Duncan and I had our first big argument then. (Well, first married argument.) He urged me to return to Omaha and stay there until and even after our baby was born. I refused. It was a lively fight. Frustrated nearly to tears, Duncan ended the confrontation by taking off his Jefferson medallion, slamming it on the kitchen table and leaving. He told me to wear it, since I was the warrior, and stomped out of the house, not an easy thing to do when you’re wearing moccasins.

He came back a day later when I was fixing dinner. He washed his face in the bucket by the door. “I guess there is no reasoning with you, Smiley,” he said.

“Your medallion is in the apple crate on top of your clean shirts,” I told him, and that was that. In retrospect, perhaps I should have done as he demanded.

We heard from the outside world through letters from Mother and my grandmama of the brewery Caseys in New York. We chuckled over Eugenie’s letters, badly spelled but brimming with enthusiasm for her new beau, an attorney. Phil, by now a sophomore at Harvard, wrote when he could. I remember one of his letters, received in late spring. He wrote to tell us that Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Extravaganza was to perform in Boston soon, with none other than Sitting Bull in a featured role.

I read it, laughed out loud, then handed it to Duncan. He read it, gave his all-purpose “Huh,” and tossed it in the cookstove flames. “That’s the Lakota for you,” was his only comment. The Nez Perce can be such snobs.

Our baby was born July 22, 1882, in the heat of a blistering summer. She was a darling baby with my auburn hair, and Duncan’s brown eyes. Her hair was so long that I could curl it around my finger. That’s all I remember of her. She never made it to September. I grieved in all the ways I could, his world and mine. What felt the best, surprisingly, was the gash I made in my arm.

Duncan made a nice marker for her – Eugenie Elizabeth Stuart, age two months. We’ve tried many times since then to have her coffin shipped up here to Oregon, but have you ever tried to get anything out of the Bureau of Indian Affairs?