ORIGINS AND MIGRATIONS
The aboriginal migrations of man in the Southwest may be
roughly likened to the spread of vegetation or to the stocking
of regions by animals from a center of distribution. Two great
movements can be detached, one setting from the Rio Grande
toward the west and south, and the other from the Gila toward
the north and east. An objective region for both was the valley
of the Little Colorado which offered an attractive home for all
the tribes.—FEWKES.
From primeval times there were in the Southwest four geographic regions
to which the aborigines naturally gravitated, because of their favorable
river systems. These were the basins of the Rio Grande, the San Juan, the
Little Colorado, and the Gila. “Here the ancient ruins are most numerous,
and life seems to have been more active and intense than elsewhere.”[107]
The ancient pueblo region extends from Great Salt Lake southward into
Mexico, and from the Grand Canyon eastward to the Pecos River. This
region comprises 150,000 square miles. In certain portions of it ruins
are to be found by the thousands. Usually they are clustered together in
villages, but there are, besides, scattered ruins that probably indicate
outlying settlements on the farm lands of the community.
Prehistoric migrations were due to various causes. Preëminent among them
was the search for water, that primal necessity of existence. The need of
salt for men and animals was another factor in the choice of settlement
of aborigines as well as of the later frontiersmen.[108] New Mexico,
Arizona, and the Great Basin are peculiarly rich in saline deposits,
which no doubt had their part in attracting population.[109] Salt might
also be a cause of emigration. Fewkes shows that land long irrigated may
become so saline as to be useless for agriculture, and he says, “This
cause was perhaps more effectual than human enemies or increased aridity
in breaking up the prehistoric culture.”[110] The hostility of neighbor
clans or neighbor tribes often drove tribes to positions that could be
more easily defended.
The routes of migration can be traced by the ruins of the more or
less temporary settlements which were constructed on the way. These
ruins, too, give us a clue to origins. They are of two types, compounds
and pueblos. “Compounds are clusters of houses (or their ruins) each
arranged on a platform bounded by a surrounding wall ... while compact
blocks or rooms, each without a surrounding wall, are clan houses,” or
pueblos.[111] From the differences in architecture of these two forms
of habitations, and still more from the differences in pottery in the
village mounds, Fewkes deduces two sources of aboriginal immigration into
the valley of the Little Colorado, with a resulting mixed culture. One
stream of these home-seekers went westward down the San Juan; the other
moved northward up the Salt.[112] The southern culture came later than
that from the east, but was effectual over a wide area. Its northern
boundary is near Hopi. Eastward it extended to Ácoma, which, says Fewkes,
is “regarded as the Eastern limit of southern Gila influence, and marks
one point on a line of demarcation of the dual influence which merged at
Hopi and Zuñi.”[113]
The careful research of one of the latest students of pueblo pottery, Dr.
Leslie Spier, brings out the fact that
migration records are but little more than suggestive
indications of former inter-tribal relations. Simply to state
the sequence of their occupation is to tell in the lowest terms
of the migrations of their erstwhile occupants. If we know the
history of the pottery art, though only in its barest outline,
we know at once the time relations between the ruins.
To illustrate, Spier found, in the ruins of the vicinity of modern Zuñi,
two general types of pottery. Since the sherds of any particular ruin
belonged to only one class he was able to establish the historical fact
that the Hálona of Coronado was the present Zuñi, and that the settlement
across the river, where are now the trading stores, had been abandoned
long before that period.[114]
The sequence of the many ruins near Zuñi bears the same relation to that
pueblo that those of the Galisteo Basin do to Ácoma. There is, in fact,
a Zuñi tradition that, shortly before Fray Marcos discovered Cíbola,
its people had conquered some small Keres villages toward the south and
southeast, had adopted some of the survivors and incorporated some of
their ritual dances with its own, which are still performed. Was it from
these that Zuñi sent colonists in 1699 to found—with other tribes—the new
pueblo of Laguna?
Wherever they have studied early civilizations, scholars have been wont
to consider that the nature of the country finally settled upon had no
inconsiderable influence upon the forms of buildings there erected.
