Ocotillo Omen, Page 2

collections, circumventing the new law in order to protect their museums’ reputations, as well as their own personal reputations. So why shouldn’t she have done so? Instead, she wanted to be honest about the ownership history for each pot, which meant slow, deliberate documentary research—a task she hadn’t yet been able to complete under the pressure of time to open the exhibit.

  She wanted to explain museum economics to the FBI field commander, tell him that institutions such as hers couldn’t spend all their time and money documenting gifts and acquisitions—they had to put on exhibitions for the public and for school children. Money to hire qualified research staff and outside experts was scarce, and without super shows, there’d be inadequate financial resources to create these jobs. Yet she knew this clod wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t give up his police powers, wouldn’t back off and end his raid, no matter what she said.

  As the Acoma potter took the gun from her and handed the weapon back to the agent, he whispered to her, “I fear our sacred pots will disappear again, this time into the maze of FBI bureaucracy. Who knows what happens to confiscated art? At least we’ve made our point—now the world will understand that our ancestors’ pots are sacred to us, and that we never gave Anglos the right to commercialize Native American heritage.”

  The museum’s chairman of the Board of Regents had been the next person to speak to her. “You have to do something, Ms. Roberts, or this seizure will cause problems when our museum undergoes its re-accreditation process next month. If we don’t get that stamp of approval, we’ll lose our foundation grants as well as our federal funding.” And, Lee anguished, she could kiss her career goodbye, too.

  Lee sighed as she remembered the looming presence of the FBI’s 18-wheeler parked in the plaza outside her catering tent. Like a giant coffin, the huge truck was about to bury the last five years of her career life. The chairman was right. She had to do something. And quick. Before she could think of what to do, Paul Zimmerman had come to her with word of the kidnapping of Running Deer’s precious new-born baby.

  “Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry,” she had said as she grasped his hand. “What happened?”

  “They took the baby right out of the hospital nursery—from under the noses of the pediatric nurses. Our baby...and now our pots, too.”

  His statement had confused her. “What do you mean?” she had asked. “Is there a connection? Your wife is Pima Indian, isn’t she? Why would the Indians take your baby?”

  “No, it’s not the Indians. It’s...ah...my guys...you know.”

  She did know. She had turned another blind eye to his last-minute addition to her exhibition. “Didn’t you pay them?”

  “I was going to...the bank was set to make my loan tomorrow...after your opening, but now...my pots—my three million dollars worth of collateral...I’ve no money to pay for the pots or to pay the ransom for Running Deer’s baby, and I dare not go to the police...or the FBI.”

  All she could say was, “I’m ever so sorry, Paul.”

  The days grew shorter as Paul and Running Deer searched desperately and tirelessly for their baby. An early September snowfall hadn’t discouraged them. Paul said if only the kidnappers would take him and bring the baby back to Running Deer, he’d be their slave forever. Lee felt responsible. If she hadn’t encouraged Paul to loan his pots to her exhibition, he wouldn’t have agreed to purchase them from the thieves, and the baby wouldn’t have been kidnapped.

  Now, sitting in her museum office and staring out into the snowy courtyard, she asked herself how could she make amends to this couple, to the Native Americans and to museums everywhere? Finally she decided on her course of action. With her own money, she bought a full-page ad in USA Today to express her feelings:

  An Open Letter of Apology to the People of the Following Pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico: Taos, Picuris, San Juan, Santa Clara, Pojaque, Nambé, San Illdelfonso, Tesuque, Cochiti, Jemez, Zia, Santo Domingo, Santa Ana, San Felipe, Sandia, Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Laguna, Isleta, and the descendants of the Pecos Pueblo living at Jemez.

  On behalf of the Palace of the Governors and myself personally, I wish to apologize to each of you. I confess that throughout the last four hundred years of recorded Southwest history there have been outright thefts of sacred Native American belongings, unlawful acts, which unfortunately continue right up to the present day. Whether bartered for or stolen outright, whether kept in trust or simply confiscated, these acts all carry the same meaning: theft with premeditation; theft by coercion; theft with malice; in other words, unforgivable theft!

  And now, all our museums and art galleries may well be shut down because of these treasure-hunting capers. There will be no more exhibits of Native American artwork anywhere. Worse, there will be no air-conditioned place in which to authenticate, endorse and show the world your contemporary works of art crafted by today’s gifted artists. You will be forced to go back to the days of hot, dusty roadside vending. None of us want this to happen.

  I am reminded of the Pima Indian legend, which tells of their good judgment. I wish to share their wondrous story with the readers of this newspaper?

  In forgotten times, in the days of the ancients, a great river overflowed its banks and threatened to flood the village. No one, not the shaman, not even the village chief, was able to persuade the waters to stop rising.

  High up on a sacred mesa there lived a wise old matriarch, whose advice was sought in times of impending disaster. “To end your ordeal,” she told the Pima, “you must sacrifice what is most valuable to you. Throw it down into the sipapu, the place of our emergence from the dark underworlds within Mother Earth into this, our present world of mountains, rain, and sunlight, and you will satisfy the water spirit’s thirst for treasure. Your forfeiture is necessary to bring your people a better world.”

  For days, the Pima debated as to what was their most valuable and prized possession. Everyone came to agree that Spring Robin’s baby was most dear to all. Everyone except the village potter, who spirited the baby away in the middle of the night deep into the nearby Ocotillo forest. When he returned to the village he was prepared to offer his most prized pot for the sacrifice. The Pima were happy that he would give up his most cherished pot to save Spring Robin’s baby. The shaman accepted the potter’s gift and delivered it down into the sipapu, and the floodwaters receded.

  Rejoicing, the villagers and Spring Robin went to get her baby, but when they arrived in the Ocotillo forest the baby was nowhere in sight. Oh, despair! But wait. Among the dull gray stems of the midwinter forest, one ocotillo plant projected twenty-five straight unbranched stems ten to twelve feet in length in a fanned-out arrangement, each displaying a new crop of small green leaves. One stem, twenty feet in length, bore an orange-red flower on its upper portion. And there, by the plant’s crown base, they found the baby.

  It was thus in the days of the ancients. Therefore the ancients, no less than ourselves, hold humanness above materialism. And thus shortens my story.

  Most Sincerely,

  Lee Roberts, Executive Director and Curator of the Palace of the Governors

  Days later, Running Deer brought her baby, Spring Blossom, to introduce her to Lee and to express thanks for bringing harmony to all. Their conversation was interrupted by streaks of blue lights revolving around the courtyard, Lee’s office and the museum’s empty galleries. Outside in the plaza, Lee heard the loud distinctive braking belch from the compression release of a giant truck engine. She and Running Deer, who carried her papoose, rushed to see what all the commotion was about. Twenty different pueblo police cars, their official pueblo emblems emblazoned on their doors, had escorted the FBI’s 18-wheeler on its return engagement to the Palace of the Governors.

  The lone potter from Acoma said it best in his decree, “We of all the present-day pueblos wish to assert that where we’ve been is not as important as where we’re going. So we entrust to your stewardship our ancestral pots, to have and to hold from this day forward.”

  After the museum staff
had uncrated and set up the exhibition once again, Lee went back to her office and discovered that the ocotillo plant in the courtyard bore a bright orange-red flower atop each leafy stem.

  ###

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