He expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting
the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I
really believed I should go and see the wall of China had I
not children, of whom it was my duty to take care.
“Sir, by so doing, you would do what would be of importance
in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre
reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would
be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone
to visit the wall of China.” Boswell’s Johnson
The Grand Cañon of the Colorado was once, in the minds of white men, an
Indian fable. It exists to-day. It is now familiar ground. Getting
there is an easy, quite luxurious journey, if one has the money. The
Santa Fe Railway system has removed all the one-time misery and terror
of the desert route to it. The hostile tribes, the sun and thirst that
plagued Don Pedro de Tovar and Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas in 1540,
when given leave to discover what truth was in the Cibola stories, have
been subdued by engineers and steam. Coronado’s search for treasure
cities and fabulous mines, for Quivira, ended in weariness, failure,
disillusion; and his record in obscurity. Cardenas saw the Grand Cañon,
while Tovar found something that should endear his name to the
ubiquitous tourist. He located the Hopi Indians under their castellated
cliffs. Now—had Tovar seen a Snake Dance! Although he arrived in
August, that was denied him.
Thus a Wall of China was prepared in America nearly four centuries ago,
and through “spirit and curiosity,” male and female wearing pants,
tourists seek it to-day. When the clans have all gone back to the
Underworld, leaving their educated young to jazz and evangelists, the
wall will retreat northward to the silent cavern-cities and the
monuments of the Utah border, to Betatakin, and Kitsiel, and
Inscription House. When a Service station desecrates the beautiful
Laguna Cañon—the Tsegi—the wall will make a last stand at Rainbow
Bridge—Nunashoshe—that great archway of the triumphant desert gods.
Tourists! Age does not wither them. I remember a very old lady,
traveling alone. Alone she arrived on the mail-stage, obsessed by a
mission, quite as Kim’s lama. Having viewed one hundred miles of desert
beauty from the mail car, she caught a little sleep, and then aroused
me Sunday morning, quite early, with determined cries. Thinking that
someone had been injured, I very nearly greeted her in pajamas, to
learn that her search must be continued, and that it required an
automobile or other conveyance. I referred her to the local trader, who
also slept late of Sundays, and he sleepily turned her over to Ed. Ed
told me of it later. He said that he “packed” her about sixty miles
farther, hither and yon, around the Moqui cliffs and through the tinted
valleys. She granted him not a croak of interest. And when he was
thoroughly tired out, with the gas “about all,” and the hour late
enough to suggest a return to the post, she halted him with:—
“Now, my man, I’ve seen this, and it is very fine indeed; but—I came to
see the Painted Desert.”
“And we had been a-trompin’ it all day!” said Ed.
Nor does their curiosity decay. I recall a party that came upon us one
evening, just at twilight. They erected tents, and stretched around
them the fetish of a hair-rope, though no snake would have ventured
near that camp for many gophers. Their cook banged his pan, and they
came and “got it.” The mail-stage pulled in late that season, and my
miscellaneous collection of letters, newspapers, and books from
everywhere would be dumped in the trader’s private office, a combined
place of business, art gallery, and Agent’s rest. By the open fire I
would dissect this mail, and reduce its bulk to ashes. But this night
“dudes” filled the room and wrangled over a pile of Navajo blankets. An
old man of the party pestered me with searching questions.
“Is this a good blanket—worth forty dollars?” he asked.
“Quite good. You may depend on Mr. Hubbell’s prices.”
“I would rather deal directly with the natives.”
“May I advise you not to? The trader is regulated, the Indian is not.
Many persons have lost their eyeteeth in a rug-deal with the Navajo.
Besides, you have no guaranty from them. That blanket is guaranteed.”
“And by whom?”
“By me, as Agent.”
“But the Hopi,—or is it Moqui?—they are different. One of them offered
to sell me a ceremonial altar at Oraibi.”
“Sorry, sir; but you could not purchase it.”
“Who would object?”
“I would, as Agent.”
