The minds of men untrained are strangely alike. There is such sameness
of arts, customs, inventions, such likeness in their religious beliefs
under like stages of development, we must reach the conclusions that
on subjects of deep human interest certain ideas are inherent in
human hearts, despite alien blood and long epochs of separation. All
barbarians have their priests or medicine men and prophets, are firm
believers in necromancy, incantations, the power of witchcraft, and
have deep faith in the great Spirit as the peculiar guardian of their
race. Some tribes have a fear of the devil who must be worshipped
in order to be propitiated. With them old times are best, and all
traditions run back to a golden age of innocency in a Region of Delight
where the rivers sparkled with sweet water, the maize was always
ripe, and high born warriors revelled and feasted on the game ever in
sight. There was no work, no disease, no old age. This Elysium was
lost by crime, and the Arcadian days ended forever. The sinful world
was destroyed by a Flood from which only one prophet and his family
escaped. Every Rocky Mountain tribe has its legend of the deluge and
belief in the second coming of the Divine Man who is to right all
wrongs, correct all miseries and mistakes; returning some bright
morning to renew the dull world to youth, and then Paradise will be
regained. For this revelation they wait, as the prophetic souls were
found waiting to be guided by the star which led to the divine child of
Mary.
The Pueblos jealously guard their wretched little chapels (_estufas_)
from the prying eyes of strangers, and the gentlest of visitors is
rebuffed by their dumb secrecy. In different ways I have gathered many
traditions. Some are childish and witless to my understanding; others
wearing symbolic veils are graceful as the Greek myths, and hold a
significance as rich. Fables of the nomads will do for another day. The
Pueblos take our attention first. The great variety of climate in North
America produces various habits of life which temper and color the
fables; and I believe there is no myth without some meaning. The vapory
conceits we treat so lightly were not empty phantasms to the brain that
shaped them in the beginning, and some heart has thrilled to each airy,
insubstantial legend.
Certain old instincts run in all bloods. The inborn desire of the
soul to account for its origin, to ask whence come I, what am I,
perplexes the bewildered savage burrowing in his cave as it did the
learned questioners, a mixed multitude crowding the Academy, reverently
listening to the wondrous maid of Alexandria--Hypatia the Beautiful.
What is truth? asked the Governor of Judea as truth Incarnate stood
before him in the Judgment Hall; and men are yet demanding of science,
nature, philosophy, the origin of being, the destinies, the soul and
its limitations. Turning from the seen to the unseen, from the outer to
the inner life, from the tangible to the unreal, longing to know the
beginning and the end of all. It is the old yearning to be as God; old
as the first man. To comprehend the stirring of the divinity within,
which neither feeds nor sleeps but lives on separate from the body,
opens endless questioning. This is the study of sages; about it the
wisest debate and ponder, and of it the savage, blanketless and naked,
where the soft seasons allow him to roam, asks with a blind ignorance
infinitely pathetic.
To him the hidden forces which rule the universe are divinities to
be entreated by prayer, propitiated by sacrifice and offerings. The
savage’s whole life is penetrated by religion, from the hard little
cradle to which he is swathed, to the shallow pit where he lies
uncoffined when life’s struggle is over.
The tribes near Santa Fé and the larger American towns of New Mexico
have mixed the religion of Christ with the old superstitions in a
curious, almost painful manner. I once visited Tesuque with a view
to gaining some knowledge of their primitive ceremonials. The usual
protracted smoking was indulged in; there followed a stupid meaningless
silence, considered the height of politeness; then we partook of
cold refreshments consisting of little apples carefully wiped on the
sheepskin which covered baby’s cradle as a blanket. We climbed the
rickety ladders, admired the excellence of the bearskins, counted the
bags of shelled corn and rough potteries baked in their mud furnaces,
surveyed a chromo in feverish colors named the Queen of Heaven, and
when the time was ripe I modestly inquired if we might be permitted to
visit the _estufa_. The head man of the tribe (cacique) whom we named
Hiawatha, smiled blandly, showing ivory white teeth without a flaw,
and said “Si, Sigñora,” with a cheerful alacrity quite foreign to the
usual aboriginal stoicism. We followed him into the courtyard and
Minnehaha followed us and stonily stared. The dusky maiden in the march
of progress is escaping from buckskin draperies. She wears the garment
called by the French _intimate_, skirt of Navajo blanket, black ground
with tracings of red embroidery, not unlike the familiar Greek pattern,
calico shawl gay as the scarf of Iris. She is without beauty of any
sort; is raw boned and high shouldered, inclining to fat; of an ashy
sunburnt skin, flat face, high cheek bones, thick lips, mannish gait,
harsh voice. She is nearly akin (if there’s anything in likeness) to
the Mongolian Ah Sin, and to ward off the sun that day carried a yellow
parasol over her heavy head. They all stared unmoved as we climbed a
ladder leaning against the side of a high pen made of pine logs and
mud plaster,--a roofless enclosure perhaps eighteen feet square. As we
looked down, a number of birds like swallows flew out, and save their
mud-built nests against the logs the ancient _estufa_ was empty. The
old arrow-maker was joking when he conducted us to the altar place;
the shrine was abandoned, the sacred fire was dead, the secret temple
with all its holy and guarded mysteries was laid open to women even!
