Soul of the Sacred Earth

by Vella Munn

  “Give me more time,” he told his mother. “My mourning is not finished.”

  “I know you loved her, but she has been gone since last winter and you walk in today.”

  “Today I captured and brought home a horse,” he told her. “And now I am weary. Tomorrow . . .” He yawned. “Tomorrow I will look to the future.”

  “A future with a wife in it?”

  Perhaps, if the newcomers do not change too much about Dinehtah.

  • • •

  Most Hopi clothing was made by men from the wild cotton that grew throughout their land. The men each had several costumes for the numerous religious ceremonies. However, when they went about the work of caring for their crops, their clothing was less elaborate. Women covered themselves with sleeveless dresses tied on one shoulder. In winter, they added shirts or blankets in addition to moccasins. Unless a woman wanted to proclaim her marriageable state, she usually wore two braids, while men tended to catch their long hair in a single knot at the nape of their necks.

  Fray Angelico had noted, in the course of studying those for whose spiritual well-being he was responsible, that their clothing, almost without exception, was clean and well tended. He’d taken it upon himself to study such things as divisions of labor, diet, and the regard given children and the elderly, but he still had a great deal to learn. Most of all, he wondered what kept them here when they could have gone to where there was more water and less heat. Something held them to the area, but what?

  Today, however, the question didn’t concern him. All that did was God’s glory, God’s message, God’s orders to him.

  “Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God?” he asked in Spanish. “Who was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was dead and buried, and rose again the third day, alive from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?”

  A black-eyed boy stared up at Fray Angelico, a sheep-like expression on his face.

  “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Church, and the resurrection of the body?”

  Angelico rested his hand on the boy’s head and prayed the youth would say something—anything. Just the same, he gave thanks to God for presenting him with his first convert, and for the sharp wind that cut a little of the afternoon’s heat.

  Although the Hopi whom he’d managed to gather around him made no attempt to join him in prayer, surely some good came out of their hearing the holy words. The question of whether a padre should learn the native language in order to minister to the people had been discussed for nearly a hundred years, starting when Fray Marcos de Niza accompanied the explorer Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado into country never before seen by civilized man, but Angelico, like most of his Franciscan brothers, believed in the unity of Catholicism and Spanish. God spoke in a single voice; all who were brought to him would learn that voice—and eventually Latin as well.

  It bothered Angelico that Captain Lopez insisted he had more important things to do than attend this baptism. After all, only a single horse out of a herd of nearly eighty had been stolen two days ago. It wasn’t as if there was any danger that the Navajo would attack in mass, not with just one horse among them while the soldiers had a cannon and muskets at their disposal.

  “Most righteous God.” He spoke as loudly as his dry throat would allow. “Look down on this poor creature and take him into Your heart. Spread Your wisdom and word among the unsaved and make this day a celebration of You.”

  He kicked the boy’s knees out from under him and then kept him sprawled on the ground by placing his foot on the back of the boy’s neck.

  The padre had intended to shut his eyes as he lifted his face to the heavens, but before he could, a distant bird caught his attention. He didn’t know whether it was a hawk or an eagle or maybe something indigenous to the desert, and couldn’t understand how it could go about its life’s work oblivious to the parching heat.

  Under his foot, the boy squirmed. Careful to keep his features peaceful, Angelico pressed a little harder. He would have immersed the child in water if there’d been enough. As it was, he’d had only a few spoonsful to sprinkle on the boy’s head, and that had evaporated almost immediately.

  “Hear me, my children,” he said, although of course the ignorant Hopi couldn’t understand. “This one is most blessed among you. From now on, he will serve a new master and great joy will be his. Joy which all of you will receive as soon as you have been saved from your heathen ways.”

  A faint grating sound returned him to his surroundings. Except for the plants the Hopi labored over so diligently, the land was lifeless, barren, godless. He’d failed his God by not conducting this baptism at Oraibi and yet . . .

  Father, with my entire being I believe in Your love and direction. You are the God almighty, maker of all things, both visible and invisible. My life has been in service to You and I joyously give what life remains in that celebration. But the devil’s strength is strong here. I feel it whenever I am near the savages’ underground sites where they worship their false gods and thus . . . thus . . .

  The devil will not win!

  Where was that infernal racket coming from? Tilting his head to one side, he determined that the sound was human, as close to human speech as the Hopi were capable of, anyway. Someone was chanting.

  “Silence!”

  The Indians jumped back, then eased forward again. “Do you not understand?” he demanded. “You risk the Lord’s wrath by interfering in this baptism.”

  A woman, her head lowered, stepped in front of the others and held out her hands, indicating the child on the ground. When the boy again tried to wriggle free, Angelico pulled him to his feet and held him against him. The woman squeaked something incomprehensible, the sound letting him know it wasn’t her that he’d heard. In fact, the accursed chanting continued.

  Chanting.

