illustration: bah, the little indian weaver] _the_ little indian weaver by madeline brandeis _producer of the motion pictures_ "the little indian weaver" "the wee scotch piper" "the little dutch tulip girl" "the little swiss wood-carver" distributed by pathè exchange, inc., new york city _photographic illustrations by the author_ grosset & dunlap publishers new york _by arrangement with the a. flanagan company_ _copyright, 1928, by a. flanagan company_ printed in the united states of america to every child of every land, little sister, little brother, as in this book your lives unfold, may you learn to love each other. contents chapter i page the corn ear doll 9 chapter ii something terrible happens 32 chapter iii at the trading post 43 chapter iv the prayer stick 62 chapter v at bah's hogan 75 chapter vi billy starts his story 88 chapter vii all about the indians 101 chapter viii who wins the radio? 119 [illustration: bah and cornelia] the little indian weaver chapter i the corn ear doll how would you like to have a doll made from a corn ear? that is the only kind of doll that bah ever thought of having. bah was only five years old and she had never been away from her home, so of course she couldn't know very much. but she knew a bit about weaving blankets, and she was learning more each day from her mother, who made beautiful ones and sold them. you see, bah and her mother were american indians, and they belonged to the navajo tribe. their home was on the navajo reservation in arizona, and they called it an indian village. but if you went there you would not think it very much of a village in comparison to the villages you know. as a matter of fact, all you could see was a row of funny little round houses, looking very much like large beehives, put together with mud and sticks and called hogans. a street of hogans in each of which lived a whole family of indians, a few goats and sheep, a stray dog or two, an indian woman sitting outside her hogan weaving a blanket, perhaps a child running with a dog--this, then, was a navajo village. [illustration: the little indian weaver] how different from your villages with their smooth stone buildings, their stores and gasoline stations, and pretty shrub-covered bungalows! most indian women have many babies, and the whole family lives together in one room which is the living room, bedroom, kitchen and dining room all rolled into one. in the top of the hogan is a hole, so that the smoke from the cooking fire in the middle of the room can go out. bah did not spend much time in her hogan. no sooner was she up in the morning than she was outside gathering sticks for the breakfast fire. from the time she put her little brown face outside the hogan door, bright and early in the morning, until nightfall when she cuddled down in her warm navajo blanket, she was out in the air--and the air is so fresh out there in the desert; so much fresher than it is in the big smoky cities. bah was a bright-eyed, healthy little girl, and the way she dressed will sound queer to you, for her clothes were made just like her mother's. on rainy days you have no doubt "dressed up" in mother's clothes and thought it quite a lark. but when the game was over, how glad you were to come back to your own little dresses and short socks. but bah had always dressed in the same way--and that is, in a long full cotton skirt, a calico waist with long sleeves, and many strings of bright beads about her neck. her hair was long, black and shiny, and her mother tied it up in a knot at the back of her neck with a white cloth. every morning bah had a lesson in weaving, just as you have a drawing lesson or a sewing lesson. her father had made her a tiny loom which stood outside the hogan door next to her mother's big loom. the morning when bah planned the corn ear doll she was in the midst of her weaving lesson. mother's fingers were flying in and out, and bah's fingers were slow--oh, so slow, but her mind was not. her mind was at work on a doll. she had once seen the picture of a doll, a real one. it was such a lovely doll! she wanted to cuddle it. how she would love to hug a doll close to her and rock it to sleep! the corn was ripe in the field which was not far away. after the lesson she would pick an ear of corn, dry it nicely and dress it in a wee indian blanket. she would make some beads for its neck. she would stick in two black beads for eyes. she would-"bah! you do not heed the lesson!" it was mother. and mother was scolding. there were few times in bah's life when she could remember mother having been cross. bah was at once attentive. "i am sorry, ma shima (my mother)," she said, in the navajo language. "i was dreaming of something sweet." "it is bad medicine to dream when one is awake, bah," said mother. "you will never learn to weave--and a navajo woman who cannot weave blankets is indeed a useless one." bah hung her head in shame. but mother laughed. "do not look that way, my little one, but try now to make the little pattern which i teach you." bah did try. she had to rip out several rows of bad weaving caused by her dreams of her corn ear doll. but not once, until the lesson was over, did bah think again of the doll. the weaving lesson was at last over, and bah ran quickly to the cornfield, where she began to look eagerly for a proper ear of corn with which to make a proper indian doll. as she was looking through the many waving stalks, she thought she heard her name being called. but was it her name, and was it being called? it sounded more like singing than like calling--and mother did not sing. "bah, bah, black sheep have you any wool?" this is what bah heard. she stopped in her search and looked around. there, a few yards away, was some one coming towards her on a pony. bah's first thought was to run. she did not want to meet a stranger. so few came here to her home, where the only people the little girl ever saw were mother, father, and the few indians who lived nearby. white people were mysterious to bah, and yet she often wondered about the white children and how they played and worked and what they did all day in school. bah would go to school next year--to the big new school just built on the reservation for indian children. white people built it, and so it must be like the white children's school. sometimes she longed to go--and other times she was just a little bit afraid. "yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full." the pony which bah had seen from a distance was now standing beside her, and she could see the rider, although he could not see her, for she had hidden and was crouching between the cornstalks. [illustration: bah's home] the rider was a very small person--a boy--a white boy. bah really didn't feel as though he should be classified as white, for his skin was a mixture of orange and brown--orange where the sun had burned him, and over that a pattern of vivid brown freckles. bah had never before seen anything like him, and it is no wonder that the timid little indian hid herself. the speckled boy took off his large cowboy hat and wiped his hot brow with a cowboy's handkerchief. "gee, it's hot, peanuts," he said aloud to the pony. "and i'd like to know the way back--but looks as if we're lost." peanuts was presumably bored, for he let his head sink slowly, closed his eyes and patiently waited for the next move. none came. bah, in her hiding place, was as dumb, if not as bored, as peanuts. she was tense with excitement, which obviously peanuts was not, and did not take her eyes from the boy's face. his every move very much interested her. here, then, was a white boy. he must be white, for he was not an indian and he spoke english. bah understood english, and of that she was very proud. her mother and father had always traded with the white man, so they had learned to speak english, and had wisely taught their little girl. now how much easier it would be for bah when she started to school. but her knowledge did not help her at the moment when she looked up from her cornstalk hiding place into the face of a live white boy. indeed she had even decided to run away, and was crawling noiselessly through the corn. "baa, baa, black sheep," again the boy began to sing as he started to turn away. bah stopped crawling. he did sing her name. he wanted her to come back. maybe she could help him find his way. and oh! the pony was stepping all over the corn. didn't he know better than to do that? the cornstalks rustled. the pony jumped to the side, and the boy turned in his saddle and saw bah standing. "oh, hello!" he said and turned back--the pony trampling upon a beautiful stalk of corn. "i didn't see you before. where were you?" bah couldn't speak. she tried ever so hard, but the english words she knew so well would not come. the boy jumped down from his pony and went up to her. there was a smile on his face and as he came closer she saw that his eyes were as blue as the sky. that part of him was pretty, thought bah, even if his skin was not--and the smile was friendly. so she gained courage. "you call my name?" she ventured. the boy looked puzzled. "no," he said, "i don't know your name, but i'm glad i've found you." again he smiled, and this time bah smiled too. "my name bah," she said, "and you say 'bah, bah, back skip'--i think you call me come back to you." when it suddenly dawned upon the boy what she meant he opened his mouth very wide indeed and laughed so hard that bah again began to be afraid. but he stopped suddenly, realizing perhaps that he had frightened her, and said: "oh, no. that is a song we sing about 'black sheep' that goes 'bah bah'! i didn't know you heard me singing it." bah looked a bit ashamed, and did not offer a reply. the boy kept on talking-"but, gee, where do you come from, bah? is your house around here?" "yes," said bah. "hogan over way, bah come to find corn in cornfield." "oh, i see," said the boy, "for dinner, i guess." "no," replied the indian girl, looking up into his face, "bah make so pretty doll from corn ear. will dress in blanket and beads. you ever see little girl's doll?" she looked so intent and innocent that the boy could not scoff at what would have been, among members of his own group at home, a subject entirely forbidden in the presence of growing gentlemen. dolls! what interest had he in dolls! but as he looked into the upturned face of the little brown maiden, he suddenly realized that she had never heard of a boy's dislike for dolls; in fact, she had probably never before met a white boy nor seen a white doll. "oh, yes, plenty of 'em," answered the white boy, "but never made of an ear of corn--" then, seeing a shadow pass over her face he resumed gallantly, "but it ought to make a peach of a doll. maybe i could help you make it." now bah was certain that she would like the white boy. she had never before had a human playmate, and the feeling was a pleasant one. but she remembered that her new friend was lost. "you no can find way home?" she asked. the boy laughed. "i guess you want to get rid of me," he said. then, sobering, he resumed. "yes, really, i'm lost. peanuts and i have been wandering all morning. you see, we started from tuba early and we just didn't watch the trails, so here we are." "oh, tuba," said bah, "not so very far. i show you how to go." "but first i'll help you fix up a corn doll," said the boy. "we'll first have to find a good fat corn ear. nice fat dolls are the best, don't you think so?" as he talked he began looking through the cornstalks, and bah watched him. he finally found what he considered to be an ideal ear, and together the two children made it into a doll, black bead eyes, cornsilk hair, blanket, and all. "i have just the name for her," said the boy. "we'll call her 'cornelia!' shall we?" bah nodded happily. the name was a new one to her and she did not catch its meaning in relation to her beautiful new doll, but it pleased her nevertheless. in fact, everything about the boy pleased her, and she was sorry when at last he said: [illustration: bah and cornelia] "it must be getting late. you'd better tell me how to get home. mother will wonder what happened." bah pointed out directions and the boy, thanking her, held out his hand and said: "you never even asked my name. don't you want to know?" bah drooped her head shyly as she replied: "indian never ask name. very bad manner." the white boy's eyes opened wide. "that's funny," he said. "then how do you get to know people's names?" "when one people like other people, they tell name. no ask," said bah seriously. "oh, then i'll tell you quick 'cause i like you. my name's billy." bah did not reply, but stood watching billy as he swung himself onto his pony. then, when he was seated and smiled down at her, she smiled up sweetly and said: "we have cow named billy." [illustration: billy] chapter ii something terrible happens for days bah's chief delight was her new corn ear doll. she kept it with her constantly. it went to bed with her, sat at meals with her, and watched the daily weaving lesson. but one day a terrible thing happened. she was sitting by her mother's side outside the hogan, her little fingers flying through the strings of her loom, and one eye watching mother's more experienced fingers as they made a beautiful new pattern. cornelia had been carefully dressed in her blanket, her beads hung about her neck and fondly kissed by her devoted parent, and was now lying at bah's feet while the little girl worked hard at her lesson. [illustration: the weaving lesson] "pull your wool tighter, bah," said mother, in navajo. bah's fingers and tongue worked together. children's tongues have a habit of moving with whatever else is in motion. and as bah worked, some sheep came wandering in from the field. they were tame sheep and often nosed about the hogan for a bit of human company or food, as the case might be, and this morning i fear the reason was food. father sheep was very large and therefore hungrier than the rest. his hunger made him bold. but bah was a particular friend of his, and i doubt whether even his appetite could have driven him to do what he did that morning, had he been able to guess the great sorrow he was to cause. "you have left out a stitch, my child, and there will be a hole in the work." bah's fingers stopped and so did her tongue. "oh dear, must i do that all over again, mother?" she asked. "if you wish to weave perfectly so that you may some day sell your work, then you must learn to rip and go over many times." ripping is deadly work, as everyone who has ever ripped knows. and bah was not as interested in ripping as she had been in making her pattern. so her thoughts naturally turned to her precious cornelia lying at her feet. her eyes turned at the same time, and horror upon horrors, what did she see? the big black sheep was there chewing contentedly, but cornelia was gone. the little blanket was there--so were the beads and some of the cornsilk hair. but cornelia was gone. the sheep went on chewing and couldn't understand why bah did not caress him as usual. "bah, do pay attention to your work!" mother was annoyed. bah turned around and mother saw a very sad sight. she saw before her another mother--a stricken little mother whose child had just provided a meal for a hungry animal. she rocked an empty blanket back and forth, and the tears were beginning to gather. mother understood what had happened, and now her voice sounded soft and kind. [illustration: "go away, mr. sheep!"] "poor bah! your doll is gone!" the little girl was crying as she continued to hug the empty blanket. "do not cry, my little one," said mother. "are there not many more corn ears in the field?" "yes, my mother," sobbed the child, "but no more cornelias!" and that was final. never again could bah go back to the cornfield. never again! how could mother even have suggested such a thing! didn't she know that cornelia, since the day of her birth, had been different from all other ears of corn? why, cornelia was a doll--she and billy had decided that--and the rest were vegetables! oh, didn't mother understand? perhaps mother did, for her next remark showed it. "one day, bah, when i went to the trading post near tuba i saw a most beautiful doll. she was an indian baby--a papoose--and she was strapped upon the prettiest little laced baby cradle you ever saw. she was dressed in a bright blanket and she had real hair and such lovely beads around her neck." a smile was trying to chase away the tears on the face of the little mother as she listened to her own mother's recital of something too wonderful to imagine. she said sorrowfully: "some white child will buy her, and how happy she will be. ah, how i should like to have her." mother said: "and so you shall, if you will work to have her." bah's eyes asked the question: "how?" and her mother went on: "you know, bah, that mother sells or trades blankets, and that father sells or trades his beautiful silver and matrix jewelry to the trading post. we do this so that we may have, in return, things which we want and need. now, you want and need a little doll. why not sell your work? bah must weave a little blanket and take it to the store where they will perhaps trade with you for the papoose doll." "do you really think they will, ma shima?" asked bah as if she could hardly believe it, and she wiped away her tears. [illustration: how bah longed for the papoose doll!] "yes, i do," answered mother. "but your blanket must be well made and of a pretty pattern--else they will not take it, for they, in turn, must sell it to the tourists." "then i shall make the most beautiful blanket which has ever been made," laughed bah, now thoroughly interested in her new task with its wonderful object. she worked all through the morning on her little blanket, with happy thoughts of a real-haired indian doll flying through her mind as her fingers flew through her work. it was not until she heard mother grinding the corn for lunch that she looked up, and not until then that she thought again of the morning's sorrow. but then she did think of it, and her parents wondered why she could not eat her corn bread. chapter iii at the trading post billy's mother and father had come to arizona for a special reason. billy's father was a writer, and he had come for information on the navajo indians for a new book he was writing. every day he would go to the indian villages, sit among the big chiefs and medicine men (who are the wise ones among the indians and are supposed to work charms which cure the sick) and he would jot down in his notebook many things which they told him. billy went with his father the first few days, but he didn't care much for the way they sat around and did nothing but talk. billy was a very active boy and he soon grew tired of listening to the droning voices of the indian men, and the scratching of father's pencil. at last he told father how it was, and father laughed. "i thought you were going to write, too, billy," he said. "you'll never find out about the indians if you don't take the trouble to listen--and then you'll never win that composition contest you've been dreaming about." it was true that billy, since he had left new york, had dreamed of nothing else but the composition contest. many of his friends at home were already struggling with their compositions, for the prize was worth striving for--a wonderful radio set, the very latest model. [illustration: "i trade my blanket for papoose doll!"] and how the others had envied him, for he was to go to arizona and live among the indians where he would be sure to learn so much of interest and send in a true account of the lives of american indians. the contest was open to any composition dealing with children of any particular race or country, and was to reveal their habits and customs. "oh! you'll win it easily, bill," his chum had said. "indians are such interesting people, and you'll find out all about them if you stick to your dad." and billy had been fired with ambition, when he had left, and when he had first arrived. but the novelty of the idea was gradually wearing off and he seemed to like far more to gallop over the country on his pony, peanuts, than to glean knowledge. especially since his meeting with bah did he look forward each morning to his ride. and each day he tried to find the indian girl and went many times to the cornfield. but she was never there and, try as he might, billy could not find her village. father did not wait for billy to answer him, but said: "well, old man, i can see the radio set gradually taking wings and broadcasting itself! you'll never win it this way, you know--and you'd have a good chance, too, if you'd come along and listen to some of the old fellows i'm chumming with each day." "oh, i'll come along tomorrow, dad," said billy carelessly. "today i'm going to the trading post and see the indian stuff there." "well, do as you like, son," said his father, "but don't be annoyed if you don't win the contest." "i'll write something yet, dad, you'll see." peanuts and billy found themselves at the trading post in the heat of the day. billy tied the pony in the shade and went into the store. it was filled with a mixed assortment of objects. on one side of the room were groceries, pots and pans, cigarettes, in fact a little bit of everything necessary for housekeeping. on the other side were the indian curios--silver and matrix jewelry, beautifully fashioned with blue stones set in, handsome navajo blankets hanging on the wall, pottery of all kinds, and beads, beads, beads. billy wandered about the store and he thought of his mother, and how she would like something to take home as a souvenir. the beads looked hopeful, as he could carry them, while a pottery jar or blanket would be big and heavy. taking from his pocket his two dollars and some few cents, he selected the string of beads which looked most likely. one string in particular very much pleased him. it was delicately made, but looked simple enough to be within reach of his two dollars. the shop-keeper was chewing tobacco in the corner. he was a white man made brown by the arizona sun and wind. "how much is this string?" asked billy, holding it up for the man to see. "that one's fifty dollars!" "fifty what?" asked billy, dazed. "fifty dollars, son," repeated the man, "and that's one of the cheapest." "gee whiz," sighed billy. "i'm out with my two an' a quarter!" "yes," smiled the man. "no one knows how much work the injuns put into that stuff. it's all handmade, and their tools ain't so good either, so it takes 'em a long time. but they sure know how to make 'em." "you bet they do," said billy--and just then his eye fell on a doll, a papoose it was, with a blanket and a string of beads. he thought of cornelia and smiled to himself. how bah would open her eyes if she could see this one! as he was thinking about her, he suddenly decided to try once more to find her. maybe this storekeeper knew where the village was. he asked--the storekeeper knew of several not far away. "the indians come in every day with things to trade. it's funny how they like plain stuff like beans and salt and will trade beautiful jewelry and blankets for just plain sacks of food. but we try and treat 'em fair. it would be easy though to cheat 'em. they don't know how valuable their stuff is." "but you don't!" said billy. "no, we don't. indians are honest, and white men should treat 'em honestly!" "that's right," said billy, thinking of the only indian he ever knew, and deciding to be off in search of her home. as he stepped out of the door he saw a small figure trudging along towards the trading post with what looked like a small blanket thrown over her arm. as she came closer he recognized bah and ran to meet her. "gee, i'm glad to see you, bah," he cried. "do you know i've been looking for you ever since the day we made cornelia. do you remember?" bah was smiling happily, but upon mention of that name her face fell. "why, what's the matter, bah? wasn't she a good doll?" "cornelia ate up!" said bah, slowly. "ate up what?" asked billy. "sheep--big one--" "gee, what an appetite she must have had!" laughed billy. but seeing that his friend was taking the conversation seriously he stopped laughing and asked: "what do you mean?" "big sheep come--very hungry. eat up cornelia!" "aw, that is too bad!" said billy. but now it was bah's turn to smile. she held out her blanket and said: "you see bah's blanket. bah come to trade blanket for doll in trading post. so pretty doll, ma shima said!" billy remembered the papoose doll and was delighted to think that it would really belong to his friend. "that's great," he said. "may i go along with you while you trade? i never saw anyone trade and i'd like to watch you." "me never trade before," said the indian girl softly, and it seemed to billy that her voice trembled. "poor little kid," he said to himself. "she's scared stiff!" he went into the store with bah and watched her as she walked up to the man in the corner and handed him the blanket. then she pointed to the doll--but she said nothing. the man took the blanket and examined it. he knew immediately what she wanted. he understood indians. and as he looked at the blanket a smile passed over his face, and billy noticed for the first time that the blanket was far from perfect. there was a hole in it, and some of the threads were sticking out. oh, it was not a very well made blanket when one compared it with the works of art hanging on the wall. as the man smiled to himself billy's anger rose. wasn't she only a little girl? how could they expect her to weave as well as the women did? it was wonderful that she could do that well! why, he didn't know a girl at home who could even start to weave a blanket like that. he felt his fists clenching together as he watched the man's face. at last the man spoke. he spoke only two words as he handed bah her blanket. "no trade." the indian girl looked at him for a moment, and billy saw two small lakes in her eyes. she did not wait for them to overflow, but ran out of the store, holding her little blanket tight. billy came to himself after she had flown through the door, and made a start as though to follow her. but he stopped and turned. [illustration: "pretty papoose doll."] "how much is that doll, mister?" he asked abruptly. "that doll's two an' a half, son." "well, i'll give you two twenty-five for her, an' that's all," said a voice that billy could hardly believe was his own, so big and manly did it sound. the man looked at him for a moment and then evidently seeing something he liked in the boy's eyes, said: "all right, sonny. it's yours. and you can bet that indian kid will never forget you!" without another word the boy paid his money, took the doll which the man wrapped for him, and departed. outside the post, when billy mounted his pony, his thought was, naturally, to go to bah and deliver the doll. the distress which he had seen in the eyes of his little friend made him realize just what a disappointment she had had. but, alas, billy knew no more of bah's whereabouts than he had known before seeing her at the trading post. the man had said that there were three or four small indian villages nearby, but the question was in which one did bah live? he jumped down again from his pony and ran into the store: "say, mister, do you know where that little girl lives?" he asked. "no," came the answer. "i never saw her before. the old folks seldom bring their kids when they come to trade. anyway not into the post. they leave 'em outside most times to watch the burro." so a period of searching began for billy. that day he visited one of the villages. he looked at each hogan for bah, and asked the indians he met, but she did not live there. they all shook their heads and grunted when he asked: "bah, little girl, live here?" it was very discouraging because he couldn't tell whether they had even understood him. it grew late and he had to hurry home for fear of worrying his parents. the next day he started out early, determined to try the other villages, and he left a puzzled father, who remarked to his wife as the boy disappeared on a fast gallop: [illustration: billy riding through the indian village] "bill isn't taking the interest in the indians i had hoped he would." but mother smiled wisely. "he's getting brown and strong, though," she answered, "and that's better." chapter iv the prayer stick bah was making a prayer stick. the prayer stick is an old custom among the indians, and every indian child knows about it. but bah had never wanted anything badly enough to try the charm. now, it was the only thing left for her to do. she took the branch of a tree, a straight branch which she cleaned, and then she took the feather of an eagle. she tied the feather to the end of the stick with a bit of wool from her loom. she wrapped the wool around and around, and when the feather was secure in place she made a hole in the ground and put the other end of the stick into the hole. the stick stood up straight and the feather on top of it waved slightly in the breeze. [illustration: the prayer stick] bah stood over her handiwork, raised her two arms skyward and prayed: "oh, prayer stick," she chanted in navajo, "please take my prayer to the sky on this eagle's feather! my prayer is for a doll!" now, you may think that bah was idol-worshipping--that she didn't know better than to pray to a stick and a feather! but this was not the case. she knew very well that it was the great father who saw and heard all, but her ancestors had all used the eagle feather to convey to the great father their prayers and to tell him their needs. it was only a method of reaching her god. when her people wanted the rain to fall they danced the great eagle dance for rain, and the great father saw and understood. this prayer of bah's was only her way of asking what you would no doubt ask with your eyes closed and your hands folded together. she did not know that she was being watched. as she started her prayer, billy had approached the hogan. his first thought had been to call to her, but somehow he had felt that what she was doing was not to be interrupted, so he stopped. it was not his intention to listen secretly to something he had no right to hear. but as he stopped, she prayed so loudly that he could not help hearing and, anyway, she did not seem to care for she went on and on, regardless of the fact that she was out in broad daylight, in front of her hogan, and anyone might pass before her door. the prayer was repeated, and it was not until she had recited it many times that she lowered her arms and with them her gaze from the heavens, and beheld the white boy standing a few yards away. he stood holding his pony's bridle with one hand, and the other hand was behind his back. he looked at her questioningly and then at the prayer stick, whose feather was waving back and forth. bah smiled and said: "i make this prayer stick to pray for doll." [illustration: "then bah give it to you."] it was hard for the boy to grasp her meaning, for he knew so little about the indians and their queer customs. however, he smiled back at her and, keeping his hand behind him, asked: "where is the blanket you made, bah?" "you like to see?" she questioned sweetly. "yes, please," said billy. bah went towards the hogan and took from a nail the blanket she had failed to sell. it was hanging on the outside wall of the hogan, a proof that it was appreciated here if not at the trading post. bah brought it over and held it up for billy to see. "you like?" she asked innocently, cocking her head on one side like a little sparrow. "i like very much, bah," answered billy eagerly. "i like to--" bah did not allow him to finish his sentence, but, starting to drape the blanket about his shoulders, she smilingly said: "then bah give to you!" the boy stood amazed while the little indian girl patted the blanket into place on his shoulders. she was giving him the blanket which she had tried so hard to trade. it was really spoiling everything for him. he had hoped to make quite a dramatic scene out of the trade, and the doll was to be a genuine surprise. now it looked as though bah had forgotten the doll and even the blanket, for she gave it up so easily and was standing in front of him smiling sweetly. "i'll trade you something for the blanket, bah," he began. "oh, no--bah give--no trade!" it was settled. billy could see that by the look in her eyes. he brought forth his package. "then billy will give bah this," he exclaimed, holding out the bundle to her. solemnly bah looked into his face. her eyes seemed to ask many questions but she said nothing. billy understood. he tore the string, undid the package, and the girl's eyes never left his face. it was as though she had guessed what was there. she looked down and beheld in his hands--the doll! her mouth opened and she formed only the word "oh"--billy put the papoose doll into her arms. slowly and solemnly she kissed it. then, turning quickly she ran to her mother who was weaving in the accustomed place-"ma shima, oh, ma shima! the papoose doll! she is mine. the great father has sent her!" [illustration: "and billy give bah this."] it was all in navajo and billy did not understand. he watched her as she sat down beside her mother and held up her new treasure. he heard her mother emit sounds, though he could hardly see her lips moving. had he been able to understand navajo he would have heard some very sweet and happy words. then bah's mother looked over at billy. she beckoned him to come and he came. her black, beady eyes followed him until he stood before her. he did not know what to think of the smile she gave him. was it friendly, or was she mocking him? billy had never before met an indian woman, and he was puzzled by the black eyes so deep and mysterious. billy found himself staring, and was suddenly aware of himself standing before a lady with his hat on. he doffed his sombrero and in doing so he smiled. bah's mother smiled back, and said in a musical voice, "sit down." [illustration: bah and the papoose doll] he sat beside her. bah was on her other side, absorbed in her doll. billy smiled into the face of the indian woman and she put her arm about him and said: "white boy good friend to indian!" [illustration: "white boy good friend to indian!"] chapter v at bah's hogan "why do you call her 'bah?' is it because she watches the sheep?" billy was asking many questions of bah's mother and he found her anxious and ready to answer him. she had already told him her name, which showed that she liked him, and billy was pleased. he wanted to hear many things about this family, especially about his little friend, bah. her mother shook her head. "no, not why. i tell you story why we call her bah." and this is what bah's mother told billy: many indians name their babies in this way: soon after the baby is born, the mother straps it to the baby cradle and goes to the door of her hogan--what she first sees as she looks out upon the world, is what she calls her newborn. if she sees a running deer--then the baby is called "running deer." if her first glance falls upon a lazy bull, resting himself, the baby will bear the name of "sitting bull." [illustration: when bah was a papoose] then, there is another way of naming the indian baby, and this is the way bah was named. when she was a wee papoose, her mother would make the bread and set her down beside the stone oven where she could watch from her baby cradle. as you perhaps know, the indian baby cradle is very plain, and simply made. it is only a board upon which the baby is strapped until he is able to walk. the indians have some very good reasons for doing this. they wish to train children to be uncomfortable and not to cry. strapped as they are to this board, they are only able to move their hands and must lie straight and stiff. this is also the reason why all indians are so straight. then the indian mother's mind is at rest, when she can have her baby securely tied in the cradle, strapped to her back, or if she puts him down any place she knows that he is safe. she can hang him on the wall while she works, which was what bah's mother did when she made the bread. now, bread in navajo is "bah," and this is how they make it. first, they take some corn and put it into a hollow stone. with another stone they smash the corn until it is fine. they then mix it with water, knead it and flatten it into small flat cakes which look like pancakes. it then goes into the big stone oven, which is always out of doors, and when it is cooked it is taken out and placed on a cool stone. at this point bah, who you see was at that time only a papoose, would cry and reach out her little hands for some "bah". as soon as mother would put a crisp piece into her little hand she would stop crying and chew on it contentedly. so they called her "bah" because she cried for bread. "so your name is 'bread!' that's a nice name. and i'm so hungry that i could eat you now!" said billy, rising to his feet and making a pretense at biting. [illustration: bah gets her name] bah laughed and hid her face behind the new doll. mother chuckled to herself, as indians do when they are amused. then she said: "i make some real 'bah' for you." "oh, that would be fine!" said the boy. then, realizing that he had practically asked for it, he hung his head and added: "but don't do it if it's too much trouble." the remark seemed to amuse the indian woman, for she chuckled again as she arose, but she did not answer him. instead, she began to prepare for the making of the bread. billy watched the process with great interest, and ate with even more interest when it was finished. the bah was delicious, he thought. it tasted like--no, it didn't taste like anything billy had ever eaten before. after having done justice to the new food, the boy was shown in and about the hogan by his little friend. she took him to her "play hogan." it was made for her by her father and was just like the one they lived in, except that it was only large enough for one child to fit into. "we could have lots of fun here, bah. i'd like to come again and play with you. may i?" billy asked. "yes, come much," answered bah happily. "and we'll play that i'm an indian chief and you are the indian mother, and the doll--oh, we haven't named the doll yet, have we?" said billy. "no, doll no name yet," said bah. "well, let's see, how shall we do it?" billy mused. "suppose you come out of your play hogan and look around. the first thing you see will be what we'll name her." "yes, i do," said bah--and obediently she entered the small hogan. "now come out, but close your eyes," called billy. out came the little girl, holding her papoose doll. she stood, with closed eyes, in the door of her hogan, and waited for further instructions. "open your eyes!" called the boy, "and tell me what you see!" bah's eyes opened slowly, dramatically. her head was raised and as she looked she saw a bluebird in a tree. billy followed her gaze and saw what she did. [illustration: naming the papoose doll] "how lucky!" thought he, "now the child will have a beautiful name!" but bah looked down at her baby and smilingly said: "bah name you 'doli'." billy was horribly disappointed. "oh, listen, bah. don't do that! why every girl calls a doll 'dolly.' that's common--name her 'bluebird.' you saw one, didn't you?" bah was still smiling as she said: "yes, i see and i name papoose 'bluebird' in navajo--that is 'doli'." a grin spread from one of billy's ears to the other. "that's the time you fooled me!" said he. they were laughing over bah's joke when they saw some one coming towards them. "my father come home," cried bah, and ran to meet him. as he came nearer billy saw that he was very tall and very straight. he wore white trousers tied below the knees with red ribbons, a sash about his waist, and many beads hanging from his neck. his hair was long and tied in the back, much the same as bah's, with a white cloth. he came over and held out his hand to billy. he said: "i hear you good to little bah. me bah's father." billy was thrilled to shake the hand of such a fine big indian, and to find that he was treating him as a friend. "he big chief," said bah proudly. "oh, are you a big chief?" asked the boy. a thought began to flicker through his mind. he would surprise his father--his father who was hobnobbing daily with big chiefs and medicine men, and who thought billy was wasting his time. he wouldn't say a word to father, but he'd begin tonight and he'd write a story, all about bah, her mother and her father, the big chief. he'd come back again tomorrow and learn more from them, for hadn't bah said "come much"--which meant he was welcome. "well, i have had such a good time with bah--mr.-a-a" "my name 'fighting bull,'" said the brave (as indian men are called). "i know why you're called fighting bull," said billy, sagely. "one time when you were little your mother must have seen a bull fight!" chapter vi billy starts his story the next morning found billy fully dressed and ready to leave before his parents were even awake. he could hardly wait for them to be astir and as soon as he heard his mother's step in her room he knocked at the door. mother opened it and stood amazed. "why, billy--at this hour! what do you mean?" "i'm going out, mother, and i didn't want to leave before you were awake." "but, dear, you can't go so early, and without your breakfast." "oh, that's all right. peanuts and i will go to the trading post and get breakfast. you see, mother, i have to--" just then there came a growl from within the room. it came from father. "what is the commotion? and at such an hour! billy, what's the excitement?" "nothing, father--only it's such a fine morning and i want a ride." "let him go, mother. he is only keeping me from my hard-earned rest. when one works one needs sleep. billy will never need it!" billy was sharp enough to understand his father's words and, smiling shrewdly to himself, he clutched a paper which reposed in his pocket, but he only called out, "goodby, father." his mother kissed him with the parting words: "do be careful, billy, and don't go too far." "no further than usual, mother," answered billy. and then, afraid that mother might ask something, he ran off, waving his hand and sighing a deep sigh of relief. billy had spent some restless hours during the night, thinking about the story he was to write. as he was only a little boy and couldn't write very well, and as this was his very first story, he was a little bit afraid of the results. but the determination to surprise father and mother had grown within him ever since the idea had come to him yesterday at bah's home. father thought billy couldn't do it! well, he'd show him! he'd listen while mrs. fighting bull told him things, and hadn't he already learned lots about them? [illustration: bah's mother weaving navajo blanket] in fact, he'd started his story! he'd started it with a poem (at least he thought it a poem) and that is what he clutched in his pocket when father chided him. he was going to show it to bah and her mother. he was going to ask them what they thought of it and he was going to tell them all about the contest, and how he'd planned to win the radio without telling his parents! how astonished they'd be, and how father would stare when he saw the radio arrive with his son's name engraved thereon-"winner of composition contest." his dreams accompanied billy all the way to the trading post. there he had a hurried breakfast of milk and crackers, allowed peanuts to graze a bit in the clover, and after buying some funny chocolates in the forms of objects, animals, birds and fishes which he thought would amuse bah, he was off in search of his new-made friends--and information. [illustration: bah's father stretching a skin] upon arriving at the hogan he found bah's mother already seated at her loom. fighting bull was stretching a goat's skin outside the hogan door. after greeting the indians, billy looked around for bah. she was nowhere to be seen. "where's bah?" he asked of her mother. the woman shook her head, the usual amused smile playing over her features. "not here." the indians had not seemed particularly pleased to see him, he thought, and his heart was beginning to sink. but then bah's mother pointed towards the play hogan. "over there. she play mother and papoose. see?" with these words, mrs. fighting bull laughed out loud, a sort of chuckle it was, but nevertheless she did laugh, and billy felt reassured. he looked and saw bah. she was emerging from her play hogan, and there was something on her back. he couldn't tell what it was, but as she approached he saw that it was a large board with a blanket strapped around it. something was in the blanket, and that something was heavy, too, for bah was obviously weighted down. "what's that?" asked billy, puzzled. "that my papoose," laughed bah, and turning her back towards billy he saw, strapped cozily to the papoose cradle, a baby sheep! it was bleating, "baa, baa--" [illustration: bah's papoose] "he knows your name," laughed billy, stroking the small woolly head. bah sat down with her burden on her back and billy sat beside her. the indian mother continued to smile to herself as she went on weaving. "me glad you come," said bah, smiling her friendly smile. "are you?" questioned billy. "i couldn't wait to get here. you know, i've started to write a story--a real story like father writes. it's going to be all about you!" "me?" the little girl pointed to herself. she realized that this was something important, for the white boy was excited and although the affair was very vague to her, she mustered up the enthusiasm necessary. "i've written a poem to start it with. want to hear it?" "oh, yes," bah's eyes grew big. just what a poem was didn't matter. it was important to know that billy had written one. so he read- "bah, bah indian girl, have you any bread? yes sir, yes sir, that's what i was fed. when i was a papoose i cried to my ma, so she gave me bread, and now my name is 'bah'!" there was a loud explosion from the corner where mrs. fighting bull was weaving. billy's face grew red. mrs. fighting bull was laughing at him. oh, now he knew he must have done something wrong! the indian woman composed herself and beckoning the boy over, she said: "you write good words. tell me more." billy had a great deal to learn about indians; he was beginning to realize that. evidently bah's mother was kindly disposed towards him but she had a queer way of laughing at everything, which was hard for billy to understand. still, he thought, it was better to laugh at everything than to be cross and angry. mrs. fighting bull was a jolly woman, that was all, and billy moved up close to her and smiled up into her face. "gee, i'm glad you like it. i thought, when you laughed, you were making fun of me. you see, i never wrote anything before, and this story has just got to be good, because----" and then he told bah and her mother of his desire to win the contest and the prize attached to it. "you like i tell you more?" asked the indian woman. "that's just what i'd like to have you do, if you would," answered the boy writer. "well, i tell you." with no more ado, mrs. fighting bull started talking as billy sat and listened to her words. chapter vii all about the indians the navajo indians live in hogans. that, you already have heard--and you know what a hogan looks like. but all indian tribes do not use the same kind of dwelling places. the pueblo, hopi and other peaceful tribes live in what are called pueblos. they are houses built of adobe and they are built to resemble a child's stone blocks when he has piled one on top of the other. to reach the top of a pueblo one must climb the ladders which are set up against the outside of the building. the pueblo villages are different from the navajo villages. they are composed of long rows of these pinkish adobe block houses, and the indian tribes who live therein are, as i have said, peaceful. can you imagine why, being as they are of a peaceful nature, these tribes build as they do? it is so that they can be protected from warlike tribes, in their many storied houses. then, too, the tribes which build pueblos do not wander, as the warlike tribes do. the pueblos are stationary, and they are built to be permanent homes. they are built, mainly, by the women and children, who do all the manual work--while the men often sit at home weaving garments and knitting stockings. [illustration: the pipe of peace] the tepees are the abode of warlike indians, such as the sioux, apaches, etc. they wander and so they build temporary dwellings which, at a moment's notice, may be transported quickly and easily from one location to another. in the east there are other indian tribes, and also in canada. then, in mexico, the indians build straw huts. there are hundreds of tribes of indians and each tribe has a different language. that is why the sign language came into existence. it is used when a member of one tribe meets a member of another tribe. they cannot understand each other's language, so they talk with their hands. when the indian chiefs gather they smoke the pipe of peace. this is usually done to celebrate some victory, or upon the occasion of a visit from a member of another tribe. the men sit around a fire in a circle and pass the long pipe from one to the other. as each man receives it he utters a sound or nods his head, proceeds to take a puff, and passes it to his neighbor. it is all done silently and quietly, but there is a wealth of meaning in this very solemn performance. [illustration: the fire maker] the indians, in older days, made fire entirely by friction. by the rubbing together of two pieces of wood, most of the tribes caused fire to appear--but some had elaborate devices made of wood and string. the navajos used a thin pole which they twirled around by using a string tied to a stick. today, the indians use matches just as we do, but most families still keep their fire-makers. the navajos do not use feathers and do not make chiefs by crowning them. but many of the other tribes create their chiefs by placing the crown of tall feathers, which you have often seen in pictures, upon the head of the "brave," and saying "i make you 'big chief flying eagle,'" or whatever the name may be. [illustration: crowning a big chief] the eagle is much venerated by the indians. we have seen how bah used a prayer stick made of an eagle feather. in the eagle dance, the dancer paints his body red, black and white, and wears a dance skirt and bonnet of eagle feathers. the dance is performed as a ceremonial, mostly as a plea for rain. the dancers imitate almost every movement of the great eagle. they soar, they hover as an eagle would hover over the fields. they spread their wings and move about in a great circle. this and the sun dance are the two most important and interesting dances of the indians; the sun dance is performed in the spring, celebrating the return of the growing season, and the growth of the corn. "oh, i hope i can remember all that," sighed billy, when mrs. fighting bull finished talking. she turned to her weaving without answering him, and he turned to bah, saying: "come, bah! let us play over at your hogan and you pretend to make me a big chief!" "yes, come," said bah, rising. they started over to their play house. from out the play hogan bah pulled forth some navajo blankets and then they both set to work to make a feather crown. having no feathers (the navajos not using them) they made their crown of branches. it was a large and weighty object when they finished with it and billy was, indeed, a queer sight when bah placed it upon his head. the big blanket was wrapped about him, and from beneath the crown peered his freckled face. with all due ceremony bah raised her eyes to heaven and chanted: "i make you big chief spots-in-the-face!" it was a very serious moment for them. billy had become a chief, and his next move was to propose the smoking of the pipe of peace. from his pocket billy pulled a chocolate pipe. it was done up in silver paper. bah was impressed as he carefully unwrapped and handed it to her. "you smoke first," he said. she took it in her hands and putting it to her mouth pretended to draw in the smoke. she handed it to billy, but he proceeded to bite out a piece, much to the astonishment of his playmate, who stared at him in wonderment. [illustration: bah and billy smoke the pipe of peace] "you do that, too, bah, it's good," billy mumbled with his mouth full. bah shrank back. "no, me no eat pipe, me smoke!" billy couldn't help laughing. "oh, but this isn't a real pipe--it's chocolate!" still bah was reluctant to try. "well," said billy, digging into his pocket for the rest of the candy. "here's another, the same--only it's not in the shape of a pipe. try it." bah took the candy and looked at it. "fish!" she gasped and dropped it. "well, what's the matter with that?" asked billy, greatly disturbed by her evident horror. "bah no eat fish. no navajo eat fish!" "tell me why," said billy, now amused and interested. bah did not answer, but pointed over to her mother. she hung her head shyly. billy didn't like to press her, so, dragging his blanket, and with his crown over one ear, he stumbled over to the loom and stood before mrs. fighting bull with the query: "why don't navajos like fish?" mrs. fighting bull did not smile, for once, and replied: "not because no like! no eat because ancestors once turned into fish. if navajo eat fish, he eat ancestor!" satisfied with this explanation, billy thanked her and trotted back to his friend. "i understand now, bah," he said. "but you see this isn't a real fish, it's candy! you try." he held it up to her, but he could see how she shrank from the thought of eating anything that was even the shape of fish. so he picked out a bird and gave it to her. after she had sampled the chocolate she was delighted to finish the whole piece, and when that was eaten, she said: "now me smoke pipe of peace." "yes," said billy, "and this time you'll eat a piece of the pipe, won't you?" he laughed loudly at his own joke, but bah was too absorbed in her new found game. when billy reached for the pipe, expecting to receive it for his turn, he saw that the little girl had put the whole pipe into her mouth and was munching the chocolate, her cheeks puffed out and a twinkle in her eye! billy stared in surprise. "why, bah, you bad girl. you ate up all the pipe!" but they soon found another game to replace the "peace pipe" and played together happily until it was time for billy to go home. before leaving he remembered that he had not thanked the indian woman for telling him so much of interest. he ran back to where she was sitting, and, drawing from his pocket the chocolate candies, he offered them to her, saying: "thanks so much for your nice story. won't you have some candy?" she took some and smiled at him. then she said: "write nice story about indians. all white men no think indians good." billy was puzzled for a moment to know what she meant. then it dawned upon him that the indians were often spoken of as cruel and savage. well, he'd "tell the world" in his story that this family was kind and civilized. he said: "oh, yes, i'll say everything i think about you, and that will be good!" then, suddenly bethinking himself of a word he'd once heard, he asked: "isn't an indian woman called a 'squaw'?" bah's mother shook her head and a slight frown--the first billy had seen--appeared between her eyes. [illustration: the "squawker"] "no. indian woman no like to be called squaw! not very nice! in reservation she fight when man call that!" "well, i'll remember and never use the word 'squaw' again," promised billy. just then an indian mother appeared in the doorway of her hogan. the papoose upon her back was crying loudly, and billy looked roguishly at mrs. fighting bull and asked: "is the baby called a 'squawker'?" chapter viii who wins the radio? for many days billy worked diligently at his composition. he took care to do his writing away from home, as he cherished the thought of surprising mother and father. then, too, he had conceived another idea. it happened to pop into his head one evening when he was returning from bah's home. it was such a good idea that he wondered he hadn't thought of it before. and so, as i have said, he worked, and no one but peanuts knew what he was doing, and peanuts was sworn to secrecy. as he would prepare to leave his secluded spot out on the prairie where he did his writing, billy would say to peanuts: "now, we'll never say a word! we'll keep this to ourselves, won't we?" [illustration: for days billy worked on his story] and peanuts was most agreeable. why not? the days had been pleasure since his master had decided to allow him to graze all day long instead of asking him to gallop over the plains. yes, indeed, the plan suited peanuts down to the ground (where, by the way, he constantly kept his nose.) billy's nose was buried in his writing and he chewed the pencil as steadily as peanuts chewed the dry nourishment he found. but at last the task was over, the manuscript sent in to the magazine, and billy was again paying his respects to the fighting bull family. peanuts was the only regretful one when the story was finished, and sent away. billy sighed a sigh of relief and the first day that he put in an appearance at the hogan, bah squealed with joy to see him returning. many happy days ensued, in which the indian girl showed the boy new games and ways of playing which she, little lonely one, had devised by herself. each evening billy would come home with the same question on his lips: "has my magazine arrived?" but new york is a long way from arizona, and it was many weeks before the magazine, in which the winning story was to appear, at last came. it was one evening after billy had had a particularly exciting day chasing buffaloes (in the form of tame sheep) with bah, that he came home to find his magazine awaiting him. it had not been opened and was lying on his little desk. it was addressed to him--and inside it was--maybe--his story! he longed to find out, but he couldn't move his fingers to open the wrapper. he suddenly grew hot all over and realized then how he longed to see that story inside those covers. if he had been an indian instead of a white boy he would have made a prayer stick and prayed via the eagle feather to the great father. the next morning father and mother found billy curled up in a big chair in the living room poring over his magazine. they could not see his face. father took up his paper, but before starting to read he remarked: "who's the lucky winner of the radio, son?" billy did not answer, but arose from his chair and brought the magazine over, to father. father glanced at the page with a wicked smile, and remarked: "needless to say, it wasn't a chap named william!" billy, his head drooping, left the room, and mother felt sorry for him. so did father. in fact i think father was sorry for what he had said, as he got up and called him back. it was then that billy told father what he had done--all about it from the first day that the idea had occurred to him until the moment when he had, with trembling fingers, opened the magazine and found.... "you're a good boy, bill," said father, "and i've been wronging you." mother was about to make a fuss over him, so, allowing her only time enough for one kiss, he grabbed his hat. then with the parting words, "i'm going to see the fighting bulls--goodbye," he made a dash for the door. "some day maybe you'll take me, bill," called father after him, "i'd like to meet the fighting bulls, and their calf. she must be a smart little kid!" then the parents looked at each other and mother's eyes were just a little bit dewy. she smiled and shook her finger at father: "i know another fighting bull," she said. "yes, dear," said father humbly, "and he has a splendid and plucky little calf!" at the hogan there was much excitement. as peanuts came galloping down the village "street" his rider saw a most unusual sight. chief fighting bull, his wife and small daughter were all grouped about an object which seemed to be attracting them. so much did it attract them that they were talking in navajo faster and louder than billy had ever heard them talk. the boy jumped down from his pony and walked up to the family circle. he saw that the object of their interest was a large wooden express box, and written across it were the words: "bah, the little indian weaver, daughter of chief fighting bull, navajo reservation, near tuba, arizona." [illustration: "is it for me?"] "this came today," said the chief to billy, and bah held up an envelope which she clutched in her hand. "and see--letter to bah." billy asked: "why don't you open it?" "yes, will do," replied the girl. at the same time as bah and billy were opening the letter, the chief, aided by his wife, was opening the large box. "you read letter for me, please," smiled bah. billy took the letter--but just then the box was opened and inside it the astonished family beheld a radio! "what this?" asked fighting bull. said billy wisely: "it's a radio--you know, you can listen to music and everything. it's lots of fun. come on, we'll fix it up!" [illustration: "without you i couldn't have written it."] with billy's instructions the chief set up the radio. it was a portable set and as soon as they attached the aerial and billy turned the dials the sound of fine music began to float on the air. "alive!" shrieked bah, turned on her heels, and fled! billy, still holding the unopened letter, ran after her. he found her hidden in a thicket and brought her back to her parents, who stood transfixed before the radio, which was still sending forth music. "don't be afraid, bah," said billy. "it's not this box making the noise. the music comes through the air from a big city!" the chief and his wife were almost as impressed as bah, but they did not show their feelings. they could only stand and stare while billy, holding on to bah with one hand for fear that she would run away again, read the following letter: "dear little bah: your story 'the little indian weaver,' written by yourself about yourself, has won the composition contest. the prize, a radio, we are sending you today. it was a great pleasure to receive such a charming little story from a real indian girl. the white children who read it will, we are sure, enjoy it, and learn a great deal from you. thank you, and we hope you will like the radio! the children's magazine." "but--but," said bah, "i not write story!" billy put his arm around her shoulders and smiling down at her said: "no, but i sent it in your name because if it hadn't been for you and your mother and father i never could have written it!" [illustration: "i put indian flag on my singing box."] as the strains of music floated through the air, attracting the sheep from the prairie, two dreamy children sat beside the radio, which was perched on the top of a packing box, and listened eagerly. [illustration: the white child loves his indian friends] bah had outgrown her fear of the "singing box" as she called the radio, and each day she and billy would enjoy songs and music from the city--strange sounds, some of them, to the little indian girl. but to billy it had become a greater joy than he ever had anticipated to watch her rapture with the new toy. one day he found a stick with feathers stuck on top of the radio, and he asked her what it meant. "bah put flag on singing box. that is indian flag!" billy never ceased learning about the indians, their customs and their interesting ways. perhaps the fighting bulls also were learning. they learned what many indians do not know--that the white child loves his brother--the first american. * * * * * transcriber's notes page 85: possibly missing "second" before "time" in the sentence: "that's the time you fooled me!" said he. page 90: retained "goodby" but possibly a typo for "goodbye." (he only called out, "goodby, father.") page 123: retained "poring" but possibly a typo for "pouring." (billy curled up in a big chair in the living room poring over his) [illustration: "every one held his rifle in readiness to shoot the escaping apaches"] captured by the navajos by captain charles a. curtis u.s.a. illustrated new york and london harper & brothers publishers copyright, 1904, by harper & brothers. contents chap. i. introduces the boys ii. attacked by navajos iii. warlike pueblos iv. in a navajo trap v. a siege and an ambuscade vi. crossing the river vii. a swollen stream and stolen pony viii. over the divide--a corporal missing ix. the rescuing party x. the corporals are promoted xi. both ponies are stolen xii. indians on the war-path xiii. the boy sergeants do good service xiv. on the desert without water xv. the ponies are found xvi. apaches in skull valley xvii. pursuit of the apaches xviii. on the trail of the apaches xix. the attack on the apache camp illustrations "every one held his rifle in readiness to shoot the escaping apaches" frontispiece "mounted, the boys presented a warlike appearance" "corporal henry asked captain bayard to inquire for manuel perea" "'god has given me among many friends, two that are something more'" captured by the navajos i introduces the boys it was late in the fall of the second year of the civil war that i rejoined my company at santa fé, new mexico, from detached service in the army of the potomac. the boom of the sunrise gun awoke me on the morning after my arrival, and i hastened to attend reveille roll-call. as i descended the steps of the officers' quarters the men of the four companies composing the garrison were forming into line before their barracks. details from the guard, which had just fired the gun and hoisted the national colors, were returning to the guard-house, and the officers were hastening to their places. at the conclusion of the ceremony i turned again towards my quarters, and noticed two handsome boys, evidently aged about fifteen and thirteen, dressed in a modification of the infantry uniform of the army, and wearing corporals' chevrons. they stood near the regimental adjutant, and seemed to be reporting their presence to him. at breakfast, the adjutant chancing to sit near me, i asked him who the youthful soldiers were. "they are the sons of lieutenant-colonel burton, corporals frank and henry," he replied. "they hold honorary rank, and are attached to head-quarters, acting as messengers and performing some light clerical work." "how do they happen to be in santa fé?" "mother recently died in the east, and the colonel had them sent here in charge of a tutor who is to fit them for college, i believe." later, on the same day, being desirous of looking over this ancient indian and mexican town, i was making a pedestrian tour of its streets, and chanced to be opposite san miguel school in the eastern section during the pupils' recess. half a dozen boys were engaged in throwing the lasso over the posts of the enclosing fence, when suddenly from a side street appeared the young corporals whom i had seen at reveille. the mexican boys instantly greeted them with derisive shouts and jeers. they called them little gringos and other opprobrious names, and one young mexican threw the loop of his lasso over the smaller corporal's head and jerked him off his feet. his companions laughed loudly. the older corporal instantly pulled out his knife and cut the rope. then the two brothers stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the crowd, quite ready to defend themselves. the young mexicans, gesticulating and shouting, crowded round the two brothers, and blows appeared imminent. "muchachos," suddenly cried a ringing voice from the rear, in spanish, "are you not ashamed? a hundred against two!" a handsome lad forced his way through the crowd, placed himself beside the two corporals, and faced his young countrymen. before the mexicans recovered from their surprise the bell of san miguel summoned them to school. they hurried away, leaving the two corporals with the young mexican who had come to their assistance. "my name is frank burton," said the older corporal, extending his hand to the mexican, "and this is my brother, henry." the mexican boy grasped the proffered hand, and said, "my name is manuel perea, of algodones." "we are the sons of the commanding officer at the fort. can't you come and see us next holiday?" "i should much like to; i will ask the fathers if i may." "come over, and we will try to make your visit pleasant." "how well you speak spanish! it will be a great pleasure to visit american boys who can speak my language, for i know but few english words." "next saturday, then?" "at ten o'clock, if the padres consent. good-bye," and manuel disappeared into the school-room. the following saturday i saw the two corporals and their newly acquired companion at the post and at dinner in the mess-room, and a friendship was then formed which was to continue for many years. one evening, nearly a month afterwards, i received an order to march my company into the jemez mountains to co-operate with other detached commands in a war being carried on against the navajo indians. just as i had laid aside the order after reading it, colonel burton entered, and, taking a seat by my fireside, announced that he had been ordered on detached service to northern colorado, on a tour of inspection, which would require him to be absent for a considerable period, and that he had been thinking of allowing his sons to accompany me to my camp at los valles grandes. "the hunting and fishing are fine in those valleys, and frank and henry would enjoy life there very much," he said. "they have done so well in their studies that they deserve a well-earned recreation." "i should much like to have their company, sir," i replied, "but would it not be exposing them to great danger from the indians?" "the officer whom you are to relieve has been in the valleys nearly a year, and he reports that he has not seen a navajo in all that time. of course, it may be your fortune to meet them, but i do not think so. if you do, then the boys must give a good account of themselves. in any engagement that involves the whole command they must not forget they are the sons of a soldier. still, i do not want them needlessly exposed. you are quite sure it will give you no trouble to take them?" "few things could afford me greater pleasure on such isolated duty, sir. they will be good company for me." "thank you for your kindness. the lads will report to you to-morrow morning. i will see that they are properly fitted out, and will write you now and then during my absence, and as soon as i return to santa fé they can be sent back." colonel burton then took his departure, and i turned to a local history to learn from its pages something of the tribe with which i might be brought in contact. the home of the navajos lay between the rio grande del norte on the east, the rio colorado on the west, the rio san juan on the north, and the rio colorado chiquito on the south, but from time immemorial they had roamed a considerable distance beyond these borders. they had always been known as a pastoral race, raising flocks and herds, and tilling the soil. they owned, at the time we began war upon them, sheep and ponies by the thousand, and raised large quantities of corn, wheat, beans, and other products. they numbered between twelve and fifteen thousand, and could put three thousand mounted warriors in the field. they were industrious, the men doing all the hard work instead of putting it upon the women, as do the indians of the plains and all of the marauding tribes. they manufactured their wearing apparel, and made their own weapons, such as bows, arrows, and lances. they wove beautiful blankets, often very costly, and knit woollen stockings, and dressed in greater comfort than did most other tribes. in addition to a somewhat brilliant costume, they wore numerous strings of fine coral, shells, and many ornaments of silver, and usually appeared in cool weather with a handsome blanket thrown over the shoulders. the navajos and the new mexicans were almost continually at war. expeditions were frequently fitted out in the border towns by the class of new mexicans who possessed no land or stock, for the sole purpose of capturing the flocks and herds of the navajos. the indians retaliated in kind, making raids upon the settlements and pasture lands, and driving off sheep, horses, and cattle to the mountains. complaints were made by the property-holders, and war was declared against the indians. the military department of new mexico was in fine condition to carry on a successful war. besides our regiment of regular infantry, it had two regiments of california volunteer infantry and one regiment each of california and new mexican cavalry. the navajo upon the war-path was terribly in earnest, and his methods of waging war were like those of the redman everywhere. with the knowledge that the american soldier was an ally of his old-time enemy, and that the mexican was wearing the uniform of the "great father," he no longer hesitated to look upon us as his enemies also, and resolved to combat us up to the very walls of our posts. no road in the territory was safe to the traveller; no train dared move without an escort. towns were raided, and women and children carried into captivity. frightful cases of mutilation and torture were constantly occurring in the mountain fastnesses. troops took the field, and prosecuted with vigilance a war in which there was little glory and plenty of suffering and hard service. every band of indians captured was taken to the bosque rodondo, on the rio pecos, where a large fort had been established. it was occupied by a strong garrison of infantry and cavalry. i had found social life in santa fé very pleasant during my brief stay there, so i was not overjoyed when i received the order to march my company to los valles grandes, there to relieve the california company already referred to. but the order being peremptory, we packed our baggage during the first hours of the night, and were on the road soon after daybreak. it was the 3d of october when the boy corporals and myself, mounted on sturdy mexican ponies, rode out of fort marcy for our new station, one hundred miles due west. the regimental band escorted the company through the plaza and for a mile on our way, playing, after immemorial custom, "the girl i left behind me," and adding, i thought with a vein of irony, "ain't ye glad you've got out th' wilderness?" on the morning of the 8th, after four days of gradual and constant ascent from the valley of the rio grande, which we had forded at san ildefonso, we began the slower ascent of the most difficult portion of our march. the woods were full of wild turkeys and mountain grouse, made fat on the pine-nuts, and frank and henry and the soldier huntsmen secured a generous supply for our first meal in our new military home. it took us from early morning until noon of the last day's march to reach the highest point of the road. what with the frequent halts for the men to fasten a rope to the wagon-poles and aid the severely taxed mules up the steepest places, to fill gullies and sloughs with stones and brush, to pry mired wheels up to firm ground, and repair broken harnesses and wagons, we were over half a day in going a distance which could have been accomplished in two hours by soldiers unencumbered with a baggage and supply train. the downward march on the western slope of the mountain-range was rapidly made over a smooth road through a continuous avenue of overarching forest trees, and without a halt. from the lower limit of the forest we caught the first glimpse of the great valleys. the valley before us was fourteen miles long, and of a nearly uniform width of eight miles. it was almost surrounded by mountains; in fact, while there were many trails leading out of it, there was but one practicable wagon-road--that by which we had entered. but at the southern extremity there was a precipitous cañon, through which flowed a considerable stream. to the west was another cañon, a dry one, called la puerta--the doorway--which led into the second valley, called the valley of san antonio. the great valley, on the eastern edge of which i had halted the company for a few moments' rest and observation, was lower through the centre than at the sides. it was not unlike an oblong platter, and was absolutely treeless, except that opposite us a bold, pine-clad point jutted out from the western mountain-range about three miles, like a headland into the sea. the whole valley was verdant with thick grass. the two boys, sitting on their ponies a few yards in advance of the company line, were in raptures over the prospect. "this is the first bit of country i've seen in new mexico that looks like vermont," said frank. "yes, and what a change in the space of a few miles!" observed henry. "on the opposite side of this range were only bunch-grass, cactus, and sand, and here we have fine turf and waving grass. what are those objects in that farther corner, sir?" he continued, turning to me and pointing to the southwest. "look like deer or grazing cattle." "there is a small herd of deer there, sure enough," i replied, after making out the objects through my glass. "we shall not want for venison if we have good luck with our rifles." "deer, antelope, turkeys, ducks, geese, sand-hill crane, and trout!" exclaimed frank. "we've hit a hunter's paradise." "and bears and catamounts, too, i suspect," said henry, looking a little lugubrious. "my, but wouldn't i like to kill a bear!" said frank. "well, i don't believe i shall hunt for one, and i hope a bear won't hunt for me," said the younger lad. "i'll be satisfied with turkeys, grouse, ducks, and trout." six miles due west, a little south of the wooded point, detached from it about half a mile, we perceived a line of small cabins, which we inferred was the volunteer encampment. they stretched across a little level space, enclosed by a gently sloping ridge of horseshoe shape. the ridge, in fact, proved to be of that shape when we examined it later. the row of sixteen cabins stretched across the curve, and looked out of the opening towards the eastern side of the valley. fifty yards in front of the cabins, running across the horseshoe from heel to heel, flowed a crystal stream of water twenty feet wide and two feet deep, which rose from forty-two springs near the northern end of the valley. the ridge enclosing the encampment was nowhere more than twenty-five feet above the level parade. the cabins were built of pine logs laid up horizontally, flanked on the north by the kitchen and stable, and on the south by a storehouse. behind the cabins, at the centre of the horseshoe curve, two-thirds the way up the slope of the ridge, and overlooking the encampment from its rear, stood the guard-house, in front of which paced a sentinel. resuming our march, a brisk step soon brought us to the encampment. at the brook before the parade i was met by the volunteer officers, who did not disguise their joy at the prospect of leaving what they considered a life of unbearable exile. even before the customary civilities were passed, the captain asked me if my animals were in a condition to warrant his loading the wagons with his company property as soon as i unloaded mine, as he wished to make an evening's march towards santa fé. i told him i thought they were, provided he took the two wagons belonging to the camp in addition, so that the loads would be light. he approved of my suggestion, and promised to send back the wagons as soon as he reached fort marcy. the wood-yard being well supplied with fuel, i saw no reason why the wagons and mules could not be spared the ten days necessary to make the round trip. one reason for doing all i could to facilitate the immediate departure of the californians was that my men were anxious to move into the cabins at once. with my first glance at the encampment, it had seemed to me too open to surprise. the adjacent forest-clad point crept up near the left flank, offering an effectual screen to an attacking party, and the overlooking sentinel at the guard-house did not have a range of vision to the rear of more than fifty yards. he was not on the summit of the ridge by at least half that distance, and walked along the side of the guard-house next the cabins. he could see nothing of the surface of the valley to the west of the ridge, and when passing along the front of the building, as he paced backward and forward, he saw nothing to the rear of his beat. i expressed my opinion of the situation to the volunteer captain, but he replied, "pshaw! you might as well take the sentinel off, for all the good he does as a lookout for indians." "have you seen none?" "not a solitary moccasin, except an occasional pueblo, since i've been here--eleven months." "i suppose you have scouted the country thoroughly?" "there isn't a trail within thirty miles that i do not know. these bundles of wolf-skins and other pelts you see going into the wagons are pretty good evidence that my men know the country." we walked to the kitchen, and found, hanging on the walls of the store-room, a dozen quarters of venison, the fat carcass of a bear, and several bunches of fowl. "we are not obliged to kill our cattle to supply the men with meat," added the captain. "we butcher only when we need a change from wild meat." "i saw from the edge of the valley where i entered it that you have deer." "pretty much everything but buffalo is here." "i hear your brook is full of fish." "there's where you make a mistake," he replied. "there is not a fish in this valley. the water is spring water, and must possess some mineral property distasteful to trout, for they never run up here. in san antonio valley, six miles to the west, in a brook less clear than this, you can catch them by the cart-load." "i suppose you intend to take this venison with you?" "not if you will accept the gift of all but a few quarters, which we will take for friends in the city." "thank you and your men. it will be a treat to us, and keep us going until we can put in a hunt on our own account." we went back to the parade, and stood looking at the surrounding mountains in the deepening twilight. "what other ways are there in and out of the valley, besides the one which we entered?" i asked. "well, on the east and south sides there is a trail between the peaks, four in all, and one good bridle-path to the pueblo of jemez. that descends from the valley level to the jemez river bottom, a drop of nearly three thousand feet, in a distance of three miles, zigzagging twice that distance." "and to the west and north?" "to the north there is a trail to abiquiu, rarely used, and to the west there is only la puerta, into which all the other trails from the east and south concentrate. it is to watch la puerta that this camp was established." "and you say you have seen no navajos or signs of them since you came?" "yes, plenty of signs, but no indians. parties have passed here in the night, but none were driving stock." i learned all i could of the captain while his men hurried their baggage into the wagons, but he was too much excited over the prospect of leaving the great valleys, as well as curious to know of events in santa fé, to give me much information. when the guard of regulars relieved the volunteer guard, i placed my sentinel on a beat a dozen yards in rear of the guard-house, which enabled him to see several hundred yards back of the ridge, and yet not show himself prominently to an approaching foe. the volunteers at last marched away, and i made a casual examination of the cabins. i noticed that the inner surface of the log walls had been hewn smooth, and the names, company, and regiment of the former occupants had been carved with knives or burned in with hot pokers along the upper courses. each had a wide, open, stone fireplace and chimney set in one corner, after the mexican fashion. no uniform design had been observed in the construction of the cabins, the occupants having followed their own ideas of what would prove comfortable. height, width, and depth were variable, but their fronts were in perfect alignment. the hut which had been occupied by the officers and which fell to the boys and myself was at the right of the line, next the storehouse, a little removed from the others. it was twenty by twenty feet, partitioned on one side into two alcoves in which were rude bedsteads, one of which was assigned to the boys and one to myself. a door opened on the south side, and a window, the only glass one in camp, looked out upon the parade. floors in all the cabins were of earth, raised a foot higher than the outside surface of the ground, smoothed with a trowel and carpeted with blankets, until later, when skins of wild animals took their place. doors were made of puncheons, swung on wooden hinges and fastened with wooden latches operated by latch-strings. our first day in camp was principally spent in making ourselves comfortable. the men were busy in filling bed-sacks from the hay-stacks, and in repairing the cabins and articles of furniture. ten head of beef cattle had been turned over to me with the other property of the camp. i had placed them in charge of a soldier, with orders to herd them in the valley immediately in front of the opening, where they could be plainly seen from the parade as well as the guard-house. at noon two mexican hunters, father and son, rode up to my door, the former mounted on a mule and the latter on a burro, or donkey. the elder said their names were josé and manuel cordova, of cañoncito, that they were looking for deer, and would like permission to make the camp their place of rendezvous. i gave them permission to do so, and their animals were turned loose with our stock. about four o'clock in the afternoon the boy corporals and myself, tired with our work of repairing and arranging quarters, sat down to a lunch of broiled grouse. we were busily picking the last bones when we were startled by loud shouts. quickly running to the centre of the parade, where the men were rapidly assembling with their arms, i saw the soldier-herdsman coming towards camp as fast as he could run, waving his hat and shouting. behind him the steers were running in the opposite direction, driven by six indians on foot. they were waking the echoes with their war-whoops. ii attacked by navajos the six navajos made no attempt to shoot the herder, although for some time he was within easy rifle range. they contented themselves with driving the cattle towards the southern section of the valley. at the first alarm sergeant cunningham got the men into line without a moment's delay. he had hardly counted off when the report of the sentinel's rifle was heard, followed by his shouting, excitedly, "indians! indians! this way! this way!" in the direction of the guard-house i saw the sentinel and guard getting into line with great rapidity. they were gesticulating wildly to us. frank burton, who was standing near me, shouted, "henry, get your carbine and fall in with me on the left!" "don't expose yourselves, boys," i said. "the colonel told me to keep you out of danger." "we are needed, sir," answered frank, promptly, and the two youngsters instantly placed themselves on the left of the line. i broke the company to the rear through the intervals between the cabins. the men had only the marching allowance of ten rounds of ammunition, so i had a couple of boxes broken open with an axe, and cartridges were distributed to them. the two mexicans joined us, and steadily and rapidly we advanced up the slope to unite with the guard. scarcely two hundred yards distant we saw a compact body of over three hundred indians. they were charging down upon us, and with a general and frightful war-whoop they began firing. we deployed as skirmishers. the men fired by volleys, sheltering themselves behind bowlders, logs, and ridges. instantly, at the head of the mounted column, there was an emptying of saddles. the onset was suddenly checked, and the indians broke into two divisions. part of the force swept along the outer side of the horseshoe ridge to the south, and the other part wheeled round to the north. i met the attack by dividing my men into two divisions. the men moved along the interior slopes, firing as they ran, and kept pace with the ponies running to the extremities. the navajos had lost twenty men. a chief, who had been in the front of the fight throughout, had the utmost difficulty in holding them in close column. "that is the great chief, el ebano," cried the elder cordova, as he put his gun to his shoulder. taking careful aim at the gray-haired leader, he fired, and one of the most famous chieftains of the navajos rolled from his saddle. the beautiful black horse he had been riding ran on towards us. with el ebano dead, the indians were dismayed. a moment later they were in full retreat, and joined their comrades who had stolen our cattle. * * * * * our casualties were few. sergeant cunningham's scalp had been grazed along the left side, private tom clary had the lobe of an ear cut, privates hoey and evans were wounded along the ribs, and corporal frank burton had a bullet wound in the right shoulder. the indians had gathered in a compact body about three miles to the southward, evidently holding a council of war. reflecting that they would not be likely to repeat their attack immediately, i walked out with the first sergeant and a few of the men to note what casualties had befallen the enemy, and learn if there were any wounded men in need of assistance. as i neared the place where the charge had been checked, i met corporal frank burton leading a black pony, gently stroking his nose and talking soothingly to him, while the animal seemed half divided between fear and newly awakened confidence. "oh, isn't he a beauty, sir!" exclaimed the boy--"isn't he just a perfect beauty!" "he certainly is a very handsome horse," i answered, after walking around him and taking in all his graces and points. "take him to the stable and we will see to what use we can put him." "do you think it would be possible for me to own him, sir?" inquired the boy, in an anxious voice. "as spoil of war, corporal?" "i suppose so, sir. i was first to capture him, you know." before i could reply to this we were startled by a loud whinny, a little to the north, which was promptly answered by the black, and, looking in that direction, we saw a cream-colored pony, with high-erected head, looking anxiously in the direction of our captive. "that seems to be a friend of your pony's," i said. "another beauty, too, sir! can't we catch it for henry?" "perhaps we can. it seems inclined to stay by this one. i see all the other loose ponies have joined the indians. but wait now until we look over the field." we now turned our attention to the prostrate bodies of the fallen enemy. all were dead. the body of el ebano, clad in black buck-skin, ornamented with a profusion of silver buttons, chains, and bracelets, lay face upward, his resolute, handsome countenance still in the embrace of death. i told the men we would give him and his comrades a warrior's burial on the morrow, and returned to camp to make it defensible against a possible night attack. the advantage of numbers was decidedly on the side of the indians, and i felt if they could show the firmness and dash of white men our chances of repelling a resolute attack were small. counting the mexicans and the boys, we numbered but forty-eight, to their three hundred or more. we were in the centre of a large valley, with no knowledge of our surroundings nor with any way out except the road by which we had entered. should we leave the protection of our ridge and cabins and take to the open valley we should be at the mercy of our foes. even supposing we could pass out of the valley unmolested, there were the forests and defiles, filled with natural ambuscades. we could not hope to pass them and reach the rio grande alive. only a few hours of daylight remained. whatever was to be done in preparation for defence must be done at once. in the wood-yard there were tiers of dry pine-logs, many of them four feet in diameter, and all about twenty feet long. with drag ropes and by rolling we conveyed them to the points of the ridge and to each end of the guard-house, and erected effective barricades. while this work was going on the two boys were busy in an attempt to capture the cream-colored pony. frank led the black towards it, while henry rattled the contents of a measure of corn and coaxed the cream-color in a tongue foreign to that with which the animals were familiar to approach and partake of it. tired at last of what seemed a vain attempt, the young corporal set the box before the black, which at once began to munch the crackling corn, and the other pony, attracted by the sound, trotted up and placed her nose beside her friend's. instantly its bridle-rein was seized, and the lads uttered a shout of triumph and led the prizes to the stable. from the top of the ridge i looked occasionally through my field-glass at the enemy. they still continued well to the south on the western side of the brook. they had dismounted and appeared to be carrying on an animated consultation. after a considerable interval of time, four of their number mounted, and, collecting the ten beeves, mule, and burro, which had been grazing near by, drove them up and down in front of the camp, beyond rifle range. they made gestures for us to come and take them--an invitation which, for obvious reasons, i declined to accept. i quite agreed with private tom clary, who, as he placed his brawny shoulder to a big log to roll it up the slope, remarked to his "bunky," private george hoey, "that's an invitation, begorra, i don't fale loike acciptin'." "ye'd niver make yer t'ilet for anither assimbly if ye did, tom. i don't think the lutinint will risk the comp'ny's hair in that way," replied hoey. to have attempted to recover our stock would have necessitated a division of our force, and the main body of the navajos stood ready to dash in and cut off a party making such a reckless move. this was what they had originally attempted to accomplish, as i heard years afterwards from a chief who took part in the raid. failing to draw us out in pursuit of our lost stock, the navajos moved slowly away in the deepening dusk to a point close against the forest on the eastern side of the valley and nearly opposite our camp. there they built a row of five fires, which soon became, in the darkness, the only evidence of their presence. i caused the sentinels to be increased, and, after dressing the wounds of the men and removing a bullet from frank's shoulder, went to bed without undressing. after some half-hour of silence, henry said: "mr. duncan." "yes; what is it?" "i'm going to name my pony chiquita." "and i'm going to name mine sancho," added frank. "what are you going to do with the animals you brought here?" i asked. "turn them in in place of the two we captured," answered henry. "all right; for general utility. good-night." "good-night. thank you, sir." half an hour before midnight the sergeant of the guard aroused me to report that strange noises could be heard from the rear of the camp. i went to the top of the ridge and listened. a sound like the dragging of branches over the ground, with occasional pauses, fell upon my ears. i sent for the elder cordova, and he listened long, with an ear close to the ground. his opinion was that the indians were creeping up for another attack. orders were sent to sergeant cunningham to wake the men without noise and assemble them at the barricades. a little after midnight the moon rose over the mountains and bathed the valley in a beautiful light. as the moon cleared herself from the summits of the range and her rays fell upon the line of paling camp-fires of the indians, my field-glass revealed the fact that the raiders had departed. ponies and riders were gone. in the whole length and breadth of the great valley not a living being was in sight outside the limit of our encampment. an inspection to the rear, to the scene of the late conflict, revealed the fact that the body of el ebano and the group of dead warriors which lay about him at nightfall had been taken away. their removal had caused the rushing and creeping sounds we had heard. mounting my horse, and accompanied by four men upon the four ponies, i crossed the valley to the indian fires, but found nothing there except the horns, hoofs, and entrails of our captured cattle. the flesh had probably been packed upon the cordovas' mule and burro to ration a raiding party into the valley of the rio grande. a well-defined trail went back through the forest, which cordova afterwards assured me led to the town of pina blanca. returning to camp, i wrote a letter to the commanding general, giving an account of the attack and its repulse, and despatched it by the mexicans, who, taking cut-offs with which they were acquainted, and borrowing horses in relays at ranches on the way, delivered it next evening at santa fé. the general sent a hundred troopers to los valles grandes, where they came galloping into camp two evenings afterwards. as captain wardwell sprang from his saddle and wrung my hand, he exclaimed: "god bless you, duncan! i came out expecting to bury the bones of you and your men." i was glad to see the california cavalry officers, and, during the three days of their stay in the valley for rest after a forced march, did the honors to the best of my ability. on the day of their departure the wagons returned loaded with supplies. instructions were received to send back all but one wagon and six mules. with the departure of cavalry and wagons, life in the valley settled down to quiet routine. i spent some time in instructing my companions, according to an agreement i had made with their father. not being a west-pointer, but a college graduate with a fair knowledge of greek and latin, and some other acquirements not considered of military utility, i was able to carry out a desire of the colonel and assist the boys in preparing themselves for college. we rarely received visits from the outside world. the nearest hamlet was an indian pueblo, twenty-six miles away, in the rio jemez valley, and representatives of the army seldom had occasion to visit our outposts. the mail arrived from santa fé every saturday afternoon, and left every monday morning in the saddle-bags of two cavalry express-men. to the soldiers life in the valleys was very pleasant. duty was light, and there were no temptations to dissipation or to be out of quarters at night, and there were no confinements to the guard-house for disorder. evenings were spent over books and papers and quiet games, and the days in drill, repairing buildings, providing the fuel for winter, hunting, and scouting. as previously referred to, we were in a region of abundant game. the boy corporals accompanied the hunting-parties, and became skilled in bringing down whatever they sighted. henry, as well as frank, shot his bear, and soon our floor was covered with the skins of wolves, coyotes, bears, and catamounts, skilfully dressed and tanned by the cordovas. and now i must introduce a principal character of my story, a valued friend who took a conspicuous part in our scouting and hunting, and who, later on, did valuable service to myself and my youthful comrades. just as i was about to leave santa fé for los valles grandes, the regimental adjutant--since a distinguished brigadier-general in the war in the philippines--gave me a beautiful young setter named victoriana, and called vic for convenience. she was of canine aristocracy, possessing a fine pedigree, white and liver-colored, with mottled nose and paws, and a tail like the plume of henry of navarre. the boys, soon after our arrival in the valleys, carrying out a conceit suggested by the letters "u.s." which are always branded upon the left shoulder of all government horses and mules, marked with a weak solution of nitrate of silver upon vic's white shoulder the same characters, and as long as she continued to live they were never allowed to grow dim. vic came to me with no education, but plenty of capacity, and the corporals and i spent much time during the long evenings and on the days when we did not accompany the scouting and hunting parties, in training her. she learned to close the door if we simulated a shiver, to bring me my slippers when she saw me begin to remove my boots, to carry messages to the first sergeant or the cook, to return to the camp from long distances and bring articles i sent for. vic was an unerring setter and a fine retriever. she was taught not to bark when a sound might bring an enemy upon us, and she would follow patiently at my heels or those of either of the boys when told to do so and never make a break to the right or left. our repeated scoutings soon made us acquainted with every trail in and out of the valley. i obtained permission from department head-quarters to employ the elder cordova as spy and guide, and he was of invaluable use to us. he was able to show me a mountain-trail into the valley of san antonio besides the one through la puerta, which i kept in reserve for any desperate emergency which might make it necessary to use another. we frequently went trout-fishing with an armed party, and could pack a mule with fish in a few hours. one morning, near the close of october, cordova left the camp before reveille on a solitary hunting-trip in order to reach los vallecitos, four miles to the south of our valley, before sunrise. he had gone but half an hour, and i was dressing after first bugle-call for reveille, when i was startled by the rapid approach of some one running towards my door. presently the guide tumbled into the cabin, gasping: "muchos navajos, teniente, muchos navajos!" (many navajos, lieutenant, many navajos!) "where are they, and how many?" i asked. "about half a league over the ridge," pointing to the south. "they chased me from the los vallecitos trail. they number about a hundred." without waiting for more definite information, i told the boys, who were hastily getting into their clothes, to stay in the cabin, and, going for sergeant cunningham, ordered him to parade the company under arms without delay; then, taking my glass, i went to the top of the ridge. lying down before reaching the crest, i looked through the screening grass and saw a party of eighty-three indians, halted and apparently in consultation. they were in full war costume, and were painted and feathered to the height of indian skill. iii warlike pueblos the party of indians halted for nearly ten minutes, evidently in excited dispute, accompanying their talk with much gesticulation. i had time to notice that the details of dress were not like those of the navajos with whom we had recently had a fight; but as the old hunter cordova had pronounced them navajos, i gave the matter little consideration. they did not seem to be aware of the existence of an encampment of soldiers in the valleys, and after a brief delay moved on towards la puerta. returning to the parade, i ordered the six mules and four ponies brought to my door, saddled and bridled, and all the men not on guard to assemble under arms with cartridge-boxes filled. fortunately, the mail-riders had arrived the previous evening from santa fé, so i ordered them to form a part of the expedition, and placed the party of thirteen under command of sergeant cunningham, mounted upon my horse. the sergeant was directed to take the "reserved trail" through the hills into the valley of san antonio and bring his men into the western end of la puerta before the indians could pass through it. i impressed it upon him on no account to fire unless the redmen showed fight, to leave his mules and horses concealed in the timber at the entrance of the cañon, and so dispose his men as to convey the impression that thirteen was but a part of his force. just before the horsemen were to start i overheard private tom clary, who was mounted on frank's recent equine acquisition, sancho, say to the boy: "corpril frank, laddie, can ye give me the naviho words for _whoa_ and _get up_? i'm afeared the little baste 'll not understand me english, and may attimpt to lave for his troibe." "you needn't speak to him, tom. use your reins, curb, and spurs," replied the boy. "true for you, corpril; a pull to stop, and a spur to go ahead. that's a language that nades no interpreter." for myself, i proposed to follow up the navajos with the rest of the company as soon as they were fairly within the cañon, and i expected to capture them without blood-shed. we started, the mounted men turning to the north of the wooded point and entering the forest, and the footmen marching direct for la puerta. i kept my men out of sight under the rolls of the valley surface, and moved at quick time. when the redmen were well within the walls of the cañon we deployed right and left, and closed up rapidly behind them. the indians showed perceptible astonishment when they perceived this unexpected and warlike demonstration, but they soon recovered, and then, feeling the superiority of the mounted man over the footman, they broke into derisive shouts and made gestures conveying their contempt for us. this continued for some time, when they suddenly showed confusion. they dashed at a gallop to the north side of the passage, and skirted it for a considerable distance, as if looking for a place of escape. failing to find one they dashed wildly to the other side, where they met with no better success, and then they halted and consulted. presently one of their number rode out and waved a white cloth. upon this i approached alone and made signs for them to dismount and lay down their arms. they did so, and at another sign withdrew in a body, when my men picked up everything and collected their ponies. i was certainly surprised at such a bloodless result of my strategy, and, after shaking hands with the chief, began my return march to camp. we had gone but a short distance when i overheard private clary, one of the mounted men, who was riding near me, say to private hoey beside him. "d'ye moind the cut uv thim chaps' hair, jarge?" "indade i do that, tom," replied george. "thim's no navihos!" "not a bit uv it. i'd as soon expict to see one in currls!" i had a wholesome respect for the opinions of these old soldiers, for they had campaigned against indians in texas, utah, colorado, and new mexico long before i had seen a more savage redman than the indolent, basket-making descendants of the passamaquoddies and penobscots. accordingly, without appearing to notice their remarks, i approached the chief, and said, interrogatively: "apache?" a shake of the head. "ute?" another shake. "navajo?" "si, señor!" he said, with a bow of his head, and i moved triumphantly on, satisfied that my eighty-three prisoners were navajos. but presently i heard clary ask, "jarge, did ye iver see navihos with blankets like thim?" "niver!" answered hoey, emphatically. evidently the two soldiers did not believe they were navajos, and were "talking at me." but if not navajos, apaches, or utes, who were these warriors? when we were near camp we were met by cordova, who had remained behind to recover from the fatigue of his early morning run. as soon as he came up to the indians there seemed to be an immediate recognition. he and the chief met and embraced, and conversed for a few moments in a language that was neither english nor spanish. then the hunter turned to me, looking shamefaced, and said, in spanish, "lieutenant, these indians are pueblos, of santo domingo." whoever knows the character of the pueblos will appreciate the joke i had perpetrated upon myself. many towns in new mexico are inhabited by these indians--towns which stood on their present sites when coronado entered the country in 1541. they form an excellent part of the population, being temperate, frugal, and industrious. they dress in indian style, and when at war paint and disfigure themselves like any other of the red peoples, so that a green soldier would see no difference between them and the wilder tribes. the pueblos explained that they were in pursuit of a band of navajos who had stolen some of their cattle the previous night. when they first saw cordova they attempted to approach him to inquire if he had seen any navajo "signs." my appearance and warlike demonstrations they could not account for, not knowing there was a camp of soldiers in the valley. when i put the questions, apache? ute? navajo? the chief thought i was asking him if he was in pursuit of a party of one of those tribes. being in pursuit of navajos, he answered yes to that name. a week after my captives had returned to their homes in santo domingo, at the close of a long and fruitless search for their lost stock, a gentleman and his servant, mounted on broncos and leading a pack-mule, rode up to my cabin late in the afternoon. he introduced himself as a government indian agent for the navajos, and handed me a letter from the department commander. it stated that the bearer was on his way to the indian pueblo of jemez, to prevent the massacre of a number of navajo women, children, and old men who had sought asylum there, and authorized me to furnish him with all the aid in my power. after dismounting and entering my quarters, the agent stated that, the navajo country being over-run by national troops, many of the principal men had sent their wives and children, with a few old men, to jemez for safety; that the party of dominicans which had been recently captured by us, being bitterly disappointed at their lack of success in retaking their missing cattle, had determined to go to jemez and wreak vengeance upon the enemy. the santo dominicans had informed the people of jemez that if they interfered to prevent the slaughter of the navajos they would be considered by the military authorities as allies of that tribe, and treated accordingly. convinced, from what the agent told me, that i should act without unnecessary delay, i proposed that we should start for jemez at once, but he declared himself too much fatigued by a long journey to undertake a night ride of twenty-six miles. my instructions from the general were to conform my movements to the wishes of the agent, so i very reluctantly and much against my convictions concluded to wait until morning. he strongly insisted there was no reason for haste, as the dominicans had not planned to leave their pueblo before noon. we set out, therefore, at four o'clock next morning. sergeant cunningham asked permission to accompany the expedition, and i allowed him to do so, leaving sergeant mulligan in charge until our return. we were a party of thirteen, mounted on every available animal in camp. henry was left behind, but frank accompanied us, mounted on the recently captured sancho, proud of his horse and proud to be included in the detachment. we passed through an interesting country, filled with wind-carven pillars and minarets, eroded shelves and caverns, and lunched at noonday beside a dozen boiling sulphur springs. we also passed cañoncito, the little village which was the home of josé cordova. as we came in sight of the tinned spires of the church at jemez, we heard a distinct murmur, and halted at once. in a moment the murmur swelled into an unmistakable indian war-whoop. it was plainly evident the dominicans had arrived before us. as soon as i heard the war-whoop i told sergeant cunningham to bring up the men as rapidly as possible, sticking to the travelled road, and, accompanied by the agent and corporal frank, i put spurs to my horse and dashed towards the town. our route was through the cultivated land, while that of the soldiers was on the hard ground along the foot-hills. ours was in a direct line, over deep, soft earth, frequently crossed by irrigating ditches, while theirs, although nearly treble the distance, was over firm soil without a break. we struck directly for the church spires, which i knew rose from the central plaza. often we plunged down the banks of _acequias_, carrying avalanches of soil with us into two or three feet of water, to make a difficult scramble up the crumbling wall of the opposite side; and as we neared the pueblo, the louder grew the discordant yells of the dominicans. as i reached the border of the plantation i found between me and the road, which here entered the town, a cactus hedge about five feet high, with no passage through it except at a considerable distance to the right. the agent veered away to the opening, but corporal frank kept sancho close behind me, and i gave my good thoroughbred his head and rode sharply at the hedge, cleared it at a bound, receiving but a few scratches from the cactus spines. turning my head as i came into the road, i saw frank come through like a trooper and join me. clear of the hedge, i found myself at the foot of a narrow street which passed between two tall adobe buildings and entered the plaza near the centre of its western side. i took it at a run, and when half-way through saw directly before its inner end, facing the north, a group of old, gray-haired navajos standing alone with their arms folded, and holding their blankets firmly about their breasts, while in their immediate front were some one hundred mounted indians, painted and ornamented in true aboriginal warrior style. on the terraced fronts of the houses and their flat roofs, and along the three sides of the square, seemed to be gathered the entire population of the town, looking passively on. before i had more than taken in the situation, a rattling discharge of rifles came from the direction of the dominicans, and the old men fell in a heap to the ground. covered with dust and mud, our horses reeking with foam, corporal frank and i burst through the crowd of spectators on the west side of the plaza, and gained the open space just as the firing-party was advancing with gleaming knives and wild yells to complete the tragedy by scalping the slain. raising my right hand i shouted, in spanish, "stop where you are!" frank had unslung his carbine and was holding it by the small of the stock in his right hand, the barrel resting in his left, looking calmly and resolutely at the hesitating indians. the blood of three generations of soldierly ancestors was thrilling his veins with a resolution to act well in any emergency which might arise. the pueblos halted, and at the same moment a group of eighteen women and nearly three times as many children, some of them in arms, who had been reserved--as i afterwards learned--for later shooting, ran into the space and clung to my feet, stirrups, and the mane and tail of my horse, entreating with eyes and voices for protection. the war-cries had ceased and the dominicans had gathered in an angry and gesticulating group, when sergeant cunningham and the rest of the men appeared on foot, running into the plaza from a side street, and formed in line before us. the massacre ended with the death of the old men. aided by the agent and the catholic priest of the pueblo i succeeded in impressing upon the jemez warriors that they must discountenance any further hostile demonstrations of the santo dominicans, and told the latter that unless they promptly withdrew and departed for their own reservation i should punish them for their recent conduct. they at once sullenly departed. that evening, by the light of a brilliant moon, the dead navajos were buried upon a hill-top overlooking the town, amid the wailing of their women and much ceremonious demonstration by the jemez people, and frank and i retired for the night to the house of the hospitable priest. early the following morning i held an inspection of the mules and horses, and finding the wheel and swing spans were much exhausted by the unaccustomed gait they had maintained in the forced march from the valleys, i determined to give them a day's rest before making the return trip. finding sergeant cunningham's, frank's, and my own horses none the worse for their exertions, i concluded that we three would return at once to camp. i placed corporal duffy in charge of the party, and told him after one day had passed to return by way of the hot springs. instead of returning by the route we came, the sergeant, frank, and i were to take a shorter and rougher one pointed out to us by padre gutierrez. this trail was almost as straight as an arrow, but led through a section of the country over which we had not scouted. at half-past nine o'clock the three of us started, vic bounding and barking at my horse's head. iv in a navajo trap six miles from jemez our road, which, after leaving the cultivated valley of the pueblos had narrowed to a path, entered the forest and ran along the side of a small brook, which it continued to follow for several miles, and then rose gradually to the side of a range of hills. we were walking our animals along the side of this acclivity, at a considerable distance above the brook on our left, their hoofs making no noise in the soft, black earth, when i was startled by the braying of an ass somewhere in the ravine. sergeant cunningham and corporal frank threw themselves quickly from their saddles and held the horses by the bits to prevent them from responding to the greeting, and i quickly sought a place from which i could make an observation. we were in a clump of evergreen trees which commanded a view of the ravine and obscured us from sight in all directions. looking across the ravine, i caught a glimpse of a party of indians a little beyond the brook. through my glass i made them out to be a party of twenty-seven navajos, sitting about a camp-fire eating their dinner. as many ponies were grazing near, and a mule and burro. from certain peculiar markings i had observed the day cordova joined me in the valleys, i had no difficulty in recognizing the last two animals to be his property. packs were lying near the fire, showing that the captured animals were being used as beasts of burden. all this time i had entirely overlooked the presence of my dog vic. had i thought of her in season, it would have been easy to have kept her close at my heels; but i had left her free to wander, not thinking of any threatening danger. suddenly i heard a chorus of grunts from the indians, and looking in their direction i saw vic stand for an instant with her forefeet on a prostrate log, look questioningly at the savages, and then drop down into the furze and disappear. the sight of a white man's dog, wearing a brilliant metallic collar, produced an electrical effect. instantly the redmen sprang to their feet, seized their arms, and began saddling and bridling their ponies. "vic has betrayed us, sergeant," i said. "we must get out of here as quickly as possible." as we sprang into our saddles and regained the trail vic came with a bound before us, and i immediately gave her positive orders to keep close at our heels. we rode as fast as it was possible to do without making a noise, hoping that we might get a considerable distance away before we were discovered. we had not proceeded far, however, when a yell announced that we were seen. as we galloped on we saw that it was impossible for the indians to cross to our side of the ravine. every mile we passed the path rose higher and the sides of the stream grew more precipitous. the indians were pursuing a path parallel to ours and about half a mile in our rear. what was the nature of the country ahead we did not know. the fact that they were pursuing, and with such eagerness, seemed to indicate they knew of some advantage to be gained farther on. on and on we rode, i in advance, the sergeant next, and frank behind. the trail wound through the trees and clumps of underbrush, with occasional openings through which we could catch glimpses of our eager pursuers. the prospect appeared exceedingly gloomy. as we galloped on i noticed at last, through a rift in the wood a considerable distance in advance, an eminence or butte which lifted its summit nearly three hundred feet skyward, and which presented on the side towards us an almost perpendicular wall. when we approached it we saw a neat log-cabin nestling under its overarching brow. we dismounted, led our panting and utterly exhausted animals into the cabin, closed the doors, and went to the windows with our rifles. the cabin was about thirty by twenty feet in area, and stood with its northern end close against the perpendicular wall of the butte, with an overhanging cliff a hundred feet above it. if a stone had been dropped from the sheltering cliff it would have fallen several feet away from the cabin's southern wall. at the end of the cabin farthest from the butte the ground upon which it stood broke off perpendicularly twenty feet downward, to a spring--the source of the brook we had been following since we left jemez. the only way to cross from one trail to the other, except by going several miles down the brook or to the north end of the butte, was, therefore, through the cabin, and for this purpose a door had been placed in each side. the cabin could be approached only on the east and west sides, and was unassailable at its north and south ends. each wall contained a small window, except the one which rested against the butte, and there a wide, stone fireplace had been built. three men with plenty of rations and ammunition could make a good defence. water could be had by lowering a bucket or canteen from the southern window to the spring, twenty-four feet below its sill. the indians had discovered that we had found shelter from their pursuit and for the present were safe, and all but five, who soon afterwards appeared in the edge of the forest to the east, had joined the main party to the west of us. they showed great respect for our place of refuge and rifles, and kept well out of range. the sergeant's and my springfield rifle could throw a bullet farther and could be loaded more rapidly than any rifles in their possession, and frank with his spencer could fire about twenty balls to our one. we removed the saddles and bridles from our animals, and, hitching them in the corners each side of the fireplace, began a discussion of our prospects. "if we could keep a couple of fires going before the doors during the night, sir," said the sergeant, "we might keep them away." "i am afraid a fire would be of greater advantage to them than to us," i replied; "we should have to expose ourselves every time we replenished it. i wonder if the roof is covered with earth? it is flat." "i'll tell you in half a minute, sir," said frank, and entering the fireplace he proceeded to ascend the wide-mouthed chimney by stepping on projecting stones of which it was built. in a moment he called down to me, "yes, sir; it is covered with about two feet of earth." "all right then. if we can get pine enough to keep a blaze going then we will have one. a fire on the roof will illuminate everything about us and leave our windows and doorways in darkness. it will aid our aim and confuse the indians." we set to work at once and pulled down all the bunks, and with large stones from the fireplace succeeded in breaking into fragments the pine puncheons and posts of which they were made. then sergeant cunningham ascended the chimney and tore away one side of the part which projected above the roof--the side looking in the direction opposite the precipice. this would enable one of us to stand in the top and replenish the fire, and at the same time remain concealed from the enemy. as we could be fired upon from only two directions, the fire tender would be safe. fortunately, padre gutierrez's housekeeper had put up a lunch sufficient to last us, including vic, for three days, and water could be drawn easily through the southern window with a canteen and lariat. "i'm afraid those chaps 'll get us in the end, sir," observed the sergeant. "of course we can eat horse-meat for a while after our victuals are gone, but we are three and they are twenty-seven--we are prisoners and they are free." "very true, sergeant," i replied, "but something may turn up in our favor. the jemez party will reach camp day after to-morrow, and when it learns we are not there we shall be looked up." "if another party of navajos don't jump them, sir." "of course, the chances are against us, sergeant, but let us keep up our spirits and make a good fight." "i'll do my best, sir, as i always have done, but this is a beastly hole to be caught in." "but why don't you send vic for help, mr. duncan?" asked frank. "laddie, i believe you have saved us! thank you for the suggestion. we'll put the little girl's education to a practical test." "what! going to send her to jemez for the men?" asked sergeant cunningham. "no; i hardly think i could make her understand our wishes in that direction, but there is no doubt she can be sent to camp. she has done that many times." "yes, sir, she'll go to the valley," said frank. "you know i sent her with a message to you from san antonio valley, six miles. i wonder how far camp is from here?" "'bout nine miles," replied the sergeant; "but she'll do it, i think. look at her!" vic had come forward, and sat looking intelligently from one to the other of us while this discussion ran on. "all right, little girl," i said, patting and smoothing her silky coat, "you shall have a chance to help us after dusk. go and lie down now." the dog went to a corner and, lying down on frank's saddle-blanket, appeared to sleep; and while corporal frank took my place at a window i wrote a message to sergeant mulligan at the camp, describing our desperate situation and requesting him to send a detachment to our rescue. i also prepared a flat, pine stick, and wrote upon it, in plain letters, "examine her collar." i intended she should carry the stick in her mouth, as she had hitherto carried articles and messages, fearing she would not understand she was to go on an errand unless all the conditions of her education were observed. during that day the navajos simply showed their presence occasionally among the trees, far away on either flank. we once heard the rapid strokes of an axe, as of chopping, and wondered what it could mean. nothing further happened till dusk. then i called vic and attached the note to her collar, wrapped in a piece of my handkerchief. "i think, sergeant," i said, "we had better send our message before it gets darker and the navajos close up nearer or the corporal lights his fire." "yes, she can't leave any too soon, sir, i think. it's going to be pokerish work for us before morning, and i shall be mighty glad to see a few of old company f appear round that rock." after fastening the note securely in the dog's collar, i placed the stick in her mouth and, opening the eastern door, said, "now, little vic, take that stick to the sergeant--go!" she turned from the doorway, crossed the room, and dropped the stick at sergeant cunningham's feet. the sergeant stooped, and placing his hand under her chin raised her head upward and laid his bronze cheek affectionately upon it. "well, vicky," he said, "there is but one sergeant in the world to you, and he is here, isn't he?" "that's so, sir," exclaimed corporal frank, addressing me. "we never sent her to anybody but you, the sergeant, and the cook." "true enough. i'll have to send her to the cook--the only one now in camp to whom she has borne messages. as he is the dispenser of fine bones and dainties, and she has had nothing to eat since morning, perhaps it is as well he is to receive this message. here, vic," placing the chip once more in her mouth, "take this stick to the cook--go!" the setter looked at me an instant, then at the sergeant and corporal, walked to the door, looked out, and then glanced questioningly at me. "yes, little one; the cook--go!" she bounded through the doorway and turned the corner of the butte at a run, bearing our summons to our comrades at los valles grandes. for some time after the departure of vic the sergeant and i stood at our windows and gloomily watched the darkness deepen in the woods. frank looked out of the window above the spring and was also silent. i was disposed to put off the lighting of our fire upon the roof as long as it appeared safe to do so, in order to husband our fuel. the animals, disappointed of the forage usually furnished them at this hour, stamped impatiently and nosed disdainfully the stale straw and pine plumes which we had emptied from the bunks and which were now scattered over the floor. it was during a momentary lull of this continuous noise that i heard a crushing sound as of a heavy wheel rolling over twigs and gravel, but was unable to guess its meaning. fearing that further delay to light our fire might bring disaster upon us, i told corporal frank to kindle it. he ascended the chimney, lighted a few splinters of pitch-pine and placed them upon the roof, and as soon as they were well lighted added to them half a dozen billets of wood which sergeant cunningham passed up to him. soon a brilliant blaze was leaping upward, and, being reflected strongly by the white sandstone of the overhanging cliff, lighted the whole space about the cabin. as soon as frank descended to the floor we gazed long and anxiously out of the windows. everything about us was now plainly visible to our eyes, and we felt sure our movements could not be seen by the navajos. to the east all was silent, and for a long while we saw nothing in that direction to suggest a lurking foe. to the west we could see no enemy, but the same mysterious sound of crushing and grinding came to our ears. what could it be, and what did it threaten? adjusting my field-glass i looked from my window in the direction of the puzzling sound, and on the farther edge of the opening, near the wood, saw a log about three feet in diameter and twenty-five or more in length slowly rolling towards us, propelled by some unseen force. passing the glass to the sergeant, i said: "the indians seem to be rolling a log in our direction. what do you think of it?" "i think it's easy to understand, sir," replied the sergeant, after a long look. "that log is a movable breastwork, which can be rolled to our door." "true, sergeant. probably a dozen or more warriors are lying behind it and rolling it forward. rather a black prospect for us if we cannot stop it!" we all three gathered at the western window, and for some moments watched the slow approach of the moving breastwork. v a siege and an ambuscade we continued to watch long and anxiously the slowly rolling log. not a glimpse of the motive power could be obtained, but it ground and crushed its way along with ominous certainty, straight in our direction. just as i had come to the conclusion that assistance could not arrive in time, the log stopped. i looked through my glass and saw the cause. "sergeant," i exclaimed, "the log has struck a rock! open the door and draw a bead on it! don't let a man leap over it to remove the stone! corporal, guard the east window!" the sergeant stood ready at the open door. all the efforts of the prostrate men behind the log had no effect, except to swing the end farthest from the obstacle slightly ahead. "there seems to be nothing for them to do but to remove the stone. keep a sharp eye on the log, sergeant!" i had hardly spoken when a sudden discharge of rifles ran irregularly along the length of the log, and under cover of the fire and smoke a stalwart warrior leaped over, raised the stone, and had borne it nearly to the top, when sergeant cunningham's rifle spoke sharply. the stone dropped on our side; the indian fell forward, with his arms extended towards his friends, who pulled him over the log, and he was screened from our sight. the volley of the navajos did us no harm. corporal frank replenished the fire on our roof from time to time, and our vigilant watch went on. at last the sergeant, who still stood at the open door, exclaimed, "lieutenant, the stone is moving! it's dropping into the ground!" "it's gone, and here comes our fate," i said. "they must have dug under the log with their knives and sunk the stone." "yes, sir, and they're safe to reach the cabin door and roast us out." "if there were two or three more stones in the way, sergeant, the delay they would cause might serve us until help comes." "i'll run out there with one, mr. duncan," said frank. "no, laddie," replied the sergeant, "that's a duty for me. i'll drop a couple there in a minute." "and when you return, sergeant, i will drop two more," said i. we went quickly to work to carry out our plan. the corporal once more mended the fire, and then we selected from the loose rubbish which had been torn from the top of the chimney several large-sized stones. removing his shoes, the sergeant, with my assistance, raised two big stones to his breast, and stood in the doorway with them clasped firmly in his arms. i took the revolvers in my hands, whispered the word, and he started out at a rapid walk, setting his feet down carefully and without noise. he dropped the stones, one before the other, without attracting attention, and regained the cabin without a shot being fired on either side. now it was my turn, and i went beyond the place where he had dropped his last stone. at that instant an alarm was shouted from the distant wood, and an indian raised his head above the log and fired. the bullet struck the falling rock, and sent a shower of stinging splinters into my face. i turned and fled. with the discharge of the indian's rifle sergeant cunningham and corporal frank opened a rapid fusillade with the revolvers, which successfully covered my retreat to the cabin; but we knew that our last chance at stone-dropping was past. several terribly long hours had crept past since we saw vic turn the butte on her errand to the valleys. judging by the time it had taken the navajos to bore a tunnel under their log and undermine the first trigging-stone, we estimated that two more hours must pass before the four obstructions we had placed in their way could be removed, unless they took some more speedy method. it was quite nine miles to camp, and the dog could easily reach it in about an hour. if she had arrived, help should by this time be fairly on the way; but if she had been killed by the besiegers before she reached the north end of the butte, or had been torn in pieces by the wolves! should the log once reach our door, we could not hope to do more than make the price of our lives dear to the enemy. while the sergeant and i stood at the door and window, speculating in no very hopeful vein over these probabilities, there came a scratch at the eastern door. frank was at the window on that side, and, startled by the sound, he called to us, "i'm afraid an indian has sneaked up on us, sir." again the scratching was heard, this time accompanied by a familiar whine, which presently swelled into a low bark. "oh, mr. duncan, it's vic! it's vic!" shouted the boy, and, springing to the door, he flung it wide open. in trotted vic, and, coming up to me, she dropped a stick at my feet bearing the words: "in the collar, as before." it took some little time for corporal frank to secure the messenger. she capered about the room, licked our hands and faces, jumped up to the noses of the ponies, and behaved as if she was conscious of having performed a great feat and was overjoyed to have returned safely. but vic surrendered to the boy at last, and, submitting her neck for inspection, he found attached to her collar a letter which read as follows: "camp at los valles grandes. "_november 20, 1863_. "lieutenant,--message received, and the messenger fed. corporal coffey and eight men leave here at 10.15 p.m. "james mulligan, _sergeant_." "come here, little doggie," said sergeant cunningham. "if we get out of this, the company shall pay for a silver collar and a medal of honor for the finest dog in the army." "if that detail marches at the regulation gait of three miles an hour," i said, "it should be here by a quarter-past one, and it is now a quarter to twelve." my anxiety over our prospects was so great i neglected to show proper gratitude to our devoted messenger. "the men will do better than that, sir, if they keep on the road. the trouble will be in finding this trail. they have never been this way." "i think the junction of this and the hot-springs trail cannot be far from here. let's take a shot at that log every three minutes from now on, and the noise may attract our friends." we began firing at once, aiming at the under side of the log where it touched the earth. i am confident this must have sent some sand and gravel into the eyes of the rollers, if it did no other damage. two of the trigging-stones we had dropped were soon undermined and sunk, and the log had stopped at the third, less than a hundred yards away. as it came on, the sergeant climbed to the top of the chimney, and shortly afterwards returned with the report that he had seen the prostrate body of a warrior revealed beyond--good evidence that his first shot had been fatal. if the next two stones should be as rapidly removed as the others, we feared the indians would reach us, unless the rescuing party prevented, at about half-past twelve. marked by our periodical shots at the log, the time hurried all too rapidly on, the indians slowly and surely approaching the cabin. the third stone disappeared, and the log moved with a louder grating over the gravelly soil to the fourth and last obstacle, about thirty yards away, and paused. "i believe, lieutenant," said cunningham, "i could hit those fellows' legs now from the chimney." "all right, sergeant. close your door and go up and try it," i replied. "a redskin with a broken leg can do us as little injury as one with a broken head." the words were hardly spoken and the sergeant had barely reached the fireplace, when, as if in anticipation of this movement, two figures leaped over the end of the log nearest the perpendicular rock, ran to the corner formed by the cabin and the wall, and by the aid of the dovetailed ends of the logs clambered quickly to the roof. i sent a shot at them, but it had no effect. no sooner had they reached the roof than they threw the flaming brands and coal of our bonfire down the chimney, where they broke into fragments and rolled over the floor, setting fire to the scattered straw and plumes. busy putting stops into the windows, and fastening them and the doors, we could do nothing to extinguish the fire before it got well under way. a blanket was thrown over the top of the chimney to prevent a draught, and soon the whole interior was thick with stifling smoke. the horses plunged frantically, sending the fire in every direction. our eyes began to smart painfully, and we felt ourselves suffocating and choking in the thick and poisonous atmosphere. to remain in the house was to be burned alive; to leave it was to perish, perhaps, in a still more horrible way. just as i was on the brink of despair, the sergeant gasped rather than spoke: "they are here, lieutenant. hark! hark!" ping! ping! we heard the sound of rifle-shots, accompanied by a good, honest, anglo-saxon cheer. was there ever sweeter music? the war-whoops ceased, the blanket was quickly withdrawn from the chimney-top, and two thuds on the east side of the cabin showed the indians had left the roof. a general scurrying of feet and other thuds down the perpendicular wall back of the spring were evidence that the besiegers were in full and demoralized flight. we threw the doors open, and our friends rushed in, and before a greeting was uttered feet and butts of rifles were sweeping brands and straw into the fireplace, and the roaring draught was fast clearing the air. before i had fairly recovered my sight, and while still engaged in wiping away the tears the smoke had excited to copious flow, i heard a sobbing voice near me say: "oh, franky, brother, if it had not been for dear little vicky what would have happened to you?" blinking my eyes open, i saw the boy corporals with their right arms about each other's neck, holding their spencers by the muzzles in their left hands. "why, henry," i said, "you did not make that march with the men?" "couldn't keep him back, sir," answered corporal coffey. "said his place was with his brother. made the march like a man, and fired the first shot when we turned the bluff." we shook hands all round, and then went out to see whether the volleys of the rescuing party had inflicted any punishment upon the navajos. two dead indians lay near the cabin, and farther away the one that had fallen when attempting to remove the obstacle before the log. there were traces of others having been wounded. a fire was promptly kindled outside the cabin, and we sat about it for a time to rest and enjoy a lunch. the horses had been somewhat singed about the legs, but were not disabled. an hour afterwards sergeant cunningham placed corporal henry on his pony, chiquita, and we started for the valleys. at daybreak the day after we left jemez we reached camp, and on the evening of the same day the detachment we had left behind for a rest also arrived, without adventure on the march. cordova and his son at once set out on the trail of the navajos, whom we reported to be in possession of their animals, to ascertain why they were in our vicinity. after four days' scouting the mexicans returned with the information that they found the indians had left their camp on the jemez road after their defeat. they had struck straight through the hills for the rio grande, where they joined the main body, the same which had attacked us the day after our arrival in the valleys, and which had recently made several successful raids on the flocks and herds near peña blanca and galisteo. it was the guide's opinion that the party which had besieged me in the cabin had been to the valleys to see what chance there was of running captured stock through there. their report must have been favorable, for cordova said a detachment of forty-seven navajos was now encamped in los vallecitos, apparently intending to pass us the following night with a large number of cattle, horses, mules, and sheep. i began at once to make preparations to retake the stolen stock and to capture the navajos. that the navajos, if they were watching our movements, might not surmise we knew of their presence near us, i ordered the scouting party and huntsmen not to go out next morning, and all the men to keep within the limits of the parade. the next evening i marched all the company, except the guard, including the boy corporals, by way of the reserved trail into the valley of st. anthony, and entered la puerta from the western end. this was done for fear some advance-guard of the redmen might witness our movement if we went by the usual way, and because so large a party might leave a trail visible to the keenly observant enemy even by starlight, and there would be moonlight before we could cross the valley. it was my intention to make an ambush in la puerta. in the narrowest part of that cañon, where it was barely fifty yards wide, the walls rose perpendicularly on each side. a hundred yards east and west of this narrowest portion of the pass were good places of concealment. i placed sergeant cunningham and thirteen men at the western end, and took as many and the boys with me to the eastern. the sergeant was instructed to keep his men perfectly quiet until the head of the herd had passed their place of concealment, and then, under cover of the noise made by the moving animals, to slip down into the cañon, and when the rear of the herd came up make a dash across the front of the indians and begin firing, taking care not to hit us. for myself, i intended to drop into the pass with my detachment when the navajo rear had passed, deploy, and bag the whole party and the booty. it was a long and tiresome wait before the raiders appeared. the men had been told that they might sleep, and many of them had availed themselves of the permission. the moon rose soon after ten o'clock, and made our surroundings plainly visible in the rarefied atmosphere peculiar to the arid region of the plains and rockies. i sat on a bowlder and watched through the tedious hours until three o'clock, when corporal frank approached from the direction of the place where his brother was sleeping. "what sound is that, mr. duncan?" he whispered. i listened intently, and presently heard the distant bleating of sheep, and soon after the deeper low of an ox. "the indians must be approaching," i replied. "you may stir up the men. be careful that no noise is made." i continued to listen, and after a long time noticed a sound like the rushing of wind in a pine forest. it was the myriad feet of the coming flocks and herds, hurrying along the grassy valley. the men began to assemble about me, all preserving perfect silence, listening for the approaching indians. another half-hour passed, and over a roll in the surface of the valley, revealed against the sky, looking many times their actual size in the uncertain perspective, appeared two tall figures, whose nearer approach showed to be mounted indians piloting the captured stock, which followed close behind. "corporal henry," i said, "drop carefully down into the trail and skirt closely along the wall until you come to sergeant cunningham's position, and tell him the indians are close by. tell him also to allow the two indians in advance to pass unmolested." i sent this order by the younger boy because i suspected he was feeling that corporal frank's expedition to jemez, with the adventures of the return trip, had given him a certain prominence to be envied. i meant henry should divide honors with his brother hereafter. the little corporal silently disappeared beneath the wall, and a few minutes afterwards the two indians entered the defile, and the goats and sheep, which had been spread widely over the open valley, scampered, crowded, and overleaped one another as they closed into the narrow way. there seemed to be fully two thousand of them, intermingled with a motley herd of horses, mules, asses, and kine of all sizes and descriptions, numbering three hundred or more, all driven by a party of seventy-three indians. the cattle-thieves were evidently congratulating themselves upon having run the gantlet of the military camp and being out of danger, for they had abandoned the traditional reserve of the indian race, and were talking loudly and hilariously as they passed my wing of the ambuscade. the indians fell completely into the trap, and they and the cattle with them were captured without any difficulty. during the winter our supply of grain ran short, and i sent a party, with the cordovas as guides, to