The Family at Serpiente

by Raymond Tolman

  “Yes, Hidalgo said, “They sent me out here to conduct research. We are supposed to run down any leads out here while June conducts ground research out west.” We are now officially historical detectives.”

  Penny interjected excitedly. I like the sound of that, you mean we are going to get paid for doing what has, up till now been a hobby?”

  “Uh huh,” answered Hidalgo, “Unless of course, you intend to immediately get married, move into a trailer house somewhere and start raising a bunch of babies like all these other little girls around here.

  Corey countered his tease by saying, “We intend to do just exactly that, but we are waiting on you first, after all, you are older than us.”

  Hidalgo grins and says, “There is more to life than making babies. There is plenty of time for that but I want to discover America first, make contributions, and then settle down. Besides, I want to be able to provide a good living for my wife and children when I settle down. I want to be able to tell my children stories about what we did and see the pride in their eyes.”

  In an instant, everything seemed perfectly clear in my mind. Instead of dread, I now had joy in my heart.

  Reaching over to Hidalgo, I took the amulet back and placed it around my neck.

  “I don’t know what it is but for some reason it seems to ease my mind.

  Corey says, “Well, it’s supposed to drive away a demon that is bothering you.”

  “All I know is it seems to be working!” I exclaimed and placed it under my blouse next to my heart.

  What is in a Name?

  I woke up early to noise coming from the kitchen. Throwing a robe over my shoulders, I ventured into the kitchen to see what was going on. There, I found my grandmother, Nora, teaching Hidalgo how to prepare country style biscuits. While they cut the biscuits out of the dough with a small tin can, Nora was explaining how they could be prepared in a Dutch oven. After the biscuits were put into a greased pan she began an explanation on how country sausage was made. As she highlighted particularly gruesome parts of the process she would look to Hidalgo to see if she could get a reaction. This brought a laugh out of me; I had watched Hidalgo do both preparations many times while back at the ranch. I sat down at the kitchen table to enjoy the show. Nora began asking questions about the Navajos.

  “Do your people still live in tepees,” Nora asked?

  “My people never lived in tepees, you must be thinking of plains Indians like the Lakotas. They now live in houses that look somewhat like the houses around here,” answered Hidalgo.

  “Do you still scalp people?”

  “Only when they deserve it,” answered Hidalgo. Hidalgo answered her questions as best that he could but I noticed a devilish grin on his face. He loved the entertainment and went out of his way to make himself a good guest.

  “Actually many of my people live in traditional houses made of timbers called Hogan’s and some of them live in mud houses.”

  “What, mud houses?” Nora was obviously mystified as to what Hidalgo was talking about.

  “Sure, they are often made from adobes or mud bricks that are laid just like the bricks around here.

  “Don’t they melt when it rains,” Nora asked. “Aren’t they terribly ugly and uncomfortable? How could you possibly live in a mud house? How do you keep clean?”

  Hidalgo, who had been grinning suddenly looked serious and says, “Adobes are made from mud and straw in an asphalt emulsion which makes them water proof. Besides, most adobes are plastered over. In Santa Fe and Albuquerque there are mud houses that are priced in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

  Nora had nothing to say after that bit of information but after a few moments she asked Hidalgo an odd question. “How do you feel about Corey getting himself a squaw?”

  “A squaw,” countered Hidalgo who was feeling terribly playful, surely you don’t mean to say that you want your granddaughter to be referred to as a squaw? We all have a much higher regard for her.”

  Nora blankly looked at Hidalgo and said, “Isn’t a squaw the wife or does that word just work for Indians.”

  Hidalgo decided to play with this for a while. “Well, first of all there is no such thing as Indians here in America unless they came over from the country of India. Actually the term is a misnomer that goes all the way back to Columbus who was obviously confused as to where he landed.”

  Nora says, I’m sorry, obviously you would rather be called Navajo.”

  Actually it must be a very confusing nomenclature to many here in the East. The name Navajo is a Tewa word that was used by the natives who were settled in the Southwest long before the Navajos came into that area. The name Navajo means thieves or takers from the fields. Actually we call ourselves Dene which means we the people. Anglos are often confused by Native American names, take Apache for example. Apache is a Zuni word for enemy. Apaches also call themselves Dene. You will discover that Penny, Cory and I often talk about the Anasazi Indians who lived in the canyon lands to the south of Serpiente. Most modern people now prefer the name Ancestral Puebloans. I realized it is all very confusing, but imagine what it is like for us. Most so called Indian names are actually names that Europeans have given us. For example, the name Delaware; the British named those Indians after Lord De La Ware who was a brave military leader. Indians who live in Canada call themselves Inuits, rather than Eskimos which means those who eat raw flesh. The Sioux call themselves Lakotas, meaning allies or the people, but their ancient enemies, the Ojibwes, called them Nadouwesioux which means little snakes or enemies. The French shortened the name to Sioux. The Ojibwes refer to themselves as Anishinabes or the people of creation. By the way, on the way here we passed a small community called Mohawk which actually means cannibal. The Mohawks actually call themselves Kaniengehagas, the people of the place of flint.

