Richard Arlin Walker
Special to ICT
Sixteen members of the Native American Church gathered and prayed Aug. 12 near a sacred site within San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park. It was a ceremony that predates the park and the city, near a stretch of the San Antonio River that mirrors the pattern of a celestial constellation.
It’s not far from a spring known as the Blue Hole, where the river rises from the aquifer.
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They prayed to give thanks for the water, for the life that originated here, for the celestial pattern that seems to serve as the Creator’s signature on a divine plan.
But the prayers were offered near the site, not on it. The city had fenced off the area, citing safety concerns related to proposed tree removal and repair of limestone retaining walls.
The city told those who would offer prayers that day that they could do so anywhere else in the park.
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“That’s the equivalent of seeing Catholics celebrating Mass outside in the street next to the cathedral, but they can’t go into the cathedral,” said Steven T. Collis, a lawyer who teaches religion and law at the University of Texas School of Law.
Collis is representing two Indigenous culture bearers, Gary Perez and Matilde Torres, who filed suit against the City of San Antonio in U.S. District Court on Aug. 9 seeking to protect access to the sacred site known as Yanaguana, which is believed to be the creation site for the Coahuiltecan people.
The lawsuit seeks to preserve religious access to the site and to protect the trees and migratory birds the city wants to remove from along the river.
On Aug. 11, Perez and Torres asked the court to intervene and allow the ceremony to take place on the site the next day, but the court denied the request.
The trees’ removal would clear the way for voter-funded repair of a Spanish-built canal dating to 1719; a waterworks pump house built in 1878; limestone retaining walls at Lambert Beach, developed in 1915; and an outdoor sculpture garden that first opened in 1923.
The 343-acre park is also home to the San Antonio Zoo, a golf course, a museum, and a sunken garden.
The city’s historic preservation officer and the state historical commission approved permits allowing for the trees’ removal; the city is waiting for permit approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Meanwhile, the city continues to harass cormorants, herons and other birds to prevent them from nesting in the trees; the Migratory Bird Treaty states that a tree cannot be removed if a migratory bird is nesting in it.
The city fenced off the site in February, saying a fallen tree and a broken tree branch posed a safety risk, and in July denied a request by Perez and Torres for access to the site for a water-offering ceremony. The two then filed suit.
“Our clients have no qualms whatsoever with the city restoring walls and keeping things healthy and nice, but what they’re asking is for the city to do it in a way that doesn’t destroy their ability to practice their religion,” Collis told ICT.
Religious freedom
Perez and Torres said site access is only one cultural and spiritual aspect that needs to be protected — the Native American Church’s water offering ceremony requires the presence of the trees and the cormorant, a migratory water bird that nests in trees along the river.
In the lawsuit and in previous interviews, they explained why.
In the Coahuiltecan creation story, a spirit in the form of a blue panther lived in the Blue Hole spring, Perez told ICT in an earlier interview. Another spirit in the form of a double-crested cormorant flew into the spring and was chased away by the blue panther. As the cormorant fled, its tail feathers scattered life-giving water across the San Antonio River Valley, including the lands that comprise the park, giving rise to life in the region, Perez said.
Perez, who is Coahuiltecan, said this stretch of the river and its horseshoe bend match the pattern of the constellation Eridanus, and both are aligned during the Winter Solstice. Torres, Otomi, said the shape of the cormorant mirrors that of the constellation Phoenix.
During the water-offering ceremony, participants touch the river with cormorant tail feathers and scatter droplets of water, according to the lawsuit. Participants also gaze into the water to see the cormorant in the underworld while seeing themselves in the reflection under the stars in the sky – at that moment a connection between the physical and spiritual worlds.
The ceremony is accompanied by the presence of cormorants and the deep, guttural sounds of their bird songs.
Perez said pilgrimages to Yanaguana are depicted in a 2,500-year-old mural on a rock face in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. The lawsuit states that members of the Native American Church and other Indigenous peoples from North and Central America recognize the religious significance of the site and refer to it by its Pakahuan name of Yanaguana, which means “spirit waters.”
“If the city goes through with its plans as of right now, our clients will eventually get access to the site but the city will have destroyed their ability to practice their religion because the city is talking about removing the birds that are crucial to part of our clients’ religious practice,” Collis said.