jemez. they were unable to get through the snow, and the elder cordova was so badly frost-bitten that in spite of all we could do he died in the camp. then i went with a larger party, and was successful. on june 1st orders came to break up the camp, and on the 9th the accumulated stores of nineteen months' occupation were packed, and with a train of ten wagons we set out for santa fé. vi crossing the river two days after my arrival at the territorial capital i was ordered to proceed alone to los pinos, a town two hundred miles south, in the valley of the rio grande, and report to captain bayard, commanding officer of a column preparing for a march to arizona. on reaching algodones, on the eastern bank of the great river, i was visited by a catholic priest. he told me that manuel perea, the mexican lad with whom the boy corporals were so friendly at santa fé, was a prisoner in the hands of elarnagan, a chief of the navajos. he begged me to assist in his release, and i promised to do all i could, consistently with my military duty. two days after arriving at los pinos, where i found a troop of california volunteer cavalry and also another troop of new mexican volunteers, the boy corporals unexpectedly arrived. colonel burton had changed his plans and had allowed them to accompany me. they at once asked to be assigned to duty, and i promised to consult with captain bayard. my interview with him concluded, i returned to my tent and found the boys busy in fitting up two cot bedsteads, spreading mats before them, hanging a small mirror to the rear tent-pole, and arranging their marching outfit as they proposed to set it up at every encampment between the rio grande and prescott. "did you have this tent pitched for our use, sir?" asked henry. "i did not know you were coming, corporal, so that is impossible. your tent was placed here some days ago by the post commander, for the accommodation of visiting officers who have since gone. captain bayard has assigned it to you." "then we are to have the tent to ourselves?" "yes." "isn't that just jolly, frank?" "fine. to-morrow we'll place a short rail across the back for our saddles and saddle-blankets, two pegs in the tent-pole for bridles, and raise a box somewhere for curry-combs and brushes." "can't we have vic here, too, sir?" asked henry. "and leave me all alone?" i replied. "you wouldn't mind it, would you, sir?" "well, i'll leave it to vic. you may make a bed for her, and we'll see which she will occupy--yours, or her old bed near mine." "all right, sir; we'll try it to-night." "now something about yourselves, boys. your tent is to be always pitched on the left of mine; you are to take your meals with the officers, and your ponies will be taken care of by one of the men who--" "that will not do, sir," interrupted frank. "father has always required us to take care of our arms, clothing, and horses like other soldiers, just as we always did in the valleys, you know. he says an officer who rides on a march, particularly an infantry officer, should not require a soldier who has marched on foot to wait upon him." "very well; do as you choose." i returned to my own tent and went to bed. placing two candles on a support near my pillow, i tucked the lower edge of the mosquito-bar under the edge of my mattress, and, settling back comfortably, proceeded to read the last instalment of news from "the states"--news which had been fifteen days on the way from the missouri. as i read of battle, siege, and march i was conscious that the boys were having some difficulty in inducing vic to remain with them. when at last all was quiet, except their regular and restful breathing, a soft nose was thrust up to my pillow, and i opened an aperture in the netting large enough to exchange affectionate greetings, and vic cuddled down on her bed beside mine and went to sleep. this was always her custom thereafter. while she was very fond of the boys, and spent most of her waking hours with them, no persuasion or blandishments could prevent her, when she knew the boys had dropped into unconsciousness, from returning to my tent, offering me a good-night assurance of her unchanged affection, and going to sleep upon her old bed. the time had now come for us to begin our march to arizona. company f had arrived, and the boy corporals were again in possession of their beautiful horses. grain, hay, and careful attendance had put new graces into the ponies' shapes, and kind treatment had developed in each a warm attachment for its young master. the first day of our march was spent in crossing the rio grande del norte and making camp four miles beyond the opposite landing. there was a ferry-boat at los pinos, operated by the soldiers of the post, capable of taking over four wagons at a time. we rose at an earlier hour than usual, and by daybreak our train of eighty-nine wagons, drawn by five hundred and thirty-four mules, was on its way to the river. the two boy corporals joined me as i followed the last wagon. mounted on their handsome animals, with carbines on their right hips, revolvers in their belts, portmanteaus behind their saddles, and saddle-pouches on each side, they were, indeed, very warlike in appearance. the two detachments of cavalry and their officers, accompanied by a paymaster and a surgeon, proceeded at once to the river, crossed and went into camp, leaving the infantry and its officers to perform the labor of transferring, from one shore to the other, wagons and mules, a herd of three hundred beef cattle, and a flock of eight hundred sheep. the boy corporals also remained behind to act as messengers, should any be required. mules and oxen swam the stream, but the sheep were boated across. on the last trip over our attention was attracted by a sudden shouting up-stream, followed by a rapid discharge of fire-arms. in the river, less than a quarter of a mile distant, were several objects making their way towards the western shore. when near the bank, and in shoaling water, we saw the objects rise, until three indians and three ponies stood revealed. as soon as they reached the shore the men sprang into their saddles and rode rapidly away. a shout from our rear caused us to look towards the shore we had just left, and we saw the post-adjutant sitting on his horse on the embankment. he said: "three navajos have escaped from the guard. send word to captain bayard to try to recapture them. if they get away they will rouse their people against you, and your march through their country will be difficult." [illustration: "mounted, the boys presented a warlike appearance"] i wrote a brief message, handed it to corporal frank, and when the boat touched the western landing he dashed off at full speed in the direction of camp. the afternoon was well advanced when henry and i, with the infantry, entered the first camp of our march. we found frank awaiting our arrival, and learned from him that captain bayard had sent two detachments of cavalry in pursuit of the indians, and that they had returned after a fruitless attempt to follow the trail. on our first evening in camp many of the officers and civilians gathered in groups about the fires for protection against the mosquitoes, to smoke, to discuss the route, and to relate incidents of other marches. captain bayard took from his baggage a violin, and, retiring a little apart, sawed desperately at a difficult and apparently unconquerable exercise. there i found him at the end of a tour of inspection of train and animals, and obtained his sanction to a plan for the employment of the boy corporals. i proceeded to tell the boys what their duties would be. corporal frank was to see to the providing of wood, water, and grass while we were on the march. he was further instructed that he was to conform his movements to mine, and act as my messenger between the train, the main body, and the rear guard. these were to be his regular duties, but he was to hold himself in readiness for other service, and be on the alert for any emergency. the odometer with which to measure the distance to prescott was placed in charge of corporal henry, and he was told to strap this to the spokes near the hub of the right hind wheel of the last wagon in the train, taking care that the wagon should start from the same point where it had turned from the main road into camp the previous day. he was to report the distance we had marched to the commanding officer at guard-mounting, which, on the march, always takes place in the evening instead of morning, as at posts and permanent camps. after reaching fort wingate, and taking up the march beyond, he would ride with the advance, and act as messenger of communication with the rear; but until then he would ride with his brother and me. the next morning found all ready for a start at three o'clock. the boy corporals found it a hardship to be wakened out of a sound sleep to wash and dress by starlight and sit down to a breakfast-table lighted by dim lanterns. there was little conversation. all stood about the camp-fires in light overcoats or capes, for western nights are always cool. when the boys and i started to ride out of camp we were, for a few moments, on the flank of the infantry company. it was noticeable that although the men were marching at "route step," when they are not required to preserve silence, few of them spoke, and very rarely, and they moved quite slowly. corporal henry, at the end of a prolonged yawn, asked, "are we going to start at this hour every morning, sir?" "yes, usually," i replied. "how far do we go to-day, frank?" "eighteen miles is the scheduled distance," answered frank. "how fast do men march?" "three miles an hour," said i. "then we shall be in camp by ten o'clock. i don't see the sense of yanking a fellow out of bed in the night." "of course, henry, there's a good reason for everything done in the army," observed frank, with soldierly loyalty. "where's the sense of marching in the dark when the whole distance can be done in six hours, and the sun rises at five and sets at seven? i prefer daylight." evidently our youngest corporal had not had his sleep out, and was out of humor. "will you please explain, sir?" asked frank. "with pleasure," i answered. "it is more comfortable to march in the early morning, when it is cool. marches rarely exceed fifteen or twenty miles a day, except where the distance between watering-places is more than that. sometimes we are obliged to march forty miles a day." "seems to me the officers are very tender of the men," observed the sleepy henry. "fifteen and twenty miles a day, and five or six hours on the road, can't tire them much." "why not try a march on foot, henry?" suggested his brother. "it might prove a useful experience." "let me suggest something better," said i. "tie your pony to the back of that wagon, and crawl in on top of the bedding and have your nap out." henry disdained to reply, but with a long and shivering yawn relapsed into silence. in a little more than six hours we reached the rio puerco, and forded its roily, brackish current to a camping-place on the other side. harry, who with daylight and warmth had recovered his good-humor, examined the odometer and reported the distance travelled to be 18.65 miles. he entered in his note-book that the spanish name puerco meant, as a noun, hog, and as an adjective, dirty. he thought the river well named. he also mentioned that on the eastern side of the stream there was an excellent camping-place, but that much pains had been taken to ford it to a very poor one. after pondering this apparently unreasonable movement he asked: "why did we not camp on that grassy park on the opposite side?" "i suppose it appears to you there can be no good reason for crossing to this side?" i asked, in reply. "it does seem even more absurd than starting on a march just after midnight--something like going into a wood-shed to rest on a wood-pile when one could as well go into a parlor and rest on a divan." "and certainly," added frank, "we have gained nothing in distance in crossing. the march is to be short to-morrow." "still, boys, there is quite as good a reason for doing this as for starting early to avoid the heat of the day. these far western streams have a trick of rising suddenly; very rarely, to be sure, but frequently enough to cause commanding officers to be on their guard. a rainfall fifty or seventy-five miles up-stream might send down a volume of water that would make it impassable for several hours or several days, according as the fall is large or small; so the rule in the army is, 'cross a stream before camping.'" "have you ever been caught by a rise, sir?" "twice. once on this very stream, near its mouth. i was in command of a small escort to a train. the wagon-master advised me to cross, but i was tempted by a fine meadow on the lower side, in contrast to a rough place on the opposite side, to take my chances. i was compelled to remain there five days. the other delay was on the gallina; but that was rising when we approached and we had no choice about crossing. we were delayed that time but two days." "i heard the paymaster and surgeon grumbling about the folly of crossing just now," said frank. "very likely; this is their first march in the far west." "the captain and lieutenants heard them, but did not explain, as you have. why was that?" "there are two reasons. one is that in the army, as well as out of it, 'tenderfeet' are left to learn by experience; the other is that our surgeon resents being cautioned or advised. now, boys, after dinner you had better take a _siesta_. by doing so you will find it less difficult to make an early start to-morrow morning." "thank you," replied frank. "tom clary and george hoey have told us that a nap is the correct thing after dinner on the march. henry and i are going to try it." "i am sorry, sir," added henry, "that i was so ill-humored this morning. i will try to do as the soldiers do when they first start out--say nothing till day breaks." "the early start was a surprise to you; you will be prepared for it hereafter." a reverberating peal of thunder interrupted our conversation and caused us to glance towards the west. there we saw a mass of dark clouds rolling down upon us. bolt after bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky and from sky to earth, and peal after peal of thunder crashed upon our ears. vii a swollen stream and stolen pony it was our custom at all camps to park the supply-train in the form of an oval, with the tongues of the wagons outward and the wheels locked. an entrance, the width of a wagon, was left at one end. when, therefore, it became certain that a tempest was about to break upon us, using the boy corporals as messengers, the chief wagon-master received orders from me to drive up the mules and corral them within the circle of wagons, and the commissary stock was hurried under the shelter of a rocky mesa west of the camp. all this was to prevent a stampede should the coming tempest be accompanied by wind and hail. tent-pins were driven in deeper, guys tightened, cavalry horses driven up, hobbled, and secured to picket ropes, loose articles thrown into wagons, and every precaution taken to be in readiness for the storm. we had not long to wait before the rain came down in torrents. in an incredibly short time the water was flowing swiftly down the slope to the river. it gathered against our tent, and finding the frail structure must go, we seized everything portable, dashed into the furious downpour, and climbed to the tops of surrounding bowlders. through the sheets of rain we could dimly see the cavalry horses standing knee-deep in water, men looking out of the covered wagons, into which they had crawled for shelter, or standing, like ourselves, on the bowlders, their bodies covered with ponchos and gum blankets. wall-tents, the sides of which had been looped up when pitched, stood with the flood flowing through them; cranes, upon which hung lines of kettles in preparation for dinner, standing alone, their fires and firewood swept away. the whole country as far as we could see was one broad sheet of rushing water, and the river, which was little more than a rill when we crossed it a few hours before, now rolled and boomed, a torrent several fathoms deep and dirtier than ever. the storm continued little over half an hour, and with the return of sunlight the surface water rapidly disappeared. demoralized tents were then set up, baggage and bedding examined, and the wet articles exposed to the sun; and before night, except for the booming of the river, little remained to remind us that we had been through a storm. just before retreat, frank, henry, and i stood on the bank of the river watching the trunks and branches of trees rush past, and the occasional plunge of a mass of earth undermined by the current. "well," said frank, after silently contemplating the scene a few moments, "what you told us about crossing a stream before camping upon it has proved true, sir, and very quickly, too." "yes; i think even the paymaster and surgeon must be congratulating themselves they are on this side of that flood," i replied. next morning we resumed our march at the usual hour, and passed over 23.28 miles to a deserted mexican town and indian pueblo. on the following day we crossed a chain of hills into the valley of the rio gallo. as we debouched from a deep ravine we caught sight of the pueblo of laguna, illuminated by the sun, just rising, behind us. the town stands upon a rocky eminence overlooking the river, which waters, by irrigation, its large and well-cultivated valley. when within four miles of it i proposed to the boys that we should hasten forward in advance of the wagons and visit the town. we galloped on, and were hospitably received by the indian governor, who did the honors of the community in person. he showed us the interior of the terraced buildings, and conducted us through the subterranean _estufa_ where, for centuries before the invention of the friction-match, the indians kept their sacred fire--fire made sacred through the difficulty of obtaining it or rekindling it when once extinguished--and so watched day and night by sleepless sentinels. when we entered the town we left our horses hitched to the willows on the bank of the irrigating ditch, near the wall of the first house, and i ordered the dog vic to remain with them. three-quarters of an hour afterwards vic looked into the _estufa_ from above, gave three sharp barks, and dashed away. we were so deeply interested in the examination of a lot of scalps, quaint pottery, weapons of warfare, etc., that we paid no attention to her. presently she appeared a second time, repeated her barking, and ran off again. a few moments later the dog again showed herself at the sky-light, and thrusting her head downward continued to bark until i approached the foot of the ladder. as i did so she uttered a sound of anxiety, or distress, and disappeared. "something must be the matter with our animals, boys," i remarked. "frank, go and see what has happened, while henry and i take leave of our host." corporal frank climbed the ladder two rungs at a step, while henry and i remained to thank the governor for his kindness and bestow some trifling gifts upon the rabble of children that had followed us closely throughout our visit. we then ascended the ladder and started for the place where we had left our animals. hurrying down the narrow alley we met frank, who was nearly breathless with exertion and excitement. while yet at a considerable distance from us he shouted: "chiquita's gone! can't see her anywhere!" hastening to the willows i found that henry's pony was indeed missing. i thought she had simply broken loose, and would be found somewhere in the neighborhood, so mounted and made a hasty search. i saw our train several miles away, toiling up a long ascent, but there was no sign of a riderless pony on the road. on my return to the willows henry said: "chiquita did not break away, sir; her halter-strap was too strong, and i tied it with a cavalry hitch. she must have been unfastened by some one. perhaps these pueblos have stolen her." "she may have been stolen, as you suggest," i replied, "but not by the pueblos. we were their guests, and our property was sacred." the indians, seeing our trouble, gathered about us, and among them i saw the governor. making my way to him, i explained what had happened. he turned to his people and addressed them in his own tongue. a young girl approached and said something, at the same time pointing to the southwest. looking in the direction indicated, over a long stretch of broken country, bordered on the west by an irregular range of sandstone mesas, i thought i saw a moving object near the foot of a rugged bluff, several miles distant; but before i could adjust my field-glass the object had turned the bluff and disappeared. one thing, however, i did see--it was vic, sitting on a knoll less than a mile from the pueblo. "i wonder we have not thought of vic's absence all this time," i said; "there she is, on the trail of the thief, wondering why we do not pursue." "the good doggie," said henry. "she did her best to tell us chiquita was stolen, and she means to do her best to retake her." turning to the governor, i asked, "are there any navajos about here?" "there is a large band in the _cienaga_, three leagues from here. the lost pony will be found there." i directed henry to run after the train and report what had happened. "wave your handkerchief," said i, "and some one will come to meet you. if it should be a mounted man, take his animal, overtake captain bayard, tell him all you know, and say that frank and i have gone in pursuit, and that i request him to send a detachment of cavalry to look us up." henry started off with a celerity begotten of his anxiety at the loss of his pony and the fear that his brother might fall into danger unless a body of troopers followed him closely. frank and i then galloped towards vic. as soon as the dog saw us approaching she sprang into the air, shook herself in an ecstasy of delight, then put her nose to the earth, and went steadily on in advance, threading her way through clumps of sage-brush and greasewood and along the ravines. the tracks of a shod pony satisfied us that we were on the trail of chiquita and her navajo rider. the boy had kept well down in the ravines and depressions, in order to screen himself from observation and possible pursuers. we, however, were not obliged to follow his tracks; vic did that, and we took the general direction from her, cutting across turnings and windings, and making much better progress than the thief could have done. an hour's ride brought us to the bluff behind which i had seen an object disappear. vic turned it and began to ascend the almost dry bed of the stream, in the bottom of which i could see occasional depressions at regular distances, as if made by a horse at a trot. soon the brook enlarged, becoming a flowing stream, and the tracks were no longer visible. that the brook flowed from the _cienaga_, or marsh, where the navajos were rendezvoused, was an easy inference. the indian boy was endeavoring to reach that place with the stolen pony. directing frank to keep up the left side of the stream, and to look for tracks indicating that chiquita had left its bed, i took the right side and hastened on. willows now began to appear along the banks, showing that we had reached a permanent flow of water. twice we came to masses of bowlders which made it impossible for a horse to travel in the stream, and we found that the pony had skirted them. we had now reached a point where a small brook entered the larger one from the right. we dismounted at the confluence to make an observation. vic suddenly began to bark furiously; then a yelp and a continued cry of pain showed that the dog was hurt, and presently she appeared with an arrow through the thick of her neck. advancing cautiously i caught sight of chiquita in a cleft of the rock at my left, and an indian boy standing behind her and aiming an arrow over the saddle. a sharp twang, and the missile flew through my hair between my right ear and my hat-rim. the boy then sprang forward, and raised a knife as if to hamstring the pony. but it was not to be, for a carbine spoke, and the raised arm of the indian fell at his side. "well done, frank!" i called. we ran forward to capture the young navajo, but he quickly disappeared behind a large rock and was seen no more. returning to the main brook with chiquita, we tied the horses to the willows and began a search for vic. i called her by all the pet names to which she was accustomed, but received no response. i searched over as great a distance as i dared, with a consciousness that a band of navajos was not far distant. reluctantly abandoning our search, we were preparing to return to the train and escort when we descried a large war-party of indians riding towards us from the direction of the _cienaga_. it was at once evident they saw us, for, raising a terrific war-whoop, their irregular mass broke for us in a furious charge. death certainly awaited us if captured, and this thought prompted us to leave our exposed position instantly. leading chiquita, and telling frank to follow, i dashed down the stream in the direction of the fort wingate road. as we flew along, feeling positive that the indians would overtake us, i eagerly surveyed the rocky wall on our left, hoping to find a break in which we could shelter ourselves and hold the enemy in check until our friends arrived. but no opening appeared, and it seemed impossible for us to reach laguna alive. on we went into the dense bushes, a hail of bullets and a rush of arrows about our ears. but at this moment the clear notes of a cavalry trumpet sounded "deploy," and the california cavalry crashed through the willows and we were saved. they broke into a skirmish-line behind us, but only a few shots were fired and the navajos were gone. being an escort, we could not delay for further operations against the enemy. our duty was to return at once to the train. frank and i were both uninjured, but a bullet had raised the chevron on the boy's sleeve, and another had shattered the ivory hilt of his revolver. the volunteers dismounted for a rest, and i took the opportunity to make a further search for vic, my faithful companion and friend. leaving my horse with frank, i started towards the place where i had last seen her. as i descended a shallow ravine to the willow-clad brook i came upon an unexpected sight, and paused to witness it. on his knees, close to the water, his back towards me, was corporal henry. extended at his left side was vic, held closely under his left arm, her plumy tail hanging dejectedly in my direction. an occasional dispirited wag showed that she appreciated the kindness being shown her. the boy was evidently busy at something that elicited from the animal, every now and then, faint cries of pain. i heard something snap, and saw him lay two parts of an arrow on the ground to his right; then he drew a handkerchief from his pocket, dipped it in the brook, and apparently washed a wound. all the time the boy could be heard addressing his patient in soothing tones, occasionally leaning his face against her head caressingly. "poor little vicky! nice, brave doggie! there, there; i will not hurt you more than i can help. they can't shoot you again, girlie, for lots of your friends are here now. you shall ride back to the train on chiquita with me. we'll own chiquita together after this." i felt a little delicacy about breaking in upon this scene and letting the boy know i had overheard all his fond talk to vic, so withdrew into a clump of bushes and began calling the dog. henry promptly answered: "here she is, sir. this way. she wants to come, but i think she had better not." "is she much hurt?" i asked, approaching them. "not dangerously, sir. this arrow passed through the top of her neck. i notched it and broke it, so as not to be obliged to draw the barb or plume through the wound. she is weak from her long run and loss of blood. the wound might be bound up if her collar was off." "i will remove it and not put it on again until the sore heals," i answered, and, taking a key from my pocket, i took off the collar and assisted in dressing the wound. after petting vic for a while, and using quite as much "baby talk" in doing so as henry had in dressing the wound, i asked the boy how he came to return with the cavalry. "i ran ahead, as you told me to, sir, and the wagon-master came to meet me. he lent me his mule, and i rode on to captain bayard and made my report. the captain sent lieutenant baldwin and his men, and lent me a spare horse to come along as guide." "have you seen chiquita?" "at a distance. is she all right?" "yes, but very tired. let us join the troop, for it is time we were on our way to the train." our return ride was at a walk. henry turned his cavalry horse over to a trooper to be led, and mounted chiquita with vic in his arms. arrived in camp he took the dog to the surgeon for treatment, and in a few days she was as lively as ever. viii over the divide--a corporal missing fort wingate was reached in two more marches--six in all from the rio grande--and we went into camp for two days for rest and some needed repairs to wagons before undertaking the second and longer section of our military journey--a section upon which at that time no white man had set up a home. recalling my promise to the priest who had interviewed me in behalf of señora perea, i made inquiries of the port wingate officers concerning her son. none of them had heard more than she already knew, but a scout claimed he had recently seen a mexican boy herding ponies for the navajo chief elarnagan, thirty miles north of zuñi. the evening before resuming our march captain bayard informed me that there was an emigrant family camped half a mile to the west of fort wingate, which had been awaiting our arrival in order to travel to arizona under our protection. he told me to assign the family a place in the train. i went to their camp, and found it located in a grove of cottonwoods a short distance out, on the arizona trail. mr. arnold, the head of the family, never ceased his occupation while i was talking to him. he was constructing a camp-table and benches of some packing-boxes he had procured from the post trader. he was a tall, well-proportioned man, of dark complexion and regular features, with black, unkempt hair and restless brown eyes. he was clothed in a faded and stained butternut suit of flannel, consisting of a loose frock and baggy trousers, the legs of the trousers being tucked into the tops of road-worn boots. his hat was a battered and frayed broad-brimmed felt. mrs. arnold sat on a stool superintending the work, bowed forward, her elbows on her knees, holding a long-stemmed cob-pipe to her lips with her left hand, removing it at the end of each inspiration to emit the smoke, which curled slowly above her thin upper lip and thin, aquiline nose. she was a tall, angular, high-shouldered, and flat-chested woman, dark from exposure to wind, sun, and rain, her hair brown in the neck, but many shades lighter on the crown of her head. her eyes were of an expressionless gray. a brown calico of scant pattern clung in lank folds to her thin and bony figure. the three daughters were younger and less faded types of their mother. each was clad in a narrow-skirted calico dress, and each was stockingless and shoeless. mother and daughters were dull, slow of speech, and ignorant. after staying long enough to give the necessary instructions and exchange civilities with each member of the family in sight, i was riding slowly back to the roadway, intending to take a brisk canter to the fort, when corporal henry's voice called from a clump of cedars at the back of the arnold family's wagons. "oh, mr. duncan, may i speak to you a moment?" turning my horse in the direction of the voice, i saw my young friend approaching, switching a handsome riding-whip in his hand. "you haven't seen all the family, sir," he said. "i have seen mr. and mrs. arnold and those the mother said were all their children--the three barefooted girls." "but there is one more girl, sir, a very pretty one, too--a niece. she's back of the wagons making friends with vic and chiquita. you must not go without seeing her." i went back with henry and saw a girl of about fourteen standing by chiquita, holding her by the bridle-rein and smoothing her neck, while vic nestled at her feet. she seemed very attractive at my first casual glance, impressing me favorably. a blonde, possessed of abundant flaxen tresses held in a band of blue ribbon, having a complexion which her recent journey had tanned and sprinkled with abundant freckles, but giving promise of rare beauty with added years and less exposure to sun and wind. her clothing was fashionably made and well fitted, and her delicate feet were encased in neat boots and stockings. "miss arnold," said henry, "permit me to introduce our quartermaster, lieutenant duncan--and mr. duncan," continued the boy, "it gives me pleasure to present to you miss brenda arnold." the quality, modulation, and refinement of the voice in which the girl assured me of her pleasure in meeting me, confirmed my first impression. "but how did you make the acquaintance of corporal henry burton, miss arnold?" i asked. "i was riding back from the fort, sir, where i had been to mail some letters, and my pony, gypsy, lost a shoe and came near falling. the stumble caused me to drop a package, and mr. burton chanced to come up and restore it to me, and he also picked up gypsy's shoe. he accompanied me to camp, and since we arrived has been giving me the history of vic, sancho, and chiquita." "and that, of course, included something of the history of their devoted attendants?" "yes, i have learned something of the gallant deeds of corporals frank and henry burton and lieutenant duncan at los valles grandes and on the march here. when i meet corporal frank i shall know you all." "he will present himself to-morrow, no doubt," i observed. "but about that pony's shoe; do you want it reset?" "yes, but who can do it?" "at our next camp, to-morrow, our soldier-blacksmith shall set it." "but i do not belong to government, sir." "but part of this government belongs to you," replied henry. "i'll lead gypsy to the forge for you, and private sattler shall shoe her as he does chiquita, and polish the shoes, too." the arnold family history, gathered incidentally on the march, and at a period later in my story, was briefly this: brenda was the only daughter of mr. arnold's only brother, and had been reared in a large inland city of new york. her father and mother had recently perished in a yachting accident, and the young girl had been sent to her paternal uncle in colorado. there were relatives on the mother's side, but they were scattered, two brothers being in europe at the time of the accident. brenda had reached her western uncle just as he was starting on one of his periodical moves--this time to arizona. the different social status of the families of the two brothers was unusual, but not impossible in our country. one of the brothers was ambitious, of steady habits, and possessed of a receptive mind; the other was idle, impatient of restraint, with a disinclination to protracted effort of any kind. the distance to the first camp beyond fort wingate where we were sure to find water was twenty-two miles; and it being impossible for us to leave the post before three o'clock in the afternoon, we determined to make a dry camp five and a half miles out. when frank and henry learned that the start was not to be an early one they rode out to the arnold camp with the information, and the former was duly presented to miss brenda. gypsy was brought into the fort and shod, and returned to her mistress in season for the march. the evening was well advanced when we pitched our tents at the dry camp. horses and mules were turned out to graze for the first time without water, and although in this mountain region the grass was abundant, they did not cease to whinny and bray their discontent throughout the night. the sun dropped behind the mountain spurs, and we drew nearer and nearer the fires, adding a thicker garment as the twilight deepened into night. frank expressed the trend of thought by asking, "we now march into the heart of the navajo country, do we not, sir?" "not precisely through the heart, but along its southern border." "they'll try to make it lively for us, i suppose?" "they will certainly watch us closely, and will take advantage of any carelessness on our part." "do you think there is any chance of our finding manuel perea?" "hardly; he is too far off our route. we cannot leave the train to look him up." there was a suspicious choke in the voice of the little corporal when he said: "it is awful to think we are going so near the dear old boy and can do nothing for him. only think of his poor mother!" "i was told at the fort that she has offered five thousand dollars to the man who will bring manuel to her," said frank. "i wish i could bring him in for nothing." "brenda says she believes we shall find him somehow," henry said. "i hope she is right, for i saw his mother at algodones and promised her to rescue him or become a prisoner with him." "so she wrote me at los pinos," i replied. "well, something may turn up to enable us to serve his mother. let us go to bed." next morning we were again on the road by starlight. a march of sixteen miles brought us to agua fria--cold water. less than a hundred yards west of the spring was a ridge which did not rise fifty feet above it, and that was the "backbone" of the continent. the water of agua fria flowed into the atlantic; the springs on the other side of the ridge flowed into the pacific. the wagons of the arnold family travelled between the rear-guard and the government wagons. they consisted of two large "prairie schooners," drawn by three pairs of oxen each, a lighter wagon, drawn by four horses, beside which four cows, two ponies, and four dogs were usually grouped. the father and eldest daughter drove the ox-teams, the mother the horse-team, and two daughters rode the ponies. brenda's pony, gypsy, was her own property, purchased soon after she joined her uncle in colorado. as my station and frank's were with the rear-guard, or along the flanks of the train, miss brenda commonly rode with us after daylight. henry, after leaving fort wingate, rode with the advance. after supper at agua fria, corporal frank ordered all water-kegs to be filled, for the water at el morro, or inscription rock, our next camping-place, was poor. the distance was seventeen and a half miles. the next march was to the junction of the rio pescado and otter creek, twenty-two miles, and the following to arch spring, nineteen miles. this way took us through the ancient town of zuñi, an indian community described by the spanish priest, father marco de niga, in 1559. after leaving zuñi, a march of thirty-two miles brought us late in the evening to a spring variously called by mexicans, indians, and americans, ojo rodondo, wah-nuk-ai-tin-ai-z, and jacob's well. it is a funnel-shaped hole in a level plain, six hundred feet in diameter at the top, and one hundred and sixty feet deep. at the bottom of the hole is a pool of brackish, green water, reached by a spiral track around the wall. our cooks first procured a supply of water, and then the animals were driven down in detachments. they waded, swam, and rolled in the water until it was defiled for human use. an hour after our arrival four navajos appeared and were admitted to an interview with captain bayard, of whom they asked information concerning the terms offered their bands as an inducement to surrender and go upon the reservation. in reply to our questions they told us we would find plenty of water at navajo springs, seven miles from jacob's well, and that there had been a heavy rainfall at the west. as the indians were preparing to leave, corporal henry came forward and asked captain bayard to inquire for manuel perea. the captain thanked the boy for the suggestion, and did so; and we learned that a mexican boy, answering the description given, was assisting in herding the ponies of elarnagan, north of the twin buttes, at the head of carizo creek. "carizo creek," said frank, reflectively, turning over his schedule of distances, "that is 19.05 miles from here." [illustration: "corporal henry asked captain bayard to inquire for manuel perea"] "yes, and there are the twin buttes," said henry, pointing to two prominent peaks to the northwest. "can't we go there, sir? it cannot be more than thirty miles." "i would not be justified in leaving the road except upon an extraordinary emergency," replied captain bayard. "don't you suppose, sir, that elarnagan would give manuel up for the large reward his mother offers?" asked brenda arnold, who stood by the side of the boy corporals, an interested listener to all that had been said. the captain asked her question of the indians, and one of them replied that the chief had refused large offers heretofore, and would doubtless continue to do so. "cannot you scare him by a threat?" asked henry. "i will try it, corporal," answered the captain. then, turning to the navajos, he continued: "tell the chief, elarnagan, that it is not the part of a brave warrior to cause grief and sorrow to women and children; tell him that the great chief at santa fé is fast bringing this war to a close, and that two-thirds of his people are already on the reservation at bosque rodondo; tell him that when he surrenders--which will not be long from now--if the boy manuel is not brought in safe he will be severely punished." "thank you," said henry. the indians left in a northerly direction. at guard-mounting captain bayard announced that, owing to the recent fatiguing marches and the lack of good water, we would go no farther than navajo springs the following day, and that we would not break camp before eight o'clock. this announcement was received with pleasure; for since leaving agua fria little water had been drunk, it being either muddy, stagnant, or alkaline. the water at navajo springs was said to be pure. ten o'clock next morning found us at the springs. they were fifteen in number, clustered in an area of less than an acre. each was of the dimensions of a barrel set upon end in the ground, with a mere thread of water flowing from it--a thread which the fierce sun evaporated before it had flowed a rod from its source. it soon became plain to every one that we could not long remain there. the indians had said there had been a heavy rainfall at the west. five and one-twentieth miles over a rough, red, and verdureless country brought us to the rio puerco of the west. there was not a drop of water in it. the commanding officer ordered me to take ten cavalrymen, with shovels, and go on to carizo creek, and, if i found no running water, to sink holes in a line across its bed. the boy corporals were allowed to go with me. the distance to carizo was seven miles, over a high, intervening ridge, and the creek, when we reached it, was in no respect different from the one we had just left. we opened a line of holes six feet deep, but found very little water. sending corporal henry back with a message to captain bayard, we pushed on to lithodendron creek, a distance of thirteen miles, and found about an acre of water, four inches deep, in the bed of the stream, under the shadow of a sandstone cliff. it was miserable stuff--thick, murky, and warm--but it was better than nothing; i sent a soldier back to the command, and sat down with frank under the cliff to wait. the march had lengthened into thirty-two miles, over an exceedingly rough country, and it had been continuous, with no noonday rest, and under a broiling sun. frank and i sat a little apart from the soldiers, watching for the arrival of the approaching wagons. time dragged slowly on until after nine o'clock, when a faint "hee-haw" in the far distance gave us the first hint that the train was over the divide and that the unfailing scent of the mules had recognized the vicinity of water. an hour more passed before sergeant cunningham and half a dozen privates of the infantry company marched down to the roily pool and stooped for a drink. the rest of the men were straggling the length of the train, which arrived in sections, heralded by the vigorous and continued braying of the mules. no one felt inclined to pitch a tent, partly on account of extreme fatigue, but chiefly because the ground was rough and stony and cacti in endless variety strewed the surface, branching and clustering about the petrified trunks of giant trees which gave the creek its name. there was no grass in the vicinity, and no grain on the train. the animals when turned loose went to the pool and drank, and then wandered about the wagons calling for forage. lowing of cattle, bleating of sheep, braying of mules, and whinnying of horses never ceased as the suffering animals wandered in search of food. there was no fuel for fires in the midst of this petrified forest of prostrate trees, so hard bread and raw bacon made our supper. after a time i began to wonder why vic had not come to greet me. she had accompanied henry when he went back with my message, and i knew that if he had returned she would have looked me up immediately. i was about to search for her, when frank appeared, and asked, "have you seen my brother?" "no," i replied, "nor have i seen vic. they must be with the rear guard." "no, sir; they are not there. i have just seen the sergeant of the guard." "have you visited the arnolds?" "yes, sir; and miss brenda says they have not seen him since he came back from you." "is not corporal henry here?" asked captain bayard, who had approached and overheard a part of our conversation. "no, sir," i answered. "i sent him to you at carizo to say we had found no water." "he reported to me," the captain replied, "and i sent him back at once with orders for you to proceed to lithodendron, as you have done." "he did not reach me. i came here because it seemed the only thing to do." "henry not here!" and the captain and all of us began moving towards the train. "cause an immediate search to be made for him. examine every wagon. he may have got into a wagon and fallen asleep." it is needless to say, perhaps, that this search was participated in by nearly every individual in the command not too tired to stir. henry was known to all, and had in many gentlemanly and kindly ways acquired the respect and affection of soldiers and civilian employés. every wagon was examined, although from the first there was a general presentiment that it would be useless. in the wagon assigned to the use of the boy corporals and myself, henry's carbine and revolver were found, but frank said his brother had not worn them during the day. the mule and cavalry herds were examined for the cream-colored pony, but that also was missing. then the thought suggested itself that the lad might be wandering on the road we had just traversed; but an examination of the sergeant of the guard showed that to be impossible. but one conclusion could be arrived at, and that was that henry had been picked up by the navajos when returning from the command to my detachment on the carizo. at the conclusion of the search the officers gathered near their wagons for a consultation. frank remained apart, silent and miserable. captain bayard said: "it is impossible for us to make an immediate pursuit with horses in such a condition as ours. to attempt a pursuit over the barren region about us would be to invite failure and disaster. if we had mexican ponies, or indian ponies like those of the boys, we might start at once. the boy is probably a prisoner, and a delay of one or two days can make little difference to him." "but can we go with any better prospect of success to-morrow or next day?" i asked. "yes, a march of sixteen miles and a half will bring us to the colorado chiquito--a stream flowing at all times with pure water; there, also, we shall find abundance of grass and a recently established cavalry camp. i received a letter from the department commander before i left wingate, stating that lieutenant hubbell and forty new mexican cavalry had been ordered there three weeks ago. we shall find an abundance of grain at the camp, and can put our animals in good condition for an expedition into elarnagan's country in a few days. now, gentlemen, let us get such rest as we can, and start at an early hour in the morning." ix the rescuing party at the close of the consultation i rejoined corporal frank, and we went back to our former seat under the cliff. the boy was exceedingly depressed, and i did my best to persuade him that all would end well and his brother would be rescued. "but he may be dead, or dying," he answered to my arguments. "no; that is improbable. had he been killed, the indians would have taken particular pains to mutilate and place his body where the passing column would have seen it. that in itself is good evidence that he is living. the worst that is likely to happen is that he may be held for ransom or exchange." "but how _can_ i wait?" exclaimed frank. "i feel as though i ought to start now." "that would do no good," i replied. "you cannot find your brother's trail, nor could you follow it in the night." "i cannot help thinking, sir, that henry will send vicky with a message, and i fear that she cannot follow us so far. she must be fearfully hungry and thirsty. i feel as if i ought to go and meet her." "you may be right about the message. as vic was without her collar, she may not have been killed." the hours crept slowly on. the uneasy animals never ceased their walk backward and forward between the water and the wagons, uttering their discontent. towards midnight, overcome by the fatigues of the day, i fell into a doze, and did not wake until called at three. a breakfast similar to our supper was served, and we were ready for the road. the mules were harnessed while vigorously braying their protests against such ill usage, and, once under way, slowly drew the wagons to the summit of the divide between the lithodendron and the little colorado, a distance of twelve miles. i did not see frank while overlooking the drawing out of the train, but gave myself no anxiety on his account, thinking he had accompanied the advance. we had proceeded about a mile when a corporal of the guard ran after me, and reported that the arnolds were not hitching up. halting the train, i rode back and found brenda sitting by the road-side in tears. "what is the matter, miss arnold?" i asked. "oh, it is something this time," she sobbed, "that even you cannot remedy." "then you think i can generally remedy things? thank you." "you have always helped us, but i do not see how you can now." "what is the trouble, please?" "our poor oxen have worn their hoofs through to the quick. they were obliged to travel very fast yesterday, and over a flinty road, and their hoofs are worn and bleeding. uncle says we must remain behind." "perhaps things are not as bad as you think," i said. "let us go back and see." rising dejectedly, and by no means inspired by hope, brenda led the way to the arnold wagons, where i found the father and mother on their knees beside an ox, engaged in binding rawhide "boots" to the animal's feet. these boots were squares cut from a fresh hide procured from the last ox slaughtered by the soldier-butcher. the foot of the ox being set in the centre, the square was gathered about the ankle and fastened with a thong of buck-skin. "are all of your cattle in this condition, mr. arnold?" i asked. "only one other's 's bad's this, but all uv 'em's bad." "that certainly is a very bad-looking foot. i don't see how you kept up, with cattle in that condition." "had to, or git left." "that's where you make a mistake. we could not leave you behind." "i didn't think 'twould be uv any use t' say anythin'," said mr. arnold. "you seem t' have all you can haul now." "we have over three hundred head of oxen in our commissary herd that we purchased of a freighter. we can exchange with you. a beef is a beef. turn your cattle into our herd, and catch up a new lot. when we get to prescott you can have your old teams if you want them." "thank you agin, sir. i shall want 'em. they know my ways an' i know theirs." from the top of the divide the road, smooth and hard, descended to the river, ten miles away. at nine o'clock the head of the column had reached the banks, and a few moments later men and horses had partaken of the clear, cool water. as the infantry and cavalry moved away from the shore the wagons came down the decline, the mules braying with excitement at the sight of the water gleaming through the green foliage of the cottonwoods and the verdant acres of rich grass that stretched along the river-side. brakes were put on and wheels double-locked, until the harness could be stripped off and the half-frantic animals set free to take a turn in the river. sheep and oxen plunged down the banks and stood leg-deep in the current while they drank the grateful water. a few moments later all the refreshed animals were cropping the generous grass. as i was going to captain bayard i observed brenda arnold taking the odometer from its wheel and making an entry in a note-book. approaching her, i asked: "why are you doing that, miss brenda?" "i promised mr. frank i would do it until he and mr. henry return," was her answer. "promised frank? where has he gone?" "gone to find his brother." "and you knew what you are telling me when we were exchanging oxen this morning?" "yes, sir." "why did you not tell me?" "mr. frank said i must not before we arrived here." "have you no idea of the fearful danger in which he has placed himself?" "i know he has gone to find henry, and that he said he should find him," and the pretty girl betrayed her lack of confidence in the boy's project by sitting down in the grass and bursting into tears. "when did corporal frank start?" i asked. "last night. he gave sancho about a dozen pounds of hard bread, filled his canteen with water which aunt martha had filtered through sand, and asked me to attend to the odometer, and rode off in the darkness. don't you really believe the boys will return, sir?" "god grant they may," i answered; "but it is very doubtful." here was fresh trouble--trouble the whole command shared, but which rested heaviest upon captain bayard and myself. we were answerable to colonel burton for the manner in which we executed his trust. "ride down the valley," said the captain to me after i had concluded my account of what brenda had said, "and look for lieutenant hubbell's camp. it cannot be far from here. tell him to send me three days' grain for forty animals. while you are gone i will select a camp farther down stream, and within easy communication with him, park the train, and establish order. we will remain here until we know what has become of the boys." i found the new mexican cavalry camp three miles down the river, and obtained the desired forage. when i returned our new camp was established, fires burning, and cooking well under way. captain bayard informed me that the detachment of mexican cavalry which had accompanied us thus far would leave at this point and not rejoin us. "i have ordered baldwin to grain his horses and be ready to start in search of our boys at daybreak," continued the captain. "you will accompany him. we shall be in no danger, with hubbell so near. you can take thirty pounds of grain on your saddles, and you will find plenty of water on the carizo where it breaks from the hills." "how many days are we to stay out?" "you are to take five days' rations. if the boys are not found in that time i fear they will never be found." i went to bed early, and soon fell into a fitful slumber, which lasted until an hour before midnight. i arose, dressed, and sat down by the smouldering camp-fire, a prey to unpleasant reflections. suddenly the sound of a cantering horse approaching from the north fell upon my ears. what could it mean? i listened intently. the horse slowed down to a walk. he entered the camp. the voice of private tom clary, who was posted as sentinel no. 1, challenged: "halt!--who comes there?" "a friend--corporal frank burton," was the answer. "blest be the saints! corpril frank, laddie, is it you--and aloive?" said the sentinel, forgetting in his joy to continue the usual formality of the challenge or to call the corporal of the guard. springing from my seat i walked towards the sentinel, and there, by the light of the moon, i saw frank, mounted upon sancho, with vic in his arms. i reached up to take my dog, but the boy quickly exclaimed: "be careful, sir, be careful! she's badly hurt. here's the letter she brought. henry is alive." to attempt to relate all that now occurred would be impossible. in some mysterious manner the news of frank's arrival crept through the camp, and half-dressed figures of officers and soldiers gathered about the camp-fire, curious to listen to an account of the boy's adventure. one little, blanketed figure ran out of the darkness, caught vic's face between her two palms, nestled her cheek against it, and with a cheerful "good-night," disappeared as suddenly as she had come. i took vic in my lap as i sat on the ground, and by the light of a blazing pine-knot proceeded to examine her condition. i found the mouth and feet of the poor animal full of the spines of the _cholla_ cactus, a growth which is simply a mass of fine thorns. this cactus grows in patches, and when the dead clusters fall to the ground the spines stick to everything touching them. the dog had stepped into a bed of these bunched needles, and filled her feet, and in trying to remove them with her teeth had thrust them through cheeks, lips, and tongue, literally closing her jaws. her paws bristled with them like pin-cushions. as to frank's adventures: after leaving the arnolds, as already described by brenda, he retraced the route to carizo creek and to the rio puerco without seeing any sign of his brother. returning to the west he dismounted at the crossing of the carizo. he felt sure that if henry had been captured by the navajos he must have been taken in the dry bed of that creek. a long and patient search resulted in the discovery of tracks made by several ponies running along the eastern side of the carizo to the north and the hills. one of the set showed the print of iron shoes. frank mounted again and followed this trail up the valley for some hours. he was thinking about returning, when he saw a white object moving on a hill-side, far in advance. it seemed to tumble, rise, and go in a circle, then tumble, rise, and circle again. frank's curiosity was aroused, and he rode on to examine the object. a few hundred yards more revealed the fact that he had come upon the missing vic, and that something was seriously the matter with her. at first frank thought she was mad or in a fit, but as he came nearer she sat up and made demonstrations of joy at his approach. he dismounted, and found her in the condition already described. on the ground was a chip, neatly cut and shaven, which she was in vain attempting to take between her sealed jaws. frank understood the matter at once. whenever victoriana was sent on a message she was given a stick to deliver. it was plain that some one had sent her to either frank or me. of course, it could have been no one but henry. she had come thus far, and had stepped into a bed of _cholla_. in trying to remove the needles from her feet she had absolutely sealed her mouth; in the attempt to recover the chip she had made the movements that had attracted the boy's attention. nothing was written on the stick. around the dog's neck was tied a cravat of dirty buck-skin. untying and opening it, frank found the inner surface covered with writing, evidently traced in berry-juice with a quill or a stick. it read as follows: "captured by the navajos. am herding ponies north of twin buttes, at the head of carizo. come to butte with cavalry, and wave handkerchief from left peak about noon. if i do not come, look for me in plain north of butte. don't worry; i'm all right. "henry." i remained at the fire long after every one had returned to their beds or duty, busy in extracting the _cholla_ spines from vic's mouth and feet. the dog seemed to understand the necessity of the treatment she was receiving, and bore the pain submissively, with only occasional moans and cries, until the operation ended. she then received a drink of water, and went to bed with frank. at daybreak the rescue detachment left camp, retraced our route to the carizo, where corporal frank put us upon the trail of the indians. we climbed to the highest point reached by the path, and saw it descend on the opposite side to a brook, deep in the valley. here we halted, took the horses a short distance down the slope we had just ascended, picketed them in a grassy nook, and frank and i started to ascend the left peak. "mr. baldwin," i said, as i moved away, "when you see us start to return, saddle and bridle as rapidly as possible, so as to be ready for emergencies." "i'll do so. you can depend upon us to be ready when wanted," was the reply. we scrambled through a scattering growth of piñon and junipers for several yards, and at last came to a perpendicular shaft of sandstone twenty feet high, with a flat top. the diameter of the shaft was about fifty feet. "henry could not have come up here, or he never would have set us to attempt an impossibility," said frank, as his eyes ran up and down the rock. "perhaps it may not be so impossible as it appears," i replied. "let us walk round the butte." we passed to the right, and, having found a practicable place for attempting the ascent, accomplished the feat in a few moments. on the flat summit we found the remains of former fires that had undoubtedly been lighted as signals. the view was grand and extensive. directly to the north lay many verdant valleys--grazing-grounds of the nomadic navajos. one of these valleys lay at the foot of the mountain upon which we stood, with a bright stream of water crossing its hither border. well out in the valley were several flocks of sheep and goats, and close to the opposite side of the brook was a herd of ponies. after frank had looked long and anxiously towards the flocks and herds, he said: "those specks near the ponies must be men, i suppose. i wonder if henry is among them? shall i make the signal?" "not yet. it is not yet noon. let us lie down among these rocks, where we shall be less conspicuous, and use the field-glass." "tell me what you see, sir, if you please." "there are five large flocks of sheep in the charge of a lot of women, some mounted and some on foot. the pony herd, which must number several hundred, is in charge of three naked indians--boys, i think. there are no other persons in sight. take a look for yourself." frank accepted the glass and surveyed the valley. "i can see nothing that looks like henry," he said. "he certainly cannot be there. why are those boys so ghostly white?" "they are covered with yeso to protect them from sunburn." "oh yes--whitewash." "gypsum. the mexicans use it for whitewash, and to preserve the complexion." "well, those boys must have plastered it on thick; they look like living statues. not a rag on them except 'breech-clouts.' hello, there comes a troop around that mound to the right. must be two hundred men." taking the glass, i looked again. coming into sight from the opposite side of an elevation on the farther side of the valley was a party of two hundred and fifteen navajo warriors. they rode to each flock of sheep in succession, stopped near the women a few moments, and then came down to the pony herd. they approached the boys, and one large indian, who appeared to be the chief, lifted the smaller boy out of his saddle, and, swinging him to his shoulder, dashed around the herd at full speed, and then set him back in his own saddle, and patted him approvingly on the back. the party next proceeded to exchange the ponies they were riding for fresh ones from the herd, and then disappeared behind the trees which bordered the brook to the west. "the pony that small boy rides looks like chiquita," remarked frank; "but the saddle and bridle are different. señora perea said that manuel was herding ponies for the navajos, and that he was naked." "yes, i know; but the letter vic brought from henry made no mention of another boy, and there are three with that herd. but let us make the signal and see what will happen." standing up and advancing to the edge of the butte's top, i waved my handkerchief from side to side, keeping my eyes fixed upon the three boys. they formed in line, facing us, looked long in our direction, and then, as if started by a spring, they flew down the plain, leaped the brook, and galloped up the long ascent towards the concealed cavalrymen. x the corporals are promoted the three indian boys were doing their utmost to excite their ponies to their greatest speed up the height. as they sped on they glanced repeatedly backward, as if fearing pursuit. higher and higher they came up the steep until we could not doubt it was their intention to reach the command. "what does it mean? what does it mean?" exclaimed frank. "why are those navajo boys running their horses in this direction? it can't be--" "never mind, frank," i interrupted. "let us get down to the men as soon as we can. the indian women are already riding after the war-party." at considerable risk to life and limb we slid down the ragged angle which we had ascended, and hurried to where baldwin and the soldiers stood beside their saddled steeds. we had barely reached the crest from which we could see the valley when the three whitewashed boys appeared on their panting and foaming animals, the little one on the buck-skin pony in the lead. "what in the world is this?" exclaimed baldwin. "three whitewashed young redskins! what do they want of us?" "here we are!" shouted a familiar voice, in excellent english. "here we are--manuel, sapoya, and i!" before we could sufficiently recover from our surprise, or, rather, calm our joyful realization of a hope born of the boys' start from the valley below, they were among us, and henry had sprung from his horse and embraced his brother, leaving a generous coating of _yeso_ upon the army blue. tears of joy had ploughed two streaks through the whiting on his face, and lent a comical effect to the boyish countenance. a general handshake ensued, and corporal frank asked, "where are your clothes, henry?" "confiscated by the chief elarnagan." "not to wear?" "well, no; i think they might prove baggy on his diminutive person." "then why did he take them?" "he has a numerous progeny, and the young elarnaganitos have an article apiece. my saddle and bridle went to mrs. elarnagan. she rides astride, you know." "when did the chief take your clothes?" "just as soon as i arrived in the valley my horse and i were stripped of--but hold on, frank; what am i thinking of?" and henry ran to one of the other boys, a graceful youngster whose perfect limbs and handsome face the _yeso_ could not mask, and who sat his horse as if he were a part of the animal. saying something to him in an undertone, the boy dismounted and approached me with henry, who said, in spanish: "this is manuel augustine perea y luna, of algodones. it is he who planned the escape when i told him there were soldiers near." i took the mexican boy's hand and assured him of the great happiness his escape afforded me, and the greater happiness it would afford his mother and relatives. frank approached, took manuel's hand, and then dropped it to give him a hearty and brotherly embrace. "ah, manuelito mio, i dreamed many dreams of rescuing you as we marched through this country, but i never believed they would be realized," he said. "but the little enrique acted, and i am here," laughed manuel. "and frank acted, too," said i, "as you shall soon hear; and you will learn that it took both boys to effect your rescue." "pardon me," replied manuel, "but it is not safe to remain here longer. elarnagan, whom you saw leaving the valley with his warriors, is intending to move down the lithodendron to attack your train somewhere on the colorado chiquito." at the close of his remarks manuel turned away, as if to mount his horse, and then, as if correcting an oversight, he said, "wait one moment, sir." going up to the third boy, he spoke a few words to him in an unknown tongue. the boy sprang to the ground and came forward. "this is sapoya," continued manuel, "a cherokee boy, whom i found a captive when i joined elarnagan's band. he is my brother, and will go with me and share my home." sapoya extended his hand and clasped mine. he was a handsome indian boy, about the same age and height as his friend. he addressed me in navajo, which was interpreted by manuel: "i am glad to meet one who has helped to open the broad land again to my brother and me. but our horses stand still, while those of our enemy fly to retake us." evidently the mexican and cherokee boys had no desire to again fall into the hands of the navajo chief. we made no further delay, but mounted and forced our animals down the mountain defiles as rapidly as possible. as soon as the route would permit, henry and manuel rode on each side of frank, and i heard the former ask about vic. frank answered in spanish, so that the mexican boy might understand. such expressions as "la perra brava!" "la fina perrita vic!" from time to time showed they were hearing of vic's adventures. [illustration: "'god has given me, among many friends, two that are something more'"] finding that corporal frank was not doing himself justice in his narration, i drew alongside the boys and related what i knew of frank's midnight ride and rescue of vic, an event which, had it not occurred, would have left henry and his friends still in captivity. at the conclusion of my tale manuel changed his position from the flank to one between the brothers, and, taking a hand of frank in his left, and one of henry's in his right, rode on a few moments in silence. then he said: "god has given me, among many friends, two that are something more. but for your brave acts i should still be a captive. thank you for myself, my dear mother, and sapoya." having reached the wagon-road crossing of the carizo, we turned at a canter over the divide between it and the lithodendron. as we rose above a terrace our attention was attracted to two mounted indians scurrying off into the broken and higher country on our right. "ah, look!" shouted manuel; "they expected to stop three naked, unarmed boys, and they are surprised to meet a troop of cavalry! viva los estados unidos! run, you sheep-stealers, we are safely out of your hands!" upon reaching the summit of the divide the whole war-party stood revealed, far to our right, out of rifle-shot. plainly, our presence was a great surprise to them. although they greatly outnumbered us, the country was too open for their system of warfare, and they were poorly armed. they stood sullenly aloof, and allowed us to canter past unmolested. just as our rear was passing them we noticed a solitary warrior advance and show a white cloth. "that is elarnagan," said manuel. "he wants to speak with you." accompanied by the mexican boy to act as interpreter, i advanced to the chief. he took my hand with dignity, and said he accepted the loss of his pale-faced captives as the fortune of war, but he demanded the return of sapoya. he said that in a fight with the utes, ten years before, his people had captured a cherokee chief, who was visiting that tribe with his wife and child. the chief and his wife had died, and he, elarnagan, had brought up the child as his own. he asked that sapoya be restored to him. i called the indian lad to me and, repeating the words of the chief, said, "you may answer for yourself." "sapoya says to the bravest warrior of the navajos, that he is grateful for all the favors that he has received, and that he thinks he has returned by hard service ample payment for all. he brought parents, three horses, and ample clothing to the navajos; he takes nothing away but the pony he rode. he has shared his blanket and food with his brother, manuel, for these many moons, undergoing fatigue and exposure with him, until his heart beats as one with his comrade's, and he desires to go with him to his home and become one of his people." the chief said nothing in reply, but advancing gave his hand in amity to both boys, and rode back to his people. "he is a good chief and a brave one," said manuel, as we rejoined the command, "but i should cherish kindlier memories of him if he had given us some clothing and an extra blanket." later, as we were riding slowly out of the bed of lithodendron, frank said, "i do not see how the indians came to spare vic." "one of them did attempt to kill her, but i threw my arms about her and the chief patted her head and gave orders that she should not be hurt. i think if her collar had not been taken off at laguna she would have been killed in a scramble to possess it. even elarnagan would have considered her life worthless compared with the possession of such a beautiful trinket." "the chief seems to have taken quite a liking to corporal henry," i remarked. "not enough to allow him to retain his clothing," said manuel; "but he would not permit him to be deprived of his pony. perhaps you saw him, when you were on the butte, dash round the herd with henry on his shoulder?" "frank and i saw it," i answered. "he said, when he placed henry back upon chiquita, 'he will make a brave chief.'" camp was reached a little after dark, and the boys plunged into the river to remove the _yeso_, and then dressed themselves in civilized garments, henry drawing on his reserve, and the others from the quartermaster's stores. had not victoriana been a modest doggie, the amount of praise and attention she received from the four boys would have turned her head; and the boys themselves had no reason to complain of the kindly congratulations they received from the infantry company. word was sent to lieutenant hubbell that manuel perea had been rescued, and the following morning all the new mexicans not on duty rode into camp to congratulate the boy upon his escape. spanish cheers and spanish felicitations filled the air for an hour. when the volunteers had gone and quiet was resumed, brenda came, and her delight at seeing the boys again showed itself in ceaseless caressings of vic and many requests for a repetition of the account of their flying ride when the signal was waved from the butte. when she at last withdrew, to repeat the story to her relatives, the corporals and i wrote a letter to señora perea, to be delivered by her son. in my portion i related the circumstances attending his recovery, detailing the part taken by the boy corporals, the dog, and the troop. i said no one desired to claim the generous reward she had offered, since no one in particular had rescued manuel; many things had combined to enable him to escape. if the lady insisted upon paying the reward, we all desired that it should be devoted to the education of sapoya. frank added a few lines, and henry closed the letter. the younger corporal wrote: "i've laughed with the rest over my two days' captivity among the navajos, and made light of it. i don't mind telling you that after shivering through two nights without clothes and without enough blankets, being bitten by mosquitoes and flies, and scorched daytimes by the sun, i begin to think manuel a great hero. "you know when i saw you i told you i was going to bring back manuel or be a prisoner with him. that, of course, was all foolish talk, for i planned nothing. to be sure, i was a prisoner with him for two days and had something to do about bringing him back, but it all happened without planning. it seems as if god directed us all through. frank, vic, the soldiers, officers, and myself--even the dry time from jacob's well to the lithodendron--all had something to do with finding manuel. "about the reward the lieutenant speaks of, we think none of us deserve it. we've talked it over, and we think if you would give sapoya a chance at school, and if you cannot make a white boy of him make him an educated man, that would be the best reward. he's very intelligent, and if he can have a good chance will learn fast. "frank and i have a scheme we hope you will approve of. mr. duncan has secured a detail from the war department to a boys' military school in the states as instructor in tactics, and will probably go in november. we are intending to ask papa to let us join that school after the christmas holidays. we want you to send manuel and sapoya there. won't you, please? be sure and say yes. think what a fine chance it will be for sapoya. "you know we boys feel something more than a friendship for one another. i suppose it is like the comradeship of soldiers who have stood shoulder to shoulder in battle. there is a tie uniting us that is closer and firmer than friendship; we feel more like brothers. "we will write often. hoping manuel will arrive home safe, and that he may never again be a captive, "i remain your friend, "henry burton." our letters were despatched by manuel and sapoya to lieutenant hubbell's camp, where captain bayard directed the boys to await the detachment of new mexican cavalry which had accompanied us from the rio grande and which was shortly to return there. we resumed our march the following day at a very early hour, and as we passed the cavalry camp two half-dressed boys came bounding out to the road-side to once more repeat their affectionate good-byes and renew their promises to meet in the future. the march continued for a week longer, through a region over which the pullman car now rushes with the modern tourist, but through which we moved at the gait of infantry. the boy corporals and brenda arnold climbed eminences, looked through clefts in precipices into the sublime depths of the great cañon, stood on the edge of craters of extinct volcanoes, penetrated the mysterious caverns of the cliff-dwellers, fished for trout in a mountain lake, caught axolotl in a tank at the foot of san francisco mountain, shot turkeys, grouse, and antelope, and enjoyed the march as only healthy youngsters can. brenda became a pupil of the boys in loading and firing their revolvers, carbines, and fowling-pieces, and made many a bull's-eye when firing at a mark, but invariably failed to hit anything living. henry said she was too tender-hearted to aim well at animals. that she was no coward an incident to be told in a future chapter will prove. when our train and its escort reached fort whipple, or, rather, the site of that work--for we built it after our arrival--the arnolds caught up their cattle from our herd, and after a two weeks' stay in prescott removed to a section of land which they took up in skull valley, ten miles to the west by the mountain-trail, and twenty-five miles by the only practicable wagon-road. this place was selected for a residence because its distance from prescott and its situation at the junction of the bridle-path and wagon-road made it an excellent location for a way-side inn. at a dress-parade held the evening before the family's departure for their new home, brenda sat on her pony, gypsy, near captain bayard, and heard an order read advancing her young friends from the grade of corporal to that of sergeant, "for soldierly attention to duty on the march, gallant conduct in the affair at laguna, and meritorious behavior in effecting the rescue of captive boys from the navajos at carizo creek; subject to the approval of colonel burton." xi both ponies are stolen "here, frank, come and help push this gate, i can't start it alone." "don't be in such a hurry, henry. wait just a moment. i think i hear a horse coming down the prescott road. i want to see if it is the express from la paz." the younger boy ceased his efforts to close the gates, and advancing a few steps before the entrance of the fort, looked up the valley to where the road from prescott appeared from behind a spur of the foot-hills. the two boys had mounted their sergeant's chevrons and adopted white stripes down the legs of their trousers. as they stood side by side vic approached and placed herself between them, nestling her delicate muzzle against the younger boy's hip and responding to his caresses with waves of her plumy tail. "do you think we shall hear from father, frank?" "we ought to; you know he said in his last letter he was getting settled at the presidio, and would soon send for us." "takes twelve days to bring a letter from san francisco. i suppose it'll take us longer to go there; seems to me he might get ready for us while we are on the road," said henry, lugubriously. "i'm getting mighty tired of opening and shutting these gates." "you forget father has to visit all the posts where companies of his regiment are stationed. that will probably take him all of a month longer." "and we must go on opening and closing gates and running errands in arizona? but come; let's get a swing on 'em and watch for the expressman afterwards. we haven't much time before retreat." the gates closed a fort which we had built since our arrival in arizona. peeled pine logs, ten feet long, had been set up vertically in the ground, two feet of them below the surface and eight above, enclosing an area of a thousand square feet, in which were store-rooms, offices, and quarters for two companies of soldiers and their officers. at corners diagonally opposite each other were two large block-house bastions, commanding the flanks of the fort. the logs of the walls were faced on two sides and set close together, and were slotted every four feet for rifles. at one of the corners which had no bastions were double gates, also made of logs, bound by cross and diagonal bars, dovetailed and pinned firmly to them. each hung on huge, triple hinges of iron. the two boys returned to the gates, and, setting their backs against one of them and digging their heels in the earth, pushed and swung it ponderously and slowly, until its outer edge caught on a shelving log set in the middle of the entrance to support it and its fellow. then, as the field-music began to play and the men to assemble in line for retreat roll-call, they swung the second gate in the same way, and braced the two with heavy timbers. the boys then reported the gates closed to the adjutant. as the companies broke ranks and dispersed the boy sergeants went to the fifth log, to the left of the gates, and swung it back on its hinges. this was one of two secret posterns. on the inside of the wall, when closed, its location was easily noticeable on account of its hinges, latches, and braces; on the outside it looked like any other log in the wall. their work being completed, the boys asked permission of the adjutant to stand outside the wall and watch for the mail. "all right, sergeants," said the adjutant; "there is no further duty for you to perform to-day." frank and henry ran through the postern, and arrived on the crest of the bluff overlooking the prescott road just as a horseman turned up the height. the news that the la paz courier had arrived spread rapidly through the quarters, and every man not on duty appeared outside the walls. joining the boy sergeants, i said, "boys, if you want to drop the job of opening and closing the gates, it can hereafter be done by the guard." "thank you, sir. we took the job, and we'll stick to it," replied sergeant frank. "i wonder if samson could lift those gates as easily as he did the gates of gaza?" questioned henry, seating himself on a log which had been rejected in the building and taking vic's head in his lap and fondling her silken ears. "we can't remain here much longer," said frank; "i think this express will bring an order for us to go to san francisco." "very likely. no doubt life here is not very enjoyable for boys." "i should say not," said henry, "for we can't look outside the fort unless a dozen soldiers are along for fear the apaches 'll get us." "but you can go to prescott." "prescott!" in a tone of great contempt; "twenty-seven log cabins and five stores, and not a boy in the place--only a dozen pike county, missouri, girls." "and we can't go there with any comfort since texas dick and jumping jack stole sancho and chiquita," added frank. further conversation on this subject was temporarily interrupted by the arrival of the expressman. a roan bronco galloped up the slope, bearing a youthful rider wearing a light buck-skin suit and a soft felt hat with a narrow brim. he was armed with a breech-loading carbine and two revolvers, and carried, attached to his saddle, a roll of blankets, a haversack, and a mail-pouch. dismounting, he detached the pouch, at the same time answering questions and giving us items of news later than any contained in his despatches. after handing his pouch to the quartermaster-sergeant, his eyes fell upon the boy sergeants. "i saw texas dick and juan brincos at cisternas negras," he said, addressing them. "my! did you, mr. hudson?" exclaimed henry, springing to his feet and approaching the courier. "did they have our ponies?" "you know i never saw your ponies; but dick was mounted on a black, with a white star in his forehead, and juan on a cream-color, with a brown mane and tail." "sancho!" said frank. "chiquita!" said henry. "do you know where they were bound?" asked captain bayard. "i did not speak to them, nor did they see me; i thought it would be better to keep out of the way of such desperate characters in a lonely place. i learned from a friend of theirs at date creek that they intend to open a monte bank at la paz." "then they are likely to remain there for some time." "can't something be done to get the ponies back, sir?" asked frank. "perhaps so. i will consider the matter." the mail was taken to my office and soon distributed through the command. among my letters was one from colonel burton, the father of the boy sergeants. he said he had been expecting to send for his sons by this mail, but additional detached service had been required of him which might delay their departure from whipple for another month, if not longer. he informed me that a detail i had received to duty as professor of military science and tactics in a boys' military school had been withheld by the department commander until my services could be spared at fort whipple, and that he thought the next mail, or the one following it, would bring an order relieving me and ordering me east. this would enable me to leave for the coast about the first week in november. frank and henry shared my quarters with me, and that evening, seated before an open fire, i read their father's letter, and remarked that perhaps i should be able to accompany them to san francisco, and, if the colonel consented to their request to go to the military school with me, we might take the same steamer for panama and new york. "oh, won't that be too fine for anything!" exclaimed the younger sergeant. "then i'll not have to leave vicky here, after all." vic, upon hearing her name called, left her rug at my feet and placed her nose on henry's knee, and the boy stroked and patted her in his usual affectionate manner. "then you have been dreading to leave the doggie?" i asked. "yes; i dream all sorts of uncomfortable things about her. she's in trouble, or i am, and i cannot rescue her and she cannot help me. usually we are parting, and i see her far off, looking sadly back at me." "henry is not the only one who dreads to part with vic," said frank. "we boys can never forget the scenes at los valles grandes, laguna, and the rio carizo. she saved our lives, helped recover chiquita, and she helped rescue manuel, sapoya, and henry from the navajos." "yes; but for her i might have lost my brother at la roca grande," remarked henry. "that was probably her greatest feat. nice little doggie--good little vicky--are you really to go to san francisco and the east with us?" "i believe if i only had sancho back, and henry had chiquita, i should be perfectly happy," observed the elder brother. after a slight pause, during which the boy seemed to have relapsed into his former depression, henry asked: "do they have cavalry drill at that school?" "yes, the superintendent keeps twenty light horses, and allows some of the cadets to keep private animals. all are used in drill." "and if we get our ponies back, i suppose we shall have to leave them here. do you think, sir, there is any chance of our seeing them again?" asked frank. "not unless some one can go to la paz for them. captain bayard is going to see me after supper about a plan of his to retake them." "i wonder what officer he will send?" "perhaps i shall go." "father could never stand the expense of sending them to the states, i suppose," said henry, despondently. "they could easily be sent to the missouri river without cost," i observed. "how, please?" "there is a quartermaster's train due here in a few weeks. it would cost nothing to send the ponies by the wagon-master to fort union, and then they could be transferred to another train to fort leavenworth." "frank, i've a scheme!" exclaimed the younger boy. "what is it?" "if mr. duncan finds sancho and chiquita, let's send them to manuel perea and sapoya on the rio grande. when they go to the military school they can take our horses and theirs, and we'll join the cavalry." "that's so," said frank. "manuel wrote that if he went to school he should cross the plains with his uncle, miguel otero, who is a freighter. he could take the whole outfit east for nothing. there would remain only the cost of shipping them from kansas city to the school." "yes, but before you cook a hare you must catch him," said i. "and our two hares are on the other side of the xuacaxélla[1] desert," said frank, despondently. "i suppose there is small chance of our ever seeing them again." [footnote 1: pronounced hwar-car-hál-yar.] our two boy sergeants had found life in arizona scarcely monotonous, for the hostile apaches made it lively enough, compelling us to build a defensible post and look well to the protection of our stock. a few years later a large force, occupying many posts, found it difficult to maintain themselves against those indians, so it cannot seem strange to the reader that our small garrison of a hundred soldiers should find it difficult to do much more than act on the defensive. close confinement to the reservation chafed the boys. a ride to prescott, two miles distant, was the longest the boys had taken alone. two weeks before this chapter opens they had been invited to dine with governor goodwin, the governor of the territory, and he had made their call exceedingly pleasant. when, at an advanced hour in the evening, the boys took leave of their host and went to the stable for their horses, they found them gone, with their saddles and bridles. inquiries made next day in town elicited the information that two notorious frontier scamps, texas dick and juan brincos, an american and mexican, were missing, and it was the opinion of civil and military authorities that they had stolen the ponies. the boys took vic to the governor's, and, showing her the tracks of her equine friends, she followed them several miles on the skull valley trail. it was plainly evident that the thieves had gone towards the rio colorado. after supper i accompanied the commanding officer to his quarters. he told me that the express had brought him a communication from the department commander, stating that, since arizona had been transferred to the department of the pacific, our stores would hereafter be shipped from san francisco to the mouth of the rio colorado, and up that stream by the boats of the colorado steam navigation company to la paz. he said he had decided to send me to la paz to make arrangements with a freighter for the transportation of the supplies from the company's landing to fort whipple. "and while you are in la paz," said the captain, "look after those horse-thieves, and turn them over to the civil authorities; but, whether you capture them or not, be sure to bring back the boys' ponies." "what do you think about allowing the boys to go with me?" "no doubt they would like it, for life has been rather monotonous to them for some time, especially since they lost their horses. think it would be safe?" "no indians have been seen on the route for some time." "the 'calm before the storm,' i fear." "the mail-rider, hudson, has seen no signs for a long time." "so he told me. the excursion would be a big treat to the lads, and, with a good escort and you in command, duncan, i think they will be in no danger. tell the adjutant to detail a corporal and any twelve men you may select, and take an ambulance and driver." "shall i go by bill williams fork or across the xuacaxélla?" "the desert route is the shortest, and the courier says there is water in the hole-in-the-plain. there was a rainfall there last week. that will give you water at the end of each day's drive." i returned to my rooms and looked over an itinerary of the route, with a schedule of the distances, and other useful information. after making myself familiar with all its peculiarities, i told frank and henry that if they desired to do so they might accompany me. they were overjoyed at the prospect. henry caught vic by the forepaws and began to waltz about the room. then, sitting down, he held her head up between his palms and informed her that she was going to bring back sancho and chiquita. "i do not intend to take vic, henry," i said. "not take vic? why not, sir?" "the road is long and weary--six days going and six returning, over a rough and dry region--and she will be in the way and a constant care to us." "but how are we going to find our horses without her? she always helps whenever we are in trouble, and she will be sure to assist us in this if we take her," said sergeant henry, emphatically. "she need be no care to you, sir," said the elder boy; "henry and i will look after her." "i am sorry to disappoint you, boys, but i cannot take the dog. she will be left with captain bayard." this decision made the boys somewhat miserable for a time. they commiserated the dog over her misfortune, and then turned their attention to preparations for the journey. "have you ever been to la paz?" asked frank. "i have never been beyond date creek in that direction," i replied. "is the xuacaxélla really a desert?" "only in the rainless season. grasses, cacti, and shrubbery not needing much moisture grow there. one of the geological surveys calls it cactus plain. it is one hundred miles long. there is water in a fissure of a mountain-spur on one side called the cisternas negras, or black tanks, but for the rest of the distance there was formerly no water except in depressions after a rainfall, a supply that quickly evaporated under a hot sun and in a dry atmosphere. a man named tyson has lately sunk a well thirty miles this side of la paz." "it was at black tanks the expressman saw texas dick and juan brincos with our ponies," said henry. "what a queer name that is!--juan brincos, john jumper, or jumping jack, as nearly every one calls him." "he is well named; he has been jumping stock for some years." "i thought western people always hanged horse-thieves?" "not when they steal from government. western people are too apt to consider army mules and horses common property, and they suppose your ponies belong to uncle sam." "frank," said henry, just before the boys fell asleep that night, "i felt almost sure we should recapture the ponies when i thought vic was going, but now i'm afraid we never shall see them again." xii indians on the war-path the following day we were so delayed by several minor affairs that we did not begin our journey until the middle of the afternoon. at the time of which i write there were but two wagon-roads out of prescott--one through fort whipple, which, several miles to the north, divided into a road to the west, the one over which we had marched from new mexico, and a second which left in a northwesterly direction. we took the latter, pursuing it along the east side of granite range for eight miles, when we passed through a notch in the range to mint creek, where the road made an acute angle and followed a generally southwesterly course to la paz. we halted for the night at the creek, eight miles from the fort. our ambulance was provided with four seats--one in front for the driver, fixed front and rear seats in the interior, with a movable middle seat, the back of which could be let down so that it fitted the interval between the others and afforded a fairly comfortable bed. on the rack behind were carried the mess chest, provisions, and bedding, and inside, under the seats, were the ammunition and some articles of personal baggage. beneath the axle swung a ten-gallon keg and a nest of camp kettles. while supper was being prepared the boys wandered about the reed-grass in a fruitless search for some ducks they had seen settle in the creek. private tom clary, who was acting as our cook, having spread our meal of fried bacon, bread, and coffee upon a blanket to the windward of the fire, called them to supper. while sugaring and stirring our coffee, the cook stood by the fire holding two long rods in his hands, upon the ends of which were slices of bacon broiling before the glowing coals. suddenly he exclaimed: "look there, sergeant laddies! look there!" raising and pointing with both sticks and the rashers of bacon towards the reed-grass behind us. there in its very edge sat mistress vic, winking her eyes and twitching her ears deprecatingly, plainly in doubt as to her reception. "stop, boys! keep quiet!" i said, to prevent a movement in her direction. "vic, you bad girl, how dared you follow me?" no reply, only a slow closing and opening of the eyes and an accompanying forward and backward movement of the ears. "go home! go!" the setter rose, dropped her head, and, turning dejectedly, disappeared with drooping tail into the tall grass. both boys exclaimed at once: "don't drive her off, sir! poor little vic!" "well, go and see if you can coax her back. if she returns with you she may go to la paz." the boys ran eagerly into the grass, and soon i heard them soothing and pitying the dog, telling her that it was all right, and that she could go. but it was evident she doubted their authority to speak for me, for henry presently came running towards me. "she won't come, sir. keeps moving slowly back in the direction of the fort. she looks so sorry and so tired. only think how badly she feels, and it is a long distance to whipple! can't she stay with us until morning?" "then she will not come with you?" "no. she is your dog, and knows it. she never disobeys you." "but she followed me here; that looks very much like disobedience." "but you did not tell her not to come." "i believe you are right. i forgot to tell her to stay." "and she did not hear you tell the corporal to tie her, sir. you told him in your room, and she was outside." "then you think she is not to blame for following us?" "of course not. she's a military dog, and always obeys orders." "but how guilty she looked." "it was not guilt made her look so, sir; it was disappointment." "yes, i think you are right, henry. i'll let her go with us. let us try an experiment, and see if she understands ordinary conversation. you know some people think dogs do." "yes, sir; i know vic does." "i'll speak to her without altering my tone of voice. now watch. 'here, vicky, little girl, it's all right; you may go with us.'" out of the reeds, bounding in an ecstasy of delight, came vic. she sprang about me, then about the boys, the soldiers, and animals, and then approaching the fire, sat down and looked wistfully at the rashers of bacon clary was still broiling. it was settled in her dog mind that she was now a recognized member of our party. we resumed our journey with the first break of dawn and rode to skull valley. the first section of the road passed through a rough, mountainous, and wooded country; but at the end of thirteen miles it entered a level valley, which gradually broadened into a wide plain that had been taken up by settlers for farms and cattle ranges. being well acquainted, i made several calls at the log-cabins which skirted the road. at the arnold house we were made very welcome, and after a generous dinner were escorted through the house and stables by the entire family. i had visited the valley many times when on scouting or escort duty, and had seen the arnold cabins gradually substituted for their tents, and their acres slowly redeemed from grazing ground to cultivated fields; but since my last visit mr. arnold had adopted an ingenious means of defence in case of an indian attack. the house and stables from the first had been provided with heavy shutters for windows and doorways, and loop-holes for fire-arms had been made at regular four-foot intervals. these the proprietor had not considered ample, and had constructed, twenty yards from the house, an ingenious earthwork which could be entered by means of a subterranean passage from the cellar. this miniature fort was in the form of a circular pit, sunk four feet and a half in the ground, and covered by a nearly flat roof, the edges or eaves of which were but a foot and a half above the surface of the earth. in the space between the surface and the eaves were loop-holes. the roof was of heavy pine timber, closely joined, sloping upward slightly from circumference to centre, and covered with two feet of tamped earth. to obtain water, a second covered way led from the earthwork to a spring fifty yards distant, the outer entrance being concealed in a rocky nook screened in a thick clump of willows. as we were climbing into our ambulance, preparatory to resuming our journey, brenda said: "if you had reached here three hours earlier you might have had the company of two gentlemen who are riding to la paz." "sorry i did not meet them. who were they?" "mr. sage and mr. bell from prescott. they are going to purchase goods for their stores; and that reminds me that not one of you has mentioned the object of this journey of yours." "that is really so," i replied. "you have made every minute of our call so interesting in showing us your improvements and the fort, and in doing the hospitable, that we have not thought of ourselves. frank, tell her about the ponies." sergeant frank, aided by sergeant henry, told in full of the loss of their animals, and said we intended to try to capture texas dick and juan brincos and recover sancho and chiquita. at the end of the boys' story, brenda asked: "the thieves were a mexican and an american?" "yes." "the american had a scar on the bridge of his nose, and the mexican had lost his front teeth?" "exactly. what do you know about them, brenda?" "they were here, but i did not see their ponies nearer than the stable; they were black and cream color. the mexican traded saddles with uncle. you'll find the one he left in the lean-to, on a peg beside the door." both boys leaped to the ground and ran round the house to the lean-to, and presently returned with henry's neat mcclellan saddle. it had been stripped of its pouches and small straps, but was otherwise unharmed. "well, when i come back with chiquita, mr. arnold, i'd like to trade saddles." "all right, youngkett, i'll trade, or you can take it now, and welcome," replied the ranchman. "no; i'll leave it until i return." the saddle was taken back to the lean-to, and after a few more words of leave-taking we started up the valley. a few miles of rapid travelling brought us to a steep ascent into a mountainous range to the right. we had proceeded but a short distance through a narrow and rugged roadway when we were overtaken by the military expressman whom we had left at fort whipple. he had come from prescott to skull valley by a short cut. "i have a letter for you, lieutenant," said he, approaching the ambulance. unfastening the mail-pouch, he turned its contents upon the back seat. a heap of loose letters and three well-worn books strewed themselves over the cushion. frank picked up the books and examined their titles. "xenophon's _memorabilia_, euripides' _alcestis_ and _medea_, and a greek grammar!" exclaimed the astonished youngster. "what are you doing with these college text-books on the la paz trail?" "making up conditions," replied the courier, a blush deepening the brown of his face. "what are conditions?" asked henry. "oh, blissful ignorance! why was i not spared the task of enlightening it?" answered the courier. "conditions are stumbling-blocks placed in the way of successful trackmen, football players, and rowing men by non-appreciative and envious professors." "'joseph gould hudson, university of yalvard,'" read frank from the fly-leaf of the _memorabilia_. "is that your name, mr. hudson?" "i'm so borne on the yalvard catalogue." "please explain, mr. hudson," i said, "how a college boy happens to be in arizona running the gantlet of this mail-route and making up conditions in greek?" "i was stroke in the crew that won the championship for yalvard at new london one year ago, and got behind in these. i was conditioned, and being ashamed to face an angry father, struck out for myself on the pacific coast. i drifted about from mining-camp to cattle-range until i was dead broke; this place offered, and i took it because i could find nothing else. i've had lots of opportunities for reflection on the xuacaxélla. i'm the repentant prodigal going home to his father." "oh, you are no prodigal, mr. hudson," observed henry. "we've heard all about you; you are too brave." "thank you, sergeant henry. no, i've not wasted my substance in riotous living, nor have i eaten husks, but i've been prodigal in wasting opportunities." "lost a whole college year, haven't you?" i asked. "i hope not. there is a german university man at la paz who has been coaching me. he thinks if i keep at work until after christmas i can go on with my old class. this is my last trip, and if i escape the apaches once more i'm going to lay off and work hard for a few months, and then return to new havbridge for examination. there's something in that letter that concerns me." opening the letter, i learned that captain bayard knew mr. hudson's story. he said this was to be the last trip of the courier, but that after his return to la paz he would come out to meet me at tyson's wells and report whether the horse-thieves were in town. he also suggested that in establishing a transshipment storehouse at the steamboat-landing i place hudson in charge. the pay would be of use to him while "making up." the courier wished us a pleasant journey, and rode away at a scrambling canter up the pass. he had been gone but a few moments when i heard a shout, and, looking up, saw him standing on a pinnacle by the way-side, on the summit of the ascent. he was looking in the opposite direction, and i saw him fire three shots from his carbine in rapid succession. dismounting the men, i made rapid preparations to meet an attack, and proceeded to work our way slowly up the height, and when we reached the narrow level at the top we found hudson and the two soldiers that formed our advance occupying a shelter among the rocks to the left, and gazing down the opposite slope. "what is it, hudson?" i asked. "a party of indians attempted to jump me here. there they go now--across that opening in the sage-brush!" a dozen indians dashed across an open space south of the road, but too far away for effective shooting, and then two more passed over, supporting a third between them. "you must have hit one of them." "i tried to. i think another was hurt more seriously, by the way he acknowledged my shot." "are you hurt?" "a slight scratch on the arm near the shoulder, and my horse is hurt." an examination of hudson's arm proved that the scratch was not serious, but i thought it best to exchange his horse for one belonging to a soldier. we then went on, frank and i walking in advance of the ambulance mules. "there's something down there in the road by ferrier's grave, sir," said corporal duffey. "looks like a dead man." "is that where ferrier was killed?" i asked. "yes, sir; i was in command of the detail that came here to look him up. he had built a little stone fort on that knoll up yonder, and kept the redskins off three days. he kept a diary, you remember, which we found. he killed six of them, and might as many more, but he couldn't live without sleep or food, and the rascals got him. they scattered the mail in shreds for miles about here." "who was ferrier?" frank asked. "he was a discharged california volunteer, who rode the express before mr. hudson." "do you think mr. hudson knew his predecessor had been killed?" "yes; the incident was much talked of at the time." we were nearing the object in the road. suddenly the mules caught sight of it, backed, and crushed the ten-gallon keg under the axle against a bowlder--a serious mishap, as our after experience will show. walking on, we came to the mutilated bodies of two men, several yards apart, whom we had no difficulty in recognizing to be the tradesmen bell and sage. with axe, bayonets, and tin cups we dug a shallow grave beside ferrier's. we placed the bodies side by side, and heaped a pyramid of stones above them. the courier again bade us good-bye, and we went on. the rest of the ride through the mountain-pass was accomplished without adventure, and evening found us encamped at willow springs. the boys shot a few quail here, of the variety known as the california quail, distinguished by an elegant plume of six feathers on the top of its head. clary broiled them for breakfast. the road on the following day was so rough that for much of the way we were unable to move faster than a walk--the slow walk of draught animals. when near a place called soldiers' holes, on account of some rifle-pits sunk there, the corporal called my attention to a pool of blood in the road. a close examination led us to believe that two men had fallen, that one had been wounded, and that a second party had come and taken the wounded man away. the locality was well adapted for a surprise. on the left was a growth of dense shrubbery extending from the road to the foot of the mountain-range. on the opposite side was an open plain. we were moving on again, when frank remarked: "there seems to have been a big gathering of apaches along this road." "yes; a war-party bent on mischief. they have struck at two points, and i fear a third--date creek--may have been attacked by this time. that is where we are to pass the night." then turning to corporal duffey, i continued: "the road from here to the creek is soft and loamy, and we are not likely to make much noise; caution the men to be quiet and not show themselves outside the track. if the indians are at the ranch it will be best for us to appear there unexpectedly." "do indians never stand up like white men, and fight?" asked the younger boy. "frequently, but their system is different from ours; however, our latest military tactics appear to be modelled on theirs." although this section of our journey was but twenty-five miles long, our rate of progress had been so slow that the day was nearly closed when we came in sight of the lines of cottonwoods that bordered date creek. we turned at last sharply to the left, and began a descent through a narrow ravine towards the creek. we were nearing its widening mouth when a half-dozen sharp reports of fire-arms broke upon our ears. a halt was ordered and the men directed to prevent the animals from betraying our presence by whinnying or braying. telling sergeant henry to remain behind and keep vic with him, i went in advance with sergeant frank. "what do you think is going on?" asked my companion, as several more reports rang out. "what i feared; the apaches are attacking the men who went out to bring in the dead and wounded men at soldiers' holes." "and if mr. hudson was not the wounded man there, i suppose he is sure to be in this scrape. why not rush in with the escort and frighten them away?" "they may be too many for us," i answered, "and it will be prudent to learn the situation at the ranch before we go nearer. i want to join the white men without the indians' knowledge, if possible." "if mr. hudson is not dead, he must know we are here." "he may be there, and the men may know we are on the road, but it certainly does not look like it." "can't vic be sent with a message?" "no; she will not take a message to a stranger." we had now reached a point from which we could see a log cabin, a stable, and an open shed or tool-house. on the side of the buildings towards us, as if screening themselves from an enemy in the opposite direction, were a few men. "if you would like me to, sir, i can crawl to the house without being seen," said frank. "that cart, wagon, oven, and stack will screen me." "yes, you can do it easily. tell mr. hopkins that we are here--seventeen, counting you two boys--and to make no demonstration when we close up. i will explain a plan to him which, i think, will enable us to teach the apaches a lesson. if you find mr. hudson there, tell him to show himself at a window or door." xiii the boy sergeants do good service frank dropped flat upon the earth and worked his way to the cabin without being seen. instantly i received a signal from mr. hopkins through a back window, and a moment later mr. hudson looked out of a back door and raised his hat. i was glad to see that his college career was still a possibility. hurrying back to the ambulance, i caused the animals to be grouped in charge of the driver and two soldiers, and with the rest of the detail moved in the direction of the ranch buildings. it had become so dark that we might possibly have passed over the open space without being seen, but, for fear of accidents, we covered it, as frank had done, on all fours. the first persons i met when i rose to a vertical position were hudson and frank, who took me to mr. hopkins. the ranchman greeted me with the assurance that the arrival of my party was a godsend, and had probably saved their scalps. i learned that the men at date creek, including the mail-carrier, numbered seven; that three were in the stable and four in the house. these buildings were the same distance from the stream, and fifty feet apart. the bank of the creek was perpendicular for a mile either way, standing fully twelve feet above the surface of the water; but there was a notch with a sloping descent, midway between the buildings, down which the live-stock was driven to water. this slope offered the only practicable point of attack, unless the indians chose to move by one of our flanks over a long level. mr. hopkins said he had crept out to the shrubbery on the edge of the precipitous river-bank, to the left of the slope, just before my arrival, and had seen on the opposite shore a small party of men moving through the willow branches towards our left. he believed it was a flanking-party, intending to make a feint from that direction and enable the main body to charge through the notch in the bank. believing the repelling force to be but seven, the indians were quite sure of success. i was convinced that mr. hopkins's inferences were correct; but in order that no mistake should be made, i sent two veterans in frontier service, privates clary and hoey, to reconnoitre both flanks. they were gone half an hour, and returned with the information that no demonstration was being made towards our right, but that a dozen or more men had gathered on the opposite shore, at a point where they could cross and turn our left flank. preparations to meet this movement were begun at once. sergeant frank was sent to the ambulance with orders for the men in charge to bring in the animals, two at a time, and fasten them in the rear of the stable and stack. this was easily accomplished in the darkness. the ambulance was left in charge of vic. while this was going on, and i was overlooking the construction of rifle-shelters on the flanks, sergeant henry approached and asked if he could not be of some use. something in the tone of the boy's voice showed me he felt he had been neglected, while his brother had been kept busy. "what would you like to do?" i asked. "does a soldier choose his duty, sir?" was the reply, uttered with some dignity. "not usually, sergeant, it is true. i have a very important thing for you to do--something for which i was intending to look you up. go and find private clary, and tell him to help you carry several armfuls of hay from the stack to the right of the slope. make a heap, so that when it is lighted it will illuminate the approach from the creek. ask mr. hopkins if he has any kerosene or other inflammable stuff to sprinkle on the hay and make it flash up quickly and burn brilliantly. then throw up a shelter in which you can lie and be ready to light the hay when signalled." "yes, sir. thank you. i'll attend to everything." not more than fifteen minutes had elapsed when the boy sergeant returned and informed me that the bundle of hay was prepared and a shelter constructed. "mr. hopkins has two gallons of axle-grease and two quarts of spirits of turpentine." "excellent. mix them together and sprinkle the hay thoroughly. then place yourself in the shelter, and when you see a light flash from the west window of the house light your bonfire." "i'll do so, sir," and the boy ran away in the darkness. an hour had passed when loud whoops gave us warning of the enemy's approach. it was the war-cry of the terrible apaches. not a sound came from the creek. i strained my eyes in that direction, but nothing was visible in the black darkness beneath the pendulous branches of the willows. at last i saw the fixed reflections of the stars in the surface of the pool diffuse themselves into myriads of sparkling atoms. a considerable body of indians must be in the water, but none appeared in sight. yes, they were crossing in two columns, to the right and left of the notch, concealed by the high shore, and would shortly unite and charge up the slope. baldwin ran to the stable to tell the men there that the apaches were coming, and to be on the alert. the whoops of the flanking party redoubled, and were accompanied by a desultory firing, which the four men opposing them answered in the same way. then i saw the sparkling water of the pool cut off from my sight, and knew that a body of men stood on the slope between us and the creek. "frank, show the light! men, ready!" the lantern flashed from the window, quickly answered by a flash on the bank, and a mass of red flame threw its luminous tresses skyward, bathing the whole scene in light. in the notch, half-way up the slope, stood a momentarily paralyzed group of nearly a hundred painted warriors. every rifle in the hands of the white men in the two buildings spoke, and instantly the notch emptied itself pell-mell of its living throng. only a few prostrate bodies showed the apaches had been there. with the discharge of fire-arms a silence immediately fell upon the scene, in marked contrast to the shrieking and yelling of a moment before. the bonfire burned low, and went out. once more we were in darkness. we believed the indians would make no further demonstration, and an hour later a scouting party ascertained that they had gathered their dead and departed. sentinels were posted, the ambulance run in by hand, the stock fed, and a midnight meal cooked. while sitting by the camp-fire, listening to the sizzling of the bacon and sniffing the aroma of the coffee, mr. hopkins introduced me to his men and guests, and i heard an explanation of the tracks and blood at soldiers' holes. early that morning three gentlemen, who had passed the night at the ranch, started for prescott. they were a mr. gray, a scotch merchant at la paz; mr. hamilton, a lawyer of the same place; and a mr. rosenberg, a freighter. when near the holes, mr. hamilton, who was riding in advance, was shot by indians concealed in the sage-brush. mr. rosenberg's mule was wounded, and plunged so that his rider fell to the ground. mr. gray, seeing the plight of the freighter, rode to his side, seized him by the collar, and aided him to leap to a seat behind him. it is probable that this act of generous daring might have ended in the death of both men but for a diversion caused by the sudden and unexpected appearance of the military expressman. he came up a slope from a lower level, and, taking in the situation at a glance, let fly three shots from his breech-loading carbine that caused the indians to lie low. the three men rode to the ranch, and mr. hopkins and his three workmen accompanied them to bring in the body of mr. hamilton. the indians did not begin to concentrate at the creek until after the burial. supper being over, the boys and i were getting into our blankets for the rest of the night, when mr. hudson, who had been preparing to depart, came to bid us good-bye. "i seem to take frequent leave of you, these times, lieutenant," he said. "yes; and your farewell ride with the whipple mail so far seems to have been anything but monotonous. i think the _anabasis_ would be a more suitable subject of study on this route than the _memorabilia_." "'hence they proceeded one day's journey, a distance of five parasangs, and fell in with the barbarians,' might well be said of this trip, for a fact." "hadn't you better travel with me the rest of the way?" "i think we have seen the last of the apaches. they do not range south and west of here. good-bye, sir." "good-bye, until we meet at tyson's wells." the next morning, when the boys, vic, and i were taking our places in the ambulance, mr. hopkins and his men, mr. gray and mr. rosenberg, approached us mounted. they informed me that they were going to la paz. "the ingins are gettin' a little too thick here," observed the ranchman. "i find it diffikilt to git proper rest after a hard day's work. think i'll stay away until uncle sam's boys thin 'em out a little more." "can i obtain a five or ten gallon keg of you, mr. hopkins?" i asked. "ours was accidentally smashed on the road." "haven't a keg to my name, lieutenant. one way 'n' ernuther all's been smashed, give away, or lent." the ride from the ranch to the edge of the desert plain was twelve miles, a portion of it over a rugged ridge. to the point where we were to ford the creek was two miles, and there the hired men, pack-mules, and ranch cattle turned off on the bill williams fork route to the rio colorado. once on the level of the xuacaxélla our team broke into a brisk trot, and we rolled along with a fair prospect of soon crossing the one hundred miles between date creek and la paz. messrs. gray, rosenberg, and hopkins shortly turned into a bridle-path which led into a mine. before taking leave of us mr. gray told me that my camping-place for the night would be at the point of the third mountain-spur which jutted into the plain from the western range. we had not travelled long before we realized our misfortune in having smashed our water-keg. each individual in our party possessed a three-pint army canteen, which had been filled when we forded the creek in the early dawn. these were to last us until evening, through an exceedingly sultry day. frank, henry, and i did our best to overcome our desire for water, but the younger boy could not refuse the appeals of vic, when she looked up with lolling tongue and beseeching eyes to the canteens. the men were the greatest sufferers, unless i except their horses. long before mid-day their canteens were empty and their mouths so dry that articulation was difficult and they rarely spoke. at five we arrived opposite the third spur, where we found a wand sticking in the ground and holding in its cleft end a slip of paper. it proved to be a note from mr. hudson, saying that this was the place to camp, and the black tanks were on the southern side of the spur, three miles distant. in a few minutes, with the horses and mules divested of saddles, bridles, and harnesses, leaving two men behind to guard the property and collect fuel for a fire, we were on the way to water. hurrying along, we saw before us a long, irregular range, apparently three thousand feet in height, which had been cleft from summit to base as if by a wedge. in this rent we found water--water deposited in a natural reservoir by the periodical rainfalls in millions of gallons, a reservoir never known to be dry. climbing over the dike which enclosed the main deposit, we descended to the cistern, filled our cups, and swallowed the contents without taking a breath. when we dipped up a second, tom clary looked into the depths of his cup with knitted brows. "whist, now, sergeant laddies!" he exclaimed. "look into the wather! it's aloive with wigglers of ivery variety. they're 's plinty as pays in a soup." "ugh! and we are full of them, too, tom," said henry, looking into his cup with narrow-eyed anxiety. pausing in the act of taking a second drink, i looked into my cup, and saw that it contained myriads of animalcula and larvæ, which zigzagged from side to side in the liveliest manner. "will they hurt us, tom?" questioned henry. "i rickon they've got the worst of it, sergeant laddie; but i think i'd fale a bit aisier if i was blindfolded or takin' a drink in the dark. i prefer me liquid refrishment with a little less mate, not to minshin its bein' less frisky." we had come to the cisternas negras with towels, intending to wash off the dust of travel. we now used one of them to strain the water, and were astonished to see that each gallon left behind it a plump spoonful of animalcula. the water was sweet, but, after discovering the abundant life in it, we deferred drinking more of it until it had been boiled. as we pursued the narrow path to camp in single file, we noticed vic a considerable distance to the right, scouting and nosing about in an earnest manner. evidently she thought she had made an important discovery, for she several times paused and looked in our direction and barked. but we were too hungry to investigate, and soon she disappeared from our view. when we reached the ambulance the boys put a few cakes of hard bread in their pockets, and, taking their shot-guns, went out to look for some "cottontails" while supper was being prepared. believing we were well out of the range of hostile indians, i did not object to their going alone. they passed a considerable distance beyond the growth of _cereus giganteus_, over a level stretch covered with knee-high bunch-grass and desert weeds, without seeing a hare. pausing on the brink of a shoal, dry ravine, they stood side by side, and rested the butts of their guns upon the ground. just then a shout of "supper! supper!" came from the group at the camp-fire. "hate to go back without anything," said frank, so i afterwards heard. "strange we can't see a rabbit now, when we saw dozens on the way to the tanks." "that's because we didn't have a gun," said henry. "you don't believe the rabbits knew we weren't armed then and know we are now?" "hunters tell bigger stories than that about 'brer rabbit.' not one has bobbed up since we got our guns." suddenly from the flat surface of the plain, not twenty yards from where the boys stood, where nothing but bunch-grass and low shrubbery grew, sixteen indians sprang up to full height, like so many jacks-in-a-box. xiv on the desert without water the boys were frightened. their hearts leaped into their throats, and it was difficult for them to restrain an impulse to turn and run; but a soldierly instinct brought them to a "ready," with eyes fixed upon the probable enemy. "quick, henry! shoot!" exclaimed frank, intending to reserve his own fire. the younger sergeant raised his double-barrelled shot-gun to his shoulder and pulled both triggers. down went the sixteen indians as if the bird-shot had been fatal to all. the plain became in an instant as objectless as it was a moment before. "load, henry, and, backward, march!" said frank, ready to fire whenever a head showed above the grass, and at the same time moving as rapidly as possible towards the camp-fire. "how! how! how!" was chorused from the direction of the indians, and several naked brown arms were stretched upward, holding rifles horizontally in the air. "that means peace," said henry. "they aren't going to fire. let's answer. how! how! how!" "how! how! how!" frank joined in, and at once the sixteen redmen sprang to their feet, apparently none the worse for henry's double charge of bird-shot at short range. they held their weapons above their heads, and continuing to utter their friendly "how!" rapidly advanced towards the boys. "they aren't playing us a trick, are they, frank?" asked henry, in an anxious tone. "no," replied the elder boy, after snatching a glance to the rear. "the lieutenant and soldiers are saddling. the indians dare not harm us on an open plain in sight of a mounted force." the boys stopped, and the redmen came up and began shaking hands in a most friendly manner, over and over again, repeating "how!" many times. they were clad in loose and sleeveless cotton shirts, all ragged and dirty, with no other clothing. the one who appeared to be chief was distinguished by the possession of three shirts, worn one above the other. each man possessed several hares and field-rats, held against his waist by tucking the heads under his belt. the boy sergeants and their strange guests reached the camp-fire, and the hand-shaking and exchange of amicable civilities went on for some time. the chief approached me and, placing a finger on one of my shoulder-straps, asked, in mongrel spanish: "usted capitan?" (are you the captain?) i replied in the affirmative. "yo capitan, tambien; mucho grande heap capitan." (i'm a captain, too; a very great heap captain.) he then asked where we were from and where we were going, and informed us that they were yavapais on a hunting expedition. we exchanged hard bread with them for a few cottontails, and set clary to making a rabbit-stew, the boys and i deferring our supper until it should be ready. "oh, mr. duncan," shouted henry from the direction of the indians, a few moments later, "come and see what these creatures are doing!" i left the ambulance and joined the group of soldiers who stood in a circle about an inner circle of seated indians. each yavapai had selected a rat from the collection in his belt, and had laid it on the coals without dressing it or in any way disturbing its anatomy. he rolled the rat over once or twice, and took it up and brushed and blew off the singed hair. he placed it again on the coals for a moment, and, taking it up, pinched off the charred fore legs close to the body and the hind legs at the ham-joint. replacing it on the fire, he turned it over a few more times. picking it up for the third time, he held it daintily in the palm of his left hand, and with the fingers of his right plucked off the flesh and put it in his mouth. when we were making our beds ready for the night, vic, whom we had forgotten in the exciting events of the evening, trotted into camp and laid a horseshoe in henry's lap. the lad took it up, and exclaimed: "one of chiquita's shoes!--a left hind shoe!" "how do you know?" i asked. "private sattler always shaped the heel of the left shoe like this, to correct a fault in her gait." "may i look at the shoe, sergeant?" asked corporal duffey, approaching from the group of men near the guard's fire. "shoes are like hand-writing--no two blacksmiths make them alike. i am a blacksmith by trade, and know all the shoes made by the smiths of our regiment. this," examining it, "is one of sattler's. he put a side-weight on it, and here is the bevel-mark of his hammer." "then our ponies have certainly passed here, and vic was on their trail when we saw her coming from the tanks," remarked frank; "but there could have been no scent after so long a time." "oh, she knows sancho's and chiquita's tracks," asseverated henry; "she knows their halters, bridles, and will bring them when told to, without mistake." the sentinel awakened us next morning at four o'clock, and informed us that the indians had left two hours before. the animals were again driven to the tanks, the vessels and canteens filled, and at six o'clock we were on the road. nearly all our water was used in the preparation of breakfast, except that in the canteens. it would have been better if we had made a third trip to the cisterns and refilled our coffee-pot and camp-kettles; but the delay necessary to do it, and the assurance that there was water at hole-in-the-plain, determined me to go on at once. the weather was a repetition of that of the previous day--hot and windless. the road proved generally smooth, but there were occasional long stretches over which it was impossible to drive faster than a walk. about four in the afternoon we reached hole-in-the-plain, and found nothing but a few hundred square yards of thin mud. the fierce rays of the sun had nearly evaporated every vestige of the recent rainfall, and in twenty-four hours more the mud would be baked earth. vic, consumed with thirst and suffering in the extreme heat, waded into the mud and rolled in it until she was the color of a fresh adobe, and was, in consequence, made to ride thereafter in disgrace on the driver's foot-board. we had intended to pass the night at the hole, but want of water compelled us to move on. very gloomy and doubtful of the outcome, we left the hole-in-the-plain. we were toiling slowly up a slope, nearly a dozen miles on this third stage of the desert route, when a horseman overtook us, who proved to be mr. gray. he slowed up, listened to my account of our perplexities, and after saying many hopeful and cheering things, telling us that tyson's wells were now not far ahead, he galloped swiftly away in the darkness. at midnight the road ascended to a considerably higher level and became suddenly hard and smooth. the driver urged the team into a series of brief and spasmodic trots, which lasted a couple of hours, when we again descended to a lower level, where the wearily slow gait was resumed. with the slower pace our spirits fell and our thirst increased. as private tom clary expressed it to the driver: "in a place like this a gallon of black tanks water would be acciptible without a strainer, and no reflictions passed upon the wigglers." "that's so, tom," called henry, from the depths of his blankets; "i could drink two quarts of it--half and half." "half and half--what do you mean?" i asked. "half water and half wigglers," was the answer. "i thought you were asleep." "can't sleep, sir; i'm too thirsty. did drop off once for two or three minutes, and dreamed of rivers, waterfalls, springs, and wells that i could not reach." "i've not slept at all," said frank; "just been thinking whether i ever rode over a mile in vermont without crossing a brook or passing a watering-trough." "it's beginning to grow light in the east," observed the driver. "by the time we reach the top of the next roll we can see whether we are near the wells." "you may stop the team, marr," said i; "we will wait for the escort to close up." we got out to stretch our legs, while the straggling soldiers slowly overtook us. the man on the wounded bronco did not arrive until the edge of the sun peeped above the horizon, and i ordered him to remove the saddle and bridle, hitch the animal behind the ambulance, and take a seat beside the driver. just when we were about to start again, frank asked permission to run ahead with the field-glass to the rising ground and look for tyson's wells. i consented, and told him to signal us if he saw them, and that if he did not we would halt, turn out, and send the least worn of the escort ahead for relief. frank started, and presently disappeared behind some brush at a turn in the road. an instant later he shouted and screamed at the top of his voice. whether he was shouting with joy or terror, or had gone out of his senses, we were unable to guess. it sounded like "who-o-o-op! water! water! water!" had the boy seen a mirage and gone mad? we could see nothing but the broad hollow about us, barren and dry as ever. but still the boy continued to shout, "water! water!" and presently he appeared round the bend, running and holding up what appeared to be a letter. it was a letter. when frank reached the ambulance tears were in his eyes as he handed me a yellow envelope. "found it on the head of a barrel over there, with a stone on it to prevent it from blowing away." breaking open the envelope with trembling fingers, i read: "tyson's wells. "dear lieutenant.--please accept four barrels of water and four bushels of corn, with my compliments. "gray." need i confess the emotions with which we realized the service this brave arizona merchant had done us? or need i mention that mr. gray--god bless him, wherever he may be!--is always remembered with gratitude by me? for this is no idle incident invented to amuse a reader, but an actual occurrence. water!--four barrels!