The Family at Serpiente

by Raymond Tolman

  Some tribes of the Cherokee Indians down in Georgia even believe that they are descended from ancient Hebrew peoples who came to Americas thousands of years ago. It would change all of history and then school teachers would need to have new history books printed. Think about it, who really discovered America? Everybody lays claim to that honor. Hidalgo added with a smile, “Actually my ancestors only discovered America after migrating down from Canada a few hundred years before Columbus.”

  I was fascinated by this description of my old homeland. Immediately I was intrigued and wanted to know more. I asked him what else they knew about the ancient history of the country I was born in.

  Hidalgo shrugged his shoulders and added, “Well I don’t know much more, but I do know that supposedly a Prince Madoc who was chronicled by Welsh bards as early as the late fifteen hundreds, was supposed to have come to America. In fact, part of Britain’s claim to America came about as the discovery and settlement of the Welsh under Madoc shortly after the eleven hundreds. I even read, while in the library in Durango once, that in 1818 a Roman coin was found on the site of the present town of Fayetteville, Tennessee, on the Elk River and not far from the site of an ancient fort.

  Ken looked out of the front window of the ranch house and followed Hidalgos points with, “You realize that by finding another set of markings, and if those markings can be authenticated, it would give more credence to the mystery stone in Los Lunas.

  “Well, the markings we found had the same amount of patina as the rest of the rock carvings. Right now, I want to learn more about that Los Lunas stone,” I said with undisguised excitement, while Corey’s head went up and down in an affirmative motion.

  Uncle Ken looked at us and answered thoughtfully, “It would be a lot easier for us to drive out to the mystery stone than it would be to pack into that back country. Let’s all drive out there some time and take a look at the mystery stone. I need to go into town tomorrow anyway and I’ll see if I can set up a meeting at the Los Lunas Mystery Stone with Bill Holliday. He knows as much about the place as anybody I know.

  Bill Holliday

  Three days later, after a lunch was prepared and packed, we all piled into the Jeep Cherokee and headed north to Los Lunas. After almost reaching the blacktop road into town we turned off and took the road that normally goes out to the Huning Ranch and the Indian Site known as pottery mounds. Despite antiquity laws, for many years the curious, school kids, family and Scout Troops had been going out there to collect pottery shards. Pot shards were everywhere, literally buckets of them.

  Driving off that dirt road we took a smaller rutted road over to the base of a large volcanic mesa, typical for this area except that this one overlooked what at one time was a vast Indian village where thousands of people lived alongside the Rio Puerco River. Nowadays it was just pastureland and desert. We soon spotted Bill Holliday sitting on the tail gate of his pickup truck, taking a sip from a thermos bottle.

  Corey was excited to meet a relative he had never met before. After a warm embrace and some frantic shaking of hands along with introductions, they opened the small pedestrian gate that Huning had erected in his fence to keep his cattle from getting out and we all started walking up a well-worn rocky trail. Corey and I, just like all kids, ran ahead prompting warnings from Aunt June to look out for rattlesnakes.

  Bill Holliday knew the area well, and he should have. He had served as the sheriff of Valencia County and knew every nook and cranny. Friendly and jovial, he was like many of the locals, strong and firm yet the biggest tease one could imagine, he reminded me of an Anglo version of John Luna. Constantly looking for an excuse to tease one of the kids, he also wasted no time in getting around to Corey and me. He knew when young people were in love and he relished teasing us. I had learned long ago to ignore this kind of teasing. Like my friend John Luna, I took it all as a compliment and dished it right back.

  Taking only a few minutes we found ourselves in front of a large slab of volcanic rock with ancient script written on it. “What does it say, I asked?

  “Well, replied Holliday, “according to those who study this stuff, they say it is the Ten Commandments and the smaller inscription (he pointed) says Yehweh is our Mighty One.” He turned and looked at me and said, “You realize that if this was actually written by an ancient scribe it would give direct proof that a connection existed between the Americas, through explorations of mariners, with the Middle East. It would indicate that after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, explorers as early as 3500 years ago came to this area.”

  I asked, “Exactly who wrote it?”

  Holliday answered with, “Well, nobody really knows, all we know is that it is an ancient Hebrew writing. By the way, you read it from right to left.” We studied the rock for some time noticing that the exact same letters were present in the petroglyph Corey and I had discovered.

  “Is it real, I mean did ancient people come all the way here from the Middle East, thousands of years ago?”

  Holliday mulled it over for a minute then answered, “Well, according to some scientist who have studied it, its’ real. Even the local Indians have a tradition about it.” While looking at Hidalgo for approval he continued, “According to Native Indians down in Isleta, the rock was a mystery even to them long before modern Anglos came into this area. But then, there is also a rumor that around 1920 or so a group of students from the University came out here and carved it as a practical joke.

  The problem is the local Indians; they have a tradition and knowledge of this place that goes back much farther than that date. They claim it was covered by lichens and was ancient when they first discovered it and it is obvious that there were many people here in antiquity, there are markings all over the place.”

