Chapter 5: The Search Resumes and Bares Fruit

Three months later, after the morning sickness had ended, but before they began to show, Maria and Jason returned to their primary task of researching their family ties. During the second week of their research, they found a promising new lead.

They had found the picture in the archives of the Bisbee Daily Review. It was a picture from 1901 of two elderly men, dressed in dark suits, shaking hands and smiling for the camera. The caption below the picture read; ‘Two of Bisbee’s most distinguished gentlemen, Mr. Joshua Hawke and Mr. Albert Guidry, Esq. celebrate fifty years of partnership’. It was another thread to follow.

The next day in the State Archives, they hit pay dirt. It was Marie who actually found it, nearly buried on a shelf of documents stored in dusty boxes awaiting digitizing funding; ‘Documents from the Law Office of Albert Guidry’.

‘Today, September 23, 1851, I have formed a partnership with a Mr. Joshua Hawke. I will be providing free legal services in exchange for 50% ownership of all claims that we discover and foreclose on. Joshua is a real go getter and we should both prosper from this arrangement.’

They skimmed through pages and pages of the mundane day-to-day business of a small town lawyer. Occasionally finding references to Joshua Hawke or their partnership. The next important tidbit of information was a notation dated April 10, 1868.

‘Today, nearly two years after her untimely death, we were finally able to settle the estate of Anna Hawke, Joshua’s wife. Joshua has informed me that he wishes to marry his Indian housekeeper ‘Silver Fox’. I have counseled him that I can, as Mayor of Bisbee, perform the service, but have reservations as to its propriety. I was informed that she is with child and that he wishes to have the child bear his name. I will rewrite his will as soon as the child is born.’

Maria could hardly keep still, as she tightened her grip on Jason’s arm. “Jason, this might be it; this might be the missing piece of the puzzle. We have traced back your family’s lineage back to Joshua himself and have never come across any offspring other than David, his son by his wife Anna. What if he had a son by Silver Fox? That could explain why I’ve reached a dead end on my side of the family.”

Excited, they continued to pour through the documents. For the better part of the next four hours, they searched, but it wasn’t until they reached the last folder in the box that they discovered what they were hoping to find.

‘The Last Will and Testament of Joshua Hawke’ as written by his partner and friend Albert Guidry, Esq.

‘I have written this will verbatim as Joshua Hawke has dictated it to me’.

‘First, I want to assure you that I am entirely lucid and in control of my faculties.

About six weeks ago, I traveled with my wife, Silver Fox and our son Ezekiel, to her tribal lands southwest of Phoenix. I was introduced to the Chief, the Medicine Man and the tribal elders. One evening I was invited to attend a special ceremony, which, if I survived, would prove myself worthy to become a member of the tribe.

The next morning I was stripped of my white man’s clothes and given a loincloth. I was escorted to a large tepee; there the Medicine Man and several of the elders joined me. We sat in a circle and first passed around a pipe, each man taking a long draw on what I assumed was filled with strong tobacco of some sort. After several minutes, my vision began to blur and the interior of the tent began to spin.

Off to the side within the tent was a pile of large stones, which practically glowed from being super-heated by a fire at the bottom of the pile. Two young braves took turns placing wet cloths over the stones, which soon filled the tepee with steam. Cups of drinking water were passed around in an effort to replace the sweat that was pouring out of our bodies; but it was a hopeless effort.

I didn’t know how much time had passed; I could barely discern the difference between up and down. The Medicine Man was handed a small wooden bowl filled with small round disc-like objects. He raised the bowl high as if offering it up to the Great Spirit and then passed the bowl around, each person taking several discs before passing it on. When it came to me, I followed suit, taking three of the discs and, following their example, popped them into my mouth and began to chew. Then he smiled at me and uttered one word, ‘peyote’, and closed his eyes.

Within a few minutes, the inside of the tent seemed to fade into brilliant colors and the faces of the elders became distorted. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out these obvious distortions out of fear of these unsettling visions.

