It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you,
We have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
—Songs from English History
For seven long years I lived in a two-penny house at the Agency, the
rooms of which were nine by twelve, and the floors not level. I decided
to increase the size of it, so that three or four visitors might
arrange themselves in one room without compelling their host to step
outside. This necessitated removing several walls, and for months I
slept in a draughty place, surrounded by broken plaster, piles of
lumber, mortar-boards and paint-pots. If one wished to call, he
scrambled up a long plank having cleats nailed to it, fell over the
débris, and projected himself into my bedroom. It was literally all
doorway, and it opened on the Desert.
One morning, about three A.M., I was aroused by a resounding crash.
Some one called earnestly for Moungwi. I turned on a flashlight, and
rescued an Indian policeman from a trap of metal-lathe and scaffolding.
It was one of the Tewa who had ridden in.
“What’s the trouble?” I asked him.
“There’s a man shot in the Wepo Wash—Navajo; and they’re holding a Hopi
for it. Billa Chezzi says must kill him pronto. Come right away and
stop it. Here’s a letter.”
The note he handed me had been hurriedly written by an Indian girl of
the mesa, and she had been so filled with the necessity for my coming
“to stop it” that she had failed to give all the facts. It appeared
however that an unfortunate Hopi, held a prisoner by the Navajo of the
North, was to be butchered by sundown; and the sun had gone down and
was about to come up again.