“The carpenter makes coffins for the people. The Navajo have a great
fear of the dead, and they will not bury when it is possible to have
the work done by someone else. We usually send a squad of men to
prepare a grave, and the parson conducts a little service. If you say
so, I will tell him.”
It was late afternoon, and would soon be twilight.
“You may tell the carpenter,” I said to the interpreter; “we will
arrange this funeral for to-morrow morning.”
“Pardon me, sir, but they have queer customs. No member of that family
will eat until the body is disposed of; and they must purify themselves
by sweat-baths and ceremonies. When one dies close to the Agency, we
help them bury at once.”
My first inclination was not to be ruled by such superstition; and then
I thought how little four centuries of progress around them and fifty
years of American influence had changed the Navajo. Like his Desert, he
has remained untouched, unaffected. A hogan that has held the dead is
never afterward occupied by the living. Its wood will not be used to
make a fire, though they come to freezing.
“Very well,” I said. “Have things made ready to-night.”
And I shall never forget my first Indian funeral. At different times
since, and among other tribes and circumstances, I have had more of
excitement and not a little anxiety at funerals; but this was my first
in the Desert.
The carpenter made a substantial box, much too large I thought; but
when the body was placed in it, wrapped in new blankets, decked with
silver ornaments, with the dead boy’s saddle, bridle, and quirt at the
foot, it was none too large. They could ill afford to part with those
blankets and silver things, and especially that saddle. But he must be
caparisoned and equipped for his new life in the ghostly land where he
would go a-roaming.
A half-dozen of the employees climbed into the wagon that would carry
the body to the grave. Among them was a visitor, a noted geologist who
has made the Empire his study, and who took his share of labor along
with the rest. The minister from the Baptist Mission met us at the
gate. The burial ground was a desolate place across the arroyo, in a
little hollow of those great drifted dunes, shunned by the Indians and
not very inviting to anyone. By the time the grave was ready, it was
quite dark and lanterns had been lighted.
“Do you wish a commitment service, sir?” asked the minister. I did not
at once understand him, having to learn that the new Agent decides
everything, and I had thought he would take his place as the man of
prayer without request. He had a short ritual for pagans, and this was
one of them. It was solemn and sufficient.
“Dust to dust ...” and the tossing of earth on the box followed. Four
of the men began filling in the grave. I had looked around for the
relatives of the dead, but as yet none were in evidence, when out of
the dusk came two strange Navajo, leading a pony. It was a very good
animal as desert mounts go. And the missionary presented to me a
serious problem.
“They wish to kill the horse. Will you permit that?”
And there was something in his tone of voice that indicated a hope I
would deny something as an innovation. Again I called for an
explanation.
“The Navajo always kill a horse at the grave,” said the trader.
“It seems a merciless thing to do—that’s a good pony.”
The missionary brightened. He had little use for pagan customs and
longed for an arbitrary decision.
“It is the custom of the people,” said the trader, an honest man who
advised me for many days thereafter. “You may not like it, and—you may
be strong enough to stop it”—there was doubt in his voice;—“but it is
their custom.”
It went against the grain; but there stood the Indians with the animal,
silent, waiting. This problem had been presented to many Agents,
perhaps.
“If we do not kill it mercifully with a gun, they will only go away and
beat it to death with rocks,” said the trader. “It must be done
to-night. I have brought a rifle.”
The desert custom of the Navajo won its first round.
The two Indians led the pony to the head of the grave, and, seeming to
understand that we had settled it, scuttled away in the shadows. The
trader leveled his rifle and shot that very good pony through the
brain. It leaped forward convulsively, and plunged down, knee-deep, in
the soft earth of the grave. The dead had a mount.
It was black night by this time, and we filed back to the Agency, where
I felt better for having the electric lights. There had been something
gruesome in the whole proceeding. But it was a custom of the people, as
the trader had said, and in other ways I learned from him that it is
not wise for a strange Chief at once to take his people by the throat.
Now the first complaints were filed with me, and soon increased to
scores. The Hopi has suffered for many years because of the willful
depredations of his too close neighbor, the Navajo; and the Navajo in
turn has community troubles of his own. There were complaints of damage
to fences, and of ruined crops, and of peeled orchards; of the stealing
of ponies, and the re-branding and butchering of cattle, the pillage of
houses, and the unwarranted seizure and holding of precious
water-holes; complaints of domestic wrangles and social scandals, of
blighted love and too ardent affections; of marriage portions and the
current price of brides, of mothers-in-law—ye Gods! even of witchcraft!
