that, according to the geographies, there are both gold and silver in
New Mexico.
"Some of them did, but gold was sacred to them. They called it the stone
of the Sun, which they worshiped, and the places where it was found were
holy and secret. They let themselves be burned rather than tell.
Besides, they thought that if the Spaniards were convinced there was no
gold, they would go away the sooner. One thing they were sure of: gods
or men, it would be better for the people of the pueblos if they went
away. Day and night the _tombes_ would be sounding in the kivas, and
prayer plumes planted in all the sacred places. Then it was that the
Turk went to the Caciques sitting in council.
"'If the strangers should hear that there is gold in my country, there
is nothing would keep them from going there.'
"'That is so,' said the Caciques.
"'And if they went to my country,' said the Turk, 'who but I could guide
them?'
"'And how long,' said the Caciques, 'do you think a guide would live
after they discovered that he had lied?' For they knew very well there
was no gold in the Turk's country.
"'I should at least have seen my own land,' said the Turk, 'and here I
am a slave to you.'
"The Caciques considered. Said they, 'It is nothing to us where and how
you die.'
"So the Turk caused himself to be taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and
talked among them, until it was finally brought to the Captain-General's
ears that in the Turk's country of Quivira, the people ate off plates of
gold, and the Chief of that country took his afternoon nap under a tree
hung with golden bells that rung him to sleep. Also that there was a
river there, two leagues wide, and that the boats carried twenty rowers
to a side with the Chief under the awning." "That at least was true,"
said the Burrowing Owl; "there were towns on the Missi-sippu where the
Chiefs sat in balconies on high mounds and the women fanned them with
great fans."
"Not in Quivira, which the Turk claimed for his own country. But it all
worked together, for when the Spaniards learned that the one thing was
true, they were the more ready to believe the other. It was always easy
to get them to believe any tale which had gold in it. They were so eager
to set out for Quivira that they could scarcely be persuaded to take
food enough, saying they would have all the more room on their horses
for the gold.
"They forded the Rio Grande near Tiguex, traveled east to Cicuye on the
Pecos River, and turned south looking for the Turk's country, which is
not in that direction."
"But why--" began Oliver.
"Look!" said the Road-Runner.
The children saw the plains of Texas stretching under the heat haze,
stark sand in wind-blown dunes, tall stakes of _sahuaro_ marching wide
apart, hot, trackless sand in which a horse's foot sinks to the fetlock,
and here and there raw gashes in the earth for rivers that did not run,
except now and then in fierce and ungovernable floods. Northward the
plains passed out of sight in trackless, grass-covered prairies, day's
journey upon day's journey.
"It was the Caciques' idea that the Turk was to lose the strangers
there, or to weaken them beyond resistance by thirst and hunger and
hostile tribes. But the buffalo had come south that winter for the early
grass. They were so thick they looked like trees walking, to the
Spaniards as they lay on the ground and saw the sky between their huge
bodies and the flat plain. And the wandering bands of Querechos that the
Expedition met proved friendly. They were the same who had known Cabeza
de Vaca, and they had a high opinion of white men. They gave the
Spaniards food and proved to them that it was much farther to the cities
of the Missisippu than the Turk had said.
"By that time Coronado had himself begun to suspect that he should never
find the golden bells of Quivira, but with the King and Doña Beatris
behind him, there was nothing for him to do but go forward. He sent the
army back to Tiguex, and, with thirty men and all the best horses,
turned north in as straight a track as the land permitted, to the Turk's
country. And all that journey he kept the Turk in chains.
"Even though he had not succeeded in getting rid of the Iron Shirts, the
Turk was not so disappointed as he might have been. The Caciques did not
know it, but killing the strangers or losing them had been only a part
of his plan.
"All that winter at Tiguex the Turk had seen the horses die, or grow
sick and well again; some of them had had colts, and he had come to the
conclusion that they were simply animals like elk or deer, only
more useful.
"The Turk was a Pawnee, one of those roving bands that build grass
houses and follow the buffalo for food. They ran the herds into a
_piskune_ below a bluff, over which they rushed and were killed.
Sometimes the hunters themselves were caught in the rush and trampled.
