The number of Pueblo or Town Indians of New Mexico and Arizona has
been variously estimated at from sixteen to twenty-five thousand. The
dumb secrecy of the red race makes it difficult for the census-taker
to reach correct figures among them. They have a suspicion that the
Sagamore with medicine-book, ink and pen has come to question them
with wicked intent; that numbering the people means plotting for
mischief; and they secrete their children and give false figures, so
it is impossible to arrive at an accurate estimate of their numbers.
In the cultured East there is a popular superstition that the noble
aboriginal soul disdains artifice, and is open as sunlight to the
sweet influences of truth and straightforward testimony:--an illusion
rising from the misty enchantments of distance. Come among them,
and you will soon learn to make allowance for every assertion; and
as for vanity and self-love I have never seen any equal that of the
children of nature debased by contact with the white men. They cannot
be instructed, because they know everything, nor surprised, because
their fathers had all wisdom before you were born. Show them the
most curious and beautiful article you possess; they survey it with
stolid composure as an object long familiar. I once saw an officer,
thinking to floor a _Caçique_, unfold the wonders of a telescope to
the untutored mind, and explain how, by bending his beady eyes to a
certain point the child of the sun might see the spots on his father;
when the blanketed philosopher coolly observed that he had often
looked through such machines. We then gave it up. Like the Chinese
they so closely resemble, nothing can be named which they did not have
ages ago; and having so long possessed all knowledge, they steadily
resist your efforts to show them their ignorance. They think themselves
the envy of the civilized world. Among such a people one soon learns
to repress assumption of superiority or effort to impress the calm
listener with your grammatical sentences. The poverty of their language
is indescribable. Where there is no writing, and of course no standard
of comparison, the change in the sound of words goes on rapidly, while
the great principle of utterance or general grammar remains. Mere
change of accent under such circumstances produces a dialect. It is
not easy to catch the lawless Indian tongues; those of the wandering
tribes are peculiarly unmanageable, and it is wise to have a common
meeting-place in the little Spanish which they pick up. They have
no preposition, article, conjunction, or relative pronoun, and to a
great degree lack the mood and tense of the verb. A dual and negative
form runs throughout the languages, and sentences are often composed,
not of the words which the objects mentioned separately mean, but of
words meaning certain things in certain connections. The disheartened
student, groping in the dark for signs and rules, and finding none,
is glad to turn from his bewildering labor to the interpreter who has
learned by ear.
The Pueblos have nineteen different villages in New Mexico, numbering
in all nearly ten thousand souls. The towns are evidently smaller than
they were formerly, as is plainly proved by ruins of houses throughout
their ancient dominion, and old worn foot-paths, abandoned or almost
untrodden, that lead from town to town, beaten by centuries of
wayfaring in some period whereof there is no history.
They are slowly decreasing in numbers, and, says a gentleman resident
among them ten years, “why they should gradually disappear like the
nomadic and warlike tribes, is a question not easily solved except by
the hypothesis that their time has come. Their great failing is lack of
self-assertion. Conquered and brought down from freedom and peace two
centuries ago, to a condition of servitude and an enforced religion,
the power of ‘The Fair God’ has rested heavily on them ever since.”
There are singular characteristics among these Pueblos. Each village
is a separate domain or clan, self-supporting, entirely independent
of the government of the other Pueblos and the great world in the
country across the Sierras where the sun rises. There is no common bond
of union among them, and so little intercourse have they with each
other that their language, everywhere subject to great mutations, is
so altered that they communicate when needful through the Spanish, of
which most Indian men understand enough to make their wishes known.
There are three dialects among the tribes of New Mexico, and three or
four more among those of Arizona. Few Indians understand more than one.
