“Now you have been having trouble with these Indians, and I am
surprised that you have dismissed all your Navajo policemen as
unworthy. You must have a police force to keep the Navajo in line. We
will call a council and select a new outfit to sustain you in this
important work.”
Which we did. There were flour and meat, coffee and sugar, together
with the all-necessary beck-a-shay nahto, cattle tobacco provided for
distribution, and the people came. As usual, the men were diffident and
modest, and no one offered himself for appointment as an officer of the
realm. The nominations were made by head-men, and discussion followed
as to individual merits, influence, bravery, and all those virtues that
are supposed to animate the warrior. The Inspector was finally
satisfied with the selections.
An old-timer sat on the platform with us, acting as interpreter. Ed had
skinned mules across the Zuni Mountains in 1889, and he could take an
old single-action forty-five and keep a tin can moving as if it were
alive. He could roll a saddle-blanket cigarette with one hand, sing a
puncher song, and play the guitar. He was one of the post-traders, and
perhaps the best Navajo interpreter alive. He knew the Navajo Indian,
having had the advantage of a living dictionary in his early days. But
Ed knew when to keep his mouth shut, and aside from faithfully
interpreting from English into Navajo and from Navajo into English he
said nothing at the time. But later:—
“It wasn’t for me, a mere uneducated Indian trader, to give my advice
to a wise guy from the East who was pointing the trails out to a
Nahtahni; but ... every damned one of them new police has ‘medicine
turquoise’ in his ears.”
It was true. Every one of them should have been in jail!
The Navajo are lithe and lean, for the most part, and their dress is
picturesque. One could see all sorts of costume at this “sing.” There
was the old fellow with trousers compiled of flour sacks, the brand
having been arranged as a bit of decoration, and where “OUR BEST” would
show to most advantage; and there was that one satisfied with a pair of
cast-off overalls. But the majority were in rich-toned velveteen
shirts, open at the neck, and with sleeves vented under the armpits;
and desert trousers, loose and flapping garments, Spanish-style, split
below the knee, made of highly colored and figured calico. One fellow’s
legs were a riot of gaudy parrots. The twisted silk handkerchiefs worn
about the head came from the Spanish too, no doubt. Their hair was
drawn back from the forehead and corded in a long knot, a Mongol touch.
Their moccasins were of red-stained buckskin, half-shoe, half-leggin,
warm and noiseless. The young men wore gay shirts and neckerchiefs,
store-bought, and their ponies showed more of decoration than
themselves. Each had a good saddle, most necessary to a desert Romeo,
and the headdresses of the ponies were heavy with silver bands and
rosettes.
Now a middle-aged dandy would strut about, proud of a crimson shirt,
and the firelight would paint him as a figure from old opera. He would
shine whitely of silver—a huge necklace, with turquoise pendants and
many strands of shell and coral; bracelets, and the khado that is still
worn, though the wrist no longer needs protection from the bowstring;
silver rings and silver buttons, all studded with turquoise chips. Not
less than five hundred dollars in metal and workmanship would adorn
these old beaux, and an Indian valuation would be enormous.
Silver and turquoise are the jeweled wealth of the Navajo, the white
metal contrasting with their sunburnt skins and the stone holding the
color of their matchless skies.
The women wore velveteen bodices and curiously full skirts. They too
were weighted with silver ornaments, one having the more of beads and
bandeaux being the favorite wife or daughter. Some of the smaller girls
moved about accompanied by the tinkling of little bells strung to their
moccasins and belts.
All this in the brilliant flare of the cottonwood fire, above which
fanned a mist of sparks like another Milky Way; and there was the
incense of the smoking logs; and the star-pinned dome overhead; and all
around the dark maw of the great lonely Desert.
Suddenly came a halt in these “singing” proceedings. The choir withdrew
somewhere, and the centre of the stage was taken by another old man,
who led a little girl. Other and older girls began to hurry around the
circle, darting here, darting there, as if running something down. At
first the little one seemed a trifle confused and stood in wide-eyed
hesitation; but with a bit of urging from the elder master of the
ceremonies, she made for Roberts. He would lead this german. Grinning,
he permitted her to pull him into the ring, his partner maintaining a
solemnity that was comical.
