Aztec Odyssey

by Jay C. LaBarge

  Twenty more risings of the sun were spent moving along at the quicker pace, which was wise given the sparseness of the terrain they encountered. They had been well informed and found that they exited the dry lands as quickly as they had entered. They stopped in a valley to let the horses graze and regain their strength for the next push forward. This place was called Huápoca by the regional tribes, and the Chichimeca guides had found a common dialect with one of them.

  Asupacaci’s Trek North

  As the caravan rested, Asupacaci was taken to a local spring with bubbling hot waters, which was believed to offer healing properties to those who bathed in it. Given the arduous journey they had suffered through, Asupacaci and several others soaked in the springs, and found themselves cleansed and reinvigorated by the experience. They were also shown more of the cliff dwellings, expertly hidden and barely visible to the naked eye. Long abandoned, the extensive complexes gave Asupacaci a strange sense of foreboding of the fate of his own people. Climbing up ladders which could be easily withdrawn, Cipactli was amazed at how well these ingenious places could be defended, and yet they sat empty, desolate. In some of the crevices of rock within the small rooms, they were proudly shown several perfectly preserved mummies, the heat and dry air having stopped the decay. Asupacaci took note, there were things he also wished to preserve for the coming ages.

  Walking back into camp, they heard a commotion and saw many of the warriors had formed into a loose circle, yelling and cheering. Breaking through them, Asupacaci and Cipactli stood with open mouths, for there was Bumblebee upon a horse, at first moving slowly within the circle, and then breaking into a slight trot. He didn’t ride with the practiced skill of a Spaniard, but he was learning, and obviously had been querying one forcefully for instruction.

  Asupacaci noticed a Spaniard who had been brought to the edge of the circle, his face beaten, doing his best to provide insight to a powerful warrior to ride a horse he couldn’t see, but only envision in his mind’s eye. Upon closer inspection he realized it was El Capitán, the leader of all the captured Spaniards, a Conquistador who had been an excellent rider and much feared enemy.

  “Greetings, Tlanahuatihqui,” Bumblebee said upon seeing Asupacaci and Cipactli enter the ring. “There is no magic in these creatures, only strength and grace. They can be ridden by any man with patience and practice, Spanish or Aztec. I think the tribes around here will figure out how to tame the wild ones and will be ready if the Spanish Coyoltlahtolli ever come this way.”

  Asupacaci saw for a fleeting moment the grandeur of his empire, of the Aztec people, of the beautiful island city of Tenochtitlán with the Hueteocalli temple at its heart, all in the bronzed, heavily muscled figure of Bumblebee proudly and defiantly atop the horse. With everyone gathered about, Asupacaci, son of Montezuma, far from home and in a strange land, spread his arms out and said, “Behold, and witness Aztec mastery over the beast that serves our enemies.”

  Pausing for effect, he looked around and made eye contact with many, then continued. “Look around you brave warriors. What other people could possibly undertake such a journey, to travel so far and so hard to the other world, to save the best of our empire for all of eternity? No other people I tell you, not from here or from any distant place across the great sea. And certainly not from Spain!”

  With that he spat loudly, and then nodded to the priests who held El Capitán. They led him to a nearby large stone, forced him on his back upon it, and each pulled an arm or leg downward to thrust his chest up. Asupacaci slowly walked over, tore open the rags of his shirt, and held an exquisite jeweled dagger of obsidian aloft for all to see.

  “The gods have blessed our journey so far and they require blood in return. Not just any blood, but that of one who led many against us. Huitzilopochtli, accept this offering for your continued blessings.”

  El Capitán knew what was coming. He had witnessed it when he still had his eyesight and yelled that he had helped them get this far, that he could help them still. He fought with all his might, screaming out to his god for mercy, but he who had given none would receive none. The razor-sharp dagger was brought down heavily and landed with a thud, so hard that air was forced out of his lungs and he gasped. Asupacaci then expertly dragged it further, creating a larger opening, until he could reach in between the ribs and feel the pulsating heart. Pausing a moment to enjoy the agony of his sworn enemy, he placed his hand completely around it, clamped tightly on it, and pulled it out of the cavity, while simultaneously cutting it completely loose with his other hand.