“And this prehistoric pottery I have seen—”
“It is recovered from graves, by Indians. It may not be sold or
transported from the State.”
“Who issued that order?”
“When the Office forgot it, I did, for this Reservation.”
“Ah, yes—you are the Agent here. Now what are your authorities?”
“Well, one might say, the supervision of everything.”
“Is that your mail—your official mail?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have many duties?”
“Quite a few.”
“What is your salary?”
I dropped the letter of the Department that I had been trying to
decipher between questions, arose calmly, and led the old gentleman
aside.
“That,” I said in a whisper, “is a State secret. There is an agreement
between the War Department and the Interior Department, entered into
just after the Navajo Treaty of 1868, and concurred in by every
President since Andrew Johnson, that no Indian Agent of the Navajo
country shall ever divulge the exact size of his reward. He may, with
discretion, reduce the sum in speaking of it; but he may not under
liability of extreme penalty, give out the true figures. It might
encourage the native to revolt. You see my position?”
“Naturally,” he said. He wiped his brow. He was simply overpowered. And
he bothered me no more.
But Messrs. Weber and Fields’ famous answer would have been more
appropriate. “I’m ashamed to tell you.”
And in early August come letters to the Agency. The queries are many
and various.
“Please furnish the date of the Snake Dance.”
“Will you send me a permit to Oskaloosa, Michigan?”
“Mail me a permit to the El Tovar, Grand Cañon, where I will meet
my wife and see if she wants to come.”
“Are moving pictures permitted, and if not, why not?”
“What are the rates at the Hopi hotels?”
“Is it good form to carry an umbrella in the Desert?”
“A Hopi woman sold me a loaf of bread in 1895. I want some of that
bread this trip.”
“Please reserve me a room and bath; I will arrive on the
eighteenth.”
All these should be answered, to the effect that the date of the dance
will be given to the press as soon as known; that permits are issued
when the permittee arrives; that there are no hotels; that the Agent
can reserve nothing; that tourists should provide themselves with
camping equipment and come prepared for rain. Does not the Snake Dance
produce rain? The thunder mutters and the rain-clouds lower ominously,
if no rain falls. There will be a drencher in the fortnight of the
Snake Dance, one may be sure; and it often occurs so shortly thereafter
as to cause one to wonder how the priests dope it out. In 1911 the
storm broke just at the close of the ceremony. It broke immediately
over me, as I perched on top of the Dance Plaza rock. That is an
excellent place for an unobstructed view of the whole show, but it has
an enormous—and unforeseen by me—disadvantage, in that one may wish to
get down at a specific moment, as I did. And at that moment, the
tribe’s collection of snakes, scores of them, hissing, writhing,
entangled, were thrown into the sacred-meal circle just below my
dangling feet. I did not get down. I sat there in the rain, and soaked.
A slicker, or oiled-coat such as fishermen wear, is an important part
of a desert outfit. It does not weigh much, it may prove useful in
covering the hood of the engine when bucking flooded washes, and it
will certainly protect its owner after the Hopi prayer for rain. Pack
one in from the railroad towns; for while the desert traders carry
them, the demand is often heavy enough to exhaust stocks. Like the
Texan’s gun, it may not be needed; but if needed, it will be “wanted
damn bad.”
Comes also to the Agent a telegram from the Commissioner: HOPE YOU ARE
DOING NOTHING TO ENCOURAGE HOPI SNAKE DANCE—just that. Already
advertising or lurid press-stories have announced the date in
Washington. The somnolent Bureau, that so often finds it inexpedient to
administer justice, arouses itself and heaves the telegram over three
thousand miles. Never shall it be said that the joys of the savage
should receive sympathetic understanding. By no means permit them to be
happy in their way. Teach them to be happy in our way. Encourage that
broad spirit of charity we invite from Kansas via the Civil Service
examinations. But do these things without hurting the native’s
feelings. Never act so as to arouse or even risk antagonism. “Do
nothing to encourage the Snake Dance,” but remember, if you have an
urge to discourage it, that we have not directed you to do anything. We
have simply expressed the hope that you will successfully do nothing.
