Part 15

The rails came down the treacherous Puerco and along the banks of the Little Colorado. To the north the dark blue Hopi Domes reared their fantastic summits, signifying nothing to this expatriated Indian, though the mother who bore him and sold him into bondage waited for him there. To the west the San Francisco peaks stood always in view, but Wupa was ignorant of the traditions of his tribe that cluster around them. The rails left the river, stretched across a flat country, and halted at the edge of a tremendous chasm, whose presence could not be suspected until it yawned beneath the feet. Here the camp halted for months, while a spider's web of steel was spun across the Devil's Canyon.

One day several Hopi came to the camp, and after staring, open-mouthed, at the labors of the white man, wandered about, as if looking for someone. Soon they ran across Wupa, and the leader spoke to him in Hopi language to this effect: "You are a Hopi; we come to bring you to your house." A doubtful shake of the head from Wupa, who did not understand the tongue of his people.

"Yes, come; they sit up there waiting for you." This ought to have stirred in Wupa a desire to go at once, but he "no sabe." Finally, after parleying in a mixture of Hopi, Zuñi, and Spanish, pieced out here and there with sign language, they persuaded him to desert the camp and set out with them for his native town a hundred miles to the north.

The home-coming of Wupa was a great affair, and his reintroduction to his mother was touching, for the Hopi are more demonstrative than other Indians. The event must have been a nine days' wonder in the gossipy pueblo of Walpi. His education was taken up at once with the intention of eradicating the evil effects of Mexican training, especially on the side of his religious instruction. If the grave priests are satisfied with their labors in helping Wupa to begin anew as a Hopi, an outsider would consider the results as rather mixed. To this day Wupa is taunted with being a Mexican; these taunts he answers with silence and an air of superiority he knows so well how to assume; how, indeed, can they know what he has gone through in his remarkable experiences?

While Wupa was willing to desert and become a pagan, as were his ancestors, exchanging the quaint cathedral of Albuquerque with its figures of saints and grewsome Corpus Cristi in a glass case for a dimly lighted room underground and familiarity with rattlesnakes, his señora had other ideas. Wupa mourned that his señora would not cast her lot with the "Peaceful People" of Tusayan; but money was scarce and the distance too great for a personal interview; the letters written by a laborious Mexican scribe were productive of no results. Though the señora might have done worse, who will blame her? During the years that passed one might think that Wupa would have forgotten his wife on the Rio Grande, but it was always the dream of his life to bring her to him at Walpi. It was pathetic to hear his schemes and to see the way in which he treasured letters from her written in the scrawl of the town scribe and addressed to Señor Don José Padilla, which is Wupa's high-sounding Castilian name. His constancy seemed admirable, for he did not take an Indian wife, granting that he could have secured one of the Hopi belles for spouse.

Still, with all this care Wupa was light-hearted, caroled with abandon Mexican or Hopi songs, or intoned solemn church music. Though a much-traveled man, he remained at his native place, the mainstay of his old mother who sold him aforetime, his father long since having traveled to the underworld. Hopi-Mexican, Pagan-Christian, he still occupies a somewhat anomalous position among his people, who have consistently hated the proud proselyting Spaniards during the more than two hundred years since they threw the "long gowns" from the rocky mesa.

About the camp Wupa was very useful. Mounted on his agile _burro_, a sight well worth seeing, he brought the mail from Keam's Canyon. He collected wood and water, indulging in many a song and exclamation. The cook especially seemed to him a fit subject of jest. The cook was really an adept at snoring and the still watches of the desert night were often too vocal. Wupa used to sing out "_Dawa yamu, Kook!_" "Daybreak, cook!" followed by a fine imitation of snoring which the subject of the jest did not enjoy. But Wupa was at his best when prospecting an ancient ruin to locate the most promising place to dig for relics. At such times his gravity and wisdom fairly bulged out. His advice was clearly and forcibly given, but the nemesis of humorists followed him, and no one ever thought of taking him seriously. And he never seemed disappointed. Wupa is a true humorist, without bitterness, one to be laughed at and loved. He was almost tearful at parting and made many protestations of friendship, at the same time presenting two watermelons from his field. These melons were unripe, according to un-Hopi standards, but were received in the spirit in which they were given, and later some natives met on the road to Keam's Canyon had an unexpected feast.

The romance of Wupa's devotion to his Mexican señora and the fine flavor of constancy he showed toward her received a rude shattering the year after the commencement of this account. He took unto himself a Hopi helpmeet,--an albino,--and a whimsical pair they looked when they came to the Snake Dance the following summer.

This step of Wupa's, in view of the repeated confidences that Hopi maidens were not to his taste anyhow, was a surprise to his friends. His choice of an albino for a mate clears him to some extent, as no doubt he believes her to be as near an approach to a white woman as a Hopi may hope to reach. However, his friends wish him well and feel like saying, "Long live Wupa, 'great' by name and truly great in quip, gibe, and gest by nature."

