Brother/Sister acts in sport are rare. Not since the Heidens of Olympic ice-skating fame have we seen the likes of the Wapitis of New Mexico, a pair of Native Americans who have risen to the top of the prep ranks in the Southwest.
THE JACKRABBIT AND THE COYOTE
Distant mountains framed the fertile valley in northern New Mexico. From the air, great green circles of irrigated hay dotted the sage-covered landscape. Quilt-like vegetable patches were strung together by trinchera, water-filled ditches that brought life and livelihood to the region. From the highway, one could see details–the cattle, alfalfa, stoop laborers, portable toilets–and the heat rising from the desert soil.
Maria Wapiti’s breasts ached from the milk let down when she heard the baby cry. Her newborn, Kivato, slept, strapped to her back.
“Did you hear that, Señor LaChance?”
The paymaster handed Maria forty dollars for her tokens, each representing a bushel basket of spinach.
“Didn’t hear a thing,” LaChance muttered. “See you in four weeks.”
In seconds, he was gone in a cloud of Cadillac dust.
Sunset approached and the vanloads of pickers headed northward for Colorado. Maria stalked the tiny cries to the distant edge of the harvested field, now more brown than green. In an uncovered basket of cool spinach leaves lay an infant child.
“I will feed you, Katita,” she whispered as she scooped the baby into her arms. The tiny black-headed girl squinted and squirmed, its face the color of the soil and its cry faint from repetition. Maria’s milk silenced its crying. The baby suckled and slept while Maria walked the two miles home.
Wakantanka provided me with two vessels of milk, Maria thought. Now, He has given me two children.
Clarence Wapiti checked the pots once more. Red beans and boiled yams would go nicely with the fresh-picked sweet corn that he bought from a neighbor on his drive from the law office. Maria would be home soon and he was eager to share the day’s news with her.
Clarence’s father had been a holy man and much magic had been passed to his son. Although only twenty-six, Clarence was the acknowledged leader of the Havatura Pueblo and the proud father of a new son. His pride was soon to be doubled.
Maria left her sandals by the door, unstrapped Kivato, who still slept, and strode up to Clarence. She threw one arm around his neck and kissed him warmly.
“Hello, my strong husband,” she said. “Your son has missed you.”
She handed Kivato to him and turned toward the door.
“I found something in the field today,” she said as she walked outside to pick up the bundle wrapped in a shred of her long skirt. She tiptoed to her husband, who was nuzzling his infant son’s face.
“Clarence,” Maria said, “I bring you a daughter. She is fresh born in the spinach by a woman who could not bear the burden of motherhood. We shall keep her and raise her to be Kivato’s sister.”
Clarence Wapiti was wise, indeed. He waited and said nothing.
“Kivato has no one his age in the village,” she said. “This child is alone, as well.”
Maria held the infant before him. Its wide brown eyes stared into the face of the leader of the Havatura and captured his soul. No one among their people could leave a child, even a dead one, but life seemed less sacred to the whites, blacks, and browns.
Maria knew her husband and the pueblo would welcome the new daughter that was left for her to find in the field.
“We will call her Tia,” she proclaimed, “a name from the Aztecs to the south.”
Kivato Wapiti grew up a powerful boy known for his endurance. His name meant “of the holy place.” The kiva was a sacred chamber in each village since the time of the Anasazi. There, men would fast, clothed in darkness, seeking visions, purifying their spirits and their flesh.
At thirteen, Kivato became the pueblo’s messenger. He could run the breadth of the reservation, ten miles, in little more than an hour. Between dawn and high noon, he could trot overland to the next pueblo, Laguna, thirty miles away. Each spring and fall, Kivato carried invitations to the other pueblos -the ancient way, on foot – for the Planting Festival in April and the Harvest Festival in September.
“Go, my son, and prepare yourself,” Clarence would say the morning before the appointed departure. Kivato would walk to the kiva, fast all day, and return home when the sun had ducked behind the mesa wall.
Tia and Clarence watched reverently as Maria cleansed Kivato’s dusty body with warm water and a coarse yucca pad.
Kivato lay motionless on his back. His heart soared with happiness to be honored by his people in this way. Clarence removed a hide-covered box from a shelf in the living room. He handed the box to Tia, who held it as her father raised the lid. Maria removed a large brown-and-white feather, whispered a simple prayer, then walked to her son.
“Run like the coyote; see like the hawk; endure like the desert dragon,” she intoned, stroking his body, from face to foot, ten times with the eagle feather. The feather had been passed through seven generations of Havatura.
Kivato could outrun all the other youth of his village but one. The one faster was his sister, Tia. In any footrace less than six throws of the club, about 1200 feet, Tia was the fastest of her people.
THIS VIEW OF SPORT
By Ken Davis
Brother/Sister acts in sport are rare. Not since the Heidens of Olympic ice-skating fame have we seen the likes of the Wapitis of New Mexico, a pair of Native Americans who have risen to the top of the prep ranks in the Southwest.
Tia and Kivato Wapiti are twins and last week they led Pueblo United High School near Grants, NM, to a sweep of both boys and girls Class AAA State Track Meets.
Tia set state records in both the 100-meter and 300-meter hurdles and won the 200- and 400-meter dashes as well. Kivato won the 1600 and 3200-meter races, both in record times. His clocking in the longer event, 9:05.77, run at an altitude of over a mile, marks him as one of the best prep runners in the USA.
