Part Two - The Other World

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Chapter 8 - New Mexico: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer'

"An alleged 'Flying Saucer' type aircraft or object in flight,

approximating the shape of a disc, has been reported by many
observers from widely scattered places, such as the United
States, Alaska, Canada, Hungary, the Island of Guam, and
Japan. The object has been reported by many competent
observers, including USAF rated officers. Sightings have
been made from the ground as well as the air.
"Commonly reported features:
- the ability to quickly disappear by high speed or by
complete disintegration
- remote control
- their identification and origin are not discernible
"Assuming that the objects might eventually be identified
as foreign or foreign-sponsored devices the possible reason
for their appearance over the U.S. requires consideration.
Several possible explanations appear noteworthy, viz:
- to negate U.S. confidence in the atom bomb as the
most advanced and decisive weapon in warfare
- to test U.S. air defense"
- United States Air Force

"Medicine," the old Apache said, "is who you are, only."
The medicine woman added, "And where you are from. Where you are born, and even
before that."
"Right here," I realized. We were in New Mexico, on El Capitan mountain about 50
miles west of Roswell and a few dozen more northeast of their Mescalero reservation. It
was a sacred mountain rising out of the desert, covered in pinon forests on a hard red
ground of dry dirt and cholla cactuses, dense thickets of chaparral oaks and dusty
evergreen shrubs, rattlesnakes, buzzards, and Paisanos in sad little adobe shacks. "My
parents were married down there in 1946 and I came along as their first born a year later,
in the spring of 1947."
"Was she a virgin?" the woman asked suddenly, rudely, almost angrily. "Your
mother."
"I ... think so. She was only 21, and in those days ... she probably was. But how do I
know?" I almost wanted to make a joke of it to get away from the personal
embarrassment, but I could see she was dead serious.
These southwestern peoples were a lot more serious than the tipi-dwellers of the
northern plains, whom the Pueblos and Navajos frowned at because the Sioux and Crow
didn't all speak their own language or resist the colonial invaders nearly as well as these
hardcore Uto-Aztecans and Yumans, or build the beautiful pueblo cities and Anasazi
cliff-dwellings at Mesa Verde, Zuni, and Canon de Chelly in my mother's native Arizona
to sustain their children and their cultures in a stable home.
On the other hand, nomads like my Huron grandfather moved more freely like the
wind and the buffalo so that I and my 4 relatives, in our own newly formed Warrior
Society, could visit the Apache and Kiowa homelands, bringing them news and songs of
the other peoples around the continent, offering them our help, and accepting their
invitations to organize other AIM chapters and their own warrior societies on their
reservations. By 1974 I was back home among my own lands and peoples - that is, as
much as any semi-nomad can be home, wherever his car is parked or his tent pitched. I
was drawn to Roswell even more than my mother's hometown of Flagstaff Arizona or my
grandfather's birthplace in Stratford Ontario because it was the place Mom always spoke
of with love and reverence, the matrimony of life and history that good women mate to
the verbal promises that are tied so much to our matrilineal traditions, in her heart. She
was a Registered Nurse and so I had always wanted to be a medicine person like her too,
ever since I was a boy, and she took me to magical rituals on the Hopi and Pima
reservations where we saw shamans dancing with venomous diamondbacks in their teeth,
and curing-doctors sucking evil spirits out of sick children as they sat in the tight circles
of curious, geometric Sandpaintings. They sang songs and danced dances I didn't
understand. The great photographer Edward Curtis took pictures of some of them in 1904
- Ganaskidi the god of the harvest with a frightening white mask like UFO abductees
report they've seen in "Aliens"; Haschebaad the Navajo female deity also with a face of
odd rectangular eyes and tiny slits for a nose and mouth; and gods of fire, forest spirits,
and 'Born from Water' the Creator and culture hero.
"Tobadzischini," the skinny old woman continued that night, her skin as red as the
black clay and her face like a rock, "he came down from the stars and was born from
water."
"Rain," the old shaman corrected, in the full moonlight.
"A meteor?" I asked. "That's what the Lakotas say. Her name was Wohpe and she
came down and became Calf Pipe Maiden, and -- "
"Her son!" the old woman interrupted irritably, giving the old man a dirty look. Then
she glared at me. "Is that what happened to you?"
"Huh?"
They burst out laughing, where a dozen of us were sitting on the rocks watching the
Moon rise over Roswell off to the east of us. My cousins from Arizona and I were living
with them for awhile to learn their medicine ways as the best way to continue our war;
and we in turn keep up a mobile communications system to follow the events in the
increasing violence and chaos of the AIM underworld, reporting the news of the awful
shootouts in South Dakota in 1975 involving Leonard Peltier and Anna Mae Aquash, a
big War Crimes Tribunal in 1976, and delegations of chiefs going to the White House in
1977. "Clown!" they laughed, pointing at me.
While holistic medicine and homeopathy were scratching for a foothold in the insane
world of big money "health care", insurance companies, pharmaceutical conglomerates,
and Medicaid, we were learning from the Curers to sing the songs that spirits like to hear,
so that they would respond and bring forth their skills to bear upon an illness. We learned
that sickness is caused by dangerous objects from animals, insects, or clouds that
penetrate a person who has misbehaved toward one of those dangerous objects.
Tutelary spirits were drawn from the mountain haunts of El Capitan when I was
conceived there, on my parents' Honeymoon, and people down there in the desert below
saw them as "glowing Ovals" flying out of the Mountain and over the town, around and
around, impossible blips on military radar that appeared and disappeared at will.
"Blowing tobacco smoke over a patient's body, and fanning it with an eagle feather,
and using a divining crystal, will make a virgin woman attract a god. Penetration by a
prayer of fertility and rainmaking will make the sky light up, happily. It will look like an
egg bursting from her womb."
"Kachinas."
"The blessing of the seeds ceremony."
"Windway sandpaintings."
"Crown Dancers representing mountain-dwelling spirits use their performances to
keep evil spirits away, which cures illnesses. I like the sacred yellow pollen from cattail
reed blossoms."
"The process of curing entails the transportation of the supernatural spirits from the
external world into the shaman's body, where it can also be used by warriors to see the
source of a disease and fight it; to influence worldly events."
"And death?" someone asked.
The old Apache smiled. "Do you remember what it was like before you were born?
Before you were even conceived?"

"RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER ON RANCH IN ROSWELL REGION

No Details of Flying Disk Are Revealed

Roswell Hardware Man and Wife Report Disk Seen

The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at

Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today that the
field had come into possession of a flying saucer.
According to information released by the department, over
authority of Maj. J.A. Marcel, intelligence officer, the disk
was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity, after an
unidentified rancher had notified Sheriff Geo. Wilcox here,
that he had found the instrument on his premises.
Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the
ranch and recovered the disk, it was stated.
After the intelligence office here had inspected the instrument
it was flown to "higher headquarters".
The intelligence office stated that no details of the saucer's
 construction or its appearance had been revealed.
Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot apparently were the only
persons in Roswell who have seen what they thought
was a flying disk.
They were sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn. last
Wednesday night at about ten minutes before ten o'clock
when a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky from
the southeast, going in a northwesterly direction at a high
rate of speed.
Wilmot called Mrs. Wilmot's attention to it and both ran
down into the yard to watch. It was in sight less than a
minute, perhaps 40 or 50 seconds, Wilmot estimated.
Wilmot said that it appeared to him to be about 1,500
feet high and going fast. He estimated between 400 and
500 miles per hour.
In appearance it looked oval in shape like two inverted
saucers, faced mouth to mouth, or like two old type
washbowls placed together in the same fashion. The
entire body glowed as though light were showing through
from inside, though not like it would be if a light were
merely underneath.
From where he stood Wilmot said that the object looked
to be about 5 feet in size, and making allowance for the
distance it was from town he figured that it must have been
15 or 20 feet in diameter, though this was just a guess.
Wilmot said that he heard no sound but that Mrs. Wilmot
said she heard a swishing sound for a very short time.
The object came into view from the southeast and
disappeared over the treetops in the general vicinity of
six-mile hill.
Wilmot, who is one of the most respected and reliable
citizens in town, kept the story to himself hoping that
someone else would come out and tell about having
seen one, but finally today decided that he would go
ahead and tell about seeing it. The announcement that
the RAAF was in possession of one came only a few
minutes after he had decided to release the details of
what he had seen."
- Front Page, July 8, 1947
Roswell Daily Record

[end of Chapter 8]