dignified, cleanly in their personal habits, and orderly; and they are
wonderful artisans. In addition to being wonderful weavers and excellent
silversmiths, they shine at agriculture and at stock raising and sheep
raising. They are born horse-traders, too, and at driving a bargain it
is said a buck Navajo can spot a Scotchman five balls any time and beat
him out; but they have the name of being absolutely honest and
absolutely truthful.
This same Mr. Smith, who has lived several years on the Navajo
reservation and who is an adopted member of the tribe, took several of
us to pay a formal call upon a Navajo subchief, who spends the tourist
season at the Grand Canon. The old chap, long-haired and the color of a
prime smoke-cured ham, received us with perfect courtesy into his winter
residence, the same being a circular hut contrived by overlapping
timbers together in a kind of basket design and then coating the logs
inside and out with adobe clay.
The place was clean and free from all unpleasant odors. In the middle of
the floor a fire burned, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof.
At one side was the primitive forge, where the head of the house worked
in metals; and against the far wall his squaw was hunkered down,
weaving a blanket on her wooden loom. A couple of his young offspring
were playing about, dressed simply in their little negligee-strings. The
mud walls were hung with completed blankets. Long, stringy strips of
dried beef and mutton--the national dishes of the tribe--were dangling
from cross-pieces overhead; and on a rug upon the earthen floor lay a
glittering pile of bracelets and brooches that had been made by the old
man out of Mexican dollars. When we came away, after spending fifteen
minutes or so as their guests, the whole family came with us; but the
old man tarried a minute to fasten a small brass padlock through a hasp
upon his wattled wooden door.
"Up on the reservation, away from the railroads and the towns, there are
no locks upon the doors," Smith said.
"Why is that?" I asked.
Smith grinned. "I'll tell the old man what you said and let him answer."
He clucked in guttural monosyllables to the chief, and the chief clucked
back briefly, meanwhile eyeing me with a whimsical squint out of his
puckered old eyes. And then Smith translated:
"Why should we lock our doors in the place where we live? There are no
white men there!"
I will confess that as a representative of the dominant Caucasian stock
I had, for the moment, no apt reply ready. Later I thought of a very
fitting retort, which undoubtedly would have flattened that impertinent
Indian as flat as a flounder; unfortunately, though, it only came to me
after several days of study, and by that time I was upward of a thousand
miles away from him. But I am saving it to use on him the next time I go
back to the Grand Canon. No mere Indian can slander our race, even if he
is telling the truth--not while I'm around!
Down in Southern California I rather figured on finding a large swarm of
Mission Indians clustering about every Mission; but, alas! they weren't
there, either. We saw a few worshipers and plenty of tourists, but no
Indians--at least, I didn't see any personally. There is something
wonderfully impressive about a first trip to any one of those old gray
churches; everything about it is eloquent with memories of that older
civilization which this Western country knew long before the Celt and
the Anglo-Saxon breeds came over the Divide and down the Pacific Slope,
filled with their lust for gold and lands, craving ever more power and
more territory over which to float the Stars and Stripes.
The vanished day of the Spaniard now lives only within the walls of the
early Missions, but it invests them with that added veneration which
attaches to whatever is old and traditional and historic. We haven't a
great deal that is very old in our own country; maybe that explains why
we fuss over it so when we come across it in Europe.
[Illustration: AS SHE LEVELED THE LENS A YELL WENT UP FROM SOMEWHERE]
There is one Mission which in itself, it seemed to me, is almost worth a
trip clear across the continent to see--the one at Santa Barbara. It is
up the side of a gentle foothill, with the mountains of the Coast Range
behind it. Down below the roofs and spires of a brisk little city
show through green clumpage, and still farther beyond the blue waters of
the Pacific may be seen.
