With gunshot and with shout,
Beneath a flaunting canopy
They bring the bright Saint out,----
The priest with gold-rimmed spectacles,
The friar gowned and stout,
The squaw, the chief, the blanket-man,----
Color a-flame in the motlied clan,----
The lanky long-haired scout
Nigh a bronzen, earringed Navaho
Lingering thereabout.
They march them down the earthen street,----
Each house must Dominic grace;
They chant a hymn in the Latin tongue
Which Old World centuries have sung;
They come to the village place,
Where in his shrine made blanket-gay,
They set the Saint to face
The motlied throng that march with song
Into the sunny space----
White, golden-bearded Dominic
Sainting a dark-skin race.
Oh, skies are blue where all day through
The painted dancers come
With plumes a-flare in their dusky hair,
With rattle and with drum----
In bright array with bannered display,
All timed to the rhythmic drum!
Oh, earth is fair in the sunny air,
With her fields of flowing green,
Where the mesas of the terraced land
Red-wall them in between----
And the folk are gay as they dance the day
That the harvest be not lean!
With naked bodies striped and daubed,
With flaming parrot crest,
Bright necklaces, and terraced crowns
Adorned with floating featherdowns----
Earth with the sunlight blest!
And ghostly white Koshare clowns,
Like souls that know no rest----
Like living souls with ancient things
Uncannily possessed!
To rattle and drum the dancers come,
The dust-brown earth they beat,
While the singers intone an heathen drone
Where they follow with rhythmic feet----
An heathen drone which their sires had known
Would make the harvest sweet!
They come before Saint Dominic,
They dance the growing maize,
Its planting and its tasseling,
Full-bladed summer days,
And the dews and rains that fill the grains,
And the purple harvest haze----
The life that lies in Mother Earth
And in bright Sun-Father’s rays:
Dancing they sing the antique song
That made the maize to grow
Or ever Christian priest or saint
Their sires had come to know----
Dancing they sing an heathen thing
Out of the long ago----
That brought fair yield to the tilléd field
Dim centuries ago.
Yes, a blessed Saint is Dominic
And blessed folk are they
Who come with dancing feet to meet
Upon his holy day----
Who tapers bring and old songs sing
And reverently pray
Kneeling before his image bright
With its golden-bearded face,
As the priests had taught when first they brought
Their Saint to the dark-skin race,----
Who should keep each year his festival
In their ancient dancing-place.
[Illustration: Saint Dominic’s Day--II
_They kneel before the sanguined rail,
The Virgin in her blue,
The Christ upon his painted cross,--
And nigh them, bright of hue,
A pony and a buffalo
Some dark-skinned artist drew._
]
[Illustration: Flower Alone
_They mocked her for her outland ways,
They jeered her kin and clan._
]
FLOWER ALONE
A Santa Clara woman
In Sant’ Domingo town,
Her rights were less than human
That day at red sundown,----
They made her less than dogs are made
Within the stranger town.
Oh, she was wicked merry
On Santa Clara street!
Red-brown as a berry,
Hale as ripened wheat;
And he who came to woo her,
He came on dancing feet.
Round his raven locks a kerchief gay,
His belt of the silver wrought,----
From Sant’ Domingo all the way
With none but her in thought:
A braided scarf, a turquoise ring,
These were the gifts he brought.
Why should she heed the old wives’ saw?
“A bride should seek her bed
“Within the pale of the village law
“Wherein she hath been bred.”
At old wives’ tales and old wives’ wails
She shook a saucy head.
And so in Sant’ Domingo town
She ground her daily corn;
She drew her water at the well,
And there her babe was born;
And earthen pots she made to sell
And quaintly did adorn.
A Santa Clara woman
Within a stranger town,
Its folk were more than human
To hold her as their own:
A saucy-head she had been bred,
Should they not bring her down?
They mocked her for her outland ways,
They jeered her kin and clan;
They whispered evil of her days,
They won away her man,----
A saucy-head she had been bred,
But, oh, her heart grew wan!
They babbled evil of her days
And evil of her art;
They mocked, they jeered, they came to gaze
Where she bode with aching heart,----
Where moody-eyed in her alien pride
With her babe she sat apart.
A Santa Clara woman
In Sant’ Domingo town,
They made her less than human,
And the hour was red sundown
When from cut and gash of the plaited lash
Crimson her blood ran down.
Crimson her blood as the setting sun,
But never to blow or curse
Did she open her lips till their work was done
And they left her for better or worse,----
Till they dragged her tied to a horse’s tail
And left her for a corse.
