Now the Indians drifted in to greet their new Chief. Although possessed by a great curiosity, they came shyly, diffidently, as is the Indian way. One would suppose that a grand council of braves would have been called to introduce a new Agent with some semblance of formality, a thing that impresses a primitive people. But not so. The old Agent, who was agent no longer, glad that someone else had succeeded to the petty headaches which are worse than the problems, packed his gear and departed. It was up to me to meet the savage in the course of business, and to make what impression I could. There were no individual records to guide one, and first impressions are not infallible; in fact, the most serious mistakes of Agents, things that long affect their gaining the confidence of the people, come about through the necessity of accepting the Indian at his face value—a slipshod method. The census, for example, was a string of names, having little accuracy, that had not been annotated in years.

The prominent men of the several districts were not at all backward in telling me how influential they were. The Navajo came first, and with reason, for they held five-sixths [123]of the range by right of might, and were eager to impress one that they should not be disturbed.

Came Hostin Nez, “Tall Man,” a lean, shrewd genius, who could remember the captivity after Carson’s campaigns. He stood proudly erect, and yet had an ingratiating manner that was part of his profession; for besides dominating a large faction of his people and being the hereditary chief of all the Navajo, he was a Medicine Man of high degree. Came from the north old Billa Chezzi, better known as “Crooked Fingers” because of a crippled hand, who had in him nothing that was sullen or criminal perhaps, but who pictured a bloodthirsty pirate on a desperate mission.

These two represented communities of Navajo, living and roaming north, south, east, and west of the Hopi mesa settlements, and by whom the Hopi have been throttled from the range. There were lesser men, headmen of groups or families. I remember Senegathe, “Wanderer,” with his gray hair blowing in long snaky wisps; and Scar Chin, who resembled a good-natured friar, though a long rip in his face suggested a strenuous past; and Silversmith Jim, and Yellow-Horse, and Bitani, and Whispering Bill, each having something of distinction in his manner or personal eccentricity.

But for the most part, my Navajo business was with Hostin Nez. He was a Judge of the Indian Court, and carried a “pretty paper,” a ragged commission, lithographed in bright colors. We had many a long and dispassionate argument, he rolling cigarettes in pieces of newspaper, which he evidently preferred to the “saddle-blankets” that came in packages, and wiping his lips now and then with a Turkish towel that was draped about his neck—a fashion in neckcloths that he affected. I never [124]knew Hostin Nez to lose patience, and he would return again and again to a point at issue in the hope of gaining advantage—in appearance a Tartar chieftain, in methods a Talleyrand.

“Think of it, Nahtahni,” he said to me, very shortly after our first meeting, “I have never had a wagon. Here I am, an influential man among my people, and all the others have been favored. When the children first went to school, the Agents used to give each father a wagon; but that was years ago, and my children are men, and I never had a wagon.”

Now this was hard lines, for a Navajo who did not possess a wagon was prevented from hauling freight, at that time a most lucrative occupation, and the camp need for a vehicle of some sort was great. The Navajo has to haul wood and water, and must somehow transport his products of wool and hides to the trader. So I promised him a wagon from the next lot received.

This would not be a present. The Indians of the Empire are independent and self-supporting; they do not receive rations, and the Nahtahnis do not make presents of implements or other necessary things. The Indians paid for such issues by laboring on the roads and at other constructive work of the jurisdiction, and were credited at current rates for laborers. The “wagon” meant the issue of a full freighting outfit—everything save the horses, of which the Navajo have a surplus. He would receive a stout farm-type wagon, having top-box, bows, and cover; also harness for four horses, all at Government cost-price, about one half the figure a trader would have quoted it. And at the appointed time he would assemble from ten to twenty of his clan to labor out the bill, his followers helping him as he would in turn help them. [125]

But Hostin Nez sent his son to sign the receipt for the issue. This was Hostin Nez Bega Number 4, indicating that there were other scions numbered one, two, and three, and perhaps even others bearing more fanciful Indian names. A great suspicion dawned on me. The issue-papers for several years back were examined, and lo! old Talleyrand had worked that game many times. He had never received a wagon; but each of his sons had received wagons after the father had made the plea for himself. When they went for freight the Nez outfit comprised a caravan, and at the scales their pay-checks totaled hundreds of dollars. Hostin Nez did not go for freight. He was the main guy, and procured the wagons!

