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Transcriber's note
In this text, some place and personal names were printed
with a macron over a vowel or vowels. These are shown
in this text as follows. For example [=a] means a
macron appeared over the letter "a" in the text, as in
K[=a]-ye-fah. S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah indicates a single
macron appeared over two consecutive "a" characters in
the name.
THE FLUTE OF THE GODS
by
MARAH ELLIS RYAN
Author of "Told in the Hills," "Indian Love Letters," "The Soul of
Rafael," etc., etc.
Illustrated by Edward S. Curtis
[Illustration: "BY THE ARROW I HAVE SAID IT!" _Page 120_]
New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Publishers
Copyright, 1909
By Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved
September, 1909
THE FLUTE OF THE GODS
PREFACE
In romances of the aborigines of the so-called New World there is
usually presented savage man or woman modified as may be by the
influence of European mythologies in various authorized forms. But,
certain people of this New World possessed at least a semi-civilization
centuries before the coming of white conquerors.
When man ceases to be nomadic, builds houses of stone and mortar,
terrace upon terrace,--walled and fortressed against the enemy,--when
he has fields of growing grain, textile fabrics, decorated pottery, a
government that is a republic, a priesthood trained in complex ritual,
a well stocked pantheon, a certain understanding of astronomy and
psychic phenomena, he may withal be called barbarian, even as was
Abraham on Moriah barbaric when the altar of his god called for
sacrifice of his only son. But a people of such culture could not with
truth be called savage.
The tale told here has to do with these same historic barbarians. That
there is more of depth to the background of American Indian life than
is usually suggested by historians has been made clear of two tribes
by Dr. Le Plongeon in his _Sacred Mysteries of the Mayas and Quiches
11500 Years Ago_. Similar mysteries and secret orders exist to-day in
the tribes of the Mexicos and Arizona. In certain instances the names
and meanings of offices identical with those of Yucatan survive, to
prove an ancient intercourse between the Mayan tribes and those who
now dwell in the valley of the Rio Grande. The Abbe Clavigero left
account of a thousand years of the history of one tribe as transcribed
by him from their own hieroglyphic records. Lord Kingsborough may have
been far astray with his theory that the people of America were the
Lost Tribes of Israel, but the researches embodied in his remarkable
_Antiquities of Mexico_, demonstrated the fact that they were not a
people of yesterday.
As to historic notes used in this tale of the more northern Sun
worshipers: Cabeza de Vaca, the first European to cross the land from
the Mississippi to Mexico (1528-1536), left record in Spanish archives
of Don Teo the Greek. Casteñada, historian for the Coronado expedition
(1540-1542), left reluctant testimony of the worse than weird night in
one Indian town of the Rio Grande, when impress was left on the native
mind that the strong god of the white conquerors demanded much of
human sacrifice. In that journal is record also of the devoted Fray
Luis, of whose end only the Indians know. In _Soldiers of the Cross_
by Archbishop Salpointe, there is an account of a god-offering made in
1680 (after almost a century of European influences), warranting the
chapter describing a similar sacrifice on the same shrine when the
pagan mind was yet supreme and the call of the primitive gods a vital
thing.
It is yet so vital that neither imported government nor imported
creeds have quite stamped it out. Only the death of the elders and the
breaking up of the clans can eradicate it. When that is done, the
Latin and the Anglo-Saxon will have swept from the heart of the land,
primitive, conservative cults ancient as the Druids.
With thanks to the Indian friends who have helped me, I desire
especially to express my obligation to Edward S. Curtis, whose
wonderful volumes of _The North American Indian_ have been an
inspiration, and whose Indian pictures for this book of mine possess a
solid value in art and ethnology far beyond the mere illustration of
text.
