I Am Regina (22 page)

The white man's wife touches me. She points to the dog who offers me his paw. “Matchlock,” she says.

“Matchlock.” I repeat the dog's name as I accept his welcome.

The woman points to herself. “Anna.”

“Anna,” Quetit says, smiling shyly at the woman.

The children giggle as their mother names them all for us: Hans, Gerta and Peter. The father she calls Jacob.

The children have trouble saying my name and Quetit's. But they soon come out from behind their mother's skirts to play the weaving game with us. I am surprised that they know how.

We sit down to a supper of bread, cheese, milk and dried apples. Jacob bows his head before we eat. I know what he is doing.

Jacob is giving thanks.

While we are eating, I notice a large wooden box attached to the cabin wall—just above a large chest with a blanket folded on it. I ... remember a box like this. My family had one. Something precious was stored inside it.

The box draws me like a bee to pollen. I sign to Anna, “May I open it?”

Anna smiles and nods her head.

I take a heavy book out of the box and place it on the table. Everyone is watching me.

“What is it?” Quetit asks as I turn the fragile pages.

“It ... it is the book of God,” I say.

Anna asks me a question. I can tell by her tone, the look in her eyes. I sign to her, “I do not understand.”

Anna points to the book.

My eyes become riveted on the words printed on the open page. For these words speak to me:

I close the book. Afraid to look at it.

“Tskinnak. What is wrong? Your face is pale,” Quetit says.

“Quetit. This must be a dream. I cannot understand the white man's tongue. And yet ... I can read the words printed in this book as if they were my own.”

“That is because they are not the white man's words. They are the words of God.” Quetit's voice echoes the awe I feel. The man of God we waited for never came. But the word of God ... it lives. It breathes within the pages of this book. In me.

“Tskinnak,” Quetit says. “Read the words aloud.”

And so I open the book once more to a page that has been well worn with use. “The Lord is my ...” I cannot read the next word.

“Shepherd,” Anna says without even looking at the page. She is smiling.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” I continue to read the words that follow, and suddenly I feel as if I've come full circle, back to my beginnings, for this is the psalm my father often read to me. I remember now and remembering, I read:

I can read no more, for now I think of Nonschetto's goodness, Woelfin's sense of pride and ... compassion. I think of a clearing where I prayed to God and kept his words within my heart like stitches quilled in deerskin. And I remember a tree stump growing new branches by a stream. I hug the book to my chest, feeling Jacob's eyes upon me, as he holds little Gerta in his arms.

At night, Quetit and I gaze out the window in the sleeping loft we share. The snow has ended and the sky is clear. The sky seems endless, the stars so bright.

“Tskinnak. Remember the story of the woman falling through the sky?” Quetit says, resting her head against my shoulder.

“I remember.”

“She fell through a night like this toward a land she had never seen. Was she afraid?”

“Perhaps. But birds held her aloft. They softened her fall.”

Starlight now touches Quetit's face, setting it aglow. She sighs. “I believe the word of God is like a bird.”

Morning comes, bringing the sound of wagon wheels, of soldiers' knocking on the cabin door. It is time to leave this kind shelter.

Anna hugs me and I cling to her. Little Gerta cries. Outside, the sky is once more overcast with clouds. The soldiers lead us to the village square. Now they line us up with all the other captives.

I see mountains in the distance, capped by snow and clouds and I think of Woelfin and Tummaa, lost somewhere beyond them. People are crying. Crowds of people push past the soldiers who are there to hold them back. I do not recognize any of the faces that I can see, but I know the anguish and the hope reflected in each one of them.

A thin, dark woman, bent like a reed in wind, rushes past. She speaks with a soldier. Her hands flutter as she points to one captive child, then to another. The soldier sadly shakes his head. The woman begins to cry. A tall man, scarred by smallpox, stares at Quetit, then at me.

“Do you know him?” Quetit whispers.

“No,” I answer, disturbed by the pock marks on his face. They remind me of Tiger Claw, of Clear Sky and Gokhotit. They all are gone.

A woman with hair the color of snow touches my arm. I feel the anguish in her voice as she now questions me. I find I cannot look at her. Nothing I could do or say would be of any comfort. I wish I had the book of God right now. I wish that I could hold it, feel its reassurance. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. He sets the prisoners free.

“Tskinnak!” Quetit points out a woman who hurries through the crowds. She wears a long, gray dress and her face is all sharp angles. It is her hair that fixes me.

Her hair is the color of the hickory nut.

