Eric Gansworth: Hi. My name is Eric Gansworth. The A in my last name is short, like in cat. But in some ways, it's an arbitrary pronunciation anyway. My one white ancestor was Dutch and he gave my family its original last name, Gansevoort. Herman Melville and I share an ancestor. His mother's maiden name was Gansevoort and his great-grandfather is my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, give or take a great.

In 1870, the white reservation school teacher decided Gansevoort was too unusual. Too difficult to pronounce. So she changed it, inventing our last name. The one we currently use. In that one stroke of a pen in a school ledger hoping to Americanize us, she gave my family a singular way to keep track of ourselves in genealogy records. To the best of my knowledge, I am related to every Gansworth on this continent in some way or another.