“Read. Read, and do not interpret,” he said.
“A second, smaller revolt erupted in 1696 and divided Pecos on the issue of helping Governor de Vargas. A vigilante group of Pecos Indians took by surprise five leaders who opposed de Vargas and executed them in a kiva. The pueblos of Picurís, Tanos and Taos wanted the rebellion and attacked Pecos, but de Vargas rallied to their aid. This bad business of Pecos killing Pecos ripped the pueblo in two. Things changed after that. A people who are torn apart from within cannot stand strong. Look at what happened between the Catholic Church and the Spanish government who nicked at each other’s throats in the old days. Bad blood lingered after the inner fighting and some of the Pecos Indians moved out of the pueblo.”
“Then we’re not the last of the Pecos?” she said, dropping her jaw so her chin almost touched her chest.
“After more than three hundred years, the deserters’ blood is so diluted they are no longer Pecos, even if any know of their ancestry. You and I, alone, are direct descendants of the people who toughed it out and stayed at Pecos until the end,” he said.
“So with all this friendship with the Spanish government, what happened that Pecos failed so badly in the ensuing years?”
He pointed to the dream catcher.
Surprisingly, he had been sober enough to attach the dream catcher to the light fixture. He must have done it while she completed her business in the bathroom. Ugh! She felt like screaming.
“Why did you hang that thing above my bed?” she said.
“The story is not finished. That salmon does not stick to the ribs any better than trout sticks to its own skeletal frame. I am hungry,” he said.
He played around with the phone, called room service and ordered him some dessert. He sat back, well satisfied like the deer that escaped the hunter’s sights. “I could get used to living like the whites,” he said.
He shoveled cake and ice cream in his mouth, grunting and chugging a glass of water.
He monopolized the bathroom for half an hour before coming to bed smiling and smelling of baby powder.
For the rest of the evening she lay against the pillows, playing with the remote.
He fell asleep holding a lit cigarette and she put it out in an ash tray, then soaked it with water, then shoved it down the disposal in the half-kitchen.
She gently closed the bathroom door and shimmied into her nightgown.
She tiptoed to her bed and dived beneath the covers. Ah, to sleep in a real bed all to herself.
“You will ship my mattress to Boston. You will not throw it away with the cooking stove and other junk,” he said in a commanding voice.
“What?” she said, banging her head against the wall.
“I cannot rest where others’ nightmares have haunted. I cannot take my repose where dreams have shattered. I cannot rest in the dark void of other heads. I make an exception tonight because you have had a disturbing day.”
“How do you know the truck…?”
He flung his arms wide and caught some Z’s while sleep eluded her. Just in case he was right and fixing her truck proved too expensive, the logistics of transporting his flea-bitten mattress was nightmarish.
She let out a heartfelt sigh and tried to get some rest with one eye open to the dream catcher, appearing exotic at the Marriott.
She turned on her back and slammed her arm across her eyes, blocking out the street light that shone through the curtains. Darkening the room with the zero-light curtains was not an option or else he might fall when he got up at night to pee.
Crap! From the other side of the room something glowed in the dark. The light grew brighter to reveal a skeleton, stark white, sitting in the corner on her suitcase. Her dream catcher whirled with a buzz, sending her one of those dreams where it feels like you’re frigging half awake.
She removed her bed covers, and tiptoed over to her suitcase.
She dropped to her knees and stroked its skull.
The skeleton turned to her, like a cat might, purring.
She touched a hole in its ribcage and a jolt like electricity seeped through her body, followed by a cracking noise as an arrow entered the side of a warrior, about twenty years old.
A flash of lightning illuminated the room. A sharp pain jabbed her at the back of her neck and a whirlwind hurled her to Pecos, where she landed on a rooftop of the pueblo, holding in her arms a warrior with flesh on his bones. An arrow stuck out of his ribcage and he struggled to speak.
Tears flowed down her face as she brushed his hair back from his head and wiped the blood from his mouth.
