If we are to attempt to understand the Pueblo Indian it becomes necessary to preface our inquiry by a brief outline, however superficial, of those general aspects of his religious belief and practice which scholars have agreed to consider as part of the common heritage of the race. In this Ácoma must inevitably share.

There is no manifestation of the Indian character more extraordinary than his elaborate religious and ritual organization. Fundamental to any real interpretation of Indian life, it is so bewilderingly intricate and so elusive that we can here touch upon only a few of the more definite aspects. No one not a master of this subject can treat it briefly without doing it a certain violence. It is impossible to say that the Indian in general believes this or that, for while there are a few essential deities in his hierarchy that are almost universally accepted, though varying somewhat in nomenclature through the tribes, the differences are legion.[199] Each nation presents its own galaxy of gods who must be separately described to give a just impression of the whole. Wissler says there is “nothing like the supreme over-ruling and personal being” such as we name God, but that the Indian “seems rather to have formed complex and abstract notions of a controlling power or series of powers pervading the universe.”[200] Thrust into life, man finds himself surrounded by potencies wholly beyond his control. These powers, supernal or infernal, must therefore be propitiated, and if man in his ignorance has offended, expiation must be offered and endured. The commonest form of address used in prayers and sacrifices is to “Those Above.” On the authority of a full-blooded Dakota Indian (Ohiyesa),[201] well known by his American name of Charles Alexander Eastman, we are told that the religion of his race is the last thing a white man can hope to understand, for it is something no Indian, still firm in his own faith, will ever talk about, since he is convinced that neither it nor the ceremonies of its celebration will be rightly interpreted.

Where all is so vague as to escape true analysis, the question arises, why separate myth and religion? Are they not practically one and inclusive? Alexander discusses this briefly and ably, and concludes that with the Indian, as with all other peoples, it is impossible to

The race as a whole has been classed among the “sun worshippers”[203] from their conviction that the sun is the highest manifestation of nature, without which no living thing can thrive. As their forefathers faced in silent adoration the golden globe coming out of the nebulous dawn, or, from that high-placed kiva in the cliffs of the Rito de los Frijoles, stood mute and motionless till it sank from sight beyond the farthest reach of the eye, it was the omnipresent spirit within the sun, but never the orb itself, to which they paid reverence. Such a contemplative worship, with its touch of orientalism, permits us to accept the appellation of “The Great Mystery” as their idea of deity. In most tribes the spirits of the earth, the sky, and water are nearly or quite equal to the sun. Below these, whom we may call the Great Gods, who cannot descend to earth in visible form, there is an infinite number of lesser deities—the half-gods, and still further to complicate such a system every deity possesses many attributes, and may at any time manifest himself under any one of a great variety of forms. Among the lesser gods are the thunder and lightning, the serpent, and the bird. Each of these has his especial power and his appointed mission to perform. He must therefore be individually appealed to in prayer, propitiated by offerings at secret shrines of earth, or thanked at appropriate seasons for benefits conferred upon weak humans, watchers of “this ominous and treacherous world.”[204]

From such a composite hierarchy it is apparent that the popular idea of “one Great Spirit” worshipped by the Indian race is a romantic fancy, unless by it is meant Nature—Nature in all of her manifestations of plants and animals, and rocks, and heavenly bodies. The Indian belief, in fact, belongs to the system called hecastotheism, the opposite extreme from monotheism, in which, to quote Cushing,

It is the eternal contest between the material and the spiritual that was to the Indian an omnipresent prepossession. Through the powerful theocratic organization of the community in its social as well as in its hieratic aspects, and by the songs and prayers of a hoary antiquity, the whole year is a complex of ceremonies. This is more especially the case in the maize-growing countries. From birth to death the Indians were aware of mysterious environing forces, some beautiful and fortune-bringing, others inimical and disastrous. To the end that life should be made endurable, a large number of esoteric organizations was everywhere established, each of which employed a special ritual at an appointed time. Among the Keres, there were originally four such priesthoods,[206] but the march of modern ideas has gradually eliminated some of these in certain of the villages. Highest of these groups were the Ya-Ya (mothers) to which the caciques belonged; then came the medicine men, the warriors, and the hunters.

