigitte loved the idea. She couldn’t wait to tell Amy about it when she went home. It suddenly made her feel more exotic, and she felt an even stronger tie with this young girl, who had ventured into a whole other world.
Jan showed Brigitte the records of the oral histories then, and it was hard to know where to start, there were so many of them. But the librarian knew her resources well. They pored through them all afternoon until they closed. But nothing about Wachiwi had turned up, or even anything about a chief going to the French court, although Brigitte knew now that several had, and the librarian said she had read of it too, mostly in books about eighteenth-century France. She had even seen drawings of Sioux chiefs in a combination of native and French court garb.
Brigitte was discouraged when she drove back to the motel in Sioux Falls. She had hoped to find something, anything that led Wachiwi from the mists of the distant past. She called her mother and told her they had found nothing so far, and Brigitte dreamed of Wachiwi that night. She was a beautiful young girl.
They found nothing on the second day either, and on the third day, Brigitte was about to give up, when they came across a series of histories that had been taken from old Sioux men of the Dakota tribe. The accounts had been recorded in 1812, and in one case were recollections an old chief had from when he was a boy. He had spoken of a Dakota chief named Matoskah, White Bear, who had had five brave sons from his first wife who died. His second wife had been a beautiful young girl, who also died when their infant girl was born. The child became the song of her father’s soul. She grew up protected by her brothers and father and refused to marry until she was older than the other girls in the village. Chief Matoskah thought no brave was worthy of her, and he and his daughter refused all the suitors who came for her hand. The man who had given the oral history said she was a proud, beautiful girl. And then he talked of their wars with the Crow, the many braves who had died fighting to protect the village, the war parties, the raids, and then he mentioned the girl again. He said that on one of their raids, the Crow had killed two of her brothers who were trying to protect her, and a young boy, and the Crow had taken her to give to their chief as a slave. The Sioux braves tried to bring her back but never could, and her father, the great chief Matoskah, had died of a broken heart later that year. The man giving the history said when the girl left, her father’s spirit left with her. He had been young himself then, but he remembered it well. He said they heard stories of her later, that she had been given to the Crow chief, and she had killed him and run away. They never found her, and she was never seen again. She never came back to her father’s tribe. A French trapper said he had seen her once, traveling with a white man, but trappers were known for their lies to Indians, so no one believed him. The girl was gone. The man telling the story said he didn’t know. Maybe she had been taken by a great spirit for killing the chief of the Crow. He said her name was Wachiwi, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and her father, Chief Matoskah, had been the wisest chief he’d ever known.