The Family at Serpiente

by Raymond Tolman

  What was the apparition that flew across the sky at Combs ridge and did it have anything to do with the tumult at Mexican Hat Anticline or did it have everything to do with the tumultuous things that happened later? Why were we the only people to see it? Skin walkers are rumored to cause humans to act evil; they seemed to enjoy toying with humans. Obviously, things like children being beaten up and personal things being stolen do not happen, normally, anywhere on river trips. Did the skin walkers make Mr. Overholt and his girlfriend, do what they did, or had he planned his actions in advance? The real mystery was how did they manage to steal the most personal possessions from almost every camp in the area? How did they know where all the personal items were hidden in each camp? Did they somehow have help? It all seemed to have happened very quickly. It seemed to be impossible for several thieves to steal as many personal bags as they did in such a short time, but no one was actually ever seen trying to steal anything. It was Overholt who insisted that the boys were responsible for everything. Were the boys working with Overholt and then found themselves victims when Overholt turned on them. Virtually the entire camping area was victimized. If they were smart enough to figure out how to do that, how could they possibly be so stupid as to think they could escape by paddling downriver to Mexican Hat? It is a bottleneck, but then, it can be paddled in several hours if the paddlers are determined and skilled enough.

  When the crows visited our camp at Mendenhall Cave, were they all skin walkers or was one animal directing all the other crows to do its bidding. Perhaps they were just crows! They all just seemed to want to look at us, and then they left. The problem was trying to wrap my mind around forty crows all belonging to a single clan that wanted to examine us. Why?

  Did any of this have anything to do with the disappearance of previous cultures that occupied the river watershed? Would the violence return in the modern four corners area? Certainly no one can explain the amount of violence that had suddenly appeared after centuries of relative peace. Why did the early Indians turn to cannibalism and head hunting? Were they so desperate that it was the only way they could survive, or were they being directed by evil witches? We all felt like we were seeing something that was invisible to everyone else.

  The apparition that Hidalgo saw seemed real enough for him. Why did it then disappear? Was it taunting Hidalgo or had it been examining him? Was it what the Navajos called a trickster? Why did it pick him to appear to? Hidalgo naturally wondered why he had been chosen.

  Oljeta Gulch was a profound mystery to us; we wondered how the raven took control of our minds. We kept wondering what could have happened, the raven had complete control of our emotions. Emotions are generated in the oldest and most primitive part of the human brain. What some scientist call the reptilian center. We wondered if there was a connection but were at a loss as to how the raven actually used its power. We found ourselves asking was there a way to combat the powers of the skin walker, or kill them? Certainly if the serpents wanted to kill us they could have easily manipulated our minds into murder. Were we being attacked or being tested? Hidalgo came to the conclusion that the creatures were trying to learn as much about us as possible. They were testing us for something that was to happen. Hidalgo knew deep in his heart that there was going to be another confrontation, sometime, somewhere.

  I learned from Hidalgo that all of this witchcraft certainly seemed to have a profound impact on the Navajos who were living there now. They despise witchcraft, yet it has a profound impact on their culture. What do the tribal elders know that they refuse to share with the rest of the world? Or do they? Everyone has different opinions.

  The one mystery that didn’t seem to bother anyone was the strange dancing lights that appeared in the sky. They didn’t seem to do anything but dance in the night sky. For now, they seemed harmless, a preoccupation of modern Americans but they seemed very different from the ancient creatures that were plaguing the people on the San Juan Watershed. One thing we understood was that there was an unnatural, supernatural force in this land, consisting of pure energy with an evil intent.

  Researching Zuni

  Wanting to find out more about the Zuni culture, Corey and I took a trip to the library at the University of New Mexico. There we read chapters from several books and wrote the most interesting things down to share with Hidalgo, June and Ken.

  When the Spanish entered the southwest in the early sixteenth century, two hundred years after Chaco Canyon was deserted, there were over eighty pueblos clustered along the Rio Grande River and its tributaries. In addition, to the far west were the Hopi towns, then to the east of them the seven Zuni villages as well as the sky city of Acoma. Several different languages were spoken in the pueblos, Keresan, Tewa, Tiwa, Towa, Shoshonnean, and the unique Zunian to name a few. The Zuni language is inexplicable. Linguist say that some aspects of it closely resemble dialects found in primitive tribes of people from North Africa in what is now the country of Libya and other linguist say they can find direct roots in their language to the ancient Japanese.

  Due, undoubtedly to the European influence, the eighty pueblos have dwindled to nineteen. Zuni is known to its ancient inhabitants, as Halona I’tiwana, the Middle Ant Hill of the World. Only a single pueblo called Zuni now exist where at one time there was seven. It is located in extreme western New Mexico, some thirty-some miles south of the railroad town of Gallup. The people in Zuni are noted for making inlaid silver jewelry and for their skill at performing at Native American ceremonies such as the Shalako that involves six giant Kachinas called The Couriers of the Gods. There is much more, however, that distinguishes the Zuni Indians.

