THE popular conception that there is no fun in red men is erroneous. All of them, far from being taciturn, silent, morose, and lacking desire for amusement other than scalping or torturing captives, are full of humour and are fond of fun. To strangers, however, they are often silent. In every village there is a great deal of amusement, and while the race is deficient in musical instruments, and the music they produce, if it can be designated by that term, is usually apart of some ceremonial, they do sing and the singing is accompanied by rattles and drums. These instruments, with a sort of flute or flageolet and bells and whistles, make the sum-total of their musical apparatus. No stringed instrument, it was believed, was known on the North American continent before the Discovery, though recently Lumholtz has found a primitive musical bow among the Huichols in Mexico that seems to show no outside influence. Their drums were usually made out of a hollow log and were of various sizes, though some tribes also used a sort of tambourine-drum formed by stretching a piece of hide over a hoop. In the case of the Mokis, the large drum was made by stretching hide over the ends of a hollow log by means of strings on the outside running from the edge of one skin to that of the other, zig-zag. These drums are about twenty inches in diameter by some three feet long, and the ones I have seen had an appearance of age that seemed to indicate a remote origin. Rattles are frequently made from deer hoofs, or from hoofs of similar animals, and also from turtle shells, and garments are trimmed with hoofs so that the movements of the wearer cause them to strike together with a musical sound. Sometimes the hoofs are attached in groups of three or more to the ends of a short stick which is shaken to produce the desired sound. This is a form specially in vogue among the Tlinkits, and these rattles are one of the articles of trade with the tourists in the North-west. Another form is a gourd or clay globe containing pebbles or something similar. Rattles of this kind are common in the ceremonials of the Mokis. Bells, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, were made by tribes of the Central American region of copper in the so-called “hawk’s-bell” shape, but it is not absolutely certain that this form of bell was not derived from European contact.[280] No other form of bell was known to any of the natives.

Whistles were made of pottery and wood and of human and other bones,[281] and were similar to our common whistles with one or more holes in the tube for changing the note. The flute was of wood, generally of cedar, which is considered a sacred wood. It was eighteen or twenty inches long and was often ornamented with carving and tufts of feathers, etc. In Mexico, some were made of terra cotta.

It is certain that the sounds produced on these various instruments would in no way suggest or resemble what is understood by music among people of European origin, and it is also probable that our music when first heard by Amerinds seems to them more like wailing and lamentation than sounds of pleasure. I remember an evening long ago, in Arizona, when we had the interesting companionship of several intelligent Navajo chiefs, who entertained us by singing, accompanying themselves by drumming on the bottom of one of our camp kettles. At length someone of our party exclaimed, “Now let’s give them Home, Sweet Home,” and this song was accordingly rendered in a way that should have moved the savage to tears, but, though the firelight was brilliant, I failed to detect any; indeed their expression appeared to resemble that which a professional musician of our own race might have exhibited. They were perfectly satisfied with a single selection, and they politely said Buéno. The Navajos have a peculiar drum, the basket drum, described by Washington Matthews.[282] It is a bowl-shaped basket made according to special rules and rites, and inverted is used as a drum in certain ceremonials, being beaten by a stick, also manufactured in a special way, and according to long-established religious rites. Whenever a ceremony is completed this stick is always pulled apart during an appropriate song, and its fragments “deposited, with prayer and ceremony, in the fork of a cedar tree or other secure place.” It is made from yucca leaves, four being the prescribed number, and every one of these must be absolutely free from blemish. One from each cardinal point of the compass is necessary, and the making of the drumstick from them is a serious matter, even the rejected fragments being disposed of in some safe place with a benediction:

“In none of the ancient Navajo rites is a regular drum or tom-tom employed,” says Matthews. “The inverted basket serves the purpose of one.”