M. E. R.
CONTENTS
I. THE WOMAN FROM THE SOUTH 1
II. THE DAY OF THE SIGN 11
III. OF THE JOURNEY OF TAHN-TÉ 18
IV. WHITE SEEKERS OF TREASURE 29
V. TAHN-TÉ AMONG STRANGERS 42
VI. TAHN-TÉ--THE RULER 56
VII. THE SILKEN SCARF 63
VIII. THE STORY BY THE DESERT WELL 74
IX. YAHN, THE APACHE 103
X. SHRINES OF THE SACRED PLACES 111
XI. THE MAID OF DREAMS 124
XII. COMING OF THE CASTILIANS 137
XIII. A PAGAN PRIEST IN COUNCIL 167
XIV. THE COURIER AND THE MAID 201
XV. THE GIVING OF THE SUN SYMBOL 221
XVI. THE TRUE VISION 244
XVII. THINGS REVEALED ON THE HEIGHTS 252
XVIII. THE BATTLE ON THE MESA 262
XIX. THE APACHE DEATH TRAP 271
XX. THE CHOICE OF YAHN TSYN-DEH 289
XXI. THE CALL OF THE ANCIENT STAR 298
XXII. "AT THE TRAIL'S END!" 306
XXIII. THE PROPHECY OF TAHN-TÉ 319
XXIV. THE BLUEBIRD'S CALL 329
ILLUSTRATIONS
"BY THE ARROW I HAVE SAID IT!" _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THE ONE TOWN OF WÁLPI 3
THE PRAYER TOKEN 15
BLOOD-RED STARS IN THE GREEN OF HIS CROWN 19
TO DON RUY, A MESSAGE IN THE MOONLIGHT 65
THE PLACE OF THE PALMS 95
THE PRAYER OF YAHN TSYN-DEH 109
YAHN AT THE GRINDING STONE 113
KA-YEMO 119
THE SIGNAL FIRE TO THE MOUNTAIN GOD 125
AND REACHED HIS HANDS TO HIS BROTHERS--THE STARS 129
THE MAID OF DREAMS 131
STRAIGHT TO HIM DRIFTED THE BLUEBIRD'S WING 135
A LONELY FIGURE DESPITE HER TROPHIES 139
TAHN-TÉ STEPPED FORWARD 179
THE PAGE 199
INTO THE KIVA OF COUNCIL THEY DESCENDED 207
ONE GIRL WAITED AT THE PORTAL 245
IN CASTILIAN WAR DRESS HE STOOD 257
SHE LED HIM UP THE ANCIENT STAIRWAY 283
ONLY A WITCH LED TO DEATH 311
"BACK! THING OF THE EVIL ONE!" 325
TAHN-TÉ; THE OUTCAST 327
ONLY A TRAIL ACROSS THE DESERT SANDS 333
THE FLUTE OF THE GODS
CHAPTER I
THE WOMAN FROM THE SOUTH
Aliksai! In Tusayan the people were living! It was the year after the
year when the great star with the belt of fire reached across the sky.
(1528.)
The desert land of the Hopi people stretched yellow and brown and dead
from mesa to mesa. The sage was the color of the dust, and the brazen
sky was as a shield made hard and dry by the will of the angry gods.
The Spirit People of the elements could not find their way past that
shield, and could not bear blessings to Earth children.
The rain did not walk on the earth in those days, and the corn stood
still, and old men of the mesa towns knew that the starving time was
close. In the kivas fasted the Hopi priests, the youth planted prayer
plumes by the shrines of the dying wells, and the woman danced dances
at sunrise, and all sang the prayers to the gods:--and each day the
store of corn was lower, and the seed in the ground could not grow.
In the one town of Wálpi there were those who regretted the seed
wasted in the planting,--it were better to have given it to the
children, and even yet they might find some of it if the sand was
searched carefully.
"Peace!" said old Ho-tiwa, the Ancient of the village, and the chief
of Things of the Spirit. "It is not yet so bad as when I was a boy. In
that starving time, the robes of rabbit skins were eaten when the corn
was gone. Yet you see we did live and have grown old! The good seed is
in the ground, and when the rain comes--"
"When it comes!" sighed one skeptic--"We wait one year now,--how many
more until we die?"
"If it is that you die--the rain or the no rain makes no change--you
die!" reminded the old man. "The reader of the stars and of the moon
says a change is to come. Tell the herald to call it from the
housetops. This night the moon is at the big circle--it may bring with
it the smile of the glad god again. Tell the people!"
And as the herald proclaimed at the sunset the hopeful words of the
priests who prayed in the kivas, old Ho-tiwa walked away from the
spirit of discontent, and down the trail to the ruins of Sik-yat-ki.
All the wells but that one of the ancient city were useless, green,
stagnant water now. And each day it was watched lest it also go back
into the sands, and at the shrine beside it many prayers were
planted.
