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

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  The dust storm settled into waves of shimmering dirt. Darkness behind her eyelids burst into visions of flowers, a field of red and blue roses…then transformed into a field littered with bodies.

  The earth threw her upward and expelled her to the center of Pecos Pueblo.

  She staggered around the grand plaza, surrounded by sobbing men, women and children. A couple hundred dead or dying Indians lay scattered about the plaza. Wives pummeled their chests with their fists.

  Children screamed out, “Father!”

  Old men cradled the heads of sons in their laps.

  About four hundred Spanish soldiers encircled this scene, pointing smoking harquebuses at the crowd.

  The arrogant Spaniard who sat on his decorative horse was made of bronze like his statue in Española. He removed his helmet and wiped his face with a handkerchief. His beard trembled with a deep sigh. He addressed the pompous man mounted beside him.

  “Well, Vicente, Pecos is the last of the pueblos to feel your vengeance for your brother’s murder. You have done me a service, Nephew. We do not have to worry any more about the pueblos revolting. We have shown them what Spanish vengeance is.”

  “Fray Francisco,” Oñate yelled, standing on his stirrups, and looking over the soldiers’ heads.

  An old friar hobbled towards him.

  “Too bad my nephew’s death ruined our first Christmas in Nuevo México,” Oñate said.

  “Our camp master will be most sorely missed, most Royal Governor, especially by his family. My condolences,” Francisco said, bowing his head obediently.

  “Yes, I have the sad duty of writing to his mother, my sister. You have my permission to get back to building your church,” Oñate said.

  “God’s work is coming along,” Fray Francisco said, pointing to a glob of mud and lumber stacked on a ridge about a thousand feet northeast of Pecos Pueblo, and the skeleton of a rectangular adobe.

  “All these heathen souls are not yet ripe for picking but with a little coercion, eh, I believe we will make Spain proud of us,” Oñate said. He nodded with his head for his soldiers to mount their horses.

  Four hundred strong, they rode from the pueblo, some with headless turkeys bouncing on their saddles.

  Fray Francisco walked beside another Franciscan. They stepped over several bodies and walked near Hollow-Woman.

  “We have taken food from them before, but it is said that the theft of a turkey sparked the Acomas’ anger,” Francisco said.

  “Truly, I shall never understand these barbarians.”

  “Perhaps if you bother to learn their language…”

  “As you do?”

  “I know a smattering but then I am the exception. I know enough to order them back to work on our church without having to use sign language,” Francisco said.

  Their conversation faded.

  The church being constructed was in a different location than the cathedral ruins at Pecos. This initial church appeared much humbler and less ambitious than a cathedral.

  A young woman, who looked vaguely familiar, blocked her way and held out a turkey feather.

  “See, I managed to save this before they took all our turkeys. The giant bird is sacred to us for its feathers that warm us in winter and adorn our heads at sacred ceremonies where its magical plumes are used as prayer sticks. The savage Spaniards cook this magnificent creature for food. I am a widow now,” she said, crumbling to the ground in a sobbing heap, and hugging her turkey feather to her chest.

  The woman turned on her back and stared at her with listless eyes. “Why do they blame the rest of us for Acoma? We bowed our heads in obedience to the Spanish and harmed no one. Pray with me, lady,” she said.

  Hollow-Woman shook her head, no, because she had no faith except for her belief in Grandfather’s magic and the Pecos curse. She simply watched the backs of Spanish soldiers march through the gates of the pueblo.

  Oñate and his killing machine vanished over the horizon.

  A lone rider approached.

  He appeared to have ridden his horse hard as it pounded its hoofs against the ground, its big nostrils opening and closing, expelling a foggy cloud that made it seem as if horse and man floated.

  A Plains Indian sat upon the horse with slumped shoulders, back bowed, and head leaning forward so that he stared at his lap. His legs dangled from his horse. His head wobbled from east to west. The arch of his arm loosely supported his spear that pointed downward at the ground instead of at his enemies. The wind pushed him and his limp muscles flapped about.

  This lone horseman was The-End-of-the-Trail Indian, human-size and come to life.