  Zuni first experienced Europeans when Franciscan Father, Fray Marcos de Niza and his Moorish companion Estavan, walked across North America with Cabeza de Vaca searching for the seven cities of gold. Instead they stumbled upon Zuni. Estavan, thinking that he could talk to the Zunis, boldly rode into the Pueblo. He was killed. Hearing of this, Niza fled south to Mexico with the news of Estavan’s death, telling tales of a golden city. Hearing those stories, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado set forth to find the Golden Cities of Cibola.

  The city he found was gold colored, but only because of the appearance of the natural rocks and adobe mud bricks that were used in its construction. There was no real wealth in the form of gold to be stolen there. He found the villages in 1540, and that is when the trouble began. Afterwards a succession of Spanish explorers stumbled into Zuni, mostly on their way to somewhere else. The natives, who had already fought outsiders such as Apaches and Navajos, now had another invasion to deal with.

  Driven by the search for gold and souls to save, Zuni was visited by a succession of explorers. By 1629 Spanish missionaries had settled into Hawikuh and a Catholic mission rose in its midst. By 1680 the Zunis had joined in a pueblo wide revolt from the Spanish. After killing one of the priests, and burning the mission of Halona, they fled to a fortified position. When the Spanish returned to Zuni they settled in a single village, Halona, as a safeguard against the increasing raids.

  The first American to have real contact with the Zuni Indians was Frank Hamilton Cushing. Arriving in Zuni in 1889 he spent four years among them becoming a Zuni himself. Cushing was unique not only because he was a brilliant ethnologist associated with the Bureau of American Ethnology under the directorship of Major John Wesley Powell of Grand Canyon fame, but because he became one of the very people he was studying. He became a member of the tribal council and as such a warrior. He learned to take scalps, a curious custom introduced to the tribe by previous Spanish invaders. He took it as a personal responsibility to deal with their real enemies the Navajos and the American politics of the time.

  By this time the area was being settled by American pioneers, even the land itself was being stolen. Cushing found himself acting as a court lawyer, fighting the surrounding ranchers who wanted to add pueblo land to their personal empires. They argued that since they would have to pay for any land they acquired, and the Indians had never
paid for any of their land, it was an injustice. The Indians had no court documents registered in Santa Fe documenting their land therefore it was up for grabs. Cushing, who had learned the Zuni language and customs, was the only white man who ever got a real insight into what it is to be a Zuni and fought for their rights in the courts.

  A Visit to Zuni

  In particular, I wanted to return to the San Juan area. My curiosity only peaked once I had the time to think about my experiences. I was amazed, after all, strange things like what had happened to us simply do not happen to the vast majority of people who travel through or live in the Four Corners area or anywhere else. Considering the hundreds of river runners who floated down the river, why did everything happen to us? But I also wanted to go to Zuni. Hidalgo’s father had suggested that the only way anyone could find out why the canyons around San Juan were deserted and people left their homes, was by visiting Zuni. When I asked Hidalgo about going to Zuni all he would say is “No!” Hidalgo refused to even discuss going to Zuni. Corey didn’t care; he just wanted to be with me wherever I went.

  It took almost a month before all the chores were done, particularly medicating the cows for an infestation of deer ticks. We decided to take the arduous trip into the canyon lands behind the ranch house that hid thousands of ruins and of course what was left of the mysterious mountain that at one time was the home of thousands of mysterious serpents. Everything looked rather sad and deserted. Not only had the serpents apparently disappeared but much of the other wildlife from coyotes to rabbits had simply vanished. Walking through the canyons, one would always be entertained by the singing of birds. Now it was a stony silence. The good news was that the entire episode was being forgotten by neighboring ranchers. They were starting to prosper again as their domesticated animals were making a rebound. Everyone seemed happy except for the family at Serpiente Ranch; we knew the hidden, but very real, cost of what was going on.

  Hidalgo continued his stubbornness until we seemed to be arguing about Zuni constantly. Finally one evening at dinner, when the subject inevitably came up June stopped the conversation with an announcement that she was going to Zuni alone. June explained that she was the only person among them that had real contacts in the Zuni world. She knew one family at Hopi well and several families at Zuni including clan elders, because of her work there on her anthropology degree. She also had the political contacts in Santa Fe where she had managed to interest certain political parties into the value of assisting in the survival of New Mexico’s indigenous populations, if for no other reason, than for tourist trade and of course there were votes in Zuni.

  Many Zunis did not take the time to participate in state elections, they have their own problems to take care of and saw little value in the government that represented the outside world. Besides, after hundreds of years of foreign contact not a single foreign entity had offered them anything that would actually help them, only religion; foreign religions that were useless to them as far as most of them were concerned. June had spent many long hours working at the pueblo and even longer hours in Santa Fe where she talked to government officials about the deplorable and ancient houses that the natives lived in. She had missed seeing Corey there years ago by only a few days.

