by Vella Munn
“How many men did Gregorio bring with him?” he made himself ask. “Enough to force many of our people to go with him?”
“Only four, but Cougar, there are other soldiers already here. All of those—how can our people fight them?”
She wanted an answer he couldn’t give her. “First I must speak to Morning Butterfly, try to free her and make her safe.”
“No, do not take that risk,” she whispered. “My sister has reached the padre’s heart, and he will not let anything bad happen to her. I believe he will fight to have my people remain here so he can continue to save our souls and because”—she gave a short, mirthless laugh—“so we can build his church.”
“Perhaps there will be a battle between the padre and the others.”
“There is only one of him, yes, but he carries his god with him and the Spanish fear that god. Maybe . . . maybe he will win and the others will leave.”
If there’d been time for ceremony and dry paintings, that might come to pass, but he was alone tonight—alone and afraid for the woman who’d touched his heart and soul.
“If the slaver wins, my people will not resist,” Singer of Songs whispered. “We will be like sheep, hiding from the memory of what happened at Acoma. I would rather be dead than live anywhere except here, but I do not know how to fight.”
True, but the Navajo did.
• • •
“I have never doubted your military expertise,” Gregorio said, “but by all that is holy, I do not understand your present course of action.”
“It is not necessary for you to comprehend everything I do,” the captain returned. “Just that you trust me to turn the current situation to both our advantages.”
Gregorio snorted. “I would like to, but how can I?” He rubbed his eyes with his large fingers and yawned. “Perhaps I did not adequately explain myself, but it was certainly never my intention to rob the Church of souls, even heathen souls. I intend to reassure Fray Angelico of that since the last thing either you or I need is to incur any more of his wrath. After all, the Franciscans, despite their pious appearance, are a powerful force and the Church’s influence extends—”
“You do not have to remind me of that.”
“Hm. It is indeed a delicate balance we must walk.” Gregorio leaned forward, and although they were alone in the tent except for a bound and silent Morning Butterfly, he lowered his voice. “I am going to ask you a question, and I expect an honest answer. The only way for you and me to profit by our relationship is by being totally open with each other.”
As if I’m enough of a fool to do that. “Certainly.”
“I—no, I think I will begin with a bit of a background, a reminder if you will. Your family’s fortunes never fully recovered from the disastrous consequences of what happened to your grandfather, true?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
“Indeed I do, indeed I do. I have no doubt you sought my daughter’s hand as part of a plan to improve your position. You saw marriage to her not as a love match, but as a financial one, did you not?”
Lopez shrugged and allowed himself a small smile. Why shouldn’t he? After all, he and Gregorio had already had this conversation.
“As for myself, I had four daughters to settle in advantageous marriages. Bonita is not, how shall I put it, gentle-natured or over-blessed in intellect. The best I hoped for was to give her a prestigious name, which you supplied. And now I have a grandson, an heir, which, you trust, makes me even more favorably disposed toward you. You are right, but what I feel when I contemplate the infant’s future only goes so far.”
“I would do the same if I was in your position.”
Lopez glanced over at Morning Butterfly, but she gave no indication she understood what they were talking about. How could she when she had no comprehension of the world beyond this miserable place?
“I hope to live many more years,” Gregorio said, “but who knows what God has decided in that regard. I need to have my estate settled. I will need a competent overseer, a master capable of taking charge of my holdings—who is as ambitious and determined as I have been.”
“Yes, you will.”
It was Gregorio’s turn to smile. “You know what I am driving at, do you not?” He’d settled back in his chair but now leaned forward again, causing the wood and leather to protest. “The position can be yours, if . . .”
If what, old man?
“If I turned my land over to you at this moment, what would be your priority?”
He didn’t have to think about the answer. “Increasing the workforce so the land would be even more profitable than it already is.”
“And how do you propose to acquire this workforce?”
“Through slaves, of course.” Out of the corner of his eyes, he noted Morning Butterfly’s sudden alarm.
“Hopi slaves? How do you propose to wrench them free from the Church?”
“Not Hopi. Navajo.”
Gregorio nodded but said nothing.
“The Church has little use for them,” Lopez continued. “In fact, I have no doubt that Fray Angelico and his fellow priests would like nothing more than to be rid of the entire tribe.”
“And how do you propose to round them up? They are wild animals.”
Turning from his father-in-law, Lopez directed his response at Morning Butterfly. “By baiting the trap,” he said.
His grandfather, Don Juan de Oñate of Zacatecas, had worn the title Governor and Captain General, which had once made him the new colony’s highest judicial officer. The drive to accomplish at least a small amount of what his grandfather had managed consumed Lopez. The time when a man could become lord and master of everything his eye beheld was past, but with luck he would one day step into Gregorio de Barreto’s shoes. However, he wanted something to call his own.
No, not just something. The legend of the Seven Cities of Gold, which had prompted the initial expeditions north from New Spain was just that, a legend. However, this country was wealthy—but not just in slaves.
