I used to think Fernandina was the sleepiest place in the world, but
that was before I had seen Santa Fé. The drowsy old town, lying in a
sandy valley inclosed on three sides by mountain walls, is built of
adobes laid in one-story houses, and resembles an extensive brick-yard,
with scattered sunburnt kilns ready for the fire. The approach in
midwinter, when snow, deep on the mountains, rests in ragged patches on
the red soil of New Mexico, is to the last degree disheartening to the
traveler entering narrow streets which appear mere lanes. Yet, dirty
and unkept, swarming with hungry dogs, it has the charm of foreign
flavor, and, like San Antonio, retains some portion of the grace which
long lingers about, if indeed it ever forsakes, the spot where Spain
has held rule for centuries, and the soft syllables of the Spanish
tongue are yet heard.
It was a primeval stronghold before the Spanish conquest, and a town of
some importance to the white race when Pennsylvania was a wilderness,
and the first Dutch governor was slowly drilling the Knickerbocker
ancestry in the difficult evolution of marching round the town pump.
Once the capital and centre of the Pueblo kingdom, it is rich in
historic interest, and the archives of the Territory, kept, or rather
neglected, in the leaky old Palacio del Gobernador, where I write, hold
treasure well worth the seeking of student and antiquary. The building
itself has a history full of pathos and stirring incident as the
ancient fort of St. Augustine, and is older than that venerable pile.
It had been the palace of the Pueblos immemorially before the holy
name Santa Fé was given in baptism of blood by the Spanish conquerors;
palace of the Mexicans after they broke away from the crown; and palace
ever since its occupation by El Gringo. In the stormy scenes of the
seventeenth century it withstood several sieges; was repeatedly lost
and won, as the white man or the red held the victory. Who shall say
how many and how dark the crimes hidden within these dreary earthen
walls?
[Illustration: El Palacio, Santa Fé. (From Pencil Sketch by Gen.
Wallace.)]
Hawthorne, in a strain of tender gayety, laments the lack of the
poetic element in our dear native land, where there is no shadow, no
mystery, no antiquity, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything
but commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight. Here is
every requisite of romance,--the enchantment of distance, the charm
of the unknown,--and, in shadowy mists of more than three hundred
years, imagination may flower out in fancies rich and strange. Many a
picturesque and gloomy wrong is recorded in mouldy chronicles, of the
fireside tragedies enacted when a peaceful, simple people were driven
from their homes by the Spaniard, made ferocious by his greed of gold
and conquest; and the cross was planted, and sweet hymns to Mary and
her Son were chanted on hearths slippery with the blood of men guilty
only of the sin of defending them.
Four hundred years ago the Pueblo Indians were freeholders of the vast
unmapped domain lying between the Rio Pecos and the Gila, and their
separate communities, dense and self-supporting, were dotted over the
fertile valleys of Utah and Colorado, and stretched as far south as
Chihuahua, Mexico. Bounded by rigid conservatism as a wall, in all
these ages they have undergone slight change by contact with the white
race, and are yet a peculiar people, distinct from the other aboriginal
tribes of this continent as the Jews are from the other races in
Christendom. The story of these least known citizens of the United
States takes us back to the days of Charles V. and the “spacious times
of great Elizabeth.”
About the year 1528 an exploring expedition set out, by order of
the king of Spain, from San Domingo to invade Florida, a name then
loosely given to the wide area between the bay of Fernandina and the
Mississippi River. It was commanded by Pamfilo de Narvaez; the same it
will be remembered, who had been sent by the jealous governor of Cuba
to capture Cortez, and who, after having declared him an outlaw, was
himself easily defeated. His troops deserted to the victorious banner,
and when brought before the man he had promised to arrest, Narvaez
said, “Esteem yourself fortunate, Señor Cortez, that you have taken me
prisoner.” The conqueror replied, with proud humility and with truth,
“It is the least of the things I have done in Mexico.”
This anecdote illustrates the haughty and defiant spirit of the general
who sailed for battle gayly as to a regatta, with a fleet of five
vessels and about six hundred men, of whom eighty were mounted. He
carried blood-hounds to track natives, chains and branding-irons for
captives; was clothed with full powers to kill, burn, plunder, enslave;
and was appointed governor over all the country he might reduce to
possession.
