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The Aqueduct - Audio The Aqueduct In the morning, as two of them and I hack through the bush with machetes, the other seven come behind with picks and shovels digging the aqueduct. The chaparral here is a common mix of Wild Lilac, Big Pod and Green Bark Ceanothus. It is slow going. First, the diggers hit an oak root which we have to cut through with an axe. Then we come into a patch of Snow Berry. The matted root structure of this colony is unusually dense. We go at it with fou r t alachos. I can sense they’re all thinking the same thing: we’d be moving a lot faster with Mateqai. By lunchtime, we’re all sweating, exhausted and hungry. We sit down in the shade of a grove of California Bay and red berry Toyon and drink water from Mission Creek—I from a tin cup, they from baskets ingeniously waterproofed with some mixture of pitch and asphalt. I stand just above the creek bed, near a leafless Sycamore and say: “Let us pray.” Reluctantly, they bow and I stumble through the Lord’s Prayer, using the only words of their language I know. I never understand why, though every one of them had been baptised and has it in their own language, half of them only pretend to mouth the words. “ Dios cascoco upalequen Alaipai quia-enicho opte; paquinini juch quique etchuet cataug itimi tiup caneche Alaipai. Ulamugo ila ulalisagua piquiyup guinsceaniup uqui amog canequi que quisagiu sucutanajun utiagmayiup oyup quie uti leg uleypo stequiyup i auteyup. Amen.” I sit down and we all begin to eat. They are unusually quiet today. None of the usual jokin g. No one calls Juan “ leqte,” meaning “woman.” But neither do they call him Juan. Ins tead, they call him M upi’ish. They aren’t using the baptismal names, not even to insult each other. Today, they use only the traditional names and they are spoken with quiet pride, tinged with hostility. It’s a small act of rebellion, I know. But I let it pass. It’s almost sile nt as we sit eating our p ozole of beef and corn and beans, which they flavor with fallen Bay leaves. Someone with less experience might have been frightened. The nine of them could easily overpower me. Two of them are armed with machetes. And the others have shovels and talachos. It crosses my mind that today, of all days, they would like to dispatch me right here in the place they cal