Class Coi3yrightN°_ CDPVRIGHT DEPOSm GOD'S COUNTRY BY DANIEL HOLMES MITCHELL The Ebbert &. Richardson Co. Cincinnati 1910 "And in. the afternoon, fliey came into a laud in tvhich it seemed alwaijs afternoon." t) y X k> h C\ ,i \ COPYRIGHT. 1910 BY THE EBSERT & RICHARDSON CO. (gCI.A:2686}7 t^' CONTENTS I _ God's Country 9 II — At the Gates 24 III — The Valley of the Rio Grande 36 IV — To Acoma, the Pueblo of the Children of the Sun 44 V — On the Trail of the Conquistadors, from Acoma to Zuni 72 VI — In Zuni, the People on the Plain of Cibola . . 98 VII — Among the Nomad Navajo, the Shepherd of the Hills 118 VIII — The Unremembered People 144 IX — The Children of the Sands 172 X — The Snake Dance 192 XI — The Grand Canon 216 [1] ILLUSTRATIONS Frontispiece. page God's Country 8 "Its Atmosphere, its Silences, its Space," 10 "Sweet-Scented Woods" 11 "Magnificent, Deep-Browed Mesas"... 14 "The Forests of Long Ago" 1-5 "Their Epitaphs were . . . Canons," 17 "Volcanoes . . . Rising ... to the Eternal Snows" 19 Lava Flow 20 Cliff Ruin 21 Pictographs 22 "The Land of Our Pilgrimage — Its Joys" 2.5 "Our Itinerary ... as Changeful as the Land" 26 "Our Itinerary ... as Changeful as the Land" 27 "Our Kitchen, Bed and Dining Table," 28 The Santa Fe Trail 29 Poisonous Alkaline Springs 31 Camping, Today, on the Santa Fe Trail, 33 "The Vision of this Still-Unentered Land" 34 The Rio Grande 37 Plaza of Laguna 38 Jesus Guadalupe 39 Laguna 41 At the Foot of Acoma Mesa 46 The Dune 48 At the Summit of Acoma Mesa 49 The Well of Shadow 50 The Enchanted Mesa .51 Acoma from the Plaza 52 The New Trail 53 An Interior . . . Grinding Corn... 56 The Pueblo of the Sun 57 A Fiesta 58 A Fiesta 59 A Fiesta 60 The Governor 62 Youngsters 65 The Mud-Cone Ovens 67 A Crater Lake 73 PAGE The Trail from Acoma to Zuni 74 Beside You Runs the Lava 75 Descendants of the Conquistadors 77 The First Flock Enters the Lane 80 The Shearing 82 The Plunge into the Vat 83 In the Vat 84 The Gate to Next Year's Pasture 85 Forests of Primeval Pine 87 The Forests of the Penitentes 89 The Basin of Tinaja 91 El Morro Rock 93 The Beauty of El Morro Rock Abides. . 95 On the Roofs of Zuni 99 Distant View of Zuni 100 Zuni Early Christian Church 101 Zuni on the River 103 Zunis' Most Sacred Shrine — the Cen- ter of the Earth 104 Zuni Masks 108 A Zuni Dance 109 Ancestral Gods Awaiting the Approach of the Dancers 110 Zuni Water Carrier Ill Typical Zuni House 112 Zuni Water Carrier 113 Typical Zuni Yard Ill Zuni Girls — the Water Carriers 115 Entering the Antelope Kiva 116 Zuni 118 Medicine Man 125 Ceremonial Masks 127 A Navajo Hogan 128 A Navajo Summer Hogan 129 A Navajo Family Party 133 Navajo Horse Race 136 Chicken Pull 137 A Navajo Society Leader 138 A Navajo Fiesta 139 Cafion de Chelley 145 A Navajo Patriarch 147 A Navajo Patriarch 149 [2] ILLUSTRATIONS — Continued PAGE Bones of the Unremembered People. . . 153 The Unremembered City 154 The Antelope Ruin 155 Diggers of Relics 156 Prehistoric Cliff Pictures 159 Casa Blanca 160 Ruined Cliff City 161 A Medicine Man 164 The Sweat House 165 One of the Sacred 167 Ancestral Gods Awaiting the Approach of the Dancers 169 Walpi — Children of the Sun 172 Town of Walpi 173 Road to Walpi 174 Street Scene of Walpi 176 Hopi Belles 178 A Dance at Oraibi 180 Main Street in Walpi 181 A Walpi Interior 182 A Walpi House Top 183 Zuni Worshipers 184 PAGE The Pueblo of Oraibi 192 The Sacred Turkeys 194 The Beginning of the Snake Dance. . . 195 Snake Priest 197 An Audience at a Snake Dance 203 The Bearer of the War God's Bow 205 During the Dance 207 Snake Dance 208 Chief Dancer ? 210 The Snake Priest 212 Snake Dance 215 Cloud Effects in Carion 217 The Angels' Gateway 217 Grand View Trail 218 A Balance Rock 219 Grand Canon 220 At the Foot of the Cliff 221 Looking into the Canon 225 Grand Canon 227 "Rain, Rain" 229 Cloud Effects in Carion 230 The Sacred Rock 232 [3] May 9, 1909. Yet, stricken heart, remember, remember How of human days he lived the better part. April came to bloom and never dim December Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart. Doomed to know not winter, only spring, a being Trod the flowery April blithely for a while, Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing. Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile. Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished, You alone have crossed the melancholy stream, Yours the pang, but his, his, the undiminished, Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream. All that life contains of torture, toil and treason, Shame, dishonor, death, to him were but a name. Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season. And like the Day of Sorrow, departed as he came. — Robert Louis Stevenson. [4] DANIEL HOLMES MITCHELL died on May ninth, nineteen hundred and nine, in the twenty-seventh year of his age. He had much talent, still undeveloped and rich in hope, which found partial expression in literary fragments left unpolished and untrimmed. But even better than his talent was his person- ality, compounded of wholesome feelings, staunch friendship, enthusiasm for the good, and sensitiveness to beauty. No memo- rial can make the individuality of Daniel Mitchell real to those who did not know him, but there are some of us whose lives are more worth while because he lived. He was from a child alive to all impressions of the world and art ; and he always had an intense joy in life. In college he pined in the midst of what he felt to be the unrealities of scholarship for the realities that seethed outside. Uncertain of his calling, he groped for a while after the thing that should grip him, and fixed at last upon literature in which he should not work for unneces- sary returns but for literature's own sake. That meant serious study, experiment, and search for self-expression. His accom- plishment was small, but he w^as laying up against an unfulfilled future. Then he went west — to Arizona — and his vivid nature flamed incandescent. He was overwhelmed by the wonder, the beauty, the immensity of "God's Country;" and he lived there drinking deep of its air and its traditions. Here was at last his subject; here was something to which he must give literary ex- pression; something infinite, endless; baffling and impelling. He was full of it; and to hear him tell of his rides across the deserts, and his exploration of strange Indian towns, and his ob- servation of weird customs, was to kindle with his fire. His note was lyric; and it is that lyric note which pervades this unper- [5] fected volume. Only the most intense color and fervor could catch the tones of sunlight and sunset about those unimaginable mesas and canons ; only bold bursts of prose poetry. In the pages which follow there are passages of lavish beauty and vivid inter- pretation. They make it seem the sadder that such power should have been quenched, power which foretold lasting accomplishment when maturer art should have mastered the vast subjects that here mastered him. We who loved him — who still love him — must read this volume through unforgettable memories ; but the mere book should hold many readers for whom it is wrapped in no such golden haze. H. A. E. [6] GOD'S COUNTRY [8] CHAPTER I. GOD'S COUNTRY JHOEVER possesses a merry heart, and enjoys the open air, will lind the pilgrimage into God's Country to be an holiday. Yet this is not a journey to put lightly to the touch, for God's Country requires a passport of love from all who enter it, and hence, if you travel it not in dreams ere setting forth in person, it may be you will be debarred from passing through the gates. Moreover, should you be a stranger thither, you will have difficulty in determining the road because, although God's Country is the fairest on the earth, there is no mention of it in the geographies. Of course the charts of it are there, but under other names, so, if you be incognizant of these, you may search an atlas through and through and be no whit the wiser of where God's Country lies. Should the location be found, however, but little would be gained, for only technicalities would be depicted on it — the draughtsman's ugly scratches and rude, misshapen lines indicative of mountains, deserts, rivers and ravines, and these contours are so empty and so destitute of charm, that they might well discourage all thought of pilgrimage. [9] Be of good cheer: God's Country is too beautiful to map. No hand can draw its atmosphere, its silences, its space, the ever changing garment of its good green out of doors, or paint its dawns and sunsets, and the glory of its stars. These attributes are infinite, and so, can not be pressed between the pages of a book, or focused on the lenses of a surveyor's instrument. Indeed, they are at once so delicate and vast that only the eye can trace them aright on the tissue of memory and, since it is they which "ITS ATMOSl'IIKIiE, ITS SILKN'C'KS, ITS Sl'ACK" make of God's Country a lasting paradise, it therefore remains a land of the Heart's Desire, to which each man must journey and discover for himself. Thus for all it is existent and a fair reality, God's Country is, primarily, an immaterial realm, a domain whose closest bond is with the spirit, a wilderness of earth and air which captivates the soul. Its landscapes, too, are richest in unmarketable wares; in sunshine and moonshine shimmering over sands, in breezes blowing through sweet-scented woods, in the perfume of grasses, in the blossom of flowers, in [10] the song of birds, in the sheen of snow, and the passage of white- winged clouds across its sky. Thus also, although its boundaries include the whole of New Mexico and Arizona, a bit of Utah, Texas and Colorado, and a tiny nook of Southern California, God's Country is really separate from these. It is in them and yet not of them, as it were; nay, rather, these are its dowered provinces, beloved beyond measure by all who dwell therein s\\ i:i:r-s( KNTF.u woods" because of their kinship with that larger kingdom to which they pay allegiance of their charm. Indeed, God's Country is so elusive, so intangible, so intricately hidden in one's intimate affections, that even the origin of its name can not be traced with any certainty. Castefiada, writing of it in 1543, affirms it was broken from the footstool of God, and Lieutenant Button, describing it in 1857, calls it a land di\ inely fair, but surely the title came not from their pens. It is too indigenous to the soil, too frequent and too easy in the [11] live speech of men to have been born of books, and must have sprung to being all at once and unawares as poppies suddenly appear in a field of yellow wheat. Perchance the name was first whispered by a shepherd in the hills, or sung by a reaper at twilight in his joyous harvest song, or, it may be, a padre said it softly in his prayers. But whatever the occasion of its first use may have been — and one likes to think it inspired by a momentary rapture — it has now become the metaphor of all men's admiration, and one hears it everywhere and constantly. Yet, whether it be spoken by ranchmen of Phoenix, by miners of Tucson, by Mexicans of Santa Fe, by Mormons of Farmington, or even by the Indians, who repeat it in their chants, there is always in the speaker's voice a cadence of devotion to all the name implies, a tone of tender reverence resembling an amen. And this land betwixt Raton Mountain and the newborn Salton Sea, is of a truth God's Country — sunshine and earth and air. Yet when one would tell why, the speech becomes all tangled on the tongue, for the charms of this wide, wild region are too evasive to be caught with words. Even as music is wedded to the soul of its composer, and mingles with the mood of him who plays it, so do the spirit and beauty of this land cling like the mists of morning to its mountains and its vales, and one can not inter- pret their transcendent loveliness unless one learns the genesis of these. Nor is this task a facile one to those possessing not an intimate knowledge of the stones, for the paving of God's Country is some of the oldest in the world. Indeed, the lineage of the land began in that dim, dark era at the twilight of creation, ere God had spread His spirit of light o'er the waters of the world, and the rocks of its hills and valleys are so weighted now with years, that none may lift the number of their ages that are gone. Yet amid the scars of weather and the creases on their face, one can still detect those lines of youth which tell how they were fashioned from an ocean's shifting sands, and laid in even strata by the movement of the waves. None know how many of these rocks there were originally, for some have crumbled, some have split, and some have vanished. Lord knows where, but, possibly, altogether there were over half a score, set one atop another on the bed-granite of the earth, each [12] with a different texture and a different coloring. Some were conglomerates of moss-green or purple, others were limestones of yellow or blue, and still others sandstones of orange, red, or brown. Each had, besides an inner, hidden beauty — intricate veins of copper, turquois, silver, and gold, or ledges of onyx, opal and asbestos — and most were cemented together by bands of bituminous coal. The water, with kindly forethought or wanton carelessness, also seasoned the rocks in the making, with their native weeds and grasses, fishes and broken shells, and these, pre- served in good repair by their forced imprisonment, are now the only means at hand to tabulate the jeons in which the different rocks were laid. These fossils themselves pretend to little beauty, excepting the charm of superlative ugliness, but seen by the side of the horrible names which man has bestowed upon them, or upon the deposits in which they chance to lie, they look the very acme of perfection. For Cretaceous, Jurassic, Silurian, Carbon- iferous, Cephalapsis Lyelli, Brachiopod, and even Dinosaur, must send a shiver down every back. Poor, inoffensive fossils, and unoffending stones! One wonders they do not hide their shame in an utter dissolution ; but no, instead they merely blush, dressing God's Country the finer for their erubescent hues. This unkind nomenclature, however, is but a tithe of the trouble God's Country has had to bear, and from which, as in this instance, it has managed to foregather the components of its charm. There was even a tragedy, which has not yet been told, in the weaving of it, strand by strand, from threads on the ocean's floor. For, after each layer of rock was laid, the sea thrust this above its surface to be passed upon and proven by the air, and the air made sport of the water's handiwork. The sun shone down on it and burned it dry ; the winds and the frosts caressed it with their cold ; clouds massed their mists above it and chastened it with rain ; rivers dissolved parts of it again into sand and bore the grains back to their mother, the sea ; rank grasses littered it with leaves ; forests grew upon it to be old and decay ; wild beasts walked its wastes and lay down and died, until at length on each occasion the land became aweary of the struggle to be fair and then it sank gently back once more to sleep in the ocean's arms. So, God's Country is a Venus, twelve times or more reborn, and at each birth more perfect and more gracious than the last. [13] Then so soon as the topmost terrace had been securely set in place, and the land, as before, had arisen from the sea, and the air, as of yore, had fought it and harried it home, a new and more violent tragedy began. For the land, on seeking its accus- tomed sanctuary, found but a grimmer torment waiting beneath the waves, because in its absence their nature had changed. The sea was no longer that placid, affectionate sea, which had fash- ioned God's Country with delicate art, but a wild and turbulent ocean, surging hither and yon; an angry, tempestuous whirlpool "MAGNIFICENT, DKEr-I!l!l)\\ KI) 5IKSA.S" that swept in foam-flecked billows onward from pole to pole. Its cold, sharp currents cut like knives, its calmest eddies were keener than the winds. Around the rocks of their own creation its torrents seethed and boiled, breaking them into fragments, tear- ing some strata away, carving others into fantastic cliffs, uplift- ing great boulders from their anchorage, and twisting, refining, polishing the land until scarcely a vestige remained to it of its earlier conformation. Indeed, so whole was the miracle of change, when God's Country at length broke loose and rose once more and forever above the tides, that the pale sun looked upon it, and knew it not. [14] Everywhere was the wreckage of the sea. Yet through this seeming chaos had the land been wrought anew, so that, exhausted as it was, and wounded to the heart, it was bleeding beauty, none the less, from its multimillion scars. Magnificent, deep-browed mesas had been chiseled from its plains; chiseled through layer and layer of rock, and then worn away to that stratum which had caught the ocean's fancy at the moment; so that some were •TIIK rOlil'.STS OF LONG AGO" high and some were low, and each was different from the rest in color and character. Around these table-lands were jjlaced a host of pinnacles and buttes, obelisks, spires, and colonnades, whose pointed summits served as a foil to their flatter surfaces, and were almost more varied of form and hue than the valleys which spread between. On these the tides had uncovered the forests of long ago — forests whose trees had suffered a sea- change to agate centuries before — and spread the prostrate trunks of stone over wide reaches of the land. In places, too, they [15] had also bared the bones of forgotten monsters again to the light, and left them resting gently on the surface of the ground, as if they had but died the day before. But the most beautiful of all the ocean's unintended gifts was a film of finest, many-colored sand, which was flung in a rainbow tissue over monument, mesa and plain. When the sun beheld these changes, and perceived that the least of them had made God's Country incomparably fair, he turned its lover at the last, and wooed it with a tenderer radiance. Speeding first into the barren, snow-capped mountains of the North, he fought there with the glaciers, which held these in a thrall. Then, when these melted from him in a sparkling ava- lanche, he took their rivers captive, thawed them of their chill, and sent them as a bridal present to the land. Across it these spread in a chain of lakes, within whose mirror the land might see its altered countenance. Then was it proud of its comeliness, and lifted its rocks toward the sun, 'til they overlooked the world. Ere they had reached this height, however, God's Country was made to pay the price of its creditable pride. For the rivers, upon feeling the pulsations of this change, grew timid, and hesi- tating in their course bade the glaciers give ear. And when these heard the tale, they laughed aloud in glee, discerning in its purport their chances of revenge. On the instant, melting faster, ever faster than before, they commanded the rivers to hasten, lest God's Country raise a barrier to their flow, and under the spur of this impetus, the frightened rivers went suddenly mad in their yearning for the sea. They turned into roaring, tum- bling floods, they flung themselves like wolves upon the land, tore it asunder in their rage, and gnawing it with their icy teeth, ate deep into the earth. So when the sun drained their anger dry, their epitaphs were a million caiions, running like veins and arteries over the land. Some of these were small and delicate, some infinite and vast, but all, whatever their depth might be, were very beautiful. Indeed, these cafions have a puissant charm. Piiions, cedars and pines grow now in the crannies of their cliff^s; cotton- wood trees and luka cane edge the shallow rivers, flowing on their creamy floors of sand; wild flowers nestle coquettishly amid the [16] ■iiiKii; Ki'iTAi'iis \vi;i;i: CA.NOXS" [17] fallen debris from their sides, and sagebrush bushes have stolen down from the rolling uplands roundabout to warm themselves in the sunshine caught between their palisades. In each, these ornaments of green, together with the tracery of water on the walls, the brilliant colors of their rocks — sunburned by day, at evening cooled by purple shadows and their perfumed breezes — the absence of sharp, ungraceful lines, and the blue sky over all, combine to make a perfect whole, a valley of contentment fairer far than the one of which the psalmist sang so well. Yet often- times these caiions ring with an ancient, human note, whose echo invests with sadness their mellow overtones. For shortly after they had been created, a fair-skinned, brown-haired little people came into God's Country from some other clime and builded them fortresses and towns high up in the wave-worn hollows of these walls. They would seem to have been a simple, quiet folk, endowed with laughter and ingenuity, and, quite content with God's Country, made for several genera- tions these pretty cafions home. Here they dwelt in peace and plenty for an unknown length of time — farming the fertile caiion meadows with wooden hoes and spades; plaiting sandals and baskets from the yucca and caiion reeds; moulding ollas, plates and dippers from the plastic canon clays; carving images of birds and beasts from the shining caiion pebbles; painting the cliffs with their finger tips; raising babies, and cotton and peaches and corn ; twining feathers into their hair and songs into their legends. Then, suddenly, they either died or were driven entirely away beyond the recollection and knowledge of Man. Indeed, so complete was their exodus that only these silent ruins and the dead in their narrow graves remain to tell us they had ever been. Whither they went we know not, no more than whence they came, but the cause of their departure may well have been another new calamity which fell upon the land — a calamity greater than all of those which had befallen before, yet one which, like the others, was in the end to add a finer garment to God's Country's beauty. By now the land had come to be a plateau raised eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. The structure which nature had posted underneath to bear so ponderous a weight, [18] through some mischance, seems not to have been strong. It weak- ened and gave way ; God's Country shook and trembled ; cracked, then burst asudden into flame. At once enormous volcanoes thrust their heads up through the fissures, and piled their red-hot cinder crests, cone above cone, upon its plain, rising indeed, to the altitude of the eternal snows. Amid the roar of earthquakes, these belched forth obnoxious gases and murky clouds of smoke. "VOI.CANOKS KISINU TO THE ETERNAL SNOWS" which, meeting the affrightened winds, were rained in deadly shower on the land, shrivelling vegetation, and strangling beasts and men. Then, lakes of lava bubbled in the craters and, over- flowing, crept in streams of fire down the volcano sides, over the mesas and into the caiions. These floods up-ended buttes and pillars in their path, plastered the cliffs with their billows, and oftentimes buried the caiion cities beneath their molten mass; but finally, the cooler currents of air froze them solid in their flow, and unable to go farther, they congealed upon the plains into ridges of gray-black pumice stone. [19] LA\A FLOW [20] Then the damage below was hastily repaired, the volcanoes slept, and God's Country dared to blossom forth once more in greenery. Sagebrush bushes took root again on its mesas and in its vales ; shrubs sprouted on its cinder cones, growing apace to be trees, and cacti spread their flowers on its lava and its sands. Soon snow fell in drifts on the mountain crests, melted and fell again, dissolving on each occasion into noisy, purling brooks, '-•■ _ •■* ■ >^^ t t -. It ~ JtX^apg ,:iai;-^-;.:^'-. ■>'■». ^ia. : : ■ -<..^lX- <^ijel CLIFF nriN which were happy just to be off and away. Past many a rippling pool these sped in white cascades of foam and, coming at last into the deserted caiions, smoothed out the creases in their floor of lava, either wearing it thinner bit by bit, or hiding it completely underneath a bed of stones. Thus the years came and went with gentle tread. The walls of the cliff dwellings toppled and partially rotted away, owls made their nests in the unfrequented rafters, mountain rats took the cold chimneys for their home. While the cities crumbled, the land lay sorrowing, [21] but once they were in ruin, it tore the mourning garment of its lava into shreds and clad itself in joy again to win the favor of the sun. Then, finally, when it had all but lost the scar of its first short motherhood of men, other peoples, who neither remembered nor knew the race which had fiourished before, came into God's Country and claimed it for their own. From the North and South and East and West, these came in great migrations and PICTOdliAl'HS fought upon it for supremacy. Some of these hordes, in whose veins perchance ran a strain of the land's departed children, copied the dwellings of their predecessors and abode in towns on the mesa tops, eventually becoming the pueblans of today — the Zuni, Hopi, Acoman and Rio Grande tribes. The rest, however, were sprung from a nomad stock, and looked with disfavor on a settled home. So they — the Apache, Navajo, Hualapi, Yuma, Pima, and Mojave — possessed themselves of the forested hills and rolling, upland meadows, from whence they might make forays on their peaceful neighbors' fields. Through centuries, whose [22] number not even they can tell, the struggles between these people waxed and waned, with now the nomads and now the pueblans slightly uppermost until, at last, the advent of another stronger race allied them all together for the purpose of defense. These new intruders on God's Country were alien to the core, having come from across the sea, and were wedded by speech and manner to the lands on its farther shore. They were of those who had sailed in the wake of Columbus to the undis- covered world, and had already won them an empire nearer south in the mountains of Mexico. Now, flushed by the fever of con- quest with which their time was full, they were reaching farther north to grasp a richer realm for themselves and Charles V of Spain. However, these Spanish Conquistadors found in God's Country no trace of those things which they had come seeking — gold and the bruited cities of Cibola — yet, for all their faults. they were a band of noble adventurers, and their hearts contin- ued in their enterprise until they had conquered God's Country for their own. They founded the town of San Gabriel and the City of Santa Fe, converted the pueblans to a show of Christianity, enacted laws, saw to it these were kept, and bringing hither horses, sheep and kine, settled themselves upon ranches to enjoy a measure of God's Country's great content. Slowly, but surely, their settlements spread until every vale held a hamlet or a town and monastery, and all the land was tinctured with their Old World chivalry. Thus, once more, the glad years came and went unnoticed, save that their passage changed the name of these Spaniards to Mexicans. Then, suddenly, the sound of war again aroused God's Country from daydreams of its beauty. For a space there- after, the rumor of battle fretted it with alarm, only to deed it at the last with scarce a scar of conflict to the Americans, within whose care it has since remained inviolate from harm, fast growing to a domain big with empire and worth, yet one which they shall ever keep God's Country of the open air. [23] CHAPTER II. AT THE GATES s UCH is this land of our pilgrimage — a land grown old through an hundred sor- rows, a land kept young by a thousand joys. Possibly this youth will impress us the more, for despite the wrinkles on its face, at heart God's Country is super- nally young. Its hills are chapleted with flowers, its deserts are appareled in the raiment of the sky, and the echoes from its caiion walls are clear as the happy laughter of a child. Yet something abides in God's Country still finer than this youth; something so delicate, so ethereal as to be almost wholly without name — the essence, perhaps, of its unpremeditation. For God's Country is the single spot in the entire world which nature has wrought distinctly for her pleasure. Here, indeed, no higher will imposed conditions on her craft or bound her by the measure of ulterior purposes, and so she was free to embroider the land with errant whims and fancies in her hours of repose, giving no thought to the pattern sketched in the Master Draughts- man's mind. Hence, these mountains were not moulded by com- mandment, these valleys were not hollowed out by rule. Instead, they are nature's personal creations, evolved from her own most intimate designs — these ornaments she has chosen from [24] all her store of beauty to adorn this acreage given her for reward. Upon these she has also lavished her love, her time, her graces, until they no longer seem her handiwork, but the incarnation of herself, possessing her infinite generation, her lasting loveliness, and God's Country, like the islands of the Hesperides, has become a garden husbanded with the golden fruit of hours, and kept invio- late from men. ■ HH| '' .'