TO ZUÑI.
OCTOBER 28.--To-day we leave the Province of Tusayan for a journey
through the Navajo country. There is quite an addition to the party now,
for we have a number of Indians employed as freighters. Their asses are
loaded with heavy packs of the collections we have made in the various
towns of Tusayan. After a while we enter a beautiful canyon coming
down from the east, and by noon reach a spring, where we halt for
refreshment. The poor little donkeys are thoroughly wearied, but our own
animals have had a long rest and have been well fed and are all fresh
and active. On the rocks of this canyon picture-writings are etched, and
I try to get some account of them from the Indians, but fail.
After lunch we start once more. It is a halcyon day, and with a
companion I leave the train and push on for a view of the country. Away
we gallop, my Indian companion and I, over the country toward a great
plateau which we can see in the distance. The Salahkai is covered with
a beautiful forest. We have an exhilarating ride. When the way becomes
stony and rough we must walk our horses. My Indian, who is well mounted
on a beautiful bay, is a famous rider. About his brow a kerchief is
tied, and his long hair rests on his back. He has keen black eyes and
a beaked nose; about his neck he wears several dozen strings of
beads, made of nacre shining shells, and little tablets of turkis are
perforated and strung on sinew cord; in his ears he has silver rings,
and his wrists are covered with silver bracelets. His leggings are
black velvet, the material for which he has bought from some trader; his
moccasins are tan-colored and decorated with silver ornaments, and the
trappings of his horse are decorated in like manner. He carries his
rifle with as much ease as if it were a cane, and rides with wonderful
352
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
dexterity. We get on with jargon and sign language pretty well. At
night, after a long ride, I descend to the foot of the mesa, and near a
little lake I find the camp. The donkey train has not arrived, but soon
one after another the Indians come in with their packs, and with
white men, Oraibi Indians, Walpi Indians, and Navajos, a good party is
assembled.
October 29.--We have a long ride before us to-day, for we must reach old
Fort Defiance. I stay with the train in order to keep everything moving,
for we expect to travel late in the night. On the way no water is found,
but in mid-afternoon the trail leads to the brink of a canyon, and the
Indians tell me there is water below; so the animals are unpacked and
taken down the cliff in a winding way among the rocks, where they are
supplied with water. Again we start; night comes on and we are still in
the forest; the trail is good, yet we make slow progress, for some of
the animals are weary and we have to wait from time to time for the
stragglers. About ten o'clock we descend from the plateau to the canyon
beneath and are at old Port Defiance, and the officers at the agency
give us a hearty greeting. powell-canyons-220.jpg
NAVAJO INDIAN WITH SILVER ORNAMENTS.
TO ZUÑI.
353 powell-canyons-221.jpg
BRINGING DOWN THE BATTEN.
We spend the 30th of October at the agency and see thousands of Indians,
for they are gathered to receive rations and annuities. It is a wild
spectacle; groups of Indians are gambling, there are several horse
races, and everywhere there is feasting. At night the revelry is
increased; great fires are lighted, and groups of Indians are seen
scattered about the plains.
November 1.--After a short day's ride we camp at Rock Spring. A fountain
gushes from the foot of the mesa. Then another day's ride
354
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
through a land of beauty. On the left there is a line of cliffs, like
the Vermilion Cliffs of Utah. In the same red sandstones and on the
top of the cliff the Kaibab scenery is duplicated. A great tower on the
cliff is known as "Navajo Church." Early in the afternoon we are at
Fort Wingate and in civilization once more. The fort is on a beauti-
powell-canyons-222.jpg
NAVAJO CHURCH, NEAR FORT WINGATE.
