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    Oh How Can I Keep on Singing?: Voices of Pioneer Women
    Oh How Can I Keep on Singing?: Voices of Pioneer Women
    Oh How Can I Keep on Singing?: Voices of Pioneer Women
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    Oh How Can I Keep on Singing?: Voices of Pioneer Women

    By Jana Harris

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    About this ebook

    When Washington Territory was created, the narrow, isolated Okanogan River Valley was considered a wasteland and an Indian reservation, the Chief Joseph Reserve, was established there. But when silver was discovered near what became Ruby City, the land was re-appropriated, and the Native Americans were moved to a more confined area. The Okanogan was then opened up to white homesteaders, with the hope of making the area more attractive to miners.
     
    The interconnected dramatic monologues in Oh How Can I Keep On Singing? are the stories of the forgotten women who settled the Okanogan in the late nineteenth century, arriving by horse-drawn cart to a place that purported to have such fine weather that a barn was unnecessary for raising livestock. Not all of the newcomers survived the cattle-killing winter of 1893. Of those who did, some would not have survived if the indigenous people had not helped them.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 4, 2015
    ISBN9781504018852
    Oh How Can I Keep on Singing?: Voices of Pioneer Women
    Author

    Jana Harris

     Jana Harris is a poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist who teaches creative writing at the University of Washington and is a Washington State Governor’s Writers Award and Andres Berger Award winner, as well as a PEN West Center Award finalist. She won a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2001 and is editor and founder of Switched-on Gutenberg, one of the first electronic global poetry journals. She lives in the Cascade Mountains with her husband, where they raise horses.

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      Book preview

      Oh How Can I Keep on Singing? - Jana Harris

      CATTLE-KILLING WINTER, 1889–90

      We walked, of course.

      Omaha to Walla Walla: 5 months, 3 days.

      My husband, Nathan Sloan (known as Kentucky),

      a fireman on the Missouri-Louisville line,

      worked years tallowing valves

      before the railroads fell on slack times.

      He lost his job and the farm.

      In Walla Walla, rested our oxen before

      the baby—christened Caleb—was born,

      walked another week north to where

      Loop Loop Creek crosses the Okanogan.

      Long days, high clouds, temperatures in the 90s.

      Made a land claim, went to Buzzard Lake

      to wash and water our stock,

      met a miner, Dutch Jake, and his dog,

      who infected my husband with gold fever.

      Came back, found our claim jumped,

      went up creek, made another. The only law

      against selling black powder to an Indian.

      Milled lumber too costly—not even a board

      for a coffin. So cut and hewed logs for a cabin,

      our lead ox hauling through mire.

      Local talk had it winters too mild

      to necessitate a barn.

      Humidity high. Nighttime temperatures falling.

      Mosquitoes so thick, Nathan had to stand

      above me as I cooked, battling them off

      with a towel. Morning coffee required

      constant skimming, while bugs

      in our mash appeared as caraway.

      Deer were so plentiful they staggered

      for lack of forage and could be had by clubbing.

      November 1, ten venison hams hung from our eaves.

      Nights getting longer, though unseasonably warm.

      Just before New Year’s, I awoke to ice

      in the washbasin. Snowed nineteen inches.

      Temperatures dropped. Snow crusted hard enough

      to cut the lead ox’s tendon.

      John Other Day, Cut Nose, and their squaws

      came daily to our door demanding flour.

      Oats: six cents a pound; potatoes, five;

      hay, a hundred a ton if you could find it.

      Forty below by mid-month. The sun never shone.

      Our oxen froze in the fields,

      the twin calves dead at the milch cow’s side,

      the last of our hay in front of her.

      Five feet of snow and blizzarding winds

      for thirteen consecutive days.

      The only drinking water, melted snow;

      the only wood, our furniture.

      Nathan sawed frozen meat from the dead,

      feeding it to what stock remained.

      I soaked rags in the blood of offal, giving

      the baby suck. God Be Praised, he thrived.

      Up on Buzzard Mountain, prospectors

      were trapped in their mines—the artillery

      of avalanche thundered through our valley.

      When he tried to leave, Dutch, his mule and hound,

      were buried—the dog dug its way out.

      Ours was the first cabin he came to.

      Brought the two living cows and one horse

      into our lean-to kitchen, supped with us

      on flour mash and seed potato.

      If we went anywhere, it was hand-over-hand

      over ice. No mail for weeks,

      river frozen, the railroad snowbound.

      A stranger who went through on snowshoes,

      said a neighbor’s wife died of laudanum

      taken with suicidal intent.

      Flour and sugar gone, rumor our daily bread.

      When the ice melted, the creeks swelled

      bringing typhoid which weakened my husband.

      After pneumonia, he looked worse

      than any at Andersonville and was unable

      to help with chores.

      First day of March. Days longer. Heavy fog.

      The stock were enfeebled by hunger.

      Balding from rain scald, hair fell in sheets

      from their hides. When the spring grass

      came on, they were too weak to graze,

      collapsing like long-legged insects.

      Ill myself, I crawled out to help, Caleb on my back:

      right hoof forward, left knee bent, sometimes

      it took a rail under the rump to raise them.

      Most ranchers went under.

      Some took twenty years to repay loans

      on herds that perished, and then

      only when they sold off their farms.

      But the two cows left to us begat others

      who begat the thousand head

      Caleb and his sons graze in this valley.

      I was born Effie Rebecca, named for my mother,

      but forever after that cattle-killing winter,

      my husband called me by another.

      Years ago he went to the stone orchard,

      my place beside him ready: "SLOAN, Nathan

      known as Kentucky, and Wife, Born Again ’89

      as God’s handmaiden, Faith."

      Long Days. High clouds. Temperatures in the 90s.

      AVALANCHE

      Mary Brisky, Rattlesnake Canyon, February 1888

      i.

      I remember it this way:

      That morning we sat down to breakfast,

      me, mama, and the traveling Reverend.

      My baby sister was on the floor

      next to the sewing machine.

      On the table, three blue bowls

      filled with oatmeal.

      It had a smoky taste that I’ll never forget.

      Sepin was outside shoveling snow

      off the roof. My father was up on the bluff

      cutting trees, snaking them down the mountain.

      When a tree fell, there was the noise

      of lightning lash and as it hit the ground,

      thunder shook our cabin—those trees

      were twenty feet around, some of them.

      When baby crawled under the table,

      I was afraid she’d burn herself

      on the hot stones mama had

      put there to warm our feet,

      so I stooped to pick her up.

      ii.

      What is your only comfort in life and death?

      Reverend Beggs’s voice was far away.

      I was lying on top of baby

      who was screaming. I didn’t

      realize what was smothering me,

      until her breath melted the snow.

      Mama was nearby. I could hear,

      but couldn’t see or touch her.

      She spoke calmly to us:

      Lie quietly and breathe as lightly as possible.

      The baby kept screaming ’til I thought

      my head would split.

      Are you hurt? mama asked,

      Can you wiggle your arms and legs?

      I could. The baby was thrashing beneath me,

      beating with her fists.

      The Reverend’s voice was shallow.

      From whence do you know your sin and misery?

      No one answered. Mama said to me:

      "Mary, the first thing to know about a baby

      is to keep her warm and dry."

      The baby howled louder. Everything around us

      was wet and cold.

      Don’t let her little butt get red, mama said.

      "For croup, rub her chest

      in rendered mutton and turpentine."

      The Reverend asked, How are you delivered?

      Mama said, "Mary, you can get sixty loaves

      of bread from a sack of flour,

      if you’re frugal. I always could."

      I said, yes, and then she said, "Remember

      to seal your crock of sourdough

      with a layer

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