It was plain the Queen of Heaven had usurped the place of the lord of
life and light. The chief smiled broadly and Minnehaha wrapped the pink
calico rebosa round her head and laughed as if she would die. I hate
to be beaten in this way, and while the gentlemen went off to look
at a bear skin, I approached the youthful princess in the attitude
of interviewer. “Gentle maiden,” I said, mustering my small stock
of Spanish, “do you remember when the Montezuma fire burned in this
deserted _estufa_?”
“Si, Sigñora.”
“Was it many years ago?”
“Si, sigñora.”
“Perhaps fifteen years?” (insinuatingly).
“Si, sigñora.”
“Ah, can you remember so long? What sort of wood was consecrated to the
shrine?”
“Si, sigñora.”
“Did it flame up to the roof, or was it merely a bank of coals; your
mother” (tenderly) “has told you of it I know.”
“Si, sigñora.”
“Then tell me all you know, if it will not trouble you too much, and I
promise you a beautiful string of blue beads.”
“Si, sigñora.”
This intellectual feast was broken up by an untimely giggle from a
gentle maiden not of aboriginal blood, and we made our adieux. I
afterward learned the sweet girl was only shamming; she understood
Spanish well enough, but chose this pretense to outwit strangers. A
distinguished success.
We were completely floored and made haste to cover our retreat by
leaving the mud-walled village for a nooning and lunch under a
clump of gnarled cedars hard by. The Indian is not disappearing at
a satisfactory rate before the march of civilization. A swarm of
children, the dirtiest and raggedest imaginable, followed us and
held out their hands for the remains of our lunch. The biscuits were
snatched by a youthful Indigene like the greedy boy of the First Reader
who refused to give his dear playmates a crumb of his cake, and I had
to fairly slap his hands to make him divide. He then swallowed the
lemon rinds and would have devoured the sardine boxes if he could. So
much alike are the sons of men!
To reach the old superstitions in their purity we must push away from
the track of the locomotive; far as possible from censer and cross,
parish priest and Protestant missionary. So we set out with the
determination of the mythic Roton, who resolved to go till he arrived
at the roof of heaven; away to the Moquis of the North and the Papagos
of the South. Below the Gila dwell in close neighborhood the Maricopas
and the Pimos, or as the old Spaniards wrote it Pimas, whom they found
three hundred years ago irrigating the lands and raising two crops of
corn a year, just as they do now. The Coco-Maricopas are a branch of
the Pueblos, and these tribes inhabit a large region, mostly perfect
desert, between the head of the Gulf of California and that extensive
cordillera of which the Sierra Catalina forms the most westerly range.
A volcanic country in which since the introduction of man, the surface
of the earth as well as the climate has undergone great changes.
After straining over scorching deserts, alkali plains, sage bush and
greasewood wastes, it was a deep pleasure to rest our tired eyes on
the bright corn lands on both sides of the river Gila, which runs
through the Pimo reservation about twenty-five miles. The three great
_acequias_ with their various branches comprise nearly five hundred
miles, and extend over a tract of land eighteen miles in length. The
fields are fenced with crooked sticks, wattled with brush, mainly
of the thorny cactus and mezquit. The Salic or rather Slavic law
prevails among the aborigines. Instead of studying graceful culture and
decorative art, the farming is done by the women. When harvest time
comes, the men turn into the fields and help, besides lightening the
labor by standing around in the shade and looking on, or sprawling on
the floor swinging the baby as it hangs suspended in a box, hanging by
a cord from the ceiling. Sometimes the mother carries a large basket
on her head and the papoose sitting on a sort of side-bustle astride
her hip. A civilized baby would tumble off instantly, but the native
infant holds on to her smooth, shining sides in an attitude wonderfully
like the missing link, our Simian ancestor, riding the calico pony in
gay circus ring. This baby does not cut monkey-shines, but stares at
the stranger as stolidly as his father and mother. The Pimo customs are
like the Coco-Maricopas in everything but burial rites. They bury their
dead but their neighbors burn them. The Maricopa bodies are placed on a
funeral pyre of resinous wood and utterly consumed, in classic fashion.