The leader and his command perished by shipwreck and disasters, all
but four. Among the survivors was one Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca,
treasurer for the king and high sheriff, who is described in the
annals of that period as having the most beautiful and noble figure
of the conquerors of the New World; and in the best days of chivalry
his valor on the battle-field, his resolution in danger, his constancy
and resignation in hardship, won for him the proud title “Illustrious
Warrior.” Ten years he, with three companions, rambled to and fro
between the Atlantic and Gulf of California. The plain statement of
their privations and miseries must of necessity be filled with marvels;
that of Cabeça de Vaca, duly attested and sworn to, is weakened by wild
exaggerations, and the _Relacion_ of this Western Ulysses is touched
with high colorings and embellished with fantastic fables equal to the
moving accidents by flood and field of the heroic king of Ithaca. He
tells of famishing with hunger till they devoured dogs with relish;
of marching “without water and without way” among savages of giant
stature, dressed in robes, “with wrought ties of lion-skin, making a
brave show,--the women dressed in wool that grows on trees;”[1] of
meeting cyclopean tribes, who had the sight of but one eye; of being
enslaved and going naked--“as we were unaccustomed to being so, twice
a year we cast our skin, like serpents;” of his escape, and, after
living six years with friendly Indians, of being again made captive
by barbarians, who amused themselves by pulling out his beard and
beating him cruelly; of living on the strange fruits of mezquit and
prickly-pear; of mosquitoes, whose bite made men appear to have “the
plagues of holy Lazarus;” of herds of wonderful cows, with hair an
inch thick, frizzled and resembling wool, roaming over boundless plains.
Holding his course northwest, he came to a people “with fixed
habitations of great size, made of earth, along a river which runs
between two ridges;” and here we have the earliest record of Pueblo
or Town Indians, so named as distinguished from nomads or hunting
tribes, dwelling in lodges of buffalo-skin and boughs. It is difficult
to trace his course along the nameless rivers of Texas; he must have
ascended the Red River and then struck across to the Canadian, which
runs for miles through a deep cañon, in which are yet seen extensive
ruins of ancient cities. Undoubtedly he was then among the Pueblo
Indians, in the northwestern part of New Mexico. He described them as
an intelligent race, with fine persons, possessing great strength,
and gave them the name “Cow Nation,” because of the immense number
of buffaloes killed in their country and along the river for fifty
leagues. The region was very populous, and throughout were signs of a
better civilization. The women were better treated and better clad;
“they had shawls of cotton;[2] their dress was a skirt of cotton that
came to the knees, and skirts of dressed deer-skins to the ground,
opened in front and fastened with leather straps. They washed their
clothes with a certain soapy root which cleansed them well.[3] They
also wore shoes.” This is the first account of the natives of that
country wearing covering on their feet--doubtless the moccasins still
worn by them.
The gentle savages hailed the white men as children of the sun, and,
in adoration, brought their blind to have their eyes opened, their
sick that, by the laying on of hands, they might be healed. Mothers
brought little children for blessings, and many humbly sought but to
touch their garments, believing virtue would pass out of them. The
rude hospitality was freely accepted; the sons of the morning feasted
on venison, pumpkins, maize bread, the fruit of the prickly-pear; and,
refreshed by the banquet, made their worshipers understand that they
too were suffering with a disease of the heart, which nothing but gold
and precious stones could cure. The Pueblos were then as now a race
depending on agriculture rather than the chase, and were in distress
because rain had not fallen in two years, and all the corn they had
planted had been eaten by moles. They were afraid to plant again until
it rained, lest they should lose the little seed left, and begged the
fair gods “to tell the sky to rain;” which the celestial visitants
obligingly did, and, in answer to the prayers of the red men, breathed
on their buffalo skins, and bestowed a farewell blessing upon them at
parting.
They again pushed westward in search of riches, always further on,
crossed a portion of the _Llano Estacado_, or Staked Plain, and
traveled “for a hundred leagues through a thickly settled country, with
towns of earth abounding in maize and beans.” Hares were very numerous.
When one was started the Indians would attack him with clubs, driving
him from one to another till he was killed or captured.[4]
Everywhere they found order, thrift, friendly welcome. The Indians gave
Cabeça de Vaca fine turquoises, buffalo robes, or, as he calls them,
“blankets of cow skins,” and fine emeralds made into arrow-heads, very
precious, held sacred, and used only in dances and celebrations. They
said these jewels had been received in exchange for bunches of plumes
and the bright feathers of parrots; they were brought a long distance
from lofty mountains in the north, where were crowded cities of very
large and strong houses.[5]
It appears from his _Relacion_ that Cabeça de Vaca passed over the
entire territory of New Mexico, went down the Gila to a point near its
mouth, struck across to the river San Miguel, thence to Culiacan, and
so on to Mexico, where the four wanderers, worn by hardship, gaunt and
spectral by famine, were received with distinction by the Viceroy,
Mendoza, and Cortez, Marquis of the Valley.
