Excavation at the Santa Barbara Mission by Wendy Rose (1993)

For some reason, this poem is particularly difficult for me to write about, and I’m not sure why. It’s hard to articulate the profound effect it had on me.

I first came across it in a photocopied packet for the Native American Literature class I took as an undergrad—a class that changed my entire way of thinking. I guess on an intellectual level I had already understood the plight of Native Americans when I signed up for that class, but studying even a small portion of their literature moved that understanding from the intellectual to the spiritual. I felt each text on that syllabus in a way that differed from anything else.

Wendy Rose, the poet, grew up with a dual identity: Native (Hopi and Mwok) and White (English, Scottish, Irish, German, etc.). She was raised off of a reservation and felt disconnected from both her Native and European cultural roots. This conflict is evident in the poem, and offers us a unique utility. What she discovers is made accessible to us because she is outside of it, as many readers are. But it is also made personal because she is a part of it, as many readers are not. It’s an effective mix of objectivity and subjectivity.

I think about this poem all the time. It resonates in all magnitudes—this idea of excitedly trying to uncover something, having the feeling that by doing so you will establish some parts of yourself, and instead arriving at a horrible realization. It encompasses the intensely private sense of identity as well as the immensity of cultural assimilation and genocide. On a personal level, the narrator is unable to feel the pride that she had expected once she uncovers a horrific truth. And once uncovered, it doesn’t go away. It overtakes everything. This happened to her in real life, but god. What a metaphor.

My words are so completely inadequate. Best just to read hers.

Short Stuff:

• Wendy Rose is a poet, visual artist, and anthropologist.
• Though she considers herself a poet above an anthropologist, her PhD in the field is evident throughout her work.

Topics

biculturalism; identity; religion; human rights; assimilation

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Excavation at the Santa Barbara Mission

When archaeologists excavated Santa Barbara Mission in California, they discovered human bones in the adobe walls.

My pointed trowel
is the artist’s brush
that will stroke and pry,
uncover and expose
the old mission wall.
How excited I am
for like a dream
I wanted to count myself
among the ancient dead
as a faithful neophyte
resting there and in love
with the padres
and the Spanish hymns.

A feature juts out. Marrow
like lace, piece of a skull,
upturned cup, fingerbones
scattered like corn
and ribs interlaced
like cholla.
So many bones
mixed with the blood
from my own knuckles
that dig and tug
in the yellow dust.
How fragile
they have become
to float and fall
with my touch,
brittle white tips
shivering into mist.
How helpless I am
for the deeper I go
the more I find
crouching in white dust,
listening to the whistle
of longbones breaking
apart like memories.
My hands empty themselves
of old dreams,
drain the future
into the moisture
of my boot prints.
Beneath the flags
of three invaders,
I am a hungry scientist
sustaining myself
with bones of
men and women asleep in the wall
who survived in their own way
Spanish swords, Franciscans
and their rosary whips,
who died among the reeds
to wait, communion wafers
upon the ground, too holy
for the priests to find.

They built the mission with dead Indians.
They built the mission with dead Indians.
They built the mission with dead Indians.
They built the mission with dead Indians.

–Wendy Rose