Durano

By Carolyn Zaroff

Bekah is a Ute Indian who was just a little girl when her cousin, Durano, left the tribe to live in Santa Fe to learn the language of the new people and the ways of the Americans and Spanish. Now he is an eighteen-year-old who is seemingly ready to accept his destiny, even though there is much about him that members of his tribe, including Bekah’s brother, both envy and hate. It is 1849 when seventeen-year-old Russian Jew, Benjamin Perlov, arrives in San Francisco, hoping to begin anew. As Durano steps into his role as Ute Indian chief, his life eventually intersects with that of Perlov who quickly becomes a friend of the Utes. As Perlov negotiates with the government so the Utes can remain on their ancestral lands instead of on new reservations created to ensure gold miners can stake their claims in Indian territory, fate leads him to Bekah’s arms and what he hopes is a future filled with love, hope, and new beginnings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Apr 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781483499499

Book preview

completion.

CHAPTER 1

When I first met my cousin Durano, his fate had already been twisted like a desert piñon, sliced by savage winds into a form barely recognizable as a tree. He would be a leader of our tribe one day—but unlike any who had come before. Some would say he was the wisest leader of all, but others, like my brother Simon, desired to see him dead. What is certain is that in his time, our way of life changed forever.

None of this is written, because our people, the Ute nation, the people of the Shining Mountains as we call ourselves in our language, do not want our words and our beliefs to be open for all the world to see. We have many secrets given to us by the grandfathers that we hold to ourselves. We speak our stories around our fires and only to those we trust—not even to all the Ute people. Only to our own small band of Uncompahgre.

The times that I want to tell you about started just before the Americans arrived. Yes, there had been a few among us for years—trappers who hunted beaver, otter, elk, deer, and even mountain sheep. In later times, there were traders and guides, such as Rope Thrower, but the whites we had come to know well for many generations were the Spanish speakers who lived in the settlement of Santa Fe near our winter camping grounds. From them we had received horses many, many generations earlier.

These horses made our people even stronger; our men could hunt farther to the east and west, and our world became larger. From the earliest times, all the high mountains and green valleys to the north, where we hunted and fished in the summer, and the desert to the south, where we lived under the sun during the cold season, belonged to the Ute people. This had been so from the beginning of time when Senawahf, the Creator, released us from his bag and placed us on this earth. He gave us the shining mountains and made us brave to defend them. We were a very fortunate people.

The day that I speak of, when Durano arrived, I had just carried the fresh skins out to the rack for drying. He rode into hunting camp astride a stallion suitable for a future chief.

Even before my mother ran out to grab his reins, I knew who he was. For as many seasons as I could remember, she had told me stories about him. She had kept his image warm for me like fry bread, and I had dreamed of him for so many nights that I knew him inside my skull. I wondered whether his skin would be white from the white food he must have eaten all the years of his absence and whether he would smell like white people—as sharp as mustard seed.

Camp had become as silent as winter with all eyes pulled to him, a member of our tribe yet a stranger. When he dismounted, the crowd of women and children stepped back as though he carried disease. He ignored them and nodded to my mother, showing respect—as if he had been raised among us—by waiting for her to speak first.

I had been a small child when he left us and could only remember dimly a skinny-legged boy. Now I could see he was powerfully built for a youth of eighteen, not tall but broad through the shoulders and back like my older brother, Simon White Owl, and the other men in our family. I was surprised to see that he wore his hair in the Ute way: two braids forward over his shoulders, each bound in buckskin. He was dressed in a soft buckskin shirt and leggings the color of winter straw, a pale yellow that showed to perfection against his dark burnished skin. I couldn’t help but wonder who had prepared those skins for him.

My mother took his blanket and carried it into our tepee as if it were a precious war trophy. He followed her, and I behind him, noticing his soft step. He smelled not white but warm like sunbaked earth.

Welcome, nephew, my mother said with a smile. But she had to turn her head away for a moment to hide her strong feelings. She had waited too long for his return to welcome him with tears. I knew she had planned a feast for this occasion, as she had lovingly described to me many times each dish she would make for him: the roasted corn, the dried fruits, the fattest elk. Now that he was standing here before her in the center of her tepee, she could only stare.

My heart is filled with happiness to see you among us again, she managed to say in a whispery voice.