Reporters say the mourners go into a profound mourning of tar. On
inquiry I learned the “tar” is a portion of the ashes of the dear
deceased mixed with the dissolved gum of the mezquit, (a species of
acacia which yields a concrete juice like gum arabic). They smear their
faces with the hideous plaster, and let it remain as a mark of deep
grief till it wears away. A widow, the next day after her bereavement,
is offered in market by the town crier to any one who wants a wife. If
an able-bodied squaw, good at hoeing, and stout enough to balance the
baby on top of the basket of corn overhead, she is usually courted,
“wooed, won, married and all” within a few days, though custom allows
her to continue the periodic howling and tar deep-mourning several days
after the new honeymoon begins to shine.
I was charmed at thought of being among Pagans assisting at such
heathen obsequies, and felt it the spot to find the ancient lore I
sought, through many a weary mile of lava bed and tropic scorch. I
was among the changeless, unimpressible American Indians, living
among demons and goblins, spirits of earth, air, fire, water, whose
beliefs are untainted by mixture of Christian ideas. Here I discovered
the flickering, mythic lights which produce such lovely effects,
changing gods to men, and making demigods of heroes. Among these
untutored children of nature, every misty outline and vapory mountain
haze might be an aboriginal soul floated out into the unknown dark
on its wanderings toward the bright sun house. In the shadows of
vast cañons the block elves have their haunts, and lie in wait for
bewildered spirits, and hurl spectral missiles along the pathless
space surrounding “the dance house of the ghosts.” The Pueblos are all
sun-worshippers, and the Pimos tell us the road to the sun house is
beset with perils. In the darkness of the dread mystery of death, deep
waters are to be crossed, many-headed monsters bellow and roar, fire
flames before the eyes, and whirlwinds lift the affrighted spirit from
his feet and toss him in mid air. Four is a sacred number with them,
derived from adoration of the four cardinal points; the soul flutters
about the body four days, and sometimes stones are thrown across the
warrior’s grave to scare away the evil spirits. In the unlighted valley
the brave must be provided with a pipe for his solace, with weapons
suited to his rank, choice armor approved to fit him as he enters the
kingdom of souls. Lifeless, he may yet grope through the cold clay,
and touching with icy fingers the trusted arms, will not tremble in
defenceless march through the horror of the awful shades.
Is this not the instinct of the antique Scythian buried on the field
with the blade in which victory still lingers? The pathos of the singer
breaking his heart and harp together:
“Lay his sword by his side, it hath served him too well
Not to rest near his pillow below;
To the last moment true, from his hand ere it fell
Its point was still turned to a flying foe.
Fellow-lab’rers in life, let them slumber in death,
Side by side, as becomes the reposing brave,--
That sword which he loved still unbroke in its sheath,
And himself unsubdued in his grave.”
Four days the howlers howl, and further to cheer the dread passage
four nights a fire is kindled on the warrior’s grave to open a path
for the blinded footsteps in the fearful “dead man’s journey,” and
lead them to the sun, the safe, final resting place. There the chief
will take up his weapons again and spend a blissful eternity fighting
his old enemies, the Yumas, and we may be sure slaying his thousands
and revelling in blood, like the Viking in the halls of the Valhalla,
with his comrades hacked to pieces in many a morning fight, but always
ready with whole limbs and flashing, undinted armor, to appear at
dinner. Food is placed on the fresh earth, the best corn bread, flesh
of antelope and jars of water, that the lone one may be comforted by
gifts from the world he has left. These tender offerings bestowed, the
property of the hero is portioned out to the tribe, fields divided
among those who need land, his grain, chickens, dogs, bows, etc.,
fairly distributed. No wrangling among heirs, no lawyers to absorb
estates, all is done fairly and equitably, in a submission to precedent
worthy our imitation.
Nor do the Pimos refuse to be comforted. Cattle are driven up and
slaughtered, and deeply burdened with sorrow, every man loads down his
squaw with beef, and feasts whole days on funeral baked meats. Dare I
disgust my dear friend, the classic reader, by saying these barbarian
feasts are reminders of the tremendous banquet in the pavilion of
Agamemnon, where the “steer of full five years” was killed, skinned,
and cooked before the eyes of the Grecians.
Homeric champions--Trojan peers and sceptered kings of Greece--were not
made wretched by indigestion, and I suspect (low be it spoken!) they
took pepsin in the natural state. With their enviable appetites they
were ready to eat off-hand; the squarest of meals never came amiss, and
their capacity for tough beef, rare done, was prodigious and unfailing.