  He and his horse stood out, shockingly white, against the reddish brown Pecos Pueblo, looking as if all their blood had been drained. He appeared ghostlike as he circled the central plaza, his entire being hung in defeat. He seemed oblivious to the carnage around him but when he passed her, he sobbed. His tears were not clear and transparent but red in color and distinct on his white cheeks.

  His cries were lost among the crush, as the people tugged the bodies of their dead loved ones.

  At first she didn’t see the short, old man with grey hair riding behind The-End-of-the-Trail Indian, hugging him around his waist. The old man was missing his feet and he bounced on the saddle. She ran after the horse, yelling, “Grandfather,” but he kicked his ankles against the horse—just like him to ignore her.

  The dragging of corpses across the earth made a whirling sound and the braids of The-End-of-the-Trail Indian swirled around his head.

  She blinked her burning eyes and was transported back to her camper where her dream catcher spun, the feathers flapping in the air like bird wings.

  The corpses whirled through the tiny hole in the center of the net.

  The-End-of-the-Trail Indian shrunk smaller and smaller as it circled her head. She protected her face with her arms from tiny clods of horse shit. She peeked through the cross of her wrists as The-End-of-the-Trail Indian and Grandfather vanished through the hole. There was a scream and a whinnying, then Grandfather’s snores.

  She snuggled closer, wrapping her arms around his feeble body, checking to see that his feet were attached at his ankles. He whimpered in his sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  In Memphis she drove down Elvis Presley Boulevard just to gawk at Graceland.

  Grandfather looked exhausted and they need not rush and break their necks to get the bones. It’s not like those two thousand or so skeletons could rise and walk away like in her dream.

  “Are you alright, Governor? You holding on?” she said.

  “A bottle of wine would fortify my blood.”

  “We may as well gas up now then.”

  She turned the wheel around, found the closest station and ordered him to, “Wait here.”

  She walked into the store, purchased a bag of his favorite cookies, a pack of gum and his favorite cheapo wine. She handed him the package then waited at the bathroom for a nun to finish her business.

  The nun stepped on her foot when she came out and didn’t apologize.

  Hollow-Woman stiffened at the nun, held her tongue and limped into the restroom, feeling like a child again at St. Mary’s.

  She dried her hands on her jeans and lifted her bangs from her forehead to examine her scar in the cracked mirror. She wiggled her eyebrows and her scar folded in and out, like a snake opening and closing its fangs.

  Her reflection faded then reappeared into a full-blown scene from childhood. The scene in shadows looked like a negative from an old movie of a seven-year-old girl sitting alone on a bed in a room lined with bunk beds, made up military style. The birthday girl held a needle and thread in one hand and in the other hand, a torn dress. She sucked on her finger because she had pricked herself. She would not cry out. She would not show any weakness. She would not reveal her homesickness. She shut her eyes yet she still saw the other girls’ fingers point at her forehead.

  “She has a rattlesnake mark. She is a witch,”
they sang, dancing around her.

  She vomited on her bed.

  The girls took a step back and screamed, “You threw up snake venom,” they recited.

  She thrashed about as they accused her of being that poisonous Towa girl from Jemez.

  “No, I am Hollow-Woman,” she hissed, raising her head like a cobra and glaring at them, pleased they feared the snake girl. She lifted her upper lip and snarled with her eye teeth like fangs. She did not reveal all her secrets and did not correct them that she only lived at Jemez and was really an endangered species from Pecos, the last of her kind, melting, fading…just like the childish scene in the mirror at a gas station in Memphis.

  The glass was now in shadows but her reflection bluntly revealed a grown woman with two fang marks stretched on her forehead that would never let her forget she was of the Snake Clan. She pressed against her scar. The girls from her youth lied; she never vomited snake venom from her system; poison still filled her soul. She walked back to the truck, clenching her fists and vowing to become a better person.

  She sat on the driver’s seat and kissed his forehead.

  “I love you, old man,” she said.

  He merely looked down at the floor and hugged his bottle of wine.