In the seven Moqui villages of Arizona, within a radius of ten miles,
three distinct tongues are spoken. The inhabitants are identical in
blood, manners, laws and mode of life. For centuries they have been
isolated from the rest of the world, and it is almost incomprehensible
to the restless, aggressive, fairer race how these Pueblos refuse any
inter-communication. Tegua and the two adjacent towns are separated
by a few miles from Mooshahneh and another pair. Oraybe is not a
great distance from both. Each mud-walled community-house has so
little interest in the others that there is neither trade nor visiting
between them. One might think the women, at least, would sometimes
pick up their knitting and go out for a little social enjoyment and
the friendly gossip so dear to the feminine heart, or that crafty
hunters, tracking deer and coyote, would follow the abandoned trails
of the forefathers winding among the towns, but they do not; they are
too sluggish and dead, and it is the rarest thing for a man to marry
outside of his own little tribe. I have heard the assertion that so
far from dying out before the march of civilization the increase goes
steadily on--not in all the tribes, but in the aggregate. It is not
true. The prehistoric ruins plainly prove that in long forgotten days
the Pueblos were numerous and powerful; a nation and a company of
nations. The Rio Grande valley was then dotted with clusters of towns,
and Santa Fé was the centre of four confederacies, and among the most
populous of cities. Down the little Rio on both banks are remains
of villages, heaps of crumbling adobes, and the unfailing sign of
fleeing tribes, scraps of broken pottery, glazed and painted with their
peculiar markings. Thinking of the bold theories about population, one
naturally asks, Who took the census when De Soto went wandering up and
down the everglades of Florida seeking the alluring, ever vanishing
Fountain of Youth.
Every Pueblo, or village, has its own officers and government
independent of all the others, and exactly the same and according to
the ancient customs. First there is the _Caçique_, chief officer of
church and state, priest of Montezuma, and director of all temporal
affairs of the pueblo. It is not known how the _Caçique_ was originally
installed in his office, he alone having power to appoint his
successor--which duty is among the first he performs after succeeding
to his office; nor can the most inquiring mind of the most energetic
newspaper correspondent discover the origin of their judicial system.
The _Caçique_, aided by three _Principales_, selected by himself,
appoints the Governor “and all the officers.” The appointments are
communicated to the council of _Principales_, and then proclaimed to
the people. No matter how weak and shrunken in numbers the tribe, it
still has its full corps of officers, all sons of Montezuma, though
evidently many generations removed from the conquering chiefs who
reveled in the jeweled halls of their illustrious ancestor.
The Governor is appointed by the _Caçique_ for one year, and is the
executive officer of the town. He is chief in power and nothing can
be done without the order of the Governor, especially in those things
relating to the political government. The position is purely honorary
as regards salary, and the honors do not cease with the office, for
the dignified place of _Principal_ is awaiting him at the close of his
term, and there is no anti-third term rule to prohibit his holding the
place many times during his life.
Immediately after the Governor succeeds to his office he repairs
to Santa Fé and seeks the agent for the Pueblo Indians to receive
confirmation. This is an empty ceremony, the agent being without the
authority to object or remove, but it is followed in obedience to
precedent and custom, and there is no harm in humoring the ambition of
the gentle wards of the government. On such days of lofty state the
happy fellow, in paint and solemn dignity, brings a silver-headed cane,
and hands it to the agent, who returns it to the Governor, and the
august inaugural ceremony is ended. Under the Mexican rule, it is said,
the new incumbent knelt before the Governor of the Territory, and was
confirmed by a process of laying on of hands, and some simple formula
of Spanish sentences.
The _Principales_, or ex-Governors, compose a council of wise men, and
are the constitutional advisers of the Governor, deciding important
questions by their vote.
The _Alguacil_, or Sheriff, carries out the orders of the Governor, and
is overseer and director of the public works.
The _Fiscal Mayor_ attends to the ordinary religious ceremonies.
The _Capitan de la Guerre_, captain of war, with his under-captains and
lieutenants, has very light duty to perform in these piping times of
peace. He is head of the ancient customs, dances, and whatever pertains
to the moral life of the people. The several priests acting under him
order the dances, and enforce special obedience of those dedicated to
any particular god or ancient order. Each of the officers has a number
of lieutenants under him.
