Return of the Bones: Inspired by a True Native American Indian Story

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

“Because you are empty and I do not see the fullness of life in you, Child. When you learn to live, when you learn to love unselfishly, when you learn to not want so much, then you will no longer be Hollow-Woman.”

  “Grandfather…” but he had silently left her, in his Shaman manner that could make him appear invisible.

  She sat until her leg cramped.

  She limped to the restroom, washed her face and by the time the bathroom door swung behind her, the cramp loosened. She shook her leg as she walked back to the camper, squinting at the moonless night.

  It seemed sunlight shone on the roof and windows and illuminated her dream catcher spinning above like a kaleidoscope. Flashing psychedelic colors made her feel like she tripped out on acid.

  Her bare feet no longer tingled like ice but felt scorched from the sun on a rough dirt road.

  Beside her shuffled an Indian woman like one of those Chinese ladies whose feet got broken and bound as a child. Dark circles shadowed her eyes and she was dressed like the ancients.

  “What year is this?” Hollow-Woman said in Towa.

  “It is the year of the Spanish Lord, 1638. My name is Lupe,” she said, bowing her head respectfully.

  Hollow-Woman introduced herself and offered to share some of the burden of the blankets she carried on her back like a burro.

  “I am young in years but hard work has molded my body into an old woman,” Lupe said, shrugging her shoulders like the load was nothing. Her back was bent and swollen. Her hands hung nearly to her knees. Her hair was prematurely grey and the lines of her face mapped her despair.

  There was a resemblance between her and the old woman. It was like looking into a mirror thirty years from now. Hollow-woman stumbled on the dirt road and bit her cheek which, God almighty stung like a bumble bee.

  “There is my home,” Lupe said, and pointed to the Pecos Pueblo that rose from the plains, a mile to the west, like rectangular mountain tops of sun-baked mud with windows here and there and brown faces staring out like dots.

  “Don Francisco stole much of our land and the water that runs nearby. Ah, I can see by your unbroken body that you are new to the pueblos. Our Royal Governor Luis de Rosas appointed Don Francisco as Encomendero of Pecos, so he is the boss we work for since the Spanish crown claims we are their vassals, and we must pay tribute to our Encomendero. We are the richest encomíenda,” Lupe said, lifting her chin proudly.

  “I still don’t understand,” Hollow-Woman said.

  “For three successive lifetimes Don Francisco and his heirs collect our tributes as his personal income tax but greed eats at that fat man so he is not satisfied with the corn and the animal skins we bring him. He forced us to the upper lands where the soil isn’t fertile and built a great hacienda. In exchange for our land, he gave us sheep. A few days later, he sent his men like thieves in the night and stole our sheep from us. Don Francisco snatched my husband from our fields so he could plant and harvest for him. Jose works their fields and has little time for our own land. Then, Jose must give Don Francisco half our corn crop to pay the taxes. Is it any wonder we starve while the Spanish grow fat?” Lupe said, spitting in the dirt but lacking saliva so all she managed was a hacking cough. “My mouth is so dry because of the drought that has lasted these many years.”

  “Can you not appeal to the Viceroy in Mexico?” Hollow-Woman said.

  “Bah, the Viceroy informed the Spanish here that an encomíenda does not include free labor, but these are empty words from a land far away. Along with summer, we look forward to the Taos Trade Fair to enrich us but this year the fair promises no relief from our hunger, no comfort from peyote buttons the Apaches trade for our goods, nor cotton for our clothing. This past spring, Jose came home from the trade fair with empty pockets. He traded all our goods but had to pay four times as much for the trade because that is the way the Spanish operated the fair, cheating so they can grow richer. Both Puebloans and plains Indians must pay the Spanish with one type of currency but are paid by the Spanish with another type of currency which is worth only a fourth. So, Jose came home poorer while the Spanish went home richer. We should boycott the trade fair but everyone fears what the Spanish will do. Instead of just kicking in our doors to beat us for not appearing penitent in church, they will make arrests and our men will vanish like before,” Lupe said.

  A wagon pulled in front at a fork in the road and they both jumped back.

