For you and I are past our dancing days.—Romeo and Juliet.
Having had charge of the Hopi for a longer period than any other
official of the United States Government,—eight years and two months,
to be exact,—I venture to picture them and their empire. To have
visited and counseled with them, to have wrangled with them, to have
traveled long distances in all sorts of weather because of their
childish factional quarrels; to have arrested and judged and
disciplined them; even married them,—if that may be separately
classed,—to have cared for them in severe illnesses and advised in
times of stress; to have ransomed them from enemies; to have espoused
their uninteresting cause in the face of Departmental opposition; and
when their meagre business of living was over to have buried them—well,
this ought to embrace an angle of vision.
Yet, I hesitate. Reflection cautions me that this may be presumption;
for, after all, what do I know of the Hopi Indians?
During those eight long years I met on the reservation thousands of
visitors—students and their mentors; painters and etchers and sculptors
of distinction, and those who thought they were; photographers and
lens-artists; ethnologists, philologists, and sociologists; ballyhoo
men from Eastern department-stores and half-wits taking an outing;
journalists and authors and publishers; geologists and common
“water-witches”; motion-picture men and others wearing puttees; actors
and lecturers; composers, musicians, and vocalists; museum scouts and
“scratchers”; clergymen and soldiers; Oxford men, Harvard men, men from
Bonn; retired statesmen and unretiring politicians; representatives of
foreign governments; persons from the far-famed city of New York;
tourists, and caparisoned dudes, and simple guides; plain gentlemen and
plainer roughnecks.
Some of them sought me out courteously to explain their missions, some
of them just happened to see me en passant, and a few earnestly avoided
me. The permit system was very irksome to those who did not have a good
excuse. And I listened to many theories concerning the Hopi and their
curious customs, and I made a brave effort to answer in some pleasant
manner ten thousand questions. Finally, I prepared a plea in
avoidance:—
“Don’t ask me. I have lived here only six years. Ask the chap camped
now at the trader’s post—he came last week.”
I plagiarized this method from a brother superintendent who knew much
of the Navajo and their rare designs in weaving.
“Now, my dear Mr. Shelton,” the tourist would ask hopefully, “Doesn’t
that sign indicate the rabbit-foot following the lightning?”
“Make up your own story,” he would gravely reply, “and then you won’t
forget it.”
So with Hopi secrets. The little of their history that is known I have
already related. The rest is speculation. The believed facts of their
ethnology may be had in Smithsonian Reports, moisture proof,
dessicated. The bones of their ceremonies have been diagrammed and
painted, their chants recorded in scaled notebooks, their odd
ceremonial objects looted and catalogued. Sentimental word-pictures one
can procure from those journalists who flitted rapidly in and out
seeking impressions, and who never failed to get them.
But I am not one whit more ignorant than any other white man. Despite
reams of theories, no one has learned anything of Hopi lore that the
Hopi did not want him to know. “Make up your own story, and you won’t
forget it.” When certain Christianized worthies of the tribe have
pretended to expose their knowledge, I have paid little attention,
since I knew the mental calibre of such fellows before conversion, and
the depth of their gray matter was never impressive. The last who gave
evidence proceeded well in his story until, with a foreign fervor, he
began to lie about the Oraibi happenings within my own time, and as I
had taken his testimony under oath in Hopi trials, I knew just how many
Bibles to trust him on.
Moreover, being the recognized Moungwi or Chief of the Hopi, and having
some instinctive conception of the manner in which an alien and
suspicious people should be governed, I respected their privacy and
reticence, to gain and hold their own respect. One cannot play with an
Indian in the morning, and expect to summon him to judgment after noon.
The poorest stick of an Indian Agent I have seen is he whom Indians
address by his first name, or familiarly without a title. When one
lowers himself to an alien’s social level, he seldom achieves more than
the privilege of dipping his food out of the same dish. It was my job
to manage all things for their best interests, against their strenuous
efforts otherwise if that were necessary—as it often was; and I hoped
to restore to them a confidence in white men, whereas they had come to
believe that all white men were a mixture of abnormal curiosity and
treachery, coupled with an astounding rudeness.