.■•.c^^'-^ ' • •TIIK LAND OF 011! rll.C HIMACK — ITS JOYS" It is a garden, however, where there is little rain. Yet, never once does God's Country appear to be suffering from drought. For its mountains are clothed in forests of pine ; piiions and cedars grow on its mesas and buttes; sagebrush meadows with daisies pied cover its valleys and plains. Even its sunburned deserts are constantly in bloom ; with primroses, hollyhocks and lilies in the spring, and gorgeous cacti of no month or season, whose flowers are more brilliant than the multicolored sands. These themselves are such a rainbow of ever changing shades that were the exotic cacti taken from them, the deserts still would blossom like sunsets in the sky. Moreover, the constant dryness imparts [25] a charm to the atmosphere. For the air of God's Country Is clearer than one thought that air could be, and the sunshine sifted through it is so marvelously fine, so wondrously diffused that even the shadows it casts are bright as the iris light reflected from a mirror's beveled rim. But possibly the most alluring trait God's Country owns is the bountiful, haphazard manner in which its different landscapes have been scattered everywhere, or mingled altogether into one. ^^0Mk^te«»sKkci«Qft=;4^^;^s4j^j,jj5;l^,^^l ■feH^s=;4^ t^v^ ■■oil! ITINKDAUV AS CIIANfiEFVL AS 'I'lIK I^ANF)'' Like as not, you will find a mountain of iridescent green, capped at the summit with perpetual snow, fronting a tropical desert of pink and yellow sands, and over against this on the farther side, a purple mesa may lift its cedar crest before a sagebrush prairie of palest shimmering gray, whose meadows finally fade away into the blue of the horizon. But howsoever the hills and valleys may chance to be arranged, each group of them will seem finer than the one unfolded last, so that you may wander through them forever and for aye and never reach the limit of their con- stant, luring change. r2G] On this journey, however, we shall travel through only a few of these, for God's Country is too extensive to be traversed at one time. Yet, although these form but a portion of the land, a tiny corner of the whole, they should be sufficient to show us a measure of its charm. For we shall visit the pueblos of the Acomans and Zunis, go thence to the upland valleys where dwell the Navajos, then, after resting in Cafion de Chelly by the graves of the Unremembered People, pass on to the Province of Tusayan '■¥--'^ t 1 h * i ' •■(II U ri'INKIlAUV . . . AS rllAMIKKI I. AS llll: LAND" in the midst of the Painted Desert, and so arrive at that wonder of all wonders of the world, the Grand Canon of the Colorado River. Thus our itinerary is as changeful as the land, and so ought to help us to understand its fair infinity. Moreover, it takes us and keeps us out in the open air, where we must wander the wilderness sleeping under the stars, having the good, brown earth for our bed, kitchen and dining table, the sun for our time- piece, the brooks for our bath, and the moon for our reading lamp. Accordingly, the railway will be beyond our ken, and to reach these destinations far from cities and their toil, we must travel God's Country ahorseback over its old, sequestered trails. [27] The most famous of these is the Santa Fe Trail, which runs from Kansas City to Southeastern Colorado, thence down to the town from which it takes its name, across God's Country to the Sierra Mountains, and over these into California. It is mis- leading, however, thus to designate its route, because most of the titles employed therein are as modern as its own, and this trail existed for centuries before they were bestowed. Indeed, its length of service transcends its length of mile, for it has been a "Orll KITCIIKX. BED AND DINING TABLE" link between East and West since God's Country's time began, and all of the land's inheritors have trodden it in turn. The first wayfarers, whose footprints still remain upon the trail, were the cliff dwellers, who traveled it in that mystic long ago ere the volcanoes had paved it with lava, and blocked it with craters and cones. Next came the Indians, to whom it was a great commer- cial highway. These wandered up and down it, exchanging their wares for countless generations, the plains tribes bartering buffalo robes for the turquois of the pueblans, who traded both for [28] THE SANTA FE TRAIL [29] abalone and wampum in California. Then the Spaniards arrived and used the trail as a military road. So early as the winter of 1541, Coronado, the leader of the first Conquistadors, followed it from the Missouri River to the pueblo of Tiguex, returning from his search for the Gran Quivira, and thenceforward they marched along it from the Pacific to Cochiti, warring upon and crushing the races by its borders, and founding or protecting settlements. Finally the Pathfinder, General Fremont, entered God's Country by this trail in 1848, and possibly foreseeing the part which it was soon to play in history, christened it with the name by which it has ever since been known. Twelve months thereafter the Santa Fe Trail was a byword through the world, and men were selling house and home that they might travel it. For during the gold excitement of the days of forty-nine, when all who could were venturing upon an Argosy, this trail became their favorite path across the wilderness to Cali- fornia. Nor was this odd, for apparently this Highway of the Holy Faith possessed two great advantages over its northern rivals. It lay through a land already partially settled — settled, indeed, for full two hundred years — where towns and ranches off'ered hospitality and protection, and the Indians along it were mostly tribes of pastoral pueblans, who had no desire to scalp the Argonauts. Thus it seemed to them the safest route to the land of El Dorado, and they spread along it joyfully in scattered cara- vans, believing it blazed with security, and cleared from every harm. Yet in the end the Santa Fe Trail proved most dangerous of all, and long ere the thousands upon it had thinned to hundreds, and the hundreds shrunk to scores, it exacted a toll of human life and human suffering surpassing the large sum total of its com- petitors. Indeed, so cruel was it, it would seem God's Country put itself at pains to thwart these Argonauts, angered, perhaps, that they should cross it without a compliment, blind to the beauties it contained because of the golden film in their eyes. However that may be — and who shall say God's Country has no pride? — it harassed them at every turn, and, using its surface attrac- tions as a lure, thrust up such great impediments to their journey [30] that death at length came to them as a deliverance. For those Indian ambuscades which made the others perilous — nor was this weapon beneath it on occasion — this trail through God's Country substituted the horrors of fatigue. It led the Argonauts by day over thirsty deserts and mesas of rock, where the sun was never clouded and a shade tree never grew, only to bring them at eve- ning to poisonous alkaline springs, and interrupt their sleep with rOlSONOrS AI.KALINK Sl'lUNGS gusts of hot, sand-laden winds. It parched men's tongues, it dried the women's breasts, it suckled the children with hunger, it goaded the oxen with heat ; and as one by one they sickened and died, it gave them a shallow, roadside grave, on which so soon as their comrades had dipped the rise ahead, coyotes and buzzards fought for supremacy. This trail had, however, between whiles, its lighter, pleasant side. There were gay fiestas in the Mexican towns, ceremonial dances in all of the pueblos, marriages and christenings in the [31] monasteries, antelope hunts on the sagebrush prairies, picnics in the woods, balls in the moonlighted patios of ranches, serenades, horse races, chicken pulls, the twanging of guitars, and the sing- ing of many an half-remembered song around camp fires burning in the starry night. Thus, though the trail took much, it gave some passing pleas- ure in return; and had the Argonauts not been steeled against its excellence, God's Country would have opened them its heart, and made them free of riches a thousand times more lasting than the yellow veins they sought. For they were a valiant, eager com- pany, ready for every danger, sturdy through every ill, and save they were tainted by the lust for gold, would have proven worthy the good will of this land. But around the camp fire, in the noon- day toil, at ease, through battle and in death, this will-of-the-wisp they had come a-seeking, beckoned them on toward the western sea, and so they raced across God's Country with curses on their lips, not guessing that they were the vanguard of a Nation's exodus, which should ere finished, turn this land into an El Dorado greater than theirs could ever be, and seeing themselves at each garden spot only so much the nearer their desire. Indeed, they were too busy counting the miles behind them as children count their pennies, and rejoicing in each addition to the sum, to per- ceive in the daily horizons unfolded aught but the enchanted Golden Fleeces of their dreams; and it was for this purblind spirit that God's Country punished them. The epic of this modern Argosy has never yet been gathered into words, but whosoever desires may read of it in the registers of churches, in the archives of towns, in the journals of survivors and the scattered Indian legends of its passage. But, above all, may one read it in the trail, writ deep by the wheels of wagons and the tramp of weary feet. And what a tale it is in its entirety ! Full of adventure, keen with the zest of deeds, freighted with sorrows, thrilling with joys — verily, a story to make the pulses quicken, and eyes grow dim with the poetry and pity of it all. The years have erased so many times the writing on the trail that now its lighter cantos are all lost, and only the tragedy remains upon its dusty parchment. Yet it bears a living witness of this in the names bestowed upon its portions by [32] the suffering Argonauts. For one need not have seen Death Valley, Diablo Caiion, Hell Mesa, or the Mountain of Skulls, to know them for waste places of the earth, where these Argonauts would have bartered a thousand El Dorados for a little cup of water. Yet, except for these grim monuments, the trail today has all but fallen out of memory. It still lies a broad, white riband athwart the land, but sagebrush bushes, cornfields and dunes have interrupted its continuity, and the travelers upon it TollA'i. (IN I'll!-; SANTA FK I KAll, now are few. A ranchman herding his sheep or cattle, a Morman peddling a wagon of fruit, an Indian going to town to trade, an idle, ignorant tourist, these are all. But whosoever they be, their business is not the digging of gold, and hence the trail has no meaning for them, save its utility. Indeed they often follow it to the branching of their ways, not deeming it different from other roads, and note with surprise the broken wheel or rusty musket, which chance or the winds have exposed to view. Nevertheless, it is fitting on this verbal pilgrimage, that we enter God's Country by the Santa Fe Trail, for none other has [33] played so large a part in its stirring history. So let us take it, and ascend to the summit of Raton Mountain in Southeastern Colorado. This is a stiff climb and may possibly test your best wet- weather temper, for Raton Mountain is the mother of storms. Standing at that distance from the Rockies, which it does, and as sponsor for a lesser range of hills, its bare, bald head is exposed on every side, and is a favorite playground for the elements. Even on the clearest day, when all the surrounding landscapes are bathing in the sun, a haze as white and fragile as the veil of an Arab bride is apt to be floating near its crest, and if the hour be stormy, then the spectacle is a marvel to behold. For angry. "THK VISIDX OK THIS STII.I.lXENTEllED LAXI) ' steel-gray clouds spring forth unnumbered from the mountain's granite scraps, and never still, yet never hurried, weave them- selves in and under and through the pines. Around the precipi- tous slopes they twist and curl, now wavering in thunderous inde- cision, now rolling together in lightning-hemmed folds until, having gathered their moisture in a mass, they unfurl in a sodden blanket of darkness for the shrapnel winds to tear, and spreading far above the land, hide it completely underneath their canopy of rain. It is seldom, however, that the mountain's crest is bowed. No matter what tempest may be brewing below, this lifts beyond the reach of storm into the cold, clear region of the snows, as if its only pleasure were in aspiring. Once at the summit, there is a new feel to the air. It is wafted up the southern slope in soft, capricious gusts and gentle [34] zephyrs, perfumed and laden with incomprehensible things. What lands you may have traversed to come thus far on your pil- grimage, no doubt seemed in your passage through them rich and beautiful ; but now, beside the vision of this still-unentered land whose spirit greets you in the breeze, they look in perspective poor and commonplace. You stand, indeed, at the gateway of a land to which you will never, can never, find the peer ; a land whose sum and substance is perfection, whose beauty is the beauty of Eden, whose wealth is the dower of worlds that have yet to be born. A mirage of it shimmers in the sky, and lo, it is so divine you veil your eyes lest it fade away like a realm in a dream. And what is the song which that mocking bird sings, there, on the bush by your side? A lilt of the sun, of the moon, of the stars, of the earth, of the wind, of the rain ; and if you would learn the mean- ing of his song, or know the joys whereof he sings, follow him down to the valley from whence these breezes blow, into God's Country, into the open air. [35] CHAPTER III. THE VALLEY OF THE RIO GRANDE lL«fti^llil ESCENDING from Raton Mountain, the Santa HHPwi^rJ Fe Trail wanders a maze of foothills, seeking ^^HjSJ '"^^ a passage for its miles, until, at length, having ^^^Bsi^i twisted free of their cafions and ravines, it enters ^^^HjBJ£ the valley of the Rio Grande, where it may run ^^^^'l^^l with more precision again upon its way. It P' ^^^ were best for us, no doubt, to follow its example, —^ — — ^^ and hurry on direct to Acoma, but only the blind could find it in their hearts to travel this meadow without a pause of rapture at its beauty. So let us linger in it for a while. Long, purple mesas and tilted crags, along whose crests grow cedars and occasionally pines, hem this valley on either side, and through its midst meanders the Rio Grande, a sparkling river of shallow depths and gentle, ordered haste, which even in time of flood preserves an air of modesty. Indeed, no other stream is quite so laughably misnamed. For the Rio Grande is never grand nor ever turbulent, but goes like a tawny, velvet-footed panther, shyly and slyly to drink of the sea, usually too timid to use more than half its bed, and always purring drowsily in the sun. Tall, slender poplars and spreading cottonwoods border its pools by either bank, standing bough-deep in them at times, and [36] making with the glint of light upon the rii^pling waters a scarf of tender green and gold, which flutters down the valley as far as eye can see. These trees have crisp and glossy leaves with frosted silver linings, that are ever a tinkle in the wind, and merry with song and plumage of mocking birds and thrushes, canaries, linnets, finches and orioles. Beside them, too, protected in a measure by their shade, lie cornfields and orchards, musical with the hum- ming of bumblebees. Beyond the fences of these farms, whose THE RIO GHAXDF. crops are nurtured by the cool, refreshing river, dry, rolling pas- tures of buffalo grass stretch to the distant, hazy hills, and over these gray-green ranges, chased with the dappled shadows of fleecy clouds, innumerable flocks of sheep graze through the live- long day, returning at twilight to the corrals of those Indian villages whose smoking chimneys greet one everywhere. Some of these towns are builded by the river, others are hidden snug among the hills, and a few, less fortunate, are perched on knolls of the open plain. A visit to these charming, pagan cities of the Saints — Taos, Bernahlillo, Jemez, San Ilde Fonso, Cochiti, San Domingo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and San Miguel — would be [37] one long, uninterrupted pleasure, but so bizzare is each, and full of unaccustomed sights and sounds, that they alone would con- sume our pilgrimage. So, now, lest they tempt us from our path, let us hasten at once down the valley to the pueblo of Isleta, where the Rio Grande turns sharply south, and thence across a red plateau, barren of everything but sand, to the pueblo of Laguna, still further west. This Indian town was founded two hundred years ago by a band of renegades from Acoma, and having, since then, sheltered PLAZA OF LAC.rXA malcontents from every pueblo round about, has consequently never lost the marks of its inception. A hodgepodge of peoples and customs and tongues makes up its present vulgar quantity, so that the town, which has besides been modernized of recent years because of its situation on the railroad, is almost empty of any interest. It contains, however, one beautiful plaza amid its dirty drab, where the sunset lights and shadows play radiant hide and seek, and is oddly enough the occasion of a legend con- cerning the hallowed picture of a saint. Jesus Guadalupe will tell you this tale if you ask him, and pay him a smile — tell it you out in the plaza as he sits by the [38] church's door, fanning himself with an eagle wing and smoking cigarettes. He is old, is Guadalupe, and wizened and thin and spare. His blue jeans are frayed at the edges, his blanket is pitted with holes, his face and his sombrero are both weather- stained with years, and his hair is white, which in one of his race denotes extraordinary age. Thus, his appearance warrants one in thinking he may have had a hand in those deeds from which JESUS GUAIJAM I'K the legend sprang, and one would suppose he could narrate it correctly. But have a care, for Guadalupe belongs to the Coyote Clan — and the coyote has never been famous for his veracity. And, forsooth, if you wish to hear the authentic version, you had better not go to Guadalupe for it (but to C. F. Lummis' volume, "Some Strange Corners of Our Country"), for he has so altered this to please his fancy that now, for the most part, the tale he tells is cut whole cloth from his imagination. The more he has [39] added of fable, however, the more charming it has become; so let us content ourselves to listen to him and not attempt to separate the few reinaining grains of truth from the naive chaff of his dissertation. Yet, ere you hear the legend (lest you fail to understand how a saint should be in the annals of this little Indian village), you must know that after the Spanish Conquest of 1598, a number of the pueblos, including Acoma and Zuni, embraced the tenets of the Catholic Church. Their conversion at this time, however, was merely temporary, being superinduced by a fear of the Spanish arms, and so soon as this menace was removed, about a century later, they all revolted, repudiating it by a massacre of the priests and a destruction of the churches. But a few years after they were again brought safely within the fold by the kind persuasion of Franciscan Fathers, and now are the first to call themselves good Catholics today. Their Christianity, none the less, is but a thin veneer, whose outward and visible signs are churches in which a mass is seldom said, and municipal saint days in which the towns indulge in their pagan rites and dances. The inward and spiritual grace is more trite still, consisting only of some minor Catholic ceremonies that, shorn of their orig- inal meaning, now adorn their older, quainter native liturgy. Now, Guadalupe: "Si, seiiors, Acoma — " His forehead wrinkled thoughtfully and pointing toward the town, he shakes his finger at it, while he musters up his words. "A — CO — ma." Ah, yes, to be sure, Acoma. We intended going thither today, did we not? And it is already noon. Then, perhaps, it were best for the tale to be told by someone who has heard Guada- lupe repeat it before. For Guadalupe is slow of speech. "Heh? Que?" And would much prefer to smoke his cigarettes. "Sta bueno, seiiors. El me contenta." An obliging compadre, Guadalupe, very well. When Laguna was founded, there chanced to be in the church at Acoma the picture of a saint (San Jose, was it not, Guadalupe? "Si, senors, San Jose.") which had been presented to the town [40] by no less a person than a King of Spain. This painting was most poor in execution, biit rich in memories of witchcrafts cured and evils set at naught ("Si, but it was a week ago since San Jose healed a poor woman of a disease, as all men know, sefiors, by uncovering to her husband the very spot where a witch had buried bad prayer plumes to harm her. And would you do me the honor to believe me — and I tell but the truth, sehors — yesterday, it is — " "Yes, Guadalupe, but — " "Amigo, look, I am quiet as la Lechuza, the owl, is by day.") and for these reasons was very precious to all the Acomans. Indeed, it was the most sacred possession of the town. Thus it is not surprising that the rene- gades took it with them when they departed, without so much as asking by-your-leave ("They left in the night, sefiors."), that they might have the Saint's protection upon their enterprise, and hang the painting here eventually in a chapel of their own. His presence among them did not prove, however, to be an unmixed blessing. For so soon as the Acomans perceived that it was gone, there was a great to-do about the matter, and war for San Jose's [41] recovery was immediately declared upon Laguna. Thencefor- ward, until some fifty years ago, there was unending strife be- tween these two pueblos. Each was in constant martial prepa- ration, either repelling or planning an attack. Men and women on both sides were murdered ("My holy grandfather, seiiors, a knife — "), children were captured and reduced to slaves, fields were laid waste, flocks were destroyed, and several churches de- molished at Laguna. Poor San Jose ("Aiy, aiy, el Pobre!") ! During these years he had a chequered and often compromising career. Indeed, he was no better than a vagrant, for he can not be said to have had a settled home. Now he was at Laguna, and now at Acoma, and now in the desert half-way between the two. He never knew in the morning where he would spend the night, and might awake on the morrow to find himself a league from the place where he had gone to sleep. ("And do you not pity him, sefiors? It con- tents one so much the better to be at home with the children at play in the evening. And the padre thinks — ") Once only in these troublous times did San Jose spend a month of quiet, and this was when reposing at the bottom of a well. Although on another occasion he was buried for a week with imposing cere- mony, under a surreptitious and quite unpronounceable name. The struggle for his possession might yet be waging had not the last padre resident at Acoma conceived a brilliant scheme to terminate it. Bethinking him of the courts, this padre Lopez ("He was a black priest, senors. He had sold himself to the Evil Ones, I think. Or so they say here in Laguna. I myself, I do not know") haled Laguna before the bar of justice upon the dire charge of common theft. But the citizens of this pueblo proved as wily in this war of words as in the war of men, and used the padre's weapons to such purpose that his case had finally to be carried to the Supreme Court of New Mexico itself. This tribunal adjudged San Jose to the pueblo of Acoma, but decreed that that town must loan the painting to Laguna once a year lest the people there be deprived of all religious consolation. ("As how could we manage without San Jose? Does he not to us bring our life blood from the Elder Ones of Old?") [42] Such is the legend, according to Guadalupe, and he "tells but the truth, seiiors." So, if his statements do not accord with those of history, shall we not rather blame history for its malversion of the facts? Only, with due regard for Guadalupe, perhaps, it were well not to carry fault-finding too far. For, should we do so, we might grow weary awaiting here for San Jose to come from Acoma — on that annual journey which Guadalupe describes so wonderfully well. Nor would it be courteous to believe the good Saint pines in secret for those stirring days of yore, when he was more of a power in the land; for if, as Guadalupe says, poor Padre Lopez met death in a trying way, from the chance explosion of an ancient pistol, well, what is there in that accident? — "Ah, but, sefiors, it was because," here Guadalupe whispers and crosses himself with fervor, "it was because — " but let us not impugn his Saintship's honor. Then, adios, amigo Guadalupe. We are off to visit San Jose's Pueblo of the Sun. [43] CHAPTER IV. ACOMA, THE PUEBLO OF THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN J^ SOON as the railroad is left behind, the land increases ^ in unkempt bareness until its plateau dies from shame L beside the gleaming furrows of a field of alkali, only I to blossom forth