If there was any one thing in the wide world I wanted to do more
than another, it was to visit the New Mexican pueblo where my friend
Tenatsali[7] spent so many years of his strange career. He had
discovered it and made it his own and before his death he turned over
to me his title to its romance and mystery. This was all he possessed
in it, for even the stone house he built with money earned by literary
work had dropped from his lavish hands. It happened one winter while
crossing the continent I heard there was to be a dance at the pueblo.
The news decided me. I stopped off on the railroad, hired a team from
the sheriff and had him drive me down to the town. It was winter; snow
covered the heights and we were both chilled through when we reached
Tenatsali’s big stone house, then a trading store. The farmer-agent, a
jovial man, who had been the trader in Tenatsali’s day, lived in the
other end of the building. He welcomed me as an old friend and told me
stories of Tenatsali until late into the night, as we sat before his
fire.
It was in his house Tenatsali had remained concealed in the long
interval from the time he rode out so debonairly on the war-path to
take a scalp, and the arrival of a scalp from Washington. He was
obliged to perform a scalp-taking feat before he could be admitted to
membership among the Priests of the Bow. As he would not secure a scalp
in the orthodox way, he had to get one as best he could. It was a very
old scalp, one from the National Museum collected by Lewis H. Morgan
many years before.
I slept soundly after the long ride, but, rising betimes, sought a
guide that I might go to the village, which is like an ant hill, across
the little river, and then climb to the summit of that mesa to the East
which overlooks the great valley. The two possible interpreters, youths
who had been reared by the trader, were both sequestered in the village
as they were to take part in the dance. And so it was decided I could
do no better than engage a schoolboy who, while he spoke little or no
English, could at least show me the trail up the mesa. In spite of the
snow the boy was barefoot, and his single garment was scanty protection
from the cold. We crossed the wide stretch of plain, rounded the mesa
and took the steep trail on the farther side. It was half obliterated
by the snowdrifts, but the boy ran lightly ahead, up and up, stretching
me a hand at the steep places until we reached the broad, table top.
There in an open shrine stood the image of the war god, Ahaiyuta, his
plumes bedraggled and blown about by the wind. We passed the ruins
covered with spiny cactus and I waited while the boy, nimble as a goat,
descended the trail beside the pinnacled rock to visit the old images
of the war gods ranged in a row in their immemorial cave. There too he
saw, I suppose, the painted jars that held the old masks of Sayatasha.
When he came back we visited the other war-god shrine and descended the
mesa to return across the plain to the store, tired and hungry after
our seven-miles’ round.
Here we found people from far and near who had come to see the
dance. There was Jesus, the Mexican, and French Dan, Falstaffian and
dissolute. There was the Missionary whom later I was to know better
and the Field Matron, a wraith of a woman who went silently among
the Indians and gave them some drug she had discovered through an
advertisement in the “boiler plate” of her home paper. There were the
Indians who fraternize with the whites, like the Albino and the old
Mormon, or to give him his full name, Ten Cent Mormon, because he had
been baptized by the Mormons in the early days and received ten cents
to bind the bargain.
The conversation at the dinner table where we had a hearty, steaming
meal was all about the dance, and even the sheriff was moved to express
himself. It was the first time this particular dance had been performed
for years. The Arrow-Swallowing society had given public exhibitions,
but on this occasion there was to be tree-swallowing as well. It was
plain enough that the agent and the sheriff really believed that the
Indians had supernatural powers.
The agent accompanied me to the village that afternoon and guided me
to a place in the large, central court where I could see the dance to
advantage. A red blanket was spread for us to sit upon, and we took
our places with the expectant crowd. Every living soul in the pueblo,
dressed in their best and gayest clothes, lined the roofs of the
terraced houses.
Few plays are staged more effectively than these performances. The
adobe walls of the houses furnish a perfect background. The court seems
entirely inclosed and the processions of dancers enter and return
by passageways set at right angles on either side. In the centre
of the plaza was a long, white, wooden box painted in colors with
cloud-terrace and rain symbols which the musicians used as a resonator
for their notched-stick rattles. While we talked, the agent pointed
out familiar faces like Niña, the pretty granddaughter of old Nayuchi
the war chief, and Lusalu, the fat governor. The small children played
on the edges of the crowd and mud-bedaubed clowns lolled around the
painted box. Two old men dressed in gala attire, with white smocks
and gay bandas and sashes, took up the notched instruments and began
scraping them in a rhythmic motion with plectra made of sheep bone.
There are few more mysterious and disturbing sounds than this same
scraping. The time is perfect, the rhythm inexorable. Something was
about to happen.
Two long processions advanced slowly into the plaza. In single file,
keeping perfect time, their turtle-shell, leg rattles in absolute
unison, dressed all alike in kilts and armlets, with faces and bodies
painted white, the dancers approached each other from opposite sides,
and wonderful to behold, each dancer with head thrown back supported
a tall spruce tree erect in his mouth. Below were the bodies of the
white-painted figures, robust and vigorous, and above a moving forest.
The processions continued to advance, and curved round the plaza until
they displayed their entire length, halted with a loud fanfare of gourd
rattles,—and then became still and silent. There were women among
them—and one wearing a white, cylinder-shaped mask. Some children,
neophytes, followed, and on one side a tiny boy with a miniature spruce
brought up the rear. The dancers rested, withdrew the trees from their
mouths and held them, butts upward with the top boughs resting on the
ground. Then it was that the full significance of the performance was
revealed. The butts, rudely chopped to a tapering point eight or more
inches in length, had been entirely swallowed.
Again the strident notes of the rattles sounded. The dancers took up
their trees, elevated and adjusted them in their mouths and danced
as before. There was the same volume of coördinated sounds, of gourd
rattles, of resonant shells and the swish, swish of the garments. Again
the white mask danced on.... It grew dark and I left the plaza, in a
daze. What did it all mean—the painted box, the swallowed trees, the
white mask?