If You Can't Beat 'Em, Try Hitting 'Em Harder
PROGRESS REPORT FOR 2/19 AND 2/20/12
New Words: 3250 (950 / 2300) on Chapter 3 ("Spirit, Faith, and Reason") of Arizona. Friar Francisco de Porres starts enforcing Christianity on the Hopi with firearms right off the bat.
Total Words: 94750.
Reason For Stopping: Going to work both days--though yesterday I wrapped up early so I could take snow pictures all the way down to campus.
Book Year: 1629.
Mammalian Assistance: None.
Exercise: Snow walks with Tucker around the neighborhood, a round trip to campus yesterday, a one-way one (so far) today.
Stimulants: None / A dollop of Dr. Pepper.
Today's Opening Passage:
Yesterday: Masitsuvio, great-grandson of Mochni the Snake Priest of Walpi, knew exactly how to deal with the Spanish intruders: Bow your head, let them think that they were superior, let them believe you were submitting to their chief and their god, and then eventually they would go away. Did the calendar sticks not chronicle this working three times before? And thus he advised the chief and elders of Walpi, who would listen to the voice of any Hopitu.
Today: The leader of the Franciscan missionaries in northern Arizona, Fray Francisco de Porres, set about his work in Walpi immediately: Teaching Spanish to the Hopitu and picking up a few words of their language too, along with their signs. He told them about the fetish he called the Bible, which told the story of their history and their god and god-son Christ in pictures called letters, though they looked nothing like the petroglyphs the Hopitu drew-in fact they looked like nothing at all, though some of the Hopitu set about learning them nevertheless. The friars brought bags of seeds and metal tools for planting, which even Masitsuvio had to admit were better at breaking earth than the stone hoes they’d been using.
Darling Du Jour: For three weeks the friar left Masitsuvio tied to the pole, no matter the weather or the cold-bound in such a way that he was beside the newly-filled kiva and facing the re-erected cross. He could close his eyes but not his ears to the morning services. He was left to piss and defecate where he sat, and the only person who could approach him was his wife-and then to feed him and give him water, but not to talk or touch.
Every day Fray Francisco would come to him and say as gently as a puppy, “You are here for your blasphemy-and while you are here think especially on the sins of pride and anger. Pray for forgiveness and to understand the rewards of Heaven awaiting the saved.” He never used Masitsuvio’s name-he only used the names of those who had been baptized and given Christian names. On the first day of Masitsuvio’s confinement he added, “And pray with gratitude that your Christian brothers and sisters saved the cross. Had you burned it, you would be whipped every day you are tied here.” And the friar would pray for him with a hand laid on Masitsuvio's head.
He was released, by coincidence or not, on the Winter Solstice. When Omawtiwa rushed to his father to finally speak to him again after the three week shunning, the boy realized that he wasn’t sure what to say. The man on his knees before him, who could only walk with men under his armpits, hardly seemed like his father at all, but rather a wholly different, weaker man.
It was that sight of him that split Omawtiwa’s feelings into two opposite and competing parts, pieces that would war with one another for decades: In one eye, as his father would say, he was angry at the friars for treating his father so evilly. He remembered the feeling of the fire spirit coming upon him and giving his people the prophecy of Pahana again, and he sought desperately for something similar to happen, something to give the Hopitu more power to fight the Christians.
But in the other eye, even at nine years old, he recognized the Christians’ power. And the night his father returned home and collapsed into an over-long sleep on his mat, Omawtiwa started praying to Christ to help his father before the boy realized what he was doing.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Farmer; Coxe; Ava's Man by Rick Bragg.
New Words: 3250 (950 / 2300) on Chapter 3 ("Spirit, Faith, and Reason") of Arizona. Friar Francisco de Porres starts enforcing Christianity on the Hopi with firearms right off the bat.
Total Words: 94750.
Reason For Stopping: Going to work both days--though yesterday I wrapped up early so I could take snow pictures all the way down to campus.
Book Year: 1629.
Mammalian Assistance: None.
Exercise: Snow walks with Tucker around the neighborhood, a round trip to campus yesterday, a one-way one (so far) today.
Stimulants: None / A dollop of Dr. Pepper.
Today's Opening Passage:
Yesterday: Masitsuvio, great-grandson of Mochni the Snake Priest of Walpi, knew exactly how to deal with the Spanish intruders: Bow your head, let them think that they were superior, let them believe you were submitting to their chief and their god, and then eventually they would go away. Did the calendar sticks not chronicle this working three times before? And thus he advised the chief and elders of Walpi, who would listen to the voice of any Hopitu.
Today: The leader of the Franciscan missionaries in northern Arizona, Fray Francisco de Porres, set about his work in Walpi immediately: Teaching Spanish to the Hopitu and picking up a few words of their language too, along with their signs. He told them about the fetish he called the Bible, which told the story of their history and their god and god-son Christ in pictures called letters, though they looked nothing like the petroglyphs the Hopitu drew-in fact they looked like nothing at all, though some of the Hopitu set about learning them nevertheless. The friars brought bags of seeds and metal tools for planting, which even Masitsuvio had to admit were better at breaking earth than the stone hoes they’d been using.
Darling Du Jour: For three weeks the friar left Masitsuvio tied to the pole, no matter the weather or the cold-bound in such a way that he was beside the newly-filled kiva and facing the re-erected cross. He could close his eyes but not his ears to the morning services. He was left to piss and defecate where he sat, and the only person who could approach him was his wife-and then to feed him and give him water, but not to talk or touch.
Every day Fray Francisco would come to him and say as gently as a puppy, “You are here for your blasphemy-and while you are here think especially on the sins of pride and anger. Pray for forgiveness and to understand the rewards of Heaven awaiting the saved.” He never used Masitsuvio’s name-he only used the names of those who had been baptized and given Christian names. On the first day of Masitsuvio’s confinement he added, “And pray with gratitude that your Christian brothers and sisters saved the cross. Had you burned it, you would be whipped every day you are tied here.” And the friar would pray for him with a hand laid on Masitsuvio's head.
He was released, by coincidence or not, on the Winter Solstice. When Omawtiwa rushed to his father to finally speak to him again after the three week shunning, the boy realized that he wasn’t sure what to say. The man on his knees before him, who could only walk with men under his armpits, hardly seemed like his father at all, but rather a wholly different, weaker man.
It was that sight of him that split Omawtiwa’s feelings into two opposite and competing parts, pieces that would war with one another for decades: In one eye, as his father would say, he was angry at the friars for treating his father so evilly. He remembered the feeling of the fire spirit coming upon him and giving his people the prophecy of Pahana again, and he sought desperately for something similar to happen, something to give the Hopitu more power to fight the Christians.
But in the other eye, even at nine years old, he recognized the Christians’ power. And the night his father returned home and collapsed into an over-long sleep on his mat, Omawtiwa started praying to Christ to help his father before the boy realized what he was doing.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Farmer; Coxe; Ava's Man by Rick Bragg.