renewed upon the farther side into a f desert of splendid lines and hues. Here tiny green lizards frisk nimbly over sands, horned larks twitter and chirp among the withered wisps of grasses, butter- flies fan their wings on the yucca spikes, and long- eared jack rabbits jump from sagebrush thickets. Here, too, the blood-red cactus flowers flash at each other like signal lamps, and a hush comes up with the wind that lays a silence on your lips. For now you are entering a cloister of the air, riding a corridor which leads to a chapel of the sun, wherein all things are mute and in accord. Great, hooded mesas of white and purple rock confine your way upon either hand, converging gradually one line toward the other, until the lowlands between them contract into a valley, which, in its turn, becomes a long defile. Indeed, as you go, these rough-hewn hills so edge ever nearer to the trail, it finally seems that this must cease before their shining, solid [44] wall. Then, suddenly, without warning, the chapel portals fly apart, the mesas, which have hugged you close, curve out afar to the north and south, and you find yourself at the entrance to a wide, ethereal plain. This basin comprises the domain of the Children of the Sun. In its midst is their finest temple, the fair Enchanted Mesa — a smooth, triangular mass of rock, eight hundred feet or more in height, that is wrought from a sandstone of the palest pink — and back of this there lowers, a mile or two away, the long brown monolith on which is perched their city, Acoma. These twain, alone, are all that break the yellow brocade of the sands, save where the distant, crumpled hills encircle the plain with their lilac mantle, bestowing upon it the aspect of a mystical land apart. This desert, however, is not in need of other ornament, for when you behold the Enchanted Mesa, all else, perforce, gives precedence to its sublimity. Smooth, precipitous, unsurmount- able, its background naught but the bluebell sky, its approach a grove of dark green junipers, this strange rock lifts from the desert like a dawn from the sea, and with its rose cliffs compassed in a gossamer of light, reaches upward and outward above you like a mirage of the sands. There is also something within it finer than all this lyric beauty, something stupendous, which raises it beyond its solitude, something which even from the golden desert's edge, calls to your spirit, bidding you to come beneath its panoply and rest. For this rock, so long the Godhead of the Children of the Sun, is like to none other rock the wide world over. Indeed, it scarcely seems a rock at all, but rather a revela- tion, whose purport is not clear, a temple builded not with hands, but willed into achievement as the stars were willed of yore, and set among them as among its peers to be a witness to their god until he choose to thrust them back into that chaos whence they sprang. This from afar; then, as you approach it, step by step, its mir- acle and beauty grow until the cliffs take fire from the hidden soul within, and flame with the fervent splendor of the Grail. Beneath it, at last, the revelation comes. There is no surface to this mesa's walls. Instead, you gaze not on them, but within, where an essence of irradiant sheen, whose movements are as music, comes and goes ; and a myriad of voices, elusive, soft and [45] AT THE FOOT OF ACOMA MESA [46] low, are singing a chorus that steals upon your ears like the half- forgotten melodies of dreams. A momentary pause, the while you struggle with this meaning, and then, behold ! the mystery is clear. For it comes upon you with the rush of a mighty sunset wind, that this Enchanted Mesa is the Heart of the World, that the songs which it is singing are but the pulsings of its life — the murmur of its rivers, the sobbing of its seas, the whisper of its forests, the rustle of its plains, the straining of its mountains and its ice floes and its lava, the laughter of its waterfalls, the blooming of its flow- ers, aye, and the mingled cadence of its birds and beasts and insects, the tingle of its sunshine and the patter of its rain. With the rhythmic beat of waves at play on a pebbly beach the paean rises, throbbing higher, ever higher, until you close your eyes to the rock in humble homage of its glory. Then, there quavers through these echoes a measure nearer hand — the voice of the desert, intoning its sweet, sad litanies ; and, on the instant, your soul has joined its worship to the desert's prayer. For are you not also earthborn like the sands? Then is this rock your mother, too; your mother and your god, which was in the Beginning and will be at the End, your god, within whose keeping rests your love, your life, your right to claim a knowledge unto all. And. gazing on it once again, you see it as it ever was, as it will ever be — your earth, God's earth, which is one with the stars, and set with them on a plain above the ebb and flow of years, where life is born transcendent, and where death has never come. Thus, when you turn away to wend toward distant Acoma at last, although you go slowly, and your heart be full, yet are you happy that to you this vision was vouchsafed, aye, happy, also, in the faith that so long as the infinite love which created you endures, so long will this Enchanted Mesa stand forth from its mystical desert, immu- table and unharmed, for it is that love imbedded in a stone. Far different is the mesa of Acoma. This rock has also an alluring majesty, but its beauty is never the beauty of peace, nor does it reveal to you those things God buried deeply in your soul. A long, lank eminence of brown, shattered and riven by the stress of ages, and carven with columns and pillars by some long-for- gotten sea, it fronts you, on the other hand, with the challenge of despair. And it has need to question your approach, for all the [47] elements in turn have massed their strength against this puny rock. Water has washed it with foam-flecked billows, and har- assed it with rain ; fire has stormed it with lava, and wrecked it with the sun ; the earth has shaken its foundations ; and even the sharp-toothed desert winds which tiptoe past the Enchanted Mesa, leaving the light foot sands untouched and level at its base, have met with Acoma in war. Great dunes, the scars of this conflict, now surround the mesa on every side. They are wedged pk -N. - ^ife-«^^ !■, THE DINE into every crack and cranny of the rock, they curve about every pinnacle and spire, and wherever a cleft in the parent stone is of large magnitude, they slope in unstained yellow toward the crest. It is, forsooth, as if the town had dared the winds to battle, and that they had hurled against it the weapon nearest hand, striving in one fell swoop to hide its beauty from the eyes of men. Yet, Acoma, for all their strife, still holds the victory ; nay, gains but an added glory from the dunes. For these twist about the mesa until against its cliffs they seem the coils of a golden python, sleeping in the sun, and Acoma sits above them on the [48J jagged mesa's edge like an eagle, meditating flight that moment they be reawakened by the winds. And what a climb it is to Acoma! You ascend by the rib of a dune, which runs from the desert deep into the rock like a ladder leading from earth to sky. Up, up, you mount along this path of pure, molten, gleaming gold, rising higher, ever higher, until the earth falls from you like a garment at the last, and you see beyond the pallid hills, which rim this desert basin round, yet AL llIK ^1 M.MIT OF AKl.MA MESA other hills and deserts and mesas far away, and farther yet, green mountains plumed with diadems of snow. At length, beneath the haze of light which hovers over them, all contours melt into one. and shimmer like a garden of mermaid's roses and anemones under the sea. Yet, still the dune continues as if it had no end, but were a ray of sunshine flung across the arc of heaven's blue,. and half blinded by its brilliance, lulled by the heat waves rising from its sands, you lose all sense of motion and seem floating toward the crest, not of your own volition, but on the pinions of the air. Then, when you seem about to fall direct into the sun, [49] the trail turns sharply, leaves the dune and hides in a crevasse of the wall, a deep, cool well of shadow, which the sunlight never enters. This narrow cleft is choked with boulders, worn smooth by many feet, and clinging insecurely to notches chiseled in its sides, you scramble, stumble over these until you reach the sum- mit, and discover you are standing at the gates of Acoma. About you are a medley of strange faces, strange attires, and these, with the earth be- neath you so infinitely far, arouse you a while to wonder whether you be not come to some unchart- ed planet, the fairy realm of your dreams. Nor does this fan- cy alter upon turning toward the town, for the pinnacle on which this stands is but a slender shaft of rock, and the crest of it is covered so completely by the dwellings, that Acoma appears, as it were, pendent in the sky. I n d e e d, i t s houses are so white and crowd so close on to the verge, that in those seasons when the mists draw nigh, you scarce can tell where they begin and where the houses have an end. And so this strange pueblo of the Children of the Sun is like a city on a cloud, whose parapets o'er- hang the margin, and to look out of its windows is like looking out of Heaven, so wonderful, so dazzling, so resplendent is the view. Near by a host of lesser crags thrust up their spires through the dunes that curve and twist about the town like golden glaciers; •nii: WKI.L OF SHADOW [50] beneath the desert shimmers with a rosary of hills etching its pastel meadows in abalone pearl ; and opposite, overtopping all, stands the Enchanted Mesa, serene, irradiant and calm, in its brooding solitude. If it be winter and the day be clear, there also arises from the north horizon the snowcapped summits of the San Mateo Mountains, crowning an hundred miles of earth, and shedding a rainbow radiance from their triple-peaked crests to mingle with the sunshine, which from dawn to darkness rings the town in a coronal of light. Nor is this all; the town itself THE ENt'HANTKD MESA is fairer far than any you have ever seen before. Taos, Berna- hlillo, Zuni, Laguna, Cochiti, taken together, can not match its beauty. For the white-winged clouds which pass it by and touch it ever and anon, have made it light of head and heart, so that its native mood is one of gay insouciance. It dances as oft as the heat waves dance on the yellow plain beneath it, and with step as fleet as the dervish winds which swirl across the dunes. And if it be unlovely for a moment, why what then? 'Tis only for a moment; thus it bids you forget whatever blemish it may have in the glory of its setting, and hides its shame, therefore. [51] beneath a merry lilt of laughter. Nor yet content, it borrows from the plumage of the sky — thieving the jewels of the moon to hang upon its house tops, robbing the sunset fires to tapestry its walls, gleaning the lightning flashes to illuminate its plazas, and pilfering the coff'ers of the rains and snows and stars to pin yet other ribands on the whiteness of its breasts — that it may be attired as becomes the high estate of the mother of a nation and handmaid of the sun. ACOJIA FliOM Tllli I'LAZA Yet, upon entering the village, you will be disappointed, for not until you are intimate with pueblo architecture can Acoma win a place in your affections. At first it will seem squalid and greatly in decay. Indeed, were it not for the people moving ever to and fro, with their bright-hued clothes, their laughter and their eager, restless bustle, you would probably think the town had been deserted for a century. This phase, however, will pass so soon as you discover the dwellings are all builded inside out. Then you will find a comeliness in their dilapidation, a charm in their lack of order, in their topsy-turvyness. The crooked streets, [52] THE NEW TUAIL [53] the crazy plazas, the houses with their doors askew, will change into a maze of quaint surprises and allurements, and Acoma, though a pueblo of but half a thousand souls, holds in its compass more delight than any or all of its sisters by the banks of the Rio Grande. It has two entrances : the trail up which we scrambled, and another along the selfsame dune, but slightly broader than the first, which has been blasted from the rock since San Jose's return to permit of the presence of burros in the village. This trail, indeed, is the finest fruit of Guadalupe's vaunted peace, although, perhaps, no pleasure to the burros, for previous to its construction, all firewood had to be carried on the backs of men and boys from the edge of the desert, several miles away. At the summit of this highway is a large, irregular plaza, really the outskirts of the town but practically the center of its little knot of life. For here the sacred festivals and dances are enacted; here is the market, the court of justice, the gossip ground and the village laundry. The washtubs of this last are natural hollows in the rock, which catch and hold the rains, and there is not a more amusing spectacle in Acoma than the sight of its maids and matrons, with their robes about their knees, scrubbing their frocks and faces in these liquid pools of light, directly they have been refilled by a passing thundershower. On the right of this plaza stands an adobe church, preserving a memory of that time when priests and soldiers quartered here, and to the left of it is the little town. The church is a long, low structure, inordinately plain, whose ornaments consist of two square, squat belfries, a balcony and a cedar door, but it gains a dignity when seen against the distant pearly sands quite out of keeping with its unimport- ance because, in spite of its ugliness, in spite of its neglect, it is the single building in the whole of Acoma, which does not appear on the instant of collapse. The private dwellings look in total ruin. They are the queerest, ramshackle affairs that you have ever seen, tilted one against another in the most haphazard fashion, as if their stones were tipsy from the ozone in the air. The masonry of adobe or undressed limestone shale, is sometimes plastered, but more often not, their tiny windows invariably slant, and their doors [54] are usually situated on the roof, whither you must ascend by a tall, gaunt ladder or a series of slabs protruding from the walls. Most have a double story, some have three, and a few can boast four terraces that rise like kitchen gardens far above the narrow, winding alleys. Regarding these last, one wonders what was the purpose of their plan, for although they intersect the town from one end to the other, and are well paved, too, by the natural rock on which the daring village perches, yet, the inhabitants leave them religiously alone to the ministrations of the pigs, ducks, burros, goats and chickens, preferring themselves to walk around the terraces of the roofs, or along the slender copings which divide these each from the other. This habit of theirs, above all else, bestows upon the pueblo that ruinous appearance, which with its want of order, gives to it the outline of a Grecian border, tacked to the sky by crazy chimney pots. Within, however, the houses are spick and span. Each family division consists of one large front room, used for all purposes, and two smaller ones behind, that are dark as closets, and only employed for the storing of the winter corn and the extra furnishings. The living room is very plain, but quite commodious, and its appointments, although simple, are as pretty as can be. It has a floor of mud, mud walls, whitewashed or tinted blue with clay, and a mud-and-faggot, raftered ceiling. Its tiny windows have no panes, its entrance has no door, but, as if to counteract these facts, which are scarcely a misfortune in so tropical a climate, a low, adobe settle runs completely around its sides, supplying the place of chairs and table, pantry, cupboard and workshop, all in one. The stove is a slab of slate arranged above the coals of an open fire, whose chimney projects from one corner like an old Apache hood, and opposite this are the stone mattetes for grinding melon seeds and corn. The cooking pots and utensil baskets, with possibly a jar or two containing herbs or their decoctions, are placed beside these on the settle, but the large, painted olla filled with the precious drinking water, is set at the other end, where the draft can cool it of the desert sun. Blankets are spread upon the floor, strings of red chilli pods hang from the rafters, a saddle and bridle are suspended from a peg, a wampum necklace, a wooden doll, a granite mortar and obsidian [55] AN INTERIOR CRINDIN'G CORN [56] pestle, and a spinning spool are clustered together on a shelf, and over the entrance to the inner rooms a bunch of eagle feathers dangle, waving in the breeze. The inmates of such a dwelling must needs be simple folk; and the Acomans are as simple and contented as can be. They are a stocky people, light of skin and full of face, with lustrous eyes and noble foreheads, firm chins, thin lips, and mouths relieved THE PIEBLO OF THE Sl'N by the tracery of smiles. In youth they are both graceful and very fleet of foot but as they grow in years, they grow in measure and precision, and move as if wearing the halos of innumerable laughs. They are quick-witted, too, and big of heart, and go through life as it were one long fiesta, happy, carefree, bouyant as the clouds that hover above their house tops in the dawn. Indeed these Children of the Sun are gayer than the gay. From, the time they awake in the morning until their good-night be said, they string their hours to a wreath of uninterrupted [57] pleasure. For they make a pastime even of their labors, and so soon as these are finished, the games and sports begin. First perhaps a rabbit hunt will occur upon the desert, for this is a favorite amusement in which the hunters run in couples, beating the brush and quarry with sticks and deerhide thongs; and if at the end the maid has proved a better Nimrod than the man, then he must don her dress and bear her kill to the village, amid the badinage of all. Next, there will be horse races, foot races. wrestling bouts, archery contests and hocky games; and finally, once or twice a week, a public dance or festival is given in the plaza, which, for all it is religious, has never a hint of religious solemnity. For the dancers are tricked forth in brilliant, fanci- ful attire — blankets of white and red or yellow, kilts and sashes of green and blue, with turquois and coral necklaces, and silver beads and belts — and the songs they sing while swaying to the music of pipe and drum, are blithe, melodious, effervescent lyrics, their sparkling laughter set to antiphony. [58] Both in sight and sound these fiestas indeed are the mer- riest affairs. Yet they strike the keynote of the Acomans' relig- ion, for this embroiders their life like a cloth of gold, knotted, it may be, here and there with a silver strand of sorrow, but always knotted on the under side. In its practice forsooth, there is nothing solemn, and but little that is sad, although a quantity of undiscovered, undeciphered mystery. For their faith is a nature worship, born of the wonders round about them — the rocks, the dunes, the desert, the morning and the night — but with Pa-yat-ya-ma, the sun, transcendent always in their hearts, and the God of the Lean Years, rising like a smoke behind his throne. Nevertheless, they are intimate with all their deities, for these are not mere abstractions but creations of flesh and blood who, for all you may not see them, hover ever in the air, both able and ready to interfere without a moment's warning in what- soever comes beneath their notice. No single act escapes their vision; no whisper fails to reach their ears; they may grant a wish ere it is asked in the gleam from a lightning flash, or wreck [59] the toil of ages in the twinkling of a star. These gods, however, are benign, except when angered by disservice, and are ever eager to bestow their blessings upon the true of heart who are learned in their ways. Thus it behooves their children, as they walk the trail of life, to read aright the omens put upon it for their guidance, lest they lose their souls, and wander like the Maiden in the Moon, seeking forever and ever the vanished Shi-pa-pu. This dread of never landing on the Islands of the Light, turns everything they see and hear, turns everything they think and do, into a revelation for the observant Acomans — a mystery which much be read at once and understood, for about them is a veil of dark which hides in mist the Great Beyond, and a budding flower, a drop of dew, the spinning of a spider's web may each be but a symbol of the Elder Ones of Old. Therefore, the Acomans carry their faith wherever they may go, into their fields and pastures, into their plazas and homes, using its rites to decipher their reveries and dreams, asking its inspiration in their sorrows, tasks [GO] and pleasures, and wearing its emblems on their breasts and its meaning hidden in their hearts, with the unquestioning assurance of an endless adoration. Indeed, from the time when as babies they lie on the sacred bed of sand, until they are borne upon spruce boughs to their pollen-sprinkled grave, no act is undertaken, no purpose set afoot, without consulting the deities with prayer and supplication, lest misfortune come upon them and their City of the Sun. Thus, the head of Acoma must be high priest and potentate together. This personage is chosen for life, with the title of Cacique, but upon assuming office he is given an assistant, who as a rule succeeds him at his death. The Cacique, however, is by no means absolute. As a matter of fact, while nothing is done without first gaining his consent, his powers are rather advisory than initiative ones, and although his course is presumed to be determined by the gods, it is moulded largely upon the opinion of his associates. For he has to assist him first, an elective council composed of the priests and elders (and all of the pueblos are governed practically the same), and then there is also elected every year a governor, a war chief and a town clerk or a crier. These three have entire dominance over all civil matters, inclusive of its law, while the Council and Cacique control ecclesiastical affairs. The Governor is treasurer of all the town finances, directs the administration of the common herds and fields, and with the war chief is joint judge of all offenses and suits in equity. This latter individual, the war chief, is, of course, little more than a figurehead today. Originally he led upon the warpath, on which his dictum was supreme, but now, except when judging, which occurs but very seldom as the Aco- mans are a law-abiding people, he spends his time planning rabbit hunts or in rounding up stray droves of sheep and cattle. Nor do the cares of office weigh upon the crier's head, for his twofold duty consists in, first, the keeping of the church's key, of which he is the reverent but absent sacristan, and next, in announcing at dawn from the house tops the calendar for each day, acquainting the folk with the dances or fiestas to be held, and what labor for the public weal the Governor, in his wisdom, has appointed to be done. [61] For the pueblo is conducted on a communistic basis, so that no matter what private wealth its citizens may possess, they also own the right to a share of the common property, toward the maintenance of which they must contribute. This com- munism is ingrained also into their social life. For the unit of society is not the family but the clan, whose members live together in a certain area, dividing thus the village into quarters. Nor is this all; these clans in turn are joined together into groups, each hav- ing its special festivals and secret worship chambers, be- cause their components are thought to be affiliated through those gods by whom they were created at the beginning of the world. This spiritual bond in- deed is the only one between them since the marriage laws prohibit an admixture of their bloods. Hence, a man may not marry a maiden belonging to his clan, nor one from those of which he is a kindred. Mar- riage, however, is a sacred duty, and so the youth hies him to another clan, woos his in- amorata and is wedded by a priest. Thenceforward, his life is an amusing contradic- tion. For he leaves his domicile and lives in the precinct of his bride, yet keeps his clan apart from hers, not even revealing to her his divine, fraternal name by which he trusts to be greeted when he attains the sky. In fact, both parties to the union TlllO COVEliNOl! [62J preserve their social status distinct from one another. The wife constructs their dwelling so soon as she is able, and thereafter is absolute mistress of all that it contains, including the fruit of her husband's fields. He, on the other hand, owns his flocks and herds, participates only in his clan fiestas, and may do anything he please save commit an infidelity. For, upon proof of this, the woman can evict him from her household, and even deny him the privilege of speaking with his children, who trace descent from her, and thus are members of her clan. Divorce, however, is a rare occurrence, for the pueblans are monogamists, and devoted to their families. Beside, they have little leisure to go philandering, for there is work to do in plenty, and they busy themselves about this with cheerful industry. So soon as the morning service to Pa-yat-ya-ma is finished, and the frugal breakfast eaten in the early light of dawn, the men fare forth with their implements to till the desert fields, the youths depart upon burros to tend the flocks of sheep, and the elders gather at the shrines to propitiate the gods. Then the house- wives send their children to the shaman for instruction, and begin with the maiden's assistance to set their homes in order. They have the sleeping blankets to air and lay away, their rooms to sweep, their corn to grind, their bread to bake, their babies and pots and pans to clean, and last but not least, their water to fetch from the pool at the foot of the trail. By the time these tasks are completed, it is certain to be noon, when all within the village enjoy a short siesta. They are up and about again, however, the instant the first breeze tempers the edges of the heat, but upon occupations of a less laborious nature. For now the elders chat or tell each other of the legends, the youths play games or climb the cliff's, and the men race over the desert, rounding up herds of cattle, matching their ponies as they run or flinging their buckskin riatas at one another's heads, while the women sit on the terraces fashioning pottery, which they decorate with a badger brush in intricate designs. This art of pottery making is common to all of the pueblans, but the Acoman tinajas, ollas, dippers, cups and bowls are accounted the best, and the townsfolk gain a goodly revenue [63] from their sale to less efficient neighbors. Indeed, today these ceramics, with their mystical ornamentations in vivid reds and browns, are the source of the greatest pride and income, but there once was a time when Acoma was also famous for