The Heirs of Columbus

Santa Maria Casino

SANTA MARIA CASINO ChristoPher Columbus saw a blue light in the west, but "it was such an uncertain thing," he wrote in his journal to the crown, "that I did not feel it was adequate proof of land.II That light was a torch raised by the silent hand talkers, a summons to the New World. Since then, the explorer has become a trickster healer in the stories told by his tribal heirs at the headwaters of the great river. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, confirmed in the name of the curia and the crown, was an obscure crossblood who bore the tribal signature of survivance and ascended the culture of death in the Old World. He landed at dawn with no missionaries or naturalists and heard the thunder of shamans in the coral and the stone. "No sooner had we concluded the formalities of taking possession ofthe island than people began to come to the beach," he wrote in his journal on October 12, 1492, at Samana Cay. Columbus unfurled the royal banner, and the green cross ofthe crown shivered on the wind over the island the tribe had named Guanahan{. He was blinded by the white sand, the broken sun on the water. He showed his sword to a painted servant on the beach, "and through ignorance he grabbed it by the blade and cut himself ." 3 "In order to win their friendship, since I knew they were a people to be converted and won to our holy faith by love and friendship rather than by force, I gave some of them red caps and glass beads which they hung around their necks," he wrote about his first encounter with tribal people in the New World. "They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them," but he misconstrued a tribal pose and later traced his soul to the stories in their blood. "They all go naked as their mothers bore them, including the women, although I saw only one very young girl." At Samana Cay the great adventurer was touched by a hand talker, a silent tribal wanderer, who wore a golden braid in her hair and carried two wooden puppets. That night she danced with the blue puppets on the sterncastle. TheSanta Maria was brushedwith a blue radiance. Columbus and the sailors were haunted bythe wild puppets and roused by a golden shimmer on the night water. Samana was an island in theoceanseathatwouldbe imaginedbutneverpossessed in the culiure ofdeath. Five centuries later the crossblood descendants of the explorer and the hand talker declared a new tribal nation. "Samana swam out to touch the man from heaven that first night in our New World and here we are on radio," said Stone Columbus. Columbus was a seasonal voice on late night talk radio because of his surname and the curious stories he told about his inheritance . "She was a natural healer, a tribal hand talker, blessed with silence, and she discovered the incredible truth that the great explorer was tribal and he carried our stories in his blood." The Heirs of Christopher Columbus are serious over their names and resurrections; the heirs come together at the stone tavern eachautumn to rememberthebeststories about theirstrain and estate, and the genetic signature that would heal the obvious blunders in the natural world. The stone tavern, thatwondrous circle ofwarm tricksterstones, has been located for more than a hundred generations on a wild blue meadow near the headwaters of the Mississippi River. 4 The Anishinaabe, the woodland tribe that founded this obscure tavern, the oldest in the New World, remember that Naanabozho, the compassionate tribal trickster who created the earth, had a brother who was a stone: a bear stone, a human stone, a shaman stone, a stone, a stone, a stone. Naanabozho was the first human born in the world, and the second born, his brother, was a stone. The trickster created the new earth with wet sand. He stood on his toes as high as he could imagine, but the waterrose closer to his nose and mouth. He could dream without a mouth or nose, but he would never leave the world to the evil gambler and his dark water. The demons in the watercausedhim todefecate, andwith pleasure, buthis shitwould not leave; several turds floated near his mouth and nose. Naanabozho was at the highest point on the earth and...