Chapter XII: Section 3839: “All marriages valid by the laws of the place where (4)

“What then?” he asked.

“Well, if they want him that badly, compel them to climb into the car and take him out of it.”

“Do you want me to bean one of those fellows, if they try that?”

“No—that wouldn’t help any. Simply compel them to take him away from you by force. I’m afraid you will not have the chance. Keep your gun on the seat, but don’t use it.”

“You mean—just let them see that it’s present?”

“Exactly. But don’t make the mistake of pointing it at any one of them, even if he does clamber in.”

With the Navajo on his native heath, idle gun-play is a very dangerous experiment, and may prove a grievous mistake. If one draws a gun, the Navajo expects that it will be used. He too has one in his belt, the Government being too pacific to object. There are no delicate preliminaries, such as the usual invitation to elevate the hands and behave. The Navajo reasons simply that a gun will explode in his face anyway, and he hopes to beat one to it. It is not an exhibition of his courage or judgment; nothing more or less than ignorant fatalism. While few Indians suicide, often a moody Navajo will announce that he is about to die, and perhaps, if the genii work upon him strongly enough, he may step toward the event. It is all right, though, and creates no comment or offense to have a somnolent gun in plain sight. The Navajo is used to weapons and the gesture is not one of potential threat.

About sixty yards from the group of Indians we found a shelter at the roadside. It had been hastily constructed—cottonwood poles, with a blanket across them to afford a little shade. The doctor stooped and crawled in to view his patient. Several elders of the family were there, besides the mother and father of the boy, and I shook hands with them. In a few moments the stockman was missed, but when next I looked toward the car he had returned there. Beside him perched a little Hopi boy.

“I’ve got him,” he called to me.

That part of it was finished nicely, but the question of keeping him was yet to be decided. Just then the physician crawled out from the shelter with no joy on his face.

“Bad,” he said. “Shot straight down through the top of the skull. Looks as if he was fired on from above. He may live an hour—not longer than that.”

Now from the direction of the mesas the Hopi were gathering. We had passed a few of them on the road, trudging along determinedly. For the first time in my experience with them, they were going doggedly into the debatable country for a council with the old enemy, and with a view to resisting him if necessary. It looked as if there would be a fight, unless somebody weakened.

“They are not going to kill Lidge,” announced one sturdy fellow as we passed him.

“Keep quiet about that,” I cautioned him. “Let me talk with those fellows.”

So, when I walked toward the group of Navajo, I realized that Hopi were coming up and making an equally sullen group behind me. The Navajo crowd parted and old Billa Chezzi stepped out of it. He had a light rifle in his hand, and a woeful expression on his aged face. He put his arm around me and besought me as his younger brother. And then tears, large, globular tears, coursed down the ragged furrows of his cheeks, as he told me of the senseless crime that had been committed against them. A small boy wickedly shot down, an innocent slaughtered, a wanton killing. And so they must have blood for this thing: an eye for an eye,—though he had no knowledge of the sacred Books. That was the old law in the Desert. And he did not let go of the rifle. As he wept copiously on my shoulder, I reached down and took hold of the gun, too. Then we talked along sympathetic lines, each holding tenaciously to the weapon. I understood that it was the evidence in the case.

When he went further into his recital, through the interpreter, he came to mentioning the gun’s part, and it was necessary for me to examine it closely. He did not want to give it up at first. But he finally yielded it. I opened the breech, and was glad to find it empty. Then I took it by the barrel, grounded the stock in the sand, and he never got hold of it after that. Somehow, I felt a little easier in having it to myself. In a measure, he had surrendered a bit of his problem into my hands.

And we talked. Finally we sat down on the ground and a number of his band with us, the rest crowded up, standing. Now I had expected that Ed would come up. He was the best interpreter in the Navajo country, and not afraid of them. It was plain that the sympathies of my Indian interpreter were not with the Hopi in this argument. Aside from the impending death of the boy, here was another real danger, and one that most Agents are forced to suffer. Indians cannot be rushed to a decision. They must have their talk out, and through talking always weaken their grievances. But untrustworthy interpretation has caused more than one man’s death. “I will fix it up for you,” silently decides the ignorant mouthpiece, thus fastening his poor intentions on the one who will have to accept responsibility in the end. And sometimes he fixes it entirely too well. Seldom it is that he interprets the full value of the discourse. He avoids completely translating unpleasant orders, for that might involve him among his people; and when the break comes he will surely prove a traitor, and may be found largely responsible for the break. His sympathies well-up when least expected, and the emotions of my interpreter in this affair had begun to display partizanship.

Finally there came a welcome call, and Mr. Thomas E. Thacker, otherwise known as “Ed,” a square trader and a straight talker, rode up.

“They were at it all last night at the store,” he said. “They had the boy there and, whether or no, they were for killing him. I told them they would have to reckon with you first, and next with Washington, and not to start anything they maybe couldn’t finish. How’s the other boy?”

“The doctor gave him an hour to live, and half of that is gone.”

“Make a deal then, before they savvy it,” advised Ed. “The squaw will let out a yowl when he dies.”

That was what I had feared. With my back to that little shelter, I had lived in dread of the Navajo mother’s wild wail.

