In a previous post I mentioned that some job interviewers had referred to me as a corn pone, and when I first started classes at an HG Magnet high school I was looked down on as some sort of yokel not only by many of the students but by some of the teachers as well, both because I was a service brat and thus of course the spawn of worthless human debris, and because I had a distinctive "southern" accent. I wasn't aware of it myself and no one had ever remarked on it to me before. I guess I picked it up from other service brats, there being a lot of southerners in the service. I took an on-line test once that said my accent most closely resembles that spoken between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Jackson, Mississippi, a region of the country I've never even visited.I got particularly mocked for pronouncing the word "aunt" the same as "ant" rather than as "awnt." -- that pronunciation to me is really ridiculously snooty pants and I will not say the word that way. I also pronounced "route" as "rowt" rather than "root," which once got me a severe scowl from a teacher. The way I pronounced "know" also seemed to set people off. 
At the DoDEA schools I was educated at, most of the students were the children of career military personnel, and their parents very often were, too. Most were old-stock Americans, pre-Ellis Islanders without a doubt and often pre-Revolutionary War pioneers, same as me. Of course, the blacks were real American blacks with deep roots in this country, not Somalis or Nigerians. The most common non-old-stockers were the Latinos, but they all had ancestors who had been in North America for a very long time.
But at the civilian magnet I stood out as an oddity. About 40 percent of the students were Orientals, almost all Chinese, children of FOBs. They were very clannish and did not associate much with non-Chinese. They had no ties to this country and no feeling for it as a nation and a people. Another 40 percent of the students were classified as "white" but not the kind of whites I was used to. These were Armenians and Iranians and Russians and who knows what else. They, too, were the offspring of FOBs with no ties to this country. The rest of the students were call-center Indians, some Latinos, a few African blacks and assorted. I had nothing in common with them and they had nothing in common with me. They all had "old" countries full of relatives. When I said I had nothing similar and that to me the old country would be Montana or maybe Pennsylvania, they were baffled. In that world, I was the foreigner.
One time at the end of a speed-reading course we were tested for speed and comprehension. I scored 1,400 words a minute with 100 percent comprehension. As the teacher read aloud the students' scores to the class, she particularly praised a boy who had received the highest score so far mentioned -- 800 words a minute with 90 percent comprehension. I expected to be praised at least as enthusiastically when she came to my score, but when she did she merely read it off without remark and passed on to others, some of whom, who did not score as well as I did, she singled out for praise. I was surprised and could not understand why she had ignored my achievement. Later my mother said that it was probably simply because she didn't like me. I couldn't think of anything I had done to offend her. My mother said that sometimes people just don't like you, and there's nothing you can do to change that. After thinking about it a while, I concluded that the teacher probably considered me a dumb hick who shouldn't even have been allowed to take classes at that school and my high score was just a fluke. The service brat thing didn't help. I did make an effort after that to watch my pronunciation and mimic that of my fellow students and teachers, and I made it a point never to mention that I grew up mostly overseas on Navy bases. No blurting out that I had taken field trips to Kamakura or hiked up the slopes of Mt. Etna or mentioning that my dad joked that I had been baptized with JP-5.The thing is, as far as I know, I have no recent ancestors, if any, from the South. I don't know of any who fought in the Civil War, though I suppose some did, of course. But most of those from back East were Anabaptists of one sort or another or Quakers. Pacifists, in other words. And almost certainly abolitionists.
I do know of one ancestor in California who had served under General Crook in the second Pitt River Expedition in 1857 and headed east at some point during the Civil War to try to join up with Crook's boys in what I think was the Kanawha Division of the Army of West Virginia. But he never made it farther east than Nebraska, enlisting in a cavalry regiment there that ended up fighting in the Indian Wars that erupted in 1864. He kept a diary of his service days, which I have seen. He wrote mostly about personal things, as is to be expected in a diary, recording what dreams he had or what was served for supper, that sort of thing. But he did mention that the infantry the cavalry operated with were all Confederate PoWs, "galvanized Yankees" he called them. These were men who apparently were given the choice of being confined to a prison camp or serving on the frontier and chose the latter. He also mentioned that his cavalry unit's slogan was "40 miles a day on beans and hay" and that the cartridges their Burnside carbines used tended to jam in the breech.
