Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 10

Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 10

During the wars which for many years marked the intercourse of the

Navajos with the whites—both Spaniards and Americans—the Cañon de Chelly

was a notable stronghold of the red men. It was here that in 1864 Kit

Carson and his troopers at last succeeded in breaking the backbone of

the Indian resistance. Today the Navajos are as peaceable as the

Pueblos.

 

According to Navajo legends, the boundaries of their land were marked

out for them by the gods who brought them up through the great reed from

the lower world.[51] These landmarks were in the form of mountains

especially created for the purpose of earth brought from the lower

world, and were seven in number. Of these the Sacred Mountain of the

East is believed to be Pelado Peak, 20 miles northeast of Jemes pueblo

and it was made fast to the earth by a bolt of lightning; the Sacred

Mountain of the South is known to be Mount San Matéo, 20 miles or so

northwest of Laguna pueblo, held in place by a great stone knife thrust

through it from summit to base; the Sacred Mountain of the West, is the

San Francisco Mountain, 12 miles north of Flagstaff, Arizona, fastened

down by a sunbeam; and the Sacred Mountain of the North is some one of

the San Juan range, which a rainbow held in place. The other three are

peaks of the mid-region, only one of which, Hosta Butte in Bernalillo

County, New Mexico, has been identified.[52] Two of these mountains are

plainly visible from the Santa Fe Railway trains and by motorists

following the National Old Trails transcontinental highway—namely, the

San Francisco Mountain (12,611 feet) and Mount San Matéo (11,389 feet).

Both are extinct volcanoes. The vicinity of Mount San Matéo (which is

also known as Mount Taylor)[53] is the scene of a thrilling tradition.

There it was that the Navajo Gods of War (children of the Sun and of the

Waterfall), mounted upon a rainbow, met and slew with lightning bolts

the boy-eating giant, Ye-itso. The latter was a monster so huge that the

spread of his two feet was a day’s journey for a man, his footfalls were

as thunder, and when he drank his draught exhausted a lake. His head,

cut off by the War-gods and tossed away, was changed into El Cabezon, a

truncated cone of a mountain visible 40 miles northeast from San Matéo;

and his blood flowing in a deluge to the south and west is what we white

folk in our ignorance call a hardened lava-flow, as we watch it from the

car window for miles westward from McCarty’s. Look at it again with the

eyes of faith, and is not its semblance that of coagulated, blackened

blood?

 

So you see in this glorious Southwest we may still follow in the very

footsteps of the gods, and regard the world as it seems through the eyes

of a primitive and poetic race—see in the lightning the weapon of the

red gods, in the rainbows their bridges to traverse chasms withal, in

the sunbeams their swift cars of passage. There is something rather

exhilarating, I think, to know that in our materialistic America there

is a region where the Ancient Ones still haunt as in the youth of the

world. To be sure the white man’s schools are operating to break up this

primitive faith; but the ingrained genius of a race is not made over in

a generation. One may stumble still upon Navajo religious ceremonies,

held in the open, with their picturesque rites and maskings and wild

music. They differ markedly from the ceremonies of the Pueblos, and are,

as a rule, undertaken under the charge of medicine men primarily for the

cure of the sick. There are no fixed dates for any of these ceremonies,

and casual travelers do not often see them, as they are most likely to

be held during the cold weather, when few visitors care to penetrate

into the country. An exceedingly interesting adjunct of many of the

Navajo rites is the dry sand painting, of a symbolic character and often

of striking beauty, made in color upon a prepared flooring of sand. The

design is “drawn” on this by dribbling upon it the dry ground

pigments—white, red, yellow, black and gray—from between the artist’s

thumb and fore-finger. The picture must be done in one day, several men

sometimes working upon it at once. When completed the sick man is placed

upon it and treated; and after that, the picture is obliterated.[54]

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX

THE HOMES OF THE HOPIS, LITTLE PEOPLE OF PEACE

 

 