its textiles, a time when fabulous prices in turquois, coral and sheep were paid for the blankets and mantas dyed and woven by its men, and embroidered with pretty figures along the edges by its women. Then the citizens of no other town were half so deft with their looms and needles, but now the only weaving done is that for the garments worn in the fiestas or the sashes and garters still pre- served from their ancient tribal costume. For the women find it cheaper to fashion their attire from the garish calicoes and prints on sale in the trader's store, and the men have all adopted the coarser American dress. Yet there is still a poetry and charm in their apparel, and it possesses both a physical and visual warmth it never had before. The men wear loose white cotton trousers, blue jeans or corduroys and negligee shirts with fancy bosoms, left open at the throat, wrapping themselves, if the day be cool, in army blankets of turkey red. Their heads and their heels have alone escaped the process of a change, for they still wear buckskin moc- casins in preference to shoes, and bind bright bandas in their hair, which hangs in a shock about their neck and shoulders. For ornament, they have wampum beads or strands of coral and abalone with jet and turquois pendants and silver bracelets, rings and buckles, hammered from their extra cash. The women's clothes are quite as various — tight-fitting blouses and mantas or skirts, whose patterns are most often gaudy flowers. These are confined at the waist by a woolen sash of red and green, but the blouses sometimes have no sleeves and the skirts reach only to the knees, since their legs are incased in the spiral folds of voluminous buckskin boots, held in position at the top by fringed and knotted woolen garters. Two ribbons, similar to these, bind the double braids of their long black hair, which is draped in a yellow shallais shawl, either flowing free or tied in a bow beneath their finely moulded chins. In contrast to these motley garbs of their color-loving eldei's, the children run stark naked until the age of six, although sometimes a prim and proper, super- [64] YOUNGSTERS [65] sensitive mamma will hang about her baby's neck a strip of calico, which flaps piquantly out behind like the pennant to a ship. These rolly-polly youngsters are the first to make one wel- come, needing only a stick of peppermint to turn them into friends, but their parents are no less eager to extend their hospi- tality. For so soon as you leave the plaza to explore the crooked streets, these beckon to you from the house tops and invite you to enter their homes, where they oflfer you everything within their larder — tortillas, piki wafers, tea and coffee, mutton stew, corn, chilli, beans and melons, and in the autumn season, yucca jelly, pihon nuts and prickly pears. They will also show you their treasures, the mother's pottery, the father's guns and saddles, the daughter's pretty dresses, the son's bows and arrows and quiver of the mountain lion skin, the children's wooden dolls, the watchdog's puppies, their rabbit robes, their blankets, their jewels, their silver bridles, their baskets, their little images and their festival attire — everything, indeed, which you care to see, except their fetiches, which hang on pegs in the inner rooms. For these are precious, and the gods would strike with lightning any- one revealing them to alien eyes. That they may not relieve your curiosity in this matter gives them, however, as much concern as your breach of manners gives you, and to lift the incubus from the conversation, some man among them who speaks English will proffer his services as guide. If you are wise you will accept of them, for he can show you in an hour what it would take you a fortnight to discover for yourself, and will add for good measure a running commen- tary in mingled Mexican and English, that brings the bizarre vil- lage nearer to your comprehension. First, perhaps, he will take you to the place where a house is being built, that you may watch the women lay the walls and lift the rafters, and when you see a burro arrive with his load of masonry — no more than a half dozen stones or a single sack of adobe mortar — you realize how ardous architecture is at Acoma, since every part of a dwel- ling, from the mud floor to the ceiling, must be brought in this patient manner from the desert far below. Next, passing- through an alley, he will point out a worship chamber, and allow you to wait by the hatchway, which opens through its roof, until [66] a priest mounts its ladder with prayer plumes in hand, and wrapped in his scarlet blanket, hastens away to some distant shrine hidden snug in a cranny of the mesa clilf. Then he leads you over the house tops, past the chimney pots and the mud-cone ovens which are set out of doors, on the terraces like TlIK .MID -CONK DVKNS domes on a Greek Cathedral, to the plaza where the youths and maidens are playing sports and games. While here, if the sacristan can be found and wheedled into humor, he will give you a glimpse of the little church with its carven altar and fluted columns, and the famous painting of the wan and melancholy San Jose hanging above the crucifix, with its crown of paper flowers. Or, if the key to the door be not forthcoming, as is [67] likely, then you, perforce, must be content with a view of the cemetery, which lies behind the church, rimmed in by a low adobe wall. This churchyard alone is worth a journey hither, for there is no other like it in the world. It is almost an acre of creamy sand, spread ten feet thick on the mesa summit, and if labor ever eases the slumber of the dead, then those within should rest in peace, for all of its earth was carried here from beneath the Enchanted Mesa in wicker baskets on the backs of men. This task was imposed by the Spanish padres, for previous to their arrival the Acoman burial places were the dunes and mesa caves. and the recollection of these brave and zealous missionaries will prod your conductor's memory anent the tragic role played by the Spaniards in the village annals, so that while you stroll past the women washing their mantas in the basins, he will recon- struct the epics enacted on this plaza, when the Conquistadors were striving to win God's Country for their own. Nor is any other spot so fine a tribute to their daring, for from Coronado onward each Conquistador in turn held his brightest crown of glory from this Pueblo of the Sun. Don Juan de Ofiate was the first to wring allegiance from its people, but lived to pay most dearly for this temporary homage. For a few weeks later, while he himself was gone upon his journey to the Moqui villages, the Acomans enticed his lieutenant, Don Juan de Zaldivar, into the plaza with only twelve companions, and rush- ing upon these unawares at dusk, while they were supping, killed all but five of them, who leaped in desperation from the cliff. Though it seems a miracle, four of these survived the impact of their fall and escaped in the darkness to bear the tale of treachery to Don Onate. Don Juan de Zaldivar was among the slain, so Ofiate sent his elder brother, the noble Don Vicente, to avenge his death and punish the pueblo for its crime. There ensued a struggle worthy the pen of the poet-captain of those years, the Seiior Villagran, for Vicente de Zaldivar reached the mesa with only seventy soldiers, in the latter part of January, 1599, and amid a hail of poisoned arrows mixed with winter winds and snows, won to its summit, step by step, until at length, arriving on a slender pinnacle, he leaped across its chasm direct into the town. Then began a fiercer onslaught, for [68] before the village yielded, Vicente and the remnant of his little company fought a three-day battle without ceasing, in the plaza, until the streets were shambles and the warriors "slipped in blood which, God in Heaven! might have been their own." "Matre de Dios! but your guide would give you his turquois could he have been there." This lesson cowed the pueblo for almost a hundred years, but in Santa Ana, 1680, the Acomans at last forgot the vision of Vicente in the plaza, sword in hand, receiving the subjugation of the dead and dying shamans, and led their sister towns in a great revolt to break forever the yoke of Spain and Rome. Fray Lucas Maldonado was their resident padre then, and him they flogged in the plaza and thonged to the altar rail while his little church was razed about him, finally, "por Dios, because he was yet alive," flinging him from the mesa to rot on the sands below. Whether it was, as your guide insists, because the padre's cassock spread like a parachute and bore his person to the ground in safety, or whether because of that heroic month of siege, where- with Diego de Vargas twelve years later took the town, Acoma thenceforward repented of her ways and accepted meekly of the will of Spain and Mexico. The church was rebuilded at the beginning of the century and "Tata Dios" worshiped there with becoming regularity until the death of Padre Lopez, who settled the little matter of the painting of San Jose; since when the pueblo has shaped its course according to the wishes of the Cacique at Washington. So your guide leaves the plaza with its age-old memories that he may show you the very place from which the flve men leaped, and the pinnacle from which Vicente and his troops sprang like so many mountain lions across the intervening chasm. The gap is fully ten feet wide, and the depth of it makes you dizzy even to contemplate, but you soon forget it, for from here the Enchanted Mesa is palely visible, rising a rainbow incense above the haze of yellow sands, and your guide has also a tale to tell of it. This rock, indeed, is the corner stone of his mystical leligion, the temple of Pa-yat-ya-ma, the Garden of the Moon, but it is not of these sacred things he speaks. For who are you, forsooth, that he should prattle of his faith? Do you believe in [69] Shi-pa-pu? Do you know where the Trues are living? Yet, although he be silent in these regards, his eyes grow soft and full of prayer as he looks at this rock of his spirit's dreams, and his voice is low and musical as he tells how, long ago, his people lived atop the Enchanted Mesa. One day, however, while the most were toiling in the fields below, the gods, for an impiety, destroyed the only trail, tumbling it all in ruins so that those on the crest could not come down nor those on the desert evermore return. Then the remnant of the Children of the Sun were full of mourning and builded their present city, the cloud-kissed Acoma, near by, that they might always have the mesa's silent admonition to walk in the path of the Trues with contrite hearts. And even yet of a nighttime, when the moon is at the full, the Acomans can hear above the dune winds on the mesa the voices of the "Other People" chanting lowly to their gods. You fain would stay and hear them, too, but the tour of the town is ended and you still have far to go. So, bidding good- bye to your guide, you stroll once more through the streets and plaza to the head of the village trail. The afternoon is waning into eventide. The western hills are in silhouette, limned at the crests with golden fire; the clouds above them, hanging low, are fringed with green and yellow feathers like the plumes that drape the altar of the dear earth-mother's shrine ; long, purple shadows, tinged with pink, splash here and there across the dunes; the western facades of the cliff burn redder than the sacred sun; and camp fires sparkle on the plain, gleaming like coyote eyes amid its pearly coverlet of dusk. Presently the sacristan climbs into the church's belfry and, when Pa-yat-ya-ma touches his shield to the horizon, the sweet-toned bells within it ring forth their vesper chimes. Above the film of thin, blue smoke, arising from the crooked chimneys, their melody floats out afar upon the desert, calling the people home to prayer, and one and all, these leave their tasks, their sports and other avocations to move like pilgrims toward the mesa's mellow stair of sand. Through the ethereal landscape, fragrant with the fall of dew, this motley caravan comes ever nearer as you descend the trail, until its fleeting, flashing press meets with you at the last and you stem its sea of faces that drift forever by. Men ahorseback, men afoot, [70] children with their bows and arrows, trains of burros, flocks of sheep, shamans, shepherd lads and lasses, in a steady stream they pass, crisscrossed and broken by the file of women mount- ing from the spring, who thread a way in stately grace with their great tinajas on their heads. But, at length the last of these has dipped her final gourd of azure water and the ultimate strag- gler, a tall, bronze youth, with a crimson breechclout at his loins, runs blithely past with a wave of the hand and a laughing farewell, "Adios." Then the sights and sounds grow indis- tinct, the brilliant raiment fades to drab, the voices and sheep bells call farther away, and the tail of the caravan vanishes into the twilight of the summit, leaving you solitary by the pool upon the desert, whose surface the cloud light kindles with an irides- cent oil. Above, the little village is veiled in silver mist ; below, the image of a star shines deep within the waters; beyond, the Enchanted Mesa lifts like a cameo, and over the sands there rustles the breath of a timid breeze. Adios it is, indeed, to the Pueblo of the Sun, and to its children gathered to their eyrie nest of dreams. [71] CHAPTER V. ON THE TRAIL OF THE CONQUISTADORS FROM ACOMA TO ZUNI EHIND the palisade of hills southwest of Acoma there lies an high plateau where the summer air blows chill with the tang of winter. This por- tion of God's Country is perched aloft, indeed, amid the regions held in fief by the hoarfrost and the hail ; and yet, it was not ever thus, for once long, long ago, it felt the heeltap of an harlot fire. Then its surface stratum was smooth, pink sand- stone, but volcanoes ruptured this with cones and overlaid it with a crust of pumice stone and lava, until it was invisible excepting at the edges, and the altered plateau ran in billows like an angry midnight sea. No doubt for a while thereafter this pavement was a waste, but so many years have melted in the crucible of time since it was spread, that now its creases are weatherworn with age and twine like old Chantilly lace among its mottled verdure. For copses of junipers and pinons grow on the cinder crests, ragged spruce trees straggle up the higher mountain sim- mits, creeping cacti adorn the fields of huge misshapen boulders, and gaunt pines fringe the margins of the many sunken craters, where limpid lakes lie mirroring the landscape round about and [72] the grass grows lush and fragrant, interspersed with reeds and flowers. By day these crystal waters are rippled by the breezes and the plumage of teals and terns, but in the twilight, when these birds have sought their nests among the tules, they flame with fire as of old, loaned for the nonce by the sunset sky. To the south this plateau changes to a wilderness of hills which tumble in confusion, boulder-scarred and forest-crowned, ■^^' ^ ^ '^■^^■: 4f.i«L4|fc*^%>^ *";t.w^^«^ -It A ir.ATKi: I.AKK to the steppes of the San Augustine Plains. A band of Apache lurked among these fastnesses of yore, but now they are unten- anted of any but the deer and bear and other woodland creatures who range their coverts as they will, molested only by a chance, infrequent Acoman. But to the west is a tamer land ; for here the plateau precipice falls abruptly to a valley, some twenty miles in width and an hundred long. Opposite this rise the foot- hills of the Oso Range, which runs at right angles to it, and at its [73] head stand the San Mateo Mountains, whose snowy summits we could see from the roofs of Acoma. These volcanoes are nearer to us now than they were then, however, and play a more impres- sive part in the trail of our pilgrimage, for they have poured a twisted stream of lava down this valley which we must ford upon our way to Zuni. To the Navajo this lava is the River of Chez-zhin, for they think it the blood of the giant, Yeitso, killed THE TRAIL FROM ACOMA TO Zl KI by their twin-god heroes, Nayenezgani and his brother; and whatever its origin may have been, its appearance certainly fits this legend, for its red-black fossil torrent clogs well nigh all the valley, leaving only a narrow strip of herbage untouched at either side. Indeed, upon occasion, the maelstrom of its tides are jammed against the enclosing walls to a height of sixty feet, and since the lava of them is so twisted and so sharp that only the wily coyote can pick a passage through, Man of necessity must take a detour around. [74] Hither from Acoma comes the trail to Zuni, first climb- ing to the high plateau through a gap in the desert hills, thence crossing its pumice pavement, strewn with crater lakes and cin- der cones, to Cebolla Spring on the western side, where onion flowers and marigolds garland a pool of water cress, and finally entering a vale, down which it wanders through fields of corn, to the edge of the lava river. Here it must needs turn sharply- north and skirt the flood of rock for miles, seeking in vain for liKSIDK YOl- ItUNS THE LAVA a place to ford. This seems indeed a futile task, for mesquite bushes, chapparal, yucca, century plants and cacti grow every- where so rank upon it that its front presents a jungle of evil spikes and thorns, on which the sun beats down with blinding glare. As you journey, turkey buzzards whirl in circles over- head; underfoot, rattlesnakes flick their tongues and glide like gray-green shadows to the cover of their lairs ; roundabout, crows and blackbirds chatter in their raucous tones, and all the while beside you runs the interminable lava until, to escape it, you [7r,] conclude you must ascend the San Mateos. But at length this turbulent river becomes suddenly smooth and calm, its obsidian billows alter into gently swelling knolls, the cacti foam upon it withers, wilts and disappears, giving place in the end to a coarse, brown stubble, and the trail, after feeling of this to learn if it should be a snare, turns face about and boldly enters into its very midst. Yet it must still be wary, for this herbage is very thin, and ugly black ripples of lava break through it here and there, so it picks its way with caution, avoiding this and that abyss, until it finally emerges upon the farther shore beside the Mexican village of San Rafael. This little hamlet is wedged between the lava and a coigne of hill, an ugly, stony foreland barren of verdure and of shade, and is, if possible, more unattractive than its environment. For its houses are all of them squat adobes, and its lanes are refuse heaps. The church, which fronts its central plaza, alone makes a pretense to rise above this atmosphere of squalor, and does so only by means of its tipsy, wooden belfry, in which the bells are jangled completely out of tune. Indeed, were it not for the meadows which lie below the town in a bay of the valley the lava spared, nothing whatever would save San Rafael from its slat- tern decadence. But these at least are good and green, for Guay- mas Spring, which bubbles from a crevasse in the hill, gives freely to them of its flow, that they may keep their verdure fresh and tender through the year. Happily the people of San Rafael resemble their pastures more than their town, being merry of heart and free of hand, and as much the kin of God's Country as the pleasant Acomans. lor although they may be poor in cash they are rich in courtesy, and wear a pricely lineage on their patrician features which even their rags and their hovels can not hide. And this is as it should be, because, though they may be fallen from their rightful high estate, these folk are the descendants of the Conquistadors, and no ill fortune can rob them of this panoply of honor. Thus they are gentle, courteous and kind, as becomes the gallant motto of their quondam coat of arms, and will welcome you politely to the life of San Rafael with its pretty, threadbare masquerade of chivalry and romance. [76] UE.StKMJANTS OF TIIIC (.OM/l ISTAUOli.S [77] For the citizens of San Rafael have kept the sunny nature of the Conquistadors as well as their manners and some of their customs, so that existence in the village is a lifelong holiday. The seiioritas are pretty; the senors are cavaliers; the phrases of their language fall like ripe pomegranates from their lips, and their voices are like the music of a west wind among pines; so many a languishing hour of love is stolen from under the noses of the dons and the duennas, who, to do them justice, veil their eyes with the lashes of their vanished youth. "Con amor el mundo paso," ah, yes, in love runs the world away! So what matter the rags and the empty pockets, the adobe huts and the dirty lanes, for "so long as there be a man to fight, a maid to love, and a song to sing, why a fig for the padres and all their prayers." Bravo, brave Seiior Sol y Baca! With your flashing eyes, your waving hair, and your new serape, it is no wonder that you are the village minstrel and Gay Lothario, and dare, by reason of these titles, to snap your fingers at the old duennas. And look to it, you sefioras, that you follow the instructions implied in Seiior Baca's speech, and keep but a touch of thistle-down on the seiiorita's shoulders. For, "pish, Saint Peter meant a maid to wed, and you will have a grandchild soon to prattle at your knees." So go about your business and leave your daughters to sit and sew their marriage linen at the window whence, through the crimson flowers of the geraniums, they may catch a glimpse of their cavaliers. Nor are the duennas' days bereft of pleasure. They also have their pastimes which, lingual though they be, and retro- spective as becomes their age, are none the less enjoyable and enjoyed. One may see them of a morning chatting at the village spring, and in the afternoon they sit on the gossip bench by the wine shop door, smoking their cigarettes while they do their needlework. Here in the evening they also gather to chaperon impromptu "bailes," and there ensues in the plaza the twanging of guitars and the shuffling of dainty feet a-dancing the fandango. Amid these merrymakings of the endless game of love which, one and all, the San Rafaelites play, there are church fiestas, saint days, and summer village picnics, in which the entire popu- lation join with frolic, song and jest, and most important, hap- [78] piest of these is the great May Festival of the sheep, when the flocks are sheared of their fleece and dipped in the long tobacco vat. Then indeed does San Rafael arise in the heyday of the spring and whirl to the madcap measure of a fortnight's pas- toral. The village folk are all there, of course, and from mesa and mountain, far and near, come country cousins to swell the tide of their festivity, until the plaza is alive with laughing throngs in gay attire, the wine shop is crowded with spurred rancheros toasting the charms of their senoritas, and the houses are filled to overflowing with noisy company. Without the town also, as well as within it, all things are joyous and fair to see, for the sun has just married the month of May, and chosen the earth for his bridal bed. So the meadows are verdant with ten- der grasses, the orchards are fragrant and pink with bloom, th? spring has a chaplet of ferns and lilies, the marshes are sprinkhd with pussy willows, and the lava river is aflame with crimson cactus blossoms. The San Mateos alone dare wear their winter mantles of gleaming snow amid this tissue of green brocade, but even these are so threadbare now that the jagged rocks beneath have slashed their folds with purple velvet and seamed their edges to the slopes of dark, impenetrable pine with groves of budding quaking aspen. Nay, more; the fretwork of these trees runs through the forest like cloths of gold to the combe of the valley, where they fade before the uplands of sage, which ring the land- scape round, and toss their perfume to each passing breeze, that it may bear this with it to the village when it blows the first glad tidings thither of the coming of the sheep. Jose Angel, the sacristan, waits for these in the belfry of the little church, whence he can see over the meadows and beyond the coigne of hill, but many breezes come and go, nor bring the tinkle of the bells to his attentive ears. Indeed, the morning wears to noon, and the noon to eventide, and still no echo save that of the laughter beneath in the plaza disturbs the sacristan. Ah, well, thinks he when the dusk has come with its afterglow of lilac haze, they will arrive tomorrow, and prepares to descend with unconcern to his belated supper, for Jose Angel has compassed his four-score years and ten, so that a tomorrow more or less is but [79] a little matter. But, hark, what was that? The creak of the ladder? The rustle of leaves in a cotton wood tree? Perhaps, but Jose Angel turns and listens with his hand upon the rope of the rusty chimes. Presently, nearer and clearer, the tinkle is repeated and there is no mistaking the purport of it now. "Neighbors, neighbors," Jose shouts, "the sheep are here," and drowns his voice in a clarion peal which announces to the village that its festival has begun. At once all doors are opened wide, and dancing, shouting, clapping their hands, the people hurry to the plaza. Yet not ■nilO KIItST FI.OCK ICNTKUS -nil: I.ANIO until the stars appear does Jose Angel still the clanging welcome of his bells and lean from the belfry to taste the air. "How many camp fires?" he is asked so soon as his head appears. "One, three, four, seven!" he answers, and would point to where their glimmer furbishes the dark, but the populace have no mind to wait. "Seven," they cry, "a lucky number. Tomorrow there will be seventy, and each night more and more," and joining arms they circle the square in a ring-around-the-rosy. Then off they trip to the wine shop to witness the lotteiy, which will decide the precedence of the flocks for the entire shearing, retiring after- wards to their homes to snatch an hour or two of slumber. [80] For the morning is but half awake when the first flock enters the lane, which runs between the emerald pastures and moves with much confusion, two thousand strong, toward the plaza. It is Sehor Sol y Baca's herd, for he it was who won the drawing, and the sehor himself rides at its head on a prancing chestnut charger. His bridle is heavy with silver trimmings, his saddle leather is embossed, and he is attired in chaparejos, inlaid spurs, a tall sombrero with filigree fringe, and a new serape patterned from the colors of the rainbow. Perceiving him in this fancy garb — high-spirited, mettlesome, debonair — for a moment one might mistake him for a Conquistador, and it was thus indeed his ancestors rode to Guaymas Spring with Coronado, a smile on their lips, a sword in their hand, and a salutation for all the world. So it is no wonder the blackbirds, with their breasts of molten gold, carol a greeting to him from the fences as he rides by, and no wonder the townsfolk gather to await his cavalcade. On he comes with a nonchalant, devil-may-care expression in his laughing eyes, and his flock follows after with noisy bleatings, driven blindly ahead in a cloud of dust by two swarthy herders who walk behind. Now and then a shaggy, crop-eared dog will dart from the melee in hue and cry after a lamb who, with tail a-wriggle, has slipped through the bars of a pasture gate, or circle some cross lane to prevent the obstinate wethers from run- ning away. Nothing, however, stays the course of Sehor Baca and his flock until they have entered the village, traversed it from end to end, w^hile the senoritas shower them with compli- ments and flowers, and are finally shut within the corral of the village shearing pen. Then Sehor Baca's hour of jubilee is past and the yearly penance of his sheep begins. For, within this shearing pen and open platform, roofed over from the sun, the shearers are await- ing with their sharp shears in their hands, ready to rush from cover and fleece the frightened sheep directly the senor signals that the gate is closely barred. This is not long forthcoming; the senor waves his hand, there is a dash, a scurry in and out among the flock, and each of the shearers returns to the pen with the bleating trophy of his chase. Ten minutes more and, car- rambas! the first poor ewe is shorn, the senor marks a tally [81] against the shearer's name, tosses the fleece to the wool bag which dangles in the center, and, presto, before the boy within can stamp it firmly underfoot another ewe is feeling the snip of the shears about her withers. For these shearers are paid by the I III: >]ii.