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

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  Since Old-Woman lived with Grandfather from the time Hollow-Woman was six until her death, she was sort of a step-grandmother and passed away when Hollow-Woman was fourteen. Only then did the role she played in her life hit her like bags of month-old bread. Her heart of stone had shattered at her death and she had run screaming behind her coffin, begging Old-Woman not to leave her all alone with Grandfather. To come back and be her mother. She promised to be like her, kind, patient and forgiving.

  For weeks she had sat, paralyzed, unable to believe that Old-Woman was gone. Every day she visited her grave until the weeds grew so tall, she could no longer find her and the piercing wound in her heart shrunk to a tumbleweed prick at the memory of Old-Woman.

  She now stroked the robe against her cheek and felt wrinkled hands cup her cheeks; kind eyes stare down at her and a gentle smile brighten her day. No matter how much abuse she hurled at her, all Old-Woman ever returned was a smile and a twinkle from her eye.

  Hollow-Woman dug her fingernail into a splinter that lodged from the wooden slab of the Patrona to the base of her thumb. She could not extract the splinter from beneath her skin, which proved she was made from wood after all because of her cruelty to Old-Woman. Youth is so wasted on the foolish. Contrarily, she was not made from wood because wood must contract and expand with the seasons of life whereas she was always stubborn and unbendable.

  Chapter Ten

  Now that they were only about six hours from Washington D.C., he woke her at five in the morning and paced in circles, anxious to leave Columbus. He promised to rest and spent most of the drive with his eyes closed. He snored lightly a good majority of the trip but still looked exhausted when they drove into the nation’s capital.

  They stopped for lunch, which did wonders for both their dispositions.

  They cleaned up in the bathrooms and he changed into a crisply starched, wrinkled shirt.

  The pickup started with a slight spark from the ignition, which worried her. A friend of Steve’s checked the truck out thoroughly before their trip and it had passed with flying colors.

  She parked at the NAGPRA offices located at the National Park Service on Eye Street so, it felt like big brother spied on them as her truck sputtered and coughed, then ground to a halt.

  They walked into the NAGPRA offices.

  Let them all stare as if she and Grandfather just stepped off a boat from the muddy Río Grande.

  Her ragged tennis shoes flapped against the floor like a bag lady, with dusty briefcase with faded cactus print banging against her torn-jean knee.

  Grandfather pounded his blackened ceremonial staff as if he was somebody, the Pecos ghost pueblo governor, sovereign with no subjects save skeletons and his smashed crown a magical hat with broken feather. All decked out in rainbow colored shirt, adorned with squash blossom necklace, his arthritic fingers dripping with turquoise. He hugged Alfred V. Kidder’s diary with a pleading look on his face, appearing as if he might fall down on his rickety knees and beg for the bones. Gone was the pride of a Kachina priest who ruled the sun. His eyes bugged out from a haggard, blood-drained face. His belt was wrapped one and a half times around the waist of his stained khaki pants that had the remnants of runny eggs. Any minute now, he might poop his pants.

  She hid behind dark glasses, embarrassed because he had looped his burlap sack around his narrow belt, fearing someone might break into their camper and steal the dream catcher. The burlap sack dragged against the floor, sifting the dust of the Pecos ruins with NAGPRA dirt and coming up with dust balls.

  After waiting for an hour while she held Grandfather up by his arms, she rocked in a stiff Yankee chair while the woman at a desk eyed them with anxiety, shuffling papers, clicking her pen, avoiding eye contact. The woman must have heard about mal ojo—the evil eye.

  Hollow-Woman hummed a nonsensical tune Grandfather taught her when needing to ward off the evil spirits. The tune worked as a child growing up at Jemez, but her stomach churned as the woman overlooked their paperwork. The poison was strong today and she gritted her teeth at the rude woman who questioned their documents, including the ones mailed them by NAGPRA. The woman gawked at them, as if they were the first Native Americans she ever saw with flesh on their bones; apparently, NAGPRA did not get many claimants in person.

  Hollow-Woman lifted her head and her hair, like black curtains, parted to reveal her piercing chocolate-brown eyes. Once more she explained their purpose, and long trip.

