The young Italian housemaid who pulled open the bronze door at 38 Via       Gregoriana tried to suppress her shock when she saw a colored woman on the front step.

          “Buon pomeriggio. I’m Edmonia Lewis, here to see Signora Cushman,” I told her.

          “Si, signorina.” She nodded. No doubt she’d been told to expect me. But she must have expected someone from one of Italy’s African outposts, an Ethiopian wearing a loose cotton dress and head scarf, not an English-speaking woman in a silk day dress. If she’d learned I was half Ojibwe Indian, as well, she might have run all the way back to her village.

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