CHAPTER VI

TO ZUÑI, THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, VIA GALLUP

Gallup, New Mexico, has never made much of a stir as a tourist center, but like many a spot of modest pretensions, it is deserving beyond its gettings. As an example of the “city beautiful” it is not, in my judgment, a success; but as a base and a fitting-out point for some of the most interesting parts of the Southwest, it is to be heartily commended.[38] Particularly is this so now that the motor car has so largely supplanted the horse-drawn vehicle for excursions afield. There are comfortable hotel accommodations and there are Harvey meals obtainable.

BEAD MAKER, ZUÑI PUEBLO

Necklaces of flat, round beads made from sea shells form a common adornment of Pueblo Indians.

A STREET IN ACOMA PUEBLO

The ladders afford means of access to the upper stories.

From Gallup (which is on one of the main automobile routes followed by transcontinental motorists) good trips radiate in many directions—85 miles to Cañon de Chelly, for instance, and its cliff dwellings amidst surpassing scenery; 75 miles to the Pueblo Bonito ruins in Chaco Cañon; 125 miles to the Hopi country; 42 miles to Zuñi pueblo; 75 miles to Inscription Rock of the Conquistadores. The great Navajo reservation with its picturesque aboriginal life reaches almost to Gallup’s back door, and even the Mesa Verde National Park,[39] can be done from Gallup in 4 or 5 days for the round trip, if the weather conditions are right.

This chapter has to do with the famous Indian pueblo of Zuñi, which lies to the south, about 2½ hours by motor car. The road is all sorts from a motorist’s standpoint; so be your own best friend and take it good-naturedly, for fussing will not mend it. In a few minutes you are beyond sight of houses and railroads, and in a twinkling Time’s clock has whirled back a couple of centuries. You pass, perhaps, a Navajo woman astride her pony, a sheepskin or two tied to the saddle, on her way to the trader’s for coffee and tobacco; and then a Mexican teamster crouching over a bit of camp-fire where his chili and beans are stewing, his wagon piled high with wool sacks drawn up by the roadside. Now a solitary adobe ranch house, or a lone trader’s log hut is seen in a wilderness of sagey plain; and now a flock of sheep drift into the road out of the piñon- and cedar-scrub, a couple of bright-eyed Navajo children shepherding in their wake. By and by you pass another sort of Indian on horseback, a slightly built man with long jet-black hair lifted by the breeze, a red _banda_ encircling it—he is a Zuñi. And then topping a low hill, you are greeted by the distant sight of a long flat-topped mesa, creamy pink against a blue sky. It is Towa-yálleni, Zuñi’s Mountain of the Sacred Corn. A turn in the road, and the great yellow plain of Zuñi spreads out before you, the Zuñi River threading its midst, and on its bank the old pueblo humps itself like a huge anthill, hardly distinguishable in color from the plain itself.

Zuñi (with a population of some 1600) is historically perhaps the most interesting of all the Pueblo towns, for it is the present-day representative of those Seven Cities of Cíbola, the fable of whose wealth led to the discovery of New Mexico in the sixteenth century. There really were seven Zuñi villages in Coronado’s time, all of which have long since disappeared, though sites of at least five are known. The present Zuñi pueblo seems to have been built about the year 1700, replacing that one of the ancient seven known as Hálona. This occupied the opposite or south bank of the river in Coronado’s time—a spot now partially covered by the buildings of a white trader.

If you are going to hold your car and return to Gallup the same day, there will probably be 3 or 4 hours available for a stroll about the pueblo. The houses, of a characteristic reddish tone, rise from one-storied structures on the outskirts to 5 stories at the center of the town, and you will enjoy mounting by ladders and stepping stones to that uppermost height for the lovely view over the plain to the mountains that hem in the Zuñi valley. The narrow streets without sidewalks open out now and then into small plazas, and some communicate with one another by tunnels. Beehive ovens squat upon the roofs in dome-like fashion and contribute a suggestion of the Orient—of Cairo or Syria. Dogs, turkeys, pigs and burros have equal right with humanity in the cramped thoroughfares, and if one is of a cleanly habit, one needs to watch one’s steps. But dirt and picturesqueness were ever comrades, and Zuñi is truly picturesque. From the open door issues the hum of the busy mealing stones, and the fragrance of the crushed corn; perhaps, too, to your ravished ears, the high-keyed melody of grinding songs shrilled by the women as they work.

