Council. She gathered her company quickly, seven women well seasoned and
not comely,--'The God of the Corn is a woman god,' she said, sharp
smiling,--and seven men, keen and hard runners. The rest she appointed
to meet her at Painted Rock ten moons from their going."
"So long as that!" said Dorcas Jane. "Was it so far from where you lived
to Mex--to the Country of Stone Houses?"
"Not so far, but they had to stay from planting to harvest. Of what use
was the seed without knowledge. Traveling hard they crossed the River of
the White Rocks and reached, by the end of that moon, the mountain
overlooking the Country of Stone Houses. Here the men stayed.
Waits-by-the-Fire arranged everything. She thought the people of the
towns might hesitate to admit so many men strangers. Also she had the
women put on worn moccasins with holes, and old food from the year
before in their food bags."
"I should think," began Dorcas Jane, "they would have wanted to put on
the best they had to make a good impression."
"She was a wise woman," said the Corn Woman; "she said that if they came
from near, the people of the towns might take them for spies, but they
would not fear travelers from so far off that their moccasins had
holes in them."
The Corn Woman had forgotten that she was telling a story older than the
oaks they sat under. When she came to the exciting parts she said "we"
and "us" as though it were something that had happened to them all
yesterday.
"It was a high white range that looked on the Country of Stone Houses,"
she said, "with peaks that glittered, dropping down ridge by ridge to
where the trees left off at the edge of a wide, basket-colored valley.
It hollowed like a meal basket and had a green pattern woven through it
by a river. Shungakela went with the women to the foot of the mountain,
and then, all at once, he would not let them go until Waits-by-the-Fire
promised to come back to the foot of the mountain once in every moon to
tell him how things went with us. We thought it very childish of him,
but afterward we were glad we had not made any objection.
"It was mid-morning when the Seven walked between the fields, with
little food in their bags and none whatever in their stomachs, all in
rags except Waits-by-the-Fire, who had put on her Shaman's dress, and
around her neck, tied in a bag with feathers, the Medicine of the Sun.
People stood up in the fields to stare, and we would have stared back
again, but we were afraid. Behind the stone house we saw the Hill of the
Sun and the priests moving up and down as Waits-by-the-Fire had
described it.
"Below the hill, where the ground was made high, at one side of the
steps that went up to the Place of Giving, stood the house of the Corn
Goddess, which was served by women. There the Seven laid up their
offering of poor food before the altar and stood on the steps of the
god-house until the head priestess noticed them. Wisps of incense smoke
floated out of the carved doorways and the drone of the priestess like
bees in a hollow log. All the people came out on their flat roofs to
watch--Did I say that they had two and even three houses, one on top of
the other, each one smaller than the others, and ladders that went up
and down to them?--They stood on the roofs and gathered in the open
square between the houses as still and as curious as antelopes, and at
last the priestess of the Corn came out and spoke to us. Talk went on
between her and Waits-by-the-Fire, purring, spitting talk like water
stumbling among stones. Not one word did our women understand, but they
saw wonder grow among the Corn Women, respect and amazement.
"Finally, we were taken into the god-house, where in the half dark, we
could make out the Goddess of the Corn, cut in stone, with green stones
on her forehead. There were long councils between Waits-by-the-Fire and
the Corn Woman and the priests that came running from the Temple of the
Sun. Outside the rumor and the wonder swelled around the god-house like
a sudden flood. Faces bobbed up like rubbish in the flood into the
bright blocks of light that fell through the doorway, and were shifted
and shunted by other faces peering in. After a long tune the note of
wonder outside changed to a deep, busy hum; the crowd separated and let
through women bearing food in pots and baskets. Then we knew that
Waits-by-the-Fire had won."
"But what?" insisted Dorcas; "what was it that she had told them?"
"That she had had a dream which was sent by the Corn Spirit and that she
and those with her were under a vow to serve the Corn for the space of
one growing year. And to prove that her dream was true the Goddess of
the Corn had revealed to her the speech of the Stone House tribe and
also many hidden things. These were things which she remembered from her
captivity which she told them."
"What sort of things?"
