Burial Mounds

In these mountain meadows, one can often see mounds of large rocks or boulders randomly spread out in no particular or apparent order. I had never thought too much about these mounds or what they might mean...until many years ago when my family was approached by another local family about coming to their home which had a...Ute burial ground...in its front "yard"...a burial ground which very few knew about. These people...non-Indians...had been living in their home for about 10 years at that time...and had felt an uneasiness about having the graves so close...sensing increasingly as time went by, as they told us, that the spirits whose bodies lay below were not at peace. The little they knew about the graves told a story of scores of brave women children and men decimated by disease previously unknown to them...laid to rest near where they had fallen. The current occupants were at a loss about what to do...or who to turn to. They also knew that it was important to keep those grounds undisturbed and free from the political hagglings of organizations or agencies...who might be only too happy to come to that ground to excavate...and to "authenticate" it by declaring it archeological territory. Guided by some inner feeling...they asked us...the only Indian family in the area at the time... for help. I sensed that...being consciencious people...they carried a weight that they could no longer carry alone and which was pressing in on them.
We agreed to go to the sacred ground...not knowing what to expect....and to do what we could in our limited knowledge. In preparation we knew the first step was to make prayer flags and tobacco ties to set on the sites. When we arrived at their home, we saw a low sloping area... mostly free of brush...surrounded by forest. And the mounds...dozens of them...clusters of boulders and rocks...hidden under trees or brush or out in the open... each one carefully and deliberately piled into smaller or larger mounds...to cover and protect the bodies of loved ones laid to rest in that high mountain forest and meadow. Silently...respectfully...we began going to each mound...starting in the forested area...staking the prayer flags and tobacco ties...moving in a clockwise circle to the meadow area. As we did this, a bald eagle appeared from the forest and started circling above us...as if in recognition of what had just taken place. The current "caretakers" of that land were visibly moved and told us that when they first came to live in that home they had seen an eagle there once or twice...but that it had been many years since he had disappeared....
Words are hard to find for...what occurred there that day as we set about...guided by the sacred knowledge of the grandfathers...moving from mound to mound...giving recognition to the spirits of those past occupants of a fallen land. One of the many things it did bring to me though was the ability to see and recognize a seemingly random gathering of boulders in an unmarked field for what they truly are... Indian burial mounds...marking the sacred land of past occupants...their stories now unknown to the current occupants...who were forced to leave their fallen loved ones on these ancestral high grounds... never to return...