Part 24

There were three of us—a Tewa policeman, the big stockman, and myself. We found the camp a short distance off the main road to Gallup, back in the trees. It held several women, four or five young fellows who promptly departed, and one large, heavy-set man who looked twenty-five years in age, and who was perhaps thirty-five. The Navajo men do not show their true ages until long past thirty. It is difficult to gauge their years until the lines begin to set in their faces.

Among the women I recognized a duplicate of the Cañon weaver. Assuming that this was the person who knew something of the robbery, I began to question her, using the policeman as interpreter. The Tewa Indians usually speak three languages: their own and Hopi and Navajo. The big fellow at the fire pricked up his ears. He feared that she would tell of the beating, for she was the sister who had been beaten; and lo, here she was being questioned concerning the blankets he had removed from the trading-post. I have no doubt that this caused him great uneasiness, and soon he began to evidence his disapproval of my questions, claiming that the woman knew nothing about the affair of the robbery. Several times he interrupted, asking: “Why you want to know that?”

I had no intention of disturbing this sullen fellow, but when he interrupted again, I told him to hold his peace. I turned to the old woman of the outfit.

“Do you know where Hoske Nehol Gode is?”

Neither she nor any one of them knew. The man at the fire sneered and seemed amused. I suspected that he would know something.

“What is your name?” I asked him.

Of the two evils, he chose the one he thought I knew less about.

“Guy,” he said.

Now did I not want Guy for burglary, although I had not been seeking him? This was too good an opportunity to be missed.

“Well, I have been looking for you, Guy,” I told him. “You will go back to the Agency with us.”

The resistance of an Indian is always negative. He stood up, and started to move off, out of the camp. I therefore of necessity had to move out of the camp with him, for I had him by the shirt-collar. This fellow must have weighed two hundred pounds of well-knit muscle, and he was in perfect fighting trim from roping and handling and riding rough ponies, and generally leading an Indian’s life in the open. At my best Arizona weight, aside from determination and official authority, I tipped the beam at one hundred and eighteen pounds. He walked off with me just as a range bull would depart with a sixteen-pound Boston terrier hanging to his muzzle.

The Indian police are always slow to come into action, so Guy had carried me about fifteen yards before the Tewa added his handicap by pinioning the Navajo’s arms from behind. To rid one’s self of an opponent like that, it is necessary to toss him completely over one’s head; and this the Navajo desperately endeavored to do; but the Tewa held to him tenaciously and between us Guy—alias Hoske Nehol Gode—was seriously inconvenienced. He stopped moving out of the camp, and began to plough up dirt in circles, viciously seeking to rid himself of the policeman, who, like an Old Man of the Sea, perched between his shoulder blades. Then the stockman, who had been at the car, arrived to assist; and once they had him well fastened, I drew a pair of handcuffs from my pocket, and slung one of them across Guy’s wrist. It locked down, but he objected to our arranging the other cuff where it belonged. In the meantime, however, he was not standing still. The four of us were slipping, side-stepping, puffing, and straining about. The Tewa did not dare loose his hold of the Navajo’s arms, and his elbow grip prevented us from forcing his wrists together. Officers in a different service would have adopted different methods; but we were of the Indian Service, and had probably followed the wrong course as it was. We should have reasoned with him, and recited a bedtime story.

Now, in this melee, Guy secured a nice twisting grip on my thumb; and I received instant notice that he meant to wrench that thumb off my hand.

“Break his hold, quick!” I called out.

Promptly from the stockman’s belt swung a forty-five, and smash, down it came across Guy’s hand. And very promptly too he released his hold.

Until this time there had been no sound from him, other than his gasping breath and the noise of struggle. At the blow, he raised a call for help and, like an infuriated animal, he threshed about and threw us with him. The dust arose and the chips that carpet a camp flew. The Tewa swung from side to side; but the Tewa did not let him go.

There was a noise in the fringe of little cedars around us, and several Navajo appeared. And they advanced. And just then the stockman dropped his gun.