A visit to the East Mesa cannot be regarded as complete without an interview with Toby. Usually no one leaves this portion of Tusayan without seeing him. His name, which means "the fly," exactly fits Toby, who has all the pertinacity of that well-known insect.

Several years ago, however, the writer failed to meet Toby and remained in complete ignorance of his great possibilities, except by hearsay, until the next season. Then when the party wound its way up to the first bench of the mesa under the dizzy cliffs and camped on a level spot near a peach tree on land which the Tewa have held for two centuries, Toby was there as a reception committee.

His "how do" was rather startling and unexpected. After the routine of handshaking, Toby remarked, "This my lan'," and pointing to the antique tree long past fruit-bearing, "This my peach tlee." Proud of his possessions he squatted on the ground and drew a plan of his lan' and inquired as he pointed out the locations of his crops, "Have you seen my con [corn]? Have you seen my beanzes?" Suddenly an idea struck him. He approached the leader of the party and put these questions to him, "You good man, uneshtan', you honesht man?" Then as if satisfied, he turned to another of the party and said, "You handsome man; you beautiful man," and it was not long before Toby had a packet of coveted smoking tobacco, although from the unkempt appearance of the explorers, his laudations were base flattery.

It was plain that Toby was desirous of airing his remarkable English, of which he is very proud, and also of paving the way to sundry small gratuities. These intentions of the Hopi are quite as apparent as that of the little child who says, "Ducky likes sweet cakes." Toby was asked to bring in a burro load of wood for cooking purposes, but with great suavity he explained that on this day the Snake priests hunted in the East world-quarter, and according to custom no one must work in that direction. On account of these conscientious scruples of Toby's, the venerable peach tree was requisitioned for enough dead branches till such time as he should sally forth with his burros for cedar billets.

The day before the Antelope Dance Toby came down to the camp on important business chewing a moccasin sole which he was stitching. He broached the subject by mysteriously saying, "Plenty Navaho come to see Snake Dance. Navaho velly bad, steal evelything." (This in a furtive way, because the Hopi are afraid of the Navaho.) "Me stay, watch camp; you go see dance; Navaho bad man." It is well to say that after Toby's watchful care at the camp all the baking powder and matches were missing. Few Hopi are proof against these articles, especially before a feast, and Toby is evidently no exception. He fought shy of camp after that, no doubt fearing a "rounding up." Perhaps, however, Toby appropriated the matches and baking powder as rent for his "lan'."

Toby is father of a large family. When asked to give a census, he counted on his fingers, "Boy, girl; boy, girl; boy," then with great enthusiasm, "Babee!" Toby's command of English is due to the fact that he was the prize pupil of a teacher at the Keam's Canyon School some years ago. He delights to show how he can spell. If no one should ask him to exhibit this accomplishment, he usually brings up the subject by asking, for instance, "How you spell box?" pronounced "boxsh." If ignorance is professed, Toby spells b-o-x, and follows with _dog_, _cat_, _man_, and other words of one syllable, and proudly finishes by writing his own name in the sand.

Toby thus furnishes great amusement to sojourners at Walpi and also leaves the suspicion in the minds of most that he is a trifle "light in the upper story."

Another character is "Tom Sawyer," a Paiute Indian who lives with the Peaceful People at the East Mesa. As handsome as a Japanese grotesque mask and almost as taciturn, his gravity seems to have telescoped his squat figure and multiplied the wrinkles in his face, half hidden by his lank, grizzled hair. Keen, shrewd eyes has he and very evasive. Tom, however, is not "bad" in the Arizona sense, nor will his make-up allow him to be altogether good. He is, therefore, a man, for which this sketch is to be congratulated. While Tom's early history may never be known to the world, his step in leaving the Paiute for the Hopi is very much in his favor. Here he fell naturally in his place as serf to Chakwaina, of whom something has already been said.

Tom became washerman for the Fewkes expedition while the party sojourned at Walpi. Percy, who prides himself on his faultless "American," held the position in former years, but having gotten a few dollars ahead, felt above work at this time. It must be said that Tom is an excellent laundryman. The idiosyncrasies of wayworn civilized garb do not stump him; in fact, he is "ol' clo'es man" for the whole East Mesa. His many quests for discarded garments to Winslow, Holbrook, and other points on the railroad are always successful. The people of Winslow affirm that wearing apparel often disappears from clotheslines and other exposed situations coincidently with the visits of Hopi, who clear the town of rags as the winds do of loose paper. When the physician of the place lost a pair of overshoes which were reposing on the back kitchen steps, he remembered too late that a Hopi had gone down the alley sometime before. The disappearance of the overshoes can scarcely arouse as much wonder as their presence and utility in arid, dusty Winslow. No doubt Tom has caused many of these mysterious disappearances and the spoils borne northward on his patient burros have promoted a dressed-up feeling among the Hopi braves.

