In 2000, I took a long motorcycle ride that brought me to Ft Sumner New Mexico. I knew this as the place where Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Pat Garrett. What I didn't know was that there had been no town of Ft Sumner when Billy was shot there, but only structures remaining from the time twenty years before when it had served as a concentration camp for Navajos and Apaches who had been sent there at the beginning of the Civil War. This area is call Bosque Redondo by the tribes.
They were rounded up and marched there, many losing their lives along the way. After arriving, they were forced to build adobe structures and plant crops along the river to feed themselves and the troops stationed there. Hundreds died farming the bottomland in a drought that stretched into a year. After the War ended, the survivors were allowed to return to their tribal lands. The buildings stood vacant until the 1870s, when a friend of Billy Bonney took over and ranched the Bosque Redondo. Billy was seeking asylum there when Garrett caught up with him. When Billy left the room he was sleeping in to go relieve himself, Garrett entered and waited for him to return. As Billy re-entered Garrett stood and cocked his revolver. Billy paused, said "quien es?"(who is it?), and was shot by Garrett.
Some years later, a flood washed all of the buildings away, and the Bosque Redondo was left looking as it had before man had come to it, a beautiful spot in a loop of the Pecos River. Later, the town grew up just north of it.
I had visited the museum and grave of Billy, and then took a walking tour of what had been the camp. Among the national park information plaques, I noticed a small meadow by the river where a medicine ring had been set up, a center staff hung with herbs, medicine bundles,and eagle feathers, surrounded by circle of stones. A sign said that this was a spot where US Government officials and members of the Apache and Navajo Nations had gathered, and where tribal medicine men had made offerings to "bring peace and rest to the souls of those who had died tragically here."
I walked back to the information center and walked up to the Men's Room door. As I pushed it open, I heard the rush of water into a sink coming from around the corner. As I rounded it, I heard the water shut off and observed that there was no one there. The remnant of small trickle of water ran into the drain as I watched.
When I walked out, I asked the ranger if anyone had ever said the place was haunted. He smiled and I told him what had happened. He remarked that yes, so many strange things happened on a daily basis that it had become commonplace for him to hear footsteps, thuds and thumps, doors opening or closing. In fact, he said, although there was an area used for camping along the river, he had often witnessed people breaking camp shortly after nightfall, and rarely saw anyone left in the campground when he came in at 6 am. Many of these campers reported "babbling" voices that disturbed their rest, he said.
Before leaving, I took a short walk to the sight of the building where Billy had been shot and looked out across the beautiful river valley, the site of so much tragedy, and it seemed right for me to say aloud "quien es?"