And the Agent, whoever he may be, has just finished wrestling with the
last of his fiscal-year accounts, closing June thirtieth and requiring
all of July to assemble. He has signed 7863 papers of different colors
and symbols, all explaining his honesty. He has completed one thousand
calculations forming the statistical section of his Annual Report, long
arrays of figures, giving the exact value of each washtub, proving the
altitude and longitude of everything, from the number of sheep the
Indians devour in a year and why, to the number of tacks used in fixing
the linoleum to his kitchen floor. He will have recently emerged from
the impotent phrases of his narrative Report, a mandatory composition
of past woes and future griefs, destined to fill an Eastern pigeonhole.
These things are fetishes, thieves of time and destroyers of
efficiency, worshiped by the Bureau as the documentary reason for its
existence. Like prefaces, they are hopefully prepared, but seldom read,
and certainly never acted on.
The Agent will pause long enough to sign a permit—a colored slip of
paper printed over with regulations having a local significance. Read
them; for he will not have time to read them to you. He has had them
printed for a purpose—the purpose of relieving him of explanations.
Should the Agent appear a trifle acrid in manner, have patience. He may
have just opened a batch of exceptions to his last year’s accounts,
rebuking him many times for intelligently carrying on the business of
the Government, when absence of intelligence would have been much
cheaper and approved. Or he may have received one of those Departmental
questionnaires, calculated on the abacus of economy, and propounding
solemnly something like this:—
It is noted that you mine coal, and request $3000 annually for the
pay of miners. This seems beyond all reason. The Office has been
informed on good authority that excellent bituminous coal may be
purchased at five dollars the ton, f.o.b. Gallup, New Mexico. Would
it not be advisable to purchase fuel in Gallup? You are directed to
procure bids f.o.b. your station, and transmit them to the Office
for consideration and comparison with your mining costs.
“Yes,” you are startled to hear him comment aloud; “The advanced class
in idiocy will now recite. Required: 2000 tons of coal, now mined
within two miles of the bunkers, costing $1.50 per ton. Would it not be
efficacious, not to say superb and miasmic, to purchase at Gallup, ship
in cars one hundred miles to Holbrook, and thence haul eighty miles in
wagons at one cent per pound cartage? Total cost, $27.00 per ton
delivered, plus handling-losses and slackage. Ask me?”
But this inane query, signed by the Commissioner without reading, as he
talked of the November elections with Congressman Grampus, must be
answered. The record must be fixed in the mausoleum of files. The Agent
will finally deny himself to Indians having real business requiring his
attention, will neglect other duties, while he laboriously composes a
fulsome answer, figuring the cost to five decimal places, and proving
that $1.50 per ton in hand, supervised, is cheaper than $27.00 per ton
on the road. He recommends—of course respectfully—that he be authorized
to continue mining the coal God gave the Indians, until such time as
the field may be leased to a syndicate; and then, with true official
loyalty to those who arrange leases, to purchase from the syndicate,
thus maintaining a perfect parity between whites who need money and
Indians who do not need coal.
Before you harshly judge this desert pessimist, reflect a bit. He will
be found sufficiently educated to issue you a permit. In the long
nights of winter he has time for reading and reflection. The ignorance
of the Desert is slowly disappearing before education; but no one has
endowed a grammar school for the relief of those you place in
Washington.
Classes in simple geography and numbers would help.
Each season more and more people come to view the Prayer for Rain. Not
all are strangers. Many Navajo ride in from the ranges, tribal
differences for the moment forgotten, just as they attend the fiestas
of the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico; and the Hopi are equally
hospitable with food and fruit at this their gala time. Many white
guests repeat, year after year. Next to our trading friends, the
Hubbells, father and son, who undoubtedly hold the record as to regular
attendance, there is an engineer of the Indian Service who has viewed
more Snake Dances than any other seriously engaged man. My own record
is not insignificant. But this class is at home in the country, with
business or duties or friendship to excuse it.