--one hundred and sixty gallons! that meant two gallons for every man and boy, and eight gallons for each animal. it meant rest, speed, safety. we moved across the ravine and found the four barrels by the road-side. the animals were secured to the ambulance and the acacia bushes, the heads of the barrels removed, and after each person had satisfied his thirst the camp kettles were used, until horses and mules had drunk the contents of one each. the stock was then turned out to graze. when coffee was poured, private tom clary arose, and, holding up his tin cup, said to his comrades: "here's a toast to be drunk standin', b'ys, and for many raysons, which i think nade not be explained to this assimbly, i'm glad to drink it in a decoction whose principal ingraydiant is wather. here's to mr. gray, whose conduct at soldiers' holes, at date creek, and on the walkerhelyer has won our admiration. may he niver lack for the liquid he has so ginerously dispinsed, nor a soft hand to smooth his last pillow, and plinty of masses for the repose of his sowl!" frank and henry sprang towards the circle of soldiers, raised their cups as clary finished his sentiment, and joined in the hearty response when he closed. at one o'clock the animals were caught up, given the remainder of the water and their portion of the corn, and got ready for the road. once up the slope marr cracked his whip, the mules started into a trot, the horses of the escort broke into a canter, and amid the cheerful clatter of hoofs and the rattle of wheels we sped on our way as fresh as if we were just leaving fort whipple. a ride of twenty miles brought us to tyson's wells. these were two in number, sunk at an intersection of several roads leading to settlements and mines, an accommodation to trains, flocks, and herds, and a profit to the owner. i learned from colonel tyson that immediately upon his arrival mr. gray had hired a wagon to take water and corn to us. he had bargained for the driver to go until he met us, but the man being prepaid may account for his not fulfilling his agreement to the letter. the rest of the day and night was spent at the wells, the boys and i taking our supper at the desert hotel, kept by the colonel. at the table, henry, in a tone of evident anxiety, asked if we should return the way we came. "yes, if we can find a few kegs in la paz that will hold water," i answered. "but we cannot haul kegs enough in the ambulance to supply the animals." "it will not be difficult. we will follow the army custom in such cases, and i will promise you that there will be no suffering from thirst when we cross the desert again." just as we were preparing for bed mr. hudson arrived from la paz. he informed me that texas dick and jumping jack were there and in possession of the ponies; that there was to be a horse-race the day after to-morrow, and the ponies had been entered. at this news the boy sergeants became much excited, and proposed a dozen impracticable ways of going on at once and seizing their property. hudson said he had talked the matter over with mr. gray, and the merchant had advised that we give out a report in la paz that we were there on the transportation and storehouse business only, and make no immediate attempt to capture the ponies. he said the town was full of the friends of the horse-thieves, and that our movements would be closely watched and reported to them. if they became alarmed they would probably run across the mexican boundary at once. "but why cannot we attend the race with the escort, as spectators, and seize them?" asked frank. "that is a move they will be sure to be looking for. if any of you go to the race, i believe neither of those men nor the ponies will be there." i told hudson to return to la paz before daylight and circulate the report that i was coming for the purpose he had mentioned. i also requested him to watch jack and dick, and if he saw them making preparations for flight to come and meet me. we were met on the outskirts of the town by mr. gray, who told us we were to be his guests during our stay, and that his corral and store-rooms were at the service of my men and stock. going directly to the house of the hospitable trader, we found it to consist of well-furnished bachelor quarters, with several spare rooms for guests. the boys were assigned a room by themselves, and i one adjoining them, in which we found ample evidence that our host had looked forward with pleasure to our visit and had fully understood boyish needs and desires. henry, after exchanging his travelling-dress for a neat uniform, appeared upon the veranda with glowing face and shining hair. "mr. gray, how pleasant you have made our room for us! have you any boys of your own?" he asked. "only two nephews, sandy and malcolm, in the 'land of cakes,'" was the reply. "what a good uncle you must be to them!" "thank you, laddie. i hope the bairns are as fine boys as you and your brother." "you are very kind to say so, sir. may i ask you a question?" "a dozen, laddie. what is it?" "when you overtook us on the desert you said it was not far to tyson's wells, and that we should soon be there." "ah! then you thought it a long way, sergeant?" "perhaps my terrible thirst had something to do with it, but it seemed more than twenty-five miles. i thought you had a queer notion of distances." "only a little deception to keep up your heart, laddie. i saw you were in sad need of water, and i made a hard ride to send it to you, but i wanted you to do your best to meet it. what do you think of the shrinking properties of water when applied to a desert road?" "wasn't it great, though! those last twenty miles your four barrels shrank into nothing but a pleasant three hours' ride." after dinner mr. hudson reported that he had dropped information at the hotels and business places that we were here to meet a director of the colorado navigation company. we also learned from him that the steamer _cocopah_ had arrived that morning from up-river, and was now lying at her landing, one mile below town, awaiting the return of the director from wickenburg. both mr. gray and hudson were of the opinion that the horse-thieves were suspicious of our presence, for their agents had been unable to locate the ponies at any stable in town. the horse-race was advertised to come off on the afternoon of the following day, half a mile below the steamboat-landing, and texas dick and juan brincos had entered horses for the stakes. mr. gray thought the appearance of the ponies in the race would depend entirely upon what course we pursued. if we attended the race the ponies would not be there; if we stayed away he had no doubt they would run. believing the trader's convictions to be correct, i instructed the escort not to go south of the town during the day of the races, and told frank and henry to amuse themselves about the streets or in the vicinity of mr. gray's residence. i then started with our host to procure a building for a military storehouse. for the rest of the day the boys showed little disposition to wander about; they spent most of their time lounging on their beds with a book, or asleep. xv the ponies are found the following day the boy sergeants rose from their beds fully refreshed, and after breakfast began to explore the town. they made some purchases in the stores, and found much amusement in watching a bevy of mojave indian girls buying pigments to be used in adorning their necks, arms, and faces. following the bronze maidens to the shore of a lagoon that backed up to the town from the river, they seated themselves beneath a cottonwood and witnessed the designing of tracings in many colors, made with endless and musical chatterings, accompanied by an evident consciousness that they were objects of interest to two pale-face boys. after completing the tinting the girls would walk about for a while and display their work to admiring friends, and then plunge into and swim about the lagoon with the ease and grace of a lot of mermaids; emerging with no trace left of their recent ornamentation, they would proceed to renew it in different designs, and take another swim. "quite like watering-place belles with extensive wardrobes," remarked frank. "and takes about as long to put on the paint as to put on a fashionable dress," said henry, "but not so long to remove it." another thing that amused the boys was a _balsa_, or raft, made by the mojaves, of the cane-grass which grew in the river-bottoms to the height of fifteen feet. a large bundle bound at the ends with grass ropes would sustain two men. the boys borrowed one of an indian girl, who was sitting in the shade of some willows prinking herself artistically with an original and intricate pigmentary pattern. stepping on board, they paddled about the lagoon for a considerable period. tiring at last of the sport, they separated, frank saying that he was going for his shot-gun, and perhaps shoot for some quail, and henry that he meant to find tom clary and set some lines for catfish. the younger sergeant failing to find the soldier, selected a line, and, procuring some bait, returned alone to the lagoon. on his way he met the indian girl walking along the sidewalk, an object of admiration and envy to the men and women of her people. her bronze flesh was adorned with a lacelike tracery of beautiful design, in many tints. "how exceedingly pretty!" said henry, in spanish, a language fairly well understood by the aborigines of the southwest. "i, or my paint?" asked the girl, coquettishly. "the paint is well put on; but i think you prettiest just after a swim." "thank you, señor." "may i use the balsa again, indita?" "si, señor, and you may keep it, but return the paddle." "thank you. i will leave the paddle on the shore where you were sitting." with this exchange of civilities henry walked down to the pool. an idea had occurred to him. he wondered if he could not float down the river to the racing-ground and get a peep at sancho and chiquita, as they came in victors. he felt sure no ponies in arizona could outrun them. but mr. duncan had told the escort not to go to the race. true; but what harm could there be if he kept out of sight? placing an empty box on the raft for a seat, he took vic on board, and began paddling out of the lagoon. speed could not be made with such a craft; it was simply a convenience for crossing or journeying down the river. the mojaves, whose village was five miles above la paz, came down on freshly made _balsas_ every day, but walked home, carrying their paddles. once well out of the lagoon, and in the river-current, the boy and dog were swept along at a swift rate. a mile down the shore he saw a crowd of men, mounted and on foot, intently watching something inland. he was approaching the race-course. he made a landing on a sand-spit that struck off from an outward curve of the bank, and dragged the _balsa_ out of the water. the shore rose abruptly from the bar to a height two feet above his head. he lifted and boosted vic up, and seizing the long tufts of overhanging grass and thrusting his feet into the loops of willow roots, drew himself to the higher level and crept into a screen of low bushes. peering through the branches, henry saw a straight-away course, parallel to the river, bordered for three hundred yards with the motley crowd of a mining and indian country. at the northern end of the course was a group of ten ponies, out of which he found no difficulty in discovering two, a black and a cream-color, and recognizing in them the property of his brother and himself. in his opinion they were the handsomest animals in the group. at the fourth signal--a pistol-shot--the ponies got away. down the three-hundred-yard track they sped, and over the last fourth the black and cream-color led by a length, crossing the goal with sancho half a neck in advance. of course the little sergeant knew they would beat, and in spite of his sorrow at the loss of his ponies--intensified by this stolen sight of them--he could not refrain from clapping his hands and saying, aloud, "bravo, sancho! bravita, chiquita!" the subdued cheer was promptly answered by a succession of barks at the foot of the tree, and vic, interpreting the boy's clapping and speech to mean that she was free to go, dashed off at the top of her speed for the race-course, and to its southern end, where the victors were now held by their dismounted riders. vic bounded wildly about them for a few moments, and then, standing still, henry saw each horse in turn place its nose to the dog's nose. one of the men struck the dog sharply with the loop of his bridle-rein, and as she fled back in the direction of the tree in which the boy was, he saw the riders hold a brief consultation and then follow the dog. henry, perceiving he was discovered, let himself down from the tree. texas dick and jumping jack approached. "ven acá, muchacho" (come here, boy), said the mexican. henry did not stir, and dick said to his companion, in spanish: "he does not understand your lingo. i will try him in english: come here, boy." henry had not disregarded juan's summons for any particular reason, but the remark of dick gave him an idea. by pretending ignorance of spanish he might learn something that would be of advantage to him. accordingly, he came forward when dick spoke. "from fort whipple, ain't yer, sonny?" "i am." "d' ye know these critters?" "the black is my brother's, the light is mine." "lookin' on 'em up, i s'pect?" "we shall take them, if we can." "you see, i was right," continued dick to his companion, in spanish. "they came here to take these horses." "then we better call for the prize, collect our stakes, and leave," said juan. "where shall we go?" asked dick. "arizona's getting uncomfortable for me, and your kin across the mexican line don't love you." "valgame dios, no! let's cross the river and go to san diego or los angeles." "estar bueno. come with us, youngster," he added, in english; "and mind ye keep a quiet tongue in yer head or ye'll have no head to wag it in after ye've spoke." henry followed the men to the head of the race-course, where they received their prizes and winnings, and withdrew to the river-bank. there they divided the money and held a conference. "we'd better cross the river to-night and camp at el rincon until morning, and then strike for dos palmas and the coast." "shall we leave our monte and other stuff in town?" asked juan. "no; you stay here and take care of the boy, and i'll go back and sell out. anastacio barela will buy. look sharp that the young soldier does not send a message by his dog. i heard lots of strange stories of her performances in that line at prescott. i will bring down something for our supper and the road." dick galloped away, leaving the mexican and henry to await his return. as the twilight deepened into darkness the boy's thoughts grew more and more despondent. he now fully and sadly realized that his disobedience of orders had brought disgrace upon himself, and ruined every chance of recovering the ponies, for once the thieves got well away they were secure from capture. it was night when dick returned and told the mexican that he had made an advantageous sale of their gambling outfit. "now, kid, ye kin slope," he said, addressing the disheartened lad. "tell the lieutenant that he kin look for us at hermosilla, on the other side of the mexican bound'ry. good-bye." henry hurried away towards la paz, with vic close at his heels. there was no occasion for haste, for he felt that nothing in the town could overtake the lost sancho and chiquita; still he hurried and stumbled on in the darkness. "oh, vicky," said the boy, in his misery, stooping to caress his companion, "i ought to be court-martialled and dishonorably discharged from the service for this. i have done very wrong. i have lost our ponies for good." the dog licked his hand sympathetically, and then suddenly bounded away, barking, and henry heard frank's voice say: "why, tom, here's vic!" "thin sargint hinery must be near," said the soldier. "yes, i'm here, frank--and oh, frank, i'm in such trouble!" and in a curiously jumbled and half-incoherent manner henry related his afternoon's experience. at the conclusion of the recital the three held a consultation as to what was best to be done. time was precious, and the town was nearly two miles distant. "sargints," said private tom clary, "i belave we can do bist by oursilves. me afthernoon's lave ixpires at tattoo, but if, as me shuparior officers, ye'll allow me to be out of camp a bit longer, i think we can sarcumvint the thaves." "we'll do our best to get you excused by the lieutenant," said frank. "thank you, sargint laddie. you say the grass-boat is near by, sargint hinery?" "not far from here, tom. just west of the middle of the race-course." "and the thaves are going to camp and cook their supper on the other side?" "so they said." "thin we'll attimpt to interfare with their arrangemints. i think the liftinint will commind an 'absence without lave' if we bring in the raskils and the ponies." the soldier and boys turned, and, bidding vic keep close to them, hurried to the bar where henry had left the gift of the mojave belle. as they were lifting the elastic raft into the water they heard the voices of men on the river, accompanied by the splashing of water, and knew that the horse-thieves were fording the stream. the colorado was shoal, having an average autumnal depth of four feet at la paz. clary secured two poles from the river débris lodged on the bar, one for frank and one for himself. henry sat on the box in the middle, holding his companions' guns across his lap with one hand, and grasping vic's collar with the other. the well-filled game-bags lay between his feet. the _balsa_ moved slowly towards the opposite shore and swiftly down-stream, the stalwart irish soldier's feet settling into the loosely bound stems as he poled. becoming alarmed when he found the water standing above his ankles, he called, in a subdued undertone: "sargint frank, i belave i shall go through the bottom of this l'aky craft before we git across." "take henry's paddle, tom; it lies on the right side of the box. lay it across the reeds and stand on it." "ah, sure and that's betther. kape yer ind a little more up-strame, sargint. we'll steer by the avening star." in a few minutes the _balsa_ lodged against the shore in the still water of a little cove. the boys and soldier were aware that they were landing some miles below their starting-point, for the current was strong and swift, while the horse-thieves had forded the river almost in a direct line. they climbed the bank, and ordering vic to keep close by them, began to move as fast as possible up the shore. they had made their way for nearly an hour over a rough and miry river-bottom when the setter showed sudden excitement and began sniffing to the right and left. "she must have struck their path from the river to their camping-place, tom," said frank. "look sharp, vicky, look sharp!" "but she seems to be working up-stream," said henry. "i should think they would have gone straight inland." "there's an excillint rayson for that, sargint laddie," returned clary. "one of the routes t' th' coast begins exactly opposite th' town, and they must go up-strame to foind it; el rincon the landing-place is called." "the corner?" "yis, th' corner. th' shore binds out there a wee bit." man and boys continued to struggle along, until across a level, grassless plot they saw, near a clump of cottonwoods, a fire, where texas dick and jumping jack were plainly visible, cooking their supper. on the side of the fire opposite the river were two saddles, upon which rested their rifles and revolvers. still farther west the two ponies were picketed and grazing. clary told henry to go to the ponies and stay there with vic, while he and frank crept upon the thieves. screening themselves behind tufts and swells, and lastly behind the saddles, they worked across the level, the sound of their moving being covered by the booming and rushing of the mighty river. when within twenty yards of the fire and five from the saddles, private tom clary sprang to his feet, aimed his double-barrelled shot-gun at the thieves, and shouted: "throw up your arrums!" at the same instant frank made a flying leap for the saddles, and seized the rifles and revolvers. henry ran forward and assisted his brother in keeping dick and juan under the muzzles of their own rifles, while clary securely bound them. this accomplished, the boys went back for a moment to renew their acquaintance with their horses. yes, the chase was over, and their favorites were again in their possession; and it cannot appear strange that the young soldiers went into boyish ecstasies of delight at their good-fortune, embracing, patting, and talking to sancho and chiquita as if they understood all that was said to them. but at last they joined clary at the fire, and the three, while they continued to carry on the interrupted cooking of their captives, discussed ways and means of returning to la paz, and it was decided to send the setter with a message. a note was pencilled on a page of frank's diary, attached to vic's collar, and she was taken to the river-bank and given a stick, with orders to deliver it to her master. with but little hesitation she plunged into the murky current, and soon disappeared in the darkness in the direction of the other shore. while the boy sergeants were going through these adventures i remained in la paz. at retreat and tattoo roll-calls corporal duffey had reported private clary absent, adding the words "and unaccounted for," and at mr. gray's table the boys were absent from supper. at first i gave myself no anxiety over the absentees, but at midnight, becoming alarmed, i began a search for them. i soon learned that henry had been seen to paddle out of the lagoon on a mojave _balsa_, accompanied by vic, and that frank and clary had gone quail-shooting. i did not feel especially anxious about the older boy, for he was in the company of one of the most trustworthy of our veteran soldiers, and would probably soon turn up safe. but henry--gone down the turbulent river on a frail bundle of grass--what might i not fear? i led all the men of the detail--every one of them as anxious as myself--on a long and fruitless search beside the river, without coming upon a clew. returning to mr. gray's, and dismissing the men, i sat upon the veranda alone, sadly reflecting upon the absence of my young companions and vic. in the midst of my sad reflections there scrambled up the steps a wet and bedraggled dog, who dropped at my feet a chip. carrying her in my arms to my room, i lighted a lamp and examined her collar, and found a few leaves of a memorandum-book covered with frank's hand-writing. the news of vic's arrival with a message spread quickly, and soon the household was gathered in my room and in possession of the news of the exploit of the boys and tom clary. "good! good!" exclaimed the director of the navigation company. "come with me to the _cocopah_. we'll steam across and get the whole party." on the western shore of the colorado, private tom clary and the boy sergeants sat by the fire broiling quail, which they seasoned from the supplies of texas dick and juan brincos, and accompanied by slices of toasted bread from the same source. in the midst of their enjoyment of "quail on toast" a loud "who-o-of! who-o-of! who-o-of!" came across the river. "hullo!" said henry; "the old _cocopah_ is starting for the gulf mighty early. i should think the pilot would find it difficult to keep off the shores when it is so dark." the boys could see by the boat's changing lights that her bow, which had been headed up-stream, when she lay at the bank, was swinging slowly out into the stream, and they expected shortly to see her starboard lights as she headed downward. but she seemed to pause, with her furnace fires and pilot lanterns pointing towards them. "who-o-of! who-o-of! who-o-of!--patter, patter, patter." the noise of the steamer grew louder and louder, until the boys rose from their seats and stared in surprise at the rapidly growing lights. "i really believe she is coming here," said frank. "she is, or she nades a dale of space to turn in," observed private tom. presently two tall smoke-stacks separated themselves from the darkness and appeared high above their heads. "ahoy there, boys!" shouted the captain's voice from the bridge. "ay, ay, sir!" answered frank. "get ready to come on board! below there--stand by to lower gang-plank! now!--lower away!" down came the plank, and a joyous group of friends walked down to the shore to greet the boys and the soldier. a few moments afterwards the boy sergeants led their ponies on board, and private tom clary escorted the prisoners. the _cocopah_ cleared away and paddled back to the la paz side, where texas dick and juan brincos were turned over to the civil authorities, and sancho and chiquita to the escort in mr. gray's corral. three days later the boys and i took leave of mr. hudson, who was now in charge of the government storehouse, and, accompanied by mr. gray, started for fort whipple. hanging under the hind axle of the ambulance was a ten-gallon keg, and inside was another. we left la paz early in the morning and arrived at tyson's wells at nine o'clock. remaining there until six o'clock in the evening, we watered our animals, and with freshly filled kegs started for hole-in-the-plain, where we stayed until the following evening, the animals passing the day on grass without water. a second night-drive brought us to cisternas negras, and the third to date creek, from which last point we resumed travelling by daylight. at skull valley, at the earnest request of miss brenda arnold, henry was allowed to remain for a few days' visit. he promised to join the next incoming mail-rider, and to ride back to the fort by way of the mountain-trail. xvi apaches in skull valley it was near midnight, four days after my return from la paz, that i sat by my open fire, absorbed in a recently published popular novel. i was suddenly aroused by a distant and rapid clatter of horse's feet. the sound came distinctly through the loop-holes in the outer wall of the room--loop-holes made for rifles and left open for ventilation. dropping my book upon the table, i listened intently to the hoof-beats. some one was riding from the direction of prescott, evidently in great haste; and arizona being a country of alarms, i surmised that the rider was coming to the fort. the horseman stopped at the great gates. "halt! who comes there?" rang out the voice of private tom clary, who was sentinel no. 1, stationed at the post entrance. "sargint hinery, is it you, laddie?" the voice continued, in a lower and gentler tone. "yes, tom; and, oh, tell mr. duncan, quick, that--" "whist! take care, laddie! howld on a bit!" and a rifle fell clattering to the ground and two solid feet sprang forward with a rush. hearing this, i started for the secret postern, and as i opened my door, heard the honest old soldier shout: "corpril uv th' guard, no. 1!" and, in a lower and appealing tone: "liftinint, if ye hear me, come quick to the little sargint. i fear th' dear b'y is dyin'." in an instant i was through the narrow gate-way, standing beside a group of the guard that surrounded clary, who, kneeling beside a panting and reeking pony, held the inanimate form of henry burton in his arms. "corpril duffey, will ye let one uv the b'ys walk me bate a minate till i can take the laddie in?" asked tom. "yes, clary, go ahead, and stay as long as you're needed," was the kindly answer. "is it to your room i'll be takin' him, sor?" asked clary, rising and holding his burden across his breast. "of course, and place him on my bed. corporal duffey, send a man for the surgeon and hospital steward, and send another with the pony to the stable." it was too dark to take in details, but i noticed chiquita was utterly exhausted, and that she was covered with foam. following clary to my room, i saw, when the light fell upon henry's face, that his right cheek and neck were bleeding, and that his left arm hung unnaturally limp by the bearer's side. we placed him upon the bed, and surgeon coues, who had now arrived and pronounced the boy to be simply in a faint from loss of blood and over-exertion, applied restoratives and brought him back to consciousness. as henry's eyelids raised, and he recognized me, he said, weakly: "oh, mr. duncan, tell captain bayard the indians have attacked mr. arnold's ranch, and that mrs. arnold is dead!" "indians attacked the ranch! when?" "about four o'clock." "how many?" "don't know. seemed as if there were over a hundred. and don't stop to worry over me. don't stop an instant--these scratches are nothing--but send the soldiers, quick, or brenda and all will be killed!" "how did you get away from the ranch? but you are right, this is no time for talk." i aroused the other officers instantly, and sent frank to his brother. all assembled in my quarters, and, while the surgeon dressed the wounds in cheek and neck and set a fractured radius, orders for an expedition to skull valley were issued, and henry told his story. at the time this incident occurred the californians had been mustered out of service and returned to their distant homes, and the garrison at fort whipple consisted of infantry only. but there were many "dough-boys" who were good riders, and a number of excellent horses were kept by the quartermaster for emergencies which required speed and short service. captain bayard gave orders for a sergeant, three corporals, and twenty-two privates to be got in readiness for mounted service, with rations for five days. the command was given to me, and private tom clary immediately applied to be relieved from guard in order to accompany me. his request was granted. sergeant frank concluded to remain with his brother. "i know it is rough on you, frankie," said henry, "not to have a chance to win a few scars, too; but i should be dreadfully worried if you were to go, and i'm worried enough about brenda now. you must stay with me." and so it was settled, and frank remained behind, lending his pony sancho to private clary. during all this preparation, dressing of wounds, and setting of fractures, henry had managed to give us an account of what had happened at skull valley before he left. i will, however, repeat it a little more connectedly, with additions obtained later from other parties. after i left sergeant henry in the valley, as i passed through there from the xuacaxélla, he had for three days devoted himself to the amusement of his young hostess, brenda, and her cousins. there were many reasons why the arnolds were not fearing an attack at the time, the principal one being that the indians had recently been defeated at date creek. with that affair they seemed to have withdrawn, and no signs of them had been seen since. near the close of the afternoon of the fourth day of henry's visit a party of forty-one apaches had suddenly appeared, and had spent an hour or more reconnoitring the valley and its approaches. apparently becoming satisfied that they would not be interrupted in their attack by outside parties, they began active operations by collecting the arnold cattle and horses, and placing them in charge of two of their number near the spring. next they fired one of the out-buildings, and under cover of the smoke gained entrance to a second, which stood less than a hundred feet from the north side of the house. knocking the mud and chips from between the logs here and there, they were enabled to open fire upon the settlers at short range. with the first appearance of the indians, mr. arnold, assisted by two travellers who had arrived that afternoon from date creek on their way to prescott, closed the windows and doorways with heavy puncheon shutters, removed the stops from the loop-holes, directed the girls to carry provisions and property into the earthwork, got the arms and ammunition ready, and awaited further demonstrations. the available defensive force consisted of every member of the family, including sergeant henry burton and the two strangers. the mother and daughters had been taught the use of fire-arms by the husband and father, and brenda had been taught by the boy sergeants. in an emergency like the one being narrated, where death and mutilation were sure to follow capture, the girls were nerved to do all that could have been expected of boys at their ages. until the apaches gained possession of the second out-building, few shots had been exchanged, and the besieged closely watched their movements through the loop-holes. it was while doing this that a bullet pierced the brain of mrs. arnold, and she fell dead in the midst of her family. the body of mrs. arnold was borne to the cellar by the sorrowing husband, accompanied by the weeping children. the firing became desultory and without apparent effect. ball and arrow could not pierce the thick walls of the log-house; only through the loop-holes could a missile enter, and by rare good-fortune none of the defenders, after the first casualty, chanced to be in line when one did. the family again assembled in defence of their home and lives, the grave necessity of keeping off the impending danger banishing, in a measure, the thoughts of their bereavement. an ominous silence on the part of the indians was broken at last by the swish of a blazing arrow to the roof. mr. arnold rushed to the garret, and with the butt of his rifle broke a hole in the covering and flung the little torch to the ground. but another and another burning arrow followed, and in spite of desperate and vigilant action the pine shingles burst into flames in several places. at this juncture henry, whose station was on the south side of the house, approached mr. arnold and said: "sir, i see chiquita grazing near the spring, close to the edge of the willows, and the two indians there with the herd keep well this way, watching the fight. if you think best, i will creep through the passage, mount, and ride to the fort for the soldiers." mr. arnold did not at once reply. he took a long look through a loop-hole towards the spring, and henry, misinterpreting his silence, said: "don't think i want to desert you, sir, and skip the ranch. i'll stay here and do my best with the others, but i thought, perhaps, if i could do it, i might save you all." "god bless ye, my boy; nobody can doubt yer fightin' 'bility; yer was born a soldier. i was only thinkin' yer chance uv gittin' by them two redskins at the spring's mighty small." "then you think it a good plan?" "yes; i'd like to have ye do it, if ye can." "thank you, sir. i'll do my best." then the lad passed around the rooms, taking the hand of each defender in farewell until he reached brenda. as he took her hand in his right and fondly lay his left upon it, the young girl broke into uncontrollable sobbing, and, throwing her disengaged arm over his shoulder, said: "oh, henry! what a dear, brave boy you are! you never think of yourself, but always of your friends!" "i will bring the soldiers, brenda, and you shall all be saved. keep up a good heart." "but it is such a long ride, and even if you do get away, you may find us dead or captives when you return." "you must be brave, brenda--no, not brave, for you are that already; but be patient. we are sure to be here before those fellows can take the little fort. that can be defended as long as the ammunition holds out." then the boy kissed the pretty brenda and her cousins, and dropped into the cellar. passing into the earthwork, he selected his saddle and bridle from a heap of others, buckled on his spurs, dropped with bowed head upon his knees a moment, and crept into the passage leading to the spring. groping his way between the narrow walls, he presently emerged through a natural crevice in a mass of bowlders near the spring. standing in the screen of willows, he parted the branches cautiously in the direction of the two indians, and saw them less than a hundred yards distant, standing with their backs towards him watching the arnold house, the roof of which was now a roaring, leaping mass of flame. closing the boughs again, henry opened them in an opposite direction and crept softly up to chiquita, holding out his hand to her. the docile pony raised her head, and, coming forward, placed her nose in his palm, submitting to be saddled and bridled without objection or noise. leaping into the saddle, the boy drove his spurs into the animal's flanks, and was off at a furious run in the direction of whipple. startled by the hoof-beats, the apaches looked back, and began running diagonally across the field to try to intercept the boy before he turned into the direct trail. arrow after arrow flew after him, one wounding him in the neck and another in the cheek, and when the distance began to increase between him and his pursuers and they saw the boy was likely to get away, one raised his rifle and sent a bullet after him, which fractured the radius of his left arm. "well, chiquita," said henry, as he turned fairly into the prescott trail and had realized the exact nature of his injuries, "you haven't got a scratch, and are good for this run if i can hold out." it was dusk when henry began his ride, and it rapidly grew darker as he hurried along the trail. neither he nor the pony had been over it before. twice he got off the trail, and long and miserable stretches of time elapsed in regaining it; but the fort was reached at last and the alarm given. xvii pursuit of the apaches with twenty-eight men, including two scouts picked up as we passed through prescott, and the post surgeon, i left for skull valley. the night was moonless, but the myriad stars shone brilliantly through the rarefied atmosphere of that western region, lighting the trail and making it fairly easy to follow. it was a narrow pathway, with but few places where two horsemen could ride abreast, so conversation was almost impossible, and few words, except those of command, were spoken; nor were the men in a mood to talk. all were more or less excited and impatient, and, wherever the road would permit, urged their horses to a run. the trail climbed and descended rugged steeps, crossed smooth intervals, skirted the edges of precipices, wound along borders of dry creeks, and threaded forests of pine and clumps of sage-brush and greasewood. throughout the ride the imaginations of officers and men were depicting the scenes they feared were being enacted in the valley, or which might take place should they fail to arrive in time to prevent. it is needless to say, perhaps, that the one person about whom the thoughts of the men composing the rescuing party centred was the gentle, bright, and pretty brenda. to think of her falling into the hands of the merciless apaches was almost maddening. on and on rode the column, the men giving their panting steeds no more rest than the nature of the road and the success of the expedition required. at last we reached the spur of the range behind which lay skull valley. we skirted it, and with anxious eyes sought through the darkness the place where the ranch buildings should be. all was silence. no report of fire-arms or whoop of savages disturbed the quiet of the valley. ascending a swell in the surface of the ground we saw that all the buildings had disappeared, nothing meeting our anxious gaze but beds of lurid coals, occasionally fanned into a red glow by the intermittent night breeze. but there was the impregnable earthwork; the family must be in that. i dashed swiftly forward, eagerly followed by my men. the earthwork was destroyed, nothing but a circular pit remaining, in the bottom of which glowed the embers of the fallen roof-timbers. a search for the slain was at once begun, and continued for a long time. every square rod of the valley for a mile was hunted over without result, and we all gathered once more about the two cellars, in which the coals still glowed. "it was in the cellar of the house that sergeant henry said the body of mrs. arnold was laid, was it not?" asked dr. coues. "yes," i replied. "then if all were killed after he left--shot from time to time--would not their remains be likely to be beside hers?" "not beside hers, i think. the last stand must have been made in the fort." "then the bodies, or what is left of them, must lie under that circular bed of coals, duncan, if they died here." "probably, doctor. it's an uncanny thing to do, but we must stir the coals and see." a thorough search revealed nothing. "does th' liftinint moind that sargint hinery mintioned a covered way that led from th' cellar to th' spring?" asked private tom clary, who wielded a rail beside me. "perhaps th' pretty lassie and her frinds are in that." "that is so, clary; thank you for the suggestion," i answered. "can you make out the opening?" "nothin' sure, sor. behoind thim wagon-tires there sames to be a natural slope of earth." "tip the tires over, clary," i ordered; and presently a number of tires, from which the fire had burned the felloes, spokes, and hubs, fell into the coals, disclosing a recently filled aperture. "looks as if the end of a passage had been filled, doesn't it?" asked the surgeon. "it certainly does," i answered. "let us go to the spring and examine." accompanied by the doctor and several men, i rode to the spring. when we arrived there we broke a way through the thick-set willows into an irregular mass of small bowlders. climbing over these, we found ourselves at the mouth of a narrow passage about four feet high and two feet wide. "this must be the entrance to the covered way," i remarked, and placing my head in the crevice, i called: "oh, mr. arnold, we are here--your friends from fort whipple!" "thank heaven!" in a man's tones, came clearly through the entrance, accompanied by a sudden outburst of sobs in girlish voices. "we'll be there directly," spoke another man's voice--that of a stranger. "we've heard your horses' hoofs jarring the ground for some time, but we thought it safest to lay low until we were sure it wasn't redskins." then followed the sound of steps, accompanied by voices, sounding at the entrance, as a voice spoken in a long tube appears to be uttered at the listener's end. some time elapsed before those who seemed so near appeared; but at last there emerged from the passage mr. arnold, two strange men, and three girls--but no brenda. "where is brenda, mr. arnold?" i asked. "heaven only knows, lieutenant. she gave herself up to the apaches." "gave herself up to the apaches! what do you mean?" "that's precisely what she did, lieutenant," said one of the strangers, adding: "my name is bartlett, from hassayampa, and this is mr. gilbert, from tucson. we were on our way from la paz to prescott and stopped here for a meal, and got corralled by the indians. but about the girl brenda: she took it into her head, after we got into the little fort, that unless some one could create a diversion to mislead the devils, we'd all lose our scalps." "that beautiful young girl! gave herself up to certain torture and death! why did you allow it?" "allow it!" exclaimed mr. bartlett, indignantly. "i hope, lieutenant, you don't think so hard of me and my friend as to believe we'd have allowed it if we'd suspected what the plucky miss meant to do!" "tell me the circumstances, mr. bartlett," said i. the party moved slowly along the path from the spring to the fires, and as they walked mr. arnold and the travellers gave an account of all that had happened after sergeant henry left for fort whipple. the burning arrows sent to the pitch-pine roof became so numerous that the besieged found it impossible to prevent the flames from catching in several places. henry was hardly out of sight before the house became untenable, and the defenders were obliged to retire to the fort. when the house was consumed, and its timbers had fallen into the cellar a mass of burning brands, the space about the earthwork was clear, and the rifles at its loop-holes kept the indians close within the out-building they had occupied since the attack began. no one dared to show himself to the unerring marksmen, who watched every movement. for a long time silence reigned among the indians. the whites, however, felt sure that plans were being matured which meant disaster to them. at last these plans were revealed in a constant and rapid flight of arrows, directed at a point between two loop-holes--a point which could not be reached by the besieged, and where, if a considerable collection of burning brands could be heaped against the logs, between the earth and the eaves, the pine walls and rafters must take fire. walls and roof were too solid to be cut away, and water could not reach the outside. the defenders, when they realized what the result of a fire would be, held a consultation, and decided that in the event of the fire getting control of the fort they should retire into the covered way, block up the entrance with earth, and remain there until help should arrive. it was thought the indians would suppose all had perished in the flames. "but they know we came here by an underground passage from the house," said brenda; "will they not suspect we have entered another passage if we all disappear?" "p'r'aps they may," answered mr. arnold; "i had not thought of that. we'll have to take our chances." "if one of us was to appear to escape from here, and join them," continued the girl, "i think they would suppose the others had perished, and make no search." "that may be true, but i'll take my chances here," said mr. gilbert. "so will i," said his companion. "a fellow wouldn't last a minute outside this fort. i prefer smothering to the death those devils will give me." it soon became evident to the besieged that the outer wall was on fire. the sun had gone down and darkness was deepening in the valley when the first tongue of flame licked through a crevice in the roof and showed that the fire had gained a foothold. soon a hole appeared, close to the eaves, which gradually enlarged towards the centre of the roof and along the surface of the earth. with blankets the fire was beaten out on the sides, but it crept insidiously along between the timber and earth covering. in making the roof, branches of pine had been spread over the timber, and the branches in turn covered with a thick layer of straw to prevent the earth from filtering between the logs. this material was as dry as tinder, and held the fire. the men stood at the loop-holes and compelled the savages to remain under cover of the out-building, while the four girls exerted themselves to keep the fire from showing inside. delay until help could arrive from whipple was what all were struggling to gain; but the increasing heat and smoke showed the defenders at last that they could no longer put off retiring to the covered way. the word was given and all entered it, and the men with shovels began to close the entrance. when it was a little more than half closed the hole in the roof had become triangular, resembling the space between two spokes and a felloe of a wheel. on the earth, or felloe side of the triangle, there was no fire; but the other sides were burning fiercely. making a sudden dash, and before any one could realize her intention, brenda leaped past the shovellers, sprang over the embankment they were throwing up, and by the aid of a bench sprang up the four-foot wall, through the flame-bordered aperture, and disappeared, her clothing apparently in a blaze. the war-whoops immediately ceased. no attempt at pursuit or rescue was made. the arnolds and the strangers felt that it would be useless, and only result in the death of the pursuers. the work of closing the passage was resumed and completed, and all sat down to await the slow flight of time and the possible arrival of the soldiers. after listening to the story of the arnolds i concluded that brenda had fallen a victim to the cruelty of the apaches, and that we should find her mutilated and disfigured body. a rapid and excited search was at once began. far and wide, over plain, through ravines, and into the foot-hills rode the soldiers, leaving no part of the country for several miles around unsearched; but not a trace of the missing girl was discovered. once more the detachment gathered near the ruins of the arnold home, and began preparations for returning to whipple. the remains of the dead wife and mother were lifted from beneath the charred timbers and deposited in a grave near by. while the burial was taking place, the two scouts, weaver and cooler, were absent, looking for the apache trail. day was dawning, and as it was probable when they returned that the command could start, i ordered the horses fed from the loose forage scattered about, and the men to prepare their breakfast. the scouts returned as the men were dispersing from their meal, and cooler placed in my hand a dainty lock of flaxen hair, wound around the middle with a strand of the same. "i found it," said the scout, "beside the ravine yonder, a little more than two miles from here. the young miss is alive, and dropped it for a 'sign.' the redskins all left in that direction." whatever brenda's three cousins may have lacked in education and cultivation, they wanted nothing in affection. they gathered about the little tress, took it daintily in their palms, kissed it again and again, and moistened it with tears. low sobs and endearing names for the brave darling who had been willing to sacrifice her life to preserve theirs fell from their lips. poor, rude, frontier maids, they had shown an equal bravery all through the defence, and proved themselves to be worthy descendants of the race that lived through the colonial struggles with the indians of the mohawk valley. the three girls gathered about me, and, clinging to my arms, besought me to go to the rescue of their cousin. "yes, yes, girls," i replied; "everything shall be done that possibly can be. we will start at once, and i hope to bring her back to you." turning to the father, i said, "mr. arnold, i will leave you a luncheon for the road, and you must try to make the distance to prescott on foot." "yes, sir; we can do it easy, thank you." "i would leave you some of the men as escort, but in such an expedition i need more than i have." "that's all right, mr. dunkin; 'f i had a beast i'd go with ye. there'll be no apaches round these parts agin for a considerable spell," and his eyes ran sadly over the ruins of his home, the wreck of his property, resting finally on the grave of his wife. yes, brenda was alive, and a prisoner of the apaches, spared by them, probably, as children sometimes are after such raids, for adoption. it was plainly our duty to rescue her from the fate of a continued life with her captors. xviii on the trail of the apaches after a further delay, to allow the scouts and their broncos to breakfast, the party mounted and turned to the west. calling paul weaver to ride by my side, i questioned him about the region before us. "i suppose you are familiar with this part of the country, paul?" "ought t' be. trapped and hunted here since i was twenty, and i'm nigh on to sixty-five now." "have these apaches a camping-place near here?" "yes; they spend a part of every year here-abouts, gatherin' mezcal. from the direction they've took, i b'lieve they're goin' to santy maree creek." "that flows into bill williams fork, does it not?" "yes, an' 't has a northern and southern branch. one of th' favorite campin'-places of th' mezcalleros 's on th' southern branch." "how far is it from here?" "'bout fifty mile." "easy of approach?" "toler'ble; good ridin' all th' way, 'cept a bit of bowlder country on a divide." "is the camp open to attack?" "wide open arter yer git into th' valley. there's a waterfall, or, rather, a piece of rips ther' that 'll drown th' n'ise of our comin'." "isn't it strange indians should camp in such a place?" "they're mezcallero 'paches, and the'r food, th' mezcal, grows thick round ther'. 'sides, ther's no other place on th' stream combinin' grazin' and waterin', and they've never been hunted into that region yit." "well, paul, they will be now." i urged the men on as fast as possible, taking care not to exhaust the horses and unfit them for a long pursuit. the soldiers were animated by a strong desire to punish the indians for their treatment of the family in skull valley, and were excited by the fear that the gentle and beautiful young girl in their hands might fall a victim to some barbaric cruelty before they could be overtaken, so that the animals were constantly urged close to their powers of endurance. near the middle of the forenoon, as the soldiers were riding up a cañon, on each side of which rose rugged sandstone precipices, we came to a fork in the trail and the cañon. not only the track parted, but, judging from footprints, most of the captured stock had passed to the right. weaver said the right-hand path led to the northern branch of the santa maria, and the left to the southern. i halted the detachment, perplexed. to divide my party of twenty-nine in order to follow both trails seemed to me to be inviting disaster. to take the whole number over a wrong trail and not rescue brenda was a course to be dreaded. i called up the scouts, weaver and cooler, for a consultation. "don't you think it is probable," i asked, "that a girl who was thoughtful enough to drop a 'sign' to show she is alive and a captive, would be likely to give a hint here as to which trail she was taken over?" "that's prob'ble, liftinint," replied weaver. "'f you'll hold th' boys here a bit, george an' i'll ride up th' two trails a piece an' look for signs." "go quite a distance, too. she might not get an opportunity to drop anything for some time after leaving the fork." "that's true, sir," said cooler; "the redskins would naturally be watching her closely. which way will you go, paul?" "let the liftinint say," answered the elder scout, tightening his belt and readjusting his equipments for resuming his riding. "all ready, then," said i. "you take the right, weaver, and george the left. while you are gone we'll turn out the stock." the scouts departed, and a few moments later the horses of the command were cropping the rich grass of the narrow valley, sentinels were placed to watch them and look for the return of the guides, and the rest of the men threw themselves upon the turf to rest. an hour passed away, when weaver was seen returning from the northern trail. as he approached he held something above his head. directing the horses to be made ready, i walked forward to meet him, and received from his hand a small bow of blue ribbon, which i at once recognized to be the property of brenda. it now appeared certain the girl captive had been taken over the road to the right; so, without waiting for the return of cooler, the men were ordered into their saddles, and we started along the northern trail. our march had not long continued, however, when private tom clary, who was riding in the rear, called to me. looking back, i saw the young scout galloping rapidly forward and waving his hat in a beckoning manner. a halt was ordered, and cooler rode up to me and placed in my hand _a lock of flaxen hair, bound with a thread of the same_. placed by the other they were twin tresses, except that the last was slightly singed by fire. well, tears glistened on the eyelids of some of the bronzed veterans at the sight of the tiny lock of hair. we had barely escaped taking the wrong trail. "god bliss the darlint," said grizzled tom clary. "there's not a ridskin can bate her with their tricks. we'll bring her back to her frinds, b'ys, or it'll go hard wid us." clary's remarks were subscribed to by many hearty exclamations on the part of his fellow-soldiers. we had no difficulty in understanding that the apaches had expected to be pursued and had dropped the ribbon to mislead us, and that brenda had dropped her "sign" to set her friends right. i asked the guides if it was not probable the apaches had set a watch on the overlooking heights to see which road we should take at this point. "it's sartin', liftinint," answered weaver; "they're watchin' us sharp jest now." "then we had better continue on the northern trail awhile and mislead them, you think?" "that's it, liftinint. that's th' best thing to do. we needn't reach their camp until after midnight, an' we might 's well spend th' time misleadin' em." "yes, and it'll be better to reach them a few hours after midnight, too," added cooler; "they sleep soundest then." "then we will go on as we began for some time longer," i replied, and the soldiers again moved at a brisk canter over the northern trail. an hour passed, and a halt was made in a grassy nook, where the horses were turned out to graze until dusk. our route was then retraced to the fork and the march resumed over the southern branch. night overtook us on a high ridge covered with loose, rounded bowlders, over which it was necessary to lead the horses slowly, with considerable clatter and some bruises to man and beast. the rough road lasted until a considerable descent was made on the western side, and ended on the edge of a grassy valley. at this point weaver advised that the horses should be left and the command proceed on foot; for if the indians were in camp at the rapids it would be impossible to approach mounted without alarming them, while if on foot the noise of the rushing water would cover the sound of all movements. six men were sent back to a narrow defile to prevent the attacking party from being surprised by the detachment of indians which had taken the northern trail, should they intend to rejoin their friends at the rapids. upon the recommendation of the scouts i determined to defer making an attack until after three o'clock, for they assured me that at that time the enemy would be feeling quite secure from pursuit and be in their deepest sleep. the horses were picketed, guards posted, and a lunch distributed, and all not on duty lay down to wait. time dragged slowly. about one o'clock a noise on the opposite side of the creek attracted attention, and cooler crept away in the darkness to ascertain its cause. in half an hour he returned with the information that the party of mezcalleros who had taken the northern trail had rejoined their friends and turned their animals into the general herd. upon learning this i despatched a messenger to call in the six men sent to guard the defile. when the time for starting arrived one man only was left with the picketed horses, and the rest of us slipped down the slope to the river-bottom, taking care not to rattle arms and equipments, and began a slow advance along a narrow pathway, the borders of which were lined with the spiked vegetation of the country. moving on for some time, i judged from the sound of flowing water that we were nearing the camp, and, halting the party, sent the scouts to reconnoitre. they returned with the information that the camp was close at hand, and contained thirteen mat and skin covered tents, or huts, and that the stolen stock and indian ponies were grazing on a flat just beyond. no guards were visible. the flat about the encampment was covered with spanish-bayonet, soapweed, and cacti, with here and there a variety of palmetto, which attains a height of about twenty-five feet, the trunks shaggy with a fringe of dead spines left by each year's growth. cooler suggested that at a given signal the trunks of two of these trees should be set on fire to light up the camp, and enable the soldiers to pick off the apaches as they left their shelter when our attack should begin. he also proposed that we yell, saying: "if you out-yell 'em, lieutenant, you can out-fight 'em." although i seriously doubted whether twenty-five white throats could make as much noise as half a dozen red ones, i consented to the proposition. i sent nine men to the flat upon which the ponies and cattle were grazing, with orders to place themselves between the creek and herd, and when the firing began drive the animals into the hills. when these instructions had been given, surgeon coues asked me if the firing would be directed into the tents. "yes, doctor," i replied. "of course, miss brenda is in one of them," he observed. "yes, and if we shoot into them indiscriminately we are quite as likely to hit her as any one." "can you think of any way of locating her?" "no; i am at a dead loss. we will try cooler's plan of yelling, and perhaps that will bring the indians out." i sent clary, who had been directed to remain near me, for sergeant rafferty, and when the sergeant appeared directed him to forbid any one to fire a shot until ordered to do so. xix the attack on the apache camp orders were passed and dispositions so made that one-half the force was placed on each flank of the camp. all movements were made at a considerable distance from the place to be attacked, and the utmost care taken not to make a sound that would alarm the sleeping foe. once on the flanks, the men were to creep up slowly and stealthily to effective rifle range. when the trunks of the palmettos were lighted all were to yell as diabolically as possible, and fire at every indian that showed himself. the front of the camp looked towards the creek, which flowed over bowlders and pebbles with a great rush and roar. the indians were expected in their flight to make a dash for the stream, and attempt to pass through the shoal rapids to the wooded bluffs beyond. my instructions were for the men to screen themselves on the flanks, behind the yuccas, spanish-bayonet, emole, and cacti. accompanied by tom clary and paul weaver, i selected a clump of vegetation on the northern side, from which the front of the tents could be observed. sergeant rafferty, with george cooler, was on the opposite flank, and the lighting of a tree on my side was to be the signal for one to be lighted on the other, and for the yelling to begin. this plan was carried out. the flash of one match was followed promptly by the flash of another. two flames burst forth, and rapidly climbed the shaggy trunks of the little palms, lighting up the whole locality. at the same instant an imitation war-whoop burst from vigorous lungs and throats. every one held his rifle in readiness to shoot the escaping apaches, but not a redskin showed his jetty head. the soldiers yelled and yelled, practising every variation ingenuity could invent in the vain attempt to make their tame white-man utterances resemble the blood-curdling, hair-raising, heart-jumping shrieks of their indian foes, now so strangely silent. not a savage responded vocally or otherwise. but for the presence of the captive girl in one of the thirteen tents the attack would have begun by riddling the thinly covered shelters with bullets at low range. the two burning trees had gone out and two others had been lighted, and it soon appeared evident that if something was not done to bring out the foe the supply of torches would soon be exhausted and nothing accomplished. in the darkness the advantage might even turn to the side of the redman. surgeon coues, who reclined near me, asked: "do you think any of those fellows understand english?" "perhaps a few common phrases. they know spanish fairly well from living for some centuries near the mexicans." "are they quite as old as that, lieutenant?" "you know what i mean, doctor." "why not speak to brenda in english, and ask her to try to show us where she is? the apaches will not understand--will think you are talking to your men." "an excellent idea, doctor. i'll try it." private tom clary was sent along both flanks with orders for all yelling to cease and for perfect quiet to be maintained. then, acting upon the surgeon's suggestion, i called, in a clear, loud voice: "brenda, we are here--your friends from the fort. your relatives are safe. try to make a signal, or do something by which we can learn where you are. take plenty of time, and do nothing to endanger your life." a long silence ensued, during which two more pillars of fire burned out. i was beginning to fear i should be obliged to offer terms to the indians, leaving them unhurt if they would yield up their captive and the stolen stock; but before i had fully considered this alternative clary, who was returning along the rear of the line of tents from his recent errand, approached and said: "liftinint, as i was crapin' along behoind th' wiggies i saw somethin' loike a purty white hand stickin' out from undher th' edge of th' third from this ind." "show it to me," said i. "i'll go with you." making a slight détour to the rear, the soldier and i crept up to the back of the tent indicated, pausing at a distance of twenty feet from it. nothing definite could be made out in the darkness. a narrow, white object was visible beneath the lower edge. sending clary back a few yards to light up a palm, i fixed my eyes on the object mentioned, and as the flames leaped up the trunk perceived by the flaring light a small, white hand, holding in its fingers the loose tresses of brenda's hair. the question was settled. the captive girl was in the third tent from the right of the line. waiting until the fire went out, clary and i made our way back to our former station. "go around the lines again, clary, and tell sergeant rafferty to move his men to a point from which he can cover the rear of the camp, and open fire on all the tents except the third from the right." "all roight, sor; th' b'ys 'll soon mak' it loively for th' rids." "tell the sergeant to light up some trees." "yes, sor." i then crept slowly back to my own flank, and ordered a disposition of my half of the party so as to command the space in front of the line of tents. in another instant the flames were ascending two tree-trunks, and the rapid cracking of rifles broke our long reserve. with the first scream of a bullet through their flimsy shelters the indians leaped out and ran for the river. few fell. rapid zigzags and the swinging of blankets and arms as they ran confused the aim of the soldiers. in less than five minutes the last apache was out of sight, and the firing had ceased. we dashed up to the tents, and i rushed to the one from which i had seen the hand and tress thrust out, and called, "brenda!" there was no response or sound. looking into the entrance, i saw in the dim light of the awakening day the figure of a girl lying on her back, her feet extended towards me, and her head touching the rear wall. the right arm lay along her side, and the left was thrown above her head, the fingers still holding her hair. a terrible fear seized my heart. i again called the girl by her name, but received no answer. i went in, and with nervous fingers lighted a match and stooped beside her. horror-stricken, i saw a stream of blood threading its way across the earthern floor from her left side. i shouted for dr. coues, and the surgeon hurried in. from his instrument-case he took a small, portable lamp, and, lighting it, fell upon his knees beside the prostrate girl. during the following few moments, while the skilled fingers of the firm-nerved surgeon were cutting away clothing to expose the nature of the wound, my thoughts found time to wander to the distant family, on its way to the fort, and to the boy sergeants there. i thought what a sad message it would be my province to bear to them, should this dear relative and cherished friend die by savage hands. there was little hope that the pretty girl could live. to me she seemed already claimed by death. she who had made our long and weary march from wingate to whipple so pleasant by her vivacity and intelligence, and had latterly brightened our occasional visits to skull valley, was to die in this wretched hole. but the _tactus eruditus_ of the young surgeon was continuing the search for some evidence that the savage stab was not fatal, and his mind was busy with means for preserving life, should there be a chance. i watched his motions, and assisted now and then when asked, and waited with strained patience for a word upon which to base a hope. at last the surgeon gently dropped the hand whose pulse he had long been examining, and said: "she is alive, and that is about all that can be said. you see, her hands, arms, and neck are badly scorched by the dash she made through the fire at the ranch. then this wicked knife-thrust has paralyzed her. she has bled considerably, too, but she lives. press your finger upon this artery--here." "can she be made to live, doctor?" "the knife has not touched a vital part, but it may have done irreparable injury. i can tell more presently." nothing more was said, except in the way of direction, for some time, the surgeon working slowly and skilfully at the wound. at last, rearranging the girl's clothing and replacing his instruments in their case, he said: "if i had the girl in the post-hospital, or in a civilized dwelling, with a good nurse, i think she might recover." "can't we give her the proper attendance here, doctor?" i asked. "i fear not. she ought to have a woman's gentle care, for one thing, and some remedies and appliances i haven't with me for such a delicate case. it is the long distance between here and the fort, and the rough road, that make the outlook hopeless. she cannot survive such a journey." "then we will remain here, doctor," said i. "write out a list of what you want, and i will send a man to whipple for tents and supplies, a camp woman, frank, vic, and the elder arnold girl." "duncan, you are inspired!" exclaimed the doctor. "i'll have my order ready by the time the messenger reports, and then we'll make brenda comfortable." a letter was written to captain bayard, the surgeon's memoranda enclosed, and a quarter of an hour afterwards fleet-footed sancho was flying over the sixty miles to fort whipple as fast as private tom clary could ride him. three days later a pack-train arrived, with a laundress from the infantry company, frank burton, and mary arnold, and with stores and supplies necessary for setting up a sick-camp. the wounded girl mended rapidly from the start. in due time brenda recovered sufficiently to bear transportation to prescott, where she joined her uncle and cousins. rapid changes quickly followed. i received orders directing me to report for duty at once at the seabury military school, and by the same mail came letters from colonel burton directing his sons to accompany me. at the end of the next fortnight, just as we were packed for a journey to the pacific coast, brenda received instructions from her maternal relatives to make the same journey, and joined us. frank and henry's project to transport their ponies east, and their plans for manuel and sapoya, were also carried out. boys and ponies became a prominent contingent to the corps of cadets under my military instruction during the following three years. later, henry went to west point and became an officer of the army. frank and manuel went to college, the former becoming a distinguished civil engineer and the latter a prominent business man. sapoya closed his school career at seabury, and rejoined his people in the indian territory, becoming a valued and respected leader of his people. on a beautiful lawn before a fine mansion on the eastern shore of the hudson river, beneath the shade of a stately elm, stands a small monument, upon the top of which rests a finely chiselled model of a setter dog. beneath, on a bronze tablet, is engraved: "beneath this stone lies victoriana, the loved and esteemed friend of charles alfred duncan, frank douglas burton, brenda arnold burton, henry francis burton, manuel augustine perea y luna, sapoya snoygon perea." the end [illustration: montezuma's castle, the ruined cliff dwelling on beaver creek between the coconino and prescott national forests, arizona] through our unknown southwest the wonderland of the united states--little known and unappreciated--the home of the cliff dweller and the hopi, the forest ranger and the navajo,--the lure of the painted desert by agnes c. laut author of _the conquest of the great northwest_, _lords of the north_ and _freebooters of the wilderness_ new york mcbride, nast & company 1913 copyright, 1913, by mcbride, nast & co. _second printing october, 1913_ _published may, 1913_ contents page introduction i i the national forests 1 ii national forests of the southwest 22 iii through the pecos forests 44 iv the city of the dead 60 v the enchanted mesa of acoma 78 vi across the painted desert 100 vii across the painted desert (_continued_) 116 viii grand cañon and the petrified forests 137 ix the governor's palace of santa fe 153 x the governor's palace (_continued_) 169 xi taos, the promised land 183 xii taos, the most ancient city in america 196 xiii san antonio, the cairo of america 214 xiv casa grande and the gila 226 xv san xavier del bac mission 251 the illustrations cliff dwelling ruins, known as montezuma castle, _frontispiece_ facing page south house of frijoles cañon ii indian woman making pottery xii indian girl of isleta, n. m. xx one way of entering the desert 4 in the coconino forest of arizona 14 forest ranger fighting a ground fire with his blanket 22 pueblo boys at play 34 chili peppers drying outside pueblo dwelling 46 los pueblos, taos, n. m. 56 entrance to a cliff dwelling 64 ruins of frijoles cañon 74 a hopi wooing 80 a hopi weaver 86 a shy little hopi maid 92 at the water hole on the outskirts of laguna 96 a handsome navajo boy 106 the pueblo of walpi 122 the grand cañon 140 the governor's palace at santa fe 154 a pool in the painted desert 160 street in santa fe 166 ancient adobe gateway 172 san ildefonso 180 taos 188 over the roofs of taos 198 a metal worker of taos 208 a mud house of the southwest 220 the enchanted mesa of acoma 230 navajo crossing mesa 246 at the mission of san xavier 254 a moki city on a mesa 262 through our unknown southwest introduction i am sitting in the doorway of a house of the stone age--neolithic, paleolithic, troglodytic man--with a roofless city of the dead lying in the valley below and the eagles circling with lonely cries along the yawning caverns of the cliff face above. my feet rest on the topmost step of a stone stairway worn hip-deep in the rocks of eternity by the moccasined tread of foot-prints that run back, not to a. d. or b. c., but to those post-glacial æons when the advances and recessions of an ice invasion from the poles left seas where now are deserts; when giant sequoia forests were swept under the sands by the flood waters, and the mammoth and the dinosaur and the brontosaur wallowed where now nestle farm hamlets. such a tiny doorway it is that stone man must have been obliged to welcome a friend by hauling him shoulders foremost through the entrance, or able to speed the parting foe down the steep stairway with a rock on his head. inside, behind me, is a little dome-roofed room, with calcimined walls, and squared stone meal bins, and a little, high fireplace, and stone pillows, and a homemade flour mill in the form of a flat _metate_ stone with a round grinding stone on top. from the shape and from the remnants of pottery shards lying about, i suspect one of these hewn alcoves in the inner wall was the place for the family water jar. on each side the room are tiny doorways leading by stone steps to apartments below and to rooms above; so that you may begin with a valley floor room which you enter by ladder and go halfway to the top of a 500-foot cliff by a series of interior ladders and stone stairs. flush with the floor at the sides of these doors are the most curious little round "cat holes" through the walls--"cat holes" for a people who are not supposed to have had any cats; yet the little round holes run from room to room through all the walls. on some of the house fronts are painted emblems of the sun. inside, round the wall of the other houses, runs a drawing of the plumed serpent--"awanya," guardian of the waters--whose presence always presaged good cheer of water in a desert land growing drier and drier as the glacial age receded, and whose serpent emblem in the sky you could see across the heavens of a starry night in the milky way. lying about in other cave houses are stone "bells" to call to meals or prayers, and cobs of corn, and prayer plumes--owl or turkey feathers. don't smile and be superior! it isn't a hundred years ago since the common christian idea of angels was feathers and wings; and these stone people lived--well, when _did_ they live? not later than 400 a. d., for that was when the period of desiccation, or drought from the recession of the glacial waters, began. [illustration: ruins of south house, one of the great communal dwellings of frijoles cañon, after excavation] "the existence of man in the glacial period is established," says winchell, the great western geologist, "that implies man during the period when flourished the large mammals now extinct. in short, there is as much evidence pointing to america as to asia as the primal birthplace of man." now the ice invasion began hundreds of thousands of years ago; and the last great recession is set at about 10,000 years; and the implements of stone age man are found contemporaneous with the glacial silt. * * * * * there is not another section in the whole world where you can wander for days amid the houses and dead cities of the stone age; _where you can literally shake hands with the stone age_. shake hands? isn't that putting it a little strong? it doesn't sound like the dry-as-dust dead collections of museums. it may be putting it strong; but it is also meticulously and simply--true. a few doors away from the cave-house where i sit, lies a little body--no, not a mummy! we are not in egypt. we are in america; but we often have to go to egypt to find out the wonders of america. lies a little body, that of a girl of about eighteen or twenty, swathed in otter and beaver skins with leg bindings of woven yucca fiber something like modern burlap. woven cloth from 20,000 to 10,000 b. c.? yes! that is pretty strong, isn't it? 'tis when you come to consider it; our european ancestors at that date were skipping through hyrcanian forests clothed mostly in the costume nature gave them; herbert spencer would have you believe, skipping round with simian gibbering monkey jaws and claws, clothed mostly in apes' hair. yet there lies the little lady in the cave to my left, the long black hair shiny and lustrous yet, the skin dry as parchment still holding the finger bones together, head and face that of a human, not an ape, all well preserved owing to the gypsum dust and the high, dry climate in which the corpse has lain. in my collection, i have bits of cloth taken from a body which archæologists date not later than 400 a. d. nor earlier than 8,000 b. c., and bits of corn and pottery from water jars, placed with the dead to sustain them on the long journey to the other world. for the last year, i have worn a pin of obsidian which you would swear was an egyptian scarab if i had not myself obtained it from the ossuaries of the cave dwellers in the american southwest. come out now to the cave door and look up and down the cañon again! to right and to left for a height of 500 feet the face of the yellow _tufa_ precipice is literally pitted with the windows and doors of the stone age city. in the bottom of the valley is a roofless dwelling of hundreds of rooms--"the cormorant and the bittern possess it; the owl also and the raven dwell in it; stones of emptiness; thorns in the palaces; nettles and brambles in the fortresses; and the screech owl shall rest there." listen! you can almost hear it--the fulfillment of isaiah's old prophecy--the lonely "hoo-hoo-hoo" of the turtle dove; and the lonelier cry of the eagle circling, circling round the empty doors of the upper cliffs! then, the sharp, short bark-bark-bark of a fox off up the cañon in the yellow pine forests towards the white snows of the jemez mountains; and one night from my camp in this cañon, i heard the coyotes howling from the empty caves. below are the roofless cities of the dead stone age, and the dancing floors, and the irrigation canals used to this day, and the stream leaping down from the jemez snows, which must once have been a rushing torrent where wallowed such monsters as are known to-day only in modern men's dreams. far off to the right, where the worshipers must always have been in sight of the snowy mountains and have risen to the rising of the desert sun over cliffs of ocher and sands of orange and a sky of turquoise blue, you can see the great kiva or ceremonial temple of the stone age people who dwelt in this cañon. it is a great concave hollowed out of the white pumice rock almost at the cliff top above the tops of the highest yellow pines. a darksome, cavernous thing it looks from this distance, but a wonderful mid-air temple for worshipers when you climb the four or five hundred ladder steps that lead to it up the face of a white precipice sheer as a wall. what sights the priests must have witnessed! i can understand their worshiping the rising sun as the first rays came over the cañon walls in a shield of fire. alcoves for meal, for incense, for water urns, mark the inner walls of this chamber, too. where the ladder projects up through the floor, you can descend to the hollowed underground chamber where the priests and the council met; a darksome, eerie place with _sipapu_--the holes in the floor--for the mystic earth spirit to come out for the guidance of his people. don't smile at that idea of an earth spirit! what do we tell a man, who has driven his nerves too hard in town?--to go back to the soil and let dame nature pour her invigorating energies into him! that's what the earth spirit, the great earth magician, signified to these people. * * * * * curious how geology and archæology agree on the rise and evanishment of these people. geology says that as the ice invasion advanced, the northern races were forced south and south till the stone age folk living in the roofless city of the dead on the floor of the valley were forced to take refuge from them in the caves hollowed out of the cliff. that was any time between 20,000 b.c. and 10,000 b.c. archæology says as the utes and the navajo and the apache--asthapascan stock--came ramping from the north, the stone men were driven from the valleys to the inaccessible cliffs and mesa table lands. "it was not until the nomadic robbers forced the pueblos that the southwestern people adopted the crowded form of existence," says archæology. sounds like an explanation of our modern skyscrapers and the real estate robbers of modern life, doesn't it? then, as the glacial age had receded and drought began, the cave men were forced to come down from their cliff dwellings and to disperse. here, too, is another story. there may have been a great cataclysm; for thousands of tons of rock have fallen from the face of the cañon, and the rooms remaining are plainly only back rooms. the hopi and moki and zuñi have traditions of the "heavens raining fire;" and good cobs of corn have been found embedded in what may be solid lava, or fused adobe. pajarito plateau, the spanish called this region--"place of the bird people," who lived in the cliffs like swallows; but thousands of years before the spanish came, the stone age had passed and the cliff people dispersed. * * * * * what in the world am i talking about, and where? that's the curious part of it. if it were in egypt, or petræ, or amid the sand-covered columns of phrygia, every tourist company in the world would be arranging excursions to it; and there would be special chapters devoted to it in the supplementary readers of the schools; and you wouldn't be--well, just _au fait_, if you didn't know; but do you know this wonder-world is in america, your own land? it is less than forty miles from the regular line of continental travel; $6 a single rig out, $14 a double; $1 to $2 a day at the ranch house where you can board as you explore the amazing ancient civilization of our own american southwest. this particular ruin is in the frijoles cañon; but there are hundreds, thousands, of such ruins all through the southwest in colorado and utah and arizona and new mexico. by joining the archæological society of santa fe, you can go out to these ruins even more inexpensively than i have indicated. * * * * * a general passenger agent for one of the largest transcontinental lines in the northwest told me that for 1911, where 60,000 people bought round-trip tickets to our own west and back--pleasure, not business--over 120,000 people bought tickets for europe and egypt. i don't know whether his figures covered only the northwest of which he was talking, or the whole continental traffic association; but the amazing fact to me was the proportion he gave--_one_ to our own wonders, to _two_ for abroad. i talked to another agent about the same thing. he thought that the average tourist who took a trip to our own pacific coast spent from $300 to $500, while the average tourist who went to europe spent from $1,000 to $2,000. many european tourists went at $500; but so many others spent from $3,000 to $5,000, that he thought the average spendings of the tourist to europe should be put at $1,000 to $2,000. that puts your proportion at a still more disastrous discrepancy--thirty million dollars _versus_ one hundred and twenty million. _the statist_ of london places the total spent by americans in europe at nearer three hundred million dollars than one hundred and twenty million. of the 3,700,000 people who went to the seattle exposition, it is a pretty safe guess that not 100,000 easterners out of the lot saw the real west. what did they see? they saw the exposition, which was like any other exposition; and they saw western cities, that are imitations of eastern cities; and they patronized western hotel rotundas and dining places, where you pay forty cents for grand junction and hood river fruit, which you can buy in the east for twenty-five; and they rode in the rubberneck cars with the gramophone man who tells western variations of the same old eastern lies; and they came back thoroughly convinced that there was no more real west. and so 120,000 americans yearly go to europe spending a good average of $1,000 apiece. we scour the alps for peaks that everybody has climbed, though there are half a dozen switzerlands from glacier park in the north to cloudcroft, new mexico, with hundreds of peaks which no one has climbed and which you can visit for not more than fifty dollars for a four weeks' holiday. we tramp through spain for the picturesque, quite oblivious of the fact that the most picturesque bit of spain, about 10,000 years older than old spain, is set right down in the heart of america with turquoise mines from which the finest jewel in king alphonso's crown was taken. we rent a "shootin' box in scotland" at a trifling cost of from $1,200 to $12,000 a season, because game is "so scarce out west, y' know." yet i can direct you to game haunts out west where you can shoot a grizzly a week at no cost at all but your own courage; and bag a dozen wild turkeys before breakfast; and catch mountain trout faster than you can string them and pose for a photograph; and you won't need to lie about the ones that got away, nor boast of what it cost you; for you can do it at two dollars a day from start to finish. it would take you a good half-day to count up the number of tourist and steamboat agencies that organize sightseeing excursions to go and apostrophize the sphinx, and bark your shins and swear and sweat on the pyramids. yet it would be a safe wager that outside official scientific circles, there is not a single organization in america that knows we have a sphinx of our own in the west that antedates egyptian archæology by 8,000 years, and stone lions older than the columns of phrygia, and kings' palaces of 700 and 1,000 rooms. am i yarning; or dreaming? neither! perfectly sober and sane and wide awake and just in from spending two summers in those same rooms and shaking hands with a corpse of the stone age. a young westerner, who had graduated from harvard, set out on the around-the-world tour that was to give him that world-weary feeling that was to make him live happy ever afterwards. in nagasaki, a little brown jappy-chappie of great learning, who was a prince or something or other of that sort, which made it possible for harvard to know him, asked in choppy english about "the gweat, the vely gweat anti-kwatties in y'or souf wes'." when young harvard got it through his head that "anti-kwatties" meant antiquities, he rolled a cigarette and went out for a smoke; but it came back at him again in egypt. they were standing below the chin of an ancient lady commonly called the sphinx, when an english traveler turned to young america. "i say," he said; "yankeedom beats us all out on this old dame, doesn't it? you've a carved colossus in your own west a few trifling billion years older than this, haven't you?" young america, with a weakness somewhere in his middle, "guessed they had." then looking over the old jewels taken from the ruins of pompeii, he was asked, "how america was progressing excavating her ruins;" and he heard for the first time in his life that the finest crown jewel in europe came from a mine just across the line from his own home state. the experience gave him something to think about. the incident is typical of many of the 120,000 people who yearly trek to europe for holiday. _we have to go abroad to learn how to come home._ we go to europe and find how little we have seen of america. it is when you are motoring in france that you first find out there is a great "camino real" almost 1,000 miles long, much of it above cloud line, from wyoming to texas. it's some european who has "a shootin' box" out in the pecos, who tells you about it. of course, if you like spending $12,000 a year for "a shootin' box" in scotland, that is another matter. there are various ways of having a good time; but when i go fishing i like to catch trout and not be a sucker. spite of the legend, "why go to europe? see america first," we keep on going to europe to see america. why? for a lot of reasons; and most of them lies. some fool once said, and we keep on repeating it--that it costs more to go west than it does to go to europe. so it does, if "going west" means staying at hotels that are weak imitations of the waldorf and the plaza, where you never get a sniff of the real west, nor meet anyone but traveling easterners like yourself; but if you strike away from the beaten trail, you can see the real west, and have your holiday, and go drunk on the picturesque, and break your neck mountain climbing, and catch more trout than you can lie about, and kill as much bear meat as you have courage, at less expense than it will cost you to stay at home. from chicago to the backbone of the rockies will cost you something over $33 or $50 one way. you can't go halfway across the atlantic for that, unless you go steerage; and if you go west "colonist," you can go to the backbone of the rockies for a good deal less than thirty dollars. now comes the crucial point! if you land in a western city and stay at a good hotel, expenses are going to out-sprint europe; and you will not see any more of the west than if you had gone to europe. choose your holiday stamping ground, sundance cañon, south dakota; or the new glacier park; or the pecos, new mexico; or the white mountains, arizona; or the indian pueblo towns of the southwest; or the white rock cañon of the rio grande, where the most important of the wonderful prehistoric remains exist; and you can stay at a ranch house where food and cleanliness will be quite as good as at the waldorf for from $1.50 to $2 a day. [illustration: in the bright arizona sunshine before their little square adobe houses indian women are fashioning pottery into curious shapes] you can usually find the name of the ranch house by inquiries from the station agent where you get off. the ranch house may be of adobe and look squatty; but remember that adobe squattiness is the best protection against wind and heat; and inside, you will find hot and cold water, bathroom, and meals equal to the best hotels in chicago and new york. in new york or chicago, that amount would afford you mighty chancy fare and only a back hall room. i know of hundreds of such ranch houses all along the backbone of the rockies. next comes the matter of horses and rigs. if you stay at one of the big hotels, you will pay from $5 to $10 a day for a rig, and $20 for a motor. out at the ranch house, you can rent team, driver and double rig at $4; or a pony at $20 for a month, or buy a burro outright for from $5 to $10. even if the burro takes a prize for ugliness, remember he also takes a prize for sure-footedness; and he doesn't take a prize for bucking, which the broncho often does. figure up now the cost of a month's holiday; and i repeat--it will cost you less than staying at home. but if this total is still too high, there are ways of reducing the expense by half. take your own tent; and $20 will not exceed "the grub box" contents for a month. or all through the rockies are deserted shacks, mining and lumber shanties, herders' cabins, horse camps. you can quarter yourself in one of these for nothing; and the sole expense will be "the grub box;" and my tin trunk for camp cooking has never cost me more than $50 a month for four people. or best and most novel experience of all--along white rock cañon of the rio grande, in mesa verde park, colorado, are thousands of plastered caves, the homes of the cliff dwellers. you reach them by ladder. there is no danger of wolves, or damp. camp in one of them for nothing wherever the water in the brook below happens to be good. hundreds of archæologists, who come from egypt, greece, italy, england, to visit these remains, spend their summer holiday this way. why can't you? or if you are not a good adventurer into the unknown alone, then join the summer school that goes out to the caves from santa fe every summer. is it safe? that question to a westerner is a joke. safer, much safer, than in any eastern city! i have slept in ranch cabins of the white mountains, in caves of the cliff dwellers on the rio grande, in tents on the saskatchewan; and i never locked a door, because there wasn't any lock; and i never attempted to bar the door, because there wasn't any need. can you say as much of new york, or chicago, or washington? the question may be asked--will this kind of a holiday not be hot in summer? you remember, perhaps, crossing the backbone of the rockies some mid-summer, when nearly everything inside the pullman car melted into a jelly. yes, it will be hot if you follow the beaten trail; for a railroad naturally follows the lowest grade. but if you go back to the ranch houses of the upper mesas and of foothills and cañons, you will be from 7,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level, and will need winter wraps each night, and may have to break the ice for your washing water in the morning--i did. another reason why so many americans do not see their own country is that while one species of fool has scared away holiday seekers by tales of extortionate cost, another sort of fool wisely promulgates the lie--a lie worn shiny from repetition--that "game is scarce in the west." "no more big game"--and your romancer leans back with wise-acre air to let that lie sink in, while he clears his throat to utter another--"trout streams all fished out." in the days when we had to swallow logic undigested in college, we had it impressed upon us that one single specific fact was sufficient to refute the broadest generality that was ever put in the form of a syllogism. well, then,--for a few facts as to that "no-game" lie! in one hour you can catch in the streams of the pecos, or the jemez, or the white mountains, or the upper sierras of california, or the new glacier park of the north, more trout than you can put on a string. if you want confirmation of that fact, write to the texas club that has its hunting lodge opposite grass mountain, and they will send you the picture of one hour's trout catch. by measurement, the string is longer than the height of a water barrel; and these were fish that didn't get away. last year, twenty-six bear were shot in the sangre de christo cañon in three months. two years ago, mountain lions became so thick in the pecos that hunters were hired to hunt them for bounty; and the first thing that happened to one of the hunters, his horse was throttled and killed by a mountain lion, though his little spaniel got revenge by treeing four lions a few weeks later, and the hunter got three out of the four. near glorieta, you can meet a rancher who last year earned $3,000 of hunting bounty scrip, if he could have got it cashed. in the white mountains last year, two of the largest bucks ever known in the rockies were trailed by every hunter of note and trailed in vain. later, one was shot out of season by stalking behind a burro; but the other still haunts the cañons defiant of repeater. from the caves of the cliff-dwellers along the rio grande, you can nightly hear the coyote and the fox bark as they barked those dim stone ages when the people of these silent caves hunted here. the week i reached frijoles cañon, a flock of wild turkeys strutted in front of judge abbott's ranch house not a gun length from the front door. the morning i was driving over the pajarito mesa home from the cliff caves, we disturbed a herd of deer. does all this sound as if game was depleted? it is if you follow the beaten trail, just as depleted as it would be if you tried to hunt wild turkey down broadway, new york; but it isn't if you know where to look for it. believe me--though it may sound a truism--you won't find big game in hotel rotundas or pullman cars. or, if your quest is not hunting but studying game, what better ground for observation than the wichita in oklahoma? here a national forest has been constituted a perpetual breeding ground for native american game. over twenty buffalo taken from original stock in the new york park are there--back on their native heath; and there are two or three very touching things about those old furry fellows taken back to their own haunts. in new york's parks, they were gradually degenerating--getting heavier, less active, ceasing to shed their fur annually. when they were set loose in the wichita game resort, they looked up, sniffed the air from all four quarters, and rambled off to their ancestral pasture grounds perfectly at home. when the comanches heard that the buffalo had come back to the wichita, the whole tribe moved in a body and camped outside the fourteen-foot fence. there they stayed for the better part of a week, the buffalo and the comanches, silently viewing each other. it would have been worth mr. nature faker's while to have known their mutual thoughts. there is another lie about not holidaying west, which is not only persistent but cruel. when the worker is a health as well as rest seeker, he is told that the west does not want him, especially if he is what is locally called "a lung-er;" and there is just enough truth in that lie to make it persistent. it is true the consumptive is not wanted on the beaten trail, in the big general hotel, in the train where other people want draughts of air, but he can't stand them. on the beaten trail, he is a danger both to himself and to others--especially if he hasn't money and may fall a burden on the community; but that is only a half truth which is usually a lie. let the other half be known! all through the west along the backbone of the rockies, from montana to texas, especially in new mexico and arizona, are the tent cities--communities of health seekers living in half-boarded tents, or mosquito-wired cabins that can be steam-heated at night. there are literally thousands of such tent dwellers all through the rocky mountain states; and the cost is as you make it. if you go to a sanitarium tent city, you will have to pay all the way from $15 to $25 a week for house, board, nurse, medicine and doctor's attendance; but if you buy your own portable house and do your own catering, the cost will be just what you make it. a house will cost $50 to $100; a tent, $10 to $20. still another baneful lie that keeps the american from seeing america first is that our new world west lacks "human interest;" lacks "the picturesqueness of the shepherds in spain and switzerland," for instance; lacks "the historic marvels" of church and monument and relic. if there be any degree in lies, this is the pastmaster of them all. will you tell me why "the human interest" of a legend about dick turpin's head festering on newgate, england, is any greater to americans than the truth about black jack of texas, whose head flew off into the crowd, when the support was removed from his feet and he was hanged down in new mexico? dick turpin was a highwayman. black jack was a lone-hand train robber. will you tell me why the outlaws of the borderland between england and scotland are more interesting to americans than the bands of outlaws who used to frequent horse-thief cañon up the pecos, or took possession of the cliff-dwellers' caves on the rio grande after the civil war? why are copt shepherds in egypt more picturesque than descendants of the aztecs herding countless moving masses of sheep on our own sky-line, lilac-misty, upper mesas? what is the difference in quality value between a donkey in spain trotting to market and a burro in new mexico standing on the plaza before a palace where have ruled eighty different governors, three different nations? why are skeletons and relics taken from pompeii more interesting than the dust-crumbled bodies lying in the caves of our own cliffs wrapped in cloth woven long before europe knew the art of weaving? why is the sphinx more wonderful to us than the great stone face carved on the rock of a cliff near cochiti, new mexico, carved before the pharaohs reigned; or the stone lions of an assyrian ruin more marvelous than the two great stone lions carved at cochiti? when you find a church in england dating before william the conqueror, you may smack your lips with the zest of the antiquarian; but you'll find in new mexico not far from santa fe ruins of a church--at the gates of the waters, guardian of the waters--that was a pagan ruin a thousand years old when the spaniards came to america. you may hunt up plaster cast reproduction of reptilian monsters in the kensington museum, london; but you will find the real skeleton of the gentleman himself, with pictures of the three-toed horse on the rocks, and legends of a plumed serpent not unlike the wary fellow who interviewed eve--all right here in your own american southwest, with the difference in favor of the american legend; for the satanic wriggler, who walked into the garden on his tail, went to deceive; whereas the plumed serpent of new mexican legend came to guard the pools and the springs. to be sure, there are 400,000 miles of motor roads in europe; but isn't it worth while to climb a few mountains in america by motor? that is what you can do following the "camino real" from texas to wyoming, or crossing the mountains of new mexico by the great scenic highway built for motors to the very snow tops. [illustration: an indian girl of isleta, new mexico, carrying a water jar.] and if you take to studying native indian life, at laguna, at acoma, at taos, you will find yourself in such a maze of the picturesque and the legendary as you cannot find anywhere else in the wide world but america. this is a story by itself--a beautiful one, also in spots a funny one. for instance, one summer a woman of international fame from oxford, england, took quarters in one of the pueblos at santa clara or thereabout to study indian arts and crafts. one night in her adobe quarters, her orderly british soul was aroused by such a dire din of shouting, fighting, screams, as she thought could come only from some inferno of crime. she sprang out of bed and dashed across the _placito_ in her nightdress to her guardian protector in the person of an old indian. he ran through the dark to see what the matter was, while she stood in hiding of the wall shadows curdling in horror of "bluggy deeds." "pah," said the old fellow coming back, "dat not'ing! young man, he git marry an' dey--how you call?--chiv-ar-ee-heem." "then, what are you laughing at?" demanded the irate british dame; for she could not help seeing that the old fellow was literally doubling in suffocated laughter. "how dare you laugh?" * * * * * "i laugh, mees," he sputtered out, "'cos you scare me so bad when you call, i jomp in my coat mistake for my pants. dat's all." * * * * * it would pay to cultivate a little home sentiment, wouldn't it? it would pay to let a little daylight in on the abysmal blank regarding the wonder-land of our own world--wouldn't it? i don't know whether the affectation recognized as "the foreign pose" comes foremost or hindermost as a cause of this neglect of the wonders of our own land. when you go to our own western wonder land, you can't say you have been abroad with a great long capital a; and it is wonderful what a paying thing that pose is in a harvest of "fooleries." there is a well-known case of an american author, who tried his hand on delineating american life and was severely let alone because he was too--not abroad, but broad. he dropped his own name, assumed the pose of a grand dame familiar with the inner penetralia and sacred secrets of the exclusive circle of the american colony in paris. his books have "gone off" like hot cross buns. before, they were broad. now they are abroad; and, like the tourist tickets, they are selling two to one. the stock excuse among foreign poseurs for the two to one preference of europe to america is that "america lacks the picturesque, the human, the historic." a straightforward falsehood you can always answer; but an implied falsehood masking behind knowledge, which is a vacuum, and superiority, which is pretense--is another matter. let us take the dire and damning deficiencies of america! "america lacks the picturesque." did the ancient dwelling of the stone age sound to you as if it lacked the picturesque? i could direct you to fifty such picturesque spots in the southwest alone. there is the enchanted mesa, with its sister mesa of acoma--islands of rock, sheer precipice of yellow _tufa_ for hundreds of feet--amid the desert sand, light shimmering like a stage curtain, herds exaggerated in huge, grotesque mirage against the lavender light, and indian riders, brightly clad and picturesque as arabs, scouring across the plain; all this reachable two hours' drive from a main railroad. or there are the three mesas of the painted desert, cities on the flat mountain table lands, ancient as the aztecs, overlooking such a roll of mountain and desert and forest as the tempter could not show beneath the temple. or, there is the white house, an ancient ruin of cañon de chelly (shay) forty miles from fort defiance, where you could put a dozen white houses of washington. "but," your european protagonist declares, "i don't mean the ancient and the primeval. i mean the modern peopled hamlet type." all right! what is the matter with santa fe? draw a circle from new orleans up through santa fe to santa barbara, california; and you'll find old missions galore, countless old towns of which santa fe, with its twin-towered cathedral and old san miguel church, is a type. santa fe, itself, is a bit of old spain set down in mosaic in hustling, bustling america. there is the governor's palace, where three different nations have held sway; and there is the plaza, where the burros trot to market under loads of wood picturesque as any donkeys in spain; and there is the old exchange hotel, the end of the santa fe trail, where stephen b. elkins came in cowhide boots forty years ago to carve out a colossal fortune. at one end of a main thoroughfare, you can see the site of the old spanish gareta prison, in the walls of which bullets were found embedded in human hair. and if you want a little versailles of retreat away from the braying of the burros and of the humans, away from the dust of street and of small talk--then of a may day when the orchard is in bloom and the air alive with the song of the bees, go to the old french garden of the late bishop lamy! through the cobwebby spring foliage shines the gleam of the snowy peaks; and the air is full of dreams precious as the apple bloom. what was the other charge? oh, yes--"lacks the human," whatever that means. why are legends of border forays in scotland more thrilling than true tales of robber dens in horse-thief cañon and the cliff houses of flagstaff and the frijoles, where renegades of the civil war used to hide? why are the multi-colored peasant workers of brittany or belgium more interesting than the gayly dressed peons of new mexico, or the navajo boys scouring up and down the sandy arroyos? why is the story of jack cade any more "human" than the tragedy of the three vermont boys, stott, scott and wilson, hanged in the tonto basin for horses they did not steal in order that their assassins might pocket $5,000 of money which the young fellows had brought out from the east with them? why are not all these personages of good repute and ill repute as famous to american folklore hunters as robin hood or any other legendary heroes of the old world? driven to the last redoubt, your protagonist for europe against america usually assumes the air of superiority supposed to be the peculiar prerogative of the gods of olympus, and declares: "yes--but america lacks the history and the art of the old associations in europe." "lacks history?" go back fifty years in our own west to the transition period from fur trade to frontier, from spanish don living in idle baronial splendor to smart yankeedom invading the old exclusive domain in cowhide boots! go back another fifty years! you are in the midst of american feudalism--fur lords of the wilderness ruling domains the area of a europe, spanish conquistadores marching through the desert heat clad _cap-à-pie_ in burnished mail; governor prince's collection at santa fe has one of those cuirasses dug up in new mexico with the bullet hole through the metal right above the heart. another fifty years back--and the century war for a continent with the indians, the downing of the old civilization of america before a sort of christian barbarism, the sword in one hand, the cross in the other, and behind the mounted troops the big iron chest for the gold--iron chests that you can see to this day among the spanish families of the southwest, rusted from burial in time of war, but strong yet as in the centuries when guarded by secret springs such iron treasure boxes hid all the gold and the silver of some noble family in new spain. when you go back beyond the days of new spain, you are amid a civilization as ancient as egypt's--an era that can be compared only to the myth age of the norse gods, when loki, spirit of evil, smiled with contempt at man's poor efforts to invade the realm of death. it was the age when puny men of the stone era were alternately chasing south before the glacial drift and returning north as the waters receded, when huge leviathans wallowed amid sequoia groves; and if man had domesticated creatures, they were three-toed horses, and wolf dogs, and wild turkeys and quail. curiously enough, remnants of some sort of domesticated creatures are found in the cave men's houses, centuries before the coming of horses and cattle and sheep with the spanish. the trouble is, up to the present when men like curtis and dear old bandelier and burbank, and the whole staff of the smithsonian and the school of santa fe have gone to work, we have not taken the trouble in america to gather up the prehistoric legends and ferret out their race meaning. we have fallen too completely in the last century under the blight of evolution, which presupposes that these cave races were a sort of simian-jawed, long-clawed, gibbering apes spending half their time up trees throwing stones on the heads of the other apes below, and the other half of their time either licking their chops in gore or dragging wives back to caves by the hair of their heads. you remember kipling's poem on the neolithic man, and jack london's fiction. now as a matter of fact--which is a bit disturbing to all these accretions of pseudo-science--the remains of these cave people don't show them to have been simian-jawed apes at all. they had woven clothing when our ancestors were a bit liable to anthony comstock's activities as to clothes. they had decorated pottery ware of which we have lost the pigments, and a knowledge of irrigation which would be unique in apes, and a technique in basketry that i never knew a monkey to possess. some day, when the evolutionary piffle has passed, we'll study out these prehistoric legends and their racial meaning. as to the "lack of art," pray wake up! the late edwin abbey declared that the most hopeful school of art in america was the school of the southwest. look up lotave's mural drawings at santa fe, or lungrun's wonderful desert pictures, or moran's or gamble's, or harmon's spanish scenes--then talk about "lack of _decadent_ art" if you will, but don't talk about "lack of art." why, in the ranch house of lorenzo hubbell, the great navajo trader, you'll find a $200,000 collection of purely southwestern pictures. * * * * * how many of the two to one protagonists of europe know, for instance, that scenic motor highways already run to the very edge of the grandest scenery in america? you can motor now from texas to wyoming, up above 10,000 feet much of it, above cloud line, above timber line, over the leagueless sage-bush plains, in and out of the great yellow pine forests, past cloudcroft--the sky-top resort--up through the orchard lands of the rio grande, across the very backbone of the rockies over the santa fe ranges and on north up to the garden of the gods and all the wonders of colorado's national park. with the exception of a very bad break in the white mountains of arizona, you can motor west past the southern edge of the painted desert, past laguna and acoma and the enchanted mesa, past the petrified forests, where a deluge of sand and flood has buried a sequoia forest and transmuted the beauty of the tree's life into the beauty of the jewel, into bars and beams and spars of agate and onyx the color of the rainbow. then, before going on down to california, you can swerve into grand cañon, where the gods of fire and flood have jumbled and tumbled the peaks of olympus dyed blood-red into a swimming cañon of lavender and primrose light deep as the highest peaks of the rockies. in california, you can either motor up along the coast past all the old spanish missions, or go in behind the first ridge of mountains and motor along the edge of the big trees and the yosemite and tahoe. you can't take your car into these parks; first, because you are not allowed; second, because the risks of the road do not permit it even if you were allowed. * * * * * is it safe? as i said before, that question is a joke. i can answer only from a life-time knowledge of pretty nearly all parts of the west--and that from a woman's point of view. believe me the days of "shootin' irons" and "faintin' females" are forever past, except in the undergraduate's salad dreams. you are safer in the cave dwellings of the stone age, in the pajarito plateau of the cliff "bird people," in the painted desert, among the indians of the navajo reserve than you are in broadway, new york, or piccadilly, london. i would trust a young friend of mine--boy or girl--quicker to the western environment than the eastern. you can get into mischief in the west if you hunt for it; but the mischief doesn't come out and hunt you. also, danger spots are self-evident on precipices of the western wilds. they aren't self-evident; danger spots are glazed and paved to the edges over which youth goes to smash in the east. * * * * * what about cost? aye, there's the rub! first, there's the steamboat ticket to europe, about the same price as or more than the average round trip ticket to the coast and back; but--please note, please note well--the agent who sells the steamboat ticket gets from forty to 100 per cent. bigger commission on it than the agent who sells the railroad tickets; so the man who is an agent for europe can afford to advertise from forty to 100 per cent. more than the man who sells the purely american ticket. secondly, european hotel men are adepts at catering to the lure of the american sightseer. (of course they are: it's worth one hundred to two hundred million dollars to them a year.) in the american west, everybody is busy. except for the real estate man, they don't care one iota whether you come or stay. thirdly, when you go to europe, a thousand hands are thrust out to point you the way to the interesting places. incidentally, also, a thousand hands are thrust out to pick your pocket, or at least relieve it of any superfluous weight. in our west, who cares a particle what you do; or who will point you the way? the hotels are expensive and for the most part located in the most expensive zone--the commercial center. it is only when you get out of the expense zone away from commercial centers and railway, that you can live at $1 or $2 a day, or if you have your own tent at fifty cents a day; but it isn't to the real estate agent's interests to have you go away from the commercial center or expense zone. who is there to tell you what or where to see off the line of heat and tips? outside the national park wardens and national forest rangers, there isn't anyone. * * * * * how, then, are you to manage? frankly, i never knew of either monkeys or men accomplishing anything except in one way--just going out and doing it. choose what you want to see; and go there! the local railroad agent, the local forest ranger, the local ranch house, will tell you the rest; and naturally, when you go into the wilderness, don't leave all your courtesy and circumspection and common-sense back in town. equipped with those three, you can "see america first," and see it cheaply. chapter i the national forests, a summer playground for the people if a health resort and national playground were discovered guaranteed to kill care, to stab apathy into new life, to enlarge littleness and slay listlessness and set the human spirit free from the nagging worries and toil-wear that make you feel like a washed-out rag at the end of a humdrum year--imagine the stampede of the lame and the halt in body and spirit; the railroad excursions and reduced fares; the disputations of the physicians and the rage of the thought-ologists at present coining money rejuvenating neurotic humanity! yet such a national playground has been discovered; and it isn't in europe, where statisticians compute that americans yearly spend from a quarter to half a billion dollars; and it isn't the coast-to-coast trip which the president of a transcontinental told me at least a hundred thousand people a year traverse. a health resort guaranteed to banish care, to stab apathy, to enlarge littleness, to slay listlessness, would pretty nearly put the thought-ologists out of commission. yet such a summer resort exists at the very doors of every american capable of scraping together a few hundred dollars--$200 at the least, $400 at the most. it exists in that "twilight zone" of dispute and strong language and peanut politics known as the national forests. in america, we have foolishly come to regard national forests as solely allied with conservation and politics. that is too narrow. national forests stand for much more. they stand for a national playground and all that means for national health and sanity and joy in the exuberant life of the clean out-of-doors. in germany, the forests are not only a source of great revenue in cash; they are a source of greater revenue in health. they are a holiday playground. in america, the playground exists, the most wonderful, the most beautiful playground in the whole world--and the most accessible; but we haven't yet discovered it. * * * * * of the three or four million people who have attended the pacific coast expositions of the past ten years, it is a safe wage that half went, not to see the exposition (for people from a radius round chicago and jamestown and buffalo had already seen a great exposition) but they went to see the exposition as an exponent of the great west. how much of the great west did they really see? they saw the alaska exhibit. well--the alaska exhibit was afterwards shown in new york. they saw the special buildings assigned to the special western states. well--the special western states had special buildings at the other expositions. what else of the purely west they saw, i shall give in the words of three travelers: "been a great trip" (two chicagoans talking in duet). "we've seen everything and stopped off everywhere. we stopped at denver and salt lake and los angeles and san francisco and portland and seattle!" "what did you do at these places?" "took a taxi and saw the sights, drove through the parks and so on. saw all the residences and public buildings. been a great trip. tell you the west is going ahead." "it has been a detestable trip" (a new yorker relieving surcharged feelings). "it has been a skin game from start to finish, pullman, baggage, hotels, everything. and how much of the west have we really seen? not a glimpse of it. we had all seen these western cities before. they are not the west. they are bits of the east taken up and set down in the west. how is the easterner to see the west? it isn't seeing it to go flying through these prairie stations. settlement and real life and wild life are always back from the railroad. how are we to get out and see that unless we can pay ten dollars a day for guides? i don't call it _seeing_ the mountains to ride on a train through the easiest passes and sleep through most of them. tell us how we are to get out and see and experience the real thing?" "h'm, talk about seeing the west" (this time from a texas banker). "only time we got away from the excursion party was when a land boomster took us up the river to see an irrigation project. that wasn't seeing the west. that was a buy-and-sell proposition same as we have at home. what i want to know is how to get away from that. that boomster fellow was an easterner, anyway." which of these three really found the playground each was seeking? not the duet that went round the cities in a sightseeing car and judged the west from hotel rotundas. not the new yorker, who saw the prairie towns fly past the car windows. not the texans who were guided round a real estate project by an eastern land boomster. and each wanted to find the real thing--had paid money to find a holiday playground, to forget care and stab apathy and enlarge life. and each complained of the extortionate charges on every side in the city life. and two out of three went back a little disappointed that they had not seen the fabled wonders of the west--the big trees, the peaks at close range, the famous cañons, the mountain lakes, the natural bridges. when i tried to explain to the new yorker that at a cost of one-tenth what the big hotels charge, you could go straight into the heart of the mountain western wilds, whether you are a man, woman, child, or group of all three--could go straight out to the fabled wonders of big trees and mountain lakes and snowy peaks--i was greeted with that peculiarly new yorky look suggestive of ananias and de rougement. [illustration: one way of entering the desert is with wagons and tents, but unless it is the rainy season the tents are unnecessary] sadder is the case of the invalid migrating west. he has come with high hopes looking for the national health resort. does he find it? not once in a thousand cases. if health seekers have money, they take a private house _in the city_, where the best of air is at its worst; but many invalids are scarce of money, and come seeking the health resort at great pecuniary sacrifice. do they find it? certainly not knocking from boarding house to boarding house and hotel to hotel, re-infecting themselves with their own germs till the very telephone booths have to be guarded. at one famous "lung" city where i stayed, i heard three invalids coughing life away along the corridor where my room happened to be. the charge for those stuffy rooms was $2 and $3 and $5 a day without meals. at a cost of $10 for train fare, i went out to one of the national forests--the pass over the divide 11,000 feet, the village center of the forest 8,000 feet above sea level, the charge with meals at the hotel $10 a week. better still, $10 for a roomy tent, $1.50 for a camp stove and as much or as little as you like for a fur rug, and the cost of meals would have been seventy-five cents a day at the hotel, seventy-five cents for life in air that was almost constant sunshine, air as pure and life-giving as the sun on creation's first day. that altitude would probably not suit all invalids--that is for a doctor to say; but certainly, whether one is out for health or play, that regimen is cheaper and more life-giving than a stuffy hotel at $2, $3 and $5 a day for a room alone. it is incredible when you come to think of it. here is a nation of ninety million people scouring the earth for a playground; and there is an undiscovered playground in its own back yard, the most wonderful playground of mountain and forest and lake in the whole world; a playground in actual area half the size of a germany, or france, with wonders of cave and waterway and peak unknown to germany or france. what are the railroads thinking about? if three million people visited an exposition to see the west, how many would yearly visit the national forests if the railroads granted facilities, and the ninety million americans knew how? it is absurd to regard the national forests purely as timber; and timber for politics! they are a nation's playground and health resort; and one of these times will come a peary or an abruzzi discovering them. then we'll give him a prize and begin going. * * * * * you will not find newport; and you will not find lenox; and you will not find saratoga in the national forests. neither will you find a dress parade except the painter's brush with its vesture of flame in the upper alpine meadows. and you will not find gaping on-lookers to break down fences and report your doings, unless it be a douglas squirrel swearing at you for coming too near his _cache_ of pine cones at the foot of some giant conifer. there is small noise of things doing in the national forests; but there is a great tinkling of waters; and there are many voices of rills with a roar of flood torrents at rain time, or thunder of avalanche when the snows come over a far ridge in spray fine as a waterfall. in fair weather, you may spare yourself the trouble of a tent and camp under a stretch of sky hung with stars, resinous of balsams, spiced with the life of the cinnamon smells and the ozone tang. there will be lakes of light as well as lakes of water, and an all-day diet of condensed sunbeams every time you take a breath. your bed will be hemlock boughs--be sure to lay the branch-end out and the soft end in or you'll dream of sleeping transfixed and bayoneted on a nine foot redwood stump. sage brush smells and cedar odors, you will have without paying for a cedar chest. if you want softer bed and mixed perfumes, better stay in newport. the forestry department will not resent your coming. their men will welcome you and help you to find camping ground. * * * * * meanwhile, before the railroads have wakened up to the possibilities of the national forests as a playground, how is the lone american man, woman, child, or group of all three, to find the way to the national forests? what will the outfit cost; and how is the camper to get established? take a map of the western states. though there are bits of national forests in nebraska and kansas and the ozarks, for camping and playground purposes draw a line up parallel with the rockies from new mexico to canada. your playground is from that line westward. to me, there is a peculiar attraction in the forests of colorado. nearly all are from 8,000 to 11,000 feet above sky-line--high, dry park-like forests of engelmann spruce clear of brush almost as your parlor floor. you will have no difficulty in recognizing the forests as the train goes panting up the divide. windfall, timber slash, stumps half as high as a horse, brushwood, the bare poles and blackened logs of burnt areas lie on one side--public domain. trees with two notches and a blaze mark the forest bounds; trees with one notch and one blaze, the trail; and across that trail, you are out of the public domain in the national forests. there is not the slightest chance of your not recognizing the national forests. windfall, there is almost none. it has been cleared out and sold. of timber slash, there is not a stick. wastage and brush have been carefully burned up during snowfall. windfall, dead tops and ripe trees, all have been cut or stamped with the u. s. hatchet for logging off. these colorado forests are more like a beautiful park than wild land. come up to utah; and you may vary your camping in the national forests there, by trips to the wonderful cañons out from ogden, or to the natural bridges in the south. in the national forests of california, you have pretty nearly the best that america can offer you: views of the ocean in santa barbara and monterey; cloudless skies everywhere; the big trees in the sequoia forest; the yosemite in the stanislaus; forests in the northern part of the state where you could dance on the stump of a redwood or build a cabin out of a single sapling; and everywhere in the northern mountains, are the voices of the waters and the white, burnished, shining peaks. i met a woman who found her playground one summer by driving up in a tented wagon through the national forests from colorado to montana. camp stove and truck bed were in the democrat wagon. an outfitter supplied the horses for a rental which i have forgotten. the borders of most of the national forests may be reached by wagon. the higher and more intimate trails may be essayed only on foot or on horseback. * * * * * how much will the trip cost? you must figure that out for yourself. there is, first of all, your railway fare from the point you leave. then there is the fare out to the forest--usually not $10. go straight to the supervisor or forester of the district. he will recommend the best hotel of the little mountain village where the supervisor's office is usually located. at those hotels, you will board as a transient at $10 a week; as a permanent, for less. in many of the mountain hamlets are outfitters who will rent you a team of horses and tented wagon; and you can cater for yourself. in fact, as to clothing, and outfit, you can buy cheaper camp kit at these local stores than in your home town. many eastern things are not suitable for western use. for instance, it is foolish to go into the thick, rough forests of heavy timber with an expensive eastern riding suit for man or woman. better buy a $4 or $6 or $8 khaki suit that you can throw away when you have torn it to tatters. an eastern waterproof coat will cost you from $10 to $30. you can get a yellow cowboy slicker (i have two), which is much more serviceable for $2.50 or $3. as to boots, i prefer to get them east, as i like an elk-skin leather which never shrinks in the wet, with a good deal of cork in the sole to save jars, also a broad sole to save your foot in the stirrup; but avoid a conventional riding boot. too hot and too stiff! i like an elk-skin that will let the water out fast as it comes in if you ever have to wade, and which will not shrink in the drying. if you forswear hotels and take to a sky tent, or canvas in misty weather, better carry eatables in what the guides call a tin "grub box," in other words a cheap $2 tin trunk. it keeps out ants and things; and you can lock it when you go away on long excursions. as to beds, each to his own taste! some like the rolled rubber mattress. too much trouble for me. besides, i am never comfortable on it. if you camp near the snow peaks, a chill strikes up to the small of your back in the small of the morning. i don't care to feel like using a derrick every time i roll over. the most comfortable bed i know is a piece of twenty-five cent oilcloth laid over the slicker on hemlock boughs, fur rug over that, with suit case for pillow, and a plain gray blanket. the hardened mountaineer will laugh at the next recommendation; but the town man or woman going out for play or health is not hardened, and to attempt sudden hardening entails the endurance of a lot of aches that are apt to spoil the holiday. you may say you like the cold plunge in the icy water coming off a snowy mountain. i confess i don't; and you'll acknowledge, even if you do like it, you are in such a hurry to come out of it that you don't linger to scrub. i like my hot scrub; and you can have that only by taking along (no, not a rubber bath) a $1.50 camp stove to heat the water in the tent while you are eating your supper out round the camp fire that burns with such a delicious, barky smell. besides, late in the season, there will be rains and mist. your camp stove will dry out the tent walls and keep your kit free of rain mold. do you need a guide? that depends entirely on yourself. if you camp under direction and within range of the district forester, i do not think you do. whether you go out as a health seeker, or a pleasure seeker, $8 to $10 will buy you a miner's tent--a miner's, preferable to a tepee because the walls lift the canvas roof high enough not to bump your head; $2 will buy you a tin trunk or grub box; $1.50 will cover the price of oilcloth to spread over the boughs which you lay all over the floor to keep you above the earth damp; $2 will buy you a little tin camp stove to keep the inside of your tent warm and dry for the hot night bath; $10 will cover cost of pail and cooking utensils. that leaves of what would be your monthly expenses at even a moderate hotel, $125 for food--bacon, flour, fresh fruit; and your food should not exceed $10 each a month. if you are a good fisherman, you will add to the larder, by whipping the mountain streams for trout. if you need an attendant, that miner's tent is big enough for two. or if you will stand $5 or $6 more expense, buy a tepee tent for a bath and toilet room. there will be windy days in fall and spring when an extra tent with a camp stove in it will prove useful for the nightly hot bath. * * * * * what reward do you reap for all the bother? you are away from all dust irritating to weak lungs. you are away from all possibility of re-infecting yourself with your own disease. except in late autumn and early spring, you are living under almost cloudless skies, in an atmosphere steeped in sunshine, spicy with the healing resin of the pines and hemlocks and spruce, that not only scent the air but literally permeate it with the essences of their own life. you are living far above the vapors of sea level, in a region luminous of light. instead of the clang of street car bells and the jangle of nerves tangled from too many humans in town, you hear the flow and the sing and the laughter and the trebles of the glacial streams rejoicing in their race to the sea. you climb the rough hills; and your town lungs blow like a whale as you climb; and every beat pumps inertia out and the sun-healing air in. if an invalid, you had better take a doctor's advice as to how high you should camp and climb. in town, amid the draperies and the portières and the steam-heated rooms, an invalid is seeking health amid the habitat of mummies. in the forests, whether you will or not, you live in sunshine that is the very elixir of life; and though the frost sting at night, it is the sting of pulsing, superabundant life, not the lethargy of a gradual decay. at the southern edge of the national forests in the southwest dwell the remnants of a race, can be seen the remnants of cities, stand houses near enough the train to be touched by your hand, that run back in unbroken historic continuity to dynasties preceding the aztecs of mexico or the copts of egypt. when the pyramids were young, long before the flood gates of the ural mountains had broken before the inundating aryan hordes that overran the forests and mountains of europe to the edge of the netherland seas, this race which you can see to-day dwelling in new mexico and arizona were spinning their wool, working their silver mines, and on the approach of the enemy, withdrawing to those eagle nests on the mountain tops which you can see, where only a rope ladder led up to the city, or uncertain crumbling steps cut in the face of the sheer red sandstone. and besides the prehistoric in the forests--what will you find? the plains below you like a scroll, the receding cities, a patch of smoke. you had thought that sky above the plains a cloudless one, air that was pure, buoyant champagne without dregs. now the plains are vanishing in a haze of dust, and you--you are up in that cloudless air, where the light hits the rocks in spangles of pure crystal, and the tang of the clearness of it pricks your sluggish blood to a new, buoyant, pulsing life. you feel as if somehow or other that existence back there in towns and under roofs had been a life with cobwebs on the brain and weights on the wings of the spirit. i wonder if it wasn't? i wonder if the ancients, after all, didn't accord with science in ascribing to the sun, to the god of light, the source of all our strength? things are accomplished not in the thinking, but in the clearness of the thinking; and here is the realm of pure light. presently, the train carrying you up to the forests of the southwest gives a bump. you are in darkness--diving through some tunnel or other; and when you come out, you could drop a stone sheer down to the plains a couple of miles. that is not so far as up in south dakota. in sundance cañon off the national forests there, you can drop a pebble down seven miles. that's not as the crow flies. it is as the train climbs. but patience! the road into sundance cañon takes you to the top of the world, to be sure; but that is only 7,000 feet up; and this little moffat road in colorado takes you above timber line, above cloud line, pretty nearly above growth line, 12,000 feet above the sea; at 11,600 you can take your lunch inside a snow shed on the moffat road. long ago, men proved their superiority to other men by butchering each other in hordes and droves and shambles; alva must have had a good 100,000 corpses to his credit in the netherlands. to-day, men make good by conquering the elements. for four hours, this little colorado road has been cork-screwing up the face of a mountain pretty nearly sheer as a wall; and for every twist and turn and tunnel, some engineer fellow on the job has performed mathematical acrobatics; and some capitalist behind the engineer--the man behind the modern gun of conquest--has paid the cost. in this case, it was david moffat paid for our dance in the clouds--a mining man, who poked his brave little road over the mountains across the desert towards the pacific. [illustration: from a lookout point in the coconino forest of arizona] you come through those upper tunnels still higher. below, no longer lie the plains, but seas of clouds; and it is to the everlasting credit of the sense and taste of denver people, that they have dotted the outer margin of this rock wall with slab and log and shingle cottages, built literally on the very backbone of the continent overlooking such a stretch of cloud and mountain and plain as i do not know of elsewhere in the whole world. in sundance cañon, south dakota, summer people have built in the bottom of the gorge. here, they are dwellers in the sky. rugged pines cling to the cliff edge blasted and bare and wind torn; but dauntlessly rooted in the everlasting rocks. little mining hamlets composed of matchbox houses cling to the face of the precipice like cardboards stuck on a nail. then, you have passed through the clouds, and are above timber line; and a lake lies below you like a pool of pure turquoise; and you twist round the flank of the great mountain, and there is a pair of green lakes below you--emerald jewels pendant from the neck of the old mountain god; and with a bump and a rattle of the wheels, clear over the top of the continental divide you go--believe me, a greater conquest than any napoleon's march to moscow, or alva's shambles of headless victims in the netherlands. you take lunch in a snow shed on the very crest of the continental divide. i wish you could taste the air. it isn't air. it's champagne. it isn't champagne, it's the very elixir of life. there can never be any shadows here; for there is nothing to cast the shadow. nightfall must wrap the world here in a mantle of rest, in a vespers of worship and quiet, in a crystal of dying chrysoprase above the green enameled lake and the forests below, looking like moss, and the pearl clouds, a sea of fire in the sunset, and the plain--there are no more plains--this is the top of the world! yet it is not always a vesper quiet in the high places. when i came back this way a week later, such a blizzard was raging as i have never seen in manitoba or alberta. the high spear grass tossed before it like the waves of a sea; and the blasted pines on the cliffs below--you knew why their roots had taken such grip of the rocks like strong natures in disaster. the storm might break them. it could not bend them, nor wrench them from their roots. the telegraph wires, for reasons that need not be told are laid flat on the ground up here. when you cross the divide, you enter the national forests. national forests above tree line? to be sure! these deep, coarse upper grasses provide ideal pasturage for sheep from june to september; and the national forests administer the grazing lands for the general use of all the public, instead of permitting them to be monopolized by the big rancher, who promptly drove the weaker man off by cutting the throats of intruding flocks and herds. then, the train is literally racing down hill--with the trucks bumping heels like the wheels of a wagon on a sluggish team; and a new tang comes to the ozone--the tang of resin, of healing balsam, of cinnamon smells, of incense and frankincense and myrrh, of spiced sunbeams and imprisoned fragrance--the fragrance of thousands upon thousands of years of dew and light, of pollen dust and ripe fruit cones; the attar, not of persian roses, but of the everlasting pines. the train takes a swift swirl round an escarpment of the mountain; and you are in the forests proper, serried rank upon rank of the blue spruce and the lodgepole pine. no longer spangles of light hitting back from the rocks in sparks of fire! the light here is sifted pollen dust--pollen dust, the primordial life principle of the tree--with the purple, cinnamon-scented cones hanging from the green arms of the conifers like the chevrons of an enranked army; and the cones tell you somewhat of the service as the chevrons do of the soldier man. some conifers hold their cones for a year before they send the seed, whirling, swirling, broadside to the wind, aviating pixy parachutes, airy armaments for the conquest of arid hills to new forest growth, though the process may take the trifling æon of a thousand years or so. at one season, when you come to the forests, the air is full of the yellow pollen of the conifers, gold dust whose alchemy, could we but know it, would unlock the secrets of life. at another season--the season when i happened to be in the colorado forests--the very atmosphere is alive with these forest airships, conifer seeds sailing broadside to the wind. you know why they sail broadside, don't you? if they dropped plumb like a stone, the ground would be seeded below the heavily shaded branches inches deep in self-choking, sunless seeds; but when the broadside of the sail to the pixy's airship tacks to the veering wind, the seed is carried out and away and far beyond the area of the shaded branches; to be caught up by other counter currents of wind and hurled, perhaps, down the mountain side, destined to forest the naked side of a cliff a thousand years hence. it is a fact, too, worth remembering and crediting to the wiles and ways of dame nature that destruction by fire tends but to free these conifer seeds from the cones; so that they fall on the bare burn and grow slowly to maturity under the protecting nursery of the tremulous poplars and pulsing cottonwoods. * * * * * the train has not gone very far in the national forests before you see the sleek little douglas squirrel scurrying from branch to branch. from the tremor of his tiny body and the angry chitter of his parted teeth, you know he is swearing at you to the utmost limit of his squirrel (?) language; but that is not surprising. this little rodent of the evergreens is the connoisseur of all conifers. he, and he alone, knows the best cones for reproductive seed. no wonder he is so full of fire when you consider he diets on the fruit of a thousand years of sunlight and dew; so when the ranger seeks seed to reforest the burned or scant slopes, he rifles the _cache_ of this little furred forester, who suspects your noisy trainload of robbery--robbery--sc--scur--r--there! then, the train bumps and jars to a stop with a groaning of brakes on the steep down grade, for a drink at the red water tank; and you drop off the high car steps with a glance forward to see that the baggage man is dropping off your kit. the brakes reverse. with a scrunch, the train is off again, racing down hill, a blur of steamy vapor like a cloud against the lower hills. before the rear car has disappeared round the curve, you have been accosted by a young man in norfolk suit of sage green wearing a medal stamped with a pine tree--the ranger, absurdly young when you consider each ranger patrols and polices 100,000 acres compared to the 1,700 which french and german wardens patrol and daily deals with criminal problems ten times more difficult than those confronting the northwest mounted police, without the military authority which backs that body of men. you have mounted your pony--men and women alike ride astride in the western states. it heads of its own accord up the bridle trail to the ranger's house, in this case 9,000 feet above sea level, 1,000 feet above ordinary cloud line. the hammer of a woodpecker, the scur of a rasping blue jay, the twitter of some red bills, the soft _thug_ of the unshod broncho over the trail of forest mold, no other sound unless the soul of the sea from the wind harping in the trees. better than the jangle of city cars in that stuffy hotel room of the germ-infested town, isn't it? if there is snow on the peaks above, you feel it in the cool sting of the air. you hear it in the trebling laughter, in the trills and rills of the brook babbling down, sound softened by the moss as all sounds are hushed and low keyed in this woodland world. and all the time, you have the most absurd sense of being set free from something. by-and-by when eye and ear are attuned, you will see the light reflected from the pine needles glistening like metal, and hear the click of the same needles like fairy castanets of joy. meantime, take a long, deep, full breath of these condensed sunbeams spiced with the incense of the primeval woods; for you are entering a temple, the temple where our forefathers made offerings to the gods of old, the temple which our modern churches imitate in gothic spire and arch and architrave and nave. drink deep in open, full lungs; for you are drinking of an elixir of life which no apothecary can mix. most of us are a bit ill mentally and physically from breathing the dusty street sweepings of filth and germs which permeate the hived towns. they will not stay with you here! other dust is in this air, the gold dust of sunlight and resin and ozone. they will make you over, will these forest gods, if you will let them, if you will lave in their sunlight, and breathe their healing, and laugh with the chitter and laughter of the squirrels and streams. and what if your spirit does not go out to meet the spirit of the woods halfway? then, the woods will close round you with a chill loneliness unutterable. you are an alien and an exile. they will have none of you and will reveal to you none of their joyous, dauntless life secrets. chapter ii among the national forests of the southwest you have not ridden far towards the ranger's house in the forest before you become aware that clothing for town is not clothing for the wilds. no matter how hot it may be at midday, in this high, rare air a chill comes soon as the sun begins to sink. to be comfortable, light flannels must be worn next the skin, with an extra heavy coat available--never farther away from yourself than the pack straps. night may overtake you on a hard trail. long as you have an extra heavy coat and a box of matches, night does not matter. you are safer benighted in the wilds than in new york or chicago. if you have camp fire and blanket, night in the wilds knows nothing of the satyr-faced spirit of evil, sand-bagger and yeggman, that stalks the town. [illustration: the forest-ranger in action, fighting a ground fire with his saddle blanket in one of the national forests of the west] to anyone used to travel in the wilderness, it seems almost like little boys playing robinson crusoe to give explicit directions as to dress. yet only a few years ago, the world was shocked and horrified by the death of a town man exploring the wilds; and that death was directly traceable to a simple matter of boots. his feet played out. he had gone into a country of rocky portages with only one pair of moccasins. i have never gone into the wilds for longer than four months at a time. yet i have never gone with less than four sets of footgear. primarily, you need a pair of good outing boots; and outing boots are good only when they combine two qualities--comfort and thick enough soles to protect your feet from sharp rock edges if you climb, broad enough soles, too, to protect the edge of your feet from hard knocks from passing trees and jars in the stirrup. for the rest, you need about two extras in case you chip chunks out of these in climbing; and if you camp near glaciers or snow fields, a pair of moccasins for night wear will add to comfort. you may get them if you like to spend the money--$8 leggings and $8 horsehide shoes and cowboy hat and belted corduroy suit and all the other paraphernalia by which the seasoned westerner recognizes the tenderfoot. you may get them if you want to. it will not hurt you; but a $3 cowboy slicker for rainy days and a pair of boots guaranteed to let the water out as fast as it comes in, these and the ordinary outing garments of any other part of the world are the prime essentials. this matter of proper preparation recalls a little english woman who determined to train her boys and girls to be resourceful and independent by taking them camping each summer in the forests of the pacific coast. they were on a tramp one day twelve miles from camp when a heavy fog blew in, and they lost themselves. that is not surprising when you consider the big tree country. two notches and one blaze mark the bounds of the national forests; one notch and one blaze, the trail; but they had gone off the trail trout fishing. "if they had been good path-finders, they could have found the way out by following the stream down," remarked a critic of this little group to me; and a very apt criticism it was from the safe vantage point of a study chair. how about it, if when you came to follow the stream down, it chanced to cut through a gorge you couldn't follow, with such a sheer fall of rock at the sides and such a crisscross of big trees, house-high, that you were driven back from the stream a mile or two? you would keep your directions by sunlight? maybe; but that big tree region is almost impervious to sunlight; and when the fog blows in or the clouds blow down thick as wool, you will need a pocket compass to keep the faintest sense of direction. compass signs of forest-lore fail here. there are few flowers under the dense roofing to give you sense of east or west; and you look in vain for the moss sign on the north bark of the tree. all four sides are heavily mossed; and where the little englishwoman lost herself, they were in ferns to their necks. "weren't the kiddies afraid?" i asked. "not a bit! bob got the trout ready; and son made a big fire. we curled ourselves up round it for the night; and i wish you could have seen the children's delight when the clouds began to roll up below in the morning. it was like a sea. the youngsters had never seen clouds take fire from the sun coming up below. i want to tell you, too, that we put out every spark of that fire before we left in the morning." all of which conveys its own moral for the camper in the national forests. it ought not to be necessary to say that you cannot go to the national forests expecting to billet yourself at the ranger's house. many of the rangers are married and have a houseful of their own. those not married, have no facilities whatever for taking care of you. in my visit to the vasquez forest, i happened to have a letter of introduction to the ranger and his mother, who took me in with that bountiful hospitality characteristic of the frontier; but directly across the road from the ranger's cabin was a little log slab-sided hotel where any comer could have stayed in perfect comfort for $7 a week; and at the station, where the train stopped, was another very excellent little hotel where you could have stayed and enjoyed meals that for nutritious cooking might put a new york dinner to shame--all to the tune of $10 a week. also, at this very station, is the supervisor's office of the forestry department. by inquiry here, the newcomer can ascertain all facts as to tenting outfit and camping place. only one point must be kept in mind--do not go into the national forests expecting the railroads, or the rangers, or providence, to look after you. do not go unless you are prepared to look after yourself. and now that you are in the national forests, what are you going to do? you can ride; or you can hunt; or you can fish; or you can bathe in the hot springs that dot so many of these intermountain regions, where god has landscaped the playground for a nation; or you can go in for records mountain climbing; or you can go sightseeing in the most marvelously beautiful mountain scenery in the whole world; or you can prowl round the prehistoric cave and cliff dwellings of a race who flourished in mighty power, now solitary and silent cities, contemporaneous with that egyptian desert runner whose skeleton lies in the british museum marked 20,000 b. c. it isn't every day you can wander through the deserted chambers of a king's palace with 500 rooms. tourist agencies organize excursion parties for lesser and younger palaces in europe. i haven't heard of any to visit the silent cities of the cliff and cave dwellers on the jemez plateau of new mexico, or the gila river, arizona, or even the easily accessible dead cities of forgotten peoples in the national forest of southern colorado. what race movement in the first place sent these races perching their wonderful tier-on-tier houses literally on the tip-top of the world? the prehistoric remains of the southwest are now, of course, under the jurisdiction of the forestry department; and you can't go digging and delving and carrying relics from the midden heaps and baked earthen floors without the permission of the secretary of agriculture; but if you go in the spirit of an investigator, you will get that permission. * * * * * the question isn't _what is there to do_. it is _which of the countless things there are to do_ are you going to choose to do? when mr. roosevelt goes to the national forests, he strikes for the holy cross mountain and bags a grizzly. when ordinary folk hie to this forest, they take along a bathing suit and indulge in a daily plunge in the hot pools at glenwood springs. if the light is good and the season yet early, you can still see the snow in the crevices of the peak, giving the forest its name of the holy cross. people say there is no historic association to our west. once a foolish phrase is uttered, it is surprising how sensible people will go on repeating it. take this matter of the "holy cross" name. if you go investigating how these "holy cross" peaks got their names from old spanish _padres_ riding their burros into the wilderness, it will take you a hard year's reading just to master the spanish legends alone. then, if you dive into the realm of the cliff dwellers, you will be drowned in historic antiquity before you know. in the glenwood springs region, you will not find the remnants of prehistoric people; but you'll find the hot springs. just two warnings: one as to hunting; the other, as to mountain climbing. there is still big game in colorado forests--bear, mountain sheep, elk, deer; and the ranger is supposed to be a game warden; but a man patrolling 100,000 acres can't be all over at one time. as to mountain climbing, you can get your fill of it in grand cañon, above ouray, at pike's peak--a dozen places, and only the mountain climber and his troglodyte cliff-climbing prototype know the drunken, frenzied joy of climbing on the roof of the earth and risking life and limb to stand with the kingdoms of the world at your feet. but unless you are a trained climber, take a guide with you, or the advice of some local man who knows the tricks and the moods and the wiles and the ways of the upper mountain world. looking from the valley up to the peak, a patch of snow may seem no bigger to you than a good-sized table-cloth. look out! if it is steep beneath that "table-cloth" and the forest shows a slope clean-swept of trees as by a mighty broom, be careful how you cross and recross following the zigzag trail that corkscrews up below the far patch of white! i was crossing the continental divide one summer in the west when a woman on the train pointed to a patch of white about ten miles up the mountain slope and asked if "that" were "rock or snow." i told her it was a very large snow field, indeed; that we saw only the forefoot of it hanging over the edge; that the upper part was supposed to be some twenty miles across. she gave me a look meant for mrs. ananias. a month later, when i came back that way, the train suddenly slowed up. the slide had come down and lay in white heaps across the track three or four miles down into the valley and up the other side. the tracks were safe enough; for the snow shed threw the slide over the track on down the slope; but it had caught a cluster of lumbermen's shacks and buried eight people in a sudden and eternal sleep. "we saw it coming," said one of the survivors, "and we thought we had plenty of time. it must have been ten miles away. one of the men went in to get his wife. before he could come out, it was on us. man and wife and child were carried down in the house just as it stood without crushing a timber. it must have been the concussion of the air--they weren't even bruised when we dug them out; but the kid couldn't even have wakened up where it lay in the bed; and the man hadn't reached the inside room; but they were dead, all three." and near ouray another summer, a chance acquaintance pointed to a peak. "that one caught my son last june," he said. "he was the company's doctor. he had been born and raised in these mountains; but it caught him. we knew the june heat had loosened those upper fields; and his wife didn't want him to go; but there was a man sick back up the mountain; and he set out. they saw it coming; but it wasn't any use. it came--quick--" with a snap of his fingers--"as that; and he was gone." it's a saying among all good mountaineers that it's "only the fool who monkeys with a mountain," especially the mountain with a white patch above a clean-swept slope. and there is another thing for the holiday player in the national forests to do; and it is the thing that i like best to do. you have been told so often that you have come to believe it--that our mountains in america lack the human interests; lack the picturesque character and race types dotting the alps, for instance. don't you believe it! go west! there isn't a mountain or a forest from new mexico to idaho that has not its mountaineering votary, its quaint hermit, or its sky-top guide, its refugee from civilization, or simply its lover of god's great outdoors and peace and big silence, living near to the god of the great open as log cabin on a hilltop capped by the stars can bring him. wild creatures of woodland ways don't come to your beck and call. you have to hunt out their secret haunts. the same with these western mountaineers. hunt them out; but do it with reverence! i was driving in the gunnison country with a local magnate two years ago. we saw against the far sky-line a cleft like the arched entrance to a cave; only this arch led through the rock to the sky beyond. "i wish," said my guide, "you had time to spend two or three weeks here. we'd take you to the high country above these battlements and palisades. see that hole in the mountain?" "rough upper alpine meadows?" i asked. "oh, dear no! open park country with lakes and the best of fishing. it used to be an almost impossible trail to get up there; but there has been a hermit fellow there for the last ten years, living in his cabin and hunting; and year after year, never paid by anybody, he has been building that trail up. when men ask him why he does it, he says it's to lead people up; for the glory of god and that sort of thing. of course, the people in the valley think him crazy." of course, they do. what would we, who love the valley and its dust and its maniacal jabber of jealousies and dollars do, building trails to lead people up to see the glory of god? we call those hill-crest dwellers the troglodytes. is it not we, who are the earth dwellers, the dust eaters, the insects of the city ant heaps, the true troglodytes and subsoilers of the sordid iniquities? perhaps, by this, you think there are some things to do if you go out to the national forests. * * * * * you have been told so often that the national forests lock up timber from use that it comes as a surprise as you ride up the woodland trail to hear the song of the crosscut saw and the buzzing hum of a mill--perhaps a dozen mills--running full blast here in this national forest. heaps of sawdust emit the odors of imprisoned flowers. piles of logs lie on all sides stamped at the end u. s.