The Turquoise Ledge Read Online Free Page A

runoff down where the roots of the bean and corn seedlings suckled and grew. These deposits of fine sand were rich in nutrients gathered as rain washed the sand from the mesas. Unlike soils of clay, the deep sand deposits captured rainwater almost immediately so little precious water was lost to flooding or evaporation.
    The most ingenious engineering was done on the floodplains where small stones were arranged in slender curved half-moons, spaced so the swift muddy runoff from sudden cloudbursts was slowed by the small stone catch-dams and the runoff sank into the deep sand then spread nicely to water the fields of corn and beans nearby.
    The Pueblo people lived in the Laguna-Acoma area for thousands of years before the Europeans invaded, but the Spanish record-keepers made no mention of Laguna Pueblo, only Acoma. It was at Acoma Pueblo that the Spaniards chopped off one hand and one foot of every captured Acoma man or boy over the age of seven, in retaliation for an Acoma victory over the Spanish troops in 1598.
    Because of their barbarity toward all the Indian tribes, the Spaniards were later killed or driven out of the country all the way to El Paso in the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Even the Apaches and Navajos set aside differences with one another and with the Pueblos to join them in the action to expel the invaders.
    In 1692 the Spaniards returned. The Indian alliances that produced the Great Revolt were no longer maintained and the Pueblo resistance failed. Those in the pueblos around Santa Fe who did resist the return of the invaders were killed and their families sent to Mexico as slaves or removed and resettled to Laguna. But the Kawaikameh, the Laguna people, had been living there by the small lake on the Rio San José for thousands of years already when the rebels from the northern pueblos were brought there. Thus the Spaniards erroneously stated Laguna Pueblo wasn’t established until 1698. The error about the date of the founding of Laguna Pueblo was repeated in later histories. The Laguna Pueblo people didn’t bother to correct the error because it made no difference to their reckoning of the world.

CHAPTER 5
    F rom my earliest days, animals and beings of the natural world occupied as much of my consciousness as human beings did. Around humans often I sensed an uncomfortable feeling below the surface, one that left me with unease and anxiety to please everyone. So early on I preferred to play alone, or to be with cats, dogs or horses for companionship, not human beings.
    Over time I realized the politics of the Marmons in the pueblo was part of this, but there was more. Another part of the unease I felt as a child may have come from what happened before I was conceived. I found this out when I was in my early twenties from my grandma Jessie, my mother’s mother.
    Grandma Jessie said my mother gave away a baby and immediately conceived me, perhaps as a way to try to forget the baby boy she couldn’t keep. Of course she never forgot the baby boy and grieved all her life. She’d already arranged the adoption before she met my father. My father wanted to raise the child as his, but my mother believed in the prevailing notion of the time—that in such situations, adoption was best. For my mother adoption was the worst, and the pain helped keep her drinking all her life.
    My mother never talked about it until she was in her sixties, and her old flame, the father of the baby boy, located her in Gallup. They tried to contact their son through a national organization for adoptees. She told me they filed their names and information with the organization but no one ever replied. The old flame rekindled for a while then sputtered out. My mother never again mentioned the old flame or the boy she gave up for adoption.
    Sometimes I think about him, the boy, my lost half brother. He haunted my mother, and by extension, he haunted my sisters and me. Somewhere I have notes from when I tried to