When I taxed the Chief with this, he was not offended. He smiled benignly and repeated:

“But, Citcili” (my younger brother), “I have never had a wagon.”

We let it go at that.

Now Billa Chezzi, chief of the northern steppes, was not so clever. He was a rougher, blustering type of Indian, and lacked finesse. Once I endeavored to make a census of the Navajo, a very difficult thing of accomplishment because of their nomadism. Two enumerators cornered old Billa and insisted that he give up the details of his private life. He named six wives living, and counted forty-seven sons in various parts of the Empire. Then he said he was tired, and getting old anyway, and that his memory did not serve him as once it did. Had he followed the system of Hostin Nez, he would have crowded the Studebaker wagon-works to full capacity.

And came Kewanimptewa, chief of that third and weakest faction of the Oraibi Hopi that had nearly perished in the hills. He was a stolid fellow, not at all like [126]his name, which signifies Chameleon. He gave me the once-over, and then said frankly:—

“Well, you are a little man—a very little man. The last one was a big man—very big man. But—perhaps you will do.”

---

Hardly had I moved the big desk to a place where I could see the Indians as they came in at the main door, in order that their pleas should not have to filter down through clerks, when the quiet of the summer afternoon was broken by cries of dismay and excited grief. A Navajo came running, weeping, his manner hysterical. He rushed into the office and stammered:—

“Charlie Bega, he dead—kill—Charlie Bega!”

For the moment I thought someone had been murdered; and a second thought did not lessen my dismay, for this man was a miner. His face was streaked where the tears had washed down through the smudges of coal-dust. The reservation has large deposits of soft coal, and fuel for the Government plants is mined by Indians under a skilled white miner. I had been down the mine that week, and had noted its sagging pillars under the pressure of that heavy mesa roof. It flashed through my mind that there had been a tragedy down the drift, and that other miners were either dead or entombed. But the Navajo interpreter quickly explained:—

“His son has just died. Their hogan is down the cañon near the mine, and he came to tell you of it, and he wants a coffin built and a grave dug.”

The doctor came in to confirm this statement, and added:—

“The carpenter makes coffins for the people. The Navajo have a great fear of the dead, and they will not [127]bury when it is possible to have the work done by someone else. We usually send a squad of men to prepare a grave, and the parson conducts a little service. If you say so, I will tell him.”

It was late afternoon, and would soon be twilight.

“You may tell the carpenter,” I said to the interpreter; “we will arrange this funeral for to-morrow morning.”

“Pardon me, sir, but they have queer customs. No member of that family will eat until the body is disposed of; and they must purify themselves by sweat-baths and ceremonies. When one dies close to the Agency, we help them bury at once.”

My first inclination was not to be ruled by such superstition; and then I thought how little four centuries of progress around them and fifty years of American influence had changed the Navajo. Like his Desert, he has remained untouched, unaffected. A hogan that has held the dead is never afterward occupied by the living. Its wood will not be used to make a fire, though they come to freezing.

“Very well,” I said. “Have things made ready to-night.”

And I shall never forget my first Indian funeral. At different times since, and among other tribes and circumstances, I have had more of excitement and not a little anxiety at funerals; but this was my first in the Desert.