It fell in the dirt under our feet, and down swung this wild bull of the pampas, the Tewa balancing between his shoulders, to reach the weapon. One moment Guy’s feet were on the gun, holding it down, and next the stockman’s foot would scuffle to scrape it aside. With the stockman bent down for it, the Navajo would be clawing at his neck or kicking at his face. It was a furious scramble, and if he ever reached that automatic gun it was ready to explode.

The sight of the gun, too, seemed to anger and justify those others who had come up. It seemed probable to me that someone of the party would be hurt, and I preferred it to be a Navajo. So I stepped back out of the fuss, drew my gun, and warned those newcomers to keep their distance. They halted at the camp’s edge.

“Why don’t you smash that animal?” I called.

The haymaker that Hoske Nehol Gode then received in the face would have staggered Dempsey. It straightened him up, but very much to my surprise, it did not fell him. The shock, however, caused him to reel off the gun, and promptly the stockman recovered it.

“Knock him down the next time.”

And smash went the forty-five over Guy’s head. But he did not drop. A Navajo of the back-country dresses his hair in a thick mattress across his scalp. Blood began to stream down his face. He let out a wild cry that he was being killed, a call for the women to help him. The night before they had sent a messenger for protection from this bully; but now they responded to his aid. They came forward, ready to claw us; and just what was the ethical thing to do then, I am not prepared to state.

“Turn him loose!” I called to the policeman.

“He may have a gun!” said the stockman.

“Then we will have to shoot him,” I said; “Turn him loose.”

The Tewa released his hold, and Guy, wearing one bracelet, made a rush out of the camp. He wanted no more of fighting, but it was evident that the place was unhealthy for us. We could hear him crashing through the brush, while we proceeded to the car. The women followed to the edge of the timber and shrilled their threats. It was probable that Guy would find a weapon; so we lost no time in vacating that section of the Desert.

Later in the day the leader of the clan came to see me.

“I have told Guy,” he said, “to make no more trouble.”

“You may return and tell him something more than that,” I replied. “Tell him to be very careful not to enter this cañon, for I mean to kill him if he does.”

That was the last I saw of Guy for several years. He kept to the back-country, after his hand and head had healed, and avoided the Agency. He filed off the handcuff. Navajo are expert at that. He was not prosecuted for beating the women, nor for the burglary. You see, three days after this affair I asked the United States District Attorney for an indictment on these charges, and a bench warrant was promised to assure his arrest by the United States Marshal. The Marshal asked me what success he might expect to have in procuring this belligerent, and I related our experience.

“He is one of a gang, and it may be necessary to arrest several of those fellows. I wouldn’t come alone. Of course, you may deputize some of my employees, but they do not care for that work. And if you ask me the easiest and most effective way to serve those warrants, I would say with a squad of uniformed men from Fort Apache. They were playing ball in Holbrook when I passed through. The Navajo bad-man respects a soldier, and he doesn’t respect anything else. He will not be awed by your badge of office. He doesn’t know what it means.”

Evidently the Marshal transmitted my suggestion to his superiors at Washington, for at once, by telegraph, I was challenged by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who demanded an explanation of my call for troops! The United States Marshal never appeared on the reservation. Guy and his assistant thieves and bullies are still at large, and I suppose they beat women and loot stores whenever the spirit moves them.

XXVI

HOPI ANNALS

But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women, and Love and Fate, according to the measure of my ability.

—Kipling to Gobind

The Hopi people are bound up in clanships, rituals, and ceremonies. Herbert E. Gregory, in his remarkable volume of statistics, entitled The Navajo Country, has this to say of them:—

These people have maintained themselves and preserved their race from extinction in a singularly unfriendly environment. With incredible skill they have practised the art of conservation of water, and that the mind of the race is intent on this one problem is shown by the organization of the clans and the elaborate ceremonies devised to enlist the coöperation of unseen Powers which are believed to control the rainfall. Endless toil and endless prayer, both directed to increase and to preserve the precious water, constitute the life of the Hopi.