“Who wounded you?” she said in a hoarse voice.
He pulled at her sleeve and lowered her ear to his lips. He spoke in Towa.
“In 1700, the Comanches muscled into New Mexico, attacking the Puebloans, the Apaches, and the Spanish. We are so isolated here at Pecos. At first, Spanish soldiers helped protect us but after fifty years, the Comanche butchers still attack; they are such fierce fighters. No one knows why they hate us and wish to crush us.”
“Perhaps they aim to prove their superiority by vanquishing the mightiest pueblo,” she said.
“We were the richest when we traded with the plains Indians our blankets, jewelry and pottery for their buffalo hides, shells and flints. Comanches warred with Apaches, our major supplier, for control of the trade. Comanches are the fiercest fighters and won. Comanches shun us and take their business to the Taos Trade Fair, making us poor and Taos rich. There is no longer a trade fair at Pecos.”
“Shall I call for a priest?” she said, noting the cross dangling from his neck.
“Holy men come no more to Pecos. God sent the Comanches to steal our cattle and horses. They hide in the woods to ambush our hunters, gatherers and workers who are so scared they no longer work the farther fields or fish for trout. We keep close to the pueblo and go hungry. There are only 150 of us now. Their pursuit of our destruction is brutal,” he said, closing his eyes.
She screamed as the warrior vanished from her arms, turning to a pile of dust.
She peeked over the side of the roof to where hundreds of Comanches walloped outside the perimeter, attempting to scale the pueblo walls.
She jerked her head back to her room at the Marriott. She still held the skeleton but he soon vanished from her arms, yet her dream catcher still hissed at her.
A chill crawled up her spine because someone moved about her room. She could see the bump on Grandfather’s bed so knew he slept and took no part in her half-awake nightmare, only his magic participated. Besides, the noise came from the opposite end of the room.
She crossed her fingers and hoped she was really dreaming. Please, don’t let it be a burglar, someone who overheard us at the restaurant discussing our grant.
A glowing light blocked her way to the bed.
As the light dimmed she could make out a woman’s shape in the form of a transparent hologram so she could see right through her like a ghost.
Oh God, this is even worse than a break-in.
This woman spun her daydream; the masquerader who Grandfather claimed like the grim reaper, brought her death.
The woman dressed like the ancients and wore knee-length moccasins. A tanned leather skirt brushed her slender ankles encased by moccasins. Black braids bounced against her chest as she moved towards her. She appeared a frail wisp of a woman. As she got closer, this apparition seemed more heart-breaking than threatening. Her face looked vaguely familiar. She held a dream catcher in her hand that looked exactly like hers.
Oh, God, her dream catcher had not only personified but was going to speak to her.
“Smallpox and measles killed even more than the Comanches. The Pecos population declined as if the entire pueblo represented Job in the Bible,” the woman said in a sing-song voice.
Light ricocheted against a jewel hanging from the woman’s neck and stung her eyes, blinding her. The woman’s face became fuzzy but she could still make out two gigantic tears that rolled down her c
heeks. Somehow the woman hooked her own heart with hers along with her emotions. It felt as if the unhappiness of the world rested upon the woman’s thin shoulders. Such grief overwhelmed Hollow-Woman; she floated in a void, her forehead flat against the woman’s forehead, her eyes locked with her muddy brown eyes, their minds melding.
The woman’s doe-like eyes swirled with liquid until one enormous tear dripped out the corner of each eye, slid down her cheeks and splashed against her necklace.
Hollow-Woman screamed as the woman unhooked her heart. The energy she took with her seemed to suck out her own energy to the point of exhaustion.
Hollow-Woman screeched, pointing at the woman’s necklace and the five tips swirling around a heart-shaped stone. She searched for this necklace nearly all her life. This woman, this dream catcher, whose thin shoulders shuddered with tears, was her mother.
