Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 8

Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 8

Look in, and if your manner is respectful and the girls not over shy,

you will be allowed the enjoyment of a charming picture of kneeling,

swaying bodies and of down-turned faces veiled in falling hair. Ollas of

native ware stand about with water; parti-colored blankets of Navajo or

Zuñi weave hanging from wall or ceiling give a touch of brightness in

the dim light of the room; in the triangular corner fireplace dinner

simmers within a bowl of native pottery set upon the coals. If fortune

favors you there may be a potter at her moulding, or, in the street,

jars being fired or bread being put to bake in the adobe ovens; or in

some plaza a ceremonial dance in costume may be in progress. Zuñi is

still comfortably pagan—the ancient Catholic church is a ruin and the

modern Protestant mission is by no means overworked—and throughout the

year the red gods of Zuñi have homage paid them in many a ceremony rich

in symbolism and pure beauty.[40]

 

On the outskirts of the pueblo in August, one may have a sight of wheat

thrashing on the open-air thrashing floors, the grain being trodden out

in oriental fashion by horses, sheep or goats. Or there may be a

straight-away horse race over the plain with a picturesque crowd looking

on; or a _gallo_ race, the part of the rooster (_gallo_) humanely taken

in these latter days by a sack buried to the neck in the sand. A quieter

feature of interest is the quaint little vegetable gardens on a slope by

the river—each tiny garden enclosed with a thin adobe wall. These are

tended by the women who daily bring water in ollas and pails to irrigate

the plants.

 

[Illustration]

 

OLD CHURCH, ACOMA PUEBLO

 

Dating from about 1700. Tradition has it that it was 40 years in

building. All material was carried up on Indians’ backs from the

plain 350 feet below, by an almost precipitous trail.

 

[Illustration]

 

A SUNNY WALL IN ZUÑI

 

The men of Zuñi are famous knitters. This one is making his wife a

pair of leggings.

 

A short walk from the pueblo brings you to Hepatina (_hay´-pa-tee-na_) a

stone shrine erected on the plain, which in the Zuñi conception, marks

the center of the earth; for the unreconstructed Zuñi believes naturally

enough, just as your and my ancestors did a few centuries ago, that the

earth is flat. Hither in the days of long ago, a guardian divinity of

the Zuñis brought them as to the safest place in the world—the farthest

from the edge—preceding them in the form of a water strider. The

double-barred cross, which you will see sometimes on Zuñi pottery, or

fashioned in silver, is the symbol of that divine guide. There has been,

by the way, some good pottery made at Zuñi, and the visitor interested

in that art may still enjoy the adventure of a house-to-house ceramic

hunt with chances of a pleasurable outcome.

 

The accommodations for visitors in the pueblo are very limited. Perhaps

one of the couple of white resident traders or the school teacher may be

complaisant enough to take you in; and there are certain Indian houses

where lodging can surely be had. If you are not of a meticulous sort, I

would recommend a stop-over long enough at least to visit the mesa

Towa-yálleni, which Cushing has put into literature as Thunder Mountain.

It looks near the pueblo, but is really 4 miles distant. On its summit

centuries ago there was a pueblo of the Zuñis, the broken down walls of

which, overrun with cactus and brush, are still quite evident. Curious

pictographs of the ancients may be traced on many a rock; and if one

knows where to look, there are pagan shrines where prayer plumes are yet

offered to the Divine Ones. Among such are those of the Twin War Gods,

whose home is believed to have been on Towa-yálleni—“little fellows that

never give up.” I was once informed by a Zuñi, “gone away now may be

gone up, may be gone down; _quien sabe_?”[41] It was on this mountain

the Zuñis found a refuge after their losing fight with Coronado in 1540;

and again in 1632 they retreated hither after killing their missionary,

Padre Letrado, of whom we shall hear again at Inscription Rock in the

next chapter. And here they were in 1692 when De Vargas forced their

surrender in the re-conquest. Tradition has it, too, that here long,

long ago, the people fled for safety when an offended deity flooded them

out of their villages in the plain; and the water still rising, a

desperate sacrifice was called for. A boy and a girl were tossed from

the summit into the angry flood. In a twinkling, the children were

transformed into pinnacles of rock and the waters sank appeased. You can

see these spires of stone today from Zuñi, and old people will tell you

that the one with a double point is the boy. A peculiar virtue resides

in that petrified humanity it seems. If a childless couple resort to the

base of the pinnacles and there plant prayer plumes, there will be

granted to them the children of their desire.

