Joan Schadewald

The best time of your life is right now, if you know or not. Try to appreciate it and don’t look for negative things. Your life is long, but it is also short. If I dwell on the down side, I will always be miserable. Look for good things in others. If you are happy other people will be happy. Be contented. Spend time with those you love whenever you can.

Joan Schadewald

My name is Joan Schadewald. My maiden name was Welch. I was born in March 1933 at home in Redwood Falls, Minnesota. My dad and his family were all born in the same home. I was born in a four-room shack on a hill. It had a wood stove to cook on and a wood stove that heated the house. We had an outhouse and no running water, so we had to get our water from a well.

I loved living on the hill because the sun was warm and we saw lots of hawks and things above us flying down into the meadow. We had woods of our own. We had our cousins around it. It was a mini-reservation. We had a lot of freedom.

Life was fun and good and pleasant. I got my surprise when I started school. I learned they didn’t want people from the hill in school. We were called names and pushed around. We learned that we were different.

I lived as a poor kid, but I didn’t know I was poor. I was happy and didn’t know I was unhappy. We would gather at grandmother’s place and dance and sing. My uncle played violin, another played an accordion, and another played spoons on a washboard. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. We didn’t have television.

I was 23 years old when I got married, in 1956. Everyone got married at 18, so I was an old maid to them. I sold lumber until I got married. I wasn’t allowed to work after I married because married women didn’t work. I had to stay home. I had seven babies in ten years. I had Richard, Michael, Gregory, Bernetta, Karen, Kenneth, and Maureen. I now have 19 grandchildren.

My tribe is the Brothertown Nation. In my native tongue we call our people EEyam-quittoo-wau-connuck. The Brothertown is a confederacy. We are made up of seven nations. They are the Mohegan (Mohegan, CN), Montauk (Long Island, New York), Niantic (pronounced “nahantic” (Niantic, CN)), Narragansett (Charlestown, R.I.), Tunxis (Farmington, CN), Pequots of Groton (CN), and Pequots of Stonington (CN). They decided that in order to survive we needed to be like the English.

I am an Indian and a cowgirl. My grandmother and mother performed in the rodeo back in the 20s and 30s. They traveled with wagons. They did sharpshooting and trick riding.