Descent and distribution included not only real and personal property
such as we know, for came a Medicine Man claiming to have inherited the
paraphernalia of a deceased tribal doctor, and requested that I decide
ownership, according to the rules, in the dried head of a dead crane.
The Indian welcomes opportunity to speak his piece in court, and if
permitted will promptly set up as prosecutor and spring to the rapid
cross-examination of witnesses. He will even incriminate himself if
there is chance of making things unpleasant for someone else; and those
of the accused found guilty and sentenced invariably request a chance
to peach on some other poor devil who has evaded punishment. Witchcraft
seldom appears in the open, but I recall one case that was unusual.
The favorite son of a Tewa died, and the father looked about him for
someone on whom to blame this calamity. Indian grief, seldom
long-lived, may be the more quickly assuaged if one can fix the blame.
Suddenly the bereaved father discovered that a certain neighbor was a
witch. He did not like the man anyway. So, finding him prowling around
the house,—urged by a sympathetic curiosity, no doubt,—the parent
seized him and dragged him into the room with the dead.
“Now,” he cried, amid tears, “You see him plainer. Look at him. You are
the one who killed him. You are a witch, and you sickened him with
sorceries and bad medicine. Listen! When we kill anything, we always
eat it. Now you eat him!”
This the alleged doctor shrank from doing, and forthwith the enraged
father administered a terrific beating. The nose of this unfortunate
neighbor was hammered out of all resemblance to a human organ, and
other features of him were sadly damaged. They both appeared before me
the next day. The father then expressed penitence and disavowed a
belief in witches; but I could see that his conversion had been too
rapid. In his troubled heart the witches prevailed. He seemed not to
mind his sentence of a week at hard labor, having had action for his
sorrow.
Having once opened a docket, the word seemed to go forth to the mesas
and the cañons to bring in their complaints. The cases became legion.
One would begin to examine witnesses in so simple a matter as
horse-stealing and record quite a bit of evidence, to discover suddenly
that the animal in question had disappeared eleven years gone, the
complaint having been duly entered by seven different Indian Agents
sitting at this and other Agencies. It became necessary to impose a
statute of limitations.
The first real trial concerned a medicine man and his collar-bone. One
Horace Greeley, of Sitchumnovi, in the First Mesa District, at that
time reputed to be seventy-four years old, and by profession a
bone-setter, had not pleased a member of his tribe. Or perhaps he had
conjured only too well with the misplaced anatomy of the patient, and
charged according to his skill. At any rate, a relative of the patient
took umbrage, and proceeded to handle Horace in a rough and unseemly
manner. Among other things damaged was Horace’s own collar-bone. He
could not very well set this himself, and naturally distrusted his
confreres; so he was forced to send for the Agency physician; otherwise
I should not have heard of the case. But Horace being found with a
fractured collar-bone and numerous contusions, the matter was reported,
and his complaint entered for the next session of court.
The Regulations of the Indian Service direct that the Court of Indian
Offenses shall consist of two or more intelligent and trustworthy
Indians, acting as Judges, whose verdicts shall be reviewed by the
Indian Agent, should an appeal be taken to him. As many Indians do not
understand their right of appeal, the Agent is compelled to be present
either to sustain or to overrule the verdicts.
And did I not have two such Judges, all properly commissioned? Did not
Hostin Nez have a treasured “pretty paper,” and was not Hooker Hongave
an equal Judge? Did not the Government, looking for justice, generously
crowd on each of them the princely salary of seven dollars, each and
every month, “fresh and fresh”? Now was the time to avail myself of
native wisdom.
Judge Hooker was a figure in the First Mesa community. At one time he
had been a Hopi of the Hopi, and had fought the new system of schools
and school regulation with all his crude ability. To prevent his
children from being enrolled, he had walled them up at home; that is,
he placed them in a small room of his house, gave them food and water,
and then walled up the entrance door, hoping that his fresh mortar
would not arouse suspicion. To-day he is hated by pagans because he has
tried to assimilate the doctrines of Christianity, and is looked on by
some Christians as an arch-hypocrite. Such are the trials of the
savage.