The carpenter made a substantial box, much too large I thought; but when the body was placed in it, wrapped in new blankets, decked with silver ornaments, with the dead boy’s saddle, bridle, and quirt at the foot, it was none too large. They could ill afford to part with those blankets and silver things, and especially that saddle. But he must be caparisoned and equipped for his new life in the ghostly land where he would go a-roaming. [128]

A half-dozen of the employees climbed into the wagon that would carry the body to the grave. Among them was a visitor, a noted geologist who has made the Empire his study, and who took his share of labor along with the rest. The minister from the Baptist Mission met us at the gate. The burial ground was a desolate place across the arroyo, in a little hollow of those great drifted dunes, shunned by the Indians and not very inviting to anyone. By the time the grave was ready, it was quite dark and lanterns had been lighted.

“Do you wish a commitment service, sir?” asked the minister. I did not at once understand him, having to learn that the new Agent decides everything, and I had thought he would take his place as the man of prayer without request. He had a short ritual for pagans, and this was one of them. It was solemn and sufficient.

“Dust to dust …” and the tossing of earth on the box followed. Four of the men began filling in the grave. I had looked around for the relatives of the dead, but as yet none were in evidence, when out of the dusk came two strange Navajo, leading a pony. It was a very good animal as desert mounts go. And the missionary presented to me a serious problem.

“They wish to kill the horse. Will you permit that?”

And there was something in his tone of voice that indicated a hope I would deny something as an innovation. Again I called for an explanation.

“The Navajo always kill a horse at the grave,” said the trader.

“It seems a merciless thing to do—that’s a good pony.”

The missionary brightened. He had little use for pagan customs and longed for an arbitrary decision. [129]

“It is the custom of the people,” said the trader, an honest man who advised me for many days thereafter. “You may not like it, and—you may be strong enough to stop it”—there was doubt in his voice;—“but it is their custom.”

It went against the grain; but there stood the Indians with the animal, silent, waiting. This problem had been presented to many Agents, perhaps.

“If we do not kill it mercifully with a gun, they will only go away and beat it to death with rocks,” said the trader. “It must be done to-night. I have brought a rifle.”

The desert custom of the Navajo won its first round.

The two Indians led the pony to the head of the grave, and, seeming to understand that we had settled it, scuttled away in the shadows. The trader leveled his rifle and shot that very good pony through the brain. It leaped forward convulsively, and plunged down, knee-deep, in the soft earth of the grave. The dead had a mount.

It was black night by this time, and we filed back to the Agency, where I felt better for having the electric lights. There had been something gruesome in the whole proceeding. But it was a custom of the people, as the trader had said, and in other ways I learned from him that it is not wise for a strange Chief at once to take his people by the throat.

---

Now the first complaints were filed with me, and soon increased to scores. The Hopi has suffered for many years because of the willful depredations of his too close neighbor, the Navajo; and the Navajo in turn has community troubles of his own. There were complaints of damage to fences, and of ruined crops, and of peeled orchards; of [130]the stealing of ponies, and the re-branding and butchering of cattle, the pillage of houses, and the unwarranted seizure and holding of precious water-holes; complaints of domestic wrangles and social scandals, of blighted love and too ardent affections; of marriage portions and the current price of brides, of mothers-in-law—ye Gods! even of witchcraft! Descent and distribution included not only real and personal property such as we know, for came a Medicine Man claiming to have inherited the paraphernalia of a deceased tribal doctor, and requested that I decide ownership, according to the rules, in the dried head of a dead crane.

The Indian welcomes opportunity to speak his piece in court, and if permitted will promptly set up as prosecutor and spring to the rapid cross-examination of witnesses. He will even incriminate himself if there is chance of making things unpleasant for someone else; and those of the accused found guilty and sentenced invariably request a chance to peach on some other poor devil who has evaded punishment. Witchcraft seldom appears in the open, but I recall one case that was unusual.

The favorite son of a Tewa died, and the father looked about him for someone on whom to blame this calamity. Indian grief, seldom long-lived, may be the more quickly assuaged if one can fix the blame. Suddenly the bereaved father discovered that a certain neighbor was a witch. He did not like the man anyway. So, finding him prowling around the house,—urged by a sympathetic curiosity, no doubt,—the parent seized him and dragged him into the room with the dead.