It came into the Turk's mind, as he watched the Spaniards going to hunt
on horseback, that the Morning Star, to whom he made sacrifices for his
return from captivity, had sent him into Zuñi to learn about horses, and
take them back to his people. Whatever happened to the Iron Shirts on
that journey, he had not meant to lose the horses. Even though suspected
and in chains he might still do a great service to his people.
"When the Querechos were driving buffalo, some of the horses were caught
up in the 'surround,' carried away with the rush of the stampeding herd,
and never recovered. Others that broke away in a terrible hailstorm
succeeded in getting out of the ravine where the army had taken shelter,
and no one noticed that it was always at the point where the Turk was
helping to herd them, that the horses escaped. Even after he was put in
chains and kept under the General's eye on the way to Quivira, now and
then there would be a horse, usually a mare with a colt, who slipped her
stake-rope. Little gray coyotes came in the night and gnawed them. But
coyotes will not gnaw a rope unless it has been well rubbed with buffalo
fat," said the Road-Runner.
"I should have thought the Spaniards would have caught him at it," said
Oliver.
"White men, when they are thinking of gold," said the Road-Runner, "are
particularly stupid about other things. There was a man of the Wichitas,
a painted Indian called Ysopete, who told them from the beginning that
the Turk lied about the gold. But the Spaniards preferred to believe
that the Indians were trying to keep the gold for themselves. They did
not see that the Turk was losing their horses one by one; no more did
they see, as they neared Quivira, that every day he called his people.
"There are many things an Indian can do and a white man not catch him at
it. The Turk would sit and feed the fire at evening, now a bundle of dry
brush and then a handful of wet grass, smoke and smudge, such as hunters
use to signal the movements of the quarry. He would stand listening to
the captains scold him, and push small stones together with his foot for
a sign. He could slip in the trail and break twigs so that Pawnees could
read. When strange Indians were brought into camp, though he could only
speak to them in the language of signs, he asked for a Pawnee called
Running Elk, who had been his friend before he was carried captive into
Zuñi Land. They had mingled their blood after the custom of friendship
and were more than brothers to one another. And though the Iron Shirts
looked at him with more suspicion every day, he was almost happy. He
smelled sweet-grass and the dust of his own country, and spoke face to
face with the Morning Star.
"I do not understand about stars," said the Road-Runner. "It seems that
some of them travel about and do not look the same from different
places. In Zuñi Land where there are mountains, the Turk was not always
sure of his god, but in the Pawnee country it is easily seen that he is
the Captain of the Sky. You can lie on the ground there and lose sight
of the earth altogether. Mornings the Turk would look up from his chains
to see his Star, white against the rosy stain, and was comforted. It was
the Star, I suppose, that brought him his friend.
"For four or five days after Running Elk discovered that the Turk was
captive to the Iron Shirts, he would lurk in the tall grass and the
river growth, making smoke signals. Like a coyote he would call at
night, and though the Turk heard him, he dared not answer. Finally he
hit upon the idea of making songs. He would sing and nobody could
understand him but Running Elk, who lay in the grass, and finally had
courage to come into the camp in broad day, selling buffalo meat and
wild plums.
"There was a bay mare with twin colts that the Turk wished him to loose
from her rope and drive away, but Running Elk was afraid. Cold mornings
the Indian could see the smoke of the horses' nostrils and thought that
they breathed fire. But the Turk made his friend believe at last that
the horse is a great gift to man, by the same means that he had made the
Spaniards think him evil, by the In-knowing Thought.
"'It is as true,' said the Turk, 'that the horse is only another sort of
elk, as that my wife is married again and my son died fighting the
Ho-he.' All of which was exactly as it had happened, for his wife had
never expected that he would come back from captivity. 'It is also
true,' the Turk told him, 'that very soon I shall join my son.'
"For he was sure by this time that when the Spaniards had to give up the
hope of gold, they would kill him. He told Running Elk all the care of
horses as he had learned it, and where he thought those that had been
lost from Coronado's band might be found. Of the Iron Shirts, he said
that they were great Medicine, and the Pawnees were by all means to get
one or two of them.
"By this time the Expedition had reached the country of the Wichitas,
which is Quivira, and there was no gold, no metal of any sort but a
copper gorget around the Chief's neck, and a few armbands. The night
that Coronada bought the Chief's gorget to send to his king, as proof
that he had found no gold, Running Elk heard the Turk singing. It was no
song of secret meaning; it was his own song, such as a man makes to sing
when he sees his death facing him.