We find in their desert cairns of rock something different from an ordinary monument to mark land or to point a road, having in them special gifts of feathers or painted sticks. That certain clans may never be without the feathers of the eagle, these birds are captured young and reared in cages or at the ends of chains on the housetops. A curious sight to see: a captive eagle, baleful of eye, morose, sullen, posed at the edge of a roof, a brooding, vicious prisoner with beak and talons like razors, a dangerous thing to approach carelessly. These birds must be reared unharmed, therefore the nests are robbed of the young. A wounded or crippled sacrifice will not be accepted; for, aside from being the source of feathers, it is said that eagles are smothered to death in certain ceremonies.

In distant places, the far-away headlands of the Butte country and the sky-drifting mountains, it is said the Hopi have altars. There is one, a young Hopi told me, atop “Sist-ter-vung-ter-we,” or “one that is farthest west,” in the long line of volcanic piles bordering their southern boundary. And once I received a handful of round, painted sticks, a miniature faggot, from the distant Apache Reservation, with an inquiry from that Agent as to their meaning.

“Yes,” said a Hopi, “they are from the Rain altar down there. The Hopi go to those places at times. I have no doubt you could find some in the San Francisco Mountains, if you knew where to look.”

Prayer-sticks, tied in little bundles, offered to the gods. And reflect for a moment. The Apache was an enemy, a most bitter and sinister enemy. The most southerly and westerly ruins of Hopi civilization are to be found along the Rio del Lino, or Flax River, as the Little Colorado was named by the Spanish. Their dawn settlements are far to the north, in hidden cañons close to the Utah line; and it is not likely that their eastern pueblos, those of the Hopi proper, were ever beyond the upper reaches of the Jedito Wash country. But these prayer-sticks are found far beyond those limits. They suggest religious pilgrimages into enemy provinces. Perhaps the early Hopi accepted even this dangerous means of placating his deities. Primitive knowledge would have located the sources of rain in the western range, where the San Francisco peaks lift their snow-capped heads, and in the White Mountains of the Apache country. The Navajo fastened his legends to that highest desert elevation, Navajo Mountain, and it is not likely the Hopi ventured there. But his Rain gods, those powerful to relieve the aridity of his country and ensure against famine, dwelt in mountains somewhere, and therefore, trembling perhaps, muttering incantations, he went to them.

Anything that is strange, and possibly potent, has been absorbed into their embroidered religion. The clans like to procure colored glass. They make much of tortoise shells, and other things speaking of the sea. President Roosevelt was petitioned by them to forward a jar of sea-water. They have—or had—a Parrot clan, a fantastic touch reminiscent of some lonely friar who had a mission garden and in it kept his pets.

Close to their homes are many shrines that excite the curiosity of tourists and that sometimes get visitors into trouble. Once a couple of the overly curious were thrashed with whips by Hopi of the Chimopovi district—for which the guilty were severely punished by the Agent then in charge. But more than one Agent has ordered busybodies to replace bahoos and gifts taken from such places. While I had a hand in this, and finally stopped the plundering of old graves, and once prevented the sale and removal of an entire Hopi altar, still I must admit that I never caught a tourist or a “scratcher” pillaging a newly made grave.

Most of the clans must have been intermingled in so small a population. We have Youkeoma’s statement that there is a Ghost clan, subdivided into a Ghost-and-Bird clan. A more intelligent member of the tribe once endeavored to recall for me the numerous fraternities of his people. He said: “The Sun, Salt, Crow, and Ant clans are dead. There are no more of those people. The Parrot clan now has but one member, a woman. The Bear clan is the largest, and next come the Sand and Snake clans. There are the Spider and Evergreen clans. Some of them go in groups, so we have the Bear, Spider, and Evergreen clans associated, as is the Rabbit clan with the Tobacco clan. We have the Eagle, the Horn, the Fire, and the Flute clan; the Antelope, the Lizard, and the Corn clan.” And when that group of progressive head-men petitioned Washington in 1886 for a school, they signed themselves as leaders of the Mountain-sheep clan, the Coyote and Badger clans, the Rain, the Reed, and the Katchina clans. But one of these men is living to-day—Honani, of Chimopovi, always one of the friendlies. The most interesting and impressive of them, Shupula, father of the chief Snake priest, died July 4, 1916, a benign old man whose features are preserved in a splendid piece of modeling by Mr. Emri Kopte, the sculptor who has lived for many years among the Hopi Indians.

