fea I >. • - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

TIGUAS
Continued from page 48
public attention in 1964. That year,
Diamond persuaded a Dr. Dunbar,
president of the Fields Philanthropic
Foundation in New York, to come to
Ysleta and see for himself the tribe's
deplorable living conditions. Diamond
now tells the story with a small touch of
humor. "I had carefully explained to the
cacique (the ceremonial chief of the
tribe) that Dunbar was coming, and that
on that day, he should be ready to
describe the tribe's major problems."
We cheer life's renewal
made grand and grandly
patterned through
established ceremony.
The day came and Dunbar arrived,
and "when I drove him down to the
pueblo," Diamond goes on, "the
cacique was nowhere to be found. None
of the other Tiguas could give any explanation.
We waited for two or three
hours and were just on the point of driving
away—me in red-faced defeat—when
the cacique trudged into the plaza,
dangling a brace of dead cottontail rabbits
over his shoulder. I was amazed at
the cacique's apparent unconcern for
the importance of Dunbar's visit and I
was firm when I said so. But the cacique
only replied, 'I have to go hunting. At
Hueco Tanks,' and then shrugged,
'Tiguas hungry.' "
Diamond's story ends with the happy
report that Dunbar was so struck with
this proof of the needs of the Tiguas, he
immediately funded the tribe for shoes,
new clothes and food.
In March, 1966, Diamond brought
the Tiguas to the attention of the National
Congress of American Indians
(NCAI) meeting in El Paso. Vine
Deloria describes the occasion in his
book, Custer Died for Your Sins, when
during the meeting a "man named Tom
Diamond appeared before us with a ragged
little group of people" and fervently
pleaded for NCAI help. Deloria details
the occasion's national importance: at
that moment, he says, "the modern era
of Indian emergence had begun." Until
then it had been assumed, by both Indians
and whites, that the American Indian's
eventual destiny was to merge
into white society and disappear. The
thought of a tribe that maintains its
traditions, socio-political structure and
basic identity within an expanding
American city "would have been so preposterous"
prior to the discovery of the
Tiguas, that the person expounding the
thesis "would have been laughed out of
the room."
The result has become news again and
again in the years that have passed.
"Discovery of the Tiguas rocked Indian
people in several respects." Far from accepting
the demise of their tribe as
"God's natural plan for Indians," says
Deloria, these people plainly demonstrated
that "Indian tribal society had
the strength and internal unity to maintain
itself indefinitely with an alien culture."
Since 1966, "an increasing
awareness of tribalism" has swept
through the whole American Indian
"power structure." Deloria gives Diamond
full praise. "Your work with the
Tiguas," he says in his autographed
note in the copy of Custer he gave to
Diamond, "was the major turning point
in Indian affairs for the last half of the
20th Century."
For all their new national fame, what
else accounts for the Tiguas' vitality
now? Diamond rates high as one factor,
certainly. But, so do financial outlays by
such private agencies as the Fields and
the Moody Foundations. Official government
recognition came late, but
when it came vast changes began. In
1967, the Texas Legislature appropriated
funds to finance the cost of the
Tribal Center, the residential area and a
Texas State Government administrative
complex. In 1968, President Johnson
signed into law United States official
recognition of the Tigua people as an
authentic Indian tribe. He also transferred
to the State of Texas any responsibility
the United States might have for
them.
These vital factors are great, but in
my judgment, the most significant explanation
for the Tiguas' new lease on
life is their still-abiding conviction that
they will preserve and pass on to their
children the heritage their forebears
passed on to them. I encounter this Indian
view each time I visit, and it is
more than a hope and a dream.
Today, canny young Tiguas like Tim
Baquera, the tribe's arts and crafts director,
and Vicente Munoz, the public relations
director, typify the community's
determination to endure and prosper in
ways that are tribally valid. "Like everyone
else," these men have told me, "our
personal survival depends on our having
a solid economic base for ourselves.
Beyond us, since Tiguas are no longer
farmers, the tribe's survival depends on
their featuring their traditional arts and
their crafts and their dances in ways that
can—to some strong degree—offer commercial
advantage."
Government support and funded research
are helping the Tiguas locate and
reaffirm their old skills: their pottery
and jewelry had become almost obsolete
crafts. Now, they flourish as significant
paid work for the community's most talented
artisans. The art objects themselves,
featuring authentic design motifs,
pay off in sales in the Center's big
store, through mail orders and wholesale
arrangements with dealers around
the country. Their herb garden features
Though I am an Anglo
newcomer here on the
Tiguas' ancient preserve, I
sense in myself a pleasure
in ritual, in tradition maintained
through the long
past.
the herbs that their elders have always
known held medicinal powers. These
herbs, now packaged for sale, bring additional
income.
The arts and the gardening support a
small number of workers, but more importantly,
their products serve as a continual
reminder to those other Tiguas—
participants in the El Paso job scene—
and their families, that to be Tigua
means to be tough, long-lived and possessed
of an enduring special identity.
"We have Indian hearts," their oldest
elder sometime ago told a visitor, Stan
Steiner. "We will always be Tiguas."
When I visit the Tiguas, I sense a bigger
reason for their long survival, a
reason touching something I know
about me and my people: The fact that
since 1607 at Jamestown, since 1620 at
Plymouth Rock, since 1849 in the desert
in covered wagons, since 1865 at Appomattox;
they too have exhibited a
long, steady courage, a zeal to hang on
and become what their own humanity
seems to require.
On San Antonio Day in Tigua, I stand
in the crowd facing the church, watching
the tribal dancers whirl and pivot
their ritual steps to the slow beat of the
red tribal drum. I watch as other tribe
members approach the church doors on
their knees, with obvious awe in their
faces, and wait with heads bowed while
the cacique strikes them on the shoulders
with willow wands. It acknowl-
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