She lay beside the beasts’ corral,
Her body as the dead,
And dimly she heard the tiny call
Of her babe that would be fed,----
Dimly she heard, and she did crawl
To nurse it, while she bled.
A Santa Clara woman
Within a stranger town;
Her rights were less than human
When redly the sun went down,----
But the babe that was born of her body
She nursed while the blood ran down.
With curious eyes I watched her at work
Where she plied her potter’s art
And creatures drew with cunning hand,
Bright for the white man’s mart,----
I wondered at the blood-red band
Limned to each crimsoned heart.
[Illustration: The Pottery Peddler
_His step was soundless and he seemed
A phantom in the land._
]
THE POTTERY PEDDLER
I saw him with his pack of wares,
Spoil of an ancient craft,----
His body supple as the bow
After the true-sped shaft:
I liked the weave of banded wool
That girt him at the thighs;
I liked the glint of gaudy things
That filled me with surmise:
The abalone at his ears,
His beaded turquoise string;
The kerchief round his glossy hair----
Red on a blackbird’s wing:
I liked the silver where its hue
Shone on his earth-brown skin,
And, oh, his patient eyes I liked,
All smouldering within.
I saw him loping up the road
Made by the white man’s hand:
His step was soundless, and he seemed
A phantom in the land.
I saw him on a white man’s street----
And, lo, the street was gone
A century of centuries
While still mine eyes looked on!
And I beheld him, lithe and proud,
Chief upon plain and hill,----
The eagle was his panoply,
The mountain lion his kill:
About him thronged his earth-brown kin,
Rhythmic with the drum,----
I saw their gleaming feathers
And their bright musicians come:
I saw them with their patterned robes,
Their glint of gaudy things,
Their greens, their reds, their silver whites,
Their dangles and their rings:
A century of centuries
While still mine eyes looked on:
An Indian--and the white man’s street
Ten thousand years agone!
[Illustration: The Dead Pueblo--I
_But yesterday its people passed
Into their silence and their night,
Leaving their broken walls to glow
Encrimsoned by the shafted light._
]
THE DEAD PUEBLO
In 1838 the dozen or so of Indians, who comprised at that time the
fading population of Pecos, abandoned their ancient pueblo and took
refuge with their kinfolk of Jemez from the unceasing Comanche raids,
which for more than a century had been diminishing the tribe. This
closed a period of continuous occupation estimated by archaeologists
at more than fifteen hundred years, during which the pueblo had become
the most powerful in the Rio Grande region. A veritable fortress on its
final site,--for it had been removed to the mesa top from an earlier
location across the arroyo,--it is believed that Pecos had been founded
as a result of the growing attacks of the wild tribes of the Plains and
Desert upon the scattered farming communities of the fertile valleys
and uplands of the vicinity. For many centuries and through many shifts
of the local culture (by no means primitive when Pecos was founded)
the community grew in strength--an eastern outpost of the Pueblo
civilization. When in 1540 Coronado entered New Mexico in quest of the
“seven cities of Cibola,” the people of Cicuyé (a Tewa name by which
Pecos became known to the Spaniards) sent a delegation with presents,
offering their friendship. Hernando de Alvarado was despatched to the
town, where, says the chronicler Castañeda, “the people came out with
signs of joy, and brought them into the town with drums and pipes and
something like flutes, of which they had a great many; they made many
presents of cloth and turquoises, of which there are quantities in
that region; and the Spaniards enjoyed themselves for several days.”
Of the village Castañeda says: “The houses are all alike, four stories
high. One can go over the top of the whole village without there being
a street to hinder. There are corridors going all around it at the
first two stories, by which one can go around the whole village.... The
people of this village boast that no one has been able to conquer them
and that they can conquer whatever villages they wish.” It was at Pecos
that the Spaniards found the Plains Indian “El Turco,” who told of the
wonderful Quivera and lured them on into the expedition toward the
Missouri River. When finally Coronado returned to Mexico, Friar Luis,
a lay brother, remained at Pecos, one of the two first missionaries of
the region. Castañeda writes: “Nothing more has been heard about him;
but before the army left Tiguex some men who went to take him a number
of sheep met him as he was on his way to visit some other villages....
He felt very hopeful that he was liked at the village [Pecos] and that
his teaching would bear fruit, although he complained that the old men
were falling away from him. I, for my part, believe that they finally
killed him.” Later the Franciscans built at Pecos one of their largest
establishments, now a massive ruin.
