The River People – Chapter 6

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1540

From where I sat atop a hill, the river flowed over its banks. Reflecting the rising sun on its broad surface, the river was gold and yellow at its spreading edges. I imagined the gardens my people would tend after the waters returned to their bed. For now, the water ran deep among the trees and further onto dry land, soaking it. This rhythm signals the ways of the earth that guide us on our journey around the wheel of life. Each spring when the floods are high, the River People move to these low hills covered with thick oak groves. Here we find game and collect acorns that the women grind to make soft bread. The dried squash and beans from the late fall harvest add to our fare.

I usually enjoy the respite from my responsibilities when the river overflows its bed, but this morning I feel disturbing emotions. In the winter months, when my people tell stories, make music, and visit with each other, a flotilla of strange men sail into our village. No one has ever seen white men. They are worrisome, smell bad, are hairy, and wear strange garments. I worry about their shining weapons made from substances none of us have ever seen. These men, in river craft propelled by wind, speak in a strange tongue. Their movements are indecipherable. I do not trust them.

Their eyes make me wary. Others in my village do not see it the same way. They are intrigued, engage in trade, and laugh at these unlikely humans in their midst. They study their sailing craft and then talk among themselves. Some even tell the strange visitors tall tales to confuse them. I do not approve of this behavior.

I know the river but not the hearts of men like Good Man does, he who I intend to consult on this matter. Good Man stands solid on stout, strong legs. His braided hair forms a crown in which eagle feathers encircle his face. A thin sturgeon bone pierces his nostrils and he wears layers of shell necklaces from trade with tribes to the west. To me this man is an unshakable mountain of wisdom that stabilizes me. However, when I visit him, he tries to brush away my worry about the strangers. For the first time, I am not convinced. Perhaps Good Man has no experience with this kind of human being.

I wonder where they come from and if this means there are others coming behind that will threaten our people. Truly, as I sit down to counsel with Good Man, I do so as one whose world is irrevocably changed by the regular appearance of these human beings. What does it mean for us? 

1604

Don Juan Ornate stood on the foredeck as his crew sailed to the riverbank near the villages of the native tribes. He still hungered to find a passage to New Spain that bypassed the Rio Grande. His objectives were to find a port on the ocean and a passage to New Spain that did not pass through the vicious tribes he’d encountered.

On board Ornate’s ship was Father Francisco Escobar, a Catholic priest who proved adept at communicating with the numerous settlements of Indians along the Rio de Buena Esperanza (the Colorado River), for he was adept at languages. He remembered them so well that on the expedition’s return up the river from the sea, the Indians in different villages could understand him.

Father Escobar kept a detailed record of his observations— in particular, of the Rancherias whose populations sometimes exceeded 5,000 people. By the time the expedition had navigated the whole of the river to the sea, Father Escobar estimated at least 30,000 Indians lived and thrived along its banks. He executed his duties with great effort for the glory of his King and for the glory of God. All along the way he realized that the friendly and generous River People could be improved by Christian principles, baptized, and integrated into New Spain as his country settled the new land.

The Account of Padre Fray Francisco de Escobar

For the Glory of Our Blessed King and Queen and the Sanctification of the Lord Jesus Christ

1605

On the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the Year of our Lord 1604, we traveled the river further south until we came to settlements of tribes speaking a variation of the same language of groups north of our location. I could communicate with them well enough. I estimate that from this point to the Port of Conversion there were 30,000 people of the same tribe, which is predominantly near the delta of the river.

These people live in stone and mud houses that spread out from each other with land and gardens in between. They clad themselves in bison hides for cold weather and are well adorned. Men braid their long hair in whirls and ringlets, which they plaster with mud from the river to tamp lice and mosquitoes. The River People are very friendly, neither surprised nor afraid, taking our arrival as just part of the day’s events.

They offered us food and continued to bring us more than we could prepare before spoilage. Maize, squash and beans of many varieties, and delicious fish, which I observed they speared or netted from the river. On one day, a young warrior brought us a basket of wild rice.

