THE DANCE OF THE ZUNYI INDIANS
At the end of November I went to Cibola, which had been the goal, four
hundred years ago, of Coronado and his companions. I had hoped to ride
over the ground of Cortes' conquest of Mexico first and then follow
the adventures of Coronado and his companions who followed the golden
vision of Cibola northward. Thus I should have kept to the historical
sequence--Columbus and the Indies, 1492, Balboa and the Pacific, 1513,
Cortes and Montezuma, 1521, Coronado, 1541. But life and death break
up elaborate plans. Since Wilfrid Ewart had joined us in New Mexico,
we decided to follow Coronado first and seek, as he did, the far famed
seven cities. We read the quaint Spanish narrative of Coronado's
journey and we set off, and it was at the time of the wonderful Shaleco
Dance.
A colored gentleman in 1540 was greatly responsible for the legend
of the Seven Cities, though he paid for it with his life. But it may
be that the Friars Marcos of Nice and Antonio of Santa Maria, who
accompanied him, were more credulous. The black man is generally
known as Stephen the Moor. All set off together but the friars, not
liking the smell of their companion's skin, bade him go ahead and
they would follow at a convenient distance. Stephen the Moor was not
loath, and being of an adventurous spirit he improved his opportunity,
made love to Indian girls as he went along and filled his bags with
their turquoise. The friars lagged behind and spent so much time in
prayer and hesitation that Stephen the Moor got to be two hundred and
forty miles ahead of them. When he arrived at Cibola they were only at
Chichilticalli.
The Indians of Cibola would not believe the blackamoor when he said he
represented a white race and had a great white emperor. His complexion
belied it. The Indians concluded it would be safer to kill him. They
had never seen a black man before and were much perplexed. They did not
believe Stephen the Moor's story; perhaps they could not understand it.
But they evidently thought it would be safer to kill him than to let
him go back to his tribe. So Stephen the Moor was choked, and the first
discoverer of Cibola perished;--his harem and the bags of turquoise
were scattered. When the friars, toiling through the desert, heard of
it they were stricken with fear and gave away to the news bearers all
that they had--except their vestments. They turned about precipitately
and fled incontinently back to Court, bringing the tale of a mighty
race of Indians and another Montezuma, of riches incredible and a sway
mightier than the empire of the Aztecs. Strangely enough, the friars
believed their own story.
Straightway an expedition was fitted out, of braggadocios and gallants,
of noble desperadoes and desperate nobles--in short, of the best blood
in all New Spain. Coronado took the head, and would not Coronado outdo
the deeds of the great Cortes himself? The almost fabulous wealth and
splendor of Mexico had prepared the naturally credulous minds of the
Spaniards for even the most fantastic things. So it did not prove
difficult to man and equip an army to conquer Cibola. The vanguard was
all of "heroes," the rear was an ever-swelling army of camp followers.
They rode five hundred leagues; the honored friars, no longer timid,
accompanying. Their plump horses grew thin and weak, and the riders
walked beside them and shouldered their own empty treasure sacks,
hoping ever to feed and fill in the rich country beyond. But every day
was one of cactus and wild dusty waste. The hands of the prickly pears
were dusty--water was the rarest things in the earth. But what did it
matter? The rich rare Cibola was near.
Scores of times were the friars called upon to retell their story. And
they abated no jot of the splendors. They sustained the courage of the
army to cross one of the most dreadful wildernesses in the New World.
And the Spaniards thought themselves well on the way to India or the
fabulous approaches to Tibet and Turkestan.
When one reflects that this adventurous army, like that of Cortes,
asked nothing else but _gold_, real fortune, one can understand
the extent of their disillusion and chagrin. From a historical and
geographical view it was a most valuable and interesting expedition.
But what did that matter to them? When they found Cibola and realized
that it had no treasure they journeyed another thousand miles in quest
of it, the even more fantastic "Kingdom of Quivira" and people of a
weaker race than Spaniards would have vanished away and disappeared in
the deserts, like the streams of the Rockies.