It is the sort of outing that true sons of Arizona enjoy. Carl Hayden,
of Congress, has kept one eye on a Snake Dance and both ears open to
Hopi conditions. Governors Hunt and Campbell have been found there
repeatedly, and Governor Hunt has sought to preserve its record in
pictures for the State Capitol at Phoenix and the museum of the
University of Arizona at Tucson. In these men the Hopi have had good
friends, and at least one Moungwi found them filled with understanding
of the Desert and its peculiar conditions.
At Walpi one has a fit setting for a theatrical ceremony. Roosevelt
wrote of it, “In all America there is no more strikingly picturesque
sight.”
The place of the dance is a narrow shelf at the very edge of the mesa.
The houses of the people, tier on tier, terraced into little balconies,
form a back-drop. Through these houses, and leading from the shelf, a
tunnel gives on to another street. The ledge is simply a continuation
of the rock roadway that skirts the brink of the village, overhanging
the wide First Mesa Valley. There is a sheer drop from this edge,
straight down at least sixty feet, to the masses of shattered stone and
drifted sand that buttress the mesa and shelve off hundreds of feet
more into the orchards. At each end of this shelf is an underground
kiva, marked by its projecting ladder-poles. A curiously eroded rock
seems to balance at one end of the little plaza, between the houses and
the precipice. Before Walpi was evolved for purposes of defense, this
rock existed. Probably it was because of this freak that the place was
selected for the rites of the tribe.
The ground-area available to spectators and dancers measures about
ninety feet in length and not more than thirty in width. This
approximate twenty-seven hundred square feet must contain about forty
Indian actors and a large percentage of the mob, to say nothing of the
snakes, a most important and active feature of the meeting, among which
are many rattlers. It is like staging a nervous ballet on the cornice
of the Woolworth Building, knowing that fifty mice will be turned loose
on signal.
The wisest of the visitors seek places on the balconies and housetops;
but not all of them can be accommodated there. Many are forced, if they
would see anything, to stand on the ledge with the dancers. Dense
groups mass at each end of the plaza and along the house-walls, and men
and boys, white and red, stand four-deep on the outer edge, facing the
snakes, and with a death-drop behind them. A tourist who would hesitate
about hunting a rattlesnake out of a bush will at this time develop
courage beyond all understanding.
When I first noted the possibility—the probability—of accident at this
unguarded mesa-brink, I proposed stretching a stout rope along it as
some small measure of precaution; and I summoned the old Snake man to
advise him of its purpose. A rope there might easily have been against
the traditions, and I was new at the game of supervision. From the kiva
came a nude figure and stood before me in the sight of the multitude.
The interpreter explained my plan.
“I see,” said the old man, nodding; “these people are your friends, and
you do not want them hurt.”
Now I did not care to vouch for all those present, and so corrected
him.
“No, they are not my friends—not all of them; they are people who
travel about the country and come to see your dance.”
“Didn’t you send them letters—write to them to come?”
“No.”
“Well,” he concluded, “I didn’t send for them. They are no friends of
mine. And you say they are not friends of yours. Why should we care
about it? Let them fall off.”
But notwithstanding his unconcern, every year I had a rope stretched
there, and compelled the daring to stand behind it. This too prevented
them from crowding the dancers, which the Indians appreciated; for when
a man is juggling an angry snake he doesn’t crave close company, and I
have seen an annoyed dancer thrash a tourist across the face, using a
live snake as his whip.
Some day the breaking of house rafters, or a flurry of panic at the
mesa edge may present tragedy as a closing feature of this ceremony.
“Let them fall off” may yet have a grim sound.