\KiM head, and so they waste no time in conversation, since the more sheep they shear in a day the more centavos can they spend in the wine shop of an evening. Besides, there is other work afoot which may not be delayed, and yet a greater penance for the complaining sheep. For so soon as each ewe is shorn, she with her lamb is chased to the vat and prodded into it head foremost. [82] TllK IMA NCK INTO THE VAT [83] This vat is sixty feet in length and filled with a boiling mixture of sulphur and tobacco, a medicine intended to eradicate disease, and through this the ewe and her lamb must swim, however much protesting, for the gate to their next year's pasture opens at the farther end. All day, for many days, this vat and the pen beside it are a mill of bleating sheep and shouting men; all night for many nights the town resounds to the twanging of guitars and the IN TlIK \ AT clicking heels of dancers; for after Seiior Baca's flock is driven from the big corral, hundreds of others enter it in their allotted order. But at length the final band arrives, pays in its toll of wool and swims its way to a twelvemonth's freedom. Then the vat is emptied, the pen is closed and the festival is over. San Rafael, however, is loath to lose the cause of its merry- making, so that evening a farewell baile is given the visitors in the plaza. Preparations for this have been under way in the kitchens for several hours, and now, at dusk, the seiioritas carry [84] their contributions of cakes and pinochea to the wine shop and hasten home again to rifle the family chests of their finest wares. Priceless mantillas, brocaded gowns, embroidered stockings and velvet slippers perfumed with memories of old Spain, are pulled from these and arranged to the taste of the duennas, who can trace the history of every garment back for several generations. Then the old-fashioned combs and jewels are removed from their sandalwood boxes and pinned in masses of raven hair or hung llli; (lATK TO NEXT YKAll'S rASTlUE upon gleaming shoulders, and the senoritas are ready to greet their waiting cavaliers. These stand without, attired in their richest velvet trousers, their laciest shirts and their brightest sashes, and when the moon rises, resolving the shadows into a tissue of filigree silver, the couples trip to the plaza, arm in arm, but chaperoned by the presence of an elderly duenna. "Con amor el mundo paso," presently the tune begins and continues to the play of feet and glances whirling in the maze of the waltz, fan- dango and contra dansa until the dawn steals over the moun- [85] tains to brush the mists from the village meadows. Then the "maestro del baile" begs the ladies' pardon for the prematurity of the day and leads the way into the wine shop, where, ready filled, the glasses stand in a row upon the counter. "Senors," he cries, and each cavalier raises his wine-red toast on high, "to the senoritas, and San Rafael grant us good grazing through the year." An hour after, when the sun sweeps the plaza clear of the night's carouse, you may possibly discover in the shadow of a wall the recumbent form of some paisano who feted himself more often than the wine cask deemed wise, or hear the bleat of an orphan lamb searching the town for its vanished mother, but, saving such, nor sight nor sound disturbs the quiet of San Rafael. For the herders and rancheros have scattered to the mountains to pick up the trail of their fleeing flocks, and since the village will need a week to drowse itself free of its flesta, perhaps, it were best for us to follow after. The dew still glistens on the grass, but it is pranked with the print of many hoofs and, when we turn the coigne of hill beneath which San Rafael is set, we perceive the hindmost mem- ber of this fugitive cavalcade. The others are already out of sight behind a bend in Zuni Cafion whose gap invites us to its shade a mile or two beyond, but this solitary horseman seems not a whit dismayed at their precipitate desertion. Instead, he sits his saddle with the graceful ease of one for whom the moment is all in all, allowing his pony to choose its gait and toying with the melody of a folk song as he rides, as if daring the sunshine to prove itself more light of heart than he. As we approach there is something reminiscent in his manner. That flick of the foot in its tapadero, that shrug of the shoulders, that toss of the head, we have surely met with these before. Can it possibly be — why of course it is — the Seiior Sol y Baca. Buenas dias, Senor, and whither do you ride alone and singing on this bright May morning? To your rancherria del Tinaja? Across the mountains? On El Morro Plain? Then a blessing on Saint Estevan, for our roads are joined in one. But come, let us hasten to reach the pines before the sun entangles us in the lasso of his beams, for the noon will be hot and the miles to Tinaja are very many and rough withal. [8G] FOHESTS OF I'FilMKVAI, PINE [87] Thus, in Senor Sol y Baca's pleasant company, we ride the round of a fragrant day, leaving the valley of San Rafael with its fair, green meadows and lava river through the narrow portal of Zuni Carion, and climbing thence, through forests of primeval, yellow pine to the highest crest of the Oso Range. The long trail, dappled with sun and shade, runs over meads of brilliant flowers, splashes through brooks, rattles over stones, drinks of a waterfall, hides among brambles, and, growing steeper all the while, emerges at length on the summit, whence we can see behind us the San Mateo Mountains, the high plateau and the rainbow haze of the desert of Acoma, and before us the expanses of an undiscovered country whose bourne is mingled with the far horizon. Ah, what visions of empire must have gathered in Coronado's eyes, when he stood upon this turret of God's Country long ago! The privations and disappointments he had already undergone must have seemed indeed but a paltry price to pay for the conquest of such a land, whose very texture shone more rich than the walls of the Alhambra, and like them held, no doubt, an even finer wealth within. So at least thinks the Seiior Baca as he points you here and yon, now revealing the peak of the Cerro del Oro behind Cebolla Mountain, and now naming the craters which rise beside the ultimate shore of the lava river. It is late, however, so Senor Baca is chary of his information, and, springing again on his pony, he rides down the western slope to the confines of a grove of giant spruce. Here he stops, peers timidly ahead, and then, presumably satisfied, spurs hurriedly into the forest's midst. Nor can you blame his hesitation, for the dark green foliage of these trees is interlaced so thickly that the pale blue sky is hid, and what little sunshine filters through is tarnished into twilight, so that for awhile even you forbear to pass the threshold of this cloister, doubtful as to what danger may be lurking in its shade. Within, however, you but find a bed of scented moss, sprinkled with yellow violets that sparkle like tiny stars, and withal this verdant carpet is soft and silent to the tread ; the fragrance of it, you would think, forbids all thought of harm. Yet, Seiior Baca shares not this opinion, for he wraps his cloak about him as if the day were chill, and urges his horse the faster with each ensuing moment. Forsooth, one meeting [88] with him now would never take him to be the same gay, singing cavalier who rode at our flanks through the morning as happy as a lark. Fear certainly sits behind him, whispering in his ear and bidding him use his quirt upon his pony's steaming flanks. Shall we ask him the cause thereof? But hark, there is no longer any need, for did you not hear that single note played on a reed pipe in the cafion yonder? And do you know what it announces? The presence of the Penitentes — that Mexican THi: KOIiKST (IK THK I'ENITKNTES order, damned by the church, of flagellant fanatics who roam these mountains in twilight and dark, flaying their naked bodies with poisonous cactus spikes, and crucifying a brother on each Good Friday morn in blind, besotted memory of Him of Calvary. Now, indeed, is the Sehor's haste made clear, for should they see one near their camp, God's wounds, the death he dies! Hush! Listen! There it is again, that shrill, soul-piercing strain upon the pipe, and nearer, too — yes, nearer — there — behind that boulder! Baca! Baca! Where is he? Gone? Then we are [89] alone. Oh, ride faster, faster, for see, the sun has all but set. What's that? Can you hear them coming? Eh? No? The trees? Yes, yes, 'tis growing cold. What of the trees? Are ended, you say? Why, so they are. Then we are free of the mountain and safely on the plain. Nay, better yet, for who can tell but the Penitentes are pur- suing? We have ridden into the patio of the rancherria del Tin- aja, so called from a natural basin in the mountain's side near by, where the Conquistadors used to fill their journey jars with water, and there is Seiior Baca himself sitting awaiting us in the lighted doorway, with a friendly smile on his lips once more, and a good excuse for his desertion. It seems he thought best to ride ahead and warn his people of our approach, since strangers arriving after dark are looked upon here with — well, suspicion. Ah, indeed, say we, it is little wonder. But no matter, we can forgive the fib because of the warmth of the Senor's greeting. For, doffing his sombrero, he bows until its brim touches the earth as he sweeps it by, exclaiming, "Pray enter your house, sehors." Nor is the speech empty of intent, coming from the heart, as we soon discover. For, directly we have washed ourselves at the pump spout in the yard, we are bidden to supper, and the table is heaped with every delicacy known to Mexican housewife's larder. The senora, to whom we are not presented (for this would be a breach of custom ) , serves the meal herself, receiving each dish of chilli con carne, tortillas or onions at the kitchen door, that she may do us the honor of first tasting it to learn if it be prepared in the proper fashion. The Seiior Baca, however, dines with us, and a more charming host we would have to travel far to find. For he has a store of anecdote and persiflage at his command, and even the sefiora's eyes are not more quick than his to note a glass or plate that needs refilling. And would you have music? Peste, where is that lazy, good for nothing Beppo? Let him come hither and make us merry with a lively air on his guitar, for 'tis a hard ride over the mountains, eh? and guests do not grow on the sagebrush at the rancherria del Tina j a. But guests, however rare they may be, are very much like other men, so the odds are it will be early to bed, whither your host will con- duct you with a caraffe and a candle. [90] When you open your casement, the morrow's morning, the crystals of an hoarfrost may glisten on the sill, for this plain, like the plateau, is higher than are many famous mountains, but other than this and the snap in the air, the out of doors will THE nASIN OF TINAJA sparkle with the verdure of the spring. To the north the moun- tain rises, its forest of spruce and pine caught in the mesh of a silver mist; to the east, where the lava river flows toward the San Augustine Plains, a line of cinder cones burns red against the pale, dawn-tinted sky; to the south the sagebrush meadows roll to a range of crumpled hills, and westward, great, hulking mesas [91] break the vision with their cliffs. The low adobe casa of the rancherria del Tinaja hides under the lip of the mountain from the fragrant tide of sage, which beats its grey-green billows to the lintel of the door, and seems inordinately small amid these distances and heights, whose lure the birds and the sheep bells sing, bidding you come among them, and chase the winds away. So Senor Baca's request to tarry falls upon inattentive ears, and immediately after breakfast you bid him "adios" to ride to the finest monument of the Conquistadors, El Morro or Inscription Rock, which lifts its facade from among the gleaming western mesas. This is a cliff of creamy sandstone that juts from the crop of a rolling hill and rises, pointed like the prow of a mighty ship, two hundred feet or more above the plain. Broadside, however, it appears, as its Spanish name implies, like a mediaeval fortress, and, if the fancy be in play, the eagles which roost on its jagged crest, do duty for the tower watch. At its base an half-dozen pines, gaunt, storm-wracked trees, make a grove of shade, and some stunted junipers which have won a precarious footing in a cleft, twine their lacery of olive green about the birth of a tiny spring that trickles from its wall. But, approaching the rock from Tinaja, these details are unnoticed, for one's view of it is from the front, whence it has the contour and motion of the Flying Victory. Indeed, it fairly breasts the foam of sage upon the plain and cleaves the air until the clouds above it soar like wings, while the mingled lights and shadows on its spreading walls behind weave in and out like draperies caught in the current of its flight. Of a truth, the beauty of El Morro Rock abides, but it is not for this that those who know it value it the most. To such it is dear for what it is, and not for what it seems, and it is a precious parchment of God's Country's history. For wherever the beet- ling cliffs protect its lower walls from weather, the Conquistadors have written in shorthand, as it were, the thrilling chapter of their conquest, cutting the characters into the rock with their Toledo daggers. In reading the entries, however, one must always bear in mind that those who wrote them were quite un- conscious of their excellence. Indeed, they would have laughed [92] KL MOHUO liOfK [93] to think that the time would ever come when the world would cherish their unpremeditated files. For, to them this rock was merely a central camping place, conveniently set on the road between Santa Fe and Mexico, and its walls but a pillar on which to post the items of common interest. Hence, they neither knew nor valued the worth of their fragmentary records, and perhaps it is this atmosphere of initial unconcern which renders these the finest memorial to their chivalry. "Paso por aqui el adelantado don Jua de Oiiate al descubri- mento de la mar del sur a' 16 de Abril ao 1605." "There passed by here the officer, Don Juan de Oiiate, to the discovery of the sea of the South on the 16th of April in the year 1605." This is one of the entries upon El Morro Rock and one whose sentences bespeak imperishable deeds. Yet, mind you, within them there is no trace of braggadocio, for men of Don Ohate's mould are chary of their words. This "officer," as he calls him- self, had already founded the cities of Sante Fe and San Gabriel de los Espanjoles — the last the second, and the first the third in point of precedence within the United States — had equipped their colonists at his own expense, had received the homage of Acoma and the Rio Grande tribes, held the title of Governor of God's Country direct from the King of Spain, and was accounted truly great in an age when men were keen of praise; yet he mentions not one of these honors in this record he chiseled here on that April day two years before the settlement of Jamestown — this record, in which he announces with naive simplicity that he has gone to discover the North Pacific Ocean. Thus we may conclude that if Ofiate had had no need for this advertisement it would not have been written, but his need for it was great. He and his fifty companions — for he scarcely had more than that, since most of his troops were left to guard the colonists at Santa Fe — were strangers to God's Country, neither knowing of its nature nor the perils it might hide, and they were setting forth upon an uncertain expedition to find the whereabouts — just think ! — of the greatest sea on earth. For all they knew, the shores of this might be over yonder hill, or they might be more than ten thousand leagues away — an ignorance which was at once their [94] THE BEAl TY OF EL MOHItO HOCK AHIDKS [95] danger and incentive. Upon the route old enemies and new might arise to strike them, water might fail, their beasts might die, a pestilence might overtake them. Thus it was likely, more than probable, that none of them would survive unto the end, and, while they were free of fear, they had no raw audacity, so they cut their purpose on El Morro that others passing it might learn the whither they had gone, or if such be, the reason why they did not return. The other entries upon El Morro — and there are many above, below and beside Don Juan de Ohate's — were written in a similar stress of doubtful circumstances, but almost all of them reveal, although often rather incompletely, what purposes con- veyed their writers hither. There is the one of "Ensign Don Joseph de Payba Basconzelos," a name which rings like a sword on steel, who "brought the town council of the kingdom" to Santa Fe, "at his own expense, on the 18th of February, 1726," the one of "Diego Martin Barba," who wrote that "the Lieutenant-Colonel and Captain Juan de Arechuleta, himself and Ensign Augustin de Ynojos passed by here in the year 1636," but forgot to add their destination ; and the one which states that "in the year 1716, on the 29th of August, there passed by here Don Feliz Martinez, Governor and Captain General of the Kingdom, to the reduction and conquest of the Moqui Indians, and in his company," we are glad to learn, "was the Reverend Father Fray Antonio Camargo, Custodian and Judge Ecclesiastic." Near by is the signature of the first bishop who came into the land, "the most illustrious Sir Doctor Don Martin de Elizaecohea, Bishop of Durango," who "reached here on the 28th day of September, 1737," and under- neath the signature of "his comrade and secretary, the Bachelor of Arts, Don Ignacio de Arasain." Overlapping this last is the crooked scrawl, signed by "Lujan," a common soldier, which informs us that "They passed by here on the 23d of March of 1632 to the avenging of the death of the Father Letrado," who had been a missionary to the treacherous Zuni Indians. The earliest entry is merely a name, "Pedro Romero, 1580." The only boastful ones concern the "Governor Don Francisco Manuel de Silva Nieto," a name sufficient in itself to flare like a trumpet through the ages, who among other flamboyant accomplishments, [96] "carried the Faith to Zuni," and "put the Zunis at peace at their own request." And no honor, either, to him for that, for anyone possessing such an armored patronymic might cow a far braver enemy than these dastardly pueblans, but let us hope, for the Gov- ernor's sake, that these testimonials to his bravery were chiseled by some devoted subordinate, and were not the result of his per- sonal pride. It little matters, however, for there is another entry here, which dims the tarnished luster of Nieto's with a blazon of pure gold. It is the most important of all, and reads : "Here was the General, Don Diego de Vargas, who conquered for our Holy Faith and for the royal crown of Spain all of New Mexico at his own expense in the year of 1692." El Morro. indeed, contains the name of no gentler or braver gentleman, for Vargas was the Bayard of the Conquistadors. After the Great Revolt of Santa Ana, 1680, when all of the Spaniards were either killed or driven from God's Country, it was he alone who dared to try to conquer it once more — dared even to risk his private fortune in the venture — and he won it, the whole of it, mile by mile, with his sword and his clemency. Beside this epitaph to greatness is the most pathetic entry, one which bears no annual date, "Soy de mano de Felipe de Arellano a 16 de Setiembre, soldado." "I am from the hand of Philip of Arellano, a common soldier." History records no otherwheres so short and stirring a biography. These are not all of the entries upon El Morro Rock. There are others whose orthography forbids interpretation, others which have been erased in part by centuries of weather, and others not pertaining to the Conquistadors, but written by vandals to their enduring shame. But these, which are quoted, are suffi- cient to reveal the magnificent memorial which the whole of them compose; and besides, these are, each of them, so full of quaint abbreviation, quainter grammar, quaintest spelling, that they will have taken what time we can spare from our pilgrimage to decipher. So, let us leave the others until another visit, and ride again upon our way in the hope that we may prove our lives to be a worthy counterpart of those whose names are chiseled here — the first and finest of God's Country's gentlemen. [97] CHAPTER VI. IN ZUNI, THE PUEBLO ON THE PLAIN OF CIBOLA HE road from El Morro Rock to Zuni is empty of interest, so let us, for the nonce, dispense with all itinerary, and, placing owl quills under our tongues, as the Zuni witches do, wish ourselves thither, and be whisked away. Nor, disregarding its convenience, is this manner of approach a poor one to employ on this occasion, for Zuni is situated in a land of mystery. The village, which is twice and again as large as Acoma, rises through many terraces to an high peak in the center, and is tethered to a knoll beside a shallow, muddy river, so that its eminence is visible afar. Yet the pueblo appears to be both very small and frail, for around it lies an undulating prairie whose prospect has no end, a sagebrush sea whose gray-green tides tug at the moorings of the knoll until it is tossed on their fragrant swell like a bit of pearly flotsam. Indeed, so vast is the expanse of earth and air about the town that Zuni is all but lost amid their sheer immensity, and as by day this prairie trembles with an effer- [98] vescent heat, and the moon by night trails over it a mesh of silver beams, the town is always partially hidden in a circumambient haze. Nor is there more than a single cape on the shores of this palpitant ocean of light toward which the pueblo can turn for protection, for the hillocks to the south and west are wedded with the prairies' sweep, the rugged bluffs to the north dissolve in utter wreckage on the plain, and only to the east there fronts the town in gracious majesty, Towa Yal-lanne, the Mountain of Corn, the ON rilK UIJOFS OK ZlNl sacred mesa of the Zunians. It it a long, high cliff with a slightly concave outline, and rising boldly from the hazy plain impresses one most with its solidity. Between the top and the bottom layers of rock, which are a wine-red sandstone, runs a broad band of pure white, which glistens like a mirror in the sun. The crest is clothed in a wood of cedars, and from its side juts out one slender pinnacle, the seat of the Zuni God of War, the triplex prongs of which point over to the sky. Around this mesa revolves the religious life of Zuni, and so it contains a legion of little shrines. Some of these are caves in the walls, others are ledges [99] on the summit, and a few are hidden beneath boulders at its base. So well are these concealed that a stranger can seldom discover them, but should one be so lucky, their very simplicity protects them from all harm. They contain no images, unless the odd-shaped pebbles can be considered such, and the only articles of service placed within are the votive offerings of meal and corn, and the pahoes or sticks of prayer. These pahoes are the prettiest little emblems. They are fashioned of a bit of luka reed about six inches long, which is wrapped in native white woolen cord to which is attached a turquois or wampum bead, and have at the end a tassel of eagle's-down. The suppliant says DISTANT VIEW OF ZUNI his prayers to it, while holding it in his hand, then he sticks it in the sand floor of the shrine, sprinkles a bit of pollen round, and goes rejoicing on his way, serene in the faith that the gentle winds will hear the feather repeating his litany, and straightway bear his message to the gods. In the past Yal-lanne had other occupants than the deities, for in troublous times, when the Apaches or Spaniards threatened an attack, the Zunis abandoned their homes on the plain and took refuge on the mesa's top. It has been two centuries now since they last lived here, but the walls of their fortress can still be traced, though they have tumbled completely down, and are over- grown with cactus thickets. The ultimate occasion of their [100] coming was the murder of two Spaniards who failed to comply with the Zuni marriage laws. But this is not the only crisis in which Spain bore a part for the history of the Zunis is closely related to the Conquistadors. Their cities — for then there were seven of them — were the first pueblos seen by any white man, Fray Marcos of Niza visiting them in 1539. It was his glowing report of these cities of Cibola, as they were called, which led Mendoza, the viceroy of Mexico, to send an expedition to the North, and when Coronado came in 1540, ZrXI EARLY CHRISTIAN CHrUCH it was to find the cities of Cibola and possess himself of the gold and jewels of their inhabitants. Thenceforth, the Zunis were in constant contact with the Spaniards during both peace and war. Churches were built, Franciscan missionaries resided among them, and part of the time they were under the rule of Spanish officers. During the turmoil of the succeeding century, the origi- nal seven cities were each one either abandoned or destroyed, and the present town of Zuni was built between the year of the Great Revolt and 1699, when there is a record of its having been visited by Governor Cubero. Just when it was built we have no authen- [101] tic knowledge, but it was probably in 1692, for the Zunis remained on Towa Yal-lanne for twelve years after the Great Revolt. In this, as in all other episodes, the Zunis bore a leading part. The account of it by Tumaka, a native Zunian (page 287, 