There was a Cibola, there is a Cibola, and Cibola will be. It is
one of the most undisturbed spots in the world. The Zunyi Indians
who inhabited the Seven Cities and who still live among the ruins
of them, hold a remarkable belief. They are geoplanarians and have
always considered the earth to be flat, and that at the extremities
there is danger of falling off. Our London, New York, Tokio, San
Francisco, Capetown, Melbourne, and the rest, they would reckon highly
dangerous--and quite truly. Ages ago, it is said, the guardian Spirit
led the Zunyi tribe to the safest spot, that is, to the very center
of the earth, the point furthest away from the edge. The sacred rock,
Hepatinah, in the Zunyi land, to-day as then, marks the center. There
were a few thousand Indians in those cities when the Spaniards came
and there are a few thousand still. They live in houses of dried mud
and of quarried stone--they are heavily and beautifully adorned with
turquoise and silver. They are gentle and mild in character but very
firm of will, people of changeless purpose, and they have successfully
withstood soldiers, missionaries, pioneers, commercial travelers and
tourists for four hundred years. They are worshipers of Nature gods
and have a religion which is all playfulness, dance, and drama, very
beautiful in its expression and evidently more real to them than the
faith of the missionaries.
I set out for Cibola on foot; Wilfrid Ewart went by car. My starting
point was the Penitente village of San Rafael in New Mexico. Nearly
all the inhabitants there practice self-flagellation in Lent and
are Spanish-speaking. Not that their forefathers were followers of
Coronado. The upper Rio Grande country was settled at a much later
date, and then very sparsely and by people whose Catholicism was not
entirely orthodox. The Penitentes are a "peculiar people," said by some
to be an attempt to realize the Third Order of St. Francis, and quite
possible having their _causa prima_ in the zeal of the Franciscans. Be
that as it may, San Rafael is a wide-spread, untidy and inhospitable
settlement on a plain covered otherwise with innumerable volcanic
cinders. The cactus alone of all the vegetable world seems at home
among the gnarled and crusted and broken rocks and the blue-black cakes
and slabs of volcanic asphalt. There are lines of tumbledown adobe
houses down below, and three moradas or Penitente chapels on the hills
above.
Among the inhabitants is a Jewish storekeeper, Solomon Bibo, once
Governor of the Indian pueblo of Acoma, near by, and lord of the
"Enchanted Mesa." "Mesa," by the way, is our old friend "mensa," a
table, with the "n" left out, and means in Spanish a tableland. As the
main characteristic of the country is the dark, sharp-edged tableland,
we may have frequently to refer to "mesas."
As a young man, Solomon Bibo came into these parts and sold goods by
the wayside, sold them to the Indians, started a trading post, married
an Indian girl, won his way to the hearts and councils of the Acoma
Indians, who, by the way, four hundred years before, from the height
of their mesa, fiercely withstood Coronado. And Solomon who must have
learned their language, and danced their dances, entered the tribe and
was elected Governor.
That partly answers the question why Jews are not seen to go to
Aberdeen. Why should they, when they can go to Acoma and become, as it
were, princes?
However, Sol Bibo had had his day at the pueblo and was now leading
storekeeper in San Rafael among these less congenial though not less
profitable Penitente Spaniards.
Epiphany brought me my horse and we set off. To Cibola from San Rafael
is somewhat over eighty miles, through the Zunyi mountains and the
Mormon village of Ramah, getting on to what used to be a great but
desolate highway in Spanish times from the South to the North.
The trail climbed upward from the warmer lower levels of the lava
beds and wound into the mazes of great rock débris, up to banks of
unmelted snow and long snow trails where spruce and pinyon blurted from
the rocks. We reached wide, untrammeled fields of snow and entered a
snowstorm which enveloped us in white veils. Epiphany took a blanket
from under his horse and tied it about his shoulders, and I put on my
gloves and turned up my collar. We cantered the horses through the
snow, even galloped. For the snow made the Spaniard uneasy, and he
urged speed. His horse Diamond did not look as if he would last out,
but his master had no doubts, and though he plunged and stumbled and
got into holes Epiphany merely swore at him, pulled him up, and urged
him on the faster.
When the snowstorm lifted Epiphany seemed to be more at ease, but he
had broken one of his stirrups and that forced him to a steady trot.
We rode across to a deserted cabin, and he sought some wire to mend
the stirrup whilst I opened a can of tongue and cut up a rough lunch.
Epiphany then admitted he had never been to Ramah before in his life,
though he had heard that it was Mormon and you could have more than one
wife. This tickled his mind a good deal and he said: "I'll write to
my girl when we get there to come and be my first wife." And while he
spoke he arduously wound alfalfa wire about the wooden foot-cage of his
stirrup.
"We must go much faster now," he cried. For the Mexican who is so slow
over everything else is very impatient on horseback. Epiphany cantered
uphill or downhill and over stones and holes in a mad style, not merely
for a hundred yards or so but over leagues.