Actually he is a childish old fellow who has tried to merit the
confidence of the mission folk, with little concept of where paganism
ends and Christianity begins. His greatest sacrifice in life has been
the abandonment of tribal ceremonies. From his house below the mesa can
be seen the famous Walpi dance-ledge, like a miniature stage high in
the thin air, thronged on pagan festal days with multi-colored
costumes, where faintly sound the chanting and the drums. But he never
attends these feasts of rhythm and song, save at the biennial Walpi
Snake Dance, when he joyfully receives a dispensation from the Agent to
go as an official of the Government, he being a Judge and the
authorized Crier. Many times did he cry down the aimless chatter of
tourists during my administration, that solemn announcements might be
made to the brethren and the visitors cautioned against the making of
vile photographs and unseemly levity. Garbed in a magnificently beaded
waistcoat that had decked some long-vanquished Sioux warrior, and
bearing his staff of office, a knotted club out of Africa, he presents
a strange and not undignified figure on these occasions.
Therefore the two who shared the woolsack were contrasts. Hostin Nez, a
Navajo pagan of the pagans, a Medicine Man, a leader of chants and a
priest of the sand-paintings; Hooker Hongave, a simple-minded savage
who had turned halfway toward the Church, with the low-toned booming of
hide drums in his ears, and in his heart perhaps a longing for the
mysticism of his ancient people.
The day of hearing having been reached, and all assembled, the Judges
listened to the story of old broken Greeley, who had by no means
recovered and was still swathed in bandages. The accused was a burly
fellow under forty, powerful enough to have challenged a middleweight,
who did not deny or extenuate the assault.
“It is a very bad thing this man has done,” said Judge Hooker, clucking
his tongue and shaking his head sadly.
“Yes, my brother,” agreed the Navajo jurist. “It is a serious thing and
it must not happen again. We must make an example of this man so all
the people may know of it.”
“We will,” said Hooker; and they withdrew to frame up a sentence.
From their determined expressions I feared that friend prisoner would
get at least a year in the hoosegow—an embarrassing piece of business,
for the Regulations do not recognize any charge as deserving more than
ninety days, and the Territorial Court had thought three years
sufficient for cold-blooded murder in a recent Indian case. The judges
reappeared.
“He is a bad man,” said Hooker.
“Yes, he is a dangerous fellow,” said Hostin Nez.
“And so we will send him to jail for—ten days.”
“Ten days!” I cried out. “Why, he nearly killed Greeley! That old man
will suffer for weeks. You mean ten weeks, don’t you?”
“No,” they said. “Ten days is a long time in jail.”
The appellate power came into action.
“Your decision, gentlemen, is overruled.”
Hooker brightened, expecting a remission of at least five days, which
would save his face at the mesa and perhaps prevent the prisoner from
hating him for many years.
“The prisoner will be confined for the period of sixty days, and during
that time he will be employed at hard labor.”
Hooker gasped, trembled, and was speechless.
“You are a man without mercy,” declared old Hostin Nez.
That was my last session of the Indian Court in the Hopi-Navajo country
with native judges sitting. One might as well expect justice from a
goose.
For an Agent who wishes to evade responsibility, the “judges” are an
excellent smoke-screen. He can always say—“It was done by the
prisoner’s own people”: Pilate’s method. Aside from its having all the
elements of farce, it breeds dissatisfaction and ill will among the
people, while teaching them nothing. I know of nothing more unjust,
unless it be the trial of an unlettered Indian according to the strict
letter of white man’s law and the unwavering standard of the white
man’s boasted morality.
Thereafter I paid the salaries, and pleasantly chatted with the old
gentlemen when they visited the Agency; but of their legal wisdom I
wanted nothing. The Court proceeded to business without them.
So large an area of country, nearly four thousand square miles,
occupied by two dissimilar tribes and these ancient enemies, should
have some measure of control. The police force I found consisted of
three individuals, two Navajo and one lonesome Hopi. The Agent had
found things so peaceful that he did not need police; which is one way
of saying that he did not bother himself about policing the Empire. And
when the first serious bit of police work became necessary, after five
years of peaceful neglect, the War Department, at the request of the
Secretary of the Interior, detailed one hundred and twenty-five men of
the Twelfth Cavalry as an “escort” to Colonel Hugh L. Scott. This
officer of long experience at Indian diplomacy was sent to review the
situation and conditions. The work completed, he recommended to the
Secretary of the Interior that the Indian Agent should have a force of
not less than twenty men, in charge of a white officer. The Department,
therefore, being unable totally to ignore the opinion of the famous
Colonel Scott, increased my police to eight men, all natives, and left
me to whatever success I could contrive. In 1921 Major-General Hugh L.
