to fill out the ranks. The Hanjen resisted joining since they always felt superior to Mongol “barbarians,” and in
the end drove us out of what they called the Middle Kingdom. Our “tribe” was never in a position to choose to
join or not join the Mongols, so our allegiance requires a bit more explanation.
According to my grandfather, our ancestors were, perhaps fortunately, obscure and forgettable until the first
Karl wandered out of the primeval forest and into a no-longer-remembered village in an area called Schwabia
far to the west. His apparent source led to his surname, Waldmann, Man of the Forest in the dialect of that
place. This Karl was, not surprisingly, a woodcutter, and since he had considerable skill at carving, he was
welcomed to the village. The family continued in modest obscurity until the next Karl, some few generations
later, who was bored with wood but fascinated with iron and bucking the family traditions, moved to a city
named Regensburg to learn the blacksmith trade. Being a perfectionist, he spent a long time working for many
masters throughout what was called the Holy Roman Empire, the obscure if pretentiously titled principality that
governed his “tribe.”
When he was admitted to the Guild as a master blacksmith, he had become a legendary sword maker, and
settled in Innsbruck, a city in the same empire which was incongruously ruled by a bishop, a type of leader of
the Christian religion prevalent in the far west. His descendants remained there continuing in the trade
uneventfully until the next Karl came to maturity. This Karl, my great-great-grandfather, did continue the
family skill of sword making, but being the second son left Innsbruck, and began to ply his trade eastward. He
happened to be at the court of King Bela of Hungary, when a certain minor Christian cleric named John came to
the court on his way back from performing an embassy from the pope, the leader or high priest of the Christian
religion, to the Great Khan in Karakorum, Kuyuk, the second successor of the immortal Chingis. Karl managed
to talk to this cleric and his companions and was fascinated by their tale. His curiosity got the best of him, and
he decided to pack up his wife and two young children and go visit this Karakorum and offer his not
inconsiderable talents to the Khan.
The story of his journey is a long, sometimes amusing, and sometimes sad saga, but it is of no significance to
this history. Suffice it to say, after some three very eventful years, he arrived at Karakorum just in time for his
wife to be delivered of a son, my great-grandfather, whom he named John for the cleric who was responsible for
the trip. Whether Karl regretted his journey, my grandfather couldn’t say, but his acceptance at the court of the
Khan was immediate, and he was soon hard at work at his first love, sword making. My great-grandfather John
moved to Khanbalikh when the Great Khan Kubilai moved the capital there.
My great-grandfather, his brother, one of his sons, and both of his brother’s sons met an untimely end during
the ill-fated second invasion of Yapon uls (a group of large islands east of the old Khanate). Of course, the first
invasion was also ill-fated, but the losses incurred were considerably less. My grandfather George decided to
ply his trade more humbly to avoid the dubious honor of being invited on any more such fiascoes. He moved to
the outskirts of Khanbalikh, and although he continued to make swords, he also made many other things as
well, catering to the tastes of the Khan’s subjects rather than the court. My father, Henry, also followed in my
grandfather’s footsteps and continued the general ironsmith business, and married Christina, the daughter of a
Nestorian Christian priest, Peter. In the next ten years he had three sons and three daughters. Only two of the
former and one of the latter survived infancy. These were the eldest son, Henry; the second daughter, Mathilde;
and the youngest son, John. Curiously, the family always used the old tribal names rather than more Mongol
names. Even more curiously, we still generally do.
Father happened to befriend an officer in the Khan’s army who greatly admired his skills and frequently
called between campaigns. He had confided to my father his pessimism about the future of the Khanate since
much of it was in revolt and most of the army’s energy had been wasted in the fratricidal power struggles since
the death of Kubilai. This officer, Kaidu, rose through the ranks and finally came to be commander of a tumen.
When Dorji, the Chancellor of the Right (yes, there was also a Chancellor of the Left, and between them they
ran the Khanate for the Khan) was forced from power, he invited Kaidu to join him in the north and take
command of the tumen then guarding the northern border of the Khanate along the Karamuren River between
the ancient home of the Khitans and the frozen lands of the reindeer-herding Tungus tribes. Since a tumen was
like a self-contained mobile city with skilled artisans as well as soldiers and their families, Kaidu invited my
father to join him and, of course, bring along his family. Because my father shared Kaidu’s pessimism about the
future and feared for his family’s safety should the revolts reach Khanbalikh, he agreed to join him as soon as
his wife had been delivered of their latest child.