“But, Citcili,” said Billa Chezzi, for the thirteenth time, “what will this poor woman do without her son? She will have no boy at home. The sheep will go untended, and—”

And for the fourteenth time I told him that matters of this kind must be settled at Washington, that far-away indefinite place where so few things are ever settled. Washington, to the Indian, has the force of a legend. It is one of the four Corner-Posts, the city of the Dalai Lama. The soldiers came from there when the Navajo were herded to the Bosque Redondo in ’63, and Billa Chezzi could remember that, if his cohort of sons and neighbors could not.

“Well then, she must keep the Hopi boy,” he decided. “He cannot go back to his people any more. She must have a son.”

When I glanced at the car I noted that four or five husky Indians would be leaning against it, talking with the stockman. He had taken the Hopi boy between his knees. I was afraid something foolish might occur, and went back.

“They have been over here four times now,” he said; “But they haven’t quite got up the nerve to start anything.”

At least fifty Hopi Indians had gathered; they stood apart, watching and waiting.

“Have you men any money with you, cash?” I asked them.

The Hopi can always be counted on to have something for a rainy day, and it was very likely to storm.

“I’ve got five dollars,” said one.

“Get what you can from the others. One hundred will not be too much.” And then to others who were stockmen: “Have you fellows any cattle in this wash?”

“Our cattle are off there,” pointing.

“It’s this way,” I explained. “We can’t fight that gang. The boy will die soon. I’ll have to buy them off. How many steers can I have from your several bunches?”

This was quite in line with the Hopi method of dealing with the aggressive Navajo, who had oppressed them so long. They held a rapid discussion and came to quick decision.

“What you need for it,” said the spokesman.

“Understand: I don’t think Washington will approve of our being held up, and I will have you repaid, if that is possible.”

He nodded.

“Take some of the boys and round up those cattle. I may likely require seven or eight two-year-olds.”

By this time too they had collected a wad of bills. I went back to the Navajo and began talking again.

“Let us understand this,” I told Billa Chezzi. “This shooting was not like a fight between two men, enemies. These were boys—children. They may have been playing together. It was an accident. Of course, that is a careless boy, and Washington doesn’t want him loose in this country. Sooner or later, he would likely hurt someone else. And I will send him to a place where he cannot hurt any more people. We have such places for bad boys.”

“But what will this poor woman do for a son?” he whined.

“You will have to find her a son from among the Navajo. She wouldn’t want a Hopi boy. Every time she looked at him she would think of this happening and be sad. That wouldn’t do. This is what I will do for the father and mother: I will get money from these Hopi, and what is lacking I will pay in cattle.”

There was a consultation among them. Some grumbled, but I knew that most of them would regard cattle as better property than a Hopi lad who would have to be watched. They saw too that the Hopi stockmen were busy rounding up the herd. Then they talked a bit with the trader, who was a man of good advices. Ed spoke to me:—

“They want to know if you will stay with the wounded boy until he dies—you and the doctor; and then will you have him buried?”

“Yes, we will attend to that.”

“And they want to know if you will pay them now, to-day?”

“Just as soon as the steers are cut out from the bunch.”

Then I drew out the money. They eyed it covetously. We agreed on approximately five hundred dollars in cash and stock at the current prices. A dozen Navajo rode off to assist in cutting out the animals, and I sent a Hopi to make the count. The crowd began dwindling away. Something had been settled, and they wished to be off before Death stalked across the plain. The Navajo have an awesome fear of the dead; but they would rally again at the mourning feast.

Just then the woman raised her wail,—a long, quavering cry.

I have related before in this chronicle that the Navajo shun funerals. We buried the lad in the sand-dunes close by, and carried Lidge off to the Agency, giving notice to his mother, en route. A short time after this I sent him to a non-reservation school. It would be well for him to be out of the Desert for a few years,—five would be none too many,—otherwise, he might be found along the trail some morning, gone to join that other lad he had so strangely hurt.

It was not possible to get from Lidge a connected story of the shooting. It is my opinion that the Navajo boy rode up, saw the gun, and wanted it. “When a Navajo sees a Hopi with anything he wants, he takes it.” Lidge was on foot. No doubt the Navajo boy threw himself off his pony and came around under the horse’s neck, stooping. Lidge, more in fright and dismay than in anger, let him have it in the skull.

I prepared a report of this affair for Washington. The details were recited, and I referred to many reports of Navajo aggression, with the Hopi always helpless and never supported. Now, in effect at least, they had made their Agent stand and deliver. When last they had tried something of this kind, against Agent Reuben Perry of the Navajo Agency, who was caught in the Chin Lee country and held prisoner for several days, Commissioner Francis E. Leupp had taken prompt, decisive action. I could not plead an exactly similar case, for only the Hopi had lost. But it seemed to me that an effort should be made to recover, to impress a realization of law on these insolent tribesmen.

I waited patiently. In 1911, with troops on the reservation, it had required four months to consider a similar injustice, and by that time the soldiers were gone; and later, with respect to the restricted range over which the Hopi and Navajo wrangled, the Office had concluded, as a mild corrective, that “this is a very perplexing question.”

But less time was lost on this occasion. The answer was brief, pointed, final. It was written on a half-sheet, for paper was being saved to reduce the national debt.