This is a gallant array of officials for such a tribe as Tesuque,
numbering less than a hundred, or Pojouque, in all twenty-six, or Zia
fifty-eight haughty aborigines. I have not been able to find if they
have badges and insignia of office, but I do know they strut along the
streets of Santa Fé as though they were at the head of tribes like
the sands of the sea-shore, like the leaves of the forest, the stars
of heaven, according to the swelling sentences of the proud speeches
which our early friend J. F. Cooper gave his heroes. The uniform worn
is usually buckskin pants, fringed leggins, moccasins, and, in lordly
defiance of the prejudices of civilization, with untaught grace the
_Caçique_ wears his pink calico shirt outside his pantaloons. It
breezily flutters in the eternal west wind, but the sun is his father,
the earth is his mother; he heeds not that cold breath though it blow
from heights of perpetual snow. The tenderness of romance invests the
degraded descendant of the noble Aztecan, and wherever he turns, the
shades of Cooper and Prescott attend him.
As a class the Pueblos are the most industrious, useful, and orderly
people on the frontier; at peace with each other and the surrounding
Mexicans. They raise large crops of grain, ploughing with a crooked
stick, the oriental implement in the days of Moses, and frequently
stirring the soil with a rude hoe, for where irrigation is necessary
constant work is required. Threshing is done by herds of goats or
flocks of sheep, the floor being a plastered mud ring enclosed in
upright poles. The wheat is piled up in the centre, the animals are
turned into the pen, and driven round and round until the grain is all
trampled out. Then the mass is thrown into the air; the wind carries
away the broken straw, leaving the grain mixed with quantities of
gravel, sand, etc. It is washed before being ground, but the flour is
always more or less gritty. They raise corn, beans, vegetables, and
grapes, the latter rich and sweet, and own large herds of cattle and
sheep. They possess in common much of the best land of the Territory
which, for cultivation, is parceled out to the various families who
raise their own crops and take their produce to market.
Paupers and drones are unknown among them, because all are obliged to
work and make contribution to the possessions of the community to which
they belong.
At Taos nearly four hundred persons live in two buildings over three
hundred feet in length, and about a hundred and fifty feet wide at the
base. They are on opposite sides of a little creek, said to have been
connected in ancient times by a bridge, a grim and threatening fortress
of savage strength, many times attacked by the Spaniards but never
captured. If there are family feuds and quarrels, the outside world has
no knowledge of them; men, women, and children, mothers-in-law and all,
live together in absolute harmony. On the highest story a sentinel is
posted. One might think this ancient custom could be dispensed with in
the generation of peace since the American occupation, but they hold
the wise Napoleonic idea, if you would have peace be always ready for
war.
[Illustration: LIVING PUEBLO. (NEW MEXICO).]
Each Pueblo contains from one to seven _estufas_, used as a
council-house and a place of worship, where they carry on their
heathen rites and ceremonies, and deliberate on the public weal; a
consecrated spot to which women are not admitted; a senate-chamber
where long debates on public affairs are maintained, and the business
of the tribe transacted by the council of wise men, cunning prophets,
and able warriors, whose duty it is to manage the internal affairs
of the town. The Governor assembles his constitutional advisers in
the lodge, where matters are discussed and decided by the majority.
One of their wise regulations is a secret police whose duty is to
prevent vice and disorder, and report in the under-ground _estufa_ the
conduct of suspected persons. The dingy little “temples of sin,” as the
old Catholics call them, are hung round with dim and fading legends
and shadowy superstitions. Their worshipers have not the slightest
approach to music in the horrible noises they make there--a kind of
sledge-hammer beating on rude drums and blowing of ear-splitting
whistles--nor have they any idea of rhythm or poetry. No correct
tradition is kept without one of these arts, and in the absence of
all recorded law a perfect devotion to custom carries their poor
civilization forward as it was in the beginning. It keeps the Pueblos
a separate and distinct people, bounded by a dead wall of conservatism
to this day. Says the Rev. Dr. Menaul of the Laguna mission, “Religion
enters into everything they do, _i. e._ everything is done according to
ancient custom. The new-born babe comes upon the stage of life under
its auspices, is fed and clothed, or not clothed, according to custom.