23d Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology), impresses as the truth: "After the old church was built at Itiwanna, a Spanish priest resided permanently at the village. After a time the Zunis came to believe that they were to be destroyed by the Span- iards, and they planned a revolt. They told all their women and children to refrain from attending services on a certain day, and the men, providing themselves with bows and arrows, which they hid under their blankets, started for the church. The leader of this revolt was the keeper of the great shell, who said that he was not afraid, as he had plenty of medicine to destroy the enemy. The Indians found only a few Spaniards in the church. They locked the doors and killed all but the priest and one other, who escaped through the roof. The priest was stripped of his vest- ments and made to wear Zuni dress. The keeper of the great shell declared that it would be best to return to Towa Yal-lanne to protect themselves better from the enemy. "While on Towa Yal-lanne, they noticed one night a fire in the distance and several men, perhaps six, were sent to find out what it meant. A party of Laguna Indians had made the fire, and they told the Zunis that in a short time many Spaniards and many Indians would attack them. The Zunis returned with the news and were again dispatched to the Lagunas, who joined the party of the Zunis. The Lagunas said that they had been com- pelled to accompany the Spaniards in their march against the Zunis, but had escaped. They were instructed by the Zunis to fill hides with water and not to touch water from any spring in the Zuni country, as they would all be poisoned, and also to take a bit of cedar twig into their mouths to protect them from the poisoned shells which would be shot by the keeper of the shell. When the enemy was discovered approaching, the keeper of the great shell and his deputy were in their house ; three times they were called upon to come out and help their people, but they did not appear. When they were called the fourth time and came forward, the enemy was well up the mesa. The keeper and his [102] deputy were nude, except for a breechcloth; their bodies and limbs were painted red, and they had anklet and wristlet wreaths of yucca. The face of each was painted black, the forehead and chin covered with eagle down, and a red, fluffy eagle plume was tied to the scalp-lock. They had been preparing medicine, which had to be obtained on the mesa, and therefore could not appear sooner. Each filled a tiny shell with the medicine, put the shell into his mouth, and approached the edge of the mesa unarmed. ZUNI ON THE RI\ Kl The people were alarmed and cried to them not to advance. They said, 'We are not afraid.' They blew the shells containing the medicine toward the enemy, who were immediately affected by it. At first the enemy appeared to be intoxicated. One would try to catch the other as he fell, and then both would stagger and soon fall. Nearly the whole army was destroyed. The surviv- ors retreated. All the Rio Grande pueblos, except the Lagunas, fought the Zunis. Those of the Lagunas who accompanied the Spaniards, did not shoot an arrow. About six months after this [103] attack the Lagunas again appeared and made a fire, and infor- mation was given to the Zunis that another attack was expected. The keeper of the shell prepared his medicine, but the Spanish priest, who was still with them, being anxious to prevent further destruction of the Spaniards, looked about for something on which to send a message. He finally wrote with charcoal on a piece of deerskin, saying that he was safe and that he loved the Zunis and wished to remain with them, and threw it down the mesa side, Zl MS' MOST SACKKL) .SHlilXK — THK CKNTKli OK THK KAKIH calling to the Spaniards to receive it. After the message was read and the Spaniards learned of the safety of their priest, they made no attack, but sent clothing and other things to him." No doubt this is what happened, although Diego de Vargas was probably more impressed by the deerskin message than he was by the medicine shell, providing he was aware of its exist- ence. This shell is still preserved by the high priest of Zuni anent some future onslaught of a foe ; so be discreet during your sojourn there, lest you also become intoxicated, and you will have need of all your intuition, for Zuni is part of the prairie's mystery. [104] Around the town, which is itself a shrine, so honeycombed is it with altars and temples, lies a magic ring of lesser sanctu- aries. Approaching it from Towa Yal-lanne, one enters this outer circle at "the Center of the Earth" — a small subterranean chamber, six feet square, which is capped by a smaller apartment, two feet high, contrived of loose stones and covered by a slab. This aperture is the womb of the world in Zuni mythology, and from it all manner of life is supposed to have come. At present it is the abode of the Gods of the Rain, and is used in connection with their ceremonies. From "the Center of the Earth," the path leads down to the sluggish river, across its shallow, thinly moist- ened bed, thence past the tiny gardens fenced with adobes, and so into the village. The difference from Acoma is marked. The streets are narrow and tortuous, the plazas are small and hidden away, and the houses are very high. They are built in tiers, so that each story is somewhat smaller than the story below, and has an uncov- ered terrace round about it; and as the foundation for each house is a solid rock, and the number of its terraces is five and sometimes six, each one is, in fact, a community by itself, con- taining thirty rooms or more, each one the dwelling of a family. The walls of these pyramidal apartments are of stone plastered over with whitewashed mud; but, except in this minor detail, their construction is identical with that pursued at the pueblo of Acoma. As in the City of the Clouds, one ascends by means of ladders or serrated extensions of the walls. These innumerable ladders and the maze of terraces rising so high above the narrow lanes, the procession of people coming up or down the shining walls, the long, protruding rafters, the myriad of crazy chimney pots which are merely broken cooking crockery piled one atop another, the oven domes, the veins of thin blue smoke curling in spirals into the clear blue sky, the indefin- able essence of them all make Zuni seem a summer-day mirage, a dream city born of the prairie heat, which, in spite of the bustle everywhere within it, will fade away like a sunset cloud. An air of intangible mystery hovers around it, filling the stranger within it with awe. Every house has a secret chamber, every nook hides a sacred altar. One hears the fall of unseen feet, the muf- [105] fled tones of unknown voices. Doors that were there but a moment before, of a sudden disappear; people you meet on an open terrace, brush by you and are gone. You look in vain ; they seem to have melted into the atmosphere. In the streets, in the covered alleys, in the plazas, and most especially in the square where stands the old, dilapidated church, shadows are always flitting through the sunlight and crooning gently at kiva entrances. These kivas, too, are most mysterious. They are the under- ground temples of the gods, square excavations dug deep into the earth, walled and floored with plastered stones, and having a tiny hatchway in the faggot roof, down which a ladder runs. There are perhaps twenty-five kivas in Zuni, which supplement the many sacred rooms in the diff'erent houses, and are used by the priests for the most secret of their ceremonies. In each there is a cupboard beneath the flags, a strange appointed altar on which are painted wooden idols and a charcoal fire which never, never dies. Indeed, so precious are these purple flames that did the Zunis flee to Towa Yal-lanne tomorrow, the coals of these fires would accompany them. They were lighted by the gods in the long ago, in that far-away land from whence the Zunis came, and only so long as they shall burn will the present world endure. The Zuni religion is very beautiful, but we can not do more than touch upon it here, for the gods are legion and are present everywhere. Their faith is a nature worship, a polytheism of nature deities. At the head is Awonawilona, the supreme, the giver and symbol of life, and life itself, of whose appearance there is no conception, of whom no image is made and naught is known save that he be the creator, who pervades all space. Beneath him, but of him and in him, is the Sun Father, giver of warmth and life; and his sister, the Moon Mother, bestower of the seasons and of death. She symbolizes the span of life as she ever waxes and wanes. Awonawilona draws from her pallid face the mystic veil, showing birth, infancy, youth and matur- ity, and then as slowly draws it back again that man may remember how, at last, when his strength is gone, he shall come again to the infancy of age, and sleep at length for a little while ere he journey to the Dance House of the Gods. Next come the Morning and Evening Stars, Orion, the Greater and Lesser Bear, [106] the Galaxy and Pleiades, and after them the virgin Mother Earth and her children, who are givers of themselves to man, the Corn Father, the Salt Woman, the Red and White Shell Maids, the Turquois Man, the Plumed Serpent, and the Great, Grim Gods of War. Then there are the Zoic Gods, who remove witchcraft, ill fortune and disease, the foremost of whom are the Bear, the Antelope, the Badger, the Eagle, the Coyote and the Cougar. The culture of each of these is in the care of its namesake clan, and one or more rooms in every community house is set aside as a chapel. The walls are decorated with paintings of the god, prayer plumes are placed on the altar hourly, and every day the sacred bowls of water and corn are refilled lest the god be made mad from lack of nourishment. But the most important of all the gods are the Uwannami or ancestral gods, whose company at death each Zuni joins, for they are the makers and the givers of the rain, which they dip from the six great waters of the world and carry in jugs to the upper firmament. The clouds that sail across the sky are the masks which protect them from the eyes of men, and through these masks they pour the rain that the heart of the earth may be good and grow green and the minds of men may think only thoughts that are good. The clouds are formed by the breath of the gods, and the winds are the breath of the Uwannami, who breathe not from the mouth, but from the heart. Lightning flashes are messages to and from the rulers of the North, the South, the East, and the West, and when it thunders the Zuni say the Uwannami are playing a game with stones. All these phenomena are of prime interest to the Zuni people, for their land is arid and the crops would die should the favor of the Ancestral Ones be withheld. So, almost every act of their exist- ence is a propitiation to these gods. When they raise their eyes to the heavens they murmur a prayer, when a cloud appears in the west they toss toward it a handful of sacred meal, when the first rain comes in the summertime they dance a dance of thanksgiving in the Uwannami's honor, and even decorate their vases with emblems of lightning and clouds and rain. One need not be an ethnologist to see at a glance that the Zunis are alien to the Acomans. They are tall, lithe, and remark- [107] ZUNI MASKS ably graceful, with fine ascetic features and velvety, dark bronze skins. Their cheekbones are high and often prominent, their eyes are brilliant, but narrow, and are hid under heavy brows. Their chins are pointed, their lips are thin, their muscles wiry. Only upon occasion do they smile, and walk as if poised for instant flight, wearing the vestments of their faith upon their counte- nance. They are a race of solemn religionaries, who see divinity everywhere and are constantly propitiating some passing, invis- A ZUNI DAXCE ible god. If you watch a group conversing in a plaza, you will presently notice one take from the pouch always hanging at his side a tiny bit of eagle down, which he allows to be wafted from him by the wind. Another will select a strand of cornsilk from the many he has tangled in a husk, and leaning out over a terrace, give it into the keeping of the air. So, too, when a man has lighted a cigarette, he will puff to the north, south, east and west before he begins to smoke it, and a woman upon entering a doorway sprinkles a pinch of meal upon the sill. Each act is [109] done with circumspection, according to custom and the ritual. They are mystics, philosophers, dreamers, fatalists, if you will, but if the last, most cheerful fatalists. They play games, they tell legends, they dance — indeed, they are always dancing. Almost every day sees a dance begun or ended, or the prepara- tion for it set on foot. The village is thronged from morning to night with gaily dressed performers wearing fanciful head ornaments and masks, and one constantly meets the priests in AN( KSTHAI, (iOIlS AWAITING THE APPROACH OF THE DANCERS their ceremonial attire on their way to attend services in the kivas or sacred rooms. In the evening, too, there is always some apartment which is musical with deep, full-throated song. But all these pastimes are religious ones, worship to Zuni's many saints, and must not be indulged in wantonly. So that there is always a hush in the village, the quiet of a church, and one feels like walking softly on one's toes. The garb of the people, while rich and glowing, is of more somber hues than the garb of the Acomans. The men wear darker trousers, have no patterns on their shirts, and their [110] ZUNI WATEll CARRIER [111] blankets are almost invariably black. Often the only touches of color in their costumes are the turquois of their necklaces and the crimson banda in their hair. The women still keep to their tribal dress — two black native blankets with narrow red or indigo borders, sewn together up the sides with a gap left open upon one, through which is thrust the right arm. Over this, upon festive occasions, they hang a white blanket deeply edged with scarlet or embroidered around the bottom in blue and green. They use no shawls upon their heads, but do their hair like the TYPRAL ziNi noi SI-: Acomans, and case their feet in the same deerskin leggings, which are held in place at the knee by a red woolen garter, woven at their husband's loom. The men do all the weaving; but this art no longer flour- ishes among them, except for ceremonial purposes and the blank- ets of their women's dress. They make much pottery, but it is inferior to that of the Acoman, and has no ready sale. Their principal industry is the drilling of turquois beads and the mould- ing of silver ornaments. They possess a turquois mine, which has been famous for several centuries, and the material for their [112] [113] ZINI WATER CARRIER beads is procured from this, but their silver mine is the Ameri- can pocketbook. Yet money does not come easy to the Zuni. The plain is dry and arid, so the yield of the fields is always inse- cure, and the ranches of Mexicans and Americans hedge them so closely round that they have no little trouble in finding suf- ficient pasturage for their herds. But the Zunis are thrifty and have managed to get along, some of them even acquiring fair- sized fortunes in horses and turquois and sheep. TYPICAL ZUNI YARD As one wanders aimlessly through Zuni, its difference from Acoma is brought most nearly home. At Acoma there were many greetings ; the townsfolk hastened to meet you at the trail, they discommoded themselves for your entertainment, they asked you at once to their houses and made you feel at home. But here, in Zuni, you are unaccosted and walk the streets alone. The women brush by you without a glance; the men, when they see you coming, will disperse; the bead maker at work by his open door will eye you askance for a moment and then turn his [114] back full upon you and commence his drilling again; the chil- dren dangle their feet from the terraces, watching you covertly, and will not be lured down the ladders with sticks of peppermint ; the burros in the alleys wag their ears at you with studied inso- lence and take pains to block your path; even the dogs, nonde- script curs that they are, refuse to bark. Should you enter a house — and you are never asked — you are shown no courtesy. ZlXl GIltLS — THE WATER CAlUilERS The inmates will display their stock of pottery and sometimes allow you to pat the baby's head, but they will offer you no seat, and should you stay above a dozen minutes the family will one by one depart, leaving the wife to keep an eye on you. They are not rude, but you can not mistake their greeting for a welcome, and you instinctively feel they will be relieved when you depart. If, ere you leave, you show an interest in the inner chamber and attempt to pry within, you will be given clearly to understand that you are not wanted there, because some service is in prog- [115] ress. Everywhere you meet with this secrecy. It hems you round like an imaginary line, circumscribing your actions and hindering your feet. You have a compensation, however, in looking at the town. Its appearance is very charming, very picturesque. Wherever one looks there is something new, something surprisingly strange to catch and hold the eye. The very inhibition put upon you adds zest to your visual inquiries. The crooked lanes, opening sud- denly into plazas and closing beyond into shadowy arcades where the children hide, the terraces rising about you in confusion till, to see the topmost you must crane your neck, the wood and corn- shocks piled upon them, their many chimney pots, the al- tars hidden in cran- nies of the walls, the old, deserted church in its shaded square, Towa Yal-lanne in the distance, the river flowing by, the pretty gardens on the bank, and the blue sky over all, compose a picture not easily forgot. The townsfolk, too, are in constant motion. Even the eagles, held captive for their down, strut in their wicker cages from daylight until dark. Men and women come and go upon mysterious errands, children romp in the streets, sheep bleat noisily in the corrals, burros enter the town and depart laden with the produce of the fields. Here is a grandmother baking some bread, there is a girl making pottery; this is a house of a silversmith, in that kiva the priests are at prayer, in the next plaza some dancers are dancing, in the room behind you a man is weaving a sash; and suddenly you catch your breath, for a dog has run up the ladder at your feet. You ENTKIilNG THIi ANTKI.l )l'i: KIVA [116] saw him, he is there beside you, yet the friend that is with you is doubtful until, lo and behold, in a moment scit-scat he goes scamp- ering down. But Zuni is most beautiful in the hazy twilight hour when the sun has gone to his couch of dreams and the silver sickle of the moon is pendent from the evening star. Then Awonawilona spreads a spirit through the sky of delicate lavenders, yellows and greens, and the breathing of the Uwannami comes in soft zephyrs from the South. Then the pinnacle on Towa Yal-lanne flares like a lighted torch and the mystical prairie draws across its face the shimmering nun's veiling of the dew. The houses of Zuni change into mother of pearl and rise like an aspiration by the river, the smoke of their evening fires spreading like incense through the still, gray air. And as the first stars appear on the forehead of the Mother Night, a silence falls like a pause in music upon the people, young and old. They come forth from their shrines and their kivas and, climbing on the house tops and joining their hands together for a moment, turn reverently and meekly toward the West. Then you know it is time you were leaving, for you are a pagan here, and Zuni — the whole of Zuni is in prayer. [117] zrNi CHAPTER VII. AMONG THE NOMAD NAVAJO, THE SHEPHERDS OF THE HILLS 5Jj||UNI, the terraced city, is itself upon a terrace SCfll of the land, the lower step of a long plateau which runs in ridges toward the North and ends, at last, in a nest of hills where dwells the Navajo. This region is one vast meadow of chaparral and sage, sprinkled with yellow daisies and pink or purple flox, but, saving the piiion wind-breaks on the crests of its swelling knolls, it owns no shade, nor can it boast of a single, wel- come habitation, so that the traveler riding it soon wearies of its waste and longs for a glimpse of the forest that marks the Reservation boundary. [118] This reservation, set aside for the use of the Navajo, is an area, containing twenty thousand of square miles, in Northeast Arizona and Northwest New Mexico — a jjrincely freehold, yet one whose compass is scarcely equal to their need. For this domain is mostly a desert of sagebrush, rock and sand, in which the herbage is very sparse and oases few and far between, so that were it not for the mountain ranges which, traversing it from north to south, divide the sterile tract in twain, their flocks would fare but poorly in its immensity. These ranges are, how- ever, luxuriantly green and fruitful, even in their names, of which they have a number — Chuiska, Carizo, Tunicha, Lukai- Chuki; but unless you be a member of the Government Survey you will probably never ascertain where one of these begins or ends, for to the unenlightened eye they form a continuous, affili- ated chain from their commencement, at Black Creek Caiion, until they join the Rockies an hundred miles beyond. In appearance these hills of the Navajo are not high, but this is the fault of circumstance and not of measurement, for since the plain from which they rise has to its credit seven thousand feet, a peak whose summit tallies ten is robbed thereby of the grandeur due to such an elevation. Their origin, however, was in that troublous time when the land was ravished by the flames, and so they are a splendid maze of modulated ridges, of sudden bluffs and of verdant meadows, rimmed round by lofty walls of rock, that are magnificent alike in coloring and contour. Chim- neys of pumice stone stud their crests, gray bands of lava string their slopes together, and often their twisted sandstone crags are either rent into forelands of deep, impressive caiions or tilted into hogbacks so that they stand on end revealing the brilliant hues of many strata while, here and there, an entire bank has slipped from sight beneath the plain, leaving behind an unclimb- able cliff fluted with columns and festooned like the gardens of Babylon. Indeed, among them everywhere are the scars of their upheaval, and yet these splintered hills are never jagged, for their blemishes of birth are altered to an ornament by a forest of yellow pine which drapes them in a mantle of everlasting green, subduing every battlement, transforming every ridge and blend- [119] ing all promontories until each is indistinct and the ranges flow like an ocean at the turning of the tide in long, uninterrupted undulations. This verdant woodland is an hallowed place, a realm where day-dreams are the current coin, and by the owner, heart's desire. The trees — primeval giants, each an emblem of its kind, with stalwart trunks enveloped in bark of mottled gray and many- fingered branches with a tendency to droop, weighted with slen- der needles and militant with cones — stand well apart, as if they knew the worth of solitude and, crooning an eternal, cares- sing lullaby, weave changeful arabesques of green upon the curtain of the sky, which glints among their foliage at the end of every vista. They crowd together up a slope, the sheet of rock on which they stand showing through like a dull mosaic, open out on the crest into stately parks, drop for an instant into a quiet dell where they shade the placid waters of a lake, then hurry on past crag and cafion to roll down the steeps of an upland valley, where the buff^alo grass grows tall and green and humming birds are at play among the flowers. As one rides this forest there is constant change ; no single place, no vista is quite the same. The trees weave in and out of one another like shuttles on a loom, crooning an eternal lullaby that soothes but never causes drowsiness. If it be winter then the soft, white snow has laid its gentle hand upon these hills, washing from off them the stains of the sun. It hangs in such heavy garlands on these trees that they seem the nesting places of doves; it swathes the underbrush in robes that never have a fold, and, drifting into the caiions, fills them on occasion to the brim. The footprints of many tiny feet checker its fields with delicate patternings, but leave them as clean as the clouds from whence they fell. Indeed, so spotless is the coverlet which spreads unbroken over hill and dale, that it spar- kles like disintegrated stars, and in the hush it levies from the land one can hear the slow-throbbing pulse of the world. But it is in the spring and the summer that one loves these hills the most. Then they exhale a beauty more beautiful than song; then the air which floods them glows like a spider's web spun from threads of gold, and has an essence whose quality no one [120] may understand until he has breathed it deep into his being and let it filter through his soul. The forest is so open that the sun- light fills its reaches to the full, leaving only a ring of opalescent shadow beneath the tall, majestic trees. The coppices of oaks are flush with tender leaves and budding acorns, the shrubbery of weeping cedars, currants and mountain mahoganies are blue and purple with berries or heavy with pink or yellow blooms. The ground is pied with countless little flowers — Mariposa lilies, larkspur, daisies, yucca, lupin and flox — and the trees on which the green cones hang in clusters are noisy with the carol- ing of mocking birds, finches, linnets, thrushes and jays, whose lilts are measured by the chatter of squirrels. The forest also harbors bigger game. Silver-tipped and cinnamon bears have dens in the rocky ledges, wild fowl breed on its little lakes, foxes and coyotes hunt through its tangled thickets, deer and antelope graze in its open parks, and cougars and wild-cats hide themselves in the branches of its pines. To the east and west these broad-topped mountains break into caiions, which were the hall-mark of wind and rain, and these in turn dissolve into beautiful vales. Upon one side of these the stalwart trees come down in a rolling tidal wave of green and walk for a space along the edge in scattered piiion groves, and upon the other stand sea-carved battlements of pink which ward away the desert sands. Of old the Navajos kept to the hills, but now they are scat- tered far and wide, through the vales, through the deserts, even beyond the bounds of their reservation. They are a nomad tribe of some twelve thousand souls, a nation whose house is the open air. For long before and after the dreaded white man came, indeed till a generation ago, they were a race of savage warriors, a company of nimble-footed brigands who, living securely in their hills, swept under cover of the night through the hamlets and ranches which dotted the open plain. Many a fire in many a harvest field has lighted up the scene of their maraudings, the smoldering ruins of many a pueblo has borne a witness to their deviltry. They took and gave no quarter on their