"All that night the Turk waited in his chains for the rising of his
Star. There was something about which he must talk to it. He had made a
gift of the horse to his people, but there was no sacrifice to wash away
all that was evil in the giving and make it wholly blessed. All night
the creatures of the earth heard the Turk whisper at his praying, asking
for a sacrifice.
"And when the Star flared white before the morning, a voice was in the
air saying that he himself was to be the sacrifice. It was the voice of
the Morning Star walking between the hills, and the Turk was happy. The
doves by the water-courses heard him with the first flush of the dawn
waking the Expedition with his death song. Loudly the Spaniards swore at
him, but he sang on steadily till they came to take him before the
General, whose custom it was to settle all complaints the first thing in
the morning. The soldiers thought that since it was evident the Turk had
purposely misled them about the gold and other things, he ought to die
for it. The General was in a bad humor. One of his best mares with her
colts had frayed her stake-rope on a stone that night and escaped.
Nevertheless, being a just man, he asked the Turk if he had anything to
say. Upon which the Turk told them all that the Caciques had said, and
what he himself had done, all except about the horses, and especially
about the bay mare and Running Elk. About that he was silent. He kept
his eyes upon the Star, where it burned white on the horizon. It was at
its last wink, paling before the sun, when they killed him."
The children drew a long breath that could hardly be distinguished from
the soft whispering _whoo-hoo_ of the Burrowing Owl.
"So in spite of his in-knowing he could not save himself," Dorcas Jane
insisted, "and his Star could not save him. If he had looked in the
earth instead of the heavens he would have found gold and the Spaniards
would have given him all the horses he wanted."
"You forget," said the Road-Runner, "that he knew no more than the Iron
Shirts did, where the gold was to be found. There were not more than two
or three in any one of the Seven Cities that ever knew. Ho-tai of
Matsaki was the last of those, and his own wife let him be killed rather
than betray the secret of the Holy Places."
"Oh, if you please--" began the children.
"It is a town story," said the Road-Runner, "but the Condor that has his
nest on El Morro, he might tell you. He was captive once in a cage at
Zuñi." The Road-Runner balanced on his slender legs and cocked his head
trailwise. Any kind of inactivity bored him dreadfully. The burrowing
owls were all out at the doors of their _hogans_, their heads turning
with lightning swiftness from side to side; the shadows were long in the
low sun. "It is directly in the trail from the Rio Grande to Acoma, the
old trail to Zuñi," said the Road-Runner, and without waiting to see
whether or not the children followed him, he set off.
[Illustration]
XIV
HOW THE MAN OF TWO HEARTS KEPT THE SECRET OF THE HOLY PLACES; TOLD BY
THE CONDOR
"In the days of our Ancients," said the Road-Runner between short
skimming runs, "this was the only trail from the river to the Middle Ant
Hill of the World. The eastern end of it changed like the tip of a wild
gourd vine as the towns moved up and down the river or the Queres
crossed from Katzimo to the rock of Acoma; but always Zuñi was the root,
and the end of the first day's journey was the Rock."
Each time he took his runs afresh, like a kicking stick in a race, and
waited for the children to catch up. The sands as they went changed from
gray to gleaming pearl; on either side great islands of stone thinned
and swelled like sails and took on rosy lights and lilac shadows.
They crossed a high plateau with somber cones of extinct volcanoes,
crowding between rivers of block rock along its rim. Northward a
wilderness of pines guarded the mesa; dark junipers, each one with a
secret look, browsed wide apart. They thickened in the cañons from which
arose the white bastions of the Rock.
Closer up, El Morro showed as the wedge-shaped end of a high mesa,
soaring into cliffs and pinnacles, on the very tip of which they could
just make out the hunched figure of the great Condor.
"El Morro, 'the Castle,' the Spaniards called it," said the Road-Runner,
casting himself along the laps of the trail like a feathered dart. "But
to our Ancients it was always 'The Rock.' On winter journeys they camped
on the south side to get the sun, and in summers they took the shade on
the north. They carved names and messages for those that were to come
after, with flint knives, with swords and Spanish daggers. Men are all
very much alike," said the Road-Runner.