The Wapitis live on the Havatura reservation, fifty miles west of Albuquerque. The only time the duo wears shoes to run in is at track meets where their use is mandated by National High School Athletic Association rules.
Tia and Kivato will attend college next fall at Rio Grande State in northeastern New Mexico, training with former Olympic coach Armando Animas. Animas, you might recall, is the outspoken leader of the Clean Sport Movement that promotes universal, mandatory drug testing – and lifetime bans for offenders.
“Tia is a talented young woman,” Coach Animas told us by phone yesterday. “My task is to complement the powerful cultural heritage which has brought her to such a high level of physical performance, with sound principles of physiology to make the most of her genetic potential.”
“Kivato has the focus and maturity of a runner many years his senior,” Animas continued. “He could well become our country’s next great Native American Olympian. We are delighted that the Wapitis have chosen Rio Grande State for their college education.”
Billy Mills, a Lakota Sioux from South Dakota who graduated from Kansas University, struck 10,000-meter gold at the Tokyo Games in 1964. We reached him at his home in California and asked his opinion of the Wapiti twins with whom he spent a week last fall at a Pueblo Nations festival.
“Tia is the smoothest sprinter I have seen among Native Americans,” Mills said. “She runs over the track, not on it.”
“Kivato first contacted me five years ago for advice,” Mills said of the 5’6″ Pueblo youth. “I told him to embrace his heritage and draw from the earth and the spirit of his people. Remember that all his best times have been run at altitudes between 5,000 and 7,500 feet above sea level. He could make an immediate impact on collegiate track.”
Rio Grande State was the only major program to actively recruit the Wapitis, according to the children’s father, Clarence, an attorney. The prevailing opinion, according to one NCAA Division I track coach at a California university is that “Indians last about one semester.”
THIS VIEW OF SPORT
By Ken Davis
One of my columns earlier this month generated considerable reader reaction. Two letters and a response by Coach Armando Animas of Rio Grande State College follow:
Dear Mr. Davis,
I’m writing in response to your article concerning the Wapiti twins of New Mexico.
The unnamed California track coach is right. I’ve seen over twenty Indian runners enter track programs in Oklahoma colleges. Not one bettered his high school performances significantly. You get those kids off the reservation and they fold. It’s probably nothing racial – they just get homesick and give up.
Since you mentioned Coach Animas and the Clean Sport Movement, I’d like to say something about drugs in sports. Until we can make sure the other countries in the world are clean, we shouldn’t hamstring our athletes with stringent drug testing.
I enjoy your column. Thanks for giving us a variety of sports stories, which other sportswriters don’t.
Yours truly,
Vern McCormick
El Reno, Oklahoma
Dear Ken Davis,
The Clean Sports Movement is out of touch with reality. The Indians chew peyote, the Europeans inject growth hormones, and every athlete in the West is experimenting with altitude chambers and blood doping. None of these procedures are detectable with current tests.
The banned substances that are tested for – steroids, amphetamines, cocaine, caffeine, et al. – can and are being masked by still other drugs that are churned out by sports chemists worldwide. Not only are illegal substances widespread and tried by most athletes, they are probably a prerequisite for world-class performance.
I’m not saying we should stop drug testing, but it is naïve to think we are catching very many of the rule-breakers. Universal testing is unrealistic because of its cost, plus it represents a severe breach of civil liberties. A lifetime ban for offenders is also unreasonable.
Everybody deserves a second chance.
Sincerely,
Jurgen Strasse, attorney at law
Midwest Branch, ACLU
Coach Animas responds:
First, I’d like to commend Ken Davis for his responsible journalism. That is a rarity today. Fairness has also become a rarity.
I’ve thought deeply for several days about the points made by Messrs. McCormick and Strasse. Like most Americans, they’ve grown accustomed to rules being routinely stretched and broken. The process has been relegated to least important status and the product – success in sports, business, or politics – is paramount.
Only one thing can save us, our culture, and probably the world order: A return to high ethics. Ethical standards are not imposed. They are believed, they are internalized, and they are lived. Ethics must be taught and pursued with zeal and devotion. Living each hour with honor is far more important than the material rewards that might accrue through winning at any cost. The moral fiber is rotted with such disregard for ethics.
Native Americans are the epitome of living in the present rather than compromising the present for some future gain. In my mind, a youngster who leaves college and returns to his people because he cannot accept a lower standard of behavior is making the only correct choice.
I have traveled the world as an athletics coach and met many great champions. I have no doubt whatever that the great ones – Zatopek of Czechoslovakia, Bannister of Great Britain, Keino of Kenya, Clarke of Australia – would no sooner have taken a banned substance than a cyanide capsule. They, and hundreds of other athletes like them, live lives of honor. That hundreds of lesser athletes pursue championships through cheating is a result of our failure as educators, coaches, parents, and leaders.
I am a physiologist, as well as a coach. Let me assure you that a body performing under the influence of drugs is a body battling for homeostasis. An athlete who is running with a clean bloodstream, his mind focused on his task, with muscles built through hard work and sound nutrition, such an athlete will come through with his best performance every time out.
A shortcut on a racecourse is, by definition, cheating. Every substance banned in sport has been placed on the list for two reasons: it is harmful to health and it is cheating to use it. If self-preservation has eroded with our civilization, it is up to us to ensure our survival as moral animals with the highest standards we can conceive.
Yours in sport,
Armando Animas