Dear Mr. Crane:

Your report of —— date received, relating the facts in the case of
a Hopi boy named Lidge, who shot a Navajo of about the same age.

Your action in this matter is approved.

Cordially yours,

XXV

WANTED AT COURT

When the coster’s finished jumping on his mother,
He loves to lie a-basking in the sun;
Ah! take one consideration with another—
The policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

—The Pirates of Penzance

In Keams Cañon, the Moqui—now the Hopi—Agency is built on terraces. The highroad to anywhere and everywhere passes through this cañon on the lowest level, and all the visiting world and its wife must pass in review before the Agent’s office and his home. The grounds were once barren of trees and shrubbery, and there had been a time, in the season of swift midsummer rains, when several shallow arroyos would flood the place. Off the main cañon are bays or alcoves, and a quite large one immediately behind the buildings of the plant. Its stream-bed would, once or twice a summer, throw a yellow foamy river into the highroad, and carry away tons of cinder ballasting that had to be renewed. This had been tolerated for years, when all necessary to correct it was to cut a straight channel for the annual flood, raise the highroad-level, and bridge the point of crossing.

This bridge, having a wooden floor, became my signal of traffic. A belated freight-team would rumble across it, telling of supplies; the weary stride of a buggy pair would herald that the doctor or the stockman had reached home and would soon report. Seldom did it announce anything after ten o’clock. Then the cañon was an enchanted place, bathed in summer moonlight or ghastly sheeted in the winter snow, quiet, sleeping. When a horseman crossed that bridge in the late night or early morning hours, it was either an Indian drifting homeward, belated, half asleep, or a messenger to the Agent. A swift driving canter, and I waited for the slipping of moccasins along a cement walk and the rattle of a quirt on my door; I was about to say, my shutters.

Now and then the message would have a tragic possibility in it: the physician wanted, quickly; or the news of a plague among the people. One would expect the police to pack the most disturbing announcements; but, strange to relate, in the two cases bordering nearest tragedy the messengers were women.

One, an employee of the field, came late at night to tell that Indians proposed to break quarantine and remove patients from a temporary hospital. This was during one of the plagues; and the Hopi suffer many, due to their congested and unsanitary mode of living. The mesa villages welcome every infection. A man should have borne this message, but the woman had slipped away as the one least likely to be missed, and round about the trails and roads, twenty-five miles, came for police. The reservation had no telephone at that time. The swift pace of the pony across the bridge aroused me. Next I heard rapid steps on the walk, then someone ascending the verandah steps. But for a wire screen, the front door stood open.

“What is it?” I asked.

No answer.

“Who is that?”

Silence.

My hand slipped over to the automatic. Threats had been made against me by Navajo. In 1916 they technically murdered me, and the press carried the story because of the Indian flavor. I had the unusual experience of reading my obituary in many papers, and might have felt puffed up about it had I not recognized a tone of regret when the rumor was exploded. Now I knew there was someone on the porch, and if the someone had a good excuse for being there, why not announce it. Just as I prepared to send a shot across it, out of the silence came a faint gasping, as if the person sought to speak and could not. The woman was suffering from bronchitis, and had lost her voice in that cool ride across the desert. And she might have lost her voice entirely at the end of it.

The second instance happened earlier on a summer evening. This time someone was riding fast—faster than an Indian goes unless something of moment has occurred. I found an Indian girl at the door. She was a returned student who had reported to me a short time before, home from a non-reservation school. She had gone back to her people’s camp. I had not recommended that, for her people were among those who sometimes made trouble. Years before, this one member of a large family had been sent to school. After three years she had returned and had been again sent away. It was the only thing to do for her. In dress, training, and standpoint she had become an alien. When she came home again, she had ceased to be a savage. I had warned her not to visit the camps.

“Stay at this school for your vacation. Let your people come here to see you. They will come.”

But she felt that she should go to her mother and sisters.

“Well?” I asked her.

“The men had whiskey,” she told me. “And they didn’t want me there. They were afraid I would tell you. And I said I would tell you, if they did not stop drinking. So they beat me, and they beat my sister too.”

“Who beat you?”

“Hoske Nehol Gode.”

“And who is that? I don’t recall that name?”

“He is my cousin.”

I took her to the hospital and the physician reported that she was badly bruised up. It appeared that she had been given quite a trouncing by the worthy cousin. The name was strange to me. Perhaps, I thought, he comes from the Fort Defiance country.

Now it happened that a trading-post had been robbed only a short time before. The fellow who conducted it was not in my good graces, he having sought to evade the livestock-buying regulations. I had confiscated his purchases and closed his place of business. The Indians knew that this gentleman had lost official standing; so, while he was absent, seeking a means of reopening,—and this means seeking political influence sufficient to overawe and intimidate the Agent through pressure at Washington,—a band of native rascals looted his store. It was my duty to punish these thieves too, if I could find them. The police recovered most of the goods, but of course foodstuffs and silver trinkets were never returned. It was believed by the Indian officers who investigated that this robbery could be fastened on one Guy, his brother Jay, and perhaps others of their gang. These men had been to school long enough to acquire English names. They headed a crew of a dozen or more bad eggs, gamblers, whiskey-runners, general mischief-makers, who defied and worried the decent Navajo and troubled those police who did not protect them.