“Now,” he cried, amid tears, “You see him plainer. Look at him. You are the one who killed him. You are a witch, and you sickened him with sorceries and bad medicine. [131]Listen! When we kill anything, we always eat it. Now you eat him!”

This the alleged doctor shrank from doing, and forthwith the enraged father administered a terrific beating. The nose of this unfortunate neighbor was hammered out of all resemblance to a human organ, and other features of him were sadly damaged. They both appeared before me the next day. The father then expressed penitence and disavowed a belief in witches; but I could see that his conversion had been too rapid. In his troubled heart the witches prevailed. He seemed not to mind his sentence of a week at hard labor, having had action for his sorrow.

Having once opened a docket, the word seemed to go forth to the mesas and the cañons to bring in their complaints. The cases became legion. One would begin to examine witnesses in so simple a matter as horse-stealing and record quite a bit of evidence, to discover suddenly that the animal in question had disappeared eleven years gone, the complaint having been duly entered by seven different Indian Agents sitting at this and other Agencies. It became necessary to impose a statute of limitations.

The first real trial concerned a medicine man and his collar-bone. One Horace Greeley, of Sitchumnovi, in the First Mesa District, at that time reputed to be seventy-four years old, and by profession a bone-setter, had not pleased a member of his tribe. Or perhaps he had conjured only too well with the misplaced anatomy of the patient, and charged according to his skill. At any rate, a relative of the patient took umbrage, and proceeded to handle Horace in a rough and unseemly manner. Among other things damaged was Horace’s own collar-bone. He could not very well set this himself, and naturally distrusted his confreres; so he was forced to send for the Agency [132]physician; otherwise I should not have heard of the case. But Horace being found with a fractured collar-bone and numerous contusions, the matter was reported, and his complaint entered for the next session of court.

The Regulations of the Indian Service direct that the Court of Indian Offenses shall consist of two or more intelligent and trustworthy Indians, acting as Judges, whose verdicts shall be reviewed by the Indian Agent, should an appeal be taken to him. As many Indians do not understand their right of appeal, the Agent is compelled to be present either to sustain or to overrule the verdicts.

And did I not have two such Judges, all properly commissioned? Did not Hostin Nez have a treasured “pretty paper,” and was not Hooker Hongave an equal Judge? Did not the Government, looking for justice, generously crowd on each of them the princely salary of seven dollars, each and every month, “fresh and fresh”? Now was the time to avail myself of native wisdom.

Judge Hooker was a figure in the First Mesa community. At one time he had been a Hopi of the Hopi, and had fought the new system of schools and school regulation with all his crude ability. To prevent his children from being enrolled, he had walled them up at home; that is, he placed them in a small room of his house, gave them food and water, and then walled up the entrance door, hoping that his fresh mortar would not arouse suspicion. To-day he is hated by pagans because he has tried to assimilate the doctrines of Christianity, and is looked on by some Christians as an arch-hypocrite. Such are the trials of the savage.

Actually he is a childish old fellow who has tried to merit the confidence of the mission folk, with little concept of where paganism ends and Christianity begins. His greatest [133]sacrifice in life has been the abandonment of tribal ceremonies. From his house below the mesa can be seen the famous Walpi dance-ledge, like a miniature stage high in the thin air, thronged on pagan festal days with multi-colored costumes, where faintly sound the chanting and the drums. But he never attends these feasts of rhythm and song, save at the biennial Walpi Snake Dance, when he joyfully receives a dispensation from the Agent to go as an official of the Government, he being a Judge and the authorized Crier. Many times did he cry down the aimless chatter of tourists during my administration, that solemn announcements might be made to the brethren and the visitors cautioned against the making of vile photographs and unseemly levity. Garbed in a magnificently beaded waistcoat that had decked some long-vanquished Sioux warrior, and bearing his staff of office, a knotted club out of Africa, he presents a strange and not undignified figure on these occasions.