He nodded politely again, but his eyes laughed, and his smile was broad. Thank you for making room at your fire for me. He spoke in formal Ute with the correct Uncompahgre pronunciation.

I laughed at the surprise of his perfect language.

He turned and stared at me. So, little cousin, do you find me amusing?

My face burned.

Now he laughed. Are you speechless still? That is how I remember you: Bekah, the little girl who stared.

Words tumbled in my head, but I could not speak. I wanted to ask him how it felt to live within the hard walls of a Spanish house away from the songs of the wind and the smells of the earth. I wanted to show him the meadow outside camp where larks sang and the glen hidden deep within the pine forest, the secret place where flowers were sprinkled over the earth like a soft blanket. But I could only stand planted like a tree while my mother fussed about and prepared a steaming bowl of tea.

I thought of all the times when my mother told his story around the fire. The sounds of disapproval that rose around the circle sounded like twigs snapping underfoot. There were sharp intakes of breath against teeth, throats cleared, and powders sprinkled to protect the rest of us from such a fate.

What could his father do? my mother would ask in a singsong voice of the clan sitting shoulder to shoulder around the fire. My sister, the boy’s mother, is dead; his new wife was eager to move north. The father chose well for his boys. I am told they live in riches with the warmest clothes and enough food in all seasons.

The clicking sounds would become louder around the fire as she sang his story. However, my mother was a wise woman who was careful not to mention everything she knew. Certain truths about Durano were held close in our family, such as our secret ways of tanning skins. Why raise the evil head of envy if it could be avoided? And there was much about Durano that others, including my brother Simon, envied and even hated. Sometimes I wonder if we did not hate him enough. But all of that came later. At first, when he returned to us, we knew only that he was full of surprise and not at all as we had imagined he would be: more white than Indian. As for my mother and me, our hearts filled with happiness, and we accepted him gladly back into our family.

Our golden boy.

CHAPTER 2

Six weeks passed before Durano trusted me enough to speak about his life.

One day, he and I walked together to a mountain-fed stream my mother had shown me when I was old enough to carry water back to camp. This stream would always have water, she had told me, even during the fire-hot days. We sat on the bank, and my cousin showed me how to make a fishing string from the reeds that grew at our feet. I know we caught fish that day, but I cannot remember them. I remember only the story he told me as we fished.

When he finished this story, I felt as though I had only then climbed out of the Creator’s bag into the world because so much I had not understood suddenly became clear. These are his words as I remember them:

Change often crawls up on a person slowly, the way a sand dune grows one grain at a time. But that day, change struck like thunder. My brother and I were outside camp checking our traps on a warm day in the year 1846, according to the white man’s calendar. Our father had left us in a small canyon while he set traps on the field above. Unlike every other summer I could remember, when our band of Utes made the long trip to the high mountains in the north, that year the elders decided to stay south, camped not far from the Mexican trading post at Santa Fe. Although there had been an unusual amount of rain in the south, and game was uncommonly plentiful, there had been much grumbling about the decision to remain in the desert. Young men wanted to flex their new muscles in the rugged mountains to the north. They wanted to hunt buffalo and bear and prove their manhood in ways impossible in the sands of our southern desert, where the largest game was coyote. My brother and I were content to set our traps for rabbit.

It was early in the season. The sun had not yet become a killer so harsh that only toughened grasses and ageless rocks could be outdoors during the midday hours. This day, a breeze as light as fine doeskin played across my back. Somewhere in the canyon above, a wren began to trill, and sweet birdsong tumbled upon us as a gift. Until that day, I believed that such an omen would bring good fortune. A large black-and-white hare stopped struggling in the snare we had set for him and watched us approach. I hated the way he stared at us and quickly began to recite the prayer of thanks to him for allowing us to take his life.

Wait. I pulled my brother’s hand off the snare before he released the latch. Can you feel it? The ground is trembling.

The rabbit twitched violently as though he had been struck by silent sky flash. A hideous sound, more piercing than a war cry, flew through the canyon and exploded off the walls. I grabbed my brother and flung us into a cave before we were swallowed into the underworld. I feared the earth would crack open as it had in ancient times. My brother clung to me sobbing. We stayed huddled against the back wall for a long time—I don’t know how long—until I could no longer bear to remain in the dark. We were not alone. Mice and rats bolted into cracks in the thick walls. Spiders scurried for shelter. I inched toward the light where I could crouch behind a wide boulder and peer out while remaining hidden. Animals screamed. I realized I was looking at a stampede. Thanks be to the Creator. Only a stampede!

