IN HOMOLOBI
Wiki made no comment when I announced our acceptance of his offer of
hospitality--if that was what it was. He merely turned on his heel
and strode off, and I was forced to extend myself to catch up with
him. Kachina elected to accompany Tawannears and Peter. The
remaining white-kilted men straggled back to resume the occupations
they had abandoned when the girl's whistle blew. Nobody paid any
more attention to the Awataba, whose smokes were rising all along the
northern cliffs. A party of young girls were rounding up the
scattered flock of sacred turkeys, and the river-bank was dotted with
women washing clothes. The agricultural work in the fields was going
on as if there had been no interruption.
Both banks of the river for a league or more were lined with open
gardens, and immediately beneath the Breast on which Homolobi was
built were a series of fenced gardens and stone storehouses, easily
defensible. The nearer we approached the village, the more
remarkable it became. Access to it was had by means of ladders and a
trail which one man could hold against an army. Its houses, solidly
constructed of stone blocks laid in mortar, were three and four
stories in height, joined together and surrounded by a wall that was
strengthened with round and square towers. It crowded the top of the
Breast and was protected from assault from above by a bulging
protuberance in the cliff overhead.
"Have your people lived here long?" I asked Wiki.
"Since the beginning of time," he returned sententiously.
"Have you many other villages?"
He eyed me askance a moment, then answered:
"The Spaniards and others before them have destroyed all save ours.
Some of our brethren live under the tutelage of Christian priests in
the South, but they build their homes upon open rocks. We are the
last of the Dwellers in the Cliffs."*
* This amazing statement has been corroborated by scientists of the
Smithsonian Institution, who agree it is probable some of the
cliff-dwellings were inhabited in recent historic times.--A.D.H.S.
"That is why you hate the Spaniards," I said.
"Yes, Englishman. Wherever they have gone they have slain our
people. But for what you said to Kachina and the fight you made to
protect her and the sacred turkeys we should have slain you
instantly. Even the Awataba had the hardihood to pursue you, in
spite of the death you dealt them, because they supposed you were
Spaniards, and they knew that if Spaniards escaped from their
country, they would come back, bringing others with them, and in the
end slay or enslave all not of their color."
"The Spaniards have always been enemies of the English," I replied,
anxious to propitiate him. "It was the English who first denied the
right of the Spaniards to exploit your country for themselves."
Have I said that Wiki had green eyes that sometimes sparkled and
again seemed to flame? They stabbed at me like two daggers as he
remarked--
"The English are white; we are red."
I said no more on that score. The man was as intelligent as I had
first imagined, and cunning, too, possessed of information you would
scarce expect to find in this isolated community in the heart of the
great rock desert.
"We are friends," I protested, recurring to my original argument.
"We have come amongst you practically without arms."
"You should not have come otherwise," he retorted.
We crossed an irrigation-ditch at this point, and I commented upon
its excellent workmanship. He nodded his head without replying, but
his manner declared as if he had shouted it: "Fool of a white man!
Do you think your people are the only ones who can work in stone?"
I essayed once again to draw him out.
"How is it that you have no fear of the Awataba?" I asked.
"They are children," he answered in his earlier phrase.
"But they are many times your number."
"They fear us."
We had entered the walled enclosures at the base of the Breast, and
he waved his hand to the bursting storehouses.
"When they starve they ask us for food, and if we have it to spare,
we give them some. They know that if they fight us, we would never
lift a hand to aid them, and they are too ignorant to help
themselves."
I had no opportunity for further conversation, for we had come to the
first of a series of ladders, each wide enough for two people to
climb it at once, propped in ledges of the cliff-side. Wiki went up
them, hand over hand, with the agility of a sailor. As I put my foot
upon the lowest rung to follow him, I heard a giggle behind me, and
Kachina pushed in front, dragging Tawannears by the hand. She had
discovered a new game, it seemed, which consisted in her pointing to
a given object and pronouncing its name in her tongue, and then
having Tawannears christen it in the Seneca dialect. She was going
into all the details of the ladder and the trail with him--his face a
study in rapture and sheepishness--when Wiki called down a sharp
command to her. She sobered instantly, and raced up the ladders
after the priest, who continued beside her.
The people of Homolobi watched our ascent with grins of amusement.
The feat looked simple enough from the ground, but 'twas as
difficult, in its way, as our climbing of the Ice Mountain of
Tamanoas. The ladders were the easiest part of it. After them came
several sections of rock-trail over the swell of the Breast as far as
a projection which answered to the nipple, where another ladder led
to the topmost section of the trail, which ran at an angle up to the
entrance of the village walls, a door that Peter must turn sideways
to enter.
Inside we were in total darkness, and I experienced a chilling fear
of treachery. But the worst that happened to us was to crack heads
and shins on unseen stairs, angles and doorposts as we were drawn
through a dingy warren of passages. Wiki guided me, and strangers
conducted Tawannears and Peter. Kachina must have skipped ahead of
us, for she was the first person we identified when we stepped
suddenly out of a gloomy vestibule into the bright, sun-smitten plaza
or central space of the village.