  Strangers came and went through the pueblo all the time, mostly tourist who after placating their curiosity drove on. There were no motels in Zuni. Nobody ever stayed, they couldn’t. The Zuni tribal council didn’t allow anyone but natural born Zuni citizens to live on the reservation. The Zuni people are a very private people. There were a few exceptions to that rule, but newcomers who wanted to stay were really not welcome. One exception to the rule was the trading company that was owned and operated by a white family for the last fifty years or so. It was necessary to the tribe. June knew she would be able to talk to Zuni Indians when nobody else could because her political efforts brought in a construction company that built homes for the people. They used Zunis as the primary source of labor which meant there were jobs, which meant there was money to buy things that were desperately needed by the pueblo people. They might feel compelled to help her.

  She knew all about the ancient cultures that lived in the southwest, she knew secrets. She knew that there was far more to their ancient ceremonies and rituals than people realized. After all, at one time the cultures in the Americas were just as interesting if not superior to anything offered in Europe. When the Spanish conquered the civilizations in South America, it was recruited Indians and disease such as smallpox that actually conquered the nations of natives, not Spanish warriors. At about the time Columbus mistakenly wandered into America, the indigenous cultures of the Americans consisted of huge populations of people, who in places like the Amazon, simply vanished along with the traces their cultures which have since been engulfed by the jungle. Only a tiny percentage, usually only one or two percent of any given population survived the introduction of the new diseases. In North America, when Columbus arrived there were some five hundred different indigenous nations, each with traditions and a culture of their own. They raided each other and occasionally intermarried. They were all profoundly affected by the newcomers and their populations plummeted due to diseases.

  Apparently gold was never considered a useful metal to the local natives here in the American Southwest. It was too soft. Although there was evidence that they traded gold to natives in the south for ceremonial goods that could only come from present day Mexico and beyond. The cultures the Spanish found were poor in material wealth; the Spanish never found the rich cities of gold that they had hoped for despite their successes in South America, but they were very rich in ceremonial and racial memories. While everyone else measured the cultures using a yardstick that measured the amount of territory they occupied, the megalithic structures they created or the gold they possessed. June was one of the first who realized the vast amounts of energy that was donated to ceremonial activities; material wealth meant nothing to them.

  June personally knew several people at Zuni pueblo such as the governor as well as several conspicuous elders. After piling into the most dependable work truck, and making the long journey to the pueblo, she encountered what she expected. They were all polite, she was even invited to share food with them in several of their homes, but they wouldn’t answer her questions about Skin Walkers. They either had no memory of the stories from that time or they would simply change the subject, it was a taboo subject, something as one elderly lady says, “a subject the Navajos would have to deal with.” Finally one elderly man gently patted June on the knee, leaned over and said into her ear; “We believe that thinking about shape shifters or skin walkers, much less talking about them, might invite them into our community. As far as we are concerned they do not exist.” They certainly didn’t want to discuss it with a white woman. Despite her political pull within the tribe, she was still an outsider.

  The people of Zuni Pueblo had good reason for being so secretive and private about their history. Although Zuni is very old and unique, they, along with Hopi and many other communities are the modern day descendants of the people who left San Juan and Chaco Canyon, the homeland of the ancient Anasazi world. They are the living descendants of those people who left in fear. They may know answers but are unwilling to divulge anything.

  After the people left what is now northern New Mexico and Colorado, they took up a whole new religion that was being practiced in Zuni, Hopi and many other southern communities, the religion of the Kachina. For the average person, life had been horrible in the north, a real challenge just to stay alive, while in the southern communities, everyone was prospering. The weather cooperated with the new communities and their gardens produced food to feed a slowly expanding population. The new religion of the Kachina, offered them a whole new way out of the darkness. After only a few generations only a few had memories of what happened.

  Finally, just when June realized that she was making a nuisance of herself and started to prepare to leave, her solution appeared to h
er. She first noticed the small boy in the shadows, watching her. This was not unusual because in the pueblo children learn to avoid outsiders. But curiosity overwhelms a few of them. She caught several glimpses of him watching her, and then she slowly advanced toward him. Finally she positioned herself where he would run into her if he tried to escape and June asked him “What’s your name?”

  Cornered, he turned to her after looking up and down the street to see who else was there. He then dropped his eyes to the ground and walked over to June and without answering her question said, “You want to ask someone some questions?”

  June answered, “Yes that’s true, but let’s answer the first question, first.”

  “Joaquen Mendoza.” said the boy with a smile. “If you really want answers to your questions you should talk to my grandfather. He is a shaman.”

  June thought she knew everyone in the community who participated in the ceremonial arts. She also knew however, that if she was going to get some real answers she would need to find someone unique, a person who followed their own path instead of following the flock. June knew what would be required, “What would your grandfather want in order to share some information with me?”