We emerged on to a magnificent, snow-covered plateau and plunged gayly
across it, not guessing that there were twenty miles of it and that it
was not to be conquered in an hour. Over all the white prairie the tops
of withered stems poked through the snow, and you knew the trail by the
absence of the stems and a shadow, a vague indentation. Rosy _mesas_
called to the woods and to us from a far horizon, and slowly as we rode
there came into view what looked like a great white castle or cathedral
fully ten miles away but glittering in late sunlight. I felt I could
not be mistaken; this must be the famous "Mesa Escrita" or Inscription
Rock, as the Americans call it, whereon Spanish explorers and travelers
have written their names even from the time of Onate.
As it stands hard by the road to Ramah we made for it and rode for
nearly two hours toward it before it seemed to grow near us. But by
then the snow clouds had returned. Eager airs swept the plateau with
earfuls of snow and wisps of blown drift. Evening dusk was closing
rapidly in, and it looked as if we should be out in the storm all night
when we espied a Mexican rancher coming towards us on his horse. This
was Caromillo, returning from Ramah to his cabin with a sack of flour,
and he advised us to spend the night with him.
So we rode back to a tiny adobe hut whose door was bolted from within.
And the little old man let himself in at a window and then undid the
bolt. It was like an icehouse inside, but we readily unsaddled our
horses and led them into the corral and then lit a fire in the hut
and put on pots to boil. It then rapidly grew hot, and we stretched
ourselves on the clay floor, drank coffee, munched bread and cheese and
fried salmon from a tin.
Night had come down outside and hid the great rock which we were so
near, and when I went out to look at the horses a three-ways blowing
snow tempest made whirls of snow dust in the air. Curiously enough,
the moon was shining behind the storm and lit up the snow-swept little
cabin and barn with a dim turnip-lantern light.
There was not much comfort in Caromillo's house; we slept on the clay
floor, but even it could impart a feeling of home in the midst of
such a storm. But the Mexicans were strange men to be quartered with.
Epiphany, who had torn his shirt riding through the thorns, took that
garment off with some idea of mending it, and his bare back was all
scarred with the marks of his Penitente creed. Flippant and cynical in
his conversation, light-hearted certainly, and yet he was bound in the
ascetic traditions and gloomy piety of his people. I would not ask him
about his religion, yet I wondered if he ever would be "crucified" and
hang on a Penitente cross till he fainted, as so many of them do.
Next morning there was a silver dawn. The Mesa Escrita was all
encrusted and hanging with snow. It had taken on an aspect of the
fantastic and hardly belonged to this world. And as we rode towards
it, because of the mists it grew further away. I saw it as it were
removed into the past, with wanderers remaining there from a bygone
age. I would have liked to write my name also on the great rock--_I
came and I passed_. But being on our horses we did not stay. We left
our footprints in the snow. The snow was deep; the silence was utter.
Even our horses made not the slightest sound as they padded over the
trackless waste of snow. Snow-veils hurried across the _mesas_--snow
descended upon us and hid all from view. Thus it was that on
Thanksgiving morning we got lost and neither of us could say which was
the way.
We rode up to the stone giants, a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet
high standing at the entrance to the Cañon de los Gigantos, and they
looked down at us with their snow-crowned heads. We rode to ranch
houses only to find them empty of human beings as their byres were
devoid of cattle. Epiphany saw a dark figure in the snow and spurred
hard after it and I followed, and we came up with a fleeing Indian
squaw and a dog, and she would say nothing but plunged abruptly into
the bush. When we found her again it was in a _hogan_, a shelter only
one third covered from the snow. There was a fire burning, and the
squaw sat herself down in front of it and would answer naught, either
to Spanish or to English questions. Her little children stared at us,
and her dogs sat on their haunches about the fire.
We got nothing from her. But, to cut a story short, we went after that
by compass and map and got to Voigt's ranch, and being Thanksgiving
Day there was a grand spread of turkey and cranberry sauce and many
preserves, and very pretty girls to look at and intelligent people to
talk to. The storm and the wilderness had been suddenly changed for
civilization. I went that night to a Mormon wedding dance at Ramah.
Mr. Voigt is the official curator of Inscription Rock and has done a
great deal to preserve the remarkable surface which is scrawled not
only with the names of famous Spaniards but with the pictographs and
hieroglyphics of the Cave dwellers. It has certainly been a great
cave-dwelling region at one time. Voigt took me behind his ranch house
to a well-preserved village of cave dwellings. He found when he bought
the property he had bought this prehistoric village also. Natural caves
had been added to by the hollowing out of the rock, and the houses
partitioned off and the wind walled off with piled rocks and mud.
