In proof of which the traveler today may see the painting in the old church at Acoma.[37]

Laguna’s principal public fiesta is held annually on September 18, and adds to the usual ceremonies of the saint’s day at a pueblo the features of a country fair, for the Lagunas are notable agriculturists. The Mission church interior at Laguna, by the way, possesses features of interest in the way of Indian decoration and ancient Spanish paintings, particularly those of the altar done on stretched hide. Visitors may be accommodated in Indian houses, if they court that experience, or at the residence of a Protestant missionary near by. The National Old Trails transcontinental highway passes the pueblo.

CHAPTER VI
TO ZUÑI, THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, VIA GALLUP

Gallup, New Mexico, has never made much of a stir as a tourist center, but like many a spot of modest pretensions, it is deserving beyond its gettings. As an example of the “city beautiful” it is not, in my judgment, a success; but as a base and a fitting-out point for some of the most interesting parts of the Southwest, it is to be heartily commended.[38] Particularly is this so now that the motor car has so largely supplanted the horse-drawn vehicle for excursions afield. There are comfortable hotel accommodations and there are Harvey meals obtainable.

From Gallup (which is on one of the main automobile routes followed by transcontinental motorists) good trips radiate in many directions—85 miles to Cañon de Chelly, for instance, and its cliff dwellings amidst surpassing scenery; 75 miles to the Pueblo Bonito ruins in Chaco Cañon; 125 miles to the Hopi country; 42 miles to Zuñi pueblo; 75 miles to Inscription Rock of the Conquistadores. The great Navajo reservation with its picturesque aboriginal life reaches almost to Gallup’s back door, and even the Mesa Verde National Park,[39] can be done from Gallup in 4 or 5 days for the round trip, if the weather conditions are right.

This chapter has to do with the famous Indian pueblo of Zuñi, which lies to the south, about 2½ hours by motor car. The road is all sorts from a motorist’s standpoint; so be your own best friend and take it good-naturedly, for fussing will not mend it. In a few minutes you are beyond sight of houses and railroads, and in a twinkling Time’s clock has whirled back a couple of centuries. You pass, perhaps, a Navajo woman astride her pony, a sheepskin or two tied to the saddle, on her way to the trader’s for coffee and tobacco; and then a Mexican teamster crouching over a bit of camp-fire where his chili and beans are stewing, his wagon piled high with wool sacks drawn up by the roadside. Now a solitary adobe ranch house, or a lone trader’s log hut is seen in a wilderness of sagey plain; and now a flock of sheep drift into the road out of the piñon- and cedar-scrub, a couple of bright-eyed Navajo children shepherding in their wake. By and by you pass another sort of Indian on horseback, a slightly built man with long jet-black hair lifted by the breeze, a red banda encircling it—he is a Zuñi. And then topping a low hill, you are greeted by the distant sight of a long flat-topped mesa, creamy pink against a blue sky. It is Towa-yálleni, Zuñi’s Mountain of the Sacred Corn. A turn in the road, and the great yellow plain of Zuñi spreads out before you, the Zuñi River threading its midst, and on its bank the old pueblo humps itself like a huge anthill, hardly distinguishable in color from the plain itself.

Zuñi (with a population of some 1600) is historically perhaps the most interesting of all the Pueblo towns, for it is the present-day representative of those Seven Cities of Cíbola, the fable of whose wealth led to the discovery of New Mexico in the sixteenth century. There really were seven Zuñi villages in Coronado’s time, all of which have long since disappeared, though sites of at least five are known. The present Zuñi pueblo seems to have been built about the year 1700, replacing that one of the ancient seven known as Hálona. This occupied the opposite or south bank of the river in Coronado’s time—a spot now partially covered by the buildings of a white trader.

If you are going to hold your car and return to Gallup the same day, there will probably be 3 or 4 hours available for a stroll about the pueblo. The houses, of a characteristic reddish tone, rise from one-storied structures on the outskirts to 5 stories at the center of the town, and you will enjoy mounting by ladders and stepping stones to that uppermost height for the lovely view over the plain to the mountains that hem in the Zuñi valley. The narrow streets without sidewalks open out now and then into small plazas, and some communicate with one another by tunnels. Beehive ovens squat upon the roofs in dome-like fashion and contribute a suggestion of the Orient—of Cairo or Syria. Dogs, turkeys, pigs and burros have equal right with humanity in the cramped thoroughfares, and if one is of a cleanly habit, one needs to watch one’s steps. But dirt and picturesqueness were ever comrades, and Zuñi is truly picturesque. From the open door issues the hum of the busy mealing stones, and the fragrance of the crushed corn; perhaps, too, to your ravished ears, the high-keyed melody of grinding songs shrilled by the women as they work.