On the smooth sandstone cliffs the children could make out strange,
weathered picture-writings, and twisty inscriptions in much abbreviated
Spanish which they could not read.
The white sand at the foot of the Rock was strewn with flakes of
charcoal from the fires of ancient camps. A little to the south of the
cliff, that towered two hundred feet and more above them, shallow
footholds were cut into the sandstone.
"There were pueblos at the top in the old days," said the Road-Runner,
"facing across a deep divide, but nobody goes there now except owls that
have their nests in the ruins, and the last of the Condors, who since
old time have made their home in the pinnacles of the Rock. He'll have
seen us coming." The children looked up as a sailing shadow began to
circle about them on the evening-colored sands. "You can see by the
frayed edges of his wing feathers that he has a long time for
remembering," said the Road-Runner.
The great bird came slowly to earth, close by the lone pine that
tasseled out against the south side of El Morro and the Road-Runner
ducked several times politely.
"My children, how is it with you these days?" asked the Condor with
great dignity.
"Happy, happy, Grandfather. And you?"
The Condor assured them that he was very happy, and seeing that no one
made any other remark, he added, after an interval, looking pointedly at
the children, "It is not thinking of nothing that strangers come to the
house of a stranger."
"True, Grandfather," said the Road-Runner; "we are thinking of the gold,
the seed of the Sun, that the Spaniards did not find. Is there left to
you any of the remembrance of these things?"
"_Hai, hai_!" The Condor stretched his broad wings and settled himself
comfortably on a nubbin of sandstone. "Of which of these who passed will
you hear?" He indicated the inscriptions on the rock, and then by way of
explanation he said to the children, "I am town-hatched myself. Lads of
Zuñi took my egg and hatched it under a turkey hen, at the Ant Hill.
They kept my wings clipped, but once they forgot, so I came away to the
ancient home of my people. But in the days of my captivity I learned
many tales and the best manner of telling them. Also the Tellings of my
own people who kept the Rock. They fit into one another like the arrow
point to the shaft. Look!"--he pointed to an inscription protected by a
little brow of sandstone, near the lone pine. "Juan de Oñate did that
when he passed to the discovery of the Sea of the South. He it was who
built the towns, even the chief town of Santa Fé.
"There signed with his sword, Vargas, who reconquered the pueblos after
the rebellion--yes, they rebelled again and again. On the other side of
the Rock you can read how Governor Nieto carried the faith to them. They
came and went, the Iron Shirts, through two hundred years. You can see
the marks of their iron hats on some of the rafters of Zuñi town to this
day, but small was the mark they left on the hearts of the Zuñis."
"Is that so!" said the Road-Runner, which is a polite way of saying that
you think the story worth going on with; and then cocking his eye at the
inscription, he hinted, "I have heard that the Long Gowns, the Padres
who came with them, were master-workers in hearts."
"It is so," said the Condor. "I remember the first of them who managed
to build a church here, Padre Francisco Letrado. Here!" He drew their
attention to an inscription almost weathered away, and looking more like
the native picture-writings than the signature of a Spanish gentleman.
He read:--
"They passed on the 23d of March of 1832 years to the avenging of the
death of Father Letrado." It was signed simply "Lujan."
"There is a Telling of that passing and of that soldier which has to do
with the gold that was never found."
_"Sons eso,"_ said the Road-Runner, and they settled themselves to
listen.
"About the third of a man's life would have passed between the time when
Oñate came to the founding of Santa Fé, and the building of the first
church by Father Letrado. There were Padres before that, and many
baptizings. The Zuñis were always glad to learn new ways of persuading
the gods to be on their side, and they thought the prayers and
ceremonies of the Padres very good Medicine indeed. They thought the
Iron Shirts were gods themselves, and when they came received them with
sprinklings of sacred meal. But it was not until Father Letrado's time
that it began to be understood that the new religion was to take the
place of their own, for to the Indians there is but one spirit in
things, as there is one life in man. They thought their own prayers as
good as any that were taught them.
"But Father Letrado was zealous and he was old. He made a rule that all
should come to the service of his church and that they should obey him
and reverence him when they met, with bowings and kissings of his robe.
