Three Conditions of Wilderness Life—Farming in the
Driest Country—The _Cache_—The Clan, the Unit of the
Tribe—Hospitality—Totems and Totem Marks—Dress—An Aboriginal
Geographer—The Winter Life—The War-path, the Scalp-lock, and the
Scalp-dance—Mourning the Lost Braves—Drifting.
The daily life of these natives of the Wilderness was regulated chiefly
by the food quest. With reference to this quest they existed in three
general states or conditions: hunter, fisher, farmer. Sometimes two,
sometimes all, these conditions were combined at one time. But no
matter which condition a tribe might be living in, nor what language
it might speak, its customs and social organisation were surprisingly
similar to those of all the other tribes. So that we have the picture
of numerous tribes dwelling in houses of widely varying construction,
subsisting on food obtained in radically different ways, and speaking
distinctly different languages, with general habits, customs, and
ceremonials almost identical, yet with the details of the daily routine
regulated largely by the kind of food most easily obtained in their
particular locality. Those in the higher mountains and on the plains
were mostly hunters. The tribes of the plains subsisted principally
on the buffalo, though some few cultivated maize, beans, and squashes
along the Arkansas, the Platte, and the Missouri river bottoms. To these
people of the prairies the horse was the greatest prize. Those living
mainly by fishing were tribes of the Pacific Coast and along the Pacific
river-valleys, like the Columbia, where the salmon run. Most of this
class had small use for the horse; many had for him no use whatever,
doing their entire travelling by canoe, and handling this craft with
unsurpassed dexterity.
[Illustration: Moki Woman Modelling a Clay Jug.
Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.]
Those in the farmer condition were the people of the extremely arid
south-western quarter where large game was scarce, and where crops of
maize and beans, grown with considerable difficulty and labour, were
the principle reliance. With maize as a basis of food supply it was
possible for a tribe to be far more sedentary than when subsistence
was obtained by the chase. Hostile neighbours could be avoided. A whole
tribe could occupy fortifications, like the Pueblo villages for example,
in the midst of some wide valley, near a river or other water supply,
or could retire to some fastness of cliff or mountain, easily defended,
where ample crops could be grown on bottom lands, and where recesses in
cliffs afforded sites for secure and comfortable homes, as well as great
quantities of fallen _débris_ for building purposes. Such were hundreds
of villages scattered over the South-west as far north as the southern
parts of Utah and Colorado; and even perhaps to Salt Lake. There was no
need of sallying forth to the confines of hostile country in search of
food; and, before the coming of the whites placed the gun and horse at
the service of the more predatory tribes, they would not readily risk
an attack on such strongholds.
The cultivation of maize was increasing, except on the immediate Pacific
Coast, where it was not cultivated at all. Even the Pai Utes, who lived
largely on grass seeds and edible plants and roots, had begun to have
small gardens where beans, pumpkins, melons, and maize grew. East of
the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes enormous quantities of
the great staple of the New World were produced before the white people
arrived. Tribes to the north in the region of Minnesota were beginning
to understand its cultivation, and the importance of having a food
supply under control. In the South-west, for an unknown period, it had
been the mainstay. There it was cultivated by irrigation whereas in the
eastern part of the continent the rainfall was, of course, sufficient.
In the South-west the men did the work in the fields, leaving the
management of the household to the women; even the building of the
houses in fact. But in districts where the products of the soil formed
only a minor part of the subsistence, or where it was mainly or entirely
wild meat, the men for so large a part of their time were engaged in
the pursuit of game that the camp and household duties, as well as what
tending of crops might be necessary, fell to the women. Their labours
were intermittent, and when the men returned from the chase, sometimes
worn out if game were scarce, the women waited upon them just as a white
woman waits on her cross husband when he comes home tired from the shop.
[Illustration: Earthenware from Moki Region. ½.]
[Illustration: The Ruins in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, Called "Casa
Blanca."
These were Once Connected.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers. U. S. Geol. Survey.]