Look in, and if your manner is respectful and the girls not over shy, you will be allowed the enjoyment of a charming picture of kneeling, swaying bodies and of down-turned faces veiled in falling hair. Ollas of native ware stand about with water; parti-colored blankets of Navajo or Zuñi weave hanging from wall or ceiling give a touch of brightness in the dim light of the room; in the triangular corner fireplace dinner simmers within a bowl of native pottery set upon the coals. If fortune favors you there may be a potter at her moulding, or, in the street, jars being fired or bread being put to bake in the adobe ovens; or in some plaza a ceremonial dance in costume may be in progress. Zuñi is still comfortably pagan—the ancient Catholic church is a ruin and the modern Protestant mission is by no means overworked—and throughout the year the red gods of Zuñi have homage paid them in many a ceremony rich in symbolism and pure beauty.[40]

On the outskirts of the pueblo in August, one may have a sight of wheat thrashing on the open-air thrashing floors, the grain being trodden out in oriental fashion by horses, sheep or goats. Or there may be a straight-away horse race over the plain with a picturesque crowd looking on; or a gallo race, the part of the rooster (gallo) humanely taken in these latter days by a sack buried to the neck in the sand. A quieter feature of interest is the quaint little vegetable gardens on a slope by the river—each tiny garden enclosed with a thin adobe wall. These are tended by the women who daily bring water in ollas and pails to irrigate the plants.

A short walk from the pueblo brings you to Hepatina (hay´-pa-tee-na) a stone shrine erected on the plain, which in the Zuñi conception, marks the center of the earth; for the unreconstructed Zuñi believes naturally enough, just as your and my ancestors did a few centuries ago, that the earth is flat. Hither in the days of long ago, a guardian divinity of the Zuñis brought them as to the safest place in the world—the farthest from the edge—preceding them in the form of a water strider. The double-barred cross, which you will see sometimes on Zuñi pottery, or fashioned in silver, is the symbol of that divine guide. There has been, by the way, some good pottery made at Zuñi, and the visitor interested in that art may still enjoy the adventure of a house-to-house ceramic hunt with chances of a pleasurable outcome.

The accommodations for visitors in the pueblo are very limited. Perhaps one of the couple of white resident traders or the school teacher may be complaisant enough to take you in; and there are certain Indian houses where lodging can surely be had. If you are not of a meticulous sort, I would recommend a stop-over long enough at least to visit the mesa Towa-yálleni, which Cushing has put into literature as Thunder Mountain. It looks near the pueblo, but is really 4 miles distant. On its summit centuries ago there was a pueblo of the Zuñis, the broken down walls of which, overrun with cactus and brush, are still quite evident. Curious pictographs of the ancients may be traced on many a rock; and if one knows where to look, there are pagan shrines where prayer plumes are yet offered to the Divine Ones. Among such are those of the Twin War Gods, whose home is believed to have been on Towa-yálleni—“little fellows that never give up.” I was once informed by a Zuñi, “gone away now may be gone up, may be gone down; quien sabe?”[41] It was on this mountain the Zuñis found a refuge after their losing fight with Coronado in 1540; and again in 1632 they retreated hither after killing their missionary, Padre Letrado, of whom we shall hear again at Inscription Rock in the next chapter. And here they were in 1692 when De Vargas forced their surrender in the re-conquest. Tradition has it, too, that here long, long ago, the people fled for safety when an offended deity flooded them out of their villages in the plain; and the water still rising, a desperate sacrifice was called for. A boy and a girl were tossed from the summit into the angry flood. In a twinkling, the children were transformed into pinnacles of rock and the waters sank appeased. You can see these spires of stone today from Zuñi, and old people will tell you that the one with a double point is the boy. A peculiar virtue resides in that petrified humanity it seems. If a childless couple resort to the base of the pinnacles and there plant prayer plumes, there will be granted to them the children of their desire.

There are trails, steep and rough, up Towa-yálleni’s sides, and if you can make the trip with an intelligent and communicative old Zuñi (most of the young ones seem to know or care little about the ancient things), you will have a remarkable outing. An hour or two spent on that lonely breeze-swept, sun-kissed mesa-top, with the ruined town, its broken shrines, its historic and legendary memories, will induct you, as no amount of reading will, into the atmosphere of the Southwest’s romantic past. There used to be—and for all I know still is—a trail that a rider on horseback can follow, at the northeastern side of the mesa. The ancient peach orchard through which it wound owes its existence to seed brought to Zuñi by the Spaniards.