Parts of this Mission are comparatively new; there are retouchings and
restorations that date back only sixty or seventy years, but most of it
speaks to you of an earlier century than this and an earlier race than
the one that now peoples the land. You pass through walls of solid
masonry that are sixteen feet thick and pierced by narrow passages; you
climb winding stairs to a squat tower where sundry cracked brazen bells,
the gifts of Spanish gentlemen who died a hundred years ago perhaps,
swing by withes of ancient rawhide from great, worm-gnawed, hand-riven
beams; you walk through the Mission burying-ground, past crumbly old
family vaults with half-obliterated names and titles and dates upon
their ovenlike fronts, and you wander at will among the sunken
individual graves under the palms and pepper trees.
Most convincing of all to me were the stone-flagged steps at the door of
the church itself, for they are all worn down like the teeth of an old
horse--in places they are almost worn in two. Better than any guidebook
patter of facts and figures--better than the bells and the graves and
the hand-made beams--these steps convey to the mind a sense of age.
You stand and look at them, and you see there the tally of vanished
generations--the heavy boot of the conquistador; the sandaled foot of
the old padre; the high heel of a dainty Spanish-born lady; the bare,
horny sole of the Indian convert--each of them taking its tiny toll out
of stone and mortar--each of them wearing away its infinitesimal
mite--until through years and years the firm stone was scored away and
channeled out and left at it is now, with curves in it and deep hollows.
Given a dime's worth of imagination to start on, almost any one could
people that spot with the dead-and-gone figures of that shadowy past;
could forget the trolley cars curving right up to the walls; the
electric lights strung in globular festoons along the ancient ceilings
of the porticoes; the roofs of the new, shiny modern bungalows dotting
the gentle slopes below--could forget even that the brown-cowled,
rope-girthed father who served as guide spoke with a strong German
accent; could almost forgive the impious driver of the rig that brought
one here for referring to this place as the Mish. But be sure there
would be one thing to bring you hurtling back again to earth, no matter
how far aloft your fancy soared--and that would be the ever-present
souvenir-collecting tourist, to whom no shrine is holy and no memory is
sacred.
There is no charge for admission to the Mission. All comers, regardless
of breed or creed, are welcomed; and on constant duty is a gentle-voiced
priest, ready to lead the way to the inner rooms where priceless relics
of the day when the Spaniards first came to California are displayed;
and into the church itself, with its candles burning before the high
altar and the quaint old holy pictures ranged thick upon the walls; and
through the burying-ground--and to all the rest of it; and for this
service there is nothing to pay. On departing the visitor, if he
chooses, may leave a coin behind; but he doesn't have to--it isn't
compulsory.
There is a kind of traveler who repays this hospitality by defiling the
walls with his inconsequential name, scratched in or scrawled on, and by
toting away as a souvenir whatever portable object he can confiscate
when nobody is looking. Up in the bell tower the masonry is all defaced
and pocked where these vandals have dug at it with pocketknives; and as
we were coming away, one of them--a typical specimen--showed me with
deep pride half of a brick pouched in his coat pocket. It seemed that
while the priest's back was turned he had pried it loose from the
frilled ornamentation of a vault in the burying-ground at the cost only
of his self-respect--admitting that he had any of that commodity in
stock--and a broken thumbnail. It was, indeed, a priceless treasure and
he valued it accordingly. And yet, at a distance of ten feet in an
ordinary light, no one not in the secret could have said offhand whether
that half-brick came out of a Mission tomb in California or a
smokehouse in Arkansas.
We didn't see any Indians when we ran down into Mexico. However, we only
ran into Mexico for a distance of a mile and a half below the California
state boundary, and maybe that had something to do with it. By
automobile we rode from San Diego over to the town of Tia Juana,
signifying, in our tongue, Aunt Jane. Ramona, heroine of Helen Hunt
Jackson's famous novel, had an aunt called Jane. I guess they had a
grudge against the lady; they named this town after her.
Selling souvenirs to tourists, who come daily on sightseeing coaches
from Coronado Beach and San Diego, is the principal pastime of the
natives of Tia Juana. Weekdays they do this; and sometimes on a Sunday
afternoon they have a bullfight in their little bullring. On such an
occasion the bullfighting outfit is specially imported from one of the
larger towns farther inland. Sometimes the whole troupe comes from
Juarez and puts on a regular metropolitan production, with the original
all-star cast. There is the gallant performer known as the armadilla,
who teases the bull to desperation by waving a red shawl at him; the no
less daring parabola, sticking little barbed boleros in the bull's
withers; and, last of all, the intrepid mantilla, who calmly meets the
final rush of the infuriated beast and, with one unerring thrust of his
trusty sword, delivers the porte-cochere, or fatal stroke, just behind
the left shoulder-blade, while all about the assembled peons and
pianolas rend the ambient air with their delighted cry: _"Hoi Polloi!