Besides the various game animals, and maize, beans, squash, grass seeds,
pine nuts, cactus apples, wild potatoes, agave, and numerous palatable
roots and berries, the dog was largely eaten. Some kinds of young dogs
were said, when well cooked, to be much like pig, but the larger ones
were apt to be coarse and rank. In addition to these numerous kinds of
food, human flesh was occasionally eaten, but only when in the pangs
of starvation: or as a religious ceremony. When no water was to be
had, the plains tribes would kill a buffalo and drink the blood. They
often also ate the entrails of animals raw, particularly those of the
buffalo, which latter delicacy Harmon[25] indulged in and speaks of as
"very palatable." All the Amerinds smoked, and with most tribes every
consultation or council or friendly visit was opened by the tobacco
pipe. Indeed the place of tobacco and the pipe among the natives of
the continent was one of the greatest importance. It was not always
what we call tobacco that was smoked, but frequently the inner bark of
the red willow, the leaves of the manzanita bush, dog-wood bark and
sumach leaves, or a plant resembling garden sage, which according to
Beckwourth,[26] grew wild in the country of the Snakes, but which was
cultivated by the Crows and several other tribes. Most of the Algonquian
tribes grew large quantities of maize, and cooked it with beans and
other things. From them, and their neighbours, we have derived not only
a number of dishes, but their names as well, such as supawn, succotash,
pone, mush, etc.
[Illustration: Old Mandan House.
From _Wonderland, 1903_—Northern Pacific Railway.]
[Illustration: A Young Cocopa.
Photograph by Delancy Gill.]
Many tribes laid away stores for winter, but these were the more
sedentary, though dried buffalo meat, and pemmican, were accumulated as
far as possible by the tribes living upon the plains. But when the diet
of a people is confined to meat alone, an enormous supply, per capita,
is required for a whole winter, hence some tribes ran out of provisions,
especially when the numbers of buffalo began to diminish, and were in
hard straits before spring came again. The fisher tribes put away great
amounts of dried salmon, but here again was the danger of shortage that
always threatened meat-eaters. The same might be true of people living
on the products of agriculture if the population pressed on the supply,
but with agriculture the returns are so bountiful that the supply was
always adequate among those tribes cultivating the ground, except there
was a failure of crops, which was rare. The Puebloans provided against
this by retaining a considerable extra store from year to year. They
used the lower inside rooms of the village which were much like cellars,
as the village, resembling a pile of huge packing cases, was built over
and around them. Thus they were admirably adapted for storage in that
dry climate. The ears of corn were piled up evenly and neatly one beside
the other. Watermelons were treated in the same way, and were preserved
in perfect condition till the end of February at least. Naturally the
tribes which moved about considerably could not well make such ample
provision for the future, but they often stored food, and other goods
in holes dug in the ground, well concealed. Such storage places were
also used by the whites, and the name _cache_ was applied to this method
by the early French trappers. Where the _cache_ was in dry ground the
contents would remain in good preservation for a long time.
[Illustration: Rear View of Mandan Village, Showing Burial-Ground.
Drawing by Catlin, plate 48, vol. i., Catlin's _Eight Years_.
Reproduction from _Smithsonian Report, 1885_, part ii.]
It is plain that the people of the Wilderness possessed everywhere
an abundant food supply, whether in the arid Southwest, whereat first
glance it would seem no cereal could grow, in the buffalo country, or
in the region of the salmon streams. It was the preservation of these
supplies, over-abundant at certain times, scarce at others, which was
their greatest difficulty.
With us the unit of our social organisation is the family: father,
mother, children. With the Amerind the unit was generally the clan (or
gens) as we call it, a group of several families related on the mother's
side, for descent was usually counted in the female line. The Omahas
and some others had changed to descent in the male line. The clan held
property in common exactly as one of our families does to-day; that is
not all property, but general property and food. There were articles
and objects which were exclusively individual property and did not
belong to the clan any more than certain articles a daughter or a son
may individually possess belong to the parents in one of our families.