Hollow-Woman reached out a hand to her but the wind picked up her mother like a whirling tornado and tore at her flesh until a skeleton floated above. Her eye sockets sunk into her skull, her shoulder bones slumped, her mouth opened in a silent scream and her bony hand stretched out.
Before they could touch, the wind took her mother away with a bone crunching twist and she vanished through the hotel window.
Her mother’s necklace and dream catcher swirled in the air and followed.
She felt such an overwhelming loss; she dropped to her knees and pushed her face to her thighs. Ah, she landed back in the present; her dream catcher stopped spinning above her bed. The hotel window was not broken and no glass on the carpet. Feeling disoriented, her pulse raced and her body was bathed in sweat. Did her mother’s ghost really visit her?
Someone was crying out loud.
Her own tears were silent so she wouldn’t wake the old man.
Moonlight streamed in through the window and two giant tears wobbled on the floor, sounding like a washing machine jiggling. These tears were not the ordinary tears of a woman but of a mystical being. The tears resembled a gelatin-like substance so she scooped up the tears with a spoon; the tears wiggled on the spoon, like clear Jell-O. She never touched another woman’s tears before so, she reached out a fingertip…carefully…delicately…she stroked, marveling at their tenderness. The tears were not smooth like expected, but a rough grainy texture with flecks of red like they were nicked by shards of a broken heart. The feel of these tears was unlike anything she ever touched before, like a precious stone not of this earth. These were her mother’s tears, no mere drops of fluid but pieces of her mother’s ghost, straight from her transparent heart. The pieces were sturdy, pliable and bubbly, yet fragile. She could see right through to her mother’s heartbreak.
She felt such overwhelming sadness for her mother, not just missing her, but thinking about her dying so young and her time on this earth cut so short. Her mother must have been awful young when she died, early twenties or perhaps a teenager.
She dropped the tears into a baggie and zipped the bag sealed, marking the baggie, with the hotel pen: Tears of a Dream Catcher.
Her mother masqueraded as her dream catcher and acted as her guide to the spirit world of Pecos, but Grandfather was wrong. Her mother did not send her the endless dream of death. Her mother would never hurt her.
The room spun dizzily and Hollow-Woman fell sideways and slumped to the carpet.
When she awoke some minutes later, or perhaps hours, she had one hell of a headache.
She couldn’t remember walking back to her bed, but then she never left the bed since it was all a dream.
Her head felt a bit fuzzy.
There was something slick in her hand.
She held a baggie up to the sunlight and gasped at her half-asleep scribbling, which marked the bag, Tears of a Dream Catcher.
Tears are usually clear. This liquid was cloudy.
Chapter Sixteen
To kill time while waiting to hear about her truck, she hopped on the subway, leaving Grandfather to rest at the hotel.
After a short ride, the train doors opened for the Smithsonian Station stop.
The Natural History Museum should have a microscope.
The literature bragged the museum was the size of eighteen football fields, big enough to get lost in. She ended up in the basement and maneuvered through a haze of hallways, reserved for employees. That wide door appeared a way out; instead she stumbled upon thousands of skeletons, apparently human.
“May I help you?” a voice said in a New Orleans drawl. The young man peered at her from light grey eyes below a cocked eyebrow and more than a passing interest.
“What is all this?” she said, waving her arm around the room of skeletons and bones.
“Native American remains waiting for repatriation, only for tribes hoping to claim their ancestors; it’s like looking for needles in a haystack. There are about 15,000 skeletons scattered about in these storerooms, all victims of science. The Indians want their relatives back, but finding out which ones are theirs…well look around and you can see the problem. I come in here on my breaks to escape the tourists and visit the poor souls.”
“Who gathered these bones?”
“Private collectors who wanted to show off to their guests.”
She made a face.
“And mostly in the 1800’s, scientists wanted to prove that whites are superior. Ishi, the last surviving Yahi, was considered the last wild American Indian. Most of his relatives were massacred at Three Knolls and the remaining few hid for forty years until only he was left. Starvation caused him to wander, nearly naked, from the woods in northern California and hide in a slaughterhouse. He lived at the anthropology museum at Berkeley. Anthropologists studied him and gave him a home until he passed away in 1916.”
