Thé the attónbe ithá hónbtha hóndi.
I saw this in a dream.
On November 13th, 1995, I dreamt a Ponca woman covered from neck to hips with pouches and seed-bags, riding a Big Horse, packed with seed-sacks and parfleches, across a tall grass prairie. A dog with Ears Up, trotted at our heels, trailing over pine ridges, to a flat hilltop. A valley spanned out below, in spiral patterns, flowers fanning, gardens of crops, circling, snaking through abandoned earth mounds.
On the ground, a woman in a faded blue dress, knees tucked under her, was bent to planting seeds, focused on her task. Behind her, a ribbon of shining water ran beneath steep, limestone cliffs. The woman in the garden turned her head to look up, a dog barked, and I woke up.
I had no idea who these women were, but their story took hold of me and never let go.
I followed the clues they laid out for me, and eventually they led me to Niobrara.
I did not know then that I would follow this dream for years...
And that these women would lead me down the road to their whole story, and that their story would change mine.
The dream of Big Horse Woman and Magghie, developed into full-fledged novels. As I wrote, my daughters grew from toddlers to women. I wrote this story for them, for all daughters, from child to woman. I wrote so our daughters could, would, learn from them, glean valuable lessons and experience, through them.
I wrote for the Plants. The women’s knowledge of healing plants, and their mutually obsessive need to save the seeds of food and medicine, is the thread that runs through all these stories. This common cause led to their meeting, rooted their friendship, and guided me in recording their stories, spreading their seeds. The Ponca call the plants ‘The Silent Nation’ because they don’t have a voice to speak for themselves. But some of us hear them, and Big Horse Woman and Magghie speak for the plants, stand for the plants, and protect them. Teach us how to listen.
I became a student of the Ponca language because it became essential to me to name the plants, as she would have. This is what led me to Nebraska, and to the Ponca Tribe, my first of many visits being in 1999. In August 2011, I moved 1300 miles to attend my first class in the Umónhon and Pónka Language at University of Nebraska Lincoln. I learned how the language reflects the ways and views of the people who speak it. My intention is that these stories contribute to the revitalization of the language, through this use of Ponca names.
Like Magghie, I too was run over by my horse-drawn vehicle, my pelvis, knee, and shoulder broken, in what my then thirteen-year-old daughter would call an attempt to take my research too far. Being flattened, forced me to settle down to the keyboard, and the women’s voices filled every silence as they fine-tuned their story and fed me detail. An urgency crept into my bones, getting me ready for when I could walk.
Some dreams are easily forgotten. Some remain to haunt. This dream carried me, as I healed, and as I followed these women on their journeys, one thoughtful step at a time, or bending hard against swooping changes, as vivid moments and scenes came to light. I asked them questions, and they answered in moving pictures, which I did my best to write.
Their big story became an opus woven in and out of my own life, braiding dream, imagination, and reality, in and out of experience. From that first morning on, I regarded them as real, tracking their stories, their cultures, their place and time. I followed clues, serendipity, tenacity, teachings, belief… determined to make them as real in the minds of readers as they are in mine.
With every step, their knowledge, experience, lessons, discoveries, and memories, become ours,
and their journey, yours…
Ride on!