  Breathing deeply with excitement and blood lust, he smelled the cloying, coppery liquid of life running down his arm. Quickly stepping up, with one foot on the rock and the other on the collapsed chest of El Capitán, he looked intensely at his warriors and held the still beating heart aloft and shouted, “Behold, Aztec mastery over our enemies!”

  Chapter 10 – May 31, Present Day

  Nick awoke in the back of his pickup truck on a trusty air mattress he had tossed in, reasonably comfortable in his sleeping bag and a couple of pillows. The old cap on the back of the pickup gave him a little privacy, but the sun was coming up and starting to reflect off the aluminum inside into his eyes. He fiddled with the c-clamps he had scrounged to hold the cap in place, habitually double checking all of them to ensure he wouldn’t see his cap sliding down the interstate after him. It had almost happened once before, but one of his friends who had been riding in back saved the day by pulling down on the window openings and banging against the cab with one foot until Nick pulled over. That was a close one but he still had the cap, even though he had lost touch with the friend over the years.

  He sat up and had to think for a moment to recalibrate and, shaking off the cobwebs in his mind, realized he was in an abandoned parking lot near Fort Leavenworth. Driving hard and enthused, he had made good time and arrived there around 11 p.m. last night. It had taken a little while for the adrenaline to wear off after discovering that the piece on his necklace was actually made of gold. Dad and Gram, you both have been holding out on me all these years, but I’m on to you now.

  He put on his glasses and held the necklace up, the sunlight glinting off where he had flaked off some of the black coating. Nick rummaged around and found his dig kit, and carefully pulled out a wrapped pack of all his go-to tools for any archeological site excavation. He put a headband on, flipped down the attached magnifier over his left eye, and grabbed what looked like a tiny jeweler’s pick. With that he squinted through the magnifier and worked the rest of the sticky black substance off, which flaked off in small pieces that stuck to the pick. Once done he wiped it down with the bottom of a favorite t-shirt he was wearing, which his PhD mentor had given him and proudly proclaimed: Archeology: Sift Happens.

  Nick crawled out of the back of the pickup, stood up and stretched to the heavens. Today was a good day to be alive. He was on to something, and there was nothing like the thrill of the hunt, of discovery, to get his blood up. And this one was personal.

  Using the natural outside light, he examined the necklace piece closer through the magnifier, and saw it was indeed about the size and shape of an oversized zipper pull. It was solid gold, and had three small inlays, one above the other like tear drops, that he hadn’t seen before, since they had been obscured by the sticky black coating. It appeared the inlays were made of what looked like emerald, obsidian, and jade, or maybe something else, but he could figure out all of that later. It was done with amazing craftsmanship, the detail and etching were intricate, almost feather-like. There were wear marks about a third of the way down, above the three inlays, and a small hook-like clasp at the top that the rope of the necklace ran through, which seemed to indicate it had been part of some larger piece.

  Nick was about to take a photograph of the necklace on his iPhone to send to his brother, but an uneasy voice in the back of this head said, don’t do it, do nothing over the airwaves or internet, only communicate face to face. That little voice had become
progressively louder since his dad had passed and he had found various clues, none of which quite fit together.

  The trained archeologist in him instinctively wanted to document any finding, so he grabbed his Canon Rebel digital camera—the good one he always brought along on digs and expeditions—and carefully put the gold link of the necklace down on a white index card, and photographed it from every angle, front and back. He also did close-ups of the coarse hemp like rope it hung on. Good to have copies digitally, just in case.