  The statue of La Conquistadora, also known as the Virgin Mary, also called the Lady, bounced in the bed of the wagon and looked out from her glass travel case with a bored expression in her painted eyes.

  Franciscan friars marched beside the wagon, dust swirling around their blue robes, wooden rosaries clicking against their thighs. Each monk held a fiery torch above his head and chanted an eerie Spanish tune, an alabado, a hymn sung at funerals. Fray Alonso de Benavides, Agent of the Holy Inquisition, led their singing.

  Hollow-Woman and Lupe fell back a step because of the heat from the torches.

  “Perhaps these Franciscans are escorting the Lady to a witch burning,” Lupe whispered.

  The wagon hit a pothole, not unusual on a dirt road that rains sculpted. The Lady’s wooden head smashed against the top of the glass case causing a crack in the glass.

  The wagon bounced along until a wheel got stuck in a bigger pothole causing it to stop lopsided on the road.

  “Now’s our chance,” Lupe said, grabbing her hand and pulling her towards the wagon.

  With a screeching noise, the glass case slid to a corner of the wagon, causing the Lady to flatten her nose against the glass.

  Lupe pushed her face at the Lady and they stood nose-to-nose with the glass between them. Lupe’s fingers, thick with calluses, clawed at the glass.

  “I have prayed for you, Lady, to come to Nuevo México and see for yourself how your people suffer. Look how my hands have toiled to pay their encomíenda tax with blankets. The flesh falls from my hands to keep the Spanish warm,” Lupe said, pressing her blistered, raw palms against the glass.

  The Lady seemed to ignore her and stared straight ahead even though Lupe screamed and banged at the glass with her fists.

  “Even our children go hungry and die because we must pay our food taxes to the Spanish. The fools outlawed our rain-making ceremonies and so the land remains dry. Bah. They eat our food but do not protect us from the Apaches. Our gods punish us for worshipping the God of the Spanish. This is why the land is so dry. And you…we gave up our gods for you, who do nothing to help us, Lady.” Lupe’s eyes reflected loss, and a tear fell from her eye as she fell to her knees, begging. “They barged into my house in the middle of the night and took my little girls as slaves and sent them across the great waters to Spain. I’ll never see my girls again.”

  Hollow-Woman knew the sorrow of losing an unborn baby, how much more painful to lose a living child. Even though they stared straight into her eyes, the Lady seemed to avoid their eyes.

  “You keep poor company, Lady,” Hollow-Woman said, pointing her finger at the agents of the Inquisition who pushed the back of the wagon, trying to remove the wheel from the pothole.

  “Do not leave your work to men. The friars do not see our suffering,” Lupe said, jabbing a finger at the glass and hissing.

  One monk looked right through Lupe as he worked at the broken wheel, but he cocked the hood of his robe in their direction, and so she lowered her head to whisper in the Lady’s wooden ear.

  “The monks do hear our complaints though and whip us for them. I must warn you, Lady, my words will pain you. Friar MartÃnez raped my niece and slit her throat. He buried her in his convent cell at Los Taos,” Lupe said, crossing her chest in the Catholic way. “Everyone at Taos Pueblo knows of this but is afraid to speak against the friar. Beware of the Franciscans who claim to be celibate. I would hide that ring if I was you; even you are not safe from their greed. Keep your eyes open; you have performed miracles, my Lady, so the Inquisition may arrest you for being a witch.”

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nbsp; Lupe covered her head with a scarf and motioned Hollow-Woman to follow as she shuffled away, carrying her load of blankets. The weight of her sorrows humped her back.

  “Look out,” Hollow-Woman yelled at Lupe but was too late.

  A wagon went barreling by and hit her.

  Lupe lay beneath the heavy wheel, screaming.

  A Spaniard sat atop the wagon and whipped Lupe to try to get her to move so the wheel in her gut would become unstuck.

  “My Lady,” Lupe screamed, lifting her arms to the statue of the Virgin Mary, “Save me.”

  The friar, who fixed the wheel, rose from his knees and his hood slid from his head. His skull shone in the sunlight and malevolence lined his facial bones as darkness swirled in his empty eye sockets. He lifted a skeletal hand to the Lady’s cage and scraped his bony fingers down the glass.