“The musical instruments,” says Bandelier, “which, while still in use in Mexico, are known to antedate the Conquest, are but three in number, one of which is already falling into oblivion. It is the tozacatl (sounding-cane), described to me as a long cane, bent round like an Alpine horn. I never saw one, but its sound is said to be a sonorous bellowing. The other is the chirimia. It is made of dark brown wood, called tepehuaje, brought to Cholula from Matamoras-Yzucar, or near Atlixco. Its length is 0.46 metre (about 18 inches) and its width at the mouth is 0.06 metre (about 3 inches). It has eleven holes irregularly arranged, and the mouthpiece is a thin plate of horn on a stem of brass. The noise produced by this instrument is a fit accompaniment to the shrill Indian voices, being horrible beyond all description.... The big drum, the tlapan-huehuetl, was formerly made out of the trunk of a tree properly hollowed, over which, at one end, a deerskin or some other dried hide was stretched. All the older authors make more or less mention of this instrument, but more particularly Bernal Diez de Castillo, who says, when describing the upper platform of the principal mounds of worship of Mexico: ‘And there they had an exceedingly large drum, which, when beaten, gave a sound as if from the infernal regions, which was heard at more than two leagues off, and they said that the skin was that of large snakes.’”[283] The teponaztli was a wooden instrument with two tongues that were beaten with a stick. Conch shells were also used as musical instruments. Some of these were of very great size.

The Eskimo drum is like a tambourine, a skin stretched over a hoop. Some of the Chiriqui whistles were shaped like a top, while others were straight with finger holes. These various types were distributed over the whole area of the continent, the drum and the rattle always predominating.

The Amerind singing at first seems extremely monotonous to our ears and the impression is that all tribes sing alike, but each stock has its own methods and peculiarities. A foundation principle with all in the men’s singing seems to be an explosive quality of vocalisation—that is, violent explosive tones instead of, as with us, tones long drawn out. The Moki seems generally to sing nothing but “ho, ho, ho, ho, he, he, he, he, hay, hay, hay,” etc., and he has quite a different rhythm from the Ute, while the singing of the Navajo, when the singer opens out all the stops, is more like the voice of a cat in the back yard than any other sound in civilisation that I can think of. Farther north the sounds change again: the Tlinkit vocalisation suggests death by strangulation.

Fillmore states that the Navajo songs were the most primitive of any he studied. “They form in fact the connecting link between excited howling and excited singing. The quality of tone is indescribable, being more like a yelp than anything else; but the intervals yelped are unmistakably those of the major chord or of the minor chord. The tone-quality is that of shouting, or even of howling, but the pitch-relations into which they tend to fall are those of the major chord.... Some of the Navaho songs are illustrations of melody so primitive as to bring us very near to the beginning of music-making.... I started my investigations with the impression that there might be essential differences in structure between the Indian music and our own. I studied the Indian music for ten years with the utmost care and thoroughness of which I was capable. I have failed to find one single interval in Indian music which we do not use. It is true, I have often heard Indians sing these intervals out of tune; but this is a phenomenon by no means confined to savage or uncivilised races. In every such case, when I was singing with Indians and was able to get at their real intentions, I have found that they meant to sing exactly the interval we should sing in their place.... I have also found that increase of power is almost always accompanied with increased elevation of pitch, and diminution of intensity with a lowering of pitch, seemingly without the Indian being aware of it.... The evidence of the essential unity of all music, from the most primitive to the most advanced, is cumulative. The Navaho howls his song to the war gods directly along the line of the major chord; Beethoven makes the first theme of his great ‘Eroica’ symphony out of precisely the same material. The Tigua makes his ‘Dance of the Wheel’ out of a major chord, and its relative minor; Wagner makes Lohengrin sing ‘Mein lieber schwan’ to a melody composed of exactly the same ingredients. In short there is only one kind of music in the world.” Like everything else pertaining to man, it is a matter of development modified by circumstances. Fillmore’s excellent investigation[284] in this line only proves again that man is the same in all climes and ages since first we get track of him, so far as his fundamental make-up is concerned. Variations and differences are only those which come from a development of latent talents or possibilities. He always moves, when he moves, along certain lines that are prearranged by his constitution and his environment. He may stop where circumstances direct, but he will have stopped where others stopped before.