Frazer points out that in the most primitive societies the practice of magic was for individual gain, but that, as community life evolved, it was employed for the benefit of the tribe. Sacrifice and prayer were the means by which the gods, the personal agents of elemental forces, were induced to bestow favors upon the whole people. Consequently it signified a great advance in social progress when a class of magic-practising men was set apart to bring prosperity to their tribe, whether this was for the control of the weather, and so indirectly for the increase of foods, or for the healing of diseases.

Although everywhere these priests were given terrible power, often ruthlessly exercised, they were,

The entire highly complicated program as practised by the Pueblo Indian may be summed up as a system of religious ideas which have as their objective counterparts bundles of fetishes, which help to serve the good of the clan, or fraternity, or community at large. According to Kroeber, “Among the Pueblos each priest is the curator of a sacred object or fetish, carefully bundled and preserved.” The mere display of these objects upon an altar made of meal or sand is a prayer to “those above.” The fetishes may not themselves be thought of as divine, but they do represent something of the same concept as does the crucifix above the High Altar of the Roman church. And they have the direct quality, as medicine-objects, of bringing succor to those in distress. To quote Kroeber once more:

There is scarcely any limit to the fetishes that exist, for they are mediators between men and the deified animal or object which each particular fetish represents, and they are therefore an essential accompaniment of all dances, or other rites, also of all the supreme events of life, such as birth, adolescence, and death. In the most unlikely clefts of the mountain or in hidden spots of earth curious little bundles are found that betoken the shrine of some fetish.[209]

Probably the oldest of all religious cults is the worship of the serpent, so often curiously mingled with that of the sun, as, for instance, in the pantheon of the Aztecs. In his “Origin of Civilization,” Sir John Lubbock says that, “as an object of worship the serpent is preëminent among ancients.”[210] Do we not also know that in that period which the historian Gibbon calls the happiest and most prosperous of the human race—the era of Marcus Aurelius—the Romans sent every year a troop of young girls to feed a great serpent asleep within a sacred cave, and that if any of the maidens were impure the serpent did not eat and the harvest of that year was a failure? How many visitors to the pueblos of the American Indian comprehend the profound reason for the awe that underlies the worship there of what is to the average white man an object of repulsion if not of fear—the rattlesnake? Yet it is easy to understand when explained. It has long been observed that the mysterious force by which all things move, whether on earth, in the sky, or under the sea, is regarded by the savage as so inexplicable that he believes it to be controlled by unseen beings of superhuman power. Consequently, the continuous movement of a serpent, whether slow or swift, without any visible aid to locomotion, would strike the primitive man as especially mysterious; add to this its power of hypnosis, its immortality achieved through the annual shedding of its skin, and lastly, a death-dealing sting, and we see reason enough why savages should regard a creature, thus endowed with gifts he has not, with such awe and fear as would lead to an intense desire to propitiate the occult power. Given desire of sufficient intensity, it may in itself become worship.

Various scholars have pointed out that not only is the zig-zag form of lightning the natural sky symbol of the serpent, but that since both may kill instantaneously when they strike, there is another logical association of ideas between them.[211] The plumed serpent,[212] Awanyu, was guardian of the waters, and had for his sky emblem the rippling course of the Milky Way. Although the snake ceremonial is thought of as chiefly a prayer for rain, it had an equally intimate connection with the bestowal of health, reminding us of the classic myth in which the symbol of Esculapius was a serpent.

If white visitors to the communal dances of any of the tribes, but let us say particularly to the snake dances of Hopi-land, would only recognize that this whole performance is an incantation or invocation to the gods, giving thanks for the harvests of the year, and would refrain from laughter and other unseemly expressions that are sacrilege to the Indian, they would greatly help toward the mutual good-will and understanding of the two races.