Hunting, farming, and such affairs were conducted, as a rule, for the
clan, hence food was clan property free to all members, or for that
matter to almost any one, because in the Amerind village, or camp,
every house was open to the hungry guest. The white man was always
fed as well as the supplies would permit; special stews of dog, or
buffalo, or succotash, were prepared for his special delectation, and
he was expected to eat all given him or take it away. To these people,
therefore, it was a rather painful surprise when, as they began to
unravel the peculiarities of their new acquaintances, they found that
the white man was perfectly willing to accept the boundless hospitality
of the native, but when the latter visited fort or camp, he was received
as a beggar. When the hospitality he expected was not granted, he asked
for it; and this, to a white man, was begging. In dealing with Amerinds
the white man went on the principle of what is yours is mine and what
is mine is my own. Perhaps there were two exceptions to this, the early
French, and the great Hudson Bay Company.
Marriage within the clan was forbidden, therefore a man had to seek
a wife in another clan or another tribe. A violation of this rule, or
of any other moral precept of their code, brought punishment from the
clan of the individual or from the officers of the tribe. Sometimes
this was nothing more than a flogging; sometimes it was death. A man
always retained allegiance to his own clan and the wife to hers, the
children belonging to their mother's clan. As a rule there was no
limit to the number of wives a man could have, though polygamy was
not general. In the Amerind code the _bona fide_ acceptance of a wife
was a marriage, and the husband was expected to assume the duties of a
husband seriously. The white adventurer did not do it. He was quite apt
to abandon his wife as cheerfully as he had taken her.
[Illustration: A Dakota of the Plains.
Figures from Photograph by U. S. Government.]
[Illustration: A Uinta Ute.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
The clan had the right to adopt into it any outsider it pleased, and
this right of adoption was frequently exercised. In this manner white,
or other prisoners, or friends, were incorporated into the clan and
therefore into the tribe, taking the place perhaps of some deceased son
or brother, daughter or sister. The adopted men not infrequently rose
to positions of importance, even to that of head chief. These officers
were usually chosen because of personal qualifications and achievements,
but it was not uncommon for the title of ordinary chief to be bestowed
on a visitor as a sort of honorary degree. There were many chiefs of
varying power and importance, mostly military; the office of sachem, a
purely civil position, was more difficult to attain, as it was generally
hereditary within the clan. Because of the law of maternal descent, a
man's son in most tribes could not inherit his father's office. He might
be adopted, however, by the clan.
[Illustration: Umatilla Woman and Child.
From _Wonderland, 1904_—Northern Pacific Railway.]
Children were seldom whipped, yet they were carefully trained and were
obedient and respectful. Their parents loved them just as white parents
love their offspring and in later days when the Indian Bureau compelled
the children to attend the agency schools, there was many a heart pang
and copious tears all round at the parting. But the usual theory was
that these people had no human sensibility.
Several families of a clan often occupied a single structure. Each clan
had a sign, a sort of coat of arms, called a totem, to represent it,
and this was often used as a signature. Combined with other pictures it
indicated the occurrence of certain events. It was generally an animal
from which in far past times the clan was supposed to be descended; but
there were also personal totems. The clan took its name from its totem,
Bear, Hawk, etc., and its members frequently held names which indicated
their clan title. The clan controlled its members, settled disputes,
and if one were murdered or committed murder, the clan prescribed or
accepted punishment or settlement as the case might be. It also argued
its case when necessary by means of representatives before the council
of the tribe. To know a tribe well it was important to know the workings
of the clan system, yet this has generally been overlooked by all but
the ethnologists. A tribe was usually spoken of by its members as "the
men" or "the people," and these terms were often understood by white
men to be the names of the tribes, and accordingly were so used.
[Illustration: Mandan Village on the Missouri, 1832.
Drawing by Catlin, plate 47. vol. i., Catlin's _Eight Years_.
Reproduction from _Smithsonian Report, 1885_, part ii.]