Therefore the two who shared the woolsack were contrasts. Hostin Nez, a Navajo pagan of the pagans, a Medicine Man, a leader of chants and a priest of the sand-paintings; Hooker Hongave, a simple-minded savage who had turned halfway toward the Church, with the low-toned booming of hide drums in his ears, and in his heart perhaps a longing for the mysticism of his ancient people.

The day of hearing having been reached, and all assembled, the Judges listened to the story of old broken Greeley, who had by no means recovered and was still swathed in bandages. The accused was a burly fellow under forty, powerful enough to have challenged a middleweight, who did not deny or extenuate the assault.

“It is a very bad thing this man has done,” said Judge Hooker, clucking his tongue and shaking his head sadly. [134]

“Yes, my brother,” agreed the Navajo jurist. “It is a serious thing and it must not happen again. We must make an example of this man so all the people may know of it.”

“We will,” said Hooker; and they withdrew to frame up a sentence.

From their determined expressions I feared that friend prisoner would get at least a year in the hoosegow—an embarrassing piece of business, for the Regulations do not recognize any charge as deserving more than ninety days, and the Territorial Court had thought three years sufficient for cold-blooded murder in a recent Indian case. The judges reappeared.

“He is a bad man,” said Hooker.

“Yes, he is a dangerous fellow,” said Hostin Nez.

“And so we will send him to jail for—ten days.”

“Ten days!” I cried out. “Why, he nearly killed Greeley! That old man will suffer for weeks. You mean ten weeks, don’t you?”

“No,” they said. “Ten days is a long time in jail.”

The appellate power came into action.

“Your decision, gentlemen, is overruled.”

Hooker brightened, expecting a remission of at least five days, which would save his face at the mesa and perhaps prevent the prisoner from hating him for many years.

“The prisoner will be confined for the period of sixty days, and during that time he will be employed at hard labor.”

Hooker gasped, trembled, and was speechless.

“You are a man without mercy,” declared old Hostin Nez.

That was my last session of the Indian Court in the [135]Hopi-Navajo country with native judges sitting. One might as well expect justice from a goose.

For an Agent who wishes to evade responsibility, the “judges” are an excellent smoke-screen. He can always say—“It was done by the prisoner’s own people”: Pilate’s method. Aside from its having all the elements of farce, it breeds dissatisfaction and ill will among the people, while teaching them nothing. I know of nothing more unjust, unless it be the trial of an unlettered Indian according to the strict letter of white man’s law and the unwavering standard of the white man’s boasted morality.

Thereafter I paid the salaries, and pleasantly chatted with the old gentlemen when they visited the Agency; but of their legal wisdom I wanted nothing. The Court proceeded to business without them.

---

So large an area of country, nearly four thousand square miles, occupied by two dissimilar tribes and these ancient enemies, should have some measure of control. The police force I found consisted of three individuals, two Navajo and one lonesome Hopi. The Agent had found things so peaceful that he did not need police; which is one way of saying that he did not bother himself about policing the Empire. And when the first serious bit of police work became necessary, after five years of peaceful neglect, the War Department, at the request of the Secretary of the Interior, detailed one hundred and twenty-five men of the Twelfth Cavalry as an “escort” to Colonel Hugh L. Scott. This officer of long experience at Indian diplomacy was sent to review the situation and conditions. The work completed, he recommended to the Secretary of the Interior that the Indian Agent should have a force of not less than twenty men, in charge of a white officer. The [136]Department, therefore, being unable totally to ignore the opinion of the famous Colonel Scott, increased my police to eight men, all natives, and left me to whatever success I could contrive. In 1921 Major-General Hugh L. Scott told me that he had not changed his opinion.