--timber sold on the stump to any lumberman and scaled as inspected by the ranger and paid by the buyer. to be sure, the lumberman cannot have the lumber for nothing; and it was for nothing that the forests were seized and cut under the old régime. how was the spoliation effected? two or three ways. the law of the public domain used to permit burn and windfall to be taken out free. your lumberman, then, homesteaded 160 acres on a slope of forest affording good timber skids and chutes. so far, no wrong! was not public domain open to homesteading? good; but your homesteading lumberman now watched his chance for a high wind away from his claim. then, purely accidentally, you understand, the fire sprang up and swept the entire slope of green forest away from his claim. your homesteading lumberman then set up a sawmill. a fire fanned up a green slope by a high wind did less harm than fire in a slow wind in dry weather. the slope would be left a sweep of desolate burn and windfall, dead trees and spars. your lumberman then went in and took his windfall and his burn free. thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of acres of the public domain, were rifled free from the public in this way. if challenged, i could give the names of men who became millionaires by lumbering in this manner. that was the principle of congress when it withdrew from public domain these vast wooded areas and created the national forests to include grazing and woodland not properly administered under public domain. the making of windfall to take it free was stopped. the ranger's job is to prevent fires. also he permits the cutting of only ripe, full-grown trees, or dead tops, or growth stunted by crowding; and all timber sold off the forests must be marked for cutting and stamped by the ranger. but the old spirit assumes protean forms. the latest way of working the old trick is through the homestead law. you have been told that homesteaders cannot go in on the national forests. yet there, as you ride along the trail, is a cleared space of 160 acres where a swedish woman and her boys are making hay; and inquiry elicits the fact that millions of acres are yearly homesteaded in the national forests. just as fast as they can be surveyed, all farming lands in the national forests are opened to the homesteader. where, then, is the trick? your farmer man comes in for a homestead and he picks out 160 acres where the growth of big trees is so dense they will yield from $10,000 to $40,000 in timber per quarter section. good! hasn't the homesteader a right to this profit? he certainly has, if he gets the profit; but supposing he doesn't clear more than a few hundred feet round his cabin, and hasn't a cent of money to pay the heavy expense of clearing the rest, and sells out at the end of his homesteading for a few hundred dollars? supposing such farmer men are brought in by excursion loads by a certain big lumber company, and all sell out at a few hundred dollars, claims worth millions, to that certain big lumber company--is this true homesteading of free land; or a grabbing of timber for a lumber trust? the same spirit explains the furious outcry that miners are driven off the national forest land. wherever there is genuine metal, prospectors can go in and stake their claims and take lumber for their preliminary operations; but they cannot stake thousands of fictitious claims, then yearly turn over a quarter of a million dollars' worth of timber free to a big smelting trust--a merry game worked in one of the western states for several years till the rangers put a stop to it. to build roads through an empire the size of germany would require larger revenues than the forests yet afford; so the experiment is being tried of permitting lumbermen to take the timber free from the space occupied by a road for the building of the road. when you consider that you can drive a span of horses through the width of a big conifer, or build a cottage of six rooms from a single tree, the reward for road building is not so paltry as it sounds. presently, your pony turns up a by-path. you are at the ranger's cabin,--picturesque to a degree, built of hewn logs or timbers, with slab sides scraped down to the cinnamon brown, nailed on the hewn wood. many an eastern country house built in elaborate and shoddy imitation of town mansion, or prairie home resembling nothing in the world so much as an ugly packing box, might imitate the architecture of the ranger's cabin to the infinite improvement of appearances, not to mention appropriateness. appropriateness! that is the word. it is a forest world; and the ranger tunes the style of his house to the trees around him; log walls, log partitions, log veranda, unbarked log fences, rustic seats, fur rugs, natural stone for entrance steps. in several cases, where the cabin had been built of square hewn timber with tar paper lining, slabs scraped of the loose bark had been nailed diagonally on the outside; and a more suitable finish to a wood hermitage could hardly be devised--surely better than the weathered browns and dirty drabs and peeling whites that you see defacing the average frontier home. naturally enough, city people building cottages as play places have been the first to imitate this woodsy architecture. you see the slab-sided, cinnamon-barked cottages among the city folk who come west to play, and in the lodges of hunting clubs far east as the great lakes. personally i should like to see the contagion spread to the farthest east of city people who are fleeing the cares of town, "back to the land;" but when there are taken to the country all the cares of the city house, a regiment of servants or hostiles, and a mansion of grandeur demanding such care, it seems to me the city man is carrying the woes that he flees "back to the farm." [illustration: pueblo boys at play in the streets of zuñi, new mexico. the dome-like tops on the houses are bake ovens] what sort of men are these young fellows living halfway between heaven and earth on the lonely forested ridges whose nearest neighbors are the snow peaks? each, as stated previously, patrols 100,000 acres. that is, over an area of 100,000 acres he is a road warden, game warden, timber cruiser, sales agent, united states marshal, forester, gardener, naturalist, trail builder, fire fighter, cattle boss, sheep protector, arrester of thugs, thieves and poachers, surveyor, mine inspector, field man on homestead jobs inside the limits, tree doctor, nurseryman. when you consider that each man's patrol stretched out in a straight line would reach from new york past albany, or from st. paul to duluth, without any of the inaccuracy with which a specialist loves to charge the layman, you may say the ranger is a pretty busy man. what sort of man is he? very much the same type as the canadian northwest mounted policeman, with these differences: he is very much younger. i think there is a regulation somewhere in the department that a new man older than forty-five will not be taken. this insures enthusiasm, weeding out the misfits, the formation of a body of men trained to the work; but i am not sure that it is not a mistake. there is a saying among the men of the north that "it takes a wise old dog to catch a wary old wolf;" and "there are more things in the woods than ever taught in l'pe'tee cat--ee--cheesm." i am not sure that the weathered old dogs, whose catechism has been the woods and the world, with lots of hard knocks, are not better fitted to cope with some of the difficulties of the ranger's life than a double-barreled post-graduate from yale or biltmore. so much depends on fist, and the brain behind the fist. i am quite sure that many of the blackguard tricks assailing the forest service would slink back to unlighted lairs if the tricksters had to deal not with the boys of eastern colleges, gentlemen always, but with some wise and weathered old dog of frontier life who wouldn't consult departmental regulations before showing his fangs. he would consult them, you know; but it would be afterwards. just now, while the rangers are consulting the red tape, the trickster gets away with the goods. in the next place, your forest ranger is not clothed with the authority to back up his fight which the n.w.m.p. man possesses. in theory, your ranger is a united states marshal, just as your mounted policeman is a constable and justice of the peace; but when it comes to practice, where the n.w.m.p. has a free hand on the instant, on the spot, to arrest, try, convict and imprison, the forest ranger is ham-strung and hampered by official red tape. for instance, riding out with a ranger one day, we came on an irate mill man who opened out a fusillade in all the profanity his tongue could borrow. the ranger turned toward me aghast. "don't mind me! let him swear himself out! i want to see for myself exactly what you men have to deal with!" now, if that mill man had used such language to a mounted policeman, he would have been arrested, sentenced to thirty days and a fine, all inside of twenty-four hours. what was it all about? an attempt to bulldoze a young government man into believing that the taking of logs without payment was permissible. "what will you do to straighten it all out?" i asked. "lay a statement of the facts before the district supervisor. the supervisor will forward all to denver. denver will communicate with washington. then, soon as the thing has been investigated, word will come back from washington." investigated? if you know anything about government investigations, you will not stop the clock, as joshua played tricks with the sun dial, to prevent speed. "then, it's a matter of six weeks before you can put decency and respect for law in that gentleman's heart?" i asked. "perhaps longer," said the college man without a suspicion of irony, "and he has given us trouble this way ever since he has come to the forests." "and will continue to give you trouble till the law gives you a free hand to put such blackguards to bed till they learn to be good." "yes, that's right. this isn't the first time men have tried to get away with logs that didn't belong to them. once, when i came back to the first forest where i served, there was a whole pile of logs stamped u. s. that we had never scaled. by the time we could get word back from washington, the guilty party had left the state and blame had been shunted round on a poor half-witted fellow who didn't know what he was doing; but we forced pay for those logs." it is a common saying in the northwest that it takes eight years to make a good mounted policeman--eight years to jounce the duffer out and the man in; but in the forest service, men over forty-five are not taken. for men who serve up to forty-five, the inducements of salary beginning at $65 a month and seldom exceeding $200 are not sufficient to retain tested veterans. the big lumber companies will pay a trained forester more for the same work on privately owned timber limits; so the rangers remain for the most part young. would the same difficulties rise if wise old dogs were on guard? i hardly think so. * * * * * what manner of man is the ranger? as we sat round the little parlor of the cabin that night in the vasquez forest, an army man turned forester struck up on a piano that had been packed on horseback above cloud-line strains of wagner and beethoven. a graduate of ann arbor and post-graduate of yale played with a cigarette as he gazed at his own fancies through the mica glow of the coal stove. a denver boy, whose mother kept house in the cabin, was chief ranger. in the group was his sister, a teacher in the village school; and i fancy most of the ranger homes present pretty much the same types, though one does not ordinarily expect to hear strains of grand opera above cloud-line. picture the men dressed in sage-green norfolk suits; and you have as rare a scene as scott ever painted of the men in lincoln green in england's borderland forests. of course, there are traitors and spies and judas iscariots in the service with lip loyalty to public weal and one hand out behind for thirty pieces of silver to betray self-government; but under the present régime, such men are not kept when found out, nor shielded when caught. for twenty years, the world has been ringing with praise of the northwest mounted police; but the red-coat men have served their day; and the extension of provincial government will practically disband the force in a few years. right now, in the american west, is a similar picturesque body of frontier fighters and wardens, doing battle against ten times greater odds, with little or no authority to back them up, and under constant fire of slanderous mendacity set going by the thieves and grafters whose game of spoliation has been stopped. let spread-eagleism look at the figures and ponder them, and never forget them, especially never forget them, when charges are being hurled against the forest rangers! _in the single fire of 1909 more rangers lost their lives than mounted policemen have died in the service since 1870, when the force was organized._ was it nietzsche, or haeckel, or maeterlinck, or all of them together, who declared that nature's constant aim is to perpetuate and surpass herself? the sponge slipping from vegetable to animal kingdom; the animal grading up to man; man stretching his neck to become--what?--is it spirit, the being of a future world? the tadpole striving for legs and wings, till in the course of the centuries it developed both. the flower flaunting its beauty to attract bee and butterfly that it may perfect its union with alien pollen dust and so perpetuate a species that shall surpass itself. the tree trying to encompass and overcome the law of its own being--fixity--by sending its seeds sailing, whirling, aviating the seas of the air, with wind for pilot to far distant clime. you see it all of a sun-washed morning in a ride or walk through the national forests. you thought the tree was an inanimate thing, didn't you? yet you find john muir and dante clasping hands across the centuries in agreement that the tree is a living, sensate thing, sensate almost as you are; with its seven ages like the seven ages of man; with the same ceaseless struggle to survive, to be fit to survive, to battle up to light and stand in serried rank proud among its peers, drawing life and strength straight from the sun. the storm wind ramps through its thrashing branches; and what do you suppose it is doing? precisely what the storm winds of adversity do to you and me: blowing down the dead leaves, snapping off the dead branches, making us take tighter hold on the verities of the eternal rocks, teaching us to anchor on facts, not fictions, destroying our weakness, strengthening our flabbiness, making us prove our right to be fit to survive. woe betide the tree with rotten heart wood or mushy anchorage! you see its fate with upturned roots still sticky with the useless muck. not so different from us humans with mushy creeds that can't stand fast against the shocks of life! you say all this is so much symbolism; but when the first great cause made the tree as well as the man, is it surprising that the same laws of life should govern both? it is the forester, not the symbolist, who divides the life of the tree into seven ages; just as it is the poet, not the philosopher, who divides the life of man in seven ages; and it needs no maeterlinck, or haeckel, to trace the similarity between the seven ages. seedling, sapling, large sapling, pole, large pole, standard and set--marking the ages of the trees--all have their prototypes in the human. the seedling can grow only under the protecting nursery of earth, air, moisture and in some cases the shade of other trees. the young conifers, for instance, grow best under the protecting nursery of poplars and cottonwoods, as one sees where the fire has run, and the quick growers are already shading the shy evergreens. and there is the same infant mortality among the young trees as in human life. too much shade, fire, drought, passing hoof, disease, blight, weeds out the weaklings up to adolescence. then, the real business of living begins--it is a struggle, a race, a constant contention for the top, for the sunlight and air and peace at the top; and many a grand old tree reaches the top only when ripe for death. others live on their three score years and ten, their centuries, and in the case of the sugar pines and sequoias, their decades of centuries. first comes the self-pruning, the branches shaded by their neighbors dying and dropping off. and what a threshing of arms, of strength against strength, there is in the storm wind, every wrench tightening grip, to the rocks, some trees even sending down extra roots like guy ropes for anchorhold. the tree uncrowded by its fellows shoots up straight as a mast pole, whorl on whorl of its branches spelling its years in a century census. it is the crowded trees that show their almost human craft, their instinct of will to live--cork-screwing sidewise for light, forking into two branches where one branch is broken or shaded, twisting and bending, ever seeking the light, and spreading out only when they reach room for shoulder swing at the top, with such a mechanism of pumping machinery to hoist barrels of water up from secret springs in the earth as man has not devised for his own use. and now, when the crown has widened out to sun and air, it stops growing and bears its seeds--seeds shaped like parachutes and canoes and sails and wings, to overcome the law of its own fixity--life striving to surpass itself, as the symbolists and the scientists say, though symbolist and scientist would break each other's heads if you suggested that they both preach the very same thing. and a lost tree is like a lost life; utter loss, bootless waste. you see it in the bleached skeleton spars of the dead forest where the burn has run. you see it where the wasteful lumberman has come cutting half-growns and leaving stumps of full-growns three or four feet high with piles of dry slash to carry the first chance spark. the leaf litter here would have enriched the soil and the waste slash would keep the poor of an eastern city in fuel. once, at a public meeting, i happened to mention the ranger's rule that stumps must be cut no higher than eighteen inches, and the fact that in the big tree region of the rocky mountains many stumps are left three and four feet high. someone took smiling exception to the height of those stumps. yet in the redwood and douglas fir country stumps are cut, not four feet, but nine feet high, leaving waste enough to build a small house. and it will take not a hundred, not two hundred, but a thousand years, to bring up a second growth of such trees. * * * * * sitting down to dinner at a little mountain inn, i noticed only two families besides ourselves; and they were residents of the mountain. i thought of those hotels back in the cities daily turning away health seekers. "how is it you haven't more people here, when the cities can't take care of all the people who come?" i asked the woman of the house. "people don't seem to know about the national forests," she said. "they think the forests are only places for lumber and mills." chapter iii through the pecos national forests of new mexico the ordinary easterner's idea of new mexico is of a cloudless, sun-scorched land where you can cook an egg by laying it on the sand any day in the year, winter or summer. yet when i went into the pecos national forest, i put on the heaviest flannels i have ever worn in northernmost canada and found them inadequate. we were blocked by four feet of snow on the trail; and one morning i had to break the ice in my bedroom pitcher to get washing water. to be sure, it is hot enough in new mexico at all seasons of the year; and you can cook that egg all right if you keep down on the desert sands of the southern lowlands and mesas; but new mexico isn't all scorched lowlands and burnt-up mesas. you'll find your egg in cold storage if you go into the different national forests, for most of them lie above an altitude of 8,000 feet; and at the headwaters of the pecos, you are between 10,000 and 13,000 feet high, according as you camp on baldy pecos, or the truchas, or grass mountain, or in horse-thief cañon. there are several other ways in which the national forests of new mexico discount eastern expectation. first of all, they are cheap; and that is not true of the majority of trips through the west. ordinarily, it costs more to take a trip to the wilds of the west than to go to europe. what with enormous distances to be traversed and extortionate hotel charges, it is much cheaper to go to paris than to san francisco; but this is not true of the forests of new mexico. prices have not yet been jacked up to "all the traffic will stand." the constant half-hour leak of tips at every turn is unknown. if you gave a tip to any of the ranch people who take care of you in the national forests of mexico, the chances are they would hand it back, leaving you a good deal smaller than you feel when you run the gauntlet of forty servitors lined up in a continental hotel for tips. in letters of gold, let it be written across the face of the heavens--_there is still a no-tip land._ as prices rule to-day in new mexico, you can literally take a holiday cheaper in the national forests than you can stay at home. once you have reached the getting off place from the transcontinental railroad, it will cost you to go into the forests $4 an hour by motor, and the roads are good enough to make a long trip fast. in fact, you can set down the cost of going in and out at not less than $2, nor more than $4. if you hire a team to go in, it will not cost you more than $4 a day, including driver, driver's meals and horse feed. or you may still buy a pony in new mexico at from $35 to $60, and so have your own horse for a six weeks' holiday. to rent a horse by the month would probably not cost $20. set your going in charges down at $2--where will you go? all through the national forests of new mexico are ranch houses, usually old mexican establishments taken over and modernized, where you can board at from $8 to $10 a week. don't picture to yourself an adobe dwelling with a wash basin at the back door and a roller towel that has been too popular; that day has been long passed in the ranches of new mexico. the chances are the adobe has been whitewashed, and your room will look out either on the little courtyard in the center, or from the piazza outside down the valleys; and somewhere along the courtyard or piazza facing the valley will be a modern bathroom with hot and cold water. the dining-room and living-room will be after the style of the old franciscan mission architecture that dominates all the architecture of the southwest--conical arches opening from one room into another, shut off, perhaps, by a wicket gate. many of the ranch houses are flanked by dozens of little portable, one-roomed bungalows, tar-paper roof, shingle wainscot, and either white tenting or mosquito wire halfway up; and this is by all odds the best type of room for the health seeker who goes to new mexico. he endangers neither himself nor others by housing close to neighbors. in fact, the number of health seekers living in such little portable boxes has become so great in new mexico that they are locally known as "tent-dwellers." it need scarcely be said that there are dozens and dozens of ranch houses that will not take tuberculous patients; so there is no danger to ordinary comers seeking a holiday in the national forests. on the other hand, there is no hardship worked on the invalid. for a sum varying from $50 to $100, he can buy his own ready-made, portable house; and arrangements can easily be made for sending in meals. [illustration: chili peppers drying outside pueblo dwelling. the structure of sticks on the roof is a cage where an eagle is kept for its feathers, which are used in religious rites] the next surprise about the national forests of new mexico is the excellence of roads and trails. you can go into the very heart of _most_ of the forests by motor, of _all_ of the forests by team (be sure to hire a strong wagon); and you can ride almost to the last lap of the highest peaks along bridle trails that are easy to the veriest beginner. in the pecos forest are five or six hundred miles of such trails cut by the rangers as their patrol route; and new mexico has for some seasons been cutting a graded wagon road clear across the ridges of two mountain ranges, a great scenic highway from santa fe to las vegas, from eight to ten thousand feet above sea level. one of the most marvelous roads in the world it will be when it is finished, skirting inaccessible cañons, shy alpine lakes and the eternal snows all through such a forest of huge mast pole yellow pine as might be the park domain of some old baronial lord on the rhine. this road is now built halfway from each end. it is not clear of snow at the highest points till well on to the end of may; but you can enter the pecos at any season at right angles to this road, going up the cañon from south to north. the great surprise in the national forests of new mexico is the great plenitude of game; and i suppose the pecos of new mexico and the white mountains of arizona are the only sections of america of which this can still be said. in two hours, you can pull out of the pecos more trout than your entire camp can eat in two days. wild turkey and quail still abound. mountain lion and wildcat are still so frequent that they constitute a peril to the deer, and the forest service actually needs hunters to clear them out for preservation of the turkey and deer. as for bear, as many as eight have been trapped in three weeks on the sangre de christo range. in one of the cañons forking off the pecos at right angles, twenty-six were trapped and shot in three months. lastly, the mountain cañons of new mexico are second in grandeur to none in the world. people here have not caught the climbing mania yet; that will come. but there are snow peaks of 13,500 feet yet awaiting the conqueror, and the scenery of the upper pecos might be a section of the alps or canadian rockies set bodily down in new mexico. and please to remember--with all these advantages, cheapness, good accommodation, excellent trails and abundance of game--these national forests of new mexico are only one day from kansas city, only two days from chicago, only sixty hours from new york or washington, which seems to prove that the national forests are as much a possession to the east as to the west. you can strike into the pecos in one of three ways: by santa fe, by las vegas, or by glorieta, all on the main line of the railroad. i entered by way of glorieta because snow still packed the upper portions of the scenic highway from santa fe and las vegas. as the train pants up over the arid hills, 6,000, 7,000, 7,500 feet, you would never guess that just behind these knolls of scrub pine and juniper, the foothills rolling back to the mountains, whose snow peaks you can see on the blue horizon, present a heavy growth of park-like yellow pine forests--trees eighty to 150 feet high, straight as a mast, clear of under-branching and underbrush, interspersed with cedar and juniper and engelmann spruce. ten years ago, before the pecos was taken in the national forests, goats and sheep ate these young pine seedlings down to the ground; but of late, herds have been permitted only where the seedlings have made headway enough to resist trampling, and thousands of acres are growing up to seedling yellow pines as regular and thrifty as if set out by nurserymen. in all, the pecos forest includes some 750,000 acres; and in addition to natural seeding, the forest men are yearly harrowing in five or six hundred acres of yellow pine; so that in twenty-five years this forest is likely to be more densely wooded than in its primeval state. the train dumps you off at glorieta, a little adobe mexican town hedged in by the arid foothills, with ten-acre farm patches along the valley stream, of wonderfully rich soil, every acre under the ditch, a homemade system of irrigation which dates back to indian days when the spanish first came in the fifteen hundreds and found the same little checkerboard farm patches under the same primitive ditch system. a glance tells you that nearly all these peon farms are goat ranches. the goats scrabble up over the hills; and on the valley fields the farmer raises corn and oats enough to support his family and his stock. we, in the east, who pay from $175 to $250 for a horse, and twenty to thirty cents a pound for our meat, open our eyes wide with wonder when we learn that horses can still be bought here for from $35 to $60 and meat at $2 a sheep. to be sure, this means that the peon mexican farmer does not wax opulent, but he does not want to wax opulent; $40 or $100 a year keeps him better than $400 or $1,000 would keep you; and a happier looking lot of people you never saw than these swarthy descendants of old spain still plowing with single horse wooden plows, with nothing better for a barn than a few sticks stuck up with a wattle roof. then suddenly, it dawns on you--this is not america at all. it is a bit of old spain picked up three centuries ago and set down here in the wilderness of new mexico, with a sprinkling of outsiders seeking health, and a sprinkling of nondescripts seeking doors in and out of mischief. the children in bright red and blue prints playing out squat in the fresh-plowed furrows, the women with red shawls over heads, brighter skirts tucked up, sprawling round the adobe house doorways, the goats bleating on the red sand hills--all complete the illusion that you have waked up in some picturesque nook of old spain. what quebec is to canada, new mexico is to the united states--a mosaic in color; a bit of the old world set down in the new; a relic of the historic and the picturesque not yet sandpapered into the commonplace by the friction of progress and democracy. i confess i am glad of it. i am glad there are still two nooks in america where simple folk are happy just to be alive, undisturbed by the "over-weaning ambition that over-vaulteth itself" and falls back in social envy and class hate. "our people, no, they are not ambish!" said an old mexican to me. "dey do not wish wealfth--no--we have dis," pointing to all his own earthly belongings in the little whitewashed adobe room, "and now i will read you a little poem i make on de snow mountains. hah! iss not dis good?" "mighty good," though i was not thinking of the poem. i was thinking of the spirit that is contented enough to _see_ poetry in the great white mountains through the door of a little whitewashed adobe room; and in this case, it was a sick room. presently, he got up out of his bed, and donned an old military cape, and came out in the sunlight to have me photograph him, so that his friends would have it _after_. * * * * * having reached glorieta, you have decided which of the many ranch houses in the pecos forest you will stay at; or if you have not decided, a few words of inquiry with the station agent or a forest service man will put you wise; and you telephone in for rig or motor to come out for you. any normal traveler does not need to be told that these ranch houses are not regular boarding houses as you understand that term; but as a great many travelers are not normal, perhaps i should explain. the custom of taking strangers has arisen from those old days when there were no inns and all passers-by were given beds and meals as a matter of course. those days are past, but luckily for outsiders, the custom survives; only remember while you pay, you go as a _guest_, and must not expect a valet to clean your boots and to quake at any discord of nerves untuned by the jar of town. in half an hour after leaving the transcontinental train, we were spinning out by motor to the well-known harrison ranch, the rolling, earth-baked hills gradually rising, the forest growth thickening, the little checkerboard farms taking on more and more the appearance of settlement than on the desert which the railroads traverse. presently, at an elevation of 8,000 feet; we pulled up in pecos town before the long, low, whitewashed ranch house, the two ends coming back in an l round the court, the main entrance on the other side of it. you expected to find wilderness. well, there is an upright piano, and there is a gramophone with latest musical records, and close by the davenport where hangs a grizzly bear pelt, stands a banjo. you have scarcely got travel togs off before dinner is sounded by the big copper ranch bell hung on the piazza after the fashion of the missions. after dinner, you go over to the supervisor's office for advice on going up the cañon. technically, this is not necessary; but it is wise for a great many reasons. he will tell you where to get, and what to pay for, your camp outfit; where to go and how to go. he will show you a map with the leading trails and advise you as to the next stopping place. to hunt predatory animals--bear and wolf and cat and mountain lion--you need no permit; but if you are an outsider, you need one to get trout and turkey and deer. another point: are you aware that you are going into a country as large as two or three of the eastern states put together; and that the forests in the upper cañons are very dense; and that you might get lost; and that it is a good thing to leave somebody on the outside edge who knows where you have gone? on my way back from the supervisor's office, the sick man called me in and told me his life story and showed me his poem. as he is a mexican, has been a delegate to the constitutional convention and is somewhat of a politician, it may be worth while setting down his views. "what is going to happen in old mexico?" "ah, only one t'ing possible--los americanos must go in." "why?" "well," with a shrug, "diaz cannot--cannot control. madero, he cannot control better dan diaz. los americanos must go in." it is a bit of a surprise to find in this little pecos town of adobe huts set down higgledy-piggledy a tiny stone church with stained glass windows, a little gem in a wilderness. i slipped through the doors and sat watching the sunset through the colored windows and dreaming of the devotees whose ideals had been built into the stones of these quiet walls. three miles lower down the valley is a still older church built in--well, they tell you all the way from 1548 and 1600 to 1700. i dare say the middle date is the nearest right. at all events, the bronze bell of this old ruin dated before 1700; and when preparations were under way for the chicago world's fair, these old mission bells were so much in demand that the prices went up to $500; and the mexicans of pecos were so fearful of the desecrating thief that they carried this ancient bell away and buried it in the mountains--where, no man knows: it has never since been found. you have been told so often that the mountains of america lack human and historic interest that you have almost come to believe it. does all this sound like lack of human interest? yet it is most of it 8,000 feet above sea level, and much of it on the top of the snow peaks between ten and thirteen thousand feet up. * * * * * at eight o'clock tuesday, april 18, i set out up the cañon with a span of stout, heavy horses, an exceptionally strong democrat wagon, and a very careful mexican driver. to those who know mountain travel, i do not need to describe the trails up pecos cañon. i consider it a safer road than broadway, new york, or piccadilly, london; but people from broadway or piccadilly might not consider it so. it isn't a trail for a motor car, though the scenic highway cutting this at right angles will be when it is finished; and it isn't a trail for a fool. the pedestrian who jumps forward and then back in dodging motors on broadway, might turn several somersaults down this trail if trying experiments in the way of jumping. the trail is just the width of the wagon, and it clings to the mountain side above the brawling waters in pecos cañon, now down on a level with the torrent, now high up edging round ramparts of rock sheer as a wall. you load your wagon the heavier on the inner side both going and coming; and you sit with your weight on the inner side; and the driver keeps the brakes pretty well jammed down on sharp in-curves and the horses headed close in to the wall. with care, there is no danger whatever. lumber teams traverse the road every day. with carelessness--well, last summer a rig and span and four occupants went over the edge head first: nobody hurt, as the steep slope is heavily wooded and you can't slide far. ranch after ranch you pass with the little portable houses for "the tent dwellers;" and let it be emphasized that well folk must be careful how they go into quarters which tuberculous patients have had. carry your own collapsible drinking cup. cabins and camps of city people from texas, from the pacific coast, from europe, dot the level knolls where the big pines stand like sentinels, and the rocks shade from wind and heat, and the eddying brook encircles natural lawn in trout pools and miniature waterfalls. wherever the cañon widens to little fields, the mexican farmer's adobe hut stands by the roadside with an intake ditch to irrigate the farm. the road corkscrews up and up, in and out, round rock flank and rampart and battlement, where the cañon forks to right and left up other forested cañons, many of which, save for the hunter, have never known human tread. straight ahead north there, as you dodge round the rocky abutments crisscrossing the stream at a dozen fords, loom walls and domes of snow, baldy pecos, a great ridge of white, the two truchas peaks going up in sharp summits. the road is called twenty miles as the crow flies; but this is not a trail as the crow flies. you are zigzagging back on your own track a dozen places; and there is no lie as big as the length of a mile in the mountains, especially when the wheels go over stones half their own size. where the snow peaks rear their summits is the head of pecos cañon--a sort of snow top to the sides of a triangle, the santa fe range shutting off the left on the west, the las vegas or sangre de christo mountains walling in the right on the east. i know of nothing like it for grandeur in america except the rockies round laggan in canada. [illustration: the pueblo of taos, where the houses are practically communal dwellings five stories in height] i had put on heaviest flannels in the morning; and now donned in addition a cowboy slicker and was cold--this in a land where the easterner thinks you can sizzle eggs by laying them on the sand. an old mexican jumps into the front seat with the driver near a deserted mining camp, and the two sing snatches of spanish songs as we ascend the cañon. promptly at twelve, tomaso turns back and asks me the time. when i say it is dinner, he digs out of his box a paper of soda biscuits and asks me to "have a crack." to reciprocate that kindness, i loan him my collapsible drinking cup to go down to the cañon for some water. tomaso's courtesy is not to be outdone. after using, he dries that cup off with an ancient bandana, which i am quite sure has been used for ten years; but fortunately he does not offer me a drink. winsor's ranch marks the end of the wagon road up the cañon. from this point, travel must be on foot or horseback; and though the snow peaks seem to wall in the north, they are really fifteen miles away with a dozen cañons heavily forested like fields of wheat between you and them. in fact, if you followed up any of these side cañons, you would find them, too, dotted with ranch houses; but beyond them, upper reaches yet untrod. up to the right, above a grove of white aspens straight and slender as a bamboo forest, is a rounded, almost bare lookout peak 10,000 feet high known as grass mountain. we zigzag up the lazy switchback trail, past the ranger's log cabin, past a hunting lodge of some texas club, through the fenced ranch fields of some new york health seekers come to this 10,000 feet altitude horse ranching; and that brings up another important feature of the "tent dwellers" in new mexico. there is nothing worse for the consumptive than idle time to brood over his own depression. if he can combine outdoor sleeping and outdoor living and twelve hours of sunshine in a climate of pure ozone with an easy occupation, conditions are almost ideal for recovery; and that is what thousands are doing--combining light farming, ranching, or fruit growing with the search for health. we passed the invalid's camp chair on this ranch where "broncho breaking" had been in progress. grass mountain is used as a lookout station for fires on the upper pecos. the world literally lies at your feet. you have all the exaltation of the mountain climber without the travail and labor; for the rangers have cut an easy trail up the ridge; and you stand with the snow wall of the peaks on your north, the crumpled, purpling masses of the santa fe range across the pecos cañon, and the whole pecos valley below you. not a fire can start up for a hundred miles but the mushroom cone of smoke is visible from grass mountain and the rangers spur to the work of putting the fire out. though thousands of outsiders camp and hunt in pecos cañon every year, not $50 loss has occurred through fire; and the fire patrol costs less than $47 a year. the "why" of this compared to the fire-swept regions of idaho is simply a matter of trails. the rangers have cut five or six hundred miles of trails all through the pecos, along which they can spur at breakneck speed to put out fires. in idaho and washington, thanks to the petty spites of local congressmen and senators, the service has been so crippled by lack of funds that fewer trails have been cut through that heavy northwest timber; and men cannot get out on the ground soon enough to stop the fire while it is small. so harshly has the small-minded policy of penuriousness reacted on the service in the northwest that last year the rangers had to take up a subscription among themselves to bury the men who perished fighting fire. pecos service, too, had its struggle against spite and incendiarism in the old days; but that is a story long past; and to-day, pecos stands as an example of what good trail making will do to prevent fires. we walked across the almost flat table of grass mountain and looked down the east side into the las vegas cañon. four feet of snow still clung to the east side of grass mountain, almost a straight precipice; and across the forested valley lay another ten or twelve feet of snow on the upper peaks of the sangre de christo range. a pretty legend clings to that sangre de christo range; and because people repeat the foolish statement that america's mountains lack legend and lore, i shall repeat it, though it is so very old. the holy _padre_ was jogging along on his mule one night leading his little pack burro behind, but so deeply lost in his vesper thoughts that he forgot time and place. suddenly, the mule stopped midway in the trail. the holy father looked up suddenly from his book of devotions. the rose-tinted afterglow of an alpine sunset lay on the glistening snows of the great silent range. he muttered an _ave maria_; "praise be god," he said; "for the blood of christ;" and as sangre de christo the great white ridge has been known ever since. chapter iv the city of the dead in frijoles cañon i am sitting in one of the caves of the stone age. this is not fiction but fact. i am not speculating as to _how_ those folk of neolithic times lived. i am writing in one of the cliff houses _where_ they lived, sitting on the floor with my feet resting on the steps of an entrance stone stairway worn hip-deep through the volcanic rock by the moccasined tread of æons of ages. through the cave door, looking for all the world from the outside like a pigeon box, i can see on the floor of the valley a community house of hundreds of rooms, and a sacred _kiva_ or ceremonial chamber where gods of fire and water were invoked, and a circular stone floor where men and women danced the may-pole before julius cæsar was born, before--if egyptian archæologists be correct--the dynasties of the nile erected pyramid and sphinx to commemorate their own oblivion. to my right and left for miles--for twelve miles, to be correct--are thousands of such cave houses against the face of the cliff, as the one in which i now write. boxed up by the snow-covered jemez (hamez) mountains at one end, with a black basalt gash in the rock at the other end through which roars a mountain torrent and waterfalls too narrow for two men to walk abreast, with vertical walls of yellow pumice straight up and down as if leveled by a giant trowel, in this valley of the frijoles waters once dwelt a nation, dead and gone before the spaniards came to america, vanished leaving not the shadow of a record behind long before william the conqueror crossed to england, contemporaneous, perhaps--for all science knows to the contrary--with that 20,000 b.c. egyptian desert runner lying in the british museum. lying in my tent camp last night listening to coyote and fox barking and to owls hooting from the dead silent city of the yellow cliff wall, i fell to wondering on this puzzle of archæologist and historian--what desolated these bygone nations? the theory of desiccation, or drought, so plausible elsewhere, doesn't hold for one minute when you are here on the spot; for there is the mountain brook brawling through the valley not five minutes' scramble from any one of these caves; and there on the far western sky-line are the snows of the jemez mountains, which must have fed this brook since this part of the earth began. was it war, or pestilence, or captivity, that made of the populous city a den of wolves, a resort for hoot owl and bittern and fox? if pestilence, then why are the skeletons not found in the great ossuaries and masses that mark the pestilential destruction of other indian races? there remain only the alternatives of war, or captivity; and of either, not the vestige of a shadow of a tradition remains. one man's guess is as good as another's; and the scientist's guesses vary all the way from 8,000 b. c. to 400 a. d. so there you are! you have as good a right to a guess as the highest scientist of them all; and while i refrain from speculation, i want to put on record the definite, provable fact that these people of the stone age were not the gibbering, monkey-tailed maniacs of claw finger nails and simian jaw which the half-baked pseudo-evolutionist loves to picture of stone age denizens. as jack donovan, a character working at judge abbott's in the valley said--"sure, monkey men wud a' had a haard time scratchin' thro' thim cliffs and makin' thim holes in the rocks." remnants of shard and pottery, structure of houses, decorations and woven cloths and skins found wrapped as cerements round the dead all prove that these men were a sedentary and for that age civilized people. when our celt and saxon ancestors were still chasing wild boars through the forests, these people were cultivating corn on the upper and lower mesas. when imperial rome's common populace boasted few garments but the ones in which they had been born, these people were wearing a cloth woven of fiber and rushes. when european courts trod the stately over floors of filthy rushes, these cliff dwellers had flooring of plaster and cement, and rugs of beaver and wolf and bear. all this you can see with your own eyes by examining the caves and skeletons of the jemez forests; and the fine glaze of the beautiful pottery work is as lost an art as the pigments of old italy. * * * * * as you go into the pecos forests to play, so you go into the jemez to dream. you go to pecos to hunt and fish. so you do to the jemez; but it is historic fact you are hunting and a reconstruction of the record of man you are fishing for. as the pecos forests appeal to the strenuous holiday hunter--the man who considers he has not had his fun till he has broken a leg killing a bear, or stood mid-waist in snow-water stringing fish on a line like beads on a string--so the jemez appeals to the dreamer, the scholar, the scientist, the artist; and i can imagine no more ideal (nor cheaper) holiday than to join the american school of archæology, about which i have already spoken, that comes in here with scientists from every quarter of the world every midsummer to camp, and dig, and delve, and revel in the past of moonlight nights round campfires before retiring to sleeping quarters in the caves along the face of the cliff. the school has been a going concern for only a few years. yet last year over 150 scientists came in from every quarter of the globe. spite of warnings to the contrary given to me both east and west, the trip to the jemez is one of the easiest and cheapest you can make in america. you strike in from santa fe; and right here, let me set down as emphatically as possible, two or three things pleasant and unpleasant about santa fe. first, it is the most picturesque and antique spot in america, not excepting quebec. color, age, leisure; a medley of races; sand-hills engirt by snow sky-line for eighty miles; the honking of a motor blending with the braying of a mexican burro trotting to market loaded out of sight under a wood pile; old spain and new america; streets with less system and order about them than an ant hill, with a modern woman's board of trade that will make you mind your p's and q's and toe the sanitary scratch if you are apt to be slack; the chimes, and chimes and chimes yet again of old catholic churches right across from a wild west show where a throaty band is screeching yankee-doodle; little adobe houses where i never quite know whether i am entering by the front door or the back; the palace where lew wallace wrote ben hur, and eighty governors of three different nationalities preceded him, and where the archæological society has its rooms with lotave's beautiful mural paintings of the cliff dwellers, and where the historical society has neither room nor money enough to do what it ought in a region that is such a mine of history. such is santa fe; the only bit of europe set down in america; i venture to say the only picturesque spot in america, yet undiscovered by the jaded globe-trotter. [illustration: above this entrance to a cliff dwelling in the jemez forest are drawings by the prehistoric inhabitants] second, i want to put on record that santa fe should be black ashamed of itself for hiding its light under a bushel. ask a santa fe man why in the world, with all its attraction of the picturesque, the antique, the snowy mountains, and the weak-lunged one's ideal climate, it has so few tourists; and he answers you with a depreciatory shrug that "it's off the main line." "off the main line?" so is quebec off the main line; yet 200,000 americans a year see it. so is yosemite off the main line; and 10,000 people go out to it every year. i have never heard that the nile and the pyramids and the sphinx were on the main line; yet foreigners yearly reap a fortune catering to visiting americans. personally, it is a delight to me to visit a place untrodden by the jaded globe-trotter, for i am one myself; but whether it is laziness that prevents santa fe blowing its own horn, or the old exclusive air bequeathed to it by the grand dons of spain that is averse to sounding the brass band, i love the appealing, picturesque, inert laziness of it all; but i love better to ask: "why go to egypt, when you have the wonders of an egypt unexplored in your own land? why scour the crowded alps when the snowy domes of the santa fe and jemez and sangre de christo lie unexplored only an easy motor ride from your hotel?" if santa fe, as it is, were known to the big general public, 200,000 tourists a year would find delight within its purlieus; and while i like the places untrodden by travelers, still--being an outsider, myself,--i should like the outsiders to know the same delight santa fe has given me. to finish with the things of the mundane, you strike in to santa fe from a desolate little junction called lamy, where the railroad has built a picturesque little doll's house of a hotel after the fashion of an old spanish mansion. to reach the jemez forests where the ruins of the cave dwellers exist, you can drive or motor (to certain sections only) or ride. as the distance is forty miles plus, you will find it safer and more comfortable to drive. if you take a driver and a team, and keep both over two days, it will cost you from $10 to $14 for the round trip. if you go in on a burro, you can buy the burro outright for $5 or $10. (don't mind if your feet do drag on the ground. it will save being pitched.) if you go out with the american school of archæology (address santa fe for particulars) your transportation will cost you still less, perhaps not $2. once out, in the cañons of the cave dwellers, you can either camp out with your own tenting and food; or put up at judge abbott's hospitable ranch house; or quarter yourself free of charge in one of the thousands of cliff caves and cook your own food; or sleep in the caves and pay for your meals at the ranch. at most, your living expenses will not exceed $2 a day. if you do your own cooking, they need not be $1 a day. one of the stock excuses for americans not seeing their own country is that the cost is so extortionate. does this sound extortionate? * * * * * i drove out by livery because i was not sure how else to find the way. we left santa fe at six a. m., the clouds still tingeing the sand-hills. i have heard eastern art critics say that artists of the southwest laid on their colors too strongly contrasted, too glaring, too much brick red and yellow ocher and purple. i wish such critics had driven out with me that morning from santa fe. gregoire pedilla, the mexican driver, grew quite concerned at my silence and ran off a string of good-natured nonsense to entertain me; and all the while, i wanted nothing but quiet to revel in the intoxication of shifting color. twenty miles more or less, we rattled over the sand-hills before we began to climb in earnest; and in that time we had crossed the muddy, swirling rio grande and left the railroad behind and passed a deserted lumber camp and met only two mexican teams on the way. from below, the trail up looks appalling. it seems to be an ash shelf in pumice-stone doubling back and back on itself, up and up, till it drops over the top of the sky-line; but the seeming riskiness is entirely deceptive. travel wears the soft volcanic _tufa_ hub deep in ash dust, so that the wheels could not slide off if they tried; and once you are really on the climb, the ascent is much more gradual than it looks. in fact, our horses took it at a trot without urging. a certain scriptural dame came to permanent grief from a habit of looking back; but you will miss half the joy of going up to the pajarito plateau if you do not look back towards santa fe. the town is hidden in the sand-hills. the wreaths have gone off the mountain, and the great white domes stand out from the sky for a distance of eighty miles plain as if at your feet, with the gashes of purple and lilac where the passes cut into the range. then your horses take their last turn and you are on top of a foothill mesa and see quite plainly why you have to drive 40 miles in order to go 20. here, white rock cañon lines both sides of the rio grande--precipices steep and sheer as walls, cut sharp off at the top as a huge square block; and coming into this cañon at right angles are the cañons where lived the ancient cliff dwellers--some of them hundreds of feet above the rio grande, with opening barely wide enough to let the mountain streams fall through. to reach these inaccessible cañons, you must drive up over the mesa, though the driver takes you from eight to ten thousand feet up and down again over cliffs like a stair. we lunched in a little water cañon, which gashed the mesa side where a mountain stream came down. such a camping place in a dry land is not to be passed within two hours of lunching time, for in some parts of the southwest many of the streams are alkali; and a stream from the snows is better than wine. beyond our lunching place came the real reason for this particular cañon being inaccessible to motors--a climb steep as a stair over a road of rough bowlders with sharp climbing turns, which only a western horse can take. then, we emerged on the high upper mesa--acres and acres of it, thousands of acres of it, open like a park but shaded by the stately yellow pine, and all of it above ordinary cloud-line, still girt by that snowy range of opal peaks beyond. we followed the trail at a rattling pace--the archæological school had placed signs on the trees to frijoles cañon--and presently, by great mounds of building stone covered feet deep by the dust and débris of ages, became aware that we were on historic ground. nor can the theory of drought explain the abandonment of this mesa. while it rains heavily only two months in the year--july and august--the mesa is so high that it is subject to sprinkling rains all months of the year; to be sure not enough for springs, but ample to provide forage and grow corn; and for water, these sky-top dwellers had access to the water cañons both before and behind. what hunting ground it must have been in those old days! even yet you are likely to meet a flock of wild turkey face to face; or see a mountain lion slink away, or hear the bark of coyote and fox. "is this it, gregoire?" i asked. the mound seemed irregularly to cover several acres--pretty extensive remains, i thought. "ah, no--no señorita--wait," warned gregoire expectantly. i had not to wait long. the wagon road suddenly broke off short and plumb as if you tossed a biscuit over the edge of the flatiron roof. i got out and looked down and then--went dumb! afterwards, mrs. judge abbott told me they thought i was afraid to come down. it wasn't that! the thing so far surpassed anything i had ever dreamed or seen; and the color--well--those artists accused of over-coloration could not have over-colored if they had tried. pigments have not been invented that could do it! picture to yourself two precipices three times the height of niagara, three times the height of the metropolitan tower, sheer as a wall of blocked yellow and red masonry, no wider apart than you can shout across, ending in the snows of the jemez to the right, shut in black basalt walls to the left, forested with the heavy pines to the very edge and down the blocky tiers of rocks and escarpments running into blind angles where rain and sun have dyed the terra cotta pumice blood-red. and picture the face of the cliff under your feet, the sides of the massive rocks eroded to the shapes of tents and tepees and beehives, pigeon-holed by literally thousands of windows and doors and arched caves and winding recess and portholes--a city of the dead, silent as the dead, old almost as time! the wind came soughing up the cañon with the sound of the sea. the note of a lonely song sparrow broke the silence in a stab. somewhere, down among the tender green, lining the cañon stream, a mourning dove uttered her sad threnody--then, silence and the soughing wind; then, more silence; then, if i had done what i wanted to, i would have sat down on the edge of the cañon wall and let the palpable past come touching me out of the silence. a community house of some hundreds of rooms lay directly under me in the floor of the valley. this was once a populous city twelve miles long, a city of one long street, with the houses tier on tier above each other, reached by ladders, and steps worn hip-deep in the stone. where had the people gone; and why? what swept their civilization away? when did the age-old silence fall? seven thousand people do not leave the city of their building and choice, of their loves and their hates, and their wooing and their weddings, of their birth and their deaths--do not leave without good reason. what was the reason? what gave this place of beauty and security and thrift over to the habitation of bat and wolf? why did the dead race go? did they flee panic-stricken, pursued like deer by the apache and the ute and the navajo? or were they marched out captives, weeping? or did they fall by the pestilence? answer who can! your guess is as good as mine! but there is the sacred ceremonial underground chamber where they worshiped the sacred fire and the plumed serpent, guardian of the springs; where the young boys were taken at time of manhood and instructed in virtue and courage and endurance and cleanliness and reticence. "if thou art stricken, die like the deer with a silent throat," says the adage of the modern pueblo indian. "when the foolish speak, keep thou silent." "when thou goest on the trail, carry only a light blanket." good talk, all of it, for young boys coming to realize themselves and life! and there farther down the valley is the stone circle or dancing floor where the people came down from their cliff to make merry and express in rhythm the emotions which other nations express in poetry and music. the whole city must have been the grandstand when the dancing took place down there. it was gregoire who called me to myself. "we cannot take the wagon down there," he said. "no wagon has ever gone down here. you walk down slow and i come with the horses, one by one." it sounded a good deal easier than it looked. i haven't seen a steeper stair; and if you imagine five ladders trucked up zigzag against the flatiron building and the flatiron building three times higher than it is, you'll have an idea of the appearance of the situation; but it looked a great deal harder than it really was, and the trail has since been improved. the little steps cut in the volcanic _tufa_ or white pumice are soft and offer a grip to foothold. they grit to your footstep and do not slide like granite and basalt, though if new mexico wants to make this wonderful frijoles cañon accessible to the public, or if the archæological school can raise the means and coöperate with the forestry service trail makers, a broad graded wagon road should be cut down the face of this cañon, graded gradually enough for a motor. the day that is done, visitors will number not 150 a year but 150,000; for nothing more exquisitely beautiful and wonderful exists in america. it seems almost incredible that judge and mrs. abbott have brought down this narrow, steep tier of 600 steps all the building material, all the furniture, and all the farm implements for their charming ranch place; but there the materials are and there is no other trail in but one still less accessible. that afternoon, mrs. abbott and i wandered up the valley two or three miles and visited the high arched ceremonial cave hundreds of feet up the face of the precipice. the cave was first discovered by judge and mrs. abbott on one of their sunday afternoon walks. the archæological school under dr. hewitt cleared out the débris and accumulated erosion of centuries and put the ceremonial chamber in its original condition. "restoring the ruins" does not mean "manufacturing ruins." it means digging out the erosion that has washed and washed for thousands of years down the hillsides during the annual rains. all the caves have been originally plastered in a sort of terra cotta or ocher stucco. when that is reached and the charred wooden beams of the smoked, arched ceilings, restoration stops. the aim is to put the caves as they were when the people abandoned them. on the floors is a sort of rock bottom of plaster or rude cement. when this is reached, digging stops. it is in the process of digging down to these floors that the beautiful specimens of prehistoric pottery have been rescued. some of these specimens may be seen in harvard and yale and the smithsonian and the natural history museum in new york, and in the santa fe palace, and the field museum of chicago. sometimes as many as four feet of erosion have overlaid the original flooring. when digging down to the flooring of the ceremonial cave, an _estufa_ or sacred secret underground council chamber was found; and this, too, was restored. the pueblo of roofless chambers seen from the hilltop on the floor of the valley was dug from a mound of débris. in fact, too great praise cannot be given dr. hewitt and his co-workers for their labors of restoration; and the fact that dr. hewitt was a local man has added to the effectiveness of the work, for he has been in a position to learn from new mexican indians of any discoveries and rumors of discoveries in any of the numerous caves up the rio grande. for instance, when about halfway down the trail that first day, at the frijoles cañon or rito de los frijoles, as it is called, i met on an abrupt bend in the trail a pueblo indian from santa clara--blue jean suit, red handkerchief around neck, felt hat, huge silver earrings and teeth white as pearls--juan gonzales, one of the workers in the cañon, who knows every foot of the rio grande. standing against the white pumice background, it was for an instant as if one of the cave people had stepped from the past. well, it was wan, as we outsiders call him, who one day brought word to the archæological workers that he had found in the pumice dust in one of the caves the body of a woman. the cave was cleaned out or restored, and proved to be a back apartment or burial chamber behind other chambers, which had been worn away by the centuries' wash. the cerements of the body proved to be a woven cloth like burlap, and beaver skin. there you may see the body lying to-day, proving that these people understood the art of weaving long before the flemings had learned the craft from oriental trade. you could stay in the rito cañon for a year and find a cave of fresh interest each day. for instance, there is the one where the form of a huge plumed serpent has been etched like a molding round under the arched roof. the serpent, it was, that guarded the pools and the springs; and when one considers where snakes are oftenest found, it is not surprising that the serpent should have been taken as a totem emblem. many of the chambers show six or seven holes in the floor--places to connect with the great earth magician below. little alcoves were carved in the arched walls for the urns of meal and water; and a sacred fireplace was regarded with somewhat the same veneration as ancient orientals preserved their altar fires. in one cave, some old spanish _padre_ has come and carved a huge cross, in rebuke to pagan symbols. other large arched caves have housed the wandering flocks of goats and sheep in the days of the spanish régime; and there are other caves where horse thieves and outlaws, who infested the west after the civil war, hid secure from detection. in fact, if these caves could speak they "would a tale unfold." [illustration: looking down on the ruins of a prehistoric dwelling from one of the upper caves in the rito de las frijoles, new mexico] the aim of the archæological society is year by year to restore portions till the whole rito is restored; but at the present rate of financial aid, complete restoration can hardly take place inside a century. when you consider that the rito is only one of many prehistoric areas of new mexico, of utah, of colorado, awaiting restoration, you are constrained to wish that some philanthropist would place a million or two at the disposal of the archæological society. if this were done, no place on earth could rival the rito; for the funds would make possible not only the restoration of the thousands of mounds buried under tons of débris, but it would make the cañon accessible to the general public by easier, nearer roads. the inaccessibility of the rito may be in harmony with its ancient character; but that same inaccessibility drives thousands of tourists to egypt instead of the jemez forests. there are other things to do in the cañon besides explore the city of the dead. wander down the bed of the stream. you are passing through parks of stately yellow pine, and flowers which no botanist has yet classified. there is the globe cactus high up on the black basalt rocks, blood-red and fiery as if dyed in the very essence of the sun. there is the mountain pink, compared to which our garden and greenhouse beauties are pale as white woman compared to a hopi. there is the short-stemmed english field daisy, white above, rosy red below, of which tennyson sings in "maud." presently, you notice the stream banks crushing together, the waters tumbling, the pumice changing to granite and basalt; and you are looking over a fall sheer as a plummet, fine as mist. follow farther down! the cañon is no longer a valley. it is a corridor between rocks so close they show only a slit of sky overhead; and to follow the stream bed, you must wade. beware how you do that on a warm day when a thaw of snow on the peaks might cause a sudden freshet; for if the waters rose here, there would be no escape! the day we went down a thaw was not the danger. it was cold; the clouds were looming rain, and there was a high wind. we crept along the rock wall. narrower and darker grew the passageway. the wind came funneling up with a mist of spray from below; and the mossed rocks on which we waded were slippery as only wet moss can be. we looked over! down--down--down--tumbled the waters of the rito, to one black basin in a waterfall, then over a ledge to another in spray, then down--down--down to the rio grande, many feet below. you come back from the brink with a little shiver, but it was a shiver of sheer delight. no wonder dear old bandelier, the first of the great archæologists to study this region, opens his quaint myth with the simple words--"the rito is a beautiful place." chapter v the enchanted mesa of acoma they call it "the enchanted mesa," this island of ocher rock set in a sea of light, higher than niagara, beveled and faced straight up and down as if smoothed by some giant trowel. one great explorer has said that its flat top is covered by ruins; and another great scientist has said that it isn't. why quarrel whether or not this is the enchanted mesa? the whole region is an enchanted mesa, a painted desert, a dream land where mingle past and present, romance and fact, chivalry and deviltry, the stately grandeur of the old spanish don and the smart business tricks of modern yankeedom. shut your mind to the childish quarrel whether there is a heap of old pottery shards on top of that mesa, or whether the man who said there was carried it up with him; whether the hopi hurled the spaniards off that particular cliff, or off another! shut your mind to the childish, present-day bickering, and the past comes trooping before you in painted pageantry more gorgeous and stirring than fiction can create. first march the enranked old spanish dons encased in armor-plate from visor to leg greaves, in this hot land where the very touch of metal is a burn. back at santa fe, in governor prince's fine collection, you can see one of the old breastplates dug up from these hopi mesas with the bullet hole square above the heart. of course, your old spanish dons are followed by cavalry on the finest of mounts, and near the leader rides the priest. sword and cross rode grandly in together; and up to 1700, sword and cross went down ignominiously before the fierce onslaught of the enraged hopi. i confess it does not make much difference to me whether the spaniards were hurled to death from this mesa--called enchanted--or that other ahead there, with the village on the tip-top of the cliff like an old castle, or eagle's nest. the point is--pagan hurled christian down; and for two centuries the cross went down with the sword before savage onslaught. martyr as well as soldier blood dyed these ocher-walled cliffs deeper red than their crimson sands. then out of the romantic past comes another era. the navajo warriors have obtained horses from the spaniards; and henceforth, the navajo is a winged foe to the hopi people across arizona and new mexico. you can imagine him with his silver trappings and harnessings and belts and necklaces and turquoise-set buttons down trouser leg, scouring below these mesas to raid the flocks and steal the wives of the hopi; and the hopi wives take revenge by conquering their conqueror, bringing the arts and crafts of the hopi people--silver work, weaving, basketry--into the navajo tribe. i confess it does not make much difference to me whether the raid took place a minute before midday, or a second after nightfall. i can't see the point to this breaking of historical heads over trifles. the point is that after the incoming of spanish horses and spanish firearms, the navajos became a terror to the hopi, who took refuge on the uppermost tip-top of the highest mesas they could find. there you can see their cities and towns to this day. and if you let your mind slip back to still remoter eras, you are lost in a maze of antiquities older than the traditions of egypt. draw a line from the manzano forests east of albuquerque west through isleta and laguna and acoma and zuñi and the three mesas of arizona to oraibi and hotoville for 400 miles to the far west, and along that line you will find ruins of churches, temples, council halls, call them what you will, which antedate the coming of the spaniards by so many centuries that not even a tradition of their object remained when the conquerors came. some of these ruins--in the manzanos and in western arizona--would house a modern cathedral and seat an audience of ten thousand. what were they: council halls, temples, what? and what reduced the nation that once peopled them to a remnant of nine or ten thousand hopi all told? do you not see how the past of this whole enchanted mesa, this painted desert, this dream land, is more romantic than fiction could create, or than picayune historic disputes as to dates and broken crockery? [illustration: a hopi wooing, which has an added interest in that among the hopi indians, women are the rulers of the household] there are prehistoric cliff dwellings in this region of as great marvel as up north of santa fe; north of ganado at chin lee, for instance. but if you wish to see the modern descendants of these prehistoric cliff dwellers, you can see them along the line of the national forests from the manzanos east of albuquerque to the coconino and kaibab at grand cañon in arizona. let me explain here also that the hopi are variously known as moki, zuñi, pueblos; but that hopi, meaning peaceful and life-giving, is their generic name; and as such, i shall refer to them, though the western part of their reserve is known as moki land. you can visit a pueblo at isleta, a short run by railroad from albuquerque; but isleta has been so frequently "toured" by sightseers, i preferred to go to the less frequented pueblos at laguna and acoma, just south of the western manzano national forests, and on up to the three mesas of the moki reserve in arizona. also, when you drive across moki land, you can cross the navajo reserve, and so kill two birds with one stone. up to the present, the inconvenience of reaching acoma will effectually prevent it ever being "toured." when you have to take a local train that lands you in an indian town where there is no hotel at two o'clock in the morning, or else take a freight, which you reach by driving a mile out of town, fording an irrigation ditch and crawling under a barb wire fence--there is no immediate danger of the objective point being rushed by tourist traffic. this is a mistake both for the tourist and for the traffic. if anything as unique and wonderful as acoma existed in egypt or japan, it would be featured and visited by thousands of americans yearly. as it is, i venture to say, not a hundred travelers see acoma's enchanted mesa in a year, and half the number going out fail to see it properly owing to inexperience in western ways of meeting and managing indians. for instance, the day before i went out, a traveler all the way from germany had dropped off the transcontinental and taken a local freight for the hopi towns. when a tourist wants to see things in germany, he finds a hundred willing palms out to collect and point the way; but when a tourist leaves the beaten trail in america, if he asks too many questions, he is promptly told to "go to--" i'll not say where. that german wasn't in a good mood when he dropped off the freight train at laguna. good rooms you can always get at the marmons, but there is no regular meal place except the section house. if you are a good westerner, you will carry your own luncheon, or take cheerful pot luck as it comes; but the german wasn't a good westerner; and it didn't improve his temper to have butter served up mixed with flies to the tune of the landlady's complaint that "it didn't pay nohow to take tourists" and she "didn't see what she did it for anyway." they tell you outside that it is a hard drive, all the way from twenty-five to thirty miles to acoma. don't you believe it! for once, western miles are too short. the drive is barely eighteen miles and as easy as on a paved city street; but the german had left most of his temper at laguna. when he reached the foot of the steep acclivity leading up to the town of acoma on the very cloud-crest of a rampart rock and found no guide, he started up without one and, of course, missed the way. how he ever reached the top without breaking his neck is a wonder. the indians showed me the way he had come and said they could not have done it themselves. anyway, what temper he had not left at laguna he scattered sulphurously on the rocks before he reached the crest of acoma; and when he had climbed the perilous way, he was too fatigued to go on through the town. the whole episode is typically characteristic of our stupid short-sightedness as a continent to our own advantage. a $20 miner's tent at laguna for meals, another at acoma, a good woman in charge at the laguna end to put up the lunches, a $10 a month indian boy to show tourists the way up the cliff--and thousands of travelers would go in and come out with satisfaction. yet here is acoma, literally the enchanted, unlike anything else in the whole wide world; and it is shut off from the sightseer because enterprise is lacking to put in $100 worth of equipment and set the thing going. is it any wonder people say that europeans live on the opportunities americans throw away? if acoma were in germany, they would be diverting the rhine round that way so you could see it by moonlight. * * * * * being a westerner, it didn't inconvenience me _very_ seriously to rise at four, and take a cab at five, and drive out from albuquerque a mile to the freight yards, where it was necessary to wet one's feet in an _acequia_ ditch and crawl under a barb wire fence to reach the caboose. the desert sunrise atoned for all--air pure wine, the red-winged blackbirds, thousands of them, whistling sheer joy of life along the overflow swamps of the irrigation canals. the train passes close enough to the pueblo of isleta for you to toss a stone into the back yards of the little adobe dwellings; but isleta at best is now a white-man edition of hopi type. few of the houses run up tier on tier as in the true pueblo; and the gorgeous skirts and shirts seen on the figures moving round the doors are nothing more nor less than store calico in diamond dyes. in the true hopi pueblo, these garments would be sun-dyed brown skin on the younger children, and home-woven, vegetable-dyed fabric on the grown-ups. the true hopi skirt is nothing more nor less than an oblong of home-woven cloth, preferably white, or vegetable blue, brought round to overlap in front under a belt, with, perhaps, shoulder straps like a man's braces. a shawl over nature's undergarments completes the native costume; and the little monkey-shaped bare feet cramped from long scrambling over the rocks get better grip on steep stone stairs than civilized boots, though many of the pueblo women are now affecting the latter. the freight train climbs and climbs into the gypsum country of terrible drought, where nothing grows except under the ditch, and the cattle lie dead of thirst, and the wind blows a hurricane of dust that almost knocks you off your feet. the railroad passes almost through the lower streets of laguna; so that when you look up, you see tier upon tier of streets and three-story houses up and up to the spanish church that crowns the hill. you get off at laguna, but do not waste much time there; for the glories of laguna are past. long ago--in the fifties or thereabouts--the dam to the lagoon which gives the community its name broke, letting go a waste of flood waters; and since that time, the men of laguna have had to go away for work, the women only remaining constantly at the village engaged herding their flocks and making pottery. perhaps it should be stated here in utter contradiction to the herbert spencer school of sociology that among the hopi the women not only rule but own the house and all that therein is. the man may claim the corn patch outside the town limits, where you see rags stuck on sticks marking each owner's bounds; or if he attends the flocks he may own them; but the woman is as supreme a ruler in the house as in the navajo tribe, where the supreme deity is female. if the man loses affection for his spouse, he may gather up his saddle and bridle, and leave. "i marry, yes," said marie iteye, my acoma guide, to me, "and i have one girl--her," pointing to a pretty child, "but my man, i guess he--a bad boy--he leave me." if the wife tires of her lord, all she has to do is hang the saddle and bridle outside. my gentleman takes the hint and must be off. i set this fact down because a whole school of modern sex sociologists, taking their cue from herbert spencer, who never in his life knew an indian first hand, write nonsensical deductions about the evolution of woman from slave status. her position has been one of absolute equality among the hopi from the earliest traditions of the race. at laguna, you can obtain rooms with mr. marmon, or mr. pratt; but you must bring your luncheon with you; or, as i said before, take chance luck outside at the section house. a word as to mr. marmon and mr. pratt, two of the best known white men in the indian communities of the southwest. where white men have foregathered with indians, it has usually been for the higher race to come down to the level of the lower people. not so with marmon and pratt! if you ask how it is that the pueblos of laguna and acoma are so superior to all other hopi communities of the southwest, the answer invariably is "the influence of the two marmons and pratt." coming west as surveyors in the early seventies the two marmons and pratt opened a trading store, married indian women and set themselves to civilize the whole pueblo. after almost four years' pow-wow and argument and coaxing, they in 1879 succeeded in getting three children, two boys and a girl, to go to school in the east at carlisle. to-day, those three children are leading citizens of the southwest. later on, the trouble was not to induce children to go, but to handle the hundreds eager to be sent. to-day, there is a government school here, and the two pueblos of laguna and acoma are among the cleanest and most advanced of the southwest. fifteen hundred souls there are, living in the hillside tiered-town, where you may see the transition from indian to white in the substitution of downstairs doors for the ladders that formerly led to entrance through the roof. [illustration: _copyright by h. s. poley_ a hopi indian weaving a rug on a hand loom in a deserted cave] out at acoma, with its 700 sky dwellers perched sheer hundreds of feet straight as arrow-flight above the plain, you can count the number of doors on one hand. acoma is still pure hopi. only one inhabitant--marie iteye--speaks a word of english; but it is hopi under the far-reaching and civilizing influence of "marmon and pratt." the streets--1st, 2nd and 3rd, they call them--of the cloud-cliff town are swept clean as a white housewife's floor. inside, the three story houses are all whitewashed. to be sure, a hen and her flock occupy the roof of the first story. perhaps a burro may stand sleepily on the next roof; but then, the living quarters are in the third story, with a window like the porthole of a ship looking out over the precipice across the rolling, purpling, shimmering mesas for hundreds and hundreds of miles, till the sky-line loses itself in heat haze and snow peaks. the inside of these third story rooms is spotlessly clean, big ewers of washing water on the floor, fireplaces in the corners with sticks burning upright, doorways opening to upper sleeping rooms and meal bins and corn caves. fancy being spotlessly clean where water must be carried on the women's heads and backs any distance up from 500 to 1,500 feet. yet i found some of the missionaries and government teachers and nuns among the indians curiously discouraged about results. "it takes almost three generations to have any permanent results," one teacher bewailed. "we doubt if it ever does much good." "doubt if it ever does much good?" i should like to take that teacher and every other discouraged worker among the indians first to acoma and then, say, to the second mesa of the moki reserve. in acoma, i would not be afraid to rent a third story room and spread my blanket, and camp and sleep and eat for a week. at the second mesa, where mission work has barely begun--well, though the crest of the peak is swept by the four winds of heaven and disinfected by a blazing, cloudless sun, i could barely stay out two hours; and the next time i go, i'll take a large pocket handkerchief heavily charged with a deodorizer. at acoma, you feel you are among human beings like yourself; of different lineage and traditions and belief, but human. at the second mesa, you fall to raking your memory of whitechapel and the bowery for types as sodden and putrid and degenerate. * * * * * mr. marmon furnishes team and indian driver to take you out to acoma; and please remember, the distance is not twenty-five or fifty miles as you have been told, but an easy eighteen with a good enough road for a motor if you have one. set out early in the day, and you escape the heat. sun up; the yellow-throated meadowlarks lilting and tossing their liquid gold notes straight to heaven; the desert flowers such a mass of gorgeous, voluptuous bloom as dazzle the eye--cactus, blood-red and gold and carmine, wild pink, scarlet poppy, desert geranium, little shy, dwarf, miniature english daisies over which tennyson's "maud" trod--gorgeous desert flowers voluptuous as oriental women--who said our southwest was an arid waste? it is our sahara, our morocco, our algeria; and we have not yet had sense enough to discover it in its beauty. red-shawled women pattered down the trail from the hillside pueblo of laguna, or marched back up from the yellow pools of the san josé river, jars of water on their heads; figures in bronze, they might have been, or women of the ganges. then, the morning light strikes the steeples of the twin-towered spanish mission on the crest of the hill; and the dull steeples of the adobe church glow pure mercury. and the light broods over the stagnant pools of the yellow san jose; and the turgid, muddy river flows pure gold. and the light bathes the sandy, parched mesas and the purple mountains girding the plains around in yellow walls flat topped as if leveled by a trowel, with here and there in the distant sky-line the opal gleam as of a snow peak immeasurably far away. it dawns on you suddenly--this is a realm of pure light. how j. w. m. turner would have gone wild with joy over it--light, pure light, split by the shimmering prism of the dusty air into rainbow colors, transforming the sand-charged atmosphere into an unearthly morning gleam shot with gold dust. you know now that the big globe cactus shines with the glow of a burma ruby here when it is dull in the eastern conservatory, because here is of the very essence of the sun. the wild poppies shine on the desert sands like stars because, like the stars, they draw their life from the sun. and the blue forget-me-nots are like bits of heaven, because their faces shine with the light of an unclouded sky from dawn to dark. you see the countless herds of sheep and goats and cattle and horses belonging to the indian pueblos, herded, perhaps, by a little girl on horseback, or a couple of boys lying among the sage brush; but the figures come to your eye unreal and out of all perspective, the horses and cattle, exaggerated by heat mirage, long and leggy like camels in egypt, the boys and girls lifted by the refraction of light clear off earth altogether, unreal ghost figures, the bleating lambs and kids enveloped in a purple, hazy heat veil--an unreal dream world, an enchanted mesa all of it, a painted desert made of lavender mist and lilac light and heat haze shimmering and unreal as a poet's vision. it adds to the glamour of the unreal as the sun mounts higher, and the planed rampart mountain walls encircling the mesa begin to shimmer and shift and lift from earth in mirage altogether. you hear the bleat-bleat of the lambs, and come full in the midst of herds of thousands going down to a water pool. these indians are not poor; not poor by any means. their pottery and baskets bring them ready money. their sheep give them meat and wool; and the little corn patches suffice for meal. then the blank wall of the purple mountains opens; and you pass into a large saucer-shaped valley engirt as before by the troweled yellow _tufa_ walls; a lake of light, where the flocks lift in mirage, lanky and unreal. almost the spell and lure of a sahara are upon you, when you lift your eyes, and there--straight ahead--lies an enchanted island in this lake of light, shimmering and lifting in mirage; sides vertical yellow walls without so much as a handhold visible. high as three niagaras, twice as high it might be, you so completely lose sense of perspective; with top flat as a billiard table, detached from rock or sand or foothill, isolated as a slab of towering granite in a purple sea. it is the enchanted mesa. hill ki, my indian driver, grunts and points at it with his whip. "the enchanted mesa," he says. i stop to photograph it; but who can photograph pure light? only one man has ever existed who could paint pure light; and turner is dead. did a race once live on this high, flat, isolated, inaccessible slab of huge rock? lummis says "yes;" hodge says "no." are there pottery remnants of a dead city? lummis says "yes;" hodge says "no." both men climbed the rock, though hill ki tells me confidentially they "were very scare," when it came to throwing a rope up over the end of the rock, to pull the climber up as if by pulley. marmon and pratt have both been up; and hill ki tells me so have two venturesome white women climbers, whose names he does not know, but "they weren't scare." as we pass from the end to the side of the enchanted mesa, it is seen to be an oblong slab utterly cut off from all contact but so indented halfway up at one end as to be ascended by a good climber to within distance of throwing a rope over the top. the quarrel between lummis and hodge has waxed hotter and hotter as to the enchanted mesa without any finale to the dispute; and far be it from an outsider like myself to umpire warfare amid the gods of the antiquarian; but isn't it possible that a custom among the acoma indians may explain the whole matter; and that both men may be partly right? miss mclain, who was in the indian service at laguna, reports that once an indian family told her of this acoma ceremony. before a youth reaches manhood, while he is still being instructed in the mysteries of hopi faith in the underground council room or _kiva_, it is customary for the acomas to blindfold him and send him to the top of the enchanted mesa for a night's lonely vigil with a jar of water as oblation to the spirits. these jars explain the presence of pottery, which lummis describes. they would also give credence to at least periodic inhabiting of the mesa. the absence of house ruins, on the other hand, would explain why hodge scouted lummis' theory. the indians explained to miss mclain that a boy could climb blindfolded where he could not go open-eyed, a fact that all mountain engineers will substantiate. [illustration: a shy little indian maid in a hopi village of arizona] but what matters the quarrel? is not the whole region an enchanted mesa, one of the weirdest bits of the new world? you have barely rounded the enchanted mesa, when another oblong colossus looms to the fore, sheer precipice, but accessible by tiers of sand and stone at the far end; that is, accessible by handhold and foothold. look again! along the top of the walled precipice, a crest to the towering slab, is a human wall, the walls of an adobe streetful of houses, little windows looking out flush with the precipice line like the portholes of a ship. then you see something red flutter and move at the very edge of the rock top--hopi urchins, who have spied us like young eagles in their eyrie, and shout and wave down at us, though we can barely hear their voices. it looks for all the world like the top story of a castle above a moat. at the foot of the sand-hill, i ask hill ki, why, now that there is no danger from spaniard and navajo, the hopi continue to live so high up where they must carry all their supplies sheer, vertical hundreds of feet, at least 1,500 if you count all the wiggling in and out and around the stone steps and stone ladders, and niched handholds. hill ki grins as he unhitches his horses, and answers: "you understan' when you go up an' see!" but he does not offer to escort me up. as i am looking round for the beginning of a visible trail up, a little hopi girl comes out from the sheep kraal at the foot of the acoma mesa. though she cannot speak one word of english and i cannot speak one word of hopi we keep up a most voluble conversation by gesture. don't ask how we did it! it is wonderful what you can do when you have to. she is dressed in white, home-woven skirt with a white rag for a head shawl--badge of the good girl; and her stockings come only to the ankles, leaving the feet bare. the feet of all the hopi are abnormally small, almost monkey-shaped; and when you think of it, it is purely cause and effect. the foot is not flat and broad, because it is constantly clutching foothold up and down these rocks. i saw all the hopi women look at my broad-soled, box-toed outing boots in amazement. at hard spots in the climb, they would turn and point to my boots and offer me help till i showed them that the sole, though thick, was pliable as a moccasin. the little girl signaled; did i want to go up? i nodded. she signaled; would i go up the hard, steep, quick way; or the long, easy path by the sand? as the stone steps seemed to give handhold well as foothold, and the sand promised to roll you back fast as you climbed up, i signaled the hard way; and off we set. i asked her how old she was; and she seemed puzzled how to answer by signs till she thought of her fingers--then up went eight with a tap to her chest signifying self. i asked her what had caused such sore inflammation in her eyes. she thought a minute; then pointed to the sand, and winnowed one hand as of wind--the sand storm; and so we kept an active conversation up for three hours without a word being spoken; but by this, a little hand sought mine in various affectionate squeezes, and a pair of very sore eyes looked up with confidence, and what was lacking in words, she made up in shy smiles. poor little hopi kiddie! will your man "be bad boy," too, by and by? will you acquire the best, or the worst, of the white civilization that is encroaching on your tenacious, conservative race? after all, you are better off, little kiddie, a thousand fold, than if you were a street gamin in the vicious gutters of new york. by this, what with wind, and sand, and the weight of a kodak and a purse, and the hard ascent, one of the two climbers has to pause for breath; and what do you think that eight-year-old bit of small humanity does? turns to give me a helping hand. that is too much for gravity. i laugh and she laughs and after that, i think she would have given me both hands and both feet and her soul to boot. she offers to carry my kodak and films and purse; and for three hours, i let her. can you imagine yourself letting a new york, or paris, or london street gamin carry your purse for three hours? yet the laguna people had told me to look out for myself. i'd find the acomas uncommonly sharp. that climb is as easy to the acomas as your home stairs to you; but it's a good deal more arduous to the outsider than a climb up the whole length of the washington monument, or up the metropolitan tower in new york; but it is all easily possible. where the sand merges to stone, are handhold niches as well as stone steps; and where the rock steps are too steep, are wooden ladders. at last, we swing under a great overhanging stone--splendid weapon if the navajos had come this way in old days, and splendid place for slaughter of the spanish soldiers, who scaled acoma two centuries ago--up a tier of stone steps, and we are on top of the white limestone mesa, in the town of acoma, with its 1st, 2nd, and 3rd streets, and its 1st, 2nd, and 3rd story houses, the first roof reached by a movable ladder, the next two roofs by stone steps. i shall not attempt to describe the view from above. take washington's shaft; multiply by two, set it down in sahara desert, climb to the top and look abroad! that is the view from acoma. is the trip worth while? is mountain climbing worth while? do you suppose half a hundred people would yearly break their necks in switzerland if climbing were not worth while? as hill ki said when i asked him why they did not move their city down now that all danger of raid had passed, "you go up an' see!" now i understood. the water pools were but glints of silver on the yellow sands. the flocks of sheep and goats looked like ants. the rampart rocks that engirt the valley were yellow rims below; and across the tops of the far mesas could be seen scrub forests and snowy peaks. have generations--generations on generations--of life amid such color had anything to do with the handicrafts of these people--pottery, basketry, weaving, becoming almost an art? certainly, their work is the most artistic handicraft done by indians in america to-day. boys and girls, babies and dogs, rush to salute us as we come up; but my little guide only takes tighter hold of my hand and "shoos" them off. we pass a deep pool of waste water from the houses, lying in the rocks, and on across the square to the twin-towered church in front of which is a rudely fenced graveyard. the whole mesa is solid, hard rock; and to make this graveyard for their people, the women have carried up on their backs sand and soil enough to fill in a depression for a burying place. the bones lie thick on the surface soil. the graveyard is now literally a bank of human limestone. [illustration: at the water hole on the outskirts of laguna, one of the pueblos in new mexico] i have asked my little guide to take me to marie iteye, the only acoma who speaks english; and i meet her now stepping smartly across the square, feet encased in boots at least four sizes smaller than mine, red skirt to knee, fine stockings, red shawl and a profusion of turquoise ornaments. we shake hands, and when i ask her where she learned to speak such good english, she tells me of her seven years' life at carlisle. it is the one wish of her heart that she may some day go back: another shattered delusion that indians hate white schools. she takes me across to the far edge of the mesa, where her sisters, the finest pottery makers of acoma, are burning their fine gray jars above sheep manure. for fifty cents i can buy here a huge fern jar with finest gray-black decorations, which would cost me $5 to $10 down at the railroad or $15 in the east; but there is the question of taking it out in my camp kit; and i content myself with a little black-brown basin at the same price, which marie has used in her own house as meal jar for ten years. as a memento to me, she writes her name in the bottom. her house we ascended by ladder to a first roof, where clucked a hen and chickens, and lay a litter of new puppies. from this roof goes up a tier of stone steps to a second roof. off this roof is the door to a third story room; and a cleaner room i have never seen in a white woman's house. the fireplace is in one corner, the broom in the other, a window between looking out of the precipice wall over such a view as an eagle might scan. baskets with corn and bowls of food and jars of drinking water stand in niches in the wall. the adobe floor is hard as cement, and clean. all walls and the ceiling are whitewashed. the place is spotless. "where do you sleep, marie?" i ask. "downstairs! you come out and stay a week with me, mebbee, sometime." and as she speaks, come up the stone stairs from the room below, her father and brother, amazed to know why a woman should be traveling alone through hopi and moki and navajo land. and all the other houses visited are clean as marie's. is the fact testimony to carlisle, or the twin-towered church over there, or marmon and pratt? i cannot answer; but this i do know, that acoma is as different from the other hopi or moki mesas as fifth avenue is from the bowery. all the time i was in the houses, my little guide had been waiting wistfully at the bottom of the ladder; and the children uttered shouts of glee to see me come down the ladder face out instead of backwards as the acomas descend. we descended from the mesa by the sand-hills instead of the rock steps, preceded by an escort of romping children; but not a discourteous act took place during all my visit. could i say the same of a three hours' visit amid the gamins of new york, or london? at the foot of the cliff, we shook hands all round and said good-by; and when i looked back up the valley, the children were still waving and waving. if this be humble indian life in its simon pure state, with all freedom from our rules of conduct, all i have to say is it is infinitely superior to the hoodlum life of our cities and towns. one point more: i asked marie as i had asked mr. marmon, "do you think your people are indians, or aztecs?" and the answer came without a moment's hesitation--"aztecs; we are not indian like navajo and apaches." opposite the enchanted mesa, i looked back. my little guide was still gazing wistfully after us, waving her shawl and holding tight to a coin which i trust no old grimalkin pried out of her hand. chapter vi across the painted desert through navajo land when you leave the enchanted mesa at acoma, to follow the unbeaten trail on through the national forests, you may take one of three courses; or all three courses if you have time. you may strike up into zuñi land from gallup. or you may go down in the white mountains of arizona from holbrook; and here it should be stated that the white mountains are one of the great un-hunted game resorts of the southwest. some of the best trout brooks of the west are to be found under the snows of the continental divide. deer and bear and mountain cat are as plentiful as before the coming of the white man--and likely to remain so many a day, for the region is one of the most rugged and forbidding in the western states. add to the danger of sheer rock declivity, an almost desert-forest growth--dwarf juniper and cedar and giant cactus interwoven in a snarl, armed with spikes to keep off intruders--and you can understand why some of the most magnificent specimens of black-tail in the world roam the peaks and mesas here undisturbed by the hunter. also, on your way into the white mountains, you may visit almost as wonderful prehistoric dwellings as in the frijoles of new mexico, or the mesa verde of colorado. it is here you find montezuma's castle and montezuma's well, the former, a colossal community house built on a precipice-face and reached only by ladders; the latter, a huge prehistoric reservoir of unknown soundings; both in almost as perfect repair as if abandoned yesterday, though both antedate all records and traditions so completely that even when white men came in 1540 the spaniards had no remotest gleaning of their prehistoric occupants. also on your way into the white mountains, you may visit the second largest natural bridge in the world, a bridge so huge that quarter-section farms can be cultivated above the central span. or you may skip the short trip out to zuñi off the main traveled highway, and the long trip south through the white mountains--two weeks at the very shortest, and you should make it six--and leave gallup, just at the state line of arizona, drive north-west across the navajo reserve and moki land to the coconino forests and the tusayan and the kaibab, round the grand cañon up towards the state lines of california and utah. if you can afford time only for one of these three trips, take the last one; for it leads you across the painted desert with all its wonder and mystery and lure of color and light and remoteness, with the tang of high, cool, lavender blooming mesas set like islands of rock in shifting seas of gaudy-colored sand, with the romance and the adventure and the movement of the most picturesque horsemen and herdsmen in america. it isn't america at all! you know that as soon as you go up over the first high mesa from the beaten highway and drop down over into another world, a world of shifting, shimmering distances and ocher-walled rampart rocks and sand ridges as red as any setting sun you ever saw. it isn't america at all! it's arabia; and the bedouins of our painted desert are these navajo boys--a red scarf binding back the hair, the hair in a hard-knotted coil (not a braid), a red plush, or brilliant scarlet, or bright green shirt, with silver work belt, and khaki trousers or white cotton pantaloons slit to the knee, and moccasins, with more silver-work, and such silver bridles and harnessings as would put an arab's damascus tinsel to the blush. go up to the top of one of the red sand knobs--you see these navajo riders everywhere, coming out of their _hogan_ houses among the juniper groves, crossing the yellow plain, scouring down the dry arroyo beds, infinitesimal specks of color moving at swift pace across these seas of sand. or else you see where at night and morning the water comes up through the arroyo bed in pools of silver, receding only during the heat of the day; and moving through the juniper groves, out from the ocher rocks that screen the desert like the wings of a theater, down the panting sand bed of the dead river, trot vast herds of sheep and goats, the young bleat--bleating till the air quivers--driven by little navajo girls on horseback, born to the saddle, as the canadian cree is born to the canoe. if you can't go to zuñi land and the white mountain forest and the painted desert, then choose the painted desert. it will give you all the sensations of a trip to the orient without the expense or discomfort. besides, you will learn that america has her own egypt and her own arabia and her own persia in racial type and in handicraft and in antiquity; and that fact is worth taking home with you. also, the end of the trip will drop you near your next jumping-off place--in the coconino and tusayan forests of the grand cañon. and if the lure of the antique still draws you, if you are still haunted by that blatant and impudent lie (ignorance, like the big drum, always speaks loudest when it is emptiest), "that america lacks the picturesque and historic," believe me there are antiquities in the painted desert of arizona that antedate the antiquities of egypt by 8,000 years. "the more we study the prehistoric ruins of america," declared one of the leading ethnological scholars of the world in the school of archæology at rome, "the more undecided we become whether the civilization of the orient preceded that of america, or that of america preceded the orient." for instance, on your way across the painted desert, you can strike into cañon de shay (spelled chelly), and in one of the rock walls high above the stream you will find a white house carved in high arches and groined chambers from the solid stone, a prehistoric dwelling where you could hide and lose a dozen of our national white house. who built the aerial, hidden and secluded palace? what royal barbaric race dwelt in it? what drove them out? neither history nor geology have scintilla of answer to those questions. your guess is as good as the next; and you haven't to go all the way to persia, or the red sea, or tibet, to do your guessing, but only a day's drive from a continental route--cost for team and driver $14. in fact, you can go into the painted desert with a well-planned trip of six months; and at the end of your trip you will know, as you could not at the beginning, that you have barely entered the margin of the wonders in this navajo land. to strike into the painted desert, you can leave the beaten highway at gallup, or holbrook, or flagstaff, or the grand cañon; but to cross it, you should enter at the extreme east and drive west, or enter west and drive east. local liverymen have drivers who know the way from point to point; and the charge, including driver, horses and hay, is from $6 to $7 a day. better still, if you are used to horseback, go in with pack animals, which can be bought outright at a very nominal price--$25 to $40 for ponies, $10 to $20 for burros; but in any case, take along a white, or indian, who knows the trails of the vast reserve, for water is as rare as radium and only a local man knows the location of those pools where you will be spending your nooning and camp for the night. camp in the southwest at any other season than the two rainy months--july and august--does not necessitate a tent. you can spread your blankets and night will stretch a sky as soft as the velvet blue of a pansy for roof, and the stars will swing down so close in the rare, clear desert air that you will think you can reach up a hand and pluck the lights like jack-o'-lanterns. because you are in the desert, don't delude yourself into thinking you'll not need warm night covering. it may be as hot at midday as a blast out of a furnace, though the heat is never stifling; but the altitude of the various mesas you will cross varies from 6,000 to 9,000 feet, and the night will be as chilly as if you were camped in the canadian northwest. up to the present, the mission of st. michael's, day's ranch, and mr. hubbell's almost regal hospitality, have been open to all comers crossing the desert--open without cost or price. in fact, if you offered money for the kindness you receive, it would be regarded as an insult. it is a type of the old-time baronial spanish hospitality, when no door was locked and every comer was welcomed to the festive board, and if you expressed admiration for jewel, or silver-work, or old mantilla, it was presented to you by the lord of the manor with the simple and absolutely sincere words, "it is yours," which scrubs and bubs and dubs and scum and cockney were apt to take greedily and literally, with no sense of the _noblesse oblige_ which binds recipient as it binds donor to a code of honor not put in words. it is a type of hospitality that has all but vanished from this sordid earth; and it is a type, i am sorry to write, ill-suited to an age when the quantity travel quite as much as the quality. for instance, everyone who has crossed the painted desert knows that lorenzo hubbell, who is commonly called the king of northern arizona, has yearly spent thousands, tens of thousands, entertaining passing strangers, whom he has never seen before and will never see again, who come unannounced and stay unurged and depart reluctantly. in the old days, when your spanish grandee entertained only his peers, this was well; but to-day--well, it may work out in goldsmith's comedy, where the two travelers mistake a mansion for an inn. but where the arrivals come in relays of from one to a dozen a month, and issue orders as to hot water and breakfast and dinner and supper and depart tardily as a dead-beat from a city lodging house and break out in complaints and sometimes afterwards break out in patronizing print, it is time for the mission and day's ranch and mr. hubbell's trading posts to have kitchen quarters for such as they. in the old days, quality sat above the salt; quantity sat below it and slept in rushes spread on the floor. i would respectfully offer a suggestion as to salting down much of the freshness that weekly pesters the fine old baronial hospitality of the painted desert. for instance, there was the berlin professor, who arrived unwanted and unannounced after midnight, and quietly informed his host that he didn't care to rise for the family breakfast but would take his at such an hour. there was the drummer who ordered the daughter of the house "to hustle the fodder." there was the lady who stayed unasked for three weeks, then departed to write ridiculous caricatures of the very roof that had sheltered her. there was the government man who calmly ordered his host to have breakfast ready at three in the morning. his host would not ask his colored help to rise at such an hour and with his own hands prepared the breakfast, when the guest looked lazily through the window and seeing a storm brewing "thought he'd not mind going after all." [illustration: a navajo boy who is exceptionally handsome and picturesque] "what?" demanded his entertainer. "you will not go after you have roused me at three? you will go; and you will go quick; and you will go this instant." the painted desert is bound to become as well known to american travelers as algiers and the northern rim of the sahara to the thousands of european tourists, who yearly flock south of the mediterranean. when that time comes, a different system must prevail, so i would advise all visitors going into the navajo country to take their own food and camp kit and horses, either rented from an outfitter at the starting point, or bought outright. at st. michael's mission, and ganado, and the three mesas, and oraibi, you can pick up the necessary local guide. we entered the painted desert by way of gallup, hiring driver and team locally. motors are available for the first thirty miles of the trip, though out of the question for the main 150 miles, owing to the heavy sand, fine as flour; but they happened to be out of commission the day we wanted them. the trail rises and rises from the sandy levels of the railroad town till you are presently on the high northern mesa among scrub juniper and cedar, in a cool-scented, ozone atmosphere, as life-giving as any frost air of the north. the yellow ocher rocks close on each side in walled ramparts, and nestling in an angle of rock you see a little fenced ranch house, where they charge ten cents a glass for the privilege of their spring. there is the same profusion of gorgeous desert flowers, dyed in the very essence of the sun, as you saw round the enchanted mesa--globe cactus and yellow poppies and wild geraniums and little blue forget-me-nots and a rattlesnake flower with a bloated bladder seed pod mottled as its prototype's skin. and the trail still climbs till you drop sheer over the edge of the sky-line and see a new world swimming below you in lakes of lilac light and blue shadows--blue shadows, sure sign of desert land as northern lights are of hyperborean realm. it is the painted desert; and it isn't a flat sand plain as you expected, but a world of rolling green and purple and red hills receding from you in the waves of a sea to the belted, misty mountains rising up sheer in a sky wall. and it isn't a desolate, uninhabited waste, as you expected. you round a ridge of yellow rock, and three zuñi boys are loping along the trail in front of you--red headband, hair in a braid, red sash, velvet trousers--the most famous runners of all indian tribes in spite of their short, squat stature. the navajo trusts to his pony, and so is a slack runner. also, he is not so well nourished as the zuñi or hopi, and so has not as firm muscles and strong lungs. these zuñi lads will set out from oraibi at daybreak, and run down to holbrook, eighty miles in a day. or you hear the tinkle of a bell, and see some little navajo girl on horseback driving her herd of sheep down to a drinking pool. it all has a curiously egyptian or oriental effect. so rachel was watering her flocks when the midianitish herders drove her from the spring; and you see the same rivalry for possession of the waterhole in our own desert country as ancient record tells of that other storied land. the hay stacks, huge, tent-shaped _tufa_ rocks to the right of the road, mark the approach to st. michael's mission. where one great rock has splintered from the main wall is a curious phenomenon noted by all travelers--a cow, head and horns, etched in perfect outline against the face of the rock. the driver tells you it is a trick of rain and stain, but a knowledge of the tricks of lightning stamping pictures on objects struck in an atmosphere heavily charged with electricity suggests another explanation. then you have crossed the bridge and the red-tiled roofs of st. michael's loom above the hill, and you drive up to an oblong, white, green-shuttered building as silent as the grave--st. michael's mission, where the franciscans for seventeen years have been holding the gateway to the navajo reserve. below the hill is a little square log shack, the mission printing press. behind, another shack, the post-office; and off beyond the hill, the ranch house of mr. and mrs. day, two of the best known characters on the arizona frontier. a mile down the arroyo is the convent school, miss drexel's mission for the indians; a fine, massive structure of brick and stone, equal to any of the famous jesuit and ursuline schools so famous in the history of quebec. and at this little mission, with its half-dozen buildings, is being lived over again the same heroic drama that father vimont and mother mary of the incarnation opened in new france three centuries ago; only we are a little too close to this modern drama to realize its fine quality of joyous self-abnegation and practical religion. also, the work of miss drexel's missionaries promises to be more permanent than that to the hurons and algonquins of quebec. they are not trying to turn indians into white men and women at this mission. they are leaving them indians with the leaven of a new grace working in their hearts. the navajos are to-day 22,000 strong, and on the increase. the hurons and algonquins alive to-day, you can almost count on your hands. driven from pillar to post, they were destroyed by the civilization they had embraced; but the navajos have a realm perfectly adapted to sustain their herds and broad enough for them to expand--14,000,000 acres, including moki land--and against any white man's greedy encroachment on that reserve, father webber, of the franciscans, has set his face like adamant. in two or three generations, we shall be putting up monuments to these workers among the navajos. meanwhile, we neither know nor care what they are doing. you enter the silent hallway and ring a gong. a navajo interpreter appears and tells you father webber has gone to rome, but father berrard will be down; and when you meet the cowled franciscan in his rough, brown cassock, with sandal shoes, you might shut your eyes and imagine yourself back in the quebec consistories of three centuries ago. there is the same poverty, the same quiet devotion, the same consecrated scholarship, the same study of race and legend, as made the jesuit missions famous all through europe of the seventeenth century. why, do you know, this franciscan mission, with its three priests and two lay helpers, is sustained on the small sum of $1,000 a year; and out of his share of that, father berrard has managed to buy a printing press and issue a scholarly work on the navajos, costing him $1,500! next morning, when mother josephine, of miss drexel's mission school, drove us back to the franciscan's house, we saw proofs of a second volume on the navajos, which father berrard is issuing; a combined glossary and dictionary of information on tribal customs and arts and crafts and legends and religion; a work of which a french academician would be more than proud. then he shows us what will easily prove the masterpiece of his life--hundreds of drawings, which, for the last ten years, he has been having the medicine men of the navajos make for their legends, of all the authentic, known patterns of their blankets and the meanings, of their baskets and what they mean, and of the heavenly constellations, which are much the same as ours except that the names are those of the coyote and eagle and other desert creatures instead of the latin appellations. lungren and burbank and curtis and other artists, who have passed this way, suggested the idea. someone sent father berrard folios of blank drawing boards. sepia made of coal dust and white chalk made of gypsum suffice for pigments. with these he has had the indian medicine men make a series of drawings that excels anything in the smithsonian institute of washington or the field museum of chicago. for instance, there is the map of the sky and of the milky way with the four cardinal points marked in the navajo colors, white, blue, black and yellow, with the legend drawn of the "great medicine man" putting the stars in their places in the sky, when along comes coyote, steals the mystery bag of stars--and puff, with one breath he has mischievously sent the divine sparks scattering helter-skelter all over the face of heaven. there is the legend of "the spider maid" teaching the navajos to weave their wonderful blankets, though the hopi deny this and assert that their women captured in war were the ones who taught the navajos the art of weaving. there is the picture of the navajo transmigration of souls up the twelve degrees of a huge corn stalk, for all the world like the hindoo legend of a soul's travail up to life. you must not forget how similar many of the indian drawings are to oriental work. then, there is the picture of the supreme woman deity of the navajos. does that recall any mother of life in hindoo lore? if all ethnologists and archæologists had founded their studies on the indian's own account of himself, rather than their own scrappy version of what the indian told them, we should have got somewhere in our knowledge of the relationships of the human race. father berrard's drawings in color of all known patterns of navajo blankets are a gold mine in themselves, and would save the squandering by eastern buyers of thousands a year in faked navajo blankets. wherever father berrard hears of a new blanket pattern, thither he hies to get a drawing of it; and on many a fool's errand his quest has taken him. for instance, he once heard of a wonderful blanket being displayed by a flagstaff dealer, with vegetable dyes of "green" in it. dressing in disguise, with overcoat collar turned up, the priest went to examine the alleged wonder. it was a palpable cheat manufactured in the east for the benefit of gullible tourists. "where did your indians get that vegetable green?" father berrard asked the unsuspecting dealer. "from frog ponds," answered the store man of a region where water is scarce as hens' teeth. father berrard has not yet finished his collection of drawings, for the medicine men will reveal certain secrets only when the moon and stars are in a certain position; but he vows that when the book is finished and when he has saved money enough to issue it, his _nom de plume_ shall be "frog pond green." if we had been a party of men, we should probably have been put up at either the franciscan mission, or day's ranch; but being women we were conducted a mile farther down the arroyo to miss drexel's mission school for indian boys and girls. here 150 little navajos come every year, not to be transformed into white boys and girls, but to be trained inside and out in cleanliness and uprightness and grace. there are in all fourteen members of the sisterhood here, much the same type of women in birth and station and training as the polished nobility that founded the first religious institutions of new france. perhaps, because the jesuit relations record such a terrible tale of martyrdom, one somehow or other associates those early indian missions with religions of a dolorous cast. not so here! a happier-faced lot of women and children you never saw than these delicately nurtured sisters and their swarthy-faced, black-eyed little wards. these sisters evidently believe that goodness should be a thing more beautiful, more joyous, more robust than evil; that the temptation to be good should be greater than the compulsion to be evil. sisters are playing tag with the little indian girls in one yard; laymen helpers teaching navajo boys baseball on the open common; and from one of the upper halls comes the sound of a brass band tuning up for future festivities. we were presently ensconced in the quarters set aside for guests; room, parlor and refectory, where two gentle-faced sisters placed all sorts of temptations on our plates and gathered news of the big, outside world. then mother josephine came in, a southern face with youth in every feature and youth in her heart, and merry, twinkling, tender, understanding eyes. presently, you hear a bugle-call signal the boys from play; and the bell sounds to prayers; and a great stillness falls; and you would not know this was navajo land at all but for the bright blanketed folk camped on the hill to the right--eerie figures seen against the pink glow of the fading light. next morning we attended mass in the little chapel upstairs. priest in vestment, altar aglow with lights and flowers, little black-eyed faces bending over their prayers, the chanting of gently nurtured voices from the stalls--is it the desert we are in, or an oasis watered by that age-old, never-failing spring of service? chapter vii across the painted desert through navajo land (_continued_) there are two ways to travel even off the beaten trail. one is to take a map, stake out pins on the points you are going to visit, then pace up to them lightning-flier fashion. if you want to, and are prepared to kill your horses, you can cross navajo land in from three to four days. even going at that pace, you can get a sense of the wonderful coloring of the painted desert, of the light lying in shimmering heat layers split by the refraction of the dusty air in prismatic hues, of an atmosphere with the tang of northern ozone and the resinous scent of incense and frankincense and myrrh. you can see the desert flowers that vie with the sun in brilliant coloring; and feel the desert night sky come down so close to you that you want to reach up a hand and pluck the jack-o'-lantern stars swinging so low through the pansy-velvet mist. you can even catch a flying glimpse of the most picturesque indian race in america, the navajos. their _hogans_ or circular, mud-wattled houses, are always somewhere near the watering pools and rock springs; and just when you think you are most alone, driving through the sagebrush and dwarf juniper, the bleat of a lamb is apt to call your attention to a flock of sheep and goats scattered almost invisibly up a blue-green hillside. blue-green, did you say? yes: that's another thing you can unlearn on a flying trip--the geography definition of a desert is about as wrong as a definition could be made. a desert isn't necessarily a vast sandy plain, stretching out in flat and arid waste. it's as variegated in its growth and landscape as your new england or old england hills and vales, only your eastern rivers flow all the time, and your desert rivers are apt to disappear through evaporation and sink below the surface during the heat of the day, coming up again in floods during the rainy months, and in pools during the cool of morning and evening. but on a flying trip, you can't learn the secret moods of the painted desert. you can't draw so much of its atmosphere into your soul that you can never think of it again without such dream-visions floating you away in its blue-gray-lilac mists as wrapped the seers of old in clairvoyant prophetic ecstasy. on a flying trip, you can learn little or nothing of the arab life of our own desert nomads. you have to depend on blue book reports of "the navajos being a dangerous, warlike race" blasted into submission by the effulgent glory of this, that, and the other military martinet writing himself down a hero. whereas, if you go out leisurely among the traders and missionaries and indians themselves, who--more's the pity--have no hand in preparing official reports, you will learn another story of a quiet, pastoral race who have for three hundred years been the victims of white man greed and white man lust, of blundering incompetency and hysterical cowardice. these are strong words. let me give some instances. we were having luncheon in the priests' refectory of the franciscan mission; and for the benefit of those who imagine that missionaries to the indians are fat and bloated on three hundred a year, i should like to set down the fact that the refectory was in a sort of back kitchen, that we ate off a red table-cloth with soup served in a basin and bath towels extemporized into serviettes. i had asked about a navajo, who not long ago went locoed right in cincinnati station and began stabbing murderously right and left. "in the first place," answered the franciscan, "that indian ought not to have been in cincinnati at all. in the second place, he ought not to have been there alone. in the third place, he had great provocation." here is the story, as i gathered it from traders and missionaries and indians. the navajo was having trouble over title to his land. that was wrong the first on the part of the white man. it was necessary for him to go to washington to lay his grievance before the government. now for an indian to go to washington is as great an undertaking as it was for stanley to go to darkest africa. the trip ought not to have been necessary if our indian office had more integrity and less red-tape; but the local agency provided him with an interpreter. the next great worry to the navajo was that he could not get access to "the great white father." there were interminable red-tape and delay. finally, when he got access to the indian office, he could get no definite, prompt settlement. with this accumulation of small worries, insignificant enough to a well-to-do white man but mighty harassing to a poor indian, he set out for home; and at the station in washington, the interpreter left him. the navajo could not speak one word of english. changing cars in cincinnati, hustled and jostled by the crowds, he suddenly felt for his purse--he had been robbed. now, the navajo code is if another tribe injures his tribe, it is his duty to go forth instantly and strike that offender. our own saxon and highland scotch ancestors once had a code very similar. the indian at once went locoed--lost his head, and began stabbing right and left. the white man newspaper told the story of the murderous assault in flare head lines; but it didn't tell the story of wrongs and procrastination. the indian office righted the land matter; but that didn't undo the damage. through the efforts of the missionaries and the traders, the indian was permitted to plead insanity. he was sent to an asylum, where he must have had some queer thoughts of white man justice. just recently, he has been released under bonds. the most notorious case of wrong and outrage and cowardice and murder known in navajo land was that of a few years ago, when the indian agent peremptorily ordered a navajo to bring his child in to the agency school. not so did marmon and pratt sway the indians at laguna, when the pueblos there were persuaded to send their children to carlisle; and miss drexel's mission has never yet issued peremptory orders for children to come to school; but the martinet mandate went forth. now, the indian treaty, that provides the child shall be sent to school, also stipulates that the school shall be placed within reach of the child; and the navajo knew that he was within his right in refusing to let the child leave home when the government had failed to place the school within such distance of his _hogan_. he was then warned by the agent that unless the child were sent within a certain time, troops would be summoned from ft. wingate and ft. defiance. the indians met, pow-wowed with one another, and decided they were still within their right in refusing. there can be no doubt but that if captain willard, himself, had been in direct command of the detachment, the cowardly murder would not have occurred; but the navajos were only indians; and the troops arrived on the scene in charge of a hopelessly incompetent subordinate, who proved himself not only a bully but a most arrant coward. according to the traders and the missionaries and the indians themselves, the navajos were not even armed. fourteen of them were in one of the mud _hogans_. they offered no resistance. they say they were not even summoned to surrender. traders, who have talked with the navajos present, say the troopers surrounded the _hogan_ in the dark, a soldier's gun went off by mistake and the command was given in hysterical fright to "fire." the indians were so terrified that they dashed out to hide in the sagebrush. "bravery! indian bravery--pah," one officer of the detachment was afterwards heard to exclaim. two navajos were killed, one wounded, eleven captured in as cold-blooded a murder as was ever perpetrated by thugs in a city street. without lawyers, without any defense whatsoever, without the hearing of witnesses, without any fair trial whatsoever, the captives were sentenced to the penitentiary. it needed only a finishing touch to make this piece of dreyfusism complete; and that came when a little missionary voiced the general sense of outrage by writing a letter to a denver paper. president roosevelt at once dispatched someone from washington to investigate; and it was an easy matter to scare the wits out of the little preacher and declare the investigation closed. in fact, it was one of the things that would not bear investigation; but the evidence still exists in navajo land, with more, which space forbids here but which comes under the sixty-fifth article of war. the officer guilty of this outrage has since been examined as to his sanity and brought himself under possibilities of a penitentiary term on another count. he is still at middle age a subordinate officer. these are other secrets of the painted desert you will daily con if you go leisurely across the great lone reserve and do not take with you the lightning-express habits of urban life. for instance, in the account of the cave dwellers of the frijoles reference was made to the indian legend of "the heavens raining fire" (volcanic action) and driving the prehistoric pueblo peoples from their ancient dwelling. mrs. day of st. michael's, who has forgotten more lore than the scientists will ever pick up, told me of a great chunk of lava found by mr. day in which were embedded some perfect specimens of corn--which seems to sustain the indian legend of volcanic outburst having destroyed the ancient nations here. the slab was sent east to a museum in brooklyn. some scientists explain these black slabs as a fusion of adobe. * * * * * as we had not yet learned how to do the painted desert, we went forward by the mail wagon from st. michael's to mr. hubbell's famous trading post at ganado. mail bags were stacked up behind us, and a one-eyed navajo driver sat in front. we were in the desert, but our way led through the park-like vistas of the mast-high yellow pine, a region of such high, rare, dry air that not a blade of grass grows below the conifers. the soil is as dry as dust and fine as flour; and there is an all-pervasive odor, not of burning, but of steaming resin, or pine sap heated to evaporation; but it is not hot. the mesa runs up to an altitude of almost 9,000 feet, with air so light that you feel a buoyant lift to your heart-beats and a clearing of the cobwebs from your brain. you can lose lots of sleep here and not feel it. all heaviness has gone out of body and soul. in fact, when you come back to lower levels, the air feels thick and hard to breathe. and you can go hard here and not tire, and stand on the crest of mesas that anywhere else would be considered mountains, and wave your arms above the top of the world. so high you are--you did not realize it--that the rim of encircling mountains is only a tiny wave of purplish green sky-line like the edge of an inverted blue bowl. [illustration: the moki indian pueblo of walpi, in northeastern arizona, stands on a mesa high above the plain] the mesas rise and rise, and presently you are out and above forest line altogether among the sagebrush shimmering in pure light; and you become aware of a great quiet, a great silence, such as you feel on mountain peaks; and you suddenly realize how rare and scarce life is--life of bird or beast--at these high levels. the reason is, of course, the scarcity of water, though on our way out just below this mesa at the side of a dry arroyo we found one of the wayside springs that make life of any kind possible in the desert. then the trail began dropping down, down in loops and twists; and just at sunset we turned up a dry arroyo bed to a cluster of adobe ranch houses and store and mission. thousands of plaintively bleating goats and sheep seemed to be coming out of the juniper hills to the watering pool, herded as usual by little girls; for the custom is to dower each child at birth with sheep or ponies, the increase of which becomes that child's wealth for life. navajo men rode up and down the arroyo bed as graceful and gayly caparisoned as arabs, or lounged around the store building smoking. huge wool wagons loaded three layers deep with the season's fleece stood in front of the rancho. women with children squatted on the ground, but the thing that struck you first as always in the painted desert was color: color in the bright headbands; color in the close-fitting plush shirts; color in the germantown blankets--for the navajo blanket is too heavy for desert use; color in the lemon and lilac belts across the sunset sky; color, more color, in the blood-red sand hills and bright ochre rocks and whirling orange dust clouds where riders or herds of sheep were scouring up the sandy arroyo. no wonder burbank and lungren and curtis go mad over the color of this subtle land of mystery and half-tones and shadows and suggestions. if you haven't seen curtis' figures and burbank's heads and lungren's marvelously beautiful desert scenes of this land, you have missed some of the best work being done in the art world to-day. if this work were done in europe it would command its tens of thousands, where with us it commands only its hundreds. nothing that the pre-raphaelites ever did in the holy lands equals in expressiveness and power lungren's studies of the desert; though the pre-raphaelites commanded prices of $10,000 and $25,000, where we as a nation grumble about paying our artists one thousand and two thousand. the navajo driver nodded back to us that this was ganado; and in a few moments mr. hubbell had come from the trading post to welcome us under a roof that in thirty years has never permitted a stranger to pass its doors unwelcomed. as mr. lorenzo hubbell has already entered history in the makings of arizona and as he shuns the limelight quite as "mollycoddles" (his favorite term) seek the spotlights, a slight account of him