Part 14

Wiki was a man of action, coming forward to add power and dignity to that most astounding ceremony ever originated by human brain, the Snake Dance; Supela is a man of craft, a worker by formulas and incantations, but first and last a believer in getting all the silver he can in return for an insight into the mysteries--a thing that Wiki has never stooped to countenance.

There are first families in Tusayan. Saalako enjoys the distinction of being by birthright the chief snake priestess of all Hopiland. Hence Kopeli, her son, was chief priest of the powerful Snake Society in that metropolis of Tusayan, Walpi; while Supela, her husband, has no credit for his share in passing on the inheritance. At present, her son "Harry" is the Snake Chief in place of the beloved Kopeli.

Saalako is an old, wise woman. The mystery which hangs around her is born of her connection with the fearful rites of the Snake cult and her store of the knowledge which has been passed down from time immemorial "by living words from lips long dust." This connection carries her to distant pueblos to mix the "medicine" for the ceremonies, no one in the whole province being better versed in herbs and spells than she. One might meet her on this errand far out in the desert or among the rugged mesas on the trail to Oraibi, afoot, moving actively for a person apparently so frail. It is difficult to measure, especially in a limited time and short acquaintance, the respect and honor given by the Walpi people to Saalako and the Snake Chief's family. It would seem that there is a certain dignity and reserve natural to people of rank, although in the common associations the Hopi are quite democratic. In any case Saalako is free from the habit of begging, so often observed among her people, which is probably due to this dignity. It is very evident, however, that the vice of begging is becoming general among the Pueblos which have been most in contact with white people.

This sketch of Saalako would be incomplete without the mention of her chief shortcoming, inordinate curiosity. Apologists commend rather than excuse laudable curiosity, affirming it to be a desirable quality in an investigator. No doubt Saalako owes her acquaintance with nature to this class, but she is famous for curiosity in other minor matters. No visitor to Walpi escapes the ordeal of her questions, and popular account has it that very few happenings escape her notice. The Hopi of both sexes are most curious; Saalako has the trait in greater degree. The hoary error of attributing curiosity to woman alone has small countenance in Hopi. However, Saalako's curiosity is well meaning and harmless. It is only an expression of the infantile which blossoms in this peaceful and isolated people.

Saalako felt it her duty to give a name to one of the exploring party under the direction of Dr. Fewkes. After several days meditation, having tried and rejected several queer sounding appellations, she at last dubbed him _Kuktaimu_, briefly, "Investigator," and kindly offered to adopt him; the adoption, however, was not consummated. Kuktaimu owes his name to the ardor with which he collected plants, insects, and geological specimens, this not escaping the sharp eyes of Saalako.

This sketch is given as a tribute to a remarkable Hopi woman whose history is worthy of fuller presentation.

Intiwa was another celebrity whose acquaintance early ripened into a regard for his true worth. His was a modest personality; in him one saw the living presentment of the sages who guided the people before America dawned upon history. A striking instance that came to notice concerning him gives an interesting sidelight on Hopi customs.

One day Intiwa went down to his cornfield to see how the crops were getting on. As he was reaching under the drooping corn blades, feeling for the ripening ears, a rattlesnake struck him on the hand. He hurried home and applied all the remedies which Hopi medical knowledge could suggest, but got no relief. Some white visitors who happened to be near were called in and did all they could for the man, and finally, after much suffering, Intiwa recovered. Now comes the curious sequel of the snake bite. The Snake Fraternity decided that Intiwa, being specially favored by the bite of the snake, must of necessity belong to their order. Perhaps Intiwa was not impressed with the alleged favor of the snake. Still he took the initiation and became a full-fledged snake priest. This is the first record of such happening in Tusayan.

Beside the honor thus thrust upon him, Intiwa was the _Kachina_ chief of Walpi, and thus an important man, the _impresario_ and chief entertainer of his town, honored by the rain-bringing serpent, blessed with a large family, ample house and abundant food--gifts no doubt of the good fairy _Kachina_.