[Illustration: A Group of Crow Chiefs.
Photograph by U. S. Government about 1875.]
When at peace these people were kind. The Rev. Samuel Parker who was
on the plains at a very early time, referring to some who accompanied
him declares: "They are very kind and manifest their kindness by
anticipating all, and more than all my wants." Harmon, who for nineteen
years was a leading member of the North-west Company, speaking of one
village where he passed several days, is sure he was treated "with more
real politeness than is commonly shown to strangers in the civilised
part of the world."
The general dress of the men was leggins of buckskin resembling the legs
of a pair of white man's trousers, attached to a belt, with frequently
a shirt of the same material, though a great deal of the time there
was no covering for the upper part of the body except a robe or blanket
thrown loosely around the shoulders. The remainder of the costume was a
breech cloth and moccasins of buckskin, the latter with or without hard
soles according to the tribe. In the South-west, particularly after the
Spaniards came, the costume was different. There leggins came only to
the knee, and were made to button, or were attached by a woven garter
twisted around just under the knee. Above there were short trousers, or
rather breeches of cotton. A cotton shirt with a blanket over it in cool
weather, and a cloth _à la turban_ around the head completed the dress.
No matter if an Amerind wears trousers as he often did and does, he
rarely dispenses with the breech cloth. In battle the warrior stripped
completely, though in past times some tribes wore armour of slats, rods,
or tough buffalo hide.
The woman's dress was a loose gown or tunic of buckskin, of woollen or
of cotton fabric, bound at the waist by a girdle, and, when travelling
or in ceremonials, moccasins with leggins attached, the latter buckskin
strips winding round and round the leg. In the house or about the
village or camp the women generally went without any covering on the
feet. The women of some tribes wore only a sort of kilt of bark strips.
The younger children in summer wore no clothing; and in some tribes,
particularly those of the mild South-west, neither men, women, nor
children troubled themselves about covering. The manner of wearing the
hair was always significant; caps and head-dresses were also worn.
In moving camp the plains tribes usually took their whole tent with
them, the poles, before they had the horse, being tied on each side of
their dogs by means of a sort of saddle made for the purpose. Moving
was far easier after the horse arrived, for not only could he pull the
poles of the tent tied to his back, but also upon them he could drag the
children, the tent cover, and the general household goods; furthermore,
the mother could ride on the horse. The _travois_ was, therefore, a
different affair with the horse to drag it than it was with the dog; but
they did not abandon utilising the dogs and they were often harnessed
to light loads on the poles. The horse, then, was not only an essential
in war and the chase, but also in the journeys from one locality to
another.
They knew well their own land and its limits. We sometimes forget this.
Francis La Flesche, an educated Dakota, writes with reference to their
knowledge:
"The white people speak of the country at this period as a
wilderness as though it was an empty tract without human interest
or history. To us Indians it was as clearly defined then as
it is to-day; we knew the boundaries of tribal lands, those of
our friends and those of our foes, we were familiar with every
stream, the contour of every hill, and each peculiar feature of
the landscape had its tradition. It was our home, the scene of our
history and we loved it as our country."[27]
Tabbaquena, a head chief of the Comanches whom Gregg interviewed,
drew for him a map, with paper and pencil, and "although the draft
was somewhat rough it bore much to our astonishment, quite a map-like
appearance, with a far more accurate delineation of all the principal
rivers of the plains, the road from Missouri to Santa Fé and the
different Mexican settlements than is to be found in many of the
engraved maps of those regions." Pike and other early explorers might
have saved themselves vast trouble had they employed such a man to
accompany them. This was not always easy, however, for sometimes when
the native was perfectly willing to draw a map, or otherwise describe
a route, nothing could induce him to leave his people, and even if he
did go, he would frequently tire of his job and slip away.
[Illustration: Granary—Cliffs of Green River.
Thirty Feet above Ground.
Photograph by L. H. Johnson.]