As for their psychology, no itinerant will ever grasp the subtlety of
these people. It is something elemental and therefore indescribable.
Those who have lived among Asiatics will know what I mean. Fatalists,
they are as patient and immutable as the Pleiades. Much of this is
vanishing with the elders as they wend their ways from the mesa stages
to the Great Place of Ceremonies that Youkeoma has told me of. The
pastoral peace and solemnity of the desert shrines is passing before
the roar of motors and the harangues of “dude wranglers.”
Now I remember a curious red-haired visitor who came into the Agency
one drowsy afternoon, herding a squad of burros. He looked a figure
from a Conrad novel, and would have graced any one of them. His animals
were packed with matting hampers having an Oriental touch. His flaming
head was bare to the summer sun, his worn and rusty boots of cordovan
preceded war-time styles and spoke of long journeys. The seat was
absent from his trousers. An astonishing man.
His first question of me was: “Who is the new French Premier?”
It just happened that I could tell him. He handed me his credentials,
and I found that this dilapidated tramp represented the French
Government in his wanderings after strange cacti and other plant life.
He strewed the contents of his hampers over my quarters and forgot to
sort the wreckage for a week. Meantime—in my bath—he was analyzing Hopi
corn and rare Indian dyes.
And he related to me strange things. He had been to Lhasa with the
Younghusband expedition. He said that the Hopi were duplicates of the
Tibetans, and that he believed the languages contained similarities.
That fellow knew how to reach the heart of a secretive people. He had
procured seventeen distinct varieties of Hopi corn, and other seed, as
well as old dye-formulæ and samples of ceremonial cotton.
“Zey call me, ze man wi’ ze burros,” he said, naïvely.
You see, he had walked in on their level, prodding his patient beasts,
covered with the desert dust, a wondrous simplicity on his face. He had
touched the Hopi heart. He could have told one things of the Hopi
people—but the opening guns of the Great War summoned him away to die
at Verdun.
Know ye the trail that the Salt bands go?
Close by the Rock where they carved their names?
Know ye the hills of the Navajo
And the barren sands that the Hopi claims?
Dim in the cañons of the dead,
Where the towns are dust and the last scalp dried,
Their swords are rust, and the desert crow
Scarce can tell where the Spaniard died.
Slain at Zuni and Cañon de Chelly, [2]
By the Mesa Black and at Santa Fe;
One of them killed by a Pecos clown,
One of them dropped by Walpi town.
—Song of the Spanish Bell
The Hopi live in northern Arizona, surrounded by the reservations of
the Navajo. They speak a Shoshonian dialect, and are often miscalled
Moqui. The Department for forty years libeled them under this misnomer.
Moqui is a Hopi term, and has been used against them by Navajo to
signify anything inert, unpleasant, cowardly, dead. The dignified
Navajo has another distinct title for the Hopi, and uses it when filled
with courtesy. Moqui is probably a Keresan word originally, since it is
found as “motsi” in Cochiti and San Felipe pueblos of the Rio Grande,
whose warriors and rebels fled to the Hopi country for sanctuary after
the rebellion of 1680.
Near the centre of that huge space on the Arizona map marked “Moqui
Reserve” are the Hopi towns. These were known to the Spanish
conquistadores as the Seven Cities of Tusayan. There are now nine
pueblos.
In that early hour of geologic time when the receding waters carved the
great gorges in the face of northern Arizona, the more resistant
sandstones and clays and coals were left as shattered cliffs, and from
these reach out many bony headlands—long fingers, at the crumbling tips
of which, like villages clinging to a rocky coast, are the eyries of
the Hopi. Below them, as sea-floors, are the sandy valleys and drifting
dunes of the Painted Desert.
