Part 4

This was a great undertaking, as the rope had to be very long. Many moons came and went before this rope was finished, and, when the task was completed, the next thing to be considered was, how they should carry or transport it to the place where the sun rises in the morning. This question puzzled them greatly, for the rope was very large and heavy, and the distance was very great.

All the animals at that time were very small tween compared to the field-mouse, which was then the largest quadruped in the whole world, twice the size of any buffalo. The horse, or, as the Indians call it, "shungatonga," meaning elk-dog, did not then exist. It was a long time before the children could find a field-mouse to whom they could appeal for aid. At last they found one at home, sitting comfortably under an immense fern.

The little boy then went up to him, and, after relating his troubles, asked if he would assist in carrying the rope. Mountains had to be crossed, rivers swum or forded, according to their depth, wide expanses of prairie to be passed over, forests skirted, swamps waded, and lakes circled before the rope and its makers could reach the place where the sun rises. The field-mouse, after much consideration, agreed to help the pair, and they began their preparations by winding the rope into a great coil, which they packed on the back of the field-mouse. On the top of this the boy and girl seated themselves, and the journey began. When they came to a river which must be crossed by swimming, the rope was taken off the mouse and unwound; then he would take one end in his mouth, and swim to the other side, letting it trail out after him as he swam. This performance had to be repeated many times before the whole rope was landed on the opposite bank. When this was done, he had to swim across again and fetch the little pair, seating them on his forehead.

It was hard work for the mouse, but the little boy encouraged him to his work by promises of reward and compliments on his extraordinary strength. The high mountains were crossed with great toil, and while they were on the dry plains the travelers suffered for want of water. The sun had dried up everything, and it almost seemed as if he understood their object, for he poured down upon them his hottest rays. Several changes of the seasons, and many moons, had come and gone before they reached the dense forest from behind which the sun was accustomed to rise. They managed to arrive at this big forest at night, so that the sun should not see them, and then they screened themselves in the woods, resting there for several days. When, at last, they felt rested and refreshed, they began their work at nightfall, and the first thing they did was to uncoil the rope. The little boy then took one end of it in his teeth, and climbed up one of the trees at the extreme edge of the woods, where he spread it out in the branches, making loops and slip-knots here and there all over, from one tree to another, until the rope looked like an immense net. Then the mouse, finding his services no longer needed, left them and wandered far away.

As morning approached, the two children quitted the wood, everything being in readiness, and retired to a distance to watch the result of their work. Soon they espied a pale light gleaming behind the forest and gradually becoming brighter and brighter. On came the sun, rolling up in all his grandeur and fast approaching the rope, while the two little hearts were beating quickly down below. In a moment he had reached the network of rope, and then, before he knew it, he was entangled in its meshes, and found himself thoroughly entrapped! What a proud moment for our hero! He compared his own size with that of the sun, and his delight seemed beyond bounds as he and the little girl watched the sun struggling to free himself, getting red with fury and rage, and pouring out his burning heat on all surrounding things. The leaves shriveled and dropped from the trees, the branches could be seen to smoke, the grass curled up and withered, and at last the forest began to burn as the heat became more intense. It seemed as if all nature was on fire. The joy of the children now turned into fear. The elk, deer, and buffalo came rushing out of the woods. The birds circled, shrieking and crying, and all living things seemed wild with fear.

At last the field-mouse called the animals together for a consultation as to what was best to be done. They held a brief council, for no time could be lost. The elk spoke up and said that as the mouse had gone to so much trouble to carry the rope to entrap the sun, he was the one who ought to set him free from his entanglement. This was generally agreed to, and, besides, the field-mouse was the largest animal, and had such sharp and strong teeth that it would be easy for him to gnaw through any rope.

It was getting hotter and hotter: something must be done quickly. The sun was blazing with rage! The field-mouse finally yielded to the wishes of his fellow-animals; and, rushing into the wood, through the terrible heat and smoke, he gnawed the rope, but in doing so was melted down to his present size. The sun then rapidly arose, and everything soon became all right again.

The fact of the little man trapping the sun and causing so much mischief proved his superiority over the other animals, and they have feared him ever since. And, according to the Indian belief, this little man and little woman were the father and mother of all the tribes of men.

