SOME INDIANS AND MR. X.
The best commentary on the road between Santa Fé and Albuquerque is that
it took us less than three hours to make the sixty-six miles, whereas
the seventy-three from Las Vegas to Santa Fé took us nearly _six_. The
Bajada Hill, which for days Celia and I dreaded so much that we did not
dare speak of it for fear of making E. M. nervous, was magnificently
built. There is no difficulty in going down it, even in a very long car
that has to back and fill at corners; there are low stone curbs at bad
elbows, and the turns are all well banked so that you feel no tendency
to plunge off. A medium length car with a good wheel cut-under would run
down the dread Bajada as easily as through the driveways of a park! And
the entire distance across Sandoval County, although a tract of desert
desolation or bleak sand and hills and cactus, is an easy drive over a
smooth road. In one place you go through a great cleft cut through an
impeding ridge, but most of the way you can imagine yourself in a land of
the earth’s beginning and where white man never was. Two Indian shepherds
in fact were the only human beings we saw until our road ran into the
surprisingly modern city of Albuquerque.
* * * * *
Stopping at the various Harvey hotels of the Santa Fé system, yet not
being travelers on the railroad, is very like being behind the scenes at
a theater. The hotel people, curio-sellers, and Indians are the actors,
the travelers on the incoming trains are the audience. Other people don’t
count.
[Illustration: THE INDIAN PUEBLO OF TAOS]
For instance, you enter a tranquilly ordered dining-room. The head
waitress attentively seats you, your own waitress quickly fetches your
first course, and starts towards the pantry for the second, when suddenly
a clerk appears and says, “Twenty-six!” With the uniformity of a trained
chorus every face turns towards the clock, and the whole scene becomes
a flurry of white-starched dresses running back and forth. Back with
empty trays and forth with buttered rolls, radishes, cups of soup, like a
ballet of abundance. You wonder if no one is going to bring your second
course, but you might as well try to attract the attention of a hive
of bees when they are swarming. Having nothing else to do you discover
the mystic words twenty-six to be twenty-six places to set. Finally you
descry your own waitress dealing slices of toast to imaginary diners at
a far table. Then you hear the rumble of the train, the door leading
to the platform opens and in come the passengers. And you, having no
prospect of anything further to eat, watch the way the train supper is
managed. Slices of toast and soup in cups are already at their places,
then in files the white-aproned chorus carrying enormous platters of
freshly grilled beefsteak, and such savory broiled chicken that you, who
are so hungry, can scarcely wait a moment patiently for your own waitress
to appear. You notice also the gigantic pots of aromatically steaming
coffee, tea and chocolate being poured into everyone’s cup but your own,
and ravenously you watch the pantry door for that long tarrying one who
went once upon a time to get some of these delectable viands for you.
“Will you have broiled chicken?” asks the faithless She you have been
watching for, bending solicitously over a group of strange tourists at
the next table. At last when the train people are quite supplied, your
speeding Hebe returns to you and apologizes sweetly, “I am sorry but
I had to help get train Number Seven’s supper. They’ve eaten all the
broiled chicken that was cooked, but I’ll order you some more if you
don’t mind waiting twenty minutes.”
By and by the train people leave, your chicken arrives and you finish
your supper in commonplace tranquillity. But let us look on at another
comedy, for which the scene shifts to the railroad station at Albuquerque
where the long stone platform is colorless and deserted. You have always
on picture postcards seen it filled with Indians. There is not one
in sight. Wait though until ten minutes before the California limited
is due. Out of the nowhere appear dozens of vividly costumed Navajos
and Hopis; their blankets and long braids woven with red cloth, their
headbands and beads and silver ornaments fill the platform with color
like a flower display. Old squaws and a few young squat themselves in
two rows, forming an aisle between the train and the station salesroom.
Although you walk up and down between their forming lines watching them
arrange their display of baskets and pottery, they are silent until the
first passenger alights, and then unendingly they chorus two words:
“Tain cent!” “Tain cent!” The words sometimes sound like a question,
sometimes a statement, but generally a monotonous drone. There is a
nice old squaw—although I believe the Hopis don’t call their women
squaws—sitting at the end. I tripped and almost fell into her lap. She
looked up, smiled, and by her inflection, conveyed, “Oh, my _dear_, did
you hurt yourself?” but what she said was, “Tain cent!”
The third Harvey scene is frankly a vaudeville performance of Indian
dancing and singing. The stage the adobe floor of the Indian exhibit
room, the walls of which are hung to the ceiling with blankets, beadwork,
baskets, clay gods, leather costumes—everything conceivable in the way of
Indian crafts. Immediately after supper the tourists take their places on
benches ranged against three sides of the apartment. Generally there is
a big open fire on the fourth side, adding its flickering light as the
last note to a setting worthy of Belasco.
The Indians dance most often in pairs but occasionally there are as many
as eight or nine in a row or a circle, with an additional background of
others beating time. The typical step is a sort of a shuffling hop; a
little like the first step or two of a clog dancer before he gets going,
or else just a bent kneed limp and stamp accompanied either by a droning
chant or merely a series of sounds not unlike grunts. To our Anglo-Saxon
ears and eyes it seemed very monotonous even after a little sample.