"Why, that in such a year they had had a pestilence and that the father
of the Corn Woman had died of eating over-ripe melons. The Corn Women
were greatly impressed. But she carried it almost too far ... perhaps
... and perhaps it was appointed from the beginning that that was the
way the Corn was to come. It was while we were eating that we realized
how wise she was to make us come fasting, for first the people pitied
us, and then they were pleased with themselves for making us
comfortable. But in the middle of it there was a great stir and a man in
chief's dress came pushing through. He was the Cacique of the Sun and he
was vexed because he had not been called earlier. He was that kind of
a man.
"He spoke sharply to the Chief Corn Woman to know why strangers were
received within the town without his knowledge.
"Waits-by-the-Fire answered quickly. 'We are guests of the Corn, O
Cacique, and in my dream I seem to have heard of your hospitality to
women of the Corn.' You see there had been an old story when he was
young, how one of the Corn Maidens had gone to his house and had been
kept there against her will, which was a discredit to him. He was so
astonished to hear the strange woman speak of it that he turned and went
out of the god-house without another word. The people took up the
incident and whispered it from mouth to mouth to prove that the strange
Shaman was a great prophet. So we were appointed a house to live in and
were permitted to serve the Corn."
"But what did you do?" Dorcas insisted on knowing.
"We dug and planted. All this was new to us. When there was no work in
the fields we learned the ways of cooking corn, and to make pots.
Hunting-tribes do not make pots. How should we carry them from place to
place on our backs? We cooked in baskets with hot stones, and sometimes
when the basket was old we plastered it with mud and set it on the fire.
But the People of the Corn made pots of coiled clay and burned it hard
in the open fires between the houses. Then there was the ceremony of the
Corn to learn, the prayers and the dances. Oh, we had work enough! And
if ever anything was ever said or done to us which was not pleasant,
Waits-by-the-Fire would say to the one who had offended, 'We are only
the servants of the Corn, but it would be a pity if the same thing
happened to you that happened to the grandfather of your next-door
neighbor!'
"And what happened to him?"
"Oh, a plague of sores, a scolding wife," or anything that she chanced
to remember from the time she had been Given-to-the-Sun. _That_ stopped
them. But most of them held us to be under the protection of the Corn
Spirit, and when our Shaman would disappear for two or three days--that
was when she went to the mountain to visit Shungakela--_we_ said that
she had gone to pray to her own gods, and they accepted that also."
"And all this time no one recognized her?"
"She had painted her face for a Shaman," said the Corn Woman slowly,
"and besides it was nearly forty years. The woman who had been kind to
her was dead and there was a new Priest of the Sun. Only the one who had
painted her with the sign of the Sun was left, and he was doddering."
She seemed about to go on with her story, but the oldest dancing woman
interrupted her.
"Those things helped," said the dancing woman, "but it was her thought
which hid her. She put on the thought of a Shaman as a man puts on the
thought of a deer or a buffalo when he goes to look for them. That which
one fears, that it is which betrays one. She was a Shaman in her heart
and as a Shaman she appeared to them."
"She certainly had no fear," said the Corn Woman, "though from the first
she must have known--
"It was when the seed corn was gathered that we had the first hint of
trouble," she went on. "When it was ripe the priests and Caciques went
into the fields to select the seed for next year. Then it was laid up in
the god-houses for the priestess of the Corn to keep. That was in case
of an enemy or a famine when the people might be tempted to eat it.
After it was once taken charge of by the priestess of the Corn they
would have died rather than give it up. Our women did not know how they
should get the seed to bring away from the Stone House except to ask for
it as the price of their year's labor."
"But couldn't you have just taken some from the field?" inquired Dorcas.
"Wouldn't it have grown just the same?"
"That we were not sure of; and we were afraid to take it without the
good-will of the Corn Goddess. Centcotli her name was. Waits-by-the-Fire
made up her mind to ask for it on the first day of the Feast of the Corn
Harvest, which lasts four days, and is a time of present-giving and
good-willing. She would have got it, too, if it had been left to the
Corn Women to decide. But the Cacique of the Sun, who was always
watching out for a chance to make himself important, insisted that it
was a grave matter and should be taken to Council. He had never forgiven
the Shaman, you see, for that old story about the Corn Maiden.