There is always a great deal of repetition in the songs. The Amerind seems content to go over and over again the same few notes. In some tribes the poet and singer stands in the interior of a circle formed by all the members of the tribe—men, women, and children—around a cedar tree from which all but the top branches have been removed. A time of moonlight is chosen, and I remember well such a night with some Pai Utes, of Arizona. The poet recited his refrain, then all took it up and repeated it in song, circling round and round the cedar with their peculiar shuffle, repeating and repeating. I joined the circle and the singing till I became tired, and finally left them still enjoying it. The poet would give out some such stanza as

and it would serve the purpose for a considerable time, when he would be obliged to announce a new one.

Mooney has translated some of the songs of the Arapahos used in the Ghost or Resurrection Dance, and I give several as specimens of their style[285]:

“This (last) song is from the northern Arapaho. The author of it in his visit to the spirit world, found his former friends playing the old game of the baqati wheel, which was practically obsolete among the prairie tribes, but which is being revived since the advent of the Ghost Dance.... The game is played with a wheel (baqati, large wheel) and two pairs of throwing sticks.... It is a man’s game and there are three players, one rolling the wheel while the other two, each armed with a pair of throwing sticks, run after it and throw the sticks so as to cross the wheel in a certain position.”[286]

Among the Mokis, some of the old men are custodians of songs, according to the societies to which they belong. Such a man is leader of the singing. It is he who knows the old songs. He meets a lot of the young men at a specified house, and placing an old tin pan on the floor to spit in while smoking cigarettes, and beside it a candle for light, they group themselves in a circle, sitting on the floor, while the instructor takes his place on a stool at the large double-headed drum at one end. He runs over a passage, beating time on the drum, and then all join in with a vigour that well-nigh raises the roof. There was something fine in the force and power with which these songs were rendered, and it was the only time in my experience that my artistic sense was stirred by Amerind singing. Later, on the same evening as the gathering mentioned, when the same young men were rehearsing further and also practising the dance with some small girls in a neighbouring house, the singing lost its fire and was not at all thrilling. Before the rehearsal with the young men the “choir master” rehearses by himself. From my house at Tewa, on the “East Mesa,” I could hear just after dark, every evening, through the stone wall, continuous singing. It was in the next room or “house,” the entrance to which, though on my level, was around a corner and not connected in any way with my balcony. I had a ladder of my own. I was curious to see who it was that was so devoted to this amusement. I mounted to my house-top by means of steps on the end of a wall, and then I could look down my neighbour’s chimney, from which little smoke and much sound were arising. I could see plainly the singer, an old man, sitting cross-legged before the fire, its light softly illuminating him, with a small double-headed drum between his knees, which he was vigorously beating in accompaniment to a “HO, ho, HO, ho, HO—HE, he, HE,” etc. When I went afterward to the house of Anawita, the war-chief, to the rehearsal described, this old fellow and Anawita were the leaders of the songs. They were practising at that time for the Somaikoli or Soyaita ceremony.

The Amerind is fond of singing. He sings in ceremonials, sings in camp, bursts out in yelps as he rides across country, and the women amongst the Pueblos sing a shrill chant while they are grinding corn. Men of some tribes sing at times without knowing what they are singing. I once had a Uinkarets Ute with me in Arizona, and at night this man would build a fire a few yards from us, and sitting by it would sing the words Lola-my, lola-my, lola-my with great vigour and gusto over and over and over again. When I asked him what the words meant, he said he did not know, nor could he explain just why he performed thus, but it was probably a gambling chant. Singing is used at night for driving away evil spirits that may be near. We had four Pai Utes once travelling with us for a number of weeks, and almost every night, along in the middle, one would wake and begin to sing in a low voice, then a second would join, and a third, and so on till all were engaged, their voices rising gradually, and finally as gradually diminishing till they ceased altogether.[287] As this performance woke us up there were protests against it, but they were of no avail. The red men declared they did it to drive off the “woonūpits,” or spirit of evil, and we were forced to partake of their protection. Beginning a song low and rising slowly is an effect often used. Fewkes mentions something of the kind. “At the termination of this ceremonial smoke,” he says, “the four priests nearest the bowl picked up the small gourd rattles and began a low, rapid rattling. This continued for a few moments, and then the priests began a song, at first low, rising gradually and increasing in volume.” Fewkes recorded many songs by means of the phonograph. The Harriman Expedition recorded a number of Tlinkit songs, and afterwards some of these were reproduced for the benefit of men of the same stock farther north, who immediately recognised the melodies and, as their hilarity testified, enjoyed them hugely, though they had never before heard a talking machine.