It is hushed to sleep with a custom-song, gets custom-medicine, and
grows up in the very bosom of religious custom. The father plants and
reaps his fields, makes his moccasins, knits his stockings, carries the
baby on his back, in fact does all that he does in strict conformity
to custom. The mother grinds the meal, makes the bread, wears her
clothing, and keeps her house, makes her water-pots, and paints them
with religious symbols, according to custom. The whole inner and outer
life of the Indian is one of perfect devotion to religious custom, or
obedience to his faith.” And this adoration of the past makes them the
most difficult of all people to be reached by outside influence, a
rigid unbending adherence to old time observances sets their faces as
a flint against everything new and foreign, and our mission-work seems
dashing against a dead wall. Nothing is subject to change among them
except language; they have the most shifting forms of human speech, so
the students tell us, and desiring no improvement or alteration, how
can we influence them by religious teaching? How plant new ideas where
there is no room to receive them?
Of all the millions of native Americans who have perished under the
withering influence of European civilization, there is not a single
instance on record of a tribe or nation having been reclaimed,
ecclesiastically or otherwise, by artifice and argument. Individual
savages have been educated with a fair degree of success, but there is
no tribe that is not savage. The Koran says, “Every child is born into
the religion of nature; its parents make it a Jew, a Christian, or a
Magian.” These North American Indians are more alike than the children
of Japhet. Our culture is a failure offered to them, unless one can be
detached from his tribe; return him to his people, and he goes back
to the dances and incantations, the mystic lodges and time-hallowed
ceremonials of the fathers. It seems as difficult to train him as to
teach the birds of the air a new note, or the beaver another mode of
making his dam; we cannot re-create the head or the heart of the red
man. He wants his freedom, his tribe, his ancient customs; he desires
no change, and his sense of spiritual things is instinctive like a
child’s.
This rigidity of organism makes sad waste of religious teaching.
Catholic and Protestant have been alike unsuccessful. Jonathan Edwards
failed as signally as the missionaries of the Territories who have
lived among them for generations. There is a scarce perceptible
progress. The young men have no wish to be better or different from
their fathers, and they are slightly changed (can we say for the
better?) since Columbus gave to Spain the gift of the New World.
Hardest of all is it to teach the Indian how divine a woman may
be made, and it is argued that women are best fitted to reach the
burden-bearing sisters of the red race. The Quakers succeeded no
better than the Puritans, and St. Mary of the Conception was not more
discouraged than the self-sacrificing bride from New England, who comes
to the land of sand and thorn to teach the dusky mothers how to sing
and sew, and broken in health and spirit, returns to her native hills
again.
[Illustration: Zuñi War Club, Dance Ornaments, etc.]
In winter the main industry of the Pueblos is practicing for the
public dances, a training pursued with anxious care by the priesthood
dedicated to the duty, as by the ambitious danseuse who fain would copy
the famous winged sylphide leap attained by the lithe limbs and flying
feet of Taglioni.
Their Te Deum after victories, and most sacred and beloved rite, is the
_cachina_ dance, which they celebrate at certain seasons of the year
with great rejoicings. I have never seen it but am told it is full of
contortions and fantastic leaps, ending in a jerky trot, unlike polka
or mazurka, and still less resembling the gliding, sinuous action of
the world-old Teutonic waltz, most delicate modulation of graceful
movement vouchsafed the children of men.
When the Spaniards first conquered this country and imposed their
religion on the natives, the idolatrous _cachina_ was prohibited
on pain of death. History records the natives held it so cruel a
deprivation, that the interdict was one of the main causes of the
great rebellion of 1680, when Don Antonio de Oterim was Governor and
Captain General of Nueva Espagna. Many of the night dances are held
in the deepest secrecy; of these the uninitiated may not speak; but
other holy days commemorative of abundant harvests are high festivals
to which citizens of Santa Fé are cordially invited. You-pel-lay, or
the green corn dance, is a national thanksgiving involving the deepest
interest and mighty preparation, besides fasting and _purification_.