The venturesome hero was summoned to Valladolid to appear before
Charles V., and hastened to lay at the feet of his imperial master the
gathered spoil which cost ten years of life: the hide of a bison, a
few valueless stones resembling emerald, and a handful of worthless
turquoises.
Before he set sail for Spain, Cabeça de Vaca told his marvelous story
to sympathetic and eager listeners; and, besides, airy rumors had
already floated down the valley of Anahuac of a land toward the north
where seven high-walled cities, “the Seven Cities of Cibola,” were
defended by impregnable outworks. They were least among the provinces,
where were countless greater cities of houses built with numerous
stories, “lighted by jewels,” and containing treasure stored away in
secret rooms, rich as Atahualpa’s ransom. Various rovers gave accounts
of natives clad in curious raiment, richer and softer than Utrecht
velvet, who wore priceless gems, whole ropes and chains of turquoises,
in ignorance of their actual value. One of these stragglers, an
Indian, reported that the houses “of many lofts” were made of lime
and stone; he had seen them “with these eyes.” The gates and smaller
pillars of the principal ones were of turquoise, and their princes were
served by beautiful girls, whom they enslaved; and their spear-heads,
drinking-cups, and ornamental vessels were of pure gold. There were
wondrous tales, too, of opal mountains,[6] lifted high in an atmosphere
of such amazing clearness that they could be seen at vast distances; of
valleys glittering with garnets and beryls; of clear streams of water
flowing over silver sands; of strange flora; of the shaggy buffalo;
of the fearful serpent with castanets in its tail;[7] of a bird like
the peacock;[8] and a _Llano_, broad as the great desert of Africa,
over which hovered a mirage more dazzling than the Fata Morgana, more
delusive than the spectre of the Brocken.
A friar named Niza, with one of the companions of Cabeça de Vaca, went
out “to explore the country” three hundred leagues away, to a city they
called Cibola,[9] clearly identified as old Zuni, on a river of the
same name, one hundred and eighty miles northwest of Santa Fé. This
flighty reporter testified to Mendoza that he had been in the cities of
Cibola, and had seen the turquoise columns and soft, feathery cloaks
of those who dwelt in king’s palaces. Their houses were made of stone,
several stories high with flat roofs, arranged in good order; they
possessed many emeralds and precious stones, but valued turquoises
above all others. They had vessels of gold and silver more abundant
than in Peru.
“Following as the Holy Ghost did lead,” he ascended a mountain, from
which he surveyed the promised land with a speculator’s eyes; then,
with the help of friendly Indians, he raised a heap of stones, set up
a cross, the symbol of taking possession, and under the text, “The
heathen are given as an inheritance,” named the province “El Nuevo
Regno de San Francisco” (the New Kingdom of St. Francis); and from that
day to this San Francisco has been the patron saint of New Mexico.
In our prosaic age of doubt and question it is hard to understand the
faith with which sane men trusted these bold falsehoods. They were mad
with the lust of gold and passion for adventure; and valiant cavaliers
who had won renown in the battles of the Moor among the mountains of
Andalusia, and had seen the silver cross of Ferdinand raised above the
red towers of the Alhambra, now turned their brave swords against the
feeble natives of the New World. Less than half a century had gone by
since the discovery of America; the conquests of Pizarro and Cortez
were fresh in men’s minds, and an expedition containing the enchanting
quality called hazard was soon organized. Illustrious noblemen sold
their vineyards and mortgaged their estates to fit the adventurers out,
assured they would never need more gold than they would bring back from
the true El Dorado. The young men saw visions; the old men dreamed
dreams; volunteers flocked to the familiar standards; and an army was
soon ready “to discover and subdue to the crown of Spain the Seven
Cities of Cibola.”
Francisco Vasquez Coronado, who left a lovely young wife and great
wealth to lead the romantic enterprise, was proclaimed captain-general;
and Castenada, historian of the campaign, writes, “I doubt whether
there has ever been collected in the Indies so brilliant a troop.” The
whole force numbered fifteen hundred men and one thousand horses; sheep
and cows were driven along to supply the new settlements in fairyland.
