Of Harrison’s barn, with its muster
Of flags festooned over the wall,
Of the candles that shed their soft lustre
And tallow on headdress and shawl;
Of the steps that we took to one fiddle,
Of the dress of my queer vis-à-vis,
And how I once went down the middle
With the man who shot Sandy McGee.
Bret Harte: “Her Letter”
Among employees of the Desert Indian Service, the Marylander is a
rarity. Back in Maryland the Indian Service is unknown, all readers of
the Sun-paper believing that Indians were originally designed by
Buffalo Bill.
So when a lad seated himself on my porch one night, and announced:
“Why, Ah’m from Maheland too; yes, indeed!” it rather struck me where I
ought to have lived. I was eating at the mess then.
He was out with an irrigation crew, surveying levels, and in a few
months had become obsessed by all things Southwest Indian. He wore
moccasins and a bracelet studded with turquoise, and he could chant
like a cold Navajo on his way home from a Yabachai.
“Ah’m goin’ to get me a gourd-drum, an’ go in for ‘singing,’” he told
me, when we had become better acquainted, and he demonstrated the eerie
half-croon-half-yodel of the Medicine Man. “Say, Nultsose! have yo’
heard them?—Medicine ‘sings’?”
This was my first intimation that a title attached to my position.
“Nultsose—”
He explained it as Navajo for paper or writing, hence; one who writes
on or issues papers pertaining to the mysteries of white men’s wholly
unnecessary accounting. Nearly all clerks wear spectacles, as I did,
and one would think that the Indian, naming his own so often because of
infirmities, would have seized on this defect for a name. But not so;
the check, order, issue-script, permit, or warrant, the paper, the
“nultsose,” is the important thing to him. It means money in hard
dollars, authority perhaps, demand for goods, leave to go on a journey
with recommendation or safe-conduct; or, if fortune has waned, summons
to the Chief.
“And if yo’ go to a ‘sing,’ Nultsose, remember to take change, an’
don’t give the squaws more’n two bits at a time. Yo’ll have to dance
with ’em, yeh know, an’ instead of thankin’ ’em, yo’ pay ’em. Hand out
a dollar, an’ Good-night—they keep the change. Now old Beck-a-shay
Thlani is inviting to one sometime soon. It’ll be a reg’lar hoe-down,
an’ we’ll go.”
The doctor was present, and he grinned uncomfortably. The Nahtahni,
stretched in his hammock, rubbed his wig and grunted.
“Ah! yo’-all come too,” urged Roberts; “It’ll be fun. They all know me,
and I’ll do the interpreting. Every old shemah with a dotter has her
eye cast my way, anyhow. They pick out the handsome boys for the
weddings at ‘sings.’ I’ll have to get me a Piute wedding-basket,
though, next pay-day. There’s a trader over at Red Lake who’s got my
order for it.”
The doctor cautioned me later not to be too hasty in this matter, and I
perceived that he had reason for timidity.
“They’ll get you,” he declared. “They never fail to land a fellow; and
then he has to prance like a fool before five thousand Indians. That’s
all right for Roberts, ’cause he’ll wind up a squaw man; but I’m
advising you.”
And one twilight, when we were again arranged on deck after supper, a
half-dozen little Navajo boys from the school sidled up to the Chief,
daring and timid by turns, their eyes snapping with the fire of hope.
They hung around until he asked:—
“Ah-tish-ah?”
“Dence!” they exclaimed, breathlessly.
“Noki yisconga, epten,” the Nahtahni severely decided.
“Doe-yah-shaunta! She-no-be-hosen. E-yah-tay.”
The Old Man was proud of his linguistic ability, and this was the
complete extent of his Navajo on any topic. The last sentence but one
he had made up, somehow, all by himself. It bore no semblance to
anything any Navajo had ever enunciated; but he knew what it meant. A
free—a very free—translation would run something like this: “Two days
from now, nothing doing. Don’t you dare to do it. It’s bad for you. I
know nothing about it. Yes; all right!”
The last was all the kids wanted. The scrub crackled as they
disappeared into and through it, going as frightened rabbits.
Roberts spoke next.
“That’s old Beck-a-shay Thlani’s ‘sing.’ Say, boss, the Doc and young
Nultsose here are both pinin’ for to shake a toe in that soiree. Let us
have a team, will yeh?”
The Nahtahni grunted.
“You know the horses have worked hard to-day—”
“Yes; let us have a team,” said his stepdaughter, who afterward married
the doctor; and that settled it, and also bound the medico to the
adventures of the evening. There are a few things no different in the
Desert. The Navajo woman of the hogan, the Hopi dowager of the
household on the height, the Pueblo wife of the lower vineyards, all
settle these questions in much the same manner. Man proposes and begins
to make a noise with words, and immediately thereafter attends strictly
to the holding of his peace. Roberts knew this, and without further
parley disappeared in the direction of the barn. Shortly came a farm
wagon, drawn by two solid animals, and a dozen of us piled into it, the
doctor noticeably lagging.
“Don’t forget your change, Nultsose,” called Roberts.
It was no great distance to the river, and soon we were splashing
through shallow waters. Mounting the high farther bank, the wagon began
tossing and rolling over an old desert road. Then the dark laid down
its thick blanket, and the stars burned through overhead. From the next
rise we noticed a faint glow, away off, and this grew larger as we
blundered along. Now a whiff of pungent smoke came on the thin desert
wind. Now the deep shadows began to dissolve into a golden gloom, and
now gleamed the white-hot flare of burning cottonwood. Then a furious
challenge from the dogs, and we saw the camp. As feudal lords were once
accompanied by retainers and shock-headed varlets, so the nomadic lord
of the Desert is followed by a multitude of canines. It seemed that a
thousand of them started up to greet us, a fearsome, throaty bedlam.