This space was sufficiently large to accommodate all the population
of the village, which must have numbered upwards of fifteen hundred
souls. It was surrounded by the communal houses, in which these
people lived, houses which made the Long Houses of the Iroquois
appear as primitive as the skin teepees of the Dakota. They rose
high above us, each story receding the depth of a room from the area
of the one below it, so as to provide a succession of unroofed
porches or verandas. These roof-tops were crowded with people, and
several hundred men lounged in the central plaza.
Directly opposite us and situated in a notch or recess in the
cliff-side was a building of somewhat different proportions. It had
the same peculiar recession of the upper stories, but instead of
having four floors it had only three, the first story being twice as
high as in the adjoining houses. There was a great doorway midway of
its windowless facade, with monstrous stone figures, creatures with
the bodies of men and the heads of fabulous beasts, entwined with
snakes, on either side.
In front of this doorway stood three people, of whom Kachina was the
least remarkable. The one in the middle of the group was a very fat
old woman, gray-haired, with dull, snaky eyes. She was dressed like
Kachina in a white robe, bordered with crude red, and she held
herself with a certain conscious dignity that was imposing, whatever
you might think about her character and personal cleanliness.
On her left was the voluble young man, who had evinced so strongly
his disapproval of us after the fight; and not content with his kilt
of serpent's-skins he now had a rattlesnake coiled around his neck,
its head poised next his left ear. He took a step forward as we
appeared in the plaza, and began declaiming in a harsh voice, the
snake at his ear hissing an accompaniment. Occasionally he would
suspend his oration, and pretend to stop and listen to what the snake
was telling him. The people heard him with awe; but I thought I
surprised a look of mild cynicism upon Wiki's face. As for Kachina,
she made no attempt to conceal her feelings.
After the voluble young man and the snake had talked until you could
have heard the rustling of a grass-blade she interrupted them as
ruthlessly as she had me. And she was not content with merely saying
what she thought. She danced it, too. That is literally what I
mean. She would say something, lift her eyes skyward, raise her arms
in a beseeching gesture, and then dance a slow, stately measure, or
perhaps a swift, heady one. Betwixt dances she was making demands of
something inside the temple or arguing with the fat old woman or with
Wiki.
When she ceased the voluble young man tried to continue his oration,
but Wiki stepped to the front and cut him off. Then there was a
four-sided debate, in which the fat old woman joined, and presently,
she raised her arms in a gesture of invocation, blinked her eyes
shut, waited--whilst everyone, including ourselves, became tense--and
ejaculated a single sentence. After which she reopened her eyes, and
waddled into the dark recesses of the temple, attended by the young
man, no longer voluble, but very sullen, and hauling the snake from
its embrace.
Wiki expressed no sentiment in his face or actions, but Kachina
showed delight as plainly as she had disapprobation of the young
man's suggestions, and she danced away by herself in the direction of
a narrow door in one corner of the temple-block.
Wiki crooked his finger.
"Come," he said, and led us through another door to a stair which
fetched us to the terrace on the roof of the fore part of the temple
proper. We crossed this roof, eyed suspiciously by several men who
wore the serpent's-skin kilt, to a doorway opening into a room
probably twelve feet square. It had no windows, and its walls and
floor were bare of furnishings.
"You may sleep here," Wiki announced briefly. "Food will be brought
later."
"Are we at liberty to go out if we please?" I asked is he was leaving.
"Why not?" he returned indifferently. "But you must be careful.
Your faces are strange to our people."
We pondered this statement until our doubts were presently set at
rest by a visit from a party of the temple priests--the wearers of
the serpent's skin kilts--headed by the voluble young man. They
stalked in whilst I was dressing an arrow-cut in Tawannears'
shoulder, their faces bleakly scowling, gathered up our guns,
powder-horns and shot-pouches and walked out again. Peter started to
rise, but sank to his haunches at a word from me.
"We better break dot feller's headt," he grumbled.
"That was what they wanted," I said.
"Otetiani is right," agreed Tawannears. "The guns are useless. If
we had resisted they would have made it an excuse to kill us."
"_Ja_, dot's maype true," admitted Peter thoughtfully. "Andt what do
we do now, eh?"
"Nothing," I answered. "'Tis sound strategy to hold our hands. This
situation is still shaping. I know not what other powers there may
be, but of the four leaders we have seen, I think Wiki has to make up
his mind about us. The serpent priest hates us for reasons of his
own. The old woman has given no sign. The girl Kachina has s fancy
for Tawannears, but there is as much danger as advantage in that.
Your feet are set upon a crooked path, brother."
Tawannears smiled, as I had not seen him smile in years, with a kind
of glad expectancy.
"There is an echo calling in my heart, brother," he said. "I do not
yet know what it is saying, but it calls louder and louder.