may not be out of place. first, as to his house: from the outside you see the typical squat adobe oblong so suited to a climate where hot winds are the enemies to comfort. you notice as you enter the front door that the walls are two feet or more thick. then you take a breath. you had expected a bare ranch interior with benches and stiff chairs backed up against the wall. instead, you see a huge living-room forty or fifty feet long, every square foot of the walls covered by paintings and drawings of western life. every artist of note (with the exception of one) who has done a picture on the southwest in the last thirty years is represented by a canvas here. you could spend a good week studying the paintings of the hubbell ranch. including sepias, oils and watercolors, there must be almost 300 pictures. by chance, you look up to the raftered ceiling; a specimen of every kind of rare basketry made by the indians hangs from the beams. on the floor lie navajo rugs of priceless value and rarest weave. when you go over to mr. hubbell's office, you find that he, like father berrard, has colored drawings of every type of moki and navajo blankets. on the walls of the office are more pictures; on the floors, more rugs; in the safes and cases, specimens of rare silver-work that somehow again remind you of the affinity between hindoo and navajo. mr. hubbell yearly does a quarter-of-a-million-dollar business in wool, and yearly extends to the navajos credit for amounts running from twenty-five dollars to fifty thousand dollars--a trust which they have never yet betrayed. along the walls of the living-room are doors opening to the sleeping apartments; and in each of the many guest rooms are more pictures, more rugs. behind the living-room is a _placito_ flanked by the kitchen and cook's quarters. now what manner of man is this so-called "king of northern arizona"? a lover of art and a patron of it; also the shrewdest politician and trader that ever dwelt in navajo land; a man with friends, who would like the privilege of dying for him; also with enemies who would keenly like the privilege of helping him to die. what the chief factors of the hudson's bay company used to be to the indians of the north, lorenzo hubbell has been to the indians of the desert--friend, guard, counselor, with a strong hand to punish when they required it, but a stronger hand to befriend when help was needed; always and to the hilt an enemy to the cheap-jack politician who came to exploit the indian, though he might have to beat the rascal at his own game of putting up a bigger bluff. in appearance, a fine type of the courtly spanish-american gentleman with castilian blue eyes and black, beetling brows and gray hair; with a courtliness that keeps you guessing as to how much more gracious the next courtesy can be than the last, and a funny anecdote to cap every climax. you would not think to look at mr. hubbell that time was when he as nonchalantly cut the cards for $30,000 and as gracefully lost it all, as other men match dimes for cigars. and you can't make him talk about himself. it is from others you must learn that in the great cattle and sheep war, in which 150 men lost their lives, it was he who led the native mexican sheep owners against the aggressive cattle crowd. they are all friends now, the old-time enemies, and have buried their feud; and dynamite will not force mr. hubbell to open his mouth on the subject. in fact, it was a pair of the "rustlers" themselves who told me of the time that the cowboys took a swoop into the navajo reserve and stampeded off 300 of the indians' best horses; but they had reckoned without lorenzo hubbell. in twenty-four hours he had got together the swiftest riders of the navajos; and in another twenty-four hours, he had pursued the thieves 125 miles into the wildest cañons of arizona and had rescued every horse. one of the men, whom he had pursued, wiped the sweat from his brow in memory of it. he is more than a type of the spanish-american gentleman. he is a type of the man that the desert produces: quiet, soft spoken--powerfully soft spoken--alert, keen, relentless and versatile; but also a dreamer of dreams, a seer of visions, a passionate patriot, and a lover of art who proves his love by buying. the navajos are to-day by long odds the most prosperous indians in america. their vast reserve offers ample pasturage for their sheep and ponies; and though their flocks are a scrub lot, yielding little more than fifty to seventy cents a head in wool on the average, still it costs nothing to keep sheep and goats. both furnish a supply of meat. the hides fetch ready money. so does the wool, so do the blankets; and the navajos are the finest silversmiths in america. formerly, they obtained their supply of raw silver bullion from the spaniards; but to-day, they melt and hammer down united states currency into butterfly brooches and snake bracelets and leather belts with the fifty-cent coins changed into flower blossoms with a turquoise center. ten-cent pieces and quarters are transformed into necklaces of silver beads, or buttons for shirt and moccasins. if you buy these things in the big western cities, they are costly as chinese or hindoo silver; but on the reserve, there is a very simple way of computing the value. first, take the value of the coin from which the silver ornament is made. add a dollar for the silversmith's labor; and also add whatever value the turquoise happens to be; and you have the price for which true navajo silver-work can be bought out on the reserve. among the navajos, the women weave the blankets and baskets; among the moki, the men, while the women are the great pottery makers. the value of these out on the reserve is exactly in proportion to the intricacy of the work, the plain native wool colors--black, gray, white and brown--varying in price from seventy cents to $1.25 a pound; the fine bayetta or red weave, which is finer than any machine can produce and everlasting in its durability, fetching pretty nearly any price the owner asks. other colors than the bayetta red and native wool shades, i need scarcely say here, are in bought mineral dyes. true bayettas, which are almost a lost art, bring as high as $1,500 each from a connoisseur. other native wools vary in price according to size and color from $15 to $150. off the reserve, these prices are simply doubled. from all of which, it should be evident that no thrifty navajo need be poor. his house costs nothing. it is made of cedar shakes stuck up in the ground crutchwise and wattled with mud. strangely enough, the navajo no longer uses his own blankets. they are too valuable; also, too heavy for the climate. he uses the cheap and gaudy germantown patterns. * * * * * at seven one morning in may, equipped with one of mr. hubbell's fastest teams and a good mexican driver who knew the trail, we set out from ganado for keam's cañon. it need scarcely be stated here that in desert travel you must carry your water keg, "grub" box and horse feed with you. all these, up to the present, mr. hubbell has freely supplied passers-by; but as travel increases through the painted desert, it is a system that must surely be changed, not because the public love mr. hubbell "less, but more." the morning air was pure wine. the hills were veiled in a lilac light--tones, half-tones, shades and subtle suggestions of subdued glory--with an almost alpine glow where the red sunrise came through notches of the painted peaks. _hogan_ after _hogan_, with sheep corrals in cedar shakes, we passed, where little boys and girls were driving the sheep and goats up and down from the watering places. presently, as you drive northwestward, there swim through the opaline haze peculiar to the desert, purplish-green forested peaks splashed with snow on the summit--the francisco mountains of flagstaff far to the south; and you are on a high sagebrush mesa, like a gray sea, with miles, miles upon miles (for three hours you drive through it) of delicate, lilac-scented bloom, the sagebrush in blossom. i can liken it to nothing but the appearance of the sea at sunrise or sunset when a sort of misty lavender light follows the red glow. this mesa leads you into the cedar woods, an incense-scented forest far as you can see for hours and hours. you begin to understand how a desert has not only mountains and hills but forests. in fact, the northern belt of the painted desert comprises the kaibab forest, and the southern belt the tusayan and coconino forests, the mesas of the moki and navajo land lying like a wedge between these two belts. then, towards midday, your trail has been dropping so gradually that you hardly realize it till you slither down a sand bank and find yourself between the yellow pumice walls of a blind _cul-de-sac_ in the rock--nooning place--where a tiny trickle of pure spring water pours out of the upper angle of rock, forming a pool in a natural basin of stone. here cowboys of the long-ago days, when this was a no-man's-land, have fenced the waters in from pollution and painted hands of blood on the walls of the cave roof above the spring. wherever you find pools in the desert, there the desert silence is broken by life; unbroken range ponies trotting back and forward for a drink, blue jays and bluebirds flashing phantoms in the sunlight, the wild doves fluttering in flocks and sounding their mournful "hoo-hoo-hoo." this spring is about half of the fifty-five miles between ganado and keam's cañon; and the last half of the trail is but a continuance of the first: more lilac-colored mesas high above the top of the world, with the encircling peaks like the edge of an inverted bowl, a sky above blue as the bluest turquoise; then the cedared lower hills redolent of evergreens; a drop amid the pumice rocks of the lower world, and you are in keam's cañon, driving along the bank of an arroyo trenched by floods, steep as a carved wall. you pass the ruins of the old government school, where the floods drove the scholars out, and see the big rock commemorating kit carson's famous fight long ago, and come on the new indian schools where 150 little navajos and mokis are being taught by federal appointees--schools as fine in every respect as the best educational institutions of the east. at the agency office here you must obtain a permit to go on into moki land; for the three mesas and oraibi and hotoville are the _ultima thule_ of the trail across the painted desert. here you find tribes completely untouched by civilization and as hostile to it (as the name hotoville signifies) as when the spaniard first came among them. in fact, the only remnants of spanish influence left at some of these mesas are the dwarfed peach orchards growing in the arid sands. these were planted centuries ago by the spanish _padres_. the trading post managed by mr. lorenzo hubbell, jr., at keam's cañon is but a replica of his father's establishment at ganado. here is the same fine old spanish hospitality. here, too, is a rare though smaller collection of western paintings. there are rugs from every part of the navajo land, and specimens of pottery from the three mesas--especially from nampaii, the wonderful woman pottery maker of the first mesa--and fine silver-work gathered from the navajo silversmiths. and with it all is the gracious perfection of the art that conceals art, the air that you are conferring a favor on the host to accept rest in a little rose-covered bower of two rooms and a parlor placed at the command of guests. the last lap of the drive across the painted desert is by all odds the hardest stretch of the road, as well as the most interesting. it is here the mokis, or hopi, have their reservation in the very heart of navajo land; and there will be no quarrel over possession of this land. it lies a sea of yellow sand with high rampant islands--600, 1,000, 1,500 feet above the plains--of yellow _tufa_ and white gypsum rock, sides as sheer as a wall, the top a flat plateau but for the crest where perch the moki villages. up the narrow acclivities leading to these mesa crests the mokis must bring all provisions, all water, their ponies and donkeys. if they could live on atmosphere, on views of a painted world at their feet receding to the very drop over the sky-line, with tones and half-tones and subtle suggestions of opaline snow peaks swimming in the lilac haze hundreds of miles away, you would not wonder at their choosing these eerie eagle nests for their cities; for the coloring below is as gorgeous and brilliant as in the grand cañon. but you see their little farm patches among the sand billows below, the peach trees almost uprooted by the violence of the wind, literally and truly, a stone placed where the corn has been planted to prevent seed and plantlet from being blown away. or if the navajo still raided the moki, you could understand them toiling like beasts of burden carrying water up to these hilltops; but the day of raid and foray is forever past. it was on our way back over this trail that we learned one good reason why the dwellers of this land must keep to the high rock crests. crossing the high mesa, we had felt the wind begin to blow, when like drummond's habitant skipper, "it blew and then it blew some more." by the time we reached the sandy plain below, such a hurricane had broken as i have seen only once before, and that was off the coast of labrador, when for six hours we could not see the sea for the foam. the billows of sand literally lifted. you could not see the sandy plain for a dust fine as flour that wiped out every landmark three feet ahead of your horses' noses. the wheels sank hub deep in sand. of trail, not a sign was left; and you heard the same angry roar as in a hurricane at sea. but like the eternal rocks, dim and serene and high above the turmoil, stood the first mesa village of moki land. perhaps after all, these little squat pueblo indians knew what they were doing when they built so high above the dust storms. twice the rear wheels lifted for a glorious upset; but we veered and tacked and whipped the fagged horses on. for three hours the hurricane lasted, and when finally it sank with an angry growl and we came out of the fifteen miles of sand into sagebrush and looked back, the rosy tinge of an afterglow lay on the gray pile of stone where the moki town crests the top of the lofty mesa. in justice to travelers and desert dwellers, two or three facts should be added. such dust storms occur only in certain spring months. so much in fairness to the painted desert. next, i have cursorily given slight details of the desert storm, because i don't want any pleasure seekers to think the painted desert can be crossed with the comfort of a pullman car. you have to pay for your fun. we paid in that blinding, stinging, smothering blast as from a furnace, from three to half past five. women are supposed to be irrepressible talkers. well--we came to the point where not a soul in the carriage could utter a word for the dust. lastly, when we saw that the storm was to be such a genuine old-timer, we ought to have tied wet handkerchiefs across our mouths. glasses we had to keep the dust out of our eyes; but that dust is alkali, and it took a good two weeks' sneezing and a very sore throat to get rid of it. of the three mesas and oraibi and hotoville, space forbids details except that they are higher than the village at acoma. overlooking the painted desert in every direction, they command a view that beggars all description and almost staggers thought. you seem to be overlooking almighty god's own amphitheater of dazzlingly-colored infinity; and naturally you go dumb with joy of the beauty of it and lose your own personality and perspective utterly. we lunched on the brink of a white precipice 1,500 feet above anywhere, and saw moki women toiling up that declivity with urns of water on their heads, and photographed naked urchins sunning themselves on the baking bare rock, and stood above _estufas_, or sacred underground council chambers, where the pueblos held their religious rites before the coming of the spaniards. of the moki towns, oraibi is, perhaps, cleaner and better than the three mesas. the mesas are indescribably, unspeakably filthy. at oraibi, you can wander through adobe houses clean as your own home quarters, the adobe hard as cement, the rooms divided into sleeping apartments, cooking room, meal bin, etc. also, being nearer the formation of the grand cañon, the coloring surrounding the mesa is almost as gorgeous as the cañon. if it had not been that the season was verging on the summer rains, which flood the little colorado, we should have gone on from oraibi to the grand cañon. but the little colorado is full of quicksands, dangerous to a span of a generous host's horses; so we came back the way we had entered. as we drove down the winding trail that corkscrews from oraibi to the sand plain, a group of moki women came running down the footpath and met us just as we were turning our backs on the mesa. "we love you," exclaimed an old woman extending her hand (the government doctor interpreted for us), "we love you with all our hearts and have come down to wish you a good-by." chapter viii the grand cañon and petrified forests the belt of national forests west of the painted desert and navajo land comprises that strange area of onyx and agate known as the petrified forests, the upland pine parks of the francisco mountains round flagstaff, the vast territory of the grand cañon, and the western slope between the continental divide and the pacific. needless to say, it takes a great deal longer to see these forests than to write about them. you could spend a good two weeks in each area, and then come away conscious that you had seen only the beginnings of the wonders in each. for instance, the petrified forests cover an area of 2,000 acres that could keep you busy for a week. then, when you think you have seen everything, you learn of some hieroglyphic inscriptions on a nearby rock, with lettering which no scientist has yet deciphered, but with pictographs resembling the ancient phoenician signs from which our own alphabet is supposed to be derived. also, after you have viewed the cañons and upland pine parks and snowy peaks and cliff dwellings round flagstaff and have recovered from the surprise of learning there are upland pine parks and snowy peaks twelve to fourteen thousand feet high in the desert, you may strike south and see the aztec ruins of montezuma's castle and montezuma's well, or go yet farther afield to the great natural bridge of southern arizona, or explore near winslow a great crater-like cavity supposed to mark the sinking of some huge meteorite. of the grand cañon little need be said here; not because there is nothing to say, but because all the superlatives you can pile on, all the scientific explanations you can give, are so utterly inadequate. you can count on one hand the number of men who have explored the whole length of the grand cañon--200 miles--and hundreds of the lesser cañons that strike off sidewise from grand cañon are still unexplored and unexploited. then, when you cross the continental divide and come on down to the angeles forests in from los angeles, and the cleveland in from san diego, you are in a poor-man's paradise so far as a camp holiday is concerned. for $3 a week you are supplied with tent, camp kit and all. if there are two of you, $6 a week will cover your holiday; and forty cents by electric car takes you out to your stamping ground. an average of 200 people a month go out to one or other of the petrified forests. from flagstaff, 100 people a month go in to see the cliff dwellings. not less than 30,000 people a year visit the grand cañon and 100,000 people yearly camp and holiday in the angeles and cleveland forests. and we are but at the beginning of the discovery of our own western wonderland. who shall say that the national forests are not the people's playground of _all_ america; that they do not belong to the east as much as to the west; that east and west are not alike concerned in maintaining and protecting them? you strike into the petrified forests from adamana or holbrook. adamana admits you to one section of the petrified area, holbrook to another--both equally marvelous and easily accessible. if you go out in a big tally-ho with several others in the rig, the charge will be from $1.50 to $2.50. if you hire a driver and fast team for yourself, the charge will be from $4 to $6. both places have hotels, their charges varying from $1 and $1.50 in holbrook, to $2 and $2.50 at adamana. the hotel puts up your luncheon and water keg, and the trips can be made, with the greatest ease in a day. don't go to the petrified forests expecting thrills of the big knock-you-down variety! to go from the spacious glories of the boundless painted desert to the little 2,000-acre area of the petrified forests is like passing from a big turner or watts canvas in the tate gallery, london, to a tiny study in blue mist and stars by whistler. if you go looking for "big" things you'll come away disappointed; but if like tennyson and bobby burns and wordsworth, "the flower in the crannied wall" has as much beauty for you as the ocean or a mountain, you'll come away touched with the mystery of that southwestern wonderland quite as much as if you had come out of all the riotous intoxication of color in the painted desert. in fact, you drive across the southern rim of the painted desert to reach the petrified forests. you are crossing the aromatic, sagey-smelling dry plain pink with a sort of morning primrose light, when you come abruptly into broken country. a sandy arroyo trenches and cuts the plain here. a gravelly hillock hunches up there; and just when you are having an eye to the rear wheel brake, or glancing back to see whether the fat man is on the up or down side, your eye is caught by spangles of rainbow light on the ground, by huge blood-colored rocks the shape of a fallen tree with encrusted stone bark on the outside and wedges and slabs and pillars of pure onyx and agate in the middle. somehow you think of that navajo legend of the coyote spilling the stars on the face of the sky, and you wonder what marvel-maker among the gods of medicine-men spilled his huge bag of precious stone all over the gravel in this fashion. then someone cries out, "why, look, that's a tree!" and the tally-ho spills its occupants out helter-skelter; and someone steps off a long blood-red, bark-incrusted column hidden at both ends in the sand, and shouts out that the visible part of the recumbent trunk is 130 feet long. there was a scientist along with us the day we went out, a man from belgium in charge of the rare forests of java; and he declared without hesitation that many of these prone, pillared giants must be sequoias of the same ancient family as california's groves of big trees. think what that means! these petrified trees lie so deeply buried in the sand that only treetops and sections of the trunks and broken bits of small upper branches are visible. practically no excavation has taken place beneath these hillocks of gravel and sand. the depth and extent of the forest below this ancient ocean bed are unknown. only water--oceans and æons of water--could have rolled and swept and piled up these sand hills. before the desert was an ancient sea; and before the sea was an ancient sequoia forest; and it takes a sequoia from six to ten thousand years to come to its full growth; and that about gets you back to the ancient of days busy in his workshop making man out of mud, and earth out of chaos. [illustration: there is nothing else remotely resembling the grand cañon in the known world, and no one has yet been heard of who has seen it and been disappointed] but there is another side to the petrified forests besides a prehistoric, geologic one. split one of the big or little pieces of petrified wood open, and you find pure onyx, pure agate, the colors of the rainbow, which every youngster has tried to catch in its hands, caught by a master hand and transfixed forever in the eternal rocks. crosswise, the split shows the concentric circles of the wood grain in blues and purples and reds and carmines and golds and lilacs and primrose pinks. split the stone longitudinally and you have the same colors in water-waves brilliant as a diamond, hard as a diamond, so hard you can only break it along the grain of the ancient wood, so hard, fortunately, that it almost defies man-machinery for a polish. this hardness has been a blessing in disguise; for before the petrified forests were made by act of congress a national park, or monument, the petrified wood was exploited commercially and shipped away in carloads to be polished. you can see some shafts of the polished specimens in any of the big eastern museums; but it was found that the petrified wood required machinery as expensive and fine as for diamonds to effect a hard polish, and the thing was not commercially possible; so the petrified forests will never be vandalized. you lunch under a natural bridge formed by the huge shaft of a prone giant, and step off more fallen pillars to find lengths greater than 130 feet, and seat yourself on stump ends of a rare enough beauty for an emperor's throne; but always you come back to the first pleasures of a child--picking up the smaller pebbles, each pebble as if there had been a sun shower of rainbow drops and each drop had crystallized into colored diamonds. i said don't go to the petrified forests expecting a big thrill. yet if you have eyes that really see, and go there after a rain when every single bit of rock is ashine with the colors of broken rainbows; or go there at high noon, when every color strikes back in spangles of light--there is something the matter with you if you don't have a big thrill with a capital "b." there is another pleasure on your trip to the petrified forests, which you will get if you know how, but completely miss if you don't. all these drivers to the forests are old-timers of the days when arizona was a no-man's-land. for instance, al stevenson, the custodian at adamana, was one of the men along with commodore owen of san diego and bert potter of the forestry department, washington, who rescued sheriff woods of holbrook from a lynching party in the old sheep and cattle war days. stevenson can tell that story as few men know it; and dozens of others he can tell of the old, wild, pioneer days when a man had to be all man and fearless to his trigger tips, or cash in, and cash in quick. at holbrook you can get the story of the show-low ranch and all the $50,000 worth of stock won in a cut of cards; or of how they hanged stott and scott and wilson--mere boys, two of them in tonto basin, for horses which they didn't steal. all through this painted desert you are just on the other side of a veil from the land of true romance; but you'll not lift that veil, believe me, with a patronizing eastern question. you'll find your way in, if you know how; and if you don't know how, no man can teach you. and at adamana, don't forget to see the pictograph rocks. then you'll appreciate why the scientists wonder whether the antiquity of the orient is old as the antiquity of our own america. flagstaff, frankly, does not live up to its own opportunities. it is the gateway to many aztec ruins--much more easily accessible to the public than the frijoles cave dwellings of new mexico. only nine miles out by easy trail are cliff dwellings in walnut cañon. these differ from the frijoles in not being caves. the ancient people have simply taken advantage of natural arches high in the face of unscalable precipices and have bricked up the faces of these with adobe. as far as i know, not so much as the turn of a spade has ever been attempted in excavation. the débris of centuries lies on the floors of the houses; and the adobe brick in front is gradually crumbling and rolling down the precipice into walnut cañon. nor is there any doubt but that slight excavation would yield discoveries. you find bits of pottery and shard in the débris piles; and the day we went out, five minutes' scratching over of one cliff floor unearthed bits of wampum shell that from the perforations had evidently been used as a necklace. the forestry service has a man stationed here to guard the old ruins; but the government might easily go a step further and give him authority to attempt some slight restoration. you drive across a cinder plain from flagstaff and suddenly drop down to a footpath that takes you to the brink of circling gray stone cañons many hundreds of feet deep. along the top ledges of these amid such rocks as mountain sheep might frequent are the cliff houses--hundreds and hundreds of them, which no one has yet explored. at the bottom of the lonely, silent, dark cañon was evidently once a stream; but no stream has flowed here in the memory of the white race; and the cliff houses give evidence of even greater age than the caves. only forty-seven miles south of flagstaff are montezuma's castle and well. drivers can be hired in flagstaff to take you out at from $4 to $6 a day; and there are ranch houses near the castle and the well, where you can stay at very trifling cost, indeed. it comes as a surprise to see here at flagstaff, wedged between the painted desert and the arid plains of the south, the snow-capped peaks of the francisco mountains ranging from 12,000 to 13,000 feet high, an easy climb to the novice. only twenty miles out at oak creek is one of the best trout brooks of the southwest; and twenty-five miles out is a ranch house in a cool cañon where health and holiday seekers can stay all the year in the verde valley. it is from east verde that you go to the natural bridge. the central span of this bridge is 100 feet from the creek bottom, and the creek itself deposits lime so rapidly that if you drop a stone or a hat down, it at once encrusts and petrifies. also at flagstaff is the famous lowell observatory. in fact, if flagstaff lived up to its opportunities, if there were guides, cheap tally-hos and camp outfitters on the spot, it could as easily have 10,000 tourists a month as it now has between 100 and 200. * * * * * when you reach the grand cañon, you have come to the uttermost wonder of the southwestern wonder world. there is nothing else like it in america. there is nothing else remotely resembling it in the known world; and no one has yet been heard of who has come to the grand cañon and gone away disappointed. if the grand cañon were in egypt or the alps, it is safe to wager it would be visited by every one of the 300,000 americans who yearly throng continental resorts. as it is, only 30,000 people a year visit it; and a large proportion of them are foreigners. you can do the cañon cheaply, or you can do it extravagantly. you can go to it by driving across the painted desert, 200 miles; or motoring in from flagstaff--a half-day trip; or by train from williams, return ticket something more than $5. or you can take your own pack horses, and ride in yourself; or you can employ one of the well known local trail makers and guides, like john bass, and go off up the cañon on a camping trip of weeks or months. once you reach the rim of the cañon, you can camp under your own tent roof and cater your own meals. or you may go to the big hotel and pay $4 to $15 a day. or you may get tent quarters at the bright angel camp--$1 a day, and whatever you pay for your meals. or you may join one of john bass' camps which will cost from $4 up, according to the number of horses and the size of your party. first of all, understand what the grand cañon is, and what it isn't. we ordinarily think of a cañon as a narrow cleft or trench in the rocks, seldom more than a few hundred feet deep and wide, and very seldom more than a few miles long. the grand cañon is nearly as long as from new york to canada, as wide as the city of new york is long, and as deep straight as a plummet as the canadian rockies or lesser alps are high. in other words, it is 217 miles long, from thirteen to twenty wide, and has a straight drop a mile deep, or seven miles as the trail zigzags down. you think of a cañon as a great trench between mountains. this one is a colossal trench with side cañons going off laterally its full length, dozens of them to each mile, like ribs along a backbone. ordinarily, to climb a 7,000 foot mountain, you have to go up. at the grand cañon, you come to the brink of the sagebrush plain and jump off--to climb these peaks. peak after peak, you lose count of them in the mist of primrose fire and lilac light and purpling shadows. to climb these peaks, you go down, down 7,000 feet a good deal steeper than the ordinary stair and in places quite as steep as the metropolitan tower elevator. in fact, if the metropolitan tower and the singer building and the flatiron and washington's shaft in the capital city were piled one on top of another in a pinnacled pyramid, they would barely reach up one-seventh of the height of these massive peaks swimming in countless numbers in the color of the cañon. so much for dimensions! now as to time. if you have only one day, you can dive in by train in the morning and out by night, and between times go to sunrise point or--if you are a robust walker--down bright angel trail to the bank of the colorado river, seven miles. if you have two days at your disposal, you can drive out to grand view--fourteen miles--and overlook the panorama of the cañon twenty miles in all directions. if you have more days yet at your disposal, there are good trips on wild trails to dripping springs and to gertrude point and to cataract cañon and by aerial tram across the colorado river to the kaibab plateau on the other side. in fact, if you stayed at the grand cañon a year and were not afraid of trailless trips, you could find a new view, a new wonder place, new stamping grounds each day. remember that the cañon itself is 217 miles long; and it has lateral cañons uncounted. when you reach el tovar you are told two of the first things to do are take the drives--three miles each way--to sunrise and to sunset points. don't! save your dollars, and walk them both. by carriage, the way leads through the pine woods back from the rim for three miles to each point. by walking, you can keep on an excellent trail close to the rim and do each in twenty minutes; for the foot trails are barely a mile long. also by walking, you can escape the loud-mouthed, bull-voiced tourist who bawls out his own shallow knowledge of erosion to the whole carriageful just at the moment you want to float away in fancy amid opal lights and upper heights where the olympic and hindoo and norse gods took refuge when unbelief drove them from their old resorts. in fact, if you keep looking long enough through that lilac fire above seas of primrose mists, you can almost fancy those hoary old gods of beauty and power floating round angles of the massive lower mountains, shifting the scenes and beckoning one another from the wings of this huge amphitheater. the space-filling talker is still bawling out about "the mighty powers of erosion"; and a thin-faced curate is putting away a figure of speech about "almighty power" for his next sermon. personally, i prefer the old pagan way of expressing these things in the short cut of a personifying god who did a smashing big business with the hammer of thor, or the sea horses of neptune or the forked lightnings of old loud-thundering jove. you can walk down bright angel trail to the river at the bottom of the cañon; but unless your legs have a pair of very good benders under the knees, you'll not be able to walk up that trail the same day, for the way down is steep as a stair and the distance is seven miles. in that case, better spend the night at the camp known as the indian gardens halfway down in a beautifully watered dell; or else have the regular daily party bring down the mules for you to the river. or you can join the regular tourist party both going down and coming up. mainly because we wanted to see the sunrise, but also because a big party on a narrow trail is always unsafe and a gabbling crowd on a beautiful trail is always agony, two of us rose at four a. m. and walked down the trail during sunrise, leaving orders for a special guide to fetch mules down for us to the river. space forbids details of the tramp, except to say it was worth the effort, twice over worth the effort in spite of knees that sent up pangs and protests for a week. it had rained heavily all night and the path was very slippery; but if rain brings out the colors of the petrified forests, you can imagine what it does to sunrise in a sea of blood-red mountain peaks. much of the trail is at an angle of forty-five degrees; but it is wide and well shored up at the outer edge. the foliage lining the trail was dripping wet; and the sunlight struck back from each leaf in spangles of gold. an incense as of morning worship filled the air with the odor of cedars and cloves and wild nutmeg pinks and yucca bloom. there are many more birds below the cañon rim than above it; and the dawn was filled with snatches of song from bluebirds and yellow finches and water ousels, whose notes were like the tinkle of pure water. what looked like a tiny red hillock from the rim above is now seen to be a mighty mountain, four, five, seven thousand feet from river to peak, with walls smooth as if planed by the artificer of all eternity. in any other place, the gorges between these peaks would be dignified by the names of cañons. here, they are mere wings to the main stage setting of the grand cañon. we reached the indian garden's camp in time for breakfast and rested an hour before going on down to the river. the trail followed a gentle descent over sand-hills and rocky plateaus at first, then suddenly it began to drop sheer in the section known as the devil's corkscrew. the heat became sizzling as you descended; but the grandeur grew more imposing from the stupendous height and sheer sides of the brilliantly colored gorges and masses of shadows above. then the devil's corkscrew fell into a sandy dell where a tiny waterfall trickled with the sound of the voice of many waters in the great silence. a cloudburst would fill this gorge in about a jiffy; but a cloudburst is the last thing on earth you need expect in this land of scant showers and no water. suddenly, you turn a rock angle, and the yellow, muddy, turbulent flood of the colorado swirls past you, tempestuous, noisy, sullen and dark, filling the narrow cañon with the war of rock against water. what seemed to be mere foothills far above, now appear colossal peaks sheer up and down, penning the angry river between black walls. it was no longer hot. we could hear a thunder shower reverberating back in some of the valleys of the cañon; and the rain falling between us and the red rocks was as a curtain to the scene shifting of those old earth and mountain and water gods hiding in the wings of the vast amphitheater. and if you want a wilder, more eery trail than down bright angel, go from dripping springs out to gertrude point. i know a great many wild mountain trails in the rockies, north and south; but i have never known one that will give more thrills from its sheer beauty and sheer daring. you go out round the ledges of precipice after precipice, where nothing holds you back from a fall 7,000 feet straight as a stone could drop, nothing but the sure-footedness of your horse; out and out, round and round peak after peak, till you are on the tip top and outer edge of one of the highest mountains in the cañon. this is the trail of old louis boucher, one of the beauty-loving souls who first found his way into the center of the cañon and built his own trail to one of its grandest haunts. louis used to live under the arch formed by the dripping springs; but louis has long since left, and the trail is falling away and is now one for a horse that can walk on air and a head that doesn't feel the sensations of champagne when looking down a straight 7,000 feet into darkness. if you like that kind of a trail, take the trip; for it is the best and wildest view of the cañon; but take two days to it, and sleep at louis' deserted camp under the dripping springs. yet if you don't like a trail where you wonder if you remembered to make your will and what would happen if the gravel slipped from your horse's feet one of these places where the next turn seems to jump off into atmosphere, then wait; for the day must surely come when all of the grand cañon's 217 miles will be made as easily and safely accessible to the american public as egypt. chapter ix the governor's palace of santa fe it lies to the left of the city plaza--a long, low, one-story building flanking the whole length of one side of the plaza, with big yellow pine pillars supporting the arcade above the public walk, each pillar surmounted by the fluted architrave peculiar to spanish-moorish architecture. it is yellow adobe in the sunlight--very old, very sleepy, very remote from latter-day life, the most un-american thing in all america, the only governor's palace from athabasca to the gulf of mexico, from sitka to st. lawrence, that exists to-day precisely as it existed one hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, four hundred years ago--back, back beyond that to the days when there were no white men in america. uncover the outer plaster in the six-foot thickness of the walls in the governor's palace of santa fe, and what do you find? solid adobe and brick? not much! the walled-up, conical fireplaces and meal bins and corn caves of a pueblo people who lived on the site of modern santa fe hundreds of years before the spanish founded this capital here in 1605. for years it has been a dispute among historians--bandelier, hodge, twitchell, governor prince, mr. reed--whether any prehistoric race dwelt where santa fe now stands. only in the summer of 1912, when it was necessary to replace some old beams and cut some arches through the six-foot walls was it discovered that the huge partitions covered in their centers walls antedating the coming of the spaniards--walls with the little conical fireplaces of indian pueblos, with such meal bins and corn shelves as you find in the prehistoric cave dwellings. we have such a passion for destroying the old and replacing it with the new in america that you can scarcely place your hand on a structure in the new world that stands intact as it was before the revolution. we somehow or other take it for granted that these mute witnesses of ancient heroism have nothing to teach us with their mossed walls and low-beamed ceilings and dumb, majestic dignity. [illustration: the governor's palace at santa fe, new mexico, within the walls of which are found the conical fireplaces of the indians who lived here hundreds of years before the spaniards came] to this, the governor's palace of santa fe is the one and complete exception in america. it flanks the cottonwoods of the plaza, yellow adobe in the sunlight--very old, very sleepy, very remote from latter-day life, but with a quaint, quiet atmosphere that travelers scour europe to find. look up to the _vigas_, or beams of the ceiling, yellowed and browned and mellowed with age. those _vigas_ have witnessed strange figures stalking the spacious halls below. if the ceiling beams could throw their memories on some moving picture screen, there would be such a panorama of varied personages as no other palace in the world has witnessed. leave out the hackneyed tale of general lew wallace writing "ben hur" in a back room of the palace; or the fact that three different flags flung their folds over old santa fe in a single century. he who knows anything at all about santa fe, knows that spanish power gave place to mexican, and the mexican régime to american rule. also, that general lew wallace wrote "ben hur" in a back room of the palace, while he was governor of new mexico. and you only have to use your eyes to know that santa fe, itself, is a bit of old spain set down in the modern united states of america. the donkeys trotting to market under loads of wood, the ragged peon riders bestriding burros no higher than a saw horse, the natives stalking past in bright serape or blanket, moccasined and hatless--all tell you that you are in a region remote from latter-day america. but here is another sort of picture panorama! it is between 1680 and 1710. a hatless youth, swarthy from five years of terrible exposure, hair straight as a string, gabbling french but speaking no spanish, a slave white traded from indian tribe to indian tribe, all the way from the gulf of mexico to the interior of new spain, is brought before the viceroy. do you know who he is? he is jean l'archevêque, the french-canadian lad who helped to murder la salle down on trinity bay in texas. what are the french doing down on trinity bay? do they intend to explore and claim this part of america, too? in the abuses of slavery among the indians for five years, the lad has paid the terrible penalty for the crime into which he was betrayed by his youth. he is scarred with wounds and beatings. he is too guilt-stricken ever to return to new france. his information may be useful to new spain; so he is enrolled in the guards of the spanish viceroy of santa fe; and he is sent out to san ildefonso and santa clara, where he founds a family and where his records may be seen to this day. for those copy-book moralists who like to know that divine retribution occasionally works out in daily life, it may be added that jean l'archevêque finally came to as violent a death as he had brought to the great french explorer, la salle. or take a panorama of a later day. it is just before the fall of spanish rule. the governor sits in his palace at santa fe, a mightier autocrat than the pope in rome; for, as the russians say, "god is high in his heavens," and the king is far away, and those who want justice in santa fe, must pay--pay--pay--pay in gold coin that can be put in the iron chest of the viceroy. (you can see specimens of those iron chests all through new mexico yet--chests with a dozen secret springs to guard the family fortune of the hidden gold bullion.) a woman bursts into the presence of the viceroy, and throws herself on her knees. it is a terrible tale--the kind of tale we are too finical to tell in these modern days, though that is not saying there are not many such tales to be told. the woman's young sister has married an officer of the viceroy's ring. he has beaten her as he would a slave. he has treated her to vile indecencies of which only hell keeps record. she had fled to her father; but the father, fearing the power of the viceroy, had sent her back to the man; and the man has killed her with his brutalities. (i have this whole story from a lineal descendant of the family.) the woman throws back her _rebozo_, drops to her knees before the viceroy, and demands justice. the viceroy thinks and thinks. a woman more or less! what does it matter? the woman's father had been afraid to act, evidently. the husband is a member of the government ring. interference might stir up an ugly mess--revelations of extortion and so on! besides, justice is worth so much per; and this woman--what has she to pay? this viceroy will do nothing. the woman rises slowly, incredulous. is this justice? she denounces the viceroy in fiery, impassioned speech. the viceroy smiles and twirls his mustachios. what can a woman do? the woman proclaims her imprecation of a court that fails of justice. (do our courts fail of justice? is there no lesson in that past for us?) do you know what she did? she did what not one woman in a million could do to-day, when conditions are a thousand fold easier. she went back to her home. it was just about where the pretty spanish house of mr. morley of the archæological school stands to-day. she gathered up all the loose gold she could and bound it in a belt around her waist. then she took the most powerful horse she had from the kraal, saddled him and rode out absolutely alone for the city of old mexico--900 miles as the trail ran. apaches, comanches, navajos, beset the way. she rode at night and slept by day. the trail was a desert waste of waterless, bare, rocky hills and quicksand rivers and blistering heat. god, or the virgin to whom she constantly prayed, or her own dauntless spirit, must have piloted the way; for she reached the old city of mexico, laid her case before the king's representatives, and won the day. her sister's death was avenged. the husband was tried and executed: and the viceroy was deposed. most of us know of almost similar cases. i think of a man who has repeatedly tried for a federal judgeship in new mexico, who has literally been guilty of every crime on the human calendar. yet we don't at risk of life push these cases to retribution. is that one of the lessons the past has for us? spanish power fell in new mexico because there came a time when there was neither justice nor retribution in any of the courts. other panoramas there were beneath the age-mellowed beams of the palace ceiling, panoramas of comanche and navajo and ute and apache stalking in war feathers before a spanish governor clad in velvets and laces. tradition has it that a ute was once struck dead in the governor's presence. certainly, all four tribes wrought havoc and raid to the very doors of the palace. within only the last century, a comanche chief and his warriors came to santa fe demanding the daughter of a leading trader in marriage for the chief's son. the garrison was weak, in spite of fustian and rusty helmets and battered breastplates and velvet doublets and boots half way to the waist--there were seldom more than 200 soldiers, and the pusillanimous governor counseled deception. he told the comanche that the trader's daughter had died, and ordered the girl to hide. the only peace that an indian respects--or any other man, for that matter--is the peace that is a victory. the indian suspected that the answer was the answer of the coward, a lie, and came back with his comanche warriors. while the soldiers huddled inside the palace walls, the town was raided. the trader was murdered and the daughter carried off to the comanches, where she died of abuse. when these tragedies fell on daughters of the pilgrims in new england, the saxon strain of the warrior women in their blood rose to meet the challenge of fate; and they brained their captors with an ax; but no such warrior strain was in the blood of the daughters of spain. by religion, by nationality, by tradition, the spanish girl was the purely convent product: womanhood protected by a ten-foot wall. when the wall fell away, she was helpless as a hot-house flower set out amid violent winds. diagonally across the plaza from the governor's palace stands the old fonda, or exchange hotel, whence came the long caravans of american traders on the santa fe trail. behind the palace about a quarter of a mile, was the gareta, a sort of combined custom house and prison. the combination was deeply expressive of spanish rule in those early days, for independent of what the american's white-tented wagon might contain--baled hay or priceless silks or chewing tobacco--a duty of $500 was levied against each mule-team wagon of the american trader. did a trader protest, or hold back, he was promptly clapped in irons. it was cheaper to pay the duty than buy a release. the walls of both the fonda and the gareta were of tremendous thickness, four to six feet of solid adobe, which was hard as our modern cement. in the walls behind the gareta and on the walls behind the palace, pitted bullet holes have been found. beneath the holes was embedded human hair. nothing more picturesque exists in america's past than the panorama of this old santa fe trail. santa fe was to the trail what cairo was to the caravans coming up out of the desert in egypt. twitchell, the modern historian, and gregg, the old chronicler of last century's trail, give wonderfully vivid pictures of the coming of the caravans to the palace. "as the caravans ascended the ridge which overlooks the city, the clamorings of the men and the rejoicings of the bull whackers could be heard on every side. even the animals seemed to participate in the humor of their riders. i doubt whether the first sight of jerusalem brought the crusaders more tumultuous and soul-enrapturing joy." [illustration: a pool in the painted desert whither came thousands of goats and sheep, driven by navajo girls on horseback] we talk of the picturesque fur trade of the north, when brigades of birch canoes one and two hundred strong penetrated every river and lake of the wilderness of the northwest. let us take a look at these caravan brigades of the traders of the southwest! teams were hitched tandem to the white-tented wagons. drivers did not ride in the wagons. they rode astride mule or horse, with long bull whips thick as a snake skin, which could reach from rear to fore team. i don't know how they do it; but when the drivers lash these whips out full length, they cause a crackling like pistol shots. the owner of the caravan was usually some gentleman adventurer from virginia or kentucky or louisiana or missouri; but each caravan had its captain to command, and its outriders to scout for indians. these scouts were of every station in life with morals of as varied aspect as joseph's coat of many colors. kit carson was once one of these scouts. governor bent was one of the traders. stephen b. elkins first came to new mexico with a bull whacker's caravan. in the morning, every teamster would vie with his fellows to hitch up fastest. teams ready, he would mount and call back--"all's set." an uproar of whinnying and braying, the clank of chains, and then the captain's shout--"stretch out," when the long line of twenty or thirty white-tented wagons would rumble out for the journey of thirty to sixty days across the plains. each wagon had five yoke of oxen, with six or eight extra mule teams behind in case of emergency. about three tons made a load. twenty miles was a good day's travel. camping places near good water and pasturage were chosen ahead by the scouts. wagons kept together in groups of four. in case of attack by comanche or ute, these wagons wheeled into a circle for defense with men and beasts inside the extemporized kraal. campfires were kept away from wagons to avoid giving target to foes. blankets consisted of buffalo robes, and the rations "hard tack," pork and such game as the scouts and sharpshooters could bring down. a favorite trick of indian raiders was to wait till all animals were tethered out for pasturage, and then stampede mules and oxen. in the confusion, wagons would be overturned and looted. as the long white caravans came to their journey's end at santa fe, literally the whole spanish and indian population crowded to the plaza in front of the palace. "los americanos! los carros! la caravana!"--were the shouts ringing through the streets; and santa fe's perpetual siesta would be awakened to a week's fair or barter. wagons were lined up at the custom house; and the trader presented himself before the spanish governor, trader and governor alike dressed in their best regimentals. very fair, very soft spoken, very profuse of compliments was the interview; but divested of profound bows and flowery compliments, it ended in the american paying $500 a wagon, or losing his goods. the goods were then bartered at a staggering advance. plain broadcloth sold at $25 a yard, linen at $4 a yard, and the price on other goods was proportionate. goods taken in exchange were hides, wool, gold and silver bullion, indian blankets and precious stones. travelers from mexico to the outside world went by stage or private omnibus with outriders and guards and sharpshooters. young spanish girls sent east to school were accompanied by such a retinue of defenders, slaves and servants, as might have attended a european monarch; and a whole bookful of stories could be written of adventures among the young spanish nobility going out to see the world. the stage fare varied from $160 to $250 far as the mississippi. though stephen b. elkins went to new mexico with a bull whacker's team, it was not long before he was sending gold bullion from mining and trading operations out to st. louis and new york. how to get this gold bullion past the highwaymen who infested the stage route, was always a problem. i know of one old spanish lady, who yearly went to st. louis to make family purchases and used to smuggle elkins' gold out for him in belts and petticoats and disreputable looking old hand bags. once, when she was going out in midsummer heat, she had a belt of her husband's drafts and elkins' gold round her waist. the way grew hotter and hotter. the old lady unstrapped the buckskin reticule--looking, for all the world, like a woman's carry-all--and threw it up on top of the stage. an hour later, highwaymen "went through" the passengers. rings, watches, jewels, coin were taken off the travelers; and the mail bags were looted; but the bandits never thought of examining the old bag on top of the stage, in which was gold worth all the rest of the loot. in those days, gambling was the universal passion of high and low in new mexico; and many a spanish don and american trader, who had taken over tens of thousands in the barter of the caravan, wasted it over the gaming table before dawn of the next day. the fonda, or old exchange hotel, was the center of high play; but it may as well be acknowledged, the highest play of all, the wildest stakes were often laid in the governor's palace. luckily, the passion for destroying the old has not invaded santa fe. the people want their palace preserved as it was, is, and ever shall be; and the recent restoration has been, not a reconstruction, but a taking away of all the modern and adventitious. where modern pillars have been placed under the long front portico, they are being replaced by the old _portal_ type of pillar--the fluted capital across the main column supporting the roof beams. this type of _portal_ has come in such favor in new mexico that it is being embodied in modern houses for arcades, porches and gardens. the main entrance of the palace is square in the center. you pass into what must have been the ancient reception room leading to an audience chamber on the left. what amazes you is the enormous thickness of these adobe walls. each window casement is wider than a bench; and an open door laid back is not wider than the thickness of the wall. to-day the reception hall and, indeed, the rooms of the center palace present some of the finest mural paintings in america. these have been placed on the walls by the archæological school of america which with the historical society occupies the main portions of the old building. you see drawings of the coming of the first spanish caravels, of coronado, of don diego de vargas, who was the frontenac of the southwest, reconquering the provinces in 1680-94, about the same time that the great frontenac was playing his part in french canada. there are pictures, too, of the caravans crossing the plains, of the coming of american occupation, of the moki and hopi and zuñi pueblos, of the missions of which only ruins to-day mark the sites in the jemez, at sandia, and away out in the desert of abo. to the left of the reception room is an excellent art gallery of southwestern subjects. here, artists of the growing southwestern school send their work for exhibition and sale. it is significant that within the last few years prices have gone up from a few dollars to hundreds and thousands. nausbaum's photographic work of the modern indian is one of the striking features of the palace. of course, there are pictures by curtis and burbank and sharpe and others of the southwestern school; but perhaps the most interesting rooms to the newcomer, to the visitor, who doesn't know that we have an ancient america, are those where the mural drawings are devoted to the cave dwellers and prehistoric races. these were done by carl lotave of paris out on the ground of the ancient races. in conception and execution, they are among the finest murals in america. long ago, the governor's palace had twin towers and a chapel. bells in the old spanish churches were not tolled. they were struck gong fashion by an attendant, who ascended the towers. these bells were cast of a very fine quality of old copper; and the tone was largely determined by the quality of the cast. old mission bells are scarce to-day in new mexico; and collectors offer as high as $1,500 and $3,000 for the genuine article. vesper bells played a great part in the life of the old spanish régime. ladies might be promenading the plaza, workmen busy over their tasks, gamblers hard at the wheel and dice. at vesper call, men, women and children dropped to knees; and for a moment silence fell, all but the calling of the vesper bells. then the bells ceased ringing, and life went on in its noisy stream. [illustration: there are streets in santa fe where one may see box-like adobe houses beside dwellings of modern architecture] no account of the governor's palace would be complete without some mention of the marvels of dress among the dons and doñas of the old régime. could we see them promenading the plaza and the palace as they paraded their gayety less than half a century ago, we would imagine ourselves in some play house of the french court in its most luxurious days. indians dressed then as they dress to-day, in bright-colored blankets fastened gracefully round hip and shoulders. peons or peasants wore serapes, blankets with a slit in the center, over the shoulders. women of position wore not hats but the silk _rebozo_ or scarf, thrown over the head with one end back across the left shoulder. on the street, the face was almost covered by this scarf. presumably the purpose was to conceal charms; but when you consider the combination of dark eyes and waving hair and a scarf of the finest color and texture that could be bought in china or the indies, it is a question whether that scarf did not set off what it was designed to conceal. about the shawls used as scarfs there is much misconception. these are not of spanish or mexican make. they come down in the spanish families from the days when the vessels of the traders of mexico trafficked with china and japan. these old shawls to-day bring prices varying all the way from $200 to $2,000. the don of fashion dressed even more gayly than his spouse. jewelry was a passion with both men and women; and the finest type of old jewelry in america to-day is to be found in new mexico. the hat of the don was the wide-brimmed sombrero. around this was a silver or gold cord, with a gold or silver cockade. the jackets were of colored broadcloth with buttons of silver or gold, not brass; but the trousers were at once the glory and the vanity of the wearer. gold and silver buttons ornamented the seams of the legs from hip to knee. there were gold clasps at the garter and gold clasps at the knee. a silk sash with tasseled cords or fringe hanging down one side took the place of modern suspenders. leather leggings for outdoor wear were carved or embossed. a serape or velvet cape lined with bright-colored silk completed the costume. bridles and horse trappings were gorgeous with silver, the pommel and stirrups being overlaid with it. the bridle was a barbarous silver thing with a bit cruel enough to control tigers; and the rowels of the spurs were two or three inches long. no, these were not people of french and spanish courts. they were people of our own western america less than a century ago; but though they were not people of the playhouse, as they almost seem to us, they are essentially a play-people. the spaniard of the southwest lived, not to work, but to play; and when he worked, it was only that he might play the harder. los americanos came and changed all that. they turned the spanish play-world up side down and put work on top. roam through the governor's palace! call up the old gay life! we undoubtedly handle more money than the spanish dons and doñas of the old days; but frankly--which stand for the more joy out of life; those laughing philosophers, or we modern work-demons? chapter x the governor's palace of santa fe (_continued_) of all the traditions clinging round the old palace at santa fe, those connected with don diego de vargas, the reconqueror of new mexico, are best known and most picturesque. yearly, for two and a quarter centuries, the people of new mexico have commemorated de vargas' victory by a procession to the church which he built in gratitude to heaven for his success. this procession is at once a great public festival and a sacred religious ceremony; for the image of the virgin, which de vargas used when he planted the cross on the plaza in front of the palace and sang the te deum with the assembled franciscan monks, is the same image now used in the theatrical procession of the religious ceremony yearly celebrated by indians, spanish and americans. the de vargas procession is a ceremony unique in america. the very indians whose ancestors de vargas' arms subjugated, now yearly reënact the scenes of the struggles of their forefathers to throw off white rule. young mexicans, descendants of the very officers who marched with de vargas in his campaigns of 1692-3-4, take the part of the conquering heroes. costumes, march, religious ceremonies of thanks, public festival--all have been kept as close to original historic fact as possible. de vargas, himself, was to the southwest what frontenac was to french canada--a bluff soldier animated by religious motives, who believed only in the peace that is a victory, put the fear of god in the hearts of his enemies, and built on that fear a superstructure of reverence and love. it need not be told that such a character rode rough-shod over official red-tape, and had a host of envious curs barking at his heels. they dragged him down, for a period of short eclipse, these lilliputian enemies, just as frontenac's enemies caused his recall by a charge of misusing public funds; but in neither case could the charges be sustained. bluff warriors, not counting house clerks, were needed; and de vargas, like frontenac, came through all charges unscathed. the two heroes of america's indian wars--frontenac of the north, de vargas of the south--were contemporaries. it will be remembered how up on the st. lawrence and among the mohawk tribes of new york, a wave of revolt against white man rule swept from 1642 to 1682. it was not unnatural that the red warrior should view with alarm the growing dominance and assumption of power on the part of the white. in canada, we know the brandy of the white trader hastened the revolt and added horror to the outrages, when the settlements lying round montreal and quebec were ravaged and burnt under the very cannon mouths of the two impotent and terrified forts. the same wave of revolt that scourged french canada in the eighties, went like wild fire over the southwest from 1682 to 1694. was there any connection between the two efforts to throw off white man rule? to the historian, seemingly, there was not; but ask the navajo or apache of the south about traders in the north, and you will be astonished how the traditions of the tribes preserve legends of the athabascan stock in the north, from whom they claim descent. ask a modern indian of the interior of british columbia about the navajos, and he will tell you how the wise men of the tribe preserve verbal history of a branch of this people driven far south--"those other denes," he will tell you. traders explain the wonderful way news has of traveling from tribe to tribe by the laconic expression, "moccasin telegram." whether or not the infection of revolt spread by "moccasin telegram" from canada to mexico, the storm broke, and broke with frightful violence over the southwest. the immediate cause was religious interference. all pueblo people have secret lodges held in underground _estufas_ or _kivas_. to these ceremonies no white man however favored is ever admitted. white men know as little of the rites practiced in these lodges by the pueblo people as when coronado came in 1540. to the spanish governors and priests, the thing was anathema--abomination of witchcraft and sorcery and secrecy that risked the eternal damnation of converts' souls. there was a garrison of only 250 men at the palace; yet already the church boasted fifty friars, from eleven to seventeen missions, and converts by the thousands. but the souls of the holy _padres_ were sorely tried by these _estufa_ rites, "_platicas de noche_," "night conversations"--the priests called them. well might all new spain have been disturbed by these "night conversations." the subject bound under fearful oath of secrecy was nothing more nor less than the total extermination of every white man, woman and child north of the rio grande. some unwise governor--trevino, i think it was--had issued an edict in 1675 forbidding the pueblos to hold their secret lodges in the _estufas_. by way of enforcing his edict, he had forty-seven of the wise men or indian priests (he called them "sorcerers") imprisoned; hanged three in the jail yard of the palace as a warning, and after severe whipping and enforced fasts, sent the other forty-four home. picture the situation to yourself! the wise men or governors of the pueblos are always old men elected out of respect for their superior wisdom, men used to having their slightest word implicitly obeyed. whipped, shamed, disgraced, they dispersed from the palace, down the rio grande to isleta, west to the city on the impregnable rocks of acoma, north to that whole group of pueblo cities from jemez to santa fe and pecos and taos. what do you think they did? fill up the underground _estufas_ and hang their heads in shame among men? then, you don't know the indian! you may break his neck; but you can't bend it. the very first thing they did was to gather their young warriors in the _estufas_. picture that scene to yourself, too! an old rain priest at san ildefonso, through the kindness of dr. hewitt of the archæological school, took us down the _estufa_ at that pueblo, where some of the bloodiest scenes of the rebellion were enacted. needless to say, he took us down in the day time, when there are no ceremonies. [illustration: an adobe gateway of old-world charm in santa fe] the _estufa_ is large enough to seat three or four hundred men. it is night time. a few oil tapers are burning in stone saucers, the pueblo lamp. the warriors come stealing down the ladder. no woman is admitted. the men are dressed in linen trousers with colored blankets fastened grecian fashion at the waist. they seat themselves silently on the adobe or cement benches around the circular wall. the altar place, whence comes the sacred fire from the gods of the under world, is situated just under the ladder. the priests descend, four or five of them, holding their blankets in a square that acts as a drop curtain concealing the altar. when all have descended, a trap door of brush above is closed. the taper lamps go out. the priests drop their blankets; and behold on the altar the sacred fire; and the outraged wise man in impassioned speech denouncing white man rule, insult to the indian gods, destruction of the spanish ruler! of the punished medicine men, one of the most incensed was an elderly indian called popé, said to be originally from san juan, but at that time living in taos. i don't know what ground there is for it, but tradition has it that when popé effected the curtain drop round the sacred fire of the _estufa_ in taos, he produced, or induced the warriors looking on breathlessly to believe that he produced, three infernal spirits from the under world, who came from the great war-god montezuma to command the pueblo race to unite with the navajo and apache in driving the white man from the southwest. if there be any truth in the tradition, it is not hard to account for the trick. tradition or trick, it worked like magic. the warriors believed. couriers went scurrying by night from town to town, with the knotted cord--some say it was of deer thong, others of palm leaf. the knots represented the number of days to the time of uprising. the man, for instance, who ran from taos to pecos, would pull out a knot for each day he ran. a new courier would carry the cord on to the next town. there was some confusion about the untying of those knots. some say the rebellion was to take place on the 11th of august, 1682; others, on the 13th. anyway, the first blow was struck on the 10th. not a pueblo town failed to rally to the call, as the highlanders of old responded to the signal of the bloody cross. new mexico at this time numbered some 3,000 spanish colonists, the majority living on ranches up and down the rio grande and surrounding santa fe. the captain-general, who had had nothing to do with the foolish decrees that produced the revolt, happened to be don antonio de otermin, with alonzo garcia as his lieutenant. in spite of no women being admitted to the secret, the secret leaked out. popé's son-in-law, the governor of san juan, was setting out to betray the whole plot to the spaniards, when he was killed by popé's own hand. such widespread preparations could not proceed without the mission converts getting some inkling; and on august 9, governor otermin heard that two indians of tesuque out from santa fe had been ordered to join a rebellion. he had the indians brought before him in the audience chamber on the 10th. they told him all they knew; and they warned him that any warrior refusing to take part would be slain. here, as always in times of great confusion, the main thread of the story is lost in a multiplicity of detail. warning had also come down from the alcalde at taos. otermin scarcely seems to have grasped the import of the news; for all he did was to send his own secret scouts out, warning the settlers and friars to seek refuge in isleta, or santa fe; but it was too late. the indians got word they had been betrayed and broke loose in a mad lust of revenge and blood that very saturday when the governor was sending out his spies. it would take a book to tell the story of all the heroism and martyrdom of the different missions. parkman has told the story of the martyrdom of the jesuits in french canada; and many other books have been written on the subject. no parkman has yet risen to tell the story of the martyrdom of the franciscans in new mexico. in one fell day, before the captain-general knew anything about it, 400 colonists and twenty-one missionaries had been slain--butchered, shot, thrown over the rocks, suffocated in their burning chapels. popé was in the midst of it all, riding like an incarnate fury on horseback wearing a bull's horn in the middle of his forehead. apaches and navajos, of course, joined in the loot. at taos, out of seventy whites, two only escaped; and they left their wives and children dead on the field and reached isleta only after ten days' wandering in the mountains at night, having hidden by day. at little tesuque, north of santa fe, only the alcalde escaped by spurring his horse to wilder pace than the indians could follow. the alcalde had seen the friar flee to a ravine. then an indian came out wearing the priest's shield; and it was blood-spattered. at santa clara, soldiers, herders and colonists were slain on the field as they worked. the women and children were carried off to captivity from which they never returned. at galisteo, the men were slain, the women carried off. rosaries were burned in bonfires. churches were plundered and profaned. at santo domingo, the bodies of the three priests were piled in a heap in front of the church, as an insult to the white man faith that would have destroyed the indian _estufas_. down at isleta, garcia, the lieutenant, happened to be in command, and during saturday night and sunday morning, he rounded inside the walls of isleta seven missionaries and 1,500 settlers, of whom only 200 had firearms. what of captain-general otermin, cooped up in the governor's palace of santa fe, awaiting the return of his scouts? the reports of his scouts, one may guess. reports came dribbling in till tuesday, and by that time there were no spanish left alive outside santa fe and isleta. then otermin bestirred himself mightily. citizens were called to take refuge in the palace. the armory was opened and arquebuses handed out to all who could bear arms. the holy sacrament was administered. then the sacred vessels were brought to the governor's palace and hidden. there were now 1,000 persons cooped up in the governor's palace, less than 100 capable of bearing arms. trenches were dug, windows barricaded, walls fortified. armed soldiers mounted the roofs of houses guarding the plaza and in the streets approaching it were stationed cannon. having wiped out the settlements, the pueblos and their allies swooped down on santa fe, led by juan of galisteo riding with a convent flag round his waist as sash. to parley with an enemy is folly. otermin sent for juan to come to the palace; and in the audience chamber upbraided him. juan, one may well believe, laughed. he produced two crosses--a red one and a white one. if the spaniards would accept the white one and withdraw, the indians would desist from attack; if not--then--red stood for blood. otermin talked about "pardon for treason," when he should have struck the impudent fellow to earth, as de vargas, or old frontenac, would have done in like case. when juan went back across the plaza, the indians howled with joy, danced dervish time all night, rang the bells of san miguel, set fire to the church and houses, and cut the water supply off from the yard of the palace. the valor of the spaniards could not have been very great from august 14th to 20th, for only five of the 100 bearing arms were killed. at a council of war on the night of august 19th, it was decided to attempt to rush the foe, trampling them with horses, and to beat a way open for retreat. otermin says 300 indians were killed in this rally; but it is a question. the governor himself came back with an arrow wound in his forehead and a flesh wound near his heart. within twenty-four hours, he decided--whichever way you like to put it--"to go to the relief of isleta," where he thought his lieutenant was; or "to retreat" south of the rio grande. the indians watched the retreat in grim silence. the spanish considered their escape "a miracle." it was a pitiful wresting of comfort from desperation. but at isleta, the governor found that his lieutenant had already retreated taking 1,500 refugees in safety with him. it was the end of september when otermin himself crossed the rio grande, at a point not far from modern el paso. at isleta, the people will tell you to this day legends of the friar's martyrdom. every mexican believes that the holy _padre_ buried in a log hollowed out for coffin beneath the chapel rises every ten years and walks through the streets of isleta to see how his people are doing. once every ten years or so, the rio grande floods badly; and the year of the flood, the ghost of the friar rises to warn his people. be that as it may, a few years ago, a deputation of investigators took up the body to examine the truth of the legend. it lies in a state of perfect preservation in its log coffin. the pueblos had driven the spanish south of the rio grande and practically kept them south of the rio grande for ten years. churches were burned. images were profaned. priestly vestments decked wild indian lads. converts were washed in santa fe river to cleanse them of baptism. all the records in the governor's palace were destroyed, and the palace itself given over to wild orgies among the victorious indians; but the victory brought little good to the tribes. they fell back to their former state of tribal raid and feud. drought spoiled the crops; and perhaps, after all, the consolation and the guidance of the spanish priests were missed. when the utes heard that the spanish had retreated, these wild marauders of the northern desert fell on the pueblo towns like wolves. there is a legend, also, that at this time there were great earthquakes and many heavenly signs of displeasure. curiously enough, the same legends exist about montreal and quebec. otermin hung timidly on the frontier, crossing and recrossing the rio grande; but he could make no progress in resettling the colonists. comes on the scene now--1692-98--don diego de vargas. it isn't so much what he did; for when you are brave enough, you don't need to do. the doors of fate open before the golden key. he resubjugated the southwest for spain; and he resubjugated it as much by force of clemency as force of cruelty. but mark the point--it was _force that did it, not pow-wowing and parleying and straddling cowardice with conscience_. de vargas could muster only 300 men at el paso, including loyal indians. on august 21, 1692, he set out for the north. it has taken many volumes to tell of the victories of frontenac. it would take as many again to relate the victories of de vargas. he was accompanied, of course, by the fearless and quenchless friars. all the pueblos passed on the way north he found abandoned; but when he reached santa fe on the 13th of september, he found it held and fortified by the indians. the indians were furiously defiant; they would perish, but surrender--never! de vargas surrounded them and cut off the water supply. the friars approached under flag of truce. before night, santa fe had surrendered without striking a blow. one after another, the pueblos were visited and pacified; but it was not all easy victory. the indians did not relish an order a year later to give up occupation of the palace and retire to their own villages. in december they closed all entrances to the plaza and refused to surrender. de vargas had prayers read, raised the picture of the virgin on the battle flag, and advanced. javelins, boiling water, arrows, assailed the advancing spaniards; but the gate of the plaza stockade was attacked and burned. reinforcements came to the indians, and both sides rested for the night. during the night, the indian governor hanged himself. next morning, seventy of the indians were seized and court-martialed on the spot. de vargas planted his flag on the plaza, erected a cross and thanked god. [illustration: a view of part of san ildefonso, new mexico, showing the famous black mesa in the background] one of the hardest fights of '94 was out on the black mesa, a huge precipitous square of basalt, frowning above san ildefonso. this mesa was a famous prayer shrine to the indians and is venerated as sacred to this day. all sides are sheer but that towards the river. down this is a narrow trail like a goat path between rocks that could be hurled on climbers' heads. de vargas stormed the black mesa, on top of which great numbers of rebels had taken refuge. four days the attack lasted, his 100 soldiers repeatedly reaching the edge of the summit only to be hurled down. after ten days the siege had to be abandoned, but famine had done its work among the indians. for five years, the old general slept in his boots and scarcely left the warpath. it was at the siege of the black mesa that he is said to have made the vow to build a chapel to the virgin; and it is his siege of santa fe that the yearly de vargas celebration commemorates to this day. and in the end, he died in his boots on the march at bernalillo, leaving in his will explicit directions that he should be buried in the church of santa fe "under the high altar beneath the place where the priest puts his feet when he says mass." the body was carried to the parish church in his bed of state and interred beneath the altar; and the de vargas celebration remains to this day one of the quaintest ceremonies of the old governor's palace. chapter xi taos, the promised land and ancient capital of the southwest as quebec is the shrine of historical pilgrims in the north, and salem in new england; so taos is the mecca of students of history and lovers of art in the southwest. here came the spanish knights mounted and in armor plate half a century before the landing of the pilgrims on plymouth rock. they had not only crossed the sea but had traversed the desert from old mexico for 900 miles over burning sands, amid wild, bare mountains, across rivers where horses and riders swamped in the quicksands. to taos came franciscan _padres_ long before champlain had built stockades at port royal or quebec. just as the jesuits won the wilderness of the up-country by martyr blood, so the franciscans attacked the strongholds of paganism amid the pueblos of the south. spanish _conquistadores_ have been represented as wading through blood to victory, with the sword in one hand, the cross in the other; but that picture is only half the truth. let it be remembered that the spanish were the only conquerors in america who gave the indians perpetual title, intact and forever, to the land occupied when the spanish came--which titles the indians hold to this day. also, while rude soldiers, or even officers, might be guilty of such unprovoked attacks as occurred at bernalillo in coronado's expedition of 1540, the crown stood sponsor for the well-being and salvation of the indian's soul. wherever the conqueror marched, the sandaled and penniless franciscan remained and too often paid the penalty of the soldier's crimes. in the tusayan desert, at taos, at zuñi, at acoma, you will find missions that date back to the expedition of coronado; and at every single mission the _padres_ paid for their courage and their faith with their lives. but taos traditions date back farther than the coming of the white man. christians have their christ, northern indians their hiawatha, and the pueblo people their bah-tah-ko, or grand cacique, who led their people from the ravages of apache and navajo in the far west to the promised land of verdant plains and watered valleys below the mighty mountains of taos. montezuma was to the southwest, not the christ, but the adam, the moses, the joseph. casa grande in southern arizona was the garden of eden, "the place of the morning glow;" but when war and pestilence and ravaging foe and drouth drove the pueblos from their garden of eden, the bah-tah-ko was the moses to lead them to the promised land at taos. when did he live? the oldest man does not know. the pueblos had been at taos thousands of years, when the spanish came in 1540; and, it may be added, they live very much the same to-day at taos as they did when the white man first came. the men wear store trousers instead of woven linen ones; some wear hats instead of a red head band; and there are wagons instead of drags attached to a dog in shafts. but apart from these innovations, there is little difference at taos between 1912 and 1540. the whitewashed mission church stands in the center of the pueblo; but the old _estufas_, or _kivas_, are still used for religious ceremony, and election of rulers, and maintenance of indian law. you can still see the indians threshing their grain by the trampling of goats on a threshing floor, or the run of burros round and round a kraal chased by a boy, while a man scrapes away the grain and forks aside the chaff. there are white man's courts and white man's laws, down at the white man's town of taos; but the indian has little faith in, and less respect for, these white man courts and laws, and out at taos has his own court, his own laws, his own absolute and undisputed governor, his own police, his own prison and his own penalties. the wealth of midas would not tempt a taos indian to exchange his life in the tiered adobe villages for all that civilization could offer him. occasionally a colonel cody, or showman jones, lures him off for a year or two to the great cities of the east; but the call of the wilds lures him back to his own beehive houses. he has plenty to eat and plenty to wear, the love of his family, the open fields and the friendship of his gods--what more can life offer? don't leave the southwest without seeing taos. it might be part of turkey, or persia, or india. it is the most un-american thing in america; and yet, it is the most typical of those ancient days in america, when there was no white man. just here, before the ethnologist arises to correct me, let it be put on record that the taos people do not consider themselves indians. they claim descent rather from the aztecs, or toltecs of the south. while the navajo and apache and ute legends are of a great migration from athabasca of the north, the pueblo legend is of a coming from the great underworld of the south. * * * * * the easiest way to reach taos is by the ancient city of santa fe. you go by rail to servilleta, or barrancas, then stage it out to the indian pueblos. better wire for your stage accommodation from the railroad. we did not wire, and when we left the railroad, we found seven people and a stage with space for only four. the railroad leads almost straight north from santa fe over high, clear mesas of yellow ocher covered with scrub juniper. there is little sign of water after you leave the rio grande, for water does not flow uphill; and you are at an altitude of 8,000 feet when you cross the divide. you pass through fruit orchards along the river, low headed and heavy with apples. then come the indian villages, san ildefonso, and española, and santa clara, where the strings of red chile bake in the sunlight against the glare adobe. women go up from the pools with jars of water on their heads. children come selling the famous santa clara black pottery at the train windows; and on the trail across the river, you see mexican drovers with long lines of burros and pack horses winding away into the mountains. women and girls in bright blankets and with eyes like black beads and skin like wrinkled parchment stand round the doors of the little square adobe houses; and sitting in the shade are the old people--people of a great age, 104 one old woman numbered her years. as you ascend the upper mesas of the rio grande, you are in a region where nothing grows but piñon and juniper. there is not a sign of life but the browsing sheep and goats. just where the train shoots in north of san ildefonso, if you know where to look on the right, you can see the famous black mesa, a huge square of black basaltic rock almost 400 feet high, which was the sacred shrine of all indians hereabouts for a hundred miles. on its crest, you can still see its prayer shrines, and the footworn path where refugees from war ran down to the river for water from encampment on the crest. away to the left, the mountains seem to crumple up in purple folds with flat tops and white gypsum gashed precipices. one of these gashes--white rock cañon--marks pajarito plateau, the habitat of the ancient cave dwellers. on the north side of the black mesa, you can see the opening to a huge cave. this was a prayer shrine and refuge in time of war for the santa clara indians. then, when you have reached almost the top of the world and see no more sheep herds, the trains pull up at an isolated, forsaken little station; and late in the afternoon you get off at servilleta. a school teacher, his wife and his two children, also left the train at this point. our group consisted of three. the driver of the stage--a famous frontiersman, jo. dunn--made eight; and we packed into a two-seated vehicle. it added piquancy, if not sport, to the twilight drive to know that one of the two bronchos in harness had never been driven before. he was, in fact, one of the bands of wild horses that rove these high juniper mountains. mexicans, or indians, watch for the wild bands to come out to water at nightfall and morning, and stampede them into a pound, or rope them. the captive is then sold for amounts varying from $5 to $15 to anyone who can master him. it need not be told here, not every driver can master an unbroken wild horse. it is a combination of confidence and dexterity, rather than strength. there is a rigging to the bridle that throws a horse if he kicks; and our wild one not only kept his traces for a rough drive of nearly twenty miles but suffered himself to be handled by a young girl of the party. [illustration: the pueblo of taos, new mexico, whose inhabitants trace their lineage back centuries before the advent of the spanish conquistadores] twilight on the upper mesas is a thing not to be told in words and only dimly told on canvas. there is the primrose afterglow, so famous in the alps. the purple mountains drape themselves in lavender veils. winds scented with oil of sagebrush and aroma of pines come soughing through the juniper hills. the moon comes out sickle-shaped. you see a shooting star drop. then a dim white group of moving forms emerges from the pines of the mountains--wild horses with leader scenting the air for foe, coming out for the night run to the drinking pools. or your horses give a little sidewise jump from the trail, and you see a coyote loping along abreast not a gun-shot away. this is a sure-enough-always-no-man's-land, a jumping-off place for all the earth--too high for irrigation farming, too arid for any other kind of farming, and so an unclaimed land. in the twenty-mile drive, you will see, perhaps, three homesteaders' shanties, where settlers have fenced off a square and tried ranching; but water is too deep for boring. horses turned outside the square join the wild bands and are lost; and two out of every three are abandoned homesteads. the dunn brothers have cut a road in eighteen miles to the arroyo hondo, where their house is, halfway to taos; and they have also run a telephone line in. except for the telephone wires and the rough trail, you might be in an utterly uninhabited land on top of the world. the trail rises and falls amid endless scented juniper groves. the pale moon deepens through a pink and saffron twilight. the stillness becomes almost palpable--then, suddenly, you jump right off the edge of the earth. the flat mesa has come to an edge. you look down, sheer down, 1,000 feet straight as a plummet--two cañons narrow as a stone's toss have gashed deep trenches through the living rocks and with a whir of swift waters come together at the famous place known as the bridge. you have come on your old friend the rio grande again, narrow and deep and blue from the mountain snows, an altogether different stream from the muddy rio of the lower levels. here it is joined by the arroyo hondo, another cañon slashed through the rocks in a deep trench--both rivers silver in the moonlight, with a rush of rapids coming up the great height like wind in trees, or the waves of the sea. what a host of old frontier worthies must have pulled themselves up with a jerk of amaze and dumb wonder, when they first came to this sheer jump off the earth! first the mailed warriors under coronado; then the cowled franciscans; then fremont and kit carson and beaubien and governor bent and manuel lisa, the fur trader, and a host of other knights of modern adventure. i suppose a proper picture of the bridge, or arroyo hondo, cannot be taken; for a good one never has been taken, though travelers and artists have been coming this way for a hundred years. the two cañons are so close together and so walled that it is impossible to get both in one picture except from an airship. it is as if the earth were suddenly rent, and you looked down on that underworld of which indian legend tells so many wonder yarns. don't mind wondering how you will go down! the bronchos will manage that, where an eastern horse would break his neck and yours, too. the driver jams on brakes; and you drop down a terribly steep grade in a series of switchbacks, or zigzags, to the bridge. it is the most spectacularly steep road i know in america. it could not be any steeper and not drop straight; and there isn't anything between you and the drop but your horses' good sense. it is one of the places where you don't want to hit your horse; for if he jumps, the wagon will not keep to the trail. it will go over taking you and the horse, too. but, before you know it, you have switched round the last turn and are rattling across the bridge. some mexican teamsters are in camp below the rock wall of the river. the reflection of the figures and firelight and precipices in the deep waters calls up all sorts of tales of arabian nights and road robbers and old lawless days. then, you pull up sharp at the toll house for supper, as quaint an inn as anything in switzerland or the himalayas. the back of the house is the rock wall of the cañon. the front is adobe. the halls are long and low and narrow, with low-roofed rooms off the front side only. from the bridge you can go on to taos by motor in moonlight; but the whole way by stage and motor in one day makes a hard trip, and there is as much of interest at the bridge as at taos. you don't expect to find settlers in this dim silver underworld, do you? well, drive a few miles up the arroyo hondo, where the stream widens out into garden patch farms, and you will find as odd specimens of isolated humans as exist anywhere in the world--relics of the religious fanaticism of the secret lodges, of the middle ages--penitentes, or flagellantes, or crucifixion people, who yearly at lent re-enact all the sorrows of the procession to the cross, and until very recent years even re-enacted the crucifixion. after supper we strolled out down the cañon. it is impossible to exaggerate its beauty. each gash is only the width of the river with sides straight as walls. the walls are yellow and black basalt, all spotted with red where the burning bush has been touched by the frosts. the rivers are clear, cold blue, because they are but a little way from the springs in the snows. snows and clear water and frost in the desert? yes: that is as the desert is in reality, not in geography books. below the bridge, you can follow the rio grande down to some famous hot springs; and in this section, the air is literally spicy with the oil of sagebrush. at daybreak, you see the water ousels singing above the rapids, and you may catch the lilt of a mocking-bird, or see a bluebird examining some frost-touched berries. it is october; but the goldfinches, which have long since left us in the north, are in myriads here. the second day at the bridge, we drove up the arroyo hondo to see the penitentes. it is the only way i know that you can personally visit a people who in every characteristic belong to the twelfth century. the houses of the arroyo hondo are very small and very poor; for the penitente is thinking not of this world but of the world to come. the orchards are amazingly old. these people and their ancestors must have been here for centuries and as isolated from the rest of the world as if living back five centuries. the penitente is not an indian; he is a peon. pueblo indians repudiate penitente practices. neither is the penitente a catholic. he is really a relic of the secret lodge orders that overran europe with religious disorders and fanatic practices in the twelfth century. except for the lenten processions, rites are practiced at night. there are the brothers of the light--la luz--and the brothers of the darkness--las tinieblas. the meeting halls are known as morados; and those seen by us were without windows and with only one narrow door. women meet in one lodge, men in another. the sign manual of membership is a cross tattooed on forehead, chin or back. when a death occurs, the body is taken to the morado, and a wake held. after penitente rites have been performed, a priest is called in for final services; and up to the present, the priests have been unable to break the strength of these secret lodges. members are bound by secret oath to help each other and stand by each other; and it is commonly charged that politicians join the penitentes to get votes and doctors to get patients. easter and lent mark the grand rally of the year. on one hill above the arroyo hondo, you can see a succession of crosses where penitentes have whipped themselves senseless with cactus belts, or dropped from exhaustion carrying a cross; and only last spring--1912--a woman marched carrying a great cross to which the naked body of her baby was bound. we passed one cross erected to commemorate a woman who died from self-inflicted injuries suffered during the procession of 1907. the procession emerges from the morado chanting in low, doleful tune the miserere. first come the flagellantes, or marchers, scourging their naked backs with cactus belts and whips. next march the cross carriers with a rattling of iron chains fastened to the feet; then, the general congregation. the march terminates at a great cross erected on a hilltop to simulate golgotha. why do the people do it? "to appease divine wrath," they say; but they might ask us--why have we dipsomaniacs and kleptomaniacs and monstrosities in our civilized life? because "julia o'grady and the captain's lady are the same as two pins under their skins." because human nature dammed up from wholesome outlet of emotions, will find unwholesome vent; and these dolorous processions are only a reflex of the dark emotions hidden in a narrow cañon shut off from the rest of the world. they were not dolorous emotions that found vent as we drove back down arroyo hondo to the bridge. our driver got out a mouth organ. then he played and sang snatches of dance tunes of the old, old days in the true west. "allamahoo, right hand to your partner and grand hodoo." "watch your partner and watch her close; and when you catch her, a double doze." "the cock flies out and the hen flies in- all hands round and go it agen." in fact, if you want to find the old true west, you'll find it undiluted and pristine on the trip to taos. chapter xii taos, the most ancient city in america taos, santa fe and el paso--these were to the southwest what port royal, quebec and montreal were to french canada, or boston, salem and jamestown to the colonists of the pre-revolutionary days on the atlantic. el paso was the gateway city from the old spanish dominions of the south. santa fe was the central military post, and taos was the watch tower on the very outskirts of the back-of-beyond of spanish territory in the wilderness land of the new world. before santa fe became the terminus of the trail for american traders from missouri and kansas, taos was the terminus of the old fur trader trail, in the days when louisiana extended from new orleans to oregon. here, such famous frontiersmen as jim bridgar and manuel lisa and jedediah smith and colonel ashley and kit carson came to barter beads and calico and tobacco and firewater for hides and fur and native-woven blankets and turquoise and rude silver ornaments hammered out of spanish bullion into necklace and bracelet. what green's hole and the three tetons were to the middle west, taos was to the southwest. mountains round taos rise 14,000 feet from sea level. snow glimmers from the peaks more than half the year; and mountain torrents water the valley with a system of irrigation that never fails. coming out of the mountains from the north, taos was the natural halfway house on the trail south to old mexico. coming out of the desert from the south, taos was the last walled city seen before the plunge into the wilderness of forests and mountains in the no-man's-land of the north. "walled city," you say, "before the coming of white men to the west?" yes, you can see those very walls to-day, walls antedating the coming of coronado in 1540 by hundreds of years. no motor can climb up and down the steep switchback to the arroyo hondo of the bridge. cars taken over that trail must be towed; but from the bridge, you can go on to taos by motor. as you ascend the mesa above the river bed, you see the mountains ahead rise in black basalt like castellated walls, with tower and battlement jagged into the very clouds. patches of yellow and red splotch the bronzing forests, where frost has touched the foliage; and you haven't gone very many miles into the lilac mist of the morning light--shimmering as it always shimmers above the sagebrush blue and sandy gold of the upper mesas--before you hear the laughter of living waters coming down from the mountain snows. one understands why the indians chose the uplands; while the white man, who came after, had to choose the shadowy bottoms of the walled-in cañons. someone, back in the good old days when we were not afraid to be poetic, said something about "traveling on the wings of the morning." i can't put in words what he meant; but you do it here--going up and up so gradually that you don't realize that you are in the lap, not of mountains, but of mountain peaks; breathing, not air, but ozone; uplifted by a great weight being taken off spirit and body; looking at life through rose-colored tints, not metaphorically, but really; for there is something in this high rare air--not dust, not moisture--that splits white light into its seven prismatic hues. you look through an atmosphere wonderfully rare, but it is never clear, white light. it is lavender, or lilac, or primrose, or gold, or red as blood according to the hours and the mood of hours; and if you want to carry the metaphor still farther, you may truthfully add that the hours on these high uplands are dancing hours. you never feel time to be a heavy, slow thing that oppresses the soul. [illustration: climbing home over your neighbor's roof and bolting your door by pulling up the ladder is customary in taos] as the streams laugh down from the mountains, ranches grow more and more frequent. it is characteristic of the west that you don't cross the _acequias_ on bridges. you cross them on two planks, with risk to your car if the driver swerve at the steering wheel. all the houses are red earth adobe, thick of wall to shut out both heat and cold, with a smell of juniper wood in the fireplaces of each room. much of this land--nearly all of it, in fact--is owned by the taos indians and held in common for pasturage and cultivation. title was given by spain four centuries ago, and the same title holds to-day in spite of white squatters' attempt to break down the law by cutting the wire of the pasture fences and taking the case to the courts. it was in this way that squatters broke down the title of old spanish families to thousands and hundreds of thousands of acres granted before american occupation. to be sure, an american land commission took evidence on these titles, in the quarrel between yankee squatter and spanish don; but the squatter had "friends in court." the old spanish don hadn't. he saw titles that had held good from 1540 slipping from his neighbor's hands; and he either contested the case to lose out before he had begun, or sold and sold at a song to save the wreckage of his fortunes. of all the spanish land grants originally partitioning off what is now new mexico, i know of only one held by the family of the original grantee; and it is now in process of partition. it is an untold page of southwestern history, this "stampeding" of spanish titles. some day, when we are a little farther away from it, the story will be told. it will not make pleasant reading, nor afford a bill of health to some family fortunes of the southwest. perjuries, assassinations, purchase in open markets of judges drawing such small pittances that they were in the auction mart for highest bid, forged documents, incendiary fires to destroy true titles--these were the least and most decent of the crimes of this era. "ramona" tells what happened to indian titles in california. paint helen hunt jackson's colors red instead of gray; multiply the crimes by ten instead of two; and you have a faint picture of the land-jockey period of new mexican history. something of this sort is going on at taos to-day among the pueblos for their land, and down at sacaton among the pimas for water. treaty guaranteed the indian his rights, but at taos the squatter cut the pueblo fences and carried the case to court. at sacaton, the big squatter, the irrigation company, took the pimas' water; so that the indian can no longer raise crops. if you want to know what the courts do in these cases, ask the pueblo governor at taos; or the pima chief at sacaton. * * * * * it is late september. a parrot calls out in spanish from the center of the patio where our rooms look out on an arcade running round the court in a perfect square. a mocking-bird trills saucily from his cage amid the cosmos bloom. donkeys and burros amble past the rear gate with loads of wood strapped to their backs. your back window looks out on the courtyard. your front window faces the street across from a plaza, or city square. stalwart, thick-set, muscular figures, hair banded back by red and white scarfs, trousers of a loose, white pantaloon sort, tunic a gray or white blanket, wrapped arab fashion from shoulders to waist, stalk with quick, nervous tread along the plaza; for it is the feast of saint geronimo presently. the whole town is in festal attire. there will be dancing all night and all day, and rude theatricals, and horse and foot races; and the plaza is agog with sightseers. no, it is not persia; and it is not palestine; and it is not spain. it is just plain, commonplace america out at taos--white man's taos, at the old columbia hotel, which is the last of the old-time spanish inns. as you motor into the town, the long rows of great cottonwoods and poplars attest the great age of the place. through windows deep set in adobe casement and flush with the street, you catch glimpses of inner patios where oleanders and roses are still in bloom. then you see the roof windows of artists' studios, and find yourself not only in an old spanish town but in the midst of a modern art colony, which has been called into being by the unique coloring, form and antiquity of life in the southwest. a few years ago, when lungren and philips and sharpe and a dozen others began portraying the marvelous coloring of the southwestern desert with its almost arab life, the public refused to accept such spectacular, un-american work as true. such pictures were diligently "skied" by hanging committees, and a few hundred dollars was deemed a good price. to-day, southwestern art forms a school by itself; and where commissions used to go begging at hundreds of dollars, they to-day command prices of thousands and tens of thousands. when i was in taos, one artist was filling commissions for an eastern collector that would mount up to prices paid for the best work of watts and whistler. it is a brutal way to put art in terms of the dollar bill; but it is sometimes the only way to make a people realize there are prophets in our own country. columbia hotel is really one of the famous old spanish mansions occupying almost the entire side of a plaza square. from its street entrance, you can see down the little alleyed street where dwelt kit carson in the old days. his old home is almost a wreck to-day, and there does not seem to be the slightest movement to convert it into a shrine where the hundreds of sightseers who come to the indian dances could brush up memories of old frontier heroes. there are really only four streets in taos, all facing the plaza or town square. other streets are alleys running off these, and when you see a notary's sign out as "alcalde," it does not seem so very far back to the days when spanish dons lounged round the plaza wearing silk capes and velvet trousers and buckled shoes, and spanish _conquistadores_ rode past armed cap-à-pie, and spanish grand dames stole glances at the outside world through the lattices of the mansion houses. in some of these old spanish houses, you will find the deep casement windows very high in the wall. i asked a descendant of one of the old spanish families why that was. "for protection," she said. "indians?" i asked. "no--spanish women were not supposed to see, or be seen by, the outside world." the pueblo proper lies about four miles out from the white man's town. laguna, acoma, zuñi, the three mesas of the tusayan desert--all lie on hillsides, or on the very crest of high acclivities. taos is the exception among purely indian pueblos. it lies in the lap of the valley among the mountains, two castellated, five story adobe structures, one on each side of a mountain stream. in other pueblo villages, while the houses may adjoin one another like stone fronts in our big cities, they are not like huge beehive apartment houses. in taos, the houses are practically two great communal dwellings, with each apartment assigned to a special clan or family. in all, some 700 people dwell in these two huge houses. how many rooms are there? not less than an average of three to each family. remnants of an ancient adobe wall surround the entire pueblo. a new whitewashed mission church stands in the center of the village, but you can still see the old one pitted with cannon-ball and bullet, where general price shelled it in the uprising of the pueblos after american occupation. men wear store trousers and store hats. you see some modern wagons. except for these, you are back in the days of coronado. all the houses can be entered only by ladders that ascend to the roofs and can be drawn up--the pueblo way of bolting the door. the houses run up three, four and five stories. they are adobe color outside, that is to say, a pinkish gray; and whitewashed spotlessly inside. watch a woman draped in white linen blanket ascending these ladders, and you have to convince yourself that you are not in the orient. down by the stream, women with red and blue and white shawls over their heads, and feet encased in white puttees, are washing blankets by beating them in the flowing water. go up the succession of ladders to the very top of a five storied house, and look out. you can see the pasture fields, where the herds graze in common. on the outskirts of the village, men and boys are threshing, that is--they are chasing ponies round and round inside a kraal, with a flag stuck up to show which way the wind blows, one man forking chaff with the wind, another scraping the grain outside the circle. glance inside the houses. the upstairs is evidently the living-room; for the fireplace is here, and the pot is on. off the living-room are corn and meal bins, and you can see the _metate_ or stone on which the corn is ground by the women as in the days of old testament record. though there is a new mission church dating from the uprising in the forties, and an old mission church dating almost from 1540, you can see from the roof dozens of _estufas_, where the men are practicing for their dances and masked theatricals. tony, the assistant governor, an educated man of about forty who has traveled with wild west shows, acts as our guide, and tells us about the squatters trying to get the indian land. how would you like an intruder to sit down in the middle of your farm and fence off 160 acres? the indians didn't like it, and cut the fences. then the troops were sent out. that was in 1910--a typical "uprising," when the white man has both troops and courts on his side. the case has gone to the courts, and tony doesn't expect it to be settled very soon. in fact, tony likes their own form of government better than the white man's. all this he tells you in the softest, coolest voice, for tony is not only assistant governor: he is constable to keep white men from bringing in liquor during the festal week. they yearly elect their own governor. that governor's word is absolutely supreme for his tenure of office. is there a dispute over crops, or cattle? the governor's word settles it without any rigmarole of talk by lawyers. "supposing the guilty man doesn't obey the governor?" we ask. "then we send our own police, and take him, and put him in the stocks in the lock-up," and he takes us around and shows us both the stocks and the lock-up. these stocks clamp down a man's head as well as his hands and feet. a man with his neck and hands anchored down between his feet in a black room naturally wouldn't remain disobedient long. the method of voting is older than the white man's ballot. the indians enter the _estufa_. a mark is drawn across the sand. two men are nominated. (no--women do not vote; the women rule the house absolutely. the men rule fields and crops and village courtyard.) the voters then signify their choice by marks on the sand. houses are built and occupied communally, and ground is held in common; but the product of each man's and each woman's labor is his or her own and not in common--the nearest approach to socialistic life that america has yet known. the people here speak a language different from the other pueblos, and this places their origin almost as far back as the origin of anglo-saxon races. another feature sets pueblo races apart from all other native races of america. though these people have been in contact with whites nearly 400 years, intermarriage with whites is almost unknown. purity of blood is almost as sacredly guarded among pueblos as among the ancient jews. the population remains almost stationary; but the bad admixtures of a mongrel race are unknown. we call the head man of the pueblo the governor, but the spanish know him as a _cacique_. associated with him are the old men--_mayores_, or council; and this council of wise old men enters so intimately into the lives of the people that it advises the young men as to marriage. we have preachers in our religious ranks. the pueblos have proclaimers who harangue from the housetops, or _estufas_. as women stoop over the _metates_ grinding the meal, men sing good cheer from the door. the chile, or red pepper, is pulverized between stones the same as the grain. though openly catholic and in attendance on the mission church, the pueblo people still practice all the secret rites of montezuma; and in all the course of four centuries of contact, white men have never been able to learn the ceremonies of the _estufas_. women never enter the _estufas_. who were the first white men to see taos? it is not certainly known, but it is vaguely supposed they were cabeza de vaca and his three companions, shipwrecked on the coast of florida in the narvaez expedition, who wandered westward across the continent from taos to laguna and acoma. as the legend runs, they were made slaves by the indians and traded from tribe to tribe from 1528 to 1536, when they reached old mexico. anyway, their report of golden cities and vast, undiscovered land pricked new spain into launching coronado's expedition of 1540. preceding the formal military advance of coronado, the franciscan fray marcos de niza and two lay brothers guided by cabeza de vaca's negro estevan, set out with the cross in their hands to prepare the way. fray marcos advanced from the gulf of california eastward. one can guess the weary hardship of that footsore journeying. it was made between march and september of 1539. go into the yuma valley in september! the heat is of a denseness you can cut with a knife. imagine the heat of that tramp over desert sands in june, july and august! when fray marcos sent his indian guides forward to zuñi, near the modern gallup, he was met with the warning "go back; or you will be put to death." his messengers refusing to be daunted, the zuñi people promptly killed them and threw them over the rocks. fray marcos went on with the lay brothers. zuñi was called "_cibola_" owing to the great number of buffalo skins (_cibolas_) in camp. fray marcos' report encouraged the emperor of spain to go on with coronado's expedition. that trip need not be told here. it has been told and retold in half the languages of the world. the spaniards set out from old mexico 300 strong, with 800 indian escorts and four priests including marcos and a lay brother. what did they expect? probably a second peru, temples with walls of gold and images draped in jewels of priceless worth. what did they find? in zuñi and the three mesas and taos, small, sun-baked clay houses built tier on tier on top of each other like a child's block house, with neither precious stones, nor metals of any sort, but only an abundance of hides and woven cloth. when the soldiers saw zuñi, they broke out in jeers and curses at the priest. poor fray marcos was thinking more of souls saved from perdition than of loot, and returned in shamed embarrassment to new spain. across the desert to the three mesas and the cañon of the colorado, east again to acoma and the enchanted mesa, up to the pueblo town now known as the city of santa fe, into the pecos, and north, yet north of taos, coronado's expedition practically made a circuit of all the southwest from the colorado river to east kansas. the knightly adventurers did not find gold, and we may guess, as winter came on with heavy snows in the upper desert, they were in no very good mood; for now began that contest between white adventurers and pueblos which lasted down to the middle of the nineteenth century. at the pueblo now known as bernalillo, the soldiers demanded blankets to protect them from the cold. the indians stripped their houses to help their visitors, but in the mêlée and no doubt in the ill humor of both sides there were attacks and insults by the white aggressors, and a state of siege lasted for two months. practically from that date to 1840, the pueblo towns were a unit against the white man. [illustration: a fashionable metal-worker of taos, new mexico, who has not adhered to the native costume] the last great uprising was just after the american occupation. bent, the great trader of bent's fort on the arkansas, was governor. kit carson, who had run away from the saddler's trade at sixteen and for whom a reward of one cent was offered, had joined the santa fe caravans and was now living at taos, an influential man among the indians. according to col. twitchell, whose work is the most complete on new mexico and who received the account direct from the governor's daughter, governor bent knew that danger was brewing. the pueblos had witnessed spanish power overthrown; then, the expulsion of mexican rule. why should they, themselves, not expel american domination? it was january 18, 1847. governor bent had come up from santa fe to visit taos. he was warned to go back, or to get a military escort; but a trader all his life among the indians, he flouted danger. traders' rum had inflamed the indians. they had crowded in from their pueblo town to the plaza of taos. insurrectionary mexicans, who had cause enough to complain of the american policy regarding spanish land titles, had harangued the indians into a flare of resentful passion. governor bent and his family were in bed in the house you can see over to the left of the plaza. in the kraal were plenty of horses for escape, but the family were awakened at daybreak by a rabble crowding into the central courtyard. kit carson's wife, mrs. bent, mrs. boggs and her children hurried into the shelter of an inner room. young alfredo bent, only ten years old, pulled his gun from the rack with the words--"papa, let us fight;" but bent had gone to the door to parley with the leaders. taking advantage of the check, the women and an indian slave dug a hole with a poker and spoon under the adobe wall of the room into the next house. through this the family crawled away from the besieged room to the next house, mrs. bent last, calling for her husband to come; but it was too late. governor bent was shot in the face as he expostulated; clubbed down and literally scalped alive. he dragged himself across the floor, to follow his wife; but indians came up through the hole and down over the roof and in through the windows; and bent fell dead at the feet of his family. the family were left prisoners in the room without food, or clothing except night dresses, all that day and the next night. at daybreak friendly mexicans brought food, and the women were taken away disguised as squaws. once, when searching indians came to the house of the old mexican who had sheltered the family, the rescuer threw the searchers off by setting his "squaws" to grinding meal on the kitchen floor. kit carson, at this time, unfortunately happened to be in california. he was the one man who could have restrained the indians. the indians then proceeded down to the arroyo hondo to catch some mule loads of whiskey and provisions, which were expected through the narrow cañon. the mill where the mules had been unharnessed was surrounded that night. the teamsters plugged up windows and loaded for the fray that must come with daylight. seven times the indians attempted to rush an assault. each time, a rifle shot puffed from the mill and an indian leaped into the air to fall back dead. then the whole body of 500 indians poured a simultaneous volley into the mill. two of the americans inside fell dead. a third was severely wounded. by the afternoon of the second day, the americans were without balls or powder. the indians then crept up and set fire to the mill. the americans hid themselves among the stampeding stock of the kraal. night was coming on. the pueblos were crowding round in a circle. the surviving americans opened the gates and made a dash in the dark for the mountains. two only escaped. the rest were lanced and scalped as they ran; and in the loot of the teams, the indians are supposed to have secured some well-filled chests of gold specie. by january 23rd, general price had marched out at the head of five companies, from old fort marcy at santa fe for taos. he had 353 men and four cannon. you can see the marks yet on the old mission at taos, where the cannon-balls battered down the adobe walls. the indians did not wait his coming. they met him 1,500 strong on the heights of a mesa at santa cruz. the indians made wild efforts to capture the wagons to the rear of the artillery; but when an indian rabble meets artillery, there is only one possible issue. the indians fled, leaving thirty-six killed and forty-five wounded. no railway led up the rio grande at that early date; and it was a more notable feat for the troops to advance up the narrowing cañons than to defeat the foe. at embudo, six or seven hundred pueblos lined the rock walls under hiding of cedar and piñon. the soldiers had to climb to shoot; and again the indians could not withstand trained fire. they left twenty killed and sixty wounded here. two feet of snow lay on the trail as the troops ascended the uplands; and it was february 3rd before they reached taos. every ladder had been drawn up, every window barricaded, and the high walls of the tiered great houses were bristling with rifle barrels; but rifle defense could not withstand the big shells of the assailants. the two pueblos were completely surrounded. a six pounder was brought within ten yards of the walls. a shell was fired--the church wall battered down, and the dragoons rushed through the breach. by the night of feb. 4th, old men, women and children bearing the cross came suing for peace. the ringleader, tomas, was delivered to general price; and the troops drew off with a loss of seven killed and forty-five wounded. the pueblos loss was not less than 200. thus ended the last attempt of the pueblos to overthrow alien domination; and this attempt would not have been made if the indians had not been spurred on by mexican revolutionaries, with counter plots of their own. * * * * * we motored away from taos by sunset. an old indian woman swathed all in white came creeping down one of the upper ladders. they could not throw off white rule--these pueblos--but for four centuries they have withstood white influences as completely as in the days when they sent the couriers spurring with the knotted cord to rally the tribes to open revolt. chapter xiii san antonio, the cairo of america if you want to plunge into america's egypt, there are as many ways to go as you have moods. you explain that the ocean voyage is half the attraction to european travel. there may be a difference of opinion on that, as i know people who would like to believe that the atlantic could be bridged; but if you are keen on an ocean voyage, you can reach the egypt of america by boat to florida, then west by rail; or by boat straight to any of the texas harbors. by way of florida, you can take your fill of the historic and antique and the picturesque in st. augustine and pensacola and new orleans; and if there are any yarns of rarer flavor in all the resorts of europe than in the old quarters of these three places, i have never heard of them. you can drink of the spring of the elixir of life in st. augustine, and lose yourself in the trenches of old fort barrancas at pensacola, and wander at will in the old french town of new orleans. each place was once a pawn in the gambles of european statesmen. each has heard the clang of armed knights, the sword in one hand, the cross in the other. each has seen the pirate fleet with death's head on the flag at the masthead come tacking up the bays, sometimes to be shattered and sunk by cannon shot from the fort bastions. sometimes the fort itself was scuttled by the buccaneers; once, at least, at fort barrancas, it suffered loot at terrible, riotous, drunken hands, when a spanish officer's daughter who was captured for ransom succeeded in plunging into the sea within sight of her watching father. but whether you enter the egypt of america by rail overland, or by sea, san antonio is the gateway city from the south to the land of play and mystery. it is to the middle west what quebec is to canada, what cairo is to egypt--the gateway, the meeting place of old and new, of latin and saxon, of east and west, of north and south. atmosphere? physically, the atmosphere is champagne: spiritually, you have not gone ten paces from the station before you feel a flavor as of old wine. there are the open spanish plazas riotous with bloom flanked by spanish-moorish ruins flush on the pavement, with skyscraper hotels that are the last word in modernity. live oaks heavy with spanish moss hang over sleepy streams that come from everywhere and meander nowhere. you see a squad of soldiers from fort sam houston wheeling in measured tread around a square (only there isn't anything absolutely square in all san antonio) and they have hardly gone striding out of sight before you see a mexican burro trotting to market with a load of hay tied on its back. a motor comes bumping over the roads--such roads as only the antique can boast--and if it is fiesta time, or cowboy celebration, you are apt to see cowboys cutting such figure eights in the air as a motor cannot execute on antique pavement. you enter a hotel and imagine you are in the plaza, new york, or the ritz, london; but stay! the frieze above the marble walls isn't gilt; and it isn't tapestry. the frieze is a long panel in bronze _alto-relievo_. i think it is a testimonial to san antonio's sense of the fitness of things that that frieze is not of roman gladiators, or french gardens with beringed ladies and tame fawns. it is a frieze of the cowboys taking a stampeding herd up the long trail--drifting and driving but held together by a rough fellow in top boots and sombrero; and the rotunda has a frieze of cowboys because that three million-dollar hotel was built out of "cow" money. old and new, past and present, saxon and latin, north and south, east and west--that is san antonio. you can never forget it for a minute. it is such a shifting panorama as you could only get from traveling thousands of miles elsewhere, or comparing a hundred remington drawings. san antonio is a curious combination of remington and alma tadema in real life; and i don't know anywhere else in the world you can get it. there are three such huge hotels in san antonio besides a score of lesser ones, to take care of the 30,000 tourists who come from the middle west to winter in san antonio; but remember that while 30,000 seems a large number of tourists for one place, that is only one-tenth the number of americans who yearly see europe. and never for a moment can you forget that as cairo is the gateway to eastern travel, so san antonio is on the road to old mexico and all the former spanish possessions of the south. it was here that madero's band of revolutionists lived and laid the plans that overthrew diaz. long ago, before the days of railway, it was here that the long caravans of mule trains used to come with, silver and gold from the mines of old mexico. it was here the highwaymen and roughs and toughs and scum of the earth used to lie in wait for the passing bullion; and it was here the texas rangers came with short, quick, sharp shrift for rustlers and robbers. there is one corner in san antonio where you can see a mission dating back to the early seventeen hundreds, and not a stone's throw away, one of the most famous gambling joints of the wildest days of the wild southwest--the site of the old silver king, where cowboys and miners from the south used to come in "to clean out" their earnings of a year, sometimes to ride horses over faro tables, or pot-shot rows of champagne. a man had "to smile" when he called his "pardner" pet names in the silver king; or there would be crackle of more than champagne corks. men would duck for hiding. a body would be dragged out, sand spread on the floor, and the games went on morning, noon and night. the missions are crumbling ruins. so is the silver king. frontiersmen will tell you regretfully of the good old days forever gone, when the night passed but dully if the cowboys did not shoot up all the saloons and "hurdle" the gaming tables. * * * * * yesterday, it was cowboy and mines in san antonio. to-day, it is polo and tourist; and the transition is a natural growth. one would hate to think of the risks of the long trail, for miners from old mexico to fort leavenworth, for cowboys from fort worth to wyoming and st. louis, and not see the risks rewarded in fortunes to these trail makers. the cowboy and miner of the olden days--the cowboy and miner who survived, that is--are the capitalists taking their pleasure in san antonio to-day. it was natural that the cow pony bred to keeping its feet in mid-air, or on earth, should develop into the finest type of polo pony ever known. for years, the polo clubs of the north, lenox, long island, milbrook, have made a regular business of scouring texas for polo ponies. horses giving promise of good points would be picked up at $80, $100, $150. they would then be rounded on a ranch and trained. san antonio is situated almost 700 feet up on a high, clear plateau rimmed by blue ridges in the distance. recently, a polo ground of 3,200 acres has been laid out; and the polo clubs of the north are to be invited to san antonio for the winter fiestas. as fort sam houston boasts one of the best polo clubs of the south, competition is likely to attract the sportsmen from far and near. you know how it is in all these new western cities. they are feverish with a mania of progress. they have grown so fast they cannot keep track of their own hobble-de-hoy, sprawling limbs. they are drunk with prosperity. in real estate alone, fortunes have come, as it were, overnight. all this san antonio has not escaped. they will tell you with pardonable pride how this little cow town, where land wasn't worth two cents an acre outside the mission walls, has jumped to be a metropolitan city of over 100,000; how it is the center of the great truck and irrigation farm district. fort sam houston always has 700 or 800 soldiers in garrison, and sometimes has as many as 4,000; and when army maneuvers take place, there is an immense reservation outside the city where as many as 20,000 men can practice mimic war. the day of two cents or even $20 an acre land round san antonio is forever past. land under the ditch is too valuable for the rating of twenty acres to one steer. all this and more you will see of modern san antonio; but still if at sundown you set out on a vagrant and solitary tour of the old missions, i think you will feel as i felt that it was the dauntless spirit of the old régime that fired the blood of the moderns for the new day that is dawning. i don't know why it is, but anything in life that is worth having seems to demand service and sacrifice and, oftener than not, the martyrdom of heroic and terrible defeat. then, when you think that the flag of the cause is trampled in a mire of bloodshed, phoenix-like the cause rises on eagles' wings to new height, new daring, new victory. it was so in texas. when you visit the missions of san antonio, go alone; or go with a kindred spirit. don't talk! let the mysticism and wonder of it sink in your soul! soak yourself in the traditions of the past. let the dead hand of the past reach out and touch you. you will live over again the heroism of the alamo, the heroism that preceded the alamo--that of the franciscans who tramped 300 leagues across the desert of old mexico to establish these missions; the heroism that preceded the franciscans--that of la salle traveling thrice 300 leagues to establish the cross on the gulf of mexico, and perishing by assassin's hand as he turned on the backward march. you will see the iron cross to his memory at levaca. it was because la salle, the frenchman, found his way to the gulf, that spain stirred up the viceroys of new mexico to send sword and cross over the desert to establish forts in the country of the tejas (texans). do you realize what that means? when i cross the arid hills of the rio grande, i travel in a car cooled by electric fans, with two or three iced drinks between meals. these men marched--most of them on foot, the cowled priests in sandals, the knights in armor plate from head to heel--over cactus sands. do you wonder that they died on the way? do you wonder that the marchers coming into the well-watered plains of the san antonio with festooned live oaks overhanging the green waters, paused here and built their string of missions of which the chief was the one now known as "the alamo"--the mission of the cottonwood trees? [illustration: an excellent example of the entrance to an adobe house of the southwest, embodying the best traditions of this kind of architecture] six different flags have flown over the land of the tejas: the french, the spanish, the mexican, the republic of texas, the confederate, the union. in such a struggle for ascendancy, needless to tell, much blood was shed righteously and unrighteously; but of the battle fought at the alamo, no justification need be given. it is part of american history, but it is the kind of history that in other nations goes to make battle hymns. details are in every school book. santa ana, the newly risen mexican dictator, had ordered the 30,000 americans who lived in texas, to disarm. sam houston, crockett, bowie, travis, had sprung to arms with a call that rings down to history yet: "fellow citizens and compatriots," wrote travis from the doomed alamo mission, to houston and the other leaders outside, "i am besieged by a thousand or more mexicans under santa ana. i have sustained a continued bombardment for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man.... the garrison is to be put to the sword if the place is taken. i have answered the summons with a cannon shot and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. i shall never surrender, nor retreat. i call on you in the name of liberty, and of everything dear to the american character, to come to our aid with all despatch. the enemy is receiving reinforcements daily, and will no doubt increase to 3,000 or 4,000 in four or five days. though this call may be neglected, i am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who forgets not what is due to his own honor and that of his country--victory or death! w. barrett travis lieut.