Several years ago Intiwa took a journey to the underworld across the deserts and down through the _sipapu_, or earth-navel, finding at last that wondrous land whence all people came out and where they finally must return, according to Hopi belief. Walpi will suffer the loss of his great knowledge; who knows but that he will emerge, and, sitting with the zealous _kachinas_, watch over the scene of his earthly triumphs?

The first meeting with the Hopi and with the Honani family was one of the most pleasurable experiences of the journey from Winslow to the Middle Mesa several years ago.

The party had toiled to the north for nearly three days through the brilliantly painted deserts that lie between the Little Colorado and the Hopi villages. The grotesque black buttes whose contours had changed so many times during the journey were left behind to the south and the gray cretaceous mesas began to narrow in on the dry washes, fringed with sage-green desert plants that characterize the region of the Hopi villages. Everyone felt that though many miles of loose sand still intervened, this was the home stretch to the goal. Far ahead on the plain several black dots were sighted, and with lively interest the party began to speculate as to what they might be. After a while it could be seen that a mounted party was coming, perhaps Navaho on first thought, likely Hopi on reflection. Soon they were decided to be a number of Hopi mounted on burros and ponies, and in a short time they were greeting the Americans with the fervor of a long-lost brother, their faces wreathed with smiles. These, then, were the taciturn Indians of the story-books.

Honani, "the Badger," citizen of Shumopavi, was escorting his family on an outing of many miles after berries. Berries, such as they are, do grow in the desert, but they may be enjoyed only by those who never tasted any other variety. Honani's wife and her three pretty daughters were astride ponies, while the baby was securely fastened in his mother's blanket; the old grandfather and grandmother who bestrode burros made up the rest of the party, which formed a very picturesque group. The women asked for water, and Honani spoke the magic word _piba_, tobacco, followed by the word, _matchi_. These words one very soon finds are the indispensable preliminary to a "smoke talk" in Hopiland.

Honani's better half is no light weight. So thought her pony which, without warning, proceeded to lie down. Amidst the screaming and chattering, the stout lady managed to extricate herself, being much hampered by her prudence in tying her blanket to the horn of the saddle. When all were quieted and the pony soundly thumped, they started again on their way berrying.

Honani is quite a prominent man and was one time chief of his pueblo. He is one of the very few Hopi who have made the grand tour to Washington--_Wasintona_, as they call it. He has a farm in the country, where he lives in summer. The vagrant Navaho who encroach on his premises are the bane of his life, and when none of this tribe is near he wishes them all sorts of unpleasant things. Honani himself is no saint; from all accounts, it is advisable to leave nothing loose while he is around. His wife has a pleasant, matronly face that one cannot help admiring. She is a skillful basket-maker and keeps her house neat and clean, which is more than can be said of her contemporaries.

There is a good deal of feeling, mingled with a large element of jealousy, against Honani in the minds of his fellow villagers, because of his friendliness toward the white man and his stand in favor of educating the children in the schools provided by the Government. At Zuñi, through some pretext or other, Honani would be hung as a wizard, whereas the amicable Hopi merely ignore him for a while.

On another occasion, while the party was encamped in a sheltered valley of the Middle Mesa, the "Honanis" came visiting. It was about supper time; the connection of the time and visit needs no explanation. Among the scanty utensils of the party two cans of similar shape contained respectively salt and sugar. Honani's wife liberally sweetened her coffee and gave the baby a taste. In a moment his hitherto placid face assumed the contortions of a Hindu idol, and he squirmed and yelled. His mother, not knowing what was the matter, shook him and punched his fat stomach to find out. Then she took a sip of coffee and screamed out, "_Ingiwa!_" (salt). Her reproachful look seemed to convey the idea that someone had designs on the baby. A few words of explanation soon put her mind at rest on that score, and smiles were again restored. When she heard that several of the party had been at times sufferers from those same malicious salt and sugar boxes, she enjoyed the joke hugely; fellow sufferers are always appreciated the world over.