I grab Quetit's hand and pull her through the milling people, keeping my eyes on the woman. Wanting to feel her eyes on mine.

Like the snowflakes that slowly drift down from the sky, this woman moves toward me.

Mother?

The woman looks beyond me. She cries out a white man's name as she runs toward a small, red-haired boy dressed in ragged deerskin. And in that instant, I know a dream has died.

“Tskinnak. Do not cry.” Quetit wraps her arms around me and we watch the woman. Now she boards her wagon. She holds her little boy as if she will never let him go.

The waiting minutes feel like hours. The crowds get thinner now. Quetit is crying and I feel as if my heart will break. The white man does not adopt his captives. Not like the Indian. Where will we go? Will Jacob and Anna offer us their shelter? For how long?

“Tskinnak.” Colonel Bouquet is calling my name. The woman with the hair like snow stands beside him, looking small, like a wren covered with soft flakes of snow.

“This woman thinks she knows you,” he says as Quetit and I approach.

The woman brushes the hair from my face. I force myself to look at her, recognize the pain, the loss that must burn inside her as it bums in me.

“Many winters ago, Indians took her daughter prisoner,” Colonel Bouquet says. “She resembled you. But the woman's memory is of a child, not of a grown girl, tall and dark.”

The woman's eyes search mine. If I could part the mists that shroud my memory and see her standing in my door flap, my heart would sing. This woman's face is kind.

“I do not know her,” I tell the Colonel, wishing that I did.

“Do you remember anything about your mother? Anything at all?” he says.

“No ... just that my mother sang to me,” I say. “And she told me stories from the great book in which God speaks to man.”

Colonel Bouquet turns to the woman. Does he tell her what I say? The woman is crying. A young man dressed in deerskin hurries over to comfort her.

Beside me, Quetit shivers. I lift her face so that her eyes meet mine. “Little one. Remember last night, what you said about the word of God?”

“I remember.”

“God's wings will give us shelter and His wings are strong. They will shelter this woman, too.” I feel the comfort of these words even as I say them.

I gaze at the woman now. She stands between the young man and the Colonel, but she still looks at me. The snow is falling and her shawl is frayed. She must be cold. How far has she traveled?

Behind her, in the distance, I see mountains shrouded by the snow. Then in the wind, I hear a trembling voice now sing:

When Quetit had the smallpox, I sang this song for her. And now, the woman with the hair like snow sings this song for me.

My mother's song.

My throat tightens with wonder. Could this woman be my mother? Tears sting my eyes, but I sing too:

And as I sing:

I feel a mother's arms enfold me.

“Regina,” she whispers.

“Regina.” I repeat the name and it seems to echo through me. “I ... am ... Regina.”

Quetit's sweet high voice breaks through the echo of my name. She sings my mother's song while all around her the snow is falling. I take her hand, drawing her into a warmth that for nine long winters I have only felt in dreams.

I want to grab the wonder of this moment and freeze it like a leaf in ice. My mother holds us now and my heart beats with joy. I give thanks for things that time nor circumstance can ever change—a mother's love, a song. ...

 

 

 

R
egina Leininger was reunited with her mother on December 31, 1764. The young man dressed in deerskin was Regina's brother, John. Regina and Quetit went home with them to live in a snug cabin set in the Tulpehockan area of Pennsylvania. Perhaps Regina's sister, Barbara, joined them there. Both she and Marie LeRoy escaped from the Indians after three and one-half years of captivity.

In February, Regina and her mother walked seventy miles to visit with Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, a prominent Lutheran minister who lived outside of Philadelphia.

Regina asked him if she could have a copy of the book in which God speaks to man.

The Reverend Muhlenberg gave her a Bible. And he watched in wonder as Regina, who spoke only Indian in everyday matters, read whole passages of the Bible aloud in German.

He recorded the moving story of her captivity in his pastoral reports.

With Bible in hand, Regina returned to the home she loved. There she lived her life encircled by the warmth of family. Regina never married.

Now, more than two centuries later, a tombstone stands in Christ's Church cemetery near present-day Stouchsburg, Pennsylvania. The inscription on it reads:

^*
“Alone, Yet Not Alone Am I.”

 

Author's note: There was a change in the English calendar during this time which accounts for the discrepancy in years. The date on the tombstone should read “1764.”

Selected Bibliography

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Dahlinger, Charles. “Fort Pitt.”
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Drake, Samuel.
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Muhlenberg, Henry Melchior.
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