-col. commanding." in the fort with travis were 180 men under bowie and crockett. the siege began on feb. 23, 1836, and ended on march 6th. besides the frontiersmen in the fort were two women, two children and two slaves. the mission was arranged in a great quadrangle fifty-four by 154 yards with _acequias_ or irrigation ditches both to front and rear. the garrison had succeeded in getting inside the walls about thirty bushels of corn and eighty beef cattle; so there was no danger of famine. the big courtyard was in the rear. the convent projected out in front of the courtyard. to the left angle of the convent was the chapel or mission of the alamo. santa ana had come across the desert with 5,000 men. to the demand for surrender, travis answered with a cannon shot. the mexican leader then hung the red flag above his camp and ordered the band to play "no quarter." for eight days, shells came hurtling inside the walls incessantly, dawn to dark, dark to dawn. just at sunset on march 3rd, there was a bell. travis collected his men and gave them their choice of surrendering and being shot, or cutting their way out through the besieging line. the besiegers at this time consisted of 2,500 infantrymen bunched close to the walls of the alamo--too close to be shot from above, and 2,500 cavalry and infantry back on the plaza and encircling the mission to cut off all avenue of escape. travis drew a line on the ground with his sword. "every man who will die with me, come across that line! who will be first? march!" every man leaped over the line but bowie, who was ill on a cot bed. "boys, move my cot over the line," he said. at four o'clock next morning, the siege was resumed. the bugle blew a single blast. with picks, crowbars and ladders, the mexicans closed in. the besieged waited breathlessly. the mexicans placed the ladders and began scaling. the sharpshooters inside the walls waited till the heads appeared above the walls--then fired. as the top man fell back, the one beneath on the ladder stepped in the dead man's place. then the americans clubbed their guns and fought hand to hand. by that, the mexicans knew that ammunition was exhausted and the defenders few. the walls were scaled and battered down first in a far corner of the convent yard. behind the chapel door, piles of sand had been stacked. from the yard, the texans were driven to the convent, from the convent to the chapel. travis fell shot at the breach in the yard wall. bowie was bayoneted on the cot where he lay. crockett was clubbed to death just outside the chapel door to the left. by nine o'clock, no answering shot came from the alamo. the doors were rammed and rushed. not a texan survived. two women, two children and a couple of slaves were pulled out of hiding from chancel and stalls. these were sent across to the main camp. the bodies of the 182 heroes were piled in a pyramid with fagots; and fired. so ended the battle of the alamo, one of the most terrible defeats and heroic defenses in american history. it is unnecessary to relate that sam houston exacted from the mexicans on the battlefield of san jacinto a terrible punishment for this defeat. captured and killed, his toll of defeated mexicans down at houston came to almost 1,700. such is the story of one of san antonio's missions. one other has a tale equally tragic; but all but two are falling to utter ruin. i don't know whether it would be greater desecration to lay hand on them and save them, or let them fall to dust. it was nightfall when i went to the three on the outskirts of the city. two have little left but the walls and the towers. a third is still used as place of worship by a little settlement of mexicans. the slant light of sunset came through the darkened, vacant windows, the tiers of weathered stalls, the empty, twin-towered belfries. you could see where the well stood, the bake house, the school. shrubbery planted by the monks has grown wild in the courtyards; but you can still call up the picture of the cowled priests chanting prayers. the missions are ruins; but the hope that animated them, the fire, the heroism, the dauntless faith, still burn in texas blood as the sunset flame shines through the dismantled windows. chapter xiv casa grande and the gila if someone should tell you of a second grand cañon gashed through wine-colored rocks in the purple light peculiar to the uplands of very high mountains--a second grand cañon, where lived a race of little men not three feet tall, where wild turkeys were domesticated as household birds and every man's door was in the roof and his doorstep a ladder that he carried up after him--you would think it pure imagination, wouldn't you? the lilliputians away out in "gulliver's travels," or something like that? and if your narrator went on about magicians who danced with live rattlesnakes hanging from their teeth and belted about their waists, and played with live fire without being burned, and walked up the faces of precipices as a fly walks up a wall--you would think him rehearsing some robinson crusoe tale about two generations too late to be believed. yet there is a second grand cañon not a stone's throw from everyday tourist travel, wilder in game life and rock formation if not so large, with prehistoric caves on its precipice walls where sleeps a race of little mummied men behind doors and windows barely large enough to admit a half-grown white child. who were they? no one knows. when did they live? so long ago that they were cave men, stone age men; so long ago that neither history nor tradition has the faintest echo of their existence. where did they live? no, it was not europe, asia, africa or australia. if it were, we would know about them. as it happens, this second grand cañon is only in plain, nearby, home-staying america; so when boys of the forest service pulled little zeke out of his gypsum and pumice stone dust and measured him up and found him only twenty-three inches long, though the hair sticking to the skull was gray and the teeth were those of an adult--as it happened in only matter-of-fact, commonplace america, poor little zeke couldn't get shelter. they trounced his little dry bones round silver city, new mexico, for a few months. then they boxed him up and shipped him away to be stored out of sight in the cellars of the smithsonian, at washington. as zeke has been asleep since the ice age, or about ten to eight thousand years b. c., it doesn't make very much difference to him; but one wonders what in the world new mexico was doing allowing one of the most wonderful specimens of a prehistoric dwarf race ever found to be shipped out of the country. it was in the gila cañon that the forestry service boys found him. by some chance, they at once dubbed the little mummy "zeke." the gila is a typical box-cañon, walled as a tunnel, colored in fire tints like the grand cañon, literally terraced and honeycombed with the cave dwellings of a prehistoric race. it lies some fifty miles as the crow flies from silver city; but the way the crow flies and the way man travels are an altogether different story in the wild lands of the gila mountains. you'll have to make the most of the way on horseback with tents for hotels, or better still the stars for a roof. besides, what does it matter when or how the little scrub of a twenty-three-inch man lived anyway? we moderns of evolutionary smattering have our own ideas of how cave men dwelt; and we don't want those ideas disturbed. the cave men--ask jack london if you don't believe it--were hairy monsters, not quite tailless, just cotton-tail-rabbity in their caudal appendage--hairy monsters, who munched raw beef and dragged women by the hair of the head to pitch-black, dark as night, smoke-begrimed caves. that is the way they got their wives. (perhaps, if little zeke could speak, he would think he ought to sue moderns for libel. he might think that our "blond-beast" theories are a reflex of our own civilization. he might smile through his grinning jaws.) anyway, there lies little zeke, a long time asleep, wrapped in cerements of fine woven cloth with fluffy-ruffles and fol-de-rols of woven blue jay and bluebird and hummingbird feathers round his neck. zeke's people understood weaving. also zeke wears on his feet sandals of yucca fiber and matting. i don't know what our ancestors wore--according to evolutionists, it may have been hair and monkey pads. so if you understood as much about zeke's history as you do about the pyramids, you'd settle some of the biggest disputes in theology and ethnology and anthropology and a lot of other "ologies," which have something more or less to do with the salvation and damnation of the soul. how is it known that zeke is a type of a race, and not a freak specimen of a dwarf? because other like specimens have been found in the same area in the last ten years; and because the windows and the doors of the cave dwellings of the gila would not admit anything but a dwarf race. they may not all have been twenty-four and thirty-six and forty inches; but no specimens the size of the mummies in other prehistoric dwellings have been found in the gila. for instance, down at casa grande, they found skeletons buried in the gypsum dust of back chambers; but these skeletons were six-footers, and the roofs of the casa grande chambers were for tall men. up in the frijoles cave dwellings, they have dug out of the _tufa_ dust of ten centuries bodies swathed in woven cloth; but these bodies are of a modern race five or six feet tall. you have only to look at zeke to know that he is not, as we understand the word, an indian. was he an ancestor of the aztecs or the toltecs? though you cannot go out to the gila by motor to a luxurious hotel, there are compensations. you will see a type of life unique and picturesque as in the old world--countless flocks of sheep herded by soft-voiced peons. it is the only section yet left in the west where freighters with double teams and riders with bull whips wind in and out of the narrow cañons with their long lines of tented wagons. it is still a land where game is plentiful as in the old days, trout and turkey and grouse and deer and bear and mountain lion, and even bighorn, though the last named are under protection of closed season just now. i'm always afraid to tell an easterner or town dweller of the hunt of these old trappers of the box cañons; but as many as thirteen bear have been killed on the gila in three weeks. the altitude of the trail from silver city to the gila runs from 6,000 to 9,150 feet. when you have told that to a westerner, you don't need to tell anything else. it means burros for pack animals. in the southwest it means forests of huge yellow pines, open upland like a park, warm, clear days, cool nights, and though in the desert, none of the heat nor the dust of the desert. it is the ideal land for tuberculosis, though all invalids should be examined as to heart action before attempting any altitude over 4,000 feet. and the southwest has worked out an ideal system of treatment for tuberculosis patients. they are no longer housed in stuffy hotels and air tight, super-heated sanitariums. each sanitarium is now a tent city--portable houses or tents floored and boarded halfway up, with the upper half of the wall a curtain window, and a little stove in each tent. each patient has, if he wants it, a little hospital all to himself. there is a central dining-room. there is also a dispensary. in some cases, there are church and amusement hall. where means permit it, a family may have a little tent city all to itself; and they don't call the tent city a sanitarium. they call it "sun mount," or "happy cañon," or some other such name. the percentage of recoveries is wonderful; but the point is, the invalids must come in time. wherever you go along the borders of old and new mexico searching for prehistoric ruins, you come on these tent cities. [illustration: the enchanted mesa of acoma, as high as three niagaras, and its top as flat as a billiard table] where can one see these cliff and cave dwellings of a prehistoric dwarf? please note the points. cliff and cave dwellings are not the same. cliff dwellings are houses made by building up the front of a natural arch. this front wall was either in stone or sun-baked adobe. cave dwellings are houses hollowed out of the solid rock, a feat not so difficult as it sounds when you consider the rock is only soft pumice or tufa, that yields to scraping more readily than bath brick or soft lime. the cliff dwellings are usually only one story. the cave dwellings may run five stories up inside the rock, natural stone steps leading from tier to tier of the rooms, and tiny porthole windows looking down precipices 500 to 1,000 feet. the cliff dwellings are mostly entered by narrow trails leading along the ledge of a precipice sheer as a wall. the first story of the cave dwellings was entered by a light ladder, which the owner could draw up after him. remember it was the stone age: no metals, no firearms, no battering rams, nor devices for throwing projectiles. a man with a rock in his hand in the doorway of either type of dwelling could swiftly and deftly and politely speed the parting guest with a brickbat on his head. similar types of pottery and shell ornament are found in both sorts of dwellings; but i have never seen any cliff dwellings with evidences of such religious ceremony as in the cave houses. perhaps the difference between cliff folk and cave folk would be best expressed by saying that the cliff people were to ancient life what the east side is to us: the cave people what upper fifth avenue represents. one the riff-raff, the weak, the poor, driven to the wall; the other, the strong, the secure and defended. you go to one section of ruins, and you come to certain definite conclusions. then you go on to another group of ruins; and every one of your conclusions is reversed. for instance, what drove these races out? what utterly extinguished their civilization so that not a vestige, not an echo of a tradition exists of their history? scientists go up to the rio grande in new mexico, see evidence of ancient irrigation ditches, of receding springs and decreasing waters; and they at once pronounce--desiccation. the earth is burning up at the rate of an inch or two of water in a century; moisture is receding toward the poles as it has in mars, till mars is mostly arid, sun-parched desert round its middle and ice round the poles. good! when you look down from the cliff dwellings of walnut cañon, near flagstaff, that explanation seems to hold good. there certainly must have been water once at the bottom of this rocky box-cañon. when the water sank below the level of the springs, the people had to move out. very well! you come on down to the cave dwellings of the gila. the bottom falls out of your explanation, for there is a perpetual gush of water down these rock walls from unfailing mountain springs. why, then, did the race of little people move out? what wiped them out? why they moved in one can easily understand. the box cañons are so narrow that half a dozen pigmy boys deft with a sling and stones could keep out an army of enemies. the houses were so built that a child could defend the doorway with a club; and where the houses have long hallways and stairs as in casa grande, the passages are so narrow as to compel an enemy to wiggle sideways; and one can guess the inmates would not be idle while the venturesome intruder was wedging himself along. also, the bottoms of these box-cañons afforded ideal corn fields. the central stream permitted easy irrigation on each side by tapping the waterfall higher up; and the wash of the silt of centuries ensured fertility to men, whose plowing must have been accomplished by the shoulder blade of a deer used as a hoe. modern pueblo indians claim to be descendants of these prehistoric dwarf races. so are we descendants of adam; but we don't call him our uncle; and if he had a say, he might disown us. anyway, how have modern descendants of the dwarf types developed into six-foot modern pimas and papagoes? it is said the navajo and apache came originally from athabasca stock. maybe; but the pimas and papagoes claim their garden of eden right in the southwest. they call their garden of eden by the picturesque name of "morning glow." how reach the caves of the dwarf race? to the gila group, you must go by way of silver city; and better go in with forest service men, for this is the gila national forest and the men know the trails. you will find ranch houses near, where you can secure board and room for from $1.50 to $2 a day. the "room" may be a boarded up tent; but that is all the better. or you may take your own blanket and sleep in the caves. perfectly safe--believe me, i have fared all these ways--when you have nearly broken your neck climbing up a precipice to a sheltered cave room, you need not fear being followed. the caves are clean as if kalsomined from centuries and centuries of wash and wind. you may hear the wolves bark--bark--bark under your pillowed doorway all night; but wolves don't climb up 600-foot precipice walls. also if it is cold in the caves, you will find in the corner of nearly all, a small, high fireplace, where the glow of a few burning juniper sticks will drive out the chill. what did they eat and how did they live, these ancient people, who wore fine woven cloth at an era when aryan races wore skins? like all desert races, they were not great meat eaters; and the probabilities are that fish were tabooed. you find remains of game in the caves, but these are chiefly feather decorations, prayer plumes to waft petitions to the gods, or bones used as tools. on the other hand, there is abundance of dried corn in the caves, of gourds and squash seeds; and every cave has a _metate_, or grinding stone. in many of the caves, there are alcoves in the solid wall, where meal was stored; and of water jars, urns, ollas, there are remnants and whole pieces galore. it is thought these people used not only yucca fiber for weaving, but some species of hemp and cotton; for there are tatters and strips of what might have been cotton or linen. you see it wrapped round the bodies of the mummies and come on it in the accumulation of volcanic ash. near many of the ruins is a huge empty basin or pit, which must have been used as a reservoir in which waters were impounded during siege of war. like conies of the rocks, or beehives of modern skyscrapers, these denizens lived. the most of the mummies have been found in sealed up chambers at the backs of the main houses; but these could hardly have been general burying places, for comparatively few mummies have yet been found. who, then, were these dwarf mummies, placed in sealed vaults to the rear of the gila caves? perhaps a favorite father, brother, or sister; perhaps a governor of the tribe, who perished during siege and could not be taken out to the common burial ground. picture to yourself a precipice face from 300 to 700 feet high, literally punctured with tiny porthole windows and doll house open cave doors. it is sunset. the rocks of these box-cañons in the southwest are of a peculiar wine-colored red and golden ocher, or else dead gray and gypsum white. owing to the great altitude--some of the ruins are 9,000 feet above sea level, 1,000 above valley bottom--the atmosphere has that curious quality of splitting white light into its seven prismatic hues. artists of the southwestern school account for this by the fact of desert dust being a silt fine as flour, which acts like crystal or glass in splitting the rays of white light into its prismatic colors; but this hardly explains these high box-cañons, for there is no dust here. my own theory (please note, it is only a theory and may be quite wrong) is that the air is so rare at altitudes above 6,000 feet, so rare and pure that it splits light up, if not in seven prismatic colors, then in elementary colors that give the reds and purples and fire tints predominance. anyway, at sunset and sunrise, these box-cañons literally swim in a glory of lavender and purple and fiery reds. you almost fancy it is a fire where you can dip your hand and not be burned; a sea in which spirits, not bodies, swim and move and have their being; a sea of fiery rainbow colors. the sunset fades. the shadows come down like invisible wings. the twilight deepens. the stars prick through the indigo blue of a desert sky like lighted candles; and there flames up in the doorway of cavern window and door the deep red of juniper and cedar log glow in the fireplaces at the corner of each room. the mourning dove utters his plaintive wail. you hear the yap-yap of fox and coyote far up among the big timbers between you and the snows. then a gong rings. (gong? in a metal-less age? yes, the gong is a flint bar struck by the priest with a bone clapper.) the dancers come down out of the caves to the dancing floors in the middle of the narrow cañon. you can see the dancing rings yet, where the feet of a thousand years have beaten the raw earth hard. men only dance. these are not sex dances. they are dances of thanks to the gods for the harvest home of corn; or for victory. the gong ceases clapping. the campfires that scent the cañon with juniper smells, flicker and fade and die. the rhythmic beat of the feet that dance ceases and fades in the darkness. that was ten thousand years agone. where are the races that danced to the beat of the priest's clapper gong? i wakened one morning in one of the frijoles caves to the mournful wail of the turtle dove; and there came back that old prophecy--it used to give me cold shivers down my spine as a child--that the habitat of the races who fear not god shall be the haunt of bittern and hoot owl and bat and fox. * * * * * i don't know what reason there is for it, neither do the indians of the southwest know; but casa grande, the great house, or the place of the morning glow, is to them the garden of eden of their race traditions; the scene of their mythical "golden age," when there were no apaches raiding the crops, nor white men stealing land away; when life was a perpetual happy hunting ground, only the hunters didn't kill, and all animals could talk, and the desert was an antelope plain knee-deep in pasturage and flowers, and the springs were all full of running water. casa grande is undoubtedly the oldest of all the prehistoric ruins in the united states. it lies some eighteen to twenty-five miles, according to the road you follow, south of the station called by that name on the southern pacific railroad. it isn't supposed to rain in the desert after the two summer months, nor to blow dust storms after march; but it was blowing a dust storm to knock you off your feet when i reached casa grande early in october; and a day later the rain was falling in floods. the drive can be made with ease in an afternoon; but better give yourself two days, and stay out for a night at the tents of mr. pinkey, the government custodian of the ruins. the ruin itself has been set aside as a perpetual monument. you drive out over a low mesa of rolling mesquite and greasewood and cactus, where the giant suaharo stands like a columned ghost of centuries of bygone ages. "how old are they?" i asked my driver, as we passed a huge cactus high as a house and twisted in contortions as if in pain. from tip to root, the great trunk was literally pitted with the holes pecked through by little desert birds for water. "oh, centuries and centuries old," he said; "and the queer part is that in this section of the mesa water is sixty feet below the surface. their roots don't go down sixty feet. where do they get the water? i guess the bark acts as cement or rubber preventing evaporation. the spines keep the desert animals off, and during the rainy season the cactus drinks up all the water he's going to need for the year, and stores it up in that big tank reservoir of his. but his time is up round these parts; settlers have homesteaded all round here for twenty-five miles, and next time you come back we'll have orange groves and pecan orchards." far as you could look were the little adobe houses and white tents of the pioneers, stretching barb wire lines round 160-acre patches of mesquite with a faith to put moses to shame when he struck the rock for a spring. these settlers have to bore down the sixty feet to water level with very inadequate tools; and you see little burros chasing homemade windlasses round and round, to pump up water. it looks like "the faith that lays it down and dies." slow, hard sledding is this kind of farming, but it is this kind of dauntless faith that made phoenix and made yuma and made imperial valley. twenty years ago, you could squat on imperial valley land. to-day it costs $1,000 an acre and yields high percentage on that investment. to-day you can buy casa grande lands from $5 to $25 an acre. wait till the water is turned in the ditch, and it will not seem such tedious work. if you want to know just how hard and lonely it is, drive past the homesteads just at nightfall as i did. the white tent stands in the middle of a barb wire fence strung along juniper poles and cedar shakes; no house, no stable, no buildings of any sort. the horses are staked out. a woman is cooking a meal above the chip fire. a lantern hangs on a bush in front of the tent flap. miles ahead you see another lantern gleam and swing, and dimly discern the outlines of another tent--the homesteader's nearest neighbor. just now casa grande town boasts 400 people housed chiefly in one story adobe dwellings. come in five years, and casa grande will be boasting her ten and twenty thousand people. like mushrooms overnight, the little towns spring up on irrigation lands. you catch the first glimpse of the ruins about eighteen miles out--a red roof put on by the government, then a huge, square, four story mass of ruins surrounded by broken walls, with remnants of big elevated courtyards, and four or five other compounds the size of this central house, like the bastions at the four corners of a large, old-fashioned walled fort. the walls are adobe of tremendous thickness--six feet in the house or temple part, from one to three in the stockade--a thickness that in an age of only stone weapons must have been impenetrable. the doors are so very low as to compel a person of ordinary height to bend almost double to enter; and the supposition is this was to prevent the entrance of an enemy and give the doorkeeper a chance to eject unwelcome visitors. once inside, the ceilings are high, timbered with _vigas_ of cedar strengthened by heavier logs that must have been carried in a horseless age a hundred miles from the mountains. the house is laid out on rectangular lines, and the halls straight enough but so narrow as to compel passage sidewise. in every room is a feature that has puzzled scientists both here and in the cave dwellings. doors were, of course, open squares off the halls or other rooms; but in addition to these openings, you will find close to the floor of each room, little round "cat holes," one or two or three of them, big enough for a beam but without a beam. in the cave dwellings these little round holes through walls four or five feet thick are frequently on the side of the room opposite the fireplace. fewkes and others think they may have been ventilator shafts to keep the smoke from blowing back in the room, but in casa grande they are in rooms where there is no fireplace. others think they were whispering tubes, for use in time of war or religious ceremony; but in a house of open doors, would it not have been as simple to call through the opening? yet another explanation is that they were for drainage purpose, the cave man's first rude attempt at modern plumbing; but that explanation falls down, too; for these openings don't drain in any regular direction. such a structure as casa grande must have housed a whole tribe in time of religious festival or war; so you come back to the explanation of ventilator shafts. the ceilings of casa grande are extraordinarily high; and bodies found buried in sealed up chambers behind the ruins of the other compounds are five or six feet long, showing this was no dwarf race. the rooms do not run off rectangular halls as our rooms do. you tumble down stone steps through a passage so narrow as to catch your shoulders into a room deep and narrow as a grave. then you crack your head going up other steps off this room to another compartment. bodies found at casa grande lie flat, headed to the east. bodies found in the caves are trussed up knees to chin, but as usual the bodies found at casa grande have been shipped away east to be stored in cellars instead of being left carefully glassed over, where they were found. lower altitude, or the great age, or the quality of the clays, may account for the peculiarly rich shades of the pottery found at casa grande. the purples and reds and browns are tinged an almost iridescent green. running back from the great house is a heavy wall as of a former courtyard. backing and flanking the walls appear to have been other houses, smaller but built in the same fashion as casa grande. stand on these ruined walls, or in the doorway of the great house, and you can see that five such big houses have once existed in this compound. two or three curious features mark casa grande. inside what must have been the main court of the compound are elevated earthen stages or platforms three to six feet high, solid mounds. were these the foundations of other great houses, or platforms for the religious theatricals and ceremonials which enter so largely into the lives of southwestern indians? at one place is the dry bed of a very ancient reservoir; but how was water conveyed to this big community well? the river is two miles away, and no spring is visible here. though you can see the footpath of sandaled feet worn in the very rocks of eternity, an irrigation ditch has not yet been located. this, however, proves nothing; for the sand storms of a single year would bury the springs four feet deep. a truer indication of the great age of the reservoir is the old tree growing up out of the center; and that brings up the question how we know the age of these ancient ruins--that is, the age within a hundred years or so. ask settlers round how old casa grande is; and they will tell you five or six hundred years. yet on the very face of things, casa grande must be thousands of years older than the other ruins of the southwest. why? first as to historic records: did coronado see casa grande in 1540, when he marched north across the country? he records seeing an ancient great house, where indians dwelt. bandelier, fewkes and a dozen others who have identified his itinerary, say this was not casa grande. even by 1540, casa grande was an abandoned ruin. kino, the great jesuit, was the first white man known to have visited the great house; and he gathered the pimas and papagoes about and said mass there about 1694. what a weird scene it must have been--the sacaton mountains glimmering in the clear morning light; the shy indians in gaudy tunics and yucca fiber pantaloons crowding sideways through the halls to watch what to them must have been the gorgeous vestments of the priest. then followed the elevation of the host, the bowing of the heads, the raising of the standard of the cross; and a new era, that has not boded well for the pimas and papagoes, was ushered in. then the indians scattered to their antelope plains and to the mountains; and the priest went on to the mission of san xavier del bac. the jesuits suffered expulsion, and garcez, the franciscan, came in 1775, and also held mass in casa grande. garcez says that it was a tradition among the moki of the northern desert that they had originally come from the south, from the morning glow of casa grande, and that they had inhabited the box-cañons of the gila in the days when they were "a little people." this establishes casa grande as prior to the cave dwellings of the gila or frijoles; and the cave dwellings were practically contemporaneous with the stone age and the last centuries of the ice age. now, the cave dwellings had been abandoned for centuries before the spaniards came. this puts the cave age contemporaneous with or prior to the christian era. in the very center of the casa grande reservoir, across the doorways of caves in frijoles cañon, grew trees that have taken centuries to come to maturity. the indian tradition is that soon after a very great flood of turbulent waters, in the days when the desert was knee-deep in grass, the indian gods came from the underworld to dwell in casa grande. (not so very different from theories of evolution and transmigration, is it?) the people waxed so numerous that they split off in two great families. one migrated to the south--the pimas, the papagoes, the maricopas; the others crossed the mountains to the north--the zuñis, the mokis, the hopis. yet another proof of the great antiquity is in the language. between papago and moki tongue is not the faintest resemblance. now if you trace the english language back to the days of chaucer, you know that it is still english. if you trace it back to 55 b. c. when the roman and saxon conquerors came, there are still words you recognize--thane, serf, thor, woden, moors, borough, etc. that is, you can trace resemblances in language back 1,900 years. you find no similarity in dialects between pima and moki, and very few similarities in physical conformation. the only likenesses are in types of structure in ancient houses, and in arts and crafts. both people build tiered houses. both people make wonderful pottery and are fine weavers, moki of blankets and pima of baskets; and both people ascribe the art of weaving to lessons learned from their goddess, the spider maid. there are few fireplaces among the ancient dwellings of the pimas and papagoes, but lots of fire pits--_sipapus_--where the spirits of the gods came through from the underworld. dancing floors, may pole rings, abound among the cave dwellings: mounds and platforms and courts among the casa grande ruins. the sun and the serpent were favored symbols to both people, a fact which is easily understood in a cloudless land, where serpents signified nearness of water springs, the greatest need of the people. you can see among the cave dwellings where earthquakes have tumbled down whole masses of front rooms; and both moki and papago have traditions of "the heavens raining fire." it has been suggested by scientists that the cliffs were cities of refuge in times of war, the caves and great houses were permanent dwellings. this is inferred because there were no _kivas_ or temples among the cliff ruins, and many exist among the caves and great houses. cushing and hough and i think two or three others regard casa grande as a temple or great community house, where the tribes of the southwest repaired semi-annually for their religious ceremonies and theatricals. we moderns express our emotions through the rhythm of song, of dance, of orchestra, of play, of opera, of art. the indian had his pictographs on the rocks for art, and his pottery and weaving to express his craftsmanship; but the rest of his artistic nature was expressed chiefly by religious ceremonial or theatrical dance, similar to the old miracle plays of the middle ages. for instance, the indians have not only a tradition of a great flood, but of a maiden who was drawn from the underworld by her lover playing a flute; and the flute clans celebrate this by their flute dance. the yearly cleansing of the springs was as great a religious ceremony as the israelites' cleansing of personal impurity. each family belonged to a clan, and each clan had a religious lodge, secret as any modern fraternal order. [illustration: it isn't america at all! it's arabia, and the bedouins of the painted desert are navajo boys] the mask dances of the southwest are much misunderstood by white people. we see in them only what is grotesque or perhaps obscene. yet the spirits of evil and the spirits of goodness are represented under the indian's masked dances, just as the old miracle plays represented faith, hope, charity, lust, greed, etc. there is the bird dance representing the gyrations of hummingbird, mocking-bird, quail, eagle, vulture. there is the dance of the "mud-heads." have we no "mud-heads" befuddling life at every turn of the way? there is the dance of the gluttons and the monsters. have we no unaccountable monsters in modern life? read the record of a single day's crime; and ask yourself what mad motive tempted humans to such certain disaster. we explain a whole rigmarole of motives and inheritance and environment. the indian shows it up by his dance of the monsters. perhaps one of the most beautiful ceremonials is the corn dance. picture to yourself the _kivas_ crowded with spectators. the priests come down bearing blankets in a circle. the blanket circle surrounds the altar fire. the audience sits breathless in the dark. musicians strike up a beating on the stone gong. a flute player trills his air. the blankets drop. in the flare of the altar fire is seen a field of corn, round which the actors dance. the priests rise. the blankets hide the fire. it is the indian curtain drop. when you look again, there is neither pageant of dancers, nor field of corn. so the play goes on--a dozen acts typifying a dozen scenes in a single night. good counsel, too, they gave in those miracle plays and ceremonial dances. "if wounded in battle, don't cry out like a child. pull out the arrow. slip off and die with silence in the throat." "when you go to the hunt, travel with a light blanket." we talk of getting back to mother earth. the indian chants endless songs to the wonder of the great earth magician, creator of life and crops. fire, too, plays a mysterious part in all theories of life creation; and this, too, is the subject of a dance. then came dark days. tribes from the far athabasca came down like the vandals of europe--navajo and apache, relentless warriors. from great houses the people of the southwest retired to cliffs and caves. when the spaniards came with firearms and horses, the situation was almost one of extermination for the sedentary indians; and they retired to such heights as the high mesas of the tusayan desert. whether when white man stopped raid by the warlike tribes, it was better or worse for the peaceful pima and papago and moki, it is hard to say; for the white man began to take the indian's water and the indian's land. it's a story of slow tragedy here. in the days of the overland rush to california, when every foot of the trail was beset by apache and navajo, it was the pima and papago offered shelter and protection to the white overlander. what does the indian know of "prior rights" in filing for water? have not these waters been his since the days of his forefathers, when men came with their families from the morning glow to the box-cañons of the gila and frijoles? if prior rights mean anything, has not the pima prior rights by ten thousand years? but the pima has not a little slip of government paper called a deed. the big irrigation companies have tapped the streams above the indian reserve; and the waters have been diverted. they don't come to the indians any more. all the indian gets is the overflow of the torrential rains--that only brings the alkali wash to the surface of the land and does not flush it off. the pima can no longer raise crops. slowly and very surely, he is being reduced to starvation in a country overflowing with plenty, in a country which has taken his land and his waters, in a country whose people he loyally protected as they crossed the continent to california. what are the american people going to do about it? nothing, of course. when the wrong has been done and the tribe reduced to extermination by inches of starvation, some muckraker will rise and write an article about it, or some ethnologist a brochure about an exterminated people. meantime, the children of the pimas and papagoes have not enough to eat owing to the white man taking all their water. they are the people of "the golden age," "the morning glow." we drove back from casa grande by starlight over the antelope plains. i looked back to the crumbling ruins of the great house, and its five compounds, where the men and women and children of the morning glow came to dance and worship according to all the light they had. its falling walls and dim traditions and fading outlines seemed typical of the passing of the race. why does one people pass and another come? christians say that those who fear not god, shall pass away from the memory of men, forever. evolutionists say that those who are not fit, shall not survive. the spaniard of the southwest shrugs his gay shoulders under a tilted sombrero hat, and says _quien sabe?_ "who knows?" chapter xv san xavier del bac mission, tucson, arizona it is the desert. incense and frankincense, fragrance of roses and resin of pines, cedar smells smoking in the sunlight, scent the air. sunrise comes over the mountain rim in shafts of a chariot wheel; and the mountains, engirting the desert round and round, are themselves veiled in a mist, intangible and shimmering as dreams--a mist shot with the gold of sunlight; and the air is champagne, ozone, nectar. except in the dead heat of midsummer, snow shines opal from the mountain peaks; and in the outline of yon tucson range, the figure of a giant can be seen lying prone, face to sunlight, face to stars, face to the dews of heaven, as the faces of god-like races ever are. you wind round a juniper grove--"cedars of lebanon," the old testament would call it. there is the silver tinkle of a bell; and the flocks come down to the watering pools, flocks led by maidens, as in the days of rachael and jacob; and the shepherds--only they call them "herders," fight for first place round the water pool, as they did in the days of rachael and jacob. then, you come to a walled spring where date palms shade the ground. and the maidens are there, "drawing water from the well," carrying water in ollas on their heads, bronzed statues of perfect poise and perfect grace, daughters of the desert, hard lovers, hard haters, veiled as all mysteries are veiled. you turn but a spur in the mountains: you dip into a valley smoking with the dews of the morning; or come up a mesa,--and a winged horseman spurs past, hair tied back by red scarf, pantaloons of white linen, sash of rainbow colors; and you are amid the dwellings of men. strings of red chile like garlands of huge red corals hang against the sun-baked brick or clay. curs come out and bark at the heels of your horse--that is why the oriental always called an enemy "a dog." pottery makers look up from their kiln fires of sheep manure, at you, the remote passerby. the basket workers weave and weave like the three fates of life. one old woman is so aged and wizened and infirm that she must sit inside her basket to carry out the pattern of what life is to her; and the sunlight strikes back from the heat-baked walls in a glare that stabs the eye; and you hear the tinkle of the bells from the watering pools. then, suddenly, for the first time, you see it. you have turned a spur of the mountains, dipped into a valley, come up on the mesa into the sunlight, and there it is--the eternal mountains with their eternal lavender veil round the valley like the tiered seats of a coliseum, the mist like a theater drop curtain where you may paint your own pictures of fancy, and in the midst of the great amphitheater rises an island rock; and on the island rock is a grotto; and in the grotto is the figure of the mother of christ--in purplish blue, of course, as betokens eternal purity--and below the island of rock in the midst of the amphitheater something swims into your ken that is neither of heaven nor earth. white, glaringly white as the very spotlessness of heaven, twin-towered as befitting the dual nature of man, flesh and spirit; pointed in its towers and minarets and belfries, betokening the reaching of the spirit of man up to god; lions between the arches of the roofed piazzas, as betokening the lion-hearted spirit of man fighting his enemies of flesh and spirit up to god! palms before arched white walls shut out the world--peace and seclusion and purity! you dip into a valley, the scent of the cedars in your nostrils and lungs, the peace of god in your heart. then you come up to a high mesa and you see the vision of the white symbol swimming between earth and sky but always pointing skyward. where are you, anyway: in persia amid floating palaces, on the nile, approaching the palaces of allahabad in india, or coming up to moorish minarets and twin towns of the alhambra in spain? believe me, you are in neither europe, asia, nor africa. you are in a much despised land called "america," whence wealth and culture run off to europe, asia and africa, to find what they call "art" and "antiquity." it is october 3rd in tucson, arizona; not far from the borders of old mexico as the rest of the world reckon distance. the rain has been falling in torrents. rain is not supposed to fall in the desert, but it has been coming down in slant torrents and the sky is reflected everywhere in the roadside pools. the air is soft as rose petals, for the altitude is only 2,000 feet; too high to be languid, too low for the sting of autumn frosts. we motor, first, through the old spanish town--relics of a grandeur that america does not know to-day, a grandeur more of spirit than display. the old spanish grandee never counted his dollars, nor measured up the value of a meal to a guest. but he counted honor dear as the virgin mary, and made a gamble of life, and hated tensely as he loved. the old mansion houses are fallen in disrepute, to-day. they are given over, for the most part to chinese and japanese merchants; but through the open windows you can still see plazas and patios of inner courtyards, where oleanders are in perpetual bloom and roses climb the trellis work, and the parrot calls out "swear words" of spanish pirate and highwayman. st. augustine mission, where heroes shed martyr blood, is now a saloon and dance hall, but where rags and tatters flaunted from the clothes lines of negro and japanese and chinese tenant, i could not but think of the torn flags that mark the most heroic action of regiments. [illustration: the mission of the san xavier at tucson, arizona, one of the most ancient in the new world, has an almost oriental aspect] from the spanish town of tucson, which any other nation would have treasured as a landmark and capitalized in dollars for the tourist, you pass modern mansions that wisely follow the spanish-moorish type of architecture, most suited to desert atmosphere. then you come on the tucson farms company irrigation project, now sagebrush and cactus land put under the ditch from santa cruz river and turned over to settlers from old mexico--who were driven out by the revolution--for $25 an acre. you see the lonely eyed woman pioneer sitting at the door of the tent flap. moisture steams up from the river like a morning incense to the sun. the tucson range of mountains shimmers. giant cactus stand ghost-like, centuries old, amid the mesquite bush; and in the columnar hole of the cactus trees you see the holes where the little desert wren has pecked through for water in a waterless season. then, before you know it, you are in the papago indian reserve. the finest basket makers of the world, these papagoes are. they make baskets of such close weave that they will hold water, and you see the papago indian women with jars--ollas--of water on their head going up and down from the water pools. basket makers weave in front of the sun-baked adobe walls where hang the red strings of chile like garlands. on the whole, the indian faces are very happy and good. they do not care for wealth, these children of the desert. give them "this day their daily bread," and they are content, and thank god. then the mountains close in a cup round the shimmering valley. in the center of the valley rises an island of rock, the rock of the grotto of the virgin; and a white dome and twin towers show, glare white, almost unearthly, with arches pointing to heaven, and lions in white all along the roof typifying the strength that is of god. there is a dome in the middle of the roof line--that is the moorish influence brought in by spain. there are twin towers on each side; and in the towers on the right hand side are three brass bells to call to work and matins and vespers. it may be said here that the french mission may always be known by its single spire and cross; the spanish mission by its twin towers and bells. the french mission rings its bell. the spanish mission strikes its bells with a hammer or gong. one utters cheer. the other sounds a rich, low, mellow call to worship. the walls and pillars and arches are all marble white; and you are looking on one of the most ancient missions of the new world--san xavier del bac, of tucson, arizona. the whole effect is so oriental as to be startling. the white dome might be indian or persian, but the pointed arches and minarets are unmistakably moorish--that is, moorish brought across by spain. the entrance is under an arched white wall, and the courtyard looks out behind through arched white gateway to the distant mountains. here four sisters of st. joseph conduct a school for the little papagoes; and what a school it is! it might do honor to the alhambra. palms line the esplanade in front of the arched, walled entrance. collie dogs rise lazily under the deep embrasures of the arched plazas. a parrot calls out some spanish gibberish of bygone days. a snow-white persian kitten frisks its plumy tail across the brick-paved walk of the inner patio; and across the courtyard i catch a glimpse of two shetland ponies nosing for notice over a fence beside an ancient don quixote nag that evidently does duty for dignitaries above shetland ponies. an air of repose, of antiquity, of apartness, rests on the marble white mission, as of oriental dreams and splendor or european antiquity and culture. i ring the bell of the reception room to the right of the church entrance. not a sound but the echo of my own ring! i enter, cross through the parlor and come on the spanish patio or central courtyard. what a place for prayers and meditation and the soul's repose! arched promenades line both sides of the inner court. here jesuit and franciscan monks have walked and prayed and meditated since the sixteenth century. by the hum as of busy bees to the right, i locate the schoolrooms, and come on the office of the mother superior aquinias. what a pity so many of us have an early impress of religion as of vinegar aspect and harsh duty hard as flint and unhuman as a block of wood. this mother superior is merry-faced and red-blooded and human and dear. she evidently believes that goodness should be warmer, dearer, truer, more attractive and kindly than evil; and all the little indian wards of the four schoolrooms look happy and human and red-blooded as the mother superior. a collie pup flounders round us up and down the court walk where the old missionary monks suffered cruel martyrdom. poll, the parrot, utters sententious comment; and the shetland ponies whinny greetings to their mistress. all this does not sound like vinegar goodness, does it? but it is when you enter the church that you get the real surprise. three times, the desertion of this mission was forced by massacre and pillage. twice it was abandoned owing to the expulsion of jesuit and franciscan by temporal power. for seventy years, the only inhabitants of a temple stately as the alhambra were the night bats, the indian herders, the border outlaws of the united states and mexico. yet, when you enter, the walls are covered with wonderful mural painting. saints' statues stand about the altar, and grouped about the dome of the groined ceiling are such paintings as would do honor to a european cathedral. the brick and adobe walls are from two to six feet thick. not a nail has ever been driven in the adobe edifice. the doors are of old wood in huge panels mortised and dovetailed together. the latch is an iron bar carved like a damascus sword. the altar is a mass of gilding and purple. to be sure, the saints' fingers have been hacked off by wandering cowboy and outlaw and indian; but you find that sort of vandalism in the british museum and westminster abbey. the british museum had careful custodians. for over seventy years, this ancient mission stood open to the winds of heaven and the torrential rains and the midnight bats. only the faithfulness of an old indian chief kept the sacred vessels from desecration. when the fathers were expelled for political reasons, old josé, of the papagoes, carried off the sacred chalices and candles till the _padres_ should return, when he brought them from hiding. gothic temples are usually built in one long, clear arch. the roof of san xavier del bac is a series of the most perfect groined domes, with the deep embrasures of the windows on each side colored shell tints in wave-lines. because of the height and depth of the windows, the light is wonderfully clear and soft. the church is used now only by indian children; and did indian children ever have such a magnificent temple in which to worship? to the left of the entrance is a wonderful old baptismal font of pure copper, which has been the envy of all collectors. one wonders looking at the ancient vessel whether it was baptized with the blood of all the martyrs who died for san xavier--francesca garcez, for instance? there is a window in this baptistry, too, that is the envy of critics and collectors. it is set more deeply in the wall than any window in the tower of london, with pointed gothic top that sends shafts of sunlight clear across the earthen floor. from the baptistry i ascended to the upper towers. the stairs are old timber set in adobe and brick, through solid walls of a thickness of six feet. the view from the belfries above is wonderful. you see the mountains shimmering in the haze. you see the little square adobe matchbox houses of papago indians, with the red chile hanging against the wall, and the women coming from the spring, and the men husking the corn. you wonder if when san xavier was besieged and besieged and besieged yet again by apache and navajo and pima, the beleaguered priests took refuge in these towers, and came down to die, only to save their mission. against indian arms, it may be said, san xavier would be an impregnable fortress. yet the priests of san xavier were three times utterly destroyed by indians. when you come to seek the history of san xavier, you will find it as difficult to get, as a guide out to the mission. as a purely tourist resort, leaving out all piety and history, it should be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to tucson. yet it took me the better part of a day to find out that san xavier is only nine miles and not eighteen from tucson. and this is typical of the difficulty of getting the real history of the place. jesuit relations of new france have been published in every kind of edition, cheap and dear. jesuit relations of new spain, who knows? the franciscans succeeded the jesuits; and the franciscans do not read the history of the jesuits. it comes as a shock to know that spanish _padres_ were on the colorado and santa cruz at the time jacques cartier was exploring the st. lawrence. we have always believed that spanish _conquistadores_ slaughtered the indians most ruthlessly. study the mission records and you get another impression, an impression of penniless, friendless, unprotected friars "footing" it 600, 700, 900 miles from old mexico to the inmost recesses of the desert cañons. in late days, when a friar set out on his journey, twenty mounted men acted as his escort; and that did not always save him from death; for there were stretches of the journey ninety miles without water, infested every mile of the way by apaches; and these stretches were known as the journeys of death. when you think of the ruthless slaughter of the _conquistadores_, think also of the friars tramping the parched sand plains for 900 miles. while fray juan de la asuncion and pedro nadol are the first missionaries known in arizona about 1538, father kino was the great missionary of 1681 to 1690, officiating at the arizona missions of san xavier del bac and tumacacori. there are reports of the jesuits being among the apaches as early as 1630--say early as the days of the jesuits in canada; but who the missionaries were, i am unable to learn. rebellion and massacre devastated the missions in 1680 and in 1727; but by 1754, the missionaries were back at san xavier and had twenty-nine stations commanding seventy-three different pueblos. in 1767, for political reasons, the jesuits suffered expulsion; and the franciscans came in--tramping, as told before, 600 and 900 miles. it was under the franciscans that the present structure of san xavier was built. garcez was the most famous of the franciscans. he spent seven years among the pimas and papagoes and yumas; but one hot midsummer sunday--july 17, 1781--during early mass, the indians rose and slew four priests, all the spanish soldiers and all the spanish servants. garcez was among the martyrs. san xavier, as it at present stands, is supposed to have been completed in 1797; but in 1827-9, came another political turnover and all foreign missionaries were expelled. tumacacori and san xavier were always the most important of the arizona missions. originally quite as magnificent a structure as san xavier, tumacacori has been allowed to go to ruin. of late, it has been made a united states monument. it is a day's journey from tucson. to describe san xavier is quite impossible, except through canvas and photograph. there is something intangibly spiritual and unearthly in its very architecture; and this is the spirit in which it was originally built. at daybreak, a bell called the builders to prayers of consecration. at nightfall, vesper bells sent the laborer home with the blessing of the church. for the most part, the workers were mexicans and indians; and as far as can be gathered from the annals, voluntary workers. the papagoes and pimas at that time numbered 5,000, of whom 500 lived round the missions, the rest spending the summers hunting in the mountains. [illustration: on top of the world--a moki city on a mesa in the painted desert. at the left are the ends of a ladder leading from an underground council chamber] when the american government took over arizona, san xavier went under the diocese of new mexico. from santa fe, new mexico, to tucson was 600 miles across desert mountains and cañons, every foot of the way infested by apache warriors; and the heroism of that trail was marked by the same courage and constancy as signalized the founding and maintenance of the other early spanish missions. it would be a mistake to say that san xavier has been restored. restoration implies innovation; and san xavier stands to-day as it stood in the sixteen hundreds, when father kino, the famous mathematician and jesuit from bavaria, came wandering up from the missions of lower california, preaching to the yumas and pimas of the hot, smoking hot, gila desert, and held mass in casa grande, the great house or garden of eden of the indian's morning glow. a lucky thing it is that restoration did not imply change in san xavier; for the mission floats in the shimmering desert air, unearthly, eerie, unreal, a thing of beauty and dreams rather than latter day life, white as marble, twin-towered, roof domed and so dazzling in the sunlight to the unaccustomed eye that you somehow know why rows of restful, drowsy palms were planted in line along the front of the wall. perhaps it is that it comes on you as such a complete surprise. perhaps it is the desert atmosphere in this cup of the mountains; but all the other missions of the southwest are adobe gray, or earth color showing through a veneer of drab whitewash. there is the giant, century-old desert cactus twisted and gnarled with age like the trees in dante's inferno, but with bird nests in the pillared trunks, where little wrens peck through the bark for water. you look again. a horseman has just dismounted beneath the shade of a fine old twisted oak; but beyond the oak the vision is there, glare, dazzling, white, twin-towered and arched, floating in mid-air, a vision of beauty and dreams. life seems to sleep at san xavier. the mountains hemming in the valley seem to sleep. the shimmering blue valley sleeps. the sunlight sleeps against the glare white walls. the huge old mortised door to the church stands open, all silent and asleep. the door of the mission parlor stands open--sunlight asleep on a checkered floor. you enter. your footsteps have an echo of startling impudence--modern life jumping back into past centuries! you ring the gong. the sound stabs the sleeping silence, and you almost expect to see ghosts of franciscan friar and jesuit priest come walking along the arcaded pavement of the inner courtyard to ask you what all this modern noise is about; but no ghosts come. in fact, no one comes. san xavier is all asleep. you cross through the parlor to the inner patio or courtyard, arched all around three sides with the fourth side looking through a wonderfully high arched gateway out to the far mountains. polly turns on her perch in her cage, and goes back to sleep. the white persian kitten frisks his white-plumed tail; and also turns over and goes to sleep. two collie dogs don't even emit a "woof." they arch their pointed noses with the fine old aristocratic air of the unspoken question: what are you of the twenty century doing wandering back into the mystery and mysticism and quietude of the religious sixteen hundred? but if you keep on going, you will find the gentle-voiced sisterhood teaching the little pimas and papagoes in the schoolrooms. san xavier, architecturally, is sheer delight to the eye. the style is almost pure moorish. the yard walls are arched in harmony with the arched outline of the roof; and in the inner courtyard you will notice the spanish lion at the intersection of all the roof arches. in front of the mission buildings is a walled space of some sixty by forty feet, where the indians used to assemble for discussion of secular matters before worship. on the front wall in high relief are placed the arms of st. francis of assisi, and in the sacristry to the right of the altar you will find mural drawings and a painting of saint ignatius. thus san xavier claims as her founders and patrons both franciscan and jesuit. this is easily explained. the franciscans came up overland across the desert from the city of mexico. the jesuits came up inland from their mission on the gulf of california. father kino, the jesuit, from a bavarian university, was the first missionary to hold services among the pimas and papagoes, and if he did not lay the foundations of san xavier, then they were laid by his immediate successors. the escutcheon of the franciscans on the wall is a twisted cord and a cross on which are nailed the arms of the christ and the arm of st. francis. the christ arm is bare. the franciscan's arm is covered. unlike other missions built of adobe, san xavier is of stone and brick. it is 100 by thirty feet. the transept on each side of the nave runs out twenty-one feet square. the roof above the nave is supported by groined arches from door to altar. the cupola above the altar is fifty feet to the dome. the other vaults are only thirty feet high. the windows are high in the clearstory and set so deeply in the casement that the light falling on the mural paintings and fresco work is sifted and softened. practically all the walls, cupola, dome, transept, nave, are covered with mural paintings. there is the coming of the spirit to the disciples. there is the last supper. there is the conception. there is the rosary. there is the hidden life of the lord. the main altar has evidently been constructed by the jesuits; for the statue of st. francis xavier stands below the virgin between figures of st. peter and st. paul and god, the creator. on the groined arches of the dome are figures of the wise men, the flight to egypt, the shepherds, the annunciation. gilded arabesques colored in moorish shell tints adorn the main altar. statues of the saints stand in the alcoves and niches of the pillars and vaults. two small doors lead up to the towers from the main door. look well at these doors and stairways. not a nail has been driven. the doors are mortised of solid pieces. the first flight of stairs leads to the choir. around the choir are more mural paintings. two more twists of the winding stair; and you are in the belfry. twenty-two more steps bring you to the summit of the tower--a galleried cupola, seventy-five feet above the ground, where you may look out on the whole world. pause for a moment, and look out. the mountains shimmer in their pink mists. the sunlight sleeps against the adobe walls of the scattered indian house. you can hear the drone of the children from the schoolrooms behind the mission. you can see the mortuary chapel down to the right and the lions supporting the arches of the mission roof. father kino was a famous european scholar and gentleman. he threw aside scholarship. he threw aside comfort. he threw aside fame; and he came to found a mission amid arabs of the american desert. the hands that wrought these paintings on the walls were not the hands of bunglers. they were the hands of artists, who wrought in love and devotion. three times, san xavier was dyed in martyr blood by indian revolt. priests, whose names even have been lost in the chronicles, were murdered on the altars here, thrown down the stairs, cut to pieces in their own mission yard. before a death which they coveted as glory, what a life they must have led. to tucson mission was nine miles; but to tumacacori was eighty; to old mexico, 900. occasionally, they had escort of twelve soldiers for these long trips; but the soldiers' vices made so much trouble for the holy fathers that the missionaries preferred to travel alone, or with only a lay brother. sandaled missionaries tramped the cactus desert in june, when the heat was at its height; and they traversed the mountains when winter snows filled all the passes. they have not even left annals of their hardships. you know that in such a year, father kino tramped from the gulf of california to the gila, and from the gila to the rio grande. you know in such another year, nineteen priests were slain in one day. on such another date, a missionary was thrown over a precipice; or slain on the high altar of san xavier. and always, the priests opposed the outrages of the soldiery, the injustice of the ruling rings. father kino petitions the royal house of spain in 1686 that converts be not forcibly seized and "dragged off to slavery in the mines, where they were buried alive and seldom survived the abuse." he gets a respite from the king for all converts for twenty years. he does not permit converts to be taken as slaves in the mines or slaves in the pearl fisheries; so the ruling rings of old mexico obstruct his enterprises, lie about his missions, slander him to the patrons who supply him with money, and often reduce his missions to desperate straits; but wherever there is a mission, father kino sees to it that there are a few goats. the goats supply milk and meat. the fathers weave their own clothing, grow their own food, and hold the fort against the enemy as against the subtle designs of the devil. these fathers mix their own mortar, make their own bricks, cut their own beams, lay the plaster with their own hands. now, remember that the priests who did all this were men who had been artists, who had been scholars, who had been court favorites of europe. father kino was, himself, of the royal house of bavaria. but jealousy left the missions unprotected by the soldiers. soldier vices roused the indians to fury; and the priests were the first to fall victims. go across the moki desert. you will find peach orchards planted by the friars; but you cannot find the graves of the dead priests. we considered the apaches a dangerous lot as late as 1880. in 1686, in 1687, in 1690, father kino crossed apache land alone. i cannot find any record of the spanish missions at this period ever receiving more than $15,000 a year for their support. ordinarily, a missionary's salary was about $150 a year. out of that, if he employed soldiers, he must pay their wages and keep. well, by and by, the jealousy of the governing ring, kept from abusing the indians by the priests, brought about the expulsion of the jesuits. the franciscans took up the work where the jesuits left off. came another political upheaval. the franciscans were driven out. san xavier's broken windows blew to the rains and winds of the seven heavens. cowboys, outlaws, sheep herders, housed beneath mural paintings and frescoes that would have been the pride of a european palace. came american occupation; and san xavier was--not restored--but redeemed. it was completely cleaned out and taken over by the church as a mission for the indians. to-day, no one worships in san xavier but the little indian scholars. look at the drawings of christ, of the virgin, of the wise men! look at the dreams of faith wrought into the aged and beautiful walls! frankly--let us be brutally frank and truthful, was it all worth while? wouldn't kino have done better to have continued to grace the courts of bavaria? in the old days, pima and papago roped their wives as in a hunt, and if the fancy prompted, abused them to death. on the walls of san xavier is the annunciation to the virgin, another view of birth and womanhood. in the old days, the indians killed a child at birth, if they didn't want it. on the walls of san xavier are pictured the wise men adoring a child. spanish rings and trusts wanted little slaves of industry as american rings and trusts want them to-day. behold a christ upon the walls setting free the slaves! was it all worth while? it depends on your point of view and what you want. though the winds of the seven heavens blew through san xavier for seventy years and bats habited the frescoed arches, it stands to-day as it stood two centuries ago, a thing unearthly, of visions and dreams; pointing the way, not to gain, but to goodness; making for a little space of time on a little space of desert earth what a peaceful heaven life might be. the end in this book was transcribed in musicxml by linda cantoni. navaho legends collected and translated by washington matthews m.d., ll.d. major u.s. army, ex-president of the american folk-lore society, etc. with introduction, notes, illustrations, texts interlinear translations, and melodies boston and new york published for the american folk-lore society by houghton, mifflin and company london: david nutt, 270, 271 strand leipzig: otto harrassowitz, querstrasse, 14 1897 five hundred copies printed, of which this is no. 199 copyright, 1897, by the american folk-lore society. all rights reserved. the riverside press, cambridge, mass., u.s.a. electrotyped and printed by h. o. houghton and company. contents. page introduction 1 legends. the navaho origin legend. i. the story of the emergence 63 ii. early events in the fifth world 76 iii. the war gods 104 iv. growth of the navaho nation 135 nati'nesthani 160 the great shell of kintyél 195 notes 209 bibliographic notes 276 melodies 279 illustrations. plate page i. navaho gods as represented in the dry-paintings frontispiece ii. san francisco mountain, arizona 63 iii. distant view of san mateo mountain, new mexico 76 iv. nayénezgani 104 v. el cabezon 114 vi. lava flow in the valley of the san josé, new mexico 118 vii. to`badzistsíni 134 figure 1. manuelito (portrait) 3 2. mariano (portrait) 4 3. jake the silversmith (portrait) 5 4. tánapa (portrait) 6 5. hádapa (portrait) 7 6. navaho man (portrait) 9 7. navaho man (portrait) 10 8. navaho skull, flattened at occiput 11 9. navaho baby-case or cradle 12 10. conical lodge with storm-door 13 11. hut of logs 14 12. hut built partly of stone 15 13. summer houses 16 14. medicine-lodge 16 15. sudatory 17 16. sacred basket 18 17. sacred basket 19 18. silver ornaments 20 19. woman spinning 21 20. ordinary loom 23 21. loom for weaving diagonal cloth 25 22. the white house 36 23. talking kethawn 39 24. circle kethawn 40 25. kethawns (sacrificial sticks and cigarettes) in basket 43 26. mask of yucca 46 27. mask of hastséyalti 47 28. mask of yébaad or goddess 48 29. picture of silnéole, a dry-painting of the night chant 49 30. alíli or show ("dance") of the nahikáï 52 31. hatáli natlói (portrait) 57 32. the shaman hatáli nez (tall chanter) (portrait) 59 33. trail of estsánatlehi (diagram) 148 34. trail of turkey approaching his master (diagram) 171 35. trail of man and turkey (diagram) 173 36. ruin in the chaco canyon, probably kintyél 195 37. circle of branches of the rite of the mountain chant 206 38. natural bridge, near fort defiance, arizona 227 39. yucca baccata 228 40. drumstick made of yucca leaves 229 41. diagram of bow-symbol on left leg of the personator of nayénezgani 253 42. diagram of queue-symbol on left leg of the personator of to`badzistsíni 253 map of the navaho country 1 navaho legends. introduction. prefatory remarks. 1. the legends contained in this book are those of the navaho[1] indians, a tribe living in the southwestern portion of the united states; mostly in the territories of new mexico and arizona, but partly in the states of colorado and utah. a definite reservation of over 12,000 square miles has been set apart for them; but in every direction, beyond the borders of this reservation, isolated families and small bands may be found dwelling, either temporarily or permanently, in localities where there are springs, streams, pools, or artificial reservoirs of water. some have taken up homesteads--or have otherwise acquired a legal title to lands beyond the borders of the reservation; others are merely squatters. a brief description of these indians--their arts, religion, ceremonies, etc.--is included in this introduction, in the belief that, if the reader possesses some knowledge of the navaho before he begins to read the tales, he may have a better understanding of the latter. but much more information, of interest to the ethnographer, will be found in notes. some items in the introduction could not properly have appeared in the notes, as there was nothing in the tales to suggest them. other items might perhaps as well have been transferred to the notes; the decision to put them in the introduction was often arbitrary. 2. title of book.--in selecting a title for this book, the word legends was chosen, rather than myths, for the reason that the tales contained herein, though mostly mythical, are not altogether such. in the origin legend, the last chapter, "the growth of the navaho nation," is in part traditional or historical, and it is even approximately correct in many of its dates, as has been shown by frederick webb hodge in his paper on the "early navaho and apache."[301] home of the navahoes. 3. the land which the navahoes occupy is arid, though not an absolute desert. the precipitation at an altitude of 7,000 feet amounts on an average to only 14.10 inches during the year (at lower altitudes it is less, at higher altitudes greater), and this is generally confined to two short seasons of moisture separated from one another by months of absolute drought, which, except in specially favored localities, would destroy any of our ordinary field-crops. but there are small spots, far apart, where irrigation can be practised, and there are other places, apparently deserts, which no white man would think of cultivating, but where indians raise meagre crops of corn, squashes, and melons. 4. soil.--he who stands on the brow of the mesa at the indian pueblo of walpi, in arizona, may unravel one secret of indian agriculture in the arid region, and learn why ancient ruins may be found in the most desolate parts. six hundred feet below him stretches a sandy plain which at most seasons of the year seems almost an absolute desert; yet in summer it is green with rows of dwarf corn. little rain falls on it and there is no irrigation; yet the corn grows and furnishes a return which repays an indian, at least, for his labor. through the plain runs a gully which at certain seasons drains the water from a high table-land beyond. the water does not all flow off, but in part settles under the sandy surface, and keeps the subsoil moist throughout the year. by planting deep, the indian farmers reach this moist subsoil, and place their seeds where the long drought cannot destroy them. on the side of the mesa, peach-trees flourish, with hidden moisture that comes out between the rocky strata at the mesa's edge. localities similar to those described are found in the navaho land, and similarly used by the navaho for farms and peach orchards. the myths make frequent allusions to such farms or gardens. 5. a few fields have recently been made by white men in the high meadows of the zuñi mountains at altitudes above 8,000 feet, where potatoes, oats, barley, and garden vegetables are raised without irrigation; but farming at such altitudes was never tried by the navahoes, and they knew nothing of cultivating the crops named above. beside their aboriginal crops, they have for a long time raised a little wheat. potatoes grow wild in the navaho country. 6. mines.--fortunately for the navahoes, no mines of precious metals have yet been discovered on their reservation; although for years past rumors of such discoveries have from time to time been circulated, and unwelcome prospectors have frequently invaded their territory. for many years previous to 1892 the principal attraction lay in the carrizo mountains.[2] a legend of a mine called the lost adam, and of miners murdered in these mountains, had circulated long through colorado mining camps. troubles between intruders and indians became so frequent and threatening in this region that general mccook, then commanding the department of arizona, which included the navaho reservation, determined to make an expedition and settle, if possible, the question of the existence of valuable mines in the carrizo mountains. a commission, consisting of gen. a. mcd. mccook, u.s.a., ex-gov. john l. barstow of vermont, and prof. j. g. allyn of new mexico, was appointed. the commission entered the mountains with a mounted escort in may, 1892, and invited prospectors who had previously visited the region to come and show where the mineral lay. they came, and then it appeared they had staked off various claims and given them felicitous names such as the western miners know how to coin,--the "lucky bill," the "boggy snoggy," etc. specimen ores were collected from every point where they were seen, and submitted to careful expert examination; but all proved worthless. some fine gold has been found in the sands of the san juan river,[3] within the navaho reservation; but it has not been found profitable to work for it. 7. surface--forests.--the surface of the country over which the navahoes are scattered varies in altitude from 4,000 feet, or less, in the valley of the colorado, to over 11,000 feet in the high peaks of tsisnadzi'ni,[52] san mateo,[54] san francisco,[56] and the san juan[58] range, which traditionally border their land. in the central and more thickly inhabited portion the highest eminence is in the tuincha mountains, 9,575 feet. the average altitude is about 6,000 feet. the country consists mostly of great plains and of plateaux or mesas. while the lower levels, except in the bottom-lands of the constantly flowing rivers, are destitute of trees, the mesas, at altitudes of from 6,000 to 7,000 feet, are well covered with low forests of piñon (pinus edulis), red cedar (juniperus virginianus) and juniper (juniperus occidentalis). at altitudes of 7,000 feet white pine (pinus ponderosa) is sparingly found; but at altitudes of 8,000 feet or more it grows abundantly and attains a good size. spruce (pseudotsuga taxifolia) is found in shaded valleys, and on northern hill-slopes above 7,000 feet, but it does not form an important part of the forest. it is an essential element in certain rites. cottonwood (populus monolifera and p. wislizenii), aspen (populus tremuloides), oak (quercus gambellii), oak-bark juniper (juniperus pachyphloea), and other trees grow less abundantly. 8. pasturage--flocks and herds.--while the navaho indians cultivate the soil, it is evident, from what has been said, that they do not do so to any great extent. their crops furnish but a small part of their subsistence. but their sterile country is fairly well adapted to the raising of sheep and goats. these form their chief food supply, and the former their principal source of wealth. with the money received for their wool they purchase flour and other provisions from the white traders, as well as various articles of luxury and utility. they possess many ponies and ride a great deal. they raise a few neat cattle. 9. as domesticated sheep and goats were unknown in america previous to the discovery by columbus, and were unknown in new mexico previous to the expedition of coronado in a.d. 1540, it follows that the navahoes have not been shepherds for many centuries. it would appear from their legends that it is not many years since they have become a prosperous and wealthy people (and such they now are, for savages); that in old days they were even poor hunters; and that they lived largely on the seeds of wild plants and on small animals that they caught in fall-traps. how meagrely they were dressed and equipped the legends also tell us. (see pars. 382, 384, 391.) population. 10. no exact census of the tribe has ever been taken, and it would not now be an easy task to take one, because the navahoes are scattered so widely and over such a wild and rugged territory. their low huts, built in tangled cedar-woods or in regions of scattered rocks, are often so obscurely hidden that one may ride through a cluster of a dozen inhabited houses thinking there is not an indian within ten miles of him. when the navahoes were held in captivity at fort sumner, new mexico, from 1863 to 1867, they depended for subsistence mostly on rations supplied by the united states, and then these captives, at least, could be accurately counted. there were in 1867 7,300 in captivity.[298] owing to desertions on the one hand, and additional surrenders on the other, the numbers varied from time to time. 11. but while the majority of the tribe were prisoners of war, it is well known that all were not captured during general carson's invasion in 1863, but that many still roamed at large while their brethren were prisoners. the count of the prisoners, therefore, does not show the strength of the tribe. 12. perhaps the most accurate census ever taken was that of 1869. "in november of 1869 a count was made of the tribe, in order to distribute among them 30,000 head of sheep and 2,000 goats. due notice was given months before, and the tribe was present. the indians were all put in a large corral, and counted as they went in. a few herders, holding the small herds that they had then bunched on the surrounding hills, were not in the corral. the result of this count showed that there were less than 9,000 navahoes all told, making a fair allowance for all who had failed to come in. at that time everything favored getting a full count; rations were issued to them every four days; they had but little stock, and, in addition to the issue of the sheep and goats, there were also two years' annuities to be given out. the season of the year was favorable, the weather fine, and they were all anxious to get the sheep and goats and annuities."[268] 13. in 1890 a count of these indians was made as a part of the eleventh census of the united states.[297] before the count was begun, the writer was informed by one of the enumerators that the plan to be employed was this: the navaho country was to be divided into a number of districts, and a special enumerator was to be sent to each district at the same time to visit each hut and take the number of each family. whether this method was carried out, the report of the eleventh census does not tell us. but this plan, while probably the best that could be employed at the time with the means allotted, was very imperfect and admitted of numerous sources of error, of which two may be specified. many huts might easily be passed unnoticed, for reasons already given, and this would make the enumeration too low. many families might easily have been counted in more than one district, for the navaho frequently shifts his abode, and this would make the count too high. the result of this enumeration was to give the tribe a population of 17,204 for that year. white men, living in the navaho country at the time, generally considered the estimate excessive. if the count of 1869 be approximately correct, that of 1890 is probably not. it is not reasonable to suppose that by natural increase alone--and no other source of increment is known--the tribe should have nearly doubled in twenty-one years. it would require birth-rates much higher and death-rates much lower than those commonly found in indian tribes to double the population in that time. the indian mother is not prolific. 14. the navahoes say that during their captivity they had much sickness and diminished in numbers; but nothing has been found in official reports to corroborate such statements. all who have any intimate knowledge of the navahoes agree that they have increased rapidly since they were restored to their ancient homes in 1869. during nearly fifteen years that the author has had opportunity to observe them, he has noticed no marked signs of physical degeneration among them. their general health and their power of resisting disease appeared about as good in 1894 as in 1880. consumption and scrofula, those greatest enemies of our reservation indians, have not yet begun to trouble the navahoes. the change from the rude hut to the close stone house, which is rapidly going on among this people, is likely to affect their health in the future, and probably not for the better. fortunately for them they have little fancy for stoves, but prefer open fireplaces such as the pueblos and mexicans use. in the year 1888, while the writer was absent from new mexico, they had an epidemic of throat disease, the precise character of which has not been ascertained. they say that about 800 people died that winter. during the winter of 1894-95 they suffered from scarcity of food,--an unusual experience for them, and the government had to assist them. an increased mortality ensued, which undoubtedly would have been much greater had it not been for the prompt action of their agent, maj. constant williams, u.s.a., in securing supplies for them. racial affinity--appearance. 15. the navahoes are usually regarded by ethnologists as being, by blood as well as by language, of the dèné or athapascan stock, and such, probably, they are in the main. but their origin legend represents them as a very mixed race, containing elements of zuñian and other pueblo stocks, of shoshonian and yuman, and the appearance of the people seems to corroborate the legend. there is no such thing as a general or prevailing navaho type. the people vary much in feature and stature. every variety of indian face and form may be seen among them,--tall men with aquiline noses and prominent features, such as we find among the crows and dakotas; dwarfish men with subdued features, such as we see among the pueblos of new mexico and arizona, and every intermediate variety. 16. the countenances of the navahoes are, as a rule, intelligent and expressive; some are stern and angry, some pleasant and smiling, others calm and thoughtful; but seldom are any seen that are dull and stupid. these characteristics are to be noted among the women as well as among the men. the social position of the navaho women is one of great independence; much of the wealth of the nation belongs to them; they are the managers of their own property, the owners of their own children, and their freedom lends character to their physiognomies. portraits. 17. fig. 1 is a picture of manuelito, who for many years was the most influential chief among the navahoes. latterly he lost much of his influence in consequence of his intemperate habits, though he was regarded as a sage counsellor till the time of his death, which occurred in 1893. when he was gone, an old indian, announcing his death to the writer, said: "we are now a people without eyes, without ears, without a mind." fig. 2 represents another chief of much influence named mariano, who also became addicted to drink in his old age and died in 1893. fig. 3 shows a very intelligent and trustworthy indian, a silversmith, known as jake among the whites, but called by the navahoes náltsos nigéhani, or paper-carrier, because in his youth he was employed as a mail-carrier between forts wingate and defiance. he it was who communicated to the author version b[306] of the origin legend. he practised a short medicine rite, was an adept in singing sacred songs, and often led in song in the great rites. his silver-work was in great demand, and he worked hard at his trade. in 1894 he accompanied a circus through the eastern states, with his workshop as a side-show; but the journey proved too much for him--he died of heart disease on his return to new mexico. fig. 4 is a portrait of a navaho woman named tánapa, who took her hair out of braid preparatory to standing before the camera. fig. 5 is a woman named hádapa, whose smiling face is introduced as a contrast to the stern brow of tánapa. figs. 6 and 7 are navaho men whose names have not been recorded. the expressions of their faces are in marked contrast. crania. 18. as a rule the crania of the navahoes are brachycephalic, and very few are dolichocephalic. the shortening seems to be due to a flattening in the occipital region (fig. 8). the author is of opinion that this is caused by the use of the baby-case, with a hard, unyielding wooden back (fig. 9), in which the navaho women carry their infants. this flattening of the navaho occiput has been the subject of some controversy. it is true that the cradle is padded to a slight extent; but the padding consists of the bark of the cliff rose (cowania mexicana), called by the navaho awétsal, or baby-bed, which forms a rather rigid pillow. true, again, when the baby is carried on the mother's back, its head often hangs forward and does not come in contact with the back of the cradle or the pillow; but most of the time the child lies on its back, and its tender occiput is subjected to deforming pressure. language. 19. the language of the navaho undoubtedly belongs in the main to the athapascan family. hubert howe bancroft, in his "native races of the pacific states" (vol. iii. p. 583),[292] tells us that the athapascans or "tinneh" are "a people whose diffusion is only equalled by that of the aryan or semitic nations of the old world. the dialects of the tinneh language are by no means confined within the limits of the hyperborean division. stretching from the northern interior of alaska down into sonora and chihuahua, we have here a linguistic line of more than four thousand miles in length, extending diagonally over forty-two degrees of latitude, like a great tree whose trunk is the rocky mountain range, whose roots encompass the deserts of arizona and new mexico, and whose branches touch the borders of hudson bay and of the arctic and pacific oceans." but the origin legend declares it is a mixed language (par. 395), and it is but reasonable to suppose that such a composite race cannot possess a very pure language. the various accessions to the tribe from other stocks have probably added many words of alien origin. what these additions are is not now known, and will not be known until all the languages of the southwest have been thoroughly studied. houses. 20. the habitations of the navahoes are usually of a very simple character. the most common form consists of a conical frame, made by setting up a number of sticks at an angle of about forty-five degrees. an opening is left on one side of the cone to answer as a doorway. the frame is covered with weeds, bark, or grass, and earth, except at the apex, where the smoke from the fire in the centre of the floor is allowed to escape. in the doorway an old blanket hangs, like a curtain, in place of a door. but the opening of the door is not a simple hiatus, as many descriptions would lead one to suppose. a cross-piece, forming a lintel, connects the jambs at a convenient height, and the triangular space between the lintel and the smoke-hole is filled in as shown in fig. 10. a picture in schoolcraft's extensive work[327] (vol. iii. plate 17) is intended to represent a navaho lodge; but it appears to have been drawn by captain eastman from an imperfect description. in this picture the doorway is shown as extended up and continuous with the smoke-hole. 21. some lodges are made of logs in a polygonal form, as shown in fig. 11. again they are occasionally built partly of stone, as shown in fig. 12. in cold weather a small storm-door or portico is often erected in front of the door (fig. 10), and an outer and an inner curtain may be hung to more effectually keep out the wind. 22. shelters.--contiguous to the hut, the navaho usually constructs a rude shelter of branches. here, in fair weather, the family often cook and spend most of the day. here, too, the women erect their looms and weave or set out their metates and grind corn, and some even choose to sleep here. such a "corral" is shown in fig. 12. 23. summer houses.--in summer they often occupy structures more simple than even the hut described above. fig. 13 represents a couple of summer houses in the zuñi mountains. a structure of this kind is built in a few hours. a couple of forked sticks are set upright in the ground; slanting poles are laid against this in the direction of the prevailing winds, so as to form a windbreak, half wall and half roof, and this is covered with grass, weeds, and earth. the ends may be similarly enclosed, or may be merely covered in with evergreen branches. one side of the house is completely open. in fig. 13 a loom is shown set up for work in one of these rude structures, the aboriginal appearance of which is somewhat marred by having a piece of old canvas lying on top. 24. medicine-lodges.--the medicine-lodges, when erected in regions where long poles may be cut, are usually built in the form of the ordinary hogáns (huts), though of much greater size (fig. 14). when these large lodges are constructed at low altitudes, where only stunted trees grow, they are built on a rude frame with walls and roof separate, somewhat on the same plan as the lodges formerly used by the arickarees, mandans, and other tribes on the missouri, and seeming a connecting link between the navaho hogán and the mandan earth-lodge.[184] 25. sweat-houses.--the sweat-house or sudatory is a diminutive form of the ordinary hogán or hut as described in par. 20, except that it has no smoke-hole (for fire is never kindled in it), neither has it a storm-door. it is sometimes sunk partly underground and is always thickly covered with earth. stones are heated in a fire outside and carried, with an extemporized tongs of sticks, into the sudatory. fig. 15 poorly represents one of these structures. when ceremonially used, the frame is constructed of different materials for different ceremonies, and the house is sometimes decorated with dry-paintings.[82] 26. modern houses.--during the past ten years, a few of the more progressive navahoes have built themselves rectangular stone houses, with flat roofs, glazed windows, wooden doors, and regular chimneys, such as their neighbors, the mexicans and pueblo indians, build. they have had before them, for centuries, examples of such houses, and they are an imitative and docile people. the reason they have not copied at an earlier date is probably a superstitious reason. they believe a house haunted or accursed in which a human being dies.[91] they abandon it, never enter it again, and usually destroy it. with such a superstition prevailing, they hesitate to build permanent dwellings. perhaps of late years the superstition is becoming weakened, or they have found some mystic way of averting the supposed evil. arts. 27. the arts of the navahoes are not numerous. they make a very rude and inartistic pottery,--vastly inferior to that of the neighboring pueblo tribes,--and they make but little of it. their bows and arrows are not equal to those of the northern indians, and, since they have both money and opportunity to purchase modern firearms, bows and arrows are falling into disuse. they do not consider themselves very expert dressers of deerskin, and purchase their best buckskins from other tribes. the women do very little embroidery, either with beads or porcupine-quills, and this little is unskilfully done. the legends indicate that in former days they stole or purchased embroideries from the utes. 28. basketry.--they make excellent baskets, but very few of them, and have a very limited range of forms and patterns. in developing their blanket-making to the highest point of indian art, the women of this tribe have neglected other labors. the much ruder but allied apaches, who know nothing of weaving woollen fabrics, make more baskets than the navahoes, and make them in much greater variety of form, color, and quality. the navahoes buy most of their baskets and wicker water-jars from other tribes. they would possibly lose the art of basketry altogether if they did not require certain kinds to be used in the rites, and only women of the tribe understand the special requirements of the rites. figs. 16 and 17 show the patterns of baskets almost exclusively made. these are used in ceremonies, and are called by the author sacred baskets. a further description of them is given in a note.[5] 29. silver-work.--there are a few silversmiths in the tribe, whose work, considering the rudeness of their tools and processes, is very artistic. it is much sought after by white people, who admire its rude beauty. probably the art of the smith has not existed long among the navahoes. in a treatise entitled "navajo silversmiths,"[307] the author described the art as it existed in 1881; but the work has improved since that time with the introduction of better tools. then the smith built his forge on the ground and squatted to do his work; now he builds it on an elevated frame (fig. 10), and sits on a stool or chair to work. fig. 18 represents silver ornaments made by jake in 1881. 30. weaving.--it is in the art of weaving that the navahoes excel all other indians within the borders of the united states. in durability, fineness of finish, beauty of design, and variety of pattern, the navaho blanket has no equal among the works of our aborigines. the author has written a treatise on "navajo weavers,"[309] in which he describes their art as it existed some thirteen years ago. but since that treatise was written the art has changed. it has improved in one respect: an important new invention has been made or introduced,--a way of weaving blankets with different designs on opposite sides. it has deteriorated in another respect: fugitive aniline dyes, purchased from the traders, have taken the place of the permanent native dyes formerly used. in the finer blankets, yarn obtained from white traders has supplanted the yarn laboriously twilled on the old distaff. navaho blankets are represented in figs. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 12. 31. the navahoes weave diagonal cloth and diamond-shaped diagonals, and to do this a change is made in the mechanism of their simple looms. they weave belts or sashes, garters and saddle-girths, and these articles, too, require changes in the arrangement of the looms and in the methods of weaving. fig. 20 represents an ordinary loom, with one set of healds. fig. 21 represents a loom arranged for weaving diagonal cloth with two sets of healds. fig. 4 shows a woman wearing a belt of native manufacture. the women depicted in figs. 5 and 21 wear dresses of navaho cloth. 32. it is not only for gain that the navaho woman weaves her blanket. having worn it for a time, until it has lost its novelty, she may sell it for a price that scarcely pays her for the yarn. one who possesses large herds, and is wealthy for an indian, will weave as assiduously as her poorest neighbor. at best, the labor brings low wages. the work is done, to no small extent, for artistic recreation, just as the females of our own race embroider and do "fancy work" for mere pastime. 33. knitting.--they knit stockings with four needles, but these stockings are devoid of heels and toes. as the needles now used are of wire and obtained from the whites, it might be thought that the art of knitting was learned from our people; but knitted leggings, made of human hair, and wooden knitting-needles, have been found in the navaho land, in cliff-dwellings which, there is reason to believe, were abandoned before the arrival of the spaniards. industry. 34. it cannot be said of the navaho men, as it is often said of the men of other indian tribes, that they are either too proud or too lazy to perform manual labor. they are, and apparently always have been, willing to do any remunerative work. when the atlantic and pacific railroad was constructed near their reservation, in 1881, much of the grading was done by navaho laborers. the white men who worked with them, and who had the strongest antipathy to chinese laborers, said that they liked the indians because they were good comrades on the work and kept up prices. a stalwart man is not ashamed to wash and iron clothes for wages, which he may want only to spend in gambling. they have been employed at fort wingate to dig cellars and make adobes, and at the latter work proved themselves more expert than the more experienced men of zuñi. 35. begging, which among other tribes is so often annoying to the white man, is little practised by the navahoes. the few who have ever begged from the author persuaded themselves that they had some claim on him. on the whole, they are a self-supporting people, and add to the wealth of the community at large. but little government aid has been given them since they were released from captivity and supplied with stock in return for that slaughtered by our troops when their land was invaded. poetry and music. 36. for many years the most trusted account of the navaho indians of new mexico and arizona was to be found in a letter written by dr. jonathan letherman,[303] of the army, and published in the smithsonian report for 1855. dr. letherman had lived three years at fort defiance, in the heart of the navaho country, when he wrote this letter, and he acknowledges his indebtedness, for assistance in preparing it, to major kendrick, who long commanded fort defiance. both the doctor and the major were men of unusual ability. the former (having changed the spelling of his name to letterman) afterwards distinguished himself as medical director of the army of the potomac, and the latter was, for many years, professor of chemistry at the national military academy. 37. from this letter the following statement concerning the navahoes is extracted: "of their religion little or nothing is known, as, indeed, all inquiries tend to show that they have none." "the lack of tradition is a source of surprise. they have no knowledge of their origin or of the history of the tribe." "they have frequent gatherings for dancing." "their singing is but a succession of grunts, and is anything but agreeable." 38. the evidence of these gentlemen, one would think, might be taken as conclusive. yet, fifteen years ago, when the author first found himself among the navahoes, he was not influenced in the least by the authority of this letter. previous experience with the indians had taught him of how little value such negative evidence might be, and he began at once to investigate the religion, traditions, and poetic literature, of which, he was assured, the navahoes were devoid. 39. he had not been many weeks in new mexico when he discovered that the dances to which dr. letherman refers were religious ceremonials, and later he found that these ceremonials might vie in allegory, symbolism, and intricacy of ritual with the ceremonies of any people, ancient or modern. he found, erelong, that these heathens, pronounced godless and legendless, possessed lengthy myths and traditions--so numerous that one can never hope to collect them all, a pantheon as well stocked with gods and heroes as that of the ancient greeks, and prayers which, for length and vain repetition, might put a pharisee to the blush. 40. but what did the study of appalling "succession of grunts" reveal? it revealed that besides improvised songs, in which the navahoes are adepts, they have knowledge of thousands of significant songs--or poems, as they might be called--which have been composed with care and handed down, for centuries perhaps, from teacher to pupil, from father to son, as a precious heritage, throughout the wide navaho nation. they have songs of travelling, appropriate to every stage of the journey, from the time the wanderer leaves his home until he returns. they have farming songs, which refer to every stage of their simple agriculture, from the first view of the planting ground in the spring to the "harvest home." they have building songs,[6] which celebrate every act in the structure of the hut, from "thinking about it" to moving into it and lighting the first fire. they have songs for hunting, for war, for gambling, in short for every important occasion in life, from birth to death, not to speak of prenatal and post-mortem songs. and these songs are composed according to established (often rigid) rules, and abound in poetic figures of speech. 41. sacred songs.--perhaps the most interesting of their metrical compositions are those connected with their sacred rites,--their religious songs. these rites are very numerous, many of them of nine days' duration, and with each is associated a number of appropriate songs. sometimes, pertaining to a single rite, there are two hundred songs or more which may not be sung at other rites. 42. the songs must be known to the priest of the rite and his assistants in a most exact manner, for an error made in singing a song may be fatal to the efficacy of a ceremony. in no case is an important mistake tolerated, and in some cases the error of a single syllable works an irreparable injury. a noteworthy instance of this rule is a song sung at the beginning of work on the last night of the great ceremony of the night chant. the rite is one which may cost the patron from two hundred to three hundred dollars. it has lasted eight days and nights, when four singers, after long and careful instruction by the priest, come forth painted, adorned, and masked as gods to sing this song of the atsá`lei. several hundred people--many from the farthest confines of the navaho land--have come to sit up all night and witness the public ceremonies. the song is long, and is mostly made up of meaningless or obsolete expressions which convey no idea to the mind of the singer, yet not a single vocable may be omitted, mispronounced, or misplaced. a score or more of critics who know the song by heart are listening with strained attention. if the slightest error is made it is at once proclaimed, the fruitless ceremony terminates abruptly, and the disappointed multitude disperses. 43. the songs all contain significant words; but these, for poetic requirements, are often greatly distorted, and the distortions must be kept in mind. in speaking thus, scant justice is done to the navaho poets. similar distortions found in an aryan tongue with a written literature are spoken of as figures of orthography and etymology, and, although there is yet no standard of spelling for the navaho language, we would perhaps do well to apply the same terms in speaking of the navaho compositions. the distortions are not always left to the whim of the composer. they are made systematically, as a rule. if the language were reduced to a standard spelling, we should find that the navaho poets have as many figures of these classes as the english poets have, and perhaps more. 44. some of the words, too, are archaic,--they mean nothing in modern navaho; but the priests assign traditional meanings to them, and this adds to the task of memorizing. but, in addition to the significant words, there are (as instanced above) numerous meaningless vocables in all songs, and these must be recited with a care at least equal to that bestowed on the rest of the composition. these meaningless sounds are commonly introduced in the preludes and refrains of the stanzas and in the verse endings, but they may occur anywhere in the song. 45. the preludes and refrains here referred to are found, with rare exceptions, in every stanza and in every song. although they are all either totally meaningless or only partly significant, they are the most characteristic parts of the poems, and the singer cons the preludes over when he wishes to call to mind any particular composition, just as we often remember a poem or song by means of the first line. they are rarely or never quite alike in any two songs, and great ingenuity is often displayed in giving them variety. 46. there is yet another burden laid on the memory of the singer of sacred songs, and this is the order of their arrangement. the songs of each ceremony are divided into groups which must follow one another in an established order, and each song has, in the group to which it belongs, a place that must not be changed under penalty of divine displeasure. to sing, during the progress of a rite, the sixth song of the whirling sticks before the fifth song is sung, would be a sacrilege as great as to chant the syllables óhohohó, in place of éhehehé. to remember this exact order of sequence in a set of two hundred or three hundred songs is no easy task.[322] 47. but it may be said: "perhaps things were different with the navahoes in dr. letherman's day. may they not have learned from other tribes, or have themselves invented all this ceremony and song since he knew them?" the reply to this is, that it is absurd to suppose that such an elaborate system of rites and songs could have grown up among an illiterate people in the twenty-five years that elapsed between dr. letherman's departure from the navaho country and the author's arrival there. besides, the latter obtained his information from men of advanced age--from sixty to eighty years old--who practised these rites and sang these songs in their youth, and who in turn learned them from men of a departed generation. the shamans who conduct these ceremonies, tell these tales, and sing these songs are scattered widely over the navaho country. men who are scarcely acquainted with one another, and who learned from different preceptors, will sing the same sacred songs and to exactly the same tune. all the lore of the navaho priesthood was undoubtedly extant in dr. letherman's time and for ages before. 48. songless women.--it is remarkable that, while the navaho men are such fruitful composers of song and such ardent singers, the women, as a rule, do not sing. among the wild hunting tribes of the north, as the author knew them thirty years ago, the women not only had songs of their own, but they took part in the ceremonial songs of the men. the pueblo indian women of new mexico, neighbors of the navahoes, have many fine songs, the song of the corn-grinders, often heard in zuñi, being especially wild and musical. but usually the navaho woman is songless. the writer tried a long time to find a woman who could sing, and offered good pecuniary inducements before he got one. she came from a distance of thirty miles. she knew no songs peculiar to her sex, but her father was a medicine-man, who frequently repeated his songs at home in order to familiarize himself with them, and she gradually picked up several of them. she sang in a musical soprano with much spirit, and was one of the most pleasing singers heard in the tribe. 49. figures of speech.--it is probable that all rhetorical figures of speech known to our poets may be found in these simple compositions of the navahoes. but in many cases the allusions are to such recondite matters of symbolism, or incidents in their myths, that they could be made plain, if at all, only by a tedious recital. thus it would not be easy to make clear in a few words why, when the goddess estsánatlehi, in one of the songs to her honor, is spoken of as climbing a wand of turquoise, we know the poet means to say she is ascending san mateo mountain, in new mexico, or why, when he speaks of her as climbing a wand of haliotis shell, he is endeavoring to tell us that she is ascending the peak of san francisco in arizona. yet we may gain some idea of the meaning by referring to the myth (par. 193). 50. but some of the metaphors and similes are not so hard to understand. here is a translation of the dove song, one of the gambling songs sung in the game of kesitsé:- wos wos picks them up (seeds), wos wos picks them up, glossy locks picks them up, red moccasin picks them up, wos wos picks them up.[273] [316] here wos wos (wosh wosh) is an onomatope for the dove, equivalent to our "coo coo"; but it is used as a noun. glossy locks and red moccasin are figurative expressions for the dove, of obvious significance. metaphor and synecdoche are here combined. 51. antithesis is not an uncommon figure with the navaho poet. here is an instance of it in a song belonging to the mountain chant, one of the great nine-day ceremonies of the shamans:- the voice that beautifies the land! the voice above, the voice of the thunder, among the dark clouds again and again it sounds, the voice that beautifies the land. the voice that beautifies the land! the voice below, the voice of the grasshopper, among the flowers and grasses again and again it sounds, the voice that beautifies the land. here the great voice of the thunder above is contrasted with the feeble voice of the grasshopper below, yet both are voices that make the world beautiful. 52. many instances of climax have been noted. one here presented is from the mountain chant. it has but two steps to the ladder:- maid who becomes a bear sought the gods and found them, on the summits of the mountains sought the gods and found them, truly with my sacrifice sought the gods and found them. somebody doubts it, so i have heard. holy young woman sought the gods and found them, on the summits of the clouds sought the gods and found them, truly with my sacrifice sought the gods and found them. somebody doubts it, so i have heard. maid who becomes a bear (tsiké sas nátlehi)[90] is an important character in navaho mythology. the last line in each stanza is an instance of irony. 53. it will be seen from the instances given that they understand the value of repetition in poetry. the refrain is a favorite form of expression; but they know of other means of giving verbal melody to their songs, as may be seen in the following original text of the bluebird (sialia arctica) song:- tsihayilkáe dóla aní, áyas dotli'zi biza holó, biza hozónigo, biza holó, biza holónigo hwíhe inlí dóla aní. dóla aní. to appreciate this a translation is not necessary, but it is given, as the reader may wish to know it:- just at daylight sialia calls. the bluebird has a voice, he has a voice, his voice melodious, his voice melodious that flows in gladness. sialia calls. sialia calls. the regular navaho name for the bluebird "dóli" (changed here to "dóla" for poetic reasons) is translated sialia, to distinguish it from the descriptive term "áyas dotli'zi" which means literally bluebird. 54. rhyme.--they are not ignorant of the value of rhyme in poetry, but they more often produce this by the repetition of significant or meaningless syllables than by selecting different words with similar endings. still we often find this, the more difficult means, resorted to as in the above song of the bluebird. 55. music.--to the casual listener it may appear that there is much sameness in the music of their songs; but a more careful study will reveal the fact that the variety is great. it is remarkable how, with such rude instruments (an inverted basket for a drum, and a gourd rattle) to accompany them, they succeed, in a series of two hundred or more songs, in producing so many musical changes. in their sacred songs of sequence, where four or more songs of similar import follow one another, as is often the case, the music may be nearly alike (but never quite alike) in all; but when the theme of the poetry changes, the music also takes a decided change. 56. for further information on the subject of music the reader is referred to note 272, which contains remarks by prof. john comfort fillmore, formerly of milwaukee, wisconsin, but now of claremont, california. over two years ago the writer sent a number of phonographic records of navaho songs to professor fillmore, who has diligently studied them and has written many of them in musical notation. some of the musical scores are appended to the note. tribal organization. 57. gentes.--the version of the origin legend by tall chanter, here given, accounts for only thirty-eight gentes among the navahoes; but this informant was able to name, in all, forty-three gentes, two of which, he said, were extinct. lists of the navaho gentes have been obtained from various sources, and no single authority has been found to give a greater number than this. but no two lists are quite alike; they differ with regard to small or extinct gentes, and one list may supply a name which another has omitted. there would be at least fifty-one gentes extant and extinct in the tribe if each name so far obtained represented a different organization. but we find in the legend instances of a gens having two names (pars. 386, 405, 428, 445). 58. on the other hand, it is possible that none of the lists may be complete. gentes derived from women of alien races, added to the tribe since it has grown numerous and widely scattered, may exist in one part of the navaho country unknown to the best informed persons in another part. extinct gentes may be forgotten by one informant and remembered by another. 59. the following is a list of the forty-three gentes named by tall chanter:- 1. tse`dzinki'ni, house of the black cliffs (pars. 378-381). 2. tse`tláni, bend in a cañon (par. 382). 3. dsi'lnaoti'lni, encircled mountain (par. 385). 4. haskánhatso (haskanhatsódine`), much yucca (par. 386). 5. nahopáni, brown streak; horizontal on the ground (par. 387). 6. tsinadzi'ni, black horizontal forest (par. 390). 7. tha`nezá` (tha`nezá`ni), among the scattered (hills) (par. 392). 8. dsiltlá`ni, base of the mountain (par. 393). 9. thá`paha (thá`pahadine`), among the waters (par. 394 et seq.). 10. tsa`yiski'dni, sage-brush hill (par. 399). 11. tse`zindiaí, trap dyke (par. 401). 12. klógi (klógidine`), (name of an old pueblo) (par. 403). 13. tó`hani, beside the water (par. 404). 14. thá`tsini, among the red (waters or banks) (par. 405). 15. kai (káidine`), willows (par. 405). 16. kinlitsí (kinlitsídine`), red house (of stone) (par. 406). 17. destsíni, red streak (par. 408). 18. tlastsíni, red flat (par. 408). 19. notá (notádine`), ute (par. 409). 20. nakaí (nakaídine`), white stranger (mexican) (par. 410). 21. to`yetlíni, junction of the rivers (par. 411). 22. háltso (háltsodine`), yellow bodies (par. 412). 23. to`ditsíni, bitter water (par. 427). 24. maitó` (maitó`dine`), coyote spring (par. 428). 25. hasli'zni (hasli'zdine`), mud (par. 429). 26. to`dokónzi, saline water (par. 430, note 171). 27. bitá`ni, folded arms (par. 431). 28. tsinsakádni, lone tree (par. 441). 29. pinbitó` (pinbitó`dine`), deer spring (par. 442). 30. tse`nahapi'lni, overhanging rocks (par. 445). 31. honagá`ni, place of walking (pars. 447, 448). 32. kinaá`ni, high standing house (par. 458). 33. to`baznaáz (to`baznaázi), two come for water (par. 449). 34. nanaste'zin, black horizontal stripe aliens (zuñi) (par. 452). 35. dildzéhi, (not translated) (par. 453). 36. ásihi (ásihidine`), salt (par. 454). 37. maideski'z (maideski'zni), coyote pass (jemez) (par. 455). 38. tse`yanató`ni (extinct), horizontal water under cliffs (par. 457). 39. tó`tsoni, great water (par. 459). 40. bitáni or dsiltáni, brow of mountain. 41. tse`yikéhe (tse`yikéhedine`), rocks standing near one another. 42. tliziláni, many goats (par. 407). 43. to`tsalsitáya (extinct), water under the sitting frog. 60. the following are eight names obtained from other sources, and not mentioned by tall chanter:-44. aatsósni, narrow gorge. 45. naa`í (naa`ídine`), monocline. 46. yóo, beads. 47. ka`náni, living arrows. 48. tse`tháni, among the rocks. 49. lóka (lókadine`) reeds (phragmites). 50. tse`deski'zni, rocky pass. 51. hoganláni, many huts. 61. more than one translation of a gentile name has often been noted; but in the above lists only one translation is given,--that which the author regards with the most favor. often, too, different narrators account differently for the origin of the gentile names. some of the translations are very liberal, and others, again, very brief; but in the paragraphs and notes to which the reader is referred he will find fuller explanations. the navahoes sometimes, but not invariably, add (as shown in the above lists) a suffix (diné`, ni, or i), signifying people; but in the above translations, to simplify the study, the word "people" is omitted. 62. there are reasons, which the author has set forth in a previous essay[318] and will not now repeat, for believing that most of the navaho gentes were originally local exogamous groups, and not true gentes according to morgan's definition.[325] there is little doubt that, in the majority of cases if not in all, the names of navaho gentes, which are not the names of tribes, are simply designations of localities, even where the legend states to the contrary; as, for instance, when it tells us that certain gentes of the western immigrants were named from words that women uttered when they first tasted of the magic fountains (pars. 427, 429, 430). 63. on the other hand, there are passages in the legend which indicate that a few of the navaho gentes were once totemic, although no evidence of clan totems is known to exist among the navahoes at the present time, and it is not improbable that a few of the gentile names may be of totemic origin, although they are now accounted for in other ways in the origin legend. the passage (par. 419) which tells us that estsánatlehi gave certain pets to the wanderers from the west, and that these pets accompanied the people on their journey, refers in all probability to the former use of totemic clan symbols, and possibly to a custom of keeping live totemic animals in captivity,--a custom prevalent among the ancient mexicans and the modern pueblos, though not among the modern navahoes. other indications of a former totemism may be found in the story of the deer spring people (par. 442, note 195; see, also, note 173). 64. in reading the fourth chapter of the origin legend--"growth of the navaho nation"--one is impressed with the different degrees of willingness, on both sides, with which new gentes are adopted into the nation. in some instances two parties, meeting for the first time, embrace one another and become friends at once (par. 382). the clans from the pacific coast--the western immigrants, as they are here called--learn of the existence of kindred tribes far to the east, take a long and dangerous journey to join them, and, when their march is done, they are received by the navahoes at once as brethren. on the other hand, the legend tells us of bands that camp long in the neighborhood of the navahoes before they become incorporated with the latter (par. 394); of other clans descended from captives (pars. 406, 454, 455); and of others that seek refuge among the navahoes only to escape starvation or persecution at home (pars. 403, 452). on the basis of their mode of adoption, the clans may be divided into the ready and the reluctant. the cause of this is probably one of language. bands which we know to have been allied in language to the navahoes--such as those derived from the apaches--will be found among the ready; while bands which we know to have spoken languages very different to the navaho--such as those derived from the utes, from zuñi, and jemez--will be found among the reluctant. it is not unreasonable to conclude that the same rule applies to clans of whose original language we know nothing. 65. phratries.--the gentes of the navahoes are divided into a number of groups, each of which may be called a phratry. authorities in the tribe differ as to the number of the phratries, and as to the gentes that compose them. some make but eight phratries. captain bourke[294] has obtained a list of eleven, with three independent gentes. some of the navahoes say there are twelve phratries, and suggest that they have some relation to the twelve tribes who dwelt in the first world. but the navaho phratry seems not to be a homogeneous organization. a case is mentioned in the legend where a gens has changed its phratral affinities (par. 451). inquiry, too, has revealed that there are sub-groups. there may be closer bonds of alliance among some gentes in a group than there are among others in the same group. authorities, then, may differ without invalidating each other's testimony. 66. these groups are indicated in the legend when it says that one gens has become closely related or affiliated with another (pars. 385, 399, 403 et al.), or when it says that two gentes cannot intermarry (pars. 393, 401, 406). if the navahoes have a term equivalent to "phratry," it has not been discovered. they have no special names for the different phratries; they often, but not always, speak of a phratry by the name of the most important gens in it. 67. if the legend is to be taken as evidence, phratries have developed among the navahoes both by segmentation of gentes and by the addition of new gentes from without; not by either method exclusively. but legendary evidence is not needed to show that gentes which bear to-day the names of alien tribes have been additions to the phratry. 68. forbidden degrees of kindred.--a navaho belongs to the gens of his mother and takes the name of that gens. cases have been noted where a navaho has been known by his gentile name and not by any other. no man may marry one of his own gens; neither may he marry one of his own phratry, though some exceptions seem to be made in the latter case where the limits of the phratry are not well defined. where this descent in the female line exists among other tribes, it is held by some ethnographers that the man does not regard his father or his father's people as his relations, and may contract a marriage with a woman of his father's gens. such is certainly not the case among the navahoes. the gens and the phratry of the father are as much forbidden kindred as those of the mother. religion. 69. sources of information.--that the navahoes have a religion--an elaborate pagan cult--has already been intimated. there is little to be gained by asking a navaho direct questions about this. learned controversialists and theologians, capable of analyzing and discussing their faith, have not arisen among them, or, if they have, they cannot easily communicate their philosophy to us. but the civilized scholar has abundant material from which to study their religion, and he must do the analyzing himself. in the great dry-paintings shown on the floors of the medicine-lodges, during their long ceremonies, may be seen pictures of many of the gods, with their hieratic belongings. in the ceremonies, or so-called dances, men are masked to represent gods. in the myths the acts and deeds of the divine ones are described, and we learn their thoughts and feelings,--kind, like indians, to their kindred; usually cruel, yet often merciful and magnanimous, to their foes. in the countless songs of the rites may be found the poetic side of the divine characters, and in the long prayers we may learn their potency, and discover how man hopes to commune with them and gain their favor. 70. no supreme god.--the religion of this people reflects their social condition. their government is democratic. there is no highest chief of the tribe, and all their chiefs are men of temporary and ill-defined authority, whose power depends largely on their personal influence, their oratory, and their reputation for wisdom. it is difficult for such a people to conceive of a supreme god. their gods, like their men, stand much on a level of equality. 71. sun god.--in the version of the origin legend here given, the sun god would seem to have some precedence over the others, but in the beginning he was only one of the people; he never figures conspicuously as a creator, and is far from omnipotent. other gods, less potent or less respected, lived before the time of man, and were powerful before the sun was made. 72. creation.--the legend begins with an already created world; there is no original creation and no creator of all. if the navahoes have a story of the beginning of all things, the author has not learned it. to a god called békotsidi[78] is given the credit of having made all animals whose creation is not otherwise accounted for in the myths, especially domestic animals. some of the indians who have heard vaguely of our creator are of the opinion that békotsidi is the god of the americans. 73. estsánatlehi.--but it is generally acknowledged by the navahoes that their most revered deity is estsánatlehi,[95] the woman who changes (or rejuvenates herself). much is said of her in the legends, but something more is to be obtained by conversation with the shamans. the name estsánatlehi is derived by syncopation from estsán, woman, and natéhi, to change or transform. she is so called because, it is supposed, she never remains in one condition, but that she grows to be an old woman, and in the course of time becomes a young girl again, and so passes through an endless course of lives, changing but never dying. it is probable that she is an apotheosis of nature, or of the changing year. 74. the deity of fruitful nature is properly a female and a beneficent goddess. she is properly, too, as the legends tell us, the wife of the sun, to whom nature owes her fertility. her home is said to be in the west, probably for the reason that in the navaho country, which lies mostly on the pacific slope, the rain comes usually from the west, and from that direction, too, come the thawing breezes in the spring. 75. yolkaí estsán.--a divinity called yolkaí estsán,[96] or white shell woman, created (or found, as some versions say) at the same time as estsánatlehi, is called the younger sister of the latter. the two goddesses are associated in the myths, but white shell woman always acts the subordinate part, and to-day is honored with a less degree of worship than her sister. estsánatlehi, made of an earthly jewel, turquoise, is related to the land. yolkaí estsán, made of white shell from the ocean, is related to the waters. 76. war gods.--next in importance to estsánatlehi, the sacred brethren, nayénezgani (or nagénezgani) and to`badzistsíni,[127] seem to stand. the writer designates these as the war gods, but the navahoes do not call them thus. according to the version of the origin legend here given, one of these was the child of estsánatlehi and the sun; the other the child of yolkaí estsán and the water, and this is the version most consistent in all respects. other versions make both the brothers children of estsánatlehi. some say they were born twins. accepting any of these versions, they would properly be called brothers, according to the indian system of relationship, and such they are called in the legends. their chief mission was to destroy the alien gods; but they still help the warriors in battle, and aid the sick who suffer from witchcraft. the longest chapter in the origin legend is devoted to recounting their genesis and history. in reading the chapter, it will be apparent to the comparative mythologist that these characters have their counterparts, which need not now be mentioned, in the myths of many races in both hemispheres. from their mythic associations it would appear that nayénezgani is a god of light, with its associated heat, while to`badzistsíni is a god of darkness, with its associated moisture; yet, apparently in contradiction to this, the representative of the former is painted black and wears a black mask in the ceremonies (plate iv.), while the representative of the latter is painted red and wears a red mask (plate vii.). 77. nayénezgani, whose name signifies slayer of the alien gods,[127] is spoken of as the elder brother in the legends and always plays the more important part. to`badzistsíni, or child of the water,[127] is called the younger brother and always appears as a subordinate character. in the ceremonies, the masquerader who personates nayénezgani always walks in front, while he who personates to`badzistsíni comes behind. the two gods are always associated in prayer and sacrifice, but here, again, nayénezgani takes precedence. in all the sacred songs where they are mentioned, the superiority of nayénezgani is indicated. antithesis, as has been said, is a favorite figure with the navaho poets, and they often employ it when speaking of these gods. the "song of the approach" of the war gods in the ceremony of klédzi hatál will serve, as well as many other compositions, to show how they treat this subject. it may be freely translated thus:- he advances! he advances! now slayer of the alien gods advances, above, among the mountain peaks, he advances, in danger he advances. he advances! he advances! now child of the water advances below, among the foothills, he advances, in danger he advances. thus both the gods come to the aid of the supplicant; but while the elder strides proudly on the summits of the mountains, the younger walks humbly among the foothills. 78. yéi.--there are a number of divinities in the navaho pantheon known as yéi (in compound words often pronounced ye or ge), which is translated "god" or "genius." what distinction exists between the yéi and other gods is not easy to determine definitely. the zuñians have a class of gods called by the same name, or, more correctly, "yéyi," as mr. cushing pronounces it. certain chiefs or important personages among these gods are called by names which begin with the syllables hastsé--as hastséyalti[73] (talking god), hastséhogan[74] (house god). it is believed that this, if spelled etymologically, would appear as hastyé, but it is not so pronounced, hast is a prefix denoting age, especially venerable age. we have it in the word hastín, which means a worthy or respected old man. hastyé would mean a venerable yéi or god. the yéi seem to be deities of minor importance to those previously mentioned and to be more numerous. thus, while there is but one estsánatlehi, but one nayénezgani, and but one to`badzistsíni there are several hastséhogan and several hastséyalti, who are chiefs of the yéi. the yéi are supposed to abide in certain localities, and in prayers in their honor the home is mentioned of the yéi to whom appeal is specially made. a place called tsé`natsi, or red horizontal rock, somewhere north of the san juan river, tse`gíhi, another place north of the san juan, and the white house (fig. 22), in the chelly canyon, are important homes of the yéi.[265] each of the sacred mountains has its group of yéi. in the myths of klédzi hatál, more than a score of places are named where yéi dwell. there are some reasons for believing that the cult of the yéi is derived from the cliff-dwellers, or from the pueblos; but there are arguments, too, against this theory. the subject will not be further considered here. the yéi are supposed to be married and have families. the males are called yébaka; the females, yébaad.[200] hastsézini,[212] the god of fire, and hastséoltoi,[206] the divine huntress, or goddess of the chase, belong, as their names indicate, to the yéi; while gánaskidi,[207] the harvest god, and tó`nenili[98] water sprinkler, are associated with them in the legends. 79. digíni.--digi'n means sacred, divine, mysterious, or holy. it is not quite synonymous with the dakota wakán or the hidatsa hopá. it is not applied to the treatment of disease; it is not applied in a general way to religious ceremonial; it has not been heard applied to the anáye, or other things of evil: for this reason it is often translated "holy." digíni, derived from digi'n, means holy people, gods, divinities. it is a name applied to the highest and lowest divinities, including the yéi (see notes 92 and 93). 80. alien gods.--such are the gods that are friendly to the human race; but man has his enemies, too, among the mysterious powers. chief among the latter are the anáye,[7] the alien gods or inimical genii. these, being analogous to the giants and ogres of european folk-lore, are sometimes called giants in this work. they are usually represented as creatures of great size. many of them are described in the origin legend. the worst have been slain, as the story relates; but others, being not unmixed evils, still remain to torment man. the legend, in accounting for their continued existence, shows the philosophic endeavor of our race to reconcile itself to the unwelcome inevitable. 81. water god.--the position of tiéholtsodi,[8] the water monster, is one of transferred allegiance. he was once the enemy of our race, but now has become friendly to it in certain ways, though it is probable that he is still thought to be responsible for cases of drowning. other gods, who were once inimical to man but are now his friends, are mentioned in the legends (par. 354). but we are not without evidence that the navaho fears to offend his most beneficent gods lest the latter may directly punish him, or at least withhold their succor in his hour of need. 82. devils.--besides the alien gods, there are evil spirits haunting the earth which men dread; these are the tsi'ndi, whose name cannot be better translated than by calling them devils. the navahoes frequently speak of the tsi'ndi (englished, chindee), and they often use the term as an angry exclamation, just as the profane among ourselves say, "oh the devil!" or "you devil!" (see pars. 257, 260), yet they dislike to discuss its character or appearance. they believe there is a devil associated with every corpse, and that it has something of the appearance of a partly decayed corpse. the spirit of the dead man goes to the lower world, which was the former home of the race, yet a demon remains with the dead body. other indians believe in a similar corpse spirit, yet the author has never known any who have such dread as the navahoes of human mortuary remains. (see par. 188 and note 91.) 83. zoölatry.--the legend tells us that there is a first man and a first woman (see pars. 160-165), who came into being in the fourth world as the result of a special act of creation: but they have not died like adam and eve; they still live in some form; they are potent; they are immortal; they are divine. but it is not man only that has his divine ancestral prototype: every animal on the face of the earth has its also, and many, if not all, of these are objects of worship. a share of reverence, too, in some cases, as in that of the bear, is bestowed on their mortal descendants. in the rite of the mountain chant[314] many of the sacrifices are sacred to the animals of the mountains. in short, zoölatry is an important element in navaho worship. 84. local gods.--some of the gods mentioned are also local divinities; thus the war gods are local divinities at to`ye'tli (par. 374), and the yéi are local divinities at tsé`natsi. but, in addition to these, there are other gods of places so numerous that a complete list of them will probably never be obtained. in the origin legend it is shown that each of the sacred mountains of the navaho land (seven in number according to tall chanter) has its divine pair of indwelling guardians, and these seem to receive more honor than any others which are gods of places only; but the genii of other mountains and of different rocks and canyons have their prayers and sacrifices in some of the rites. 85. fanciful legends of places are common in all lands and among all races, but no people are more ingenious in composing such tales than our american indians. the navaho has unusual sources of inspiration in this direction, and he fails not to profit by them. his land abounds in wonderful geologic formations, in rocks strangely sculptured by rain and by nature's sand-blast, in vast volcanic peaks and fields of lava; and it abounds also, as might be expected, in myths accounting for these features, and in the genii which belong to the myths. a few of these myths are incorporated in the tales told in this work, but they are very few compared with the total of such legendary lore. 86. the strength of their belief in these local divinities may be illustrated by the following incident: the writer once made a journey, accompanied by two navahoes, to tsúskai[9] (chusca knoll), which is supposed to be the home of the tsiké sas nátlehi, or maidens who become bears. when the party got to the top of the ridge from which the knoll rises, and about three hundred yards from the base of the knoll, the indians refused to go farther, saying they feared the divine ones who dwelt in the knoll. the writer proceeded alone, and had much difficulty in riding up the pathless hill, among loose rocks and fallen trees. on the summit he found a little hollow among the rocks full of sand, and, scraping into this, he discovered a number of hand-wrought stone and shell beads, which had been put there as sacrifices. when he descended from the knoll, he found the indians awaiting him where he had left them, and all set out together to retrace the rough mountain trail down to red lake. in a little while, his horse becoming very lame, the writer was obliged to dismount. "what has made your horse lame?" asked the indians. "he must have struck his leg against some of the fallen trees when he was climbing the knoll," was the answer. "think not thus, foolish american," they said. "it was not the fallen trees that wounded your horse. the digíni of the mountain have stricken him because you went where you had no right to go. you are lucky if nothing worse happens to you." of course indians had been up to the top of the knoll, or the beads could not have been put there; but they went only after preparatory prayer and only to deposit sacrifices. 87. demonolatry.--there are writers who say that the indians "worship the devil" and other malevolent powers; but it is not only learned authors who speak thus. jesus alviso, a mexican captive reared among the navahoes, said to the author in 1880: "los indios hacen figuras de todos sus diablos, señor" ("the indians make figures of all their devils, sir"), and it was this hint which led to the discovery of their dry-paintings. he called them devils; in this work they are called gods. perhaps other tribes worship personifications of evil, but certainly the navahoes do not. the gods who are supposed to love and help men the most receive the greatest honor. the evil spirits are not worshipped except, rumor says, by the witches. it would appear, moreover, from the origin legend, that the worst of evil powers--the alien gods--were long ago destroyed, and that only demons of minor influence remain. the chief of witches, estsán natán, or woman chief, has her home beneath the earth, in one of the lower worlds. ceremonies. 88. a great number of ceremonies are practised by the navaho priests. many of these are of nine days' duration; there are others that last but a single day or a few hours. to learn one of the great rites so as to become its hatáli (chanter, singer),[16] or priest, is the work of many years, and no one knows more than one such rite perfectly. the older priests know something of other rites, may assist at them and sing songs at them, but are not competent to conduct them. a priest of a great rite may know some of the lesser rites. 89. all the great ceremonies which the writer has witnessed among the navahoes are primarily for the healing of the sick; but the occasion is always used to ask the gods for various temporal blessings, not only for the sick person but for all,--the shaman, the relations of the sick, and for the people in general. the invalid, for whose benefit the rite is performed, defrays all the expenses of the ceremony, which often amount in value to the sum of two hundred or three hundred dollars. the navahoes being a scattered and to some extent a wandering people who do not build towns, they lack the organization to have rites of a more public character, such as the village indians have.[184] hence these healing ceremonies, in which the sick man and his relations become hosts, are used as occasions for prayer for the common weal, and as occasions in which large numbers may assemble to witness interesting exhibitions and have the social enjoyments which attend the gathering of a crowd. 90. minor ceremonies.--among the minor ceremonies, besides those for healing the sick, are those of planting, harvesting, building, war, nubility, marriage, travel, and many other occasions in life. in addition to these, there are ceremonies for special occasions, as for bringing rain. during an unusually dry season a number of navahoes may subscribe together and raise a good fee for a priest to sing, pray, sacrifice, and conduct a ceremony to bring rain. 91. origin of ceremonies.--the late mr. a. m. stephen of arizona, who for many years studied the rites and myths of both mokis and navahoes, has often called the attention of the writer to the many resemblances between the cults of these two tribes, who differ so much in other respects, and he has suggested that the navahoes may have borrowed from the mokis. this may be the case, for the navahoes have, probably, people of moki descent among them, and they have had intercourse with the mokis, both peaceful and warlike, for a long time. but, throughout all the navaho legends so far collected, it is strongly indicated that the navaho cultus, where borrowed, came from cliff-dwellers, from inhabitants of pueblos now deserted, and from wild tribes. the mokis figure but little in the navaho rite-myths. the author is inclined to believe that the navahoes have not borrowed much directly from the mokis, but that both tribes have taken inspiration from common sources. in radical points of symbolism, such as the sacred colors and the ceremonial circuit, the navaho and moki rites differ widely. 92. elements of ceremonies.--in the ceremonies there are numerous minor acts of such diverse character that they cannot be classified and are not described in this work. they can be discussed better in connection with the rites to which they belong. there are other acts of minor importance, such as the ceremonial bath[10] [82] and the administration of pollen,[11] which are considered in the notes. but there are six elements of the worship which constitute such important parts in all the great rites that brief descriptions of them are presented in this introduction. these six are: sacrifice, painting, masquerade, dance, prayer, and song. the last has been already discussed (par. 41 et seq.). 93. sacrifices.--the sacrifices of the navahoes are innocent and bloodless. their kindly gods are easily propitiated. like their worshippers, they are all fond of tobacco, and they prize a few feathers and beads. even the chief war god demands no smoking hearts or blood of captives; a little painted cigarette is all he asks in return for his favors. an extensive chapter might be written about the sacrificial cigarettes and sticks which the navahoes call ketán (englished, kethawn), but a short description of them must suffice here. (see note 12.) 94. cigarettes.--the cigarettes are usually made of the hollow joints of the common reed (phragmites communis), but other plants are sometimes used. to form a cigarette, a piece of the reed is cut off with a stone knife, the node being excluded; it is rubbed with sandstone, so that the paint may adhere; it is painted with some symbolical device; a wad of feathers is inserted into it to keep the tobacco from falling out; it is filled with some kind of native tobacco,[223] usually the nicotiana attenuata, or dsi'lnato of the navahoes; it is sealed with moistened pollen and symbolically lighted with a rock crystal, which is held up to the sky and touched to the tip of the cigarette. after it has been prayed over it is taken out and left for--i.e., sacrificed to--the god for whom it is intended. the god, they say, recognizes it by its symbolic painting and by the place where it is sacrificed. he picks it up, smells and examines it. if he is satisfied that it is properly made and that it is for him, he takes it and bestows on the supplicant the favors asked. 95. sacrificial sticks.--besides the cigarettes, small sticks are used as sacrifices to the gods. these are made from a variety of woods,--different gods and different occasions requiring woods of different sorts,--and they are painted in a variety of ways for the same reasons. they are usually made in pairs, one for the male and the other for the female. celibacy is not practised by the navaho gods; every deity has its mate, and she must be propitiated as well as he. the female is distinguished in some way from the male, and this is usually done by cutting a small facet at the tip end of the female stick (see fig. 23), to represent the square mask worn by one who masquerades as a goddess in the ceremonies. he who appears as a god wears a round cap-like mask (fig. 27), and the round cut end of the stick sufficiently represents this. 96. often the feathers of different kinds of birds are sacrificed with the kethawns, either attached to the latter or separate; also beads of stone or shell and various kinds of powdered vegetable and mineral substances, including pollen,[11] which is the most sacred substance employed by the navaho priests. 97. disposal of kethawns.--the different ways in which kethawns are deposited or sacrificed are as numerous as are their forms, materials, and decorations, and each way has its special symbolism. some are laid in the branches of a tree, others among rocks, others at the base of a cliff, others, again, at the root of a tree, and others on level ground; a few are thrown away almost at random, but most of them are laid down with care and with rigorous ceremonial form. all that are laid with care are placed with their tips away from the lodge, and each is destined to go toward some particular point of the compass. when the bearer of the sacrifice leaves the lodge, he proceeds in the direction of the place selected for the sacrifice; when he has deposited it he turns to the right and takes a sunwise direction in returning. he does not cross his outgoing trail; he must not walk through an ant-hill; he must run both going and coming.[12] 98. ceremonial pictures.--the pictures accompanying the navaho rites are among the most transitory in the history of art. in previous essays the author has called them dry-paintings. similar works have been observed among other tribes, both nomadic and sedentary, and the observers have designated them as "sand-paintings," "sand-altars," etc. they are drawn in all the great rites, and even in some of the lesser rites--those of only one day's duration--small but handsome dry-paintings are sometimes made. they vary in size from four to twelve feet in diameter. sometimes the fire in the centre of the medicine-lodge must be removed in order to accommodate them. the groundwork is sand, which is conveyed in blankets into the medicine-lodge, and spread out over the floor to the depth of about three inches. it is smoothed with the broad oaken battens used in weaving. 99. before the sand is brought in, the pigments are ground to powder and put on broad pieces of pine bark, which serve as trays--or palettes, shall we say? the pigments are five in number,--white, red, yellow, black, and gray. the white, red, and yellow are made of sandstone. the black is made of powdered charcoal, with which a little sandstone is mixed to facilitate the grinding and give weight to the powder. the gray, made of black and white mixed in suitable proportions, is intended to represent blue, is called blue by the navahoes, and, combined with the other colors, has the effect of blue in the paintings. it will be spoken of as blue in the subsequent descriptions. the navahoes use indigo and a native bluish mineral pigment to paint masks, kethawns, and other small objects; but for the dry-paintings such a large quantity is needed that these would be too expensive. to apply the colored powder, a pinch of it is taken up between the thumb and first two fingers and allowed to fall slowly on the sand, while the thumb is moved over the fingers. 