These nine little towns are set oddly in groups of three, and so are
the Hopi divided, quite as into three distinct provinces. Three are
balanced on the narrow backbone of the First Mesa, a knife-like
projection that rises hundreds of feet above the valley, and is at one
place not more than twenty feet in width. These are old Walpi, beloved
of etchers, and Tewa of the warriors, and Sitchumnovi. Three are built
on the broad mounds of the Second Mesa, known as Machongnovi,
Chepaulovi, and Chimopovi. And perhaps the oldest and certainly the
youngest of the villages are at Third Mesa—Oraibi, the aged; and tiny
Bacabi; and redolent, sullen Hotevilla.
Their first contact with white men was made in the dark of an autumn
night in 1540, but it was in the next dawn that they realized invasion
by a new and strange enemy. Most of Hopi history has the dawn
atmosphere. Their footprints lead back to the caves of the Dawn Men.
Their homes face the rising sun from the highest point of the
landscape; their ceremonies and hunts begin at sunrise. They are a
dawn-loving people.
Contact with the Spaniards was broken by the revolt of 1680, and
completely ceased with 1700; but the gifts of the enemy remained in
fruits, and wool, and beasts of burden, and perhaps some loot of swords
and Church vessels hidden to this day. The obstinate Hopi were not
worth the effort at reconquest, and later the Mexican Government did
not bother them. For more than one hundred and fifty years the Hopi
knew only the Navajo and Apache and Ute as his enemies. With the close
of the Mexican War and the treaty of 1848, this nearly forgotten tribe
came under the nominal guardianship of the United States. I say
nominal, for their first Agent was located in far-distant Santa Fe, and
unlike the Spanish, he had no missioners to risk martyrdom for the
spreading of his doctrine. In 1849 he accompanied an expedition against
the Navajo, and reached Cañon de Chelly, about sixty miles from the
First Mesa. One year later a delegation of Hopi visited this chief to
petition for protection against the Navajo. I fancy them plodding
afoot, behind their burros, timidly crossing the Navajo country to pass
through the provinces of their kinsmen, the Pueblos, and on to the City
of the Holy Faith. In that same year, 1850, their Agent was prevented
from visiting them, as he wished, because he lacked an escort of
troops.
Many estimates of the Hopi population were made in the early years. The
Spaniard was an expert at overestimating for the benefit of distant
kings. His thousands were always given as tens of thousands, and when
he wanted money and help toward new colonies he stressed the saving of
souls and could easily imagine millions of baptisms. But it is recorded
in 1780 that smallpox had reduced the Hopi to less than 800. In 1899
their first resident Agent stopped guessing and made a count. He found
and listed 1832 Hopi. In one hundred and nineteen years the population
had little more than doubled. In 1912 there were 2068 on the Reserve,
and in the next seven years they gained 217, or 31 per year—15 per
thousand annually. They lost nearly sixty per cent of this seven-years’
gain in 1918, the year of Spanish influenza. In 1919 there were 2158
Hopi on the Reserve, and adding the absent, who had increased and
multiplied in the west, at Moencopi, there were less than 2500 of these
Indians alive. But this handful has interested more distinguished men
and women than have many greater nations.
While there is much of Hebraic resemblance in the Navajo Indians,—their
pastoral life and their religious customs,—a matter that strikes every
thinking visitor and student, there is more of this in Hopi history.
Their retreat southward from the cavern villages, from Betatakin Cave,
from the Swallows’ Nest and Scaffold House—stopping to build a hamlet
here and to reap a harvest there, leaving always testimony in potsherds
and corn refuse—to their present cliffs, was much the same as the
migrations of the Jews. Perhaps, having lost one citadel, they moved on
to the next best position for defense; or perhaps a remnant of a
once-powerful tribe fled; for we do not clearly know whether these
cliff-dwellers migrated from choice, or to escape pestilence, or to
avoid captivity. Across the relatively narrow territory of their hegira
the Navajo and Apache—the once-combined “Apaches du Navaju”—and perhaps
the Ute fought and harried, the Hopi quite as helpless as Judæa between
Egypt and Babylonia. When they retired finally to such a place as old
Walpi, to barricade the narrow causeway at the mesa-end and to defend
the Walpi stairway, just wide enough for one enemy at a time, surely
this was a desperate people making a last desperate stand. I have no
doubt that the Hopi, peaceful as they have been and are named, fought
some worthy fights before the white man was known on this continent.
