“So why are you studying the Valachs?” I asked. The response came back: “Because I am an Engineer for a large software firm in Romania and I am trying to reconnect to a way of life more meaningful than that of living in a modern large city such as Bucharest .” The Internet is an amazing tool for me. Not only has it opened new vistas but it has also helped me connect with so many people that have similar interests. What else do I find fascinating: our need to connect to the past. Not just the past but our past.

However, this past fall, I was sent an essay that had originally been written in Czech and then translated into English. It was about the Valachs. By the time I finished reading the article, I was experiencing what I can only describe as Enlightenment. Bits and pieces of family history, the location of the village of origin for my grandmother’s people, and the folk tales for which I am the current holder all fit into what I had read in the essay on the Valachs. It had always been said by my mother that my grandmother’s people were “beyond the mountains people.” That statement had always been a puzzlement. It wasn’t anymore. I e-mailed the essay on the Valachs to my sisters and from each came quick responses: “Yes, that is who we are!”

Although oral tradition and folklore have gained more respect than they once had in the scientific world, they are still not considered by many to be “scientific evidence.” But, to some of us, what you feel in your heart and know from your deepest self weighs profoundly.

Since the first paper on the Valachs reached me, others have quickly followed including the one by Dr. Jaroslav Štika reprinted in this issue of the Český hlas and one by Dr. Gary Kocurek. When I contacted Dr. Kocurek for permission to reprint his article, he offered information about his DNA project (see page 10 ) which I found intriguing. This was no longer the 1980’s and I was no longer in Austin, Texas. And, even though I am on a farm in rural Nueces County, the Internet takes me around the world and into resource libraries that once were beyond my reach. While searching for more information on the Valachs, I stumbled on a series of research papers which focused on the origins of the Slovak people. So much of what was written in those papers pertained to the Slavic peoples as a whole. What a treasure of information I had found!

Finally, I began to feel a connection to the Slavic people as a whole. As I read paper after paper, I formed within my mind a picture of the Slavic peoples throughout times--all the way back to the “Great Migration of People.” I followed discussions of how their settlements spread throughout the Central Danube region and of how foreign powers influenced their societies and ways of life. Then, when I read articles on the types of housing they used and on their burial practices, I knew that I had found my tribal people. I now had a timeline through the centuries. I had made the connection.

When my children were in elementary school, we would spend hours crafting dwellings, canoes, fish-drying racks, and other features for detailed dioramas of Native American villages. For my daughter, we built one for a Pacific Northwest tribe that hunted whales. For my son, we built one of the fierce independent Karankawas of South Texas. While it is doubtful that Texas students will ever be building dioramas of ancient Slav villages with zemnicas, adjacent burial mounds, and an idol of the god, Radegast, I like the idea. The tribal history of the Slavs is no less important than those of the native Americans, the Celts, the Egyptians, Vikings, or any other tribe.

As stated previously, I am intrigued by the Valach DNA Study that Dr. Gary Kocurek proposes and I am looking forward to learning if there are more potential links to the Latinized people of Romania such as Dr. Kocurek’s own. At the same time, I believe that there will be a significant number of Texas Czechs who, once they learn who the Valachs were, will finally have a name for the fire that burns within them. No test result will tell them more surely than their own hearts!

One final point I wish to share, as I read the research papers on the history of the Slav peoples, time and time again the authors would emphasize the lack of histories written by the Slavs themselves. Many of the available histories were, apparently, written by outsiders with political or scholarly reasons to skew the events in certain directions. The current Slovak researchers are now charged not only with searching out new avenues to determine what really existed but must also debunk misinformation at the same time. I see this as a wake-up call. Let us not leave the history of the Texas Czechs to be written by outsiders. Let us continue to document the lives, times, and ways of those who came before us. And, as Robert Janak wrote about the new CHS Project, Recollections, let us not forget how important our times, efforts, and achievements will become in the future. I encourage you all to participate in the Recollections Project. And, if you are a candidate and can afford to have the DNA testing done, please do so. Both of these projects offer an opportunity to document and share who the Texas Czechs really are. Each one offers an opportunity for us to toss new pebbles.

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