I did archeology at Fort Vancouver, just across the river from Portland, OR so my story is located a little south of where Pegman took us today but I couldn’t help writing 150-words about something so familiar and dear to my heart.
We Indians and Kanakas took our leave of Fort Vancouver long ago.
Archaeologists study what we left behind believing that mapping areas of shattered dish fragments will show what our lives were like while working as servants for soldiers and their wives.
They deceive themselves for decorated fragments of transfer-printed pitchers and shards of salt-ware jars have no stories to tell. They define where we lived, in quarters sectioned off from the Hudson’s Bay men, but the “fancy” names we were given such as Ban-yan, Foretop, and Ropeyarn are not recorded on these fragments. Heartache and loneliness cannot be written on a sliver of porcelain. Nor the joyful birth of a child.
We wish the archaeologists well.
And perhaps it’s for the best no one remembers our true names or what we did or how much we loved. Those memories are for us to keep.
Up From the Ashes 