From the plumed serpent to the adoration of the bird is an easy transition for the Indian mind. Do we not read in the wisdom of Solomon: “There be three things which are too wonderful for me; and the chief of these were the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock”? And in truth what is more enviable than a bird, that, spurning the earth, may overtop the clouds, pouring out his melody as he soars; or, like the eagle, proud, swift, and sudden, may swoop to clutch his prey and be aloft again in the flash of a moment.[213]

The Keres to which the Ácomas belong regard Sky Father—synonymous with Sun Father—and Earth Mother as the great deities. Haeberlein tells us the common Southwest concept is that the Earth Mother while lying down is impregnated either by a sunbeam or a drop of water. In either case rain must effect the union and the fertilization. He calls the specific psychologic characteristic of Pueblo culture the “idea of fertilization,” because all their ceremonies are focused upon the production of fertility for the fields. He further maintains that this psychologic aspect cannot be disposed of as an independent element, nor as a mere accessory, but that “it is at every point in time, and space, inherently associated with the historical side”;[214] that is, it has entered materially into every new idea or form of worship that developed in their midst.

Lakes and springs are more or less consciously identified by the Keres with Si-pa-pu, the place of exit from the underworld, where the Earth Goddess gave birth to the clans of men. Hence such water is the most direct path of communication with the gods of fertilization, of which a water monster is the symbol. The Keres believe that the Twin war gods received from the Sun Father bows, arrows, and lightning-bolts as weapons; in the ceremony the lightning is not a death-dealing weapon of war, but only a bringer of rain. Here we have a concrete illustration of that duality which is so characteristic of the Indian and often so puzzling to the white observer. Kroeber considers it in part, at any rate, a deliberate repetition connected with a tendency toward exacting elaboration of ceremonial. The idea here is that when the Twins meet, the clouds cause rain to fall. Hence the war captain and his lieutenant always impersonate the Twins. There are significant secondary psychologic associations illustrated by these dual concepts, for these gods are at the same time deities of war and of fertilization. In one game we find netted wheels to symbolize the war shields of the Twins, which were spun from clouds. The Hopi women, on the other hand, play the Dart and Wheel game as the magic of fertilization. Here is another illustration of the universal belief in magic power, which human activity of the right sort may influence in order that the life of man may be safeguarded and led forward to a desired goal.

The K’at’sina, who impersonate the gods in the masked dances, were, according to Keres ideas, created in the underworld by Utset, an earth goddess. She sent them to live in the west, which is therefore their traditional home. They are variously described as rain-makers, as deified spirits of ancestors, or, as one writer calls them, as “a heterogeneous crowd.”

Goddard says of the K’at’sina that in them we have one of the most outstanding features of the ceremonial and religious life of the Southwest:

Enough has been said to show that symbolism plays a large rôle in Indian beliefs and in daily life.

Among the most sacred symbols of the Indians was the number four, undoubtedly derived from the four cardinal points, which, like most of the primitives, the aborigine in his wanderings identified with the daily journey of the heavenly bodies; and with the winds, which were the spirits of the cardinal points that brought about changes of weather and of seasons. The amazing extent of the application of this sacred four is beyond the scope of this work, but a few examples will illustrate the astonishing variety of its use:

All the first missionaries who came out to New Mexico with the Conquistadores were of the Franciscan order. Very keen were these ardent apostles to watch the native mind, and to make use of every point of approach or community of idea that would help the savage to grasp the new religion they offered him. One of the first aids undoubtedly toward this end was their recognition of certain emblems or totems that they found in Indian villages, which bore some resemblance to Christian symbols. In this they were but following the example set them by the earliest of their faith, who took over as far as possible pagan characters, such as we may see in the Roman catacombs. May we not believe that, as they found among the barbarians symbols such as the cross, or a ritual of sprinkling and of head-washing somewhat akin to Christian baptism, through which initial links of understanding could be established between them and the Indians, so they must soon have perceived that in the Canticle of the Sun, given them by their founder, Saint Francis, there was another possibility of mental approach, deeper and more embracing than any other? The Canticle does not indeed proclaim the “worship of all creatures,” but its communion with all elemental life surely forged a bond between them and the aborigine, which made the Indian more willing to listen to this new religion, and which aided the priests in forcing upon them its acceptance:

