Return of the Bones: Inspired by a True Native American Indian Story

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  Return of the Bones

  Inspired by a True Story

  Native American Historical

  by

  Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  About Return of the Bones

  A dazzling family epic of ancestry, love and forgiveness, Return of the Bones is a very special book, inspired by a true story, which should be told. In 1915, 2,067 skeletons were stolen from the ghost pueblo of Pecos and transported to Harvard University for medical research. In present day and across the miles, the wind carries their cries to Grandfather who hears the bones longing for home. The old man and his granddaughter travel from New Mexico to Boston in a ratty pickup to retrieve the family bones. Along the way, they bicker along the miles as Grandfather tries to persuade Hollow-Woman to appreciate her ancestors and by doing so, come to love herself. A magical dream catcher fashioned by Grandfather and an archaeologist’s diary reveal the history of her people.

  Return of the Bones won:

  Best Historical Fiction New Mexico / Arizona Book Awards

  Best Drama

  Best Ebook

  Best Audio Book

  Return of the Bones is available as an Audio book read by an award-winning New York stage actress.

  Did you know that President George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, dug up Geronimo's grave and stole his skull to be used as initiation into the Skull and Bones Society at Yale?

  Did you know that the desecration of the Pecos graves was the beginning of American Archaeology?

  Did you know that the Pecos skeletons were the research subjects for the landmark study which proves exercise prevents osteoporosis?

  Return of the Bones is a mystical story enhanced with video and pictures.

  Praise from Newspapers & Magazines

  Also available as an enhanced ebook, Return of the Bones is a novel inspired by the true story of the theft of 2,067 skeletons from the former pueblo of Pecos in 1915. For 84 years, these skeletons would be studied and examined, but at what cost to society? Return of the Bones tells of an elderly grandfather who felt the bones' yearning to come home ever since they were stolen away, but his granddaughter Hollow-Woman doesn't want to hear it. As the two of them take a road trip, the grandfather creates a dream-catcher to aid his grandchild in "seeing" the past, in the hope that she might better respect her ancestors and their remains. A novel of family ties that stretch far past immediate generations, Return of the Bones encourages the reader to think long and hard about what should or should not be condoned as acceptable behavior toward other people's ancestors. Highly recommended. -- Midwest Review

  "The information archaeologists, anthropologists and cultural historians collect in their work usually collects dust in library basements of universities and emerges, if at all, only in reports in academic prose as dry as the dust on the file folder. In her novel, RETURN OF THE BONES, Belinda Vasquez Garcia takes scientific facts that lie dormant in these files and gives us a fascinating, very readable real account of the death of the people who once lived in the long ruined Pecos Pueblo, of the search for their bones, and the remarkable amount of information medical sciences has collected from them. The book also casts light on important chapters in our past of which too many Americans are totally ignorant." -- Tony Hillerman, New York Times Best Selling Author

  In Return of the Bones, author Belinda Vasquez Garcia weaves a mystical story. -- Colorado Magazine

  Garcia fascinates readers with her literary magic. -- Las Cruces Bulletin

  Text Copyright © 2012 Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  All rights reserved.

  Dedication

  With loving memory, Return of the Bones is dedicated to the ghosts of Pecos. (video link)

  Though they be extinct, they are cloud people who move gently over the ruins of Pecos Pueblo.

  Though they have died out, they are not forgotten.

  Their spirit lives on in the Jemez people and all indigenous peoples of earth.

  From their toil, a civilization was built.

  From their imagination, a legend was born.

  From their bones, medical science expanded.

  May their fire of Montezuma burn brightly.

  May their feathered serpent awaken.

  And may they cross over to the other side where Pautiwa, Chief of Kachina Village, awaits.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication | Author’s Note | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty | Chapter Twenty-One | Chapter Twenty-Two | Chapter Twenty-Three | Chapter Twenty-Four | Chapter Twenty-Five | Chapter Twenty-Six | Chapter Twenty-Seven | Epilogue |

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  Audio Book Return of the Bones

  Other Links

  Afterword by the Author | Interactive Links | Glossary | B-i-b-l-i-o-g-r-a-p-h-y | For Book Clubs: Reading Guide (Study Guide)

  Author’s Note

  A lot of historical research went into writing Return of the Bones. The novel is based on a true story few are familiar with in Native American history. A glossary has been included at the end of the book. Please refer to the Table of Contents.

  Included in this digital version are clickable links to video on the author’s Youtube channel directly related to the story for the readers’ enjoyment. These links will be preceded by: (video link). In some of the text are clickable links to the book’s web pages with pictures related to the story. These and additional hyperlinks are listed at the end in a section entitled Interactive Links, which is included in the Table of Contents.

  There is, also, a Reading Guide (Study Guide) with suggested discussion questions for book clubs and reading groups.

  Although the bones be hundreds of years old, they are still family. For blood flows from generation to generation and thus, the family line lives on.

