The Almanac of the Dead

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  Calabazas had been stubborn. They were crazy, he said; they had seen too many Hollywood movies. The minute there were prison riots and unrest in the cities the battle lines would fall along skin color. No, the Hopi had explained patiently, if anything happened, it would be more like the haves, whatever colors they were, killing the have-nots. Anyway, the African Americans would not be the focus of attention; the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans making their way north with the twin brothers would be. Calabazas had been skeptical of the Mexican Indian woman and her account of the spirit messages the twins claimed they got from the big blue macaws the people carried with them. But the Hopi said he believed it was necessary for the hundreds of thousands of Indians to appear from the South to prevent whites from turning on blacks in the United States. Almost immediately whites would look to blacks and Hispanics as buffers or shields, and mediators between themselves and the great migration of Native Americans. Calabazas was skeptical that the millions of U.S. citizens who called themselves Christians would even tolerate, much less support, a Native American religious movement to reclaim the Americas from the destroyers. Still, the heat waves and droughts had already driven thousands north to cooler temperatures. All the big shade trees in Tucson had died as the water table plunged precipitously.

  Until the twin brothers and the people had reached the border, the Hopi advised they should all make preparations and then simply wait. As Wilson Weasel Tail’s Ghost Dance song had stated, white people seemed to be having nervous breakdowns and psychotic episodes in record numbers. The Hopi said perhaps the whites could sense the changes that were approaching. What they had done to others was coming back on them; the tables had turned; now the colonizers were being colonized.

  Calabazas said he didn’t believe in miracle conversions of Christians or Jews or Moslems back to tribal religions, and the Hopi winked and said, “But you do believe in mass hysteria? The collective need to see drops of real blood on Church statues during Lent? You know something about mass hypnosis and subliminal messages.” The Hopi smiled. “Anyway, no one says it will happen right away tomorrow. No one says anything like that. Native American people have been on these continents thirty thousand years, and the Europeans have been here for five hundred.”

  The Hopi had talked about peaceful and gradual changes as if he believed voting would become the solution as soon as millions more Indians became U.S. citizens. Lecha watched the expression on Angelita’s face as the Hopi had outlined the possibilities for peaceful changes. Each time the Hopi said “nonviolent free elections,” Angelita had grimaced. Lecha could see Angelita suspected the truth: there would be no elections; great struggles were about to sweep all through the Americas as far north as Alaska and Canada. Angelita La Escapía was one tough she-dog; Lecha could see that in the Mayan’s barrel figure and steely, dark eyes. Angelita only pretended to agree with the twin brothers and their followers, unarmed and humble as they walked northward to fulfill an ancient prophecy. Lecha had seen the twin brothers on satellite TV. They looked to be hardly more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and easy to manipulate by the likes of Angelita. Lecha wasn’t fooled; it was that big Mayan woman who was behind the twin brothers. Lecha had watched Angelita whisper to Zeta, and Zeta had made a lengthy reply. Later when Lecha asked her, Zeta admitted Angelita had asked about buying a few army surplus Stinger missiles. Lecha thought Angelita was right. The Hopi and the twin brothers might sincerely believe their recovery of the Americas could take place without bloodshed, but Lecha had her doubts especially since the hideous slaughter that had occurred in South Africa. These American continents were already soaked with Native American and African blood; violence begat violence, but if the destroyers were not stopped, the human race was finished.

  Calabazas took the words of the Hopi to heart. He believed the change was in motion and was a process that had never stopped; it would all continue with or without him. Calabazas could sit back and do nothing if he wanted to and still the changes were inevitable. All the same, Calabazas felt uneasy. He had trusted the men who had been in Room 1212, but he wasn’t sure about the women, especially not the Eskimo or the Maya woman. Those two looked like troublemakers; they looked like killers if a man didn’t cooperate. The Eskimo woman said “quality, rather than quantity,” and she had been talking about the Indigenous People’s Army of the North. They might be few, but they were fierce and well armed. The Army of the North would sweep down behind the U.S. forces along the Mexican border. Before Weasel Tail knew it, his Lakota armies had been absorbed into the Army of the North. Weasel Tail was a smart man because he didn’t object. No objections or resistance would stop the Maya woman or the other one, the Eskimo. Fire. All the Eskimo woman had talked about was fire. Forests and tundra burning. The earth burning. La Escapía—why, just her name—she was no better. She had talked about the fire macaw who brings destruction.

  Wilson Weasel Tail and the Hopi could talk all they wanted about peaceful revolutions, but Calabazas had seen the Maya La Escapía talking to Zeta, and he knew what that meant. For years Zeta had been buying and stockpiling weapons in the old mine shafts. Calabazas was content to retire from smuggling, politics—everything; he had put in his time and had earned a rest in the shade with his little mule and burros. Calabazas would sit back and let the others make the decisions and give the orders, the way he always had, since he was a child with the old-time people in the Yaqui mountain strongholds. They had told him what must be done and he had done it. Since he was an old man now, maybe the women would give him something easy to do, something that wasn’t too strenuous or too dangerous—maybe answering the phone or mailing letters.