Yet we are told they keep it up for eight or ten or twelve hours at a
stretch, when they are dancing seriously and at home. Dancing to them is
a religious ceremony, not merely an informal expression of gayety.
The women we saw wore heavy black American shoes and calico mother
hubbards with a ruffle at the bottom, and generally a shawl or blanket
around their shoulders. Only one wore the blanket costume as it is
supposed to be worn: around her body and fastened on one shoulder leaving
the other arm and shoulder bare and also bare feet.
The men were much more picturesque, in dark-colored velvet shirts,
silver belts, necklaces of bright beads and white cross-bars that looked
like teeth, huge turquoise square-cut earrings and red head-bands. The
“Castle cut” head-dress that has been the rage in New York for the last
year or two is simply that of the Navajo Indians. Their head-band is a
little wider and invariably of red, and the black straight hair ends as
stiffly as a tassel.
In some places as at the Grand Canyon, there are Navajo huts and a Hopi
communal house where the tourist can see something of the way the Indians
live; the way they weave blankets or baskets, beat silver or make and
paint pottery.
But to go back to Albuquerque, where although we saw less of the Indians
than later in other places, we were lucky enough to hear a great deal
about them. After dinner—there was no dancing—we were in the Indian
Exhibit room—probably the most wonderful collection of their crafts that
there is. As we were admiring an exceptionally beautiful blanket of red,
black and white and closely woven as a fine Panama hat, a man—we thought
him the proprietor at first—said:
“It took three years’ bargaining to get that blanket from a Navajo chief.
You can’t get them made of that quality any more. They’d rather get ten
or twelve dollars for a blanket they spend a few weeks on and get paid
often, than work a year on a single blanket that they can sell for a
hundred.”
He picked out various examples of pattern and weaving and explained
relative values. The amount of red, for instance, in the one we had been
looking at added greatly to its price. We found out later that although
not stationed at Albuquerque, he was one of the Harvey staff, and as we
spent the whole evening talking with him, and he might not care to have
his name taken in vain, I’ll call him Mr. X. He has lived for years among
the Indians. We could have listened to his stories about them forever,
but to remember the greater part would be a different matter.
On the subject of business dealings, an Indian, he said, has no idea of
credit. No matter how well he knows and trusts you, he wants to be paid
cash the moment he brings in his wares. To wait even an hour for his
money will not satisfy him. A puzzling thing had happened on the platform
that afternoon. I heard a lady say to an old squaw, “I’ll take these
three baskets.” Whereupon instead of selling the baskets, the Indian
hastily covered all of them with a blanket, got up and went away!
I told this to Mr. X. He considered a minute, then asked:
“Did the lady by chance wear violet?”
“She did!” interposed Celia. “She had on a violet shirtwaist and——”
“That explains it!” Mr. X broke in. “No wonder she ran away. To an Indian
violet is the color of evil. None but a witch would wear it. Red is
holy; they love red above all colors. Also they love yellow, orange and
turquoise.”
As we were talking a young Navajo who was standing near us, suddenly
covering his eyes with his arm, rushed from the room. Naturally we looked
at our clothes for an evidence of violet but Mr. X. laughed.
“It wasn’t a case of color this time! Do you see that old squaw that just
came in? She is his mother-in-law. Navajos won’t look at their wife’s
mother; they think they will be bewitched if they do. He is going back
to the Reservation tomorrow, because the old woman came down today.
He is an intelligent Indian, too, but if he spies a stray cat or dog
around tonight, he will probably think it is his mother-in-law having
taken that shape. Their belief in witchcraft is impossible to break. At
the same time they have an undeniable gift for necromancy, second sight
or whatever it may be called, scarcely less wonderful than that of the
Hindoos of India. The boy in the basket trick and the rope-climbing trick
of Asia are not to be compared with things I have seen with my own eyes
in New Mexico.
“I have seen a Shaman, or priest, sing over a bare adobe floor, and the
floor slowly burst in one little place and a new shoot of corn appear.
I have seen this grow before my eyes until it became a full-sized stalk
with ripened corn. Instead of waving a wand, as European magicians do,
the priest sings continually and as long as he sings the corn grows, when
he stops the cornstalk stops.
“The same Shaman can pour seeds and kernels of corn out of a hollow
stalk until all about him are heaping piles of grain that could not be
crowded into a thousand hollowed cornstalks. Medicine men of all tribes
can cure the sick, heal the injured, get messages out of the air and do
many seemingly impossible things.
“Navajos abhor snakes as much as we do, but Moquis hold them sacred.
Before their famous snake dance, during which they hold living
rattlesnakes in their mouths and bunches of them wriggling in each hand,
they anoint their bodies with the juice of an herb, and drink an herb
tea; both said to be medicine against snakebite. At all events they don’t
seem to suffer more than a trifling indisposition even when they are
bitten in the face. One theory is—and it certainly sounds reasonable—that
from early childhood the snake priests are given infinitesimal doses of
rattlesnake poison until by the time they reach manhood they are immune
to any ill effects.”
