Ceremony

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  Old Betonie sat back on his heels and looked off in the distance. “Nothing is that simple,” he said, “you don’t write off all the white people, just like you don’t trust all the Indians.” He pointed at the coffeepot in the sand at the edge of the coals, and then at the meat. “You better eat now,” he said.

  Tayo finished the meat on the mutton ribs and threw the bones to a skinny yellow dog that came out from behind the hogan. Behind the dog a boy about fifteen or sixteen came with an armload of firewood. He knelt by the fire with the kindling; Betonie spoke to him in Navajo and indicated Tayo with a nod of his head.

  “This is my helper,” he told Tayo. “They call him Shush. That means bear.” It was dark, but in the light from the fire Tayo could see there was something strange about the boy, something remote in his eyes, as if he were on a distant mountaintop alone and the fire and hogan and the lights of the town below them did not exist.

  He was a small child learning to get around by himself. His family went by wagon into the mountains near Fluted Rock.

  It was Fall and they were picking piñons. I guess he just wandered away trying to follow his brothers and sisters into the trees. His aunt thought he was with his mother, and she thought he was with her sister.

  When they tracked him the next day his tracks went into the canyon near the place which belonged to the bears. They went as far as they could to the place where no human could go beyond, and his little footprints were mixed in with bear tracks.

  So they sent word for this medicine man to come. He knew how to call the child back again.

  There wasn’t much time. The medicine man was running, and his assistants followed behind him.

  They all wore bearweed tied at their wrists and ankles and around their necks.

  He grunted loudly and scratched on the ground in front of him he kept watching the entrance of the bear cave. He grunted and made a low growling sound. Pretty soon the little bears came out because he was making mother bear sounds.

  He grunted and growled a little more and then the child came out.

  He was already walking like his sisters he was already crawling on the ground.

  They couldn’t just grab the child They couldn’t simply take him back because he would be in between forever and probably he would die.

  They had to call him step by step the medicine man brought the child back.

  So, long time ago they got him back again but he wasn’t quite the same after that not like the other children.

  Tayo stood up and moved around the fire uneasily; the boy took some ribs and disappeared again behind the hogan. The old man put some wood on the fire. “You don’t have to be afraid of him. Some people act like witchery is responsible for everything that happens, when actually witchery only manipulates a small portion.” He pointed in the direction the boy had gone. “Accidents happen, and there’s little we can do. But don’t be so quick to call something good or bad. There are balances and harmonies always shifting, always necessary to maintain. It is very peaceful with the bears; the people say that’s the reason human beings seldom return. It is a matter of transitions, you see; the changing, the becoming must be cared for closely. You would do as much for the seedlings as they become plants in the field.”

  NOTE ON BEAR PEOPLE AND WITCHES

  Don’t confuse those who go to the bears with the witch people. Human beings who live with the bears do not wear bear skins. They are naked and not conscious of being different from their bear relatives. Witches crawl into skins of dead animals, but they can do nothing but play around with objects and bodies. Living animals are terrified of witches. They smell the death. That’s why witches can’t get close to them. That’s why people keep dogs around their hogans. Dogs howl with fear when witch animals come around.

  The wind came up and fanned the fire. Tayo watched a red flame crawl out from under the white coals; he reached down for a piece of juniper and tossed it in. The fire caught. He rubbed pitch from the wood between his fingers and looked down at Gallup.

  “I never told you about Emo,” he said, “I never told you what happened to Rocky.” He pointed at the lights below. “Something about the lights down there, something about the cars and the neon signs which reminds me of both of them.”

  “Yes,” the old man said, “my grandmother would not leave this hill. She said the whole world could be seen from here.”

  “Rocky wanted to get away from the reservation; he wanted to make something of himself. In a city somewhere.”

  “They are down there. Ones like your brother. They are down there.”

  “He didn’t make it though. I was supposed to help him, so he’d make it back. They were counting on him. They were proud of him. I owed them that much. After everything that happened. I owed it to them.” He looked at the old man, but he was staring at the lights down below, following the headlights from the west until they were taillights disappearing in the east. He didn’t seem to be listening.

  “There are no limits to this thing,” Betonie said. “When it was set loose, it ranged everywhere, from the mountains and plains to the towns and cities; rivers and oceans never stopped it.” The wind was blowing steadily and the old man’s voice was almost lost in it.

  “Emo plays with these teeth—human teeth—and he says the Indians have nothing compared to white people. He talks about their cities and all the machines and food they have. He says the land is no good, and we must go after what they have, and take it from them.” Tayo coughed and tried to clear the tightness from his throat. “Well, I don’t know how to say this but it seems that way. All you have to do is look around. And so I wonder,” he said, feeling the tightness in his throat squeeze out the tears, “I wonder what good Indian ceremonies can do against the sickness which comes from their wars, their bombs, their lies?”

