Part 13

“There should be three children in this house,” one would say.

There were never any children in sight. The long, narrow, principal room would seem to have no doors leading from it. Racks of corn, carefully piled, and blankets and folded skins lined the walls. The employees, having assisted in such matters before, began lifting down these blankets and piled furnishings, to reveal usually a small door, and beyond this door would loom the blackness of a corn-cellar. The flashlight showed more corn racked up, melons in piles, and filled sacks; but no children. I would scramble through the little trap to make a closer investigation, recalling how Judge Hooker had walled up his brood, years before, when the Hopi of the First Mesa protested against education.

In the first of these places there was no room for hiding between the sacks, and when I moved against them I could feel the corn they held. I prepared to leave the place, and was at the opening, when I heard a sigh, as if someone had long held his breath and could hold it no longer. Back I went. No one among the melons, nor behind the racked corn. I began moving the sacks. Three were filled with corn on the cob; the fourth—my hand grasped the top of a Hopi head. It was like the jars of wine and the hidden thieves.

From the sacks we delivered the three children of that household.

When they appeared in the main room, laughing, the father caught them in his arms; and when they were taken from him, the mother proceeded to play the same trick. It was easy to break his hold on them, but not so easy to handle a woman without giving grounds for complaint as to rough usage—a charge the Hopi like to make. But those three children went into the street, notwithstanding all this hokum, and other employees took them before the physicians. There were three doctors present, the Army surgeon and two physicians of the Indian Service. Each child received a thorough examination, and only those fit and above the age of ten years were taken from the village.

I do not know how many houses there are in Hotevilla, but I crawled into every filthy nook and hole of the place, most of them blind traps, half-underground. And I discovered Hopi children in all sorts of hiding-places, and through their fright found them in various conditions of cleanliness. It was not an agreeable job; not the sort of work that a sentimentalist would care for.

In but one instance was real trouble threatened. On coming from one cellar, I found the head of the house sitting in the centre of his castle with an axe at his feet. He protested against the removal of the children, and grasped the axe as if to use it. The men with me promptly removed the implement, and threw him into a corner.

By midday the wagons had trundled away from Hotevilla with fifty-one girls and eighteen boys. Our survey of the place in July had warranted an estimate of one hundred and fifty pupils, but in the five months that had elapsed an epidemic of measles and its terrible aftermath of bronchial pneumonia had swept the town.

“Where are the others?” the interpreter asked of a villager.

“Dead,” he replied, solemnly.

So much for expediency and Departmental delay.

Of those taken, nearly all had trachoma. It was winter, and not one of those children had clothing above rags; some were nude. During the journey of forty-five miles to the Agency many ragged garments went to pieces; the blankets provided became very necessary as wrappings before the children reached their destination. It was too late to attempt the whole distance that afternoon, so the outfit went into camp at the Oraibi day-school, where a generous meal was provided, and the next day their travel was completed.

Across the great Oraibi Valley was the pueblo of Chimopovi, perched on the highest of the mesa cliffs. And this place had a suburb, dominated by one Sackaletztewa, a direct descendant of the gentleman who had founded the original Hopi settlement after their emerging from the Underworld. Sackaletztewa was as orthodox as old Youkeoma, and it was his following that had given battle to a former Agent and his Navajo police. I proposed to Colonel Scott that Chimopovi should be visited.

“Take the troop to-morrow morning, and finish it up yourself.”

So next day the same scene was enacted. It was a short job, only three children being found; but here occurred something like resistance. All the protestants congregated in the house of Sackaletztewa. When I entered, a man opened a little cupboard of the wall and produced a packet of papers. They were offered to me as documents of great value. And they were strange documents—letters from people of the country who had read in newspapers of Youkeoma’s visit to Washington, and his defiance of the Government. I suppose such persons have nothing better to do, and write letters of sympathy to the members of every Indian delegation that parades itself eastward in feathers and war-paint to present a fancied grievance. I recall the words of one of these papers, from some weak-minded woman:—

Chief Youkeoma: you are a noble man. Do not let the Government have your children. Their schools are not the place for your Indian lads who know only the hunt and the open spaces. Resist to the last gasp. Die rather than submit.

Very like, she is now writing scenarios. Of course this correspondent had read Fenimore Cooper, and was filled to the neck with the storybook idea of Indians—lithe, clean, untouched by disease, and painted by romance. The Southwest has no such Indians; and Indians, whether lithe or not, are seldom clean and never romantic. She knew nothing of filth and trachoma and child-prostitution, while the Hopi had brought such things to a fine degree of perfection. And she lived in Indiana.