But I did not connect either Jay or Guy with Hoske Nehol Gode. Who would? There is little hope of making an accurate census of the nomadic Navajo; and whenever one does succeed, he will have the joy of recording three to five names for each adult. The Navajo, in speaking of or to one another, do not use given names. Too many of their titles mean infirmities or weaknesses. Some of their names are not delicate; and by this I mean that they are coarse enough to offend Navajo. One learns in talking with them through interpreters, to say “this man,” or “that man,” and to leave the name of him alone. Many of them establish their identity by relationship. Instead of saying “I am the Man with the Broken Nose,” he may call himself “Curly-Hair’s Brother-in-Law.” And therefore, when an official goes looking for an obscure member of the tribe, seeking him under his real name, he is apt to meet and talk with Curly-Hair’s Brother-in-Law, or Victor Hugo, if the man has been to school and had a literary teacher, to learn finally that Curly-Hair’s relative by marriage, the brilliant French poet, and the Man with the Broken Nose, are all one and the same person. This game of hare and hounds is often humorous, unless it chances to be dangerous.

Now it also happened that I was preparing a number of cases for presenting to the Federal Court. Trips from the remote desert to court are troublesome and expensive, so one likes to assemble them in batches and thus clear the docket. I was gathering Hopi and Navajo witnesses, and chanced to need as one the wife of “the Ghost.” How was I to know that the Ghost’s wife was a sister of the returned student? This woman knew something of the robbery. I did not connect the two incidents. And I did not know that there was still another sister, practically a twin in appearance of the one wanted. That morning I learned that the apparition’s better half was weaving a blanket down the cañon. The Ghost’s wife didn’t want to go to court, and assured me that the person I needed would be found at the camp where the returned student had met with her beating. By going there I could kill two birds with one stone—procure the wife of the Ghost, and the sister of the student who had suffered also. I did wound two birds, all right; for at that camp I encountered both Guy and Hoske Nehol Gode.

If I have not confused matters, it will be recalled that I wanted Guy for burglary, and Hoske Nehol Gode for assaulting two women. Now Guy and Hoske Nehol Gode were one and the same person. Guy did not know that I suspected him of looting the trader’s store, but he perfectly well knew that I might be looking for him to answer the assault-charge.

There were three of us—a Tewa policeman, the big stockman, and myself. We found the camp a short distance off the main road to Gallup, back in the trees. It held several women, four or five young fellows who promptly departed, and one large, heavy-set man who looked twenty-five years in age, and who was perhaps thirty-five. The Navajo men do not show their true ages until long past thirty. It is difficult to gauge their years until the lines begin to set in their faces.

Among the women I recognized a duplicate of the Cañon weaver. Assuming that this was the person who knew something of the robbery, I began to question her, using the policeman as interpreter. The Tewa Indians usually speak three languages: their own and Hopi and Navajo. The big fellow at the fire pricked up his ears. He feared that she would tell of the beating, for she was the sister who had been beaten; and lo, here she was being questioned concerning the blankets he had removed from the trading-post. I have no doubt that this caused him great uneasiness, and soon he began to evidence his disapproval of my questions, claiming that the woman knew nothing about the affair of the robbery. Several times he interrupted, asking: “Why you want to know that?”

I had no intention of disturbing this sullen fellow, but when he interrupted again, I told him to hold his peace. I turned to the old woman of the outfit.

“Do you know where Hoske Nehol Gode is?”

Neither she nor any one of them knew. The man at the fire sneered and seemed amused. I suspected that he would know something.

“What is your name?” I asked him.

Of the two evils, he chose the one he thought I knew less about.

“Guy,” he said.

Now did I not want Guy for burglary, although I had not been seeking him? This was too good an opportunity to be missed.

“Well, I have been looking for you, Guy,” I told him. “You will go back to the Agency with us.”

The resistance of an Indian is always negative. He stood up, and started to move off, out of the camp. I therefore of necessity had to move out of the camp with him, for I had him by the shirt-collar. This fellow must have weighed two hundred pounds of well-knit muscle, and he was in perfect fighting trim from roping and handling and riding rough ponies, and generally leading an Indian’s life in the open. At my best Arizona weight, aside from determination and official authority, I tipped the beam at one hundred and eighteen pounds. He walked off with me just as a range bull would depart with a sixteen-pound Boston terrier hanging to his muzzle.

The Indian police are always slow to come into action, so Guy had carried me about fifteen yards before the Tewa added his handicap by pinioning the Navajo’s arms from behind. To rid one’s self of an opponent like that, it is necessary to toss him completely over one’s head; and this the Navajo desperately endeavored to do; but the Tewa held to him tenaciously and between us Guy—alias Hoske Nehol Gode—was seriously inconvenienced. He stopped moving out of the camp, and began to plough up dirt in circles, viciously seeking to rid himself of the policeman, who, like an Old Man of the Sea, perched between his shoulder blades. Then the stockman, who had been at the car, arrived to assist; and once they had him well fastened, I drew a pair of handcuffs from my pocket, and slung one of them across Guy’s wrist. It locked down, but he objected to our arranging the other cuff where it belonged. In the meantime, however, he was not standing still. The four of us were slipping, side-stepping, puffing, and straining about. The Tewa did not dare loose his hold of the Navajo’s arms, and his elbow grip prevented us from forcing his wrists together. Officers in a different service would have adopted different methods; but we were of the Indian Service, and had probably followed the wrong course as it was. We should have reasoned with him, and recited a bedtime story.