It has not yet been found out whether Tom gave an exhibition of artistic lying or was telling the truth about the following matter. Tom was starting on one of his periodical clothes raids to Winslow, and he was asked to bring back a can of plaster. About a week later Tom returned with the following laconic tale, "Snake bite burro, burro die; me take can back, give to man."

At the time it was thought that Tom had overloaded his burro with old clothes and had invented the story. There is much to be said on Indian invention. If Tom is living he is still an active citizen of Hopiland.

XI

THE ANCIENT PEOPLE

The Southwest has always been a storied land to its native dwellers. Mountain profile, sweep of plain, carved-out mesa, deep canyon, cave, lava stream, level lake bed, painted desert, river shore, spring and forest are theirs in intimacy, and around them have gathered legends which are bits of ancient history, together with multitude of myths of nature deities reaching back into the misty beginning.

Deep is this intimacy in the practical affairs of life, teaching the way to the salt, the place of the springs, the range of the game, the nest of the honey bee, the home of the useful plants, the quarry of the prized stones, and the beds of clay for pottery, for the desert is home and there is no thing hidden from keen eyes. From far off, too, came in trade shells from the Pacific, feathers from Mexico, buffalo pelts from the Plains, and, perhaps, pipestone from Minnesota, so that the land of sunshine was not so isolated as one might think, and its resources fed, clothed, and ministered to the esthetic and religious needs of numerous tribes of men from the old days to the present.

The white men who tracked across the vast stretches of the "Great American Desert" no doubt saw ruined towns sown over the waste, and perhaps believed them lost to history, little suspecting that within reach lived dusky-hued men, to whom these potsherd-strewn mounds and crumbling walls were no sealed book. The newer explorers have drawn the old-world stories from the lips of living traditionists, and by their friendly aid have gathered the clues which, when joined, will throw a flood of light on the wanderings of the ancient people. Through them it has been learned that each pueblo preserves with faithful care the history of its beginnings and the wanderings of its clans. This at proper times the old men repeat and the story often takes a poetical form chanted with great effect in the ceremonies. As an example of these interesting myths, one should read the Zuñi Ritual of Creation, that Saga of the Americans which reveals a beauty and depth of thought and form surprising to those who have a limited view of the ability of the Indian.

One thing is settled in the minds of the Pueblo dwellers. In the beginning all the people lived in the seven-story cave of the underworld, whence they climbed toward the light and after reaching the surface of the earth, migrated, led by supernatural beings. Where the mythical underworld adventures leave off begins a real account, telling the wanderings of the clans and the laying of the foundations of the multitudinous ruins of the Pueblo region. It may not be possible to connect all the ruinous villages with the migrations of the present Indians, for there is room enough in this vast country to have sunk into oblivion other peoples and languages, as the vanished Piro, who passed away since the white strangers came to Cibola, but much may be done to gather the glittering threads before they slip from sight.

The journeyings and campings of the ancient people becomes intelligible when the make-up of the present pueblos is known. One finds that every pueblo consists of clans which are larger families of blood relations having certain duties and responsibilities together; a name, such as the bear, cloud, or century plant; certain rites and ceremonies to the beings; clan officers and customs amounting to laws, and a history preserved in the minds of the members. So it will be seen that a tribe among the house-builders is composed of a number of smaller tribes, called clans, each complete and able to take care of itself, forming the present villages. Often in the early days a powerful clan migrated long distances and left members in many different places, because clan law forbids marriage within the clan, and the man must live with the people of his wife. In these migrations portions of a clan would break off and cast their lot with other villages, and often several clans traveled in company, building their pueblos near one another, and thus came the groups of ruins so common in the Southwest.

For this reason, all the present villages have received swarms from other hives and have sent out in turn swarms from the home village, during their slow migrations around the compass. The habits of the ancient people thus led to a constant flux and reflux in the currents of life in the Southwest and in spite of their substantial houses and works costly of labor the Pueblo Indians were as migratory as the tent-dwellers of the Plains, though they moved more slowly. Their many-celled villages on mesas or on the banks of streams, in the cliffs of the profound canyons, dug in the soft rocks or built in the lava caves, were but camps of the wanderers, to be abandoned sooner or later, leaving the dead to the ministrations of the drifting sand.