The theory is that the people of Cibola, to defend themselves from
the Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos, took to caves at one time. But
of course theories innumerable could be brought forward. No one has
learned to read the hieroglyphics.
One especially good service Mr. Voigt has performed as curator of the
Rock, and that is, to have erased the names of a score or so of modern
visitors who with a nonchalance which is almost sublime had written
their names down with those of the Conquistadores; the Winkelsteins of
Chicago, the Jones's of Jonesville.
This _Mesa Escrita_ is, however, little visited. For it is thirty
or forty miles from Cibola or Zunyi, and those who go to the Indian
pueblo seldom go further. It is in part of the most remote country of
America--as the Zunyis themselves think, it is the place furthest from
the edge. Hence, I suppose, the Mormon settlement of Ramah. For the
Mormons, being a persecuted sect, have ever sought out places where
they were not likely to be disturbed.
Ramah is an American village, not Mexican or Indian in type, but a bit
of North America, all little wooden houses and neatly fenced yards. We
drove to the wedding dance and I talked to the Bishop and the elders
and found a rather sad lot of Mormons where, after all, far from
polygamy being practiced, there were not enough girls to go round. The
eligible brides seemed mostly pale and thin. With what devotion the
Mormon young men clasped Betty and Katharine who, unlike the Mormon
girls, were well-formed, open-air girls full of life and desire.
Another day passed and we drove to Zunyi. It was the last stage. There
was deep snow and mist over it with vague sunset lights wandering
in the mist. Up on the _mesas_ I saw the first two of the cities of
Cibola--in the ruins in which Coronado left them. And there in the
mist I saw a third of the cities, but greater and grander, with towers
and domes, and unlike anything Indians ever built. Golden and rose
lights of sunset tinted the shadowy outline. I said to Voigt and his
nieces--"Look! Cibola!" but even as I did so it had gone--melted into
the general configuration of the _Mesas_ of Zunyi. It was Coronado's
mirage seen again--and his disillusionment.
It was dark when we arrived at the real Cibola, the strange and
unwonted city which the Spaniards found, the home far from the haunts
of other men, of the wonderful Zunyi tribe with their coal-black hair,
bright-colored little turbans, turquoise earrings, bead necklaces and
silver rings and bracelets and brooches and ceintures, with their
elaborate dances and religious rituals, and a Nature worship against
which Catholicism has never been able to make way.
When we entered the first large house we saw that the Shaleco Birds
had already come down from the mountains, and in each of the Shaleco
houses prayers were being chanted by the Indians. Zunyi's halls were
all alight with large lamps and hung with every kind of glittering
wampum. There were great white beams and white walls decorated with
dados of printed cotton, there were ropes along the wall and there
hung silver belts and _serapes_--waist swathes--deerskins, shawls,
beautiful blankets, necklaces. There were bowls of the sacred meal upon
the floor, and a long line of sprinkled meal led up to what seemed to
be an altar--the Shaleco altar. In front of that stood motionless the
framework and vest of the Shaleco Bird, as it was being consecrated,
and Indians chanted unendingly prayers and incantations. Along the
walls stood visiting Indians, chiefly Navajos, wrapped in their
resplendent blankets, waiting and silent.
Up till midnight, however, the chief activity seemed to be in the
kitchens where a great feast was being prepared. The kitchens were
large enough for stacks of joints of meat to be piled up--and along
the whole length of the walls flamed log-fires with a dozen high old
earthenware pots simmering upon them. The odor of the joints was almost
overpowering, but it was pleasantly blended with the smoke which went
up the vast vent of the hollow wall. Old squaws with bent backs tended
pots and flames and they wore long bright kerchiefs on their heads and
down their backs. Certainly they never knew how cold it was outside.
We went to "Pablito" and "Emily," fanciful names of an Indian and his
wife. Their true names they will seldom divulge. They gave us a room
and blankets--in case we could snatch a few hours of sleep now and
then. Pablito's house was a strange hive of activity. It had a long
corridor which led to a bake-house, and through our room and along this
corridor went a procession of squaws carrying pumpkins so heavy we
interceded now and then to help them, and carrying tubs of "_chili con
carne_"--roast meat and chili--and of _frijoles_ (beans).
At eleven we all lay down to try to sleep, the girls chaffing one
another a great deal. I had expected to meet Wilfrid Ewart and the
poet Witter Bynner at the Zunyi Dance, and we heard they had arrived.