forays nor left an article behind, but razed the houses, killed and scalped the men, bound the women over to be slaves, [121] and captured live stock by the multitude. In the end these raids have proven their salvation for, slowly as the young men learned the prestige which lay in a herd of horses, the wealth in a band of sheep, they tended their stolen flocks with greater care, and finally abandoned the warpath of their sires to wander their verdant upland valleys in quest of pasturage. So they who were once a terror in the land are today become shepherds and farming- folk like the people their fathers slew, and now only in their sacred legends which have come down from an immemorial past does one hear among them the whisperings of war. In these, however, there is little else, for their gods and goddesses, of which there is seemingly no end, have each of them won to a divinity through acts of consummate cunning or the strength of a strong right arm. Their religion is an inchoate mixture of supernatural beings, some of them good and some of them evil, but all of whom are ever to be feared. Amid this company no one is supreme. Each has his special rights and attributes, each has his own abiding place, each has particular duties to perform. Beyond these limits their powers are circum- scribed, and their acts depend upon the assistance of their fellows. None of that spirituality which we find among the pueblo deities clothes or enhances them. Indeed, they are scarcely more than immortal men and women, as their name of "Them who never die" implies, and one seeks in vain to find among them all a single tender, endearing quality. They think nothing of cheating or harming one another, and should a Navajo desire their support he must pay them well for what succor he receives, and should he unintentionally transgress the least important of their many laws they visit him with heavy punishment. Collectively, these gods are called Digini Dine, but may be subdivided into three classes: the Yebitsai, or grandfathers of the giants who existed at the beginning, the divinities whom the Yebitsai created for various purposes, in which are included the bearers of the Sun and the Moon, the White Shell Woman, Estsannatlehi, the woman who changes; First Man, First Woman, and the two gods of war ; and the tsindis or evil spirits, who work harm. Besides these there are a legion of lesser sprites who dwell in the water, the rocks and the trees; and the animal [122] gods, or prototypes in the form of men of the most important existing birds and beasts, of whom Coyote is the chief. Unlike the deities themselves, the legends which tell of their births and deeds abound in poetic fire and beautiful imagery. There must be at least ten thousand of these entrancing fairy tales, each one of which has a dozen variants. In them we are told how at the Beginning, the Ant, the Beetle, and Locust People dwelt in the First World; how for sin they were forced to climb through the sky to a second world above, and thence for the same cause to a third and fourth; how here the Yebitsai created the First Man and the First Woman from ears of corn, how the descendants of these sinned, and the waters rose and compelled them to cliinb again through a slender reed to a fifth world, which is ours ; how here they placed the mountains and made the sun and moon and stars, how they bore giants who grew and killed them off until finally only four of them remained; how then the Yebitsai made two magical women who bore two sons, the gods of war, by whom the giants and monsters were destroyed, and how at last the human race came to be, and the present clans of the Navajo — or Dine, as they call themselves — arose and prospered in the land. Between these major episodes are placed a host of minor incidents — telling, to mention only a few, of the coyote's mischief - makings, for which he is continually being killed and chopped into pieces only to come alive again more mischievous than ever; of the woman who changed herself into a bear and her short career of crime, of the gambler Nohoilpi and how he lost his fortune and was shot like an arrow into the air ; of the witch who changed her- self into a comely maiden and enticed men to her house on the top of a rock, where she promptly devoured them; of beavers who skinned themselves, and of little birds who rolled enormous stones and played at pulling out their eyes — all of which serve to explain the raison d'etre of existing things. Indeed the Navajos account for each fact, no matter how minute. They know why the turkey's tail has a bar of white, how the horned toad got his prickles, why the pinon trees bear nuts, why they are nomads and not pueblo Indians, and why they bury their dead in the rocks instead of the ground. From the time the wind blows the breath into their mouths, until it draws it forth again, forever, [123] they do nothing but what has its precedent in the legends. So, to thoroughly understand their life and customs, we ought to learn the legends all by heart; but we have not the leisure for such acquaintance here. The most we can do is to trace the origin of some of their most peculiar usages as the mention of each is made, and leave the remainder with the medicine men. The memory of these singers, or Hatali, as they are called, transcends the marvelous. Not only do they preserve unchanged this mass of oral tradition from age to age — a feat no body of white men could accomplish — but they must also keep at their finger tips the liturgy of the rites which they perform, including the many long, exhaustive prayers, some of which take three hours to repeat. Should one in the conduct of a ceremony derange an act of service or misplace so much as a single word in the legends, prayers or hymns, the whole must be rebegun or else it becomes a tsindi, an evil thing. Naturally, then, the medicine man's profession requires years and years of arduous training, and only the brainiest in the tribe can ever become a member of the same, and only a few of those who get thus far can hope to rise to eminence therein. It follows, of course, that these Hatali compose the Navajo aristocracy. Yet, unlike most nomad peo- ples, the Navajos have no chief, for they argue that since among their gods no one god is supreme, hence here on earth there must be democracy. So the influence an individual exerts depends on his personality. If he is a good orator and can swing a gather- ing to his way of thinking, if he is learned in the tribal customs and traditions, or if he be wealthy in horses and sheep, he may win to a certain degree of authority, but this authority never extends beyond the locality in which he lives, and should he journey far from home he is likely to find himself unappreciated. As a class, however, the medicine men wield a power which is all but absolute, for they are the physicians of the tribe, and among primitive peoples who know nothing of hygiene or physi- ology, the art of healing is thought miraculous. Among the Navajos this belief is carried to extremes. They possess knowl- edge of several drugs and medicinal herbs, it is true, but even these to be efficacious must be administered by a priest, for efficacy comes directly from the gods. Hence all their rites are thera- [124] MEDH INE MAN [125] peutical. Their religion may be called an unenlightened Chris- tian Science, whose creed is that "the goblins will catch you if you don't watch out." It is thought that the tsindis send disease, and even the gods themselves are not averse to torturing a man if he has been lax in paying his respects. So, whenever a man has a toothache, or has seen an evil spirit, say an owl, or has an untoward accident happen him, he calls an Hatali to conduct a Sing and exorcise the devils from his jjerson. Every mental and physical ill has its special rite, so that there are an excessive number of these Sings. Some of them are unim- portant affairs, lasting only for an hour or two and consisting mainly of a long prayer and a dose of magical medicine. Others are for more urgent cases and are more ceremonious. These may stretch over nine days or nights, although most of them con- tinue but for five, and are much more formal and interesting. Among them may be mentioned the Coyote Sing, the Feather Sing, the Ant Sing, the Dragon Fly Sing, and the Spider Cere- mony. They are very quaint, very picturesque, and abound in poetic symbolism. But they can not compare with the three great- est Sings of all, which are more often spoken of as chants — the Yebitsai, Wind and Mountain Chants — all of which continue through nine consecutive days and nights. These are held only in the winter months, between the first frost in the fall and the first thunder in the spring. They are not employed to remove a specific disease, but are what one might call annual house- cleanings of the soul, and are meant as preventatives rather than cures for evil. In them the gods themselves appear in person to the patient and administer to him the sacred remedies. This seeming miracle is performed by a most amusing method. Some of the patient's neighbors, or members of his family perhaps, strip and paint their bodies with a fluid colored by charcoal or pulver- ized rock, tie a fandangle kilt about their loins and slip a befeath- ered buckskin mask completely over their heads. In this guise, which thoroughly hides their identity, they come at the proper moment before the patient and shout in his ear or pound him on the back as the observance they are acting may demand. It is thought, for the time being, these men are in reality the gods, and therefore while they wear the masks, they speak only in signs or [126] a series of hallooing calls. In order that the proper religious feeling may be retained by the patient for his temporarily sancti- fied relations, he is not allowed to see them dress, and only dis- covers who the gods have been after the ceremony. Besides these dramatic impersonations, the chants are filled with many beau- tiful acts of service. CEREMONIAL MASKS Kethawns — the Navajo Prayer Plumes — are made and planted, the patient is dressed in robes of spruce boughs or his naked body is painted with various symbols, the singer sings songs to the shaking of rattles or the beating of drums, and on the last night a public dance is always held, to witness which crowds gather from far and near. The medicine lodges in which these chants are held resemble the ordinary hogan or house in everything but size, being twice as large, and since no ceremony can ever be held in them again they [127] are indeed often used as dwellings afterwards. Though they are simiDle, it is no easy matter to construct them, and the process requires several days. They are built entirely of green, barked pine logs, propped in a circle against three carefully interlocked poles from which two other poles extend to the pronged tops of the door jambs. At the door is hung a blanket, a hole is left open at the apex of the cone for the escape of smoke, and the space between the door and this chimney is roofed across with boughs. A NAVAJO HOGAN To keep the wind and rain from driving through the cracks, the logs are covered with strips of bark, over which in turn is thrown a layer of pine needles and dirt. This leaves a circular interior whose walls slope like a tent's, whose floor is the ground, and which has no ceiling but the sky. The arrangements are as simple as the dwelling. A fire, which is never extinguished, burns in the center directly beneath the hole, bundles of sheep pelts and blankets are rolled against the walls by day and spread into beds at night, the American pots and pans and water buckets are stacked on one side of the door, and besides these, possibly in an [128] empty packing case, are stored the supply of groceries — coffee, flour, canned goods, pinon nuts and corn. The Navajos have besides this type of dwelling several others, but their difference lies more in the manner of construction than the shape. There is the circular hogan where the logs are laid horizontally and curve symmetrically to the central aperture; the summer shelter or wick-y-up built of greenwood boughs, the stone hut, and the usual frontier cabin. But, no matter of what A xaVajo simmer hogan variety they are, all have two things in common — the hole in the roof and the doorway facing directly on the east. The reasons for this are found in the following legend: In the days when the giants had killed and eaten all but four of the mythical people who came from the underworlds, these sought refuge at White Standing Rock, near which they found the tiny turquois image of a woman. A few days after their arrival there they heard in the distance a Yebitsai calling: [129] "Wu-whu-whu-whu, Wu-whu-whu-whu," and knew that he was coming to see them. After a time he appeared before them and told them to go when twelve nights had passed to the top of a sacred mountain near by, bringing thither the little turquois image. When he had gone they pondered deeply and asked them- selves many questions, wondering for what purpose Hastseyalti, for such was his name, had summoned them all to the mountain. On the appointed day they ascended by an holy trail to a level spot near the summit, where they met a party awaiting them, Beside Hastseyalti, there was Hastsehogan, White Body, who had come up with them from the underworld, the Mirage Stone People and the eleven brothers of the maid who became a bear. These stood in a circle around a sacred buckskin which was stretched upon the ground. To the east of this stood the White Dawn People, to the south were the Blue Sky People of the Day, to the west the Yellow Sunset Folk, and on the north the black- robed Children of the Dark. Hastseyalti laid the turquois image and a similar image fashioned of white shell upon the buckskin, placing beside them a white and a yellow ear of corn, the Pollen Boy and the Grasshopper Girl. These he covered with another sacred buckskin, under which he placed Niltsi, the wind. Now the assembled company sang a song. Four times they sang it, softly, crooningly, and at each repetition Hastseyalti entered the ring and raised the buckskin. The fourth time he did so the images and the ears of corn were found to be changed into living beings of human form. The turquois had become Estsannatlehi, the woman who, when she grows old, becomes young again ; the white shell was her sister, Yolkai Estsan ; the white ear of corn was the White Corn Boy, and the yellow ear the Girl of the Yellow Corn. So soon as they had risen from the buckskin, White Body took with him deep into the mountain the Pollen Boy and the Grass- hopper Girl and the White Corn Boy and the Yellow Corn Girl, and the rest of the holy ones departed, leaving the two sisters on the mountain alone. Four nights the women stayed here on the side of the moun- tain, each with the other for company. On the morning of the fourth day Estsannatlehi said: "Why should we stay here, younger sister? Tell me why. Let us go to the high peak [130] yonder and look around us." So they journeyed to the summit of the mountain. When they had been there several days, Estsan- natlehi said again : "Younger sister, it is lonely here. We have no one to speak with but ourselves, and we see nothing all day long but the sun which rolls above our heads and the water which trickles from yonder waterfall." "That is true, my elder sister," said Yolkai Estsan, and then she added, after a little while, "Do you think the sun and the water can be people?" "Let us see if it be so," Estsannatlehi answered her. "I shall stay here and await for the one in the morning, and do you go down among the rocks and seek the other there." At dawn of the succeeding day Estsannatlehi found for her- self a bare flat rock, where she lay down with her feet toward the east that the rising sun might shed his light upon her, and Yolkai Estsan went down to the waterfall and, lying upon the rocks beneath, allowed it to drip upon her. At noon the women met on the mountain top and they were sorrowful, for they thought no people had come to them. And Estsannatlehi said : "My little sister, it is very, very sad to be so lonesome. Tell me how we may make people so that we may have others to talk with besides our- selves." "I do not know," replied Yolkai Estsan, "but do you think well of it, sister, and plan how it is to be done." For four days and nights the women pondered deeply, schem- ing to make people like themselves. Then Yolkai Estsan said: "Elder sister, I feel something strange move within me. I wonder what it can be!" And Estsannatlehi answered: "It is a child. It was for this that you lay beneath the waterfall, sister mine. I know it now, for I also feel within me the motions of a child, and it was for this that I lay on a rock in the sun." And so it was, indeed. After a little while the boys were born, and grew to be the Navajo Gods of War, who destroyed the giants from off the land. And because the father of one was the water and the father of the other the sun, therefore do the Navajos today build their hogans so that the Sun God may enter them in the morning and the Rain God fall within when it rains. The social structure of the Navajos is as simple, if not simpler, than their dwellings. The people are divided into clans, each one of which has an origin legend from which, as in the [131] Goat Clan, it usually takes its name. However, the members of these clans are scattered far and wide, so that the actual basis of society is the individual family and not the gens. Even the bonds of this family are lax. Polygamy is practiced, and both men and women, until they pass the bounds of middle age, are great philanderers. Indeed, a marriage as a white man knows it, can scarcely be said to exist at all. The number of wives a man may have depends on the size of his pocketbook, and since in each instance his only expense is the initial one "procural," he usually has several. The manner in which an enamoured swain woos and wins his dulcinea is very humorous. He seldom speaks to the girl herself, but sends a friend to her papa to inquire of him the very lowest price at which he may become his son-in-law. This urgent matter settled — and the value of the woman declines as her marital experiences grow — the young man comes in person to her hogan. The outcome of this social call determines his future status in the family. He enters silently, lights a cigarette, smokes part of it and then, flicking the ashes carefully from the end, offers it to his prospective mother-in-law. If she accepts it, puffs at it for a while and then, with the same courtesy, hands it back, he is thenceforth persona grata with her. But if not, she becomes a nushjai or an owl, and he and she must never meet lest she bewitch him with her evil eye. The women smoke as freely as the men, but on this occasion they usually think the practice quite unsuited to their sex, and so the young man goes away pre- pared to dodge her presence. This superstition entails on both a heavy penalty, and it is not an infrequent sight to see the one making long detours or waiting for hours, outside a trading store because the other is purchasing within. This conference, import- ant as it is, does not, however, make smooth the way of love. The final consent to marriage lies with the girl, and since her marriage portion goes to her maternal uncles and not to herself, she need consider nothing but her affection. The ceremony itself is a minor incident. No flowers are sent, no presents are given. The singer says a prayer which the bride and groom repeat, asking for the couple's good health, many children, and happiness, and after they have each eaten a bit of meal out of the same basket, pronounces them man and wife. The [132] life of neither is changed by the marriage. They continue to live in their respective homes, the husband merely visiting his wife. Unless he is reconciled with his mother-in-law, he never enters her hogan during these calls, but sojourns in a wick-y-up close by, whither his wife comes out to him. Divorce by both parties is easy to obtain. Should the man have reason to suspect her fidelity he ceases his occasional calls and may, after a decent interval of A NA\ A,lo I' \M II A mourning, marry again. Should the woman tire of his atten- tions, all she need do is to remain in her mother's hogan when he comes, and he takes the gentle hint without query. It is all very practical, very matter-of-fact. If they find, however, as the years progress, that their love is no ephemereal affection, but a passion destined to endure, the man divides his share of horses and sheep from his parents' flocks and builds him an hogan of his own, whither, when all is ready, comes his wife, bringing her numerous pots and pans, and together they set up the heavy blanket loom. [133] This loom is the epitome of their labor, the consummate diary of their lives. Upon it they write their joys and sorrows, from off of it they gain their bread, to it they devote the major portion of the day. It is an unique contrivance, very simple, but very cumbersome. A heavy log, about six feet long, is suspended be- tween two posts about five feet high. To this log is lashed a lighter pole, so that it may be readily raised or lowered at need, between which and a third pole on the ground, the warp is stretched taut and even. The weaver sits on the ground before the loom, changing the set after each strand of wool is run, which by an ingenious method of catch strings she pulls towards her, thereby bringing the rear warp to the fore. To hold it in place until the new strand is run, she inserts a beating stick to pry the two warps apart and tighten the strands already laid. The blanket industry is not new among the Navajos. They learned the art more than an hundred years ago from their neigh- bors, the pueblans, and mastered its intricacies so well they soon were selling their product to their teachers. Before the intro- duction of diamond dyes they distilled their colors from vari- ous vegetables — getting their blue from the indigo, their green from the sage, their yellow from the daisy, their black from the bark of the mountain rose, and their purple from a cactus. Red, a real red, they never had until they learned to unravel the bayetta flannel under-garments of the Mexicans. These old blankets were made for wear, and worn they were to tatters oftentimes, so that the few remaining in good condition are very rare and very valuable. Indeed, they are almost priceless, and did a Navajo have one of them today his fortune would be made, for there are not three hundred of them in all, and the majority of these, it is sad to say, are in the British National Museum. The old shades were more luminous and lasting than the new, and the yarn was much finer spun, so that in many ways these old blankets are more beautiful than those now made among them. Indeed, the present blanket, save when it is made of American German- town yarn, is really less blanket than rug, being thick and soft and having a lengthy nap. This change is due, no doubt, to the fact that they are no longer made for home consumption, but to sell to the traders who pay the weavers by the pound. The utili- [134] tarian spirit evidenced in this additional weight has not, however, been carried into the design, and in this direction the modern article, if anything, surpasses its predecessor. In spite of the thousands annually made and the fact that all of the patterns employed are geometrical, no two of the blankets are ever exactly the same, even when ordered so. Each one is an original crea- tion, the personal combination by the weaver of some or all of the many figures — diamonds, crosses, swastikas, zigzags, pyra- mids, Grecian borders, squares and bands, so that each is an individual work of art. This is not strange, as no drawing of the pattern is ever made. It grows to completion as the blanket grows, slowly and intermittently, from fancies in the weaver's brain. Yet all are finished, each one is complete, there is in non^ an incongruity. Made from the wool from off their flocks, carded and spun by hand in the hogan, and woven, except in the winter months, entirely out of doors, they possess moreover a quality finer than this unpremeditation of design. They seem to catch God's Country in their threads, the spirit of that sunshine, verdure and air which makes the land of the Navajo beautiful and holds the essence of its poetry and charm. What with the care of their flocks and fields, the weaving of blankets and their household duties, one would suppose the Nava- jos to have scant leisure for amusement, but they manage to wedge many pastimes with their work. Their games are, all of them, games of chance, but betting is never heavy, and an invet- erate gambler quickly loses caste. Some of these pertain to a sex, as the stick game of the women and the pole game of the men, but many others, like Mexican monte and koon-kan, a sort of piquet of their own invention, and the moccasin game which they play in their hogans in the winter evenings, are open to both. This last resembles most nearly that diversion of our childhood days commonly known as "who's got the button?" except that a pebble instead of a button is used, and this, instead of being held in the hand is buried in one of the four moccasins filled with dirt, its methods are much the same. It is, however, more formal, for it has a semi-religious origin. The legends assert that it first was played by the animal gods, and during its progress now, the participants sing a series of songs narrating the deeds and virtues [135] of these. The count is kept by yucca sticks, each side at the start having a hundred of these, which they pay to the other in numbers of from four to ten as a penalty for their having failed to eliminate in their guess all of the moccasins save the one in which the pebble lies, and the game is won by the side first having all of the counters of its opponent in possession. Once a game is begun it may not be discontinued, no matter how tedious it may become, until the dawn light gilds the sky. Then it must stop on the instant, for the sun god is presumed to like it not, but it may be continued the following evening. NAVAJO HORSE RACE But the two favorite sports of the Navajos are horse racing and chicken pulls. For these no time or season is out of tune. Winter and summer, day in, day out, they indulge in the former to their heart's content, running their wiry ponies against one another or matching a race with some bigger American horse. A chicken pull occurs less frequently, for since they themselves do not possess the necessary chicken, they must wait until a trader gives them one. This each of the traders are willing to do once a year, for among this people who have no newspapers, a nahohai, as a pull is called, is their easiest form of advertisement. It brings a crowd to the little store and gives the owner a chance [136] to display his wares to a larger clientele, so that even if he does not procure a return on the money expended for the chicken and other prizes then, he is certain to do so sooner or later, for those who attend will carry an excellent report of his articles to their stay-at-home neighbors. The actual chicken pull is of short duration, lasting an half an hour at the most, but the