  Sweat that had nothing to do with the day’s heat ran down the small of his back, and he fought to suppress a shudder. He’d heard the sound before and would have immediately recognized it if he hadn’t been otherwise occupied. Still holding on to the boy, he turned so he was no longer looking directly into the sun, and studied his surroundings. A trio of young women was directly ahead of him. Behind them stood someone wearing a mask that resembled nothing he had ever seen before. The chanting came from the mask wearer.

  Another shiver wracked him. He opened his mouth to speak but let it close because no matter how simply he expressed himself, he wouldn’t be understood. If only his fellow priest Fray Joseph were here, but the old man had died before the journey was two weeks old.

  The mask wearer shuffled toward Angelico, his dark feet kicking up small puffs of dirt. It took both of his hands to keep the wood-and-feather mask in place, but the wearer seemed oblivious to any discomfort. His words were strung together, sharp like rock grating against rock, sometimes low and almost pleasant but mostly an insult to the ears.

  Angelico made note of the black, white, and red colors decorating the mask; an inverted triangle of a mouth; tiny, dark eyes; and, most alarming, what looked like horns sticking out of the side of the head. The wearer—a man, the padre determined after noting that except for the mask, he wore only a loincloth—turned his head this way and that as if challenging anyone to risk being gored by the white-tipped horns.

  From what he’d gathered from the writings of the first Franciscans to reach the new land, the Indians believed in a multitude of devil-gods. This must be a depiction of one of them, perhaps the most powerful and dangerous the Hopi, in their ignorance, worshipped.

  With the resisting boy clutched in front of him, Angelico backed away, then forced himself to stand his ground as he prayed. You are holy, Lord, the only God, and Your deeds are wonderful. You are strong. You are great. You are the Most High. You are Almighty.

  His throat closed and he struggled to breathe. “How misguided you all are to give homage to an
ything except the Lord God!” he screamed. “This is the road to hell and eternal damnation. Come to me. Beg for forgiveness and understanding. I will show you the true way, the only way!” You are my protector, my guardian and defender. You are my courage, my haven and hope.

  “Fight the devil! Cast him out and be saved!”

  He watched the Indians closely, searching for any signs of belief. He was stunned—surely that hadn’t been comprehension in the eyes of one of the young women. The masked figure continued to approach, and Angelico released the boy. For a moment he was tempted to begin the boy’s education or to identify the woman he had just seen, but the Hopi still advanced. Trying to look dignified rather than afraid, Angelico moved away quickly.

  The boy, on the verge of tears and yet wanting to appear brave, stood with his hands by his sides as his mother embraced him. She wiped him from head to foot with her skirt and then released him to play.

  The boy’s uncle, a member of the Marau society, removed his Ahote mask. Ahote, a singer of sacred songs, was a benevolent kachina, but the uncle had guessed the padre didn’t know that and would be frightened the way small children were the first time they witnessed the winter Powamu ceremony to celebrate the fall harvest.

  “Are you sure what you did was wise?” the boy’s mother, Slow Runner, asked him as Morning Butterfly joined them. “You wore your costume when it was not a kachina ceremony. The gods may be displeased.”

  “The gods will understand,” Morning Butterfly ventured. “It should please them to see that a wooden mask frightens the newcomers.”

  “Perhaps,” Slow Runner muttered. “I do not like it that the padre took my son and made him do things he did not want to.”

  “Should we expect anything different?” said Nose Too Long, eldest son of the village’s senior chief.

  “I wish they would go away.” Slow Runner stared at the departing padre. “I pray they will want nothing from us and will go elsewhere, that they will not do to us as was done to the Keres at the Sky City.”

  Among the Hopi, the men were the leaders, but as several braves came to stand beside Nose Too Long, Morning Butterfly felt she had to speak.

  “The padre’s words made little sense to me,” she admitted. “The words themselves had meaning, but put together they were nonsense.” After thinking about it for a moment, she said she thought the padre had performed a religious ceremony because he’d used the words “lord” and “god.” He’d obviously wanted some response from the boy, and when he hadn’t gotten it, he’d become agitated.

  “He is different from the soldiers, and there are no others like him,” she said. “Perhaps he is lonely and wants us to join him in what he does.”

  “That will never be,” another brave insisted. “To be Hopi is to be one of the People, nothing else.”

  “But if we are forced to . . .” Slow Runner clamped a hand over her mouth. “I do not want this thing! I want back what we were before they came.”

  “Not everything that comes from the newcomers is bad,” Nose Too Long pointed out. “We knew about sheep and horses, but now that they are here, I see how valuable they are. I want to take the sheep fur and turn it into clothing. Perhaps we will find it is better than cotton.”

  “That cannot be,” Slow Runner retorted. “Cotton is a gift from Mother Earth.”

  The debate over whether the good might outweigh the bad in respect to the newcomers’ possessions continued, but Morning Butterfly didn’t try to contribute, and the padre was far enough away that he couldn’t overhear.

  It seemed that he’d looked at her more than he had the others. The soldiers were like that, staring at her until she wanted to run, but it was her understanding that a padre wasn’t like other men. She wasn’t as tall as she would have liked to be and no matter how much she ate, she remained thin, but maybe the strangers liked to sleep with skinny women.

