Wasn’t she an Indian, really?

Jesus Helguera What she did not expect was the fantastic, almost mythical, land of the Red Rocks. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. Maria was certain that the place must have some kind of special aura about it. It simply felt different, as if there was some sort of cosmic or magnetic pull on her very soul. She decided to camp here for several days, glorying in the strangeness of the place. Oftentimes, she’d ride Alanza into a canyon or to the base of a magnificent mountain and just sit, listening to the nothingness of the desert and wondering if she had not found her final place, the place where she’d live out the rest of her days.
At one point, the wind picked up and she and Alanza took refuge in a cave system. There she found petroglyphs of elk with Indians hunting them. It was prophetic and she felt even more tied to the land. Wasn’t she an Indian, really? She was called a Mexicana, but her dark skin, the little village where she lived, the way she grew up, scratching out an existence, making baskets. It was all a very strange realization, as she’d not thought of herself as an Indian. The Indians were the Apaches and the Sioux and the others from el Norte, the ones who wore paint on their faces and feathers in their hair. But the more she thought on it, the more she wandered about, the more evidence she saw; the drawings on the rocks, the ruins in the mountains, the pottery shards on the ground, all these things led to her identifying herself as an Indian.
She looked at the stick figures stalking the elk. They had no weapons, but if they had, would they be spears or throwing sticks or bows with arrows? She considered her fancy rifle. It was really the same thing when she thought about it. They hunted to survive, and she hunted to survive. They likely hunted for pleasure, for community, just to show their gods that they could do it. Show that they could and would make it in this unforgiving land. And wasn’t that what Maria was doing? Making her way, showing her God that she could do it, that she’d survive in the most unforgiving land on the planet, without help, without a man? She’d thrive; flourish in this land or in the most horrible saloons or the most desolate mountains, wherever she found herself, she’d survive and flourish. Maria's Trail