Most Amerind songs are connected with ceremonials, and some are imported or adopted. Ceremonials are not always sacred. Many of them are full of amusing features intended to entertain the onlookers. The attendance at a camp or village on a ceremonial day is for amusement as much as anything else.

The different tribes of a locality expect to meet friends then and enjoy social intercourse. The Amerind is fond of games, races, and all forms of sport on which a wager can be laid. A game without a stake would be no game at all for him. He must put up something to lose, and I once noticed after a distribution of goods among individuals of a certain tribe that within twenty-four hours a few had all the goods. In modern times many Amerinds play cards. Their own games are numerous. In the “awl game,” played chiefly by women, “the players,” according to Mooney, “sit upon the ground around a blanket marked in charcoal with lines and dots and quadrants in the corners as shown in illustration on preceding page. In the centre is a stone upon which the sticks are thrown. Each dot ... counts a point, making twenty-four points for dots. Each of the parallel lines, and each end of the curved lines in the corners, also counts a point, making sixteen points for the lines, or forty points in all. The players start from the bottom, opposing players moving in opposite directions, and with each throw of the sticks the thrower moves her awl forward and sticks it into the blanket at the dot or line to which her throw carries her. The parallels on each of the four sides are called ‘rivers,’ and the dots within these parallels do not count in the game. The rivers at the top and bottom are ‘dangerous’ and cannot be crossed, and when the player is so unlucky as to score a throw which brings her upon the edge of the river (i. e., upon the first line of either of these pairs of parallels) she ‘falls into the river’ and must lose all she has hitherto gained and begin again at the start. In the same way, when a player moving around in one direction makes a throw which brings her awl to the place occupied by the awl of her opponent coming around from the other side, the said opponent is ‘whipped back’ to the starting-point and must begin all over again.... The game is played with four sticks, each from six to ten inches long, flat on one side and round on the other. One of these is the trump stick and is marked in a distinctive manner in the centre on both sides, and is also distinguished by having a green line along the flat side, while the others have each a red line.... There are also a number of small green sticks, about the size of lead pencils, for keeping tally. Each player in turn takes up the four sticks together in her hand and throws them down on end upon the stone in the centre. The number of points depends upon the number of flat round sticks which turn up.... Only the flat sides count except when all the sticks turn round side up. On completing one round of forty points the player takes one of the small green tally sticks from the pile and she who first gets the number of tally sticks previously agreed on wins the game.”[288]

Another game, widely spread and in some respects resembling the Mexican game of patolli, is thus described by Fewkes as he found it among the Mokis[289]:

“This game, totolospi, resembles somewhat the game of checkers, and can be played by two persons or by two parties. In playing the game, a rectangular figure divided into a large number of squares is drawn upon a rock, either by scratching or by using a different-coloured stone as a crayon. A diagonal line, tuhkiota, is drawn across the rectangle from north-east to south-west, and the players station themselves at each end of this line. When two parties play, a single person acts as player, and the other members of the party act as advisers. The first play is won by tossing up a leaf or corn husk with one side blackened. The pieces which are used are bean or corn kernels, stones and wood, or small fragments of any substance of marked colour. The players are stationed at each end of the diagonal line, tuhkiota. They move their pieces upon this line but never across it. The moves which are made are intricate and the player may move one or more pieces successively. Certain positions entitle him to this privilege. He may capture or, as he terms it, kill one or more of his opponent’s pieces at one play. In this respect the game is not unlike checkers, and to capture the pieces of the opponent seems to be the main object of the game.”