"As soon as the townspeople found that the Caciques were considering
whether it was proper to give seed corn to the strangers, they began to
consider it, too, turning it over in their minds together with a great
many things that had nothing to do with it. There had been smut in the
corn that year; there was a little every year, but this season there was
more of it, and a good many of the bean pods had not filled out. I
forgot," said the Corn Woman, "to speak of the beans and squashes. They
were the younger sisters of the corn; they grew with the corn and twined
about it. Now, every man who was a handful or two short of his crop
began to look at us doubtfully. Then they would crowd around the Cacique
of the Sun to argue the matter. They remembered how our Shaman had gone
apart to pray to her own gods and they thought the Spirit of the Corn
might have been offended. And the Cacique would inquire of every one who
had a toothache or any such matter, in such a way as to make them think
of it in connection with the Shaman.--In every village," the Corn Woman
interrupted herself to say, "there is evil enough, if laid at the door
of one person, to get her burned for a witch!"
"Was she?" Dorcas Jane squirmed with anxiety.
"She was standing on the steps at the foot of the Hill of the Sun, the
last we saw of her," said the Corn Woman. "Of course, our women, not
understanding the speech of the Stone Houses, did not know exactly what
was going on, but they felt the changed looks of the people. They
thought, perhaps, they could steal away from the town unnoticed. Two of
them hid in their clothing as much Seed as they could lay hands on and
went down toward the river. They were watched and followed. So they came
back to the house where Waits-by-the-Fire prayed daily with her hand on
the Medicine of the Sun.
"So came the last day of the feast when the sacred seed would be sealed
up in the god-house. 'Have no fear,' said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'for my
dream has been good. Make yourselves ready for the trail. Take food in
your food bags and your carriers empty on your backs.' She put on her
Shaman's dress and about the middle of the day the Cacique of the Sun
sent for them. He was on the platform in front of the god-house where
the steps go up to the Hill of the Sun, and the elders of the town were
behind him. Priests of the Sun stood on the steps and the Corn Women
came out from the temple of the Corn. As Waits-by-the-Fire went up with
the Seven, the people closed in solidly behind them. The Cacique looked
at the carriers on their backs and frowned.
"'Why do you come to the god-house with baskets, like laborers of the
fields?' he demanded.
"'For the price of our labor, O Cacique,' said the Shaman. 'The gods are
not so poor that they accept labor for nothing.'
"'Now, it is come into my heart,' said the Cacique sourly, 'that the
gods are not always pleased to be served by strangers. There are signs
that this is so.'
"'It may be,' said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'that the gods are not pleased.
They have long memories.' She looked at him very straight and somebody
in the crowd snickered."
"But wasn't it awfully risky to keep making him mad like that?" asked
Dorcas. "They could have just done anything to her!"
"She was a wise woman; she knew what she had to do. The Cacique _was_
angry. He began making a long speech at her, about how the smut had come
in the corn and the bean crop was a failure,--but that was because there
had not been water enough,--and how there had been sickness. And when
Waits-by-the-Fire asked him if it were only in that year they had
misfortune, the people thought she was trying to prove that she hadn't
had anything to do with it. She kept reminding them of things that had
happened the year before, and the year before. The Cacique kept growing
more and more angry, admitting everything she said, until it showed
plainly that the town had had about forty years of bad luck, which the
Cacique tried to prove was all because the gods had known in advance
that they were going to be foolish and let strangers in to serve the
Corn. At first the people grew excited and came crowding against the
edge of the platform, shouting, 'Kill her! Kill the witch!' as one and
then another of their past misfortunes were recalled to them.
"But, as the Shaman kept on prodding the Cacique, as hunters stir up a
bear before killing him, they began to see that there was something more
coming, and they stood still, packed solidly in the square to listen. On
all the housetops roundabout the women and the children were as still as
images. A young priest from the steps of the Hill, who thought he must
back up the Cacique, threw up his arms and shouted, 'Give her to the
Sun!' and a kind of quiver went over the people like the shiver of still
water when the wind smites it. It was only at the time of the New Fire,
between harvest and planting, that they give to the Sun, or in great
times of war or pestilence. Waits-by-the-Fire moved out to the edge of
the platform.
"'It is not, O People of the Sun, for what is given, that the gods grow
angry, but for what is withheld,' she said, 'Is there nothing, priests
of the Sun, which was given to the Sun and let go again? Think, O
priests. Nothing?'