So that was the place where he went for prayer when his heart was
heavy with the woe of his people. And that was how he found that which
was waiting there to be found.
It was a girl, and she looked dead as she lay by the stones of the old
well. As he bent over to see if she lived, the round moon came like a
second sun into the soft glow of the twilight, and as it touched the
face of the girl, the old man felt the wind of the south pass over
them. Always to the day he died did he tell of how that south wind
came as if from swift wings!
[Illustration: THE ONE TOWN OF WÁLPI _Page 1_]
He called to some men who were going home from rabbit hunting in the
dusk, and they came and looked at the girl and at each other, and drew
away.
"We have our own women who may die soon," they said: "Why take in a
stranger? Whence comes she?"
No one had seen her come, but her trail was from the south. She wore
the dress of a pueblo girl, but she was not of their people. Her hair
was not cut, yet on her forehead she carried the mark of a soon-to-be
maternity--the sacred sign of the piñon gum seen by Ho-tiwa when he
went as a boy for the seed corn to the distant Te-hua people by the
river of the east.
"I come here with prayer thoughts to the water," said the old man
noting their reluctance,--"and I find a work put by my feet. The
reader of the skies tells that a change is to come with the moon. It
is as the moon comes that I find her. The gods may not be glad with us
if our hearts are not good at this time."
"But the corn--"
"The corn I would eat can go to this girl for four days. I am old, but
for so long I will fast,--and maybe then the gods will send the
change."
So the girl was carried to his house, and the women shrank away, and
were afraid--for the clouds followed the wind swiftly from the south,
and the face of the moon was covered, and at the turn of the night was
heard the voice of a man child--new born of the strange girl found by
the well in the moonlight. Ho-tiwa in the outer room of the dwelling
heard the voice--and more than the child voice, for on the breath of
the wind across the desert the good rain came walking in beauty to the
fields, and the glad laughter of the people went up from the mesa, and
there was much patter of bare feet on the wet stone floor of the
heights--and glad calls of joy that the desert was to live again!
And within the room of the new birth the women stared in affright at
the child and at each other, for it was most wonderfully fair--not
like any child ever seen. This child had hair like the night, eyes
like the blue of the sky, and face like the dawn.
One man among them was very old, and in his youth had known the Te-hua
words. When the girl spoke he listened, and told the thing she said,
and the women shrank from her when it was told.
"She must be a medicine-woman, for she knows these things," she said,
"and these things are sacred to her people. She says that the blade of
a sacrifice must mark her child, for the boy will not be a child as
other children." And at the mention of the knife the people stared at
each other.
"There is such a knife," said Ho-tiwa. "It belongs to the Ancient
Days, and only the gods, and two men know it. It shall be as she says.
The god of the sky has brought the woman and has brought the child,
and on the face of the child is set the light of the moon that the
Hopi people will never again doubt that the gods can do these
things."
And there was a council at which all the old men talked through the
night and the day. And while they talked, the rain poured in a flood
from the gray sky, until men said this might be magic, for the woman
might have brought witchcraft.
But the old chief said no evil craft could have brought the good
rain:--The wind and the rain had come from the south as the girl had
come from the south, and the light on the face of the child was a
symbol that it was sacred.
Then one man, who had been an Apache prisoner, and found his way back,
told of a strange thing;--that forty days to the south where the birds
of the green feathers were, a new people had come out of the Eastern
sea, and were white. The great kings made sacrifices for them, and
planted prayer plumes before them--for they were called the new gods
of the water and the sunrise.
And the girl had come from the south!
Yet another reminded the council that the words of the girl were
Te-hua words, and the Te-hua people lived East of Ci-bo-la and
Ah-ko--the farthest east of the stone house building people.
"Since these are her only words, the child shall be named in the way
of that people," said Ho-tiwa. "The sacred fire was lit at the birth,
and on the fourth morning my woman will give the name in the Te-hua
way, and throw the fire to burn all evil from his path, and the sacred
corn will guard his sleep. Some of you younger men never have heard of
the great Te-hau god. Tell it to them, Atoki, then they will know why
a Te-hua never sends away a poor stranger who comes to them."
The man who knew Te-hua words, and had seen the wonderful Te-hua
valley in his youth, sent smoke from his ceremonial pipe to the four
ways of the gods, and then to the upper and nether worlds, and spoke:
"_Aliksai!_ I will tell of the Te-hua god as it was told to me by the
old man of Kah-po in the time of starving when I went with the men for
the sacred corn of the seed planting:
"The thing I tell is the true thing!