  “Look at my grandfather, how old and tired he is. He has waited nearly a century to reunite with his bones, miss.”

  “His bones?” the woman said, laughing nervously.

  Grandfather looked right through the woman, obviously having taken a dislike to her the minute they sat down. It seemed he thought her even more clueless than she about ancestral bonds.

  Hollow-Woman dug her fingernails into the wooden arms of the chair to keep from jumping up and slithering across the desk. This white-starched woman appeared afraid of them. There was a sign which stated that NAGPRA was under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior, namely Fish and Wildlife and Parks. She hugged her stomach, which trembled with laughter, because they had classified Native American bones as wildlife.

  “The bones are my family,” Grandfather croaked and Hollow-Woman knew what it cost him as he begged with his eyes for the woman to help him.

  Finally, all was in order; NAGPRA approved their grant but they would have to wait until tomorrow to pick up the paperwork which required signatures, since it was so late in the day.

  Smiling with few teeth in his mouth, Grandfather shook hands with the woman and her boss.

  He let out a deep satisfying breath when they exited the building.

  She placed her arm through his and kissed his cheek.

  “Let’s go visit Popé,” she said.

  “The famous witch from San Juan Pueblo, Popé, died centuries ago,” he said, giving her an astonished look.

  “Ah, but he is here, Governor, in our nation’s capital for all to admire.”

  Chapter Eleven

  He was clearly puzzled as they drove to the Capitol building. It was four in the afternoon and their shoes sounded hollow as they toured the National Statuary Hall and a semicircular room draped in hot pink and red with gold braid. Here, statues of notable persons lined the hall. Each state was allowed two statues, for a total of one hundred. Representing New Mexico, a statue of Popé stood amongst the likes of the founding fathers of the United States, the heroes of the American Revolution, and other larger-than-life figures. His statue was seven-feet tall and carved from pink Tennessee marble, making his statue the only colorful one in the collection.

  The text identifying his statue stated that his name was pronounced Pó-pay, which means Ripe Squash. The words described his famous public whipping in the year 1675, after the Spanish Inquisition arrested him for witchcraft. After the 1680 Indian Pueblo Revolt, he became leader of all the pueblos until his death in 1692. Without Popé to plan and lead the rebellion, the pueblo peoples’ culture would have been snuffed out by the Inquisition that held colonial New Mexico in an iron grip of religious fanaticism.

  His statue was so realistic, whipping scars carved on his back dug into the marble.

  Grandfather touched his statue with wonder, rubbing the deer hide blanket draped around one shoulder and patting the ankle-length moccasins.

  “Like Moses, Popé is our deliverer,” he said.

  “The Pueblo Revolt is what the American Revolution was to the American Colonists. He is our George Washington,” she said.

  “I admire his courage and his passion, which moved him to build an army to defeat the Spanish. Even the Spanish always referred to him as El Popé with great respect, even when they whipped him and especially when they ran from him across the Río Grande. He saved our rituals and way of life. In those days there were not nineteen pueblos like today. The Puebloans lived in seventy multi-storied adobe towns. There were nine basic languages and many cou
ld not speak the same tongue. The pueblos were located some distance from each other, scattered about New Mexico like chiseled ant hills.

  “How did he bring the pueblos together to attack on the same day?” she said.

  “He did it with this,” he said, patting a knotted rope Popé held in his hands.

  The statue of Popé had a wide-eyed look like even he was astonished he managed to drive the Spanish from New Mexico. It was no surprise that in all her years at boarding school the Indian Pueblo Revolt was never mentioned by the nuns, who were Spanish or white.

  “He was the most masterful witch who ever lived and smart as the whip the Spaniards laid upon his back. The pueblos have always used their kivas for council, and he summoned in his Taos kiva three supernatural beings, Kachinas, whom he communed with for five years patiently planning the rebellion, the most successful Indian revolt in history. The fact that Popé could get all the pueblos to revolt against their Spanish subjugators on the same day was pure magic. Do you know where the ogre Kachina, Yowi, got his nickname from?” he said.