Now there is a wide difference between demanding the rights of Indians, rights that should be sacred under agreements,—and perhaps foreign treaties, such as those of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico,—and inciting them to warfare and rebellion when teachers and physicians are striving to recover them from ignorance and disease. There is a vast difference between the argument that a title confirmed by three sovereign Governments be not attacked for the sake of political loot—as in the case of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico—and denouncing the educational system of the United States and advising a group of benighted savages to kill in a distant and lonely desert. That writer from Indiana should have been a field matron for a little!

I have no sympathy with this type of sentimentalist. I deported some of them from the Hopi desert country when they appeared with their box of theoretical tricks.

I handed back the documents, and asked where the children were. Accompanied by my Tewa policeman, I entered a small room off the main house and found these three mentioned surrounded by relatives. The room filled up to its capacity and a harangue began. At Hotevilla we had not listened to argument, but here I thought it best to placate them, to explain things, rather more in line with the moral-suasion programme outlined from Washington. All talk led to one definite answer, growing sullenly louder and louder: “You cannot take the children.”

We had to make an end. When I proceeded to lift one from the floor, in a twinkle two lusty Indians were at my throat. The Tewa (Indian police) came to my assistance, his face expanding in a cheerful grin as he recognized the opportunity of battle, and three or four others draped themselves around his form. The sound of the struggle did not at once get outside. The Tewa began to thresh out with his arms and let his voice be heard. An employee peered inside and set up a shout. Then in plunged several very earnest fellows in uniform, and out went the protestants, scrambling, dragging, and hitting the door jambs. The Tewa followed to see that these things were properly managed, he being the local and ranking officer in such affairs. I remained behind to counsel against this attitude, but did not remain long enough, for on going outside the house I spoiled a little comedy.

Sackaletztewa, the head man, a sinewy fellow of about fifty years, when unceremoniously booted forth, had challenged the Tewa policeman to mortal combat. He declaimed that no Indian policeman could whip him. The soldiers had greeted this as the first worthy incident of a very dull campaign.

“You have on a Washington uniform and wear guns,” said Sackaletztewa, “but without them you are not a match for me. If you did not have those things, I would show you how a real Hopi fights.”

Now this Tewa always rejoiced in a chance for battle. The fact that no one at Hotevilla had been arrested had filled him with gloom. Unbuckling his belt and guns, he handed them to the nearest trooper; then he promptly shucked himself out of his uniform. Twenty or thirty of the soldiers made a ring, their rifles extended from hand to hand, and into this arena Nelson was conducting Sackaletztewa for the beating of his life. It was a pity to issue an injunction. If I had remained only five minutes longer in the house, those patient soldiers would have had something for their pains, and the grudge of the Indian police, who had suffered in esteem at Chimopovi five years earlier, would have been wiped from the slate.

Sackaletztewa was a good man physically; he had courage; but he was a Hopi, and knew nothing of striking blows with his fists. He would have relied on the ancient grapple method of combat, and the proficient art of scalp-tearing. Perhaps he would have tried to jerk Nelson’s ears off by dragging at his turquoise earrings. He would have scratched and gouged, and, if fortunate enough to get a twist in the neckerchief, would have choked his man to a finish. All this is permitted by the desert Indian rules of the game. But unless Nelson had been tied to a post, he would have accomplished none of these things; for the first rush would have carried him against a terrific right smash, accompanied by a wicked left hook. Behind these two taps would have lunged one hundred and sixty pounds of pure muscle. And a very bewildered Hopi would have spent the remainder of the day holding a damaged head, and wondering how he would manage a flint-corn diet without his teeth.

That night, blaming myself for the necessary interference, I joined Colonel Scott at the Agency.

Now you will please not strive to conjure up a harrowing scene of terrified children, removed from their parents, lonely and unconsoled. They were not babies. They were nude, and hungry, and covered with vermin, and most of them afflicted with trachoma, a very unpleasant and messy disease. Some of them had attended this Cañon school in the past, that time before their parents’ last defiance, and they knew what was in store for them—baths, good food, warm clothing, clean beds and blankets, entertainment and music, the care of kindly people. There would be no more packing of firewood and water up steep mesa-trails, and living for weeks at a time on flint corn, beans, and decaying melons. There would be meat,—not cut from hapless burros,—and excellent bread of wheat flour, gingerbread even; and toys and candy at that wonderful time the Bohannas call Christmas. There would be games for both boys and girls, and no one at this school would interfere with their innocent Indian pleasures. Their parents would visit them, and bring piki bread—and the parents very promptly availed themselves of the privilege.