Some weeks before the carnival we accepted an invitation from the
_Caçique_ of Santo Domingo, where unusual pomp and circumstance attend
the celebration of this harvest home.
It was in the mild September. Our ambulance was roomy and comfortable,
the mules were fresh, the party just such as the dear reader loves,
the breeze sweet as the unbreathed air of Eden. I will not tire your
patience with raptures about Rocky Mountain sunlight and scenery; the
glorious peaks are always in sight, the aerial tints from the hand
of the great Master are shifting and changeable as eastern skies at
sunset--floating veils of exquisite hue hinting of a viewless glory
beyond. The wagon road is always good, and with song and story we
beguiled the way and listened with eager interest to a delightful
legend, prettily told by a reporter from St. Louis, which he said he
had from one of the medicine men of the Pueblos. All about “a spirit
yet a woman, too,” who with bright green garments and silky yellow
tresses flits above the maize fields, and in the night, robed with
darkness as a garment, draws a magic circle round them to keep off
blight and vermin.
It had rather a familiar air and flavor, and when the story was ended,
one of the audience dryly inquired if the narrator had ever heard of
Longfellow. St. Louis then came down reluctantly and confessed to
having stolen the tradition from _Hiawatha_.
We missed our way, and in consequence had to jolt over one bad hill,
so steep and cut with steps it reminded me of the gigantic precipitous
stairs in the flight of Israel Putnam, a blood-curdling picture of
affrighted rider and steed, the delight and terror of my childhood.
But this was a mighty hill of adamant, on which the flood, earthquakes
and the centuries counted only in heaven have beaten and spent their
strength in vain. We did not care for delays. Time is no object on the
frontier. We lag along with exasperating slowness if you want to get
through; are not expected at any place, sleep where the night overtakes
us, and loiter at will in no fear of being behind time or caught in
a shower, a hap-hazard, good-for-nothing way of travel which gives a
mild, game flavor to the journey. If you have a drop of gypsy blood in
you it will come to the surface, strawberry-mark and all, in New Mexico.
As we neared the village we passed pilgrims going up to the jubilee:
men, women, children in holiday attire, for once moved out of their
stony rigidity of face and mien, smiling back to their last white
molars in answer to the courteous salutations exchanged by wayfarers
everywhere in that Territory. The natives step with an easy swinging
gait, apparently untired at the end of a day’s march as in the first
hours of the morning. Their figures in motion are not without artistic
grace, expressing strength and fleetness; and when interested an alert
intelligence lights the face, but ordinarily the cold, stony apathy of
the race is its ruling characteristic. One Pueblo marching beside us
that day I shall never forget. He was a very model of sinewy strength,
a perfect mountain prince, erect and stately in his crown of green
leaves, and striped Navajo blanket draping his shoulders, held in place
by one symmetric hand. The noblest Roman wore his imperial mantle
with no better grace. The attrition of civilization fails to make our
aborigines at all like “the white brother.” These peace-loving Pueblos,
a pastoral people pursuing their simple industries and trudging to
market with their poor products, are as thoroughly Indian as the
wildest Apache, with brandished knife and dripping scalp in hand,
dancing on the battle field and whooping in triumph over the banquet of
blood.
After leaving the Israel Putnam hill we crossed a _mesa_ or table-land,
and, descending into the valley of the Del Norte descried the village
of the Santo Domingo, a tribe which numbers in all 1,129 souls.