FUN AMONG THE RED BOYS

BY JULIAN RALPH

VARIOUS as are the customs of the Indians, it is their savage, warlike natures that we are most apt to remember. Few of us, in fact, ever think of Indian children at all, except at the sight of a picture of them. Little has been told or written about the boy and girl red folk, and it would puzzle most of my readers to say what they suppose these children of nature look like, or do to amuse themselves, or how they are brought up. It will astonish most city people to hear that red children are very like white children, just as a lady who was out on the plains a few years ago was astonished to find that they had skins as smooth and soft as any lady's--no, smoother and softer than that: as delicate and lovely as any dear little baby's here in New York. This lady was visiting the Blackfeet in my company, and she was so surprised, when she happened to touch one little red boy's bare arm, that she went about pinching a dozen chubby-faced boys and girls to make herself sure that all their skins were like the coats of ripe peaches to the touch.

Whether the Indians really love their children, or know what genuine love or affection is, I cannot say; but they are so proud and careful of their little ones that it amounts to the same thing so far as the youngsters are concerned. Boy babies are always most highly prized, because they will grow up into warriors.

The little that is taught to Indian boys must seem to them much more like fun than instruction. They must hear the fairy stories and the gabble of the medicine-men or conjurers, and the tales of bloody fights and brave and cunning deeds which make the histories of their tribes. They learn not to take what does not belong to them unless it belongs to an enemy. They learn not to be impudent to any one stronger and bigger than themselves; they learn how to track animals and men, how to go without food when there is not any, how to eat up all there is _at once_ when any food is to be had, how to ride and shoot and run and paddle, and smoke very mild tobacco. As for the rest, they "just grow," like Topsy, and are as emotional and fanciful and wilful as any very little white child ever was. They never get over being so. The older they grow to be, the older children they become, for they are all very much like spoiled children as long as they live.

The first Indians I ever saw, outside of a show, were boys at play. They were Onondagas, on their reservation near Syracuse, New York. They were big boys of from sixteen to twenty years old, and the game they were playing was "snow-snakes." The earth was covered with snow, and by dragging a stout log through this covering they had made a narrow gutter or trough about 500 or 700 feet long. Each youth had his snow-snake, which is a stick about eight feet long, and shaped something like a spear. All the snow-snakes were alike, less than an inch wide, half an inch thick, flat on the under side, rounded on top, and with a very slight turn upward at the point to suggest a serpent's head. The "snakes" were all smoothed and of heavy hard wood. The game was to see who could send his the farthest along the gutter in the snow. The young men grasped their snakes at the very end, ran a few steps, and shot the sticks along the trough. As one after another sped along the snow, the serpent-like heads kept bobbing up and down over the rough surface of the gutter precisely like so many snakes. I bought a snow-snake, but, though I have tried again and again, I cannot get the knack of throwing it.

But I have since seen Indian boys of many tribes at play, and one time I saw more than a hundred and fifty "let loose," as our own children are in a country school-yard at recess. To be sure, theirs is a perpetual recess, and they were at home among the tents of their people, the Canada Blackfeet, on the plains, within sight of the Rocky Mountains. The smoke-browned tepees, crowned with projecting pole-ends, and painted with figures of animals and with gaudy patterns, were set around in a great circle, and the children were playing in the open, grassy space in the center. Their fathers and mothers were as wild as any Indians, except one or two tribes, on the continent, but nothing of their savage natures showed in these merry, lively, laughing, bright-faced little ragamuffins. At their play they laughed and screamed and hallooed. Some were running foot-races, some were wrestling, some were on the backs of scampering ponies; for they are sometimes put on horseback when they are no more than three years old. Such were their sports, for Indian boys play games to make them sure of aim, certain of foot, quick in motion, and supple in body, so that they can shoot and fight and ride and hunt and run well. To be able to run fast is a necessary accomplishment for an Indian. What they call "runners" are important men in every tribe. They are the messenger men, and many a one among them has run a hundred miles in a day. They cultivate running by means of foot-races. In war they agree with the poet who sang:

"For he who fights and runs away May live to fight another day";

and afterward, if they were taken prisoners, they had a chance for life, in the old days, if they could run fast enough to escape their captors and the spears and bullets of their pursuers.

A very popular game that attracted most of the Blackfeet boys was the throwing of darts, or little white hand-arrows, along the grass. The game was to see who could throw his arrow farthest in a straight line. At times the air was full of the white missiles where the boys were playing, and they fell like rain upon the grass.

In another part of the field were some larger boys with rude bows with which to shoot these same darts. These boys were playing a favorite Blackfeet game. Each one had a disk or solid wheel of sheet-iron or lead, and the game was to see who could roll his disk the farthest, while all the others shot at it to tip it over and bring it to a stop. The boys made splendid shots at the swift-moving little wheels, and from greater distances than you would imagine.