NOTE: Five miles northeast of Zuñi, is Black Rock, where travelers with an interest in Government education of the Indians may see a Reservation School in operation. Within a radius of 15 or 20 miles of the main pueblo are 3 farming villages occupied in summer by Zuñis to be near certain tracts of tillable land. One of these, Ojo Caliente, 15 miles southwest of Zuñi, is close to the site of ancient Háwikuh—the first Pueblo town seen by white men. Upon it in 1539, intrepid Fray Marcos de Niza looked down from a nearby height, and then, warned by the murder of his avant-courier, the negro Estévanico, beat a prudent retreat to Mexico. Coronado captured the place in the following year, and thence made his first report of the famous 7 cities to the viceroy in Mexico. It is the scene of one of the most charming of Cushing’s Zuñi folk tales, “The Foster Child of the Deer.” Extensive excavations have recently been made there by Government ethnologists.

CHAPTER VII
EL MORRO, THE AUTOGRAPH ROCK OF THE CONQUISTADORES

Thirty-five miles eastward from Zuñi (2 hours by automobile, if the roads are dry) is a huge rock mass of pale pink sandstone whose sides rise sheer a couple of hundred feet against a turquoise sky. It stands in the midst of a lonely plain whose wild grasses are nibbled by the passing flocks of wandering Navajos, and so far as I know, there is no nearer human habitation than the little Mormon settlement of Ramah, through which you pass to reach the rock. This cliff has a story to tell of such unique interest that the United States Government has acquired the mesa of which it is a spur for a National Monument. It is known as Inscription Rock, or El Morro (the latter a not uncommon Spanish-American designation for a bold promontory), and was a landmark as early as the sixteenth century for the Spanish expeditions bound between Santa Fe, Acoma and Zuñi. Water, feed, and wood were here available, as they are today, making the foot of the high cliff a good camping place, and here as a matter of fact during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, many a Spanish military party did camp, and having rested themselves and their cattle, went on refreshed to do the errands of their King and Church.

And hither one day in 1849, just after New Mexico had become part of the United States, came Lieut. J. H. Simpson, U. S. A., with some troopers on a military reconnaissance, and discovered that the base of the cliff was a veritable album of those old Conquistadores; bearing not only the names of the Spanish explorers but frequently an accompaniment of date and comment that form important contributory evidence touching the early history of the Southwest. Simpson made copies of a number of the inscriptions, and these were published with translations (not always accurate) in his report to the Secretary of War.[42] Most of those recordings carved in the soft rock with sword or dagger point are still fresh and legible, so little have centuries of dry New Mexico weather worn the clear-cut lettering. If you go to see them, you will be a dry-as-dust indeed if you do not feel an odd sort of thrill as you put your finger tips upon the chiseled autographs of the men who won for Spain an empire and held it dauntlessly. For most of these records are not idle scribblings of the witless, but careful work by people with a purpose, whose names are mentioned in the documents of the time. Here are the names, for instance, of Oñate, the conqueror, and of De Vargas, the re-conqueror, the very flower of the warrior brotherhood. The Rock is a monument such as has no duplicate in the country; and some day when our historians have got the Southwest in proper perspective, and waked up to a realization of the heroism and romance that went into the making of it, El Morro will perhaps be really protected (if its priceless inscriptions survive so long) and not left as it is now to vandal tourists to hack and carve their silly names upon.

It takes knowledge of old Spanish abbreviations to get at the sense of many of the records, but even the casual visitor cannot but be struck by the artistry that characterizes many of the petrographs. One who has Spanish enough to give zest to the quest could easily spend a couple of days, camped at this fascinating spot, spelling out the quaint old notations, peopling again in fancy this ancient camp-ground with the warriors of long ago in helmet and cuirass, their horses housed in leather; and ever with them the Franciscan soldiers of the Cross in gray gown and cord with dangling crucifix. Then there is the enjoyment of the place itself—the sunny solitude, and the glorious, extended views, the long blue line of the Zuñi Mountains, the pale spires of La Puerta de los Gigantes (the Giants’ Gate). Then, if you like, is the climb to the mesa’s summit for yet wider views, and a sight of the ruined old pueblo there, whereof history has naught to tell—only tradition, which says that it was once a Zuñian town.

There is some doubt as to the earliest inscription on the Rock. One questionable writing, unsigned, appears to be 1580. Next in point of antiquity is the undoubted record of Oñate, cut across an earlier Indian petrograph, and reads literatim: “Paso por aqi el adelantado don jua de oñate del descubrimiento de la mar del sur a 16 del abril del 1606.” (That is: Passed by here the provincial chief Don Juan de Oñate from the discovery of the South Sea on 16th of April, 1606.) The discovery he records as of the South Sea (i.e., Pacific Ocean) was really of the Gulf of California, for Oñate doubtless believed as most of the world did in his day that California was an island. Oddly enough, though, he made a mistake in the date, which documentary evidence proves to have been 1605 not 1606.

The inscription of De Vargas, the reconqueror, following the Pueblo rebellion of 1680, reads: “Aqui estaba el Genl Dn. Do de Vargas quien conquisto a nuestra santa fe y la real corona todo el nuevo Mexico a su costa año de 1692.” (Here was the General Don Diego de Vargas who conquered to our holy faith and the royal crown all New Mexico, at his own expense, year of 1692.)