The rites are conducted by the Indians with solemnity and reverence. It
is not a show in a juggler’s booth, to be guyed and ridiculed. But when
one of the poisonous snakes has coiled, and is hissing and rattling and
striking, just the time when one would think spectators would become
more tense, that is when taunts are flung and a perfect bedlam of
thoughtless merriment arises. Were there fewer visitors, as at minor
ceremonies, they would be reproved; but the Hopi are a patient people,
and they never insisted that these strangers behave themselves; they
only expected that the visitor would keep his place, and not attempt to
join the dance, a thing that some wild whites—including a few wild
women—are only too ready to do. You now see all the standpoint of the
old priest.
Each tourist packs one of those devices sold by Mr. Eastman. At many of
the ceremonies, particularly the Flute Dance, cameras are barred by the
Hopi, and I had their restriction respected. But when I proposed to
increase the tribe’s revenue by taxing each visitor a dollar for the
camera privilege, the clan thought it good business, and asked me to
arrange it. I had camera tags prepared, and the trails to the top
policed. Each policeman was accompanied by a representative of the
clan, who sold the tags, and who carried a sack of money to change
anything up to a fifty-dollar bill. Usually twenties were thrust
forward, and promptly nineteen hard, cumbersome cart-wheels were dumped
into the canny tourist’s lap. It was disconcerting to those who sought
that form of evasion. Occasionally came one who demanded a decision of
the Supreme Court against this outrage, chanting invariably that he was
a taxpayer, and often adding that he knew Wilson, or whoever happened
to occupy the place of Chief Magistrate. But backing the collector was
the imperturbable Indian policeman, who did not pay taxes and who did
not know Wilson. The policeman knew Moungwi only, who had been found
ready to “stand behind,” as an officer put it. Either pay “una peso,”
“shu-kashe-vah,” “thathli ibeso,” or “one iron-man,” in Spanish, Hopi,
Navajo, or Americanese, whatever language you cared to have it in, or
surrender that black devil-box in which a man’s spirit may be
imprisoned.
One dollar! Yet there were many who sought to evade, and forced
unpleasantness; there were a few who flatly refused to pay and yielded
their kodaks; there was even one who tried to steal a moving-picture
film, who was hunted down at night in the black desert, caught in the
early morning, handcuffed, lodged in the Agency hoosegow, and had his
precious record confiscated for Uncle Samuel, who preserves it in
Washington to-day. This tricky envoy of a famous news-service has
related in a magazine his harrowing experience, giving me full credit
as his one-time host. I have not space in which to analyze his
inaccuracies. Suffice it to say that he cost one very tired and
harassed Moungwi and two hard-boiled rangemen a night’s rest. He should
know that every trail to the railroad was watched, and he would just as
surely have been apprehended and had his outfit confiscated had he
escaped to the Mecca of Los Angeles, that windy city out of which he
worked. The jurisdiction of the Indian Agent extended there, or for
that matter anywhere, in connection with a plot affecting his wards.
There was a midnight conference with the visiting official then acting
as Commissioner, who, surrounded by loneliness and an empty sterility,
not having at his beck a Law Board, seemed bewildered. For once, delay
could not be sought by mail. There was no one to receive the buck. A
Departmental order was being laughed at. Despite the possibility of
ridicule, the visiting mandarin feared that I might jar the gentle
traditions and affect several votes in Southern California.
“I can handle him on the reservation,” I said, anxious to be off. “What
I want to know, and all I want to know, is, do you authorize me to
follow him to the Coast?”
The Acting Commissioner shivered in his pajamas. It is cold at those
altitudes, even on August nights; and when one is standing barefoot,
you know, and being pressed for a warrant—he wavered into the wrong
pew, for he said: “Ask Shelton about it.”
Now Shelton was the most determined Indian Agent that ever wielded
authority in the lonely desert. He and a dozen other Agents were among
my guests. He was that one with a chipped-granite face I had met in the
Office long ago, and whose language had failed when he tried to
describe the subtle beauty of his domain. Roosevelt called him one of
the best Agents in the Service, “who has done more for the Navajo than
any other living man.” He disciplined the criminal element among
Indians, and protected all of them, good and bad, from exploitation.