THE DEAD PUEBLO
I
A valley with its ancient hills
Deep-founded in earth’s adamant
And crested dark with driven cloud,
Like warrior’s trophies blown aslant:
With zenith-high a riven space,
Whence royal from his azured zones
The golden sun strikes sheer where lie
The dead pueblo’s fallen stones:
A ruin upon the mesa top
Above the scarred arroyo’s sands,
Its ochres crimsoned by the glow,
Mid rock-strewn solitudes it stands:
Where citadelled as now with light
Its ramparts stood a thousand years,
The valley’s strong Acropolis
Against the gathering murk of fears:
When Caesars held imperial sway
Its dusky warriors manned their wall;
Round council-fires its chieftains sate
When Roland fell at Roncevalles:
What time the looms of Flanders wove,
Its women spun their fleecy thread;
They fashioned earthen burial jars
While wailing mere mourned Arthur dead:
The dancers gathered to its feasts
The while Columbus sailed the seas;
At Coronado curious gazed
Its children from their mothers’ knees:
And there where now is grass-grown nave,
Walls summer-breached and winter-rent,
To pray before a Christian saint
Came many a dark-hued penitent:
But yesterday its people passed
Into their silence and their night,
Leaving their broken walls to glow
Encrimsoned by the shafted light:
Leaving their valley’s purpled hills
To gather glamours and to brood,
Scornful of man and his phantom years,
In vast and patient solitude.
II
In the days of the Sires of the People
Came the First-remembered of Men
Forth from the wombs of mothering Night,
To seek their Sign and to find their Light,
And to hew them homes mid the virgin loams,
Then, as ever again.
Out of the mists of the past they marched,
Children of Earth and of Sky,----
The red-soil land was theirs to claim,
The hill-born torrent their flood to tame,
And avalanche-thrown was the quarry-stone
For their houses builded high.
They gathered them where the valleys smiled,
They gathered them, tribe and clan,----
They laid their walls through the sunny days;
They broke their fields and they tilled their maize,
And they sang them airs and chanted them prayers
That come with the joy of man.
Till up from the glowing desert,
And up from the wandering plain,
The greased and painted warriors crept
With sudden whoop on them that slept----
Like wolves in bands from the famished lands,----
And they left a bloody stain.
They ravaged the peaceful farmsteads,
They shattered and scattered the folk,
And they filled the land with a deathly spell,
Where Apache stealth and Comanche yell
And the treacherous blow of the Navaho
Their nightly terrors woke.
Till the chieftains counselled in sorrow
Mid the sound of women’s woe,
And they swore to build them a fortress-keep,
And to hold their lands, and to sow and reap
Where Sacred Earth had given them birth,
Whatso might be their foe!
And they set the rocks of their citadel
On the mesa’s granite crest,
And their terraces rose till the barren space
Became a nation’s gathering place,
And the red light shone from the stubborn stone
Where the People dwelt at rest.
And a new Age dawned and their troubled Morn
Passed into the splendid Day;
And they sang from their roofs when their work was done
High-chanted hymns to the Fathering Sun;
And their bows were strong and the arrow’s prong
Kept the carrion tribes at bay.
[Illustration: The Dead Pueblo--II
_With their cornfields and their beanfields,
With their vines of squash and pumpkin,
With their sunflowers and tobacco,
Dwelt the olden folk of Pecos._
]
III
Time was kindly with this people
In the ancient Vale of Pecos,
In their citadel enseated
High above the scarred arroyo,
High upon the brunting mesa.
There within the storeyed houses
Built about their dancing plaza,
Walled against the foeman’s onslaught,
Walled and towered and ever watchful,
Safe and happy dwelt the people:
With their cornfields round about them
In the pleasant watered valleys,
Fair with corn of many colors
Sacred to the Guardian Mothers----
White of Morn and blue of Zenith,
Yellow for the burning Sunset,
Speckled for the cloudy Northland:
Earth and Sky have many colors,
So the corn has colors many
Sacred to the Guardian Mothers:
With their cornfields and their beanfields,
With their vines of squash and pumpkin,
With their sunflowers and tobacco,
Dwelt the olden folk of Pecos
Rich and happy in their valley:
And the fires upon their hearth-stones
Glowed at dawn and glowed at twilight,
And the wavering smoke ascended
Quiet into quiet heavens----
Till the city seemed reflected
In the vaporous blue of noonday,
In the gleaming stars of night-time:
And the women at their grinding
Sang the Song of Fruitful Pollen;
And the maidens at their spinning
Sang the Breath-song of the Cotton;
And they wove their baskets singing,
Singing modelled earthen vessels,
Painted brown and black and yellow
With the symbols of the Cloud-Folk,
Of the Mist-Folk and the Rain-Folk,
And the sudden zig-zag Lightning----
And they left the life-line broken
For the spirit of the vessel
That it might not be imprisoned
In the moulded clay forever:
And the menfolk in the cornfields
Sang the Song of Winter Breaking,
Sang the Springtime and the Seeding,
Sang the Tasseling and Summer,
Sang the Fruitfulness of Harvest,
And the Life that stirs in all things:
And within their sacred Kivas,
Where the Priests and Elders gathered
Round their Totems and their Altars,
Underneath the painted symbol
Of the Plumed and Crested Serpent,
There they sang their Spirit Ancients
And the deeds of mighty Heroes,
Of the Brothers armed with sunbeams
Where they slew the hateful monsters
When the Primal People wandered
And the World was in its making:
And within the sacred Kivas
Said the prayers their sires had taught them,
That the tribe might live forever
Fathered by the Shining Heaven,
Mothered on Earth’s fruitful bosom,
With the Winds forever breathing
Fourfold Life from out the Quarters
Of the fourfold World man dwells in:
And the men and women gathered,
And the young men and the maidens,
And the children and the strangers,
When above the Kivas flaunted
Banners brilliant with bright feathers
Telling of the coming feast-day
With the dancing and the chanting
And the altars set with prayer-plumes,
Where the grave-faced Priests and Elders
Smoked before the sacred emblems
Of the Powers that watched the nation:
In the ancient Vale of Pecos,
In its days of peace and plenty,
When the people lived securely
In their citadel enseated
High above the scarred arroyo,
High upon their granite mesa.