Scott told me that he had not changed his opinion.
The Hopi do not make good policemen, and certainly not in a cohort of
one. Their very name implies “the peaceful ones.” Their towns are ruled
largely by pueblo opinion. If a resident acquires the reputation of
being unreasonable and unfeeling, as a policeman often must, his
standing in the outraged community may affect all other phases of his
life. Therefore the Hopi is not likely to become a very zealous officer
when operating alone. And too, the Hopi fear the Navajo, as it is said
the Navajo fear the Ute, and are useless when removed from the
neighborhood of their homes.
But many years ago, when the Hopi were sorely pressed by nomad enemies
and had not even the consolation of telling their woes to an Indian
Agent, they sent emissaries to their cousins, the Pueblo Indians of
what is now New Mexico, and begged for a colony of warriors to reside
with them. In response to this plea, and looking for something to their
advantage, in 1700 came a band of the Tewa from Abiquiu on the Chama
River, from that section where Onate found San Juan de los Caballeros.
To these people the Hopi granted a wide valley west of the First Mesa,
known as the Wepo Wash, providing they would stay and lend their
prowess in future campaigns. They built a village atop the First Mesa,
now called Tewa or Hano, where their descendants live to-day. Some
intermarried with the Hopi, and a few with the near-by Navajo; but they
have not been absorbed, and it is a curious fact that while all the
Tewa speak Hopi and Navajo with more or less fluency, after two
centuries of living side by side few of the Hopi can speak the Tewa
dialect.
The Hopi invited warriors, and the warriors have graduated into
policemen, for one learns to police the Hopi districts, and even to
discipline some of the Navajo, with Tewa officers. They are dependable
and courageous, even belligerent; that is to say, they will fight when
it is necessary and, strange thing among desert Indians, with their
fists, taking a delight in blacking the opponent’s eye. But one has to
learn that the Hopi as policemen are fine ceremonial dancers.
The Navajo cohort had been selected following a frontier fallacy. Many
of the old Agents believed that a good police force could be built from
the “bad men” of the community.
“The cattle-thief will know all other cattle-thieves,” was their
reasoning. “The gambler will not be deceived as to those who waste
their herds and silver playing monte. And the meaner an Indian among
his own, the more respect and fear he will stimulate when garbed in a
uniform and authorized to pack a gun.”
As reasonable as if New York officials should make a special deputy of
Gyp the Blood.
Hoske Yega, commonly known as Old Mike, a tall and unscrupulous Navajo,
carried the Chief’s badge. It was said that he had killed more than one
man; and while I am not so sure of this, certainly he was no example of
righteousness. The second officer was not so mean a specimen, but one
of the same system. They had been policemen of the jurisdiction for
many years, believed themselves entitled to the positions, and knew the
game. A Navajo policeman has nothing to learn from the bulls of the
whites as to methods of graft and the blackmailing use of his badge.
The Indian Service has used native police since 1878, and I will admit
that occasionally one finds a jewel of an officer, of good judgment,
trustworthy, brave, and loyal; but for the most part the Indian
policemen of the Desert are go-betweens and grafters.
Providing that the Indian accused of wrongdoing is not of the
policeman’s clan, providing that the policeman is not afraid of him or
of his clan, providing that there is no witchcraft involved, the Navajo
policeman can serve a warrant and get his man as quickly and as
unerringly as any Sherlock Holmes. A skilled tracker, he can read the
trail as an open book; and often he does not need to follow it. Indians
leave their visiting cards behind them. My first knowledge of this came
when the corral of Clezzi Thlani was relieved of several good ponies,
and Old Mike was sent forth to investigate. He recovered most of the
stock from the open range, and reported:
“They were taken by Sageny Litsoi.”
Sageny’s idea had been the common one among Navajo, dating from
wagon-train days: to run the ponies a little further each night until
distance had convinced him that he actually owned the animals. Then a
little tinkering with a hot wire would so confuse brands as to bring
even the records to his support.
“Why didn’t you bring him in?” I asked.