The army mustered in Compostella, under no shadow darker than the wavy
folds of the royal banner, and one fair spring morning, the day after
Easter, 1540, marched out in armor burnished high, with roll of drums,
the joyful appeal of bugles, and all the pomp and circumstance the old
Spaniard loved so well. The proud cavaliers, “very gallant in silk
upon silk,” kindled with enthusiasm, and answered with loud shouts the
cheers of the people who thronged the house-tops. The viceroy led the
army two days on the march, exhorted the soldiers to obedience and
discipline, and returned to await reports.
When the mind is prepared for wonders the wonderful is sure to appear,
and time fails to tell what prodigies the high-born gentlemen beheld:
the Indians of monstrous size, so tall the tallest Spaniard could reach
no higher than their breasts; a unicorn, which escaped their chase.
“His horn, found in a deep ravine, was a fathom and a half in length;
the base was thick as one’s thigh; it resembled in shape a goat’s horn,
and was a curious thing.” They were the first white men who looked down
the gloomy cañon of the Colorado to the black rushing river, walled by
sheer precipices fifteen hundred feet high. Two men tried to descend
its steep sides. They climbed down perhaps a quarter of the way, when
they were stopped by a rock which seemed from above no greater than
a man, but which in reality was higher than the top of the cathedral
tower at Seville. They passed places where “the earth trembled like a
drum, and ashes boiled in a manner truly infernal;” watched magnetic
stones roll together of their own accord; and suffered under a storm
of hail-stones, “large as porringers,” which indented their helmets,
wounded the men, broke their dishes, and covered the ground to the
depth of a foot and a half with ice-balls; and the wind raised the
horses off their feet, and dashed them against the sides of the ravine.
They fought many tribes of Indians, and were relieved to meet none who
were “man-eaters and none anthropophagi.”[10]
The route of Coronado is traced with tolerable clearness up the
Colorado to the Gila; up the Gila to the _Casa Grande_, called
Chichiticale, or Red House, standing more than three centuries ago,
as it does now, in a mezquit jungle on the edge of the desert; “and,”
writes his secretary, “our general was above all distressed at
finding this Chichiticale, of which so much had been said, dwindled
down to one mud house, in ruins and roofless, but which seemed to
have been fortified.” With true Spanish philosophy, he covered his
disappointment, and gave the place an alluring mystery, with the idea
that “this house, built of red earth, was the work of a civilized
people come from a distance.” And into the distance he went, through
Arizona, the lower border of Colorado, and turned southeast to where
Santa Fé now stands, then the central stronghold of the Pueblo empire.
They fought and marched, destroyed villages, leveled the poor temples
of the heathen, planted the cross, and sang thanksgiving hymns over
innumerable souls to be saved,--all very well as far as it went; but
the mud-built pueblos yielded neither gold nor precious metals.
Acoma, fifty miles east of Zuni, is thus accurately described by
Castenada, under the name of Acuco: “It is a very strong place, built
upon a rock very high and on three sides perpendicular. The inhabitants
are great brigands, and much dreaded by all the province. The only
means of reaching the top is by ascending a staircase cut in solid
rock: the first flight of steps numbered two hundred, which could only
be ascended with difficulty; when a second flight of one hundred more
followed, narrower and more difficult than the first. When surmounted,
there remained about twelve more at the top, which could only be
ascended by putting the hands and feet in holes cut in the rock. There
was space on this summit to store a great quantity of provisions, and
to build large cisterns.”[11]
The chiefs told Coronado that their towns were older than the memory
of seven generations. They were all built on the same plan, in blocks
shaped like a parallelogram, and were from two to four stories high,
with terraces receding from the outside. The lower story, without
openings, was entered from above by ladders, which were pulled up,
and secured them against Indian warfare. There was no interior
communication between the stories; the ascent outside was made from
one terrace to another. The houses were of sun-dried bricks, and for
plaster they used a mixture of ashes, earth, and coal. Every village
had from one to seven _estufas_, built partly underground, walled
over the top with flat roofs, and used for political and religious
purposes. As in certain other mystic lodges which date back to the days
of King Solomon, women were not admitted. All matters of importance
were there discussed; there the consecrated fires were kept burning,
and were never allowed to go out. The women wore on their shoulders a
sort of mantle, which they fastened round the neck, passing it under
the right arm, and skirts of cotton. “They also,” writes Castenada,
“make garments of skins very well dressed, and trick off the hair
behind the ears in the shape of a wheel, which resembles the handle
of a cup.” They wore pearls on their heads and necklaces of shells.
Everywhere were plenty of glazed pottery and vases of curious form and
workmanship, reminding the Spaniards of the jars of Guadarrama in old
Spain.
