Chapter 1: Before the Beginning

While Grampa Becker was from Bavaria, Pa’s mother had been Seneca, and Pa wanted us -- my two brothers, two sisters and me -- to be proud of our native heritage.

The Seneca called themselves Onodowa’ga, the “people of the hills.” Their traditional home had been in the uplands south of Lake Ontario, among the Finger Lakes, in what is now northern New York State. The Seneca were one of the original five member tribes of the Iroquois League which, by the time of the American Revolution, held sway over a territory extending from southern Canada to northern Kentucky.

Still, Pa didn’t mean for us to be proud in a boastful way. Besides, hardly anybody that carried Indian blood was boastful about it, as most folks thought Indians were savage animals and anyone with even partial Indian parentage was judged a no-class mongrel. What Pa meant was that we should appreciate the long history of being part of America and all that it meant to us, the combining of two races from two continents, Europe and North America. Still, I was content with my Seneca blood and never apologized for it, to the cost of a bloody lip or two when I was a youngster.