Hoi Polloi! Dolce far niente!"_
Isn't it remarkable how readily the seasoned tourist masters the
difficulties of a foreign language? Before I had been in Mexico an hour
I had picked up the intricate phraseology of the bullfight; and I was
glad afterward that I took the trouble to get it all down in my mind
correctly, because such knowledge always comes in handy. You can use it
with effect in company--it stamps you as a person of culture and
travel--and it impresses other people; but then I always could pick up
foreign languages easily. I do not wish to boast--but with me it amounts
to a positive gift.
It was a weekday when we visited Tia Juana, and so there was no
bullfight going on; in fact, there didn't seem to be much of anything
going on. Once in a while a Spigotty lady would pass, closely followed
by a couple of little Spigots, and occasionally the postmaster would
wake up long enough to accept a sheaf of postcards from a tourist and
then go right back to sleep again. We had sampled the tamales of the
country, finding them only slightly inferior to the same article as sold
in Kansas City, Kansas; and we had drifted--three of us--into a Mexican
cafe. It was about ten feet square and was hung with chromos furnished
by generous Milwaukee brewers and other decorations familiar to all who
have ever visited a crossroads bar-room on our own side of the line.
Bottled beer appeared to be the one best bet in the drinking line, and
the safest one, too; but somehow I hated--over here upon the soil of
another country--to be calling for the domestic brews of our own St.
Louis! Personally I desired to conform my thirst to the customs of the
country--only I didn't know what to ask for. I had learned the
bullfighting language, but I hadn't progressed very far beyond that
point. While I was deliberating a Mexican came in and said something in
Spanish to the barkeeper and the barkeeper got a bottle of a clear,
almost colorless fluid out from under the counter and poured him a
sherry glassful of it. So then, by means of a gesture that is universal
and is understood in all climes, I indicated to the barkeeper that I
would take a little of the same.
The moment, though, that I had swallowed it I realized I had been too
hasty. It was mescal--an explosive in liquid form that is brewed or
stilled or steeped, or something, from the juices of a certain variety
of cactus, according to a favorite family prescription used by Old Nick
several centuries ago when he was residing in this section. For its size
and complexion I know of nothing that is worthy to be mentioned in the
same breath with mescal, unless it is the bald-faced hornet of the Sunny
South. It goes down easily enough--that is not the trouble--but as soon
as it gets down you have the sensation of having swallowed a comet.
As I said before, I didn't see any Indians in Old Mexico, but if I had
taken one more swig of the national beverage I am satisfied that not
only would I have seen a great number of them, but, with slight
encouragement, might have been one myself. For the purpose of assuaging
the human thirst I would say that it is a mistake on the part of a
novice to drink mescal--he should begin by swallowing a lighted kerosene
lamp for practice and work up gradually; but the experience was
illuminating as tending to make me understand why the Mexicans are so
prone to revolutions. A Mexican takes a drink of mescal before
breakfast, on an empty stomach, and then he begins to revolute round
regardless.
On leaving Tia Juana we stopped to view the fort, which was the
principal attraction of the place. It was located in the outskirts just
back of the cluster of adobe houses and frame shacks that made up the
town. The fort proper consisted of a mud wall about three feet high,
inclosing perhaps half an acre of bare clayey soil. Outside the wall
was a moat, upward of a foot deep, and inside was a barrack. This
barrack--I avoid using the plural purposely--was a wooden shanty that
had been whitewashed once, but had practically recovered from it since;
and its walls were pierced--for artillery-fire, no doubt--with two
windows, to the frames of which a few fragments of broken glass still
adhered. Overhead the flag of the republic was flying; and every
half-minute, so it seemed to us, a drum would beat and a bugle would
blow and the garrison would turn out, looking--except for their
guns--very much like a squad of district-telegraph messengers. They
would evolute across the parade ground a bit and then retire to quarters
until the next call to arms should sound.