  The old man shook his head. “That is the trickery of the witchcraft,” he said. “They want us to believe all evil resides with white people. Then we will look no further to see what is really happening. They want us to separate ourselves from white people, to be ignorant and helpless as we watch our own destruction. But white people are only tools that the witchery manipulates; and I tell you, we can deal with white people, with their machines and their beliefs. We can because we invented white people; it was Indian witchery that made white people in the first place.

  Long time ago in the beginning there were no white people in this world there was nothing European. And this world might have gone on like that except for one thing: witchery. This world was already complete even without white people. There was everything including witchery.

  Then it happened. These witch people got together. Some came from far far away across oceans across mountains. Some had slanty eyes others had black skin. They all got together for a contest the way people have baseball tournaments nowadays except this was a contest in dark things.

  So anyway they all got together witch people from all directions witches from all the Pueblos and all the tribes. They had Navajo witches there, some from Hopi, and a few from Zuni. They were having a witches’ conference, that’s what it was Way up in the lava rock hills north of Cañoncito they got together to fool around in caves with their animal skins. Fox, badger, bobcat, and wolf they circled the fire and on the fourth time they jumped into that animal’s skin.

  But this time it wasn’t enough and one of them maybe a Sioux or some Eskimos started showing off. “That wasn’t anything, watch this.”

  The contest started like that. Then some of them lifted the lids on their big cooking pots, calling the rest of them over to take a look: dead babies simmering in blood circles of skull cut away all the brains sucked out. Witch medicine to dry and grind into powder for new victims.

  Others untied skin bundles of disgusting objects: dark flints, cinders from burned hogans where the dead lay Whorls of skin cut from fingertips sliced from the penis end and clitoris tip.

  Finally there was only one who hadn’t shown off charms or powers. The witch
stood in the shadows beyond the fire and no one ever knew where this witch came from which tribe or if it was a woman or a man. But the important thing was this witch didn’t show off any dark thunder charcoals or red ant-hill beads. This one just told them to listen: “What I have is a story.”

  At first they all laughed but this witch said Okay go ahead laugh if you want to but as I tell the story it will begin to happen.

  Set in motion now set in motion by our witchery to work for us.

  Caves across the ocean in caves of dark hills white skin people like the belly of a fish covered with hair.

  Then they grow away from the earth then they grow away from the sun then they grow away from the plants and animals. They see no life When they look they see only objects. The world is a dead thing for them the trees and rivers are not alive the mountains and stones are not alive. The deer and bear are objects They see no life.

  They fear They fear the world. They destroy what they fear. They fear themselves. The wind will blow them across the ocean thousands of them in giant boats swarming like larva out of a crushed ant hill.

  They will carry objects which can shoot death faster than the eye can see. They will kill the things they fear all the animals the people will starve.

  They will poison the water they will spin the water away and there will be drought the people will starve.

  They will fear what they find They will fear the people They kill what they fear.

  Entire villages will be wiped out They will slaughter whole tribes.

  Corpses for us

  Blood for us

  Killing killing killing killing.

  And those they do not kill will die anyway at the destruction they see at the loss at the loss of the children the loss will destroy the rest.

  Stolen rivers and mountains

  the stolen land will eat their hearts

  and jerk their mouths from the Mother.

  The people will starve.

  They will bring terrible diseases

  the people have never known.

  Entire tribes will die out

  covered with festered sores

  shitting blood

  vomiting blood.

  Corpses for our work

  Set in motion now set in motion by our witchery set in motion to work for us.

  They will take this world from ocean to ocean they will turn on each other they will destroy each other Up here in these hills they will find the rocks, rocks with veins of green and yellow and black. They will lay the final pattern with these rocks they will lay it across the world and explode everything.

  Set in motion now set in motion To destroy To kill Objects to work for us objects to act for us Performing the witchery for suffering for torment for the still-born the deformed the sterile the dead. Whirling whirling whirling whirling set into motion now set into motion.

  So the other witches said

  “Okay you win; you take the prize,

  but what you said just now—

  it isn’t so funny

  It doesn’t sound so good.

  We are doing okay without it

  we can get along without that kind of thing.

  Take it back.

  Call that story back.”

  But the witch just shook its head

  at the others in their stinking animal skins, fur and feathers.

  It’s already turned loose.

  It’s already coming.

  It can’t be called back.