Records of especial interest, too, are two of 1629, telling of the passing by of Governor Silva Nieto. One is in rhymed verse[43] and refers to Nieto as the “bearer of the Faith to Zuñi;” that is, he had acted as escort of the first Christian missionaries to pagan Zuñi. A tragic sequel to that inscription is a short one that is so abbreviated that scholars have had a hard tussle with it. The puzzle has been solved, however. You will know this petroglyph by the signature Lujan, a soldier, and the date 1632; and it reads, Englished: “They passed on 23 March 1632 to the avenging of Padre Letrado’s death.” Zuñi did not take kindly to its missionaries and killed them periodically. This Padre Letrado was one of the martyrs—shot to death as he preached, holding out his crucifix to his murderers.[44]

In delicate, almost feminine, characters is a modest inscription that reads, translated: “I am from the hand of Felipe de Avellano, 16 September, soldier.” There is something touching, I think, about that personified periphrase, and I am glad that, in spite of the omission of the year, historians have identified the writer. He was a common soldier of the garrison at Zuñi after the reconquest, and met death there in 1700.

It is unfortunate that this noble and unique monument should be left exposed as it is to vandals. Almost every white visitor thinks it is his duty to scratch his name up alongside the historic ones and there is no guardian to forbid—only an unregarded sign of the Department of the Interior tacked on a nearby tree. A year ago the Department, in response to private representation, promised to put up a fence of protection, and perhaps this has been done; but a fence is a perfectly inadequate measure. If the East possessed one such autograph in stone (of Joliet, or La Salle, or Cartier), as El Morro bears by the half dozen, I wonder if the few hundred a year necessary to support a local guardian would not be forthcoming? When will our nation take seriously the colonial history of the Southwest as just as much its own as that of the Atlantic side of the Continental Divide?

At the shortest, it is a matter of two days to achieve a visit to El Morro from the railway. Gallup is the best stop-off. There an automobile may be hired, and the night spent at Ramah, where accommodations may be had at the trader’s unless you prefer to camp at the Rock itself, which, if you like such adventure and are prepared, is a joyous thing to do.

CHAPTER VIII
THE STORIED LAND OF THE NAVAJO

The Navajos are the Bedouins of our Southwest, and there are about 22,000 of them—a fine, independent tribe of Indians occupying a semi-desert, mountainous reservation in northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and a small corner of Utah. Indeed they occupy somewhat more, for they are confirmed rovers and are frequently found setting up their hogans, shepherding their sheep, and weaving their blankets, well across their government-fixed borders. One is sure to see some of them in Gallup, where they come to trade—the men generally in dark velveteen shirts worn loose outside the trousers, their long, black, uncut hair filleted about with red bandas and caught up behind in a club or knot. Both men and women are expert riders, sitting their ponies as firmly as centaurs; and both are extravagantly fond of silver jewelry, of which they often wear small fortunes in necklaces, belts, bracelets, rings and buttons hammered by their own silversmiths from coin of Mexico. If you see them wearing blankets, as you will when the weather requires it, these will be the gaudy products of Yankee looms, which they buy for less than the price they receive for their own famous weave. So, thrifty traders that they are, they let the white folk have the latter and content themselves with the cheaper machine-made article bought from an American merchant.

It is part of the fun of a visit to the Hopi towns that you must cross a section of the Navajo Reservation and thus get a glimpse of life in the latter; but there is a special trip which I would like to recommend from Gallup as a starting point, that brings one more intimately into touch with the tribe. That is to Chin Lee and the Cañon de Chelly,[45] about 100 miles northwest of Gallup. There is a choice of roads, so that the going and returning may be by different routes. The trip may be done by time economists in an automobile in two or three days, but a more enjoyable plan for easy-going folk is to take eight or ten days to it by horseback or wagon, camping by the way. And do it preferably in September or early October, for then the mid-year rains are usually over, the air clear and sparkling, and feed for horses sufficiently abundant. The elements that enter into the landscape are primarily those that go to the making of the grandeur of the Grand Cañon region, but scattered and distant, not concentrated. There is a similar sculpturing of the land into pinnacles and terraces, cones perfect or truncated, battlemented castles and airy spires, appearing, when afar, mistily in an atmosphere of amethyst and mauve and indefinite tones of yellow and pink. Now the road threads open, sunny forests of pine and oak, the latter in autumnal dress of crimson and gold and surprising you with acorns as sweet as chinquapins. Again, it traverses broad, unwatered, semi-desert plains dotted with fragrant sage-brush and riotous sunflowers, the only animated things in sight being prairie dogs and jackrabbits, or an occasional band of Navajo ponies. As the morning advances, cumulus clouds rise in stately squadrons above the horizon and move across the sky dropping drifting shadows; at noon over a fire of sage stumps you heat up your beans and brew your coffee in the grateful shade of your wagon; night finds you at some hospitable trader’s post, or enjoying your blankets at the sign of La belle étoile. Only at long intervals will you come upon sign of human life. At Fort Defiance, 30 miles north of Gallup, is a Government Reservation school for the Navajos, and a mile from it an Episcopal medical mission—a living monument to the loving interest of Miss Eliza Thackara in these Indians. Eight miles south of Fort Defiance is the Franciscan Mission of St. Michael’s to the Navajo, where, if you are interested, the hospitable Brothers can show you what sort of a job it is to transform an ungroomed savage into Christian semblance. At Ganado, Arizona, 45 miles from Gallup, is the trading post of Mr. J. L. Hubbell, whose name for a generation has in that part of the world been a synonym for hospitality.[46]