Now that the automobile has become a common mode of travel even in the

desert, you may reach the pueblos of the Hopi Indians quite comfortably

from Gallup.[55] The distance is about 130 miles to the first of the

villages. The road is via St. Michael’s (where the Franciscan Brothers

maintain a Mission for the Navajos); Ganado, where Mr. J. L. Hubbell’s

trading post stands; and Keam’s Cañon, where Mr. Lorenzo Hubbell,

hospitable son of a hospitable father, has another trading post. As far

as Ganado (70 miles) the way is identical with the first part of one

road to the Cañon de Chelly. From Ganado westward there are 60 miles of

pure wilderness, semi-desert, treeless, but in summer and autumn

splendid in places with sheets of wild flowers in purple and yellow. On

every hand—sometimes near, sometimes afar—are the characteristic mesa

formations of the Southwest carved by the elements into curious shapes

to which the fancy readily suggests names. One that you will pass is a

strikingly good model of a battleship’s dismantled hull, and goes by the

name of Steamboat Rock—a pleasant conceit for this desert, which, the

geologists tell us, was once a sea bottom. Nowhere is sign of humanity,

save perhaps, some wandering Navajos or a chance traveler like yourself.

 

[Illustration]

 

CASA BLANCA OR WHITE HOUSE

 

A prehistoric Cliff dwelling set amidst the stupendous scenery of

the Cañon de Chelly, Arizona—the reputed haunt of certain Navajo

gods.

 

[Illustration]

 

EL MORRO OR INscRIPTION ROCK, N. M.

 

This remarkable cliff bears near its base a score or more of

autographs carved in the stone by the Spanish conquerors during the

17th and 18th centuries.

 

At last there comes a change over the country ahead of you—a

transfiguration to broad sweeps of pink and pallid yellow, with here and

there a streak of white or of green, and on the far horizon a wall of

purple. The Painted Desert is before you, and upon the very tip of a

long promontory streaked horizontally with brown and red and yellow, and

laid upon the desert like a gigantic arm thrust out, you see the

castellated sky-line formed by the pueblos of the First Hopi Mesa. The

geography of the Hopi country is like this: Three long, narrow mesas

extending fingerlike into the Painted Desert, the tips about 10 miles

each from the next. On the First Mesa (which is the easternmost) are

three villages in an almost continuous row—Hano (called also Tewa),

which you plump breathlessly into at the top of the one steep trail

which is your means of access to all; then Sichúmovi, and lastly, at the

mesa’s extremity with all the desert in front, is Walpi, a most

picturesque pile rising in terraces to 4 stories and suggesting some

mediaeval fortress. The Second Mesa is forked at its tip, with

Mishóngnovi and Shipaúlovi set superbly along one tine, and

Shimópovi[56] on the other. On the Third Mesa stands old Oraibi, largest

and until recently most populous of all. Some years ago, however, it

suffered a secession of fully half its population, who are now

established a few miles away on the same mesa forming the independent

pueblos of Hótavila and Bácavi.[57]

 

The situation of these little towns is magnificent beyond words,

overlooking the Painted Desert, ever changing, ever wonderful, ever

challenging the spiritual in you, and stretching to where the San

Francisco Peaks, the Mogollones and the White Mountains notch the dim

horizon line. The elevation (6000 feet above the sea) and the purity and

dryness of the air, combine to make the climate particularly healthful

and enjoyable. Winter brings frosts and some snow, alternating with

brilliant sunshine. Summer, the season that interests the average

visitor, is as a rule delightful—the afternoon thunder showers of July

and August being only a refreshment and a source of added

picturesqueness in the form of superb cloud effects, spectacular

lightning, and splendid rainbows. Mid-day is warm enough for old men to

loiter in the sun in a costume that is pared down to a breech clout and

little children joyously wear nothing at all; yet both need covering in

the shade. As for the summer nights, they are always deliciously cool

and for outdoor sleeping are ideal. The flat-roofed, eaveless houses are

usually of flat stones laid in mud mortar, and though terraced, do not

usually exceed two or three stories in height. The arrangement is in

streets and plazas, the _kivas_ or ceremonial chambers (corresponding to

the _estufas_ of the Rio Grande pueblos) being underground and reached

by a descending ladder, whose upper part—two rungless poles—stick

picturesquely up in the air. There is a growing tendency to build the

new houses at the bases of the cliffs, particularly at the First and

Third Mesas—a reversal to first principles; for when Don Pedro de Tovar,

a lieutenant of Coronado, with Padre Juan de Padilla (of whom we heard

at Isleta) and a few soldiers, visited in 1540 this province of Tusayan,

as they called the country, they reported the Hopis dwelling at the foot

of the mesas. It was only later, probably after the Pueblo Rebellion of

1680, that the towns were rebuilt upon the mesa summits where we now

find them. The sites of two former Walpis may still be traced below the

First Mesa together with the ruins of an ancient Franciscan Mission,

some of whose timbers, they say, form part of the existing pagan

_kivas_. The Hopi never took kindly to missionary effort by the whites.