  They left on horseback before dawn. The old man rode a skinny pinto mare with hip bones and ribs poking against the hide like springs of an old car seat. But she was strong and moved nimbly up the narrow rocky path north of Betonie’s hogan. The old man’s helper rode a black pony, hunching low over its neck with his face in the mane. Maybe he rode like that for warmth, because it was cold in those foothills before dawn; the night air of the high mountains was chilled by the light of the stars and the shadows of the moon. The brown gelding stumbled with Tayo; he reined it in and walked it more slowly. Behind them in the valley, the highway was a faint dark vein through the yellow sand and red rock. He smelled piñon and sage in the wind that blew across the stony backbone of the ridge. They left the red sandstone and the valley and rode into the lava-rock foothills and pine of the Chuska Mountains.

  “We’ll have the second night here,” Betonie said, indicating a stone hogan set back from the edge of the rimrock.

  Tayo stood near the horses, looking down the path over the way they had come. The plateaus and canyons spread out below him like clouds falling into each other past the horizon. The world below was distant and small; it was dwarfed by a sky so blue and vast the clouds were lost in it. Far into the south there were smoky blue ridges of the mountain haze at Zuni. He smoothed his hand over the top of his head and felt the sun. The mountain wind was cool; it smelled like springs hidden deep in mossy black stone. He could see no signs of what had been set loose upon the earth: the highways, the towns, even the fences were gone. This was the highest point on the earth: he could feel it. It had nothing to do with measurements or height. It was a special place. He was smiling. He felt strong. He had to touch his own hand to remember what year it was: thick welted scars from the shattered bottle glass.

  His mother-in-law suspected something.

  She smelled coyote piss one morning.

  She told her daughter.

  She figured Coyote was doing this.

  She knew her son-in-law was missing.

  There was no telling what Coyote had done to him.

  Four of them went to track the man.

  They tracked him to the place he found deer tracks.

  They found the place the deer was arrow-wounded

  where the man started chasing it.

  Then they found the place where Coyote got him.

  Sure enough those coyote tracks went right along there

  Right around the marks in the sand where the man lay.

  The human tracks went off toward the mountain where the man must have crawled. They followed the tracks to a hard oak tree where he had spent a night. From there he had crawled some distance farther and slept under a scrub oak tree. Then his tracks went to a piñon tree and then under the juniper where he slept another night. The tracks went on and on but finally they caught up with him sleeping under the wild rose bush. “What happened? Are you the one who left four days ago, my grandchild?” A coyote whine was the only sound he made. “Four days ago you left, are you that one, my grandchild?” The man tried to speak but only a coyote sound was heard, and the tail moved back and forth sweeping ridges in the sand. He was suffering from thirst and hunger he was almost too weak to raise his head. But he nodded his head “yes.”

  “This is him all right, but what can we do to save him?”

  They ran to the holy places they asked what might be done.

  “At the summit of Dark Mountain ask the four old Bear People. They are the only possible hope they have the power to restore the mind. Time and again it has been done.”

  Big Fly went to tell them. The old Bear People said they would come They said Prepare hard oak scrub oak piñon juniper and wild rose twigs Make hoops tie bundles of weeds into hoops. Make four bundles tie them with yucca spruce mixed with charcoal from burned weeds snakeweed and gramma grass and rock sage. Make four bundles.

  The rainbows were crossed. They had been his former means of travel. Their purpose was to restore this to him.

  They made Pollen Boy right in the center of the white corn painting. His eyes were blue pollen his mouth was blue pollen his neck was too There were pinches of blue pollen at his joints.

  He sat in the center of the white corn sand painting. The rainbows crossed were in the painting behind him. Betonie’s helper scraped the sand away and buried the bottoms of the hoops in little trenches so that they were standing up and spaced apart, with the hard oak closest to him and the wild rose hoop in front of the door. The old man painted a dark mountain range besid
e the farthest hoop, the next, closer, he painted blue, and moving toward him, he knelt and made the yellow mountains; and in front of him, Betonie painted the white mountain range.

  The helper worked in the shadows beyond the dark mountain range; he worked with the black sand, making bear prints side by side. Along the right side of the bear footprints, the old man painted paw prints in blue, and then yellow, and finally white. They finished it together, with a big rainbow arching wide above all the mountain ranges. Betonie gave him a basket with prayer sticks to hold.

  en-e-e-ya-a-a-a-a! en-e-e-ya-a-a-a-a! en-e-e-ya-a-a-a-a! en-e-e-ya-a-a-a-a!

  In dangerous places you traveled in danger you traveled to a dangerous place you traveled in danger e-hey-ya-ah-na!