Wagons loomed up, their canvas tops lending a touch of the pioneer
days; and in the spaces between the poles were the little
cooking-fires, around which women and children huddled amid pots and
pans, saddles and boxes and water-kegs and tangled harness—all the
clutter of a desert camp. Beyond the huge central fire was a hogan,
that queer house the Navajo builds of logs and plasters with adobe,
domed like a beehive, and from its roof wreathed a thin column of
smoke. There rested the sick man for whom all this preparation had been
made, the cost of which would likely break old Beck-a-shay Thlani, or
at least seriously strain his credit at the trading-posts.
Coarse Navajo rugs were spread close to the fire and, with grave
salutations from the older men and smiles from mothers who convoyed a
bevy of Navajo girls, we were invited to be seated in the place of
honor. This would have impressed any blank-record Easterner, going
about making notes, as rude but wholesome hospitality, and it was; but
the courtesy also enabled the Navajo to indulge himself—and
particularly herself—in a bit of fun. The doctor slipped away into the
shadows; and I noticed that the young men of the Navajo, scores of
them, sat their ponies, a long line of horsemen behind us. They eased
in their saddles, reins hanging, their faces having the grave solemnity
that marks a shy and diffident people.
That is, shy of strangers, before whom they draw on the mask of
gravity, mistaken since the days of Fenimore Cooper for stoicism. But
no one was shy of Roberts; and especially had he friends among the
ladies. Every old shemah greeted him with a smile and exclamations of
pleased surprise. He held the confidence of these people; and well he
might, considering the pains he had been to in acquiring a working
vocabulary of their language, which is probably as difficult to master
as Chinese. And I felt somewhat reassured in having him for sponsor. We
lolled comfortably on the rugs, and the fire burned our faces and
lighted everything as at a play.
“The doc’ has vamoosed,” he said, grinning; “but that won’t do him any
good. They’ll run him down in the scrub, and bring him in hog-tied.
I’ve told a dozen old women that he is stingy with his dancing.
Self-defense—otherwise you an’ me’d have to do it all.”
“Explain this dancing act,” I requested.
“Don’t worry,” Robert replied. “The squaws will attend to everything
for yeh. Just yield gracefully—an’ pay ’em. Don’t forget that.”
Now from the hogan came a band of solemn-featured men, led by an old
gentleman of the tribe who bore a strong resemblance to Rameses III,
straight out of glass case No. 12, as you go down the east corridor,
save that he was slightly animated. He bore a staff, to which a little
gourd-drum was tied. The group formed a wedge behind him. Silently they
swayed together, shoulders touching, for several seconds. Then the old
one tapped the drum and intoned a howl, and with one accord they were
off, like a flock of coon dogs on a cold night. In time with the
curious rhythm they continued swaying, and occasionally did a hop-step
without moving forward. The fire beat upon them and, as they warmed to
the chanting, heads thrown back, mouths agape, and vocal chords never
missing a note, the sweat beaded on their foreheads.
“This,” said Roberts to me, in solemn appreciation, “this is some
singing—I never heard better.” And I agreed with him. It laid over
anything I had ever heard, including a Mott Street theatre choir.
It is impossible to describe the nuances of the Navajo chants. At the
farthest northern trading-post there lives a lady who can translate the
Rain Song, the Prayer before Day, and other of their invocations; and I
know a white man who had a “medicine sing” held over him to comfort his
Navajo wife; but until you meet up with Roberts, properly chaperoned
nowadays in the great Jedito Wash, I pass giving any idea of that weird
combination of sounds. A long sustained note at times, now a crooning
melody, now a sad, half-wild cry, filled with minor effects that would
be the delight and the despair of any jazz artist, it is indeed a song
of the Desert.
And the most astounding thing of all was the endurance of that aged
vocalist, the old Medicine Man. The pitch of his drum simply encouraged
him in new effects. There was an energy, a sustaining confidence in his
efforts that must have had a rare effect on the ailing one within the
hogan. And for two mortal hours the others of the singing band followed
his lead without once rivaling him. When one hesitated, as might be
seen but not heard, the clamor of the pack smothered all defects; and
the faltering one would cough, spit straight upward into the air,
uncaring, and get a fresh start. But the old man was never headed; not
once did he waver, hesitate, or fail in the key. He had begun with that
first flat sounding of the drum, and he continued faithfully unto the
end. He was an artist. I admired him. And when Roberts told me that the
old charlatan would receive at least twenty sheep and five head of cows
for his fee, I began to understand his unflagging spirit. He had a
reputation to sustain.
The Regulations of the Interior Department, issued to Nahtahnis, state
that all such interesting old comedians should be in jail for this
offense against medical ethics. But, mark you! the Interior Department
does not encourage Nahtahni to put him in jail. There are too many of
him. The Navajo number between thirty and forty thousand souls on the
six Navajo reserves, and about every seventh man is a doctor of tribal
medicine. While a lucrative calling, it is not always a desirable one
for the neophyte, since failure to exorcise successfully the evil
spirits enmeshed in the patient has been followed more than once by
swift demise, and the blundering physician did not heal himself later,
nor did he hear the singing.