It is not easy to teach reverence to a free people, and the men of the
Ant Hill had been always free. But the worst of Father Letrado's rulings
was that there were to be no more prayers in the kivas, no dancings to
the gods nor scatterings of sacred pollen and planting of plumes.
Also--this is not known, I think--that the sacred places where the Sun
had planted the seed of itself should be told to the Padres."
"He means the places where the gold is found mixed with the earth and
the sand," explained the Road-Runner to Dorcas Jane and Oliver.
"In the days of the Ancients," said the Condor, "when such a place was
found, it was told to the Priests of the Bow, and kept in reverence by
the whole people. But since the Zuñis had discovered what things white
men will do for gold, there had been fewer and fewer who held the
secret. The Spaniards had burnt too many of those who were suspected of
knowing, for one thing, and they had a drink which, when they gave to
the Indians, let the truth out of their mouths as it would not have gone
when they were sober.
"At the time Father Letrado built his first chapel there was but one man
in Hawikuh who knew.
"He was a man of two natures. His mother had been a woman of the
Matsaki, and his father one of the Oñate's men, so that he was half of
the Sun and half of the Moon, as we say,--for the Zuñis called the first
half-white children, Moon-children,--and his heart was pulled two ways,
as I have heard the World Encompassing Water is pulled two ways by the
Sun and the Moon. Therefore, he was called Ho-tai the Two-Hearted.
"What finally pulled his heart out of his bosom was the love he had for
his wife. Flower-of-the-Maguey, she was called, and she was beautiful
beyond all naming. She was daughter to the Chief Priest of the Bow, and
young men from all the seven towns courted her. But though she was
lovely and quiet she was not as she seemed to be. She was a Passing
Being." The Condor thoughtfully stretched his wings as he considered how
to explain this to the children.
"Such there are," he said. "They are shaped from within outward by their
own wills. They have the power to take the human form and leave it. But
it was not until she had been with her mother to To-yalanne, the sacred
Thunder Mountain, as is the custom when maidens reach the marriageable
age, that her power came to her. She was weary with gathering the sacred
flower pollen; she lay under a maguey in the warm sun and felt the light
airs play over her. Her breath came evenly and the wind lifted her long
hair as it lay along her sides.
"Strangely she felt the pull of the wind on her hair, all along her
body. She looked and saw it turn short and tawny in the sun, and the
shape of her limbs fitted to the sandy hollows. Thus she understood that
she was become another being, Moke-iche, the puma. She bounded about in
the sun and chased the blue and yellow butterflies. After a time she
heard the voice of her mother calling, and it pulled at her heart. She
let her heart have way and became a maid again. But often she would
steal out after that, when the wind brought her the smell of the maguey,
or at night when the moon walked low over To-yalanne, and play as puma.
Her parents saw that she had power more than is common to maidens, but
she was wise and modest, and they loved her and said nothing.
"'Let her have a husband and children,' they said, 'and her strangeness
will pass.' But they were very much disappointed at what happened to all
the young men who came a-courting.
"This is the fashion of a Zuñi courting: The young man says to his Old
Ones, 'I have seen the daughter of the Priest of the Bow at the Middle
Ant Hill, what think ye?' And if they said, 'Be it well!' he gathered
his presents into a bundle and went to knock at the sky-hole of her
father's house.
"'_She_!' he said, and '_Hai_!' they answered from within. 'Help me
down,' he would say, which was to tell them that he had a bundle with
him and it was a large one. Then the mother of the girl would know what
was afoot. She would rise and pull the bundle down through the
sky-hole--all pueblo houses are entered from the top, did you not know?"
asked the Condor.
The children nodded, not to interrupt; they had seen as they came along
the trail the high terraced houses with the ladders sticking out of the
door-holes.
"Then there was much politeness on both sides, politeness of food
offered and eaten and questions asked, until the girl's parents were
satisfied that the match would be a good one. Finally, the Old Ones
would stretch themselves out in their corners and begin to scrape their
nostrils with their breath--thus," said the Condor, making a gentle
sound of snoring; "for it was thought proper for the young people to
have a word or two together. The girl would set the young man a task, so
as not to seem too easily won, and to prove if he were the sort of man
she wished for a husband.