Nevertheless, there is more life than you see, for the native hogan, or one-roomed dwelling of logs covered with earth, is so inconspicuous that you may pass within a few rods of one and never detect it. The Navajos do not congregate in villages but each family wants a lot—miles, indeed—of elbow room.

Chin Lee, mentioned above, is not Chinese as it sounds, but the Navajo name of a spacious valley into which Cañon de Chelly debouches. If you have a taste for mythology, it will interest you to know that here, according to tradition, Estsán-atlehi (the chief goddess of the Navajo pantheon and wife of the Sun-god), traveling from the east once camped with her attendant divinities for a great ceremony and a footrace. She was on her way to her home in the great water of the west, where in a floating house she still lives, and receives her lord the Sun every evening when his daily work is finished.[47] There is a trading post at Chin Lee, and beyond the broad flat in front of it is the entrance to Cañon de Chelly. This is a narrow, tortuous rift in the earth, some 20 miles long, whose perpendicular sides of red sandstone rise 800 to 1000 feet. Opening into it are two side gorges, Monument and Del Muerto Cañons. A shallow stream of sweet water—sometimes, however, hidden beneath the sands—creeps along the cañon floor, widens in the plain into the Rio de Chelly, and flowing northward joins the San Juan in southern Utah. So in time does it contribute its bit to the tawny flood that pours through the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.[48]

The interests that hold the visitor in Cañon de Chelly are several. There is, first, the stupendous scenery. Men and animals traversing this level floor seem pygmies at the foot of the smooth, vertical walls, carved and stained by the master-artist Time working through who knows how many milleniums. The windings of the gorge keep one in perpetual expectancy of something going to happen just around the corner, and create an atmosphere of mystery that is little short of thrilling. In places the cañon widens out in sunlit coves and wild-grass meadows, where clustered reeds[49] rustle and wild flowers bloom. Quite as often, though, the walls are so close together that the sunshine never reaches the bottom and the grim surroundings suggest some overwhelming picture of Doré’s.

Then there are the ancient dwellings in the cliffs—little, crumbling cities of the dead. Perched high up in shallow cavities of the flat wall, some are inaccessible except by ladders; others, may be reached by scrambling up talus slopes. One famous one, known as Mummy Cave, in Cañon del Muerto, should by all means be visited; but even more striking is one in the main cañon called La Casa Blanca or the White House. The upper story of this majestic ruin, which strikingly resembles some medieval castle, is colored white; and the whole line of the immense edifice set high above the earth and projected against the dark background of a natural cavity in the enormous cliff, makes a dramatic picture. The effect is heightened when we learn that in Navajo folk-lore it plays a part as the abode of certain genii or minor divinities who, the faithful believe, still haunt the edifice.

In places the cliffs are prehistoric art galleries, adorned with pictographs of unheard-of birds and animals, human hands outspread, geometrical designs, and attenuated figures of men in various attitudes.

Lastly, there is the interest of a present-day Indian life, for the cañon is the free, joyous home of numerous Navajo families, that come and go as fancy dictates. Their hogans, often with a hand-loom for blanket weaving[50] swung from a nearby tree are set inconspicuously here and there at the base of the towering cliffs, wherever there is a bit of land suitable for the raising of corn, beans and melons. Peach orchards, too, are here, from seed of Spanish introduction centuries ago. Flocks of sheep and goats are continually on the move up and down the cañon, which is musical with their bleatings and the wild melody of the shepherds’ songs. It is a picturesque sight at evening to see the homing bands crowding into the primitive folds which sometimes are a mere crevice in the rock walls with a rude fence thrown across the opening.

During the wars which for many years marked the intercourse of the Navajos with the whites—both Spaniards and Americans—the Cañon de Chelly was a notable stronghold of the red men. It was here that in 1864 Kit Carson and his troopers at last succeeded in breaking the backbone of the Indian resistance. Today the Navajos are as peaceable as the Pueblos.