Now, in this melee, Guy secured a nice twisting grip on my thumb; and I received instant notice that he meant to wrench that thumb off my hand.

“Break his hold, quick!” I called out.

Promptly from the stockman’s belt swung a forty-five, and smash, down it came across Guy’s hand. And very promptly too he released his hold.

Until this time there had been no sound from him, other than his gasping breath and the noise of struggle. At the blow, he raised a call for help and, like an infuriated animal, he threshed about and threw us with him. The dust arose and the chips that carpet a camp flew. The Tewa swung from side to side; but the Tewa did not let him go.

There was a noise in the fringe of little cedars around us, and several Navajo appeared. And they advanced. And just then the stockman dropped his gun.

It fell in the dirt under our feet, and down swung this wild bull of the pampas, the Tewa balancing between his shoulders, to reach the weapon. One moment Guy’s feet were on the gun, holding it down, and next the stockman’s foot would scuffle to scrape it aside. With the stockman bent down for it, the Navajo would be clawing at his neck or kicking at his face. It was a furious scramble, and if he ever reached that automatic gun it was ready to explode.

The sight of the gun, too, seemed to anger and justify those others who had come up. It seemed probable to me that someone of the party would be hurt, and I preferred it to be a Navajo. So I stepped back out of the fuss, drew my gun, and warned those newcomers to keep their distance. They halted at the camp’s edge.

“Why don’t you smash that animal?” I called.

The haymaker that Hoske Nehol Gode then received in the face would have staggered Dempsey. It straightened him up, but very much to my surprise, it did not fell him. The shock, however, caused him to reel off the gun, and promptly the stockman recovered it.

“Knock him down the next time.”

And smash went the forty-five over Guy’s head. But he did not drop. A Navajo of the back-country dresses his hair in a thick mattress across his scalp. Blood began to stream down his face. He let out a wild cry that he was being killed, a call for the women to help him. The night before they had sent a messenger for protection from this bully; but now they responded to his aid. They came forward, ready to claw us; and just what was the ethical thing to do then, I am not prepared to state.

“Turn him loose!” I called to the policeman.

“He may have a gun!” said the stockman.

“Then we will have to shoot him,” I said; “Turn him loose.”

The Tewa released his hold, and Guy, wearing one bracelet, made a rush out of the camp. He wanted no more of fighting, but it was evident that the place was unhealthy for us. We could hear him crashing through the brush, while we proceeded to the car. The women followed to the edge of the timber and shrilled their threats. It was probable that Guy would find a weapon; so we lost no time in vacating that section of the Desert.

Later in the day the leader of the clan came to see me.

“I have told Guy,” he said, “to make no more trouble.”

“You may return and tell him something more than that,” I replied. “Tell him to be very careful not to enter this cañon, for I mean to kill him if he does.”

That was the last I saw of Guy for several years. He kept to the back-country, after his hand and head had healed, and avoided the Agency. He filed off the handcuff. Navajo are expert at that. He was not prosecuted for beating the women, nor for the burglary. You see, three days after this affair I asked the United States District Attorney for an indictment on these charges, and a bench warrant was promised to assure his arrest by the United States Marshal. The Marshal asked me what success he might expect to have in procuring this belligerent, and I related our experience.

“He is one of a gang, and it may be necessary to arrest several of those fellows. I wouldn’t come alone. Of course, you may deputize some of my employees, but they do not care for that work. And if you ask me the easiest and most effective way to serve those warrants, I would say with a squad of uniformed men from Fort Apache. They were playing ball in Holbrook when I passed through. The Navajo bad-man respects a soldier, and he doesn’t respect anything else. He will not be awed by your badge of office. He doesn’t know what it means.”

Evidently the Marshal transmitted my suggestion to his superiors at Washington, for at once, by telegraph, I was challenged by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who demanded an explanation of my call for troops! The United States Marshal never appeared on the reservation. Guy and his assistant thieves and bullies are still at large, and I suppose they beat women and loot stores whenever the spirit moves them.

XXVI

HOPI ANNALS

But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women,
and Love and Fate, according to the measure of my ability.

—Kipling to Gobind

The Hopi people are bound up in clanships, rituals, and ceremonies. Herbert E. Gregory, in his remarkable volume of statistics, entitled The Navajo Country, has this to say of them:—

These people have maintained themselves and preserved their race
from extinction in a singularly unfriendly environment. With
incredible skill they have practised the art of conservation of
water, and that the mind of the race is intent on this one problem
is shown by the organization of the clans and the elaborate
ceremonies devised to enlist the coöperation of unseen Powers which
are believed to control the rainfall. Endless toil and endless
prayer, both directed to increase and to preserve the precious
water, constitute the life of the Hopi.