Emeralds were everything, his salvation and pride—once their location was finally revealed by the miserable Navajo when they’d become his captives!
And then, finally, he would no longer question what his life was about.
• • •
“First People lived with wisdom flowing through them. They understood that the earth, like them, was alive. The earth was their mother. First People were made from her flesh and suckled at her breast. Her milk was the grass upon which all animals grazed, and corn had been created specially to supply food for mankind.”
One Hand straightened and looked around the kiva at the assembled men. They were all looking at him, their expressions both grave and expectant.
“The corn plant was also a living thing with a body much like man’s,” he continued. “And the people brought its flesh into their own, making corn, too, their mother. Thus First People had two mothers, Earth and Corn.”
“Yes, yes,” the men muttered in unison.
“It was the same with their father. He was Sun, the solar god of the universe, and it wasn’t until he appeared before First People at the time of the red light, Talawva, that they became fully formed. Yet Sun’s face was but the face through which Taiowa, the Creator, looked. These things, thus, were First People’s true parents. Their human parents were but the instruments through which their power manifested itself.”
“Yes, yes.”
Outside, the sun had already risen, but although his bones needed its warmth, One Hand’s need for the kiva was stronger. “I speak of these things because in this time of change, it is important that we remember our beginning.”
“We are like a newborn,” Sun in the Sky said, his voice equally low and somber. “An infant spends its first twenty days with a perfect ear of corn beside it because that is Corn Mother. The infant sleeps in darkness because although its body is of this world, he is still under the protection of his universal parents. In darkness
, with Corn Mother beside us, we are at peace. Safe.”
“Sun in the Sky, I do not find fault with your words, but it comes to me that we cannot think of ourselves as infants. We have not been washed with water in which cedar has been brewed, and fine white cornmeal has not been rubbed over our bodies since we became men. I wish,” he told the Bear Clan elder, “that all of us could nurse from Earth Mother’s breast, but our feet do not walk that way.”
Sun in the Sky frowned but didn’t say anything. One Hand would have liked nothing better than to speak of the rituals and ceremonies that guided all Hopi throughout their lives, but the men who shared the kiva with him knew those things, and if he was going to help his people, he had to do more.
“My dreams have long been of things I could not bring myself to speak of and they were born of memories of this.” He indicated his stump. “I buried my nightmares within me, at least I told myself I did, but one among us knew the truth.”
Morning Butterfly’s father and another man nodded, making him wonder how many had been aware of what he’d thought had been his secret. It didn’t matter.
“The time has come for me to live beyond those nightmares. I looked at Morning Butterfly’s courage and gave silent thanks to her for showing me the way, but I cannot lean on her. Instead, I have to find my own truth. My own wisdom.”
“That is good.”
“My journey is not complete and it may never be, but ever since the newcomers arrived, I have opened my heart to Hopi wisdom as never before. That is what I wish to speak about today.”
He waited for encouragement, but all he saw were expectant faces, faces as familiar as his own.
“My thoughts are of Tokpa, the Second World.”
“Where First People were sent when they forgot how to be pure and happy.”
He nodded agreement with Sun in the Sky. “Tokpela, Endless Space, is where we would still be if the First People had not lost their way, but they did, and that, I believe, is what has happened again.”
“How can that be?” Wanderer demanded. “We conduct our ceremonies as we always have. During Niman it rained, did it not? What more proof do we need—”
“It rained only a little,” he interrupted the senior chief. “Because our hearts were not pure.”
Several clan heads disagreed, but he waited them out. As he did, he placed both his whole hand and the stump on the ground and imagined earth’s life force flowing into him.
“Our hearts are not pure,” he repeated. “Not because we have forgotten ancient truths, but because strangers, who do not understand that these rocks and dirt are part of us, walk on our land. The padre speaks of a god unfamiliar to us, a god Hopi land has no need of.”
“That is true, but we do not dare tell the padre that.”
“Morning Butterfly has tried. Perhaps her words have reached his heart; perhaps, because he is not Hopi, he cannot hear them.”
One Hand explained Morning Butterfly’s conversations with Cougar, his voice thick with emotion.
“Why a Navajo accepts Hopi wisdom while the Spanish cannot is not for me to say,” he concluded. “We cannot turn the newcomers from what they are; we can only be Hopi—more Hopi than we have been since their arrival.”
He expected more disagreement from the clan leaders, but all they did was study him.
“Go with me back to when First People lived in Tokpela, when they stopped being pure and happy and were banished to Tokpa. How did that happen?”
“Before that, they multiplied and spread over the face of the land as the Creator told them to do,” Wanderer supplied. “Although they were of different colors and spoke different languages, they breathed as one and understood one another without talking.”
