In what? he said with a bit of indignation. I gave him a few more details about the burials, the disposal, and the protests. I still felt like I was being tested.
Ted gave one of his checked laughs. “Seems like some of those protesters were from nations that don’t even have chiefs.” He said his last word with such exasperated stress that it rhymed with “sheaves.” “The mining people probably went to some reservations and couldn’t find anybody to talk to.” He had a point. The embassy of Austria is easier to find than that of the Olmec.
“You know, what everybody would like is that the chiefs decide, the representatives. But you can go out to some reservations, and there’s no government to be found. Or else there’s two of them, the spiritual authority and the political authority. Some reservations have representative government. Sometimes greed gets involved.”
He looked at me hard. “How would you get rid of those remains? Fella you’re talking about up in Rochester might have been the only person they could find willing to take it on. If he’s got a thick hide, he ought to just let the stuff rain off him. That’s what I’d do.”
He squinted off in the direction of the sun. “Doesn’t surprise me there might be some energy at those mines.”
I didn’t feel like I was at the bottom yet of this cycle of curse and countercurse. I went to Michael Bastine. At first he thought I was curious about the Seneca individual who had reburied the human remains. “He’s an OK guy,” he said. “I’ve been in the same sweat lodge with him a couple times. We don’t have any problems.”
“But people we know do have problems. What’s your take?”
“He’s gotten himself the reputation as the type of Indian whites can do business with,” said Michael with a bit of a grin. “He’s made a few bad decisions.”
“Bad decisions?”
“There might have been a time or two that he got called in by his bosses, and they might have said to him, ‘You’re being a bit too Indian here to get this job done.’ I know what I’d have done if somebody had said that to me. I’d have said, ‘Well, that’s who you hired.’ But he didn’t say that, and he got himself caught between bad options.”
“Like some of those arrangements with the ancient remains?”
“Some of that. And so much more I can’t even talk about.”
“After all I’ve heard people say about curses,” I said, “I was wondering how this guy can escape them.”
“Well, there’s deals you can make,” said Mike with a knowing look.
After all the damage had been done, a prominent Onondaga elder visited the region. He gathered members of the Native community. “This is a battlefield as well as a burying ground,” he said of the area of the mines. “Ask permission if you have to pass through.”
He showed people the troubled areas and told them to keep children away after dark. “Kids are vulnerable. They’ll see things the parents won’t.” He worked a ceremony to ease the site and minimize harm to the living innocent. Then he headed up to Rochester.
The old healer found our Seneca friend toiling in his office over a block of stone studded with bones and artifacts. Without a word, the elder took up one troublesome femur like a piece from a jigsaw puzzle. It popped into his hand like the rock had decided to spit it out. Then he put it back. The Seneca went to pull it out again and found it as stuck in the stone as King Arthur’s proverbial first sword.
“It’s all about the intent,” the old healer said. “If your intent is for the good of the world, a lot of these problems will go away for you. If you’re selfish, the old ones will know it. And they’ll never get out of your way.”
SIGNS OF SUPERNATURAL WAR
The undercurrents of an occult culture clash could be seismic in some sensitive circles and yet run far beneath the radar of almost every white. How would you know if something is brewing behind the scenes? How would you know if war has been declared? If the clash is a stalemate or just one eruption in a long series, you may never know for sure. But you might learn to spot the signs of an unrest that may be the omens of a conflict.
It could be when a diminutive old Native American man is spotted pitching powder on the city hall building in Albany. Was it witch or medicine powder? What did he want the city to do or stop doing?
It could be when an otherwise responsible nineteen-year-old from one of the Niagara region reservations steals a car and tears out inexplicably into the night, howling east toward Batavia on a road that follows a trail that was already ancient when the whites arrived. As if some devil came after him, he may have hit eighty-five in the village zones and stopped only when he was killed in a crash. Who sent what after him? Why?
It could be when a middle-aged Seneca man is found killed with no explanation on the Cattaraugus Seneca Reservation. Was it a simple crime?
It could be when the heads of dozens of dogs are found on the St. Regis Reservation. Someone, it seems, in Mohawk country was sending someone else a message, with at least the signs of a powerful spell.
It could be when a man is found in his car in the parking lot of an Onondaga country