We had by this time wandered out of the Indian room and seated ourselves
in the big rocking-chairs on the veranda of the Alvarado, Mr. X. with
us. Every now and then he stopped and said that he thought he had talked
about enough, but we were insatiable and always begged him to tell us
some more. Of the many things he told us, the most interesting of all
were stories of the medicine men and the combination of articles that
constitutes each individual’s own fetich or “medicine.” To this day not
only medicine men, but chiefs, would as soon be parted from their own
scalp-locks, as from this talisman. Each has his own medicine that can
never be changed, though upon occasion it may have a lucky article added
to it. Most commonly the fetich is composed of a little bag made of the
pelt of a small animal and filled with a curious assortment of articles
such as bear’s claws, wolf’s teeth, things that are associated with the
wearer’s early prowess in the world, or more likely a former existence.
At all events, an Indian’s standing and power in his tribe is dependent
upon this fetich, and to lose it is to lose not only power but caste—much
more than life itself.
In the days past of the Redman’s war prowess, this sort of “medicine”
worn by warriors most especially, was supposed to grant them supernatural
powers to kill enemies and preserve their own life. If they were
wounded or killed, it meant that the enemy’s medicine was even more
powerful. But using the word “medicine” in our sense, their “medicine
men”—healers—certainly know of mysteriously potent cures, the secrets of
which no white man understands.
Their most usual way of effecting a cure is, apparently, to dance all
night in a circle around the afflicted person, with curative results
that are too uncannily like magic to be believable. One case that Mr.
X. vouched for personally was that of a child that was dying of blood
poison. Two white surgeons of high repute said that the child had
scarcely a chance of living even by amputating an arm that had mortified
beyond any hope of saving; and that without the operation, its death
was merely a question of hours. The Indian parents refused to have it
done, and insisted upon taking the child to the Reservation. The white
doctors declared the child could not possibly survive such a journey but
as, in their opinion, it could not live long anyway, the parents might
as well take it where they pleased. They started for the Reservation. It
was Sunday. “Four sleeps we come back, all right,” said the father. On
Thursday, the fourth day, exactly, back they came again with the child
well, and its arm absolutely sound. That a mortified arm should get well,
comes close to the unbelievable—even though vouched for, as in this case,
by several reputable witnesses.
As a case of mental telepathy, Mr. X. told us that time and time again
he had known Indians to get news out of the air. An old Navajo one day
cried out suddenly that his squaw was “heap sick.” He was so excited that
he would not wait for Mr. X. to telegraph and find out if there was any
truth in his fear, nor would he wait for a train, but started on a pony
to ride to the Reservation. After he had gone a telegram came saying that
the squaw had been bitten by a rattlesnake and was dying.
After a while the topic turned upon our own trip. We had intended to ship
the car at Albuquerque, but the road from Santa Fé had been so good we
were encouraged to go further and Mr. X.’s enthusiasm settled it.
“Having come down into this part of the country,” he said, “you really
ought not to miss seeing some of the wonders of our Southwest. The
Pueblo of Acoma is a little out of the way, but there is nothing like
it anywhere. ‘The city of the sky’ they call it—I won’t tell you any
more about it—you just go and look at it for yourselves. Isleta, a short
distance south from here, is a pueblo that lots of tourists go to see,
and Laguna is fairly well known, too. They are both on your road if you
go to Gallup. Acoma is off the beaten track but you wait and send me a
postcard if it is not worth considerable exertion, even to behold it
from the desert. The Enchanted Mesa, the higher one that you come to
first, is interesting chiefly because of its story. The truth of it I
can’t vouch for, but it is said to have been inhabited once by people
who reached its dizzy summit by a great ladder rock that leaned against
its sides. One day in a terrific storm while the men were all plowing
in the valley below, the rock ladder was blown down and the women and
children were left in this unscalable height to perish. Laguna is about
halfway between here and the continental divide, or about one-third of
the distance to Gallup. Acoma is perhaps eighteen miles south of Laguna
where you can get a guide and also more definite information. Or you can
just go south across the plain by yourselves, fairly near the petrified
forest later—no, that not until you are on the way to Holbrook. You also
skirt the edge of the lava river—I don’t think you’d know it was anything
to look at unless you were told. At the time of the eruption, the lava
on the surface cooled while that underneath it was still boiling, and
the steam of the boiling mass burst through the hardened surface and
splintered it like broken glass. Glass is in fact the substance it most
resembles. The country is full of stories of men and animals that have
tried to cross it, but neither hoofs nor cowhide boots have ever been
made that can stay intact on its gashing surface.
[Illustration: TO SEE THE SLEEPING BEAUTY OF THE SOUTHWEST, THE PATH IS
BY NO MEANS A SMOOTH ONE TO THE MOTORIST]
“And of course you must get a glimpse of the painted forest. After
that you can take a train when you please”—then with a laugh he
corrected—“when you get where a train goes.”
“Where could we sleep?” asked Celia.
“Well, you can sleep at the hotel in Gallup—it isn’t an Alvarado but
it’ll shelter you. For my own part, if you have a fine night, I’d sleep
out!”