The gallant freebooters traversed deserts, swam rivers, scaled
mountains, in a three years’ chase after visionary splendors; but the
opal valley and the vanishing cities, with their sunny turquoise gates
and jeweled colonnades, faded into the common light of day. Though
the adventurers failed in their mocking “quest of great and exceeding
riches,” they explored and added to the Spanish crown, by right of
occupation, an area twelve times as large as the State of Ohio.
I dwell on these earliest records because it is the habit of travelers
visiting ruins, which in the dry, dewless air of New Mexico are almost
imperishable, to ascribe them to an extinct race and lost civilization,
superior to any now extant here. They muse over Aztec glories faded,
and temples fallen, in the spirit of the immortal antiquary, who saw
in a ditch “slightly marked” a Roman wall, surrounding the stately and
crowded prætorium, with its all-conquering standards bearing the great
name of Cæsar.
These edifices are not mysterious except to revered fancies, and
their tenants were not divers nations, but clans, tribes of one blood,
and civilized only as compared with the savages surrounding them--the
tameless Apache, the brutish Ute, the degraded Navajo, against whose
attacks they devised their system of defense, so highly extolled by
rambling Bohemians, and threw up “impregnable works,” which are only
low embankments wide enough for the posting of sentinels.
I have been through many abandoned and inhabited pueblos, examining
them with the utmost care, and can discover no essential in which they
differ from one another or from those of Castenada’s time. In each
one there is the terraced wall; the vault-like lower story, used as
granary, without openings, and entered from above by ladders; the small
upper rooms, with tiny windows of selenite and mica; the same round
oven; the glazed pottery; the circular estufa with its undying fire;
_acequias_ for irrigation, not built like Roman aqueducts, but mere
ditches and canals; and from the sameness of the remains I infer that
no important facts are to reward the search of dreaming pilgrim or
patient student.
Each village had its peculiar dialect, and chose its own governor. The
report of the Rev. John Menaul, of the Laguna Mission, March 1, 1879,
gives an abstract of their laws, identical with those framed by “the
council of old men,” the dusky senators described by Castenada; and
then, as now, the governor’s orders were proclaimed from the top of the
estufa, every morning, by the town-crier.
After the invasion of Coronado, New Granada, as it was then called, was
crossed by padres, vagabonds of various grades, and later by armies
of subjugation. The same tale is told: how the peace-loving Pueblo
was found, as his descendants are, cultivating fields along the rivers
or near some unfailing spring, living in community houses wonderfully
alike, and keeping alive the sacred fire under laws which like those of
the Medes and Persians, change not. The fair strangers were at first
graciously welcomed and feasted; but the red men soon learned that the
children of the sun, before whom they knelt, whose march-worn feet they
kissed in adoration, were come merely for robbery and spoil. The Indian
was condemned not only to give up his scanty possessions, and leave the
warm precincts of the cheerful day to work in dismal mines, but he must
put out the holy flame, and worship the God of his pitiless master.
Conversion was ever a main object of the zealous _conquistador_, and
Vargas, one of the early Spanish governors, applying for troops to
carry on the crusade, writes--and his record still stands--“You might
as well try convert Jews without the Inquisition as Indians without
soldiers.” The first revolt (1640), while Arguello was governor of the
province, grew out of the whipping and hanging of forty Pueblos, who
refused to give up their own religion and accept the holy Catholic
faith.
The Pueblos constantly rebelled, and escaped to the lair of the
mountain lion, the den of the grizzly and cinnamon bear, the hole of
the fox and coyote. They sought shelter from the avarice and bigotry
of their Christian persecutors in the steeps of distant cañons, and
found where to lay their head in the hollows of inaccessible rocks; and
this brings us to the cliff houses, latterly the subject of confused
exaggeration and absurd conjecture.
It is well known that the first foreign invasions were by far the
most merciless, and it appears reasonable that hunted natives made a
hiding-place in these fastnesses; that there they allied themselves
with the Navajo, who, from a remote period, had dwelt in the
northern plains, beat back the enemy, and, as Spanish rigor relaxed,
returned from exile to their fields and adobe houses as before.
Mud walls had been proof against arrow, spear, and battle-axe, but
could not withstand the finer arms of the fairer race. The cave or
cliff-dwellings of Utah, Colorado, and Arizona are exact copies of
the community tenements of Southern and Moquis pueblos, varying with
situation and quality of material used. The architecture of these human
nests and eyries--in some places seven hundred and a thousand feet
from the bottom of the cañon--has been magnified out of all bounds.