He did write about coming across the remains of a wagon train attacked by the Sioux, who killed, scalped and mutilated the corpses of everyone and looted the wagons, scattering the goods and personal possessions of the travelers across the prairie, kegs of flour smashed, bolts of cloth unwound and left in great ribbons of calico. The oxen were slaughtered and feasted on. The only things taken were guns, ammunition and the horses. And, as it turned out later, some women and children. He also wrote that his troop, sent to reinforce Ft Rankin, defended adjacent Julesburg, Colorado, from an attack by over a thousand Arapaho, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, who in a series of assaults eventually overwhelmed the defenders and burned the town to the ground. He noted that of the 60 men in his troop, 22 were killed or died of wounds as a result of those battles. But they did hold the fort, saving the lives of the civilians who had taken refuge there.
About the oddity of having pacifist and war-fighting ancestors, at least one reason that I know of happened during the American Revolution when the British paid the Shawnee to attack homesteaders in the Ohio River valley. The German immigrants that included my ancestor had originally settled around Germantown in what is now a part of Philadelphia but later moved to western Pennsylvania where they established farms. I guess the French and Indian War, especially the Braddock Expedition disaster, led them to move even farther west in an attempt to keep clear of trouble. But in 1777, the year of the Bloody Sevens as it was called, their little settlement was massacred by the Shawnee, only my ancestor, his brother, sister and mother surviving out of a village of maybe a hundred people. The experience killed his pacifism and he fought through the Revolution, then lit out for the far west, eventually joining 
John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company as a trapper and trader. To avoid having his hair lifted, he needed the protection of Indian allies so he married into the northern Cheyenne tribe. His descendants were associated with the Bent brothers. Some adopted the white man's ways, one of them that I know about becoming a wagon train guide on the Oregon Trail and then going to California during the Gold Rush. Others blended into the northern Cheyenne tribe. Two of these that I know of joined the US Army after the final defeat of the Cheyenne in 1879, one serving with the 1st Battalion, 22nd infantry, E Company, out of Ft. Keogh, Montana, fighting the Sioux,and the other serving with the 8th Cavalry, Troop L, out of Ft. Union, New Mexico. He fought the Apaches and Comanches.
I suppose all old stock Americans have similar ancestral stories. Maybe they know something about their forebears, maybe a lot, maybe nothing much, if anything. But one thing they do know, even if they never really think about it, is that this is their native land. America is home. After all, they and theirs created it, one felled tree, one plowed furrow at a time. And sometimes one rifle ball at a time.
After looking back over my long line of American ancestors, you know what? I am proud to be a corn pone, a real native American whose people founded this nation, and a country girl at heart who always looks with love and longing to prairie and mountain, sea and sky -- and prouder to be a service brat. I come from a long line of soldiers, sailors and airmen. It's what we do. It's what we're good at. When this civilization dies, when all the great cities are nothing more than grass covered mounds -- and that day will come to our civilization as it has to every other -- my descendants will survive, if only as mounted warriors with bow and lance .... Fiddler’s Green
Halfway down the trail to Hell,
In a shady meadow green
Are the Souls of all dead Troopers camped,
Near a good old-time canteen.
And this eternal resting place
Is known as Fiddlers’ Green.
Marching past, straight through to Hell
The Infantry are seen.
Accompanied by the Engineers,
Artillery and Marines,
For none but the shades of Cavalrymen
Dismount at Fiddlers’ Green.
Though some go curving down the trail
To seek a warmer scene.
No Trooper ever gets to Hell
Ere he’s emptied his canteen.
And so rides back to drink again
With friends at Fiddlers’ Green.
And so when man and horse go down
Beneath a saber keen,
Or in a roaring charge or fierce melee
You stop a bullet clean,
And the hostiles come to get your scalp,
Just empty your canteen,
And put your pistol to your head
And go to Fiddlers’ Green.
Fear no danger! Shun no labor!
Lift up rifle, pike, and saber!
To arms! To arms! To arms!
Shoulder pressing close to shoulder,
Let the odds make each heart bolder!