So far very like our Rocky mountaineers, but unhappily the red warriors
are not embalmed in verse by the imperishable poets.
When the Indian woman dies no high sepulchral feasts, no games and
honors, such as Ilion to her hero paid. With scant ceremony she is
wrapped in her poor shroud, the moccasins of her own make fastened to
her shapely feet; the carrying-strap worn across the forehead, and the
paddle go with the cold hands. Sad emblem of woman’s destiny in the
wilderness; pathetic tokens that even in the mystic land of shades she
must be the silent, uncomplaining slave of her brutish, savage lord.
This is the Pimo legend of the Creation: The world was made by an
earth prophet. In the beginning it stretched fair and frail as a line
of light across the darkness of empty space. A wise Sagamore lived
in the Gila valley, and one night a royal eagle came to the door and
warned him of a deluge close at hand. The prophet wrapped his mantle
of fur around him, for it was winter, and laughed the gray messenger
to scorn. The kingly bird shook his white head, spread wide his wings
and soared away to heaven. Again the eagle came with his warning cry,
the waters were near and would soon burst overhead; but the sachem
drowsily groaned at the wakening voice and turned on his bed of buffalo
skins and slept. Three times the broad wings shadowed the sleeper, and
the friendly voice entreated him to flee the wrath of the gods, but
the prophet gave no heed. Then quick as the eagle disappeared in the
blue and starry silence, there came thunder, lightning, and a mountain
of water like an earthquake overspread the valley of Gila, and the
morning sun shone on only one man saved from destruction by floating
on a ball of resin--Szeukha, the son of the Creator. He was enraged at
the royal bird, thinking him the mover of the flood, and made a rope
ladder of tough bark like the woodbine, climbed the naked, riven cliff
where the eagle lived, and slew him. He then raised to life the mangled
bodies of the slain on which the eagle had preyed, and sent them out to
re-people the world. In the centre of the vast eyrie he found a woman,
the eagle’s wife, and their child. These he helped down the rope ladder
and sent on their way, and from them are descended that race of wise
men called Hohocam, ancients or grandfathers, who were guided in all
their wanderings by an eagle. Southward they marched past forests of
oak, sycamore, cedar and flowering trees, past mountains of crystal and
gold, and rivers murmurous with song flowing over beds of stars, till
they reached a deep blue lake kissed by soft winds, sparkling in the
sunlight. On its borders they planted a city with streets of water--old
Tenochtitlan, which white men call Mexico. Through the uncounted
centuries since the deluge, Szeukha has not dropped out of Indian
memory.
Because he killed the bird of prophecy he had to do a sort of penance,
which was never to scratch himself with his nails but always with a
little stick. The custom is still adhered to by the unchanging Pimos,
and a splinter of wood, renewed every fourth day, is carried for this
purpose, stuck in their long coarse hair and plied with extreme energy
and enjoyment. Stern are the duties of the historian, and truth obliges
me to record the Pimos do not scratch their heads for nothing.
They are good fighters, and have been a wall of defence against the
incursions of Apaches, at one time the only protection for travellers
between Fort Yuma and Tucson. They appear comfortable in their
huts,--which are snug dens of oval shape made of mud and reeds thatched
with _tule_ or wheat straw,--quietly contented with their industrious
wives and their own lazy selves. They make a kind of wine like sour
cider, not nearly so good though, and quaff the vinegar bowl with
sombre hilarity after the corn bread and mutton are disposed at dinner.
The tributaries of the Gila bear sweet, soft, meandering Spanish names
which I forget. They are rivers of the leaky sort, disappearing by
fitful turns and capriciously starting up again in the deeply worn
channels. Even in its best strength the Gila (river of swift water) is
not so large as an Indiana creek which we would blush to call river. It
contains three kinds of fish; trout, buffalo, and humpback, all equally
mean, of slippery, muddy, flavor and most inferior quality.
Not far from the Pimo villages, eleven in number, are the written
rocks, mentioned in the oldest histories and described at length
by the early explorers and the modern traveller. At the base of an
immense bluff are heaps of boulders covered with figures of men and
animals, rudely carved with some coarse instruments. Uncouth shapes of
birds, footprints, snakes, and the ever recurring print of a moccasin,
indicative of marching. Many writers attach a value to these ancient
inscriptions; one old Spanish adventurer discerned in them letters like
the Gothic, Hebrew and Chaldean characters. They are not there to-day;
among hundreds of piled-up boulders and detached stones there is no
tracery like the letters of any known language. Some of the markings
are centuries old and partly effaced, others written over and over
again. The under sides of the rocks, also, are sculptured where it
would be impossible to cut them as they lie, and some weigh many tons.
