Offerings by One Apache

Soul-Centered Watercolor Paintings by Carol Montoya

The True Story of One Apache

You may be wondering where the title of my web site “Offerings by One Apache” comes from. The following real life story is how this name came to be and why this title is meaningful to me.Imagine yourself in two worlds simultaneously. Imagine having one part of your being in a time from the past, feeling and understanding what it must have been like living in the times of your ancestors. Imagine having another part of your being in the present, experiencing the now and how much has changed and yet how much of the experiences of humanity have stayed the same. Imagine yourself in the shoes of your ancestors, in the exact moment of memory, of knowing a circumstance they created changed the outcome of history. My experience combined two distinct times into one precise moment, demonstrating the space/time continuum, as well as the interconnectedness of life over hundreds of years.This story helped me to see the intricate and sometimes intertwined cycles our lives manifest and the reality we can create to heal, teach and understand life. The ties to my ancestors and the webs we create presently, offer amazing opportunities to see how we are all connected in so many ways.August 9, 2006: I am sitting in the plaza at the Picuris Pueblo, 40 miles north of Santa Fe, New Mexico attending the annual Feast Day honoring the Pueblo's patron saint, St. Lawrence. The day is warm under the sacred New Mexican sun and the small Pueblo has swelled with visitors from all over the region to watch the famed ceremonial dances. Transfixed by the graceful movements of elaborate regalia adorned by the dancers as they keep in cadence with the rhythmic drum beat, an eerie feeling washes over me and I am carried away on a surreal wave of energy and realization of something greater than I. Everything seems so different and yet it is also the same. I envisioned a timeless cord stretching back to the past and snapping forward to the present. Bringing the experience of my ancestors with it. The drums drone on and the dancers continue to move in concerted prayer and affirmation, and yet, although I am present, my consciousness has also merged with memories and images from the past, a time some 300 years earlier when my ancestors met in battle that changed the lives of these people I sit among.I come from two bloodlines deeply rooted in the Southwest of America, two bloodlines who were enemies, two bloodlines whose trampled footprints and horseshoes left a mark into the soil from the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico to Colorado and whose exploits developed the cultures and ways of life that are present there today, two bloodlines who were responsible for oppressing and liberating the Picuris people--the Apache and the Spanish.I am the direct descendant of Col. Juan de Ulibarri, a Spanish nobleman who arrived in New Mexico in 1692 with the 2nd de Vargas expedition. He is credited with being the first non-Native to pass before the famed and sacred Spanish Peaks of Colorado, known as the Breasts of the Earth by Native people. Juan also wrested the Picuris Pueblo from a brutal occupation that decimated their numbers at the hands of my Apache ancestors.My Paternal Grandmother was full blooded Apache. She was born in the same Spanish Peaks that Juan de Ulibarri had passed hundreds of years before. My father was born in the Cuchara Valley below these same peaks.As I’m listening to the thundering drums and watching the dancers dancing, I am overcome by the many sensations of human emotion that played out hundreds of years ago upon the very ground upon which I sit, surrounded by the remaining descendants of the Picuris people, less than 500 of them. Strangers to each other, we are silently joined at the intersection of our common history. I am one Apache sitting among many Picuris on this Feast Day. I grow aware that I am the repository for the combined DNA of the characters (enslaver and liberator) who so altered the course of Picuris Pueblo. Enemy and Friend, Abuser and Savior--it is all within me as well as outside of me. Seeing duality play out in real time. Past and present fuse together to yield a timeless perception of reality.The trailing wind of a dancer passing close to me caresses my face. Perhaps Spirit is acknowledging a reunification of ancient energies, the Oneness that we are. In this moment,I am One Apache.