  Seeing Fort Leavenworth again brought Nick’s memory back to a more innocent time, back to seeing things through the eyes of a nine-year-old, back to having both parents and the cocoon of safety that came with it. It almost seemed he was seeing things through the lens of old home movies, and he enjoyed the temporary warmth of the nostalgia. Originally established in 1827, the fort was known as the post that opened up the west. It had proven instrumental in keeping peace between Indian tribes and the increasing number of intrusive settlers migrating westward via wagon train. Alexandre had passed through it about a year after the Civil War, and it served as a jumping off point for what would become a series of battles, pacifications and postings for him. Originally a part of the Michigan Brigade during the Civil War, his unit was affectionately known as the Wolverines, or more commonly as Custer’s Cavalry, during the conflict.

  When Alexandre headed west after the war, he was still a part of Custer’s 7th Cavalry, but had been reassigned to fill out another depleted unit that needed experience troopers. “And a good thing too,” Nick’s dad had quipped. “Otherwise we would be visiting a cemetery up at Little Big Horn instead of having these great adventures in the Southwest.” Queue the boys and Mom giggling and rolling their eyes at one another. Just one of those little twists of history that could have played out so differently, one where there was no necklace with a gold pendant, and perhaps his dad would be riding in the car with him instead of only occupying a place in his anguished memory.

  Nick spent a couple hours taking photographs, exploring the fort, its cemetery, and the museum. Once he finally found Alexandre’s name on a microfilm archive of the muster rolls, proof positive he had been through here, Nick snapped a last photo and started losing his interest, as it didn’t seem there was anything else here relevant to his quest. He gassed up his pickup, grabbed a couple slices of pizza and an iced tea from the minimart and set out across the plains to the next stop on his traveling road show, to Quivira.

  Back in the days of Nick’s childhood, Quivira was one of many places that had caught his father’s attention. They had all spent time there the same summer they went through Fort Leavenworth. It took Nick nearly four hours to drive to Lyons, Kansas, which was the nearest town to the supposed location of Quivira. He arrived in the late afternoon. Where to crash for the night, bed of the truck or bed in a hotel, was his big decision, but since he had just started his road trip, he opted for the truck. He used his smart phone to find a good local restaurant for dinner and thought some Tex-Mex at the El Portillo would put him in the right frame of mind. A fat burrito and a couple of Corona’s later, he cruised the area to line up what he would do tomorrow, and to find a quite parking area to crash for the night. And crash he did, with the rain drumming on the aluminum roof of the truck cap lulling him into a deep slumber.

  In Nick’s sleep his mind wandered, uncluttered by conscience thought, until it focused on the kernel of something in his memory, something that had been nagging at him that he hadn’t been able to quite pull to the surface. The memory sharpened, and all of a sudden he was five or six years old, sitting at the top of the stairs, peeking through the railings, listening to a whispered conversation between his dad and Grandma Ingrid. He crept lower, curious, since he rarely heard his boisterous Grandma whisper.

  Grandpa Jacques had passed not too long ago, and she was telling his dad something important, something about a family legend passed down generation to generation. Alexandre, his distant relative, had befriended the Indians he was sent to fight. He had been given a gift by them, told of some type of hidden treasure, and given a hint on how to find it. Grandma Ingrid said that now her husband Jacques had passed, it was up to Albert to carry on the family quest. Just then lightning flashed close by, so bright Nick saw it through his dream and closed eyelids, and as the loud thunder boomed he sat straight up in a cold sweat. He reached for his voice recorder, carefully placed next to his glasses and watch, and spoke slowly and carefully into it before the memory faded. “So go and find the treasure Albert,” she had said, “For Jacques’ sake why don’t you go and find it!”

  Nick awoke early the next morning, a light rain still pinging on the aluminum cap and the sunrise obscured by fast moving, dark gray clouds. He instinctively touched the necklace he wore and tried to focus on a dream he had in the middle of the night, something he knew was very important, but it had faded. The dream he woke up to, about a small island covered in grasshoppers who flew in a swarm, morphed into the actual sound of the rain on the cap, and he couldn’t get that one out of his mind.