In all the history of the Wilderness only one explorer has travelled
where the modern Amerind did not go and that one was Major Powell when
he descended the Colorado. The natives of his time entered the various
canyons here and there, but they never remained in them or navigated
their waters. Long years ago clans lived within their fastnesses and
knew them well, but before the eventful journey of Powell[28] they had
vanished. As winter approached those tribes that had been roving during
the mild season selected for the winter comfortable village sites near
wood and water and prepared for a long stay. Other tribes whose general
village life was more stationary arranged their food supply and provided
for stormy weather. If the shadow of famine did not fall on the camp
time passed pleasantly, the long evenings being devoted to visiting
from tipi (tepee) to tipi, or from house to house, and the crisp air
resounded with merry laughter, shouts, and singing. Games of different
kinds were played, and certain gifted story tellers kept their audiences
nightly in a roar with vivid tales—some true, some made for the occasion
out of whole cloth. The Pueblos practised their ceremonial songs, and
at times the boom of the great drum quivered constantly on the evening
air, when perhaps no other sound was audible. The Pueblo adobe and stone
walls being thick all ordinary sounds were prevented from passing out,
hence, as a rule, evening closed in silently, particularly in winter
when doors were shut against the cold. This was more the case after the
whites came, for before that event there were no doors, the openings
being filled by blankets or skins. The doorways then were much smaller,
to exclude cold air, storm, animals, enemies, and this gave rise to
stories of dwarfs, that have from time to time appeared.
[Illustration: Interior of a Moki House.
The women at the back are grinding corn, while those at the right
are baking bread on a hot slab, in paper like sheets. Above is the
chimney-hood.
U. S. Bu. Eth.]
In the villages where the walls were no more than the thickness of the
buffalo-hide covering the tipi poles, the hilarity rang out and made the
locality extremely gay. The popular notion that these people were gloomy
and fierce in daily life is a delusion. They were as happy and full of
larks as children, and probably no people ever more appreciated a joke.
A little thing would sometimes cause great merriment. I remember on
one occasion, a good many years ago, when encamped near Fort Defiance,
I was standing one evening in front of my tent when an old Navajo was
seen approaching who was particularly afraid of a camera. I had in my
hand a small hand camera, and as a joke I ran toward him pointing it
as if to photograph him, although the light had nearly vanished and
a negative could not have been made except by very long exposure. The
Navajo did not know this and much to the amusement of his compatriots
who were standing around to the number of perhaps a score, he began to
dodge about in the wildest fashion, trying to avoid my advance. For some
moments I kept up the play, because they were all having such a jolly
time except the victim; and he did not seem seriously to mind the chase.
Apropos of this subject, Fowler,[29] when crossing the plains met with
an incident, also illustrative of their appreciation of fun. He wore
spectacles and had broken one of the glasses. One day while at a native
settlement, he felt some one steal the spectacles from his eyes and run
away with them. He thought they were lost for good, but presently he
heard a great uproar of shouts and laughter, and then saw the man who
had taken them advancing and leading another with the "specs" on his
face. On closer approach Fowler saw that the led person was blind in the
eye corresponding to the broken glass; and the joker signified that the
"specs" suited his friend much better than they did Fowler. Then amidst
great good humour they were returned to him.
[Illustration: Sitting Bull.
From _Wonderland, 1901_—Northern Pacific Railway.]
In some portions of the South-west, cotton was cultivated and woven into
blankets and garments long before the white man came. The Pueblo men did
the weaving in that division; among some tribes the women did it. The
loom was a simple affair, made of a couple of slender logs, or thick
boughs, and several sticks with an arrangement of cords. It is still
in use by the Navajo and the Moki people. Among the Moki the men set up
the loom in the kiva, a sort of club room entirely devoted to the men,
whereas among the Navajo, women usually weave under a flimsy shelter of
boughs. The Navajo builds no substantial house, because he will never
live in a structure in which any one has died. Probably some such idea
retarded many tribes from building more permanently.
[Illustration: Bellochknahpick—The Bull Dance.