"It was time for a god to walk on the earth, and one was born of the
piñon tree and a virgin who rested under the shadow of its arms. The
girl was very poor, and her people were very poor; when the piñon nut
fell in her bosom, and the winds told her a son was sent to her to
rest beneath her heart, she was very sad, for there was no food.
"But wonderful things happened. The Spirits of the Mountain brought to
her home new and strange food, and seeds to plant for harvest:--new
seeds of the melon, and big seed of the corn:--before that time the
seeds of the corn were little seeds. When the child was born, strange
things happened, and the eagles fly high above till the sky was alive
with wings. The boy was very poor, and so much a boy of dreams that he
was the one to be laughed at for the visions. But great wise thoughts
grew out of his mountain dreams, and he was so great a wizard that the
old men chose him for Po-Ahtun-ho, which means Ruler of Things from
the Beginning. And the dreamer who had been born of the maid and the
piñon tree was the Ruler. He governed even the boiling water from the
heart of the hills, and taught the people that the sickness was washed
away by it. His wisdom was beyond earth wisdom, and his visions were
true. The land of that people became a great land, and they had many
blue stones and shells. Then it was that they became proud. One day
the god came as a stranger to their village:--a poor stranger, and
they were not kind to him! The proud hearts had grown to be hard
hearts, and only fine strangers would they talk with. He went away
from that people then. He said hard words to them and went away. He
went to the South to live in a great home in the sea. When he comes
back they do not know, but some day he comes back,--or some night! He
said he would come back to the land when the stars mark the time when
they repent, and one night in seven the fire is lit on the hills by
the villages, that the earth-born god, Po-se-yemo, may see it if he
should come, and may see that his people are faithful and are waiting
for him to come.
"Because of the day when the god came, and they turned him away for
that his robe was poor, and his feet were bare;--because of that day,
no poor person is turned hungry from the door of that people. And the
old men say this is because the god may come any day from the South,
and may come again as a poor man.
"And this was told to us by the Te-hua men when we went for seed corn
in that starving time, and were not sent away empty. _Aliksai!_"
The men drew long breaths of awe and approval when the story was
ended. The old man who had found the girl knew that the girl had found
friends.
But the mysterious coincidence of her coming as the rain came--and
from the south--and the fair child!
Again the man who had been a prisoner with the Apaches was asked to
tell of the coming of the white gods in the south where the Mexic
people lived. He knew but little. No Apache had seen them, but Indian
traders of feathers had said it was so.
The men smoked in silence and then one said:--"Even if it be so, could
the girl come alone so far through the country of the hostile
people?"
"There is High Magic to help sometimes," reminded the old chief. "When
magic has been used only for sacred things it can do all things! We
can ask if she has known a white god such as the trader told of to our
enemies."
And the two oldest men went to the house of Ho-tiwa's wife, and stood
by the couch of the girl, and they sprinkled sacred meal, and sat in
prayer before they spoke.
And the girl said, "My name is Mo-wa-thé (Flash Of Light) and the name
of my son is Tahn-té (Sunlight). We may stay while these seeds grow
into grain, and into trees, and bear harvest. But not always may we be
with you, for a God of the Sky may claim his son."
And she took three seeds from the fold of the girdle she had worn.
They were strange seeds of another land.
The old men looked at each other, and remembered that to the mother of
the Te-hua god, strange seeds had been given, and they trembled, and
the man of the Te-hau words spoke:
"You come from the south where strange things may happen. On the trail
of that south, heard you or saw you--the white god?"
And she drew the child close, and looked in its face, and said,
"Yes--a white god!--the God of the Great Star."
And the old men sprinkled the sacred meal to the six points, and told
the council, and no one was allowed to question Mo-wa-thé ever again.
The seeds were planted near the well of Sik-yat-ki, and grew there.
One was the tree of the peach, another of the yellow pear, and the
grain was a grain of the wheat. The pear tree and the wheat could not
grow well in the sands of the desert, only enough to bring seed again,
but the peach grew in the shadow of the mesa, and the people had great
joy in it, and only the men of the council knew they came from the
gods.
And so it was in the beginning.