These last must have fallen from the mountain after the hieroglyphs
were made. There can be no doubt of their great antiquity and the
large numbers of carved stones prove it to have been a resort ages on
ages ago, but I doubt the importance of the lines, to me meaningless
zigzags. Indians are the laziest of mortals, and in their childish way
love to scribble worthless signs, rude pictography on their skins and
the hides of animals, their walls and potteries. The “Pedros Pintados”
which took such hold on Spanish imagination were probably boundary
lines between tribes, and the tortoise, snake and so on are the ancient
tribal symbols, treaties possibly. If they had the deep significance
claimed by easily excited chroniclers the story would run like this:
The sons of the North have waded a lake of blood, have swept like the
whirlwind across the Sierras; the bow has rattled, the arrow flew. We
have broken the bones of the Apaches, scooped out their eyes and warmed
our hands in their smoking blood. We have scalped the proud warriors
and beaten out the brains of their children. Whoop la! Now let the
earth tremble, for the wolves are let loose on the slain!
There are widely scattered ruins in the Gila valleys showing it was
once densely populated, but the remains are so monotonous they command
little interest. The visitor who has seen one has the type of all.
A certain melancholy pathos invests every ruin; houses where men
have lived and died are more or less haunted, but the relics of New
Mexico and Arizona are destitute of anything like grace or comeliness.
The makers and builders never got beyond the rough adobe, the stone
hatchet and flint arrow-head, and nothing is proved by them except that
this country has been inhabited from a remote period by a people not
differing greatly from the Pueblos of to-day.
As we journeyed up the valley we saw herds of antelopes, always too
distant for a shot. The Rocky mountain antelope is a most beautiful
and graceful animal, of compact form and exceeding strength. The lithe
limbs are delicate and fleet, feet small and elegant, tail short and
tufted. It is light fawn color, under parts white; its luminous dark
eyes are like those of the gazelle of the Orient. Shy and not easily
approached the Indians domesticate them by trapping when very young.
They have the gentlest, most confiding way of laying their heads in
your lap, and looking up with the lustrous eyes which have furnished
poets with lovely imagery from the days of Solomon to the nights of
Byron. I know no creature with such an appealing manner and such swift
grace of movement; they speed across the still, wide plain, in the
farness of the distance appearing like low flying birds.
Though we are not in the Navajo country we see now and then their
famous blanket, striped in gayest blue, yellow and red, this last
color so dear to the Indian eye, made from ravelling out flannel which
they buy of the white traders. The dyes are vegetable and absolutely
fadeless. The blanket is coarse, hard and heavy; a good one will shed
water like rubber, and wear a great while as a horse or saddle blanket.
The Indian women spin wool in a slow, simple way by rolling in their
hands, and they spend all their spare time for months in making one
blanket which may sell for thirty-five dollars, or if very brilliant
in color and close in texture, for fifty or a hundred dollars. When
on the march even, the Navajo woman has her little contrivance for
weaving, on the mule with her, or across her shoulder if on foot, and
in five minutes after the halt is sounded she sits under a tree weaving
away as composedly as though she had been at it for hours. The loom is
nothing but sticks placed horizontally, one at top, two at bottom, far
enough apart to accommodate warp of the blanket’s length or breadth.
Between these the warp is stretched, and to one straps are attached
to throw over the limb of a tree. At the bottom are other straps, for
the feet to operate in beating up the filling. In her silent, joyless,
persevering fashion the work goes steadily on, and the weaver is
satisfied to see it grow at a rate incalculably slow.
A sufficient measure of civilization is the treatment of women, and
among Apaches we find the deepest degradation. The Pueblo wives are
incomparably better off than those of the nomads. The contrast between
them and their sisters of the fairer race is more painful than that
between men of the two races. I have seen young hunters with stately
forms, erect, lithe and sinewy, and one warrior who might have been a
model for Uncas, the favorite hero of our early friend Cooper.
We all remember the anecdote Galt tells of Benjamin West. When in Rome
his friends agreed that the Apollo of Vatican should be the first
statue shown to the young Philadelphia Quaker. It was enclosed in a
case, and to try the effect on him suddenly the keeper threw open the
doors. “A young Mohawk warrior,” exclaimed West.
But the likeness is only in the body. The ideal head of the Apollo with
its clustering locks, the exquisite sensitive face with its delicate
molding of lip and chin, the Phidian forehead and nose, are in highest
contrast with the sensual, sluggish lineaments of the red man.