 

There are trails, steep and rough, up Towa-yálleni’s sides, and if you

can make the trip with an intelligent and communicative old Zuñi (most

of the young ones seem to know or care little about the ancient things),

you will have a remarkable outing. An hour or two spent on that lonely

breeze-swept, sun-kissed mesa-top, with the ruined town, its broken

shrines, its historic and legendary memories, will induct you, as no

amount of reading will, into the atmosphere of the Southwest’s romantic

past. There used to be—and for all I know still is—a trail that a rider

on horseback can follow, at the northeastern side of the mesa. The

ancient peach orchard through which it wound owes its existence to seed

brought to Zuñi by the Spaniards.

 

NOTE: Five miles northeast of Zuñi, is Black Rock, where travelers

with an interest in Government education of the Indians may see a

Reservation School in operation. Within a radius of 15 or 20 miles of

the main pueblo are 3 farming villages occupied in summer by Zuñis to

be near certain tracts of tillable land. One of these, Ojo Caliente,

15 miles southwest of Zuñi, is close to the site of ancient

Háwikuh—the first Pueblo town seen by white men. Upon it in 1539,

intrepid Fray Marcos de Niza looked down from a nearby height, and

then, warned by the murder of his avant-courier, the negro Estévanico,

beat a prudent retreat to Mexico. Coronado captured the place in the

following year, and thence made his first report of the famous 7

cities to the viceroy in Mexico. It is the scene of one of the most

charming of Cushing’s Zuñi folk tales, “The Foster Child of the Deer.”

Extensive excavations have recently been made there by Government

ethnologists.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII

EL MORRO, THE AUTOGRAPH ROCK OF THE CONQUISTADORES

 

 

Thirty-five miles eastward from Zuñi (2 hours by automobile, if the

roads are dry) is a huge rock mass of pale pink sandstone whose sides

rise sheer a couple of hundred feet against a turquoise sky. It stands

in the midst of a lonely plain whose wild grasses are nibbled by the

passing flocks of wandering Navajos, and so far as I know, there is no

nearer human habitation than the little Mormon settlement of Ramah,

through which you pass to reach the rock. This cliff has a story to tell

of such unique interest that the United States Government has acquired

the mesa of which it is a spur for a National Monument. It is known as

Inscription Rock, or El Morro (the latter a not uncommon

Spanish-American designation for a bold promontory), and was a landmark

as early as the sixteenth century for the Spanish expeditions bound

between Santa Fe, Acoma and Zuñi. Water, feed, and wood were here

available, as they are today, making the foot of the high cliff a good

camping place, and here as a matter of fact during the sixteenth,

seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, many a Spanish military party did

camp, and having rested themselves and their cattle, went on refreshed

to do the errands of their King and Church.

 

And hither one day in 1849, just after New Mexico had become part of the

United States, came Lieut. J. H. Simpson, U. S. A., with some troopers

on a military reconnaissance, and discovered that the base of the cliff

was a veritable album of those old Conquistadores; bearing not only the

names of the Spanish explorers but frequently an accompaniment of date

and comment that form important contributory evidence touching the early

history of the Southwest. Simpson made copies of a number of the

inscriptions, and these were published with translations (not always

accurate) in his report to the Secretary of War.[42] Most of those

recordings carved in the soft rock with sword or dagger point are still

fresh and legible, so little have centuries of dry New Mexico weather

worn the clear-cut lettering. If you go to see them, you will be a

dry-as-dust indeed if you do not feel an odd sort of thrill as you put

your finger tips upon the chiseled autographs of the men who won for

Spain an empire and held it dauntlessly. For most of these records are

not idle scribblings of the witless, but careful work by people with a

purpose, whose names are mentioned in the documents of the time. Here

are the names, for instance, of Oñate, the conqueror, and of De Vargas,

the re-conqueror, the very flower of the warrior brotherhood. The Rock

is a monument such as has no duplicate in the country; and some day when

our historians have got the Southwest in proper perspective, and waked

up to a realization of the heroism and romance that went into the making

of it, El Morro will perhaps be really protected (if its priceless

inscriptions survive so long) and not left as it is now to vandal

tourists to hack and carve their silly names upon.

 

It takes knowledge of old Spanish abbreviations to get at the sense of

many of the records, but even the casual visitor cannot but be struck by

the artistry that characterizes many of the petrographs. One who has

Spanish enough to give zest to the quest could easily spend a couple of

days, camped at this fascinating spot, spelling out the quaint old

notations, peopling again in fancy this ancient camp-ground with the

warriors of long ago in helmet and cuirass, their horses housed in

leather; and ever with them the Franciscan soldiers of the Cross in gray

gown and cord with dangling crucifix. Then there is the enjoyment of the

place itself—the sunny solitude, and the glorious, extended views, the

long blue line of the Zuñi Mountains, the pale spires of La Puerta de

los Gigantes (the Giants’ Gate). Then, if you like, is the climb to the

mesa’s summit for yet wider views, and a sight of the ruined old pueblo

there, whereof history has naught to tell—only tradition, which says that it was once a Zuñian town.