When the coster’s finished jumping on his mother,
He loves to lie a-basking in the sun;
Ah! take one consideration with another—
The policeman’s lot is not a happy one.
—The Pirates of Penzance
In Keams Cañon, the Moqui—now the Hopi—Agency is built on terraces. The
highroad to anywhere and everywhere passes through this cañon on the
lowest level, and all the visiting world and its wife must pass in
review before the Agent’s office and his home. The grounds were once
barren of trees and shrubbery, and there had been a time, in the season
of swift midsummer rains, when several shallow arroyos would flood the
place. Off the main cañon are bays or alcoves, and a quite large one
immediately behind the buildings of the plant. Its stream-bed would,
once or twice a summer, throw a yellow foamy river into the highroad,
and carry away tons of cinder ballasting that had to be renewed. This
had been tolerated for years, when all necessary to correct it was to
cut a straight channel for the annual flood, raise the highroad-level,
and bridge the point of crossing.
This bridge, having a wooden floor, became my signal of traffic. A
belated freight-team would rumble across it, telling of supplies; the
weary stride of a buggy pair would herald that the doctor or the
stockman had reached home and would soon report. Seldom did it announce
anything after ten o’clock. Then the cañon was an enchanted place,
bathed in summer moonlight or ghastly sheeted in the winter snow,
quiet, sleeping. When a horseman crossed that bridge in the late night
or early morning hours, it was either an Indian drifting homeward,
belated, half asleep, or a messenger to the Agent. A swift driving
canter, and I waited for the slipping of moccasins along a cement walk
and the rattle of a quirt on my door; I was about to say, my shutters.
Now and then the message would have a tragic possibility in it: the
physician wanted, quickly; or the news of a plague among the people.
One would expect the police to pack the most disturbing announcements;
but, strange to relate, in the two cases bordering nearest tragedy the
messengers were women.
One, an employee of the field, came late at night to tell that Indians
proposed to break quarantine and remove patients from a temporary
hospital. This was during one of the plagues; and the Hopi suffer many,
due to their congested and unsanitary mode of living. The mesa villages
welcome every infection. A man should have borne this message, but the
woman had slipped away as the one least likely to be missed, and round
about the trails and roads, twenty-five miles, came for police. The
reservation had no telephone at that time. The swift pace of the pony
across the bridge aroused me. Next I heard rapid steps on the walk,
then someone ascending the verandah steps. But for a wire screen, the
front door stood open.
“What is it?” I asked.
No answer.
“Who is that?”
Silence.
My hand slipped over to the automatic. Threats had been made against me
by Navajo. In 1916 they technically murdered me, and the press carried
the story because of the Indian flavor. I had the unusual experience of
reading my obituary in many papers, and might have felt puffed up about
it had I not recognized a tone of regret when the rumor was exploded.
Now I knew there was someone on the porch, and if the someone had a
good excuse for being there, why not announce it. Just as I prepared to
send a shot across it, out of the silence came a faint gasping, as if
the person sought to speak and could not. The woman was suffering from
bronchitis, and had lost her voice in that cool ride across the desert.
And she might have lost her voice entirely at the end of it.
The second instance happened earlier on a summer evening. This time
someone was riding fast—faster than an Indian goes unless something of
moment has occurred. I found an Indian girl at the door. She was a
returned student who had reported to me a short time before, home from
a non-reservation school. She had gone back to her people’s camp. I had
not recommended that, for her people were among those who sometimes
made trouble. Years before, this one member of a large family had been
sent to school. After three years she had returned and had been again
sent away. It was the only thing to do for her. In dress, training, and
standpoint she had become an alien. When she came home again, she had
ceased to be a savage. I had warned her not to visit the camps.
“Stay at this school for your vacation. Let your people come here to
see you. They will come.”
But she felt that she should go to her mother and sisters.
“Well?” I asked her.
“The men had whiskey,” she told me. “And they didn’t want me there.
They were afraid I would tell you. And I said I would tell you, if they
did not stop drinking. So they beat me, and they beat my sister too.”
“Who beat you?”
“Hoske Nehol Gode.”
“And who is that? I don’t recall that name?”
“He is my cousin.”
I took her to the hospital and the physician reported that she was
badly bruised up. It appeared that she had been given quite a trouncing
by the worthy cousin. The name was strange to me. Perhaps, I thought,
he comes from the Fort Defiance country.
Now it happened that a trading-post had been robbed only a short time
before. The fellow who conducted it was not in my good graces, he
having sought to evade the livestock-buying regulations. I had
confiscated his purchases and closed his place of business. The Indians
knew that this gentleman had lost official standing; so, while he was
absent, seeking a means of reopening,—and this means seeking political
influence sufficient to overawe and intimidate the Agent through
pressure at Washington,—a band of native rascals looted his store. It
was my duty to punish these thieves too, if I could find them. The
police recovered most of the goods, but of course foodstuffs and silver
trinkets were never returned. It was believed by the Indian officers
who investigated that this robbery could be fastened on one Guy, his
brother Jay, and perhaps others of their gang. These men had been to
school long enough to acquire English names. They headed a crew of a
dozen or more bad eggs, gamblers, whiskey-runners, general
mischief-makers, who defied and worried the decent Navajo and troubled
those police who did not protect them.
