The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] (6 page)
Read The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] Online
Authors: J Michael Orenduff
We sat down opposite him and waited. He looked at me for what seemed like several minutes but was probably only twenty seconds. I tried to return his gaze with as noncommittal a look as I could muster.
He spoke to Masoir briefly.
Masoir merely nodded.
A young man entered from a door behind our host and brought us each a bowl of red stew. The old man took a bite, chewed, and then signaled for us to eat. The stew had chunks of beef, course ground cornmeal, onions, tomatoes, and enough dried and ground red chile to incinerate an acre of forest. I finished the bowl as decorum required. Between the log fire and the stew, I was no longer cold.
We lowered our bowls and listened to the Indian speak for perhaps fifteen minutes. I recognized a word or two, not even enough to tell what the topic was, but mostly I liked hearing the sibilant consonants that sounded like dry leaves being chased by the wind across sandy ground.
When he finished speaking, he and Masoir exchanged sentences for another ten minutes. Then the old man smiled and fell silent, and we left.
10
Masoir was quiet as we rocked and bumped across the river and then plowed through sand up onto the highway. I was concentrating on choosing a path and steering, but my frontal lobe was questioning one of Schuze’s Anthropological Premises, abbreviated SAP, which some of my friends say is what you have to be to believe them. The one I was reconsidering was Number 9: Paleolithic cultures will eventually disappear. It’s just a matter of time and technology until the aboriginal peoples of the Amazon, for example, will be overrun by so-called civilization. But the Ma had been overrun four hundred years ago and were gamely holding on.
When we reached the false security of smooth pavement, Masoir began to tell me what he had learned. The man we ate with had been next to Otaku Ma’sin in the tribal hierarchy. The story of the pots was not one the Ma often shared with outsiders, but the old man – whose name was Sema Ma’tin – knew from Otaku that he could trust Masoir.
Masoir turned to face me. “I may have misled you, Mr. Schuze, and if so I apologize. I didn’t realize how much of the Ma language I have lost over the last twenty years. I didn’t understand much of what Sema said, and the part I did understand may not be useful to you.”
“Please call me Hubert. And I’ll be grateful for any information you gathered.”
“Well, let me start with one thing I am sure about. There were two sets of pots.”
I turned to him with a quizzical look.
“Actually, there have been more than two sets in the past. Ma legend says their ancestors without names made the first set. They attribute great power to the pots.”
“Who are the ancestors without names?”
“The Ma divide history more or less as we do with ancient and modern. Their dividing line is based on names they remember. Ma children are taught to recite their ancestors’ names back for ten generations. Everyone before that is called an ancestor without a name.”
“So the first pots might date back to as recently as ten generations ago, say two hundred years or so?”
“Theoretically, yes, but they must be much older because they have to predate the arrival of the Spanish.”
“Why?”
“Because they say the Spanish stole the first set from them. They crafted a replacement set. That set was stolen by a governor when this area was part of Mexico. They made another set after that.”
“Then what?”
“Then the Mexican-American War resulted in New Mexico becoming a U.S. territory. Fearing they were going to be robbed once again, they crafted a duplicate set – that’s why I said there were two sets – and they put both sets in the
kiva
, the new pots in plain sight and the old set hidden. In case the Americans came to steal pots, the Ma hoped they would take the new ones and not know the difference.”
I thought how my own copies had fooled people over the years and felt a sudden kinship with the Ma. “Did it work?”
“Yes and no. I’ll tell you what I already knew and what Sema told me. First, what I know. The new American administration wasn’t interested in stealing pots, so we’ll never know if the Ma plan would have worked. What the new administration was interested in was reorganizing the territory. They had surveys made of the pueblos. There had never been surveys before. Both the Spaniards and the Mexicans took whatever land they needed, but other than that, they went along with the informal boundaries recognized by the tribes. The stated purpose of the surveys was for official record-keeping, but some of the pueblos complained they ended up smaller after the survey.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“What Sema told me is they lost their
kiva
to the Americans. I suppose it fell outside the lines of the new survey.”
“How could that be? The
kiva
is in the middle of the village.”
Masoir shook his head. “At some point in the distant past, they had moved their dwelling area a few miles to the south. As you know, many of the pueblo tribes have done this over the years, sometimes to better defend themselves from the raids of the nomadic tribes, sometimes for superstitious reasons. Anyway, they moved, but they continued to use the primary
kiva
for ceremonies even though it was no longer in the center of the village. The American survey left the
kiva
outside their land. When they went to the lost
kiva
to take the pots and other sacred objects back to their village, they found the
kiva
had been emptied. All the copies were gone, but some of the originals were hidden well enough not to be found. The Ma still have eight of them.”
“How many were taken?”
“Five. Each set contained thirteen pots, one for each lunar month of the year, each bearing a design appropriate to that month.”
“So they’re missing eighteen pots.”
“Yes, but it’s only the five originals they want back. For some reason, they consider those pots to carry the same magic as the very first ones.”
“And the copies lack magic?”
He nodded.
“Did he tell you what the thirteen designs are?”
“No, but he gave me one example. The pot for the tenth lunar month has a corn design because it’s the month of the harvest.”
“No other examples?”
“No. I know it would have been helpful for you to have a complete description of the entire set, but he didn’t offer, and it would have been inappropriate to ask.”