"The priests, huddled on the stairs, began to question among themselves,
and Waits-by-the-Fire turned to the people. 'Nothing, O Offspring of
the Sun?'
"Then she put off the Shaman's thought which had been a shield to her.
'Nothing, Toto?' she called to a man in the crowd by a name none knew
him by except those that had grown up with him. She was
Given-to-the-Sun, and she stood by the carved stone corn of the
god-house and laughed at them, shuffling and shouldering like buffaloes
in the stamping-ground, and not knowing what to think. Voices began to
call for the man she had spoken to, 'Toto, O Toto!'
"The crowd swarmed upon itself, parted and gave up the figure of the
ancient Priest of the Sun, for they remembered in his day how a girl who
was given to the Sun had been snatched away by the gods out of sight of
the people. They pushed him forward, doddering and peering. They saw the
woman put back her Shaman's bonnet from her head, and the old priest
clap his hand to his mouth like one suddenly astonished.
"Over the Cacique's face came a cold glint like the coming of ice on
water. 'You,' he said, 'you are Given-to-the-Sun?' And he made a gesture
to the guard to close in on her.
"'Given-to-the-Sun,' she said. 'Take care how you touch that which
belongs to the gods, O Cacique!'
"And though he still smiled, he took a step backward.
"'So,' he said, 'you are that woman and this is the meaning of those
prophecies!'
"'I am that woman and that prophet,' she said with her hand at her
throat and looked from priests to people. 'O People of the Sun, I have
heard you have a charm,' she said,--'a Medicine of the Sun called the
Eye of the Sun, strong Medicine.'
"No one answered for a while, but they began to murmur among themselves,
and at last one shouted that they had such a charm, but it was not for
witches or for runaway slave women.
"You _had_ such a charm,' she said, for she knew well enough that the
sacred charm was kept in the god-house and never shown to the people
except on very great occasions. She was sure that the priests had never
dared to tell the people that their Sacred Stone had disappeared with
the escaped captive.
"Given-to-the-Sun took the Medicine bag from her neck and swung it in
her fingers. _'Had!'_ she said mockingly. The people gave a growl;
another time they would have been furious with fright and anger, but
they did not wish to miss a syllable of what was about to happen. The
priests whispered angrily with the guard, but Given-to-the-Sun did not
care what the priests did so long as she had the people. She signed to
the Seven, and they came huddling to her like quail; she put them
behind her.
"'Is it not true, Children of the Sun, that the favor of the Sun goes
with the Eye of the Sun and it will come back to you when the Stone
comes back?'
"They muttered and said that it was so.
"'Then, will your priests show you the Eye of the Sun or shall I show
you?'
"There was a shout raised at that, and some called to the priests to
show the Stone, and others that the woman would bring trouble on them
all with her offenses. But by this time they knew very well where the
Stone was, and the priests were too astonished to think of anything.
Slowly the Shaman drew it out of the Medicine bag--"
The Corn Woman waited until one of the women handed her the sacred
bundle from the neck of the Corn image. Out of it, after a little
rummaging, she produced a clear crystal of quartz about the size of a
pigeon's egg. It gave back the rays of the Sun in a dazzle that, to any
one who had never seen a diamond, would have seemed wonderfully
brilliant. Where it lay in the Corn Woman's hand it scattered little
flecks of reflected light in rainbow splashes. The Indian women made the
sign of the Sun on their foreheads and Dorcas felt a prickle of
solemnity along the back of her neck as she looked at it. Nobody spoke
until it was back again in the Medicine bundle.
"Given-to-the-Sun held it up to them," the story went on, "and there was
a noise in the square like a noise of the stamping-ground at twilight.
Some bellowed one thing and some another, and at last a priest of the
Sun moved sharply and spoke:--
"'The Eye of the Sun is not for the eyes of the vulgar. Will you let
this false Shaman impose on you, O Children of the Sun, with a
common pebble?'
"Given-to-the-Sun stooped and picked up a mealing-stone that was used
for grinding the sacred meal in the temple of the Corn.
"'If your Stone is in the temple and this is a common pebble,' said she,
'it does not matter what I do with it.' And she seemed about to crush it
on the top of the stone balustrade at the edge of the platform. The
people groaned. They knew very well that this was their Sacred Stone and
that the priests had deceived them. Given-to-the-Sun stood resting one
stone upon the other.
