The Wild Girl (23 page)

DAALK’IDA ’AGUUDZAA.
IT HAPPENED LONG AGO. SHE DREAMS THAT
her aunt Tze-gu-juni is washing her for her puberty ceremony, and as she does so she sings the puberty songs to the girl, in a low, soft voice.
White-Painted-Woman, mother of all Apaches. Five thousand years and two hundred generations ago, you are already among us as both man and woman, child and elder, hunter and suckler of babies, dressed in the heavy skins of mastodons, as we make our way in a blizzard across the frozen Siberian plains.

Her aunt washes her feet, her calves and thighs, gently between her legs, washing away the blood that has begun to flow. The girl tries hard to push the bad thoughts away, to concentrate on the songs, to do everything correctly so that she will not bring misfortune down upon the People. But she is worried. Her sister’s husband, Indio Juan, has announced that after the end of the traditional four-day recovery period following the ceremony, he will take her as his second wife. It is true that there are few men left in the band suitable to be her husband; the Mexicans have been killing them off one by one, so that almost all who remain are boys and a few old men. But she does not wish to marry Juan; he is crazy and beats her sister, and all are afraid of his madness. But her mother says that the People need babies, and as the last of the girls coming into menarche, she is White-Painted-Woman now, the future of the People depends upon her and she will have to overcome her objections to Indio Juan. She tries hard not to think about these things. The water is cold but her aunt’s hands are gentle and sure, and after she finishes washing her body, she dries her and then she washes her hair with yucca root, and combs it out and dresses her in her beautifully beaded puberty dress, and combs her hair again, and the girl, so grateful for these kind and loving attentions, looks up into her aunt’s eyes. But it is no longer her aunt who combs her hair and the girl does not know where she is, or who this is into whose eyes she looks. She isn’t even sure who she is; she is no longer White-Painted-Woman, her entire world has vanished, and all those she knows in it are gone as well, and all who inhabit this new world are strangers and enemies. She is caged in a cold dark place and she is alone. She has only her own ancient self now to protect her, the hard kernel of her wildness, a memory of freedom.
Duu ghat’ iida. Do not touch me, White Eyes, stay away, keep back, ba’naag’uuya, I will bite you, I will kill you, I will die defending myself, you may not touch me, I will kill you, I will kill you, I wish to die now, do not touch me, I warn you, keep back, I will bite you, I will kill you.

“The gringo asks me to tell you that he is not going to hurt you. He just wants to put the blanket around you. El quiere ayudarlo. El no lo dolerá. ¿Me entiende usted?” He wants to help you. He will not hurt you. Do you understand me?

“I will die before I allow anyone to touch me. Ishxash. I will bite you, I will kill you, do not touch me, I wish to die.”

Now the White Eyes puts the blanket around her and she huddles under it, peering out at him. Who are these people? There is a Mexican boy speaking to her and another man, and when the hot white sun strikes her inside this cold dark hole in the ground, blinding her, she knows that she has indeed fallen through the old world and into another, and she wonders if she is already dead.

She curls up again on the cold floor and lies perfectly still, closing up into herself, and she dreams this life of the People from beginning to end.
Daalk’ida ’aguudzaa.
Three thousand years ago the People crossed the frozen Bering Sea to Alaska, and you are again among them as both man and woman, child and elder, hunter and suckler of babies. White-Painted-Woman, mother of all Apaches.

She dreams of sunlight flooding her face, and of an old man speaking to her in her own tongue. She opens her eyes and looks up into his ancient, furrowed face, and she thinks that this must be Yusen himself, that she has gone at last to the Happy Place. But then she looks around her and she sees all the Mexicans and the White Eyes staring at her and she knows this is not the Happy Place at all, and she begins to cry out, to struggle, and the old man takes her by the shoulders and speaks softly to her.
“Duu hajit’iida
.
Lie still, child, and I will take you home.”

After they stole Geraldo Huerta, Indio Juan led the band back to one of their old
rancherías
. They rode on stolen mules and burros and others walked, through nearly impassable mountain passes into secret
cañóns
watered by unnamed rivers, where no Mexican dared follow. It was the same country to which those who had refused to surrender to the American army had fled fifty years ago, and had lived ever since. There was still game in the valleys, which were well protected by the mountains, and they were able to grow some crops. Whatever else they had needed, including women and children to supplement their dwindling bloodlines, they had stolen in stealthy, middle-of-night raiding forays upon the Mexican mountain villages and the isolated ranches, so that none could even say for certain that it had been the bronco Apaches who had preyed upon them.

More recently, the ranchers had been expanding their range, their cattle and vaqueros penetrating the People’s country. The vaqueros were hard, cruel men, and well armed, and ever since Indio Juan had begun his bold daytime predations, they killed on sight every Apache they happened upon in the high country, man, woman, or child, beheading or scalping them in order to collect their bounty. And so the People’s numbers were being steadily reduced, the survivors driven farther south, ever deeper into the mountains.

The Huerta boy cried throughout the first day’s travel, and most of the next day, and Indio Juan finally told the women that if they had not quieted him by nightfall, he would kill the child. He knew that Fernando Huerta had surely formed a posse by now and that the boy’s cries would give them away. So the women and girls of the band cooed and cuddled and fussed over the boy, as if he were the most important person on earth; they rode with him on their warm laps, holding him in their pungent brown arms; they gave him precious chunks of sugar to suck and they spoke to him in Spanish as well as Apache.

Little Geraldo was grateful for their attentions and their kindnesses and soon they even encouraged from him an exhausted smile and by the evening of the second day he had stopped crying, and he did not cry again. Within a week he was speaking Apache and within a month he remembered his old family mostly in dreams from which he awoke disturbed, disoriented, in that strange shadow limbo between his new life and the old.