A little way off the main road, on the bank of the river, are the
adobe houses, two stories high with the usual terraces. The roofs are
supported by pine logs, are nearly flat and covered with bark and
earth. A few miles away are the ruins of ancient Pueblos, crumbling
walls whose thickness attests their age. Like all the prehistoric
buildings, they are on a high bluff two hundred feet above the
water. All ruins have a certain pathetic interest, but we did not
turn aside to visit these, knowing it would be only a repetition of
arrowheads, stone hatchets and the tiresome pottery fragments. The old
arrowheads are mainly obsidian (_iztli_), usually black, sometimes
a smoky or brown tint. They are strewed through the earth wherever
graves of men have been found. To borrow the forcible sentence of
Holmes, “Whether the arrowheads are a hundred or a thousand years old
who knows, who cares? There is no history to the red race, there is
scarcely an individual in it. A few instincts on legs and holding a
tomahawk;--there is the Indian of all time.”
We saw a party that day hunting rabbits with clubs which they throw,
making a whirring sound like the boomerang of eastern savages. It is
the one sport in which women are allowed to take part. If in whirling
his missile a warrior misses a rabbit, which is finally killed by a
squaw, he is obliged by law or custom, which is equally strong, to
change clothes with her, and they return to the pueblo, or village,
in that guise; Hercules and Omphale. He must also keep her in fresh
meat during the next winter, serving out his term of degradation in
feminine belongings, a target for aboriginal wit, and, for the season,
the village fool. Under such humiliating penalty for failure, we may
imagine the experts throw the club with wondrous care and skill when
women join in the chase.
This joke is immemorially old, handed down from the ancients or
fathers, and is immortally fresh and delightful, tickling the fancy of
the red man.
On both sides of the river run chains of hills, those on the west side
extending inland in extensive _mesas_; and not very far away to the
southeast we trace, in aerial tints of supreme beauty, the serrated
ridges of the Sandia mountains.
Properly speaking there are but two valleys in New Mexico; the Rio
Grande and the Pecos. Should either stream go dry, starvation and
famine would follow. They flow nearly parallel, from north to south,
fifty and sixty miles apart, till they reach Texas. Skirting their
banks are the cultivated fields, making a garden beauty with their
tender verdure in contrast with the dull green of dry plains.
By the city of the saint sat a feminine mummy selling grapes. Her head
was dressed by the hands of time and nature after the style of Elisha,
which so diverted the bad boys of Bethel, and she looked immovable as
the dead.
She and her store of fruitage, were sheltered from the sun blaze in
a booth of pine boughs; a little green bower called by the orientals
_succôth_, a refreshment to the eyes in the shadeless stretch of the
parched valleys. The wattle of twigs and leaves is such as Israel
made for himself in Canaan, and men of Galilee wove together of
thick foliage on the pleasant skirts of Olivet, when they came up to
Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover; such as the Sharon peasant
yet builds for his family at the Jerusalem gate of Jaffa. There was
much beside this shady spot to remind us of Bible pictures; the low
adobe houses, the flocks with the herdsman coming to drink at the
shallow stream, the clambering goats in scanty pastures high up
the rocks, shaking their beards at the passing strangers, the kids
bleating by their mothers, the Mexican women, straight as a rule,
carrying water-jars on head or shoulder, like maidens of Palestine.
Now and then an old black shawl, melancholy remnant of the gay rebosa,
shrouding an olive forehead, suggested the veiled face of the gentle
Rebecca. The lofty presence, the high eagle features of the Jewish
race, the lustrous eyes of the Orient are not here, nor is the barren
magnificence of New Mexico more than a suggestion of the land once the
glory of all lands, with its verdure of plumy palms, beauty of olive
orchards, the dark foliage of cypress trees, and white and scarlet
blooms of orange and pomegranate.
These thoughts pass through our mind as we wait in the wagon while the
driver, a Mexican boy, bargains with Pharoah’s daughter for the day’s
supply of grapes. We get three fine bunches for five cents, rich and
nourishing, grown in sandy river bottoms irrigated with alkali water.
They are sweet as the ripest Italian vintage in terraced vineyards,
warmed by the volcanic heat throbbing in the fiery heart of Vesuvius.