Mandan Ceremonial.
Drawing by Catlin, plate 67. vol. i., Catlin's _Eight Years_.
Reproduction from _Smithsonian Report_, 1885, part ii.]
[Illustration: Details of Navajo Loom Construction.
U. S. Bu. Eth.]
It was a sorry day when the trader brought them alcohol. By its use
tribes were degraded, swindled, beggared. Occasionally some energetic
chief would raise an objection, even to the point of a fight with
his people, but it was like a man raising his hand to halt the north
wind. The whites wanted the goods the native had, and they wanted
them for nothing. Alcohol and water were next to nothing. Porcupine
Bear, a Cheyenne, once protested so vigorously that he and a brother
chief came near to mortal combat. He was overruled, and like Rip Van
Winkle, they all agreed not to count that time. Very soon every one was
full of whiskey, not excepting the noble Porcupine Bear himself. The
traders poured tallow into the bottom of the measuring cup so that it
should hold less than the stipulated amount, also putting thumbs and
fingers in to cunningly accomplish the same cheat.
As to population, it is difficult to form an exact estimate. Undoubtedly
in early times the number of natives in the region forming the United
States was exaggerated; the tendency now appears rather to go to the
other extreme. The dwellings having been mostly of perishable materials
there is little to indicate former population outside of the mounds
of the Mississippi valley, and the house ruins of the South-west. The
latter are so numerous as to testify either to residence for an immense
period or to a population of considerable size. It was probably both.
While these village sites were often only repetitions by the same
people at different times, yet there are so many of them that there
must also have been a goodly number of clans and tribes. Whole areas,
like the region lying immediately north of the Colorado River, exhibit
multitudinous remains, but, when white men first went there, only a
few scattered bands of Pai Utes were found, who built nothing but brush
wickiups.
[Illustration: A Navajo.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
[Illustration: Scalp-Dance of the Sioux.
Drawing by Catlin, plate 297, vol. ii., Catlin's _Eight Years_.
Reproduction from _Smithsonian Report, 1885_, part ii.]
[Illustration: A Group of Dakotas.
Photograph by U. S. Government about 1875.]
The time when the others expired has never been even approximately
established. It may have been one, two, three, any number of centuries
before our occupation. In that climate a house ruin might endure ages
with hardly a noticeable change. But there are certain points leading
to the belief that some of the depopulating was of sudden occurrence,
and as diseases brought by the Europeans early spread from Mexico, and
as sedentary people closely grouped would suffer even more than tribes
living in open camps, it appears reasonable to assume that smallpox and
kindred diseases ravaged the whole Wilderness soon after the landing of
Cortez, and were particularly disastrous in the South-west. Nothing in
the shape of skeletons would remain to tell the tales of destruction,
because wolves and dogs would devour the bodies and scatter the bones.
As they will dig a body out of a grave and strew the bones far and
wide, dragging one from a house would be simple. When the smallpox
finally swept through the plains tribes, in historical time, they
were wofully reduced in numbers. Many killed themselves to avoid the
lingering horrors. Whole tribes were exterminated, and the wolves and
dogs consumed the putrid carcasses.[30]
[Illustration: Necklace of Human Fingers.]
Probably there was never a dense population, yet there might have been,
say, three or four hundred thousand all told, in the Wilderness. This,
with perhaps, six or seven hundred thousand east of the Mississippi,
would give a total aboriginal population for the area of the United
States of about a million.[31] The estimate of Major Powell was under
three-quarters of a million. A quarter of a million are left, and they
are not decreasing, for though they are very poor as a rule, owing
to the destruction of their game and other food supplies and to their
having no means of earning money, yet contagion no longer destroys them
as of old, and wars are a thing of the past. They are now, however, a
different people from those occupying the country at the beginning of
the sixteenth century.