100. to paint one of these large pictures may require the labor of several men--a dozen sometimes--working from early morning till late in the afternoon. the picture must be finished before dark, for it is impracticable to work on it with such artificial lights as the indians can command. while the work is in progress the priest who conducts the ceremonies does little more than direct and criticise. the operators have received a certain initiation. they have seen the picture painted before and are familiar with its details. if an error is made the faulty part is not erased; sand is spread on it to obliterate it, and the corrected drawing is made on the new deposit of sand. the pictures are drawn according to exact and established rules. some parts are measured by palms and spans, and not a line of the sacred designs may be varied in them. in drawing straight lines the colored powder is poured over a tightened cord. but in a few cases the artist is allowed to indulge his fancy, thus, in drawing the embroidered pouches which the gods wear suspended at the waist (plate i.), the limner may, within certain limits, give his god as handsome a pouch as he wishes and embroider it to suit his notion. the naked forms of the mythical characters are drawn first and then the clothing and ornaments are laid on. 101. when the picture is finished a number of ceremonies (differing somewhat in different rites) are performed over it. pollen or corn-meal may be placed on certain parts of the sacred figures, and one of these substances may be scattered over it. water or medicinal infusions may be applied to it. at length the patient is brought in and placed sitting on the picture. moistening his palms, the shaman or an assistant takes the colored dust from various parts of the divine figures and applies it to similar parts of the subject's body. medicine is then usually administered in four draughts. when the patient leaves, others in the lodge who are ill, or fancy themselves ill, take dust on their palms from the picture and apply it to their own persons. he who has headache takes dust from the head in the picture and applies it to his own head. he who has sore feet takes dust from the pictured feet. when all are done the picture is badly marred; it is then totally obliterated,--the method and ceremony of obliteration differing in different rites,--and the sand on which it was drawn is taken out of the lodge and thrown away. the floor on the lodge is swept, and the uninitiated, entering a moment later, has no evidence of what has taken place. 102. plate i. shows pictures of five different gods as they appear separately in the dry-paintings. figure 29 represents, in black, a complete painting (the original of which was done in five different colors) from the rite of the klédzi hatál, or the night chant. it will be observed that some of the gods or yéi of plate i. are to be seen in fig. 29. 103. the medicine-men declare that these pictures have been transmitted from teacher to pupil, unchanged in all the years since they were revealed to the prophets of the rites. there are good reasons for believing that this is not strictly true: the majority of the great ceremonies may be performed only during the coldest part of the year,--the months when the snakes are dormant. no permanent copies of the pictures were ever preserved until the author painted them; they were carried from season to season in the memories of men, and there was no final authority in the tribe to settle questions of correctness. but it is probable that changes, if they occurred, were unintentional and wrought slowly. after the writer made copies of these pictures, and it became known to the medicine-men that he had copies in his possession, it was not uncommon for the shamans, pending the performance of a ceremony, to bring young men who were to assist in the lodge, ask to see the paintings, and lecture on them to their pupils, pointing out the various important points, and thus, no doubt, saving mistakes and corrections in the medicine-lodge. the water-color copies were always (as the shamans knew) kept hidden at the forbidden season, and never shown to the uninitiated of the tribe. 104. masquerade.--in the rites, men appear representing gods or other mythic characters. sometimes such representations are effected by means of paint and equipment only, as in the case of the akáninili, or messenger of the mountain chant,[314] who is dressed to represent the prophet dsi'lyi neyáni as he appeared after the butterfly goddess had transformed him; but on other occasions masks are added to the dress, as in the rites of the night chant. in this there are twenty-one masks,[267] made of sacred buckskin,[13] for representatives of the gods to wear, besides a mask of yucca leaves[14] trimmed with spruce twigs (fig. 26), which the patient wears on one occasion. the buckskin masks, without plumes or collars, are kept in a sack by the shaman, and he carries them on horseback to the place where the rites are to be performed; there they are freshly painted, and the collars and plumes are added just before they are to be used in the ceremony. 105. plates iv. and vii. show the masks as they are actually worn, and exhibit men as they are dressed and painted to represent the war gods. in plate i. we get representations of these masks as they are depicted in the dry-paintings. fig. 27 shows the mask of hastséyalti, the talking god, as it appears when all is ready for the dance, with plume and collar of fresh spruce twigs applied. fig. 28 depicts the mask of a yébaad, or female yéi. the female masks cover only the face, leaving the hair free. the male masks (fig. 27) cover the entire head, concealing the hair. 106. when a man is dressed in his godly costume he does not speak; he only makes motions and utters a peculiar cry,--each god has his own special cry,--and he may perform acts on the patient with his special weapon or talisman. the masquerader, they say, is, for the time being, no longer a navaho, but a god, and a prayer to him is a prayer to a god. when he enters the lodge and sits down before the sick man, the latter hands him his sacrifice and prays to him devoutly, well knowing that it may be his own uncle or cousin, disguised in the panoply of divinity, who receives the sacrifice. 107. dance.--it has been customary with travellers to speak of indian ceremonials as dances. this is chiefly for the reason that the dance most attracts the attention of white men, and the other portions of the work are likely to pass unheeded. dancing is rarely the most important element of an indian ceremonial, and among the navahoes it is always a minor element. in some of the lesser rites it does not occur at all. in the nine days' ceremony of the mountain chant it occurs only on the last night, and then forms but a part of the show,--rude dramatic performances and feats of legerdemain (see fig. 30) occupying about an equal time until the entertainment ends, soon after dawn. in the nine days' ceremony of the night chant, dancing as a part of the ceremony is confined to the last night, although undress rehearsals of the dance take place after sunset for a few days before. 108. these dances of the navaho, although accompanied with religious symbolism, and performed often by men wearing sacred costumes, are undoubtedly intended largely to entertain the spectators. while but a few people may be present during the first eight or nine days of a great ceremony, a large crowd always gathers to witness the performances of the last night, and many people stay up all night to do this. on the last night of the mountain chant the dances are picturesque and various. many of them are borrowed from other rites. they have been described by the author in a previous work. on the last night of the night chant the dance and song vary but little, and to the ordinary observer may seem not to vary at all. yet the spectators who come to the mountain chant are not more wakeful and watchful than those who come to the night chant. the dancing is always rhythmical and well-timed. figures are often introduced like those of our quadrilles; but no round dances, like our waltz or polka, have been observed--the rough ground is not suited for such. the dancers and the drummers practise long in private before coming to the public exhibition. 109. prayer.--in a paper entitled "the prayer of a navaho shaman,"[315] the author has published a long composition, called a prayer by the man from whom he received it, which is a simple narrative and does not contain a word of supplication. this is the only prayer of such character obtained from a navaho. many other long prayers have been recorded, all of which are formed on a common plan. the name of a god is mentioned, and some flattering attributes are given to him. if it is a god such as hastséyalti, of which there are more than one of the same name, his residence is mentioned. he is informed that sacrifices have been prepared for him. he is asked to remove the spell of disease. immediately he is assured that it is removed. then he is asked to bestow various blessings on the supplicant and all his kindred and people. the prayer is given out, one sentence at a time, by the shaman, and the patient repeats it after him, sentence by sentence. 110. these prayers, repeated by two voices, sound much like litanies, and all end with an expression (hozóna hastlé) analogous to the amen of christian prayers, four times repeated; yet the navaho prayers show in their spirit no indication of the influence of christian teaching. they are purely pagan compositions. the only evidence of any modern influence they present is the occasional inclusion of a request for increase of wealth in the shape of horses and sheep. a typical navaho prayer from the rites of klédzi hatál is given in note 288. 111. besides these long prayers, repeated by two persons, the shamans have many monologue prayers; there are prayers silent and vocal, formulated and extempore, used by both priest and layman; and there are short devotional sayings which may be classed as benedictions and ejaculations. the legends. 112. of the many lengthy myths and legends obtained by the author from the navahoes, three have been selected for publication in this volume. the first is the origin legend of the tribe; the other two are incomplete rite-myths, i.e., rite-myths told by men who were not priests of the associated rites. 113. versions.--as might be expected among an unlettered people, thinly scattered over a wide territory, the legends of the navahoes have many variants. no two men will tell the same tale exactly alike, and each story-teller will probably maintain that his own version is the only reliable one. variations of the origin legend, which is the property of the tribe at large, and, unlike the rite-myths, is not in the keeping of any especial order or priesthood, are particularly numerous; but even in the rite-myths, as told by priests of the rites, versions may be found. notwithstanding these varieties, the tale-tellers agree substantially in the more important matters. of the two rite-myths given in this work, only one version of each was procured; but several versions of the origin legend, complete or partial, were recorded. the one here published was selected as being the most complete, extensive, and consistent of all. other versions often supplement it. the narrators sometimes acknowledged that they had forgotten episodes which others had remembered and detailed. the learned old shaman, hatáli nez, forgot to tell how the stars were made; while a younger and less erudite person, jake the silversmith, related a fair version of this episode, which came also from other sources to the writer. jake's version of the legend, which has already been published, is designated in the notes as version b;[306] that of old torlino, a priest of the hozóni hatál, is designated as version a. other versions are alluded to, but not designated by letter or number. some fragmentary versions by other authors[291] [300] have been published, but these are not quoted in the notes. 114. origin legend.--the origin legend divides itself into four very distinct parts or chapters, which are named: i. the story of the emergence; ii. early events in the fifth world; iii. the war gods; iv. the growth of the navaho nation. the name of the first part is that given to it by the navaho story-tellers. the names of the other parts are supplied by the author. the first part, the story of the emergence, ends when it is related that the people came out from the fourth world to the surface of this, the fifth world.[15] 115. rite-myths.--by a rite-myth is meant a myth which accounts for the work of a ceremony, for its origin, for its introduction among the navahoes, or for all these things combined. the navahoes celebrate long and costly ceremonies, many of which are of nine days' duration. each ceremony has connected with it one or more myths, or legends which may not be altogether mythical. 116. when a rite-myth is told by a priest of the rite to which the myth belongs, minute and often tedious particulars concerning the rite, its work, symbolism, and sacrifices are introduced into the tale. when such a myth is told by one who is not a priest of the rite (although he may be a priest of some other rite), these esoteric parts are altogether omitted, or only briefly alluded to. to the latter class belong the two rite-myths given in this book. they are here published because they are among the most interesting and ingenious that have been collected among the navahoes. the attention of the reader is directed, in the notes, to a few places where esoteric or ceremonial matters are thought to be referred to. tales containing ceremonial allusions in full are reserved for future publication, along with a description of the rites to which they pertain, as such is considered the more appropriate place for their publication. 117. in one version of the origin legend (version a) a portion of this story is used as a rite-myth. it is embellished with prayers and songs, and interspersed with allusions to ceremonial work which the version of hatáli nez does not contain; but in other respects it is inferior to the latter. thus embellished it contributes a share to the myth of the ceremony of hozóni hatál, or chant of terrestrial beauty. even in the version of hatáli nez, the songs seem introduced from some rite-myth, and scarcely to belong to the original story. 118. whenever an opportunity has occurred of studying a rite with its associated myth, it has been found that the myth never explains all the symbolism of the rite, although it may account for all the more important acts. a primitive and underlying symbolism, which probably existed previous to the establishment of the rite, remains unexplained by the myth, as though its existence were taken as a matter of course, and required no explanation. some explanation of this foundation symbolism may be found in the origin legend, or in other early legends of the tribe; but something remains which even these do not explain. 119. myths of the whirling logs.--in the ceremony of klédzi hatál there is drawn upon the floor of the medicine-lodge a large dry-painting which is very imperfectly represented in fig. 29. the original was wrought in five colors and was about 12 feet in diameter. it depicts a vision of the prophet bélahatini, who established the rites of klédzi hatál. on one occasion, says the tale, he was led, in the san juan valley, to a lake on the borders of which grew four stalks of sacred corn, each of a different color. in the centre of the lake lay two logs crossing one another at right angles. near both ends of each log sat a pair of yéi, or genii, male and female, making eight in all. on the shore of the lake stood four more yéi, three of whom had staves, by means of which they kept the crossed logs away from the shore and whirling in the waters. the rainbow goddess, the anthropomorphic rainbow of the navahoes, surrounded the lake. all the circumstances of this strange scene are duly symbolized in the painting. 120. it was in his efforts to get a further explanation of this extraordinary picture that the author came upon the story of nati'nesthani. it is not the story that explains the picture, although certain passages in it (pars. 481, 488) might seem to explain it. the story to which the picture belongs is that of bélahatini, which may some day be published in connection with a description of the ceremony of klédzi hatál, or the night chant. the prophet bélahatini, according to the tale, floated down the san juan river in a hollow log, until he came to the whirling lake, where he saw the vision depicted in the dry-painting. but when the shaman had finished telling the story of bélahatini he said: "there is another story of a man who floated down the san juan river in a hollow log. it is a story belonging to a different rite, the atsósidze hatál. would you like to hear it?" it was thus that the story of nati'nesthani came to be told. the narrator of the two tales was a priest of the klédzi hatál, but not of the atsósidze hatál; hence one tale is crowded with allusions to acts in the ceremony, while the other, as here published, has few such allusions. 121. the great shell of kintyél.--the story of the great shell of kintyél, as here given, is a fragment of a rite-myth,--the myth of the yóidze hatál, or yói hatál[250] (bead chant), a nine days' healing ceremony. it conveys a moral often found in navaho tales, which is, that we must not despise the poor and humble. they may be favored by the gods and prove themselves, to-morrow, more potent than those who yesterday despised and mocked them. it also signalizes the triumph of a poor navaho over wealthy pueblos. 122. translation of legends.--in rendering the navaho tales into english, the author has not confined himself to a close literal translation. such translation would often be difficult to understand, and, more often still, be uninteresting reading. he has believed it to be his duty to make a readable translation, giving the spirit of the original rather than the exact words. the tales were told in fluent navaho, easy of comprehension, and of such literary perfection as to hold the hearer's attention. they should be translated into english of a similar character, even if words have to be added to make the sense clear. such privileges are taken by the translators of the bible and of the classic authors. still the writer has taken pains never to exceed the metaphor or descriptive force of the original, and never to add a single thought of his own. if he has erred in rendering the spirit of the savage authors, it has been by diminishing rather than by exaggerating. he has erred on the side of safety. he has endeavored to "tune the sitar" rather low than high.15a again, the original was often embellished with pantomime and vocal modulation which expressed more than the mere words, and which the writer is unable to represent, and it contained extemporized onomatopes which no letters can express. 123. texts.--the men who narrated to the author the tales contained in this book were not men of unlimited leisure, as many suppose the indians to be; they were popular shamans, or medicine-men, who had numerous engagements to conduct ceremonies during the summer months, and it was only during the winter months that they permitted themselves to tell the tales. it was usually with difficulty that arrangements were made with one of these shamans to devote a period of two or three weeks to the service of the author. then, too, they had farms and stock which demanded their care. neither was the author a man of unbounded leisure. rarely could he devote more than two or three hours out of twenty-four to the work of ethnography. it has happened more than once that he has been obliged to break an engagement made with a shaman, at a cost of considerable trouble and money, in order to go on detached service away from his proper station. for these reasons it was not practicable to record the original indian texts of all the stories. the author had to choose between copious texts and copious tales. he chose the latter. but some texts have been recorded. in order that the reader may judge how closely the liberal translation here offered follows the original, the navaho text of the opening passages--ten paragraphs--of the origin legend, with interlinear translations, are given in the notes. the texts of songs, prayers, and interesting passages may also be found in the notes. alphabet used. 124. ever since the present alphabet of the bureau of ethnology was established (in 1880), it has been the author's custom to use it in spelling indian words. but heretofore he has written mostly for the scientific world, for ethnologists and philologists who either were familiar with the alphabet, or were willing to constantly refer to it in reading. as the present work is designed to reach a wider circle of readers, the propriety of using the alphabet of the bureau becomes doubtful. many of the author's friends have begged him not to use it in this collection of tales, believing that its unusual characters would embarrass the average reader and detract from the interest of the work. another system has, therefore, been devised, according to which consonants printed in roman letters have the ordinary english sounds, while those printed in italics have sounds analogous to the english but not identical with them. the vowels, when unmarked, have the continental sounds. when these sounds are modified, diacritical marks are added in accordance with the latest edition of webster's dictionary. the sound of english a in what is indicated by a. the only diphthong is ai, which has the sound of english i in pine. one mark not employed in webster's orthoepy is used in this book, viz., the inverted comma after a vowel to show that it is aspirated. 125. according to this arrangement, the casual reader will find the indian words easily legible. if he takes the trouble to consult this and the preceding paragraph he may pronounce the words almost exactly as a navaho would; if not he may, at least, pronounce them in a way that few navahoes would fail to comprehend. at all events, to the majority of readers, a perfect pronunciation of the indian words is immaterial. many white men, living within the borders of the navaho land, converse with these indians in a jargon or debased language which might be spelled in english characters with their ordinary english values. for example, let us take the word for hut or house. this is properly pronounced hogán; but the whites in new mexico generally call it hogán, and the navahoes never fail to understand the word as thus pronounced. in this form it is an adopted english word in the southwest. the following are the values of the consonants when printed in italics:-d has the sound of english th in this. g has a sound unknown in english, gh imperfectly represents it. it is the g of the dakota, or the arabic ghain. h has the sound of german ch in machen. l is an aspirated l unknown in english, hl imperfectly represents it. it is formed with the side rather than with the tip of the tongue. s has the sound of english sh in shot. t has the sound of english th in thing. z has the sound of english z in azure. c, j, q, r, and x are not used. the sound of english ch in church is represented by ts; that of english j in jug, by dz. spelling of navaho. 126. in the many papers about the navahoes which the author has previously written he has spelled the name of the tribe according to the spanish system "navajo," with the plural also in spanish form, "navajos." in the present work he spells it, according to english orthography, "navaho," with an english plural, "navahoes," and he thus intends to spell it in the future. this he does because the spanish spelling is misleading to the majority of english readers. it may properly be asked why he should adopt an english orthography for navaho, a name of spanish origin, while he retains the misleading spanish orthography of san juan. it is not sufficient, in reply, to say that the territory of the navaho has been in the possession of the united states since 1848, and that we have thus acquired the right to spell this name in our own way; for a thousand other names of spanish origin have marked our map as long, which we never ventured to change, either in spelling or pronunciation. perhaps the best defence to be made of our course is that the name navaho exists nowhere but within our borders. if we change the spelling here, we do not conflict with the spelling elsewhere. but there are scores of san juans in spanish america. we could not change the spelling of our san juan without confusion. it were better that we should follow the example of lord byron and pronounce it jew'an; but this the people of the southwest will probably never do. they will speak of the stream as the "san won" or the "san whon" for all time. furthermore, the english spelling of navaho is not a new thing with the writer. many have already adopted it. notes. 126. in preparing the notes the author has usually limited himself to such matters as he believes he only can explain, or such as, at least, he can explain better than any one else. in a few cases he has given information on subjects not generally known and not easily to be investigated. the temptation to wander into the seductive paths of comparative mythology, and to speculate on the more recondite significance of the myths, had to be resisted if the work were to be kept within the limits of one volume. resemblances between the tales of the navahoes and those of other peoples, civilized and savage, ancient and modern, are numerous and marked; but space devoted to them would be lost to more important subjects. again, many of the readers of this book may be prepared, better than the author, to note these resemblances. shamans.[16] 127. so much has been said against the medicine-men of the indians by various writers, who accuse them of being reactionaries, mischief-makers, and arrant deceivers, that the writer feels constrained to give some testimony in their favor,--in favor, at least, of those he has met among the navahoes; he will not speak now for other tribes. 128. there are, among the navahoes, charlatans and cheats who treat disease; men who pretend to suck disease out of the patient and then draw from their own mouths pebbles, pieces of charcoal, or bodies of insects, claiming that these are the disease which they have extracted. but the priests of the great rites are not to be classed with such. all of these with whom the writer is acquainted are above such trickery. they perform their ceremonies in the firm conviction that they are invoking divine aid, and their calling lends dignity to their character. they interfere little with the political affairs of the tribe. 129. smiling chanter.--it is a source of great regret that a better likeness cannot be presented of hatáli natlói than that shown in fig. 31. it is reproduced from a painting which was copied from a dim kodak photograph. his name may be translated smiling chanter, or smiling doctor; an angry or unpleasant expression is never seen on his face. he is also called hatáli pahozóni, which may be translated happy or good-natured chanter. he is a priest of the klédzi hatál, or night chant. he would be considered a man of high character in any community. he is dignified, courteous, kind, honest, truthful, and self-respecting. but his dignity is not of the pompous kind. he has a keen sense of humor, makes an excellent joke, and is a good mimic; but, for all his fun, he is neither vulgar nor unkind. he never begged from the author, and never made a bargain with him in advance for his services, or named a price for them when he was done. he always took the greatest pains to explain everything, and, after the writer had been duly initiated into the mysteries of his order, he withheld nothing. to him we are indebted for the story of nati'nesthani. 130. tall chanter.--figure 32 represents an aged priest named hatáli nez, or tall chanter. he was the first who could be persuaded to explain to the author the ceremonies or relate the rite-myths; but when he set the example, others were found to follow. he also is a priest of the night chant. of late years he has become unpopular as a shaman, owing to an increasing irritability of temper; but he exhibits no envy of his more popular rivals. he perhaps has a better knowledge of the legends than any other man in the tribe. before he would confide any of his secrets to the author he said: "the chanters among the navahoes are all brothers. if you would learn our secrets you must be one of us. you must forever be a brother to me. do you promise this?" he has ever since addressed the author as sitsi'li, "my younger brother," and has in turn been called sinái, "my elder brother." 131. ethics.--among themselves, these men have a code of ethics which is, in general, more honestly upheld than the code of our own medical profession. they exhibit no jealousy of one another. they boast not of the excellence of the particular rite they practise. they assist and counsel one another. if a medicine-man, in performing a rite, finds that his supply of some sacred article is exhausted, he sends to the nearest medicine-man for it. if the latter has it, he is obliged to give, and is not allowed to receive payment in return. 132. torlino.--they are as willing as any other indians to learn the white man's philosophy. old torlino, a priest of hozóni hatál, sent a son to school at carlisle, and when the young man returned he no doubt imparted to his father much that he had learned there. the writer sent for the old man to get from him the myth of hozóni hatál. torlino began: "i know the white men say the world is round, and that it floats in the air. my tale says the world is flat, and that there are five worlds, one above another. you will not believe my tale, then, and perhaps you do not want to hear it." being assured that the tale was earnestly desired, despite of all white men's theories, he proceeded. "i shall tell you the truth, then. i shall tell you all that i heard from the old men who taught me, as well as i can now remember. why should i lie to you?" and then he made the interesting asseveration which is here literally translated: "i am ashamed before the earth; i am ashamed before the heavens; i am ashamed before the dawn; i am ashamed before the evening twilight; i am ashamed before the blue sky; i am ashamed before the darkness; i am ashamed before the sun; i am ashamed before that standing within me which speaks with me (my conscience!).[274] some of these things are always looking at me. i am never out of sight. therefore i must tell the truth. that is why i always tell the truth. i hold my word tight to my breast." 133. medical practice.--often have the shamans come to the author for treatment for themselves and their friends, and they never made any secret of this, but asked for medicine in the presence of the laity of their own tribe. they do not pretend to deal in panaceas. on the other hand, in cases where the author has failed to give prompt relief to a sick indian, they have come in all sincerity and politeness and said, "i know a remedy for that difficulty. will you let me try it?" they do not confine themselves to the practice of their shamanistic rites. they use various plants in the treatment of disease, and these, in simple, acute cases, they administer without prayer, sacrifice, or incantation. a last word (to poets and others). 134. it is possible that poets, novelists, travellers, and compilers will search this humble volume and cull from it facts and fancies, which, clothed in fairer diction, may add interest to their pages. the author does not ask that such writers shall acknowledge the source of their inspiration. this is more than he has a right to expect. our greatest poets have borrowed from sources as obscure and never named their creditors. the author has often, ere now, experienced the pleasure of seeing his thoughts and discoveries blazoned in print over other names. but he ventures to make a few requests of the literary borrower. he begs that the latter will not garble or distort what is here written,--that he will not put alien thoughts into the minds of these pagan heroes; that he will not arm them with the weapons nor clothe them in the habiliments of an alien race; that he will not make them act incongruous parts. 135. stephen powers, in his "tribes of california"[326] (page 38), gives, in simple and direct language, the story of how fire came to the karok nation. a few years after he wrote, some one worked his story into a "poem," which appeared, most artistically illustrated, in one of our leading magazines. in this poem the coyote, in a quandary, is represented as "stroking his goatee." coyotes have no goatees; indians have no goatees. the act of stroking the goatee, in thought or perplexity, is the special mannerism of a nervous american. no allusion could be more out of place in an indian legend. should the poet referred to ever select any of the tales in this book to be tortured into a poem, i beg that he will not, even for the sake of making a faulty rhyme, put a beard on the chin of the navaho coyote god. washington matthews. 1262 new hampshire avenue, washington, d.c. may 1st, 1896. legends. the navaho origin legend. i. the story of the emergence. 136. at to`bilhaski'di (in the middle of the first world), white arose in the east, and they[17] regarded it as day there, they say; blue rose in the south, and still it was day to them, and they moved around; yellow rose in the west and showed that evening had come; then dark arose in the north, and they lay down and slept.[18] 137. at to`bilhaski'di water flowed out (from a central source) in different directions; one stream flowed to the east, another to the south, and another to the west. there were dwelling-places on the border of the stream that flowed to the east, on that which flowed to the south, and on that which flowed to the west also. 138. to the east there was a place called tan (corn), to the south a place called nahodoóla, and to the west a place called lókatsosakád (standing reed). again, to the east there was a place called essalái (one pot), to the south a place called to`hádzitil (they come often for water), and to the west a place called dsillitsíbehogán (house made of the red mountain). then, again, to the east there was a place called léyahogán (under-ground house), to the south a place called tsiltsi'ntha (among aromatic sumac), and to the west a place called tse`lisíbehogán (house made of red rock). 139. holatsí dilyi'le (dark ants) lived there. holatsí litsí (red ants) lived there. tanilaí (dragon flies) lived there. tsaltsá (yellow beetles) lived there. wointli'zi (hard beetles) lived there. tse`yoáli (stone-carrier beetles) lived there. kinli'zin (black beetles) lived there. maitsán (coyote-dung beetles) lived there. tsápani (bats) lived there. totsó` (white-faced beetles) lived there. wonistsídi (locusts) lived there. wonistsídikai (white locusts) lived there. these twelve people started in life there.[19] 140. to the east extended an ocean, to the south an ocean, to the west an ocean, and to the north an ocean. in the ocean to the east lay tiéholtsodi; he was chief of the people there. in the ocean to the south lived thaltláhale (blue heron), who was chief of the people there. in the ocean to the west lay tsal (frog), who was chief of the people there. in the ocean to the north was idni`dsilkaí (white mountain thunder), and he was chief of the people there.[20] 141. the people quarrelled among themselves, and this is the way it happened. they committed adultery, one people with another. many of the women were guilty. they tried to stop it, but they could not. tiéholtsodi, the chief in the east, said: "what shall we do with them? they like not the land they dwell in." in the south blue heron spoke to them, and in the west frog said: "no longer shall you dwell here, i say. i am chief here." to the north white mountain lightning said: "go elsewhere at once. depart from here!" 142. when again they sinned and again they quarrelled, tiéholtsodi, in the east, would not speak to them; blue heron, in the south, would not speak to them; frog, in the west, would say nothing; and white mountain thunder, in the north, would not speak to them. 143. again, at the end of four nights, the same thing happened. those who dwelt at the south again committed crime, and again they had contentions. one woman and one man sought to enter in the east (to complain to the chief), but they were driven out. in the south they sought to go in where blue heron lay, but again they were driven out. in the west, where frog was the chief, again they tried to enter; but again they were driven out. to the north again they were driven out. (the chief) said: "none of you (shall enter here). go elsewhere and keep on going." that night at nahodoóla they held a council, but they arrived at no decision. at dawn tiéholtsodi began to talk. "you pay no attention to my words. everywhere you disobey me; you must go to some other place. not upon this earth shall you remain." thus he spoke to them. 144. among the women, for four nights they talked about it. at the end of the fourth night, in the morning, as they were rising, something white appeared in the east. it appeared also in the south, the west, and the north. it looked like a chain of mountains, without a break, stretching around them. it was water that surrounded them. water impassable, water insurmountable, flowed all around. all at once they started. 145. they went in circles upward till they reached the sky. it was smooth. they looked down; but there the water had risen, and there was nothing else but water there. while they were flying around, one having a blue head thrust out his head from the sky and called to them, saying: "in here, to the eastward, there is a hole." they entered the hole and went through it up to the surface (of the second world). 146. the blue one belonged to the hastsósidine`, or swallow people.[21] the swallow people lived there. a great many of their houses, rough and lumpy, lay scattered all around. each tapered toward the top, and at that part there was a hole for entrance. a great many people approached and gathered around[275] the strangers, but they said nothing. 147. the first world was red in color; the second world, into which the people had now entered, was blue.[22] they sent out two couriers, a locust and a white locust, to the east, to explore the land and see if there were in it any people like themselves. at the end of two days the couriers returned, and said that in one day's travel they had reached the edge of the world--the top of a great cliff that arose from an abyss whose bottom they could not see; but that they found in all their journey no people, no animals of any kind, no trees, no grass, no sage-brush, no mountains, nothing but bare, level ground. the same couriers were then dispatched in turn to the south, to the west, and to the north. they were gone on each journey two days, and when they returned related, as before, that they had reached the edge of the world, and discovered nothing but an uninhabited waste. here, then, the strangers found themselves in the centre of a vast barren plain, where there was neither food nor a kindred people. when the couriers had returned from the north, the swallows visited the camp of the newly arrived people, and asked them why they had sent out the couriers to the east. "we sent them out," was the reply, "to see what was in the land, and to see if there were any people like ourselves here." "and what did your couriers tell you?" asked the swallows. "they told us that they came to the edge of the world, yet found no plant and no living thing in all the land." (the same questions were asked and the same answers given for the other points of the compass.) "they spoke the truth," said the swallow people. "had you asked us in the beginning what the land contained, we would have told you and saved you all your trouble. until you came, no one has ever dwelt in all this land but ourselves." the people then said to the swallows: "you understand our language and are much like us. you have legs, feet, bodies, heads, and wings, as we have: why cannot your people and our people become friends?" "let it be as you wish," said the swallows, and both parties began at once to treat each other as members of one tribe; they mingled one among the other, and addressed one another by the terms of relationship, as, my brother, my sister, my father, my son, etc.[23] 148. they all lived together pleasantly and happily for twenty-three days; but on the twenty-fourth night one of the strangers made too free with the wife of the swallow chief, and next morning, when the latter found out what had happened, he said to the strangers: "we have treated you as friends, and thus you return our kindness. we doubt not that for such crimes you were driven from the lower world, and now you must leave this. this is our land and we will have you here no longer. besides, this is a bad land. people are dying here every day, and, even if we spare you, you cannot live here long." the locusts took the lead on hearing this; they soared upwards; the others followed, and all soared and circled till they reached the sky. 149. when they reached the sky they found it, like the sky of the first world, smooth and hard with no opening; but while they were circling round under it, they saw a white face peering out at them,--it was the face of ni'ltsi, the wind. he called to them and told them if they would fly to the south they would find a hole through which they could pass; so off they flew, as bidden, and soon they discovered a slit in the sky which slanted upwards toward the south; through this slit they flew, and soon entered the third world in the south. 150. the color of the third world was yellow.[22] here they found nothing but the grasshopper people. the latter gathered around the wanderers in great numbers, but said nothing. they lived in holes in the ground along the banks of a great river which flowed through their land to the east. the wanderers sent out the same locust messengers that they had sent out in the second world to explore the land to the east, to the south, to the west, to the north, to find out what the land contained, and to see if there were any kindred people in it; but the messengers returned from each journey after an absence of two days, saying they had reached the end of the world, and that they had found a barren land with no people in it save the grasshoppers.[24] 151. when the couriers returned from their fourth journey, the two great chiefs of the grasshoppers visited the strangers and asked them why they had sent out the explorers, and the strangers answered that they had sent them out to see what grew in the land, and to find if there were any people like themselves in it. "and what did your couriers find?" said the grasshopper chiefs. "they found nothing save the bare land and the river, and no people but yourselves." "there is nothing else in the land," said the chiefs. "long we have lived here, but we have seen no other people but ourselves until you came." 152. the strangers then spoke to the grasshoppers, as they had spoken to the swallows in the second world, and begged that they might join them and become one people with them. the grasshoppers consented, and the two peoples at once mingled among one another and embraced one another, and called one another by the endearing terms of relationship, as if they were all of the same tribe. 153. as before, all went well for twenty-three days; but on the twenty-fourth one of the strangers served a chief of the grasshoppers as the chief of the swallows had been served in the lower world. in the morning, when the wrong was discovered, the chief reviled the strangers and bade them depart. "for such crimes," he said, "i suppose you were chased from the world below: you shall drink no more of our water, you shall breathe no more of our air. begone!" 154. up they all flew again, and circled round and round until they came to the sky above them, and they found it smooth and hard as before. when they had circled round for some time, looking in vain for an entrance, they saw a red head stuck out of the sky, and they heard a voice which told them to fly to the west. it was the head of red wind which they saw, and it was his voice that spoke to them. the passage which they found in the west was twisted round like the tendril of a vine; it had thus been made by the wind. they flew up in circles through it and came out in the fourth world. four of the grasshoppers came with them; one was white, one blue, one yellow, and one black. we have grasshoppers of these four colors with us to this day.[25] 155. the surface of the fourth world was mixed black and white. the colors in the sky were the same as in the lower worlds, but they differed in their duration. in the first world, the white, the blue, the yellow, and the black all lasted about an equal length of time every day. in the second world the blue and the black lasted a little longer than the other two colors. in the third world they lasted still longer. in the fourth world there was but little of the white and yellow; the blue and the black lasted most of the time. as yet there was neither sun, moon, nor star. 156. when they arrived on the surface of the fourth world they saw no living thing; but they observed four great snow-covered peaks sticking up at the horizon,--one at the east, one at the south, one at the west, and one at the north. 157. they sent two couriers to the east. these returned at the end of two days. they related that they had not been able to reach the eastern mountain, and that, though they had travelled far, they had seen no track or trail or sign of life. two couriers were then sent to the south. when they returned, at the end of two days, they related that they had reached a low range of mountains this side of the great peak; that they had seen no living creature, but had seen two different kinds of tracks, such as they had never seen before, and they described such as the deer and the turkey make now. two couriers were next sent to the west. in two days these returned, having failed to reach the great peak in the west, and having seen no living thing and no sign of life. at last two couriers were sent to the north. when these got back to their kindred they said they had found a race of strange men, who cut their hair square in front, who lived in houses in the ground and cultivated fields. these people, who were engaged in gathering their harvest, the couriers said, treated them very kindly and gave them food to eat. it was now evident to the wanderers that the fourth world was larger than any of the worlds below. 158. the day following the return of the couriers who went to the north, two of the newly discovered race--kisáni (pueblos) they were called--entered the camp of the exiles and guided the latter to a stream of water. the water was red, and the kisáni told the wanderers they must not walk through the stream, for if they did the water would injure their feet. the kisáni showed them a square raft made of four logs,--a white pine, a blue spruce, and yellow pine, and a black spruce,--on which they might cross; so they went over the stream and visited the homes of the kisáni. 159. the kisáni gave the wanderers corn and pumpkins to eat, and the latter lived for some time on the food given to them daily by their new friends. they held a council among themselves, in which they resolved to mend their manners for the future and do nothing to make the kisáni angry. the land of the kisáni had neither rain nor snow; the crops were raised by irrigation. 160. late in the autumn they heard in the east the distant sound of a great voice calling. they listened and waited, and soon heard the voice nearer and louder. they listened still and heard the voice a third time, nearer and louder than before. once more they listened, and soon they heard the voice louder still, and clear like the voice of one near at hand. a moment later four mysterious beings appeared to them.[26] these were: bitsís lakaí, or white body, a being like the god of this world whom the navahoes call hastséyalti; bitsís dotli'z, or blue body, who was like the present navaho god tó`nenili, or water sprinkler; bitsís litsói, or yellow body; and bitsís lizi'n, or black body, who was the same as the present navaho god of fire, hastsézini. 161. these beings, without speaking, made many signs to the people, as if instructing them; but the latter did not understand them. when the gods had gone, the people long discussed the mysterious visit, and tried to make out what the gods meant by the signs they had made. thus the gods visited four days in succession. on the fourth day, when the other three had departed, black body remained behind and spoke to the people in their own language. he said: "you do not seem to understand the signs that these gods make you, so i must tell you what they mean. they want to make more people, but in form like themselves. you have bodies like theirs; but you have the teeth, the feet, and the claws of beasts and insects. the new creatures are to have hands and feet like ours. but you are uncleanly, you smell badly. have yourselves well cleansed when we return; we will come back in twelve days." 162. on the morning of the twelfth day the people washed themselves well. the women dried themselves with yellow corn-meal; the men with white corn-meal.[27] soon after the ablutions were completed they heard the distant call of the approaching gods. it was shouted, as before, four times,--nearer and louder at each repetition,--and, after the fourth call, the gods appeared. blue body and black body each carried a sacred buckskin. white body carried two ears of corn, one yellow, one white, each covered at the end completely with grains.[28] 163. the gods laid one buckskin on the ground with the head to the west; on this they placed the two ears of corn, with their tips to the east, and over the corn they spread the other buckskin with its head to the east; under the white ear they put the feather of a white eagle, under the yellow ear the feather of a yellow eagle. then they told the people to stand at a distance and allow the wind to enter. the white wind blew from the east, and the yellow wind blew from the west, between the skins. while the wind was blowing, eight of the mirage people came and walked around the objects on the ground four times, and as they walked the eagle feathers, whose tips protruded from between the buckskins, were seen to move. when the mirage people had finished their walk the upper buckskin was lifted,--the ears of corn had disappeared; a man and a woman lay there in their stead. 164. the white ear of corn had been changed into a man, the yellow ear into a woman. it was the wind that gave them life. it is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives us life. when this ceases to blow we die. in the skin at the tips of our fingers we see the trail of the wind; it shows us where the wind blew when our ancestors were created. 165. the pair thus created were first man and first woman (atsé hastín and atsé estsán). the gods directed the people to build an enclosure of brushwood for the pair. when the enclosure was finished, first man and first woman entered it, and the gods said to them: "live together now as husband and wife." at the end of four days hermaphrodite[29] twins were born, and at the end of four days more a boy and a girl were born, who in four days grew to maturity and lived with one another as husband and wife. the primal pair had in all five pairs of twins, the first of which only was barren, being hermaphrodites. 166. in four days after the last pair of twins was born, the gods came again and took first man and first woman away to the eastern mountain where the gods dwelt, and kept them there for four days. when they returned all their children were taken to the eastern mountain and kept there for four days. soon after they all returned it was observed that they occasionally wore masks, such as hastséyalti and hastséhogan wear now, and that when they wore these masks they prayed for all good things,--for abundant rain and abundant crops. it is thought, too, that during their visit to the eastern mountain they learned the awful secrets of witchcraft, for the antíhi (witches, wizards) always keep such masks with them and marry those too nearly related to them. 167. when they returned from the eastern mountain the brothers and sisters separated; and, keeping the fact of their former unlawful marriages secret, the brothers married women of the mirage people and the sisters married men of the mirage people. they kept secret, too, all the mysteries they had learned in the eastern mountain. the women thus married bore children every four days, and the children grew to maturity in four days, were married, and in their turn had children every four days. this numerous offspring married among the kisáni, and among those who had come from the lower world, and soon there was a multitude of people in the land. 168. these descendants of first man and first woman made a great farm. they built a dam and dug a wide irrigating ditch. but they feared the kisáni might injure their dam or their crops; so they put one of the hermaphrodites to watch the dam and the other to watch the lower end of the field. the hermaphrodite who watched at the dam invented pottery. he made first a plate, a bowl, and a dipper, which were greatly admired by the people. the hermaphrodite who lived at the lower end of the farm invented the wicker water-bottle.[30] others made, from thin split boards of cottonwood, implements which they shoved before them to clear the weeds out of the land. they made also hoes from shoulder-blades of deer and axes of stone. they got their seeds from the kisáni. 169. once they killed a little deer, and some one among them thought that perhaps they might make, from the skin of the head, a mask, by means of which they could approach other deer and kill them. they tried to make such a mask but failed; they could not make it fit. they debated over the invention and considered it for four days, but did not succeed. on the morning of the fifth day they heard the gods shouting in the distance. as on a previous occasion, they shouted four times, and after the fourth call they made their appearance. they brought with them heads of deer and of antelope. they showed the people how the masks were made and fitted, how the eye-holes were cut, how the motions of the deer were to be imitated, and explained to them all the other mysteries of the deer-hunt.[31] next day hunters went out and several deer were killed; from these more masks were made, and with these masks more men went out to hunt; after that time the camp had abundance of meat. the people dressed the deerskins and made garments out of them. 170. the people from the third world had been in the fourth world eight years when the following incident occurred: one day they saw the sky stooping down and the earth rising up to meet it. for a moment they came in contact, and then there sprang out of the earth, at the point of contact, the coyote and the badger. we think now that the coyote and the badger are children of the sky. the coyote rose first, and for this reason we think he is the elder brother of the badger. at once the coyote came over to the camp and skulked round among the people, while the badger went down into the hole that led to the lower world. 171. first man told the people the names of the four mountains which rose in the distance. they were named the same as the four mountains that now bound the navaho land. there was tsisnadzi'ni in the east, tsótsil in the south, dokoslíd in the west, and depe'ntsa in the north, and he told them that a different race of people lived in each mountain. 172. first man was the chief of all these people in the fourth world, except the kisáni. he was a great hunter, and his wife, first woman, was very corpulent. one day he brought home from the hunt a fine fat deer. the woman boiled some of it and they had a hearty meal. when they were done the woman wiped her greasy hands on her dress, and made a remark which greatly enraged her husband; they had a quarrel about this, which first man ended by jumping across the fire and remaining by himself in silence for the rest of the night.[32] 173. next morning first man went out early and called aloud to the people: "come hither, all ye men," he said; "i wish to speak to you, but let all the women stay behind; i do not wish to see them." soon all the males gathered, and he told them what his wife had said the night before. "they believe," he said, "that they can live without us. let us see if they can hunt game and till the fields without our help. let us see what sort of a living they can make by themselves. let us leave them and persuade the kisáni to come with us. we will cross the stream, and when we are gone over we will keep the raft on the other side." he sent for the hermaphrodites. they came, covered with meal, for they had been grinding corn. "what have you that you have made yourselves?" he asked. "we have each two mealing-stones, and we have cups and bowls and baskets and many other things," they answered. "then take these all along with you," he ordered, "and join us to cross the stream." then all the men and the hermaphrodites assembled at the river and crossed to the north side on the raft, and they took over with them their stone axes and farm implements and everything they had made. when they had all crossed they sent the raft down to the kisáni for them to cross. the latter came over,--six gentes of them,--but they took their women with them. while some of the young men were crossing the stream they cried at parting with their wives; still they went at the bidding of their chief. the men left the women everything the latter had helped to make or raise. 174. as soon as they had crossed the river some of the men went out hunting, for the young boys needed food, and some set to work to chop down willows and build huts. they had themselves all sheltered in four days. 175. that winter the women had abundance of food, and they feasted, sang, and had a merry time. they often came down to the bank of the river and called across to the men and taunted and reviled them. next year the men prepared a few small fields and raised a little corn; but they did not have much corn to eat, and lived a good deal by hunting. the women planted all of the old farm, but they did not work it very well; so in the winter they had a small crop, and they did not sing and make merry as in the previous winter. in the second spring the women planted less, while the men planted more, cleared more land, and increased the size of their farm. each year the fields and crops of the men increased, while those of the women diminished and they began to suffer for want of food. some went out and gathered the seeds of wild plants to eat. in the autumn of the third year of separation many women jumped into the river and tried to swim over; but they were carried under the surface of the water and were never seen again. in the fourth year the men had more food than they could eat; corn and pumpkins lay untouched in the fields, while the women were starving. 176. first man at length began to think what the effect of his course might be. he saw that if he continued to keep the men and the women apart the race might die out, so he called the men and spoke his thoughts to them. some said, "surely our race will perish," and others said, "what good is our abundance to us? we think so much of our poor women starving in our sight that we cannot eat." then he sent a man to the shore to call across the stream to find if first woman were still there, and to bid her come down to the bank if she were. she came to the bank, and first man called to her and asked if she still thought she could live alone. "no," she replied, "we cannot live without our husbands." the men and the women were then told to assemble at the shores of the stream; the raft was sent over and the women were ferried across. they were made to bathe their bodies and dry them with meal. they were put in a corral and kept there until night, when they were let out to join the men in their feasts.[33] 177. when they were let out of the corral it was found that three were missing. after dark, voices were heard calling from the other side of the river; they were the voices of the missing ones,--a mother and her two daughters. they begged to be ferried over, but the men told them it was too dark, that they must wait until morning. hearing this, they jumped into the stream and tried to swim over. the mother succeeded in reaching the opposite bank and finding her husband. the daughters were seized by tiéholtsodi, the water monster, and dragged down under the water. 178. for three nights and three days the people heard nothing about the young women and supposed them lost forever. on the morning of the fourth day the call of the gods was heard,--four times as usual,--and after the fourth call white body made his appearance, holding up two fingers and pointing to the river. the people supposed that these signs had reference to the lost girls. some of the men crossed the stream on the raft and looked for the tracks of the lost ones; they traced the tracks to the edge of the water, but no farther. white body went away, but soon returned, accompanied by blue body. white body carried a large bowl of white shell, and blue body a large bowl of blue shell. they asked for a man and a woman to accompany them, and they went down to the river. they put both the bowls on the surface of the water and caused them to spin around. beneath the spinning bowls the water opened, for it was hollow, and gave entrance to a large house of four rooms. the room in the east was made of the dark waters, the room in the south of the blue waters, the room in the west of the yellow waters, and the room in the north of waters of all colors.[36] 179. the man and the woman descended and coyote followed them. they went first into the east room, but there they found nothing; then they went into the south room, but there they found nothing; next they went into the west room, where again they found nothing; at last they went into the north room, and there they beheld the water monster tiéholtsodi, with the two girls he had stolen and two children of his own. the man and the woman demanded the children, and as he said nothing in reply they took them and walked away. but as they went out coyote, unperceived by all, took the two children of tiéholtsodi and carried them off under his robe. coyote always wore his robe folded close around him and always slept with it thus folded, so no one was surprised to see that he still wore his robe in this way when he came up from the waters, and no one suspected that he had stolen the children of tiéholtsodi. 180. next day the people were surprised to see deer, turkey, and antelope running past from east to west, and to see animals of six different kinds (two kinds of hawks, two kinds of squirrels, the hummingbird, and the bat) come into their camp as if for refuge. the game animals ran past in increasing numbers during the three days following. on the morning of the fourth day, when the white light rose, the people observed in the east a strange white gleam along the horizon, and they sent out the locust couriers to see what caused this unusual appearance. the locusts returned before sunset, and told the people that a vast flood of waters was fast approaching from the east. on hearing this the people all assembled together, the kisáni with the others, in a great multitude, and they wailed and wept over the approaching catastrophe. they wept and moaned all night and could not sleep. 181. when the white light arose in the east, next morning, the waters were seen high as mountains encircling the whole horizon, except in the west, and rolling on rapidly. the people packed up all their goods as fast as they could, and ran up on a high hill near by, for temporary safety. here they held a council. some one suggested that perhaps the two squirrels (hazáitso and hazáistozi) might help them. "we will try what we can do," said the squirrels. one planted a piñon seed, the other a juniper seed, and they grew so very fast that the people hoped that they would soon grow so tall that the flood could not reach their tops, and that all might find shelter there. but after the trees grew a little way they began to branch out and grew no higher. then the frightened people called on the weasels (glo`dsilkái and glo`dsilzi'ni). one of these planted a spruce seed and one a pine seed. the trees sprouted at once and grew fast, and again the people began to hope; but soon the trees commenced to branch, and they dwindled to slender points at the top and ceased to grow higher. now they were in the depths of despair, for the waters were coming nearer every moment, when they saw two men approaching the hill on which they were gathered. 182. one of the approaching men was old and grayhaired; the other, who was young, walked in advance. they ascended the hill and passed through the crowd, speaking to no one. the young man sat down on the summit, the old man sat down behind him, and the locust sat down behind the old man,--all facing the east. the elder took out seven bags from under his robe and opened them. each contained a small quantity of earth. he told the people that in these bags he had earth from the seven sacred mountains. there were in the fourth world seven sacred mountains, named and placed like the sacred mountains of the present navaho land. "ah! perhaps our father can do something for us," said the people. "i cannot, but my son may be able to help you," said the old man. then they bade the son to help them, and he said he would if they all moved away from where he stood, faced to the west, and looked not around until he called them; for no one should see him at his work. they did as he desired, and in a few moments he called them to come to him. when they came, they saw that he had spread the sacred earth on the ground and planted in it thirty-two reeds, each of which had thirty-two joints. as they gazed they beheld the roots of the reeds striking out into the soil and growing rapidly downward. a moment later all the reeds joined together and became one reed of great size, with a hole in its eastern side. he bade them enter the hollow of the reed through this hole. when they were all safely inside, the opening closed, and none too soon, for scarcely had it closed when they heard the loud noise of the surging waters outside, saying, "yin, yin, yin."[37] 183. the waters rose fast, but the reed grew faster, and soon it grew so high that it began to sway, and the people inside were in great fear lest, with their weight, it might break and topple over into the water. white body, blue body, and black body were along. black body blew a great breath out through a hole in the top of the reed; a heavy dark cloud formed around the reed and kept it steady. but the reed grew higher and higher; again it began to sway, and again the people within were in great fear, whereat he blew and made another cloud to steady the reed. by sunset it had grown up close to the sky, but it swayed and waved so much that they could not secure it to the sky until black body, who was uppermost, took the plume out of his head-band and stuck it out through the top of the cane against the sky, and this is why the reed (phragmites communis) always carries a plume on its head now.[38] 184. seeing no hole in the sky, they sent up the great hawk, gini'tso, to see what he could do. he flew up and began to scratch in the sky with his claws, and he scratched and scratched till he was lost to sight. after a while he came back, and said that he scratched to where he could see light, but that he did not get through the sky. next they sent up a locust.[39] he was gone a long time, and when he came back he had this story to tell: he had gotten through to the upper world, and came out on a little island in the centre of a lake. when he got out he saw approaching him from the east a black grebe, and from the west a yellow grebe.[40] one of them said to him: "who are you and whence come you?" but he made no reply. the other then said: "we own half of this world,--i in the east, my brother in the west. we give you a challenge. if you can do as we do, we shall give you one half of the world; if you cannot, you must die." each had an arrow made of the black wind. he passed the arrow from side to side through his heart and flung it down to wonistsídi, the locust.[41] the latter picked up one of the arrows, ran it from side to side through his heart, as he had seen the grebes do, and threw it down.[42] the grebes swam away, one to the east and one to the west, and troubled him no more. when they had gone, two more grebes appeared, a blue one from the south and a shining one from the north. they spoke to him as the other grebes had spoken, and gave him the same challenge. again he passed the arrow through his heart and the grebes departed, leaving the land to the locust. to this day we see in every locust's sides the holes made by the arrows. but the hole the locust made in ascending was too small for many of the people, so they sent badger up to make it larger. when badger came back his legs were stained black with the mud, and the legs of all badgers have been black ever since. then first man and first woman led the way and all the others followed them, and they climbed up through the hole to the surface of this--the fifth--world. ii. early events in the fifth world. 185. the lake[43] was bounded by high cliffs, from the top of which stretched a great plain. there are mountains around it now, but these have been created since the time of the emergence. finding no way to get out of the lake, they called on blue body to help them. he had brought with him from the lower world four stones; he threw one of these towards each of the four cardinal points against the cliffs, breaking holes, through which the waters flowed away in four different directions.[44] the lake did not altogether drain out by this means; but the bottom became bare in one place, connecting the island with the mainland. but the mud was so deep in this place that they still hesitated to cross, and they prayed to ni'ltsi dilkóhi, smooth wind, to come to their aid.[45] ni'ltsi dilkóhi blew a strong wind, and in one day dried up the mud so that the people could easily walk over. while they were waiting for the ground to dry, the kisáni camped on the east side of the island and built a stone wall (which stands to this day), to lean against and to shelter them from the wind.[46] the other people set up a shelter of brushwood. the women erected four poles, on which they stretched a deerskin, and under the shelter of this they played the game of three-sticks,[47] tsindi', one of the four games which they brought with them from the lower world. 186. when they reached the mainland they sought to divine their fate. to do this some one threw a hide-scraper into the water, saying: "if it sinks we perish, if it floats we live." it floated, and all rejoiced. but coyote said: "let me divine your fate." he picked up a stone, and saying, "if it sinks we perish; if it floats we live," he threw it into the water. it sank, of course, and all were angry with him and reviled him; but he answered them saying: "if we all live, and continue to increase as we have done, the earth will soon be too small to hold us, and there will be no room for the cornfields. it is better that each of us should live but a time on this earth and then leave and make room for our children." they saw the wisdom of his words and were silent. the day they arrived at the shore they had two visitors,--puma and wolf. "we have heard," said these, "that some new people had come up out of the ground, and we have come over to see them." puma took a bride from among the new people. 187. on the fourth day of the emergence some one went to look at the hole through which they had come out, and he noticed water welling up there; already it was nearly on a level with the top of the hole, and every moment it rose higher. in haste he ran back to his people and told them what he had seen. a council was called at once to consider the new danger that threatened them. first man, who rose to speak, said, pointing to coyote: "yonder is a rascal, and there is something wrong about him. he never takes off his robe, even when he lies down. i have watched him for a long time, and have suspected that he carries some stolen property under his robe. let us search him."[48] they tore the robe from coyote's shoulders, and two strange little objects dropped out that looked something like buffalo calves, but were spotted all over in various colors; they were the young of tiéholtsodi. at once the people threw them into the hole through which the waters were pouring; in an instant the waters subsided, and rushed away with a deafening noise to the lower world.[49] 188. on the fifth night one of the twin hermaphrodites ceased to breathe. they left her alone all that night, and, when morning came, coyote proposed to lay her at rest among the rocks. this they did; but they all wondered what had become of her breath. they went in various directions to seek for its trail, but could find it nowhere. while they were hunting, two men went near the hole through which they had come from the lower world. it occurred to one of them to look down into the hole. he did so, and he saw the dead one seated by the side of the river, in the fourth world, combing her hair. he called to his companion and the latter came and looked down, too. they returned to their people and related what they had seen; but in four days both these men died, and ever since the navahoes have feared to look upon the dead, or to behold a ghost, lest they die themselves.[60] 189. after this it was told around that the kisáni, who were in camp at a little distance from the others, had brought with them from the lower world an ear of corn for seed. some of the unruly ones proposed to go to the camp of the kisáni and take the corn away from them; but others, of better counsel, said that this would be wrong, that the kisáni had had as much trouble as the rest, and if they had more foresight they had a right to profit by it. in spite of these words, some of the young men went and demanded the corn of the kisáni. the latter said, after some angry talk on both sides, "we will break the ear in two and give you whichever half you choose." the young men agreed to this bargain, and the woman who owned the ear broke it in the middle and laid the pieces down for the others to choose. the young men looked at the pieces, and were considering which they would take, when coyote, getting impatient, picked up the tip end of the ear and made off with it. the kisáni kept the butt, and this is the reason the pueblo indians have to-day better crops of corn than the navahoes. but the pueblos had become alarmed at the threats and angry language of their neighbors and moved away from them, and this is why the navahoes and pueblos now live apart from one another. 190. after the kisáni moved away, first man and first woman, black body and blue body, set out to build the seven sacred mountains of the present navaho land. they made them all of earth which they had brought from similar mountains in the fourth world. the mountains they made were tsisnadzi'ni in the east, tsótsil (taylor, san mateo) in the south, dokoslíd (san francisco) in the west, depe'ntsa (san juan) in the north, with dsilnáotil, tsolíhi, and akidanastáni (hosta butte) in the middle of the land.[61] 191. through tsisnadzi'ni,[62] in the east, they ran a bolt of lightning to fasten it to the earth. they decorated it with white shells, white lightning, white corn, dark clouds, and he-rain. they set a big dish or bowl of shell on its summit, and in it they put two eggs of the pigeon to make feathers for the mountain. the eggs they covered with a sacred buckskin to make them hatch (there are many wild pigeons in this mountain now). all these things they covered with a sheet of daylight, and they put the rock crystal boy and the rock crystal girl[53] into the mountain to dwell. 192. tsótsil,[54] the mountain of the south, they fastened to the earth with a great stone knife, thrust through from top to bottom. they adorned it with turquoise, with dark mist, she-rain, and all different kinds of wild animals. on its summit they placed a dish of turquoise; in this they put two eggs of the bluebird, which they covered with sacred buckskin (there are many bluebirds in tsótsil now), and over all they spread a covering of blue sky. the boy who carries one turquoise and the girl who carries one grain of corn[55] were put into the mountain to dwell. 193. dokoslíd,[56] the mountain of the west, they fastened to the earth with a sunbeam. they adorned it with haliotis shell, with black clouds, he-rain, yellow corn, and all sorts of wild animals. they placed a dish of haliotis shell on the top, and laid in this two eggs of the yellow warbler, covering them with sacred buckskins. there are many yellow warblers now in dokoslíd. over all they spread a yellow cloud, and they sent white corn boy and yellow corn girl[57] to dwell there. 194. depe'ntsa, the mountain in the north, they fastened with a rainbow. they adorned it with black beads (pászini), with the dark mist, with different kinds of plants, and many kinds of wild animals. on its top they put a dish of pászini; in this they placed two eggs of the blackbird, over which they laid a sacred buckskin. over all they spread a covering of darkness. lastly they put the pollen boy and grasshopper girl[59] in the mountain, to dwell there. 195. dsilnáotil,[60] was fastened with a sunbeam. they decorated it with goods of all kinds, with the dark cloud, and the male rain. they put nothing on top of it; they left its summit free, in order that warriors might fight there; but they put boy who produces goods and girl who produces goods[61] there to live. 196. the mountain of tsolíhi[62] they fastened to the earth with ni'ltsatlol (the streak or cord of rain). they decorated it with pollen, the dark mist, and the female rain. they placed on top of it a live bird named tsozgáli,[68]--such birds abound there now,--and they put in the mountain to dwell boy who produces jewels and girl who produces jewels.[64] 197. the mountain of akidanastáni[66] they fastened to the earth with a sacred stone called tse`hadáhonige, or mirage-stone. they decorated it with black clouds, the he-rain, and all sorts of plants. they placed a live grasshopper on its summit, and they put the mirage-stone boy and the carnelian girl there to dwell.[66] 198. they still had the three lights and the darkness, as in the lower worlds. but first man and first woman thought they might form some lights which would make the world brighter. after much study and debate they planned to make the sun and moon. for the sun they made a round flat object, like a dish, out of a clear stone called tsé`tsagi. they set turquoises around the edge, and outside of these they put rays of red rain, lightning, and snakes of many kinds. at first they thought of putting four points on it, as they afterwards did on the stars, but they changed their minds and made it round. they made the moon of tsé`tson (star-rock, a kind of crystal); they bordered it with white shells and they put on its face hadilki's (sheet lightning), and tó`lanastsi (all kinds of water).[67] 199. then they counseled as to what they should do with the sun; where they should make it rise first. the wind of the east begged that it might be brought to his land, so they dragged it off to the edge of the world where he dwelt; there they gave it to the man who planted the great cane in the lower world, and appointed him to carry it. to an old gray-haired man, who had joined them in the lower world, the moon was given to carry. these men had no names before, but now the former received the name of tsóhanoai, or tsínhanoai, and the latter the name of kléhanoai. when they were about to depart, in order to begin their labors, the people were sorry, for they were beloved by all. but first man said to the sorrowing people: "mourn not for them, for you will see them in the heavens, and all that die will be theirs in return for their labors."[68] (see notes 69 and 70 for additions to the legend.) 200. then the people (diné`, navahoes) began to travel. they journeyed towards the east, and after one day's march they reached nihahokaí (white spot on the earth) and camped for the night. here a woman brought forth, but her offspring was not like a child; it was round, misshapen, and had no head. the people counselled, and determined that it should be thrown into a gully. so they threw it away; but it lived and grew up and became the monster téelget,[131] who afterwards destroyed so many of the people. 201. next day they wandered farther to the east, and camped at night at tse`taiská (rock bending back). here was born another misshapen creature, which had something like feathers on both its shoulders. it looked like nothing that was ever seen before, so the people concluded to throw this away also. they took it to an alkali bed close by and cast it away there. but it lived and grew and became the terrible tse`na'hale,[135] of whom i shall have much to tell later. 202. the next night, travelling still to the east, they camped at tse`bináhotyel, a broad high cliff like a wall, and here a woman bore another strange creature. it had no head, but had a long pointed end where the head ought to be. this object was deposited in the cliff, in a hole which was afterwards sealed up with a stone. they left it there to die, but it grew up and became the destroyer tse`tahotsiltá`li,[142] of whom we shall tell hereafter. because he was closed into the rock, his hair grew into it and he could not fall. 203. the next night, when they stopped at tse`ahalzi'ni (rock with black hole), twins were born. they were both roundish with one end tapering to a point. there were no signs of limbs or head, but there were depressions which had somewhat the appearance of eyes. the people laid them on the ground, and next day, when they moved camp, abandoned them. tse`ahalzi'ni is shaped like a navaho hut, with a door in the east. it is supposed that, when they were abandoned to die, the twin monsters went into this natural hut to dwell. they grew up, however, and became the bináye aháni, who slew with their eyes, and of whom we shall have more to tell. 204. all these monsters were the fruit of the transgressions of the women in the fourth world, when they were separated from the men. other monsters were born on the march, and others, again, sprang from the blood which had been shed during the birth of the first monsters,[71] and all these grew up to become enemies and destroyers of the people. 205. when they left tse`ahalzi'ni they turned toward the west, and journeyed until they came to a place called to`intsósoko (water in a narrow gully), and here they remained for thirteen years, making farms and planting corn, beans, and pumpkins every spring. 206. in those days the four-footed beasts, the birds, and the snakes were people also, like ourselves, and built houses and lived near our people close to depe'ntsa. they increased and became the cliff-dwellers. it must have been the flying creatures who built the dwellings high on the cliffs, for if they had not wings how could they reach their houses? 207. from to`intsósoko they moved to tse`lakaíia (standing white rock), and here they sojourned again for thirteen years. from the latter place they moved to tse`pahalkaí (white on face of cliff), and here, once more, they remained for a period of thirteen years. during this time the monsters began to devour the people. 208. from tse`pahalkaí they moved to the neighborhood of kintyél[72] (broad house), in the chaco canyon, where the ruins of the great pueblo still stand. when the wanderers arrived the pueblo was in process of building, but was not finished. the way it came to be built you shall now hear:-209. some time before, there had descended among the pueblos, from the heavens, a divine gambler, or gambling-god, named nohoílpi, or he who wins men (at play); his talisman was a great piece of turquoise. when he came he challenged the people to all sorts of games and contests, and in all of these he was successful. he won from them, first, their property, then their women and children, and finally some of the men themselves. then he told them he would give them part of their property back in payment if they would build a great house; so when the navahoes came, the pueblos were busy building in order that they might release their enthralled relatives and their property. they were also busy making a race-track, and preparing for all kinds of games of chance and skill. 210. when all was ready, and four days' notice had been given, twelve men came from the neighboring pueblo of ki'ndotliz, blue house, to compete with the great gambler. they bet their own persons, and after a brief contest they lost themselves to nohoílpi. again a notice of four days was given, and again twelve men of ki'ndotliz--relatives of the former twelve--came to play, and these also lost themselves. for the third time an announcement, four days in advance of a game, was given; this time some women were among the twelve contestants, and they, too, lost themselves. all were put to work on the building of kintyél as soon as they forfeited their liberty. at the end of another four days the children of these men and women came to try to win back their parents, but they succeeded only in adding themselves to the number of the gambler's slaves. on a fifth trial, after four days' warning, twelve leading men of blue house were lost, among them the chief of the pueblo. on a sixth duly announced gambling day, twelve more men, all important persons, staked their liberty and lost it. up to this time the navahoes had kept count of the winnings of nohoílpi, but afterwards people from other pueblos came in such numbers to play and lose that they could keep count no longer. in addition to their own persons the later victims brought in beads, shells, turquoise, and all sorts of valuables, and gambled them away. with the labor of all these slaves it was not long until the great kintyél was finished. 211. but all this time the navahoes had been merely spectators, and had taken no part in the games. one day the voice of the beneficent god, hastséyalti,[73] was heard faintly in the distance crying his usual call, "wu`hu`hu`hú." his voice was heard, as it is always heard, four times, each time nearer and nearer, and immediately after the last call, which was loud and clear, hastséyalti appeared at the door of a hut where dwelt a young couple who had no children, and with them he communicated by means of signs. he told them that the people of ki'ndotliz had lost at game with nohoílpi two great shells, the greatest treasures of the pueblo; that the sun had coveted these shells and had begged them from the gambler; that the latter had refused the request of the sun and the sun was angry. in consequence of all this, as hastséyalti related, in twelve days from his visit certain divine personages would meet in the mountains, in a place which he designated, to hold a great ceremony. he invited the young man to be present at the ceremony and disappeared. 212. the navaho kept count of the passing days; on the twelfth day he repaired to the appointed place, and there he found a great assemblage of the gods. there were hastséyalti, hastséhogan[74] and his son, ni'ltsi[75] (wind), tsalyél (darkness), tsápani (bat), listsó (great snake), tsilkáli (a little bird), nasi'zi (gopher), and many others. besides these there were present a number of pets or domesticated animals belonging to the gambler, who were dissatisfied with their lot, were anxious to be free, and would gladly obtain their share of the spoils in case their master was ruined. ni'ltsi (wind) had spoken to them, and they had come to enter into the plot against nohoílpi. all night the gods danced and sang and performed their mystic rites for the purpose of giving to the son of hastséhogan powers, as a gambler, equal to those of nohoílpi. when the morning came they washed the young neophyte all over, dried him with meal, dressed him in clothes exactly like those the gambler wore, and in every way made him look as much like the gambler as possible, and then they counselled as to what other means they should take to outwit nohoílpi. 213. in the first place, they desired to find out how he felt about having refused to his father, the sun, the two great shells. "i will do this," said ni'ltsi (wind), "for i can penetrate everywhere, and no one can see me;" but the others said: "no; you can go everywhere, but you cannot travel without making a noise and disturbing people. let tsalyél (darkness) go on this errand, for he also goes wherever he wills, yet he makes no noise." so tsalyél went to the gambler's house, entered his room, went all through his body while he slept, and searched well his mind, and he came back saying, "nohoílpi is sorry for what he has done." ni'ltsi, however, did not believe this; so, although his services had been before refused, he repaired to the chamber where the gambler slept, and went all through his body and searched well his mind; but he, too, came back saying nohoílpi was sorry that he had refused to give the great shells to his father. 214. one of the games they proposed to play is called taká-thad-sáta, or the thirteen chips. (it is played with thirteen thin flat pieces of wood, which are colored red on one side and left white or uncolored on the other side. success depends on the number of chips which, being thrown upwards, fall with their white sides up.) "leave the game to me," said the bat; "i have made thirteen chips that are white on both sides. i will hide myself in the ceiling, and when our champion throws up his chips i will grasp them and throw down my chips instead." 215. another game they were to play is called nánzoz.[76] (it is played with two long sticks or poles, of peculiar shape and construction, one marked with red and the other with black, and a single hoop. a long, many-tailed string, called the "turkey-claw," is secured to the end of each pole.) "leave nánzoz to me," said great snake; "i will hide myself in the hoop and make it fall where i please." 216. another game was one called tsi'nbetsil, or push-on-the-wood. (in this the contestants push against a tree until it is torn from its roots and falls.) "i will see that this game is won," said nasi'zi, the gopher; "i will gnaw the roots of the tree, so that he who shoves it may easily make it fall." 217. in the game tsol, or ball, the object was to hit the ball so that it would fall beyond a certain line. "i will win this game for you," said the little bird tsilkáli, "for i will hide within the ball, and fly with it wherever i want to go. do not hit the ball hard; give it only a light tap, and depend on me to carry it." 218. the pets of the gambler begged the wind to blow hard, so that they might have an excuse to give their master for not keeping due watch when he was in danger, and in the morning the wind blew for them a strong gale. at dawn the whole party of conspirators left the mountain, and came down to the brow of the canyon to watch until sunrise. 219. nohoílpi had two wives, who were the prettiest women in the whole land. wherever she went, each carried in her hand a stick with something tied on the end of it, as a sign that she was the wife of the great gambler. 220. it was their custom for one of them to go every morning at sunrise to a neighboring spring to get water. so at sunrise the watchers on the brow of the cliff saw one of the wives coming out of the gambler's house with a water-jar on her head, whereupon the son of hastséhogan descended into the canyon and followed her to the spring. she was not aware of his presence until she had filled her water-jar; then she supposed it to be her own husband, whom the youth was dressed and adorned to represent, and she allowed him to approach her. she soon discovered her error, however, but, deeming it prudent to say nothing, she suffered him to follow her into the house. as he entered, he observed that many of the slaves had already assembled; perhaps they were aware that some trouble was in store for their master. the latter looked up with an angry face; he felt jealous when he saw the stranger entering immediately after his wife. he said nothing of this, however, but asked at once the important question, "have you come to gamble with me?" this he repeated four times, and each time the young hastséhogan said "no." thinking the stranger feared to play with him, nohoílpi went on challenging him recklessly. "i'll bet myself against yourself;" "i'll bet my feet against your feet;" "i'll bet my legs against your legs;" and so on he offered to bet every and any part of his body against the same part of his adversary, ending by mentioning his hair. 221. in the mean time the party of divine ones, who had been watching from above, came down, and people from the neighboring pueblos came in, and among these were two boys, who were dressed in costumes similar to those worn by the wives of the gambler. the young hastséhogan pointed to these and said, "i will bet my wives against your wives." the great gambler accepted the wager, and the four persons, two women and two mock-women, were placed sitting in a row near the wall. first they played the game of thirteen chips. the bat assisted, as he had promised the son of hastséhogan and the latter soon won the game, and with it the wives of nohoílpi. 222. this was the only game played inside the house; then all went out of doors, and games of various kinds were played. first they tried nánzoz. the track already prepared lay east and west, but, prompted by the wind god, the stranger insisted on having a track made from north to south, and again, at the bidding of wind, he chose the red stick. the son of hastséhogan threw the wheel; at first it seemed about to fall on the gambler's pole, in the "turkey-claw" of which it was entangled; but to the great surprise of the gambler it extricated itself, rolled farther on, and fell on the pole of his opponent. the latter ran to pick up the ring, lest nohoílpi in doing so might hurt the snake inside; but the gambler was so angry that he threw his stick away and gave up the game, hoping to do better in the next contest, which was that of pushing down trees. 223. for this the great gambler pointed out two small trees, but his opponent insisted that larger trees must be found. after some search they agreed upon two of good size, which grew close together, and of these the wind told the youth which one he must select. the gambler strained with all his might at his tree, but could not move it, while his opponent, when his turn came, shoved the other tree prostrate with little effort, for its roots had all been severed by gopher. 224. then followed a variety of games, on which nohoílpi staked his wealth in shells and precious stones, his houses, and many of his slaves, and lost all. 225. the last game was that of the ball. on the line over which the ball was to be knocked all the people were assembled; on one side were those who still remained slaves; on the other side were the freedmen and those who had come to wager themselves, hoping to rescue their kinsmen. nohoílpi bet on this game the last of his slaves and his own person. the gambler struck his ball a heavy blow, but it did not reach the line; the stranger gave his but a light tap, and the bird within it flew with it far beyond the line, whereat the released captives jumped over the line and joined their people. 226. the victor ordered all the shells, beads, and precious stones, and the great shells, to be brought forth. he gave the beads and shells to hastséyalti, that they might be distributed among the gods; the two great shells were given to the sun.[77] 227. in the mean time nohoílpi sat to one side saying bitter things, bemoaning his fate, and cursing and threatening his enemies. "i will kill you all with the lightning. i will send war and disease among you. may the cold freeze you! may the fire burn you! may the waters drown you!" he cried. "he has cursed enough," whispered ni'ltsi to the son of hastséhogan. "put an end to his angry words." so the young victor called nohoílpi to him and said: "you have bet yourself and have lost; you are now my slave and must do my bidding. you are not a god, for my power has prevailed against yours." the victor had a bow of magic power named eti'n dilyi'l, or the bow of darkness; he bent this upwards, and placing the string on the ground he bade his slave stand on the string; then he shot nohoílpi up into the sky as if he had been an arrow. up and up he went, growing smaller and smaller to the sight till he faded to a mere speck and finally disappeared altogether. as he flew upwards he was heard to mutter in the angry tones of abuse and imprecation, until he was too far away to be heard; but no one could distinguish anything he said as he ascended. 228. he flew up in the sky until he came to the home of békotsidi,[78] the god who carries the moon, and who is supposed by the navahoes to be identical with the god of the americans. he is very old, and dwells in a long row of stone houses. when nohoílpi arrived at the house of békotsidi he related to the latter all his misadventures in the lower world and said, "now i am poor, and this is why i have come to see you." "you need be poor no longer," said békotsidi; "i will provide for you." so he made for the gambler pets or domestic animals of new kinds, different to those which he had in the chaco valley; he made for him sheep, asses, horses, swine, goats, and fowls. he also gave him bayeta,[79] and other cloths of bright colors, more beautiful than those woven by his slaves at kintyél. he made, too, a new people, the mexicans, for the gambler to rule over, and then he sent him back to this world again, but he descended far to the south of his former abode, and reached the earth in old mexico. 229. nohoílpi's people increased greatly in mexico, and after a while they began to move towards the north, and build towns along the rio grande. nohoílpi came with them until they arrived at a place north of santa fé. there they ceased building, and he returned to old mexico, where he still lives, and where he is now the nakaí digíni, or god of the mexicans. 230. the navaho who went at the bidding of the sun to the tryst of the gods stayed with them till the gambler was shot into the sky. then he returned to his people and told all he had seen. the young stranger went back to tse`gíhi, the home of the yéi. 231. the wanderers were not long at kintyél, but while they were they met some of the daylight people. from kintyél they moved to to`i'ndotsos, and here mai,[80] the coyote, married a navaho woman. he remained in the navaho camp nine days, and then he went to visit dasáni, the porcupine. the latter took a piece of bark, scratched his nose with it till the blood flowed freely out over it, put it on the fire, and there roasted it slowly until it turned into a piece of fine meat. porcupine then spread some clean herbs on the ground, laid the roasted meat on these, and invited his visitor to partake. coyote was delighted; he had never had a nicer meal, and when he was leaving he invited his host to return the visit in two days. at the appointed time porcupine presented himself at the hut of coyote. the latter greeted his guest, bade him be seated, and rushed out of the house. in a few minutes he returned with a piece of bark. with this he scratched his nose, as he had seen porcupine doing, and allowed the blood to flow. he placed the bloody bark over the fire, where in a moment it burst into flames and was soon reduced to ashes. coyote hung his head in shame and porcupine went home hungry. 232. soon after this coyote visited maítso,[80] the wolf. the latter took down, from among the rafters of his hut, two of the old-fashioned reed arrows with wooden heads, such as the navahoes used in the ancient days; he pulled out the wooden points, rolled them on his thigh, moistened them in his mouth, and buried them in the hot ashes beside the fire. after waiting a little while and talking to his guest, he raked out from the ashes, where he had buried the arrow points, two fine cooked puddings of minced meat; these he laid on a mat of fresh herbs and told coyote to help himself. coyote again enjoyed his meal greatly, and soon after, when he rose to leave, he invited wolf to pay him a visit in two days. wolf went in due time to the house of coyote, and when he had seated himself the host took two arrow-heads, as wolf had done, rolled them on his thigh, put them in his mouth, and buried them in the hot ashes. after waiting a while, he raked the ashes and found nothing but two pieces of charred wood where he had placed the arrow-heads. this time he gave no evidence of his disappointment, but sat and talked with his guest just as if nothing had happened, until wolf, seeing no sign of dinner and becoming very hungry, got up and went home. 233. in those days the chicken-hawks and the hummingbirds were known as great hunters. they were friendly to one another and dwelt together in one camp. 234. coyote went to pay them a visit, and when he arrived at the camp he entered one of the huts of the hummingbirds. he found therein two beautiful hummingbird maidens, gayly dressed, with rows of deer-hoof pendants on their skirts and shoulders. he lay down in the lodge and said to the maidens: "where is everybody to-day? i heard there were many people camped here, but the camp seems deserted." the maidens replied: "there are many people camped here, but to-day the men are all out hunting." 235. now, coyote was a dandy; he was always beautifully dressed; he had a nice otter-skin quiver and his face was painted in spots. the maidens, when they had looked well at him, bent their heads together and whispered to one another, "he is a handsome young man. he is beautifully dressed. he must be a person of some importance." he spent the day gossipping with the maidens and telling them wonderful tales about himself. "would you know who i am?" he said. "i am the god of tsisnadzi'ni mountain. i have no need to hunt. all i have to do is to will the death of an animal and it dies. your people have no need to wear themselves out hunting for game. i can kill all they want without labor." 236. at nightfall, when the hunters returned, the maidens left the lodge, went to where their friends were assembled, and told them all about the visitor. when the maidens had finished their story, the chief directed one of the young men to go over to the hut, peep in over the curtain in the doorway, and see what the stranger looked like. the young man did as he was bidden, making no noise, and looked into the lodge unobserved by coyote. when he returned to the chief he said: "the stranger is a fine-looking man and is beautifully dressed. perhaps he is indeed a god." the chief then said: "it may be that all is true which he has told the maidens. we have to travel far in all sorts of weather and to work hard to secure food. he may know some way to save us from labor, so let us be kind to him. go, one of you maidens, back to the lodge to serve him." hearing these words, the younger of the two young women returned to the lodge. her clothing was ornamented with many pendants of bone and hoof that rattled with every movement she made, and for this reason coyote named her tsiké nazi'li, or young woman who rattles. 237. in the morning she went to the lodge where her people were, and where a good breakfast was already prepared, and she brought a large dishful of the food for coyote to eat. as she was about to depart with the food her people charged her to tell coyote nothing of certain bad neighbors of theirs, lest he might visit them and work wonders for their benefit. but their injunctions came too late. already tsiké nazi'li had told him all about these bad neighbors, and he had made up his mind to visit them. 238. when breakfast was over she said: "now the hunters are going out." he replied: "i will go with them." so he joined the party, and they travelled together till they got to the brow of a high hill which overlooked an extensive country. here coyote told his companions to remain concealed while he went into the plain and drove the game toward them. when he got out of sight, he tied to his tail a long fagot of shredded cedar-bark, which he set on fire, and then he ran over the country in a wide circle as fast as he could go. everywhere the fagot touched it set fire to the grass, and raised a long line of flame and smoke which drove the antelope up to where the hunters were concealed. a great quantity of game was killed; the hunters returned laden with meat, and their faith in coyote was unbounded. 239. next morning they all went out once more to hunt. again the hunters concealed themselves on the brow of a hill, and again coyote tied the blazing fagot to his tail and ran. the people on the hilltop watched the line of fire advancing over the plain; but when it turned around as if to come back to the place from which it started, it suddenly ceased. much game was driven toward the party in ambush; but coyote did not return, and the hunters went to work cutting up the meat and cooking food for themselves. 240. coyote, in the mean time, had gone to seek the bad neighbors. he untied his brand at the place where the hunters had seen the line of fire cease, and wandered off in a different direction. after a while he came to two great trees, a spruce and a pine, growing close together, and filled with chattering birds of two kinds. the spruce-tree was filled with birds called tsi'di béze, and the pine-tree with birds called tsi'di sási. they were all busily engaged in playing a game which coyote had never seen before. they would pull out their eyes, toss these up to the top of the tree, cry "drop back, my eyes! drop back!" and catch the eyes as they descended in their proper sockets. coyote watched their play for a long time, and at length, becoming fascinated with the game, he cried out to the tsi'di sási in the pine-tree, "pull out my eyes for me. i want to play, too." "no," they replied, "we will have nothing to do with you." again and again he begged to be allowed to join in the sport, and again and again they refused him. but when he had pleaded for the fourth time, they flew down to where coyote sat, and, taking sharp sticks, they gouged his eyes out. the eyes were thrown up to the top of the pine-tree, and when they fell down coyote caught them in his orbits and could see again as well as ever. coyote was delighted with the result of his first venture, and he begged them to pull his eyes out again, but they said angrily: "we do not want to play with you. we have done enough for you now. go and leave us." but he continued to whine and beg until again they pulled out his eyes and tossed them up with the same happy result as before. thus four times were his eyes pulled out, thrown upward, and caught back again in the head. but when he begged them to pull out his eyes for the fifth time, they went to a distance and held a council among themselves. when they returned they pulled his eyes out once more; but this time they took pains to pull out the strings of the eyes (optic nerves) at the same time; these they tied together, and, when the eyes were again flung up in the tree, they caught on one of the branches and there they stayed. now coyote was in mortal distress. "drop back, my eyes! drop back!" he cried. but back they never came, and he sat there with his nose pointed up toward the top of the tree, and he howled and prayed and wept. at last the birds took pity on him and said: "let us make other eyes for him." so they took a couple of partly dried pieces of pine gum and rolled them into two balls; these were stuck into the empty sockets, and, although they were not good eyes, they gave him sight enough to see his way home. the gum was yellow, and for this reason coyotes have had yellow eyes ever since. 241. he crept back, as best he could, to the place where he had left the hunters, and where he found them cutting and cooking meat. he sat down facing the fire, but he soon found that his gum eyes were getting soft with the heat, so he turned his side to the fire. the hunters gave him a piece of raw liver, supposing he would cook it himself. not daring to turn towards the fire, lest his eyes should melt altogether, he threw the liver on the coals without looking, and when he tried afterwards to take it up he thrust his hand at random into the fire and caught nothing but hot coals that burned him. fearing that his strange action was observed, he tried to pass it off as a joke, and every time he picked up a hot coal he cried: "don't burn me, liver! don't burn me, liver!" after a while the hunters seated around the fire began to notice his singular motions and words, and one said to another: "he does not act as usual. go and see what is the matter with him." the hunter who was thus bidden went over in front of coyote, looked at him closely, and saw melted gum pouring out from between his eyelids. 242. it happened that during the day, while coyote was absent, a messenger had come to the camp of the hunters from another camp to tell them that an individual named mai, or coyote, had left his home, and had been seen going toward the camp of the hummingbirds, and to warn them against him. "he is an idler and a trickster,--beware of him," said the messenger. so when they found out the condition of their visitor they said: "this must be coyote of whom we have heard. he has been playing with the tsi'di sási and has lost his eyes." 243. when they had arrived at this conclusion they started for camp and led the blind coyote along. in the mean time they devised a plan for getting rid of him. when they got home they took the rattling dress of tsiké nazi'li and gave her an ordinary garment to wear. then a chicken-hawk took the dress in his beak, and, flying a little distance above the ground, shook the dress in front of coyote. the latter, thinking the maiden was there, approached the sound, and as he did so the chicken-hawk flew farther away, still shaking the dress. coyote followed the rattling sound, and was thus led on to the brink of a deep canyon. here the hawk shook the dress beyond the edge of the precipice. coyote jumped toward where he heard the sound, fell to the bottom of the canyon, and was dashed to pieces. 244. but for all this he did not die. he did not, like other beings, keep his vital principle in his chest, where it might easily be destroyed; he kept it in the tip of his nose and in the end of his tail, where no one would expect to find it; so after a while he came to life again, went back to the camp of the birds, and asked for tsiké nazi'li. they told him she was gone away, and ordered him angrily to leave, telling him they knew who he was, and that he was a worthless fellow. 245. coyote left the camp of the birds, and wandered around till he came to the house of one of the anáye, or alien gods, named yélapahi,[71] or brown giant. he was half as tall as the tallest pine-tree, and he was evil and cruel. coyote said to the brown giant, "yélapahi, i want to be your servant; i can be of great help to you. the reason that you often fail to catch your enemies is that you cannot run fast enough. i can run fast and jump far; i can jump over four bushes at one bound. i can run after your enemies and help you to catch them." "my cousin," responded brown giant, "you can do me service if you will." coyote then directed the giant to build a sweat-house for himself, and, while the latter was building it, coyote set out on another errand. 246. in those days there was a maiden of renowned beauty in the land. she was the only sister of eleven divine brothers.[81] she had been sought in marriage by the sun and by many potent gods, but she had refused them all because they could not comply with certain conditions which she imposed op all suitors. it was to visit her that coyote went when he left yélapahi at work on the sweat-house. 247. "why have you refused so many beautiful gods who want you for a wife?" said coyote to the maiden after he had greeted her. "it would profit you nothing to know," she replied, "for you could not comply with any one of my demands." four times he asked her this question, and three times he got the same reply. when he asked her the fourth time she answered: "in the first place, i will not marry any one who has not killed one of the anáye." when he heard this coyote arose and returned to the place where he had left yélapahi. 248. on his way back he looked carefully for the bone of some big animal which great wolf had slain and eaten. at length he found a long thigh-bone which suited his purpose. he took this home with him, concealing it under his shirt. when coyote got back, yélapahi had finished the sweat-house.[82] together they built the fire, heated the stones, and spread the carpet of leaves. coyote hung over the doorway four blankets of sky,--one white, one blue, one yellow, and one black, and put the hot stones into the lodge. then they hung their arms and clothes on a neighboring tree, entered the sudatory, and sat down.[83] 249. "now," said coyote, "if you want to become a fast runner, i will show you what to do. you must cut the flesh of your thigh down to the bone and then break the bone. it will heal again in a moment, and when it heals you will be stronger and swifter than ever. i often do this myself, and every time i do it i am fleeter of foot than i was before. i will do it now, so that you may observe how it is done." coyote then produced a great stone knife and pretended to cut his own thigh, wailing and crying in the mean time, and acting as if he suffered great pain. after a while of this pretence he put the old femur on top of his thigh, held it by both ends, and said to the giant: "i have now reached the bone. feel it." when the giant had put forth his hand, in the absolute darkness of the sweat-house, and felt the bare bone, coyote shoved the hand away and struck the bone hard with the edge of his knife several times until he broke the bone, and he made the giant feel the fractured ends. then he threw away the old bone, rubbed spittle on his thigh, prayed and sang, and in a little while presented his sound thigh to the giant for his examination, saying: "see! my limb is healed again. it is as well as ever." when he had thus spoken coyote handed his knife to yélapahi, and the latter with many tears and loud howls slowly amputated his own thigh. when the work was done he put the two severed ends together, spat upon them, sang and prayed, as coyote had done. "tóhe! tóhe! tóhe!"[84] he cried, "heal together! grow together!" he commanded; but the severed ends would not unite. "cousin," he called to coyote, "help me to heal this leg." coyote thought it was now time to finish his work. he ran from the sweat-house, seized his bow, and discharged his arrows into the helpless yélapahi, who soon expired with many wounds. 250. coyote scalped his victim, and tied the scalp to the top of a branch which he broke from a cedar-tree; as further evidence of his victory, he took the quiver and weapons of the slain and set out for the lodge of the maiden. he knew she could not mistake the scalp, for the yéi, in those days, had yellow hair,[85] such as no other people had. when he reached the lodge he said to the maiden: "here is the scalp and here are the weapons of one of the anáye. now you must marry me." "no," said the maiden, "not yet; i have not told you all that one must do in order to win me. he must be killed four times and come to life again four times." "do you speak the truth? have you told me all?" said coyote. "yes; i speak only the truth," she replied. four times he asked this question, and four times he received the same answer. when she had spoken for the fourth time coyote said: "here i am. do with me as you will." the maiden took him a little distance from the lodge, laid him on the ground, beat him with a great club until she thought she had smashed every bone in his body, and left him for dead. but the point of his nose and the end of his tail she did not smash. she hurried back to her hut, for she had much work to do. she was the only woman in a family of twelve. she cooked the food and tanned the skins, and besides she made baskets. at this particular time she was engaged in making four baskets. when she returned to the lodge she sat down and went on with her basket-work; but she had not worked long before she became aware that some one was standing in the doorway, and, looking up, she beheld coyote. "here i am," he said; "i have won one game; there are only three more to win." 251. she made no reply, but took him off farther than she had taken him before, and pounded him to pieces with a club. she threw the pieces away in different directions and returned to her work again; but she had not taken many stitches in her basket when again the resurrected coyote appeared in the doorway, saying: "i have won two games; there are only two more to win." 252. again she led him forth, but took him still farther away from the lodge than she had taken him before, and with a heavy club pounded him into a shapeless mass, until she thought he must certainly be dead. she stood a long time gazing at the pounded flesh, and studying what she would do with it to make her work sure. she carried the mass to a great rock, and there she beat it into still finer pieces. these she scattered farther than she had scattered the pieces before, and went back to the house. but she had still failed to injure the two vital spots. it took the coyote a longer time on this occasion than on the previous occasions to pull himself together; still she had not wrought much on her basket when he again presented himself and said: "i have won three games; there is but one more game to win." 253. the fourth time she led him farther away than ever. she not only mashed him to pieces, but she mixed the pieces with earth, ground the mixture, like corn, between two stones, until it was ground to a fine powder, and scattered this powder far and wide. but again she neglected to crush the point of the nose and the tip of the tail. she went back to the lodge and worked a long time undisturbed. she had just begun to entertain hopes that she had seen the last of her unwelcome suitor when again he entered the door. now, at last, she could not refuse him. he had fulfilled all her conditions, and she consented to become his wife. he remained all the afternoon. at sunset they heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and she said: "my brothers are coming. some of them are evil of mind and may do you harm. you must hide yourself." she hid him behind a pile of skins, and told him to be quiet. 254. when the brothers entered the lodge they said to their sister: "here is some fat young venison which we bring you. put it down to boil and put some of the fat into the pot, for our faces are burned by the wind and we want to grease them." the woman slept on the north side of the lodge and kept there her household utensils. she had about half of the lodge to herself. the men slept on the south side, the eldest next to the door. 255. the pot was put on and the fire replenished, and when it began to burn well an odor denoting the presence of some beast filled the lodge. one of the brothers said: "it smells as if some animal had been in the wood-pile. let us throw out this wood and get fresh sticks from the bottom of the pile." they did as he desired; but the unpleasant odors continued to annoy them, and again the wood was taken from the fire and thrown away. thinking the whole pile of wood was tainted with the smell, they went out, broke fresh branches from trees, and built the fire up again; but this did not abate the rank odor in the least. then one said: "perhaps the smell is in the water. tell us, little sister, where did you get the water in the pot?" "i got it at the spring where i always get it," she replied. but they got her to throw out the water and fill the pot with snow, and to put the meat down to boil again. in spite of all their pains the stench was as bad as ever. at length one of the brothers turned to his sister and said: "what is the cause of this odor? it is not in the wood. it is not in the water. whence comes it?" she was silent. he repeated the question three times, yet she made no answer. but when the question had been asked for the fourth time, coyote jumped out of his hiding-place into the middle of the lodge and cried: "it is i, my brothers-in-law!" "run out there!" the brothers commanded, and turning to their sister they said: "run out you with him!" 256. they both departed from the lodge. as coyote went out he took a brand from the fire, and with this he lighted a new fire. then he broke boughs from the neighboring trees and built a shelter for himself and his wife to live in. when this was completed she went back to the lodge of her brothers, took out her pots, skins, four awls, baskets, and all her property, and carried them to her new home. 257. one of the elder brothers said to the youngest: "go out to-night and watch the couple, and see what sort of a man this is that we have for a brother-in-law. do not enter the shelter, but lie hidden outside and observe them." so the youngest brother went forth and hid himself near the shelter, where he could peep in and see by the light of the fire what took place and hear what was said. the pair sat side by side near the fire. presently the woman laid her hand in a friendly manner on coyote's knee, but coyote threw it away. these motions were repeated four times, and when he had thrown her hand away for the fourth time he said: "i have sworn never to take a woman for a wife until i have killed her four times." for a while the woman remained silent and gazed at the fire. at length she said: "here i am. do with me as you will." (the myth then relates four deaths and resurrections of the woman, similar to those of the coyote, but it does not state how or where she preserved her vital principle.) when she returned for the fourth time she lay down, and coyote soon followed her to her couch. from time to time during the night they held long, low conversations, of which the listener could hear but little. at dawn the watcher went home. in reply to the questions of his brothers he said: "i cannot tell you all that i saw and heard, and they said much that i could not hear; but all that i did hear and behold was tsindás" (devilish, evil). 258. next morning the brothers proposed to go out hunting. while they were getting ready coyote came and asked leave to join them, but they said to him tauntingly: "no; stay at home with your wife; she may be lonely and may need some one to talk to her," and they chased him out of the lodge. just as they were about to leave he came back again and begged them to take him with them. "no," they replied, "the woman will want you to carry wood; you must stay at home with her." they bade him begone and set out on their journey. they had not gone far on their way when he overtook them, and for the third time asked to be allowed to join the party; but again they drove him back with scornful words. they travelled on till they came to the edge of a deep canyon bordered with very steep cliffs, and here coyote was seen again, skulking behind them. for the fourth time he pleaded with them; but now the youngest brother took his part, and suggested that coyote might assist in driving game towards them. so, after some deliberation, they consented to take coyote along. at the edge of the canyon they made a bridge of rainbow,[86] on which they proceeded to cross the chasm. before the brothers reached the opposite bluff coyote jumped on it from the bridge, with a great bound, and began to frolic around, saying: "this is a nice place to play." 259. they travelled farther on, and after a while came to a mesa, or table-land, which projected into a lower plain, and was connected with the plateau on which they stood by a narrow neck of level land. it was a mesa much like that on which the three eastern towns of the mokis stand, with high, precipitous sides and a narrow entrance. on the neck of land they observed the tracks of four rocky mountain sheep, which had gone in on the mesa but had not returned. they had reason, therefore, to believe that the sheep were still on the mesa. at the neck they built a fire, sat down near it, and sent coyote in on the mesa to drive the sheep out. their plans were successful; soon the four sheep came running out over the neck, within easy range of the hunters' weapons, and were all killed. presently coyote returned and lay down on the sand. 260. in those days the horns of the rocky mountain sheep were flat and fleshy and could be eaten. the eldest brother said: "i will take the horns for my share." "no," said coyote, "the horns shall be mine: give them to me." three times each repeated the same declaration. when both had spoken for the fourth time, the eldest brother, to end the controversy, drew out his knife and began to cut one of the horns; as he did so coyote cried out, "tsinántlehi! tsinántlehi! tsinántlehi! tsinántlehi!" (turn to bone! turn to bone! turn to bone! turn to bone!) each time he cried, the horn grew harder and harder, and the knife slipped as it cut, hacking but not severing the horn. this is why the horns of the rocky mountain sheep are now hard, not fleshy, and to this day they bear the marks of the hunter's knife. "tsi'ndi! tsindás bilnáalti!" (you devil! you evil companion in travel!) said the hunter to coyote. 261. the hunters gathered all the meat into one pile, and by means of the mystic power which they possessed they reduced it to a very small compass. they tied it in a small bundle which one person might easily carry, and they gave it to coyote to take home, saying to him, "travel round by the head of the canyon over which we crossed and go not through it, for they are evil people who dwell there, and open not your bundle until you get home." 262. the bundle was lifted to his back and he started for home, promising to heed all that had been told him. but as soon as he was well out of sight of his companions he slipped his bundle to the ground and opened it. at once the meat expanded and became again a heap of formidable size, such that he could not bind it up again or carry it; so he hung some of it up on the trees and bushes; he stuck part of it into crevices in the rocks; a portion he left scattered on the ground; he tied up as much as he could carry in a new bundle, and with this he continued on his journey. 263. when he came to the edge of the forbidden canyon he looked down and saw some birds playing a game he had never witnessed before. they rolled great stones down the slope, which extended from the foot of the cliff to the bottom of the valley, and stood on the stones while they were rolling; yet the birds were not upset or crushed or hurt in the least by this diversion. the sight so pleased coyote that he descended into the canyon and begged to be allowed to join in the sport. the birds rolled a stone gently for him; he got on it and handled himself so nimbly that he reached the bottom of the slope without injury. again and again he begged them to give him a trial until he thus three times descended without hurting himself. when he asked the birds for the fourth time to roll a stone for him they became angry and hurled it with such force that coyote lost his footing, and he and the stone rolled over one another to the bottom of the slope, and he screamed and yelped all the way down. 264. after this experience he left the birds and travelled on until he observed some otters at play by the stream at the bottom of the canyon. they were playing the navaho game of nánzoz. they bet their skins against one another on the results of the game. but when one lost his skin at play he jumped into the water and came out with a new skin. coyote approached the otters and asked to be allowed to take part in the game, but the otters had heard about him and knew what a rascal he was. they refused him and told him to begone; but still he remained and pleaded. after a while they went apart and talked among themselves, and when they returned they invited coyote to join them in their game. coyote bet his skin and lost it. the moment he lost, the otters all rushed at him, and, notwithstanding his piteous cries, they tore the hide from his back, beginning at the root of his tail and tearing forward. when they came to the vital spot at the end of his nose his wails were terrible. when he found himself denuded of his skin he jumped into the water, as he had seen the otters doing; but, alas! his skin did not come back to him. he jumped again and again into the water; but came out every time as bare as he went in. at length he became thoroughly exhausted, and lay down in the water until the otters took pity on him and pulled him out. they dragged him to a badger hole, threw him in there, and covered him up with earth. previous to this adventure coyote had a beautiful, smooth fur like that of the otter. when he dug his way out of the badger hole he was again covered with hair, but it was no longer the glossy fur which he once wore; it was coarse and rough, much like that of the badger, and such a pelt the coyotes have worn ever since. 265. but this sad experience did not make him mend his ways. he again went round challenging the otters to further play, and betting his new skin on the game. "your skin is of no value; no one would play for it. begone!" they said. being often refused and insolently treated, he at length became angry, retired to a safe distance, and began to revile the otters shamefully. "you are braggarts," he cried; "you pretend to be brave, but you are cowards. your women are like yourselves: their heads are flat; their eyes are little; their teeth stick out; they are ugly; while i have a bride as beautiful as the sun." he shook his foot at them as if to say, "i am fleeter than you." he would approach them, and when they made motion as if to pursue him, he would take a big jump and soon place himself beyond their reach. when they quieted down, he would approach them again and continue to taunt and revile them. after a while he went to the cliff, to a place of safety, and shouted from there his words of derision. the otters talked together, and said they could suffer his abuse no longer, that something must be done, and they sent word to the chiefs of the spiders, who lived farther down the stream, telling them what had occurred, and asking for their aid. 266. the spiders crept up the bluff, went round behind where coyote sat cursing and scolding, and wove strong webs in the trees and bushes. when their work was finished they told the otters what they had done, and the latter started to climb the bluff and attack coyote. conscious of his superior swiftness, he acted as if indifferent to them, and allowed them to come quite close before he turned to run; but he did not run far until he was caught in the webs of the spiders. then the otters seized him and dragged him, howling, to the foot of the hill. he clung so hard to the grasses and shrubs as he passed that they were torn out by the roots. when the otters got him to the bottom of the hill they killed him, or seemed to kill him. the cliff swallows (hastsósi)[21] flew down from the walls of the canyon and tore him in pieces; they carried off the fragments to their nests, leaving only a few drops of blood on the ground; they tore his skin into strips and made of these bands which they put around their heads, and this accounts for the band which the cliff swallow wears upon his brow to-day. 267. it was nightfall when the brothers came home. they saw that coyote had not yet returned, and they marvelled what had become of him. when they entered the lodge and sat down, the sister came and peeped in over the portière, scanned the inside of the lodge, and looked inquiringly at them. they did not speak to her until she had done this four times, then the eldest brother said: "go back and sleep, and don't worry about that worthless man of yours. he is not with us, and we know not what has become of him. we suppose he has gone into the canyon, where we warned him not to go, and has been killed." she only said, "what have you done with him?" and went away in anger. 268. before they lay down to sleep they sent the youngest brother out to hide where he had hidden the night before to watch their sister, and this is what he saw: at first she pretended to go to sleep. after a while she rose and sat facing the east. then she faced in turn the south, the west, and the north, moving sunwise. when this was done she pulled out her right eye-tooth, broke a large piece from one of her four bone awls and inserted it in the place of the tooth, making a great tusk where the little tooth had once been. as she did this she said aloud: "he who shall hereafter dream of losing a right eye-tooth shall lose a brother." after this she opened her mouth to the four points of the compass in the order in which she had faced them before, tore out her left eye-tooth and inserted in its place the pointed end of another awl. as she made this tusk she said: "he who dreams of losing his left eye-tooth shall lose a sister." 269. the watcher then returned to his brothers and told them what he had seen and heard. "go back," said they, "and watch her again, for you have not seen all her deeds." when he went back he saw her make, as she had done before, two tusks in her lower jaw. when she had made that on the right she said: "he who dreams of losing this tooth (right lower canine) shall lose a child;" and when she made that on the left she said: "he who dreams of losing this tooth (left lower canine) shall lose a parent." 270. when she first began to pull out her teeth, hair began to grow on her hands; as she went on with her mystic work the hair spread up her arms and her legs, leaving only her breasts bare. the young man now crept back to the lodge where his brethren waited and told them what he had seen. "go back," they said, "and hide again. there is more for you to see." 271. when he got back to his hiding-place the hair had grown over her breasts, and she was covered with a coat of shaggy hair like that of a bear. she continued to move around in the direction of the sun's apparent course, pausing and opening her mouth at the east, the south, the west, and the north as she went. after a while her ears began to wag, her snout grew long, her teeth were heard to gnash, her nails turned into claws. he watched her until dawn, when, fearing he might be discovered, he returned to his lodge and told his brothers all that had happened. they said: "these must be the mysteries that coyote explained to her the first night." 272. in a moment after the young man had told his story they heard the whistling of a bear, and soon a she-bear rushed past the door of the lodge, cracking the branches as she went. she followed the trail which coyote had taken the day before and disappeared in the woods. 273. at night she came back groaning. she had been in the fatal canyon all day, fighting the slayers of coyote, and she had been wounded in many places. her brothers saw a light in her hut, and from time to time one of their number would go and peep in through an aperture to observe what was happening within. all night she walked around the fire. at intervals she would, by means of her magic, draw arrow-heads out of her body and heal the wounds. 274. next morning the bear-woman again rushed past the lodge of her brethren, and again went off toward the fatal canyon. at night she returned, as before, groaning and bleeding, and again spent the long night in drawing forth missiles and healing her wounds by means of her magic rites. 275. thus she continued to do for four days and four nights; but at the end of the fourth day she had conquered all her enemies; she had slain many, and those she had not killed she had dispersed. the swallows flew up into the high cliffs to escape her vengeance; the otters hid themselves in the water; the spiders retreated into holes in the ground,[87] and in such places these creatures have been obliged to dwell ever since. 276. during these four days, the brothers remained in their camp; but at the end of that time, feeling that trouble was in store for them, they decided to go away. they left the youngest brother at home, and the remaining ten divided themselves into four different parties; one of which travelled to the east, another to the south, another to the west, and another to the north. 277. when they were gone, the whirlwind, níyol, and the knife boy, pésasike, came to the lodge to help the younger brother who had remained behind. they dug for him a hole under the centre of the hogán; and from this they dug four branching tunnels, running east, south, west, and north, and over the end of each tunnel they put a window of gypsum to let in light from above. they gave him four weapons,--atsinikli'ska, the chain-lightning arrow; hatsoilhálka (an old-fashioned stone knife as big as the open hand); natsili'tka, the rainbow arrow; and hatsilki'ska, the sheet-lightning arrow. they roofed his hiding-place with four flat stones, one white, one blue, one yellow, and one black. they put earth over all these, smoothing the earth and tramping it down so that it should look like the natural floor of the lodge. they gave him two monitors, ni'ltsi, the wind, at his right ear, to warn him by day of the approach of danger; and tsalyél, darkness, at his left ear, to warn him by night. 278. when morning came and the bear-woman went forth she discovered that her brothers had departed. she poured water on the ground (hali'z) to see which way they had gone. the water flowed to the east; she rushed on in that direction and soon overtook three of the fugitives, whom she succeeded in killing. then she went back to her hut to see what had become of her other brothers. again she poured water on the level ground and it flowed off to the south; she followed in that direction and soon overtook three others, whom she likewise slew. returning to the lodge she again performed her divination by means of water. this time she was directed to the west, and, going that way, she overtook and killed three more of the men. again she sought the old camp and poured on the ground water, which flowed to the north; going on in this direction she encountered but one man, and him she slew. once more she went back to discover what had become of her last brother. she poured water for the fifth time on the level ground; it sank directly into the earth. 279. the brothers had always been very successful hunters and their home was always well supplied with meat. in consequence of this they had had many visitors who built in their neighborhood temporary shelters, such as the navahoes build now when they come to remain only a short time at a place, and the remains of these shelters surrounded the deserted hut. she scratched in all these places to find traces of the fugitive, without success, and in doing so she gradually approached the deserted hut. she scratched all around outside the hut and then went inside. she scratched around the edge of the hut and then worked toward the centre, until at length she came to the fireplace. here she found the earth was soft as if recently disturbed, and she dug rapidly downward with her paws. she soon came to the stones, and, removing these, saw her last remaining brother hidden beneath them. "i greet you, my younger brother! come up, i want to see you," she said in a coaxing voice. then she held out one finger to him and said: "grasp my finger and i will help you up." but wind told him not to grasp her finger; that if he did she would throw him upwards, that he would fall half dead at her feet and be at her mercy. "get up without her help," whispered ni'ltsi. 280. he climbed out of the hole on the east side and walked toward the east. she ran toward him in a threatening manner, but he looked at her calmly and said: "it is i, your younger brother." then she approached him in a coaxing way, as a dog approaches one with whom he wishes to make friends, and she led him back toward the deserted hogán. but as he approached it the wind whispered: "we have had sorrow there, let us not enter," so he would not go in, and this is the origin of the custom now among the navahoes never to enter a house in which death had occurred.[91] 281. "come," she then said, "and sit with your face to the west, and let me comb your hair." (it was now late in the afternoon.) "heed her not," whispered wind; "sit facing the north, that you watch her shadow and see what she does. it is thus that she has killed your brothers." they both sat down, she behind him, and she untied his queue and proceeded to arrange his hair, while he watched her out of the corner of his eye. soon he observed her snout growing longer and approaching his head, and he noticed that her ears were wagging. "what does it mean that your snout grows longer and that your ears move so?" he asked. she did not reply, but drew her snout in and kept her ears still. when these occurrences had taken place for the fourth time, wind whispered in his ear: "let not this happen again. if she puts out her snout the fifth time she will bite your head off. yonder, where you see that chattering squirrel, are her vital parts. he guards them for her. now run and destroy them." he rose and ran toward the vital parts and she ran after him. suddenly, between them a large yucca[88] sprang up to retard her steps, and then a cane cactus,[89] and then another yucca, and then another cactus of a different kind. she ran faster than he, but was so delayed in running around the plants that he reached the vitals before her, and heard the lungs breathing under the weeds that covered them. he drew forth his chain-lightning arrow, shot it into the weeds, and saw a bright stream of blood spurting up. at the same instant the bear-woman fell with the blood streaming from her side. 282. "see!" whispered ni'ltsi, the wind, "the stream of blood from her body and the stream from her vitals flow fast and approach one another. if they meet she will revive, and then your danger will be greater than ever. draw, with your stone knife, a mark on the ground between the approaching streams." the young man did as he was bidden, when instantly the blood coagulated and ceased to flow. 283. then the young man said: "you shall live again, but no longer as the mischievous tsiké sas nátlehi.[90] you shall live in other forms, where you may be of service to your kind and not a thing of evil." he cut off the head and said to it: "let us see if in another life you will do better. when you come to life again, act well, or again i will slay you." he threw the head at the foot of a piñon-tree and it changed into a bear, which started at once to walk off. but presently it stopped, shaded its eyes with one paw, and looked back at the man, saying: "you have bidden me to act well; but what shall i do if others attack me?" "then you may defend yourself," said the young man; "but begin no quarrel, and be ever a friend to your people, the diné`. go yonder to black mountain (dsillizi'n) and dwell there." there are now in black mountain many bears which are descended from this bear. 284. the hero cut off the nipples and said to them: "had you belonged to a good woman and not to a foolish witch, it might have been your luck to suckle men. you were of no use to your kind; but now i shall make you of use in another form." he threw the nipples up into a piñon-tree, heretofore fruitless, and they became edible pine nuts. 285. next he sought the homes of his friends, the holy ones, níyol and pésasike. they led him to the east, to the south, to the west, and to the north, where the corpses of his brothers lay, and these they restored to life for him. they went back to the place where the brothers had dwelt before and built a new house; but they did not return to the old home, for that was now a tsi'ndi hogán and accursed.[91] 286. the holy ones then gave to the young hero the name of léyaneyani, or reared under the ground, because they had hidden him in the earth when his brethren fled from the wrath of his sister. they bade him go and dwell at a place called atáhyitsoi (big point on the edge), which is in the shape of a hogán, or navaho hut, and here we think he still dwells. iii. the war gods. 287. the diné` now removed to tse`lakaíia (white standing rock), where, a few days after they arrived, they found on the ground a small turquoise image of a woman; this they preserved. of late the monsters (anáye, alien gods) had been actively pursuing and devouring the people, and at the time this image was found there were only four persons remaining alive;[92] these were an old man and woman and their two children, a young man and a young woman. two days after the finding of the image, early in the morning, before they rose, they heard the voice of hastséyalti, the talking god, crying his call of "wu`hu`hu`hu" so faint and far that they could scarcely hear it. after a while the call was repeated a second time, nearer and louder than at first. again, after a brief silence, the call was heard for the third time, still nearer and still louder. the fourth call was loud and clear, as if sounded near at hand;[26] as soon as it ceased, the shuffling tread of moccasined feet was heard, and a moment later the god hastséyalti stood before them. 288. he told the four people to come up to the top of tsolíhi after twelve nights had passed, bringing with them the turquoise image they had found, and at once he departed. they pondered deeply on his words, and every day they talked among themselves, wondering why hastséyalti had summoned them to the mountain. 