According to Navajo legends, the boundaries of their land were marked out for them by the gods who brought them up through the great reed from the lower world.[51] These landmarks were in the form of mountains especially created for the purpose of earth brought from the lower world, and were seven in number. Of these the Sacred Mountain of the East is believed to be Pelado Peak, 20 miles northeast of Jemes pueblo and it was made fast to the earth by a bolt of lightning; the Sacred Mountain of the South is known to be Mount San Matéo, 20 miles or so northwest of Laguna pueblo, held in place by a great stone knife thrust through it from summit to base; the Sacred Mountain of the West, is the San Francisco Mountain, 12 miles north of Flagstaff, Arizona, fastened down by a sunbeam; and the Sacred Mountain of the North is some one of the San Juan range, which a rainbow held in place. The other three are peaks of the mid-region, only one of which, Hosta Butte in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, has been identified.[52] Two of these mountains are plainly visible from the Santa Fe Railway trains and by motorists following the National Old Trails transcontinental highway—namely, the San Francisco Mountain (12,611 feet) and Mount San Matéo (11,389 feet). Both are extinct volcanoes. The vicinity of Mount San Matéo (which is also known as Mount Taylor)[53] is the scene of a thrilling tradition. There it was that the Navajo Gods of War (children of the Sun and of the Waterfall), mounted upon a rainbow, met and slew with lightning bolts the boy-eating giant, Ye-itso. The latter was a monster so huge that the spread of his two feet was a day’s journey for a man, his footfalls were as thunder, and when he drank his draught exhausted a lake. His head, cut off by the War-gods and tossed away, was changed into El Cabezon, a truncated cone of a mountain visible 40 miles northeast from San Matéo; and his blood flowing in a deluge to the south and west is what we white folk in our ignorance call a hardened lava-flow, as we watch it from the car window for miles westward from McCarty’s. Look at it again with the eyes of faith, and is not its semblance that of coagulated, blackened blood?

So you see in this glorious Southwest we may still follow in the very footsteps of the gods, and regard the world as it seems through the eyes of a primitive and poetic race—see in the lightning the weapon of the red gods, in the rainbows their bridges to traverse chasms withal, in the sunbeams their swift cars of passage. There is something rather exhilarating, I think, to know that in our materialistic America there is a region where the Ancient Ones still haunt as in the youth of the world. To be sure the white man’s schools are operating to break up this primitive faith; but the ingrained genius of a race is not made over in a generation. One may stumble still upon Navajo religious ceremonies, held in the open, with their picturesque rites and maskings and wild music. They differ markedly from the ceremonies of the Pueblos, and are, as a rule, undertaken under the charge of medicine men primarily for the cure of the sick. There are no fixed dates for any of these ceremonies, and casual travelers do not often see them, as they are most likely to be held during the cold weather, when few visitors care to penetrate into the country. An exceedingly interesting adjunct of many of the Navajo rites is the dry sand painting, of a symbolic character and often of striking beauty, made in color upon a prepared flooring of sand. The design is “drawn” on this by dribbling upon it the dry ground pigments—white, red, yellow, black and gray—from between the artist’s thumb and fore-finger. The picture must be done in one day, several men sometimes working upon it at once. When completed the sick man is placed upon it and treated; and after that, the picture is obliterated.[54]

CHAPTER IX
THE HOMES OF THE HOPIS, LITTLE PEOPLE OF PEACE

Now that the automobile has become a common mode of travel even in the desert, you may reach the pueblos of the Hopi Indians quite comfortably from Gallup.[55] The distance is about 130 miles to the first of the villages. The road is via St. Michael’s (where the Franciscan Brothers maintain a Mission for the Navajos); Ganado, where Mr. J. L. Hubbell’s trading post stands; and Keam’s Cañon, where Mr. Lorenzo Hubbell, hospitable son of a hospitable father, has another trading post. As far as Ganado (70 miles) the way is identical with the first part of one road to the Cañon de Chelly. From Ganado westward there are 60 miles of pure wilderness, semi-desert, treeless, but in summer and autumn splendid in places with sheets of wild flowers in purple and yellow. On every hand—sometimes near, sometimes afar—are the characteristic mesa formations of the Southwest carved by the elements into curious shapes to which the fancy readily suggests names. One that you will pass is a strikingly good model of a battleship’s dismantled hull, and goes by the name of Steamboat Rock—a pleasant conceit for this desert, which, the geologists tell us, was once a sea bottom. Nowhere is sign of humanity, save perhaps, some wandering Navajos or a chance traveler like yourself.