nahohai continues all the day. The crowds begin to gather early in the morning, some of the more exclusive families even arriving the night before. They CHICKEN PULL come on horseback, in wagons, on foot, and even on burros, all of them dressed in gala-day attire. The men wear their very newest corduroy trousers, their most brilliant V-necked, velvet shirts, their showiest bandas, their finest jewelry, and have their hair immaculately coiffured. It is drawn together at the nape of the neck, and after being tightly bound with a cord, is rolled in a fold as long as the hand and tied again at the middle, so that when finished it has the shape of a double fan. The women's dress is practically the same, except, of course, that they wear skirts instead of trousers. Even the cleverest modiste could [137] learn new tricks from the hang of these petticoats. No woman on earth, save a Navajo squaw, can take six yards of calico, gather them about the waist and have them take so many different angles ; A XA\ A-IO S(1lii;TV I.KAIIKI! nor can she, when this marvel is put on, mount a horse and sit straddle there without so much as showing her slender ankle. It requires an art which the civilized woman has either not mastered or has long ago lost. ^ [138] When the trader finally makes his appearance about one or two o'clock, with the chicken dangling in his hands, there is a rush of horses, a hitching-up of teams, and the crowd moves leisurely toward the race course, ranging themselves on either side of the track. They make a pretty picture sitting there in a double line in their flashing costumes, with silver and wampum necklaces around their necks, turquois pendants in their ears, bracelets and rings on their arms and fingers, wide silver belts about their waists and silver bridles on their restive ponies. Silence reigns while the chicken is buried in a hole until only his head protrudes, the dirt being moistened and stamped with the foot to pack it hard, so that the trophy can not be easily extracted ; but so soon as the trader gives the signal that all is ready for the pull an obstreperous pandemonium breaks loose. Riders push and shove their mounts through the throng, whirling in circles to make a space, beating the rumps and noses of the horses nearest them, shouting, gesticu- lating, urging, until finally they work their way to the track and [139] congregate at the farther end. Here they form in line, precedence being decided by arrival, and at a shout from the trader, come charging down upon the chicken, who, lucky for him, has by this time yielded up his chicken-hearted ghost. As each one gallops by he stoops from the saddle and grabs for the neck. The first one misses ; the second barely touches it with his fingers ; the horse of the third contestant shies; the fourth one is more lucky, he catches hold for an instant, but is forced to let go to keep himself from falling. So on and on they come riding around to the start- ing place after every unsuccessful attempt. Occasionally some man loses his balance and falls, turning somersaults down the track; sometimes the sudden lurch throws the horse and he and his rider roll in the dust; sometimes a steed becomes wild with fright and charges indiscriminately into the throng. But nothing is allowed to interfere with the contest. If one contestant drops out, another moves up to his place. Gradually, as the chicken becomes loosened and its neck becomes longer and easier to hold, the excitement grows intense. The spectators keep their eyes fixed on the trophy, shouting and clapping their hands as now one rider and then another almost wrench it free, and finally when the lucky man pulls it out as he races by, the spurs are put to an hun- dred flanks, and the whole crowd canters after him en masse. Away he goes through the sagebrush, dodging behind trees, jump- ing ditches, swinging the chicken high above his head, and bringing it down on the heads of his pursuers who come too near. At last they surround him, hedge him in, and a dozen arms shoot out to grab the chicken, or pull him from the saddle in the attempt. He must stand the onslaught of the entire crowd. To keep the chicken is impossible, so zip! he flings it into the air. Another catches it as it falls, and the chase is on again. Around the store, up and down the track, through woods, across meadows, it waxes and wanes until finally the chicken is torn into bits, and the crowd no longer knows whom to pursue. Then laughing and shouting, all return to the track, for the pull is but the beginning of the fun. Numerous field sports fol- low. There are wrestling bouts, foot races by old men and young, squaw races, horse races, tugs of war, for all of which prizes are offered by the trader, and bets made and taken by the entire throng. [140] Usually those who live near by contest with those who have come from other sections, but never is there the echo of a fracas. Good humor reigns supreme; there is never a quarrel or angry word, never the hint of disappointment among the losers. They give and take hard knocks with a laugh and a jest ; nothing unsettles their humor or clouds their play. So long as the daylight lasts they romp and tousle, but when twilight comes and the shadows fade into the soft, gray canopy of night, they ride in clusters through trees, hieing to the neighboring hogans, for they have a childlike terror of the dark. To them it is peopled with evil things — bats, owls, tsindi and the ghosts of their dead. Of these last they are especially afraid, for death itself is an awful mystery. They have part way solved the riddle in their legends, but the knowledge, if such it may be called, has only added to their dread of it. So keen is the fear that even a hogan in which a human being dies is thenceforth haunted and accursed. A hole is straightway made in its western side, that the spirit of the departed may fly away, and then it is abandoned by all forever. Should a Navajo pass by it after the sun has set, he turns his face in the opposite direction and chants a litany to weave a spell about his person lest the ghost approach and touch him and he die. The song he sings is of the sun and moon and stars, for they were the cause of the first bereavement, and in their keeping still remain the threads of every life. The story of their creation is beautiful. When the people climbed up onto this world from below, they still had with them the three lights and the darkness — the white light of dawn, the blue light of day, the yellow light of sunset, and the blackness of night — but First Man and First Woman thought it would be well if they formed some other lights to make the new world brighter, and so, after much deliberation, they decided to create the sun and moon and stars. For the sun they fashioned a disc of mirage stone, which they set with turquois and edged with rays of red rain, lightning and snakes of many kinds. The moon they made from crystal, which they bordered with white shells, and put the spirit of waters upon its face. Then they considered what they should do with these things, and where they should make them rise. The wind of the [141] east begged so hard that they might be brought to his land, that at last they dragged them thither to the edge of the world where the east wind dwelt. There they gave the sun into the keeping of Tsinhanoai, the young man who had i^lanted the reed in the lower world, and bade him carry it. They bestowed the moon upon his companion, Klehanoai, and then returned to the Place of Emergence and set about making the stars. For these they gathered sparkling bits of mica, on each of which they put four points of crystal. When all of the stars had been made, First Man drew a plan of the heavens on the ground and proceeded to place them. In the north, where he wished to have one which should never move, he put the brightest of all and set about seven others. Next he placed one in the south, one in the east and one in the west, and then he placed various other constellations. But before he had finished. Coyote came along and growing impatient, exclaimed, "They will do as they are," and hastily gathered them in his hands. When he had collected all of the bits of mica, he tossed them upward, blowing a breath upon them as he did so. Instantly they stuck in the sky, those to which a place had been assigned adhering in their proper places, but the rest remaining wherever they hap- pened to light. On the fifth morning thereafter the sun climbed into the heavens as usual, but when he reached the zenith he stopped. The day grew very hot and all the people longed for night to come, but the sun moved not. Then the wise Coyote said, "Tsinhanoai stops because he has not been paid for his work. When you give him his due he will move again." Even as he spoke the wife of a great chief ceased to breathe, and Tsinhanoai moved on. The people wondered greatly what evil thing had come upon the woman, and they left her to lie alone through the night. When morning came again. Coyote proposed that they lay her among the rocks. This they did, but they wondered much as to whither her breath had gone. And they sought its trail in various directions, but found it not, anywhere. While they were hunting, two men searched near the hole through which they had emerged from the under- world, and it occurred to one of these to look down the hole. When he did so he saw far below him the maiden seated by the side of the river of the fourth world, singing and combing her hair. He [142] called to her, but she heard him not, but his companion came and looked down at her, too. Then they returned to the people and related what things they had seen. That evening the moon also stopped in the zenith, and while the people grew uneasy the two men who had seen the maiden ceased to breathe and grew cold, and Klehanoai was observed to move again. Then the people asked Coyote to explain these miracles and he said, "The heavens are wide and it is no easy task for Tsinhanoai and Klehanoai to bear across them the heavy shields you bade them carry. Therefore, does each require every day the breath of one among you to strengthen him on his journey." And so the people were given understanding of the matter. And thereafter until now and forever the sun takes toll of a human life for his daily fee ; but the moon procures his from among the alien races, who separated from the people in that long, long ago when the first one died. [143] ^^^^^^^^Hj^^^ ^^V^^H ^^PNE^''9^^^^HH^Hf ^^I^H " ^^^^flfff^tE^^^^ ■ l^^H . ^ . ' ■ - • • ~ v^'^^^^^HU^Q^^^^^V^IB^H ikr^*. -----: *• ' *-•*■» »^;^ r 1 ^ '-^i^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H CHAPTER VIII. THE UNREMEMBERED PEOPLE HE Carrizo Mountains, on their western side, drop through a series of upland valleys, crags and small volcano cones, pell-mell into a canon called Canon de Chelley, which in turn is lost among the hummocks and dunes of the Chin Lee desert. This canon, or nest of canons, for there are several branches, each one of which has its own peculiar name, runs from the desert far up into the hills for a distance of seventy or eighty miles, but in its entirety would cover near a thousand. The two main forks are known respectively as Canon de Chelley and Caiion del Muerto, the last being christened by a massacre enacted perhaps a century ago high up on its walls, when a com- [144] pany of Mexican soldiers came upon a hidden band of renegade Navajos and killed them all without regard to sex or age. Then there is Bear Canon, Bat Cafion, Monument Canon, Chokecherry Canon, and half a dozen others, any one of which you would need a week to thoroughly explore. Canon de Chelley, though large and beautiful, can not com- pare in pure, perfect grandeur with the Grand Cafion of the Colorado River, but there is a note within it one misses in its t'ANON Di; I. IIEI.LKV larger sister, a charm and a delicacy which brings it nearer to the heart, if not so close to the spirit's aspirations. One loves it much more deeply, though not, perhaps, with half so fine a love, and one feels more at home among its cliffs because they are not too high for comprehension. Unlike the Grand Cafion, which was carved entirely by a river, the many-fingered ripples of a stream, there is no tracery of water in the making of Cafion de Chelley and its tributaries. Instead, it was rent apart by some convulsion in the earth at the time when the land first stretched [145] its baby fingers toward the sun. But wrinkles, they say, are only the shadows of smiles, so perhaps these canons are but the pencil- lings upon our granddam's face of the laughs she laughed and the songs she sang around the cradles of the stars. The walls of the canon are no more than four hundred yards apart, save where the influx of a branch widened them for a moment to possibly a mile. From being mere ledges at the mouth, where they run beneath the desert sands, they become in an instant glorious sandstone cliffs, a thousand and then two thou- sand feet in height, which still preserve the blush of merriment, though here and there the sharp-toothed winds have scarred them deep with caves and the sun has tanned upon their face the tear- drops of the rain. The floor is in spring a rivulet fed by the melting mountain snows, and in summer a yellow meadow of sand in which grow stately groves of cottonwoods and fields of luka cane. The canon winds and curves so frequently, but never without gentle preparation, that one never is vouchsafed a view of length, but seems to be wandering Meander's passageway, through a maze of corridors which have no end. As a rule the cliffs rise sheer from the sands, sometimes even beetling many feet, but often a mass of debris clusters at their base and occasion- ally they break into fragments as they ascend, becoming a host of titanic pinnacles. Gaunt pines, dwarf walnuts, chokecherry trees and thick-leaved shrubbery grow on the rocky slopes; gnarled cedars and thorny chapparal deck coignes of vantage on the walls, and wherever a little moisture seeps, hang garlands of ivy and the trumpet vine. Innumerable monoliths and pillars stand forth in splendid isolation upon the cafion's floor, thwarting the sluggish river's course and compelling it to curve on either hand. The grain of the rock is perpendicular so that its actual surface is very smooth, incomparably so, and the walls, as in all river sub- stances, round out each other's contours so completely that one can trace the lines of a cliff upon the cliff directly opposite. Their summits are seldom jagged, but undulate with the knolls and hol- lows of the sagebrush plains, which roll away on either side. The water raining on these heaths has trickled over the canon walls for so many centuries that they are streaked with broad, black bands of falls, and mottled with lichens and the dye of leaves. [146] A NAVAJO PATKIARCH [147] One can not know the coloring of the air, nor preconceive the richness of its tone until one has seen it against these canon walls, its liquid, azure texture overspun with threads of sunbeam gold or fused with the silver tendrils of the moon. Nor can you know the height of Heaven's arc before you measure it by the cafion tops and realize how far above it goes. In the nighttime, too, the fewness of the stars which you are given from the depths to see, the hour or two elapsing between their rising and setting, and the immeasurable distances from out of which they shine, will all contribute to your astonishment. At first you will feel inutterably minute, the smallest little bit of microcosm in a universe transcending university. But as you become accustomed to being at the bottom of a well you will ex- perience a thousand new sensations, each full of pleasure and a joy of life denied you on the mountains and the open plains. Except that it lies below the surface, Caiion de Chelley is not, however, in any sense a well. It is full of light and of action and the perfume of growing things. The breezes which blow through it are lush with the fragrance of flowers, the odor of peach trees in bloom and in fruit, the scent of corn pollen and the rosin of pines. The sunlight refracted from the cliffs and up from the floor of sand floods it with a white-hot radiance, the twi- light cools it with rainbow shadows of lavender, orange and green, and the night pours into it a thick, ambrosian dark through which the moonbeams filter hesitatingly, becoming suffused with the atmosphere an hundred feet before they reach the earth, so that they float above the head like foam upon the sea. There is always in the cafion, too, the noise of many voices, the song of birds, the cadence of insects, and the laughter and gossip of Navajos riding up and down. All things are fresh, all things are pure. The peach orchards seem just to have burst their leaves, the pines appear to have just husbanded their cones, the tassels of the corn have just broken their buds. Even the walls, seared as they are by time, wear a pleasant look of incompletion as if they had been chiseled out today and were to be polished by the master hand tomorrow. Yet through this newness, this garb of juvenescence, there runs a faded garniture embroidered by the past — the cities of those Unremembered People who were the caiion's first inher- itors. [148] A NAVAJO rATlilAKCIl [149] Wherever the sand-toothed desert winds have gnawed a cave into the battlements, wherever at the rocks' first separation a ledge or terrace has happened to remain, these ancient cities hide. Some are large and some are small, some must have housed five hundred or a thousand souls, others no more than a single family. A few of them nestle at the feet of the cliffs, but the majority are perched high, high above the ground on shelves and in crannies which nowadays are oftentimes impossible to reach. Indeed, it is a constant source of wonder how their inhabitants ever climbed up or down, and did not the dwellings themselves bear witness, the mention of them would seem a fairy tale. No one can tell you whence these people came, nor who they were, nor upon what pilgrimage they traveled at the last when suffering or surfeit weaned them to leave these canon walls for other hunting grounds. For whoever they were, they have vanished from mortal ken as completely as the mythical thieves in the night, leaving behind them only these ruined towns to tell us that they were. The date of the abandonment of these, even, can not be set with certainty. It may have been while Caesar marched through Gaul, or perhaps when Nineveh was in its prime, or Joseph ruled in Egypt, none can tell. There are, however, other things by which we can compose the story of their lives — the dead and the paraphernalia in their graves, the broken utensils on their ash heaps, the sacred relics hidden in their temples, and their picto- graphs on the caiion walls. These symbols telling of their history were no doubt eloquent to them, but are almost meaningless to us, who possess not the requisite key. Yet here and there, amid the circles, triangles and dots are scattered forms of easy recognition, rude representings of a life we also know. That herd of antelope in frightened flight is surely the epic of the village huntsman, while beneath, in that bow and arrow with the broad, black band, one reads the epitaph of a warrior, and, look, that maiden with her hair in whorls, did she not live the life of Juliet long, long before Verona's church bells tolled? And then those sheaves of corn, are they not eloquent of the harvest time? Do you not hear the fodder rustling in the wind? Can you not see the harvesters beneath the yellow moon husking the corn by the river and spreading it out on the rocks to dry, where the long-tailed squirrels hide? [150] But there is a pictograph greater than all the rest — the village trails. Here are drawings which are indeed alive, legends written unconsciously in a tongue which all men know, the melan- choly tongue of poverty. Ah, the arts of the world have been many, but none of them have endured. They have risen through riches to pre-eminence, have flourished a century or a thousand years, and then, on a day have come by them a people to whom their beauty was strange. The fault lay not with the artists, but with them by whom they were paid. A prince, no matter what his lineage, invariably patronizes art, but the forms he cherishes, the forms he helps create, are all of them articles to adorn the pageant of his person or estate, baubles to hedge him from the multitude, so all, however pretty they may be, pass with his name and are forgotten so soon as his family. "But the poor ye have with you always," because the race has neither a beginning nor an end, and only those things which the poor have made are eternal. The first songs were sung by shepherds at watch beneath the stars ; the man who was closest akin to God was first worshiped in a manger; bread was first baked in a little hut under a hill, and these trails were worn deep in the face of the rock by barefooted bearers of burdens, who toiled from the dawn to the darkness lest the rich in their plenty should starve. They received, in theii' time, scant honor for their labors ; let us give honor to them now, in ours. For while the priests composed creeds in the kivas, and the captains of industry and war were commissioning pictographs of their deeds to be painted on the rocks, these handmen and maidens wrote an epic of the life of their people which should be read and understood long after the religions were forgotten and the pictures had become illegible. Indeed, these trails have a fascination aside from their vaga- ries. As one sits below them in the sun tracing their wanderings up the cliffs to the entrance of the towns, and thence, ofttimes to the cafion's rim, where they give access onto the meadows and mountains behind, and sees how they wind and curve and flow, now running up a beetling crag in tiny steps and notches, then edging carefully around some tall abutment, next twisting like a corkscrew up a pinnacle to its crest, whence one must leap across a chasm to a ledge on the principal wall, and finally mounting out [151] of sight behind a promontory, group after group possess them until they teem with fanciful pageantry. Perchance there appears a file of warriors starting forth to war ; bright feathers are braided in their hair, their naked bodies are oiled and glisten- ing. Behind them, at the entrance to the town, stands a company of white-robed priests, chanting them godspeed upon their kill; on the house tops their wives and daughters wave good-bye; at the foot of the trail the children are gathered together prepared to shower them with daisies and the pollen of luka reeds. Slowly and circumspectly the warriors descend, as befits men on whom a trust is laid, passing midway a train of ragged, gray-haired women bearing great baskets of corn upon their backs, pause for a moment to wave farewell and disappear around the nearest bluff. For the time there is the silence of departure, then one hears the sob of a maiden, the laughter of some toilers in the fields, and presently high up on a narrow ledge, a lad in a cotton tunic begins to play upon a pipe of reeds. The notes float down upon the wind with soft reiteration until suddenly the sun casts over you the shadow of a cloud and you rub your eyes to rid them of the glare, smiling the while at your vain imaginings. It is precarious to attempt the trails, for a misstep would set us on a road we have no wish to follow, but the town is worth a deal of danger, so let us put on for the nonce the toes and talons of Mr. Darwin's ancestors (for, of course, no such creatures hang from our family tree). Even with these contrivances we may experience no little difficulty, for at a distance the trails resemble turkey tracks in snow, and a close inspection reveals them to be no more than shallow scoopings in the rock, too small by half for a cofi'ee cup to rest in. However — but we are already up. Perhaps those are our ancestors after all. No wonder these Unremembered People builded their towns so high. The view from any one of them is superb and is, as a military outlook, unsurpassed. The eye can sweep the canon from bend to bend, perceiving every object on its floor, every chink and crevice in its farther wall, and can even see beyond the rim across the sagebrush plains. The distance is too great for any arm to shoot an arrow from below ; by reason of the overhanging cliffs no hand can hurl a missile from above. Upon three sides [152] is a rampart of living rock, and at the front is nothing but the air. Providing an enemy had reached the caiion unobserved, they must BOXES OF THE ISIiEMKMBERED PEOPLE either hide until the dead of night and try the trail then in single file, trusting to chance to elude the guards or storm it in the light of day, when one could easily hold it against a thousand. [153] Architecturally, the towns resemble a pueblo, but they are in actual, instead of apparent, ruin. The houses, which are built of hand-dressed stones, have often triple stories, for these caves have high, cathedral roofs. Their floors and ceilings of mud- coated faggots have usually sagged or fallen, their walls in places have toppled half away, and in some instances enormous slabs of rock have crashed through them from above, bursting them outward in complete debris. The first impression one receives THE UNREMEMBERED CITY of them is that they have suffered centuries of drought, and this is indeed the fact, for the upper cliffs protrude so far that in time of storm no moisture touches them. Instead of wetting them the rain falls in a silver veil before their face, protecting them from the flurries of the wind. As a result the stones all look superla- tively parched ; the adobe plaster fairly gapes with thirst. But the dust which has settled upon these ancient cities, fllling the interiors many feet, brings home to one this dryness most of all. It is as flne as the particles of a cobweb, and if you sift a handful [154] '•:> ""t*:' through your fingers, it resolves immediately into the air with a snap and sparkle, like bubbles of champagne. Moreover, there is mingled with this dust millions and millions of tiny little prickles, the refuse of cactus pears brought thither to serve as tid- bits of the evening meal, by the mountain rats, which make the chimneys their abode. These prickles are no bigger than the point of a pin, but they will sift through 3^our clothes, work under your skin, cling to your hair and eye- brows until you feel as if you had lain in a bed of nettles, and desire forthwith to imitate the Lady of Coventry. Let the lust of grave-digging once enter your soul, how- ever, and you will bear these many ills with cheerfulness, for there is no more intox- icating pleasure than that of poking among these ruins for broken relics and mummified remains. You begin reluctantly, with fu- tile qualms against disturbing the ordered slumbers of the dead, but directly you unearth, or to be more precise, undust a chip of pottery or the wishbone of some prehistoric turkey, you throw scruples to the winds along with the cactus prickles and thence- forth will grub like an ant-eater so long as light permits. Your first unbroken olla will be as priceless as the Rosetta stone, and when you find an inoffensive stick you will spend entire hours