  He reached for his watch to see the time and found the voice recorder on top of it, and vaguely remembered dictating something during the night. He played it back, and heard his sleepy voice recounting the dream over the noise of the storm. The steady rain and thunder made it hard to hear, but the message was unmistakable, and the dream came back and clearly replayed in his mind.

  Now that’s the way to wake up, Nick thought, smiling to himself. He may have been missing one of his dad’s journals, perhaps the key one, but he was methodically filling in the blanks. Like a deep lingering itch you couldn’t quite scratch that finally went away, his mind found release in now knowing the memory he had so feverishly sought.

  Nick grabbed a yogurt, some granola and an iced coffee out of his cooler, ate a quick breakfast, and drove over to the proudly titled, but somewhat underwhelming, Coronado Quivira Museum. So typical, he thought. The oppressor who nearly wipes out the indigenous population now gets top billing. If he felt a little bitter, it was largely a result of his education and chosen tradecraft. The more he learned and experienced over time, the more starkly evident it was that explorers the world over colonized in the name of God and King, and then proceeded to appropriate and exploit the natural resources, while raping, slaughtering, and enslaving the inhabitants. The old joke that rang so true was, “It was never good to be the natives when the colonizers came calling.”

  Nick paid the museum entry fee and got reacquainted with the history and relevance of Quivira. In 1540 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado had set out from Mexico to find the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, also known as Cibola. Coronado was simply following what had been told to him by the survivors of an earlier ill-fated expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez. Narváez had originally been sent by the Governor of Cuba to stop the invasion of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, who had overstepped his authority. Although he greatly outnumbered Cortés, Narváez not only lost an eye, he lost the battle, was taken prisoner, and held captive for several years.

  Upon his release he returned to Spain, where Charles V authorized him to explore and colonize Florida, so named because it meant Flowering Easter, the Spanish name for Palm Sunday and the date of its discovery. They set out in 1527 with over 600 men in five ships, hopeful to find a civilization similar to what Cortés had discovered in Mexico. Florida proved to be anything but hospitable to Narváez, whose ships were damaged in a storm, and then landed near present day Tampa Bay with the remnants of his expedition. Unable to make headway and harassed by the natives, the survivors, including Narváez, built rafts and tried to navigate along the coast back to the Spanish province of Pánuco, so named from the river that ran through it. Narváez was carried out to sea, never to be seen again, and only four men made it out alive to tell the tale.

  In one of the greatest documented feats of discovery, human endurance, and survival, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and three of his fellows, over the course of nine years, traveled
completely around the Gulf of Mexico, overshot their goal all the way to the Pacific Ocean, turned south again where they eventually met Spanish slave traders, and finally reached Mexico City in 1536. Stories were told by Cabeza de Vaca and the other survivors of the tribes and villages they had encountered, of rumors they had heard about even wealthier tribes and fabulous cities. These had excited the Spaniards, and soon more expeditions set out. Coronado’s wasn’t the first, but it built up the work of the others and the rumors that came back, which grew ever more fantastic with the retelling.

  Coronado first worked his way to the Zuni Pueblos in western New Mexico. Not finding the riches they sought at the pueblos, Coronado’s men viciously subdued those they encountered, and were told by an Indian called “the Turk” of a fabulous place where “trees hung with golden bells and people whose pots and pans were beaten gold.” The Turk led them far afield, and when they found no treasure, they killed him and returned from whence they started. The furthest point the Spaniards reached was in Kansas, at a place Coronado named Quivira.

  Nick wandered through the exhibits, taking photos of things that either interested him on a professional level, or might prove useful to his unraveling the family quest. There were reproductions of native lodgings, ancient Indian artifacts, a Spanish helmet and pieces of armor, and signs that pointed where one could pick up parts of the wagon rutted Santa Fe trail. He wandered outside and pondered the significance of Quivira, in and of itself and as it related to his dad’s obsessive search.