There is at least one open and above-board infidel at the East Mesa. Chakwaina is his name, and he is a Tewa of Hano. The old nature faith in this pueblo does not show many signs of weakening, so that were Chakwaina less in possessions and in consequent influence, he might have been brought to book long ago for his sins. Chakwaina says "the _kachinas_ are no good." Perhaps the poor people who so depend on the crops for their existence believe devoutly in the gift-bearing _kachinas_ from ignorance or selfish motives, while _Chakwaina_, who has sheep, flour, and money, feels independent of any spiritual aids; this is the old story. Chakwaina undoubtedly feels able to take care of himself, for no one has succeeded in getting ahead of him at a bargain. Of course when a pair of sheep shears or a stone is too frequently found in a bag of wool after weighing, people will suspect cheating. It is well to keep watch on Chakwaina!

On the other hand, Chakwaina was one of the first to move down permanently from the mesa when the Government offered inducements to the Hopi to descend from their eyrie. He has always been friendly to the white people; he aided in the establishment of a day school at the "Sun Spring," and used his influence to persuade the people to send pupils to the school at Keam's Canyon. He has also traveled much, adding Spanish, Navaho, and a smattering of "American" to his Hopi-Tewan repertory of languages, for the Tewa, besides being the most progressive inhabitants of Tusayan, are the best linguists. This is due to the fact that the people of the little town of Hano have preserved their own language, and being within a stone-throw of Walpi, must also know Hopi. Hence the step toward learning other tongues is made easier.

Chakwaina has his house near Ishba, or "wolf spring," in very picturesque surroundings. Below, in the wash, are his cornfields and melon patches, showing skillful engineering in diverting the water on the arable ground by means of dams and wings. Here he and his faithful adjutant, "Tom Sawyer," the Paiute, put in many a laborious hour, the latter waging deadly warfare on the obnoxious prairie dogs whose fate is to be eaten if caught.

Chakwaina is disposed to poke fun at the scientific men who come to Tusayan to study the ways of the Hopi. He has a remarkable laugh, and his mimicry of the Snake Dance is one of the most amusing things to be seen in Hopiland. His object is to ridicule all parties by making himself ridiculous. It is evident that Chakwaina has not the accustomed contentment of the Hopi. Having denied the first article of faith in the _kachinas_ and having received nothing higher in return, he stands in the unhappy position of all unbelievers of whatever race or time.

A portrait gallery of the celebrities of Tusayan would not be complete without Mungwe, or, as his name is translated, "El Capitan," "Cap" for short; but his name is properly _Mongwe_, "the owl." "Cap" is a Tewa whose ancestors were invited long ago to come from the Rio Grande and cast their lot with the Hopi on the Walpi Mesa. Here their descendants still dwell in the village of Hano, preserving the language and customs transplanted from the "Great River of the North." "Cap" is one of the most energetic and capable Indians in all Hopiland. Wiry in figure, alert of movement, loquacious, quick of comprehension, trustworthy and experienced, he is quite in advance of the large majority of his contemporaries. Long ago he abandoned the inconvenient mesa; his farm-house with its red roof can be seen among his cornfields far out in the broad valley to the southeast of Walpi. The men who work for Mongwe seem to be pervaded with his energy, and there is no doubt that he is regarded by them as a captain of industry, for he allows no laggards to eat his bread. In the line of teaming, Cap excels. No matter how long or bad the road or how heavy the load, his staunch little ponies will carry it through. A rickety wagon and providence-tempting harness seem to prove no bar to any attempt, where money is to be earned. Hence, though a number of the Hopi possess wagons through the generosity of the Government, Mongwe gets most of the hauling.