They play with arrows so frequently that it is no wonder they are good marksmen; yet you would be surprised to see how frequently they bring down the birds, rabbits, and gophers which abound on the plains. The houses of these plump little drab-colored creatures are holes in the turf, and as you ride along the plains you will see them everywhere around, sitting up on their haunches with their tiny fore paws held idle and limp before them, and their bead-like, bright eyes looking at you most trustingly--until you come just so near, when pop! suddenly down goes little Mr. Gopher in his hole. You may be sure the Indian boys find great sport in shooting at these comical little creatures. But the boys take a mean advantage of the fact that the restless gophers cannot stay still in one place any great length of time. When one pops into a hole it is only for a minute, and during that minute the Indian boy softly and deftly arranges a snare around the hole, so that when the gopher pops up again the snare can be jerked and the animal captured.

We gave the boys in the Blackfeet camp great sport by standing at a distance of a hundred yards from all of them and offering a silver quarter to whichever boy got to us first. You should have seen the stampede that followed the signal, "Go!" Blankets were dropped, moccasins fell off, boys stumbled and others fell atop of them, their black locks flew in the breeze, and the air was noisy with yelling and laughter.

These boys spin tops, but their "top-time" is the winter, when snow is on the ground and is crusted hard. Their tops are made of lead or some other metal, and are mere little circular plates which they cover with red flannel and ornament with tiny knots or wisps of cord all around the edges. These are spun with whips and look very pretty on the icy white playgrounds. Nearly all Indian boys play ball, but not as we do, for their only idea of the game is the girlish one of pitching and catching. All their games are the simplest, and lack the rules which we lay down to make our sports difficult and exciting.

The boys of the Papago tribe in the Southwest have a game which the fellows in Harvard and Yale would form rules about, if they played it, until it became very lively indeed. These Indian boys make dumb-bells of woven buckskin or rawhide. They weave them tight and stiff, and then soak them in a sort of red mud which sticks like paint. They dry them, and then the queer toys are ready for use. To play the game they mark off goals, one for each band or "side" of players. The object of each side is to send its dumb-bells over to the goal of the enemy. The dumb-bells are tossed with sticks that are thrust under them as they lie on the ground. The perverse things will not go straight or far, and a rod is a pretty good throw for one. The sport quickly grows exciting, and the players are soon battling in a heap, almost as if they were playing at foot-ball.

These are games that will not wear out while there are Indian boys to play them. On the oldest reservations, where even the grandfathers of the Indians now alive were shut up and fed by their government, the boys still play the old games. But wherever one travels to-day, even among the wildest tribes, a new era is seen to have begun as the result of the Indian schools, and Indian boys are being taught things more useful than any they ever knew before. The brightest boys in the various tribes are selected to be sent to these schools, and it is hoped that what they learn will make all the others anxious to imitate white men's ways.

THE CHILDREN OF ZUNI

BY MARIA BRACE KIMBALL

"Little Indian, Sioux or Crow, Little frosty Eskimo, Little Turk or Japanee, Oh, don't you wish that you were me?"

SO says the well-fed, well-dressed, well-housed little Scotchman in Robert Louis Stevenson's rhyme. But I don't believe that the small Indians of Zuni would care at all to change places with the little "me" of Edinburgh or New York. In their village of mud and stone, on the sunny plains of New Mexico, they have lived for centuries in perfect contentment. Fine houses, green parks, and merry streets would be nothing to them; hats and parasols, candies and ice-cream would make them stare; and mere cleanliness would only astonish them. Indeed, if they saw us washing our faces and brushing our hair every day, they would probably one and all cry out in Zuni words:

"Oh, don't you wish that you were _me_?"