  RISE UP!

  THE TUCSON POLICE had used SWAT teams to raid the homeless camps. They had used armored vehicles to smash down the cardboard and tin lean-tos and tents pitched under mesquite trees. The SWAT team had hit the camp with the women and children too, and the screaming children had been taken from their mothers to “protective custody” in State foster homes. But at the war veterans’ camp, the SWAT team had stopped as if by hypnosis. They had seemed paralyzed by the sight of the homeless war veterans standing at attention in their raggedy army-surplus uniforms without any weapons. Clinton would never forget that moment. Rambo-Roy had addressed the men: “You didn’t fight and almost die for the United States to end up like this. You didn’t crawl on your belly through bullets, blood, and poison snakes in foreign countries just to starve and sleep in a ditch when you got back home!”

  Other homeless men and women had witnessed the face-off between the SWAT team and the veterans; in their faces Clinton thought he had detected a flicker of recognition. Clinton had listened to the Barefoot Hopi, and he had talked day and night with the African. Both had preached patience, the patience of the old tribal people who had been humble enough not to expect change in one human lifetime, or even five lifetimes. Maybe not tomorrow or next week, but someday Clinton knew, the other homeless people would remember the defiance of the homeless vets; the dumpy, pale women and their skinny, pale men would remember the absolute surge of pride and power the veterans’ defiance had given them. Like little seeds, the feelings would grow, and the police violence that had rained down on the people would only nurture the growing bitterness.

  Clinton had been headed out anyway when the police came looking for him and Rambo-Roy. Naturally the Tucson police had got the details confused and had arrested the first white man and black man they had located wearing camouflage clothing. Clinton had not been sure if it was right for him and Rambo-Roy to let two other “brothers” take the rap for Trigg’s murder. The police claimed they had genetic evidence from the crime scene that linked the two men in police custody to the killing. Clinton and Rambo-Roy both knew any genetic evidence found at the crime scene belonged to them, not the men in police custody. So actually the Tucson police had found no evidence at the scene, but after they had arrested the two men, the police detectives had taken hair and skin-cell samples from the me
n to put in the evidence bags with other material collected at the murder scene. Rambo said once the police had planted your hair or skin cells at the scene of the crime, you were finished. There was nothing that could be done. So even if Clinton had turned himself in, it wouldn’t be his hair or his skin cells in that police evidence bag. Rambo-Roy said the brothers were doing their part by taking the rap for them. Clinton had to get back to the big cities. He had to try to reach the black war vets before they got misled by fanatics or extremists screaming “Black only! Africa only!” because Clinton had realized the truth: millions of black Indians were scattered throughout the Americas. Africans in the Americas had always been “home” because “home” is where the ancestor spirits are. From the gentle giants, Damballah and Quetzalcoatl, to the Maize Mother, and the Twin Brothers and Old Woman Spider, Africa and the Americas had been possessed.

  Clinton was heading for Haiti after he visited some of his black Indian cousins in New York City. Black Indians living in Manhattan had long been supplying aid and arms to the Mohawk nations at war with Canada and the United States. The African had been discreet about the modest financial aid certain African nations had sent to the Mohawks. The African had called the aid a “symbolic gesture” of the solidarity between the African tribal people and the Native American tribal people. Now that black Africans had finally recovered their ancestral land the spirits would not allow the Africans to turn their backs on the tribes of the Americas as they fought to take back their land.

  Clinton wasn’t going to waste time with the whiners and complainers who had made wine or dope their religion, or the Jesus junkies, who had made religion their drug. Talking to Weasel Tail and the Barefoot Hopi had given Clinton so many more ideas than he and Rambo-Roy had ever got by themselves. Rambo-Roy and he had been right about the homeless and their plan to organize the homeless poor around an army of homeless war vets. On the Indian reservations the surviving war vets were at the core of the preparations. As Weasel Tail and the Hopi said, they might kill and cripple thousands, or even millions, of us, but those who did survive would indeed become a power to be reckoned with. All around them, all their lives they had witnessed their people’s suffering and genocide; it only took a few, the merest handful of such people, to lay the groundwork for the changes.

  Ignorance of the people’s history had been the white man’s best weapon. Clinton had continued to fill his notebook with fragments of the history the people had been deprived of for so long. The Hopi had given Clinton a book that the Hopi said might shine some more light on black Indians. Clinton had written in bold letters at the top of the notebook page Thank you, Herbert Apthekerl

  1526

  Pee Dee River, South Carolina: Negro slaves rise up, flee to live with the Indians.

  1663

  Gloucester County, Virginia: Indians aid black and white slaves.