The river is lined with thick forests of bean-bearing trees that will be excellent sources of wood, and fewer scattered, taller trees of a kind not as suitable for firewood. There is a sweet, pleasant scent from the wood of the little forests that is winsome. I noticed it lingers in the meat and fish cooked over a wood fire. The River People are well nourished and are of large frame and muscular form quite pleasing to the eye, and the women are very pretty, wearing their hair cut straight across their forehead and hanging loosely beside their faces and down their backs.

One of the tribesmen agreed to accompany us further down the river to the Port of Conversion at the confluence with the sea. I am grateful to the Lord Jesus Christ that our navigator came along as a guide. Several of our small boats became mired in the shallows, one with a heavy load of artillery that made it sink lower. We removed some of the weapons, but we still had to abandon that boat.

The river spans out for many leagues in every direction, creating blind corners, labyrinths, and hidden coves among the thickly growing trees and shrubs, reeds, and marsh grasses. Then, one turn and it opens into a deep bay. Our guide indicated that it was near the time a high tide commences near the mouth of the river when boats can easily be overcome by strong tides, overturned, and men lost to quicksand or undercurrents. This is a difficult navigation that will need careful planning for a route by ships up the river. Due to its shallows, it will need to be a boat with a short broad draft.

Present Day ….

In his recurring dream the river spirit appeared to Albert as the sleek, shimmering salmon, a giant that challenged even the best fisherman. The creature’s powerful tail and penetrating eyes spoke to him from a watery kingdom emanating from the sky beings.

The river spirit connected the old man to earth spirits that converged in the tumult of spring floods, and lingered over the quiet eddies where life began. It was there, along the banks downstream, where the waters slowed beside his people’s fields and gardens. It was there that the young of many river denizens were birthed and nurtured. The river spirit reminded Albert of his duty to protect and defend the river. Its nightly visitations energized the elder during the dream so that upon waking, the old man had leapt from his bed with renewed will—the secret to his perpetual vigor he had told his friends.

But, on this night in his dream he found himself sweating as he climbed onto a steel walkway where he had strapped enough dynamite to blast a hole in the dam. He was singing an ancient song at the top of his lungs, barely discernible where he stood at the causeway as water plunged from the edges of the main wall that imprisoned the river’s body. Behind the wall the river formed a huge, blue lake that pressed hard on the concrete after the recent heavy rains. Giant turbines roared as electricity poured across the lines that extended into the desert and canyonlands as far as Albert could see in any direction. He felt it there, so near to the river spirit— he felt the lifeblood being drained away.

And then, he lit the fuse and felt the thunderous forces tear him and the dam into smithereens and watched from high above as the river coursed through the jagged hole, pulling building-sized chunks of concrete with it, plunging down its old bed, dragging everything with it to the sea. Albert moved without any restriction from his heavenly vantage point to where he saw his people gathering near the river as it made it way south over the desert toward the mother of all life. They were jumping and cheering, greeting the river spirit in exultation, even as the wild river caused destruction everywhere it flowed. Towns, railroads, marinas, bridges, and roads disappeared in its tumult. Likely people died too. Albert awoke in terror, realizing he’d been the agent of all that destruction and death. He staggered outside the trailer into the still dawn morning and vomited the contents of his stomach into the sand. Spent from the dream, he drank directly from a cistern of rainwater, pulling handfuls to his mouth to wash away the dream’s toxic message. The river spirit had shown him that blowing up the dam was a pipe dream. It was not the way, the spirit had said, and the dream showed him. As a reasonable man he knew that was true, but his desire to blow up the structures that restrained the natural river’s flow came from his heart and soul.

He pulled himself up the stoop of his trailer and returned to his bed to rest and to think. How could he help restore the river, the land and his people to health without destroying others? There must be a way, but its complexities were beyond Albert’s reason on that early morning. He drifted then into a quiet slumber well beyond his normal waking time. The quiet of the desert and gentle sounds of creatures stirred; the dove fluttered, the coyote yawned, and the desert beetle rumbled over the sand and rock and little damp places where water condensed from a rock face beaming in the bright morning sun. The desert spirit rocked the old man sleeping in his little trailer as a mother rocks a babe in her arms. The land ministered to Albert and to all whose fervent wish included life itself in their prayers. The wisdom that Albert needed was there in every living creature and all the land, waters and sky – waiting for the human being to rediscover it.