“Get ready for the next set,” he called to me over his shoulder.
The social features were on, and the girls were hunting partners. Did
the young men of the ponies vie with each other? They did not. They sat
their steeds as if cut from granite. For it would seem that a young man
would likely lose half his finery, certainly all his change, if
captured, and might find himself later up against a breach-of-promise
suit. On foot, he was at a disadvantage; mounted, it was the more
difficult to drag him down. I cannot say that I noticed any chivalry
among those young Navajo fellows.
But Roberts—there was a fine accommodating chap for you. One partner
was not enough for him; he now had two of the tiny ones.
The dance seemed simple enough. It consisted in one’s acting as a
pivot, around which the little squaw, or several of them, turned
backward with rapid scuffling steps. Her one hand tightly gripped the
man’s belt, the other held as tightly her blanket. Her expression was
as sober as a Chinaman’s. But she accomplished the purpose of the
business. After a few moments of that turning, the subject would be too
dizzy to argue out of a donation. It kept up until Roberts was weaving;
but when they stopped he protested that he was a poverty-stricken
wretch—and promptly, without cracking a smile, they began again. He
must shell out at least a quarter to each, which he did finally, and
they scuttled back to their chaperons, who banked the money. And here
he came unsteadily to the blanket we shared, while I suspected several
of the old women casting menacing glances in my direction. There
sounded a scurry in the outer darkness, and a crashing of the
greasewood.
“The doc’ has beat it,” said Roberts, dropping down. I raised to look
around; and just then, from behind, I felt a very muscular hand
grasping my belt. There was nothing to do but yield in the best humor
possible. A wild shout from the Indians, men and women, even from the
ungallant horsemen grouped in the rear, and I was thrust and pulled
forward. They had appointed two of the small girls to me, and their
hold on my belt was like grim death.
And now the shuffle began.
I endeavored to spin without entangling my feet, but there was
something wrong with my action. I was no such success as friend Roberts
had been. Now the master of ceremonies came forward, his wrinkled face
having the benevolence of a grandfather, and with expressive gestures
he explained his sorrow because of my inefficiency. He would give me a
lesson. We used words that neither understood, and made signs at each
other until wholesale laughter retired the teacher. But I was not
retired. I was still in the ring.
The gold-and-orange flares of the fires dazzled one’s eyes, and then
one began to turn faster; the circle of bright figures in the full
light lost outline, and then the wagons and horses and hogan and
Roberts on his blanket blurred into and formed one jumbled
merry-go-round of which I was the centre. A little more of this, and I
cried “Enough!” and very nearly staggered into the fire. Solemnly my
partners waited for and clutched at their two-bit pieces, and I weaved
back to the blanket.
The doctor was not captured that night. Perhaps he managed to hide
until we harnessed the team and started for home; perhaps he walked
into the Agency, as several accused. But this was a “running dance,”
meaning a moving one. A second installment of it was held the next
night at a point ten miles down the river. The doctor was compelled to
go, and there they ran him down and forced his performance. His effort
was not half bad, and I wondered if mine had been as funny.
Affairs of this sort taught me that the desert Navajo are a
good-natured and interesting people, in many ways like our own country
folk at quilting-bees and huskings. They have their renegades and black
sheep, with which the white race is as fully endowed; and my ugly
experiences of later days could not be charged to the tribe.
When a Navajo is ailing, they manage to combine exorcism of the evil
spirits with the amusing dance, and whether or not old Beck-a-shay
Thlani was improved physically, the girls had a good time. It often
helps them to find a husband; and in this case, how were they to know
that Roberts would desert them for an Albuquerque girl, or that in a
few months I would be interested only in solemnizing the marriages of
older sisters and the herding of the remainder into schools?
But I have often wondered, when on those trails leading down into
Beck-a-shay Thlani’s district, and coming suddenly on a shy Navajo
maiden chivvying a band of sheep, if she were one I danced with that
night on the Little Colorado River, when I was simply “Nultsose,” and
the worries and responsibilities of Nahtahni had not been clamped to my
shoulders.