“Yes,” One Hand agreed. “It was the same with the birds and animals. They all suckled at the breast of Mother Earth, who gave them her milk of grass, seeds, fruit, and corn. People and animals, they all felt as one. But then—”
He took a long, calming breath before continuing. “Then came some who forgot the commands of Sotuknang and Spider Woman to respect their Creator. They used their vibratory centers for earthly purposes instead of carrying out the plan of Creation, and were punished. This is where my thoughts have been, on how Sotuknang treated those whose hearts still had a song in them.
“Sotuknang caused the world to teeter off balance, spin around, and roll over. Mountains plunged into seas, seas and lakes splashed over the land, and the world spun through cold and lifeless space, freezing into solid ice. But those with songs in their hearts were spared and placed in the underground world where they lived happy and warm until the world once again began to rotate on its axis. The ground”—again he pressed his flesh against the earth—“the ground became their home and they were safe because they believed.
“The world is teetering off balance again,” he finished. “And if we are to survive, we must trust, body and soul, in Mother Earth.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
After feeding and watering his exhausted horse, Cougar announced he had something of great importance to discuss inside the sweat lodge.
Now, surrounded by relatives, clan members, and fellow warriors, he passed on what he’d learned from Singer of Songs. He’d told the young woman she would be safe with his people and asked her to come with him, but she’d explained that even if she could leave her sister, her parents needed her. In the end, he’d clasped her hand and vowed to do whatever he had to in order to free Morning Butterfly.
“My sister says courage runs through you,” said Singer of Songs. “I believe her, and know that what lives in a man’s heart is more important than the tribe he belongs to.”
He couldn’t look into the hearts of the newcomers, but the fact that the captain had imprisoned Morning Butterfly deeply disturbed him. Before anyone could ask why it mattered so much to him, he explained that not just the padre but the soldiers, too, depended on her to communicate with the Hopi.
“She sacrificed a great deal and spent much time away from her people because she sought peace between Hopi and Spanish,” he said. “Despite her own beliefs, she walked beside the padre and gave his words to her people. For that she was rewarded by being made a prisoner.”
“If the padre sets great store by her, he should free her.”
“He is but one man.”
“What concern is it of ours, Cougar?” Drums No More asked. “We share the same land with the Hopi, but that does not mean their problems are ours.”
“She ate with us and listened to Navajo words and prayers,” he reminded him. “She did not step on our beliefs.”
“No, she did not. But those things do not make her, or her people, Navajo. Cougar, I watched when the two of you were together and know your heart walks with hers. Perhaps that thing has made you forget that your first heartbeat was Navajo—and can be nothing else.”
“I have not forgotten.”
“Have you not? Cougar, I am an old man, and yet I remember what it is to be in love. It is a wonderful time, new and exciting, but I caution you—that emotion is not everything.”
He hadn’t called this gathering to talk about what he felt for Morning Butterfly, and he certainly didn’t want to be told she might have turned him from the path he’d always followed.
“Her people will not free her, so I will make the attempt, but I do not want to do so alone,” he said as evenly as possible. “I also wish for the Hopi to look at the Navajo and learn to be cougars, not deer. Otherwise, they will become slaves.”
In response to their puzzled expressions, he explained that the captain’s father-in-law, a landowner, was searching for a way to make his property even more productive. Everyone had heard about the taking of slaves, and a number of Navajo from other villages had been kidnapped and never seen again. Still, as long as the Spanish were interested only in Hopi laborers, his fellow tribesmen believed they were safe. He disagreed.
“Morning Butterfly is the voice of her people,” he continued. “Throu
gh her, the Spanish have learned what little they know about the Hopi, but now they have silenced her and with that act, thrown her people into darkness. I cannot, will not allow that!”
“If it was anyone except Morning Butterfly,” Drums No More asked, “would you still say that?”
“To be Hopi or Navajo is not so different,” he said. “And it has come to me that if the padre says they cannot take a single Hopi, they may come after us.”
Several of the men nodded uneasily, but although his brow furrowed, Drums No More simply pointed out they had no way of knowing that.
“No,” he agreed. “But Morning Butterfly can tell us those things.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. My grandson, I do not wish to bring you grief. It would please me to give your heart peace, but what if you free her? Perhaps she will be safe here, but I fear her presence would place us in danger.”
“We are already in danger!” Shocked by his sharp tone, he tried to gather his thoughts but only partially succeeded. “Grandfather, Morning Butterfly and I are wiser together than we are apart. We each bring wisdom to the other. If the Navajo reach out to the Hopi, if we say something about who we are and our courage by freeing her, then the Hopi will no longer see us as their enemies. United, Hopi and Navajo can repel the newcomers.”
Although the various tribes traded with one another, no one had ever suggested they take up arms together against a common enemy. Still, he could tell his people were carefully weighing his words. Several agreed with him, and Blue Swallow pointed out that Hopi knowledge of the soldiers’ strengths and weaknesses was greater than theirs. However, Drums No More continued to scowl, as did most of those his age, which concerned Cougar, not just because this was his grandfather, but because the words of the elders carried the most weight when decisions were made.