TO ZUÑÍ
355
ful site at the foot of the Zuñi Plateau. And now our journey with the
pack train is ended, and I bid good-by to my Indian friends. My own pack
train is to go back to Utah, while from Fort Wingate I expect to go to
Santa Fe in an ambulance. But the region about is of interest for its
wonderful geologic structure and for the many ruins of ancient pueblos
found in the neighborhood. On the 2d of November Captain Johnson, an
artillery officer, takes me for a ride among the ruins. Many of these
ancient structures are found, but those which are of the most interest
are the round towers. Nothing remains of these but the bare walls. They
average from 18 to 20 feet in diameter, and are usually two or three
stories high. Probably they were built as places of worship.
Above Fort Wingate there is a great plateau; below, there stretches a
vast desert plain with mesas and buttes. The ruins are at the foot of
the plateau where the streams come down from the pine-clad heights.
On the 3d of November with a party of officers I visit Zuñí in an
ambulance. The journey is 40 miles, along the foot of the plateau half
the way, and then we turn into the desert valley, in the midst of which
runs the Zuñi River, sometimes in canyons cut in black lava. Zuñí is a
town much like those already visited, except that it is a little larger.
Nothing can be more repulsive than the appearance of the streets;
irregular, crowded, and filthy, in which dogs, asses, and Indians are
mingled in confusion. In the distance Toyalone is seen, a great butte
on which an extensive ruin is found, the more ancient home of
powell-canyons-223.jpg
ROUND TOWER ON A ROCK.
356
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
these people, though Zuñi itself appears to be hundreds of years old.
The people speak a language radically different from that of Tusayan,
and no other tribe in the United States has a tongue related to it.
In the midst of the town there is an old Spanish church, partly in
ruins, but it is still graced with the wooden image of a saint, gayly
colored; and the old tongueless bell remains, for it was sounded with a
stone hammer held in the hand of the bellman; the marks of his blows are
deeply indented in the metal. Alvar Nuñez Caveza de Vaca was the first
white man to see Zuñi, when he wandered in that long journey from
Florida around by the headwaters of the Arkansas, through what is now
New Mexico and Arizona, southward to the City of Mexico. He had with
him a Barbary negro, who was killed by the Zuñi, and his burial place is
still pointed out.
Among the Zuñi, as among the tribes of Tusayan, the form of government
which prevails throughout the North American tribes is well illustrated.
Kinship is the tie by which the members of the tribe are bound together
as a common body of people. Each tribe is divided into a series of
clans, and a clan is a group of people that reckon kinship through
the family line. The children therefore belong to the clan of the
powell-canyons-224.jpg
TOYALONE, FROM THE TOP OF A HOUSE IN ZUÑÍ.
357
TO ZUÑI.
357 powell-canyons-225.jpg
TYPICAL TERRACED COMMUNAL PUEBLO.
mother. Marriage is always without the clan; the husband and father
must belong to a different clan from the mother and children, and the
children belong to their mother and are governed by her brothers, or by
her mother's brothers if they be still living. The husband is but the
guest of the wife and the clan, and has no other authority in the family
than that acquired by personal character. If he is an able and wise man
his advice may be taken, but each clan is very jealous of its rights,
and the members do not submit to dictation from the guest husband. The
woman is1 not the ruler of the clan; the ruler is the patriarch or elder
man, or if he is not a man of ability a younger and more able man
is chosen, who by legal fiction is recognized as the elder. Over the
officers of the clan are the officers of the tribe,--a chief with
assistant chiefs. The organization by tribal governors varies from tribe
to tribe. Sometimes the chieftaincy is hereditary in a particular
clan, but more often the chieftaincy is elective. There is very little
personal property among the tribal people, such property being confined
to clothing, ornaments, and a few inconsiderable articles. The ownership
of the great bulk of the property inheres in the clan, such as their
358
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
houses, their patches of land, the food raised from the soil, and the
game caught in the chase. Sometimes the clans are grouped, two or more
constituting a phratry, and then there are other officers or chiefs
standing between the clan and tribal authority. Again, tribes are
sometimes organized into confederacies, and a grand confederate chief
recognized. In addition to the chieftaincy of confederate tribes,
phratries, and clans, there are councils; but these are not councils
of legislation in the ordinary sense. The councils are clans whose
decisions become a precedent. Tribal law is therefore court-made law,
and such customary law grows out of the exigencies which daily life
presents to the people. The problems as they arise are solved as best
they may be, and the deliberations of the councils look not to the
future but only to the present, and are invoked to settle controversy,
that peace may be maintained. Of course there is no written constitution
or body of laws, but there are traditional regulations which are well
preserved in the idioms of oral speech, every rule of procedure or of
justice being sooner or later coined into an aphorism.
