This is the season of pilgrimage here, a time of duty and obligation, of thanksgiving and service and sacrifice exactly one month before the feast day named for the Pueblo’s Catholic saint: San Geronimo, Saint Jerome. The mission church whose crossed we featured in this week’s Monday Photo Meditation will figure even more prominently than usual at that time, when the village opens its gates to the outside world to join in the celebration and feast. It’s one of the rare occasions when outsiders are welcomed to join in tradition (to a limited extent), but it’s no coincidence that the invitation occurs in conjunction with an event that combines the old ways with newer ones brought from a land half a world away.
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. As I wrote here last year:
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.
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.
Wings has long had two pastel portraits of the warrior in his personal collection: one of him wearing blue, hair uncovered, around his face in loose chin-length cut, and the one shown in the photo above. The former is a representation that evokes Goyathlay’s status as medicine man and spiritual elder. This one, with the bandanna covering his head, to me summons images of him as a military strategist and political leader, with its implication of removing distraction and getting down to work in other, more mundane areas. Wings has thus far not been able to bring himself to part with the other portrait, but last year, he put this one on offer here on the site. 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
In a week when we’ve been looking at indigenous concepts of the Four Sacred Directions, of Spirit reaching outward to embrace our world, reaching inward to bring that world on the four winds to the center of all that is, “Geronimo” becomes a reminder of the need for boundaries: of what we allow into our world, of what we allow to be carried out of it, whether words or worship, politics or people.
Sometimes, the most important direction is the one not visible to the outside world — the one that points inward, toward what it means to be true to one’s people, to tradition, to self. It’s what keeps our cultures from being lost in translation.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