We could not get close enough to ascertain what all the excitement was
about, because they would not let us. We were not allowed to venture
within fifty yards of the outer breastworks, or kneeworks; and even
then, so the village authorities warned us, we must keep moving. A woman
camera fiend from Coronado was along, and she unlimbered her favorite
instrument with the idea of taking a few snapshots of this martial
scene.
As she leveled the lens a yell went up from somewhere, and out of the
barrack and over the wall came skipping a little officer, leaving a
trail of inflammatory Spanish behind him in a way to remind you of the
fireman cleaning out the firebox of the Through Limited. He was not much
over five feet tall and his shabby little uniform needed the attention
of the dry cleanser, but he carried a sword and two pistols, and wore a
brass gorget at his throat, a pair of huge epaulets and a belt; and he
had gold braid and brass buttons spangled all over his sleeves and the
front of his coat, and a pair of jingling spurs were upon his heels.
There was a long feather in his cap, too--and altogether, for his size,
he was most impressive to behold. He charged right up to the abashed
camera lady and, through an interpreter, explained to her that it was
strictly against the rules to permit a citizen of a foreign power to
make any pictures of the fortifications whatsoever. He appeared to nurse
a horrid fear that the secret of the fortifications might become known
above the line, and that some day, armed with this information, the Boy
Scouts or a Young Ladies' High School might swoop down and capture the
whole works. He explained to the lady, that, much as he regretted it, if
she persisted in her suspicious and spylike conduct, he would have to
smash her camera for her. So she desisted.
The little officer and his merry men had ample reason for being a mite
nervous just then. Their country was in the midst of its spring
revolution. The Madero family had just been thinned out pretty
extensively, and it was not certain yet whether the Diaz faction or the
Huerta faction, or some other faction, would come out on top. Besides,
these gallant guardians of the frontier were a long way from
headquarters and in no position to figure out in advance which way the
national cat would jump next. All they knew was that she was jumping.
[Illustration: AS THE OCCUPANTS SPILLED SPRAWLINGLY THROUGH THE GAP, A
FRONT TIRE EXPLODED WITH A LOUD REPORT]
Every morning, so we heard, they were taking a vote to decide whether
they would be Federalists that day or Liberalists, or what not; and the
vote was invested with a good deal of personal interest, too, because
there was no telling when a superior force might arrive from the
interior; and if they had happened to vote wrong that day there was
always the prospect of their being backed up against a wall, with
nothing to look at except a firing squad and a row of newmade graves.
We were told that one morning, about three or four weeks before the date
of our visit, the garrison had been in the barrack casting their usual
ballot. They were strong Huertaists that morning--it was Viva Huerta!
all the way. Just about the time the vote was being announced a couple
of visiting Americans in an automobile came down the road flanking the
fort. There had been a rain and the road was slippery with red mud. As
the driver took the turn at the corner his wheels began skidding and he
lost control. The car skewed off at a tangent, hurdled the moat, and
tore a hole in the mud wall; and, as the occupants spilled sprawlingly
through the gap, a front tire exploded with a loud report. The garrison
took just one look out the front door, jumped to the conclusion that the
Villa crowd had arrived and were shooting automobiles at them, and
unanimously adjourned by the back way into the woods. Some of them did
not get back until the shades of night had descended upon the troubled
land.
Such is military life in our sister republic in times of war, and yet
they sometimes have a very realistic imitation of the real thing over
there. Revolution before last there were two separate engagements in
this little town of Tia Juana. A lot of belligerents were killed and a
good many more were wounded.
In an iron letter box in front of the post-office we saw a round hole
where a steel-jacketed bullet had passed through after first passing
through a prominent citizen. We did not see this citizen. It became
necessary to bury him shortly after the occurrence referred to.
In vain I sought the red brother on my saunterings through California.