At last there comes a change over the country ahead of you—a transfiguration to broad sweeps of pink and pallid yellow, with here and there a streak of white or of green, and on the far horizon a wall of purple. The Painted Desert is before you, and upon the very tip of a long promontory streaked horizontally with brown and red and yellow, and laid upon the desert like a gigantic arm thrust out, you see the castellated sky-line formed by the pueblos of the First Hopi Mesa. The geography of the Hopi country is like this: Three long, narrow mesas extending fingerlike into the Painted Desert, the tips about 10 miles each from the next. On the First Mesa (which is the easternmost) are three villages in an almost continuous row—Hano (called also Tewa), which you plump breathlessly into at the top of the one steep trail which is your means of access to all; then Sichúmovi, and lastly, at the mesa’s extremity with all the desert in front, is Walpi, a most picturesque pile rising in terraces to 4 stories and suggesting some mediaeval fortress. The Second Mesa is forked at its tip, with Mishóngnovi and Shipaúlovi set superbly along one tine, and Shimópovi[56] on the other. On the Third Mesa stands old Oraibi, largest and until recently most populous of all. Some years ago, however, it suffered a secession of fully half its population, who are now established a few miles away on the same mesa forming the independent pueblos of Hótavila and Bácavi.[57]

The situation of these little towns is magnificent beyond words, overlooking the Painted Desert, ever changing, ever wonderful, ever challenging the spiritual in you, and stretching to where the San Francisco Peaks, the Mogollones and the White Mountains notch the dim horizon line. The elevation (6000 feet above the sea) and the purity and dryness of the air, combine to make the climate particularly healthful and enjoyable. Winter brings frosts and some snow, alternating with brilliant sunshine. Summer, the season that interests the average visitor, is as a rule delightful—the afternoon thunder showers of July and August being only a refreshment and a source of added picturesqueness in the form of superb cloud effects, spectacular lightning, and splendid rainbows. Mid-day is warm enough for old men to loiter in the sun in a costume that is pared down to a breech clout and little children joyously wear nothing at all; yet both need covering in the shade. As for the summer nights, they are always deliciously cool and for outdoor sleeping are ideal. The flat-roofed, eaveless houses are usually of flat stones laid in mud mortar, and though terraced, do not usually exceed two or three stories in height. The arrangement is in streets and plazas, the kivas or ceremonial chambers (corresponding to the estufas of the Rio Grande pueblos) being underground and reached by a descending ladder, whose upper part—two rungless poles—stick picturesquely up in the air. There is a growing tendency to build the new houses at the bases of the cliffs, particularly at the First and Third Mesas—a reversal to first principles; for when Don Pedro de Tovar, a lieutenant of Coronado, with Padre Juan de Padilla (of whom we heard at Isleta) and a few soldiers, visited in 1540 this province of Tusayan, as they called the country, they reported the Hopis dwelling at the foot of the mesas. It was only later, probably after the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680, that the towns were rebuilt upon the mesa summits where we now find them. The sites of two former Walpis may still be traced below the First Mesa together with the ruins of an ancient Franciscan Mission, some of whose timbers, they say, form part of the existing pagan kivas. The Hopi never took kindly to missionary effort by the whites. Every padre among them was murdered at the time of the Rebellion, and they would never tolerate another. Even kind Padre Garcés (of whom we shall hear in a subsequent chapter) the Oraibians kept sitting outdoors in a street corner for two days, and then evicted him from their town. In 1700, one pueblo whose inhabitants showed a hospitable feeling to the preaching of a persistent friar, was attacked by neighboring Hopis, set on fire and such of the inhabitants as were not killed, were carried to other towns. Of that pueblo—its name was Awátobi—you may see some ruined remnants yet about 9 miles southeast of Walpi.[58]

The attraction that draws most visitors to the country of the Hopi Indians is the famous Snake Dance held annually in August. The date is a movable one and not known positively until 9 days in advance, when the information may be had of the Santa Fe railway officials, who make it a point to be posted. This remarkable ceremony, in which live snakes, a large proportion of them venomous rattlers, are handled by the dance participants as nonchalantly as if they were kittens, is in fact a prayer for rain, in which the snakes (never harmed or their fangs extracted as is sometimes ignorantly supposed), are intermediaries between the people and the gods of water. It is moreover the dramatization of a Hopi myth concerning the origin of the two clans—Antelope and Snake—who perform the ceremony. The myth has to do with the adventures of a young man who, impelled by curiosity to know where the river waters went, made a trip on a hollow log down the Colorado to its mouth. There he had many dealings with the Snake people, in whose ways he was instructed by the friendly Spider Woman. Finally he married the Snake chief’s daughter, and brought her to his own country. The first children of this union were snakes, which the Hopis drove away, but the next were human, and these, the ancestors of the present Snake Clan, came to Walpi to live. The entire ceremony continues throughout 9 days, and is conducted secretly in the underground kiva until near sunset of the last day. Then the priests dramatically emerge into the upper air, and the dance with the snakes occurs. It is all over in about half an hour, but that half hour is what brings the crowd—about the most thrilling and wide-awake performance that is offered anywhere in America. Though the Snake Dance takes place annually, all the villages do not hold it the same year. The most frequented presentations are those at Walpi, held in the odd years, as 1917, 1919, etc., and at Oraibi, the latter in the even years, as 1918, 1920, etc.