  They caught I-55 north to Jackson, Missouri.

  He slept most of the way.

  She exited off the freeway and wound her way to a street named Moccasin Springs. They pulled up at the Trail of Tears State Park and he asked for her help to climb down from the truck.

  One look at Grandfather and they did not ask for proof he was over sixty-five and eligible for a senior discount camping fee.

  They feasted on canned beans, roasted wieners and Oreo cookies.

  She popped an Elvis CD into her player and put on her earphones. He would not allow her to play music on her truck’s CD player while they traveled because he complained how much her music hurt his ears, the old fart. He should talk. His flageolet busted the sound barrier. She had her own theory of why the Pecos Pueblo collapsed. All the musicians gathered one day in the main plaza for a concert. POW! They shattered the adobe, splintered the apartments, and flattened the pueblo with a few notes blown through hollowed bird bones.

  She sang silently to the song, Lady Madonna, moving her head to the beat. When she got to the lyric, did you think that money was heaven sent, Grandfather nudged her knee.

  “Read me more of the thief’s diary,” he said.

  She sighed and put her CD player away, always ready to treat the old man nicer when she felt guilty. She wrapped him in his blanket and balanced his hat on his head. She stroked his cheek.

  She crossed her legs, Yoga style, dragged her butt closer to the fire, and thumbed through the diary.

  “April 1, 1915.

  We have unearthed many relics here, bits of pottery and straw. At first, the trash mounds looked like a natural part of the ridge until we found trash at each level of digging. ‘What we have here is a time capsule of these ancients, centuries of discards thrown away in chronological order,’ I said. ‘The Indians have built upon their trash. No garbage dumps,’ I joked. I am examining the changes in pottery and other remains, and I believe I can devise a scheme to interpret the time sequence of the Pecos Pueblo, from beginning to the end of these unfortunates. I should be able to date the relics we unearth by using stratigraphy against the great trash mounds. Perhaps I’ll call my system Basketmaker and Pueblo. There is a potential for hundreds of years of fertile garbage here, including carved stone figures and decorated pottery, some intact. I wrote Mother, ‘You never thought your son would be a garbage man.’”

  “Garbage? Bah! The thief unearthed the sustenance of a people like he dug in their veins to remove their nutrients. Their blood nourished the Pecos earth. Their hearts beat beneath the surface. Their dreams decorated their pottery. Their hunger devoured their eating utensils. Their spirituality embodied their carved stone figures. You cannot categorize a man’s soul into Basketmaker and Pueblo. Man is as complex as the path of the great hunter, the tornado. One never knows which way it will gallop and where it will graze,” Grandfather said.

  “Well, the saying goes, one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. Listen to his words as they spill from the prairie dog’s pen,” she said.

  “This evening Jack and I engaged in a lively discussion about how New Mexico makes a good argument for separation of church and state. Under Spanish rule the king either appointed the governor or sold the governorship, in either case, the new governor spent a lot of his own money to outfit an army to travel to the outback that was New Mexico. Being so isolated from Mexico City, New Spain’s headquarters, a New Mexico governor’s supremacy went unchecked, except by the friars who competed for power.

  Our historian came into my tent and got involved in our discussion of church and state. He stated the case of Governor Pedro de Peralta who ruled New Mexico from 1610 to 1614, and his struggle with Fray Isidro Ordóñez. In Peralta’s case, Fray Ordóñez constantly undermined him, ultimately resulting in the governor’s excommunication and his imprisonment by the Franciscans.

  The Indians also involved themselves in Spanish politics, sometimes poisoning a friar who meddled in their affairs.

  But to get back to the ruins, the biggest piece we have unearthed so far is part of a wall of the Spanish Mission Catholic Church named Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles de Porcíuncula. The union of the pueblos and the church was forced. The friars ordered the Indians to kneel and kiss their hands and obey them else they would torch their pueblos. They threatened the Indians with Spanish swords or burning them alive if they injured their friars. We have found many smashed idols of stone and wood, many dated around 1620, the time that Fray Ortega, as guardian of the Pecos Convento, vowed to abolish all heathen idolatry and undertook a war against their beliefs. He was the first zealot but would not be the last.