  She recalled the doll-size wooden Kachina Grandfather gave her for her eighth birthday. Forget Barbie dolls, she had doll-like creatures of Pueblo gods. Over the years she collected a large number of wood-carved Kachinas standing on little wooden circles in her living room, each twelve or fourteen inches tall, each appropriately posed, each colorfully painted, each with accessories like her first Kachina, Yowi, who held a bloody knife in one hand and in the other hand a severed head.

  “Yowi is the priest killer,” Grandfather had explained when he handed her the Kachina.

  Yowi had slipped from her fingers and the wooden head Yowi held broke from his hand and rolled across the floor.

  “I remember as a child I broke the Kachina Yowi, and you said he would punish me for my carelessness. Yowi’s alligator face has terrified me ever since,” she said.

  “Indeed, you should be scared because Yowi is Punisher Kachina. He beheaded Catholic priests during the Pueblo Revolt. I believe he was one of the Kachinas in the kiva summoned by Popé to help win the war against the Spanish. From the Shipapu of the kivas, the doorway to the gods, Popé summoned Kachinas from their sacred waters beneath the earth so that all across New Mexico, friars were beheaded and torched. Their missions burned. All that remained of the second church built at Pecos was ashes.”

  The archaeologist’s diary had an entry for July where he wrote about discovering a hidden kiva. He said: Perhaps the kiva was dug in the twelve years between 1680, when the Indians drove out the Spanish and 1692, when the Spanish returned to rebuild a new church atop the old church. The second possibility is the Spanish dug the hidden kiva, and the friars built their church above on purpose, as a symbol of their religion’s superiority over that of the Indians, in much the same way the priests earlier subjugated the Puebloans and enslaved them to build their churches. It was growing dark when we made our discovery and I don’t know yet how safe the kiva is to enter. Tomorrow we shall see. There is a chill in the air and it feels like fall. I’ve asked my servant for another wooly blanket.

  “Look, the artist of Popé’s statue is from Jemez,” she said.

  “That should make you proud since you claim to be Jemez and not Pecos.”

  She placed her arm around his shoulders and pushed him through the Capitol building exit. “Popé brought the pueblos together. Let us not you and I fight,” she said.

  “Our nation’s government is not so stupid after all. The U.S. has redeemed itself, in my eyes, by putting up a statue to a man such as Popé,” he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  They camped at Cherry Hill Park, the closest campground to Washington D.C. Both seemed more relaxed since their journey began. She talked and laughed on her cell phone with Steve.

  He smoked his ceremonial pipe, closing his eyes, obviously savoring the tobacco.

  They had eaten well, thanks to their promised grant from NAGPRA.

  “Read me more tales of the man whose fascination with Pecos endangered his soul,” he said.

  He would never understand basic concepts of archaeology. She rolled her eyes and opened the diary, holding the pages up to the light.

  “August 17, 1915.

  Given the brutality of what happened here when the Indians finally rebelled against the Spanish after so many years of oppression, we believe the church wall is from the rebuilding after the Spanish returned in 1692. I’m not Catholic, yet I was moved by the jagged ruins of this ancient church, and fell to my knees, bowed my head, and said a prayer for the priests who were murdered here in 1680 when the Indians rose up against the Spanish.”

  “The priests who were murdered there,” Grandfather said, mockingly.

  “Sh. He goes on to talk about the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “My historian tells me the war between church and state escalated as the Inquisition tightened its grip, making lives miserable for both the Indians and Spanish settlers, but especially the Indians. The Puebloans often ran for their lives, leaving behind all their possessions, except for turkeys bundled beneath their arms and their precious sacred feathers. Often the friars chopped off their hair as punishment for idolatry. Fray Alonso de Posada, Head Agent of the Inquisition stationed at Pecos from 1662 to 1665, commanded all friars to burn the Puebloans’ religious masks, prayer sticks and idols. He outlawed their Kachina dances. Fray Juan Bernal, Agent of the Inquisition, lived at Pecos from 1669 to 1671, as did Agent Fray Pedro de Ayala in 1673.