  Seeing that he had an entranced audience Bill Holliday continued, “According to local history, the inscriptions were first seen by European settlers as far back as 1800. Florencio Chavez, a former resident of Los Lunas claimed that he had been shown the rock by his maternal grandfather, Simon Serna, whose father had seen it as early as 1800. Serna himself was pretty old at the time he saw it.”

  After a pause to take another sip out of his thermos bottle Holliday continued, “Frank Hibben of the University of New Mexico examined the rock back in 1936 and at that time the rock was half covered in sand and covered with lichens. Unfortunately many people have been here since that time. Someone took a steel chisel and cleaned out the grooves removing the patina making it impossible to scientifically date the inscription.”

  “There is also the thing about the eclipse,” Holliday says. “In the year 2017, the citizens of New Mexico are going to be entertained by one of the most dramatic events which nature has to offer. In that year, according to Astrophysicists who know about such things, we will experience a total eclipse here in the Los Lunas area. During this kind of experience, the stars come out and are clearly visible in the middle of the day. An eclipse has occurred here before. Two thousand years ago it happened here. Surely the Anasazi saw it. From rock art found around the state, such as in Chaco Canyon, there is evidence that early people witnessed the event and in their own way recorded it for the rest of eternity.”

  “The thing is, if you take the Mystery Stone seriously there is evidence that non-Indian people also witnessed the event. Recently the remains of the red ocher people were discovered on the east coast in an area where no previous discovery of them had been known. In Brownsville, Texas there are rock carvings overlooking the Rio Grande where it deposits its water into the Gulf of Mexico. Those rock carvings or petroglyphs have a distinctly European influence. However they are disappearing quickly due to erosion and vandalism. It seems that for some myopic reason every generation of us humans think that we have all the right answers and those other poor unfortunate ones that have come before us didn’t know anything. Many feel superior only when making others appear; smaller.”

  Bill Holliday pointed at the trail that continued up the steep hill and said, “There is
more to look at on top of the hill.”

  I was intrigued at what the top of the hill looked like. I knew that at one time it was the top of a seething volcanic flow but what I found there was interesting.

  Bill Holliday explained as he pointed, “The top of the mesa is a fort. If you look closely you can see where a defensive fort has at one time been built. Of course there is little left now but you can certainly see the outlines of buildings that stood here a long time ago.

  June ventured a theory, “They look like European defensive works, like Masada.

  I asked, “What is a Masada?

  “Well, answered June, the ancients Israelites constructed a massive fort on top of a sandstone mountain similar to this one. They fought off the Romans for several months until the Romans built a giant ramp so they could bring siege machines to the top of the mountain. When they finally got there they discovered that all the Israelites had committed suicide rather than being captured by the Romans. To this day, Israel’s version of the CIA is called Masada in honor of their ancestors.

  Intrigued by what they learned everyone took a few days off and backpacked into the canyon where the pool was located. June was particularly intrigued by the pictographs. Over the years she had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t a question of who had discovered America first, but who hadn’t discovered America, well before Columbus.

  A Real Family

  Both Corey and I had to make decisions about our future. I was just in the prime of my young life and it was obvious that I was having an effect upon the young men I encountered. Hidalgo, on one occasion even said that I was a strikingly beautiful woman and he was actually serious when he said it. I rarely went into town but when I did I noticed that every boy I met did a double take. I was beginning to acquire that beauty that makes it difficult for a boy my age to sit and talk to me without being tongue tied. I was healthy and growing financially strong, and Corey had become my best friend. But the relationship was starting to change. We were beginning to look at each other differently. Not just a childhood infatuation but rather a mutual admiration. There was much more to it than just the physical attraction. We had become partners in life, depending upon each other for all kinds of things. We were becoming soul mates.

  Both Corey and I had finished our high school education but it was by taking tests sent by mail. We were home schooled, a necessity in this very isolated ranch country. This all seemed rather matter of fact for Corey but for me I missed sharing my senior year with old friends, and the sports I was always involved with would have been the crowning accomplishment of my senior year. With my grades I could have won scholarships. My entire life could have been different. I missed a multitude of friends, school dances and homecoming, a formal graduation rather than just simply receiving the diploma that arrived in the mail several weeks after I had completed my studies. I thought about the Robert Frost poem “The trail not taken,” and wondered about the trail I had not taken. Later, I was to learn that I had already learned from Aunt June and Uncle Ken more than most college graduates.

  Deep in my heart I even missed seeing my mother. Remembering the days leading up to my trip to Serpiente, the arguments, the yelling at each other and the hurt feelings bothered me but I was older and more mature now. We could put our differences aside.

  Both Corey and I wanted to go to college, but the responsibilities of living in Serpiente had, until now, taken up all our time. Now, we had time and more importantly money. Now we had the freedom to consider our futures but most importantly in our hearts we were conscious of our real treasure; biologically unrelated souls that had become a real family and lived in a place called Serpiente.