It has been seen that a clan is a body of kinship in the female line;
but the members of the different clans are related to one another by
intermarriage. Thus the first tie is by affinity; but, as fathers belong
to other clans than the children, the tie is also by consanguinity. Thus
the entire tribe is a body of kindred, and the tribal organization is a
fabric with warp of streams of blood and powell-canyons-226.jpg
DANCER HOLDING UP THE GREAT PLUMED ARROW.
TO ZUÑI.
359
woof of marriage ties. When different tribes unite to form a confederacy
for offensive or defensive purposes, artificial kinship is established.
One tribe perhaps is recognized as the grandfather tribe, another is
the father tribe, a third is the elder-brother tribe, a fourth is the
younger-brother tribe, etc. In these artificial kinships the members
of one tribe address the members of another tribe by kinship terms
established in the treaty. Strangers are sometimes adopted into a clan,
and this gives them a status in the tribe. The adoption is usually
accomplished by the woman claiming the individual as her youngest son or
daughter, and such adopted person has thereupon the status belonging
to such a natural child; and, though he be an adult, he calls the child
born into the clan before his advent, though it be but a year old, his
elder brother or his elder sister. Then often young men are advanced in
the clan because of superior ability, and this is done by giving them a
kinship rank higher than that belonging to their real age; so that it
is not infrequently found that old men address young men as their
elder brothers and yield to their authority. The ties of the tribe are
kinship, and authority inheres in superior age; but in order to adjust
these rules so that the abler men may be given control, artificial
kinship and artificial age are established. The civil chiefs direct the
daily life of the people in their labors. powell-canyons-227.jpg
DANCER "SWALLOWING" THE GREAT PLUMED ARROW.
360
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO. powell-canyons-228.jpg
NAVAJO WOMAN WEAVING A BELT.
To the civil organization of the tribe, as thus indicated, there is
added a military organization, and war chiefs are selected. But usually
these war chiefs are something more than war chiefs, for they also
constitute a constabulary to preserve peace and mete out punishment; and
young men from the various clans are designated as warriors
361
TO ZUÑI. 361
and advanced in military rank according to merit. There is thus a
brotherhood of warriors, and every man in this brotherhood recognizes
all others of the group as being elder or younger, and so assumes or
powell-canyons-229.jpg
NAVAJO WOMAN SPINNING.
362 powell-canyons-230.jpg
A ROOM IN A ZUÑI HOUSE.
TO ZUÑI. 363
yields authority in all matters pertaining to war and the enforcement of
criminal law.
In addition to the secular government there is always a cult government.