But in these first hours they eluded us. I do not know whether it was
the expectation of meeting Ewart or Bynner or merely the spirit of the
age, but the two pretty nieces, of which perhaps Betty was the more
vain (though who can say?), insisted on curling their hair at one in
the morning. They had brought curling tongs with them, and so relit
the oil lamp and heated the tongs in the glass chimney and laboriously
curled each beautiful lock. We men watched them from the floor, with
half-closed eyes. Then we got up also and sallied forth into the
ice-bound streets and visited the shrines again.
By that time the Indians had feasted their guests and all the dances
were in full activity. Where before in the hall of a Shaleco house had
been the drone and the stillness of prayers before a shrine there was
now the gayety of marvelous ritual dances and Nature ballets.
The Shaleco and the Mudheads were dancing together. I imagine that
Shaleco is the Spanish name for the Bird-god of the Zunyi Indians.
Chaleco is Spanish for a vest, and the chief characteristic of the
Bird-god is his beautiful embroidered vests which hang over interior
hoops and fold over one another. The Bird is nine or ten feet high.
Imagine, therefore, how high the rooms in which he dances! He is an
astonishing bird. He wears a sun halo of eagles' feathers, he has horns
of turquoise color, and at his throat is a voluminous black ruff of
thickly clustered little feathers. Black holes are his eyes, and his
beak is a long, straight, cleft piece of wood which opens and shuts and
clack-clacks in menace or in mirth. The embroidered vests below are of
turquoise color fading toward green. Inside all this, of course, is a
hidden Indian, hidden in all except his moccasins.
The Mudheads, in contrast to the Shalecos, were almost naked and were
ugly. Their bodies were painted mud color (adobe color), and they wore
over their natural heads a mask of misshapenness. They looked like
badly made men of mud--as if some journeyman had made man. There were
knobs on their heads, finger holes for eyes; they had protruding,
bottle-neck mouths. They wore no jewelry, but round their middles
hung a slit kilt of black material, and as they danced their bare,
mud-colored hips slipped in and out.
I was told they represented in mythology the offspring of a brother
and sister. Their function, however, was that of clowns. I took their
real symbolism to mean, human beings in the presence of the Nature god,
absurd and ugly. When the Shalecos had returned to the mountains I
noticed that the Mudheads took off their masks and danced seriously and
beautifully again.
But in the strange midnight the Shalecos in the dance constantly chased
them. There was something whimsical in the expression of the Shaleco,
especially when it leaped forward dancing from the shrine. It ran like
a bird and squeaked and clack-clacked as it ran. Katharine Voigt took
the attention of the Shaleco directly she entered the first hall. Was
it her bright red tam-o-shanter or her curled locks? I cannot say. But
he flew at her across the room so that she retreated whilst the Bird,
with the lightest of turns, had checked its speedy advance and was
returning to the shrine, and the four Mudheads present were mumming and
spluttering and step-dancing back and forth in ungainly gestures, and
the chorus of singers and drummers at the back of the room kept the
throb of time. Scores of Indians watched from the sides, scores crowded
the doorways, the light of the large lamps above was warm and bright,
and the dancing never ceased.
We went from house to house. At another house a band of Zunyis were
dancing a Navajo dance in honor of the Navajos present. At another
the Longhorns were dancing. The Longhorns had mitered heads of red
and blue, masked, hidden faces, black feather-ruffs at the throat
like that of the Shaleco, but bare body and legs and beautiful brown
moccasins. They carried in their hands spears of horn and a bunch of
twigs. In their dance the chief movement was a running forward with
bent knees, like a Roman soldier spear in hand. But they smote no one
till the dance was over next day. Then I believe they smote every one
they could.
In another hall danced a buckskin-headed child of dawn with a white
taperlike point on the height of his head and a crimson diadem set with
silver conches about his brows; a beautiful and serene figure, and one
of the most delicate of the dancers. It was in the house where he was
dancing that I met the poet Bynner, tired and yet spellbound. "This is
the most beautiful of them all, I think," he said. The dance was pure
poetry to him.
In another room danced the Firegod, naked blackened, ugly. His whole
body was soot colored and he had, like a string about his middle, the
meanest of loin cloths. Far from being a Firegod he seemed an uncouth
savage. But with him danced two Shaleco Birds, a Longhorn, and six
Mudheads, and they made an astonishing medley.
