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.”She said: “And remember to tell the children our story, about our journey from the east, about how we caused the earth to tremble when we stepped on Grandfather Tortoise’s burrow, how we found Wanchem by the magical stream, how Mother Moon protected us and lighted our way.Teach our children to remember these stories and to tell them to their children, so that Topaa in generations to come will know their beginnings.”Marimi then summoned her great-granddaughter, who had since infancy suffered from blinding headaches and visions, which Marimi no longer saw as an affliction but as a blessing, and she placed her hand upon the girl’s head, and said, “The gods have chosen you, my daughter.They have given you the spirit-gift.So now I give my name to you for I am to join our ancestors, and by taking my name you will become me, Marimi, clan medicine woman.”They buried her with great ceremony in the cave at Topaa-ngna, sending her spirit to the West with her medicine pouches, her spear thrower, her hairpins and earrings.But the sacred raven’s spirit-stone they kept, draping it around the neck of the chosen girl, now named Marimi, who would be the clan medicine woman and whose duty it would be to tend the cave of the First Mother for the rest of her life.Chapter ThreeYour name is Walks With The Sun and you were out with a hunting party; you strayed too far and got lost, so you settled here and made this place your home.No, Erica, thought as she studied the photographs she had taken of the skeleton in the cave.This woman would never get lost.You are Seal Woman and you sailed down from the northwest in a long canoe, you and your lover running away from tribal taboos that forbade you to marry.Or you came from islands far to the west, long sunk back into the sea, and you were named for a goddess.Pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, Erica leaned back from her worktable and stretched, rolling her head and shrugging her shoulders to get the stiffness out.She looked at the time.Where had the hours flown?As she reached for her cold coffee she contemplated the mess piled on the workbench— artifacts waiting to be examined and labeled and catalogued.Erica was in the trailer that had been converted into a lab filled with scientific equipment, microscopes, tall stools, and a bulletin board covered with pins and notes and drawings.It was early evening and she had been sorting the last of the day’s finds.She was the only one in the lab; everyone else was either still at dinner in the cafeteria tent or socializing around the camp.When Erica had uncovered the skull in the cave floor, Sam Carter had authorized her to commence a full-scale excavation.They got the go-ahead from the Office of Environmental Preservation, and while Sam was to be the field director, he gave Erica the honor of conducting the hands-on work, despite sharp criticism from both within and outside the State Archaeologist’s Office.However, he had cautioned her: “Be objective, Erica.After the embarrassment of the Chadwick shipwreck, there were those who wanted you fired.But you’re a good anthropologist and I don’t think your career should go into the toilet because of one impulsive mistake.”Promising to be careful, Erica had approached the job with her characteristic vigor and exuberance, wasting no time getting started marking out the cave floor with stakes and string, and then meticulously scraping off the soil with the edge of a trowel blade, curbing her eagerness to plunge through the soil layers and find the riches of history underneath.The scraped-off dirt was placed in buckets and hauled topside, where volunteers sieved through it to see if it contained archaeological material.Outside the cave, the noisy business of geologists, engineers, and soils specialists got under way in earnest along Emerald Hills Drive.And Jared Black, of course, had his job.They were in a race.Jared’s task was to locate the most likely descendant as quickly as possible and then to turn the cave and its contents over to that person or tribe.As soon as that happened, Erica suspected she would be out of a job.She was Anglo, and once the cave was owned by Native Americans they would want their own people on the excavation, possibly even halting the excavation altogether and sealing the cave.And so Erica was working long, hard hours, desperate to decipher the mysteries of the cave before Jared Black accomplished his goal.The first visitor he had brought to the cave was Chief Antonio Rivera of the Gabrielino tribe.He was there to possibly identify the painting and therefore allow Jared to start the legal wheels in motion.As the visitor was of advanced age, he had been lowered to the cave in a chair, and while Chief Rivera had sat and gazed at the pictographs, Erica had paused in her work to watch him.The face mapped with a million lines and creases, coppery and weathered, remained a mask as the small, alert eyes flitted from one symbol to another, stopping, fixing, staring, absorbing, and then moving on.He had sat motionless for nearly an hour, his eyes drinking in the magnificent mural, body rigid, rough cracked hands flat on his knees, until finally he had heaved a ragged sigh and risen from the chair to say, “It is not of my tribe.”One after another Jared brought tribal members into the cave— Tongva, Diegueñeo, Chumash, Luiseño, Kemaaya— some young, some old, men and women, in suits or jeans, short hair or braids, to stand or sit and ponder the perplexing mysteries of the ancient mural.And each, upon leaving, shook his or her head to say, “It is not my tribe.” Some of the visitors looked at Erica with clear displeasure, recalling ancient taboos about women trespassing in holy places.Some were even uncomfortable about themselves being there.A woman from the Purisima tribe north of Santa Barbara became highly agitated and left, saying that she had broken the taboo which forbade women to look upon the sacred symbols of a shaman’s vision quest and that now her entire tribe would be cursed because of her being here.Some visitors, however, looked favorably upon Erica and her work.One young man, a member of the Navajo tribe and a professor of Native American history at the University of Arizona, shook Erica’s hand and said he looked forward to hearing of her progress.Jared also produced Anglo experts, men and women trained in universities to know Indian ways.These, too, with their degrees and book knowledge, shook their heads and departed.The painting wasn’t the only mystery in the cave.The 1814 one-cent piece she had found the day before, for example.In 1814 it was illegal for Californios to trade with Americans.American ships were not allowed to dock at San Pedro or San Francisco, and anyone who jumped ship was caught and deported.So how did an American coin get into the cave? Erica knew it couldn’t have been dropped there years later, when California was part of the United States, because the relief was so sharp.One could clearly see the wreath embracing the words One Cent, and around that, United States of America.On the other side, the Liberty head with a wreath on her curly hair surrounded by twelve crisply defined stars and the numbers 1814, all sharply defined [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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