Suddenly, I was walking in the desert, the brilliant sun illuminating the parched earth and the mountains to the east. As I walked, I became aware of the fact that I was carrying a large sack over my shoulder. Suddenly two figures appeared in front of me, walking in the same direction that I was, a smaller bag over each’s shoulder. One of these figures paused, put his bag down, and turned east walking towards the mountains. The other continued walking in front of me; and then suddenly, there were two again each carrying a bag on his shoulder. The new person continued walking and I followed, while the other stayed behind. This happened four more times and then everything disappeared. I found myself back in the tepee; someone handed me a cup of a bitter tea, which I gulped down. I could not keep my eyes open.

Once again, I found myself standing in the desert, at the foot of a large mountain. I watched as a young man, carrying a bag over his shoulder, walked slowly towards me seemingly coming directly out of the mountain. Behind him was a group of Indians, they were women, but not squaws, these were warriors. They walked in formation, the youngest at the perimeter of the group, ever alert for trouble. In the center of the group were several elderly women, each was being helped by a seemingly middle-aged woman. The final group of women were also middle aged, but appeared to be no less capable of defending themselves.

Bringing up the rear was another man, this one was dressed in a loincloth, on his feet, he wore a pair of moccasins, and his hair was long, held by a leather band tied around his forehead. He stopped at the end of the trail and waved to me, as the rest continued past me heading west. When I turned back to see if he was going to follow I discovered that he had vanished.

The next thing that I became aware of was that I was no longer inside the tepee, but in the arms of my loving wife. I tried to tell her what I had seen, but she placed a finger to my lips and whispered, “Those are your visions, yours and yours alone. You are now one of us.”

I slept the rest of the day until the next morning. I told her I wanted to return to our home in Bisbee, that I had work to do and things to take care of. She informed me that she and our son would not be returning to Bisbee and that she would prepare a home there for us, for when I returned to her.

I returned to Bisbee still puzzled over the meaning of my dreams. During the early morning hours of one of my many sleepless nights I had an epiphany; the first two men that appeared I was sure were my sons. One was David; he had already become established in the Bisbee business community. The other was Ezekiel, he had remained behind in order to take care of his mother, I was not sure what his future would hold, but according to my visions, his journey would take a different path. I was sure that each successive new man who appeared in my dream would be the offspring of the man before, my direct decedents through David.

What still puzzled me was the second dream. I surmised that the young man was the last of my descendants, the seventh son, but who was the other man, the mountain man. He had no bag with him, and he waved to me as if he knew me. It must have been my second son, Ezekiel, but who were the female warriors and why were they with my sons. The seventh son appeared to be leading them westward, but to where? In addition, why was my second son with them and why would he not or could not follow them out of the mountains?

I pondered these questions for several days. I even told you, Albert, about my visions. It was you, Albert, who gave me some answers. You had mentioned the bags, that they must have some meaning. Maybe, you threw out; they were their inheritances from their fathers. I thought about that and a key detail came to me, one that I had overlooked even at the time of my visions. My bag had been large and heavy at the beginning, but with each new descendent, my bag got smaller and lighter, until when the last appeared I no longer held a bag at all. It wasn’t their inheritance from their fathers, it was from me, and it was I bequeathing my fortune forward, in the last case, six generations forward.

When I asked you if it could be done, you said you had never heard of such a thing before, but that it was my money, I could do with it what I wanted, and only my sons could contest the will. I told you that there was little chance of that; that David knew very little about the extent of my wealth and that Ezekiel knew nothing at all. When I asked you what you thought the reason was that they were heading west, you said maybe to join the rest of the tribe on the reservation. I thought there was more to it than that, maybe it was to unite these females with my wife’s descendants; but that couldn’t be it, unless she had taken a lover in my absence, her descendants would be our descendants. The answer was there, I just could not see it, yet.

I had you draw up the will dividing my estate into eight equal parts, one to my wife, one each to my two sons, and then one each in trust for each of the first-born males starting with David’s son and going forward. Each of the trusts would have two beneficiaries. One would be the descendent himself, he could only withdraw fifty percent of the value at the time he inherited the trust, and the other beneficiary would be a remainder trust whose beneficiary would be the seventh son, who would inherit that trust at the age of forty.

The J.S. Morgan Company was chosen as the investment manager for these six trusts and given free rein to invest the assets as they deemed prudent.’