Every _padre_ among them was murdered at the time of the Rebellion, and

they would never tolerate another. Even kind Padre Garcés (of whom we

shall hear in a subsequent chapter) the Oraibians kept sitting outdoors

in a street corner for two days, and then evicted him from their town.

In 1700, one pueblo whose inhabitants showed a hospitable feeling to the

preaching of a persistent friar, was attacked by neighboring Hopis, set

on fire and such of the inhabitants as were not killed, were carried to

other towns. Of that pueblo—its name was Awátobi—you may see some ruined

remnants yet about 9 miles southeast of Walpi.[58]

 

The attraction that draws most visitors to the country of the Hopi

Indians is the famous Snake Dance held annually in August. The date is a

movable one and not known positively until 9 days in advance, when the

information may be had of the Santa Fe railway officials, who make it a

point to be posted. This remarkable ceremony, in which live snakes, a

large proportion of them venomous rattlers, are handled by the dance

participants as nonchalantly as if they were kittens, is in fact a

prayer for rain, in which the snakes (never harmed or their fangs

extracted as is sometimes ignorantly supposed), are intermediaries

between the people and the gods of water. It is moreover the

dramatization of a Hopi myth concerning the origin of the two

clans—Antelope and Snake—who perform the ceremony. The myth has to do

with the adventures of a young man who, impelled by curiosity to know

where the river waters went, made a trip on a hollow log down the

Colorado to its mouth. There he had many dealings with the Snake people,

in whose ways he was instructed by the friendly Spider Woman. Finally he

married the Snake chief’s daughter, and brought her to his own country.

The first children of this union were snakes, which the Hopis drove

away, but the next were human, and these, the ancestors of the present

Snake Clan, came to Walpi to live. The entire ceremony continues

throughout 9 days, and is conducted secretly in the underground _kiva_

until near sunset of the last day. Then the priests dramatically emerge

into the upper air, and the dance with the snakes occurs. It is all over

in about half an hour, but that half hour is what brings the crowd—about

the most thrilling and wide-awake performance that is offered anywhere

in America. Though the Snake Dance takes place annually, all the

villages do not hold it the same year. The most frequented presentations

are those at Walpi, held in the odd years, as 1917, 1919, etc., and at

Oraibi, the latter in the even years, as 1918, 1920, etc.

 

The Snake Dance attracts largely through the horror awakened in most of

us by reptiles, though it possesses many elements of majestic beauty,

too. There are numerous other Hopi ceremonies whose dominant feature to

the white onlooker is simple beauty; for instance, the picturesque Flute

ceremony held at springs below the mesas, and then along the ascending

trails to the mesa-top accompanied by songs, the music of native flutes

and the scattering of flowers. This ceremony, which is also the

dramatization of a legend[59] as well as an invocation for rain,

alternates with the Snake Dance, being held at about but not at the

identical time with it, and always at other pueblos than those holding

the Snake Dance. This permits attenders at one to witness the other

also. Then at all the pueblos there are the autumnal Basket Dances of

the women, and in spring and summer the many beautiful Katchina Dances.

Katchinas are the deified spirits of the Hopis’ ancestors, and are

intercessors with the greater gods for divine favors for the Hopis. They

are supposed to reside amid the San Francisco Peaks, where the home of

the Sun god is, the great dispenser of blessings. Their annual visits

(Indians of the pueblo impersonating the gods) are the occasions of much

merry-making, of songs and processions, and dances in mask and gay

costumes. Each god has his distinctive mask and dress, and the queer

little wooden “dolls” (as the traders call them, though “Katchina” is

the better word), which the visitors find in Hopi houses are careful

representations of these, made for the children of the household to

familiarize themselves with the characteristic aspect of each divinity.

“These dances,” to quote Mr. Walter Hough, whose excellent little work,

“The Hopi,” should be read by every intending visitor, “show the

cheerful Hopi at his best—a true spontaneous child of nature. They are

the most characteristic ceremonies of the pueblos, most musical,

spectacular and pleasing. They are really more worthy of the attention

of white people than the forbidding Snake Dance, which overshadows them by the elements of horror.”