Next to these phases of his religion are the red pages of his life-calendar. The Hopi is born to a heritage of toil in an unfriendly environment, and perhaps to misunderstanding and small sympathy; but the poetry of his life begins at once. The paternal grandmother acts as his nurse. After bathing the child she anoints it with wood ashes, that he may have a smooth body. The mother is supposed not to let the sun shine on her for the period of twenty days, at the end of which time the child is named. Only the women of the husband’s family are present at this ceremony. They bring a blanket of Hopi weave, and a bowl of sacred water to place before the mother. They wash her hair with this water. Each of these godmothers brings an ear of corn as an offering. They dip the corn in the water and stroke the head of the infant four times, making at the same time a wish for its health and happiness. Each of them suggests a name. The child will belong to the mother’s clan, but will be named for something denoting the father’s clan. If the father happens to be a member of the Sand clan, his children will be named for things common to the desert sand.

On the twenty-first day after the birth these women have assembled and washed the mother’s hair. This is before sunrise: they are a dawn-loving people. Then the grandmother takes the infant in one arm and the mother by the hand. Imagine that little ceremony upon the craggy mesa-top in the gray chill of the desert morning, high in the thin air, overlooking all the dim sleeping valleys. They step to the mesa edge to view the rising sun. Sacred meal, mixed with corn-pollen, is strewn on the air. Then, as that mellow light flames the farthest east, radiating from the hearts of all the people, gilding Yucca Point and the Terrace of the Winds, plashing warmly the cold walls of the mesa fortress, the grandmother speaks the name she has selected from those suggested for the child.

If the child be a girl, she will receive another name on reaching maturity, when her hair will be washed and arranged in the symbolic whorls as a sign of womanhood. If a boy, he will receive another name at a certain ceremony entitling him to wear a mask and to dance. These names then last through life.

One can understand from this little baptismal scene how my friend of the Second Mesa, Ta-las-we-huma, got his name. It must have been a beautiful sunrise, and the little fellow must have been well-favored in the sight of his sponsors; for his name may be translated, “Glow of the Rising Sun.”

The Hopi do not name their children with the frank vulgarity that so often is found among the Navajo and other tribes. Many of their titles are pure poetry. We have Lo-may-ump-tewa—something Going Straight and Good, as an arrow—and Se-you-ma—one who Carries a Flower. Then there are many names such as we commonly associate with Indians: Sah-mee or Green Corn, and Qua-ku-ku, or Eagle Claws.

The Hopi maiden is most frequently given a tender name, and she is often a pretty little thing deserving it. We find Tawa-mana, or Girl of the Sun, and Pole-mana and Pole-see, meaning Butterfly Girl and Butterfly Flowers (buttercups).

They are equally tasteful in naming places. I have already mentioned Huh-kwat-we, the Terrace of the Winds. Of their closer and more intimate places we find Ta-wah-pah Spring, the Spring of the Sun, at one time a most precious waterhole, however roiled and muddy. And Pah-lots-quabbie, the “place where we get red paint for the face,” a point of particular interest to the women who wish to preserve their complexions. Despite their copper-colored skins, the intense rays of the desert sunlight cause them to take measures for protection. Much of Indian face-painting is cosmetic, and not for the brilliant color-scheme that a tourist connects with war-parties and potential scalpings.

Many of their names are difficult to translate in a word or two, since they most often describe things fully. The desert Indian is not a word-maker, and for unfamiliar objects he does not create nouns. There is Dah-vuph-cho-mah: this spot white men call the Hill of the Water-Witch, for it is where the Water Development chief has his home, shops, and office. He calls it a “camp.” Camp or not, it is a haven of welcome for rare souls, including itinerant artists, poets, and depressed Indian Agents. A disappointed candidate for the much-coveted mayoralty of Polacca, probably actuated by bitterness, once dubbed this prominence Pisgah. The Hopi named it, long before the mystery of well-rigs and peach-tree wands was known, Dah-vuph-cho-mah: “the place where we dry rabbit-skins for the quilts.” Quite simple, is it not?