  1687

  Westmoreland County, Virginia: Negro slaves rebel.

  1688

  Maryland: “Sam,” slave belonging to R. Metcalfe, leads uprising.

  1690

  Newbury, Massachusetts: Mysterious white man from New Jersey leads Indian and black slaves to French Canada.

  1691

  Middlesex County, Virginia: “Mingo” leads other black slaves on rampage.

  1702

  New York, South Carolina: Mild unrest among slaves.

  1708

  Newton, Long Island: Indian and black slaves rebel and kill seven whites.

  1709

  Counties of Surry, James City, and Isle of Wight in Virginia suffer rebellions of Indian and black slaves.

  1711

  South Carolina: Great terror among whites as “Sebastian” leads other black slaves in uprising.

  1712

  New York City: Indian and Negro slaves kill nine white men during uprising.

  1713

  South Carolina: Slave rebellion plot blamed on slave preacher recently arrived from Martinique.

  1720

  South Carolina: Slave uprising coincides with drought, economic depression, and Indian troubles.

  1722

  Rappahannock River, Virginia: Slave unrest and conspiracies.

  1723

  Gloucester and Middlesex, Virginia: Slaves plot to flee to Florida and freedom promised by Spanish officials. Boston, Massachusetts, and New Haven, Connecticut: slaves set fire to numerous buildings.

  1727

  Louisiana: Captured Indian slave reveals secret outlaw village of “Natanapalle” where runaway black and Indian slaves live.

  1729

  Virginia: Black slaves flee to Blue Ridge Mountains with guns and agricultural implements.

  1730

  Louisiana: French arm adult black slaves to fight Chonachee Indians, but blacks conspire with Indians against the white men.

  Virginia, South Carolina, Louisiana: Unrest and rebellion blamed on rumor among black slaves that the king had freed all baptized slaves.

  1733

  Unrest among black slaves increases everywhere after the Spanish government announces all slaves of the British who reach Florida will be free.

  1738

  Charles Town, Virginia: Conditions approach guerrilla warfare as black slaves try to reach Florida, which they call “the promised land.”

  1739

  Stono, South Carolina: Uprising of black slaves blamed on Spain’s war with England.

  1740

  New York City: Slaves poison their masters’ water.

  1741

  New Jersey: Arson blamed on black slaves.

  1747

  New York City: Uprising among black slaves.

  1751

  South Carolina: Law enacted against slaves poisoning masters.

  1755

  Virginia, Maryland: the French and Indian War causes slave unrest.

  1765

  South Carolina: “Maroons” hiding in mountains grow more troublesome.

  1767

  Alexandria, Virginia: Rebellious black slaves.

  1771

  Georgia: British agent blamed for stirring up black slaves.

  1772

  Perth Amboy, New Jersey: In the center of the slave trade, a rebel conspiracy is uncovered.

  1774

  Boston: Black slaves rise up and seek aid of British and Irish. St. Andrew’s Parish, Georgia: Slaves rise up.

  1775

  North Carolina: Black slaves plot to rise up and join British forces.

  1776

  Bucks County, Pennsylvania: Black slaves rise up to aid British.

  1778

  Albany, New York: “Tom” arrested again for stirring up minds of Negro slaves against their masters.

  1782

  Spanish Louisiana: Rebellious “maroons” and Negroes led by one “St. Malo” make trouble for whites.

  1786

  Savannah River, Georgia: Negro slaves calling themselves “soldiers of the King of England” carry on guerrilla warfare from a stockaded village in Bell Isle swamp.

  1791

  Santo Domingo (Haiti): Successful black slave uprising. News does not reach U.S. slaves for a year or two.

  1791

  Western Virginia: Indians defeat General St. Clair and unrest stirs among black slaves while militia is gone fighting Indians.

  1793

  North Carolina: Cherokee Indians fight whites and black slaves threaten to rise up.

  1793

  Richmond, Virginia: Black slaves discuss successful rebellion in Santo Domingo.

  Charleston, South Carolina: Mysterious fires sweep the city, and black slave unrest is blamed on revolt in Santo Domingo.

  1796

  Massive sell-off of black slaves by white masters such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington due to economic hard times.

  1797

  Charleston, South Carolina: Three black slaves executed for “plots” and arson.

  1800

  Denmark Vesey buys his freedom. Nat Turner is born. John Brown is
born.

  1800

  Henrico County, Virginia: “Gabriel,” slave of T. Prosser, leads a conspiracy.

  1804

  New Orleans: Slaves are restless and cruelly punished during war between France and Spain.

  1804

  Philadelphia: Whites attack blacks, but blacks rally together shouting, “Show them Santo Domingo!”

  1810

  Virginia: Slaves rise up and kill four whites.

  1811

  St. John and St. Charles Parish, Louisiana: Charles Deslondes, a free mulatto from Santo Domingo, leads a rebellion of black slaves.

  1812