  Hidalgo’s Dilemma

  Now that he was financially secure and with his help his mother and father were now more secure, everyone seemed happy but Hidalgo, who wanted much more out of life. Unlike many other Navajos, Hidalgo had a ‘you only live once’ attitude. He decided to return to his personal studies.

  Being a Navajo, he had a very Indian view of the world. He lived in a metaphysical world very different from most other people, whether Indian or white. He still made a point to return to the reservation occasionally to take part in ceremonies such as the Blessing Way. Having a fancy car or house, meant nothing to him. He read constantly, a trait he had picked up from Ken and June who kept a personal library in their house. While other people spent their time staring at a plastic box with moving pictures of other people’s lives in it, he preferred to ride the countryside taking care of the ranch and thinking his own thoughts. He was accomplished in his own personal studies, he always took a book with him on those rides and when the sun climbed into the sky making it too uncomfortable to work he would hide away under the shade of a tree or cliff and read. Hidalgo was truly a self-educated man.

  Before coming to work for Ken and June on their ranch, a job that my father had arranged, Hidalgo had worked in Durango, Colorado as a deputy sheriff, a job he had enjoyed at first but soon found boring, dealing with the same drunks and petty thieves over and over, The tourists were fascinating to work with, at first, but soon that too became predictable. The tourist also made the same stupid mistakes, over and over and that was frustrating, but his biggest complaint about the job was the mischief that the kids on vacation got themselves into.

  Young kids, usually teenage boys, were being turned loose in a tourist town, usually without their parents having the foggiest ideas what they are doing. They were always getting into trouble in very predictable ways and when he tried to help them his personal belief system and his job came into conflict.

  It was always the same. The boys would get caught shoplifting, drinking beer or smoking marijuana, or even just fighting among themselves. They were then arrested. If their parents were fairly wealthy they could buy their way out of trouble with the help of one of the local lawyers who specialized in such work. But for most, and the more serious offenders, they were always put into a juvenile facility that was operated by a private company.

  Sometimes a person who was committed to spend a month there would find themselves serving almost a year before they were released. The guards were the ones who decided if an inmate was rehabilitated or cured. Meals cost the correctional facility about ten cents apiece yet it cost the parents one hundred and fifty dollars a day for their children to be there, all court mandated. The more inmates who occupied the facility and the longer they stayed in jail, the more money the facility made.

  The facility was always filled with teenagers. A portion of that extra money that the facility made was then kicked back to the judge who sentenced them there and the judge was becoming wealthy because of the kickbacks. Everyone seemed happy about this relationship between the county and the facility, but it didn’t set right with Hidalgo.

  Hidalgo had heard of a system that the Native Indians used in Alaska. There, minor offences were treated just like anywhere else, the youngster or his parents paid the fine. Some even spent time in a correctional institute just like in the lower forty eight. But hard core offenders were treated very differently. They were handcuffed, put aboard a small boat and then driven through icy cold water many miles away to a deserted island. There, they were left a small supply of food in a small cabin with a wood burning stove, a table, and a bunk.

  Being totally alone with no one else to blame for their problems, the offender was put into a survival situation. They were left there for months on end requiring them to take personal responsibility for themselves. The consequences of their actions were severe. If they loafed, they went without food. One young man in a fit of anger burned down the cabin just to be stubborn. When the first snow started to fall he found himself building another cabin with the very limited resources that were at hand. He was responsible for his own actions good or bad. The program worked, when they were allowed to return they were very changed individuals who had lost the hate and greed that sent them there.

  Hidalgo’s last year on the force had left him in a quandary w
hether to stay on the job or move on. When the corrupt judge was finally discovered through a tax audit it was discovered that he had been putting his money into an island estate in the Cayman Islands. By putting his money there he had avoided paying taxes and when discovered he quickly left the country. It was the final straw for Hidalgo.

  During the time Hidalgo was working in Durango, he spent his free time taking classes at Fort Lewis, the local college. There he studied law and criminology as well as his personal favorite subject, Native American history. At one time, Hidalgo even considered becoming a lawyer and then returning to the Navajo reservation and representing other Navajos who were constantly getting into trouble. That was the way it was, the same Navajos getting into trouble over and over. But more than anything else he wanted to become a detective. Maybe even a private detective.

  Hidalgo could not reconcile his feelings about justice and the way the county operated, so when the opportunity occurred he left the job. Hidalgo moved to Serpiente, after meeting Penny’s father who was in Durango taking a couple of days off from his job at the drill hole. Penny’s father had managed to get himself into a jackpot when a young lady and he collided on a busy sidewalk. In the excitement Penny’s Father hadn’t noticed that the girl had slipped her hand into his pocket and relieved him of his wallet that was passed off to her boyfriend. That wallet contained some fourteen hundred dollars. He reported the pickpocket to the police and Hidalgo was assigned to investigate the incident.