The determination that wore down the Spaniard must have had its martial
quality when facing enemies armed no better than themselves. It
required a brave war-party to attempt to storm those mesa strongholds.
And their foes must have stood somewhat in awe too of Hopi
incantations, made so impressive by their Snake legends and solemn
mummery. The Snake gods protected them more than once, according to
their priests, and are remembered in the ceremonies.
And the resemblance is not only in fanciful surmises. The daily life of
the people duplicates in many ways the customs of the Judæans. A people
of legends and portents. In the quiet nights they have watched those
burning signals of the heavens that mark wars and the birth of kings.
Perhaps their shepherds too have been summoned by such signs, inspiring
them to missions and pilgrimages, bearing gifts, relating to that
mythical Bohanna who will one day come to redeem and revivify the
people. From the great chart of the heavens they take their calendar.
And certainly, in the sunsets of that quiet and ever-tinted land their
pueblos reflect the Old East, with its donkeys and goat-bells, and
simple gardens by the springs, and the blurring dust of sheep in the
half-tones of desert twilights.
Government reports of to-day give the unqualified fact (?) that the
Hopi have a reservation of 3863 square miles, large enough, in all
sense, for twenty-five hundred people! But the Hopi exist on and use
less than one fifth of this semi-arid land, the remainder being held
and dominated by their old plague, the Navajo. The Hopi Indian Agent
has absolute jurisdiction—on paper—over all those Navajo living within
the boundaries of the Hopi Reserve; but this does not mean that he is
or ever has been able to control that undisciplined element of Navajo
who pillage the peaceful Hopi whenever in the mood. Many bitter and
scathing reports have been sent to Washington concerning this. Agents
have not minced words, and have not always spared themselves in an
effort to get justice—well, let us say, “consideration” for the Hopi.
When reports failed to procure attention, one or two started crusades
against the Navajo, not always successful, that ended in blows and
bruises, to say nothing of the chance of sterner wounds. A difficult
task to find the offender; if found, he was invariably supported by a
gang—his gang. I recall one investigator who stated blandly that it was
similar to conditions often found in cities: that of a corner gang.
Quite so. But the investigator did not ask to see the corner, nor did
he evidence any anxiety to encounter the gang.
The nomadic Navajo have a vast country to make themselves scarce in,
quite 30,000 square miles of wilderness, much of it untracked; there is
no quick communication between the six Agencies established to govern
these people. It has been possible to coördinate business methods, so
as to have uniform stock-regulations, for instance; but nothing has
been arranged to guarantee the peace. There have been numerous murders
in Navajo country. Representatives of the Board of Indian
Commissioners, particularly Major-General Hugh L. Scott, and inspectors
of the Indian Department have fired verbal volleys in support of Hopi
Agents. Navajo have been dragged to the Agency guardhouse, and other
Navajo have been haled before the Federal Courts when the Agent could
arrange locally all the details of the haling. A one-time United States
Marshal, charged with the duty of assisting, remained conspicuous by
his absence from the scene. The matter finally attracted the attention
of a sub-Committee of Congress, and brought about a field investigation
of Hopi conditions, pictured in a printed report. I know that the
report was complete, for I wrote it; in fact, I had prepared that
report in 1918, and placed it before Congress two years prior to the
appearance of the sub-Committee. The gentlemen graciously inserted it
as a tailpiece to their otherwise innocuous comments.
But the wall of political indifference to anything that does not
furnish a vote has not been dented. It is a mere matter between obscure
tribes, a squabble in the hills, which occasionally embarrasses an
Indian Agent and constantly annoys a helpless people who have no other
court of appeal. Neither tribe nor Agent can threaten a politician.
Both tribe and Agent are kept mute by an uncaring Bureau.