Nor with the coming of the white people did the wandering cease. There were Seven Cities of Cibola in the subsequent stretch of time, these seven towns were fused into the Pueblo of Zuñi and again came a dispersal and from this great pueblo formed the small summer villages of Nutria, Pescado, and Ojo Caliente. A human swarm built Laguna two centuries ago to swarm again other times. Acoma is mistress of Acomita; Isleta has a namesake on an island in the Rio Grande near El Paso, and in Tusayan the farming pueblo of Moenkapi Hotavila and Ushtioki in the plains in front of Walpi, are late additions. Thus, in times of peace, these hamlets spring up, each having the possibilities of becoming large settlements, and in times of danger they come together to better withstand the common enemy, for the union born of need and strengthened by the coming of wily foes was inculcated by former experiences. But these unions were never close, even between the clans when they forsook their small community houses and came together forming tribes. Between tribes of the same language there were but the faintest traces of combinations for mutual welfare.

Perhaps about the time of the landfall of Columbus a group of tribes began to push their way into the region of the house-builders[19]. These tribes were related and had crept down from the north, where now their kinsfolk live under the Arctic Circle. It was many years before the Apache and Navaho were strong enough to try conclusions with the settled peoples, but when they had gathered to themselves the lawless from many tribes, then began terrible chapters of history which only recently have been written to a finis. Wherever these conscienceless savages ranged were carnage and destruction. The habits of the house-builders changed and the ruins on high mesas and the lookouts on every hill tell plainly how they sought defence from the scouting enemy. The large towns in the Salinas of Manzano passed into oblivion under the attacks of the Apache and began a mythical career as the "Gran Quivira" of treasure hunters. Great was the devastation of which the complete story may never be told, yet nearly every tribe preserves legends of bloody contacts with the Navaho and Apache.

[19] The Early Navaho and Apache. F. W. Hodge, Amer. Anthropologist, July, 1895.

Still at an early period the Navaho became changed from a fierce warrior to a comparatively peaceful herdsman, subject to the maddening vagaries of that most whimsical of gentle creatures, the sheep. Early in the Spanish colonial period the Navaho preyed on the flocks of sheep of the Rio Grande pueblos, where they had been brought by the Conquistadores, and by that act his destiny was altered. Later on, instead of hunting the scalps of his fellow creatures, his flint knife became more useful in removing the wool from the backs of his charges; he thus became famous as a blanket weaver, and soon excelled his teachers in that peaceful art.

Other visitors and neighbors of the Pueblo people were almost as undesirable as the Apache and Navaho. The Comanche of the Plains brought ruin to many a clan by his forays, and his brother, the Ute, from the mountains to the north, was a dangerous enemy to encounter and at many times in the past attacked the villages of the Hopi. To the west were the Yuma and Mohave, to the south were the Pima, extending into Mexico, and in the Cataract Canyon of the Colorado lived the Havasupai deep in the earth. These have been the neighbors of the Pueblos since recorded history began. Also the tent dwellers of the buffalo plains sometimes visited the Pueblos, tracking up the Canadian, and perhaps other neighbors there were, now vanished beyond resurrection or legend or the spade of the archeologist into the dust of the wind-swept plains.

Besides the harrying of enemies of the wandering sort, there were quarrels among the sedentary tribes and the old-fashioned way of fighting it out according to Indian methods left many a village desolate. For this reason the villages were often built on mesas before the ancient enemies of their occupants began their range of the Southwest, and hostilities were carried on against brothers located near the corn lands and life-giving springs of the Pueblo country.

In the ancient days, as at present, the secret of the distribution of Pueblo men was the distribution of water. It seems that in the vast expanse embraced in the Pueblo region every spring has been visited by the Indians, since whoever would live must know where there is water. The chief springs near the villages they dug out and walled up and built steps or a graded way down to the water, and often these works represent great labor. Likewise, the irrigation canals and reservoirs of southern Arizona show what he could do and surprise the moderns. One soon sees that there is not a spring near the present villages that does not receive its offerings of painted sticks adorned with feathers, as prayers to the givers of water. These simple-hearted folk in the toils of drought seem to have all their ceremonies to bring rain, and there is nothing else quite as important in their thoughts. In the same way the Southwest has made the settlers workers in stone and clay, for Nature has withheld the precious wood. Few other parts of the world show so clear an instance of the compelling power of the surroundings on the customs of a people.

Why or how the pueblo builders came into this inhospitable region no one may decide. The great plateau extending from Fremont's Peak to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, with its varied scenery, its plants and animals, and its human occupants is replete with interesting problems of the Old New World. Perhaps as the people crowded from the North along the Rockies toward the fertile lands of Mexico, some weaker tribes were thrust into the embrace of the desert and remained to work out their destiny. It would appear that no tribe could adopt the land as a home through free choice, because the sparseness of the arid country must make living a desperate struggle to those who had not the precious seeds of corn.

Corn is the mother of the Pueblos, ancient and modern. Around it the Indian's whole existence centers, and the prevalent prayers for rain have corn as the motive, for corn is life. Given corn and rain or flowing water, even in small amount, and the Indian has no fear of hard times, but prospers and multiplies in the sanitorium where his lot is cast.