  “Ugh.” Hollow-Woman gasped for breath, now lying on the mattress. The camper was dirty white in color and no longer psychedelic. Her dream catcher hung motionless from the ceiling.

  She hugged with shivering arms the wooden slab, the Patrona of Pecos, the Lady who represented the Virgin Mary, so important to the survivors; they would rather starve than leave her behind at the crumbling pueblo. She wished for even a spark of Lupe’s faith. Even though Lupe lay beneath a wagon wheel, she had cried to the Lady to save her. Even though her daughters were shipped across an ocean to work as slaves in Spanish households, her faith remained. How many other children did the Spanish kidnap? What a terrible ordeal for Indian children, enslaved as household servants in Spain, to inhabit a culture so different than their own. At least, children enslaved in the New Mexico colony lived closer to home and perhaps their parents could glimpse them occasionally.

  “Save me, Lady,” she mumbled to the block of wood but could not muster any passion in her voice, nor conviction, nor hope. Her words fell flat, the affliction of a woman who didn’t really believe…in anything.

  Her hand relaxed and slid across the slab of wood, and a splinter lodged at the base of her thumb. The splinter stung sharply but she was helpless to remove it, because her dream catcher spun rapidly, hypnotizing her. The direction of the breeze on her face blew counter-clockwise. The breeze did not cool her.

  Instead of her nightgown, rich clothing spun from gold draped across her body. A silver lace mantilla flowed to her feet. An enormous gold necklace hung from her neck and weighed down her chest. Her heart sounded like a woodpecker knocking against a tree. She couldn’t move her eyebrows and her mouth splintered when she tried to smile.

  She stood in the center of this grand mud-baked plaza before, in the old part of Santa Fe where little has changed in hundreds of years. Old Santa Fe, in modern times, still has the look of a Spanish colonial town situated 7,000 feet high near a stream that flows from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and spills into the Río Grande.

  She cuffed a hand to her brow to block out the sun, and peered at the dusty road, but there was only dirt where New Santa Fe should have been. In old Santa Fe, the Palace of the Governors dwarfed all the other buildings. The palace was a low rectangular one-story adobe building, an entire block long, with a carved open porch supported by wooden posts. The porch bordered the entire building.

  She recently toured the Palace of the Governors, the oldest continuously occupied building in the United States, in modern day a state history museum. Oñate originally planned the Palace of the Governors and his successor, Peralta, completed the building. The sign hanging in front of the building now differed in that it was not in English, like modern times, but in Spanish. The words proclaimed: El Palaio de el Gobernadoros, establecido 1610 por orden de Nuevo España, which translates to: The Palace of the Governors established 1610 by order of New Spain.

  The sign listed names of various Spanish colonial offices housed at the Palace, beginning with the most important office, that of Governor Luis de Rosas, appointed governor of New Mexico, 1637.

  Still dressed like a Spanish noble woman, she didn’t want to draw attention to her dark Indian skin because she feared being accused of theft. She tugged at the necklace to draw it around her head, but the necklace was short and the clasp stuck so it would not open. The emerald and ruby rings on her fingers were too tight to come off. She tucked her hands under her arms and walked with her head bowed. Dust soon covered her rich clothing and silk robe.

  No one seemed to notice her along the porch anyway. Spanish soldiers and government officials lingered with their noses in the air. Other men slapped important-looking papers in their hands and marched into offices. Others marched out of offices, some with a smile on their faces, many with a frown.

  In the middle of the street a Spanish soldier whirled his arm above his head and whipped several Indians who had their heads bowed low. One of the Indians, a woman, cried out in pain and held a hand to her bleeding cheek.

  Due to her long robe, Hollow-Woman stumbled, regained her balance and didn’t actually fall though her clumsiness drew the attention of a soldier. He stopped whipping the Indians, stepped in front of her, and smacked her across the face with the back of his hand. He cussed at her in Spanish. Even given her rich Spanish clothing, an Indian had no right to walk across the porch of the Palace of the Governors. In present day, Native Americans sit on the porch with their legs crossed, selling their jewelry on homespun blankets as colorful as rainbows. What was the punishment in ancient times for an Indian who dared set foot on the porch of the Palace of the Governors to seek refuge from the hot sun?