The Hopi once made many robes of rabbit-skins. It was necessary to bury the pelts in the sand before removal to the mesa-top, a ceremonial matter; and Dah-vuph-cho-mah was the place to do it. The skins were then rolled into ropes, thick and soft, and sewed together. I last saw these coverings at Hotevilla, where so many traditions are preserved.

And this suggests the methods of rabbit-hunting. The Hopi does not seek bunny with .22 rifle, or bow and arrow, or snares. Actually he drops the swift creature with the Hopi rabbit-stick or boomerang, a curved piece of mountain-oak that these Indians throw skillfully. But the answer to the inquiring tourist is—“He runs the rabbit down.” The Hopi are fleet of foot, and of course our touring friend devours this explanation literally. Hopi rabbit-hunts are joyous community-affairs, and they do run the rabbit down. They encircle a very large area of desert valley, all runners, all bearing rabbit-sticks. Then they begin contracting the circle. As the rabbits flee before one advancing line of beaters, they are turned back by other lines. From every bush, it seems, Hopi are bobbing up, with menacing blows and wild cries. The game is thus run down and killed when tiring. Patient burros bear home the spoils. I have seen these beasts covered with dead rabbits, while afar in the plain still arose the merry shouts of the running hunters.

The language of the Tewa is composed of shorter terms.

“What do you call these?” I asked, showing some local beans.

“We call them ‘tdo.’”

“What does that mean?”

“It means ‘beans.’ When a Tewa means beans, he says ‘beans.’ But when a Hopi speaks of these, he says: ‘Kotcha-cha-chi-morzree,’ ‘the beans that are soft when boiled a long time.’” So he described them first, when experimenting with their cooking, and he has never seen fit to shorten his nomenclature.

Compared with the stalwart Sioux or the equally tall and vigorous Navajo of the mountains, men of the horses, the Hopi are at first glance a little people. This has brought them some sympathy from those who seize on superficial appearances. The mature Hopi has a thick figure, not inclined to fatness, but with barrel-like lungs and a sturdy back. He would make a fine wrestler. As he has accepted things of civilization via the trader, and absorbed so much from his neighbor, the Navajo, his costume is not radically different to-day. The curious dresses of the olden-time, of buckskin, cloth of native weave, and feathers, such as may be seen in the Harvey collection at Albuquerque, have disappeared from the mesas and to the younger generation are unknown. A shirt of velveteen, loose trousers of some light cloth, often pure white, moccasins of red-stained buckskin and his own peculiar design, a handkerchief twisted about his head, these form his costume. Most of his ornaments are bought of the Navajo, save that an occasional Hopi silversmith will hammer the metal into Hopi patterns, such as butterflies and snakes with turquoise eyes. When you see these forms, they are Hopi. The Navajo does not use them.

But in this dress of the men the resemblance to the nomad ceases. The true Hopi is marked by his short stature, his broader and radically different physiognomy, and especially by the dressing of his hair. The Navajo is usually a sloven with his hair. Do not get too close to him. The Navajo draws his hair tightly back from the brow, and catches it in a knot or a queue at the back of his head. And there is little difference between the men and their women. The Hopi wears the bang and the straight bobbed effect that came out of Egypt. When it is possible, he takes scrupulous care of his mane. Hair-washing is an important feature of all ceremonies. He was the first bobbed American.

To-day this effect will be found among the orthodox only. The younger men, home from schools, have adopted the comb and shears as they drift away from many fetishes. But hair-cutting has produced some serious wrangles with the Hopi. Long ago an Agent zealously interpreted a Washington order to mean that all Indians, not only those in schools, should be made to cut their hair in white man’s fashion—as if this would produce civilization overnight. To the elders of the tribe this was a terrible heresy, and they resisted very naturally. It is too bad that orders cannot be transmitted in the form of blue-prints.