Horse-racing is a great sport among all Amerinds and much valuable property changes hands on these occasions. There are also foot races. Anything they can bet on constitutes a game, and they are much like many white men in this respect. Arrows are shot into the air to see who can shoot out of sight, or they are shot at a mark and dexterous archers try to split the shaft of the preceding shooter. Or they throw arrows or bows over the ground or the snow to see who can throw farthest. In this line the Iroquois had the game known as “snow snake,” wherein a specially formed stick was caused to glide over the snow or ice. The Arapahos used for a similar purpose slender willow rods about four feet long peeled and painted and tipped with a point of buffalo horn. This is swung from one end like a pendulum and then let fly with a sweeping motion.

Among the Pai Utes a common gambling game was played by four men sitting down in two rows opposite each other, that is, two on a side, and about five feet apart. In front of each side was a row of little sticks placed diagonally in sand heaped up, the ends sticking out toward the side to which the lot belonged. Two bits of bone formed the pieces, one being plain and the other having a buckskin string around it. These pieces were about two and a half inches long, tapering toward their ends. The leader of one side tosses both pieces into the air and, catching them, crosses his arms, pressing the fists against each shoulder. The point is for the other side to guess in which hand is the piece that is marked with the string, and the diagonally opposite player chooses. He does not at once indicate a choice, but sways his body back and forth, his right hand extended and waving to and fro across the opponent’s breast, and slapping his own chest, all the while fiercely uttering a gambling song. Finally he would point directly at the hand he chose, and if his guess were correct he received a tally stick, if not, the other side got one. The side that wins all the tally sticks is victor and carries off the stakes, which are usually put on the ground at one end of the group. This is something like the “hunt the button” game of the prairie tribes described by Mooney.[290] “It is the regular game in the long winter nights after the scattered families have abandoned their exposed summer positions on the open prairie and moved down near one another in the shelter of the timber along the streams.... The players sit in a circle around the tipi fire, those on one side of the fire playing against those on the other. The only requisites are the ‘button,’ usually a small bit of wood, around which is tied a piece of string or otter skin, with a pile of tally sticks.... Each party has a button, that of one side being painted black, the other being red. The leader of one party takes up the button and endeavours to move it from one hand to the other, or pass it on to a partner, while those of the opposite side keep a sharp lookout and try to guess in which hand it is.” This game is played by both sexes but never together.

Still another game which was a great favourite all over the country, and is yet, especially among the women, is the “plum stone” or dice game. Five or six dice made of bone or plum stones, a small bowl or basket, and the usual tally sticks are the implements. Two of the dice are alike in shape and marking, while the others are different from these but like each other. The dice are tossed up and the count made according to the way the marks and blanks fall.

The camps and villages are particularly lively in winter, when there is not much to do in the way of hunting, farming, or fishing. The sound of the drum, gambling songs, and rattles make the evening merry where the village is one of skin tipis or other light structures, but among the Pueblos the walls of the houses are so thick that sounds do not easily come through. The great drum is penetrating and its deep “bum-bum-bum” could be heard vibrating on the winter air, but other sounds were muffled or extinguished altogether by the walls. One moonlight evening when I arrived before the town of Oraibi, about eight o’clock, not a single sound was distinguishable, and to judge by appearances, the place was a deserted ruin, till the dogs got a sniff of our approach and then pandemonium ruled so far as they were concerned. Many tribes have an assembly house, where there are various congregations in the winter evenings, to sing and to dance. Among the Pueblos these congregations, when there are women or girls involved, take place in an ordinary dwelling; the kiva, which is council room, club, and society lodge, seldom being open to women. An orchestra that performed in a Kabinapek assembly hall described by Stephen Powers is worth mentioning. “The orchestra, eight in number, all young men, were squatted together opposite the entrance, four facing four. Between them was a hollow slab, serving as a kind of drum to be beaten by a drummer with the naked foot, and each of them held in his right hand a little stick, split half way down, to be used as a clapper in keeping time. The dancers were all young women, who stood in a curved row in front of the orchestra.” This orchestra sang a chorus accompanied by the clappers they held. “Like everything they sung it has no meaning. They all sung in a high falsetto voice, the women especially, so that they were less agreeable to listen to than the men. The sharp monotonous clacking of the sticks and the dull tunk, tunk of the slab drum were execrable.” He states that they kept perfect time, however, and also that “there was one short passage in this chorus which when chanted by the men alone was one of the most moving I ever heard. These three rude, barbaric, and wholly unintelligible syllables, hu-di-go, were trilled and prolonged out with a sweet, soft, and wild melodiousness that I shall not forget to my dying hour.”[291]

