Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Native American Mystery


     I have a copy of a tintype photo of a Native American man.  Who was this somber looking man?  Where was he from?  I have no idea.  I know nothing about this man.
     This photo was one of many old photos belonging to my maternal grandmother.  I used to love sitting next to MaMa on the couch looking at all her old black/white photos and listening to the stories behind each photo.  Many of these photos had belonged to my great-grandmother then were passed down to my grandmother.  I don't remember if it was after my grandmother died or it might have been years later when my grandfather died that the photos were in my aunt's possession.  I don't think my mother had any of those photos.  My aunt had them all.  I loved those photos.  One year as a birthday gift I gave my aunt a photo album to store our family's precious photos.  I offered to put the photos in the album for her.  There were a lot of photos of my mother and aunt as young girls spending the summer upstate in the 'country'.  This album took a long time to put together or at least it seemed like it took forever.  I had all the photos spread out on the floor then I grouped them together by event or scene.  I put all the bar scenes together, summers spent in Rifton, Christmases, weddings, etc...  I studied backgrounds and faces then finally put them all in the album.  The miscellaneous photos were placed in the back.  I gave the completed photo album to my aunt who told me to keep it.  Really?  Yeah !!!  The photos are Mine!!
     Well, now, getting back to the subject of today's blog post...
     My grandmother used to tell me that we had an American Indian in our family.  She had shown me his photo many times and I was always fascinated.  I wondered what tribe he was from.  I don't think MaMa knew much about him, just that he was one of her great grandfathers.
     I hope to discover the identity of this grandfather and solve my Native American mystery.

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