The Hopi do not make good policemen, and certainly not in a cohort of one. Their very name implies “the peaceful ones.” Their towns are ruled largely by pueblo opinion. If a resident acquires the reputation of being unreasonable and unfeeling, as a policeman often must, his standing in the outraged community may affect all other phases of his life. Therefore the Hopi is not likely to become a very zealous officer when operating alone. And too, the Hopi fear the Navajo, as it is said the Navajo fear the Ute, and are useless when removed from the neighborhood of their homes.

But many years ago, when the Hopi were sorely pressed by nomad enemies and had not even the consolation of telling their woes to an Indian Agent, they sent emissaries to their cousins, the Pueblo Indians of what is now New Mexico, and begged for a colony of warriors to reside with them. In response to this plea, and looking for something to their advantage, in 1700 came a band of the Tewa from Abiquiu on the Chama River, from that section where Onate found San Juan de los Caballeros. To these people the Hopi granted a wide valley west of the First Mesa, known as the Wepo Wash, providing they would stay and lend their prowess in future campaigns. They built a village atop the First Mesa, now called Tewa or Hano, where their descendants live to-day. Some intermarried with the Hopi, and a few with the near-by Navajo; but they have not been absorbed, and it is a curious fact that while all the Tewa speak Hopi and Navajo with more or [137]less fluency, after two centuries of living side by side few of the Hopi can speak the Tewa dialect.

The Hopi invited warriors, and the warriors have graduated into policemen, for one learns to police the Hopi districts, and even to discipline some of the Navajo, with Tewa officers. They are dependable and courageous, even belligerent; that is to say, they will fight when it is necessary and, strange thing among desert Indians, with their fists, taking a delight in blacking the opponent’s eye. But one has to learn that the Hopi as policemen are fine ceremonial dancers.

The Navajo cohort had been selected following a frontier fallacy. Many of the old Agents believed that a good police force could be built from the “bad men” of the community.

“The cattle-thief will know all other cattle-thieves,” was their reasoning. “The gambler will not be deceived as to those who waste their herds and silver playing monte. And the meaner an Indian among his own, the more respect and fear he will stimulate when garbed in a uniform and authorized to pack a gun.”

As reasonable as if New York officials should make a special deputy of Gyp the Blood.

Hoske Yega, commonly known as Old Mike, a tall and unscrupulous Navajo, carried the Chief’s badge. It was said that he had killed more than one man; and while I am not so sure of this, certainly he was no example of righteousness. The second officer was not so mean a specimen, but one of the same system. They had been policemen of the jurisdiction for many years, believed themselves entitled to the positions, and knew the game. A Navajo policeman has nothing to learn from the bulls of the whites as to methods of graft and the blackmailing [138]use of his badge. The Indian Service has used native police since 1878, and I will admit that occasionally one finds a jewel of an officer, of good judgment, trustworthy, brave, and loyal; but for the most part the Indian policemen of the Desert are go-betweens and grafters.

Providing that the Indian accused of wrongdoing is not of the policeman’s clan, providing that the policeman is not afraid of him or of his clan, providing that there is no witchcraft involved, the Navajo policeman can serve a warrant and get his man as quickly and as unerringly as any Sherlock Holmes. A skilled tracker, he can read the trail as an open book; and often he does not need to follow it. Indians leave their visiting cards behind them. My first knowledge of this came when the corral of Clezzi Thlani was relieved of several good ponies, and Old Mike was sent forth to investigate. He recovered most of the stock from the open range, and reported:

“They were taken by Sageny Litsoi.”

Sageny’s idea had been the common one among Navajo, dating from wagon-train days: to run the ponies a little further each night until distance had convinced him that he actually owned the animals. Then a little tinkering with a hot wire would so confuse brands as to bring even the records to his support.

“Why didn’t you bring him in?” I asked.

“Didn’t see him—just got the horses.”

“Then how do you know that Sageny is the thief?”

“Went to corral; saw his tracks. Yisconga dahtsi” (to-morrow perhaps) “I bring in Sageny.”

“You mean the trail will lead to his hogan?”