His Agency was a lovely garden wrested from a sterile immensity, where
the Desert bloomed as a rose. Shelton is gone now. Only the Indians
miss him. His place in the great Desert has not been filled. There are
Nahtahnis and Nahtahnis. And I venture to say that the praise of
Theodore Roosevelt, plus the few words I have written, are all the
record shows for Shelton’s many years in that empire of the San Juan
River, where the Ship Rock trims its great stone sails against the
desert winds.
Shelton rolled out and sat on the edge of his bed. He listened.
“How far to your line?” he asked.
“Nine miles by the road I think he has taken. He’s across the line long
ago, unless the Jedito is running and has stopped him.”
“Do you need me?” he said. He was not a man to waste words.
“No. But there is an early train west. He may be off the reservation.
What would you do?”
“Get him,” said Shelton, and went back to bed.
For it had been ordered that no moving-picture film of the Hopi Snake
Dance should be made, unless by permit of the Secretary of the
Interior; and it had been further decreed that such permission should
be granted to representatives of State and National museums only. The
Governor of Arizona had respected this order. The Commissioner had
declined to request any modification of it. I was therefore anxious to
find the fellow who had slipped in furtively, had procured a
reservation permit by evasion, had been warned not to work, who had
proposed a contract requiring the Secretary’s approval, and who had
broken his word.
For a week I had been on my toes, so to speak. Two thousand tourists,
threescore official guests, including a dozen observing Indian Agents
and the Colonel and everything, had caused me to become a trifle
peevish. The Dance was over; the tumult and the shouting had died, the
captains and the kings were departing. And so was an insolent
crank-operator with a valuable film. Too much is enough.
We got him. He will never forget it.
Because of this untoward happening, and the wild cries of wounded
vanity heard in Washington, the Commissioner became annoyed. He issued
a crushing order that no photographs, still, animated, or out of focus,
should be permitted thereafter. Thus all innocents are restricted to
this day, and the official in charge reaps the criticism. He must
locate and check the cameras on the day of the Snake Dance, a terrible
procedure, bringing him into argument with almost everyone. This must
be done because a few tourists may not be trusted to obey the order. A
very foolish order. Nearly everyone was happy when he could bang away a
roll of films for the family album and for a fee of one dollar. The
tourist loses his chance to vie with Edward Curtis, and the Indians
lose their feast money.
The reason for such an order against the movies? Well, it would never
do to puff, through an entire administration, that all our Indians are
domesticated, tamed, and engaged regularly in singing “Onward Christian
Soldiers,” and then to have a spine-thrilling vision flashed up in
every movie-theatre each September. Some of the mildest of the Hopi are
members of the Snake clan, and go their peaceful ways at Walpi; but
they zealously enact their parts in the pageant every second year; and
to see those fellows painted ferociously, garbed in savage dress, with
snakes held in their mouths—yes, in their mouths; and two or three
active snakes can weave a revolting mask for a painted face—
I can conceive of no more terrible close-up than that of a Snake
Priest, coming toward one with eyes glaring, cheeks and chin painted
black, his mouth a huge white daub, and snakes, some of them with
rattles, feeling around his ears, through his hair, and about his face
and neck. This would never do for general consumption. The public would
accept such a pictorial news-item as proof that these continental
United States contain savages very like those who beat the awesome
drums in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Tourists! I remember the incidents of an Oraibi Snake Dance. At Oraibi
the water-supply is limited. The assembled multitude drank the trader’s
well dry, and it was then a choice between the mesa-spring, an
unsanitary flow, and the water-wagon of the day school. Trip after trip
to a distant well this wagon made, the horses dragging through heavy
sand; and as fast as it arrived the tourists emptied it. Precious
water! But I had to appoint a guard to prevent their leaving the faucet
running. Because my employee objected to several wasting the water, he
was reported to Washington as a villain who had refused a drink to a
suffering traveler in a burning and inhospitable Desert!
Then came an Indian who complained that they were taking his wood. The
Indians at Oraibi have to haul their firewood a distance of ten to
twelve miles. After one has brought in his winter’s supply, he grows
rather petulant to see another man, who rides about in an automobile,
calmly burning it.