“Didn’t see him—just got the horses.”
“Then how do you know that Sageny is the thief?”
“Went to corral; saw his tracks. Yisconga dahtsi” (to-morrow perhaps)
“I bring in Sageny.”
“You mean the trail will lead to his hogan?”
“No, No! Went to corral; see his tracks—Sageny’s feet. No two Navajo
have feet alike.”
And when Sageny was brought in, although he had many excuses and
claimed that he had raised the animals, he did admit taking animals
having another’s brand; and he occupied the guardhouse for a period as
a guest of the Empire. Several of my Navajo police graduated later into
the same rest-room, which seemed a humorous proceeding to many, and was
not altogether different from the experiences of some white
lieutenants.
It was when I discovered that Tewa could be depended on that better
police-work followed. The point of view was different. One day I
summoned the tall and spare Tewa chief of police, and said to him:—
“Nelson, I want Hostin Chien Bega. You know him?”
“Yes; me know him—call him ‘Bull-Neck.’”
“‘Bull-Neck’ it is. Can you bring him in?”
“Dahtsi.”
“Well, here are handcuffs. Suppose you try it.”
He took the cuffs and walked away. A short time after he returned, and
I saw that he had buckled on his guns.
“You want ‘Bull-Neck,’” he commented. “He mean Navajo—carry two guns
all the time. Sometimes bring in whiskey. Now, how bad you want him?
You want him dead?”
Well, to be plain about it, I did not want Hostin Chien Bega, alias
Bull-Neck, as a morgue exhibit. He was mean enough in the flesh. And I
foresaw the later experience of a brother superintendent who ruled the
reservation on my west line. His domain was if anything a trifle wilder
than mine, reaching to the Grand Cañon and the most remote places of
the Utah border. Its area was a trifle more than five thousand square
miles, inhabited by at least six thousand Navajo, many of whom had
never touched civilization. One Taddytin had graduated from the police
force into a bully of the countryside, and it became necessary to
impose on him a bit of his own medicine. Taddytin was a giant in
physique and quite the meanest man of that territory. Messages
summoning him to the Agency were of no avail. He pleaded illness, that
cover to which retreat all those who do not wish to testify. Taddytin
not only resisted the persons sent to arrest him, but did his level
Navajo best with a .45 gun to get them before they subdued him. The
Navajo is quite handy with a gun at close range. Most of them go armed
from the time they make money enough to purchase a heavy weapon at the
nearest trading-post—a trade permitted by the Indian Office, although
in utter defiance of both Federal and Arizona State law.
The affair came off in a hogan, which is entirely too restricted a
place for serious shooting. Taddytin’s gun twice missed fire, and the
persons sent to arrest him, having been in line with the gun, became
nervous and, strange to relate, lost their judgment. They should have
reprimanded Taddytin for carrying a defective weapon. Instead, they
felt it necessary to shoot Taddytin several times, and although not
using one of those fancy .22’s that O. Henry was wont to ridicule, the
first two bullets failed to knock him down. Unfortunately the last shot
killed Taddytin, which was entirely opposed to all policies of moral
suasion.
My brother superintendent, who acts as Indian Agent no longer, defended
himself in the Federal Court, first against a murder charge, and then
one of perjury, from the Spring term of 1916 to and including the
Spring term of 1918. He stood quite alone, save for the testimony of
all those who knew anything about Indians and Taddytin in particular.
It cost him quite four thousand dollars in cash, to say nothing of time
and mental disturbance. The full history of this case may be found in a
Congressional Report (House Doc. 1244) to accompany H.R. Bill No. 5639,
dated September 19, 1922—a bill to reimburse the man after his
persecution had ended; a report that is probably forgotten. According
to that report, the superintendent, acting as Indian Agent—
did not receive the support from the Indian Bureau in connection
with this matter to which he was entitled, but instead he was
vigorously, and your committee believes unjustly, prosecuted by the
Federal authorities.
You see, the superintendent became the official goat, and suffered that
a glowing policy of big wind and puffery might not be embarrassed.
As this affair occurred to my next-door neighbor, it had a serious
effect on law-and-order conditions within my by no means peaceful
jurisdiction, to the end that I was once reported as murdered and often
threatened with having the report confirmed.
No; I did not urge my Tewa policeman to give a too realistic picture of
loyalty to my commands.