To their enemies they were often horribly cruel, to those of their own
hue as well as those who were white. And they learned speedily that the
white man was much the same as themselves in this regard. They no longer
burn victims at the stake, but the white man who, in the earliest time
gave them fearful lessons in this art, still continues it; even within
sight of our temples of justice. Their wars were multiplied by the
compression of their free territory, which was the result of the white
man's arrival, and by the impositions of the newcomers. There was one
locality, a strip lying along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains,
which appears to have been a sort of No Man's Land, and this was called
the "Hostile Ground," and the "War Road." Any one wandering in this
tract was always in danger of attack from many directions.
If a war party met with failure it would try to recover its prestige by
attacking whatever came in its way, but if it were successful, all but
the enemy it had originally proceeded against were comparatively safe.
A successful band reaching the borders of its home camp would send
a runner in with the announcement, when the people would turn out to
form a triumphal procession, and the braves decked themselves out in
war-bonnets, war-shirts, etc., kept for such parades. One with his face
blackened carried a long pole from which the bloody scalp-trophies
dangled, and these were saluted with shouts of joy. At the same
time they were reviled as enemies. This pole was planted in front of
the lodge of the head chief, where later the scalp-dance and other
ceremonies were performed. Many tribes removed all their hair but
a solitary lock, called the scalp-lock in consequence, left for the
benefit of the enemy. The number of scalps a warrior could boast was
the gauge of his military importance in the tribe. But when the war
party returned in defeat, the camp became a pandemonium of wailing,
and moaning, and gnashing of teeth. Women chopped off fingers by way
of mourning; tore their flesh; and braves also shockingly mutilated
themselves. Then nothing short of a success in war could wash out the
disgrace.
[Illustration: House Ruin on Green River, Utah.
Photograph by L. H. Johnson.]
One hardly can believe that a large number of these people once had
their villages and their farms east of the Mississippi, where the
factory and the mowing-machine now hold sway, but in the South-west
wherever we tread we discover some indication of the old population:
a trail, an irrigating ditch, a tree for a ladder, house walls, rock
pictures, etc., and often, far from the tumult of the modern world, we
seem almost to catch the sigh of a voice, or the rustle of a blanket,
in the breeze that whispers through the old piñon tree. On the East
Mesa of the Mokis we appear to command a clear perspective, for the
modern world is not evident. I always seemed there to be far out of it.
Through their windows we can well see into the past and reconstruct the
wilderness. Sitting on the housetop at the day's end, the surf of our
restless civilisation beating against the far horizon, the vanished sun
burnishing with a wondrous spread of gold the whole high vault of the
Arizona sky, we drowsily follow the fading light as it dissolves in a
sea-like mist the plains so far below, till they no longer have being
but float from its firm moorings, the great headland—villages, rocks,
and all—drifting it backward through phantasmal centuries. And out of
the strange houses around us, where the mothers sing their lullabies,
arise the forgotten hosts of other days, with the cry of the chase
and the clash of battle, as if like Don Roderick we had unlocked the
fateful gates of the Forbidden Tower and were about to be overwhelmed.
Suddenly, amidst the turmoil of that ancient throng we discover a
greater commotion. It is the European with his hand of iron, shooting as
he marches, while through the smoke of his gun rises, like the Spectre
of the Brocken, a hideous companion he does not see. It is the dismal
Shadow of Death, smiting right and left; and they walk on together, ever
over corpses.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[25] _A Journal of Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North
America_, by Daniel Williams Harmon. A. S. Barnes & Co.
[26] _The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth._ Harper &
Bros.
[27] _The Middle Five._
[28] For the story of this exploration see _The Romance of the
Colorado River_, by F. S. Dellenbaugh, and for further information
on the natives of the Wilderness, see _The North Americans of
Yesterday_, same author, and _The Indian of To-day_, by George Bird
Grinnell.
[29] _Journal of Jacob Fowler_, edited by Elliott Coues.
[30] See _Voyages to the Arctic_, by Alexander Mackenzie, vol. i.,
p. xxxviii., and other early travellers in the West.
[31] Catlin estimated 16,000,000.
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