They called it “indianuity” – a distinctive take off on ingenuity.

The creativity the term implies was a way of life for Sam Babcock’s (Onondaga) paternal grandmother Lena (Turtle Clan), who lived on Indian Town Road on Orchard Hill.

Sam was a child of the Great Depression, born in 1929, but his memories of this era are flooded with an abundance found in family and community that belied the economic deprivations.

“I remember how close our extended families were,” said Sam, who grew up on the Onondaga Reservation. “We had to be close to survive. I remember visiting my grandmother. There was no electricity in the house; their light came from kerosene lamps. If she broke a globe, she’d use an old mayonnaise jar in its place after she popped the bottom out by shaking stones inside the lidded jar.”

The house itself was cold, with air filtering through the windows and doors, Sam said. Heat came from a big kitchen stove complete with a reservoir on one side to keep water warm. Outside, his grandfather had a half-acre garden he spaded by hand. When Sam’s family visited, his grandparents would load up his father Milton’s (Turtle Clan) car with vegetables from the garden.

“And we all had chickens through Dr. Bates [see related links],” said Sam. “So we always had eggs to eat.”

His father, who had graduated from apprentice school in Syracuse, was a mason during the Depression. Milton had learned the painstaking task of applying gold leaf, as well as other skills, during his training. Union representatives would give each man a job for a few days, so everyone had a chance to earn money. Milton was sent away on jobs, including to Montpellier, Vt.

Back home, Milton kept up his own garden, growing tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, peas and more. He had an acre of land that, for a small price, men on the reservation would plow using horses.

“We always had enough food; we made food stretch,” said Sam. “It seemed as though my mother made dinner out of thin air.

“But everybody on the rez was poor, so you didn’t know you were poor. Once you went into the city and saw kids on bikes and roller skates living in homes with lights and telephones, then you knew.”

Only one individual had a phone on the reservation at this time: Amanda Pierce (Turtle Clan). The school had another. And it would be 1938 before they had electricity.

A degree of relief came with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1935, the federal government began offering millions of Americans jobs through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), including those living on the reservation.

Sam’s dad was one of the men who worked straightening a “crooked, winding, hilly” road, one of several WPA projects. Using mostly Indian labor, bridges were built and other construction completed, giving much- needed work to those on the reservation.

One contractor, Sam recalled, had lots of equipment, along with teams of horses and wagons. Big wagons, a fascination for a little boy, called bottom dumps were used – the bottom opened up to dump the gravel to make the road bed.

“You can still see where they dug up the gravel along the side of the road,” said Sam.

With the United States’ declaration of war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, life changed yet again. Air raid wardens were widely used, including on the reservation. Sam remembers the Civil Defense-issued uniforms, white hats and armbands. Ray Elm (Turtle Clan) and Sam’s uncle, Bill Pierce, Onondaga, were both wardens, part of an organized non-military effort to prepare American civilians for a military attack, mobilizing the population in response to the threat.

Rationing also was a reality of WWII. Sam recalled butter, meat, sugar and even shoes being rationed, along with gasoline.

“My father had an A card on the car window,” said Sam. “An A card was worth seven gallons a week; the higher your letter in the alphabet, the more gas you got. If you had an important job, you got more gas.

“You also got a book of stamps. Every time you got gas, you’d give the book to the attendant, who would take out the right number of stamps. In Syracuse, there were bootleggers counterfeiting the stamps, but no one on the rez did it. Other guys would sell you gas, just don’t ask any questions.”

Milton worked in government shops during the war, so he wasn’t called up to fight. He lived out the Depression and war years with tenacity, mixed with bartering. That’s the way it was done, said Sam: You’d bargain with neighbors for something you needed in exchange for goods they needed or a service they required.

This is precisely how the family – Sam, his sister, mother and father – got their water. They would carry water 800 feet or more from a neighbor’s well to their home. And, every spring, his father would clean the debris from the well, which was owned by an elderly woman. Milton took care of the well in exchange for the water for his household.

“To this day, I’m careful with water,” said Sam. “I take fast showers, never let the water run. That’s the way I was brought up; you had to conserve. Same thing with electricity. Conserving comes naturally.
“It’s bad today again. Lot of people losing their jobs. I don’t know how we can dig ourselves out of this. Only thing to do is try.”