Eager explorers, hurried away by imagination, have even compared the
civilization which produced them with
“The glory that was Greece,
The grandeur that was Rome.”
I found nothing in them to warrant such flights of fancy, and, like
all castles in air, they lessen wofully at a near view. Those along
the Rio Mancos and Du Chelly are mere pigeon-holes in the sides of
cañons, roofed by projecting ledges of rock. The walls, six or eight
inches thick, are built of flat brook-stones hacked on the edge with
stone hatchets, or rather hammers, to square angles; in some cases
they are laid in mud mortar and finished with mud plaster, troweled,
Pueblo fashion, with the bare hand. Certainly, mortal never fled to
these high perches from choice, or failed to desert them as soon as the
danger passed. Whether we believe that the hunters were Christian or
heathen, we must admit that this was a last refuge for the hunted, made
desperate by terror. The masonry is smoothed, so none but the sharpest
eyes can notice the difference between it and the rock itself, and in
no instance is there trace of chimney or fire-place.[12] The whole idea
of the work is concealment.
One might well ask, with sight-seeing Niza strolling through fabled
Cibola, “if the men of that country had wings by which to reach these
high lofts.” Unfortunately for the romancers, “they showed him a
well-made ladder, and said they ascended by this means.” And well-made
ladders the cliff dwellers had--steps cut in the living rock of the
mountain, and scaling-ladders stout and light.
The solitary watch-towers along the McElmo, Colorado, and wide-spread
relics of cities in the cañon of the Hovenweep Utah, near the old
Spanish trail through the mountains from Santa Fé to Salt Lake, are
built on the same general plan, and divided into snug cells and
peep-holes, averaging six by eight feet. Perpendiculars are regarded;
stones dressed to uniform size are laid in mud mortar. A distinguishing
feature is in the round corners, one at least appearing in nearly every
little house. “Most peculiar, however, is the dressing of the walls
of the upper and lower front rooms, both being plastered with a thin
layer of firm adobe cement of about the eighth of an inch in thickness,
and colored a deep maroon red, with a dingy white band eight inches
in breadth running around floor, sides, and ceiling”[13]--ideas of
improvements probably derived from their enlightened conquerors. There
is a story that a hatchet found there would cut cold steel, but I have
not been able to learn its origin or trace it to any reliable authority.
In every room entered was the unfailing mark of the Pueblo--pottery
glazed and streaked, as manufactured by no other tribe of Indians and
invariably reduced to fragments, either through superstition or to
prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy. No entire vase or jar
has appeared among the masses strewed from one end to the other of
their ancient dominion. I have picked up quantities of this pottery
near old towns, where it covers the ground like broken pavement, but
have not seen one piece four inches square.
After their first experiments the Spaniards saw the policy of
conciliating a confederation so numerous and powerful as the Pueblos,
and as early as the time of Philip II. mountains, pastures, and waters
were declared common to both races; ordinances were issued granting
them lands for agriculture, but the title in no instance was of higher
grade than possession. The fee-simple remained in the crown of Spain,
then in the government of Mexico, by virtue of her independence, and
under the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848, passed to the
United States.
When General Kearney took possession of the country the Pueblos were
among the first to give allegiance to our government, and, as allies,
were invaluable in chasing the barbarous tribes--their old enemies,
whom they tracked with the keen scent and swiftness of blood-hounds.
They now number not less than twenty thousand peaceful, contented
citizens, entitled to confidence and respect, and by decree of the
supreme court (1871) they became legal voters.
Without written language, or so much as the lowest form of
picture-writing, they usually speak a little Spanish, enough for
purposes of trade, and, less stolid and unbending than the nomads,
in manner are extremely gentle and friendly. Their quaint primitive
customs, curious myths, and legends afford rich material for the poet,
and their antiquities open an endless field to the delving archæologist.
Nominally Catholics, they are really only baptized heathen. A race
so rigidly conservative must by very nature be true to the ancient
ceremonials, and their religion is not the least attractive study
offered by this interesting people. Even the dress of the women (oh,
happy women!) has remained unchanged,--the same to-day as described by
Coronado’s secretary in 1541.