  The soldier stood with one fist raised above his head. He blinked his eyes at the necklace entangled in her long hair.

  A carriage arrived and saved her from a beating and questioning. Dust blew about the wheels, creating quite a stir.

  The officer spun away from her, snapped his heels, and saluted the black carriage with a fancy-looking emblem painted on the side of the door.

  She breathed a sigh of relief because the arrival of the carriage spared her an explanation of why she masqueraded as a Spanish lady.

  The carriage ground to a halt; the officer opened the door, bowed and helped down a small, well-fed man who teetered on high-heeled boots.

  The fat man wiped the sweat from his brow with an embroidered handkerchief. He looked up to the lean officer with a wolfish face and moustache. “You have news for me, Capítan Gutierrez?” he said.

  “We carried out the slave raid as ordered. We killed around seventy Apaches but captured twenty-five. They are able-bodied and can replace the sixteen Puebloans who died in your sweatshops last week. The extra nine you can sell for a hefty profit at Nueva Vizcaya.”

  “I have also brought prisoners with me from the Pecos Pueblo. Chavez and his men are escorting the slaves. The Pecos claim the Apache refuse to trade buffalo hides and meat for the knives we gave them to trade for us. They returned empty-handed so now, I’ll have to work the hide off the prisoners in exchange for my loss.”

  “Who can blame the Apaches for not wanting to trade food? With a drought that’s lasted five years?” Capítan Gutierrez said.

  “We must demand even more tribute from the Puebloans then.”

  “Uh, Governor,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow and shaking in his boots. “Fray Domingo de Espíritu ex-communicated the guards you appointed to watch over the prison cell of Fray Antonio Jiménez.”

  “How dare Fray Espíritu interfere in my business! Fray Jiménez disrupted my trade profits at Pecos.”

  “But Fray Jiménez is more than sixty years old. It seems cruel to imprison him.”

  “Don’t go soft on me,” de Rosas said, narrowing his eyes.

  “This appointment is an affront against you to undermine your governing,” Capítan Gutierrez said, snapping his heels together.

  “I understand the Inquisition blames me for the death of Fray Miranda at Taos. I did not tell the Indians to murder their missionary, only to disobey him. The friars are such hypocrites. They run their conventos like a general store and the Indians as if
they are cattle. I do not work children in my sweatshops as they do; the children turn a better profit when sold to Spain and are treated more humanely as household slaves. I will deal with the custos, Fray Espíritu, myself. He holds another grudge against me because I have recently shutdown one of these sweatshops run by the friars. Come, my friend, join me in a glass of wine. At this rate, our ribs will be sticking out of our chests like the Indians,” De Rosas said, slapping him on the back.

  The fat little governor strutted into the palace, followed by the swarthy captain.

  At her feet, an Indian lay on the dirt. He appeared starving. His chest rattled as he struggled for every breath.

  She also labored to breathe due to her heavy rich clothing. Fog blew from between her lips and the air grew cold.

  She held her hands to her face, expecting to see her fingers dripping with rubies and emeralds but instead, her wedding ring flashed at her. Like Cinderella, her rich gown was transformed back into her raggedy nightgown. Above her, the dream catcher twirled slowly as though winking at her.

  She ran her hands down the front of her bathrobe which resembled an old-fashioned rug that made her want to curl up, like a cat, in front of a roaring fire. The robe held up to the test of time because the best seamstress in the world, Old-Woman, the only female of any influence in her life, sewed it. She had treated Old-Woman so poorly, not realizing until her death how much she loved her wrinkles, and the smell of her oven-baked skin powdered with rising breasts of yeast and gobs of butter for moisturizer. Old-Woman was her first regret. She should have treated her like a grandmother instead of snarling at her and showing her claws like a feral kitten. Even in old age, bent with a hump on her back, Old-Woman had slaved over her as though Hollow-Woman was her own flesh and blood. She had tried her best to be the peacemaker between Hollow-Woman and Grandfather. Her eyes had been weak with cataracts when she had sewed her final gift by hand, her arthritic fingers working the needle though it pained her. Even after all these years the robe she made for her still smelled like fried bread and honey.