Among the various tribes there is a dire monotony, and in nothing are
they more alike than in a lofty scorn of work. The man glories in his
laziness, the woman exults in her slavery. I have seen an Indian try
a heavy lift and set the bag of corn down again with a “Ugh! squaw’s
work.” If we insinuate he should do the little hoeing for their scant
supply of beans the woman resents the idea. “Would you have a warrior
work like a squaw?” is her indignant response to the suggestion.
I once saw a married couple trudging home, if their cold, smoky, dirty
den may be called by that dear name. The husband, perhaps twenty steps
in advance of the woman who bore on her back a bag of corn. The noble
red man (see J. F. Cooper), waited for her to come up to him, she
hastening her pace as she saw it. Then he slung his rifle on her pack,
folded his arms across his noble breast, and strode forward with easy
gliding step, in untrammeled dignity. How I longed to hand that noble
red man over to the mercies of a woman’s rights convention.
The husband may disfigure or insult the wife at pleasure, divorce
her without form or ceremony by a mere separation, and she has no
protection or appeal; sometimes his conduct drives her to suicide.
In divorce it is the unwritten law of the wilderness that children
go with their mother. Among the wandering tribes mother and baby are
not divided even in death. A merciful barbarity gives one blow with
the hatchet, and the little one rests with the best love it can know
on earth. They have few children; four are a large family, twins
are unknown, nearly all reach maturity. Among the wild tribes where
polygamy is the rule it is not a cause of complaint among the women,
from the fact that it implies a division of labor, and the latest wife
lords it over her predecessors. Even among savages there is no love
like the last love.
The Pimo Indians are not made of “rose-red clay,” they are dark brown,
differing in complexion from the Appalachians east of the Rocky
mountains and the olive hues of the California tribes. Historians say
they have ever been the most active and industrious of the Pueblos;
still that does not imply the energy and activity of the white race.
They sit for hours in front of their huts, motionless as a group of
petrifactions. In a mild climate their wants are few and simple, and a
little of this world’s goods obtained without much work and less worry
is sufficient for the calm philosophers who despise the arts of the
white race and steadily march in the paths of the forefathers.
I must not leave their country without mention of the wooing of the
young Pimo warrior. All Pueblos have but one wife, and no girl is
obliged to marry against her will, however eligible the parents may
consider any offer. If his bent of love be honorable, his purpose
marriage, Romeo first wins over the parents by making them presents,
such delicacies as pumpkins, beans, coyote skins, or if he is very
wealthy a pony. Then, in banged locks and straggling braids of hair,
he sits at the door of the lady of his choice serenading her for
hours, day after day, tooting with all his might on a flute of cane,
an instrument of torture with four holes in it. He hides himself in a
bush and like the nightingale “sings darkling.” Sometimes Juliet is a
coquette and takes no notice of the tender demonstration, leaving him
to keep up the plaintive, shrill noise till
“Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.”
If no notice is taken of the appeal there is no further sign; he
may hang up his flute, with its bright pencillings and gayly tufted
fringes, and there is no mortification in the rejection. Should she
smile on his suit she comes out of the coop-like den and the ceremony
is ended. Romeo takes her to his house and the bride is at home. If he
is a man of moderate means the house is built of four upright stakes,
forked at one end, driven into the ground; across these other sticks
are laid to support the roof, which may be of corn shucks, or straw
or rushes. If he is ambitious to have a lasting, palatial mansion
it will be walled round with stakes, plastered and roofed with mud.
An opening for a door is left about three feet high to creep in at.
These residences are from five to seven feet high, so one cannot stand
upright in every one. Adjoining the wigwam is a bower of boughs open on
all sides; in this shady lodge are the few potteries in which Juliet
does the cooking, and here the happy pair sit on their heels when at
rest, and Romeo smokes while she grinds the corn in the _metate_ of
stone.
It is expected that the bridegroom will pay the parents all his means
admit to compensate them for the loss of a hand in the cornfield. The
Indian wife never hears of protoplasm, equal suffrage, social science
and the like. She often builds the wigwam after Romeo has cut the
poles, always bears them on her shoulders in the march, plows the
fields with a crooked stick, raises the beans, hoes the corn, bakes
the cakes, without a complaint. If her beady, black eyes mark his
coming and look brighter when he comes I cannot tell why. He is sullen
and still, a dusky shape, the very perfection of gloomy indifference.
Perhaps if he eats the _tortillas_ with an appetite her soul is glad
and she has her reward. If she is content, why sow the seeds of
dissatisfaction by telling her she is a beast of burden and he is a
beast of prey?