“No, No! Went to corral; see his tracks—Sageny’s feet. No two Navajo have feet alike.”

And when Sageny was brought in, although he had many [139]excuses and claimed that he had raised the animals, he did admit taking animals having another’s brand; and he occupied the guardhouse for a period as a guest of the Empire. Several of my Navajo police graduated later into the same rest-room, which seemed a humorous proceeding to many, and was not altogether different from the experiences of some white lieutenants.

It was when I discovered that Tewa could be depended on that better police-work followed. The point of view was different. One day I summoned the tall and spare Tewa chief of police, and said to him:—

“Nelson, I want Hostin Chien Bega. You know him?”

“Yes; me know him—call him ‘Bull-Neck.’ ”

“ ‘Bull-Neck’ it is. Can you bring him in?”

“Dahtsi.”

“Well, here are handcuffs. Suppose you try it.”

He took the cuffs and walked away. A short time after he returned, and I saw that he had buckled on his guns.

“You want ‘Bull-Neck,’ ” he commented. “He mean Navajo—carry two guns all the time. Sometimes bring in whiskey. Now, how bad you want him? You want him dead?”

Well, to be plain about it, I did not want Hostin Chien Bega, alias Bull-Neck, as a morgue exhibit. He was mean enough in the flesh. And I foresaw the later experience of a brother superintendent who ruled the reservation on my west line. His domain was if anything a trifle wilder than mine, reaching to the Grand Cañon and the most remote places of the Utah border. Its area was a trifle more than five thousand square miles, inhabited by at least six thousand Navajo, many of whom had never touched civilization. One Taddytin had graduated from the police force into a bully of the countryside, and it [140]became necessary to impose on him a bit of his own medicine. Taddytin was a giant in physique and quite the meanest man of that territory. Messages summoning him to the Agency were of no avail. He pleaded illness, that cover to which retreat all those who do not wish to testify. Taddytin not only resisted the persons sent to arrest him, but did his level Navajo best with a .45 gun to get them before they subdued him. The Navajo is quite handy with a gun at close range. Most of them go armed from the time they make money enough to purchase a heavy weapon at the nearest trading-post—a trade permitted by the Indian Office, although in utter defiance of both Federal and Arizona State law.

The affair came off in a hogan, which is entirely too restricted a place for serious shooting. Taddytin’s gun twice missed fire, and the persons sent to arrest him, having been in line with the gun, became nervous and, strange to relate, lost their judgment. They should have reprimanded Taddytin for carrying a defective weapon. Instead, they felt it necessary to shoot Taddytin several times, and although not using one of those fancy .22’s that O. Henry was wont to ridicule, the first two bullets failed to knock him down. Unfortunately the last shot killed Taddytin, which was entirely opposed to all policies of moral suasion.

My brother superintendent, who acts as Indian Agent no longer, defended himself in the Federal Court, first against a murder charge, and then one of perjury, from the Spring term of 1916 to and including the Spring term of 1918. He stood quite alone, save for the testimony of all those who knew anything about Indians and Taddytin in particular. It cost him quite four thousand dollars in cash, to say nothing of time and mental disturbance. [141]The full history of this case may be found in a Congressional Report (House Doc. 1244) to accompany H.R. Bill No. 5639, dated September 19, 1922—a bill to reimburse the man after his persecution had ended; a report that is probably forgotten. According to that report, the superintendent, acting as Indian Agent—

did not receive the support from the Indian Bureau in connection with this matter to which he was entitled, but instead he was vigorously, and your committee believes unjustly, prosecuted by the Federal authorities.

You see, the superintendent became the official goat, and suffered that a glowing policy of big wind and puffery might not be embarrassed.

As this affair occurred to my next-door neighbor, it had a serious effect on law-and-order conditions within my by no means peaceful jurisdiction, to the end that I was once reported as murdered and often threatened with having the report confirmed.

No; I did not urge my Tewa policeman to give a too realistic picture of loyalty to my commands. [142]