Fewkes believes that “the cliffs in which are the ruins of the Navajo
Monument favored the construction of cliff dwellings rather than of open
pueblos.”[115] Caverns large and small, trees for beams and rafters,
in short, all the conditions for cliff communities are there. It is
incredible that the same conditions would not have had an effect as well
upon the arts and crafts. The fantastic shapes into which the summits are
eroded, and the great columnar forms of awesome size, cannot have failed
to impress the primitive mind, developing conceptions of supernatural
forms and agencies.
Priority of origin between cliff dwellings and those on the level soil
is an interesting question. The earliest villages were probably in river
valleys or near small streams at the foothills of the many mesas. Later
the Pueblo Indians removed to the more inaccessible sites on the summits
of the mesas for protection from the nomad tribes who constantly harassed
them by predatory raids upon their flocks and crops. The aboriginal
Indians probably lived in detached houses, grouped more or less according
to clans, or to the neighborhood of their planting fields. Gradually a
more compact village or pueblo existence was found essential to protect
the agricultural Indians from the nomad tribes. There are writers who
believe, in accordance with the fond tradition of the native peoples,
that the oldest villages on low ground were evolved from cave and cliff
dwellings. Santa Clara, for example, in a flat region close to the Rio
Grande, claims the cliffs of Puyé for its ancestral home as well as its
temporary refuge in times of danger in later eras. On the other hand,
Dr. Hewett[116] writes that he has indubitable proof that this claim
is only one of many ruses employed by the Indians to secure their hold
upon increased territory. No doubt in times of emergency Puyé was used
by Santa Clara, but the “nation” never originated in these lofty cliff
dwellings. In the case of Walpi the removal from the lower levels to the
mesa top occurred within the historic period; Ácoma, we know, had been
on its cliff summit long before the first white man saw it, nor has any
record yet been found that does not connect it with the top of the great
crag. At whatever period this change occurred from life on the arable
ground-level to these easily defended cliffs, there must have resulted
a fundamental change in the organization of existence. Permanent houses
would be built only on the high stone table-lands, while the farms would
be supplied with merely temporary dwellings. In some cases these farms
would be actually overlooked, as at Walpi, by the mesa pueblo, or, as at
Acomita, be a dozen miles distant from Ácoma.
Since most Pueblo Indian ceremonial exists to implore help for the
increase of the fertility of all created things, including the increase
of human beings, all important rites and dances take place either before
the time of planting or after the harvest is gathered; consequently the
summer settlements rarely, perhaps never, had _kivas_ or ceremonial
chambers; this fact is an aid in determining the temporary or permanent
character of the ruins scattered over the plains.[117]
Various were the causes for the abandonment of these prehistoric
dwellings. Some of the houses found were evidently of only temporary
usefulness—way-stations in a pathless wilderness. Some settlements
perhaps were near water sources long since overwhelmed by drifting
sand. Prolonged drought often was the primary reason for moving. The
hostilities of other tribes would drive a people from a location not
easily defended. The failure of grain crops or of other nutritive or
medicinal plants would generally be considered a sign from the gods
that the place was accursed. Any prolonged disaster, whether it were
drought, or flood or disease, was usually attributed by the Pueblos to
witchcraft. Many secret crimes committed in retaliation have contributed
slowly but surely to the depopulation of whole villages. The pueblo of
Sía is said to owe its decline in comparatively recent time to constant
“inter-killing going on for supposed evil practices of witchcraft.”[118]
Originally, it is believed by some writers, the two divisions of the race
known as those of the Plains and those of the Pueblos were one and the
same, the Pueblo Indians being merely “fragments” of wandering tribes
left behind on both banks of the rivers that coursed through the plains.
Differing environments effected great contrasts in the lives of the two
peoples. The hunting of the buffalo largely determined the habits of the
Plains Indians. That animal furnished a steady supply of meat in contrast
with what could be got by the Pueblos from the occasional hunt of small
game; his skin dried in the sun made an excellent tent, in place of the
brush or adobe shelter; his fur made warm and durable clothing, whereas
the Pueblos had to depend upon wool and cotton garments. From the horns
drinking-cups were fashioned.[119]
Since moving on from point to point in early times was so much the
habit of all Indians, the marvel is that these migrating bands stopped
in a region so unpromising and infertile as the Great Basin, where the
human struggle for existence is of such incalculable proportion that the
imagination grows weary; but stop they did, as innumerable pueblo ruins
bear tangible witness. By its very aridity the sedentary Indians were
assured of a certain protection from their enemies, who would not be so
much attracted to the desert as to more luxuriant regions.[120] True,
this land of sage and sand, of greasewood and the burning sun, can be
made to flower like a garden, with sufficient water, but the infinite
labor required daunts the mind.