The Eskimo, despite the severity of their surroundings, are a merry people, and have many diversions. Football, strange to say, is a favourite pastime, but neither their method nor their ball would pass muster with a college expert. The ball is a pudgy affair from three to seven inches in diameter, and is either kicked or whipped along. The whip is a short stick with several loops of seal thong at the end. The game, according to Turner, is a favourite with all. Throwing stones at a mark is also a pastime. Another is a kind of wrestling or struggling with each other, such as is in vogue with almost all the tribes of the continent. Turner says: “The opponents remove all their superfluous garments, seize each other around the waist and lock hands behind each other’s backs. The feet are spread widely apart and each endeavours to draw, by the strength of the arms alone, the back of his opponent into a curve and thus bring him off his feet. Then with a lift he is quickly thrown flat on his back. The fall must be such that the head touches the ground.... The feet are never used for tripping.”[292]

Anything like scientific boxing is unknown among the tribes of the continent. When they try anything of this sort it is a mere clawing at each other’s heads, and one professional pugilist, if fists alone were used, could knock out a whole tribe. Among the Hudson Bay Eskimo, a popular game is played by trying to catch, on the end of an ivory point, an ivory piece that looks something like a stumpy revolver. A string is attached to it and to the ivory point, and the game is to throw up the piece and cause the point to enter one of the holes and catch it. Cards, such as we have, are known to almost all tribes, and where they have not learned games from the whites they invent some of their own.

Ball games of various kinds were played and the Canadian game called lacrosse is of Amerind origin. Parkman in his Pontiac vividly describes one of these lacrosse games used in strategy to gain entrance to an English fort. “The plain in front was covered by the ball players. The game in which they were engaged, called baggattaway by the Ojibwas, is still, as it always has been, a favourite with many Indian tribes. At either extremity of the ground, a tall post was planted, marking the stations of the rival parties. The object of each was to defend its own post and drive the ball to that of its adversary. Hundreds of lithe and agile figures were leaping and bounding upon the plain. Each was nearly naked, his loose black hair flying in the wind, and each bore in his hand a bat of a form peculiar to this game. At one moment the whole were crowded together, a dense throng of combatants all struggling for the ball; at the next they were scattered again, and running over the ground like hounds in full cry. Each, in his excitement, yelled and shouted at the height of his voice. Rushing and striking, tripping their adversaries, or hurling them to the ground, they pursued the animated contest amid the laughter and applause of the spectators.”

In Central America, a form of tennis was in vogue and stone courts where the game was played have been found and described by some of our modern archæologists.

I never saw any ball playing amongst the Uinkarets, Shevwits, or other Amerinds of the northern Arizona-southern Nevada region. They all appeared to be deficient in games, at the time I was first among them, not knowing what our playing-cards were, and having even no games of exterior origin. There were flat pieces of cedar bark, painted with red stripes, said by some to have been used like dice, but I never saw them engaged in playing with them. The children used a flat piece of bark as a doll, and most Amerind children play with dolls made of wood, terra cotta, and other materials.[293] The small boys devote themselves to the bow and arrow for amusement in many tribes, and they will go out in the woods, or on the plain, and bring down small birds and mice with considerable skill. The whip-top, made of wood, is a favourite everywhere, especially among the Moki boys, whose life on the barren mesas precludes much hunting with bow and arrow. The children also beat the drum for fun.