Our friend, alas, is not modest in the announcement of his worth. It is a subject on which his tongue works like a spinning-jenny. At night after the cares of the day, sitting around the camp-fire with ample bread, unlimited rashers of bacon, and a circle of hearers, Cap eats and talks in the plural. The word plural calls for a sentence or two in reference to Cap's wives. Not that he has ever defied Hopi customs to the extent of having more than one wife at a time, but the list of the ones who have disagreed with him, if completely up to date, would be interesting reading. From what can be gleaned, in this Utopian land, women have the right of divorce. The relationship of Cap's children, it will be seen, is very assorted. To hazard a guess, Cap's matrimonial ventures are marred by his general "fussiness."

Aside from this, Mongwe is an honor to Hopiland. His success has drawn to him a party of the young generation who are afflicted with the universal desire for _shiba_ (silver), and if they are inspired with Mongwe's example it will be a benefit to Tusayan, the Hopi body politic, which needs active young blood to overcome the centuries of inertion.

Another vivacious Hopi is Wupa, whose name means "great." The fatherly interest which Wupa takes in the white man was sufficient recommendation to attach him to our camp as man-of-all-work, and a closer acquaintance brought to view other sides of his character in which the gay features far outnumber the grave. Faithful to the extent of his lights, though averse to steady work, he managed to earn his bread and a small stipend, but considering the entertainment he furnished, his pay should have been equal to that of the end-man in a minstrel show.

So it happens that the memories of Wupa bring forth a flood of pleasing recollections. The merriest of all that merry race of laughing, joking, singing Hopi, his presence around the camp-fire diffused an atmosphere of cheerfulness which does not always prevail amidst the discomforts of roughing-it in the desert. Short of stature and bandy-legged, possessed of a headpiece wrinkled and quizzical, one cannot by any stretch of the imagination make him out handsome; but he is so loquacious, witty, and full of tricks that it is not possible to doubt his fitness for the position of king's jester. Wupa has his moods, though. Sometimes an air of preternatural gravity and unspeakable wisdom enwraps him; very close behind this mask, for such it is, lurks a mirth-provoking skit and boisterous laugh. Like other humorists Wupa has the fatality of being most amusing when serious. Still, in the iridescent interworld between smiles and tears Wupa has a romantic and sad history.

The _dramatis personae_ woven into this history are white men, Mexicans, Zuñi Indians, and his fellow Hopi. The first misfortune that befell Wupa was to be born at the time when famine harried the Peaceful People in their seven villages to the north of the Little Colorado. Famine is an old story with the Hopi. For two years no rain had fallen, and neither the Snake nor the Flute dance availed to bring the good will of their gods. The sacredly reserved corn laid up to tide over a bad year had been eaten, and the Hopi were in distress. They gathered the wild plants that seem to be independent of drought, and tried to keep soul and body together till the rain-clouds should again sweep across the Painted Desert; but many were those who never saw the time of ripe corn. Many deserted the pueblos and cast their lot among the Navaho shepherds, the Havasupai of Cataract Canyon, and other more fortunate tribes of friendly people.

So it happened that Wupa's mother with her hungry babe took the well-known trail to Zuñi 100 miles away, and nerved with the strength of desperation at last reached the pueblo under "Corn Mountain." Indian philanthropy rarely extends outside the circle of relatives, and the Zuñi had no mind to give corn to the poor Hopi woman beyond enough to keep her from starving. But little Wupa was worth a bushel of the precious ears, and for that amount he was exchanged, becoming, without being consulted, a Zuñi, while his mother trudged back to Hopiland with food for her starving kinsfolk, feeling, no doubt, little sorrow at the loss of her babe, so great is the levelling power of famine and misfortune. There are usually strays at all Indian villages, and thus the presence of the little Hopi stranger passed without notice. When the crops were assured in the fields of the famine-stricken Hopi, they ceased coming to Zuñi, and Wupa seems to have been unclaimed and forgotten.