  Fray Ortega also engaged in a war of sorts with Juan de Eulate, Royal governor of New Mexico from 1618 to 1625. As my historian pointed out, Church and State warred numerous times before this. From the beginning, both Franciscans and governors competed for its riches, which turned out to be the Indians.

  Fray Ortega accused Governor Eulate of being in league with the devil. At every turn, Eulate frustrated the attempts of the friars as they toiled in the vineyard of the Lord, which is what the Franciscans labeled New Mexico, the red grapes being the Indians, but the governor felt those grapes were his. Eulate did his utmost to prevent the friars from using Indian labor to build their missions. Removing them from their fields to build churches meant the Indians’ crops fell short, which cut into Eulate’s profits as prime picker.

  But Eulate acted as no hero to the natives even though he did allow them their idolatry and freedom to live with their wives and concubines, which caused the friars to label the governor the anti-Christ.

  Eulate’s other enterprises involved kidnapping Indian children and selling them as slaves to the colonists. Phillip III, himself a religious zealot, considered Eulate’s slaving legal so long as the stolen Pueblo children learned their Catholic catechism.

  Eulate sent out his own apostles, Indians who mingled about the pueblos exalting their idols and instructing them not to go to mass or obey the friars. He proclaimed the governor the Puebloans’ best friend and the friars their mortal enemies.

  With the Church under Eulate’s iron fist, Fray Ortega had the insane idea to build a cathedral at Pecos, large enough to hold all two thousand or so Pecos souls. Fray Ortega at this time lived in an austere convento of a few rooms adjoining the Pecos ruins to the south.”

  She closed her eyes, seeing once more the small church being built in her dream then flicked her eyes open to the old man’s scrutiny. She cleared her throat and continued reading.

  “But as fate would have it, Eulate intervened and stopped all heavenly construction at Pecos. Nor would he allow any repairs of existing churches or conventos at any other pueblos. He even threatened to hang any Indian lab
orers who refused to stop building.

  In retaliation, the friars excommunicated Eulate and vowed to inform against him.

  He threatened to whip them with two hundred lashes.

  The arrival of wagons bursting with supplies along with peace maker Fray Chavarría, the new custos and head of the Franciscan priests, halted this battle for now. Fray Chavarría transferred Fray Ortega to Taos where the Indians fed him tortillas made with maize, mice meat and urine.”

  Grandfather laughed and she grinned at him.

  She read, “Fray Chavarría replaced Fray Ortega with Fray Juárez, who recommenced building a cathedral at Pecos. Only a miniscule portion of the 300,000 sun-dried mud blocks used to build the church of 1621 remain. I don’t know how the Indians managed with each block weighing about forty pounds. We have taken apart one of the blocks and found in the adobe: chips of bone, pottery and charcoal pieces so, the dirt to make the mud for the church walls was probably dug from the pueblo garbage.”

  Grandfather sounded like he choked on a skull. “When we get back to Pecos and rebury the stolen ones, I will destroy the ruins with my bare hands. So the Catholics even used the people’s bones to build their church. Don’t you see these are more of our ancestors who cannot join the cloud people in eternal rest? Pecos bones are the bricks and their blood the mortar that holds together the walls of the Spanish cathedral, a church built on fire and death,” he said, spitting and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  She swallowed some air, sipped a water bottle and continued reading.

  “My historian tells me, ‘While the men hauled earth and water and the great quantity of wood needed for scaffolding, the actual laying up of walls in Pueblo society was women’s work. He quoted Fray Alonso de Benavides who wrote that ‘the women poked fun at men building walls so they refused, even under the whip.’ Those Pecos women must have been muscular to build the mission with forty-pound bricks.

  In its heyday, the massive church resembled a 1500’s fortress in the design of a gothic Mexican-adobe cathedral at the end of the world, which made it stand out like an extraordinary sore thumb, at least to the Indians who broke their backs during its construction. The natives also built at this time a new two-story convento with covered patio, walkway and balcony.