Horse-racing is a sport in which many tribes, especially those of the plains, are past masters. The Pueblos, particularly the Mokis, owing to their sedentary life, have less opportunity to develop in this line, but the Navajos, Sioux, Crows, Blackfeet, and Comanches have little to learn about rough-and-ready racing. It goes without saying that the Eskimo, Aleuts, Tlinkits, Haidas, and other North-west tribes, whose range of life is on and by the sea, have no knowledge of handling horses. They never adopted the horse, because it was as useless to them as an elephant or a hippopotamus. But to the plains tribes this animal came like a gift from the gods, and they appreciated it fully, and horses became their standard of wealth. Some tribes, like the Kaivavits, Uinkarets, and Shevwits Utes of northern Arizona have never possessed many horses because of their poverty, but there were always a goodly number owned, and horse-racing was a great amusement with them, as well as with those tribes which counted their horses by the thousand. Dodge describes an amusing race that took place near Fort Chadbourne, Texas, between a horse of a Comanche chief and three horses of the officers of the garrison, which illustrates the Amerind cleverness in the jockeying line.[294] It took several days of manœuvring to bring the chief to the point, and then a race was arranged with the third best horse of the white men. The distance was four hundred yards, and property to the amount of sixty dollars a side was wagered on the result. “At the appointed time all the Indians and most of the garrison were assembled at the track. The Indians ‘showed’ a miserable sheep of a pony with legs like churns; a three-inch coat of rough hair stuck out all over the body, and a general expression of neglect, helplessness, and patient suffering struck pity into the hearts of all beholders. The rider was a stalwart buck of one hundred and seventy pounds, looking big and strong enough to carry the poor beast on his shoulders. He was armed with a huge club, with which, after the word was given, he belabored the miserable animal from start to finish. To the astonishment of all the whites, the Indian won by a neck. Another race was proposed by the officers and, after much ‘dickering,’ accepted by the Indians, against the next best horse of the garrison. The bets were doubled, and in less than an hour the second race was run by the same pony, with the same apparent exertion and with exactly the same result. The officers, thoroughly disgusted, proposed a third race, and brought to the ground a magnificent Kentucky mare, of the true Lexington blood, and known to beat the best of the others at least forty yards in four hundred. The Indians accepted the race, and not only doubled the bets as before, but piled up everything they could raise, seemingly almost crazed with the excitement of their previous success. The riders mounted; the word was given. Throwing away his club, the Indian rider gave a whoop, at which the sheep-like pony pricked up his ears and went away like the wind, almost two feet to the mare’s one. The last fifty yards of the course were run by the pony with the rider sitting face to his tail, making hideous grimaces, and beckoning to the rider of the mare to come on. It afterwards transpired that the old sheep was a trick and straight pony, celebrated among all the tribes of the South.” Yet some people think the Amerind has no sense of humour.

Story telling is another amusement, and a good story teller, says Dodge, is a man of importance. “The bucks, and squaws, and children crowd to his lodge, or any other where he happens to be, and spend the long winter evenings listening to his recitals. These stories are as marvellous as the imagination of the teller can create, jumbling gods and men, fabulous and living animals, the impossible and the possible in the most heterogeneous confusion.”[295]

The Navajos, or at least some of them, have considerable dramatic sense. On one occasion, when some Navajos camped near us, one of them gave an exhibition of character delineation that would have done credit to a professional actor. Choosing a large bush nearby as a screen for his costuming, he came out to the fire successively representing the various nationalities with which he was familiar. Some of these were extremely well done. The Pai Ute, for instance, is poor in clothing and always begging. Our actor took off all his clothing but the breech-cloth, approached the fire timidly and cringingly, and crouched down beside it, drawing the back of his hand across his nose with an accompanying sniffle, and exclaimed in Pai Ute: Tabac ashanty (I want some tobacco). Another was the American, who stepped nervously to the fire, and restlessly turned first front, then back, extended his hands, rubbing them over the heat; held up first one foot, then the other, and so on. These impersonations were full of the character of the types indicated. The exhibition finally culminated in a representation of the characteristics of his own people. Retiring once again behind the bush, he at last appeared with his full costume on, carefully adjusted. His head bore a red turban, his shirt was held by a fine belt, his broad Navajo trousers met at the knee the red buckskin leggings, ornamented with silver buttons, and his feet were protected by moccasins finely wrought, held by silver buttons. About his shoulders was a fine blanket of Navajo make, and across his back a large bow and its arrows in a panther-skin case and quiver. Approaching the fire with a measured, haughty tread, head erect and folded arms, he paused majestically before it, straightened to his full height, and in a deep, dignified tone spoke the single word, “Navajo.”