  In southern Arizona for example, the Papagos means bean eaters, a name given to them by the Pimas, another Arizona tribe. The Pima by the way, were called Pima which actually means “I don’t know’ which was apparently their reply when asked their name in Spanish by early explorers. The term you used to describe your granddaughter, as ‘squaw,’ actually means a prostitute or something even worse. By the way, the only tribes that I know of that are called by their real names are the Hopi or peaceful ones and Havasupai which means people of the blue green water, referring to their home among the beautiful waterfalls in a side canyon of the Grand Canyon.”

  “Oh my,” Nora says, “I have been using that dreadful term all of my life and didn’t know any better. Grandma immediately went back to working on the biscuits but Hidalgo could see she was raising her eyebrows every few minutes and muttering to herself which brought a mischievous smile to his face.

  Returning to the bedroom to get dressed, the events of the previous night came back to me. I was a little embarrassed by the emotions I had demonstrated. It came to my conscience that if I had gotten married right away I would be living in Camp Creek near my family. I would be able to demonstrate to all my old friends that I could be just like them. I could do what was considered normal, living close to my family. Living close to my grandparents had been especially intriguing to me. I thought to myself, why? Why was all of this suddenly so important to me? It was as if someone or something wanted me to drop out of the race, to disappear, to become another girl raising kids in another cheap trailer house.

  I then thought of Corey. His whole life was a world apart, living on a ranch in New Mexico. He could never escape his responsibilities; everyone there was dependent upon him. I had ignored my own values that had made me special in the first place. Life was becoming a grand adventure, why should I leave a life of adventure with certain romance in order to relive my mother’s life. I would no longer be a member of a team. I didn’t like what I saw when I glanced at myself in the vanity mirror.

  When I reentered the kitchen Corey was there, looking up at me a little warily he said to me, “How are you this morning?

  “Terrible,” I answered. �
�I have been thinking about what I have been putting you through, I’m sorry.”

  “No problem,” Corey replied.

  Hidalgo, who had been preoccupied setting the table and who hadn’t said a word asked me then. “Have you ever considered that someone or something didn’t want you to return to Serpiente?

  I thought about it for a minute then answered, “Well, It seems like the idea of getting married, right now, and staying here in Camp Creek, got stuck in my head. It felt like an obsession. Now that I think about it all, I am mystified. It seems like a silly idea to me now. I truly am embarrassed about it all.”

  Hidalgo looked at her and said, “Perhaps your actions were being directed without your even knowing it. Has it occurred to you that Corey may be dealing with a demon also? It is not in his nature to be concerned about such trivial things as losing a couple of dollars playing a game like Bingo. That sort of thing is common to many of my people. It is as if an evil spirit places those ideas in your heads. Maybe they are afraid of you and don’t want you to return home.”

  I thought about that for a minute, particularly about the part about returning home. Serpiente had become more of a home to me than any place I had ever lived. I pulled the owl amulet over my neck and handed it to Hidalgo. Hidalgo was fascinated by the object, turning it over and over in his hand and then handing it back to me. “I would appreciate it, if you would keep this with you at all times. There is something special about it, I don’t know what but it is special.”

  “Sure,” I responded. Serpiente was my home now. I could always return to Camp Creek anytime I wanted to. In the light of day it all seemed clear to me. Perhaps something was playing with my mind, I could only wonder, thinking about my dream for a second. I had never told them about the dream I experienced on the way to Serpiente. But, one thing I knew, Hidalgo knew about things like that. He truly was an unusual Native American.

  Judaculla Rock

  My vacation had turned into a job, but suddenly I was feeling better about myself. Perhaps a demon had been influencing me, playing games with my mind. Now those recent ideas about getting married right away seemed ridiculous. I was also realizing just how close I had come to losing Corey or ruining not only my life, but his as well. I promised myself that I would be a much more responsible person in the future, especially when it concerned other people’s lives.

  It would take a couple of days to rig Corey’s truck out for the task at hand. We found a place in nearby White Pine where a camper shell could be installed on the truck so we didn’t have to deal with rain and the expense of motels every night. Yet we were not really back on the job as one would expect. Both Corey and Hidalgo wanted to explore. This part of the country was all new to them. Appalachia was as old and mysterious to them as Chaco Canyon was to an Easterner. So it became a vacation with a purpose.

  We preferred camping out whenever possible or practical. We had plenty of money but all of us had grown up being very frugal. Old habits are hard to break, or as Nora said, “Waste not, want not.” Besides there would be plenty of time spent in towns where we could enjoy ourselves.

  One might expect the situation to be a little odd, especially for Hidalgo, who could have easily found himself, going along on a honeymoon. But because we had worked so intensely together for the last three years it seemed like all we did was change work sites. And despite the fact that I had grown up in East Tennessee I had never actually seen any of the sites we were now planning to explore, in fact, like most of my old friends I had never been more than fifty miles away from home.

