"The Indians who ate them had visions or dreams. They could see their gods and talk with their ancestors. But only those Indians who were medicine men and had the right to see strange things had the right to eat they mescal button. They warned everybody else not to touch them, or bad luck would come to them."
Day after day, Ambrose woke up, flew to the largest, most branch-filled and green tree he could find, and pecked his beak away, hoping someone, anyone, would hear his attempted plea for help. Though it seemed useless, with his son dead and his wife gone, and nobody ever believing that a simple, red-headed woodpecker such as himself would be a human being that had been transformed, Ambrose saw that he had nothing to lose.
In my prime, I had been an adventurer, an author, and a war veteran. I have not lived at home since I was 15, and, since fighting in the Civil War, my wife has said that I have not been the same. That is where this adventure stemmed: I decided I wanted to see Mexico before I died. Packing a small bag and some ink, I hit the road. Nothing was holding me back. Unfortunately, I never made it to Mexico. As far as people are concerned, I died trying to get there. This is not the case: I am very much alive, and very much in need of someone to save me.
While on his journey to Mexico, the author ran into a small group of Texas Indians around the Brazos Reserve. Though they had been ordered by the president to move years before, this very unique and small group had managed to stay put decades later. Ambrose was fascinated with this and wanted to know everything about these people. He lived the way they lived and was willing to try absolutely anything. This is what eventually landed him into trouble.
While I was among the people, I befriended a teen who was different. His name was Mesa. It’s not that he didn’t like to do things that were expected of him, such as hunting and building fires and tents, it’s just that he wasn’t very good at these things. Actually, he was rather horrific. So horrific, in fact, that he was told to just not even try, and was cast to an area where the medicine men resided. “Whatever the healers need, fetch it for them,” his mother had told him.
The medicine men were a very important part of the tribe's life, but Ambrose soon found out that they had secrets of their own. One day, Mesa brought Ambrose over to a pointy, green plant and pointed at the button-like berries that were dangling from its branches. “See those?” Mesa asked, pointing at one of them.
Ambrose nodded in agreement, curious at where this was going.
“The medicine men claim that whenever they eat them, they can contact our ancestors. It is almost as if they allow them to join any other world they would like, one that normal people have no idea exists.”
Then Mesa turned away from the plant casually, and went on with his search for a plain root that he had been asked to fetch, not leaving any time for Ambrose to ask any questions.
I don’t like to advertise this, but I was very curious about the juicy, bright berries. So much so that, after Mesa and the medicine men had fallen asleep, I crept around until I found the bush. After making sure nobody had stirred, I picked a couple of the berries from the plant’s branches and put them in my mouth. Chewing slowly.
I expected to be able to contact spirits and past heroes, but instead I woke up with a beak. This is the very reason why I hammer my head into trees day in and day out. I am hoping for attention, for someone to figure out what is wrong with me.
The day after my transformation, I heard Mesa looking for me in the woods. He was calling my name, so I tried to peck louder and louder as I heard him come closer. When he saw me, though, he threw a rock at me.
Each day, right as I am giving up hope, the sun sets. Whenever I wake, I try again, thinking about how it is a new day and anything is possible.
I will do this until I die.
Bibliography: When the Storm God Rides In: Tejas and Other Indian Legends by Florence Stratton
Collected by Bessie M. Reid
1936
Ambrose Bierce information:
Author’s Biography: Hannah Stephens is a senior at the University of Oklahoma. She will graduate in May with a degree in Public Relations and minors in History and Political Science.
In the original version of this story, the rumor was that there were the seeds (that Ambrose consumed),
and if anyone ingested them other than the healers in the town, they would be transformed. This being said,
nobody outside of the tribe had ever encountered this experience. While reading the original version of this story, I found myself thinking it was interesting that nobody ever thought about the woodpeckers, even though there was magic involved. The story discussed how the Native Americans would turn into woodpeckers if they ate the magic seeds...
"A certain plant that grew on the desert was called the mescal plant. Little knobs or buttons which grew on this plant had, when eaten, a magic power. The Indians who ate them had visions or dreams. They could see their gods and talk with their ancestors. But only those Indians who were medicine men and had the right to see strange things had the right to eat the mescal buttons. They warned everybody else not to touch them, or bad luck would come to them.
One man did not listen to the medicine men. He wanted to know what the medicine men saw in their dreams when they ate the mescal buttons and then fell down to the ground or wandered about the camps singing with their eyes closed."
The Manitou, which is a god of the clouds of the sky, is the one who was in charge of the changes.
"'I will turn you into birds, and you can go look for them in the hollow trees. When you find them I will turn you all back into people again,' the Manitou said.
He waved his hand over the Indians. They became birds. The black robes they were wearing turned into black feathers, and the red feathers they wore in their hair turned into the red head of the woodpeckers. Then the tribe flew off to the trees and began tapping every tree with their sharp bills to find their children.
Even yet the woodpeckers tap the trees. When they find bugs they eat them because they are hungry, but they keep on tapping to find their children."
I then decided it would be interesting if one of the people who was transformed was not someone from the tribe, but an outsider.
Doing a little research, I found Ambrose Bierce, a journalist and explorer from the Civil War era. He went missing before he died, with people believing that he had made it to Mexico and died there. The last sightings of him, though, were in Texas, which made this the perfect person to base the story around. Of course if he ran into a tribe that was supposed to have been removed years before he would stick around and learn about them!
This changes history... he didn't go missing! He was cursed!
Bringing a real human being into the story made it fun to write. Meshing a myth with someone’s real disappearance is something that I have never done before, but it was entertaining to merge the two together. I decided to switch back and forth between first and third person in order for the reader to get the full understanding of what has happened, without having to read the original script. Of course, reading a little information about Bierce and/or the original Tejas tale would not hurt.