Since the outcome of migration is more or less permanent settlement, some
allusion to the adaptation of the Indian to the natural environment in
which he elected to remain is pertinent here. If upon the flat plain,
his adobe of pinkish yellow or brown sinks into the sandy background
and seems a mere outcropping of the rounded hills close by; if upon
the mesa-top, the houses look as if carved from the cliff itself and
defy all approach. The lack of all domestic animals among the Pueblos,
a notable fact, was of course a very serious handicap to them. Until
the Spaniards brought the horse and the sheep into the country in the
sixteenth century, the infrequent dog left behind by the nomad tribes
and used by the Pueblos as an accompaniment of the chase was their only
four-footed domestic animal. Castañeda notes as an uncommon sight the
wolfish dog which the Plains Indians harnessed to carry heavy burdens of
transport.[121] He also wrote that the pueblo people assured him they
kept the turkey only for its eggs and its feathers, but he could not
believe it, since the Spaniards found that bird such good eating.
Other points of contrast between the sedentary and nomad Indians are full
of interesting suggestion. But we can here indicate only in a superficial
way the most patent of them all. The Pueblo Indians, having established
themselves in a latitude and at an altitude highly favorable to
civilization, made more rapid progress in agriculture and the arts than
their kindred “nations” farther north. But on the other hand, wandering
over great distances trained the nomad Indian to much greater quickness
of eye and other sense perceptions, and also developed a more sinewy and
alert body. Change of scene increased his knowledge of other parts of the
continent and taught him how to cope with innumerable difficulties on the
way, of which the Pueblo Indian knew nothing.
The Spaniards coming north from Mexico found the Pueblos a backward
people relatively to the Nahuas and the Mayas, but leading a peaceful,
agricultural existence just as they had done for hundreds, possibly
thousands, of years, and having developed at the same time a culture
of many sorts that suited their needs and satisfied their hearts.
This culture included an architecture ranking high among “Pueblo
Arts” and characteristic of the mesa country which produced it, where
building-material was to be had for the taking.
One form of expression of their art is found in the pictographs on the
cliffs and _kiva_ walls intended to communicate a kinship of ideas
between tribes who could not understand each other’s speech. It is not
believed that these pictographs were at all like the ideographs of the
Central American peoples. They generally delineate natural objects,
most often animals, and while they may sometimes record events, like a
victory in war, or indicate the special shrine of the antelope or the
serpent, they are for the most part thought to be merely the beginnings
of pictorial art characteristic of all children and of races in their
childhood. The archaeologists and ethnologists have thus far gathered
so few positive data about the Ácomas that their racial origin is still
wrapped in mysterious and romantic legend. But so much as this is agreed
upon: the Ácomas are a people of one race, the Keresan,[122] composed
of many clans, some of them related to those who settled in the Tusayán
region.[123] They entered this great valley from the Gila, and form the
most eastern group of its influence and seem from the very first to have
been in continual conflict with other peoples. They were apparently at
once attacked and forced to defend themselves, and forthwith chose the
most inaccessible rock they could find, whereon to build an impregnable
fortress-city from which other tribes could not dislodge them.
Cosmos Mindeleff considers Ácoma’s position on a mesa summit unusual, and
thinks it due to the fact that, “like the wilder tribes, its people were
predatory upon their neighbors.”[124] The actual date when the Pueblo of
Ácoma began its life upon its fortress-rock we shall probably never know,
but all are agreed that it was very ancient in Coronado’s time (1540).
Lummis asserts that Isleta and Ácoma are the only pueblos on sites
occupied in Coronado’s time; but in another place he says that he
was told by the Ácomas that “a generation ago” drought forced their
inhabitants to form a colony at Isleta. Bandelier says: “With the
exception of Ácoma there is not a single pueblo standing where it
was at the time of Coronado, or even sixty years later, when Juan de
Oñate accomplished the peaceable reduction of the New Mexican village
Indians.”[125] Again he writes that such fragments of Ácoma tradition
as could be gathered pointed “to the north as the direction whence that
branch of the Queres originally came, and of the Pueblo of Sía on the
Jémez River as the place where they separated from the other Queres.”