I didn’t want to question Masoir’s judgment. After all, he was to my knowledge the only white man who had ever lived among the Ma.
I asked him why he’d never seen the pots while they were in the University’s possession.
“They were a late addition to the collection, acquired only a year or so before I left. Gerstner kept them under lock and key because he said it would insult the Indians to have white men studying them. I was surprised he accepted the collection, but in retrospect, I think he did so to further his repatriation scheme. The provenance of those pots was shaky to say the least, so everyone wanted to return them to the Ma, myself included. And once you decide that, why not do the same for the other tribes? I explained why not, but to no avail.”
“If he really feels that way about artifacts, why would he have kept them himself?”
“Remember, I’m not certain he did. But I know they didn’t get back to San Roque, and I personally think Gerstner is a complete phony. He feigned belief in repatriation of artifacts only because that view would best advance his career.”
“Well, I think I’ll be able to recognize the pots if I see them.”
“Ma’tin did tell me the pots are all the same size and use the same color scheme. He even told me the three colors. One of the colors is black, but I didn’t recognize the other two color words he used.”
“Probably shades of what we would call charcoal and sienna,” I guessed.
“You’re the potter. I remember color words that were frequently used, like yellow and black, but I doubt I ever knew the words for charcoal or sienna.”
“How big are they?”
“Two hands high and one and a half hands across.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. They are made with melting stone.”
“What is melting stone?”
“I thought you might know. Some kind of clay?”
“Not that I’ve heard of.”
“Do potters ever use lava? That might be called melting stone.”
“Some of the black-on-black pots do use ground pumice – that might be it. Anything else?”
“Just that they want them back because they are amulets. If they have them, their treasure is protected.”
“What treasure could they possibly have?”
“Treasure is my loose translation of a Ma word that means something like esteemed or valued. Remember, I’m hardly an expert.”
“You may be the only white man who understands their language. You’re my expert until something better comes along.”
“Maybe the treasure is something abstract like luck,” Masoir speculated.
“They don’t seem to have enjoyed much luck,” I commented.
He was staring out across the river as we approached Albuquerque. “Do you know who San Roque was?”
I shook my head.
“I only know because I was curious as to why the Spaniards chose that name, so I looked it up. Roque was born in the 13
th
Century. Tradition says he had a birthmark in the form of a red cross on his chest. He was from a wealthy family, but his parents died when he was young. He joined the Franciscan order and gave all his money to the poor. As a monk, he devoted himself to caring for the victims of the plague. He is said to have contracted the disease. He made a miraculous recovery and went on to perform many miracles of healing. After his death, he became the patron saint of plague victims.”
“So the Spanish named the Ma Pueblo ‘San Roque’ because the Indians had the plague?”
“That’s the story they gave. The Ma think the plague came upon them because the pots were stolen.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t believe in amulets, theirs or ours. The pots didn’t help the Ma, and Roque’s cross didn’t help him.”
“How so?”
“He was arrested as a spy by his uncle who didn’t recognize him. He died in prison. When they were preparing to bury him, they found the birthmark, and only then did his uncle realize he had kept his nephew in prison until he died.”
11
“I can’t believe you actually visited San Roque. It looks so bleak, and you hear all those stories. There’s no bridge. How did you get there?”
“The river bottom there is rocky, so you just drive across.”
“And how did the old wreck do on the rocks?”
“Rode it out with no complaint. The Bronco also did well.”
“Not nice, Hubie.”
“I like the old guy. His mind is sharp, and he obviously commands respect from the Ma.”
“So you think you’ll be able to recognize the pots?”
“Probably. Although knowing the colors would make it easier. The old man told us all three colors, but Masoir didn’t know the Ma words for two of them.”
“Why didn’t he ask them for the English words? Don’t they speak English out there?”
“I’m sure the young ones do. Most of the elderly ones probably do as well, but they just choose not to.”
“So you’ll be trying to burgle something you may not even recognize?”
“I’ll recognize them. I know the size, I know what is probably the dominant color, and I know something else.”
“What?”
“Gerstner isn’t a pot collector, so any pot I find in his place will almost certainly be one of the missing Ma pots.”
“What will you do with them if you find them?”
I thought it over while I sipped my margarita. Before my trip to San Roque, I would have said I’d sell most of the pots to a discriminating collector and keep one for myself to admire. Now that I knew the history of the pots – or at least part of it – I wasn’t so sure. I felt like I had a duty to return any of the originals I found and sell only the copies. The copies were genuine Ma pots after all, and a collector wouldn’t know or care what the Ma thought about their lack of magic.
“Maybe the pots will tell me.”
“I know pots have mouths, but I don’t think they talk. And anyway, they’d probably speak Taos.”
“Tanoan. Actually, Tanoan is a group of languages, like Slavic or Romance.”
“Well, I don’t speak any of those, especially Romance.” She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Are you ready for this, Hubie? I’m thinking of going online.”
“I thought you were already online. You tell me about emails you receive. Don’t you have to be online to get email?”
“Hubert, talking to you about computers makes me know how you anthropologists must feel when you stumble across a primitive tribe. I’m not talking about email. I’m talking about an online dating service. See, you post your picture and a little write-up about yourself telling prospective dates what you like and don’t like, and then if someone is interested, they contact you via the dating service site, and the two of you can exchange messages. Then, if you’re both interested, you can make plans to meet.”