But I did not connect either Jay or Guy with Hoske Nehol Gode. Who
would? There is little hope of making an accurate census of the nomadic
Navajo; and whenever one does succeed, he will have the joy of
recording three to five names for each adult. The Navajo, in speaking
of or to one another, do not use given names. Too many of their titles
mean infirmities or weaknesses. Some of their names are not delicate;
and by this I mean that they are coarse enough to offend Navajo. One
learns in talking with them through interpreters, to say “this man,” or
“that man,” and to leave the name of him alone. Many of them establish
their identity by relationship. Instead of saying “I am the Man with
the Broken Nose,” he may call himself “Curly-Hair’s Brother-in-Law.”
And therefore, when an official goes looking for an obscure member of
the tribe, seeking him under his real name, he is apt to meet and talk
with Curly-Hair’s Brother-in-Law, or Victor Hugo, if the man has been
to school and had a literary teacher, to learn finally that
Curly-Hair’s relative by marriage, the brilliant French poet, and the
Man with the Broken Nose, are all one and the same person. This game of
hare and hounds is often humorous, unless it chances to be dangerous.
Now it also happened that I was preparing a number of cases for
presenting to the Federal Court. Trips from the remote desert to court
are troublesome and expensive, so one likes to assemble them in batches
and thus clear the docket. I was gathering Hopi and Navajo witnesses,
and chanced to need as one the wife of “the Ghost.” How was I to know
that the Ghost’s wife was a sister of the returned student? This woman
knew something of the robbery. I did not connect the two incidents. And
I did not know that there was still another sister, practically a twin
in appearance of the one wanted. That morning I learned that the
apparition’s better half was weaving a blanket down the cañon. The
Ghost’s wife didn’t want to go to court, and assured me that the person
I needed would be found at the camp where the returned student had met
with her beating. By going there I could kill two birds with one
stone—procure the wife of the Ghost, and the sister of the student who
had suffered also. I did wound two birds, all right; for at that camp I
encountered both Guy and Hoske Nehol Gode.
If I have not confused matters, it will be recalled that I wanted Guy
for burglary, and Hoske Nehol Gode for assaulting two women. Now Guy
and Hoske Nehol Gode were one and the same person. Guy did not know
that I suspected him of looting the trader’s store, but he perfectly
well knew that I might be looking for him to answer the assault-charge.
There were three of us—a Tewa policeman, the big stockman, and myself.
We found the camp a short distance off the main road to Gallup, back in
the trees. It held several women, four or five young fellows who
promptly departed, and one large, heavy-set man who looked twenty-five
years in age, and who was perhaps thirty-five. The Navajo men do not
show their true ages until long past thirty. It is difficult to gauge
their years until the lines begin to set in their faces.
Among the women I recognized a duplicate of the Cañon weaver. Assuming
that this was the person who knew something of the robbery, I began to
question her, using the policeman as interpreter. The Tewa Indians
usually speak three languages: their own and Hopi and Navajo. The big
fellow at the fire pricked up his ears. He feared that she would tell
of the beating, for she was the sister who had been beaten; and lo,
here she was being questioned concerning the blankets he had removed
from the trading-post. I have no doubt that this caused him great
uneasiness, and soon he began to evidence his disapproval of my
questions, claiming that the woman knew nothing about the affair of the
robbery. Several times he interrupted, asking: “Why you want to know
that?”
I had no intention of disturbing this sullen fellow, but when he
interrupted again, I told him to hold his peace. I turned to the old
woman of the outfit.
“Do you know where Hoske Nehol Gode is?”
Neither she nor any one of them knew. The man at the fire sneered and
seemed amused. I suspected that he would know something.
“What is your name?” I asked him.
Of the two evils, he chose the one he thought I knew less about.
“Guy,” he said.
Now did I not want Guy for burglary, although I had not been seeking
him? This was too good an opportunity to be missed.
“Well, I have been looking for you, Guy,” I told him. “You will go back
to the Agency with us.”
The resistance of an Indian is always negative. He stood up, and
started to move off, out of the camp. I therefore of necessity had to
move out of the camp with him, for I had him by the shirt-collar. This
fellow must have weighed two hundred pounds of well-knit muscle, and he
was in perfect fighting trim from roping and handling and riding rough
ponies, and generally leading an Indian’s life in the open. At my best
Arizona weight, aside from determination and official authority, I
tipped the beam at one hundred and eighteen pounds. He walked off with
me just as a range bull would depart with a sixteen-pound Boston
terrier hanging to his muzzle.
