EXCERPTS
“She looked out the window to see a jacal on fire and her Indian cook being attacked by a band of wild raiders. Old and sick as she was, Doña Juliana was a worthy daughter of Don Bernabe. Jumping up and taking machete in hand and a shield on the other arm, she opened the door to let her wards in to safety and found herself in a swirling mob of Indians. One of the sons of the cook was at the door, unwounded, just behind was his mother who had taken nine arrow wounds, and trailing was his brother, also wounded. As the first boy tried to get into the house, a wild Indian seized him by the arm and started dragging him away. Doña Juliana jumped out of the house, dropping her shield and catching the boy’s other arm. In the momentary tug-of-war that ensued, she cut the Indian across the head with the machete, almost removing an ear. With another cut she opened the Indian’s scalp and he let go of the boy who fled into the house with his mother and the wounded son.”
From Chapter XVI, “Chapa and the Zavala Era”
Pgs. 245-246
“In the Odyssey, Ulysses went into the shadow world and met with the spirits of the dead, many of whom he had known while living. But before he could communicate with them, he had to make a blood offering, for only a sip of that essence of life could give them the capacity to answer his questions. Of those who have passed on, the memory of we the living is our blood offering; it gives our ancestors life, that they may communicate. In place of blood, much research and understanding, with a careful assembly of facts, makes it possible to present a lucid picture of the people presented in this book.
“As the researcher learns more about the people recorded in this book, they assume some life, and as Ulysses found in the world of the spirits, they take brief leave from the Caverns of Oblivion. So with the recorded thoughts of those who went before us as a guide, I accept the example set by that master of history, Herodotus: I will try, as he did, to differentiate actual record from legend, and together with that which of personal experience I can relate, attempt to define something of these ancestors, their comrades, and their contemporaries.”
(As written in the original forward by)
Carl L. Duaine
Zapata, Texas – 1987
