Lady Unafraid
By Carolyn “Candy” Peterson
Systemic racism and partisan ill-will are best overcome by love, and I offer an example of a young woman whose courage, curiosity, kindness, and faith in a loving God can inspire us to acknowledge and overcome our bad habits. When we acknowledge our complicity in systems that are unfair and unkind to others, we are on the path to becoming the people we deeply want to be.
In 1862, while men from the Copper Country were volunteering to fight with the Union Army, Rebecca Jewel Francis undertook a different sort of challenge: teaching in the Indigenous village near L’Anse. Rebecca was born in Cornwall, England, the daughter of a skilled miner. He accepted what he expected to be a four-year assignment at the Cliff Mine here in the Keweenaw and moved with his wife and five children in 1852. En route, during a stop in Quebec, the family was stricken with cholera, and Rebecca’s mother and two youngest siblings died. Rebecca and her two older brothers were taken in by their father’s childhood friend in a small town near Toronto, where they lived while their father went on to the Keweenaw alone.
The three children stayed behind in Canada for six years, and in that last year Rebecca’s oldest brother died of tuberculosis. Their father, having remarried in the Copper Country, brought his two remaining children to the Cliff. His new wife, now Rebecca’s stepmother, was not kind to Rebecca and her brother. A visiting Methodist minister from downstate saw how miserable Rebecca was and suggested she be sent to a school in Ann Arbor. Her only remaining brother enlisted in the Union Army. Three months after she moved to Michigan, her father died suddenly.
After such a difficult start in life, one might think that 17-year-old Rebecca would be suffering terribly. On the contrary, she determined to become a teacher and accepted a one-year volunteer position in a school for Indigenous children in the village on the east side of Keweenaw Bay, across from the Methodist mission near Father Baraga’s church at Assinins.
Rebecca took a steamer from Detroit to Houghton, and on a very stormy day she was fetched by three young Anishinaabe men, who paddled her in a canoe through wind and waves for hours. They were blown off course and were forced to spend the night on a beach. It seemed the Anishinaabe could speak no English, but they later admitted that this was a pretense and that they were testing her. In the course of that harrowing journey, the men gave Rebecca her new name: Swangideed Wayquay, Lady Unafraid.
Rebecca lived with a French Canadian trapper and his family, who were very kind to her. Jean-Pierre offered to be her interpreter as she began teaching her Anishinaabe students, but Rebecca embraced her vulnerability and chose to meet her students as equals. Her Christian faith was gentle and kind, and it gave her the courage to face every challenge as an opportunity. She was supported, emotionally, by her neighbors in the village, as well as the elderly couple at the Methodist mission across Keweenaw Bay.
Rebecca’s awe for the physical beauty of the area and her affection for her students and their families endeared her to the community. With her rudimentary language skills, she visited each of her students in their homes, where she was keenly interested in their lives and admired their cleverness. The only son of the chief was her favorite. “Light of the Morning,” Wassiasiwin, was an especially thoughtful young man, and their conversations were reassuring to both as they discovered how beautifully their deepest beliefs were aligned.
Rebecca, at 17, had the sort of power that leads by example, not by intimidation. She built relationships with her new neighbors, one at a time, because she was a respectful listener. She looked for the beauty and goodness in everyone she met. She was not tempted to dominate others. In fact, her vulnerability was her most important quality. Completely dependent upon her hosts in the village, she shared what she had to offer: a love of knowledge, a curious mind and a generous spirit.
A tragic event during Rebecca’s year involved the death of Wassiasiwin. He was part of a group of young men whose traps had been poached by young men from a neighboring tribe. In the scuffle that resulted, Wassiasiwin was killed. For days, while the chief grieved, the people divided into two different groups, some wanting to avenge the death and others fearing what might come of such revenge. A small group was dispatched to the neighboring village to meet with its leaders, who were deeply remorseful about what had happened. Peace offerings were made, and violence was avoided.
If human civilization is to persist, we will need to learn from each other, from different cultures. The European way, the white way, has thus far been one of domination, not respect. We have assumed that our civilization has been the best, and we have expected people from other traditions to adopt our way of thinking. But as we recognize the shortcomings of our ways (negative impacts on our environment as well as on each other) and tap into the energy that our diversity offers, we have an unprecedented opportunity to change.
We will soon emerge from our COVID confinement, and I suggest we use whatever time we have left to ponder our complicity in a culture that has been built on racism and celebrates partisan wrangling. Remembering one unusual young woman, let us resolve to, like Rebecca Francis, use our recovered freedom to build relationships with people who are different from us with respect and openness, engaging in activities and conversations that help us overcome our selfishness and fear.