A stream of horses poured through the narrow canyon not more than a man’s length away from where I hid. I had never seen such horses, taller and broader than any of ours.

We Utes are proud of our horses and the way we ride. We believe that horses understand our language. I could now see clearly that these horses were not listening to any human being. They ran possessed by ghosts, eyes bulging, hooves slipping on rock, flanks scraping the canyon walls. Horseflesh filled the canyon fuller than the spring floods, more horses than the herds owned by all of the Utes together.

Behind the horses came wagons carrying guns larger than men. I had never seen such guns. Then came more wagons than I could count packed with men and crates. These looked like soldiers; they carried long guns slung across their backs and wore the same dust-covered, dark-green uniforms, but they were an army I did not recognize. Drivers screamed at the oxen pulling the wagons and whipped them. I strained to understand their words, but they made no sense—nothing like the Spanish spoken by Mexican soldiers.

For the rest of my days, I will never forget the sight of thousands of men forcing their way through that narrow-walled canyon, bending nature to their will. Canyon walls reeked of blood in their aftermath. I can still smell the stench of animal dung they left behind.

We met our father on the trail; he ran down the steep path from above with a wildness in his eyes I had never seen before. He gathered us to him and led us up out of the canyon without speaking. That evening in camp the elders spoke as though they had always known such an army would descend upon the land. I did not believe them but said nothing. Young men spoke about forming war parties to ride out against the strangers before the night was out. I looked at them knowing what I knew, but again I did not speak. Who would believe the words of an untested thirteen-year-old? I noticed that my father spoke quietly in the circle to those who would listen. When the young men saw that the elders were not ready to decide on battle, they backed away from the fire and huddled together in the dark behind us at the far edge of camp. Nothing happened that night.

The next day I was pleased when my father allowed me to ride with him and a small party to Santa Fe. Before the sun had completed its journey to the top of the eastern sky, we could smell smoke. Where the trading post and fort had once stood, there was only smoke and flames. Our party stood in silence for a long time before we turned and headed back to camp.

Americans. Black Hawk spoke first at the fire that night. Leaders from each of our seven Ute bands had galloped into camp from summer hunting lodges in the northern mountains and beyond. Behind the leaders sat the elders and then the younger men. Hidden in the shadows, outside the light thrown by the fire, stood the women and older children. No one spoke or moved while Black Hawk paused to stare at each leader in turn.

Americans. That’s what the new people call themselves, he said. Americans. They have driven the Spanish away faster than mountain lions chase deer.

Voices rose around the fire. We had heard about Americans from the tribes to the east of our mountains. Murdering thieves is what they had been called at war councils of the Sioux and Arapaho and Cheyenne who had fought them for years, but we had never heard of an American army as large as the one that had marched on Santa Fe.

Our tribe had lived mostly in peace with the Spanish through many generations, although not everyone knew them as well as my family did. My father often traded good hides at the post for ponies and blankets. I had accompanied him many times after he realized that I could speak their language. My stepmother also liked to ride to the post to trade her beadwork for ground flour or brightly colored cloth.

Kuera, tell us again what you saw in the canyon, Red Hawk said to my father, who repeated the story he had already told many times.

Silence. The pipe was passed to another speaker.

Why should all the horses belong to Americans? There are too many for one army. More horses could mean better hunting for us. Better fighting. This was a man my father’s age speaking, but he was not regarded as a leader.

Better to leave theirs alone. You’d just be stealing trouble, said a voice from the row of elders. We have horses of our own.

My father nodded.

Horses are not our concern tonight, Red Hawk said softly. Tonight, around this fire we must decide our future. Do we start peaceably with these white men, or do we attack before they have time to lay out their bedrolls?

When I heard that, I thought, How can we attack? The entire Ute nation is as small as an osprey egg compared to their force of eagles. I listened to other leaders and elders speak in favor of a surprise war party. Many younger men spoke for that action. I was surprised that your brother Simon, who was not much older