Perhaps----"
Kachina glided through the doorway.
"Do not heed what Kokyan does or says to you," she ordered me curtly.
"He is jealous, poor, crawling ant! And he thinks he can spoil my
plans."
"Who is Kokyan?" I queried.
She stared at me, childishly puzzled that anyone should be no
continually ignorant.
"He who has just left."
"Oh, the young man with the snake?"
"Yes, stupid buffalo," she derided me.
"And why is he jealous!"
She dimpled like any other girl, and dug her sandal-toe in the dust
of the floor.
"Because of me, of course."
"Of course," I echoed. "But he is not jealous of me, for instance?"
"Oh, no," she answered frankly. "He is jealous of Tawannears."
She pronounced the Seneca's name with a delicious lisp.
"Is he your lover?"
"He wants to be." She became confidential. "He has been this way
since he succeeded his father as Priest of Yoki and Voice of Chua.*
He has brought rain two years running now, and everybody says how
mighty a priest and spell-master he is. But Wiki says I must serve
him first of all as Sacred Dancer, for Massi sent me direct to him
and not to Kokyan. Besides, I don't like Kokyan. He is a good
warrior and a clever priest--but I don't like him."
* The Snake.
"Is Kokyan Chief Priest?"
"How ignorant you are, Englishman! Of course not! Wiki is chief
priest--and Angwusi is priestess of Tawa, the Sun, the Giver-of-Life.
Kokyan is only priest of Yoki. But when a priest of Yoki is as
successful as he is, he becomes really as important as the chief
priest and the priestess. And then Kokyan has been telling the young
men how much better things would go if he was chief priest or had
more influence in the Council."
"But what does your chief say to all this?" I questioned.
"Chief? What chief?"
"The chief of the village! And the war-chiefs."
She gurgled with laughter.
"You are own brother to the Awataba, Englishman! We do not have such
chiefs. We look down on warriors. When we must fight, we all do;
but we make no practice of war. The priests and the council govern
the village."
"Who are the council?" I pressed.
"Oh, the priests--and the elders--the priests select them. But I am
tired of talking with you, Englishman. I came here to learn
Tawannears' speech. I told Wiki I should. He told me I must not,
and I said if I could not I should marry Kokyan to-night. Wiki does
not want me to marry Kokyan."
She sank down betwixt the Seneca and me, pointing a finger at Peter.
"What is that houaw's* name?"
* Bear's.
"Wait, wait!" I pleaded. "Tell me why you left us on the ladder and
went ahead into the village."
"No, I am tired of all that," she declared mutinously. "I shall talk
with Tawannears now."
"But 'tis he wishes to know," I lied. "And he must learn through me."
Her face brightened.
"Oh! Indeed, you are stupid, Englishman! Why did you not say so
before?"
"Because I had no chance," I laughed.
"You are an Awataba," she insisted. "You must have killed a
Spaniard, and taken his clothes. But you asked why Wiki called me.
It was because I talked with Tawannears--and I am going to talk to
him whenever I please. So I just told fat old Angwusi! Wiki said
that Kokyan would make trouble, and that I must go ahead and tell
Angwusi he was bringing you up to the village because you had saved
me and the sacred turkeys and were not Spaniards."
"And then?" I prompted her.
"Why, then, I went to the kiva,* and Kokyan was talking to Angwusi
against Wiki, and I told him I would dance against him if he
continued to be foolish. And he said that Chua the Snake had
counseled him that you three were to be the doom of Homolobi and you
must all be slain for a sacrifice to Chua."
* Ceremonial Place or Temple.
"So that was what he was talking about when Wiki brought us in?"
"Yes, he told the people what Chua had said, and that you would
probably bring heavy rain to spoil the harvest or a drought next
Summer. And Chua prophesied to him again whilst he talked, and said
you came here plotting evil, especially the red one called Tawannears.
"Then I danced for Massi, and cried to all the Gods, and as I danced
they told me that Chua's voice had been mistaken, that men who saved
the Sacred Dancer and the sacred turkeys of Massi's shrine could not
be Massi's enemies. Kokyan said it was not true, that you were
Chua's enemies. But I cried into the temple, and Massi answered back
that such things were best left unsaid, that they made it seem that
Chua was divided from Massi.
"Kokyan did not know what to say to that." She giggled
reminiscently. "So Wiki talked to Angwusi, and she made a prayer to
Tawa for light."
"What did Tawa say!" I demanded, for she had turned again to
Tawannears.
"That it was too early to decide."
That, mark you, was the width of the margin betwixt my comrades and I
and death--what an old Indian woman chose to say that the sun had
told her to say!
"Is it left so?" I asked uneasily.
"How else!" she snapped pettishly. "I did not come here to talk to
you."
"But for how long is it left so?"
"Until the festival at the end of this moon--the moon which precedes
the harvest. But if you say any more, Englishman, I will go to
Angwusi and ask her to have Tawa say that the others may be saved,
but you must be cast from the cliff."