Another day of sun and haze, and what experience tells us will be high winds before the day gets too much under way. This is still the hard season, air far colder than by rights it needs to be, driven on a trickster wind spawned and strengthened by climate change.
Spring has always been the hard season here, of course, but its effects are now intensified thanks to humanity’s misbehavior.
These are hard times generally, and the earth feels it, too: a sizeable earthquake in Nevada in the early hours of this day; the first tropical storm, weeks early, forming in the Atlantic; the twinned threats of wildfire and whirlwind all across the land. The pandemic has allowed Mother Earth a few moments to slow a bit, to breathe, but the rush to reopen in the face of sure and certain death will mean more harm to her as well to us.
In our way, our very existence is braided into that of the earth itself, intertwined, inextricable.
Unbreakable, no matter how the forces of colonialism and genocide may try.
Today’s featured work is one to teach us of courage and strength of heart in the face of truly hard times, of bravery and an unbreakable spirit when the overwhelming forces of evil seek to break that link in every way possible. It’s a remarkably realistic portrait of the great Chiricahua warrior and spiritual leader, Goyathlay, more popularly known as “Geronimo,” the lines of hard experience in his matching the earthy lines on the kaba-paper background. From its description in the Other Artists: Wall Art gallery here on the site:
Goyathlay (“One Who Yawns”) is perhaps the archetypal Indian warrior, a man of both great military acumen and great spiritual power and wholly devoted to his people. The rest of the world knows him as “Geronimo,” and his name has become cross-cultural shorthand for courage and heart. Here, he looks out quizzically from the frame, perhaps ready to yawn once more at yet another in the long string of deceptions and lies for which he ultimately gave his life, far from his people’s sacred lands.The texture and depth are astounding; each line in his aging, weathered face tells a story and evokes this famed warrior’s bravery and leadership. By Pemwah (Isleta Pueblo). The visible image is 14.5″ high by 22.25″ wide; the entire piece, including frame, is 22.25″ high by 30.25″ wide (dimensions approximate).
Pastel on Japanese kaba paper; rugged barn-wood frame
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
I’ve written of Goyathlay at some length here before, of how he came by his more-famous colonial name and what it signifies on a deeper level (and one probably entirely unintended by those who bestowed it):
Goyathlay and his warriors were famous among both Spanish (Mexican) and U.S. soldiers for their courage, daring, and strategic aggression. Word of his exploits traveled fast and far, as did word of his purported supernatural powers. As an enemy, he was respected, but also feared outright. During clashes in Mexico, where he and his warriors raided and harried the Mexican forces mercilessly, word of his arrival — or even of the possibility that he might be in the area — instilled such fear into the soldiers’ hearts that they invoked the name of their patron saint, Jerome — in Spanish, Geronimo (pronounced Hay-ROE-nee-moe, but with short, sharp vowels, unlike those found in English). It became a cry of terror, so the story goes, and it stuck: The Spanish evermore thought of him as Geronimo; the U.S. soldiers picked up the name, but, as was their wont, predictably mispronounced it Jer-AH-nih-moe; and Goyathlay himself no doubt both laughed and yawned at the thought that he was capable of striking such terror into the hearts of the invaders that they would accidentally reward him with the name of their patron saint. Today, it’s appropriated for everything from military actions to charging cries in children’s games.
But it is the latter connection, to my mind, that is the far more interesting of the two:
Most people probably don’t really grasp the particular significance of Saint Jerome, nor of the underlying reason that Spanish priests would have chosen him as the patron saint for this village. Jerome, or, as the Spanish called him, San Geronimo, was the patron saint of librarians, encyclopedists, and, perhaps most significantly, translators.
It didn’t help the Spanish much. Like another Native icon upon whom the same name was bestowed by colonizers, the language here has remained steadfastly impervious to all real attempts at compilation and translation. More than a half-millennium later, it is still defiantly unwritten, even in the face of new attempts at linguistic incursion by new[er] evangelists bent on conversion of multiple kinds, including those who wish to impose their own religious and cultural practices from without, and those who wish to steal those of the people for themselves.
Words hold power; our peoples all across this continent have always known this. Here, those words are not for anyone but the people themselves.
It is ironic to me that Mexican soldiers in the service of the Spanish should have called upon Saint Jerome for deliverance from the Chiricahua leader whose defenses bedeviled them so. It’s how Goyathlay, better known to the rest of the world as Geronimo, perhaps the most feared of all Native leaders, was given the Catholic saint’s own name.
. . .
Funny, that. An Apache medicine man turned fierce warrior, the last holdout, the one who harried colonizers from the lowliest settler all the way up to the American president himself and not a few from the imposed border to the south, a man whose real name referred to yawning, would eventually acquire the name of a bibliophilic monk from the other side of the world and, in a subversion of the entire colonial process, convert a bookish name based on words into a fearsome war cry, a symbol of military power and strategy and courage in battle, a prayer for salvation and relief from the self-defense of the oppressed.
It’s natural that Goyathlay, in his Geronimo persona, should become an intertribal symbol of Native power and resistance. It’s equally natural that Native artists of peoples and traditions other than the Chiricahua should find inspiration in his image.
Goyathlay was denied the right of return to the lands of his people. An illegitimate colonial government feared too much his power, and, despite promise after promise to the contrary, made sure that he died penned up within their authority and control. As I wrote earlier:
Goyathlay is credited with a number of famous quotes, but for me, one stands out, both for its accuracy and for its poignancy:
I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.
This fierce warrior, this powerful medicine man, was forced to spend his final decades in enclosures. The scars no doubt ran deep. And yet, his love for and defense of his people never wavered, and today, he is revered for that strength of character.
His physical connection may have been forcibly severed from the earth of his homelands by a campaign of genocide, but no colonial power could sever it from his spirit. And it is that spirit that inspires us today, one of courage for (and strength from) the earth.
Nothing about that has been lost in translation.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