  We were seeing and learning new things and had many questions to answer; no one knew why the oldest pyramids built in America occurred in northern Louisiana or why Ice Age Clovis style materials were mysteriously being discovered in Virginia. In fact, more Clovis age sites were being discovered along the east coast than out west and the long held idea that those people had come over to America from Asia through Alaska was being questioned more and more. Certainly the vast majority of Native Indians had crossed over the Bering Straits but there were nagging questions about older contacts. We had read that during the last ice age sea levels were several hundred feet lower than they are now but it still would have taken a herculean effort for early people to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean. These were obviously mysteries to be solved.

  Our first day trip was over to Caney Fork Road in Jackson County, North Carolina. My grandmother, Nora wanted us to see one of two mysterious sites that she had seen as a little girl.

  One site was the Judaculla Rock. There we found a large boulder about 40 feet in circumference that was covered with rock carvings. Since the local Cherokee Indians had no idea what the carvings and diagrams meant, we knew it was of great antiquity. We studied the carvings carefully trying to match them up with the rock carvings that we were familiar with.

  Even Hidalgo was stumped; he suggested that maybe the carvings were some sort of treaty between earlier people who lived in North Carolina well before the Cherokees.

  I thought that one diagram appeared like a hand pointed to the last pictograph, and was showing the way to a place; it was a map. We drove the long drive back to Camp Creek intrigued but with no real answers. On the way home Grandma looked at Hidalgo and said, “Here I thought you were an Indian and could read Indian writing!” Hidalgo rolled his eyes.

  Hidalgo made an attempt to make my grandmother understand about Indian writing. “When Columbus first came to the continent, there were an estimated five hundred languages being spoken. Currently there are about thirty four, seven in New Mexico alone. He asked Grandma if she could speak Spanish.

  “Heavens no,” Nora responded.

  “Well, I can, along with several other languages but I can’t put my mind into the mind of a person living thousands of years ago. Besides, the symbols seen on the rock represent something in the mind of the author. Who knows how many thousands of years ago that rock was carved and what was in the mind of the writer?”

  Then with a mischievous look on his face Hidalgo asked her, “Have you ever seen English as it was written long ago? Can you read old English from five hundred years ago, or even read Shakespeare in its original print?

  Nora could only say that she couldn’t read Shakespeare well in any language.

  The Old Stone Fort

  We found ourselves filling a large cardboard box with piles of photographs and articles containing tidbits of information. In the Southeast there were few American Indian ruins for us to explore. These Native Americans lived in a vast forest, never using stone to build their structures. But I discovered that there exists in East Tennessee, as well as the entire Eastern United States, fortified mound works. The one we were to visit was situated in an excellent strategic position overlooking steep bluffs, located on the plateau between two forks of whitewater streams that combine to form the Duck River.

  We explored the “Old Stone Fort” near Manchester, Tennessee, where one of the rare instances of a primitive work built in the remote uplands could be examined. It has no mounds within its large enclosure yet it was evidently designed to withstand a long siege. It is built in the forks of the Duck River, on the brow of a ravine, and it could hardly have been better placed by a military engineer. The name, “Old Stone Fort” is a misnomer, for the walls are made of earth, like all other primitive ramparts; the core of the earth fortification is stony rubble.

  It has one entrance, an intricate gateway, cleverly designed to be hard to attack and easy to defend. On our visit we learned that some have been inclined to think that Old Stone Fort was erected by a band of Spaniards who strayed far inland. This is very unlikely. It required a massive amount of work to construct. Yet why it was built remains a mystery. All that anybody can say conclusively was no Indian dwelled there in the times we are aware of, and there are no Indian dwelling sites found anywhere nearby.

  Both Hidalgo and I recognized it immediately as an ancient meeting place, much like the canyon pool that Corey and I had discovered i
n the canyons south of Serpiente. It was clear from literature at the ‘fort’ that many modern people had tried to connect the fort to biblical events or to ancient Hebrews or Phoenicians that had wandered into America.

  Hidalgo became angry talking to one fellow who insisted that he was an expert on ancient America. What was so strange to Corey and I was that the fellow was a fellow Native American, a Cherokee Indian. “We Cherokees have always had a tradition that white people preceded us into the occupation in East Tennessee. Whites lived along the Little Tennessee River and they had fortifications down the Tennessee to the mouth of the Chicamauga Creek. Oconostota, the great Cherokee chief believed that his grandparents and father say that whites were called Welsh; that they had crossed the great water and landed first at the mouth of the Alabama River, and made their way to the mountain country.”

  The old Cherokee further explained that even earlier a Prince Madoc who was chronicled by Welsh bards put his ideas into print as early as 1584. In fact, part of Great Britain’s claim to America, rather than some Italian by the name of Columbus was based upon the discovery and settlement of the Welsh under Madac shortly after 1170. According to this person, Prince Madoc taught the natives to build the structures known as Mounds all over the Eastern United States. Hidalgo knew better than this. Native Americans didn’t need instruction from others on how to build their megalithic structures. It took very little time before they realized that most mysterious places could be attributed to the Woodland Indian culture. The mystery was why did they build structures such as the old stone fort or in places like Ohio, why were there giant effigies of serpents there?