The Three Roses and the Rosebud Necklace

In the valley of the Roaring River, Pre-North Carolina, 1487

          My name is Emanuelle Rose. I was born in the year 1463, in the eastern mountains of what would later become the state of North Carolina, on the side of the mountain where the wild roses grow close and cloaking the misty mountainside. In a round about way you could say I was the daughter of Man Whose Hair Flows Coppery Against the Sky. My father was a wanderer and imparted in me this same lust. I remember there was a song I used to sing in the early springtime, a song of my father's words. My heart can still hear my father singing this song in the early morning. Sometimes my mother, Sweet Dew Woman, would join her voice to his. When they sang around the campfire at night, The Girl Sitting Near the Red Star would move in the sky at the rise of their voices. I believed hearing their voices mingled was a sweet heaven in my heart. They would sing:

One of these days
I'm going to walk away east,
to where the tracks of
my grandfathers' lie resting
and the spirits of my grandmothers'
sing.

One of these days
I'm going to walk away east,
walk with my head held high
and singing
the song I sang long ago
in the land of the living blue sky.

One of these days
I'm going to walk away east,
to where the wild rose will lie
close and cloaking
the misty mountainside.


One of these days
I'm going to walk away east,
to where the black hawk sings
and the moon shines quick.

One of these days. . .

Caney Knob, 1963

          It all began in the year 1963, the winter of my eleventh year. I, who was to become TheRealCrow, met the old man who was to name me Crow high up in the mountains near Caney Knob. Caney was the highest peak in my part of Kentucky. I lived in the Turkey Creek area of Pike County. I had been told that a person could see clear over to Williamson, West Virginia from the top of Caney. That was over five miles distance, and my heart had been telling me it wanted to see West Virginia that day.

          As I recall, I was sitting on a thick, cushioning bed of cool, green moss near the summit of Caney Knob. I was watching a pair of gray squirrels scampering through the red oak and shell bark hickory leaves and listening to a catbird play his accordion when the squirrels started up a squawk and disappeared into a tall, shag bark hickory tree. The catbird's final note of what I thought was the song, Red River Valley, still lingered in my ears when I heard it. A slow, undulant whistle moved toward me through the waves of the now almost silent wind.

          I listened to the whistle moving back and forth through the chords of the slow wind as I wondered, Who can that be? The whistle moved mellifluously with the wind as it walked its way across the hollows and folds of Caney. The wind played a silent song through the sleeves of the shirt I wore and the strings of my heart gathered into a tight spring of something akin to fear, but not quite her. At that moment I saw him, my long ago grandfather, Man Whose Hair Flows Coppery Against the Sky.

          He stood beneath the sourwood tree I had passed moments before, looking at me as he continued to whistle. His long, coppery hair, stirred by the rising wind, hid his face from my eyes. The foliage of the sourwood tree became for a moment a rolling green and white tide exploding against steep cliffs. The first large, protruding limb of the sourwood tree became the surging prowl of a longboat. Grandfather? I whispered the word tentatively. Then I saw there stood beneath the sourwood tree only the wind playing in the early morning sunlight. It had not been Man Whose Hair Flows Coppery Against the Sky. My heart sighed in the hollow of its chest. . .

In the valley of the Roaring River, Pre-North Carolina, 1530

          My mother, Sweet Dew Woman was of the Cherokee people. My father, Man Whose Hair Flows Coppery Against the Sky was from the north country, far across the sea of many fears. I have often heard it spoken of around the campfires that he was a Norseman. Oh, my father was a warrior strong, and the love he carried in his heart was a forever love, not a love that died from day to day.

Sweet Dew Woman

          In my childhood I was called Dewberry. My mother, Yellow Rose Nodding, gave me the name Sweet Dew Woman in the autumn of the twelfth year of my life. Oh, I was so proud! I was a child no longer, I was Sweet Dew Woman!

The Rosebud Necklace

         My first vivid memories are of old shoes. I will be the first one of us to return across the sea. Many nights I have dreamed. Years of gazed upon blue sky have aged these dreams into a tight bundle of death that has gone to the one who catches dreams on the mountain. The death of all dreams lies in a meadow beneath the field of sorrow.

         I have dreamed of a black wolf running, of the talking forest in the time of the snow that fell before three midnights and of the ancient whisper of the one who is older than my life. This one is the wind. . . The wind who speaks to the snowflakes as she guides them to rest in a tangled cedar thicket. I have dreamed. . .

         Now that I have introduced myself, I will relate to you the memory of the old shoes and myself, The One Who Would Become the Rosebud Necklace.

          In the beginning we were three, my mother, my sister and I. My father had, in some far away memory of my mother, gone tumbling down the mountainside held tightly in the grasp of the rain who had become.





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