[Illustration: The Dead Pueblo--III
_And within their sacred Kivas,
Where the Priests and chieftains gathered,
Painted with the Serpent Symbol,
With their totems and their altars,
Sang the days of Spirit Ancients._
]
[Illustration: The Dead Pueblo--IV
_The Cross of Christus crucified,
With thorn-pressed brow and piercéd side,
And body wounded sore._
]
IV
Blessed is the martyr’s crown
And valiant were they who wore
In Francis’ name the corded gown
And to the heathen bore
The Cross of Christus crucified,
With thorn-pressed brow and piercéd side
And body wounded sore:
Like valiant soldiers they did come
To preach their Gospel mild
And find them sweetest martyrdom
Within an heathen wild----
St. Francis’ men, who turned to kiss
The Crucifix, and met their bliss,
And on their murderers smiled.
Bruit had come to the Pecos folk
Of warrior-men from Heaven,
Who strid strange beasts and in thunders spoke
And armed them with red levin----
Who bannered their hosts with new gods and dread
And shook the land with a terrible tread
Where they searched for the Cities Seven:
And the Priests and the Elders wafted high
The smoke of their questioning prayer,
And they asked of Earth and they asked of the Sky
And they asked of the Lords of the Air----
And the signs breathed peace, and they were content,
And unto the strangers their captains they sent
With gifts and with covenants fair.
For why should they fear the stranger’s face
When the Powers whom their sires had known
Had boded them well from the Sacred Place
With its ancient divining stone?
Why should men fear who through perilous past
By their strong gods warded were mighty at last
Into a nation grown?
So with flute and with drum and with gala cheer
Forth they thronged them to greet
The steeled and glittering Cavalier
And the Friar with way-worn feet----
And the men of Spain found pleasant rest,
And the ovens glowed, and each grateful guest
Warm-scented the odors sweet:
Oh, the men of Spain in Pecos town
Were welcomed with joyous array,
Whose folk little dreamed as the dusk closed down
That their Sun had ended that day----
That an Age of the Red Man’s World was past,
And down from their altars his gods were cast
To silently vanish away!
Oh, who could the bitterness and the blood
Of their lurid morrow know?
Where the aged shaman sat grim with his brood
Of the Spirits of long ago,
And the lonely friar with his lifted sign
Stood watching the riders in drifting line
Pass out to the morning glow:
And who should rue his martyr’s crown
To the valiant soul who wore
In Francis’ name the corded gown
And to the heathen bore
The Cross of Christus crucified,
With thorn-pressed brow and piercéd side
And body wounded sore?
In after years they came again
In corded robe and cowl,
The army of St. Francis’ men,
With book and adz and trowel----
And they builded their church and their masses said,
And they pastored the living and prayed for the dead,
And succored them many a soul:
And the folk of the ancient citadel
To Christian rites were born,
And they harkened to a Christian bell,
And they prayed to Christ each morn----
And sometimes in the fading day
Their olden altars, in decay,
With plumes they did adorn.