  The Indians were not only victims of a religious war with the Inquisition but were caught in the middle of a battle between Governor and church. Governors often threatened Indians with death if they did not testify against their missionary when the governor went before the Inquisition and accused friars of fornication or some other blasphemy.

  Among all this jealousy and hatred between church and state, the Indians questioned the Spaniards’ god, who did not allow them to sing their songs and prohibited their sacred ceremonies so that their world turned upside down; the rains ceased and their crops failed. Their own gods no longer blessed them and punished them for turning to the Spanish god. Nor could the Spanish protect them any longer from the Apaches who ravaged their lands, murdered, kidnapped and pillaged both settlers and Puebloans.

  Pecos was the best off of the pueblos, being friends with the Apaches and their joint trade fair. It seemed Pecos was the only pueblo spared from famine that swept across the land, during which even some of the Spanish had to roast cowhide to survive.

  By 1680, the Indians blamed the Spanish for their troubles and the years-long drought. They were better off before they deserted their gods.

  Small rebellions sprang up over the previous two decades and many Indians hung, but in lieu of the 1675 witchcraft trials, New Mexico was ripe for a major Revolt.

  Oranges from Stanford arrived yesterday. ”

  Grandfather was asleep, with his chin on his chest, snoring lightly.

  She nudged him gently and helped him to bed, tucking him in like a child.

  “Did I miss the war?” he said.

  “Just the seeds,” she said.

  “From one seed can grow a stalk of disenchantment. Two seeds planted in the same hole can branch out in a gnarly fashion that chokes the roots beneath. Granddaughter, I no longer wish to cross knives with you.”

  “Nor do I; your knife is more like a sword.”

  “As is yours, many times you have cut me to the quick,” he said.

  “I have had a grand fencing master.”

  “Let us bury the tomahawk then. I am too old and weary, and you have a face as ugly as an ogre Kachina when you are mad.”

  “Fine, let’s bury the hatchet,” she said, yanking the covers up to his chin and slamming the camper doors.

  She opened the driver’s truck door and adjusted the overhead light so it would stay on when the door was closed, revealing her key in the ignition for anyone who was interested in stealing her truck and him.

  She
marched to the bathroom to shower, thinking the old buzzard would never change and examining her face in the mirror with flashing eyes. Ugh. He said she was ugly. Why did his opinion matter so much? He should talk. He looked like an ogre, even when not pissed off. Was he ever young and good looking? He must have sprouted as a troll. If she was hideous, it was his fault.

  The cool water from the shower finally abated her anger.

  She turned off the water, shoved her arms into her robe and sprinted, soaking wet, to the camper.

  She sobbed with relief that her truck was still there with him sleeping in the back, and she wouldn’t have to issue an Amber Alert—he could be so childish.

  She removed her keys from the ignition and snapped off the overhead light.

  She ran back to the bathroom, hoping no one had stolen her clothes.

  He was right. She was pretty ugly when mad.

  Chapter Thirteen

  By the time she swung the bathroom door open at Cherry Hill Camp, her skin had air-dried. She wiggled into her pajamas and carried her damp robe over her arm, shivering and hurrying to the camper.

  In the distance, a woman danced on the sidewalk, twirling a dream catcher around her wrist, sweeping the net across her head. Images twirled from the hole in the middle of the dream catcher and at first she thought someone had broken into her camper after all but the woman was Native American, clothed in a buckskin dress and moccasins.

  Suddenly, the sidewalk buckled; the concrete faded in and out.

  Magic created a dynamic dream catcher indeed, sending her daydreams.

  She spun around and vomited on a dirt road.

  Ten men clothed in dark-blue hooded robes walked the dusty road with large wooden crucifixes bouncing against their knees. It seemed the earth parted as all jumped from the road to let them pass.

  The Franciscan friars traveled so close to her, their robes brushed against her ankles. These men had the harshest faces. Lines of absolute power dug into their cheeks. Their eyes glowed with self-righteousness and their chins thrust out in defiance of all but their own cardinal law. Even their leather sandals pounded the road with the confidence of wild stallions. They behaved as men on a mission.