“Go back to them, my friend,” I said, “and politely ask for payment.”
“I did that first, but they told me to get out.”
I directed a policeman to go with the Indian, and the policeman
returned to report that he had been received—not to say insulted—with
words. Whereupon the policeman departed a second time, evidently
pleased with his mission, and efficiently led in a very angry
gentleman. The complainant trailed along too.
“This Indian claims that you have burned his wood.”
“Yes, we used some of it.”
“He has to go a long way for that wood.”
“Well, what of it?”
“I understand he has asked for payment. I pay six dollars a cord for
firewood delivered by these Indians.”
“Yes, he did ask for payment—”
“How much?” I inquired, thinking the Indian might have overreached.
“Early this morning he arrived, and demanded fifty cents.”
“A very reasonable charge, don’t you think?”
“Reasonable! We come seventy-five miles into this barren desert, and
are denied firewood! Do you call that hospitality? Is that the way you
educate Indians to view the public that supports them? A fine sense of
courtesy!”
Having delivered himself of this rejoiner, the gentleman turned away to
signify that the interview was finished; but the policeman happened to
be standing at the door.
“Who asked you to come into this desert? This Indian did not invite
you. You arrived without notice or summons. He is under no obligation
to furnish your comfort. And you do not support these Indians. They are
self-supporting. They pay the Government for everything they receive,
other than the education of their children; and I’ll bet your own
children attend a public school. Suppose this Indian came to your town,
camped without asking in your dooryard, and helped himself to your
firewood. You would call him a vagabond, and he would get, very likely,
a magistrate’s sentence. Pay him a dollar.”
“I will pay him nothing.”
“One dollar, or I will show you the line.”
The dollar was paid.
Tourists! Are all of them like this? I answer from a long experience in
the Indian country that a very large percentage of them are just like
this. Outside the reservations they form the bulk of unthinking
sentimentalists, preaching a crusade for dissatisfied and malcontent
Indians, stirring them against real friends and worthy tribesmen,
making a pother and often a hell’s brawl of half-baked accusations and
charges. Recently a crew of them discovered “religious liberty” among
the dangerous barbarians of certain backward pueblos in New Mexico. The
knowledge of men of experience, the views of priests and ministers, the
affidavits of eyewitnesses, the testimony of Indians who had emerged
from the twilight zone and had accepted both education and
Christianity, all availed nothing against those who would demonstrate
that a Pueblo cacique, having a phallic doctrine to uphold, was being
denied his “religious right” to enslave and debase the helpless of his
community. A terrible banner for friends of the Pueblos to raise.
Whose fault?—Washington’s. Washington has known of and winked at this
disgrace for more than a decade.
Permit me to inform you that there are within the United States Indians
as benighted and as evil as those who beat the drums in the Heart of
Darkness. I have had them in charge. I have spent nights in their
villages. I have faced the duty of restraining them. I have seen the
results of their malicious performances. I have taken to hospital the
unfortunates they viciously maltreated. I have arrested and prosecuted
some of the guilty. I have protected a few of those they threatened—but
not all; for I have exhumed their dead.
But do not think for a moment that I was directed to curb these evil
clans of New Mexico. With my Indian police from other and freer
pueblos, with determined employees both white and Mexican, and on one
occasion backed by a United States Marshal’s posse, I was fortunate
enough to get away with it. The United States Court, and the press, and
the wholesome of the community, approved my actions and wished more
power to me as Agent. A respect for law was being established. One New
Mexican disgrace was being eliminated.
But lo! this became embarrassing to the East. Even as Nahtahnis, those
in supreme command change and are different. Imagine being told that
efforts toward control should cease, since the Government would find it
inexpedient to lend support! What mattered it if a man were hanged
until nearly dead, or a woman tortured, by caciques claiming “religious
liberty”? As for violated children—who should presume to disturb the
ancient Indian customs?