The little half-civilized children of Zuni so aroused our curiosity that we drove through forty miles of sand and sage-brush, from the railroad at Fort Wingate, to pay them a visit. As the Indians do not provide for travelers, we took our hotel with us--tents, beds, and food--and camped just outside their village. The village looks like a huge beehive made of clay and stuck fast to the top of a sandy knoll. The hive is filled with a mass of cells--three hundred single rooms, placed side by side and piled in rows one on top of another. In each of these rooms lives a Zuni family. There are no inside stairways leading from story to story, but if the boys and girls living in one row wish to pay a visit to a house above them, they must go outdoors and climb a ladder. On the slope between the village and the Zuni River are a number of small vegetable-gardens, each one inclosed by a mud wall. Zuni has no inns, no shops, no saloons, not even proper streets, but only narrow alleys that thread their way through the strange town. As we walked through the village, all the world came out to see us. Girls and boys clustered on the roofs or sat on the ovens,--queer little cones of mud which seem to grow up out of the house-tops,--while fathers, mothers, and babies peered out from dark doorways, to stare at the visitors. When we had finished our tour of the roofs and alleys, we were hospitably invited indoors; even there the children followed us, and as we glanced up to a hole in the ceiling which served as a window, a girl's laughing face filled the opening. We must have looked strange enough in our hats and gloves and long skirts.

The Zuni child spends his early days in a cradle. But a cradle in Zuni-land does not mean down pillows, silken coverlets, and fluffy laces; it is only a flat board, just the length of the baby, with a hood like a doll's buggy-top over the head. Upon this hard bed the baby is bound like a mummy--the coverings wound round and round him until the little fellow cannot move except to open his mouth and eyes. Sometimes he is unrolled, and looks out into the bare whitewashed room, blinks at the fire burning on the hearth, and fixes his eyes earnestly on the wolf and cougar skins that serve as chairs and beds and carpets in the Zuni home.

By the time he is two or three years old, he has grown into a plump little bronze creature, with the straightest of coarse black hair and the biggest and roundest of black eyes. He is now out of the cradle, and trots about the house and the village. When the weather is bad he wears a small coarse shirt, and always a necklace of beads or turquoise.

As he grows older, he adds a pair of loose cotton trousers to his costume, and, if anything more is needed to keep him warm, he girds on his blanket, just as his forefathers have done in all the three hundred years since white men first knew the Zunis. His long hair, either flying loosely in the wind or tied back with a band of some red stuff, serves him both as hair and as hat.

His little sister, however, has a more elaborate dress. Her mama weaves it for her, as she does her own, in a rude loom. She makes two square blankets of black cotton, finishes them neatly across top and bottom, sews them together at the sides with red yarn, and the dress is ready to try on. It always fits perfectly, as the part which forms the skirt is simply held in place by a sash, and the waist is made by drawing two corners of the blankets up over the left shoulder. The sash, woven in gay colors, is also the work of Mama Zuni. A long, narrow piece of cotton cloth is draped from the other shoulder, and swings easily about, serving as pocket, shawl, or pinafore. In cold weather, moccasins, leggings, and blankets are also worn. These articles, too, are made at home. While the mother is the dressmaker and tailor, the father is the family shoemaker. A few of the Zuni girls have dresses like those of American girls. These clothes have come to them through the mission-school which adjoins the village.

The Zunis have a language of their own--no very easy one for boys and girls to learn, judging from its many-syllabled, harsh-sounding words. They also speak a little Spanish, as does nearly everybody in New Mexico.

The little Zunis amuse themselves with running, wrestling, jumping, and playing at grown folks, just as civilized children do. They have their bows and arrows, their rag-dolls,--strapped like real babies to cradles,--and their shinny sticks and balls. The children also make themselves useful at home. The older girls take care of their younger brothers and sisters, and the boys tend the goats. There are large herds of goats belonging to the village, and they must be taken every morning to graze on the plain, and brought home at night to be shut up in the corrals, or folds, safe from prowling wolves.

The little children often go with their mothers to draw water from the village well, about a hundred yards from the houses. At the top of a flight of stone steps they wait, playing about in the sand, while their mothers go down to the spring. There the women fill the jars, then, poising them on their heads, climb the hill and mount the ladders to their homes. As all the water used by the village has to be brought to it in these _ollas_ (water-jars), carried on the women's heads, it is not surprising that the boys' clothes are grimy and the girls have apparently never known what it is to wash their faces.

The _ollas_, which answer the purpose of family china and of kitchen-ware, are made by the Zuni women from the clay of the river-bank. The wet earth is shaped by hand into jars of all sorts and sizes; the jars are then painted with gay colors, in queer patterns, and burned. It is a pretty sight, of an evening, to see the fires of the kilns dotted all over the terraces of the village. Each piece of pottery is shut up inside a little wall of chips, which are set on fire; when the chips are burned up, the article is baked and ready for use. The Zuni mamas make not only the jars for family use, but also clay toys for the children, curious rattles, dolls' moccasins, owls, eagles, horses, and other childish treasures.