In taking our leave of the Republic of Ácoma, seated haughtily aloof upon her stony citadel, certain reflections grow imperious. Emerging from the shadows of legendary origins to the historic past, already a dim and distant background, we may please our fancy with poetic and picturesque, or heroic episodes, while recognizing that the flowing tide of civilization has inevitably swept away some that was admirable, along with more that was brutal and savagely impossible to retain.
The sources of Ácoma’s life story, as of other Indian communities, are three. First, we have all that has been carefully garnered and interpreted for us by the anthropologists. This is chiefly concerned with pre-Columbian or pre-Spanish days. Since the American domination, government officials and visitors to all the pueblos have added much of value and interest. There remains an almost untouched treasure in the vast number of records kept through nearly three centuries by Spanish priests and chroniclers. The padres in particular saw the Indian as he is in his daily occupations, in his mind, in his traditional worship, as well as in his warrior adventuring. When these shall have received due recognition from students of the Southwest, we may begin to hope that we shall understand the First Americans.
Looking at Ácoma as symbolic of all Indian “city-states,” are we not forced to admit that the white invader has pretty completely blotted out one type of the human family? So altered are the fragmentary remains of its religious and its social organization that they appear to be hardly more significant to the white onlooker than is any picturesque pageant; while to the Indian himself they must be rather a poor imitation of his traditional ceremonial.
It is too late to ask whether or not white conquest could have been less cruel, but surely our reconstruction might have been less ruthless.
It is asserted by those who know that “nearly a thousand languages have given way before the Anglo-Saxon speech.” When the American succeeded to the Spanish over-lordship of the aborigine, why did he not heed the example of his English forbears in their rule of subject races? Tolerant of all that was most sacred and inherent to the conquered, recent English colonial policy has had for a fundamental principle the fostering of native genius, and a respect for the faith and ritual, essential to those brought under subjection.
This served as well the useful end of making conquest less offensive and obedience more willing. It makes one envious of what Sir Valentine Chirol writes of his rulers when they mastered India. “They respected the customs of the people, tried to understand their needs, and gave the humblest folk a new sense of security from arbitrary oppression, and a new conception of justice as a boon that was neither to be bought nor sold.”
The Spaniard was the pioneer invader and conqueror. The American should have grasped his opportunity as trustee of a rich and original element in the land. Trustees accept a duty and responsibility along with new power, the success or failure of which lies within their own hands. But the white man began by imposing upon the Indian a religion so unlike his own that it soon became a weapon of deceit, and a dangerous impediment to their mutual understanding.
The system under which these wards of the nation are ruled to-day would doubtless protest against the old phrase that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” but in practice it does not materially improve on that unhappy formula.
In justice to a great inheritance of art and of primitive literature (for the chant and the folk-lore are the germ of written tales), can we not now arouse a public pride for the appreciation of this legacy, which constitutes, as has been said earlier in these pages, the only original contribution of the western world to either form of creative genius.
The healthy association of the races should promote an education that pays heed to the needs and mentality of the Indian, fostering his deft fingers in his native crafts instead of teaching him that machine-made and artificially dyed rugs are superior; that would help him to develop his innate agricultural talent by better implements and a more generous use of soils and of irrigation. At least let him be protected from political exploitation and even from the selfishness of too ardent exploring students.
It does not fall within this writer’s province to suggest solutions for one of the most urgent and complex of national problems. She only desires to bring before the bar of public opinion the tangle of difficulties largely created by an indifference to Indian philosophy and sensitiveness and to a misuse of power which has bred a deep sense of racial injustice.