In every tribe there are Shamans, designated variously by white men as
"medicine men," "priests," "priest doctors," "theurgists," etc. In
many tribes, perhaps in all, the people are organized into Shamanistic
societies; but that these societies are invariably recognized is not
certain. The Shamans are always found. Among the Zuñi there are thirteen
of these cult societies. The purpose of Shamanistic institutions is to
control the conduct of the members of the tribe in relation to mythic
personages, the mysterious beings in which the savage men believe. In
the mind of the savage the world is peopled by a host of mythic beings,
anthropomorphic and zoomorphic. The difference between man and brute
recognized in civilization, is unrecognized in savagery. All animal
life is wonderful and magical co sylvan man. Wisdom, cunning, skill,
and prowess are attributed to the real animals to a degree often
greater than to man; and there are mythic animals as well as mythic
men--monsters dwelling in the mountains and caves or hiding in the
waters, who make themselves invisible as they pass over the land. Not
only are there great monsters, beasts, and reptiles in their mythology,
but there are wonderful insects and worms. All life is miraculous and
is worshiped as divine. The heavenly bodies, the sun and moon and stars,
are mythic animals, and all of the phenomena of nature are attributed to
these zoic beings. For example, the Indian knows nothing of the ambient
air. The wind is the breath of some beast, or it is a fanning which
rises from under the wings of a mythic bird. All the phenomena of
nature, the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of
the moon, the shining of the stars, the coming of comets, the flash
of meteors, the change of seasons, the gathering and vanishing of the
clouds, the blowing of the winds, the falling of the rain, the spreading
of the snow, and all other phenomena of physical nature, are held to
be the acts of these wonderful zoic deities. It is deemed of prime
importance that such deities should be induced to act in the interest
of men. Thus it is that Shamanistic government is held to be of as great
importance as tribal government, and the Shamans are the peers of the
chiefs. With some tribes the cult socie-
364 CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
ties have greater powers than the clan; with other tribes clan
government is the more important; but always there is a conflict of
authority, and there is a perpetual war between Shamanistic and civil
government.
These Shamans and cult societies have a great variety of functions to
perform. All disease and all injuries are attributed to mythic beings or
to witchcraft, and on these pathologic ideas the medicine practices of
the people are based. The medicine men are sorcerers, who work wonders
in discovering witchcraft and averting its effects or in discovering the
disease-making animals and overcoming their power. So the Shamans
and the cult societies are the possessors of medicine and ceremonies
designed to prevent and cure human ailments. They also have charge of
the ceremonies necessary to avert disaster and to secure success in all
the affairs of life in peace and war; and they prescribe methods and
observances and furnish charms and amulets, and in every way possible
control human conduct in its relation to the unknown. No small part of
savage life is devoted to cult ceremonies and observances. The hunter
cannot penetrate the forest without his charm; the woman cannot plant
corn until a ceremony is performed for securing the blessings of some
divine being. Religious festivals and ceremonies are carried on for days
and weeks. A war must be submitted to the gods, and a sneeze demands a
prayer.
Our arrival at Fort Wingate practically ended the exploration of the
great valley of the Colorado. This was in 1870. In 1891 we can look back
upon the completion of the survey of all of that region, for it has now
been carefully mapped. The geology of the country has been studied, and
the tribes which inhabit it have been subjects of careful research.
This work has been carried on by a large corps of men, and interesting
results have accrued.
365 powell-canyons-231.jpg
ASHTISHKEE, A NAVAJO CHIEF.
366 powell-canyons-232.jpg
NAVAJO MEDICINE LODGE, VIEWED FROM THE SOUTH.
367 powell-canyons-233.jpg
NAVAJO MEDICINE LODGE, VIEWED FROM THE EAST.
368 powell-canyons-234.jpg
NAVAJO FIRE DANCE.
369 powell-canyons-235.jpg
WORKSHOP OF NAVAJO SILVERSMITH.
370 powell-canyons-236.jpg
ZUÑÍ WOMAN WEAVING A BELT.
371 powell-canyons-237.jpg
WEAVING OF DIAMOND-SHAPED DIAGONALS.
372 powell-canyons-238.jpg
ZUÑI FETICHES.
373 powell-canyons-239.jpg
EFFIGY POTTERY FROM ZUÑI.
374 powell-canyons-240.jpg
ZUÑÍ POTTERY.
375 powell-canyons-241.jpg
ZUÑÍ GRAILS.
376 powell-canyons-242.jpg
CULINARY POTTERY FROM ZUÑI.
377 powell-canyons-243.jpg
NAVAJO FABRICS.
378 powell-canyons-244.jpg
THE GRAND CANYON.
379