Announce, however, that these same Hopi Indians are wont to dance with
live rattlesnakes! Ah! that is a different story, and received with
different emotions. The politician rushes in to view the spectacle. The
Bureau sheds crocodile tears about it. Reams of reports are called for
and written. During the past twelve years the Hopi Snake Dance has
troubled the Solons of the Interior Department far more than any signal
of Hopi distress. The Christian ire of three administrations has been
aroused by this primitive pagan ceremony. Result: the Hopi Snake Dance
is as well advertised as the Grand Cañon of the Colorado!
Most picturesque of the Hopi towns is Walpi. You can procure a fine
appreciation of this, the effect of standing on the roof of the last
Walpi house and viewing the entire First Mesa therefrom, the narrow
rugged top and the deep valleys on either side, the trail down to
Polacca, the whole vast sweep of that distant and beautiful
landscape—simply by visiting the New York Museum of Natural History.
The artists have constructed a wonderful reproduction of that Enchanted
Empire citadel. My friend of various wild spots in Indian country, Mr.
Howard McCormick, magically brought the charm of the Hopi eyrie to the
edge of Central Park.
I recall a particularly drab day in New York, one of those having a
wintry edge that comes only off great waters, when I wandered into the
Museum, seeking this exhibit. I had anticipated something of the usual
order—papier-mâché, plaster, dust, and a ticket; but behold! I found
myself at home, on the mesa-top, below me the First Mesa and the Wepo
Valleys; and to my right would be Huh-kwat-we, the Terrace of the
Winds, and in the dim distance Moits-o-ve, or Yucca Point. I felt that
in a moment I should surely see Harry Shupula, the chief Snake priest,
emerging from his kiva; and half aloud I addressed one of the group as
“Quat-che” (friend). And at the foot of the winding trail, a little
beyond the spring, would be the camp of the water-witch and a desert
welcome—such a welcome as “Mac” and wandering Indian Agents receive. A
great feeling of Heimweh came over me. I wished for a magic carpet,
that I might step instantly from the lonely desert of New York into
crowded, speaking Hopi-land.
I remember a conversation with a clergyman from Canada, as we stood at
the inner edge of the crowd on the Walpi Snake Dance ledge, passing
that bit of ominous wait just before the entrance of the Antelope
priests for the annual ceremony. That is the time when the Hopi Indian
Agent meets most celebrities and makes most of his enemies. Some words
passed concerning the picturesqueness of old Walpi, and the magnificent
view from our position. The plain below was bathed in a lemon light.
“Yes,” I said, casually, “the people would be better off in the valley,
if we could get them to remove.”
“What!” he cried out in pain and direst astonishment. “Would you have
them leave this beautiful place—this beautiful life!”
I had uttered sacrilege. No Hopi of the old school could have bettered
the clergyman’s utter horror at the thought. But the gentleman, I am
sure, gave little attention to many things an Agent sees that are not
beautiful, things of distinct menace, hideous things. Walpi is a scenic
place, a ruined castle in outline, and always steeped in color effects;
but there is the dangerous ledge-road up which all supplies and wood
and water must be packed, a road that has accounted for more than one
Hopi when the brake would not hold. And did he not forget that women
did much of the packing on their backs? And the old and blind, who had
plunged over the sheer face of the cliff? And above all, the constant
danger of the filth-infested houses, where trachoma and tuberculosis
abide? These are things that a tourist does not notice, and when he is
away from the color effects and the sound of drumming chants, they do
not impinge on his vacant—his vacation mind.
Destroy Walpi as a picture? No. But as a human habitation, Yes!
I recall a visit to the Indian Office at Washington shortly after one
of my characteristic reports on this very subject.
“What!” said a Bureau chief who, because he signed a great many letters
daily without reading them, believed himself intelligent. “You
recommended dynamiting the First Mesa—the destruction of that oasis of
beauty, and peace, and—and—”
“And trachoma, and tuberculosis, and child prostitution,” I finished
for him, as he gasped and his words failed, as I knew they would. Words
always fail a Bureau chief. Like the long-range gun of the Germans, he
is accustomed to firing things across the continent, secure in that the
other fellow cannot immediately crash his words back into his teeth.