The Indian police are always slow to come into action, so Guy had
carried me about fifteen yards before the Tewa added his handicap by
pinioning the Navajo’s arms from behind. To rid one’s self of an
opponent like that, it is necessary to toss him completely over one’s
head; and this the Navajo desperately endeavored to do; but the Tewa
held to him tenaciously and between us Guy—alias Hoske Nehol Gode—was
seriously inconvenienced. He stopped moving out of the camp, and began
to plough up dirt in circles, viciously seeking to rid himself of the
policeman, who, like an Old Man of the Sea, perched between his
shoulder blades. Then the stockman, who had been at the car, arrived to
assist; and once they had him well fastened, I drew a pair of handcuffs
from my pocket, and slung one of them across Guy’s wrist. It locked
down, but he objected to our arranging the other cuff where it
belonged. In the meantime, however, he was not standing still. The four
of us were slipping, side-stepping, puffing, and straining about. The
Tewa did not dare loose his hold of the Navajo’s arms, and his elbow
grip prevented us from forcing his wrists together. Officers in a
different service would have adopted different methods; but we were of
the Indian Service, and had probably followed the wrong course as it
was. We should have reasoned with him, and recited a bedtime story.
Now, in this melee, Guy secured a nice twisting grip on my thumb; and I
received instant notice that he meant to wrench that thumb off my hand.
“Break his hold, quick!” I called out.
Promptly from the stockman’s belt swung a forty-five, and smash, down
it came across Guy’s hand. And very promptly too he released his hold.
Until this time there had been no sound from him, other than his
gasping breath and the noise of struggle. At the blow, he raised a call
for help and, like an infuriated animal, he threshed about and threw us
with him. The dust arose and the chips that carpet a camp flew. The
Tewa swung from side to side; but the Tewa did not let him go.
There was a noise in the fringe of little cedars around us, and several
Navajo appeared. And they advanced. And just then the stockman dropped
his gun.
It fell in the dirt under our feet, and down swung this wild bull of
the pampas, the Tewa balancing between his shoulders, to reach the
weapon. One moment Guy’s feet were on the gun, holding it down, and
next the stockman’s foot would scuffle to scrape it aside. With the
stockman bent down for it, the Navajo would be clawing at his neck or
kicking at his face. It was a furious scramble, and if he ever reached
that automatic gun it was ready to explode.
The sight of the gun, too, seemed to anger and justify those others who
had come up. It seemed probable to me that someone of the party would
be hurt, and I preferred it to be a Navajo. So I stepped back out of
the fuss, drew my gun, and warned those newcomers to keep their
distance. They halted at the camp’s edge.
“Why don’t you smash that animal?” I called.
The haymaker that Hoske Nehol Gode then received in the face would have
staggered Dempsey. It straightened him up, but very much to my
surprise, it did not fell him. The shock, however, caused him to reel
off the gun, and promptly the stockman recovered it.
“Knock him down the next time.”
And smash went the forty-five over Guy’s head. But he did not drop. A
Navajo of the back-country dresses his hair in a thick mattress across
his scalp. Blood began to stream down his face. He let out a wild cry
that he was being killed, a call for the women to help him. The night
before they had sent a messenger for protection from this bully; but
now they responded to his aid. They came forward, ready to claw us; and
just what was the ethical thing to do then, I am not prepared to state.
“Turn him loose!” I called to the policeman.
“He may have a gun!” said the stockman.
“Then we will have to shoot him,” I said; “Turn him loose.”
The Tewa released his hold, and Guy, wearing one bracelet, made a rush
out of the camp. He wanted no more of fighting, but it was evident that
the place was unhealthy for us. We could hear him crashing through the
brush, while we proceeded to the car. The women followed to the edge of
the timber and shrilled their threats. It was probable that Guy would
find a weapon; so we lost no time in vacating that section of the
Desert.
Later in the day the leader of the clan came to see me.
“I have told Guy,” he said, “to make no more trouble.”
“You may return and tell him something more than that,” I replied.
“Tell him to be very careful not to enter this cañon, for I mean to
kill him if he does.”
That was the last I saw of Guy for several years. He kept to the
back-country, after his hand and head had healed, and avoided the
Agency. He filed off the handcuff. Navajo are expert at that. He was
not prosecuted for beating the women, nor for the burglary. You see,
three days after this affair I asked the United States District
Attorney for an indictment on these charges, and a bench warrant was
promised to assure his arrest by the United States Marshal. The Marshal
asked me what success he might expect to have in procuring this
belligerent, and I related our experience.
“He is one of a gang, and it may be necessary to arrest several of
those fellows. I wouldn’t come alone. Of course, you may deputize some
of my employees, but they do not care for that work. And if you ask me
the easiest and most effective way to serve those warrants, I would say
with a squad of uniformed men from Fort Apache. They were playing ball
in Holbrook when I passed through. The Navajo bad-man respects a
soldier, and he doesn’t respect anything else. He will not be awed by
your badge of office. He doesn’t know what it means.”
Evidently the Marshal transmitted my suggestion to his superiors at
Washington, for at once, by telegraph, I was challenged by the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who demanded an explanation of my call
for troops! The United States Marshal never appeared on the
reservation. Guy and his assistant thieves and bullies are still at
large, and I suppose they beat women and loot stores whenever the
spirit moves them.