Since it is true that much Ácoma tradition assigns their origin to a
separation from the main Keres nation at Sía, it is rather curious that
Mrs. Stevenson[126] makes not the slightest allusion, in her exhaustive
memoir, to Ácoma or to any tribal connection between Sía and Ácoma.
After this separation they drifted “to the Southwest across the bleak
valley of the Rio Puerco, and dividing into two bands, established
themselves in small pueblos to the right and left of Cañada de la Cruz
and on the mesa above Acomita, twelve miles north of their present
village.”
On both sides of the Cañada de la Cruz toward Laguna there are mesas with
ruins which Ácoma claims for its ancestors. This supports their tradition
of having drifted hither in several small bands, which settled separately
and then consolidated—on Katzímo, or on Ácoma. This would be the place
and time for their use of the Mesa Encantada.
Acomita is still part of the cultivated land belonging to the Ácomas.
Thither nearly the whole population has migrated every summer for
generations, and some of them now live there the year round. It is
twelve miles in a straight line north of the peñol and occupies fertile
bottomlands of Blue Water Creek. Pueblito and McCarty’s are other
stretches of adjacent farming country occupied in the same way by the
Ácomas. Here they raise enough wheat, corn, chili, beans, peaches, and
melons for their use, and have some to barter for other necessities.
Bandelier considers it uncertain whether these fields were cultivated
when Espéjo came there in 1583, because the distance of “two leagues”
that Espéjo gives does not agree with the present position. May it not
rather be an incorrect measurement?
Other associations of the Ácoma tribe with the surrounding countryside
are more definite. At Cebollita[127] the ruins are believed to be
Spanish, but with an Indian origin. They belong to a series of ruins
scattered at irregular intervals along an ancient trail of seventy miles
leading from Ácoma to Zuñi in regular use in the seventeenth century.
There are indications that it began to be used after Ácoma had been
founded, or at least after the Ácoma tribe established itself in the
vicinity,[128] a proof that there was regular communication between
the pueblos to the far west and those more centrally located. This is
the trail described by Hernando de Alvarado and Fray Juan de Padilla.
As Castañeda does not mention that these men suffered from any lack of
water, it seems certain that they passed no inhabited villages, but only
a desert waste which the nomad raided at pleasure. From Ácoma onward,
pueblos were seen at short distances from one another, thus requiring of
the traveler more caution and a slower progress.
[Illustration: ON THE OLD TRAIL TO ZUÑI
_Bolton_]
The Ácomas call Cebollita, Ka-uni-a, but strenuously deny all knowledge
of its builders. This trail after passing Cebollita passes another
“rancho,” Cebolla, and thence to the south of El Morro (Inscription
Rock), and the headwaters of Zuñi River in an almost straight line to
Zuñi hot springs, where is Ahacus or Háwikuh, which by some early
students of the tradition was confused with one of the many ways of
spelling the aboriginal name of Ácoma.[129]
Bandelier examined an isolated cliff-house two miles due south of Ácoma,
with walls of yellow clay in perfect condition. The rocks showed caves
and partition walls, and there were rock-paintings and rude carvings on
large detached blocks not far from the ruins. The Indians denied all
knowledge of them save that they were older than their ancestors, but a
boy guide told Bandelier that the painting was the work of the Koshare
(delight-makers) of Ácoma. Here they also found plume-sticks, which
showed it to be a sacrificial place in actual use.[130]
Fewkes[131] believes that in the early migrations there was some close
relation between the ancestors of the tribes now at Hopi, who are
Shoshonean, and those at Ácoma, who are Keresan, and who do not to-day
acknowledge such a connection, since they speak two different languages.