So there was nothing of exile or punishment involved in this matter; and if you have any true regard for childhood and defenceless children, there will be seen a great deal of protection and happiness in it. I fancy that many of the girls—especially those who had reached that age when the maternal uncles, the ogres of the family, assign them in marriage and as the old men pleased—had been counting the days since the first news of the troop’s coming.

It was a busy time for the corps of school employees when the wagons arrived. Seventy-two children had to be recovered from the dirt and vermin that had accumulated during their long holiday. The less said about this the better; but I would have been amused to see the critics at the job of hair-cutting!

Those children spent four years at the Cañon school, and without vacations. When the school departments were closed in 1915, because certain buildings showed weaknesses and I feared their collapse, the Hotevilla children, having reached eighteen years, might decide for themselves whether or not they wished further education. With few exceptions, they elected to attend the Phœnix Indian school. They had no wish to visit Hotevilla, and very frankly told me so. To illustrate their standpoint, Youkeoma’s granddaughter, an orphan, was not of age so to elect. She feared that I would consult the old man about the matter, and she knew that he would insist upon her return to the pueblo life. So she secreted herself in one of the wagons that would carry the older pupils to the railroad, and went away without my knowledge.

I had advised against the immediate recall of the troop of soldiers, and had expected that a sergeant’s squad would remain for some months to return runaways and to preserve discipline among those who might risk the power of my army of three policemen. It was not improbable that a band of Hotevillans would come to the Cañon to demand their children, once the soldiers were withdrawn. They had staged this play before, and in 1913 certain Navajo did not hesitate to make off with pupils. But trouble on the Border called. It was then I sought the Colonel’s counsel. For a time he evaded a direct statement of his views, but I was insistent, and he said:—

“I would never permit an Indian to remove his child from the school against my orders to the contrary. They would find me sitting on the dormitory steps. Other methods of prevention you must devise for yourself.”

He concluded with the words I have quoted before: “Young man! you have an empire to control. Either rule it, or pack your trunk.”

Very early the next morning the troop departed. There was a light fall of snow, to be followed by more and more, until the stark Cañon cliffs were frozen and white in the drifts. The little campaign in the hills had closed just in time.

Twice thereafter Colonel Scott, accompanied by the cavalry, came to the Desert; once to pacify the truculent Navajo at Beautiful Mountain, after they had threatened the San Juan Agency at Shiprock, New Mexico, and once to quiet the Ute on our northern borders. But the Moqui Reservation was left entirely to my ruling. The Department read the Colonel’s report through a reducing glass, and gave me eight policemen instead of the twenty he advised. With these and a few determined employees I contrived to have peace and order within the Hopi-Navajo country—not always easily or pleasantly, but without actual war. And I did not pack the proverbial trunk until the latter part of 1919, eight years later, when ordered to take charge of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico.

XV

AN ECHO OF THE DAWN-MEN

“According to the law of the Medes and Persians.” —Daniel, vi, 12

The sending of a small army to one’s home, and the imposing of rigid Governmental regulations, would seem to be sufficient to give any rebel pause. But not so Youkeoma. He stood faithfully by the traditions; and unfortunately for him, the traditions obstructed or became entangled with everything that a white official proposed for the best interests of his community. No doubt the old man had been amazed, and I think somewhat disappointed, when he was not sent away as a prisoner. He could have made capital of another entry in an already lengthy record as a political martyr. But he did not propose to soften in consideration of this amnesty. He very likely thought it an exhibition of the white man’s weakness, and gave his ancient oracles the credit.

Nothing was heard of him until the next early summer, when came time for the dipping of sheep on the range. The Hotevilla flocks were the poorest of all the Hopi stock, which is saying a good deal, since the Hopi is a disgraceful shepherd at any pueblo. But whatever their condition, the head man of Hotevilla did not intend to recognize the sanitary live-stock regulations issued by the peculiar Bohannas. They paid no attention to the Indian crier who announced the order, and they did not move their sheep toward the vats. It was necessary to send police, hire herders, drive the animals to the dip about twenty-five miles from their village, and return them to the sullen owners. Naturally, in such a movement, there are losses. Youkeoma came to the Agency, at the head of a delegation, to file protest against this action and to present claims for damages. He came modestly clad in one garment, a union suit, and without other indication of his rank.

During the hearing a few of the Hotevilla children came in to greet their relatives. It was a satisfied little group of clean and well-fed youngsters, having no resemblance to the filthy, trachomatous urchins we had gathered at the pueblo.

“Your people’s children are happy here,” said a clerk.

Youkeoma looked at the girls in their fresh frocks, and noticed their well-dressed hair, which had not been weeded with a Hopi broom.