In San Francisco I once thought I had him treed. On Pacific Street, a
block ahead of me, I saw a group of pedestrians, wrapped in loose
flowing garments of many colors. Even at that distance I could make out
that they were dark-skinned and had long black hair. I said to myself:
"It is probable that these persons are connected with Doctor Somebody's
Medicine Show; but I don't care if they are. They are Indians--more
Indians than I have seen in one crowd at one time since Buffalo Bill was
at Madison Square Garden last spring. I shall look them over."
So I ran and caught up with them--but they were not Indians. They were
genuine Egyptian acrobats, connected with a traveling carnival company.
When Moses transmitted the divine command to the Children of Israel that
they should spoil the Egyptians, the Children of Israel certainly did a
mighty thorough job of it. That was several thousand years ago and those
Egyptians I saw were still spoiled. I noticed it as soon as I got close
to them.
In Salt Lake City I saw half a dozen Indians, but in a preserved form
only. They were on display in a museum devoted to relics of the early
days. In my opinion Indians do not make very good preserves, especially
when they have been in stock a long time and have become shopworn, as
was the case with these goods. Personally, I would not care to invest.
Besides, there was no telling how old they were. They had been dug out,
mummified, from the cliff-dwellers' ruins in the southern part of the
state, along with their household goods, their domestic utensils, their
weapons of war and their ornaments; and there they were laid out in
glass cases for modern eyes to see. There were plenty of other
interesting exhibits in this museum, including several of Brigham
Young's suits of clothes. For a man busied with statecraft and military
affairs and domestic matters, Brigham Young must have changed clothes
pretty often. I couldn't keep from wondering how a man with a family
like his was found the time for it.
To my mind the most interesting relic in the whole collection was the
spry octogenarian who acted as guide and showed us through the
place--for he was one of the few living links between the Old West and
the New. As a boy-convert to Mormonism he came across the desert with
the second expedition that fled westward from Gentile persecution after
Brigham Young had blazed the trail. He was a pony express rider in the
days of the overland mail service. He was also an Indian fighter--one of
the trophies he showed was a scalp of his own raising practically, he
having been present when it was raised by a friendly Indian scout from
the head of the hostile who originally owned it--and he had lived in
Salt Lake City when it was a collection of log shanties within the walls
of a wooden stockade. And now here he was, a man away up in his
eighties, but still brisk and bright, piloting tourists about the upper
floor of a modern skyscraper.
We visited the museum after we had inspected the Mormon Tabernacle and
had looked at the Mormon Temple--from the outside--and had seen the
Beehive and the Lion House and the Eagle Gate and the painfully ornate
mansion where Brigham Young kept his favorite wife, Amelia. The
Tabernacle is famous the world over for its choir, its organ and its
acoustics--particularly its acoustics. The guide, who is a Mormon elder
detailed for that purpose, escorts you into the balcony, away up under
the domed wooden roof; and as you wait there, listening, another elder,
standing upon a platform two hundred feet away, drops an ordinary pin
upon the floor--and you can distinctly hear it fall. At first you are
puzzled to decide exactly what it sounds like; but after a while the
correct solution comes to you--it sounds exactly like a pin falling.
Next to the Whispering Gallery in the Capitol at Washington, I don't
know of a worse place to tell your secrets to a friend than the Mormon
Tabernacle. You might as well tell them to a woman and be done with it!
In Salt Lake City I had rather counted upon seeing a Mormon out walking
with three or four of his wives--all at one time. I felt that this would
be a distinct novelty to a person from New York, where the only show
one enjoys along this line is the sight of a chap walking with three or
four other men's wives--one at a time. But here, as in my quest for the
Indian, I was disappointed some more. Once I thought I was about to
score. I was standing in front of the Zion Cooperative Mercantile
Establishment, which is a big department store owned by the Church, but
having all the latest improvements, including bargain counters and
special salesdays. Out of the door came an elderly gentleman attired in
much broadcloth and many whiskers, and behind him trailed half a dozen
soberly dressed women of assorted ages.
Filled with hope, I fell in behind the procession and followed it across
to the hotel. There I learned the disappointing truth. The broadclothed
person was not a Mormon at all.