I had not recommended that. I had simply advocated the destruction of
the road leading to Walpi, since the Government and its Bureau Chief
would not advance sufficient moneys to make the road safe for travel.
That is the viewpoint of tourist and bureaucrat,—the artist has one of
pure sentimentality,—of all those who have viewed the Hopi, who have
been charmed by the color of his life, but who have been utterly blind
to his miseries, and who have contributed nothing to his well-being.
No one has a keener appreciation than I of the artistic value of the
Hopi pueblos—those old streets of worn rock where the bearded Spanish
walked; the curious archways and the irregular little balconies from
which children peer over at one; the thought of phantom Mission bells
from the peach orchards. But I was not stupid enough to overlook that
these same streets contained offal, that the houses were not
ventilated, and that there were various unseemly stenches in the air. A
tourist must leave his olfactory organs at home. And I knew, being in
charge, that all the labor of industrious and conscientious
field-matrons was not enough to keep those quaint streets and
courtyards clean.
I remember another visitor at another Snake Dance, a man sitting on the
parapet of a Hopi kiva, looking down through the ladder entrance. I saw
that a number of dancers were below there, preparing costumes. They had
an array of skins and masks and feathers, with many cans of bright
paints.
“I suppose you know a good bit about that too?” I asked.
“Well, I recognize some of the signs, common to Indian people.”
“Shall we go down? You can give them a hand,” I suggested.
“I should like to, very much; but—won’t they object?”
“Perhaps I can arrange that,” and I started down the ladder. Several of
the Indians glanced up, but, observing it was only Moungwi, said
nothing.
“Here!” I called to them. “Here is a real friend of yours. You may not
know him, but he understands many tribes, and their ways, and their
signs. Put him to work. He can help with those costumes.”
One looked up from a robe he was painting, and thrust forward a brush
and paints, as if to say: “Welcome, brother; fall to!”
The white visitor showed a rare facility. The Indians noticed it.
“You know him?” asked one, pointing to a design.
“Yes,” he said, naming it.
They laughed delightedly, and soon he was friend to them all. I left
him in the kiva, busily working with them and chatting as much as
possible with a limited vocabulary and many descriptive gestures. This
was Ernest Thompson Seton. I have not seen him since, but afterward he
forwarded a letter, thanking me for his entrée to the wardrobe-room of
the First Mesa, and giving some excellent advice concerning the things
we had discussed before he signed on as costume-painter for the Hopi
tribe. Among all the visitors I met in Hopi-land, he was one of very
few who sensed the things that should be done and those not done for
their welfare. Briefly, his idea was that the community life should not
be violently disrupted, for fear of the effect our own isolated rural
populations had suffered; and that efforts should be made to keep alive
all that is best in the social and mesa-plan of living, without
permitting the Indian people narrowly to confine themselves to it. This
of course would include the harmless dances or shows, the social
features that many confuse with ceremonies. I could recall the earnest
efforts made by former Agents to induce the people to leave the mesa
heights—notably that one beginning in 1891, when houses were built for
them in the flats, and later completely furnished. By 1900 at least one
hundred such houses had been placed at Hopi disposal. And I knew that
in 1911 not more than half of those houses were used even temporarily.
The people would return for the society of their kind, drawn, too, by
intense religious feeling for the ancient mesa home.
I could recall two abortive efforts made toward the allotment of these
people in severalty: the scheme to have them accept parcels of land,
many of which were miles from water, and on which it would have been
impossible for families to subsist themselves, to say nothing of
maintaining their sheep and other stock. The first of these allotment
plans blew up in 1894; but the Bureau, wedded to the allotment theory,
was not deterred. A second and most expensive effort died in 1911,
after friends of the Indian plainly showed the farce of the
proceedings, if they said nothing as to the inhuman side of it. This
did not please the allotting agent, eager for his pay and job, nor his
son, nor his assistants, nor the camp cook and the other hangers-on of
an allotting crew. But thank God! it died, nevertheless.