We find in their desert cairns of rock something different from an ordinary monument to mark land or to point a road, having in them special gifts of feathers or painted sticks. That certain clans may never be without the feathers of the eagle, these birds are captured young and reared in cages or at the ends of chains on the housetops. A curious sight to see: a captive eagle, baleful of eye, morose, sullen, posed at the edge of a roof, a brooding, vicious prisoner with beak and talons like razors, a dangerous thing to approach carelessly. These birds must be reared unharmed, therefore the nests are robbed of the young. A wounded or crippled sacrifice will not be accepted; for, aside from being the source of feathers, it is said that eagles are smothered to death in certain ceremonies.

In distant places, the far-away headlands of the Butte country and the sky-drifting mountains, it is said the Hopi have altars. There is one, a young Hopi told me, atop “Sist-ter-vung-ter-we,” or “one that is farthest west,” in the long line of volcanic piles bordering their southern boundary. And once I received a handful of round, painted sticks, a miniature faggot, from the distant Apache Reservation, with an inquiry from that Agent as to their meaning.

“Yes,” said a Hopi, “they are from the Rain altar down there. The Hopi go to those places at times. I have no doubt you could find some in the San Francisco Mountains, if you knew where to look.”

Prayer-sticks, tied in little bundles, offered to the gods. And reflect for a moment. The Apache was an enemy, a most bitter and sinister enemy. The most southerly and westerly ruins of Hopi civilization are to be found along the Rio del Lino, or Flax River, as the Little Colorado was named by the Spanish. Their dawn settlements are far to the north, in hidden cañons close to the Utah line; and it is not likely that their eastern pueblos, those of the Hopi proper, were ever beyond the upper reaches of the Jedito Wash country. But these prayer-sticks are found far beyond those limits. They suggest religious pilgrimages into enemy provinces. Perhaps the early Hopi accepted even this dangerous means of placating his deities. Primitive knowledge would have located the sources of rain in the western range, where the San Francisco peaks lift their snow-capped heads, and in the White Mountains of the Apache country. The Navajo fastened his legends to that highest desert elevation, Navajo Mountain, and it is not likely the Hopi ventured there. But his Rain gods, those powerful to relieve the aridity of his country and ensure against famine, dwelt in mountains somewhere, and therefore, trembling perhaps, muttering incantations, he went to them.

Anything that is strange, and possibly potent, has been absorbed into their embroidered religion. The clans like to procure colored glass. They make much of tortoise shells, and other things speaking of the sea. President Roosevelt was petitioned by them to forward a jar of sea-water. They have—or had—a Parrot clan, a fantastic touch reminiscent of some lonely friar who had a mission garden and in it kept his pets.

Close to their homes are many shrines that excite the curiosity of tourists and that sometimes get visitors into trouble. Once a couple of the overly curious were thrashed with whips by Hopi of the Chimopovi district—for which the guilty were severely punished by the Agent then in charge. But more than one Agent has ordered busybodies to replace bahoos and gifts taken from such places. While I had a hand in this, and finally stopped the plundering of old graves, and once prevented the sale and removal of an entire Hopi altar, still I must admit that I never caught a tourist or a “scratcher” pillaging a newly made grave.

Most of the clans must have been intermingled in so small a population. We have Youkeoma’s statement that there is a Ghost clan, subdivided into a Ghost-and-Bird clan. A more intelligent member of the tribe once endeavored to recall for me the numerous fraternities of his people. He said: “The Sun, Salt, Crow, and Ant clans are dead. There are no more of those people. The Parrot clan now has but one member, a woman. The Bear clan is the largest, and next come the Sand and Snake clans. There are the Spider and Evergreen clans. Some of them go in groups, so we have the Bear, Spider, and Evergreen clans associated, as is the Rabbit clan with the Tobacco clan. We have the Eagle, the Horn, the Fire, and the Flute clan; the Antelope, the Lizard, and the Corn clan.” And when that group of progressive head-men petitioned Washington in 1886 for a school, they signed themselves as leaders of the Mountain-sheep clan, the Coyote and Badger clans, the Rain, the Reed, and the Katchina clans. But one of these men is living to-day—Honani, of Chimopovi, always one of the friendlies. The most interesting and impressive of them, Shupula, father of the chief Snake priest, died July 4, 1916, a benign old man whose features are preserved in a splendid piece of modeling by Mr. Emri Kopte, the sculptor who has lived for many years among the Hopi Indians.

Next to these phases of his religion are the red pages of his life-calendar. The Hopi is born to a heritage of toil in an unfriendly environment, and perhaps to misunderstanding and small sympathy; but the poetry of his life begins at once. The paternal grandmother acts as his nurse. After bathing the child she anoints it with wood ashes, that he may have a smooth body. The mother is supposed not to let the sun shine on her for the period of twenty days, at the end of which time the child is named. Only the women of the husband’s family are present at this ceremony. They bring a blanket of Hopi weave, and a bowl of sacred water to place before the mother. They wash her hair with this water. Each of these godmothers brings an ear of corn as an offering. They dip the corn in the water and stroke the head of the infant four times, making at the same time a wish for its health and happiness. Each of them suggests a name. The child will belong to the mother’s clan, but will be named for something denoting the father’s clan. If the father happens to be a member of the Sand clan, his children will be named for things common to the desert sand.

