Canyons

The middle chapters of Canyons following Coyote Runs’s death in Chapter 9 are primarily concerned with Brennan’s investigation of the skull and the procedural nature of how research is done. Brennan exhibits good judgment by involving Homesley, perhaps the only adult in his life who would fully understand why he feels so connected to the skull. However, this procedure is influenced by another force: the voices and feelings that Brennan is receiving from the skull. Unlike a typical investigation, Brennan can confirm or deny certain information based on the reaction inside of his head from the skull. When Homesley asks him if he is going to take the skull to the proper authorities, Brennan responds by saying, “I can’t. I’ve started to several times, many times, but something stops me and I can’t. I just can’t. And I’m having all these weird dreams that I don’t understand and things are happening to me” (112). Though it might be expected that an adult in this situation would be concerned for Brennan’s mental health, Homesley takes his statements at face value, recognizing Brennan’s fascination with the skull as a healthy impulse.

Homesley begins to take on the characteristics of a father figure for Brennan in these chapters. For instance, when Brennan is first invited over to Homesley’s home, he’s introduced to the teacher’s basement where he keeps his music and listening equipment. Homesley continues to allow Brennan to be involved in his life in a more personal manner than is typical for teachers, for instance, allowing Brennan to spend the entire night in his house reading the documents and searching for the history of the skull. However, this is not to say that Homesley is unconcerned for Brennan’s wellbeing, as at the end of the novel he still contacts the authorities with Brennan’s likely location of the titular canyon out of concern. The relationship between Homesley and Brennan is portrayed as positive and uplifting for both of them, who each demonstrate a need for a deeper human connection than they currently have access to.

In this section, Brennan starts to dive more deeply into the history of the Indigenous population of the region. This violence was directed toward the Indigenous population as well as internally, to its own population, as Brennan notes how a particular newspaper article “told of two soldiers who had hacked each other to death with knives in a cantina in Juarez. The author didn’t seem shocked so much as amazed that they would kill each other at the same time” (136). Though the dehumanization and violence directed toward the Indigenous peoples is clearly portrayed to be worse (as shown in the newspaper articles, where killing an Indigenous person is frequently characterized as a positive), violence itself needs an outlet, and the colonizers are not immune from inflicting it on each other. In fact, the violence perpetrated toward the Indigenous population contributes to intra-community violence, as violence typically begets itself, thematically supporting Violence as a Part of Colonization.

The genocide of the Indigenous population of the Americas is recognized with shock by Brennan as he does his research. As a boy in the latter half of the 20th century, Brennan was most likely not taught much of the history of that particular genocide, and so the descriptions of how the Indigenous people are treated by the soldiers and colonizers in the 19th century is impactful to Brennan. Considering the poor and sensationalized writing of the 19th century newspaper accounts of the raids, Brennan thinks that “[e]verything was so violent—white, red, color didn’t seem to matter. Violence was the way of it—the engine that seemed to drive the West was violence” (136). Violence, here, is not shown as being an aberration, an act that is not in concert with the world around it. Rather, violence here is shown to be a force of destruction and creation in tandem, sweeping away the world created by the Indigenous people in favor of the world of the colonizer.

Brennan is reaching a recognition that his own life, as a white child in Texas, is as much a product of this violence as the lives of the ranchers, colonizers, and soldiers. By replacing Coyote Runs skull in its respectful and traditional resting place, Brennan is returning to Coyote Runs the respect and agency denied to him in life by this violence. Though Brennan can never escape the legacy of this violence, as it is pervasive, in the city and lawns and unnatural human development around him, his connection to Coyote Runs allows him a greater personal investment in nature and a greater empathy toward those who have been forgotten by history.