The average bureaucrat, admiring the Allotment Acts, thinks that an
Indian’s head may be jammed into a regulation lathe, and with a few
twists and spins turned out a full-fledged Mid-west agriculturist—just
such a man as Thompson Seton said needed community centres made for
him, to keep him from becoming an inmate of an insane asylum. Just so.
But it cannot be done, my masters, with the speed of the mimeograph
that grinds out your tirades and exhortations. Your Allotment Acts have
been good friends to South Dakotans and others who wished to speculate
in lands; but they have produced untold misery among the Indian
peoples, and have utterly destroyed an innocent and simple phase of
American life.
Now I never agreed with the ecclesiastical gentleman who thought that
the Hopi mesa system was wholly one of beauty and idealism. But the
writing man did force on me a realization of the utility and sanity to
be found in the life that the Hopi had unconsciously adopted. Begun as
a defense against enemies, the result in peace times was for good, if
accompanied by sanitation and the protection of the younger generation.
And I accepted a new view of the Indian ceremony and dance.
Until we furnish something as good in place of the Indian social dance,
why rave about it? We might easily have a large number of low-spirited,
sullen, and even dangerous Indians on our hands if it were not for
these joyous occasions. So long as the dances are clean, can any one
quarrel with a Ya-be-chai of the Navajo, a Corn Dance of the Hopi, or
one of the Pueblo spectacles, half pagan, half Catholic? I have seen
scores of such dances, not as a tourist, but as the man on the ground
in charge, and I have not been able to figure out that they are one bit
worse than a country picnic among our own bucolic population of Texas
or South Dakota, for instance. I have seen a South Dakota Rotary Club
cut as many fool antics as a Southwest Indian clan.
I recall an illustration from my very short stay among the Sioux in
1922. It was the Fourth of July, and I had permitted the old Indians to
hold their dance on the hills. It had long been the custom to stop
their merrymaking at sunset, and a very good ruling too. But this
Fourth was unusually quiet, the booze-runners not having appeared as
per schedule. The Indians petitioned me to permit just a little dancing
after nightfall. It had been very quiet, and my special police force
was large enough, and seemed loyal enough, to assure good order.
“All right,” I said. “But please remember that I shall have a squad of
police there, and I shall be there myself; so don’t start any shines.”
They had a very creditable evening party, and the peace was not broken.
Later I visited the Agency amusement hall where a number of whites,
visitors from the countryside and more than one mixed-blood couple of
education, were enjoying themselves to the latest jazz. Now I am no
authority on dancing and, having lived among Indians, I am not easily
shocked; but the postures and attitudes of those South Dakota whites
were—well, a trifle extreme, to say the least of it.
“We have looked at them both,” said an old Sioux to me, anxiously.
“Au-tay-ah-pe (Father), there may be something wrong with the Indian’s
drum dance, but—I do not like the white man’s fiddle dance.”
I told him very frankly which I thought the worse. There is no use in
trying to bluff an old Indian. He can see through a hypocrite quicker
than any man I know.
This is not a sentimentalist defence of the old Indian dance. I have
bitterly excoriated the “secret” dances of the Pueblo Indians of New
Mexico, but could never get sufficient backing from the Department to
end them. Such indecencies may be found among all primitive peoples,
and those of the Pueblos who indulge in them are most primitive—the
barbarians of San Felipe, Santo Domingo, and other decadent backward
pueblos. But I have tried to envision the social side of an alien
people who have no other form of diversion than the spectacle of the
dance. Were the Government to put them on a moving-picture circuit—but
we were discussing the decencies.
And, to repeat: When we have established among them an amusement as
appealing, simple, and inoffensive, it will be time for the
condemnation of those features that are innocuous and foreign. And it
will be long before I shall forget the comparison, by an Indian,
between the dance of the Sioux with drums and sleighbells, a noisy
soul-stirring hullabaloo, and—the seductive, suggestive “white man’s
fiddle dance.”