On the twenty-first day after the birth these women have assembled and washed the mother’s hair. This is before sunrise: they are a dawn-loving people. Then the grandmother takes the infant in one arm and the mother by the hand. Imagine that little ceremony upon the craggy mesa-top in the gray chill of the desert morning, high in the thin air, overlooking all the dim sleeping valleys. They step to the mesa edge to view the rising sun. Sacred meal, mixed with corn-pollen, is strewn on the air. Then, as that mellow light flames the farthest east, radiating from the hearts of all the people, gilding Yucca Point and the Terrace of the Winds, plashing warmly the cold walls of the mesa fortress, the grandmother speaks the name she has selected from those suggested for the child.

If the child be a girl, she will receive another name on reaching maturity, when her hair will be washed and arranged in the symbolic whorls as a sign of womanhood. If a boy, he will receive another name at a certain ceremony entitling him to wear a mask and to dance. These names then last through life.

One can understand from this little baptismal scene how my friend of the Second Mesa, Ta-las-we-huma, got his name. It must have been a beautiful sunrise, and the little fellow must have been well-favored in the sight of his sponsors; for his name may be translated, “Glow of the Rising Sun.”

The Hopi do not name their children with the frank vulgarity that so often is found among the Navajo and other tribes. Many of their titles are pure poetry. We have Lo-may-ump-tewa—something Going Straight and Good, as an arrow—and Se-you-ma—one who Carries a Flower. Then there are many names such as we commonly associate with Indians: Sah-mee or Green Corn, and Qua-ku-ku, or Eagle Claws.

The Hopi maiden is most frequently given a tender name, and she is often a pretty little thing deserving it. We find Tawa-mana, or Girl of the Sun, and Pole-mana and Pole-see, meaning Butterfly Girl and Butterfly Flowers (buttercups).

They are equally tasteful in naming places. I have already mentioned Huh-kwat-we, the Terrace of the Winds. Of their closer and more intimate places we find Ta-wah-pah Spring, the Spring of the Sun, at one time a most precious waterhole, however roiled and muddy. And Pah-lots-quabbie, the “place where we get red paint for the face,” a point of particular interest to the women who wish to preserve their complexions. Despite their copper-colored skins, the intense rays of the desert sunlight cause them to take measures for protection. Much of Indian face-painting is cosmetic, and not for the brilliant color-scheme that a tourist connects with war-parties and potential scalpings.

Many of their names are difficult to translate in a word or two, since they most often describe things fully. The desert Indian is not a word-maker, and for unfamiliar objects he does not create nouns. There is Dah-vuph-cho-mah: this spot white men call the Hill of the Water-Witch, for it is where the Water Development chief has his home, shops, and office. He calls it a “camp.” Camp or not, it is a haven of welcome for rare souls, including itinerant artists, poets, and depressed Indian Agents. A disappointed candidate for the much-coveted mayoralty of Polacca, probably actuated by bitterness, once dubbed this prominence Pisgah. The Hopi named it, long before the mystery of well-rigs and peach-tree wands was known, Dah-vuph-cho-mah: “the place where we dry rabbit-skins for the quilts.” Quite simple, is it not?

The Hopi once made many robes of rabbit-skins. It was necessary to bury the pelts in the sand before removal to the mesa-top, a ceremonial matter; and Dah-vuph-cho-mah was the place to do it. The skins were then rolled into ropes, thick and soft, and sewed together. I last saw these coverings at Hotevilla, where so many traditions are preserved.

And this suggests the methods of rabbit-hunting. The Hopi does not seek bunny with .22 rifle, or bow and arrow, or snares. Actually he drops the swift creature with the Hopi rabbit-stick or boomerang, a curved piece of mountain-oak that these Indians throw skillfully. But the answer to the inquiring tourist is—“He runs the rabbit down.” The Hopi are fleet of foot, and of course our touring friend devours this explanation literally. Hopi rabbit-hunts are joyous community-affairs, and they do run the rabbit down. They encircle a very large area of desert valley, all runners, all bearing rabbit-sticks. Then they begin contracting the circle. As the rabbits flee before one advancing line of beaters, they are turned back by other lines. From every bush, it seems, Hopi are bobbing up, with menacing blows and wild cries. The game is thus run down and killed when tiring. Patient burros bear home the spoils. I have seen these beasts covered with dead rabbits, while afar in the plain still arose the merry shouts of the running hunters.

The language of the Tewa is composed of shorter terms.

“What do you call these?” I asked, showing some local beans.

“We call them ‘tdo.’”

“What does that mean?”

“It means ‘beans.’ When a Tewa means beans, he says ‘beans.’ But when a Hopi speaks of these, he says: ‘Kotcha-cha-chi-morzree,’ ‘the beans that are soft when boiled a long time.’” So he described them first, when experimenting with their cooking, and he has never seen fit to shorten his nomenclature.