The Antelope Chief at Walpi is the authority from whom Fewkes learned
that in the Hopi Snake legends the Tcá-ma-hia[132] (a Keresan term),
or ancestral hero of the Puma or Snake clan, left the Snake people at
Wukoki on the Little Colorado, to seek other clans emerging from the
underworld. He was told by a war god at So-tcap-tu-twi to go westward. He
did so and met those clans at Ácoma, where he joined them and where their
descendants live. The relations between Tcá-ma-hia at Ácoma and the Snake
clan at Walpi seem never to have been broken.[133] At the biennial dance
there are placed around the border of the sand mosaic of the Antelope
altar eighteen smooth, light-brown stones called Tcá-ma-hia, which are
looked upon as ancient weapons representing the warriors of the Puma
clan of the Snake phratry. During the altar-songs one of the priests of
the Sand clan, who are said to have lived at Wukoki with the Snake clan,
beats on the floor with one of these stones, keeping rhythm with the song
and the rattles. It is a telegram to Ácoma for the Tcá-ma-hia to join
them in the Snake ceremony. He arrives on the evening of the eighth day
at the subterranean Moñ-Kiva. Tcá-ma-hia is then present at Walpi next
day to act as Asperger (Nahiapüma) at the _kisi_ (brush shelter). While
throwing out the charm liquid to the six cardinal points, he calls out
the Keres invocation to warrior gods: _Awahia, Tcá-ma-hia, yomaihiye,
teimahaiye_. His dress and speech are not Hopi but of an older stock,
and the whole impersonation undoubtedly is meant to recall the ancestral
wanderer of Keresan blood who left the Snake people to be joined at Ácoma
by other clans.
There is said to be a ruin on the now uninhabited mesa of Awátobi called
A-Ko-Kai-Obi (place of the ladle) which is also the Hopi name for Ácoma.
At all events, there is every indication of former association of the
Puma and the Snake clans of Hopi and Ácoma.
There is so much that seems to connect Hopi (Tusayán) and Ácoma (Keresan)
in prehistoric times that it is difficult to resist the temptation to
quote the whole creation story as told to Fewkes at Walpi, because of
its innate poetry; but so varying are the details in the several Tusayán
pueblos that we dare not assume the identity of any one of them with a
place as far away as Ácoma. We must be content with referring the reader
to the legend as related by Fewkes, quoting here from it only the Ácoma
detail.[134]
While we were living at Wu-ko-ki (Great house) one of the
Tcá-ma-hia dwelt with us, and then he left us, and traveled far
to the southwest, looking for other people that he knew were
coming up from the under world. When he reached So-tcap-tu-kui
(near Santa Fé), he met Pu-u-kon-ho-ya (one of the mythic
twins, grandsons of the Spider Woman) to whom he told his
object. Pu-hu-kon-ho-ya said he could find those people, and
fitting in his bow the arrow, fletched with wings of the
bluebird, he shot it into the sky, and it came down far to
the northeast, at Si-pa-pu, which people were climbing. The
arrow told them its message; and they said, “We will travel
to the southwest and may Tcá-ma-hia come to meet us.” On this
the arrow flew back to its sender and told of these people and
Tcá-ma-hia traveled westward to meet them. When he went to the
great rock where Ácoma now is, he climbed up and found the
great ladle-shaped Cavities on its summit, filled with rain
water, and he named it the place of the ladle (A-ko-ky-obi).
Here he rested and the people he was working for joined him
there and at this place they have ever since remained.
Sand mosaics, or “dry-paintings,” made with elaborate care by skilled
artists of the tribe with sands of many colors, are so usual a part
of the ritual celebrations of Indian people that it has been no
little surprise and perplexity to find not a single allusion to such
altar-pictures at Ácoma. It is true that they are always within a _kiva_,
and since we have no description of any _kiva_ interior at Ácoma, the
conclusion can be only that sand mosaics are regarded as too sacred for
alien eyes to behold.[135]
To-day there is a colony of about five hundred Indians resident upon
the lofty peñol. The rich heritage of migration tradition, of folk-lore
concerning the adventures of their prehistoric ancestors, no less
than the more tangible evidence of a hardy and adventurous tribe
within the period of historic record, furnishes plenty of material for
the interested student. From the shadowy north by way of legendary
halting-places to Wukoki on the Little Colorado and so to the very
solid, glowing mass of Katzímo and on to Ácoma itself we have followed
their pilgrimage. Long labor would be sweet if only some one might gain
the coöperation of their own wise men to put within our grasp this
history of a vanishing culture.