There passes my window at this moment a young Indian girl from Tesuque,
a village eight miles north of Santa Fé. Like the beloved one of the
Canticles, she is dark but comely, and without saddle or bridle sits
astride her little _burro_ in cool defiance of city prejudice. Always
gayly dressed, with ready nod and a quick smile, showing the whitest
teeth, we call her Bright Alfarata, in memory of the sweet singer
of the blue Juniata; though the interpreter says her true name is
_Poy-ye_, the Rising Moon. Neither of us understands a word of the
other’s language, so I beckon to her. She springs to the ground with
the supple grace of an antelope, and comes to me, holding out a thin,
slender hand, the tint of Florentine bronze, seats herself on the
window-sill, and in the shade of the _portal_ we converse in what young
lovers are pleased to call eloquent silence. Her donkey will not stray,
but lingers patiently about, like the lamb he resembles in face and
temper, and nibbles the scant grass which fringes the acequia. I think
his mistress must be a lady of high degree, perhaps the _caçique’s_
daughter, she wears such a holiday air, unusual with Indian women, and
is so richly adorned with beads of strung periwinkles. She wears loose
moccasins, “shoes of silence,” which cannot hide the delicate and
shapely outline of her feet, leggins of deer-skin, a skirt reaching
below the knee, and a cotton chemise. Her head has no covering but
glossy jet-black hair, newly washed with _amolé_, banged in front, and
“is tricked off behind the ears in the shape of a wheel which resembles
the handle of a cup”--the distinguishing fashion of maidenhood now
as it was more than three hundred years ago. Tied by a scarlet cord
across her forehead is a pendant of opaline shell, the lining of a
mussel shell, doubtless the very ornament called precious pearl and
opal which dazzled the eyes and stirred the covetous hearts of the
first _conquistadores_. Our Pueblo belle wraps about her drapery such
as Castenada’s maiden never dreamed of,--a flowing mantle which has
followed the march of progress. Thrown across the left shoulder and
drawn under her bare and beautiful right arm is a handsome red blanket,
with the letters U. S. woven in the centre.
One secret cause of the Pueblos’ ready adherence to our government is
their tradition that,
“Far away
In the eternal yesterday.”
Montezuma, the brother and equal of God, built the sacred city Pecos,
marked the lines of its fortifications, and with his own royal hand
kindled the sacred fire in the _estufa_. Close beside it he planted a
tree upside down, with the prophecy that, if his children kept alive
the flame till his tree fell, a pale nation, speaking an unknown
tongue, should come from the pleasant country where the sun rises, and
free them from Spanish rule. He promised the chosen ones that he would
return in fullness of time, and then went to the glorious rest prepared
for him in his tabernacle the sun.
I have seen the remains of that forsaken city, once a mighty fortress,
now desolate with the desolation of Zion. Thorns have come up in her
palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof. It is a
habitation for dragons and a court for owls. The site, admirably chosen
for defense, is on a promontory, somewhat in the shape of a foot, which
gave a broad lookout to the sentry. In the valley below, the waters of
the river Pecos flow softly, and park-like intervals fill the spaces
toward foot-hills which skirt the everlasting mountain walls. The
adobe houses have crumbled to the dust of which they were made, and
heaped among their ruins are large blocks of stone, oblong and square,
weighing a ton or more, and showing signs of being once laid in mortar.
The outline of the immense _estufa_, forty feet in diameter, is plainly
visible, sunken in the earth and paved with stone; but all trace of the
upper story of the council chamber has vanished. On the _mesa_ there is
not a tree, not even the dwarf cedar, which strikes its roots in sand,
and lives almost without water or dew; but, strange to see, across the
centre of the _estufa_ lies the trunk of a large pine, several feet in
circumference--an astonishing growth in that sterile soil. The Indian
resting in its fragrant shade, listening to the never-ceasing west wind
swaying slender leaves that answered to its touch like harp-strings
to the harper’s hand, clothed the stately evergreen with loving
superstition, which hovers round it even in death; for this is the
Montezuma tree, planted when the world was young.
When Pecos was deserted the people went out as Israel from Egypt,
leaving not a hoof behind. They destroyed everything that could be
of service to an enemy, and the ground is yet covered with scraps of
broken pottery marked with their peculiar tracery.