  No, she would never willingly give herself to one of them.

  Nose Too Long’s father, Chief Cold Morning, hadn’t been around while the padre forced the boy to do his bidding, but he was here now, his thick hair wind-tangled and his eyes narrow with concern.

  “The men must talk,” he declared. “It is time for decisions to be made.”

  “Decisions?” Morning Butterfly wasn’t afraid of Cold Morning—no Hopi woman feared a Hopi man—but she’d recently been a child, while Cold Morning had been a leader for many, many seasons.

  “The Keres who survived were forced to become a thing called Christians. Many of their children were stolen and never seen again. My father and grandfather prayed the Spanish would go back to where they came from, but they have not. Instead, they traveled further north and are now in Hopi land. I do not want to see my people bow before them.”

  “I must try to put more meaning to the padre’s words,” she said. “His and the soldiers’. Otherwise, we may never know what we must about them.”

  Chief Cold Morning nodded. “My thoughts are the same, Morning Butterfly. But I do not want to ask such a thing of you because I am afraid the soldiers may try to rape you. You are not the only one who understands their language. Your whole family does. I will speak to your father.

  “No. My father is not well and my mother spends her time caring for him. I do not want them burdened any more than they already are.”

  Cold Morning started to nod, then went still, his gaze fixed on the padre. Fray Angelico had turned around and was shuffling toward them. He’d tucked his hands into the loose sleeves of his robe.

  “What is going on here?” the padre demanded. “If you so much as raise a fist against me, I will insist you be punished.” He jerked his head toward the military compound in emphasis. “The Lord’s work will be done, and your heathen souls will be saved, all of them!”

  The chief glanced at Morning Butterfly, who struggled to keep her features impassive, although she ached to translate.

  “I keep reminding myself that you are children,” the padre continued. “That it is my duty to show you the way to the light. The task seems daunting, but I will prevail. Understand! I will baptize all of you, show you how to fear the Lord our God.”

  Fear?

  “Do you think I want to punish anyone? Of course not. Mine is a merciful God, but I will never turn from my task. I am beholden to the patrons who financed my trip here, powerful and wealthy men determined to make this godless country safe. If you insist on remaining heathens, you will suffer the consequences. Do you understand me? Do you?”

  Despite herself, Morning Butterfly flinched at his anger. When she did, the padre’s gray eyes met hers, then he whirled and moved off swiftly.

  • • •

  She was beautiful. Whether the girl was a virgin or not wasn’t something Fray Angelico concerned himself with. Nakedness was so common among the heathens, especially among the children who showed no shame at exposing themselves, that he couldn’t imagine that keeping oneself pure mattered to them.

  They would learn the error of their ways! Repent and—

  His right thigh muscle cramped, forcing him to stop and try to rub the knot out of it. He tried to distract himself from the discomfort by taking in his surroundings, but Oraibi dominated everything. Was there no way the accursed thing wouldn’t mock him . . .

  The pain in his thigh eased, allowing him to think beyond it. He could have started walking again, but it was easier to remain where he was, to continue to massage the muscle, the front of his leg, higher, to brush against the organ that had swollen while he looked at the Hopi woman. If anyone saw what he was doing, what had happened to him—

  A sob clogged his throat and he dropped his hand. He was a priest, a man of God. Why, after all these years, was he being tested by temptations of the flesh?

  The woman was responsible. She and whatever devils she and her people worshipped.

  Chapter Five

  A few wispy clouds danced above the horizon, but Cougar paid them little mind as he and five other Navajo warriors crept toward Ora
ibi. The journey had begun with a song to Nandza’ gai, daylight, and Chahalgel, darkness, to insure a safe raid. Armed with knives and ropes, their intention was to steal as many horses as they could. Although his companions wanted to strike as soon as possible, Cougar had successfully argued that they should wait until evening so they could take advantage of darkness. He remembered what the corral looked like, he’d explained, and promised to guide the others safely to the herd.

  Now the sun had begun its downward journey and they were crouched behind a rise, looking out and up at the proud mesa where ancient Hopi had ended their long search for a home. He wasn’t afraid to be here, but neither did he allow himself to be lulled into thinking that earlier success and a song had adequately prepared him for what he was about to do. If the gods were pleased with him, he would continue to live; if he’d done something to displease them, he would join his wife in the afterworld. In truth, death-thoughts had stalked him since the decision to raid had been made, not that he’d speak of them to anyone.

  “There are too many horses,” Blue Corn Eater said. “I do not understand why they brought so many with them. The sparse grass here will not feed them all, and there is not enough water.”

  Cougar nodded agreement. From where they were, he could see three sand-covered plots with their deep-planted and widely spaced still-green corn stalks. Although he had no interest in farming, he admired the Hopi’s ability to make anything grow on their few little bits of land not covered with rocks or too steep. The corn, squash, beans, and tobacco plants gentled the landscape and spoke softly of life.