Tribal Ways. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ understand,” Watson said with a grin. “I forgot all my geology pretty much the instant I turned in my last exam.”

      “So if you could fill me in a bit on the cultural background of the Southwest and Plains cultures, and any hint you can provide me as to why something out of Navajo folk belief would be operating in the Comanche country of western Oklahoma would definitely be appreciated.”

      “Well, to start with, the Indian cultures of North America didn’t live in vacuums, much less isolation from one another,” Watson said.

      Annja was only mildly surprised at a tenured professor using such a politically incorrect term as Indian; very few Native Americans she’d ever met showed anything but the most strident contempt for the phrase Native American. Tom Ten Bears hadn’t had much use for it, either.

      “Even before the Europeans’ arrival, my own people, the Kiowas, were especially famed for their roles as raiders and traders. Rather as the Vikings were in Europe and even the Mediterranean. So were the Comanches, especially after the two nations allied in the late eighteenth century. Comanche relics have turned up in the Cahokia Mounds. Kiowa tradition recalls trading voyages to the country of the Maya—who were themselves noted for the long journeys of their own traders, who also served as proselytizers for their religion.”

      “Really?”

      Watson nodded. “So the South Plains people were common visitors to New Mexico. What’s now northeastern New Mexico was part of their customary range. In fact, the Kiowa-Comanche alliance got its start in the 1790s on what’s now the site of Las Vegas, New Mexico—you did know there was one, didn’t you?”

      “Oh, yes. In the mountains east of Santa Fe,” Annja said.

      “That’s it. You’d be surprised how many people have only heard of the one in Nevada. Or maybe you wouldn’t. At any rate, the relationship between the Pueblos and the South Plains people was especially problematic. Sometimes the Plains folk came to the Pueblos to trade, sometimes to pillage and kill. It was the usual antagonism between settled groups and nomads.”

      “I’m familiar with that,” Annja said. “So where do the Navajos come in?”

      “Originally as rivals,” Watson said with a smile. “As an Apachean subgroup of the Athabascan peoples they and their fellow Apacheans also raided the prosperous and populous riparian communities. That often brought them into conflict with the South Plains people. Usually the Apache came off second best.”

      Annja noted a half-hidden grin at that. That was something she’d noticed in her dealings with people of Plains Indian extraction—no matter how vocally they tried, as many did, to disavow violence and war, they remained at core warrior cultures. And thoroughly proud of their histories.

      “It wasn’t perfectly straightforward, of course,” Watson said.

      “Are human interactions ever?”

      Watson laughed. “Not that I’ve noticed.” She shook her head, seemed to go introspective for a moment. “Anyway, one thing that happened was that the Jicarilla band of Apaches early on settled in northern New Mexico, and entered into alliance with the Taoseños. They provided security for the great annual Taos trade fairs.”

      “Really? I didn’t know that.”

      “Yes. So there was always considerable contact between the people of the Southwest and of the South Plains. A famous hide painting exists of a battle—at about the time of the American Revolution—between Spanish troops with Apache mercenaries and French ones alongside Comanche allies.”

      “Who won?”

      “The French and Comanche. I’m tempted to add of course. Anyway, the contacts, if anything, grew stronger with the conclusion of the wars of Indian subjugation. After the final surrender of the Chiricahua Apaches to the U.S. Army in the 1880s they were eventually shipped to Fort Sill in Oklahoma.”

      “Which is the heart of Comanche territory.”

      “Yes. About half the Nation still lives around Sill and Lawton. Of course, by the time the Chiricahua gave up their relatives the Navajo had long since come to terms with the inevitable and settled down to become sheep-herders. Meanwhile, the Chiricahua had extensive exposure to Comanche culture on the reservation.”

      “I didn’t think there were any reservations in Oklahoma,” Annja said.

      “There aren’t anymore. It was the usual story. The free peoples of the Plains kept being restricted to smaller and smaller chunks of less and less desirable real estate. Then as soon as they got settled in, somebody would discover something on the land they’d been ceded—gold in the Black Hills, say—and they’d be pushed off again.

      “In Oklahoma the Kiowa and Comanche were both forcibly settled onto reservations, which were then whittled away to nothing. The last Kiowa were forced out for white settlement in 1901, the Comanche in 1906.”

      “That’s sad,” Annja said.

      “Yes. It is. Don’t worry—I know you didn’t do it.”

      Annja laughed. “So what can you tell me about the Dog Society?”

      “Originally a Cheyenne warrior society. One of six, actually.”

      “Why would Comanche radicals be calling themselves after a Cheyenne group?”

      Watson shrugged. “You’d have to ask them. However, the Cheyennes spent a lot of time in the South Plains, and had much contact with the Kiowas and Comanche. They still do. Also, the Dog Soldiers were known for their extreme aggression. They were eventually outlawed and cast out of the Cheyenne tribe after one of their members murdered a fellow tribesman, and formed their own band. That could be part of the attraction for violent radicals, that aggressive association.”

      “I see. What I still don’t understand, I’m afraid, is how and why someone evidently caught up in Navajo witchcraft would wind up committing murders in Oklahoma.”

      “Again, I have no good explanation to give you. Such an individual would be very…twisted, by the standards of any human culture. Navajos—Athabascans—still take witchcraft with the utmost seriousness. It’s the blackest evil to them. People accused of witchcraft still have a tendency to turn up dead.

      “The Navajo wolf, or skinwalker, is basically the worst kind of witch. You can only gain that kind of power through extensive contact with the dead—something most of the Southwest Indians are very leery of, and which the Athabascans in particular dread. Also, the shape-changing power can only be won through committing one or more ritual murders.”

      “Wow,” Annja said.

      “That’s not a life-way I’m terribly conversant with. Modern Navajos don’t like to talk about it for two reasons. The acculturated ones dislike associating their people with what seems to them a potentially pernicious superstition. The traditionalists dislike talking about religious beliefs to outsiders because to talk about witches invites their attentions, which traditional Navajos believe can be literally deadly.”

      Watson shook her head. “Really, I’d say even a lot of the most modern Navajos feel at least a certain thrill of dread about skinwalkers. Just as atheists raised amid Christian society sometimes harbor secret fears of hell.”

      “I’m СКАЧАТЬ