Of Petroglyphs and Pueblos

Meet Romeldo Shadduck, a Pueblo Indian who was sent to the Indian Boarding School in Albuquerque when she was 12 years old.

Monday, May 3, 2010
“Each of these rocks is alive, keeper of a message left by the ancestors.....There are spirits, guardians; there is medicine.” Pueblo Elder William F. Weahkee said this about the thousands of petroglyphs we found today in the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We stood on a lava field, a hawk spiraling down from the mesa above. Some of the glyphs are recognizable as animals or people. There are crosses and other mysterious markings on the black rocks.
As we climbed the mesa, we came upon two native Americans. One was blind and was being helped up the rough and rocky path by his friend. It was the first time they had come to the glyphs. We chatted with the sighted Indian and he told us he was descended from the Anasazi. He guided his friend's feet on the tricky path while he told us about how the Anasazi believed that aliens from another planet came to these parts thousands of years ago and merged with the Anasazi. “My grandfather believes this,” he said, almost defensively. I told him anything is possible in this beautiful land.
No one really knows what these glyphs are all about. They have deep spiritual meaning for the Pueblo, Navajo and Dine Indians. The glyphs are said to be understood by the Pueblo people. But they believe it is not appropriate to reveal the meaning to those of us who are not of them.
They are thought to be about 1,300 years old. Some of the glyphs are actually more modern, placed there by Spanish shepherds who grazed their sheep on the mesa. But the early crosses, with a cross within another cross are by the Native Americans. The Spanish shepherds created more simple imagery.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Today was Ting Lee's date with destiny. We found a vet in Albuquerque, via the internet, who agreed to spay her before she comes into heat. We dropped her off at 7:30 am. And then went wandering around Albuquerque for the day.
First stop was a traditional breakfast at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. I had huevos rancheros, with eggs, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, toast and tortilla while Jo dug into a heaping plate of blue corn pancakes, served with pinon butter. The butter had pine nuts in it and she raved about the taste treat.
We wandered the exhibits and learned about the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico. But, as always, the place came alive when we came upon a tiny and old Pueblo woman, Romeldo Shadduck, (her father had been given the name Shadduck by Presbyterian man from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she told us.
Romeldo told us she had been sent to Indian boarding school when she reached the 7th grade. She graduated from Indian School and was sent on to college where she earned a degree that permitted her to teach other Indian children.
“I still live in the adobe house of my ancestors,” she told us proudly. “It has six rooms now because my brother added two rooms.”
Romeldo's brother made it high into the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her oldest sister, who is 96, also was a teacher and is about to be given an honorary doctorate. I asked this lovely old lady, in a gentle way, how much younger she is than her sister. Romeldo was not about to give up her age, however. “Oh, I am much younger. I was the fourth child. My sister was the first child,” she said.
Jo wanted to know if the people at the Indian School had tried to change her into a white American but she said it was a good experience for her. “Everyone had to speak English,” she told us. “But that was because the children all spoke different languages.” She said she speaks the Puebloan language of her mother. But she does not speak the language of her father, who came from another tribe. As a result, she spoke English when she spoke with her father.
She was extremely proud of the fact that she still lives in her adobe home today. I asked if it has electricity and water and she said these were added many years back. She said the adobe style of construction is rarely used today. “It's all sticks now,” she said. Many of the buildings here in New Mexico are built in the adobe style. But they are constructed of concrete and steel. Romeldo's home is of the original mud and straw.
We wandered into Oldtown, where there's a square, surrounded by Indians selling their turquoise necklaces and silverware. We found a quiet plaza off the square and sat in the shade, listening to three Indians playing soothing music on pan flutes, along with bamboo wooden flutes and guitar.
When we picked up Ting, exhausted, late in the afternoon, the vet handed her over and said she was in good spirits and looked very strong. She now weighs 5 lbs 4 oz. She gave us a plastic conical collar to keep her from reaching her stitches. But that proved to be unusable in our motor home. She immediately slid beneath the driver's seat and got her collar jammed which resulted in huge wails of distress. So we decided she would have to learn to live without the collar and without trying to nip at her stitches.

Wednesday, May 5
High winds were forecast for this afternoon. So we decided to make a short 120-mile jog west to Gallup, New Mexico. We came to Red Rock Park, run by the city of Gallup. We now are surrounded by the Navajo Indian reservations.
Our campground is as advertised – backed right up to enormous red sandstone rocks. There's a natural structure a couple of miles behind us called Church Rock that towers over everything and seems to be in the shape if a trident of rocks. We visited the museum at the park and got to study some quite spectacular sand paintings, done by the Navajo. There is one, Bears and Soft Talkers, which took eight days and nine nights. It measures about 30 inches square. At the center is black darkness and the gray face of the sun and the white face of the moon, both with feathers and rainbow bars. The bears each have four tracks. Soft Talkers each wear headdresses of eagle tail feathers and owl feathers. Their wrist bands, knee garters, and sashes are of rainbows. The moccasins are of the black clouds The painting is entirely hand done out of pulverized colored sand.