  Chapter One

  After ninety-eight years of hard living, the only mystery Grandfather could not crack was how to die in peace and leave this world in a gentler way than he endured it. He harbored many secrets, including his true heritage: he was not a Jemez Indian. He and his thirty-five-year-old granddaughter, Hollow-Woman, were the last of their kind, survivors of the ghost pueblo of Pecos. The lines on his face traced a family tree. Often, he led her on a funeral dance across the branches by pointing out which wrinkle on his face sprouted after a relative’s death. He waltzed across creases of his great-grandparents, grandparents, mother, father, stepmothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, in-laws, children, relatives she never knew. His lineage crisscrossed his features like a New Mexico roadmap. He masked his soul’s potholes with poetry he recited in their native tongue Towa.

  “Granddaughter, you are but a splinter from the pine trees of Pecos. I dreamed that from a splinter a tree would blossom with many branches, but I quake in my moccasins that the Pecos people will die with you.”

  “Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. You jabber like a broken record, old man; family, ghosts and a fallen pueblo relic.” Hollow-Woman blew on her manicure and two fang marks on her forehead opened and closed. He could see right through her snake scars and believed he had the means to save her. Lord knows he tried ever since saddled with her at four days old. Her parents died and aband
oned her to the care of this imposing Shaman who never taught her how to be kind.

  “Geronimo!” blared from the speaker and she sighed with relief that he forgot about barren women and extinction.

  He peered with bloodshot eyes at the twenty-six inch screen that broadcast a tad fuzzy due to rabbit ears and poor reception at Jemez, isolated like most pueblos.

  A woman reporter, dressed in navy blue suit and stiff collar, wiggled about in snow. “A letter written in 1918 has been discovered in the Sterling Memorial Library archive that refers to Yale University students stealing Geronimo’s bones. The Apache warrior’s bones vanished in 1918 from his grave at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and bragging rights have circulated at Yale for decades that his bones were at the elite Skull and Bones Society’s headquarters. It is said that Geronimo’s skull is displayed in a glass case and used to initiate new members into the secretive order. One of the thieves is purported to be George Prescott Bush, the deceased father of George H. W. Bush, former President of the United States. The letter, written from one Bonesman to another Bonesman, reveals details of the 1918 theft and may be proof that the rumor is true, as the Apaches have claimed for years—former students stole Geronimo’s bones as a Yale prank.” (video link)

  He seemed bewildered at the woman’s report. Hollow-Woman acted as his English interpreter since seven years of age, after returning for the summer from St. Mary’s Boarding School for Indians. Her head had reached his waist and English as choppy as a category-five hurricane blew from her lips. She had since grown enough to look down at him and graduated to a category-one. She sat him down, like a child, and explained in Towa the deer meat and legumes of the news.

  He turned white as a sheep. “The white man is not content with having chased us to the ends of the earth in life. They must come after us in death. Even our president.”

  “These are not the old days, Governor. In this case, justice will prevail. Geronimo’s family can file with NAGPRA to get his bones back,” she said.

  “What is NAGPRA?”

  “NAGPRA stands for Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. I think Congress passed the bill in 1990. Using that law, Geronimo’s family has the right to get his bones back.”

  “Geronimo’s family and I have a bone to pick with rich white men, or in my case, many bones. So much lost time, nine years. I am a man teetering on death’s crevice, and I must have a word with the ghosts of Pecos.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and ripped his shirt in two. He chanted the lyrics from a funeral song and wailed.

  “Calm down, Governor.”

  He smiled in his mysterious way, his eyes appearing as two slits, carved into cracked mud.

  “Crazy old Shaman,” she said under her breath.

  He leaned against their other heirloom, a royal ceremonial silver staff King Philip III of Spain presented to their clan in 1620. At that time, Pecos Pueblo was the biggest town in what is now the United States. The silver was so tarnished the staff was black, though she could see the reflection of her eye where he had rubbed his thumb across the staff for nearly a century. He had always been governor of the Ghost Pueblo of Pecos, their glory days long behind them. He claimed their conquerors did not vanquish them to the point of extinction, but a dying fire cursed them and their feathered serpent hid from them.

  Other than the times he drank or smoked handmade cigarettes, his mouth remained closed. Usually he grunted. Normally his grunt revealed whether he hungered, boiled over, froze or whatever, but a sorry grunt never came from him. He now gave a pathetic grunt mixed with a whine. He wobbled away from the television on legs bowed from nearly a century spent riding horses. His petrified toe peeked through his canvas high-top tennis shoes, the modern Indian moccasin, only he was trapped in a time warp of the glory days of the pueblos, before the invaders came. He pounded the royal staff against the cracked tile as if he was somebody, king of the Pecos Pueblo ruins. His long-sleeved shirt hung half-way out of his pants, the khaki dangling to his knees because he shrunk half an inch every year since he turned ninety. Oil and grass stains dotted his clothes. A gallon of bleach would not make his grey t-shirt white again.

  “Crazy as a loon,” she grumbled. They struggled on washing day. He claimed his magic’s perspiration seeped into the threads of his clothes and detergent weakened his wizardry. It seemed they always locked horns. Ever since she was a little girl, his sorcery scared the hell out of her. His powers could do with a bit of dilution and he could do with a bath.

