May 31, 2003

• Welcome to New Mexico,
   white man!

  
  

  As promised…

  
  

  Yesterday, as I transcribed the final sentences of Episode Three in the continuing Adventures of Melody Andrewdottir, Lady Shaman on my Old Fart‘s site, I realized that our ditzy little Mel had provided a great opening to tell the story of what has turned out to be one of the more memorable moments of the early months of my marriage to Greyfox.

  
  

  I wasn’t going to marry Greyfox when I went to Pennsylvania to help him pack up and move to Alaska.  I loved him, sure, but marriage has ruined more than one good love affair for me, and I didn’t want to marry again, ever, at all, period.  But he talked me into it with a lot of bullshit about “upper middle class values” and such.  Then, of course, he started regretting it before the honeymoon even started.

  
  

  He got cold feet.  He said the cold feet business was all about moving to Alaska in November, but I think it went deeper.  Anyhow, I’ve told some of that story elsewhere, and this little tale is about a specific incident on that extended honeymoon that came about when he decided we would winter in the Southwest and go north the following spring.

  
  

  We were traveling in two vehicles, with Greyfox following me in his SUV, while I drove his little sports car with nine-year-old Doug in the passenger seat.  Greyfox had gone over the maps with me as I chose the scenic route through the Rockies that had us crossing the Continental Divide thirteen times.  Later on, he said it looked flat there spread out on his bed in Harrisburg. 

  
  

  We were at the memorial monument to the snow plow drivers who died in the line of duty, high in Red Mountain Pass, when he finally told me that he hated narrow mountain roads.  By then, the quickest route down to flat land was to just proceed on as planned.  That’s how we ended up in Gallup, New Mexico.

  
  

  Oops, I’d better back up a bit, or this in-joke still won’t make any sense to the uninitiated.  If Greyfox’s name doesn’t clue you, I’ll make it explicit.  He’s Native American, calls himself “half-breed” though the actual blood quantum is unknown.  His tribe, Muscogee Nation of Florida, started adopting Europeans in the 1600s or 1700s when a Wind Clan woman married a French Voyageur.  Their last hereditary chief was a redhead named Alexander McGillivray.  The BIA doesn’t recognize the tribe (and they are still contesting that) because they have no distinct language or culture.

  
  

  The result of all that is that I, a freckled redhead whose parents and grandparents preferred to ignore the redskins in their ancestry and pass for white, inherited more Native American cultural fragments than did Greyfox as an enrolled member of an unenrolled tribe.  To any uninformed eye, he looks and sounds like a thoroughly americanized descendant of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, except for the southern drawl he picked up from his mother’s people.

  
  

  Nevertheless, Greyfox is proud of his native ancestry, proud of his NDN heritage, whatever it may be.  He changed his name to make the heritage obvious to anyone inclined to evaluate him merely on the basis of the way he looks, talks, thinks and acts–like any other white man.  I think he had actually convinced himself, on the basis of that tribal membership card he carries in his wallet and the annual tribal dues he pays whenever I remember to write the check, that he is an Indian.  As a certified Indian shaman among a bunch of pagan wannabe Indians, he had gained a certain level of recognition from his peers, as well.

  
  

  So, we’re walking along the skid row strip of bars and pawn shops across the street from the Santa Fe railroad tracks in Gallup, out of one pawnshop, and on to the next, ogling all the beautiful silver, leather, pottery, stone and wood carvings and weaving that has been hocked for the cash to feed the families or the addictions of the local natives.  Doug was grooving on all the pretty things and I was enjoying sharing what I had learned of the traditions behind some of the art in my many visits to the Four Corners area as a kid.  Greyfox was soaking up the ambience and empathizing with the old Navajo woman who buttonholed us and sold me a set of beautiful but non-traditional placemats she hadn’t been able to sell to any of the shops.

  
  

  Suddenly, a door burst open, and two sturdy young Navajo men struggled out of a bar, supporting a third man between them.  He was obviously very drunk, was cursing and doing everything except cooperating with his friends.  The trio staggered and lurched down a step and into Greyfox, nearly knocking him down.  One of the young men let go his drunken friend long enough to steady my husband, then grabbed the drunk before his friend dropped him.

  
  

  The bleary-eyed inebriate, weaving there between his friends, looked Greyfox up and down, and said loudly, with a laugh, “Welcome to New Mexico white man.”

  
  

  Greyfox stood there, stunned.  The trio lurched away down the street, and Doug and I moved toward the next shop along the way, but Greyfox didn’t move.  He just stared, open-mouthed, after the three dark-eyed, brown-skinned, black-haired men.  I guess he might tend to remember the incident anyway, even without occasional reminders from Doug and me, but we like to remind him anyway, especially when he says or does something just too awfully white for words.  A little dose of reality never hurt anyone.

  
  

  

  • 4:24 pm
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