“Yeah, Berkley gave him a home so they could dissect him after he died,” she said.
“Yeah, it sucks. His brain was sent to the Smithsonian against Ishi’s wish not to be autopsied.”
“Did the Smithsonian want his brain because he was the last of his kind?” she said, opening her eyes wider.
“Nah, scientists were doing a comparison study of the size of brains of various races. The Smithsonian collected 300 brains in all and Ishi’s was important since he was a representative of the Native American race.”
“Kind of like the Nazis,” she said.
“I hear Ishi’s brain is in a Smithsonian warehouse in Maryland preserved in a sealed tank. Some tribe in California is trying to get his brain back to rebury his brain with his remains but they’re not Yahi so it’s tricky.”
“I can imagine,” she said, telling him a bit of her own story.
“Oh, wow, you can relate then. During the Indian Wars the Surgeon Generals ordered the army to send back skulls for scientific study; so soldiers beheaded bookoos of Native Americans and shipped their heads to D.C. Our government, also, paid good money to civilians who would bring in their bones,” he said.
“My god, our government encouraged this?”
“If scientists didn’t have to rob graves for specimens, they could spend more time studying disease from the samples and improving our health.”
“Right, doing racial profiling of specimens’ brains sure improves our health,” she said with a wry smile.
“It wasn’t just Berkeley who befriended natives to study them. The explorer Robert Peary met six Eskimos in Greenland. In 1897, they traveled to New York at his invitation. He turned them over to the anthropologist Franz Boas who moved them into the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Four sickened and died. Unlike Ishi, these guys had family but Boas did not ship their remains back to their loved ones. Instead, he boiled the flesh off their bones so he and his colleagues could study their skeletons,” he said.
“Oh, wow, you look pale, please don’t throw up,” he said, kindly offering her a chair. “I didn’t mean to gross you out with Frankenstein stories.” He sat across from her leaning forward and lowering his voice like he was about to reveal more horrors.
“One of th
e surviving Eskimos traveled back to Greenland and the other stayed in New York—a little fella named Minik, six or seven years old, whose father was one of the dead Eskimos. They even gave a pretend funeral and substituted a fur-wrapped log for his father’s corpse, which the child walked behind, crying. Later, an older and wiser Minik discovered the hoax. It crushed him to visit the museum and see his father’s bones displayed in a glass case. His story reminds me of yours except Minik spent his life trying to get his father’s bones back from the museum that lied to him.”
“Did Minik ever get back his father’s bones?” she said, rubbing goose bumps on her arms.
“Nope. After Minik grew up, he moved back to Greenland for a bit and struggled with a language and culture he forgot. He returned to New York. The Spanish flu killed him in 1918. Minik was buried in New York City at his request, a place he came to love, even given the treachery of New Yorkers claiming to be his friend.”
“What about his father’s bones?”
“New York finally returned them to Greenland six years ago,” he said, slapping his knees. “Well, I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Do you mind if I stay here for a little while?” she said, eying a microscope on a table to her left.
“Hell, if I care; isn’t my museum but don’t stay long because my bosses try to categorize the bones when there’s time, even though lack of documentation is a pain, I hear. There used to be more skeletons but some tribes have claimed about three thousand of them,” he said.
“You’d think with all the DNA tests nowadays, they could find out who their descendants are and repatriate the bones that way,” she said.
“That would be a frickin’ nightmare. I hear that around the nation in museums, national parks services, universities, and other government agencies there’s around two million Native American bones.”
The blood rushed from her face, just as she began to feel more like herself.
“The only ones I’ve befriended are them four hundred skulls over there,” he said, laughing. “They’re from the Sand Creek Massacre that happened November 29, 1864.”
Return of the Bones: Inspired by a True Native American Indian Story Page 15