Compared with the stalwart Sioux or the equally tall and vigorous Navajo of the mountains, men of the horses, the Hopi are at first glance a little people. This has brought them some sympathy from those who seize on superficial appearances. The mature Hopi has a thick figure, not inclined to fatness, but with barrel-like lungs and a sturdy back. He would make a fine wrestler. As he has accepted things of civilization via the trader, and absorbed so much from his neighbor, the Navajo, his costume is not radically different to-day. The curious dresses of the olden-time, of buckskin, cloth of native weave, and feathers, such as may be seen in the Harvey collection at Albuquerque, have disappeared from the mesas and to the younger generation are unknown. A shirt of velveteen, loose trousers of some light cloth, often pure white, moccasins of red-stained buckskin and his own peculiar design, a handkerchief twisted about his head, these form his costume. Most of his ornaments are bought of the Navajo, save that an occasional Hopi silversmith will hammer the metal into Hopi patterns, such as butterflies and snakes with turquoise eyes. When you see these forms, they are Hopi. The Navajo does not use them.

But in this dress of the men the resemblance to the nomad ceases. The true Hopi is marked by his short stature, his broader and radically different physiognomy, and especially by the dressing of his hair. The Navajo is usually a sloven with his hair. Do not get too close to him. The Navajo draws his hair tightly back from the brow, and catches it in a knot or a queue at the back of his head. And there is little difference between the men and their women. The Hopi wears the bang and the straight bobbed effect that came out of Egypt. When it is possible, he takes scrupulous care of his mane. Hair-washing is an important feature of all ceremonies. He was the first bobbed American.

To-day this effect will be found among the orthodox only. The younger men, home from schools, have adopted the comb and shears as they drift away from many fetishes. But hair-cutting has produced some serious wrangles with the Hopi. Long ago an Agent zealously interpreted a Washington order to mean that all Indians, not only those in schools, should be made to cut their hair in white man’s fashion—as if this would produce civilization overnight. To the elders of the tribe this was a terrible heresy, and they resisted very naturally. It is too bad that orders cannot be transmitted in the form of blue-prints.

The women of the tribe are the strongholds of conservatism. I recall holding a council of mixed sexes, the talk relating to some form of community improvement along modern lines. And when it was over, I asked my interpreter:—

“Do you believe they understood?”

“The men, of course,” he replied, emphatically; “but do you think it possible to get that stuff through a Hopi woman’s head? Epten. The men will try to carry out your wishes; but they are in for a very unpleasant time of it with their women. A Hopi woman! She is like a piece of sandrock. The winds wear it away, but it will take many years.”

The younger women, who have had schooling, wear the gingham and calico dresses they have learned to make and launder, and the field matrons assist them in renewing these garments. But the old ones, and the students of middle-age, are most likely to be found wearing the ancient Hopi weaves. A dress may be of thick cloth caught at one shoulder, leaving the opposite arm bare, belted at the waist with a woven sash, the wearer’s legs and feet bare most of the time, unless for some special journey she dons the woman’s wrapping and shoe of buckskin. She grows thick and fat, her countenance rounding into a broad, complacent face that can smile pleasantly or become stolidly impervious as the mood strikes her. Once married, her hair is parted and hangs down her back in thick plaits. Her hands are thick and coarsened from hard labor, the making of pottery, and especially from the baking of piki bread.

This baking is done on a red-hot stone over the fire. The Hopi woman sits before it, at her side a pan of batter, sometimes colored red or blue. She dips her hand into the batter and smears it deftly over the hot stone. Before it has burned and curled, she wipes over it a second layer. This last cooks perfectly in a thin wafer, quite like tissue-paper, crinkled and brittle. This she peels off and places in a pile of such sheets. All day she does this, often until her palm is perfectly cooked with the bread. The sheets are then rolled, again resembling a packet of tissue, quite like those we used to buy at Christmas time for decorations. A dozen of these rolls, and the Hopi man will take the trail, fully provided with provender.

Some rather reject the thought of eating piki bread, but I have sampled Indian foods more than once, and with different results. An old Navajo shemah can broil mutton ribs and prepare a pot of coffee over a hogan fire in such a way that one who has had a hard trip,—and more of it to come,—thinks them delicious. And piki bread is not half bad, although rather flat in taste, and gritty, for the sand will intrude; and I suppose if one accepted it as a steady diet his teeth would be worn down in time, like those of the older Hopi. As for the cooked hand, one should gratefully accept and eat piki without being too curious as to its making. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Next in the Hopi life-calendar appears the urgent necessity for marriage. The happy man has very little to do with this affair. The bride-elect—self-elected—and her mother, a wily dowager who has contrived a large part of the proceedings, decide most of these things for themselves. I cannot say how early negotiations have been opened by the aunts and uncles of both signatories, but of course they have been consulted. At any rate, on a day the girl and her mother pay a visit to the eligible young man’s home, and tender his parents a present of piki bread and cornmeal on a woven-reed plaque. Most Southwest tribes use a wedding-basket symbol; the Navajo import from another tribe a wedding basket of definite design, and will use no other. If the boy’s parents accept these presents and replace them with a portion of mutton on the same plaque, they have signified their consent to the union. If there has been dissension between the Montagues and Capulets and a plague on both houses, so to speak, the disdaining parents give this piki and meal to others, signifying their lack of interest in mere foreigners, and these receiving diplomats break the sad news that a perfectly good offer has been declined.