Mrs. Nuttall, after long years of study, concludes that the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor were a guiding principle of the Aztec calendar and furnished the archetype of the varied forms of the swastika and of the cross symbol.[217] She gives 4000 B.C. as an approximate date for the first use of this symbol. Certainly the swastika forms a favorite design for amulets, and for the decoration of baskets and pottery, among the Pueblo artists, and since it is agreed that nearly every ornament has its symbolic purpose, have we not here perhaps one more point of contact? At all events, the cross unquestionably existed in America for a very long time before the coming of the “men with faces white like snow who came in wooden houses with wings.” Did not Castañeda write, upon finding some cross-shaped prayer-sticks, “in some way the Indians must have received light from our Redeemer Christ”? In fact the padres found the cross below our Rock of Ácoma as well as elsewhere, and questioned whether it could be due to “the pious labors of St. Thomas or to the sacrilegious subtlety of Satan.” However they settled so obscure a problem, the Indian familiarity with the cross symbol—something both races held in reverence—undoubtedly helped the Franciscans to spread their gospel of the cross of Christ.

It is interesting to recall that the rosary and the double cross date in the Indian country from Espéjo’s time (1582) when he forced the natives to wear it as a token of allegiance to Spain and to the Roman church.

John G. Bourke says in 1884 that at Santo Domingo

Another example of such “application” is the rule that everyone must be signed with a cross of ashes on Ash Wednesday, according to the practice of the Roman church.

So interwoven with real religion are fear and superstition in the mind of aboriginal man that we find everywhere in primitive society a belief in witchcraft. It is then a safe clue toward an understanding of many unusual things which the observant visitor sees in New Mexico.

Witches are mischievous beings, doing ill to their neighbors in pure wantonness of mood, for little or no reason. Since this is so, there is no outward characteristic that distinguishes a witch, and we are told that part of the aloofness and also of the courtesy shown strangers is because anyone may prove capable of doing the household an injury. Father Dumarest writes:

The most frequent metamorphoses of human beings into animals for the purpose of practising witchcraft are into the owl (tecolete) or the fox. The hoot of the owl is therefore a portent of evil, and brings a shudder to every Indian. In New Mexico one of many ways of discovering a witch is to plant a broom at the door surmounted by a small cross made from straws of the same broom; or the broom may be put behind a door with a cross formed of two needles. “If a woman is a witch she will not leave the house till broom and cross are removed.”[221] Witches are the cause of all illness. For instance, all skin diseases are attributed to the “angry ants,” and toothache is especially dreaded as a sign of the displeasure of the gods. To counteract these malevolent powers, the Shamans or medicine men are sought in times of distress because they are the workers in “good magic,” and hence are healers. Consequently the materia medica of the Indian is fetishistic, and even when ‘real medicine’ is taken by a sick person, magic and fetish medicine are invariably added. Mrs. Stevenson[222] says that

While animism, in the broadest sense of that term, was universal in the beliefs of the New World, and to this day the greater part of their religious culture bequeathed to them from dim prehistoric time is preserved and accepted as the rule of daily life, there is nevertheless something so abstract, so lofty and poetic in the Indian absorption in pure spirit that his religion becomes elusive and must be sympathetically felt by us rather than arbitrarily expressed.

Religion has never been separated in primitive civilizations from the

A deeply ingrained tenderness for children, the poetry of a race sensitive to all natural phenomena, the awe born of a consciousness of the mystery and the sorrows of every human life, and the need of something not ourselves, something higher and more helpful than anything earth can give, is the essence of Indian religion, as it is of all our humanity. The Indian worship of spirit is silent and solitary, in temples not made with hands, where all-embracing Nature herself dwells in forest silences, or on heights where sun and wind alone abide. How mistaken and purblind was the assumption of the European that, because these primitive people had not his particular belief, the religion that served them as its substitute was worse than none at all, whereas actually there was within it the elements of the most developed faith—that awe of which Henry Dwight Sedgwick in his “Life of Marcus Aurelius” writes: “Among the qualities that go to make up character a sensitiveness to the feeling of awe is the surest sign of the higher life. It lies deeper than other susceptibilities, sensuous or spiritual.”

While allowing that the Indian always was and is to-day a pagan, and that his worship of the countless manifestations of nature must be called superstition, let us admit that this worship is, nevertheless, the honest faith of men who “look not beyond the evidence of the senses,” of which its unquenched and never-to-be quenched altar fire is the eternal symbol, to many a serious student a holier thing than priest-made creeds.