"'The Sun has been angry with you,' she said, 'but the Goddess of the
Corn saves you. She has brought back the Stone and the Sacrifice. Do not
show yourselves ungrateful to the Corn by denying her servants their
wages. What! will you have all the gods against you? Priestess of the
Corn,' she called toward the temple, 'do you also mislead the people?'
"At that the Corn Women came hurrying, for they saw that the people were
both frightened and angry; they brought armsful of corn and seeds for
the carriers, they took bracelets from their arms and put them for gifts
in the baskets. The priests of the Sun did not say anything. One of the
women's headbands slipped and the basket swung sideways.
Given-to-the-Sun whipped off her belt and tucked it under the basket rim
to make it ride more evenly. The woman felt something hard in the belt
pressing her shoulder, but she knew better than to say anything. In
silence the crowd parted and let the Seven pass. They went swiftly with
their eyes on the ground by the north gate to the mountain. The priests
of the Sun stood still on the steps of the Hill of the Sun and their
eyes glittered. The Sacrifice of the Sun had come back to them.
"When our women passed the gate, the crowd saw Given-to-the-Sun restore
what was in her hand to the Medicine bag; she lifted her arms above her
head and began the prayer to the Sun."
* * * * *
"I see," said Dorcas after a long pause; "she stayed to keep the People
of the Sun pacified while the women got away with the seed. That was
splendid. But, the Eye of the Sun, I thought you saw her put that in the
buckskin bag again?"
"She must have had ready another stone of shape and size like it," said
the Corn Woman. "She thought of everything. She was a wise woman, and so
long as she was called Given-to-the-Sun the Eye of the Sun was hers to
give. Shungakela was not surprised to find that his wife had stayed at
the Hill of the Sun; so I suppose she must have told him. He asked if
there was a token, and the woman whose basket she had propped with her
girdle gave it to him with the hard lump that pressed her shoulder. So
the Medicine of the Sun came back to us.
"Our men had met the women at the foot of the mountain and they fled all
that day to a safe place the men had made for them. It was for that they
had stayed, to prepare food for flight, and safe places for hiding in
case they were followed. If the pursuit pressed too hard, the men were
to stay and fight while the women escaped with the corn. That was how
Given-to-the-Sun arranged it.
"Next day as we climbed, we saw smoke rising from the Hill of the Sun,
and Shungakela went apart on the mountain, saying, 'Let me alone, for I
make a fire to light the feet of my wife's spirit...' They had been
married twenty years.
"We found the tribe at Painted Rock, but we thought it safer to come on
east beyond the Staked Plains as Given-to-the-Sun had advised us. At Red
River we stopped for a whole season to plant corn. But there was not
rain enough there, and if we left off watching the fields for a day the
buffaloes came and cropped them. So for the sake of the corn we came
still north and made friends with the Tenasas. We bought help of them
with the half of our seed, and they brought us over the river, the
Missi-Sippu, the Father of all Rivers. The Tenasas had boats, round like
baskets, covered with buffalo hide, and they floated us over, two
swimmers to every boat to keep us from drifting downstream.
"Here we made a town and a god-house, to keep the corn contented. Every
year when the seed is gathered seven ears are laid up in the god-house
in memory of the Seven, and for the seed which must be kept for next
year's crop there are seven watchers"--the Corn Woman included the
dancers and herself in a gesture of pride. "We are the keepers of the
Seed," she said, "and no man of the tribe knows where it is hidden. For
no matter how hungry the people may become the seed corn must not be
eaten. But with us there is never any hunger, for every year from
planting time till the green corn is ready for picking, we keep all the
ceremonies of the corn, so that our cribs are filled to bursting. Look!"
The Corn Woman stood up and the dancers getting up with her shook the
rattles of their leggings with a sound very like the noise a radiator
makes when some one is hammering on the other end of it. And when Dorcas
turned to look for the Indian cribs there was nothing there but the
familiar wall cases and her father mending the steam heater.
[Illustration: SIGN OF THE SUN AND THE FOUR QUARTERS]
[Illustration]
VII
A TELLING OF THE SALT TRAIL, OF TSE-TSE-YOTE AND THE DELIGHT-MAKERS;
TOLD BY MOKE-ICHA