“What do you think of my plan?”
“Why, Sir, I would not presume to suggest—”
“That is not the question. You should be somewhat familiar with these
Indian people by now. Will my plan succeed?”
His eyes punched through mine, straight back into the brain, out
through the skull of my rear elevation, and I knew they were drilling
on through the stone wall immediately behind me.
“Considering the experiences of former agents, and even soldiers,
Colonel Scott, and—”
“Do you think my plan will succeed?”
“It is a very good plan to try, Colonel. It has been your method with
other tribes, and it may prove successful here.”
“But what do you think?”
There was no way of avoiding the truth. He would have it.
“You will not succeed.”
He studied a moment or two.
“I have dealt with unreasonable Indians,” he said, slowly.
“So I am informed, sir. But you have not dealt with the Hopi Indian,
who is a religious fanatic; and since you pressed me for an opinion, I
had to give it. I can ask only that these people be not promised
anything that will not be fulfilled. That has provoked half the trouble
of the past. The Department has threatened them, and then curled up.
They are accustomed to being betrayed by soldiers. They will talk
endlessly; but if you expect to bring a Hopi to reason without a show
of force, it is too much. You will not accomplish it.”
Whereupon the Colonel seemed satisfied that he had procured an answer
from me, and next day he departed for the pueblo of Hotevilla, with an
interpreter and a striker to attend him. His extraordinary knowledge
and uncanny skill in the sign-language would avail him nothing among
the Hopi, for few of the Southwest Indians use this method of
conversing. The deserted mission house was placed at his disposal. The
troop remained encamped in Keams Cañon at the Agency.
That night the mail brought those belated orders, in duplicate, from
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to me, and from the Secretary of the
Interior to Colonel Scott. I read them with amazement and a complete
mixture of feelings. They had been drawn without deference to the
facts, and were as completely garbled a set of instructions as one
could imagine. By merely accepting the conditions imposed, the Indians
could win, and the whole expedition be reduced to farce. Washington had
been so careful to preserve a shield between it and the sentimental
critics of the country that, no matter what I proposed doing and no
matter what the officer agreed to assist in doing, the fat was in the
fire if those orders were recognized.
And here were more than one hundred men, with mounts and extra mounts,
and a pack train, and a wagon train en route with additional supplies.
Hay for the horses was being purchased locally at sixty dollars the
ton, and oats in proportion; and these were but two items of the
expense. A very costly piece of humor, indeed.
But the Colonel was at Hotevilla; and there he remained for ten days,
talking, talking, talking, when he was not listening to Youkeoma. I had
one report from a messenger, who found the old chief seated in the
centre of the floor, facing the Colonel on his camp-bed, the
interpreter to one side. It was the seventh day, and Youkeoma, in the
recital of his traditions, had reached a date only four hundred years
removed. To give the old chap credit, he never weakened. The Colonel,
sitting bolt upright, would go into a doze, finish a nap, and pick up
the thread of the discourse immediately on waking, to continue as long
as daylight lasted.
Of course there were breaks in this programme. They invited the officer
to a rabbit-hunt, and gave exhibitions of their fleetness in running
and their skill with the rabbit-club or Hopi boomerang; and he
witnessed some of their ceremonies. But the end of it all was talk—so
many words arranged one after the other, one string in slow, even-toned
English, studied, level, monotonously imperative; the other in
imperturbable Hopi, rising and falling as Chinese, started with a long
intake of the breath and finished in whispers when Indian lungs were
exhausted.
Youkeoma began at a point in his traditions before the period of the
Dawn Men, when they came up from the Underworld. Wells’ Outline of
History is not half so elaborate. And without a break or hesitation,
supporting his statements with pieces of pictured rock offered as
indisputable evidence, much as Moses would have brought forth the
Tables of the Law, he progressed down through the ages. The troop
surgeon, who had joined the Colonel, furnished me a rough transcript of
this legend, which, boiled to a bare consistency, follows:—