Away in a corner, long-haired, long-faced, sat the chorus, with
wide-open mouths, never ceasing their _Ho-i-ho, ho-ho-ho, ha-ha-ha-ha_,
and beating on their tiny drums. Resplendent scarlet and orange colors
lined the walls, the blanket cloaks of the tall, Moorish-looking Navajo
Indians. Wampum glittered on every wall. Eyes glittered also. Glittered
also the embroidered vests and strange blue horns of the Shaleco
Birds--only the Mudheads made dissonance and disharmony, bubbling
through their mud masks and calling out obscenities and bad jokes and
posturing misshapenness. But all moved, back and forth, back and forth,
tripping it, turning, marking time, waving hands to the time of the
tomtoms in the corner.
What the Spaniards of Coronado thought of all this has not been
recorded. Their eyes sought gold--but this is not a gold country; the
Indians do not wear it, do not seek it. Even to take all their silver
and turquoise away is not to equal one or even one tenth of the value
of one of Montezuma's presents to Hernan Cortes. They must have been
annoyed. The Shalecos, the Mudheads, the Longhorns! Had they ridden
five hundred leagues to see these?
They had no poets with them, only brutal soldiers and vulgar priests.
They were even capable of burning these innocent Indians alive, and
proposed, as a lesson in their Christianity, to burn two hundred of
them at once in one day. Even that was waste of time when the question
of gold was in the mind. Behold, a clever Indian has started the story
of Golden Quivira, and will lead Coronado a thousand miles further into
the desert, away from Cibola which asks only to be left in peace.
The Spaniards in Southern Mexico found gems innumerable and gold
without price, and they obliterated without a thought Aztec culture.
But in the North they found nothing but sand and cactus, and so left
the Indians for the most part at peace.
So to-day at the "center of the earth" the Shalecos still come down
from the mountains and dance for the children of Cibola. We watched
them till dawn--then we returned to our room. Emily, our little Zunyi
hostess, was sleeping in my blanket on the floor, and was alarmed and
about to get up again when she saw us return, but I gently put her back
on the floor and patted her on the cheek so that she settled down to
sleep again. The rest of us lay down on the floor in the miscellany of
blankets and wraps and slept as we could for an hour or two till the
sun came up. For it had been a tiring night, even for us who merely
looked on.
Only next noon did I encounter Wilfrid Ewart, though he also had been
pilgrimaging from room to room and dance to dance the night long. Which
shows how much was happening in Zunyi when two friends could thus miss
one another all night.
"What happens to-day?" he asked of a tall friendly Indian standing
bareheaded in the snow.
"Shaleco go way back up into the mountains. Not come for another year,"
said he playfully. "Way up ... and no come for another year. Next year
Shaleco come again."
And in a little while the six Shaleco Birds came out of the houses and
crossed the river, and the Longhorns came, and the Firegod, and the one
I call the Child of Dawn, and they danced in the snow which had melted
under the noonday sun and in the mud. First the Longhorns danced alone.
Then they returned to the pueblo and its streets and roofs, and smote
men and women on their backs; once, _thwack_, twice, _thwack_, whilst
the fleet-footed Shalecos danced by the river's edge.
Hundreds of men and women watched from the house tops of the pueblo.
Over a hundred horsemen, with gay kerchiefs about their brows, stood on
the further side of the river with the Shalecos, and five or six cars
with American sightseers were drawn up also. The mighty mountains, the
Butte and the Twin Butte, immemorially sacred, looked down at the scene
across the snows. Then the Longhorns returned from smiting the village
and danced again with the great strange Shaleco birds. The hundred
horsemen suddenly galloped away toward the mountains, and Shalecos and
Longhorns began to move rapidly away from the pueblo. And I stood with
Wilfrid Ewart in the snow and shine of that fair afternoon and watched
them fade from our eyes.
"Shaleco has gone away to the mountains. Shaleco not come again for
another year," said I softly, echoing the Indian.
"By Jove!" cried Wilfrid, as if waking from a reverie. "That was fine.
This has been the best of it all--"
And then Wilfrid had to go. For he was one in a crowd in a car. And I
was left behind when almost every one else had gone.
And at night I saw the Mudheads dance again, this time without their
masks, and showing their true features. Two old men stood, one each
side of the sacred shrine, and balanced eagle feathers while they
danced, now and then dipping the feathers in the sacred meal. The
drum men beat the drums and hallooed, and the brown men danced and
perspired. The Shalecos, alas, were gone. The Mudheads had become
ourselves, now repentant and prayerful and asking blessings from the
Bird.