Friday, February 15, 2013

Loving the Facts: Post Valentines Day Post


“Manna from Heaven.”  It’s wonderful when the historical facts surrounding an event  are so gripping that it’s hard to improve on them with a fictional account. 

This happened to me with my first published historical fiction work, “Nothing Here but Stones”.  The drama surrounding the immigration of a group of Russian Jews to a relatively isolated part of Colorado was palpable. What first began as a planned move to the United States became urgent when anti-Jewish pogroms became widespread in Poland and the Ukraine. 


Cotopaxi, Colorado about 1890
All planning aside, the immigrants left their homes and settled in an area south of Cotopaxi, Colorado. With promises of houses, farming equipment, two span of horses and other items, the Cotopaxi “colonists" set out, traveling from New York City to what must have seemed like an empty expanse of nothingness.  As they left Pueblo and headed due west, the terrain quickly shifted to steep rocky canyons, foothills, and towering rugged mountains.


When they arrived in Cotopaxi, they discovered the houses were insufficient and incomplete, the equipment and livestock less than promised, and the “farming” ground littered with rocks. Miles south of town, the small dwellings were above 8,000 feet with no water available for irrigation.

 
The colonists struggled to succeed, but for two consecutive years, their crops failed, yielding potatoes smaller than the seed stock they used to plant them.  To complicate things, they had hoped to own their own land. This never happened. Whether the understanding was lost in the translation from Yiddish to English or was misunderstood from the beginning is unknown.  They traveled 40 miles by wagon to Canon City to the county seat and made statements attesting to ownership, but the statements did not provide any rights of ownership.


This skeleton version offers plenty to hang a story on.  One can imagine the long, uncomfortable train trip, the difficulty getting the first crops planted, the language barrier and difficulty communicating…


And within that are the documented facts of men, three to a log, carrying huge trees down steep slopes to the river for the extension of the railroad, west from Salida over Monarch Pass, the women scavenging for coal along the railroad tracks, “marauding bears”, hungry Utes begging for food, pleas for help on bended knee, and a man fording the Arkansas at flood level to get medicine for his wife.  
And I still haven’t mentioned the love story of two of the colonists and the third colonist who tried to get the marriage annulled. When he was unsuccessful, he left the colony on foot, journeying through the back country to Denver in despair.
When the colonists began to struggle, some naysayers accused them of unrealistic expectations and lack of resolve.  Others insisted they were victims of misinformation and deceit. After two short years, the Cotopaxi Colony dissolved. Many colonists became leaders in the Denver Jewish community, and some became successful farmers in other places.  The descendants ‘success stories are numerous and varied.
 Manna from Heaven!  Who wouldn’t fall in love with this story of struggling pioneers and the things they endured to start a new life in the United States. 
I know I did.  It captured my heart, and after that, the hardest part was deciding on which details to add or subtract, or to bend or embellish in order to render the story in fictional form.  
With the recent re-release of “Nothing Here but Stones” in a paperback version, I’ve had a chance to revisit the original story that inspired me so much in the first place.
 I’m still in love with the facts as much as the fiction…still in love with the idea that people can overcome difficulties and go on to find success…even when the original vision becomes something new.

 

8 comments:

  1. I love reading the story behind your story.

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  2. Thank you, Sally. I hope you had a great Valentines Day. xxoox (They should make a heart symbol for a keyboard.)

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  3. This is an absolutely fascinating story, Nancy, the sort that makes a fellow author feel, 'I wish I'd got there first!' One question, though: WHY Cotopaxi?

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  4. What hard labor, difficult struggles for the Cotopaxi group! That colony produced seeds, didn't it? It blew in the wind and sprouted elsewhere. Nothing Here But Stones is a wonderful book. I am glad to hear that you are not "finished" with the Cotopaxi stories. There must be some spirits whispering in your ear to write more about their lives. Best wishes !

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    1. Thank you, Penny. The story I always wanted to develop further was the one about the two colonists that married. They were cousings and had quite a story before they ever reached the colony. Jacob came early to "scout" out the situation, lost an eye in an industrial accident in New York City and because of being out of work, made a contact that eventually helped with the settlement of the colony. His cousin, (both were Millsteins)went to Germany and came to the United States against her father's will and the two of them were married in Blackhawk before the colonists arrived. The end result of this was they dropped one of the "l's" in Millstein on the marriage license and so the colony descendents with the Millstein name are either of the double "l" variety or the single "l" variety. So many layers to this single slice of history! Thanks for your comment.

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  5. Andi,

    They came to Cotopaxi because they had a sponsor...a Portuguese Jew named Saltiel. He had heard about this group of immigrants and contacted the HIAS (Hebrew Immigration Society) in New York and told them Cotopaxi was the place to come and offered to help with the housing etc. It is speculated that he was looking for a source of cheap labor for his mines in the Cotopaxi area.

    After the first crop failure, many of the Colonists did go to work for him, but were only paid in "Chit" to be used in the local store which was owned by this man's cousin. This part of the story has also come to be debated by a relative of Saltiel's who has written essays to defend his long lost relative.

    Don't you just love history? It drives home the point that it's hard to subtract our own biases and viewpoints from the whole equation even after more than 100 years.

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  6. Nancy, this is such wonderful information. Thank you so much for sharing the story behind the story. Loved it.

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    1. Thank you, Dori. I really did fall in love with this story when I first read about it.

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