Daring to Be Different: Missouri's Remarkable Owen Sisters

2. St. Joseph: The Place and Its People

2 Saint Joseph The Place and Its People The lives and career choices of Mary, Luella, and Juliette Owen were deeply influenced by their hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri. Mary, the oldest of the three, was fascinated from childhood by the stories and songs she heard from members of St. Joseph’s African American community and her discoveries at the nearby Indian burial ground. The burial ground was described by family friend J. B. Moss as “a wonderful place to find wild fruits, such as crab apples, choke cherries, mulberries, black and red haws, hickory nuts. . . . On these hunts for fruits and nuts were often found many Indian arrowheads, beads, stone pipes and war clubs.” It was the Indian artifacts that interested Mary and led to her later study of American Indian arts and traditions. Luella, the second sister, also drew inspiration from St. Joseph, but she was fascinated by the geography and geology of her environment : the unique soil known as loess and familiarly dubbed “sugar dust”; the hills, which were rapidly being smoothed out as the city grew; the unique characteristics of the Missouri River with its surrounding rocks and bluffs; and the awe-inspiring beauty of underground caves all intrigued her.   St. Joseph Like her two older sisters, Juliette, the youngest of the Owen children, was keenly interested in St. Joseph and the environment in which she grew up. From the time she was a very young child, she loved the world of nature—the prairie grass, wild flowers, nuts, birds—everything in the natural world. Jean Fahey Eberle, author of The Incredible Owen Girls, quotes Juliette as saying, “From my earliest childhood I have had a passionate love for birds and flowers. I remember looking with wondering delight on the velvety upturned faces of the variously tinted pansies that bordered the paths.” If any one of the three, Mary, Luella, or Juliette, could have stepped back in time fifty or one hundred years, she might not have recognized the site of St. Joseph as it had been in its early days. Even as late as 1840, ten years before Mary’s birth in 1850, St. Joseph was still only a village made up of a huddle of cabins on the Missouri River. The spot on which St. Joseph stands was sometimes described as “a cup in the hills along the great Missouri River.” According to legend, it was once a gathering place for American Indians, and various Indian tribes came to the site to settle differences and forge alliances. Some tribes considered these “everlasting hills” to be consecrated ground. They believed it had once been the home of their gods; ailing tribal leaders came from far and near to die there. Mary heard stories of the earlier days, when native tribes believed the rays from the beautiful sunsets at this sacred place formed an invisible bridge they called Wah-wahha -nawah over which the souls of the departed crossed on a direct route to Paradise. It was, as Indians would tell her later, “the holiest place on earth.” In her book, The Sacred Council Hills, Mary describes the imposing ceremonies she imagined had taken place on the spot where St. Joseph’s courthouse later stood: It must have been a thrilling spectacle and beautiful as well, when the . . . warriors, sentinels of the morning star, the day bringer, stood . . . softly tapping the sacred drum as the hurrying dawn brightened the eastern sky, their strokes growing strong as the lights increased till, with fury of  Daring to Be Different sound—booming drum and shouts of exaltation—they called the tribe to a frenzy of song and concerted movement, then pious quieting to the sun appearing above the eastern horizon. Equally beautiful and thrilling but indescribably mournful, was the farewell to the sun at day’s decline, and to the soul following the shining track to find its way to Paradise. In the view of most European settlers, however, the early period of St. Joseph’s history was primarily the story of FrenchCanadian fur trader Joseph Robidoux III. Born in St. Louis on August 10, 1783, to Joseph and Catherine Robidoux, he was introduced to the fur trade at an early age by his father. As early as the 1790s he had traveled up and down the Missouri River on trapping expeditions. Robidoux married Eugenie Deslisle in St. Louis in 1800 but was widowed soon after his...