Especially in the autumn, when the trees are a blaze of color, when the feather-shaped sumac leaves blush to a deep crimson, Carolyn Lauing Finzer likes to walk through her Naperville yard and feel the presence of the Pottawatomie Indians.
”I think the spirits of the Pottawatomie are in that plant,” she says, standing before a sumac shrub that grows in her one-acre yard, which is registered as a suburban wildlife refuge.
Pointing to the crescent leaves that bow from their stems, she says it reminds her of a chieftian`s headdress. Though she is far from quiet in her red, blue and black dress adorned with 260 small bells made from tin snuff-box lids, Finzer says she feels closer to those roaming spirits than when she is not wearing it.
As the wind rustles through the leaves and her bells jingle as she walks, the low-voiced chieftains can almost be heard.
”This time of year, I can envision the Pottawatomie chief and how the people worked before bluegrass and the Chemlawn trucks came,” she says wistfully. ”When I see the sumac, a shrub, when I see that, I think of the Indians dancing around and the feathers flying in the wind. I believe the spirits of the Indians are still walking around.”
Two hundred years ago, the Pottawatomie Indians dwelled in the Illinois prairie and were part of the Algonquin people. They migrated to the Illinois prairie by way of Canada and the northern Great Lakes area. Because they were quickly supplanted by the white settlers in the mid-1800s, Finzer has dedicated herself to telling people about the land`s former inhabitants.
Although Finzer does not have a drop of American Indian blood in her-she is a fourth-generation Napervillian of German descent-she has become a modern- day bard traveling from school to school and from group to group sharing the lore and customs of the Pottawatomie tribe, among others.
Finzer has spent most of her life loving and learning Indian lore and crafts. Her earnest interest in American Indian folklore has earned her enough respect and trust that an Ojibway woman from Minnesota made her the ceremonial jingle dress.
The dress was designed during an influenza epidemic in northern Wisconsin and Canada in the 1920s, Finzer says of the red dress that has a black yoke and is trimmed in royal blue. The jingles are attached to the trim around the yoke, apron and hem of the skirt.
”Eight to 12 kids died in one day,” she says as she launches into the story. ”So the whole tribe prayed to the great spirit, Gitchi Manitou, asking him `Why are you taking our children?` The great spirit appeared in a vision to two of the mothers and instructed the women to make four dresses with metal bangles that would make loud sounds to scare away the evil forces.”
Finzer says the women made the dresses, one in each of the four ceremonial colors of blue, red, yellow and white:
”The women worked feverishly through the night to make the dresses. When they were done, they gathered all of the children in one wigwam. The women danced through the night to the point of exhaustion in a circle around the children. By morning light, the children were getting better. The fever broke. Some children began walking and others asked for food.
”Because of the miracle, it is a dress worn only to pow-wows and tribal ceremonies. I was given permission to wear it when I go to school
demonstrations.”
Finzer says she charges $75 and up to give a presentation, depending how far she must travel, because it takes her more than an hour to put on the full regalia. That includes adorning her salt-and-pepper hair with feathers and hair ties, putting on several necklaces and medicine bags, bracelets, a beaded belt, leggings and her moosehide moccasin boots.
Finzer was figuratively adopted and named Wha-Whe-Cse-Cso by a Northwest Coast American Indian man living near the Wisconsin Dells whom she and her husband, Melvern, once helped. It means ”woman with a loving heart or big-hearted woman,” she explains.
”This fellow was in jail for a time, and his wife and baby were having a hard time existing daily. When he was released-he had a strong automotive talent-we gave him the old beater so he could have a means to get around. Because of this generosity, he named me.”
As a child, Finzer`s family often visited her Great Aunt Victoria Koppa, who owned a cottage in Sayner, in Wisconsin`s north woods. Her aunt took her and her family to pow-wows where she began learning tribal lore. She began collecting native American pottery and wore native American jewelery. She has since traveled throughout the country visiting Indian reservations and sites where she has met members of various tribes and asked them about their mythology and how their crafts are made.
In her ranch house, an entire room is devoted to her Indian collections, which include 60 miniature dolls and a cabinet full of miniature baskets, flanked by an authentic totem pole. On a pew-like bench sit three native American rag dolls. Several books about native Americans lie on her coffee table.
Finzer, 42, studied art at Illinois State University, from which she graduated in 1969. She taught art at Jefferson Junior High School in Naperville until 1975, the year her first daughter, Nicole, was born. Her other daughter, Deirdre, is 9. Although she formally left the classroom in 1975, Finzer has never really left. She has been a Scout leader for 10 years, volunteers at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle as well as conducts her Indian programs in schools.
Finzer credits her curiosity about native American crafts to her art background, but the unity she feels with the native American spirit may stem from Girl Scouts, where the love of nature and the outdoors was encouraged by her leader, who happened to be her mother, Marcianna Lauing. Lauing, who studied botany at North Central College in Naperville, helped instill in her daughter a lifelong love and concern for nature.
”Her mother was like that (a nature lover),” recalled Barbara Jansz, curriculum resource specialist at Scott Elementary School in Naperville. ”She taught us all the names of all the birds in the state. She stuck it out with Girl Scouts until 8th grade; so she`s a saint.”
Following in her mother`s footsteps, Finzer was a Girl Scout leader for both of her daughters, simultaneously. Just as her mother cultivated her troop to love nature, Finzer has also nurtured her troops to be concerned about the environment.
Long before recycling became popular, Finzer involved her troops in it.
”Carolyn is the archetypal neighborhood volunteer, who as an individual looks for ways to help. She would come in and say, `I have all these Girl Scouts who are eager to help, and I have 10 good ideas. And she did,” said Anne Aitchison, chairman of the Naperville Area Recycling Center. ”It was Carolyn`s idea to decorate Christmas trees in downtown Naperville with recyclable ornamants.”
Cutting and curling soda pop cans to be used as decorations one year, Aitchison said, was a ”very Carolyn thing to do, to use them artistically and then use them for recycling.”
During a recent presentation at Scott Elementary School, Finzer stood in full Indian regalia, jingling with every movement. She began her two-hour presentation to 100 3d graders, who sat amazingly still on the floor in one classroom, by describing how adept the Pottawatamie were at finding practical uses for available materials. The talk segued into using their example as a platform to spread the word about recycling.
As she described the materials they used to build their wigwams, she departed from the subject for a moment to explain how the cattail, which Pottawatamie Indians used for insulation, had another use.
She explained that the fluff that resulted when the cattails went to seed was used as a disposable diaper. She said the fluff was mixed with sphagnum moss, which lined a deerhide square that was wrapped and knotted around the baby.
”When it was soiled, all they had to do was peel this out, and this was a biodegradable substance. It was not going to litter the earth as our plastic diapers do today,” she told the youngsters.
For Finzer, the union the native Americans had with the earth and the sky is what gives her the confidence to claim kinship with them without indulging in self aggrandizement. Finzer finds comfort when some native Americans she has met have asked her what tribe she is from.
”That makes me feel real good. Because I am Indian at heart. In my heart I am Indian because of my love of nature and the respect I have for the earth. People would think I was a strange woman because I talk to plants or smile at a sumac,” she said. ”It`s something in my heart and my soul.”
