|
 When Karen Westerman met Chief Webster Little Eagle Custalow, he had been fighting to save his river for six years, and by the time he passed away in 2003, he had been fighting for the Mattaponi River for eight years. But it would still be another six before it would at last be saved. If you add all those years together, they equal 2,000 acres of wetlands and wilderness saved thanks to Karen, the Chief, and hundreds more like-minded Virginians.
According to her journal, Karen Westermann met Chief Webster on August 20, 2002, almost seven years to the day before the Mattaponi was finally safe. At eighty-nine, Chief Little Eagle was advanced in years, and his son, Carl, had asked Karen to help care for his ailing father. From the very first day, he noticed a connection between Karen and the Chief.
“The more they talked and laughed, I could feel there was an instant mutual bond, trust, and understanding between them,” he says. “I sensed that during their visits they both learned something from each other, and both understood each other.”
Author Karen Tootelian
By the time Karen had come to care for Chief Webster, he had been Chief of the Mattaponi Indian tribe for over twenty-five years. A descendant of Pocahontas and the old Powhatan Chiefs, he commanded the respect of the remaining Virginia Indian tribal leaders and politicians alike.
If you told Little Eagle these things, though, he’d probably just smile and ask you to call him Webster. Known equally for his generosity and humble nature as he was for his strength as a leader, he made an undeniable impression on Karen from the start.
On August 20, after that first day with the Chief, she wrote in her journal, “First impressions: love, caring, humor, kindness.”
Her journal, an account of the love and compassion she and Chief Webster shared for each other and for the river that meant so much to them both, would later be published by Brandylane Publishers, Inc. under the title The Chief and I. In 2004, Pleasant Living magazine ran a feature on Karen and the Chief, but theirs and the Mattaponi River’s story starts way back in 1989, when a man from Newport News visited King and Queen County, home of Little Eagle and the Mattaponi Indian reservation.
Newport News city officials proposed the King William Reservoir, a 1,500 acre monster to feed the city’s water habit for the next half-century or so—a project that would siphon off seventy-five million gallons of water a day from the river that flowed through Chief Webster’s backyard, inevitably leading to its destruction, and taking with it the Mattaponi Indians’ way of life. Native Americans typically do not speak out when politics and policies affect them, but when he called people from across the county together to save their river in 1996, the Chief did just that. Along with his friends, neighbors, and concerned citizens from across the state, he helped form the group Save the Mattaponi.
“Naturally, Webster did not want anyone to take this river,” says Karen. “As I learned, Indians did not speak out against actions affecting them; it was not their way. But Webster broke with that on matters that he felt were important. This was one of them.”
Meanwhile, Karen had just moved to King and Queen County. After putting her traveling days behind her, she’d remembered her long love for the Mattaponi River, and returned to the area from neighboring New Kent County. She had opposed the reservoir since the days when it was still just a proposal, and when she learned that her new neighbors were organizing an effort against it, she signed up. There she met Carl Custalow, one of the leaders of Save the Mattaponi. Later, he would mention to Karen that he needed somebody to help care for his elderly father. She volunteered, and after August 20, 2002, the rest was history. Seven years and one book later, the river that she and the Chief had loved so much would finally be saved. But, they both had a long way to go until then.
The Newport News City Council, specifically mayor Joe Frank and city manager Randy Hildebrandt, were standing in their way. They saw a vital need for this reservoir. According to them, Newport News and the greater Peninsula would be facing a critical water shortage in the coming years, and the King William Reservoir was the surest way of avoiding a coming crisis. Their estimates for the city’s future water needs demanded a quick solution, and the speediest and most environmentally plausible—if not exactly friendly—means to that solution could be found flowing right through the Mattaponi Indian reservation.
One of those folks was named Allan Carroll. Allan was a colonel in the Norfolk District Army Corps of Engineers, and he was commissioned to study the proposed reservoir in light of the controversy stirred up by the likes of the Chief, Carl, and Karen. What emerged was a comprehensive four-year study, culminating in the report Evaluation of Conflicting Views on Future Water Use in Newport News, Virginia.
All totaled, Carroll’s report repudiated just about every argument Mayor Frank and City Manager Hildebrandt were making for the Reservoir. According to Carroll and the rest of the Corps, Newport News had overestimated their projected water needs by as much as three times, and they had not fully explored other alternatives, not to mention the disastrous affect the reservoir would have on the local Indian population and the environment. The Mattaponi River is the chief spawning ground for the dwindling American shad, and any damage done to this pristine habitat would put them, and thus the Indians whose livelihood depended on them, in danger. It also didn’t help that at the time of the study, Newport News actually had a water surplus and was selling it to neighboring cities.
“I believe the cumulative environmental impacts of this project and the potential risk to the culture and economy of the [Mattaponi] tribes would be too great,” said Carroll in a letter to Hildebrandt.
In short, it just wasn’t worth it. Later that year, the Norfolk District Army Corps of Engineers voted to deny Newport News its permit for the construction of the King William Reservoir. Later that same year, Newport News decided to appeal the denial of their permit, and so began a series of legal maneuverings that would be giving people on both sides of the Mattaponi River headaches for years to come.
Back at the reservation, while the fight to save the river was never far from their minds, Karen continued caring for the Chief as if it wasn’t. She would come Tuesdays and Thursdays for a few hours, to cook and sit and talk with him. He loved her visits, and it shows through in the journal entries from those days that make up her book, The Chief and I.
“He enjoyed having her there and appreciated her kindness,” said Carl, Little Eagle’s eldest son. “Because she was not there everyday, he would ask me, ‘When is the black-haired girl coming again? When I told him, his eyes would brighten up and he would say, ‘She’s a nice person.’”
They spent their days talking about bluebirds and watching the snow fall together. At night she’d make him homemade chicken soup or her patented Armenian sweet bread, and sing for him while she worked around the house. Just before he passed away, the Chief and Karen were sitting together, when he told her about an idea he had.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “we need to make a sign and paint ‘It’s a beautiful, sunny day,’ on it and set it as you come into the reservation…so people might stop and see it and take notice of the beauty. People are so busy; they go all round, but they don’t notice the beauty.”
In 2009, six years later, Karen received the good news that she and the Chief had waited so long to hear. After years of legal highs and lows, she and the rest of the folks at Save the Mattaponi received word that Mayor Joe Frank and the rest of the Newport News city government were going to pursue the reservoir no further. After almost every environmental organization in the state had condemned the project, its estimated cost had quadrupled, and not even seven lobbyists working simultaneously could save it, either in Richmond or around Newport News’ water coolers and dinner tables, they decided to pull the plug. While it isn’t certain, as of June of this year, the official word out of the city manager’s office is that the project is dead in the water.
In 2003, just after Chief Little Eagle passed away, Karen made his sign for him. Six years later, and almost twenty years after that man from Newport News walked into town with a briefcase full of the King William Reservoir, the Chief’s sign stands today. Standing next to the entrance to the reservation, it reminds people to stop and enjoy the scenery around them. Today, with the Mattaponi River finally safe, even the man from Newport News would agree, it’s a beautiful day. pl
|
locations
Comments