Look in, and if your manner is respectful and the girls not over shy, you will be allowed the enjoyment of a charming picture of kneeling, swaying bodies and of down-turned faces veiled in falling hair. Ollas of native ware stand about with water; parti-colored blankets of Navajo or Zuñi weave hanging from wall or ceiling give a touch of brightness in the dim light of the room; in the triangular corner fireplace dinner simmers within a bowl of native pottery set upon the coals. If fortune favors you there may be a potter at her moulding, or, in the street, jars being fired or bread being put to bake in the adobe ovens; or in some plaza a ceremonial dance in costume may be in progress. Zuñi is still comfortably pagan—the ancient Catholic church is a ruin and the modern Protestant mission is by no means overworked—and throughout the year the red gods of Zuñi have homage paid them in many a ceremony rich in symbolism and pure beauty.[40]

On the outskirts of the pueblo in August, one may have a sight of wheat thrashing on the open-air thrashing floors, the grain being trodden out in oriental fashion by horses, sheep or goats. Or there may be a straight-away horse race over the plain with a picturesque crowd looking on; or a _gallo_ race, the part of the rooster (_gallo_) humanely taken in these latter days by a sack buried to the neck in the sand. A quieter feature of interest is the quaint little vegetable gardens on a slope by the river—each tiny garden enclosed with a thin adobe wall. These are tended by the women who daily bring water in ollas and pails to irrigate the plants.

OLD CHURCH, ACOMA PUEBLO

Dating from about 1700. Tradition has it that it was 40 years in building. All material was carried up on Indians’ backs from the plain 350 feet below, by an almost precipitous trail.

A SUNNY WALL IN ZUÑI

The men of Zuñi are famous knitters. This one is making his wife a pair of leggings.

A short walk from the pueblo brings you to Hepatina (_hay´-pa-tee-na_) a stone shrine erected on the plain, which in the Zuñi conception, marks the center of the earth; for the unreconstructed Zuñi believes naturally enough, just as your and my ancestors did a few centuries ago, that the earth is flat. Hither in the days of long ago, a guardian divinity of the Zuñis brought them as to the safest place in the world—the farthest from the edge—preceding them in the form of a water strider. The double-barred cross, which you will see sometimes on Zuñi pottery, or fashioned in silver, is the symbol of that divine guide. There has been, by the way, some good pottery made at Zuñi, and the visitor interested in that art may still enjoy the adventure of a house-to-house ceramic hunt with chances of a pleasurable outcome.

The accommodations for visitors in the pueblo are very limited. Perhaps one of the couple of white resident traders or the school teacher may be complaisant enough to take you in; and there are certain Indian houses where lodging can surely be had. If you are not of a meticulous sort, I would recommend a stop-over long enough at least to visit the mesa Towa-yálleni, which Cushing has put into literature as Thunder Mountain. It looks near the pueblo, but is really 4 miles distant. On its summit centuries ago there was a pueblo of the Zuñis, the broken down walls of which, overrun with cactus and brush, are still quite evident. Curious pictographs of the ancients may be traced on many a rock; and if one knows where to look, there are pagan shrines where prayer plumes are yet offered to the Divine Ones. Among such are those of the Twin War Gods, whose home is believed to have been on Towa-yálleni—“little fellows that never give up.” I was once informed by a Zuñi, “gone away now may be gone up, may be gone down; _quien sabe_?”[41] It was on this mountain the Zuñis found a refuge after their losing fight with Coronado in 1540; and again in 1632 they retreated hither after killing their missionary, Padre Letrado, of whom we shall hear again at Inscription Rock in the next chapter. And here they were in 1692 when De Vargas forced their surrender in the re-conquest. Tradition has it, too, that here long, long ago, the people fled for safety when an offended deity flooded them out of their villages in the plain; and the water still rising, a desperate sacrifice was called for. A boy and a girl were tossed from the summit into the angry flood. In a twinkling, the children were transformed into pinnacles of rock and the waters sank appeased. You can see these spires of stone today from Zuñi, and old people will tell you that the one with a double point is the boy. A peculiar virtue resides in that petrified humanity it seems. If a childless couple resort to the base of the pinnacles and there plant prayer plumes, there will be granted to them the children of their desire.

There are trails, steep and rough, up Towa-yálleni’s sides, and if you can make the trip with an intelligent and communicative old Zuñi (most of the young ones seem to know or care little about the ancient things), you will have a remarkable outing. An hour or two spent on that lonely breeze-swept, sun-kissed mesa-top, with the ruined town, its broken shrines, its historic and legendary memories, will induct you, as no amount of reading will, into the atmosphere of the Southwest’s romantic past. There used to be—and for all I know still is—a trail that a rider on horseback can follow, at the northeastern side of the mesa. The ancient peach orchard through which it wound owes its existence to seed brought to Zuñi by the Spaniards.

NOTE: Five miles northeast of Zuñi, is Black Rock, where travelers with an interest in Government education of the Indians may see a Reservation School in operation. Within a radius of 15 or 20 miles of the main pueblo are 3 farming villages occupied in summer by Zuñis to be near certain tracts of tillable land. One of these, Ojo Caliente, 15 miles southwest of Zuñi, is close to the site of ancient Háwikuh—the first Pueblo town seen by white men. Upon it in 1539, intrepid Fray Marcos de Niza looked down from a nearby height, and then, warned by the murder of his avant-courier, the negro Estévanico, beat a prudent retreat to Mexico. Coronado captured the place in the following year, and thence made his first report of the famous 7 cities to the viceroy in Mexico. It is the scene of one of the most charming of Cushing’s Zuñi folk tales, “The Foster Child of the Deer.” Extensive excavations have recently been made there by Government ethnologists.