The Snake Dance attracts largely through the horror awakened in most of us by reptiles, though it possesses many elements of majestic beauty, too. There are numerous other Hopi ceremonies whose dominant feature to the white onlooker is simple beauty; for instance, the picturesque Flute ceremony held at springs below the mesas, and then along the ascending trails to the mesa-top accompanied by songs, the music of native flutes and the scattering of flowers. This ceremony, which is also the dramatization of a legend[59] as well as an invocation for rain, alternates with the Snake Dance, being held at about but not at the identical time with it, and always at other pueblos than those holding the Snake Dance. This permits attenders at one to witness the other also. Then at all the pueblos there are the autumnal Basket Dances of the women, and in spring and summer the many beautiful Katchina Dances. Katchinas are the deified spirits of the Hopis’ ancestors, and are intercessors with the greater gods for divine favors for the Hopis. They are supposed to reside amid the San Francisco Peaks, where the home of the Sun god is, the great dispenser of blessings. Their annual visits (Indians of the pueblo impersonating the gods) are the occasions of much merry-making, of songs and processions, and dances in mask and gay costumes. Each god has his distinctive mask and dress, and the queer little wooden “dolls” (as the traders call them, though “Katchina” is the better word), which the visitors find in Hopi houses are careful representations of these, made for the children of the household to familiarize themselves with the characteristic aspect of each divinity. “These dances,” to quote Mr. Walter Hough, whose excellent little work, “The Hopi,” should be read by every intending visitor, “show the cheerful Hopi at his best—a true spontaneous child of nature. They are the most characteristic ceremonies of the pueblos, most musical, spectacular and pleasing. They are really more worthy of the attention of white people than the forbidding Snake Dance, which overshadows them by the elements of horror.”

Visitors who allow themselves to be hurried up to the Hopi towns the day before the Snake Dance and then packed off home the next morning, as most of them do, may think they have had a good time, but it is largely the bliss of ignorance. They do not know what they have missed by not spending a week or two. To be sure accommodations are limited and primitive, but one must expect to rough it more or less in Indian country. Still the Hopis are not savages and one can be made comfortable. It is generally possible to rent one of the small houses at the foot of the mesa, if one does not bring one’s own camp outfit, and there are traders at most of the villages where supplies of necessaries may be obtained. Climb the trail to the sunny, breeze-swept mesa top; get acquainted with the merry, well-behaved little children—easy enough, particularly if you have a little stock of candy; watch the women making piki (the thin wafer-like corn-bread of many colors that is the Hopi staff of life), or molding or burning pottery; see the men marching off, huge hoes on shoulder, to cultivate their corn and beans, sometimes miles away, in damp spots of the desert, or coming inward-bound driving burros laden with firewood or products of the field. All this, in an architectural setting that is as picturesque as Syria, replete with entrancing “bits” that are a harvest to the artist or the kodaker. After a day or two you will have had your measure pretty well taken by the population, and granting your manners have been decent, you will be making friends, and every day will show you something new in the life of this most interesting race. Of course there is a difference in the different towns—the customs of some have been more modified than others by contact with the whites and the influence of the Government educational system. The Walpians and their neighbors are perhaps the most Americanized; the people of Hótavila and Shimópovi, the least so.

The Hopis possess arts of great interest. Pottery of beautiful form and design is made at Hano[60] of the First Mesa. This tiny village has the honor of being the home of the most famous of Indian potters, Nampéyo, whose work is so exquisite that it looks distinctive in any company. Her daughter Kwatsoa seems nearly as gifted. Then there is basketry. Curiously enough the East Mesa makes no baskets whatever, and the baskets of the Middle Mesa are quite of another sort from those of the Third Mesa, and both so different from all other Indian baskets whatsoever, as to be recognized at a glance. The Third Mesa baskets are woven wicker work usually in the form of a tray or plaque, the design symbolizing birds, clouds, butterflies, etc., in glaring aniline dyes. Those of the Second Mesa are in heavy coils sewed together with a thread of the yucca wrapping, and in various shapes from flat to globular, the latter sometimes provided with handles. Weaving is an ancient Hopi art that is now unfortunately decadent. In pre-Spanish days and for some time afterwards, the Hopi cultivated a native cotton,[61] and cotton is still woven by them into ceremonial kilts and cord. Formerly they were famous weavers of rabbit-skin blankets. The visitor may still run across an occasional one in the pueblos, but the blanket of wool has long since displaced them. The Hopis make of weaving a man’s business, which is usually carried on in the kivas when these are not being used for religious purposes. They specialize in women’s mantas, or one-piece dresses, of a dark color with little or no ornamentation.