“They should be dirty like the sheep,” he answered, “as dirty as I am. That is the old Hopi way.”

His claims for damage were disallowed, and for much angry disputing he spent a few days in the jail; then, very much to my surprise, he promised that he would not counsel resistance to future Governmental orders.

“I will attend to my affairs hereafter,” he agreed. “For myself, I do not promise to obey Washington; but the people may choose for themselves which way to go—with me, or with Washington.”

This was all that was asked of him, and he departed.

A year passed without incident. When the pupils were not returned in vacation time, the parents filed regular complaints. They very truthfully admitted that, were their requests granted, they had no intention of permitting the children to return, so it seemed best to deny them.

And now the other children of the village were growing up. At the time of the first gathering, only those above ten years of age were taken; and given a few years among the Hopi, without epidemic, children spring up and expand like weeds. A census was taken, not without acrid dispute and a few blows, which showed that the pueblo held about one hundred children of age to attend primary grades. So I proposed to build a complete school-plant close to their homes. This was another terrible blow to the traditions.

When selecting a site, great care was taken not to appropriate tillable land or to invade fields. The school stands on a rock-ledge. For a water-supply it was necessary to develop an old spring, one that the Hopi had long since abandoned and lost. It is the only Hopi school on the top of a mesa, and the children do not have to use dangerous trails.

The villagers watched us very suspiciously as we surveyed the lines for seven buildings, and they respected the flags marking the site-limits. But when materials and workmen arrived, and the buildings began to go up, they uttered a violent protest.

“We do not wish to see a white man’s roof from our pueblo!”

They declared that all such buildings would be burned. Guards were necessary whenever the workmen left the camp. The school was built, however, and the smaller children rounded up and into it. Two dozen men managed what had required a troop of cavalry; but do not think that we approached it in a spirit of indifference. The town held about one hundred husky men, and one never knew what might happen. Once again I had to crawl through the corn-cellars of the place.

The old Chief was not to the front, and his body-guard of elders was conspicuous by its absence. Great credit was given them for keeping their word. I flattered myself that the contentious Hopi spirit and the backbone of rebellion had cracked together. But he was simply waiting for a more propitious date, in strict accord with prophecy, perhaps. The fire in the kiva had not burned with a flame of promise; the cornmeal had not fallen in a certain sign; the auguries were not auspicious. A little later and these things must have strengthened him, for one night he appeared at the door of the field matron’s quarters, accompanied by his cohort, the whole band evidencing an angry mood.

“It is time,” he said, wrathfully. “You have been here long enough. We will not drive you away to-night, but in the morning do not let us find you here. There will be trouble, and we may have to cut off your head.”

The field matron was alarmed, but she did not leave as directed. She waited until they had gone away, and then slipped across the half-cleared desert space to the school principal’s home. He promptly saddled a horse and came into the Agency that night. There were no telephones across the Desert then. Next day he returned with definite instructions.

It is not wise to permit Indians of an isolated place to indulge themselves in temper of this kind. One bluff succeeds another, until finally a mistake in handling causes a flare-up that is not easy to control, and one is not thanked in Washington for fiascos. I have pointed out how quickly Washington moves itself to aid when there is revolt.

A capable field-matron or field-nurse is a good angel among such people. She supplements daily the work of the visiting physician, dispensing simple remedies according to his direction; she is foster-mother to the little children of the camps and to the girls who return from the schools. All social ills have her attention. She maintains a bathhouse and laundry for the village people, and a sewing-room for the women. In times of epidemic, these field matrons perform extraordinary labors, and have been like soldiers when facing contagious disease. With one other, Miss Mary Y. Rodger at the First Mesa, Miss Abbott of Hotevilla ranked as the best in the Service; and having ordered her to remain on that station, I determined that she should live at the pueblo of Hotevilla in peace, if every one of the ten-thousand sacred traditions reaching straight back to the Underworld went by the board.

It is necessary first to catch your rabbit.

Whenever wanted and diligently sought for, Youkeoma was somewhere else, and an unknown somewhere. While it was said that he and the other old men spent their time in the kivas, I had failed to find them there. Like the coyote that scents gun-oil, he smelt business from afar; and this time it was business, and I wanted him.

Summoning the Indian police, I dispatched them under two white officers to attend a Navajo dance in a distant cañon, forty miles east of the Agency. Hotevilla was directly west from the Agency and about the same distance removed. Having placed eighty miles between my police and the scene of action, I informed my office force that I intended visiting the railroad town on business. This would take me eighty miles to the south. Others of the white men were sent to work at different range points. No one suspected a Hotevilla mission. We went our several ways.