While her father supervised an experimental farm, the author lived at Fort Duchesne during 1925-1935. She gives a detailed physical, geographical, day-to-day, and emotional account of life there, and includes her observation of the plight of her friends, the Uintahs and Ourays, who were forced to live in the old Fort converted to an Indian Reservation. It changed her forever and in ways that were in conflict with the opinions of the adults around her. Thought-provoking, sensitive, factual history. She includes Native American Folklore stories.
From the Author
After my Mother died, there was no one left in my family with whom I could reminisce about the decade we lived at Fort Duchesne, because my brother Leroy, who shared those years, had died during World War II. It occurred to me to write about those years on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, so that they could be preserved in the memory of the family. Though I told these stories many times, writing them has been an adventure in self discovery that revealed a significance to the events that I had not suspected. I also believe they are an important part of local history and folklore that needs to be documented.
Autobiographical writing about childhood memories falls somewhere between history and fiction. Selecting experience that can be recounted in an interesting manner results in a somewhat fictional account of historical facts. A memoir of childhood is not free from the influence of adult experience and perspective. Therefore, writing the history of my personal past has necessitated the addition of information acquired outside of memory.
As a life long reader of autobiographical writing, I learned that men and women choose a different pattern to recount their lives. Men usually present their life as an orderly progress toward the achievement of a goal, or career. Women record those events that have had significant influence on their own growth, and understanding of themselves in relation to others. Women write about mentors and teachers.
In keeping with this pattern, I have written this memoir as a collection of essays and stories about real events and people, that affected me. I have augmented my memory with historical research to verify what I remembered. I have added editorial comment to give meaning to a world that no longer exists. Many of the people I have written about are no longer living, yet they were important to the development of a community that does exist, however changed. In writing about the persons who served as my mentors, I have added biographical information in order to document their history, as well as mine. Rather than a narrative of sequential events over a decade, I have chosen experiences that were significant to my growth and development. I have presented those events as perceived by the child I was. Often the events of several summers merge into one remembered image, and separation has not always been possible; therefore, I have presented the stories as the events of one long summer. The stories really happened, and I have used real names of the people who shared them with me. I have added fictional dialogue to create stories that convey folklore in a more dramatic way than prose narrative could.
Some of my experience was unique among my peers. It was unique even in my own family, for my surviving sisters did not share most of them. My sister, Lorraine, was too young; and my sister, Nancy, was not yet born. This account of the decade of summers from 1925 to 1935, is also prompted by rapid change and a greatly increased population of the Uintah Basin. A knowledge of the past is necessary to an understanding of the present.
During my childhood, my family migrated winter and summer between two worlds of contrasting scenery, values and experience. While a child, I was unable to reconcile conflicts which resulted from those contrasts. I was often squelched by older members of our extended family, who were disinterested and impatient with a child's stories. I was often hurt by wintertime schoolmates, who did not want to share my experience of a place unknown to them.
After we moved permanently to Logan, I ceased talking about my previous experience and stories, because I needed to be accepted by my peers. I became integrated into life as lived in Logan, and the events of Fort Duchesne were replaced by different activities and concerns. But, I never forgot Fort Duchesne, for it remained the home of my childhood. It was there that I gained awareness of the world. The most vivid memories were of the Indians, my childhood home, and the natural world that surrounded it. Those are the images that inspired my stories. My Memoir is an attempt to preserve those events and people which remain uniquely mine.
I am grateful to those whose stories I tell, and to those who shaped and influenced my understanding of those events. I wish to acknowledge those who consented to an interview after so many years had passed. I value the comments of several historians who read earlier versions of these stories, and encouraged me to continue writing them. One folklorist said to me, "It is powerful stuff to remember this in first person. But, when you played games, and when you sang songs, what did you play?And what did you sing?"I have included those games, and some of the songs. I am grateful to my own children, who first listened to these stories.
I dedicate this Memoir to My Family all of them!
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