Where the Lost Wander(107)
Chief Washakie was born around the turn of the century and died around the turn of the next. He was thought to be at least one hundred years old when he died. He is one of the only Native leaders to retain the lands of his choosing in negotiations with the US government. The Wind River Range and the lands of Washakie’s boyhood still belong to the Shoshoni (and the Arapahoe) people.
Washakie’s mother, Lost Woman, was as true to life as I could make her. I read an autobiography called The White Indian Boy about Elijah Nicholas Wilson (1842–1915), who lived with the Shoshoni for two years in the mid-1850s and knew and loved Washakie’s mother well. He never called her Lost Woman, only his Indian mother, so it came as a great surprise to me when I did more research and found her name, Lost Woman. For me, Lost Woman captures the spirit of this book, the struggles of all women, all mothers, in the landscape of 1850s America. Hanabi too was real, though she never lived with the Lowry family. Not much is known about her. She was Washakie’s second or third wife and died young. Washakie and Hanabi had one daughter, who grew up and had children of her own. The year of my story is 1853, but it’s most likely that the death of Lost Woman’s sons in the avalanche happened a year or two after that, as well as the birth of Hanabi’s daughter.
Chief Pocatello was a real person too. He and Washakie had a fractious relationship, most likely born of their different ways of addressing the concerns and hardships of their people. Pocatello was a hero to some, a villain to others. I hope only that I didn’t portray him too harshly but represented the conditions and circumstances of the time in a factual and even compassionate light.
Naomi’s family, the Mays, was named after my own pioneer ancestors, who came to Utah in those early years of the westward migration. I am also eternally grateful for another of my husband’s five-times great-grandfathers, Milo Appleton Harmon, who kept a journal when he crossed the plains, which he did multiple times. He left a legacy on paper for his children to read, and I have been richly blessed by his diary. What a humble, hardworking, amazing man he was.
Louis Vasquez, trapper and fur trader and co-owner of Fort Bridger, was a real person. It seems he did sell his half of the business to the Mormon leaders, which led to continued strife between Jim Bridger and the Saints. The Mormons burned the fort in 1857 so it wouldn’t be taken over by Johnston’s army, which is a whole other story. Narcissa Vasquez, Louis’s wife, was also real. I had to take some liberties with her description and personality, but those who knew her said she was small and vivacious with a lovely smile. By all accounts, she was a fascinating woman with a great story—another person I would love to talk to—which you get a glimpse of in Where the Lost Wander.
As with any work of historical fiction, fact and imagination must be woven together because so many of the facts are in dispute or simply don’t tell the whole story. One thing that is not in dispute: life was hard for the emigrants who crossed the plains. I read countless pioneer journals and compilations. The people suffered, they had very little, and most of them just wanted a better life and went west to find it. There was good and bad, ugly and beautiful, shameful and hopeful, and it’s all wrapped into one very rich heritage. In order to accurately reflect the times, I had to use terms and words and talk about things that I am not comfortable with and you might not be comfortable with either. I hope the reader will experience the story in the spirit it was written, recognizing that who we are is not who they were, and judging historical people by today’s standards prevents us from learning from them, from their mistakes and their triumphs. These people helped build the framework that we now stand on. We should be careful about burning it down.
A final disclosure: As with many indigenous languages, Pawnee and Shoshoni have different dialects and spellings, and regional usage varies. In old accounts, many of the Native words are spelled phonetically, the way people heard them, and there is wide variance even among native speakers. I did my utmost to get it right and used the languages sparingly for color and context, and I ask for forgiveness if there are mistakes. I love the Native heritage of my country and want only to shine a light on some of the forgotten people that new stories can bring back to life.
Amy Harmon
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy Harmon is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times bestselling author. Her books have been published in eighteen languages—truly a dream come true for a little country girl from Utah.
Harmon has written fifteen novels, including the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller What the Wind Knows, the USA Today bestsellers The Smallest Part, Making Faces, and Running Barefoot, as well as the #1 Amazon bestselling historical novel From Sand and Ash, which won a Whitney Award for book of the year in 2016. Her novel A Different Blue is a New York Times bestseller. Her USA Today bestselling fantasy The Bird and the Sword was a Goodreads Best Book of 2016 finalist. For updates on upcoming book releases, author posts, and more, go to www.authoramyharmon.com.