  She wrinkled her nose at his greasy braids that swung around the wall, tucked her bare feet under her legs and went back to watching the news. The report switched to the coming of the Millennium in nine months, a panic that claimed the world was due to end because all the computers would come crashing down due to the birth of the Y2K bug.

  He wasted no time returning to the living room and blocking her view of the television with his five-foot three-inch frame. He waved like a swaying tree with his urine-stained mattress slumped across his spine.

  She rose to help him but the mattress slid off his back.

  He swung his neck and took a swig from a bottle of wine encased in a paper sack; as if he could fool her into thinking he drank Kool-Aid. He smacked his lips and shoved the cork back on. He nudged her shoulder.

  “Drive me to Pecos. Bring my mattress; I would like to ride in comfort on my own bed for my last journey home.”

  “You can’t call Pecos home. The ancestors deserted the pueblo a century and a half ago. Even you can’t claim to be that ancient, Governor.”

  He filled her childhood with horror when he first took her to the godforsaken family pueblo and spoke about the Spanish Inquisition, church torchings, beheadings, blood spilling, ghosts, witches, and poisonings. She screamed whenever he wanted to go to the haunted Pecos ruins. Last time he dragged her to Pecos she was twelve and swore then never to go back but now, he pleaded with his eyes and he was so damned old. So, she heaved his mattress and hauled the saggy, smelly thing behind her, stopping now and then to smack at the fleas. She zigzagged to her pickup-truck, pulling his mattress through the mud holes, just to be ornery.

  Huffing and puffing, she lifted his mattress and shoved it into the bed of her pickup. Her head spun from the stench of wine wafting from the faded grey and white stripes. Her truck lived up to a junk man’s dream with cigarette butts, cans, bottles, rags, and other sundries scattered about. Like him, she never threw anything away, a habit nourished by a childhood of poverty.

  She jerked open the passenger door, but he lifted a leg over the back and plopped down on his mattress. He stared at the sky with glazed eyes. His head appeared like a shriveled cranberry. With a shaky hand he clutched a blanket to his chin, spittle dribbling down his neck. He had few teeth to speak of and his skinny body did not even dent his mattress. He just lay there with his arms and legs spread wide, croaking like a frog.

  “But, Governor, you’ll catch a chill. Why don’t we wait until Steve’s day off so we can travel in his car?”

  “Death stalks me like a sunset shadow but I shall outfox the pale horse and with bridle and lasso, ride fifteen minutes more after the sun skis down the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Remember, Granddaughter, build my coffin from pine trees of the Sangre de Cristos.”

  “Don’t speak of dying,” she whispered.

  “Do not weep like a willow in the snow. Reunion with the snake clan is like a dance at winter solstice. Like the prodigal son in the Bible, family will join hands and dance around me to Masawkatsina’s drums and the Keeper of the Dead will welcome me with open arms.”

  “Stop talking nonsense and ride in the front with me. It’s mid-February. You’ll catch pneumonia.”

  “I long for the wind blowing on my face. I wish to breathe crisp air into my lungs. I will be confined in a box soon enough, and the elements will not kill me, but my body’s weakness will be the death of me. Your new truck must be good for something, to carry my coffin.”

  “Eight years ago a new
used truck, now my truck free and clear,” she said, lifting her chin proudly but regretting choosing a black pickup since he equated her truck to a hearse.

  He banged the damn staff against metal; she jumped.

  “Bring my knapsack, it has my ceremonial pipe,” he ordered.

  With black hair swinging around her waist, she marched into her mud house made of adobe blocks that resembled all the other houses at the Jemez Pueblo, making it appear like a village from the Stone Age.

  She stuck her tongue out at the mirror, wishing she did not always give into him, especially when his health was at stake. She lacked the courage of a Pecos warrior though her Native American ancestry shone from her naturally tanned skin and high cheekbones.

  She stomped back carrying his knapsack, and threw it on the front seat.

  “Drive,” he barked and whopped that frickin’ staff as if heir to a kingdom and not a curse.

  “Quit having a tantrum,” she said, fitting a pair of fluffy earmuffs on his ears. She wrapped his neck with a muffler, pulling the wool to just below his nose. She shoved his hat on his head, wrapped him in a blanket, and tucked his legs and hips into a sleeping bag. She yanked up the zipper so the bag wouldn’t fly off him.

  The governor of Pecos laid wrapped like a papoose, a forgotten mummy, the royal ceremonial staff beside him. He had spoken of his impending death. He was old and the bright sun was deceiving; over to the east towards Pecos grey clouds gathered.

  “What if it rains?” she said.

  “It will not rain. I have not called forth any storms today.”

  “Right, Weatherman.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and his lower lip trembled. The tip of his nose was wet.

  “I’ll take you home to Pecos, Governor, if this is your wish,” she said and sighed, stroking his withered cheek. Thank goodness his skin wasn’t hot.