[Illustration: The Dead Pueblo--V
_And the lonely friar with his lifted sign
Stood watching the riders in drifting line
Pass out to the morning glow._
]
V
Still do the valley’s ancient hills,
Oblivious of man’s passing years,
Renew their bloom with the summer sun
And gloam with gray cloud-fallen tears:
Above their purple crests still climb
The storm’s dark streamers ’thwart the heaven----
Like ghosts of old marauders come
Bright-arrowed with the jagged levin:
And still upon the mesa top
The dead pueblo’s ruined walls
Flare back defiance where the light
In crimson splendor o’er them falls:
About the plaza strewn with shards
Like phantom footsteps fitful go
The phantom winds and idly shift
The downs of thistles to and fro:
And sway the purple huaco’s spires,
And bend the sunflower’s yellow head
O’er wild verbenas lavender
And Indian paintbrush saffron-red:
And ruffle faint the placid pool
That gathers on the kiva’s floor
To mirror still the cloudy forms
Pictured upon its walls of yore:
While in the chambers long untrod
The broken vigas and the clay
Imprinted with the builder’s hand
Yet crumble in their slow decay:
And underneath the mounded stones
That mark the ancient wall and keep,
With gaud and trinket nigh their bones,
Do they that builded sleep their sleep:
There, warded by the broken church
And tumulus that bears the Rood,
Rememberless the ruins lie,
Dead, mid the valley’s solitude:
Above them, with his pinions spread
Majestic in his noiseless flight,
The Eagle wheels; then soars him far
To vanish in the western night.
VI
AZTEC GODS
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Tezcatlipoca
_O Lord, very mighty!
On the day that I honor thee I shall ascend a terraced temple;
Bright flowers will adorn my head, dancing maidens will accompany
me;
To the music of pulsing flutes I shall sing thee with triumphant
voice!_
]
TEZCATLIPOCA
Puissant Lord!
Invisible, impalpable, inescapable!
Men see thee not, and thou art with them;
Men touch thee not, and thou art with them;
Men know thee not, and thou knowest them.
The dense rocks are as crystal before thee;
The hearts of the quaking mountains are as crystal before thee;
As crystal is my heart--naught therein is hidden from before thee.
Thy mind doth reflect all secret things, O Tezcatlipoca!
Thou art as a fume-dark mirror of polished obsidian, deep with
reflection.
All things remote thy body doth envelop; none withstay thee, who art
the blown breath of the spacious world!
Whistlings and flutings and the rumblings of many drums are thine,
And the Night Winds are thy hounds, that bay thy relentless Ways;
Thou art the Sweeper-up of the Realms of Silence--they also are of
thee.
O Lord very mighty!
On the day that I honor thee I shall ascend a terraced temple;
Bright flowers will adorn my head, dancing maidens will accompany
me;
To the music of pulsing flutes I shall sing thee with triumphant
voice!
O Lord very terrible!
On the day that I honor thee I shall mount upon the Dragon of Stone;
I shall break my singing flute, the flowers of my chaplet I shall
scatter to the winds:
On the day that I honor thee my heart I shall cast before thee!
Let it be pellucid as crystal, on that day when thou shalt pierce
me!
Let it be as bodiless light, when thou comest with unstaying feet!
Let my heart be altogether pure, when as a fleet wind thou takest me
hence!
O Tezcatlipoca!
Lord ever terrible! Lord inescapable!
[Illustration: Xochiquetzal
_Radiant Lily, there where thou standest
Exhaling fragrance,
A Butterfly to thy lips clinging,--
Radiant Lily,
I thank thee!_
]
XOCHIQUETZAL
Radiant Lily, there where thou standest
Exhaling fragrance,
A Butterfly to thy lips clinging,----
Radiant Lily,
I thank thee.
Upon the lips of the Goddess of Flowers
A Butterfly is clinging----
Upon the lips of the Goddess of Life
An iridescent Butterfly,
Sipping the sweets,
Fanning its wings in her breath.
Is she not beautiful----
The Lily of Life?
Exhaling her fragrance,
With golden pollen fruitful,
Summoning the Winged Spirits?
QUETZALCOATL
Thou green-feathered Sky-Snake,
Thou crested Serpent,
Thy body is the undulating cloud, the rolling cloud,
Boiling white above,
Black-bellied.
Forked lightnings are thy tongues,
Thine eyes flash forked lightnings;
Thy great drums boom
From mountain to mountain, thundering----
Whither thou goest bearded with black rain,
Shedding beneath thee a reek of black rain.
He was an old man when he sailed away to Tlapallan:
Bright was his countenance as the silver-crested cloud;
Like a descending rain was his streaming beard;
His wind-blown robe was as the blue rain hiding the hill-tops.
Upon the azure lake he was wafted,
Serpent-treading----
Wafted beyond the horizons of day and night,
Wafted unto Tlapallan,
Quetzalcoatl departing.