The trip through the Pimo country was made memorable by my first
bivouac. ’Twere vain to tell thee all; how a mule drank alkali water,
swelled up and died in an hour, how part of the party had to push
forward with a disabled team, leaving a broken wagon and luggage to
wait the relief, and how a long, hot day brought us to a government
station. This was a mud shanty thatched with cedar boughs and plastered
with clay. The edifice was divided into three rooms, the first was a
stable where a gay little pony was pacing round and round without a
halter. The next was the guest chamber. As I approached, there issued
from it a fragrance, the triple extract of raw hide, burnt bacon and
old pipe. The apartment, perhaps sixteen feet square, was without door
or window. The “accommodations” were a mud fireplace in the corner
where one might make coffee and fry eggs, and a pile of sheepskins on
which the visitor might spread his blanket and sleep,--if he could. The
cedar and mud roof slanted as though it would tumble down any minute.
The clay floor was unswept, the walls fringed with cobwebs and adorned
with strings of red pepper, saddles and bridles. In one corner lay bags
of shelled corn; on a swinging shelf were newspapers, an odd volume
of Oliver Twist and sporting magazines. The third room was sacred to
herdsmen and _rancheros_. The keeper of this lodge in a vast wilderness
was a retired minstrel, and his photograph as jolly endman broadly
smiled upon us, dangling from enormous deer’s antlers which upheld
decorative art in lieu of a mantel piece. I took peaceable possession
of the only chair and my fellow traveller through life’s journey
lolled in luxurious ease on the end of a candlebox, while we surveyed
the “accommodations.” There were three chromos of Evangeline on the
walls: presumably the peddler closed out his stock there. One picture
of that melancholy maiden sitting on a nameless grave is depressing;
two are hardly endurable; three are heart-breaking. I gave way before
them and said, “We will try an Indian lodge under the open sky.” My
resolution made the idea at once become a pleasant thought. In a barren
country the householder, a pilgrim and a stranger, develops a versatile
genius second only to that of Bernini the Florentine sculptor, artist,
poet, musician, who gave an opera in Rome where he built the theater,
invented the engines, cut the statues, painted the scenes, wrote
the comedy and composed the music. In the spirit of communism which
pervades the Territories I rummaged the abandoned baggage and found
blankets, buffalo robes, a mattress, one attenuated pillow stuffed with
feathers pretty much all quill, made “riant” by a pink calico case
ruffled all round. No sham about that pillow.
A clump of stunted pines was the chamber, carpeted with the soft
needles undisturbed for ages. A Navajo blanket made a striped roof, its
weight a security against puffs of wind even if we had not fastened it
with strings and tent pins driven into the warm, gravelly sand. The
pretty recess, so like a play-house, had a fine charm; spicy with the
fresh scent of the pines, shadowed by a great rock, the pink pillow
looked rather lumpy but restful and inviting. I felt sure there were
pleasant dreams, or better yet, dreamless sleep in the unexpected
luxury.
While I smoothed its tumbled ruffles the gay troubadour came from high
pastures with his herds to let them drink at the precious spring, and
then fold them in a corral made of stakes of mezquit wattled with
cactus.
The grama grass on which they feed is described in the books as
incomparably the most nutritive in the world, which may account for
the grand development of bone in the animals throughout the region.
All the wild grasses of the country are peculiar in curing themselves
in the stalk. The grama bears no flower, shows no seed, but seems to
reproduce itself from the roots by the shooting up of young, green and
vigorous spires, which are at first inclosed within the sheaths of
their old and dried-up predecessors, which by their growth they split
and cast to earth, themselves filling their places. The vast region
swept from immemorial ages by the Apaches is covered with this sort of
low, mossy grass, and it enables those most savage of savages to make
their wonderful marches with their wiry little ponies, which endure
extraordinary fatigue so long as they have this feed in abundance, and
are allowed to crop it from native _pasturas_.
The troubadour who kept the wayside inn was a handsome scamp, a
captivating runaway from civilization, calling himself John Smith,
which I am sure is not his name. He apologized for the absence of
his cook (who had no existence on earth), and in festal mood, with
many flourishes, insisted on displaying his own skill in the culinary
science. He graduated under the celebrated Micawber many years ago, and
would like nothing better than a “hot supper of his own getting up.”
With the help of a Mexican _peon_, he deftly and rapidly concocted and
served in the Evangeline apartment various poisons, liquid and solid,
spreading them on a pine table covered with newspapers. Conspicuous
among the dishes were hot death-balls, with lightning zigzags of deadly
drugs, known on the frontier as “soddy biscuit.” Under the beguiling
name of spring lamb we had paid an exhaustive price for a section of
ancient ram which might have battered the walls of Babylon. Fire made
no impression on it, and the chops rebounded under the teeth like
India-rubber. However we had the usual reserve of crackers, ham, canned
fruit, and I drank to the general joy of the whole table in a glass of
withered lemonade. The gentlemen ate with cannibal appetite, and so far
from dropping dead, as I feared, seemed refreshed by the reflection.
