Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/95

CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—REFUSAL TO PAY INCOME TAX 82 should greet me but the small girl to whom I had given a dime. She squealed in delight and called her mother. In this manner I found my new friend, 7-year-old Louise Aguilar. In the six months that followed I was a daily visitor and played games with her, or she and her aunts came to my cottage for "huevos"; as they liked the change from beans to eggs. When her young aunt was married I was the only "Anglo" invited to the wedding supper. They knew I did not drink beer or wine but insisted that I have plenty of chili. My throat burned and the tears came at this hot food and they all had much fun at my discomfort. Several years later I visited in Los Angeles and tried to find my small Louise but they had moved again.

One of the last people I met at the pueblo was the elder son of the former chief. He was over thirty-eight when drafted for World War II. In camp he refused to drill, saying he was not going across the water to fight for the white man. His captain asked him if he did not want to fight for his country. He replied that his country was Isleta; that it was nothing the white man had given the Indians, but was only a small bit that they had not stolen. The captain was impressed and asked more questions. He found that this Indian had always fought the Indian Bureau schemes; that he wanted the rich Indian to hire help to clean the irrigation ditches instead of making the poor Indian do it for nothing; and for this reason he was drafted away from the pueblo where he could not bother the exploiters. His father had been fooled or bribed into giving the names of all of the Indian youth eligible for the draft. If he had put up a fight the matter might have been dropped, for the Indians are not citizens.

On trips with my employer I went up the beautiful Jemez River and saw the Jemez. Meanwhile I had corresponded for years with the Hopi conscientious objectors and decided to find work in Arizona in order to be nearer them.