She dreams that the People are traveling and she is an infant riding in a cradleboard strapped to her mother’s back. It is springtime and the motion of her mother’s walking stride bounces and jostles her gently and she sleeps peacefully, waking from time to time to look up at the trees and the clouds moving across the sky, to hear the birds singing. And she sleeps again.

They come to a stop for the day, and her mother lifts her out of the cradleboard to bathe her, dips her into the warm water and holds her there, floating on the surface, secure in her mother’s sure gentle hands. She dreams that she is back in her mother’s womb, surrounded by water, floating, warm and safe.
Daalk’ida ’aguudzaa.
It happened long ago. And you are again among us as both man and woman, child and elder, hunter and suckler of babies as we make our way up the Yukon to Canada following the caribou herds into the upper Mackenzie drainage, from there over the millennia down the eastern edge of the Rockies and out onto the Great Plains, where we follow the great herds of bison.

Over the centuries, we drift south, to take up residence in the southern plains, where another tribe of fierce enemies, the Comanches, themselves driven out by the even more numerous Sioux, come down upon us from the north, pushing us west into the mountains and deserts that are to become our new homeland. And you among us as both man and woman, suckler of babies and slayer of enemies. White-Painted-Woman, mother of all Apaches.

She opens her eyes and looks up to see the old man peering down at her; it must be Yusen, the life-giver, and she is being born again onto the earth, how many times now in this endless cycle of birth and death? And although she does not wish to give up the comfort and safety of her mother’s womb, suddenly she has no air, her lungs ache to breathe, she struggles clawing for the light, thrusting violently from the water, fully awake now and trying to draw breath, gagging and choking.

She knows this place where she is now, recognizes this spring; many times the People have stopped here to water. And suddenly she is overcome with a terrible thirst. She drinks water from her cupped hand but it makes her cough again.

“Do not drink too much water, too quickly, child,” says the old man, “for it will make you sick.”

“Who are you, Grandfather?” she asks.

“My name is Goso,” says the old man. “I am
ch’uk’aende.
My mother was a sister of the great chief Cochise. I once lived in this country myself. I am taking you home to the People. I am taking myself home to the People.”

“If you are really
ch’uk’aende,
Grandfather,” she answers, “why do you ride with White Eyes?”

“My
tsuye
and I,” the old man says, “have taken these White Eyes captive. They are our slaves.”

She leaves the water and dries herself in the sun as the old man and the others set up camp. She sleeps and wakes and sleeps again, and all the while the old man talks to her. He tells her of his own people, and of those with whom he rode; he speaks names and places she recognizes from the old stories. She understands that the old man is a
di-yin,
that he has Power, that somehow he has rescued her from the Mexicans. And that he is taking her home. She drinks a little broth, but she is so tired and she must sleep again. She crawls into the wickiup they have built for her, warm and snug on the sleeping place they made of soft pine boughs covered in blankets. She sleeps, and as she sleeps she dreams this life of the People from beginning to end.
Daalk’ida ’aguudzaa.
It happened long ago.

Now the Spaniards come up from the south, thousands of them in their suits of armor, they slaughter and enslave the People, sending them to dig holes in the center of the earth, or to Mexico City to work as servants in their homes. And she among them, howling in the darkness.

Those who survive have hardened into a nation of raiders and warriors; they attack the missions and presidios, mercilessly slaughtering the soldiers and the Black Robes, stealing their stock, making captives of the women and children; in this way they drive the Spanish, finally, from their land. And thus for a time the People rule the country others called Apachería. And she among them as both man and woman, child and elder, suckler of babies and slayer of enemies. White-Painted-Woman, mother of all Apaches.

And she is again among them after the Spanish became the Mexicans, the People’s hatred of them undiminished. As both man and woman, child and elder, warrior and bearer of children, she rides with the raiders as they plunder villages in Chihuahua and Sonora, stealing stock and murdering the townspeople, taking prisoners of the women and children. Then the scalp hunters come to claim their bounties—one hundred pesos for the scalp of an Apache warrior, fifty pesos for that of a woman, twenty-five pesos for the hair of a child, and many of the People, and she among them, go to the Happy Place without their hair.

Some of the scalp hunters are a strange new race of man with pale skin and white eyes, and soon from all directions more come into their country, trappers and miners, soldiers and ranchers, and there is more war and more butchery. She rides with the various bands of the chiefs known as Chuchilla Negro, Juan José, Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, following a long trail of blood and death, of killing, dying, running. The People murder and are murdered in kind, pushed deeper into the twisted canyons of the Chiricahua, the Mogollon, the Dragoon, the Huechos, the Sierra Madre, raiding on both sides of the border, stealing stock and killing the hated Mexicans, killing, too, the hated White Eyes and taking their children to make of them Apaches. Nana, Chato, Loco, Geronimo, Victorio, Juh, with their bands she rides as both man and woman, warrior and mother; she runs from their pursuers through the night, a cradleboard strapped to her back.

But so many of the People are exhausted now from the endless wars, the constant flight, and they surrender, finally, to the White Eyes and are taken to live on the reservations. Others are sent by train to the iron house in Florida, hated place with the air hot and thick as wet wool, and many die there of disease, heartbreak and madness, die in the sweltering dark of their stone cells. And she among them, howling in the blackness.

Now there is nothing more that can be done to her or that she can do to her enemies, no more tortures or murders or suffering that she has not already endured, has not already inflicted in the brutality of centuries she has dreamed. She is curled up in warm blankets atop soft pine boughs in a wickiup in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, and she sleeps, dreaming this life of the People from beginning to end. White-Painted-Woman, mother of all Apaches.

THE NOTEBOOKS OF NED GILES, 1932
NOTEBOOK IV:

Into the Sierra Madre