The banquet ended, we insisted on music from the obscured, let me not
say fallen, star, and the banjo was brought forth from its case under
the festive board. Brudder Bones had a rich and delightful voice, and
we listened to him with unaffected enjoyment. One by one the herdsmen
came by leading their lean and thirsty sheep, making a picturesque
spectacle as they passed to the spring.
Back of the miserable hut stretched a plain, level as water, three
miles to the foot-hills; far beyond were the Sierras, purple to the
snow line, then a shining silver chain. Their unspeakable beauty haunts
me still like some enchanting vision in which I beheld a new heaven
and a new earth. Beyond the bower rose a heap of boulders, bare except
for the tall yucca’s cream-white blossoms which decked them in bridal
brightness, and a species of night-blooming cereus that with the
declining day unfolded every petal and filled the air with a fragrance
like white lilies. On a bench in front of the hut sat a prospector
and the belated travellers; lounging on blankets and skins were half
a dozen soldiers, a Pueblo Indian, a negro and a Mexican _peon_. The
banjo did its best for the musician occupying the candle box; I was
enthroned in the only chair. A mixed company, representative of the
border races.
What should we sing but “Tenting to-night boys,” and “Oft in the stilly
night,” the twilight song with its tender memories of the lost loves
buried many a year ago? Lastly, in the solemn beauty of the afterglow,
we gave “John Brown’s Body” with a rousing chorus in honor of the
graves forever green and glorious.
A line of crimson lights flamed along the mountain peaks, then the drop
curtain of violet and pearl gray fell softly through the speckless
sapphire and over the darkening hills. ’Twas time to say good-night;
most of the herdsmen wrapped themselves in blankets and rolled like
logs on the ground; the passive ragged _peon_ bowed in courteous grace
with gently spoken _adios_, and lay against the side of the hut, his
delicate face upturned to the sky. Old uncle Ned made a tiny fire of
pine cones “to toas my feet, missis,” as he muffled head and ears in an
army coat on which a shred of shoulder strap hinted of better days. We,
too, said “good-night.” Besides the old songs my ear was haunted with
dim æolian soundings mingling an evening strain from the Koran:
“Have we not given you the earth for a bed,
And made you husband and wife?
And given you sleep for rest,
And made you a mantle of night?”
But I could not sleep thus mantled in that Eden bower. The air was so
electric that five lines of fire followed my fingers as I drew them
across the buffalo robe. I was in that state known to most women and
a few men when my eyelids would _not_ close. I felt as if the seven
doors of the enchanted lantern were opened and I could see all over
the world. There was nothing to fear, but a sense of strangeness and
awe held me. The spangled arch which upholds the throne of God,--its
splendor robbed me of my rest; my spirit was not fitted to the
magnificent infinite palace. Of the exquisite beauty of that balmy
semi-tropic night I hardly trust myself to speak. Through the soft
perfumed dusk, through the leafy tent, the stars glowed resplendent.
None missing there; the lost Pleiad found her sisters; Aldebaran
shone in the East; Arcturus and his sons; Orion belted and spurred
with jewels. The blanket slipped from its fastenings and there was
no curtaining to veil the far-off mystery of my boundless bed-room.
The cool night breeze fanned my face as I watched the lofty spaces
so solemn, so wondrous fair. I had often slept in the ambulance with
curtains close-buttoned; that was a room. The walls of this apartment
were limitless.
Restlessly turning on the pink pillow I thought of eyes that are
looking down, not up at the starry hosts, and the voice now beyond them
which used to sing to the air of “Bonnie Doon,”
“Forever and forevermore,
The star, the star of Bethlehem.”
The goats and sheep were at rest, the hurt lamb had ceased its bleat,
the light in the ranche went out. In the stilly night silence all,
save the low wind soughing in the pines making midnight hush the
deeper. The long howl of a dog in the distance. Was he barking at the
silver boat in the blue bay overhead? What sailors manned that fairy
craft? Did they understand the mysteries and could they answer my
weary questionings? What saw they in the unfathomable depths? and what
meant that signal shot from the slender bow across the trackless blue,
dropping sparkles of fire through the dusk?
Good night, Good night!
THE END.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.
Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks, except for the
frontispiece.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
The following changes were made:
Santa Fè has been changed to Santa Fé throughout.
p. 45: Taguna changed to Laguna (the Laguna mission,)