For market, the purple clusters are laid lightly in crates made of
pine branches thick as your thumb, bound together by green withes of
bark, lined with fresh leaves and packed on the backs of _burros_, the
scriptural ass. The vine is not allowed to run, but is kept trimmed
close to the ground. Every year the branches are cut near to the parent
stock, which is rarely more than four feet high.
The forlorn little town, built round a central plaza, was swept and
garnished ready for the holiday, and having shaken off its usual
drowse appeared quite lively. We were escorted with much dignity to
an honored seat on one of the flat roofs reached by a rickety ladder.
There the ancient patriarchs of the tribe, too old to take the field,
were gathered, and with them old witches without witching ways,
wrinkled, withered, graceless, seated in the favorite aboriginal pose
on their heels. The preliminary ceremony was held a few days before,
when the first ears of corn began to ripen. They were gathered by the
women, and, like the Jewish first fruits, the wave-offering in the
temple, were brought with solemn reverence to the high priest, who
alone has the right to husk them for ascertaining if the promise of a
fair harvest is assured. This done, criers were sent through the town
announcing to the people that, from his bright sun-house the god of the
Pueblos had smiled upon his children in bountiful crops, and they must
meet at high noon on a certain day and render unto him thanksgiving and
praise.
The burning sky of noon, where no cloud flings a cooling shadow,
scorches the valley with tropic fervor, but these children of the
wilderness love its parching heat and open the solemnities when the
flooding light is at meridian.
In the centre of the open plaza four large camp-kettles of boiling corn
were swung gypsy fashion over separate fires. The tops of the poles
were adorned with twelve ears of corn representing the twelve months
of the year. Each one was watched by four men, naked to the waist,
with bodies painted white, red, green, and blue. They are the four
seasons, and are elected for their skill in singing and great powers
of endurance. Their duty was to dance round the kettles, keep up the
fires, and sing songs to Montezuma and the unnamed god, keeping time
with a cornstalk on the edge of the kettle. Did my reader ever hear
Indian singing? He need never want to. It is a long-continued strain
of unearthly howls and yells of the sort to drive one crazy, to make
your flesh, aye, the very marrow of your bones creep.
At exactly noon the grand procession moved, led by three Sagamores,
holy heralds marching ahead, solemn and still as sphinxes. Then came
thirty-five men, the dancers proper, naked except a small embroidered
blanket, but appearing clad by reason of a coating of white paint
barred with blue. Their legs and arms were striped with red, white, and
blue; green hemlock wreaths mixed with red berries of the mistletoe
circled their arms above the elbow.
The same ornamentation served as bracelets, anklets and necklaces, and
resting on the thick black locks, newly washed with amolé and glossy
as a blackbird’s throat, were crowns of gray eagle plumes. The effect
of this adorning was that of a festal robe, unique and strikingly
picturesque. Around the knees of the main actors were bands of red
cloth to which hung small shells of the ground-turtle, eagle claws,
and antelope hoofs; and dangling from the back at the waist was a fox
tail or a fur robe, the skin of such wild animals as were killed by the
wearer during the year. They walked in Indian file, each appearing to
tread in the same track, bending forward as if weighted down with corn,
which fiction is part of the play.
The musicians were placed in a conspicuous part of the plaza in the
chief seats of the synagogue such artists love. One had a drum,
(_tombe_) which he beat unmercifully, another clashed clanging, banging
things like cymbals, and a castinet player dextrously rattled deer
hoofs after the manner of the jolly end man, our friend and brudder
Bones. One ambitious artist performed on an ornamented whistle made
from the bone of a wild turkey’s wing, blowing shrilly with unlimited
breath, as St. Louis observed, _sotto voce_, loud enough to split the
ears of corn. There was, besides, a heathenish instrument of torture,
whose name I failed to obtain, consisting of half a gourd with the
convex side up; on this was placed with the left hand a smooth stick
and across it the right hand drew backward and forward a notched stick
in a sawing manner, making a sound like the grinding of corn in the
_metate_. Luckily this machine does not make much racket, but what
there is, is of the quality calculated to turn one goose-flesh. The
sound of filing saws is rich melody in comparison.