When he was five or six, the Zuñi in turn sold him to some Mexicans, and the next account there is of him he was living at Albuquerque, a stout young _peon_, with cropped hair, a devout Catholic, speaking Castilian after the fashion of the "Greasers." Wupa thus became, to all intents and purposes, a Mexican, and perhaps had lost sight of his origin. Neither is the transition from Indian to Mexican at all difficult or incongruous. Few Americans realize the new problem of the population that came to us through the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the clannish, unprogressive foreigners who were made American citizens without being consulted. It must be said, however, that the Anglo-Saxon prejudice of the Latin leaves quite out of sight the good qualities of the Mexican; it rarely considers that his ignorance is due largely to lack of advantages during several centuries, and that the strain of Indian blood has not helped matters. According to the white man's way of looking at it, this listless race, seemingly satisfied to be _peons_ in the land of the free, is inferior and doubtfully classed with the Indians, with the doubt in the latter's favor.

Wupa quickly picked up the language and associations of his accidental compatriots, and soon the Padre rejoiced in another brand plucked from the burning. His next step was to find a señorita and to marry her, and after the semi-barbarous wedding his woes really begin. In explanation of the description given of Wupa as he appears at present, it may be fair to say that twenty years off his age would leave him a passably young man, but even with this gloss, one cannot form a very high estimate of the señorita's taste.

During the period of Wupa's exile, one knowing the Hopi would be curious to find out how he bore himself and whether an inherited love for the freedom of the desert was ever shown. Perhaps the early age at which he began kicking about the world, and his varied experiences, completely lost him to the feeling of his kith and kin. Civilization is irksome to the desert-bred Hopi and he soon becomes as homesick for his wind-swept mesas as the Eskimo for his land of ice or the Bedouin for the Sahara. These questions may have a suggested answer in the home-coming of Wupa, for he returned again to his native pueblo after one of the most varied and remarkable series of adventures that ever filled out a true story. The events that led up to the home-coming of Wupa form not the least interesting episodes in his history and occurred along the old Santa Fé Trail, immortalized by Josiah Gregg. The railroad builders had labored across the plains, up the steep slopes of the Rockies, following the famous trail to old Santa Fé, leaving behind two bands of steel. Blasting, cutting, filling, and bridging, they were advancing toward quiet Albuquerque on the lazy Rio Grande, and the news of these activities stirred that ancient town from center to circumference.

The dwellers in the Southwest are brought squarely up against the "proposition," as they call it, that one must work if he would live. The Mexicans, though reputed lazy, are on the contrary always anxious to work for wages, and the motley and wicked railroad camp had a large population of the dark-skinned believers in Montezuma recruited from long distances.

Wupa joined with the Albuquerque contingent. What his duties were it is not difficult to imagine; his skill in "rustling" wood and water in later years gives a good clue as to his work on the railroad. As messenger and general utility boy where steady labor was not required, he no doubt proved useful and picked up sundry pieces of silver for his señora. Perhaps not the least of his services lay in his unfailing good-humor expressed in cheering songs with which he softened the trials of railroad pioneering through that almost desert country.

The picturesque wickedness of the westward traveling construction camp with its fringe of saloons, gambling hells, and camp followers seems never to have taken Wupa in its snares. Of shooting irons and drunken men he had the inborn terror shown always by the Hopi, a feeling still kept alive among them by that later incursion into New Mexico and Arizona, the Texas cowboy. There was no fight in Wupa; the most that could be gotten out of him was a disarming laugh and a disappearance, as soon as that move could be made. Picturesque as was the construction camp, the stern side of life came very near, and the wonderful hues of the landscape were but mockery to the tired and thirsty men, who prepared the Santa Fé Trail for the iron horse. Poor food, worse water, alkali dust, parching heat and chilly nights of summer and the severity of winter were living realities; there were health and vigor in the air of the mountains and elevated plateaus, though food and appetite did not always strike a balance of compensation.

Wupa moved along with the camp, little realizing the meaning of the struggle with the drifting sand, the rocky canyons, and the dry rivers that became torrents and in an hour swept away the work of a month, burying ties and rails in the limbo of boiling sand. By night he rolled himself in his blanket and after his orisons slept under the brilliant stars, while his fellow Mexicans snored in strangely assorted heaps among the sage-clumps.