The Oriental Gheber built his temple over deep subterranean fires, and
the steady light shone on after altar and shrine were abandoned and
forgotten; but the fire-worshipers on the stony _mesa_ at Pecos had a
very different work. The only fuel at hand was cedar from the adjacent
hills; and, shut in the dark inclosure, filled with pitchy smoke and
suffocating gas, it is not strange that death sometimes relieved the
watch. When the chiefs, who had seen the kingly friend of the red man,
grew old, and the hour came for their departure to their home in the
sun, they charged the young men to guard the treasure hidden in the
silent chamber. Another generation came and went; prophecy and promise
were handed down from age to age, and the Pueblo sentinel, true to his
unwritten creed, guarded the consecrated place beside the miracle-tree,
daily climbed the lonely watch-tower, looked toward the sun-rising,
and listened for the coming of the beautiful feet of them that on the
mountain-top bring glad tidings. Their days of persecution ended, they
no longer ate their bread with tears, and a century of prosperous
content went by. Then they were shorn of their strength, and their
power was broken by inroads of warring nations. The cunning Navajo
harried their fields and trampled the ripening maize; the thieving and
tameless Comanche carried off their wives, and sold their children into
slavery, and their numbers were so reduced that the warriors were too
feeble to attempt a rescue. Hardly enough survived to minister in the
holy place; hope wavered, and the mighty name of Montezuma was but a
dim, proud memory.
Yet the devoted watchmen dreamed of a day when he should descend with
the sunlight--crowned, plumed, and anointed--to fill the dingy _estufa_
with a glory like that when the Divine Presence shook the mercy-seat
between the cherubim. The eternal fire flickered, smouldered in embers,
but endured through all change and chance, like a potent will; it was
the visible shadow of the Invisible One, whose name it is death to
utter. Sent by his servant and lawgiver, his word was sure; they would
rest on the promise till sun and earth should die.
At last, at last, constant faith and patient vigil had their reward. On
the wings of the wind across the snowy Sierras was heard a sound like
the rushing of many waters--the loud steps of the promised deliverer.
East, toward Santo Domingo, southward from the Rio Grande, there
entered Santa Fé an army of men with faces whiter than the conquered
Mexican. Their strange, harsh language was heard in the streets; a
foreign flag bearing the colors of the morning, white and red, blue
and gold, was unrolled above the crumbling palace of the Pueblos. The
prophecy was fulfilled, and at noon that day the magic tree at Pecos
fell to the ground.
After the American occupation, the remnant of the tribe in Pecos
joined that of Jemez, which speaks the same language. It is said the
_caçique_, or governor, carried with him the Montezuma fire, and in
a new _estufa_, sixty miles from the one hallowed by his gracious
presence, the faithful are awaiting the second advent of the beloved
prophet, priest, and king, who is to come in glory and establish his
throne forever and ever.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The hanging moss. _Tillandsia usneoides._
[2] Made of the fibre of the maguey, or American aloe.
[3] The root of the _Yucca aloifolia_, a spongy, fibrous mass,
containing gelatinous and alkaline matter. It grows in most parts of
New Mexico, where it is called _amolé_, and is used instead of soap for
washing.
[4] This is still a favorite sport among the Pueblos. They sally out
from their villages, mounted on _burros_, to the prairies, where
rabbits are started from their coverts, when the horsemen chase them;
using clubs, which they throw with great precision, like the boomerang
of the savage Australian. In this way they catch a great many. It is
very exciting, and is carried on amid yells and much good-natured
laughter.
[5] In the Navajo country between the San Juan and Colorado Chiquito,
are found quantities of beautiful garnets and a green stone resembling
emerald. It abounds in ruins of pueblos capable of holding many
thousand souls; in all probability the emeralds presented to De Vaca
came from that region.
[6] The name still attaches to a snowy range southwest of Santa Fé.
[7] Rattlesnake.
[8] Turkey.
[9] Indian name for buffalo. New Mexico was known to the early
Spaniards as the Buffalo Province.
[10] Castenada’s Narrative covered 147 MS. pages, written on paper in
characters of the times, and rolled in parchment. It was preserved in
the collection of D’Uguina, Paris, was translated and published in
French by H. T. Campans, in 1838, and now lies before me. It is wholly
free from the vice of the commonplace, being tinged with the warm
glow which precedes the morning light of history. Wild as the Homeric
legends, it serves like them to point the way.
[11] It is the same to-day that it was in 1540,--a place of great
strength; and the _Mesa_ can be ascended only by the artificial road.
The houses on top are of adobes, one and two stories in height. Water
is brought from the valley below by the women in jars of earthenware,
which they balance on their heads with wonderful ease as they ascend
the high steps and ladders. The present population numbers not over
four hundred souls.
[12] Cañon du Chelly, in Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, is a
passage through a mountain range, twenty-five miles in length, from one
hundred to five hundred yards in width, and is perhaps the strongest
natural citadel on the earth. There is but one narrow way by which a
horse can ascend its height, where a squad of soldiers could defy the
cavalry of the world.
[13] Hayden’s Survey, 1874.