The three sphinxes, members of the council who headed the procession,
made a short speech before each house, the occupants being outside
and waiting. At special places they joined the choral howling of the
trains, which proceeded with the dire monotony of everything Indian.
Thus they went from house to house till every one was serenaded, and
from each roof corn was handed and added to the common stock. My
knowledge of San Domingan being rather limited, I am unable to furnish
a correct report of the brief speeches. Doubtless they were like white
men’s public occasions; carefully prepared impromptu. These ended, they
sung and danced to the plaza, circling round the boiling kettles, in
one hand rattling a sacred gourd containing grains of corn, and covered
with tribal symbols and ancestral totems marked in red paint; in the
other swinging a quantity of _tortillas_ (rolls of corn bread) tied
together with thread, like a bunch of cigars.
The corn is a species of the very hard flint. The grains yellow or
bluish black and red, sometimes all three on one cob. The stalk is
perhaps four feet high, the ears growing near the ground. Thin corn
cakes, _tortillas_, are the principal food of Mexican and Indian, and
the women pride themselves on the skill and speed with which they
make them. The shelled grains are boiled in water with a little lime
to soften the skin so that it can be pulled off, then it is ground
into meal by mashing with a long round stone, like our rolling-pin,
against an oblong, slightly hollowed stone called a _metate_. A little
water is added, making it the consistence of gruel, and it is baked in
thin cakes on hot stones or griddles of tin or copper. When done they
are the color of a hornet’s nest and tasteless as white paper. Once
accustomed to them strangers become very fond of _tortillas_.
At an appointed signal the corn was taken from the kettle, burnt in the
consecrated fire, and the ashes sprinkled over the fields to insure
a good crop next year; then another fire was kindled, and kettles
re-filled with corn, and when boiled freely distributed to all the
people, who heartily enjoyed the banquet.
Such is the green corn dance; a yearly delight celebrated in the
changeless fashion set before these people in the primeval years. New
and startling figures are not in the program. Their ambition is to do
all according to the traditions of the elders. As the day advanced the
ecstacy increased, the dancers shuffled and hopped as if they would
shuffle off this mortal coil. Convulsive stamping and leaping made
with frantic gestures; the din of savage minstrelsy; the guttural,
unrhythmed voices and the hideous “_tombe_,” a hollow log covered at
the ends with dried hide, made a barbaric uproar that lingers long on
senses attuned to harmony.
I must not close without mention of the dogs of You-pel-lay. Admitted
to that equal sky, they were given the right to a voice in the matter
and toward evening they embarked in a tumultuous, unearthly fantasia.
As we scaled the Israel Putnam hill the soft night wind fell on our
hot, tired faces like the cool touch of holy water, and floated after
us the farewell symphonies of the revelry. And they were all pow-wow
and bow-wow.
Perhaps the classic reader, if I am so fortunate as to have one, may
be reminded in this festival of the haunted vale of Enna and its
lovely fables; mythic stories filled with hidden meaning veiled by the
splendors of the Eleusinian mysteries. It is the instinctive spirit
of gratitude to the Lord of the harvest, the keeper of the destinies;
and the poverty of this race and their rude rites are to the genius
and varied wealth of ancient Greece only the difference of blood and
civilization everywhere between the Old World and the New.
The squaws wear no wreaths and have no share in these ceremonials, but
adoring women are the same the world over, and out of their own hearts
create the glory and beauty of the shrines where they burn precious
incense and kneel for worship. They looked on in secret rapture with
love-light in their eyes, an expression I have seen in the face of a
listening wife in the senate gallery, when the man foremost of all
the world to her speaks the words which thrill the crowd to silence.
In Santo Domingo there is no noiseless telegraphy of swimming eye or
waving hand. Little does the sullen red sachem care for the subtle
flattery of loving admiration.