“It’s not just about the site, it’s the interaction between the site, the river water and the cormorants that are in the trees,” he said. “If the city takes away the habitat of the birds so that the birds are no longer there, our clients can no longer practice their religion.”
Collis added, “The city can achieve all the goals they want to achieve, but they need to come through and work with our clients instead of barreling through with this thing.”
According to the lawsuit, the city rejected two engineering alternatives — both supported by a local structural engineer — that would have shored up the canal walls and the limestone walls at Lambert Beach.
In its response filed with the court, the city said some trees and birds need to go. There is “a compelling government interest” in managing the bird population in the park, the city stated.
“The existing rookeries (regardless of species) are simply too large, and can actually have a very harmful effect on the affected trees,” the city said. “The uric acidity of the birds’ droppings and the weight of the nests can have adverse impacts on the trees.”
Collis met with the city on behalf of Perez and Torres, and asked that safety fencing the city installed around the sacred site be removed so Native American Church adherents could participate in the water-offering ceremony there. The city said it tried to accommodate the request by offering three other sites in the park. Collis said that offer was no accommodation.
“Our clients asked to get into this specific spot they needed to get into. This is the one that tracks the constellation,” Collis told ICT. “The city said, ‘We’re willing to accommodate you,’ but then they refused to let our clients into the only spot our clients needed to get into. What they offered was to let our clients into areas that were already accessible to our clients. Their claim of accommodation was no accommodation at all. They fenced off the only place my clients need to be to practice their religion.”
In a sworn declaration, city parks and recreation manager Ross Hosea, a certified arborist, testified that a large pecan tree collapsed on the river bank at the site on April 23, and that the hanging broken branch of a large cypress tree poses a safety risk.
“I have concluded, in my professional opinion, that removal of the fencing to allow access would place park visitors in danger of serious physical harm,” he stated.
Opposition to tree removal
Opposition is growing, with more than 1,000 San Antonians signing a petition opposing the removal of the trees.
Three tribes have also submitted letters in opposition to the city’s plans, including the Comanche Nation, based in Lawton, Oklahoma; the Lipan Apache Tribe, based in McAllen, Texas; and the Lipan Apache Band, based in Brackettville, Texas.
San Antonio, the seventh most-populous city in the United States, is home to an estimated 30,000 Indigenous peoples, representing 1.4 percent of the city’s population, according to the U.S. Census.
At least one-third of the city’s Brackenridge Park is defined as forested, or having an average of 60 trees per acre, according to Miranda Garrison, architectural historian for the city Public Works Department.
The current project would affect 1.83 acres, Garrison wrote in a report to the Texas Historical Commission.
But that doesn’t mitigate concerns of those who say the trees must be spared.
Alesia Garlock, who is of Indigenous Mexican ancestry, told ICT in an earlier interview that removal of the trees could disturb ancestral burials. The Brackenridge Park Conservancy, which manages the park for the city, acknowledges that what is now the park “has been an oasis for humans for 12,000 years,” the earliest of which were Indigenous people “who found water, food and shelter here.”
But the water that drew people here – Indigenous peoples, Spanish settlers, and those who would become San Antonians – has been depleted by unchecked growth, Perez said.
San Antonio’s population was 37,673 in 1890, when water still gushed 20 feet into the air from the Blue Hole, inspiring the development of swimming beaches and golf courses, and driving ambitious plans for the city. San Antonio’s population grew to 53,321 in 1900, 408,442 in 1950, and more than 1.1 million in 2000. The estimated population in 2022 was nearly 1.5 million, according to the U.S. Census.
The aquifer no longer bursts forth from the Blue Hole. Water flows from the spring after heavy rain, but the geyser that once left New York Central Park architect Frederick Law Olmsted awestruck is no more, Perez said.
The city returns recycled water to the river downstream in the park, but swimming is no longer allowed there and a landscape architect’s report states that the upper course of the San Antonio River and the riparian corridor are “no longer healthy or accessible.”
Torres explained the importance of Yanaguana — and why the trees and birds must be saved — in a March 2022 documentary.
“The reason we are trying to protect the trees and the waterbirds is because of that creation story,” Torres said in the film. “Our people understood very well what we had here within the birthplace of San Antonio … and these birds that migrate from the south continue to come and tell that story that this site is sacred.”
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