289. on the morning of the appointed day they ascended the mountain by a holy trail,[93] and on a level spot, near the summit, they met a party that awaited them there. they found there hastséyalti, hastséhogan (the home god), white body (who came up from the lower world with the diné`), the eleven brothers (of maid who becomes a bear), the mirage stone people, the daylight people standing in the east, the blue sky people standing in the south, the yellow light people standing in the west, and the darkness people standing in the north. white body stood in the east among the daylight people, bearing in his hand a small image of a woman wrought in white shell, about the same size and shape as the blue image which the navahoes bore. 290. hastséyalti laid down a sacred buckskin with its head toward the west. the mirage stone people laid on the buckskin, heads west, the two little images,--of turquoise and white shell,--a white and a yellow ear of corn, the pollen boy, and the grasshopper girl. on top of all these hastséyalti laid another sacred buckskin with its head to the east, and under this they now put ni'ltsi (wind). 291. then the assembled crowd stood so as to form a circle, leaving in the east an opening through which hastséyalti and hastséhogan might pass in and out, and they sang the sacred song of hozóngisin. four times the gods entered and raised the cover. when they raised it for the fourth time, the images and the ears of corn were found changed to living beings in human form: the turquoise image had become estsánatlehi, the woman who changes (or rejuvenates herself); the white shell image had become yolkaí estsán, the white shell woman; the white ear of corn had become natálkai asiké; the white corn boy and the yellow ear of corn, natáltsoi atét the yellow corn girl.[94] after the ceremony, white body took pollen boy, grasshopper girl, white corn boy, and yellow corn girl with him into tsolíhi; the rest of the assembly departed, and the two divine sisters, estsánatlehi[95] and yolkaí estsán,[96] were left on the mountain alone. 292. the women remained here four nights; on the fourth morning estsánatlehi said: "site'zi (younger sister), why should we remain here? let us go to yonder high point and look around us." they went to the highest point of the mountain, and when they had been there several days estsánatlehi said: "it is lonely here; we have no one to speak to but ourselves; we see nothing but that which rolls over our heads (the sun), and that which drops below us (a small dripping waterfall). i wonder if they can be people. i shall stay here and wait for the one in the morning, while you go down among the rocks and seek the other." 293. in the morning estsánatlehi found a bare, flat rock and lay on it with her feet to the east, and the rising sun shone upon her. yolkaí estsán went down where the dripping waters descended and allowed them to fall upon her. at noon the women met again on the mountain top and estsánatlehi said to her sister: "it is sad to be so lonesome. how can we make people so that we may have others of our kind to talk to?" yolkaí estsán answered: "think, elder sister; perhaps after some days you may plan how this is to be done." 294. four days after this conversation yolkaí estsán said: "elder sister, i feel something strange moving within me; what can it be?" and estsánatlehi answered: "it is a child. it was for this that you lay under the waterfall. i feel, too, the motions of a child within me. it was for this that i let the sun shine upon me." soon after the voice of hastséyalti was heard four times, as usual, and after the last call he and tó`nenili[98] appeared. they came to prepare the women for their approaching delivery.[99] 295. in four days more they felt the commencing throes of labor, and one said to the other: "i think my child is coming." she had scarcely spoken when the voice of the approaching god was heard, and soon hastséyalti and tó`nenili (water sprinkler) were seen approaching. the former was the accoucheur of estsánatlehi, and the latter of yolkaí estsán.[100] to one woman a drag-rope of rainbow was given, to the other a drag-rope of sunbeam, and on these they pulled when in pain, as the navaho woman now pulls on the rope. estsánatlehi's child was born first.[101] hastséyalti took it aside and washed it. he was glad, and laughed and made ironical motions, as if he were cutting the baby in slices and throwing the slices away. they made for the children two baby-baskets, both alike; the foot-rests and the back battens were made of sunbeam, the hoods of rainbow, the side-strings of sheet lightning, and the lacing strings of zigzag lightning. one child they covered with the black cloud, and the other with the female rain.[102] they called the children sináli (grandchildren), and they left, promising to return at the end of four days. 296. when the gods (yéi) returned at the end of four days, the boys had grown to be the size of ordinary boys of twelve years of age. the gods said to them: "boys, we have come to have a race with you." so a race was arranged that should go all around a neighboring mountain, and the four started,--two boys and two yéi. before the long race was half done the boys, who ran fast, began to flag, and the gods, who were still fresh, got behind them and scourged the lads with twigs of mountain mahogany.[103] hastséyalti won the race, and the boys came home rubbing their sore backs. when the gods left they promised to return at the end of another period of four days. 297. as soon as the gods were gone, ni'ltsi, the wind, whispered to the boys and told them that the old ones were not such fast runners, after all, and that if the boys would practice during the next four days they might win the coming race. so for four days they ran hard, many times daily around the neighboring mountain, and when the gods came back again the youths had grown to the full stature of manhood. in the second contest the gods began to flag and fall behind when half way round the mountain, where the others had fallen behind in the first race, and here the boys got behind their elders and scourged the latter to increase their speed. the elder of the boys won this race, and when it was over the gods laughed and clapped their hands, for they were pleased with the spirit and prowess they witnessed. 298. the night after the race the boys lay down as usual to sleep; but hearing the women whispering together, they lay awake and listened. they strained their attention, but could not hear a word of what was uttered. at length they rose, approached the women, and said: "mothers, of what do you speak?" and the women answered: "we speak of nothing." the boys then said: "grandmothers, of what do you speak?" but the women again replied: "we speak of nothing." the boys then questioned: "who are our fathers?" "you have no fathers," responded the women; "you are yutáski (illegitimate)." "who are our fathers?" again demanded the boys, and the women answered: "the round cactus and the sitting cactus[104] are your fathers." 299. next day the women made rude bows of juniper wood, and arrows, such as children play with, and they said to the boys: "go and play around with these, but do not go out of sight from our hut, and do not go to the east." notwithstanding these warnings the boys went to the east the first day, and when they had travelled a good distance they saw an animal with brownish hair and a sharp nose. they drew their arrows and pointed them toward the sharp-nosed stranger; but before they could shoot he jumped down into a canyon and disappeared. when they returned home they told the women--addressing them as "mother" and "grandmother"--what they had seen. the women said: "that is coyote which you saw. he is a spy for the anáye téelget." 300. on the following day, although again strictly warned not to go far from the lodge, the boys wandered far to the south, and there they saw a great black bird seated on a tree. they aimed their arrows at it; but just as they were about to shoot the bird rose and flew away. the boys returned to the hogán and said to the women: "mothers, we have been to the south to-day, and there we saw a great black bird which we tried to shoot; but before we could let loose our arrows it flew off." "alas!" said the women. "this was raven that you saw. he is the spy of the tse`na'hale, the great winged creatures that devour men." 301. on the third day the boys slipped off unknown to the anxious women, who would fain keep them at home, and walked a long way toward the west. the only living thing they saw was a great dark bird with a red skinny head that had no feathers on it. this bird they tried to shoot also; but before they could do so it spread its wings and flew a long way off. they went home and said to the women: "mothers, we have been to the west, and we have seen a great dark bird whose head was red and bare. we tried to shoot it, but it flew away before we could discharge our arrows." "it was dzéso, the buzzard, that you saw," said the women. "he is the spy for tse`tahotsiltá`li, he who kicks men down the cliffs." 302. on the fourth day the boys stole off as usual, and went toward the north. when they had travelled a long way in that direction, they saw a bird of black plumage perched on a tree on the edge of a canyon. it was talking to itself, saying "a`a`i`." they aimed at it, but before they could let fly their arrows it spread its wings and tail and disappeared down the canyon. as it flew, the boys noticed that its plumes were edged with white. when they got home they told their mothers, as before, what they had seen. "this bird that you saw," said the women, "is the magpie. he is the spy for the bináye aháni, who slay people with their eyes. alas, our children! what shall we do to make you hear us? what shall we do to save you? you would not listen to us. now the spies of the anáye (the alien gods) in all quarters of the world have seen you. they will tell their chiefs, and soon the monsters will come here to devour you, as they have devoured all your kind before you." 303. the next morning the women made a corncake and laid it on the ashes to bake. then yolkaí estsán went out of the hogán, and, as she did so, she saw yéitso,[105] the tallest and fiercest of the alien gods, approaching. she ran quickly back and gave the warning, and the women hid the boys under bundles and sticks. yéitso came and sat down at the door, just as the women were taking the cake out of the ashes. "that cake is for me," said yéitso. "how nice it smells!" "no," said estsánatlehi, "it was not meant for your great maw." "i don't care," said yéitso. "i would rather eat boys. where are your boys? i have been told you have some here, and i have come to get them." "we have none," said estsánatlehi. "all the boys have gone into the paunches of your people long ago." "no boys?" said the giant. "what, then, has made all the tracks around here?" "oh! these tracks i have made for fun," replied the woman. "i am lonely here, and i make tracks so that i may fancy there are many people around me." she showed yéitso how she could make similar tracks with her fist. he compared the two sets of tracks, seemed to be satisfied, and went away. 304. when he was gone, yolkaí estsán, the white shell woman, went up to the top of a neighboring hill to look around, and she beheld many of the anáye hastening in the direction of her lodge. she returned speedily, and told her sister what she had seen. estsánatlehi took four colored hoops, and threw one toward each of the cardinal points,--a white one to the east, a blue one to the south, a yellow one to the west, and a black one to the north. at once a great gale arose, blowing so fiercely in all directions from the hogán that none of the enemies could advance against it. 305. next morning the boys got up before daybreak and stole away. soon the women missed them, but could not trace them in the dark. when it was light enough to examine the ground the women went out to look for fresh tracks. they found four footprints of each of the boys, pointing in the direction of the mountain of dsilnáotil, but more than four tracks they could not find. they came to the conclusion that the boys had taken a holy trail, so they gave up further search and returned to the lodge. 306. the boys travelled rapidly in the holy trail,[93] and soon after sunrise, near dsilnáotil, they saw smoke arising from the ground. they went to the place where the smoke rose, and they found it came from the smoke-hole of a subterranean chamber. a ladder, black from smoke, projected through the hole. looking down into the chamber they saw an old woman, the spider woman,[106] who glanced up at them and said: "welcome, children. enter. who are you, and whence do you two come together walking?" they made no answer, but descended the ladder. when they reached the floor she again spoke to them, asking: "whither do you two go walking together?" "nowhere in particular," they answered; "we came here because we had nowhere else to go." she asked this question four times, and each time she received a similar answer. then she said: "perhaps you would seek your father?" "yes," they answered, "if we only knew the way to his dwelling." "ah!" said the woman, "it is a long and dangerous way to the house of your father, the sun. there are many of the anáye dwelling between here and there, and perhaps, when you get there, your father may not be glad to see you, and may punish you for coming. you must pass four places of danger,--the rocks that crush the traveller, the reeds that cut him to pieces, the cane cactuses that tear him to pieces, and the boiling sands that overwhelm him. but i shall give you something to subdue your enemies and preserve your lives." she gave them a charm called nayéatsos, or feather of the alien gods, which consisted of a hoop with two life-feathers (feathers plucked from a living eagle) attached, and another life-feather, hyiná biltsós,[107] to preserve their existence. she taught them also this magic formula, which, if repeated to their enemies, would subdue their anger: "put your feet down with pollen.[108] put your hands down with pollen. put your head down with pollen. then your feet are pollen; your hands are pollen; your body is pollen; your mind is pollen; your voice is pollen. the trail is beautiful (biké hozóni). be still."[109] 307. soon after leaving the house of spider woman, the boys came to tse`yeinti'li (the rocks that crush). there was here a narrow chasm between two high cliffs. when a traveller approached, the rocks would open wide apart, apparently to give him easy passage and invite him to enter; but as soon as he was within the cleft they would close like hands clapping and crush him to death. these rocks were really people; they thought like men; they were anáye. when the boys got to the rocks they lifted their feet as if about to enter the chasm, and the rocks opened to let them in. then the boys put down their feet, but withdrew them quickly. the rocks closed with a snap to crush them; but the boys remained safe on the outside. thus four times did they deceive the rocks. when they had closed for the fourth time the rocks said: "who are ye; whence come ye two together, and whither go ye?" "we are children of the sun," answered the boys. "we come from dsilnáotil, and we go to seek the house of our father." then they repeated the words the spider woman had taught them, and the rocks said: "pass on to the house of your father." when next they ventured to step into the chasm the rocks did not close, and they passed safely on. 308. the boys kept on their way and soon came to a great plain covered with reeds that had great leaves on them as sharp as knives. when the boys came to the edge of the field of reeds (lokáadikisi), the latter opened, showing a clear passage through to the other side. the boys pretended to enter, but retreated, and as they did so the walls of reeds rushed together to kill them. thus four times did they deceive the reeds. then the reeds spoke to them, as the rocks had done; they answered and repeated the sacred words. "pass on to the house of your father," said the reeds, and the boys passed on in safety. 309. the next danger they encountered was in the country covered with cane cactuses.[89] these cactuses rushed at and tore to pieces whoever attempted to pass through them. when the boys came to the cactuses the latter opened their ranks to let the travellers pass on, as the reeds had done before. but the boys deceived them as they had deceived the reeds, and subdued them as they had subdued the reeds, and passed on in safety. 310. after they had passed the country of the cactus they came, in time, to saitád, the land of the rising sands. here was a great desert of sands that rose and whirled and boiled like water in a pot, and overwhelmed the traveller who ventured among them. as the boys approached, the sands became still more agitated and the boys did not dare venture among them. "who are ye?" said the sands, "and whence come ye?" "we are children of the sun, we came from dsilnáotil, and we go to seek the house of our father." these words were four times said. then the elder of the boys repeated his sacred formula; the sands subsided, saying: "pass on to the house of your father," and the boys continued on their journey over the desert of sands.[110] 311. soon after this adventure they approached the house of the sun. as they came near the door they found the way guarded by two bears that crouched, one to the right and one to the left, their noses pointing toward one another. as the boys drew near, the bears rose, growled angrily, and acted as if about to attack the intruders; but the elder boy repeated the sacred words the spider woman had taught him, and when he came to the last words, "be still," the bears crouched down again and lay still. the boys walked on. after passing the bears they encountered a pair of sentinel serpents, then a pair of sentinel winds, and, lastly, a pair of sentinel lightnings. as the boys advanced, all these guardians acted as if they would destroy them; but all were appeased with the words of prayer.[111] 312. the house of the sun god was built of turquoise; it was square like a pueblo house, and stood on the shore of a great water. when the boys entered they saw, sitting in the west, a woman; in the south, two handsome young men;[112] and in the north, two handsome young women. the women gave a glance at the strangers and then looked down. the young men gazed at them more closely, and then, without speaking, they rose, wrapped the strangers in four coverings of the sky, and laid them on a shelf.[113] 313. the boys had lain there quietly for some time when a rattle that hung over the door shook and one of the young women said: "our father is coming." the rattle shook four times, and soon after it shook the fourth time, tsóhanoai, the bearer of the sun, entered his house. he took the sun off his back and hung it up on a peg on the west wall of the room, where it shook and clanged for some time, going "tla, tla, tla, tla," till at last it hung still. 314. then tsóhanoai turned to the woman and said, in an angry tone: "who are those two who entered here to-day?" the woman made no answer and the young people looked at one another, but each feared to speak. four times he asked this question, and at length the woman said: "it would be well for you not to say too much. two young men came hither to-day, seeking their father. when you go abroad, you always tell me that you visit nowhere, and that you have met no woman but me. whose sons, then, are these?" she pointed to the bundle on the shelf, and the children smiled significantly at one another. 315. he took the bundle from the shelf. he first unrolled the robe of dawn with which they were covered, then the robe of blue sky, next the robe of yellow evening light, and lastly the robe of darkness. when he unrolled this the boys fell out on the floor. he seized them, and threw them first upon great, sharp spikes of white shell that stood in the east; but they bounded back, unhurt, from these spikes, for they held their life-feathers tightly all the while. he then threw them in turn on spikes of turquoise in the south, on spikes of haliotis in the west, and spikes of black rock in the north; but they came uninjured from all these trials and tsóhanoai said: "i wish it were indeed true that they were my children." 316. he said then to the elder children,--those who lived with him,--"go out and prepare the sweat-house and heat for it four of the hardest boulders you can find. heat a white, a blue, a yellow, and a black boulder." when the winds heard this they said: "he still seeks to kill his children. how shall we avert the danger?" the sweat-house was built against a bank. wind dug into the bank a hole behind the sudatory, and concealed the opening with a flat stone. wind then whispered into the ears of the boys the secret of the hole and said: "do not hide in the hole until you have answered the questions of your father." the boys went into the sweat-house, the great hot boulders were put in and the opening of the lodge was covered with the four sky-blankets. then tsóhanoai called out to the boys: "are you hot?" and they answered: "yes, very hot." then they crept into the hiding-place and lay there. after a while tsóhanoai came and poured water through the top of the sweat-house on the stones, making them burst with a loud noise, and a great heat and steam was raised. but in time the stones cooled and the boys crept out of their hiding-place into the sweat-house. tsóhanoai came and asked again: "are you hot?" hoping to get no reply; but the boys still answered: "yes, very hot." then he took the coverings off the sweat-house and let the boys come out. he greeted them in a friendly way and said: "yes, these are my children," and yet he was thinking of other ways by which he might destroy them if they were not. 317. the four sky-blankets were spread on the ground one over another, and the four young men were made to sit on them, one behind another, facing the east. "my daughters, make these boys to look like my other sons," said tsóhanoai. the young women went to the strangers, pulled their hair out long, and moulded their faces and forms so that they looked just like their brethren. then sun bade them all rise and enter the house. they rose and all went, in a procession, the two strangers last. 318. as they were about to enter the door they heard a voice whispering in their ears: "st! look at the ground." they looked down and beheld a spiny caterpillar called wasekede, who, as they looked, spat out two blue spits on the ground. "take each of you one of these," said wind, "and put it in your mouth, but do not swallow it. there is one more trial for you,--a trial by smoking." when they entered the house tsóhanoai took down a pipe of turquoise that hung on the eastern wall and filled it with tobacco. "this is the tobacco he kills with," whispered ni'ltsi to the boys. tsóhanoai held the pipe up to the sun that hung on the wall, lit it, and gave it to the boys to smoke. they smoked it, and passed it from one to another till it was finished. they said it tasted sweet, but it did them no harm. 319. when the pipe was smoked out and tsóhanoai saw the boys were not killed by it, he was satisfied and said: "now, my children, what do you want from me? why do you seek me?" "oh, father!" they replied, "the land where we dwell is filled with the anáye, who devour the people. there are yéitso and téelget, the tse`náhale, the bináye aháni, and many others. they have eaten nearly all of our kind; there are few left; already they have sought our lives, and we have run away to escape them. give us, we beg, the weapons with which we may slay our enemies. help us to destroy them." 320. "know," said tsóhanoai, "that yéitso who dwells at tsótsil is also my son, yet i will help you to kill him. i shall hurl the first bolt at him, and i will give you those things that will help you in war." he took from pegs where they hung around the room and gave to each a hat, a shirt, leggings, moccasins, all made of pes (iron or knives),[114] a chain-lightning arrow, a sheet-lightning arrow, a sunbeam arrow, a rainbow arrow, and a great stone knife or knife club (peshál).[115] "these are what we want," said the boys. they put on the clothes of pes, and streaks of lightning shot from every joint.[116] 321. next morning tsóhanoai led the boys out to the edge of the world, where the sky and the earth came close together, and beyond which there was no world. here sixteen wands or poles leaned from the earth to the sky; four of these were of white shell, four of turquoise, four of haliotis shell, and four of red stone.[117] a deep stream flowed between them and the wands. as they approached the stream, ni'ltsi, the wind, whispered: "this is another trial;" but he blew a great breath and formed a bridge of rainbow,[86] over which the brothers passed in safety. ni'ltsi whispered again: "the red wands are for war, the others are for peace;" so when tsóhanoai asked his sons: "on which wands will ye ascend?" they answered: "on the wands of red stone," for they sought war with their enemies. they climbed up to the sky on the wands of red stone, and their father went with them.[118] 322. they journeyed on till they came to yágahoka, the sky-hole, which is in the centre of the sky.[119] the hole is edged with four smooth, shining cliffs that slope steeply downwards,--cliffs of the same materials as the wands by which they had climbed from the earth to the sky. they sat down on the smooth declivities,--tsóhanoai on the west side of the hole, the brothers on the east side. the latter would have slipped down had not the wind blown up and helped them to hold on. tsóhanoai pointed down and said: "where do you belong in the world below? show me your home." the brothers looked down and scanned the land; but they could distinguish nothing; all the land seemed flat; the wooded mountains looked like dark spots on the surface; the lakes gleamed like stars, and the rivers like streaks of lightning. the elder brother said: "i do not recognize the land, i know not where our home is." now ni'ltsi prompted the younger brother, and showed him which were the sacred mountains and which the great rivers, and the younger exclaimed, pointing downwards: "there is the male water (san juan river), and there is the female water (rio grande); yonder is the mountain of tsisnadzi'ni; below us is tsótsil; there in the west is dokoslíd; that white spot beyond the male water is depe'ntsa; and there between these mountains is dsilnáotil, near which our home is." "you are right, my child, it is thus that the land lies," said tsóhanoai. then, renewing his promises, he spread a streak of lightning; he made his children stand on it,--one on each end,--and he shot them down to the top of tsótsil (mt. san mateo, mt. taylor). 323. they descended the mountain on its south side and walked toward the warm spring at tó`sato.[120] as they were walking along under a high bluff, where there is now a white circle, they heard voices hailing them. "whither are you going? come hither a while." they went in the direction in which they heard the voices calling and found four holy people,--holy man, holy young man, holy boy, and holy girl. the brothers remained all night in a cave with these people, and the latter told them all about yéitso.[121] they said that he showed himself every day three times on the mountains before he came down, and when he showed himself for the fourth time he descended from tsótsil to tó`sato to drink; that, when he stooped down to drink, one hand rested on tsótsil and the other on the high hills on the opposite side of the valley, while his feet stretched as far away as a man could walk between sunrise and noon. 324. they left the cave at daybreak and went on to tó`sato, where in ancient days there was a much larger lake than there is now. there was a high, rocky wall in the narrow part of the valley, and the lake stretched back to where blue water is to-day. when they came to the edge of the lake, one brother said to the other: "let us try one of our father's weapons and see what it can do." they shot one of the lightning arrows at tsótsil; it made a great cleft in the mountain, which remains to this day, and one said to the other: "we cannot suffer in combat while we have such weapons as these." 325. soon they heard the sound of thunderous footsteps, and they beheld the head of yéitso peering over a high hill in the east; it was withdrawn in a moment. soon after, the monster raised his head and chest over a hill in the south, and remained a little longer in sight than when he was in the east. later he displayed his body to the waist over a hill in the west; and lastly he showed himself, down to the knees, over tsótsil in the north.[122] then he descended the mountain, came to the edge of the lake, and laid down a basket which he was accustomed to carry. 326. yéitso stooped four times to the lake to drink, and, each time he drank, the waters perceptibly diminished; when he had done drinking, the lake was nearly drained.[123] the brothers lost their presence of mind at sight of the giant drinking, and did nothing while he was stooping down. as he took his last drink they advanced to the edge of the lake, and yéitso saw their reflection in the water. he raised his head, and, looking at them, roared: "what a pretty pair have come in sight! where have i been hunting?" (i.e., that i never saw them before). "yiniketóko! yiniketóko!"[124] "throw (his words) back in his mouth," said the younger to the elder brother. "what a great thing has come in sight! where have we been hunting?" shouted the elder brother to the giant. four times these taunts were repeated by each party. the brothers then heard ni'ltsi whispering quickly, "akó`! akó`! beware! beware!" they were standing on a bent rainbow just then; they straightened the rainbow out, descending to the ground, and at the same instant a lightning bolt, hurled by yéitso, passed thundering over their heads. he hurled four bolts rapidly; as he hurled the second, they bent their rainbow and rose, while the bolt passed under their feet; as he discharged the third they descended, and let the lightning pass over them. when he threw the fourth bolt they bent the rainbow very high, for this time he aimed higher than before; but his weapon still passed under their feet and did them no harm. he drew a fifth bolt to throw at them; but at this moment the lightning descended from the sky on the head of the giant and he reeled beneath it, but did not fall.[125] then the elder brother sped a chain-lightning arrow; his enemy tottered toward the east, but straightened himself up again. the second arrow caused him to stumble toward the south (he fell lower and lower each time), but again he stood up and prepared himself to renew the conflict. the third lightning arrow made him topple toward the west, and the fourth to the north. then he fell to his knees, raised himself partly again, fell flat on his face, stretched out his limbs, and moved no more. 327. when the arrows struck him, his armor was shivered in pieces and the scales flew in every direction. the elder brother said: "they may be useful to the people in the future."[126] the brothers then approached their fallen enemy and the younger scalped him. heretofore the younger brother bore only the name of to`badzistsíni, or child of the water; but now his brother gave him also the warrior name of naídikisi (he who cuts around). what the elder brother's name was before this we do not know; but ever after he was called nayénezgani (slayer of the alien gods).[127] 328. they cut off his head and threw it away to the other side of tsótsil, where it may be seen to-day on the eastern side of the mountain.[128] the blood from the body now flowed in a great stream down the valley, so great that it broke down the rocky wall that bounded the old lake and flowed on. ni'ltsi whispered to the brothers: "the blood flows toward the dwelling of the bináye aháni; if it reaches them, yéitso will come to life again." then nayénezgani took his peshál, or knife club, and drew with it across the valley a line. here the blood stopped flowing and piled itself up in a high wall. but when it had piled up here very high it began to flow off in another direction, and ni'ltsi again whispered: "it now flows toward the dwelling of sasnalkáhi, the bear that pursues; if it reaches him, yéitso will come to life again." hearing this, nayénezgani again drew a line with his knife on the ground, and again the blood piled up and stopped flowing. the blood of yéitso fills all the valley to-day, and the high cliffs in the black rock that we see there now are the places where nayénezgani stopped the flow with his peshál.[129] 329. they then put the broken arrows of yéitso and his scalp into his basket and set out for their home near dsilnáotil. when they got near the house, they took off their own suits of armor and hid these, with the basket and its contents, in the bushes. the mothers were rejoiced to see them, for they feared their sons were lost, and they said: "where have you been since you left here yesterday, and what have you done?" nayénezgani replied: "we have been to the house of our father, the sun. we have been to tsótsil and we have slain yéitso." "ah, my child," said estsánatlehi, "do not speak thus. it is wrong to make fun of such an awful subject." "do you not believe us?" said nayénezgani; "come out, then, and see what we have brought back with us." he led the women out to where he had hidden the basket and showed them the trophies of yéitso. then they were convinced and they rejoiced, and had a dance to celebrate the victory.[130] 330. when their rejoicings were done, nayénezgani said to his mother: "where does téelget[131] dwell?" "seek not to know." she answered, "you have done enough. rest contented. the land of the anáye is a dangerous place. the anáye are hard to kill." "yes, and it was hard for you to bear your child," the son replied (meaning that she triumphed notwithstanding). "he lives at bikehalzi'n," she said. then the brothers held a long council to determine what they should do. they made two cigarette kethawns of a plant called azeladiltéhe,[132] one black and one blue, each three finger-widths long; to these they attached a sunbeam and laid them in a turquoise dish. "i shall go alone to fight téelget," said nayénezgani, "while you, younger brother, remain at home and watch these kethawns. if they take fire from the sunbeam, you may know that i am in great danger; as long as they do not take fire, you may know that i am safe." this work was finished at sundown.[133] 331. nayénezgani arose early next morning and set out alone to find téelget. he came, in time, to the edge of a great plain, and from one of the hills that bordered it he saw the monster lying down a long way off. he paused to think how he could approach nearer to him without attracting his attention, and in the mean time he poised one of his lightning arrows in his hand, thinking how he should throw it. while he stood thus in thought, nasi'zi, the gopher, came up to him and said: "i greet you, my friend! why have you come hither?" "oh, i am just wandering around," said nayénezgani. four times this question was asked and this answer was given. then nasi'zi said: "i wonder that you come here; no one but i ever ventures in these parts, for all fear téelget. there he lies on the plain yonder." "it is him i seek," said nayénezgani; "but i know not how to approach him." "ah, if that is all you want, i can help you," said gopher; "and if you slay him, all i ask is his hide. i often go up to him, and i will go now to show you." having said this, nasi'zi disappeared in a hole in the ground. 332. while he was gone nayénezgani watched téelget. after a while he saw the great creature rise, walk from the centre in four different directions, as if watching, and lie down again in the spot where he was first seen. he was a great, four-footed beast, with horns like those of a deer. soon nasi'zi returned and said: "i have dug a tunnel up to téelget, and at the end i have bored four tunnels for you to hide in, one to the east, one to the south, one to the west, and one to the north. i have made a hole upwards from the tunnel to his heart, and i have gnawed the hair off near his heart. when i was gnawing the hair he spoke to me and said: 'why do you take my hair?' and i answered, 'i want it to make a bed for my children.' then it was that he rose and walked around; but he came back and lay down where he lay before, over the hole that leads up to his heart." 333. nayénezgani entered the tunnel and crawled to the end. when he looked up through the ascending shaft of which nasi'zi had told him, he saw the great heart of téelget beating there. he sped his arrow of chain-lightning and fled into the eastern tunnel. the monster rose, stuck one of his horns into the ground, and ripped the tunnel open. nayénezgani fled into the south tunnel; téelget then tore the south tunnel open with his horns, and the hero fled into the west tunnel. when the west tunnel was torn up he fled into the north tunnel. the anáye put his horn into the north tunnel to tear it up, but before he had half uncovered it he fell and lay still. nayénezgani, not knowing that his enemy was dead, and still fearing him, crept back through the long tunnel to the place where he first met nasi'zi, and there he stood gazing at the distant form of téelget. 334. while he was standing there in thought, he observed approaching him a little old man dressed in tight leggings and a tight shirt, with a cap and feather on his head; this was hazaí, the ground squirrel. "what do you want here, my grandchild?" said hazaí. "nothing; i am only walking around," replied the warrior. four times this question was asked and four times a similar answer given, when ground squirrel spoke again and inquired: "do you not fear the anáye that dwells on yonder plain?" "i do not know," replied nayénezgani; "i think i have killed him, but i am not certain." "then i can find out for you," said hazaí. "he never minds me. i can approach him any time without danger. if he is dead i will climb up on his horns and dance and sing." nayénezgani had not watched long when he saw hazaí climbing one of the horns and dancing on it. when he approached his dead enemy he found that hazaí had streaked his own face with the blood of the slain (the streaks remain on the ground squirrel's face to this day), and that nasi'zi had already begun to remove the skin by gnawing on the insides of the fore-legs. when gopher had removed the skin, he put it on his own back and said: "i shall wear this in order that, in the days to come, when the people increase, they may know what sort of a skin téelget wore." he had a skin like that which covers the gopher to-day. hazaí cut out a piece of the bowel, filled it with blood, and tied the ends; he cut out also a piece of one of the lungs, and he gave these to nayénezgani for his trophies.[134] 335. when nayénezgani came home again, he was received with great rejoicing, for his mother had again begun to fear he would never more return. "where have you been, my son, and what have you done since you have been gone?" she queried. "i have been to bikehalzi'n and i have slain téelget," he replied. "ah, speak not thus, my son," she said; "he is too powerful for you to talk thus lightly about him. if he knew what you said he might seek you out and kill you." "i have no fear of him," said her son. "here is his blood, and here is a piece of his liver. do you not now believe i have slain him?" then he said: "mother, grandmother, tell me, where do the tse`na'hale[135] dwell?" "they dwell at tsé`bitaï (winged rock),"[136] she answered, "but do not venture near them; they are fierce and strong." 336. next morning early he stole away, taking with him the piece of bowel filled with blood. he climbed the range of mountains where the hill of tsúskai rises, and travelled on till he came to a place where two great snakes lay. since that day these snakes have been changed into stone. he walked along the back of one of the snakes, and then he stepped from one snake to the other and went out on the plain that stretched to the east of the mountains, until he came close to tsé`bitaï, which is a great black rock that looks like a bird. while he was walking along he heard a tremendous rushing sound overhead, like the sound of a whirlwind, and, looking up, he saw a creature of great size, something like an eagle in form, flying toward him from the east. it was the male tse`na'hale. the warrior had barely time to cast himself prone on the ground when tse`na'hale swooped over him. thus four times did the monster swoop at him, coming each time from a different direction. three times nayénezgani escaped; but the fourth time, flying from the north, the monster seized him in his talons and bore him off to tsé`bitaï. 337. there is a broad, level ledge on one side of tsé`bitaï, where the monster reared his young; he let the hero drop on this ledge, as was his custom to do with his victims, and perched on a pinnacle above. this fall had killed all others who had dropped there; but nayénezgani was preserved by the life-feather, the gift of spider woman, which he still kept. when the warrior fell he cut open the bag of bowel that he carried and allowed the blood of téelget to flow out over the rock, so that the anáye might think he was killed. the two young approached to devour the body of the warrior, but he said "sh!" at them. they stopped and cried up to their father: "this thing is not dead; it says 'sh!' at us." "that is only air escaping from the body," said the father; "never mind, but eat it." then he flew away in search of other prey. when the old bird was gone, nayénezgani hid himself behind the young ones and asked them, "when will your father come back, and where will he sit when he comes?" they answered: "he will return when we have a he-rain,[137] and he will perch on yonder point" (indicating a rock close by on the right). then he inquired: "when will your mother return, and where will she sit?" "she will come when we have a she-rain,[137] and will sit on yonder point" (indicating a crag on the left). he had not waited long when drops of rain began to fall, the thunder rolled, lightning flashed, the male tse`na'hale returned and perched on the rock which the young had pointed out. then nayénezgani hurled a lightning arrow and the monster tumbled to the foot of winged rock dead. after a while rain fell again, but there was neither thunder nor lightning with it. while it still poured, there fell upon the ledge the body of a pueblo woman, covered with fine clothes and ornamented with ear pendants and necklaces of beautiful shells and turquoise. nayénezgani looked up and beheld the female tse`na'hale soaring overhead (she preyed only on women, the male only on men). a moment later she glided down, and was just about to light on her favorite crag, when nayénezgani hurled another lightning arrow and sent her body down to the plain to join that of her mate. 338. the young ones now began to cry, and they said to the warrior: "will you slay us, too?" "cease your wailing," he cried. "had you grown up here you would have been things of evil; you would have lived only to destroy my people; but i shall now make of you something that will be of use in the days to come when men increase in the land." he seized the elder and said to it, "you shall furnish plumes for men to use in their rites, and bones for whistles." he swung the fledgling back and forth four times; as he did so it began to change into a beautiful bird with strong wings, and it said: "suk, suk, suk, suk." then he threw it high in the air. it spread its pinions and soared out of sight, an eagle. to the younger he said: "in the days to come men will listen to your voice to know what will be their future: sometimes you will tell the truth; sometimes you will lie." he swung it back and forth, and as he did so its head grew large and round; its eyes grew big; it began to say, "uwú, uwú, uwú, uwú," and it became an owl. then he threw it into a hole in the side of the cliff and said: "this shall be your home."[138] 339. as he had nothing more to do at tsé`bitaï, he determined to go home, but he soon found that there was no way for him to descend the rock; nothing but a winged creature could reach or leave the ledge on which he stood. the sun was about half way down to the horizon when he observed the bat woman walking along near the base of the cliff. "grandmother," he called aloud, "come hither and take me down." "tse'dani,"[139] she answered, and hid behind a point of rock. again she came in view, and again he called her; but she gave him the same reply and hid herself again. three times were these acts performed and these words said. when she appeared for the fourth time and he begged her to carry him down, he added: "i will give you the feathers of the tse`na'hale if you will take me off this rock." when she heard this she approached the base of the rock, and soon disappeared under the ledge where he stood. presently he heard a strange flapping sound,[140] and a voice calling to him: "shut your eyes and go back, for you must not see how i ascend." he did as he was bidden, and soon after the bat woman stood beside him. "get into this basket, and i will carry you down," she demanded. he looked at the large carrying-basket which she bore on her back, and observed that it hung on strings as thin as the strings of a spider's web. "grandmother," he said, "i fear to enter your basket; the strings are too thin." "have no fear," she replied; "i often carry a whole deer in this basket: the strings are strong enough to bear you." still he hesitated, and still she assured him. the fourth time that he expressed his fear she said: "fill the basket with stones and you will see that i speak the truth." he did as he was bidden, and she danced around with the loaded basket on her back; but the strings did not break, though they twanged like bowstrings. when he entered the basket she bade him keep his eyes shut till they reached the bottom of the cliff, as he must not see how she managed to descend. he shut his eyes, and soon felt himself gradually going down; but he heard again the strange flapping against the rock, which so excited his curiosity that he opened his eyes. instantly he began to fall with dangerous rapidity, and the flapping stopped; she struck him with her stick and bade him shut his eyes. again he felt himself slowly descending, and the flapping against the rock began. three times more he disobeyed her, but the last time they were near the bottom of the cliff, and both fell to the ground unhurt. 340. together they plucked the two tse`na'hale, put the feathers in her basket, and got the basket on her back. he reserved only the largest feather from one wing of each bird for his trophies. as she was starting to leave he warned her not to pass through either of two neighboring localities, which were the dry beds of temporary lakes; one was overgrown with weeds, the other with sunflowers. despite his warning she walked toward the sunflowers. as she was about to enter them he called after her again, and begged her not to go that way, but she heeded him not and went on. she had not taken many steps among the sunflowers when she heard a fluttering sound behind her, and a little bird of strange appearance flew past her close to her ear. as she stepped farther on she heard more fluttering and saw more birds of varying plumage, such as she had never seen before, flying over her shoulders and going off in every direction. she looked around, and was astonished to behold that the birds were swarming out of her own basket. she tried to hold them in, to catch them as they flew out, but all in vain. she laid down her basket and watched, helplessly, her feathers changing into little birds of all kinds,--wrens, warblers, titmice, and the like,--and flying away, until her basket was empty. thus it was that the little birds were created.[141] 341. when he got home to`badzistsíni said to him: "elder brother, i have watched the kethawns all the time you were gone. about midday the black cigarette took fire, and i was troubled, for i knew you were in danger; but when it had burned half way the fire went out and then i was glad, for i thought you were safe again." "ah, that must have been the time when tse`na'hale carried me up and threw me on the rocks," said nayénezgani. he hung his trophies on the east side of the lodge, and then he asked his mother where tse`tahotsiltá`li[142] dwelt. she told him he lived at tse`tezá`; but, as on previous occasions, she warned him of the power of the enemy, and tried to dissuade him from seeking further dangers. next morning he set out to find tse`tahotsiltá`li, he who kicks (people) down the cliff. this anáye lived on the side of a high cliff, a trail passed at his feet, and when travellers went that way he kicked them down to the bottom of the precipice. nayénezgani had not travelled long when he discovered a well-beaten trail; following this, he found that it led him along the face of a high precipice, and soon he came in sight of his enemy, who had a form much like that of a man. the monster reclined quietly against the rock, as if he meditated no harm, and nayénezgani advanced as if he feared no danger, yet watching his adversary closely. as he passed, the latter kicked at him, but he dodged the kick and asked: "why did you kick at me?" "oh, my grandchild," said the anáye, "i was weary lying thus, and i only stretched out my leg to rest myself." four times did nayénezgani pass him, and four times did the monster kick at him in vain. then the hero struck his enemy with his great stone knife over the eyes, and struck him again and again till he felt sure that he had slain him; but he was surprised to find that the body did not fall down the cliff. he cut with his knife under the corpse in different places, but found nothing that held it to the rock until he came to the head, and then he discovered that the long hair grew, like the roots of a cedar, into a cleft in the rock. when he cut the hair,[143] the body tumbled down out of sight. the moment it fell a great clamor of voices came up from below. "i want the eyes," screamed one; "give me an arm," cried another; "i want the liver," said a third; "no, the liver shall be mine," yelled a fourth; and thus the quarrelling went on. "ah!" thought nayénezgani, "these are the children quarrelling over the father's corpse. thus, perhaps, they would have been quarrelling over mine had i not dodged his kicks." 342. he tried to descend along the trail he was on, but found it led no farther. then he retraced his steps till he saw another trail that seemed to lead to the bottom of the cliff. he followed it and soon came to the young of the anáye, twelve in number, who had just devoured their father's corpse; the blood was still streaming from their mouths. he ran among them, and hacked at them in every direction with his great stone knife. they fled; but he pursued them, and in a little while he had killed all but one. this one ran faster than the rest, and climbed among some high rocks; but nayénezgani followed him and caught him. he stopped to take breath; as he did so he looked at the child and saw that he was disgustingly ugly and filthy. "you ugly thing," said nayénezgani; "when you ran from me so fleetly i thought you might be something handsome and worth killing; but now that i behold your face i shall let you live. go to yonder mountain of natsisaán[144] and dwell there. it is a barren land, where you will have to work hard for your living, and will wander ever naked and hungry." the boy went to natsisaán, as he was told, and there he became the progenitor of the pahutes, a people ugly, starved, and ragged, who never wash themselves and live on the vermin of the desert.[145] 343. he went to where he had first found the children of tse`tahotsiltá`li. nothing was left of the father's corpse but the bones and scalp. (this anáye used to wear his hair after the manner of a pueblo indian.) the hero cut a piece of the hair from one side of the head and carried it home as a trophy. when he got home there were the usual questions and answers and rejoicings, and when he asked his mother, "where is the home of the bináye aháni, the people who slay with their eyes," she begged him, as before, to rest contented and run no more risks; but she added: "they live at tse`ahalzi'ni, rock with black hole."[146] this place stands to this day, but is changed since the anáye dwelt there. it has still a hole, on one side, that looks like a door, and another on the top that looks like a smoke-hole. 344. on this occasion, in addition to his other weapons, he took a bag of salt with him on his journey.[147] when he came to tse`ahalzi'ni he entered the rock house and sat down on the north side. in other parts of the lodge sat the old couple of the bináye aháni and many of their children. they all stared with their great eyes at the intruder, and flashes of lightning streamed from their eyes toward him, but glanced harmless off his armor. seeing that they did not kill him, they stared harder and harder at him, until their eyes protruded far from their sockets. then into the fire in the centre of the lodge he threw the salt, which spluttered and flew in every direction, striking the eyes of the anáye and blinding them. while they held down their heads in pain, he struck with his great stone knife and killed all except the two youngest. 345. thus he spoke to the two which he spared: "had you grown up here, you would have lived only to be things of evil and to destroy men; but now i shall make you of use to my kind in the days to come when men increase on the earth." to the elder he said: "you will ever speak to men and tell them what happens beyond their sight; you will warn them of the approach of enemies," and he changed it into a bird called tsidiltói[148] (shooting or exploring bird). he addressed the younger, saying: "it will be your task to make things beautiful, to make the earth happy." and he changed it into a bird called hostódi,[149] which is sleepy in the daytime and comes out at night. 346. when he reached home with his trophies, which were the eyes[150] of the first bináye aháni he had killed, and told what he had done, estsánatlehi took a piece of the lung of téelget (which he had previously brought home), put it in her mouth, and, dancing sang this song:- nayénezgani brings for me, of téelget he brings for me, truly a lung he brings for me, the people are restored. to`badzistsíni brings for me, of tse`na'hale he brings for me, truly a wing he brings for me, the people are restored. léyaneyani brings for me, of tse`tahotsiltá`li he brings for me, truly a side-lock he brings for me, the people are restored. tsówenatlehi[151] brings for me, of bináye aháni he brings for me, truly an eye he brings for me, the people are restored.[276] 347. when she had finished her rejoicings he asked, "where shall i find sasnalkáhi (bear that pursues)?" "he lives at tse`bahástsit (rock that frightens)," she replied; but again she pleaded with him, pictured to him the power of the enemy he sought, and begged him to venture no more. 348. next morning he went off to rock that frightens and walked all around it, without meeting the bear or finding his trail. at length, looking up to the top of the rock, he saw the bear's head sticking out of a hole, and he climbed up. the bear's den was in the shape of a cross, and had four entrances. nayénezgani looked into the east entrance, the south entrance, and the west entrance without getting sight of his enemy. as he approached the north entrance he saw the head of the watching bear again; but it was instantly withdrawn, and the bear went toward the south entrance. the hero ran round fast and lay in wait. in a little while the bear thrust forth his head to look, and nayénezgani cut it off with his great stone knife. 349. he addressed the head, saying: "you were a bad thing in your old life, and tried only to do mischief; but in new shapes i shall make you of use to the people; in the future, when they increase upon the earth, you will furnish them with sweet food to eat, with foam to cleanse their bodies, and with threads for their clothing." he cut the head into three pieces: he threw one to the east, where it became tsási, or haskán (yucca baccata); he threw another to the west, where it became tsásitsoz (yucca angustifolia); and he threw the third to the south, where it became nóta (mescal). he cut off the left forepaw to take home as a trophy. 350. "where shall i find tsé`nagahi (travelling stone)?" he said after he had returned from his encounter with pursuing bear and shown his trophy to his people. "you will find him in a lake near where tsé`espai points up," answered estsánatlehi; but she implored him not to go near the lake. he did not heed her, and next morning he went off to seek the travelling stone. 351. he approached the lake on the north side, while the wind was blowing from the south, but he saw nothing of the stone. thence he went around to the south side of the lake. when he got here the stone scented him, rose to the surface, poised itself a moment, and flew toward nayénezgani as if hurled by a giant hand. raising his lightning arrow, he held it in the course of the stone and knocked a piece off the latter. when the stone fell he struck another piece off with his knife. tsé`nagahi now saw it had a powerful foe to contend against; so, instead of hurling itself at him again, it fled and nayénezgani went in pursuit. he chased it all over the present navaho land, knocking pieces off it in many places[152] as he followed, until at length he chased it into the san juan river at tsintáhokata, where a point of forest runs down toward the river. 352. travelling stone sped down with the current and nayénezgani ran along the bank after it. four times he got ahead of the stone, but three times it escaped him by dipping deep into the river. when he headed it off for the fourth time, he saw it gleaming like fire under the water, and he stopped to gaze at it. then the stone spoke and said: "sawé (my baby, my darling), take pity on me, and i shall no longer harm your people, but do good to them instead. i shall keep the springs in the mountains open and cause your rivers to flow; kill me and your lands will become barren." nayénezgani answered: "if you keep this promise i shall spare you; but if you ever more do evil as you have done before, i shall seek you again, and then i shall not spare you." tsé`nagahi has kept his promise ever since, and has become the tiéholtsodi of the upper world. 353. he brought home no trophy from the contest with tsé`nagahi. it had now been eight days since he left the house of the sun.[153] he was weary from his battles with the anáye, and he determined to rest four days. during this time he gave his relatives a full account of his journeys and his adventures from first to last, and as he began he sang a song:- nayénezgani to atsé estsán began to tell, about bitéelgeti he began to tell, from homes of giants coming, he began to tell. to`badzistsíni to estsánatlehi began to tell, about the tse`na'hale he began to tell, from homes of giants coming, he began to tell. léyaneyani to atsé estsán began to tell, of tse`tahotsiltá`li he began to tell, from homes of giants coming, he began to tell. tsówenatlehi to estsánatlehi began to tell, about bináye aháni he began to tell, from homes of giants coming, he began to tell.[277] 354. there were still many of the anáye to kill; there was white under the rock, blue under the rock, yellow under the rock, black under the rock, and many yélapahi, or brown giants. besides these there were a number of stone pueblos, now in ruins, that were inhabited by various animals (crows, eagles, etc.),[154] who filled the land and left no room for the people. during the four days of rest, the brothers consulted as to how they might slay all these enemies, and they determined to visit again the house of the sun. on the morning of the fourth night they started for the east. they encountered no enemies on the way and had a pleasant journey. when they entered the house of the sun no one greeted them; no one offered them a seat. they sat down together on the floor, and as soon as they were seated lightning began to shoot into the lodge. it struck the ground near them four times. immediately after the last flash tsápani, bat, and tó`nenili, water sprinkler, entered. "do not be angry with us," said the intruders; "we flung the lightning only because we feel happy and want to play with you:" still the brothers kept wrathful looks on their faces, until ni'ltsi whispered into their ears: "be not angry with the strangers. they were once friends of the anáye and did not wish them to die; but now they are friends of yours, since you have conquered the greatest of the anáye." then, at last, tsóhanoai spoke to his children, saying: "these people are rude; they respect no one. heed them not. here are seats for you. be seated." saying this, he offered the brothers a seat of shell and a seat of turquoise; but ni'ltsi told the brothers not to take them. "these are seats of peace," he said; "you still want help in war. nayénezgani, take the seat of red stone, which is the warrior's seat; and you, to`badzistsíni, stand." they did as the wind bade them. 355. "my children, why do you come to me again?" asked tsóhanoai, the bearer of the sun. "we come for no special purpose; we come only to pass away the time," nayénezgani answered. three times he asked this question and got the same reply. when he asked for the fourth time, he added, "speak the truth. when you came to me before i gave you all you asked for." now it was to`badzistsíni who replied: "oh, father! there are still many of the anáye left, and they are increasing. we wish to destroy them." "my children," said tsóhanoai, "when i helped you before, i asked you for nothing in return. i am willing to help you again; but i wish to know, first, if you are willing to do something for me. i have a long way to travel every day, and often, in the long summer days, i do not get through in time, and then i have no place to rest or eat till i get back to my home in the east. i wish you to send your mother to the west that she may make a new home for me." "i will do it," said nayénezgani; "i will send her there." but to`badzistsíni said: "no, estsánatlehi is under the power of none; we cannot make promises for her, she must speak for herself, she is her own mistress; but i shall tell her your wishes and plead for you." the room they were in had four curtains which closed the ways leading into other apartments. tsóhanoai lifted the curtain in the east, which was black, and took out of the room in the east five hoops: one of these was colored black, another blue, a third yellow, and a fourth white, the fifth was many-colored and shining. each hoop had attached to it a knife of the same color as itself. he took out also four great hailstones, colored like the four first hoops. he gave all these to his sons and said: "your mother will know what to do with these things." 356. when they got their gifts they set out on their homeward journey. as they went on their way they beheld a wonderful vision. the gods spread before them the country of the navahoes as it was to be in the future when men increased in the land and became rich and happy. they spoke to one another of their father, of what he had said to them, of what they had seen in his house, and of all the strange things that had happened. when they got near their journey's end they sang this song:- nayénezgani, he is holy, thus speaks the sun, holy he stands. to`badzistsíni, he is holy, thus speaks the moon, holy he moves. léyaneyani, he is holy, thus speaks the sun, holy he stands. tsówenatlehi, he is holy, thus speaks the moon, holy he moves.[278] 357. when they got within sight of their home they sang this song:- slayer of giants, through the sky i hear him. his voice sounds everywhere, his voice divine. child of the water, through the floods i hear him. his voice sounds everywhere, his voice divine. reared 'neath the earth, through the earth i hear him. his voice sounds everywhere, his voice divine. the changing grandchild, through the clouds i hear him. his voice sounds everywhere, his voice divine.[279] 358. when the brothers got home they said to estsánatlehi: "here are the hoops which our father has given us, and he told us you knew all about them. show us, then, how to use them." she replied: "i have no knowledge of them." three times she thus answered their questions. when they spoke to her for the fourth time and nayénezgani was becoming angry and impatient, she said: "i have never seen the sun god except from afar. he has never been down to the earth to visit me. i know nothing of these talismans of his, but i will try what i can do." she took the black hoop to the east, set it up so that it might roll, and spat through it the black hail, which was four-cornered; at once the hoop rolled off to the east and rolled out of sight. she took the blue hoop to the south, set it up, and spat through it the blue hail, which was six-cornered. then the hoop rolled away to the south and disappeared. she carried the yellow hoop to the west, set it up, and spat through it the eight-cornered yellow hail; the hoop rolled off to the west and was lost to sight. she bore the white hoop to the north; spat through it the white hail, which had eleven corners, and the hoop sped to the north until it was seen no more. she threw the shining hoop up toward the zenith, threw the four colored knives in the same direction, and blew a powerful breath after them. up they all went until they were lost to sight in the sky. as each hoop went away thunder was heard.[155] 359. during four days after this nothing of importance happened, and no change came in the weather. at the end of four days they heard thunder high up in the sky, and after this there were four days more of good weather. then the sky grew dark, and something like a great white cloud descended from above. estsánatlehi went abroad; she saw in all directions great whirlwinds which uprooted tall trees as if they had been weeds, and tossed great rocks around as if they had been pebbles. "my son, i fear for our house," she said when she came back. "it is high among the mountains, and the great winds may destroy it." when he heard this, nayénezgani went out. he covered the house first with a black cloud, which he fastened to the ground with rainbows; second, with a black fog, which he fastened down with sunbeams; third, with a black cloud, which he secured with sheet-lightning; and fourth, with a black fog, which he secured with chain-lightning. at sunset that evening they caught a little glimpse of the sun; but after that, continuously for four days and four nights, it was dark; a storm of wind and hail prevailed, such as had never been seen before, and the air was filled with sharp stones carried before the wind. the people stayed safe in the lodge, but they could hear the noise of the great storm without. on the morning of the fifth day the tumult ceased, and nayénezgani, going out, found that all was calm, though it was still dark. he now proceeded to remove the coverings from the lodge and threw them upwards toward the heavens. as the first covering, a sheet of fog, ascended, chain-lightning shot out of it (with chain-lightning it had been fastened down). as the second covering, a cloud, ascended, sheet-lightning came forth from it. as the third covering, a fog, went up, sunbeams streamed from it; and as the fourth cover, a robe of cloud, floated up, it became adorned with rainbows. the air was yet dark, and full of dust raised by the high wind; but a gentle shower of rain came later, laying the dust, and all was clear again. all the inmates of the lodge now came out, and they marvelled to see what changes the storm had wrought: near their house a great canyon had been formed; the shape of the bluffs around had been changed, and solitary pillars of rock[156] had been hewn by the winds. 360. "surely all the anáye are now killed," said estsánatlehi. "this storm must have destroyed them." but ni'ltsi whispered into nayénezgani's ear, "san (old age) still lives." the hero said then to his mother: "where used old age to dwell?" his mother would not answer him, though he repeated his question four times. at last ni'ltsi again whispered in his ear and said: "she lives in the mountains of depe'ntsa." 361. next morning he set out for the north, and when, after a long journey, he reached depe'ntsa, he saw an old woman who came slowly toward him leaning on a staff. her back was bent, her hair was white, and her face was deeply wrinkled. he knew this must be san. when they met he said: "grandmother, i have come on a cruel errand. i have come to slay you." "why would you slay me?" she said in a feeble voice, "i have never harmed any one. i hear that you have done great deeds in order that men might increase on the earth, but if you kill me there will be no increase of men; the boys will not grow up to become fathers; the worthless old men will not die; the people will stand still. it is well that people should grow old and pass away and give their places to the young. let me live, and i shall help you to increase the people." "grandmother, if you keep this promise i shall spare your life," said nayénezgani, and he returned to his mother without a trophy. 362. when he got home ni'ltsi whispered to him: "hakáz estsán (cold woman) still lives." nayénezgani said to estsánatlehi: "mother, grandmother, where does cold woman dwell?" his mother would not answer him; but ni'ltsi again whispered, saying: "cold woman lives high on the summits of depe'ntsa, where the snow never melts." 363. next day he went again to the north and climbed high among the peaks of depe'ntsa, where no trees grow and where the snow lies white through all the summer. here he found a lean old woman, sitting on the bare snow, without clothing, food, fire, or shelter. she shivered from head to foot, her teeth chattered, and her eyes streamed water. among the drifting snows which whirled around her, a multitude of snow-buntings were playing; these were the couriers she sent out to announce the coming of a storm. "grandmother," he said, "a cruel man i shall be. i am going to kill you, so that men may no more suffer and die by your hand," and he raised his knife-club to smite her. "you may kill me or let me live, as you will. i care not," she said to the hero; "but if you kill me it will always be hot, the land will dry up, the springs will cease to flow, the people will perish. you will do well to let me live. it will be better for your people." he paused and thought upon her words. he lowered the hand he had raised to strike her, saying: "you speak wisely, grandmother; i shall let you live." he turned around and went home. 364. when nayénezgani got home from this journey, bearing no trophy, wind again whispered in his ear and said: "tieín (poverty) still lives." he asked his mother where poverty used to live, but she would not answer him. it was wind who again informed him. "there are two, and they dwell at dsildasdzi'ni." 365. he went to dsildasdzi'ni next day and found there an old man and an old woman, who were filthy, clad in tattered garments, and had no goods in their house. "grandmother, grandfather," he said, "a cruel man i shall be. i have come to kill you." "do not kill us, my grandchild," said the old man: "it would not be well for the people, in days to come, if we were dead; then they would always wear the same clothes and never get anything new. if we live, the clothing will wear out and the people will make new and beautiful garments; they will gather goods and look handsome. let us live and we will pull their old clothes to pieces for them." so he spared them and went home without a trophy. 366. the next journey was to seek ditsi'n, hunger, who lived, as ni'ltsi told him, at tlóhadaskaí, white spot of grass. at this place he found twelve of the hunger people. their chief was a big, fat man, although he had no food to eat but the little brown cactus. "i am going to be cruel," said nayénezgani, "so that men may suffer no more the pangs of hunger and die no more of hunger." "do not kill us," said the chief, "if you wish your people to increase and be happy in the days to come. we are your friends. if we die, the people will not care for food; they will never know the pleasure of cooking and eating nice things, and they will never care for the pleasures of the chase." so he spared also the ditsi'n, and went home without a trophy. 367. when nayénezgani came back from the home of hunger, ni'ltsi spoke to him no more of enemies that lived. the slayer of the alien gods said to his mother: "i think all the anáye must be dead, for every one i meet now speaks to me as a relation; they say to me, 'my grandson,' 'my son,' 'my brother.'"[157] then he took off his armor--his knife, moccasins, leggings, shirt, and cap--and laid them in a pile; he put with them the various weapons which the sun had given him, and he sang this song:- now slayer of the alien gods arrives here from the house made of the dark stone knives. from where the dark stone knives dangle on high, you have the treasures, holy one, not i. the offspring of the water now arrives, here from the house made of the serrate knives. from where the serrate knives dangle on high, you have the treasures, holy one, not i. he who was reared beneath the earth arrives, here from the house made of all kinds of knives. from where all kinds of knives dangle on high, you have the treasures, holy one, not i. the hero, changing grandchild, now arrives, here from the house made of the yellow knives. from where the yellow knives dangle on high, you have the treasures, holy one, not i.[280] 368. his song had scarcely ceased when they heard, in the far east, a loud voice singing this song:- with slayer of the alien gods i come, from the house made of dark stone knives i come, from where dark knives dangle on high i come, with implement of sacred rites i come, dreadful to you. with offspring of the waters now i come, from the house made of serrate knives i come, from where the serrate knives hang high i come, with implement of sacred rites i come, divine to you. with reared beneath the earth now do i come, from house of knives of every kind i come, where knives of every kind hang high i come, with implement of sacred rites i come, dreadful to you. now with the changing grandchild here i come, from the house made of yellow knives i come, from where the yellow knives hang high i come, with implement of sacred rites i come, dreadful to you.[281] 369. as the voice came nearer and the song continued, estsánatlehi said to the youths: "put on quickly the clothes you usually wear, tsóhanoai is coming to see us; be ready to receive him," and she left the lodge, that she might not hear them talk about the anáye. 370. when the god had greeted his children and taken a seat, he said to the elder brother: "my son, do you think you have slain all the anáye?" "yes, father," replied the son, "i think i have killed all that should die." "have you brought home trophies from the slain?" the father questioned again. "yes, my father," was the reply; "i have brought back wing-feathers, and lights and hair and eyes, and other trophies of my enemies." "it is not well," said tsóhanoai, "that the bodies of these great creatures should lie where they fell; i shall have them buried near the corpse of yéitso." (he got the holy ones to carry the corpses to san mateo and hide them under the blood of yéitso, and this is the reason we do not see them lying all over the land now, but sometimes see them sticking out of the rocks.)[159] he took the trophies and the armor and said: "these i shall carry back to my house in the east and keep them safe. if you ever need them again, come and get them." promising to come back again in four days, and meet estsánatlehi on the top of tsolíhi, he departed. 371. at the end of four days estsánatlehi went to the top of tsolíhi and sat down on a rock. tsóhanoai came, sat beside her, and sought to embrace her; but she avoided him, saying: "what do you mean by this? i want none of your embraces." "it means that i want you for my own," said the bearer of the sun. "i want you to come to the west and make a home for me there." "but i do not wish to do so," said she. "what right have you to ask me?" "have i not given your boys the weapons to slay the alien gods?" he inquired, and added: "i have done much for you: now you must reward me." she replied, "i never besought you to do this. you did not do it on my account; you did it of your own good will, and because your sons asked you." he urged another reason: "when nayénezgani visited me in the east, he promised to give you to me." "what care i for his promise?" she exclaimed; "i am not bound by it. he has no right to speak for me." thus four times she repulsed him. when he pleaded for the fifth time, saying: "come to the west and make a home for me," she said: "let me hear first all you have to promise me. you have a beautiful house in the east. i have never seen it, but i have heard how beautiful it is. i want a house just the same built for me in the west; i want to have it built floating on the water, away from the shore, so that in the future, when people increase, they will not annoy me with too many visits. i want all sorts of gems--white shell, turquoise, haliotis, jet, soapstone, agate, and redstone--planted around my house, so that they will grow and increase. then i shall be lonely over there and shall want something to do, for my sons and my sister will not go with me. give me animals to take along. do all this for me and i shall go with you to the west." he promised all these things to her, and he made elk, buffalo, deer, long-tail deer, mountain sheep, jack-rabbits, and prairie-dogs to go with her. 372. when she started for her new home the hadáhonestiddine` and the hadáhonigedine`, two tribes of divine people,[160] went with her and helped her to drive the animals, which were already numerous. they passed over the tuintsá range at péslitsi (red knife or red metal), and there they tramped the mountain down so that they formed a pass. they halted in tsinlí valley to have a ceremony[161] and a foot-race, and here the animals had become vastly more numerous. when they crossed dsillizi'n (black mountain),[162] the herd was so great that it tramped a deep pass whose bottom is almost on a level with the surrounding plain; at black mountain all the buffaloes broke from the herd and ran to the east; they never returned to estsánatlehi and are in the east still. at hostódito` the elks went to the east and they never returned. from time to time a few, but not all, of the antelope, deer, and other animals left the herd and wandered east. four days after leaving tsinlí valley they arrived at dokoslíd (san francisco mountain), and here they stopped to perform another ceremony. what happened on the way from this mountain to the great water in the west, we do not know, but after a while estsánatlehi arrived at the great water and went to dwell in her floating house beyond the shore. here she still lives, and here the sun visits her, when his journey is done, every day that he crosses the sky. but he does not go every day; on dark, stormy days he stays at home in the east and sends in his stead the serpents of lightning, who do mischief. 373. as he journeys toward the west, this is the song he sings:- in my thoughts i approach, the sun god approaches, earth's end he approaches, estsánatlehi's hearth approaches, in old age walking the beautiful trail. in my thoughts i approach, the moon god approaches, earth's end he approaches, yolkaí estsán's hearth approaches, in old age walking the beautiful trail.[282] 374. when estsánatlehi had departed, nayénezgani and to`badzistsíni went, as their father had bidden them, to to`ye'tli,[163] where two rivers join, in the valley of the san juan; there they made their dwelling, there they are to this day, and there we sometimes still see their forms in the san juan river.[164] the navahoes still go there to pray, but not for rain, or good crops, or increase of stock; only for success in war, and only the warriors go. iv. growth of the navaho nation. 375. before estsánatlehi left, she said to yolkaí estsán: "now, younger sister, i must leave you. think well what you would most like to do after i am gone." the younger sister replied: "i would most like to go back to depe'ntsa, where our people came from." "alas! you will be lonely there," said the elder sister. "you will want for some one around you to make a noise and keep you company." still, when estsánatlehi left, yolkaí estsán turned her face toward depe'ntsa. she went with the two brothers as far as to`ye'tli, and, when these stopped there, she set out alone for the mountains. 376. when she got to depe'ntsa (the san juan mountains), she went first to a place lying east of hadzinaí (the place of emergence), named dsilladiltéhi; in an old ruined pueblo on its side she rested during the day, and at night she went to the top of the mountain to sleep. on the second day she went to a mountain south of the place of emergence, called dsili'ndiltéhi; rested on the side of the mountain during the day, and on its top at night. she began now to feel lonely, and at night she thought of how men might be made to keep her company. she wandered round in thought during the third day, and on the third night she slept on top of dsiltagiiltéhi, a mountain west of hadzinaí. on the fourth day she walked around the place of emergence, and wandered into the old ruins she found there. on the fourth night she went to the top of dsiltiniltéz, the mountain which lies to the north of the place of emergence, and there she rested, but did not sleep; for she thought all the time about her loneliness, and of how people might be made. on the fifth day she came down to the shores of the lake which surrounded the place of emergence, and built a shelter of brush. "i may as well stay here," she said to herself; "what does it avail that i wander round?" she sat up late that night thinking of her lonely condition. she felt that she could not stay there longer without companionship. she thought of her sister in the far west, of the twelve people, of the gods that dwelt in the different mountains, and she thought she might do well to go and live with some of them. 377. the next morning she heard faintly, in the early dawn, the voice of hastséyalti shouting his usual "wu`hu`hu`hú," in the far east. four times the cry was uttered, each time louder and nearer. immediately after the last call the god appeared. "where did you save yourself?" he asked the white shell woman, meaning, "where were you, that you escaped the anáye when they ravaged the land?" "i was at dsilnáotil with my sister," she said; "but for five nights i have been all alone in these mountains. i have been hoping that something might happen to relieve my great loneliness,--that i might meet some one. sítsaí (grandfather), whence do you come?" he replied: "i come from tse`gíhi,[165] the home of the gods. i pity your loneliness and wish to help you. if you remain where you are, i shall return in four days and bring estsánatlehi, the divine ones of all the great mountains, and other gods, with me." when he left, she built for herself a good hut with a storm door. she swept the floor clean, and made a comfortable bed of soft grass and leaves. 378. at dawn on the fourth day after the god departed, yolkaí estsán heard two voices calling,--the voice of hastséyalti, the talking god, and the voice of hastséhogan, the house god. the voices were heard, as usual, four times, and immediately after the last call the gods appeared. it was dark and misty that day; the sun did not rise. soon after the arrival of the first two, the other promised visitors came, and they all formed themselves in a circle east of the lodge, each in the place where he or she belonged. thus the divine ones of tsisnadzi'ni stood in the east; those of tsótsil (san mateo mountain) in the south; those of dokoslíd (san francisco mountain) in the west; those of depe'ntsa (san juan mountain) in the north. each one present had his appropriate place in the group. at first yolkaí estsán stood in the west; but her sister, estsánatlehi, said to her: "no, my young sister; go you and stand in the east. my place is in the west," and thus they stood during the ceremony. estsánatlehi brought with her two sacred blankets called dilpi'l-naská, the dark embroidered, and lakaí-naská, the white embroidered. hastséhogan brought with him two sacred buckskins, and the nalkénaaz (a divine couple who came together walking arm in arm) brought two ears of corn,--one yellow, one white,--which the female carried in a dish of turquoise. 379. hastséyalti laid the sacred blankets on the ground, and spread on top of these one of the sacred buckskins with its head to the west. he took from the dish of the female nalkénaaz the two ears of corn, handing the white ear to tse`gádinatini asiké, the rock crystal boy of the eastern mountain, and the yellow ear to natáltsoi atét, the yellow corn girl of san francisco mountain. these divine ones laid the ears on the buckskin,--the yellow with its tip toward the west, the white with its tip toward the east. hastséyalti picked up the ears, and nearly laid them down on the buckskin with their tips to the east, but he did not let them touch the buckskin; as he did this he uttered his own cry of "wu`hu`hu`hú." then he nearly laid them down with their tips to the south, giving as he did so hastséhogan's cry of "ha-wa-u-ú." with similar motions he pointed the ears to the west and the north. next he raised them toward the sky, and at length laid them down on the buckskin, with their tips to the east. he accompanied each act with a cry of his own or of hastséhogan, alternating as in the beginning. so the ears were turned in every direction, and this is the reason the navahoes never abide in one home like the pueblos, but wander ever from place to place. over the ears of corn he laid the other sacred buckskin with its head to the east, and then ni'ltsi, the wind, entered between the skins. four times, at intervals, hastséyalti raised the buckskins a little and peeped in. when he looked the fourth time, he saw that the white ear of corn was changed to a man, and the yellow ear to a woman. it was ni'ltsi who gave them the breath of life. he entered at the heads and came out at the ends of the fingers and toes, and to this day we see his trail in the tip of every human finger. the rock crystal boy furnished them with mind, and the grasshopper girl gave them voices. when hastséyalti at last threw off the top buckskin, a dark cloud descended and covered like a blanket the forms of the new pair. yolkaí estsán led them into her hogán, and the assembled gods dispersed. before he left, hastséyalti promised to return in four days. 380. no songs were sung and no prayers uttered during their rites, and the work was done in one day. the hogán near which all these things happened still stands; but since that time it has been transformed into a little hill. to-day (a.d. 1884) seven times old age has killed since this pair was made by the holy ones from the ears of corn. the next very old man who dies will make the eighth time.[166] 381. early on the fourth morning after his departure hastséyalti came again as he had promised, announcing his approach by calling four times as usual. when white shell woman heard the first call, she aroused the young people and said: "get up, my children, and make a fire. hastséyalti is coming." he brought with him another couple, hadáhonige asiké (mirage boy) and hadáhonestid atét (ground-heat girl). he gave yolkaí estsán two ears of corn, saying, "grind only one grain at a time," and departed. yolkaí estsán said to the newly-arrived couple: "this boy and girl of corn cannot marry one another, for they are brother and sister; neither can you marry one another, for you are also brother and sister, yet i must do something for you all." so she married the boy made of corn to the ground-heat girl, and the mirage boy to the girl made of corn. after a time each couple had two children,--a boy and a girl. when these were large enough to run around, this family all moved away from hadzinaí, where they had lived four years, to tse`lakaíia (white standing rock). the two men were busy every day hunting rabbits, rats, and other such animals, for on such game they chiefly lived. from these people are descended the gens of tse`dzinki'ni,[167] house of the dark cliffs; so named because the gods who created the first pair came from the cliff houses of tse`gíhi, and brought from there the ears of corn from which this first pair was made. 382. after they had lived thirteen years at tse`lakaíia, during which time they had seen no sign of the existence of any people but themselves, they beheld one night the gleam of a distant fire. they sought for the fire all that night and the next day, but could not find it. the next night they saw it again in the same place, and the next day they searched with greater vigilance, but in vain. on the third night, when the distant gleam shone again through the darkness, they determined to adopt some means, better than they had previously taken, to locate it. they drove a forked stick firmly into the ground; one of the men got down on his hands and knees, spreading them as wide apart as possible, and sighted the fire through the fork of the stick. next morning he carefully placed his hands and knees in the tracks which they had made the night before, and once more looked through the fork. his sight was thus guided to a little wooded hollow on the side of a far-off mountain. one of the men walked over to the mountain and entered the little hollow, which was small and could be explored in a few moments; but he discovered no fire, no ashes, no human tracks, no evidence of the presence of man. on the fourth night all the adults of the party took sight over the forked stick at the far twinkle, and in the morning when they looked again they found they had all sighted the same little grove on the distant mountain-side. "strange!" said the man who had hunted there the day before; "the place is small. i went all through it again and again. there was no sign of life there, and not a drop of water that could reflect a ray from a star or from the moon." then all the males of the family, men and boys, went to explore the little wood. just as they were about to return, having found nothing, wind whispered into the ear of one: "you are deceived. that light shines through a crack in the mountain at night. cross the ridge and you will find the fire."[168] they had not gone far over the ridge when they saw the footprints of men, then the footprints of children, and soon they came to the camp. one party was as much rejoiced as the other to find people like themselves in the wilderness. they embraced one another, and shouted mutual greetings and questions. "whence do you come?" said the strangers. "from tse`lakaíia," was the response. "and whence come you?" asked the men of the white standing rock. "we tarried last," replied the strangers, "at to`i'ndotsos, a poor country, where we lived on ducks and snakes.[169] we have been here only a few days, and now we live on ground-rats, prairie-dogs, and wild seeds." the new party consisted of twelve persons,--five men, three women, one grown girl, one grown boy, and two small children. the tse`dzinki'ni people took the strangers home with them, and yolkaí estsán welcomed them, saying: "ahaláni sastsíni!" (greeting, my children!) the place where the tse`dzinki'ni found the strangers encamped was called tsé`tlana (bend in a canyon); so they gave them the name of tse`tláni, or tse`tlánidine`, and from them is descended the present gens of tse`tláni in the navaho nation. 383. the next morning after the arrival of the tse`tláni, hastséyalti came once more to the lodge of the white shell woman; but he talked with her apart from the others, and when he was gone she told no one what he said. in three days he came back again; again they talked apart, and when hastséyalti was gone she remained silent. it was her custom to sleep with one of the little girls, who was her favorite and companion. in the morning after the second visit of hastséyalti she said to this little girl: "i am going to leave you. the gods of tse`gíhi have sent for me; but i shall not forget your people, and shall come often to watch over them and be near them. tell them this when they waken." when she had spoken she disappeared from the sight of the little girl, and when the people woke they searched, but could find her nowhere. they supposed she had gone to tse`gíhi and tarried there a while before she went to depe'ntsa to dwell forever in the house of white shell, which had been prepared for her there. the fourth night after the departure of yolkaí estsán the little girl had a dream, which she related to her people in the morning. in the vision she saw yolkaí estsán, who said to her: "my grandchild, i am going to depe'ntsa to dwell. i would take you with me, for i love you, were it not that your parents would mourn for you. but look always for the she-rain when it comes near your dwelling, for i shall ever be in the she-rain." 384. while at white standing rock the men wandered much around the country in search of food. some who had been to to`dokónzi (saline water) said the latter was a better place than than that in which they lived; that there were some porcupines there, an abundance of rats, prairie-dogs, and seed-bearing plants; and that there were steep-sided mesa points in the neighborhood where they might surround large game.[170] after the departure of yolkaí estsán the people all moved to to`dokónzi;[171] but they remained here only a few days, and then went to tsa`olgáhasze. here they planted some grains of corn from the two ears that hastséyalti had given them long ago. this was a very prolific kind of corn; when planted, several stalks sprouted from each grain, and a single grain, when ground, produced a large quantity of meal, which lasted them many days. 385. when they had been fourteen years at tsa`olgáhasze they were joined by another people, who came from the sacred mountain of dsilnáotil, and were therefore called dsilnaoti'lni, or dsilnaoti'ldine`. these were regarded as diné` digíni, or holy people, because they had no tradition of their recent creation, and were supposed to have escaped the fury of the alien gods by means of some miraculous protection. they did not camp at first with the older settlers, but dwelt a little apart, and sent often to the latter to borrow pots and metates. after a while all joined together as one people, and for a long time these three gentes have been as one gens and have become close relations to one another. the new-comers dug among old ruins and found pots and stone axes; with the latter they built themselves huts. 386. seven years after the arrival of the dsilnaoti'lni a fourth gens joined the navahoes. the new arrivals said they had been seeking for the dsilnaoti'lni all over the land for many years. sometimes they would come upon the dead bushes of old camps. sometimes they would find deserted brush shelters, partly green, or, again, quite green and fresh. occasionally they would observe faint footprints, and think they were just about to meet another people like themselves in the desolate land; but again all traces of humanity would be lost. they were rejoiced to meet at last the people they so long had sought. the new-comers camped close to the dsilnaoti'lni, and discovered that they and the latter carried similar red arrow-holders,[172] such as the other gentes did not have, and this led them to believe that they were related to the dsilnaoti'lni. the navahoes did not then make large skin quivers such as they have in these days; they carried their arrows in simpler contrivances. the strangers said that they came from a place called haskánhatso (much yucca baccata), and that they were the haskándine`, or yucca people; but the older gentes called them haskánhatso, or haskanhatsódine`, from the place whence they came.[173] 387. fourteen years after the accession of the fourth gens, the navahoes moved to kintyél (which was then a ruin), in the chaco canyon. they camped there at night in a scattering fashion, and made so many fires that they attracted the attention of some strangers camped on a distant mountain, and these strangers came down next day to find out who the numerous people were that kindled so many fires. as the strangers, who were also diné` digíni, or holy people, said they came from nahopá (place of the brown horizontal streak), the navahoes called them nahopáni. they joined the tribe, camping near the haskánhatso and dsilnaoti'lni. 388. it was autumn when the fifth gens was received. then the whole tribe moved to the banks of the san juan river and settled at a place called tsintó`betlo[174] (tree sweeping water), where a peculiar white tree hangs over the stream and sweeps the surface of the water with its long branches: there is no other tree of its kind near by. here they determined to remain some time and raise crops; so they built warm huts for the winter, and all the fall and winter, when the days were fair, they worked in the bottom-lands grubbing up roots and getting the soil ready for gardens to be planted in the spring. the elder gentes camped farther down the stream than those more newly arrived. 389. in those days the language which the navahoes spoke was not the same they speak now. it was a poor language then; it is better in these days. 390. when the tribe had been living six years on the banks of the san juan, a band joined them who came from tsi'nadzin[175] (black horizontal forest), and were named as a gens from the place whence they came. the navahoes observed that in this band there was a man who talked a great deal to the people almost every morning and evening. the navahoes did not at first understand what this meant; but after a while they learned he spoke to his people because he was their chief. his name was nabiniltáhi. 391. while living at the san juan the people amused themselves much with games. they played mostly nánzoz[76] in the daytime and kesitsé[176] at night. they had as yet no horses, domestic sheep, or goats. they rarely succeeded in killing deer or rocky mountain sheep. when they secured deer it was sometimes by still-hunting them, sometimes by surrounding one and making it run till it was exhausted, and sometimes by driving them over precipices. when a man got two skins of these larger animals he made a garment of them by tying the fore-legs together over his shoulders. the woman wore a garment consisting of two webs of woven cedar bark, one hanging in front and one behind; all wore sandals of yucca fibre or cedar bark. they had headdresses made of weasel-skins and rat-skins, with the tails hanging down behind. these headdresses were often ornamented with colored artificial horns, made out of wood, or with the horns of the female mountain sheep shaved thin. their blankets were made of cedar bark, of yucca fibre, or of skins sewed together.[177] each house had, in front of the door, a long passageway, in which hung two curtains,--one at the outer, the other at the inner end,--made usually of woven cedar bark. in winter they brought in plenty of wood at night, closed both curtains, and made the house warm before they went to sleep. their bows were of plain wood then; the navahoes had not yet learned to put animal fibre on the backs of the bows.[178] their arrows were mostly of reeds tipped with wood; but some made wooden arrows.[180] the bottom-land which they farmed was surrounded by high bluffs, and hemmed in up-stream and down-stream by jutting bluffs which came close to the river. after a time the tribe became too numerous for all to dwell and farm on this spot, so some went up in the bluffs to live and built stone storehouses in the cliffs,[179] while others--the tsinadzi'ni--went below the lower promontory to make gardens. later yet, some moved across the san juan and raised crops on the other side of the stream.[180] 392. eight years after the coming of the tsinadzi'ni, some fires were observed at night on a distant eminence north of the river, and spies were sent out to see who made them. the spies brought back word that they had found a party of strangers encamped at a place called tha`nezá`, among the scattered (hills). soon after, this party came in and joined the navahoes, making a new gens, which was called tha`nezá`ni. the strangers said they were descended from the hadáhonigedine`, or mirage people. the remains of their old huts are still to be seen at tha`nezá`. 393. five years after the tha`nezá`ni were added, another people joined the tribe; but what gods sent them none could tell. they came from a place called dsiltlá` (base of mountain), and were given the name of dsiltlá`ni. as they had headdresses, bows, arrows, and arrow-holders similar to those of the tha`nezá`ni they concluded they must be related to the latter. ever since, these two gentes have been very close friends,--so close that a member of one cannot marry a member of the other. the dsiltlá`ni knew how to make wicker water-bottles, carrying-baskets, and earthen pots, and they taught their arts to the rest of the people. 394. five years later, they were joined on the san juan by a numerous band who came originally from a place called thá`pahahalkaí, white valley among the waters, which is near where the city of santa fé now stands. these people had long viewed in the western distance the mountains where the navahoes dwelt, wondering if any one lived there, and at length decided to go thither. they journeyed westward twelve days till they reached the mountains, and they spent eight days travelling among them before they encountered the navahoes. then they settled at to`i'ndotsos and lived there twelve years, subsisting on ducks and fish,[169] but making no farms. all this time they were friendly to the navahoes and exchanged visits; but, finding no special evidences of relationship with the latter, they dwelt apart. when at length they came to the san juan to live, marriages had taken place between members of the two tribes, and the people from among the waters became a part of the navaho nation, forming the gens of thá`paha. they settled at a place called hyíetyin (trails leading upward), close to the navahoes. here was a smooth, sandy plain, which they thought would be good for farming, and the chief, whose name was góntso, or big knee, had stakes set around the plain to show that his people claimed it. the people of the new gens were good hunters, skilled in making weapons and beautiful buckskin shirts, and they taught their arts to the other gentes. 395. the thá`paha then spoke a language more like the modern navaho than that which the other gentes spoke. the languages were not alike. the chief of the tsinadzi'ni and góntso often visited one another at night, year after year, for the purpose of uniting the two languages and picking out the words in each that were best. but the words of the thá`paha were usually the best and plainest;[182] so the new language resembles the thá`paha more than it resembles the old navaho. 396. while the thá`paha lived at hyíetyin they had always abundant crops,--better crops than their neighbors had. sometimes they could not harvest all they raised, and let food lie ungathered in the field. they built stone storehouses, something like pueblo houses, among the cliffs, and in these stored their corn. the storehouses stand there yet. the thá`paha remained at hyíetyin thirteen years, during which time many important events occurred, as will be told, and then they moved to azdeltsígi. 397. góntso had twelve wives; four of these were from the gens of tsinadzi'ni, four from the gens of dsiltlá`ni, and four from the gens of tha`nezá`ni. he used to give much grain from his abundant harvests to the gentes to which his wives belonged; but, in spite of his generosity, his wives were unfaithful to him. he complained to their relations and to their chiefs; these remonstrated with the wives, but failed to improve their ways. at last they lost patience with the women and said to góntso: "do with them as you will. we shall not interfere." so the next wife whom he detected in crime he mutilated in a shameful way, and she died in consequence. he cut off the ears of the next transgressor, and she, too, died. he amputated the breasts of the third wife who offended him, and she died also. he cut off the nose of the fourth; she did not die. he determined then that cutting the nose should, in future, be the greatest punishment imposed on the faithless wife,--something that would disfigure but not kill,--and the rest of the people agreed with him.[183] but this had no effect on the remaining wives; they continued to lapse from virtue till all were noseless. then they got together and began to plot mischief against their husband, big knee. they spoke so openly of their evil intentions that he feared to let any of them stay in his lodge at night and he slept alone. 398. about this time the people determined to have a great ceremony for the benefit of big knee; so they made great preparations and held a rite of nine days' duration.[184] during its progress the mutilated women remained in a hut by themselves, and talked about the unkindness of their people and the vengeance due to their husband. they said one to another: "we should leave our people and go elsewhere." on the last night of the ceremony there was a series of public exhibitions in a corral, or circle of branches, such as the navahoes have now on the last night of the ceremony of the mountain chant,[185] and among the different alíli, or entertainments of the night, was a dance by the mutilated women. when their time came they entered the circle, each bearing a knife in her hand, and danced around the central fire, peering among the spectators as if searching for their husband; but he was hidden in the wall of branches that formed the circle. as they danced they sang a song the burden of which was "pésla asilá." (it was the knife that did it to me.) when they had finished their dance they left the corral, and, in the darkness without, screamed maledictions at their people, saying: "may the waters drown ye! may the winters freeze ye! may the fires burn ye! may the lightnings strike ye!" and much more. having cursed till they were tired, they departed for the far north, where they still dwell, and now, whenever they turn their faces to the south, we have cold winds and storms and lightning. 399. not long after this memorable ceremony a number of utes visited the navahoes. they came when the corn-ears were small, and remained till the corn was harvested. they worked for the navahoes, and when their stomachs were filled all left except one family, which consisted of an old couple, two girls, and a boy. these at first intended to stay but a short time after their friends had gone; but they tarried longer and longer, and postponed their going from time to time, till they ended by staying with the navahoes till they died. they made particular friends with the thá`paha, and got into the way of speaking to the latter people as they would to relations. one of the girls, whose name was tsá`yiskid (sage-brush hill), lived to be an old woman and the mother of many children. from her is descended the gens of tsa`yiski'dni, which is so closely allied to the thá`paha that a member of one of these gentes may not marry a member of the other. 400. soon after the departure of the utes the navahoes were joined by a group of people who, when they came to tell their story, were found to have come from thá`paha-halkaí, and to have made wanderings similar to those of the people who first came from that place. the new people spoke, also, the same language as the thá`paha. for these reasons they were not formed into a new gens, but were joined to the gens of thá`paha. 401. some years later a large band came from the south to the settlement on the san juan. it consisted of apaches, who told the navahoes that they had left their old tribe forever and desired to become navahoes. they had not come to visit, they said, but to stay. they all belonged to one gens among the apaches,--the gens of tse`zindiaí (trap-dyke),[186] and they were admitted into the tribe as a new gens with their old name. from the beginning they showed a desire to associate with thá`paha, and now they are closely related to the latter and must not marry with them. another band of apaches, which came a little later, was added to the same gens. 402. about this time there was a great famine in zuñi, and some people from this pueblo came to the san juan to dwell with the navahoes. they came first to the thá`paha, and, although they had women in the party, they were not formed into a new gens, but added to thá`paha. the gens of zuñi was formed later. 403. the famine prevailed also at other pueblos, and some starving people came to the navahoes from an old pueblo named klógi, which was near where the pueblo of jemez now stands. these formed the gens of klógi, and made special friends of the thá`paha. 404. the next accession was a family of seven adults, who came from a place called tó`hani (near the water). they first visited the dsiltlá`ni and remained, forming the gens of tó`hani, affiliated now with dsiltlá`ni. 405. the people who joined the navahoes next after the tó`hani came from a place called tha`tsí, among the red (waters or banks), which was west of the san juan settlement. from their traditions it appeared that they were not a newly created people; they had escaped in some way from the alien gods, and were for these reasons regarded as diné` digíni, or holy people. they were divided into two gentes, thá`tsini and kaídine`, or willow people, and for a while they formed two gentes among the navahoes; but in these days all traces of this division have been lost, and all their descendants are now called, without distinction, sometimes thá`tsini and sometimes kai or kaídine`. 406. before this time the navahoes had been a weak and peaceable tribe; but now they found themselves becoming a numerous people and they began to talk of going to war. of late years they had heard much of the great pueblos along the rio grande, but how their people had saved themselves from the anáye the navahoes did not know. a man named napaílinta got up a war party and made a raid on a pueblo named kinlitsí (red house), and returned with some captives, among whom was a girl captured by napaílinta. from her is descended the gens of kinlitsí, whose members are now close relations to tsinadzi'ni (the gens of napaílinta), and cannot intermarry with the latter. 407. the captives from kinlitsí were, at first, slaves among the navahoes;[187] but their descendants became free and increased greatly, and from them came another gens, tliziláni, many goats, also closely related to tsinadzi'ni. 408. next in order came a band of apaches from the south representing two gentes,--destsíni (red streak people), and tlastsíni (red flat ground people). these were adopted by the navahoes as two separate gentes and became close relations to the tsinadzi'ni. 409. not long after the arrival of these apaches some utes came into the neighborhood of the navahoes, camping at a place called tsé`di`yikáni (a ridge or promontory projecting into the river), not far from hyíetyin. they had good arms of all kinds, and two varieties of shields,--one round and one with a crescentic cut in the top. they lived for a while by themselves, and were at first unruly and impertinent; but in the course of time they merged into the navahoes, forming the gens of notá or notádine`, ute people. 410. about the time they were incorporated by the navahoes, or soon after, a war party of the utes made a raid on a mexican settlement, somewhere near where socorro now is, and captured a spanish woman. she was their slave; but her descendants became free among the navahoes and formed the nakaídine` (white stranger people), or mexican gens, who cannot now intermarry with notádine`. 411. góntso, or big knee, chief of the thá`paha, was still alive and was a famous old man; but he had become feeble and had many ailments. there was a great ceremony practised in those days called natsi'd, which lasted all winter,[184] from harvest-time to planting-time; but the navahoes have long ceased to celebrate it. this ceremony was held one winter for the benefit of big knee at the sacred place of to`ye'tli, the home of the war gods. one night, while the rites were being performed, some strangers joined the navahoes coming from the direction of the river. adopted by the navahoes, they formed the gens of to`yetlíni, and became closely allied to notádine` and nakaídine`. 412. on another occasion during the same winter some apaches came from their country in the south to witness the ceremony of natsi'd. among the women of the thá`paha was one who visited the apache camp and remained all night there. she became attached to an apache youth, with whom she secretly absconded when the visitors left. for a long time her people did not know what had become of her; but many years after, learning where she was, some of her relations went to the apache country to persuade her to return. she came back an old woman, bringing her husband and a family of three girls. the girls were handsome, had light skins and fair hair. their grandmother, who admired them very much, insisted that a new gens should be made of them. so they were called háltso, yellow bodies,[188] and originated the gens of that name. their father died an old man among the navahoes. 413. on another night of the same winter, while the ceremony for big knee was going on, two strange men, speaking the navaho language, entered the camp. they said they were the advanced couriers of a multitude of wanderers who had left the shores of the great waters in the west to join the navahoes. you shall now hear the story of the people who came from the western ocean:-414. surrounding estsánatlehi's home were four mountains, located like those at the place of emergence--one in the east, one in the south, one in the west, and one in the north. she was in the habit of dancing on these mountains,--on the mountain in the east to bring clouds; on the mountain in the south, to bring all kinds of goods,--jewels, clothing, etc.; on the mountain in the west, to bring plants of all kinds; and on the mountain in the north, to bring corn and animals. on these journeys for dancing she passed from the east mountain to the south, the west, and the north mountain, the way the sun goes; and when she was done dancing on the north mountain she retraced her course (without crossing it) to the east; but she never completed the circle, i.e., she never passed from the north directly to the east. over the space between the north and the east mountains she never travelled. this is the way her trail lay:-415. estsánatlehi had not been long in her western home when she began to feel lonely. she had no companions there. the people who had accompanied her thither did not stay with her. she thought she might make people to keep her company, so one day, when she had completed one of her dancing journeys, she sat down on the eastern mountain. here she rubbed epidermis from under her left arm with her right hand; she held this in her palm and it changed into four persons,--two men and two women,--from whom descended a gens to which no name was then given, but which afterwards (as will be told) received the name of honagá`ni. she rubbed the epidermis with her left hand from under her right arm, held it in her palm as before, and it became two men and two women, from whom descended the gens afterwards known as kinaá`ni. in a similar way, of epidermis rubbed from under her left breast she created four people, from whom descended the gens later known as to`ditsíni; of epidermis from under her right breast, four persons, from whom descended the gens called bitáni; of epidermis from the middle of her chest, the four whose descendants were called hasli'zni; and of epidermis from her back between her shoulders, the four whose descendants were called bitá`ni in later times. 416. she said to these: "i wish you to dwell near me, where i can always see you; but if you choose to go to the east, where your kindred dwell, you may go." she took them from her floating home to the mainland; here they lived for thirty years, during which time they married and had many children. at the end of this time the twelve people (diné` nakidáta), or rather what was left of them, appeared among estsánatlehi's people and said to them: "we have lost our sister who kept our house for us; we have no home; we know not where else to go; so we have come here to behold our mother, our grandmother. you have kindred in the far east who have increased until they are now a great people. we do not visit them, but we stand on the mountains and look at them from afar. we know they would welcome you if you went to them." and many more things they told about the people in the far east. 417. now all crossed on a bridge of rainbow to the house of estsánatlehi on the sea, where she welcomed them and embraced them. of the diné` nakidáta but ten were left, for, as has been told, they lost their sister and their younger brother; but when they came to the home of estsánatlehi she made for them two more people out of turquoise, and this completed their original number of twelve. she knew with what thoughts her children had come. she opened four doors leading from the central chamber of her house into four other rooms, and showed them her various treasures, saying: "stay with me always, my children; these things shall be yours, and we shall be always happy together." 418. when the people went back from the house of estsánatlehi to the mainland, all was gossip and excitement in their camp about what they had heard of the people in the east. each one had a different part or version of the tale to tell,--of how the people in the east lived, of what they ate, of the way in which they were divided into gentes, of how the gentes were named, and of other things about them they had heard. "the people are few where we live," they said; "we would be better off where there are so many." they talked thus for twelve days. at the end of that time they concluded to depart, and they fixed the fourteenth day after that as the day they should leave. 419. before they left, the diné` nakidáta and estsánatlehi came to see them. she said: "it is a long and dangerous journey to where you are going. it is well that you should be cared for and protected on the way. i shall give you five of my pets,[189]--a bear, a great snake, a deer, a porcupine, and a puma,--to watch over you. they will not desert you. speak of no evil deeds in the presence of the bear or the snake, for they may do the evil they hear you speak of; but the deer and the porcupine are good,--say whatever you please to say in their presence." 420. besides these pets she gave them five magic wands. to those who were afterwards named honagá`ni she gave a wand of turquoise; to those who later were called kinaá`ni, a wand of white shell; to those who became to`ditsíni, a wand of haliotis shell; to those who became bitá`ni, a wand of black stone; and to those who in later days became hasli'zni, a wand of red stone. "i give you these for your protection," she said, "but i shall watch over you myself while you are on your journey." 421. on the appointed day they set out on their journey. on the twelfth day of their march they crossed a high ridge and came in sight of a great treeless plain, in the centre of which they observed some dark objects in motion. they could not determine what they were, but suspected they were men. they continued their journey, but did not directly approach the dark objects; they moved among the foothills that surrounded the plain, and kept under cover of the timber. as they went along they discerned the dark objects more plainly, and discovered that these were indeed human beings. they got among the foothills to one side of where the strangers were, and camped in the woods at night. 422. in spite of all the precautions taken by the travellers, they had been observed by the people of the plain, and at night two of the latter visited their camp. the visitors said they were kiltsói, or kiltsóidine` (people of the bigelovia graveolens); that their tribe was numerous; that the plain in which they dwelt was extensive; and that they had watermelons getting ripe, with corn and other food, in their gardens. the people of the west concluded to remain here a while. the second night they had two more visitors, one of whom became enamored of a maiden among the wanderers, and asked for her in marriage. her people refused him at first; but when he came the second night and begged for her again, they gave her to him. he stayed with her in the camp of her people as long as they remained in the valley, except the last two nights, when she went and stayed with his people. these gave an abundance of the produce of their fields to the wanderers, and the latter fared well. when the travellers were prepared to move, they implored the young husband to go with them, while he begged to have his wife remain with him in the valley. they argued long; but in the end the woman's relations prevailed, and the kiltsói man joined them on their journey. in the mean time four other men of kiltsói had fallen in love with maidens of the wanderers, and asked for them in marriage. the migrating band refused to leave the girls behind, so the enamored young men left their kindred and joined the travellers. the kiltsói tried to persuade the others to dwell in their land forever, but without avail. 423. they broke camp at last early in the morning, and travelled all day. at night a great wind arose, and the bear would not rest, but ran around the camp all night, uneasy and watchful. the men looked out and saw some of the kiltsói trying to approach; but the bear warded them off and they disappeared without doing harm. in the morning it was found that the men of the kiltsói who had joined them on their journey had now deserted them, and it was supposed that in some way they were in league with their brethren outside. 424. the second day they journeyed far, and did not make camp until after dark. as on the previous night, the bear was awake, watchful, and uneasy all night. they supposed he was still looking out for lurking kiltsói. not until daybreak did he lie down and take a little sleep while the people were preparing for the day's march. 425. on the third night the bear was again wakeful and on guard, and only lay down in the morning while the people were breaking camp. "my pet, why are you troubled thus every night?" said one of the men to the bear. the latter only grunted in reply, and made a motion with his nose in the direction whence they had come. 426. on the fourth night they camped, for mutual protection, closer together than they had camped before. the bear sat on a neighboring hill, from which he could watch the sleepers, but slept not himself all night. as before, he took a short sleep in the morning. before the people set out on their march some one said: "let us look around and see if we can find what has troubled our pet." they sent two couriers to the east and two to the west. the former returned, having found nothing. the latter said they had seen strange footprints, as of people who had approached the camp and then gone back far to the west. their pursuers, they thought, had returned to their homes. 427. they had now been four days without finding water, and the children were crying with thirst. on the fifth day's march they halted at noon and held a council. "how shall we procure water?" said one. "let us try the power of our magic wands," said another. a man of the gens who owned the wand of turquoise stuck this wand into the ground, and worked it back and forth and round and round to make a good-sized hole. water sprang from the hole. a woman of another gens crouched down to taste it. "it is bitter water," she cried. "let that, then, be your name and the name of your people," said those who heard her; thus did the gens of to`ditsíni, bitter water people, receive its name. 428. when the people had cooked and eaten food and drunk their fill of the bitter water, they said: "let us try to reach yonder mountain before night." so they pushed on to a distant mountain they had beheld in the east. when they got near the mountain they saw moccasin tracks, and knew there must be some other people at hand. at one place, near the base of the mountain, they observed a cluster of cottonwood trees, and, thinking there might be a spring there, they went straight to the cottonwood. suddenly they found themselves among a strange people who were dwelling around a spring. the strangers greeted the wanderers in a friendly manner, embraced them, and asked them whence they came. the wanderers told their story briefly, and the strangers said: "we were created at this spring and have always lived here. it is called maitó`, coyote water (coyote spring), and we are the maídine`" (coyote people). the navahoes called them maitó`dine`. 429. the travellers tarried four days at the coyote spring, during which time they talked much to their new friends, and at length persuaded the latter to join them on their eastern journey. before they started, the coyote people declared that their spring was the only water in the neighborhood; that they knew of no other water within two days' journey in any direction. on the morning of the fifth day they all moved off toward the east. they travelled all day, and made a dry camp at night. the next day at noon they halted on their way, and decided to try again the power of a magic wand. this time the white shell was used by a member of the gens to whom it had been given, in the same way that the turquoise wand was used before. water sprang up. a woman of another gens said: "it is muddy; it may make the children sick." "let your people then be named hasli'zni, mud people," cried voices in the crowd. thus the gens of hasli'z, or hasli'zni, was named. 430. the second night after leaving coyote spring, darkness overtook the wanderers at a place where there was no water, and they rested there for the night. at noon on the following day all were thirsty, and the children were crying. the people halted, and proposed to try again the efficacy of a sacred wand. the wand of haliotis was used this time. when the water sprang up, a woman of the coyote people stooped first and drank. "it is to`dokónz, alkaline (or sapid) water," she exclaimed. to her and her children the name to`dokónzi was then given, and from them the present gens of that name is descended. its members may not marry with maitó`dine`, to whom they are related. 431. on the night after they found the alkaline water, they encamped once more at a place where no water was to be found, and on the following day great were their sufferings from thirst. at midday they rested, and begged the bearers of the black stone wand to try the power of their magic implement. a stream of fine, clear water sprang up when the wand was stuck in the ground. they filled their vessels and all drank heartily, except a boy and a girl of the gens that bore the black stone wand. "why do you not come and drink before the water is all gone?" some one asked. the children made no reply, but stood and looked at the water. the girl had her arms folded under her dress. they gave then to her and to her gens the name of bitá`ni,[190] which signifies the arms under the dress. 432. the night after the bitá`ni was named, the travellers slept once more at a place where no water was to be found, and next day they were very thirsty on their journey. in the middle of the day they stopped, and the power of the red stone wand was tried. it brought forth water from the ground, as the other wands had done, and all drank till they were satisfied; but no member of the gentes still unnamed said anything and no name was given. 433. after this they camped two nights without water. on the second noon they arrived at a spring in a canyon known to the maídine` and called by them halkaíto`, water of the white valley. they journeyed no farther that day, but camped by the water all night. 434. from halkaíto` they travelled steadily for twenty-five days, until they came to a little river near san francisco mountain, and west of it. during this part of the journey they found sufficient water for their needs every day. they stopped at this river five nights and five days and hunted. here one man, and one only,--whose name was bainili'ni (looks on at a battle),--killed a deer, a large one, which he cut into small pieces and distributed around so that every one might get a taste. 435. from the banks of this stream they came to the east side of san francisco mountain, to where, beside a little peak, there is a spring that has no name. here the travellers stopped several days, and built around their camp a stone wall that still stands. 436. the puma belonged to the gens that bore the black stone wand, and that was afterwards called kinaá`ni. while the people were camped at this spring he killed a deer. the bear sometimes killed rabbits. the snake and the porcupine were of no use, but were a trouble instead, since they had to be carried along. the deer ran among the crowd and did neither good nor harm. the people lived mostly on rabbits and other small animals and the seeds of wild plants. 437. from the spring near san francisco mountain they travelled to bitáhotsi (red place on top),[191] and from there to tsé`zintsidilya. here they held a council about the big snake. he was of no use to them, and a great encumbrance. they turned him loose among the rocks, and his descendants are there in great numbers to this day. at natsisaán (navaho mountain) they turned the porcupine loose, and that is why there are so many porcupines on the navaho mountain now. 438. they next went to the place now called agála,[192] or agálani, much wool, or hair, and were now in the land of the ozaí (oraibes). they camped all around the peak of agála and went out hunting. some who wore deer-masks for decoys, and went to get deer, succeeded in killing a great number. they dressed many skins, and the wind blew the hair from the skins up in a great pile. seeing this, one of the honagá`ni proposed that the place be called agála, so this name was given to it. 439. from agála the wanderers went to tse`hotsóbiazi, little place of yellow rocks, and from there to yótso, big bead. on the way they camped often, and sometimes tarried a day or two to hunt. it was now late in the autumn. at yótso they saw moccasin tracks, evidently not fresh, and they said to one another: "perhaps these are the footprints of the people whom we seek." now there were diverse counsels among the immigrants. some were in haste to reach the end of the journey, while others, as the season was late, thought it prudent to remain where they were. thus they became divided into two parties, one of which remained at yótso, while the other (containing parts of several gentes) continued the journey. soon after the latter was gone, those who remained at yótso sent two messengers, and later they sent two more, to induce the seceders to return; but the latter were never overtaken. the couriers came to a place where the runaways had divided into two bands. from one of these the jicarilla apaches are supposed to have descended. the other band, it is thought, wandered far off and became part of the diné` nahotlóni.[193] 440. the last two messengers sent out pursued one of the fugitive bands some distance, gave up the task, and returned to yótso. the messengers sent first pursued the other band. after a while they saw its camp-fires; but at such a great distance that they despaired of overtaking it and turned toward the san juan river, where they found at length the long-sought navahoes. these two messengers were the men, of whom you have heard before, who entered the camp of big knee at to`ye'tli while the dance of natsi'd was going on, and announced the approach of the immigrants from the west. (see par. 143.) 441. when spring-time came, the people who had remained at yótso set out again on their journey; but before long some of the to`ditsíni got tired. they said that the children's knees were swollen, that their feet were blistered, and that they could not go much farther. soon after they said this they came to a place where a great lone tree stood, and here they declared: "we shall stop at this tree. after a while the people will come here and find us." they remained and became the gens of tsinsakádni, people of the (lone) tree, who are closely related to to`ditsíni and cannot marry with the latter. 442. at pinbitó`, deer spring, some more of the gens of to`ditsíni halted, because, they said, their children were lame from walking and could travel no farther. here they formed a new gens of pinbitó`dine`, people of deer spring,[194] who are also closely related to to`ditsíni. at this place they wanted their pet deer to leave them, but he would not go; he remained at the spring with the people who stayed there. what finally became of him is not known.[195] 443. the main body of the immigrants kept on their way, and, soon after passing deer spring, arrived at hyíetyin, where the people of thá`paha had their farms. big knee was still alive when they came; but he was very old and feeble, and was not respected and obeyed as in former days. when thá`paha and hasli'zni met, they traced some relationship between the two gentes: their names had much the same meaning; their headdresses and accoutrements were alike; so the hasli'zni stopped with thá`paha and became great friends with the latter. yet to-day a member of one of these gentes may marry a member of the other. 444. the bear was the last of their five pets which the immigrants retained. when they were done their journey they said to him: "our pet, you have served us well; but we are now safe among our friends and we need your services no more. if you wish you may leave us. there are others of your kind in tsúskai (the chusca mountains). go there and play with them." they turned him loose in tsúskai, and bears have been numerous there ever since. 445. of the people from the west, there was yet one gens--that to which estsánatlehi had given the wand of turquoise--which had no name. this nameless people did not stay long on the banks of the san juan before they wandered off far toward the south. one day two men of the party, while hunting, came to a place called tsé`nahapil, where there were high overhanging rocks. here they saw the fresh prints of unshod human feet. they followed these tracks but a short distance when they beheld a man watching them from a rocky pinnacle. as soon as he saw that he was observed, he crouched and disappeared. they ran quickly behind the rock on which they had seen him and again observed him, running as fast as he could. "why do you fly from us?" they shouted. "we mean no harm to you." hearing this he stopped till they came up to him. then they found he spoke the same language they did, and they addressed him in terms of relationship. "where do you live?" they asked. "in a canyon high on the mountain," he replied. "what do you live on?" they queried. "we live mostly on seeds," he answered; "but sometimes we catch wood-rats, and we raise small crops." "we shall have many things to tell one another," said the hunters; "but your home is too far for our people to reach to-day. tell your people to come to this spot, and we shall tell ours to come up here and meet them." when the hunters got home they found their friends cooking rabbits and making mush of wild seeds. when the meal was finished all climbed the mountain to the appointed place and found the strangers awaiting them. the two parties camped together that night and related to one another their histories and adventures. the strangers said that they had been created at the place where they were all then camped only seven years previously; that they were living not far off at a place called natanbilhátin, but that they came often to their natal place to pick cactus fruit and yucca fruit. they said they called themselves tsé`dine`, or rock people; but the nameless ones gave them the name of tse`nahapi'lni, overhanging rocks people, from the place where they met. with this name they became a gens of the navahoes. 446. the tse`nahapi'lni told their new friends that they had some corn and pumpkins cached at a distance, and they proposed to open their stores and get ready for a journey. they knew of some apaches to the south, whom they would all visit together. these apaches, they said, had some gentes of the same names as those of the navahoes. then they all went to where the provisions were stored, and they made corn-cakes to use on the journey. when they were ready they went to the south and found, at a place called tsóhanaa, the apaches, who recognized them as friends, and treated their visitors so well that the latter concluded to remain for a while. 447. at the end of three years the tse`nahapi'lni went off to join the navahoes on the san juan. the nameless people stayed four years longer. about the end of that time they began to talk of leaving, and their apache friends tried to persuade them to remain, but without avail. when they had all their goods packed and were ready to start, an old woman was observed walking around them. she walked around the whole band, coming back to the place from which she started; then she turned towards them and said: "you came among us without a name, and you have dwelt among us, nameless, for seven years; no one knew what to call you; but you shall not leave us without a name. i have walked around you, and i call you honagá`ni (walked-around people)."[196] 448. when the honagá`ni got back to the san juan they found that the tse`nahapi'lni had been long settled there and had become closely related to tlastsíni, destsíni, kinlitsíni, and tsinadzi'ni. the honagá`ni in time formed close relationships with tha`nezá`ni, dsiltlá`ni, tó`hani, and nahopáni. these five gentes are now all the same as one gens, and no member of one may marry a member of another. 449. it happened about this time, while some of the thá`paha were sojourning at agála, that they sent two children, one night, to a spring to get water. the children carried out with them two wicker bottles, but returned with four. "where did you get these other bottles?" the parents inquired. "we took them away from two little girls whom we met at the spring," answered the children. "why did you do this, and who are the girls?" said the elders. "we do not know. they are strangers," said the little ones. the parents at once set out for the spring to find the strange children and restore the stolen bottles to them; but on their way they met the little girls coming toward the thá`paha camp, and asked them who they were. the strange children replied: "we belong to a band of wanderers who are encamped on yonder mountain. they sent us two together to find water." "then we shall give you a name," said the thá`paha; "we shall call you to`baznaázi," two come together for water. the thá`paha brought the little girls to their hut and bade them be seated. "stay with us," they said. "you are too weak and little to carry the water so far. we will send some of our young men to carry it for you." when the young men found the camp of the strangers they invited the latter to visit them. the thá`paha welcomed the new-comers as friends, and told them they had already a name for them, to`baznaázi. under this name they became united to the navahoes as a new gens, and they are now closely affiliated with thá`paha.[197] 450. shortly after the coming of to`baznaázi, the navahoes were joined by a band of apaches, who were adopted by thá`paha and not formed into a new gens. about the same time a band of pah utes came and were likewise adopted by thá`paha. a little later some more apaches arrived and became a part of thá`paha; but, although no distinct name is now given them, their descendants are known among the thá`paha as a people of different origin from the others. 451. another party of apaches, who came afterwards, dwelt a long time among the to`dokózi; but later they abode with the thá`paha, and became closely related to the latter. they are still affiliated with thá`paha, but these call them to`dokózi. 452. some years passed before the next accession was made. this was another party of zuñi indians, and they were admitted into the gens of the thá`paha. soon after them came the zuñi people, who were at last formed into a separate gens,--that of nanaste'zin. this is the navaho name for all the zuñians, and means black horizontal stripe aliens.[198] all these people deserted the zuñi villages on account of scarcity of food. 453. a new people, with painted faces, came from the west about the same time as those who formed the gens of zuñi, or a little later. they are supposed to have been a part of the tribe now called mohaves on the banks of the colorado. they bore the name of dildzéhi, and their descendants now form a gens of that name among the navahoes. at first they affiliated with nanaste'zin; but to-day they are better friends with thá`tsini than with nanaste'zin. 454. a war-party, consisting of members of different gentes, was now organized among the navahoes to attack a pueblo called saíbehogan, house made of sand. at that place they captured two girls and brought them home as slaves. there was a salt lake near their old home, and the girls belonged to a gens of salt people there. so their numerous descendants now among the navahoes form the gens of ásihi, or salt. the captives were taken by members of the tse`dzinki'ni, hence ásihi and tse`dzinki'ni are now affiliated. 455. then a war party was gotten up to attack the people of jemez pueblo. on this raid one of the tlastsíni captured a jemez girl, but sold her to one of the tse`dzinki'ni. she was the progenitor of the gens of maideski'zni, people of wolf pass (i.e., jemez), which is now affiliated with tse`dzinki'ni. 456. after the navahoes attacked saíbehogan there was a famine there, and some of the people abandoned their homes and joined the navahoes. they said that in their pueblo there was a gens of thá`paha, and hearing there was such a gens among the navahoes they came to join it. therefore they sought thá`paha till they found it and became a part of it. 457. there came once a party of seven people from a place called tse`yanató`ni, horizontal water under cliffs, to pay a short visit to the navahoes; but from time to time they delayed their departure, and at last stayed forever with the navahoes. they formed the gens of tse`yanató`ni, which is now extinct. 458. the people whom estsánatlehi created from the skin under her right arm, and to whom she gave the wand of white shell, was called, after they came among the navahoes, kinaá`ni, high stone house people; not because they built or dwelt in such a house, but because they lived near one.[199] 459. when the bitá`ni were encamped at a place called tó`tso, or big water, near the carrizo mountains, a man and a woman came up out of the water and joined them. from this pair is descended the gens of tó`tsoni, people of the big water, which is affiliated with bitá`ni. nati'nesthani. 460. nati'nesthani,[201] he who teaches himself, lived, with his relations, near the mountain of dsilnáotil. the few people who lived there used to wander continually around the mountain, hence its name, encircled mountain. nati'nesthani delighted in gambling, but was not successful. he lost at game, not only all his own goods, but all the goods and jewels of his relations, until there was only one article of value left--a necklace consisting of several strings of white beads. his parents and brother lived in one lodge; his grandmother and niece lived in another, a little distance from the first. when the gambler had parted with everything except the necklace, his brother took this to the lodge of his grandmother and gave it to her, saying: "my brother has gambled away everything save this. should he lose this at game, it is the last thing he will ever lose, for then i shall kill him." 461. nati'nesthani did not spend all his time gambling; sometimes he hunted for wood-rats and rabbits in the mountains. the day the necklace was brought, in returning from his hunt, he came to the house of his grandmother and saw the necklace hanging up there. "why is this here?" he asked. "it is put here for safe-keeping," replied his niece. "your brother values it and has asked us to take care of it. if you lose it in gambling, he has threatened to kill you. i have heard the counsels of the family about you. they are tired of you. if you lose this necklace at play, it is the last thing you will ever lose." on hearing this he only said to his niece, "i must think what i shall do," and he lay down to rest. 462. next morning he rose early, made his breakfast of wood-rats, and went out to hunt, travelling toward the east. he stopped at one place, set fall-traps for wood-rats, and slept there all night. during the night he pondered on many plans. he thought at first he would go farther east and leave his people forever; but again he thought, "who will hunt wood-rats for my niece when i am gone?" and he went back to her lodge and gave her all the little animals he had killed. 463. in the morning he breakfasted again on wood-rats, and said to himself: "i shall go to-day to the south and never return." such was his intention as he went on his way. he travelled to the south, and spent the night out again; but in the morning he changed his mind, and came back to his niece with wood-rats and rabbits and the seeds of wild plants that he had gathered. the women cooked some of the wood-rats for his supper that night. when he lay down he thought of his brother's threats, and made plans again for running away. he had not touched the beads, though he longed to take them. 464. next morning he went to the west, hunted there all day, and camped out at night as before; but again he could not make up his mind to leave his people, though he thought much about it; so he returned to his niece with such food as he had been able to get for her, and slept in the lodge that night. 465. on the following day he went to the north and hunted. he slept little at night while camping out, for his mind was filled with sad thoughts. "my brother disowns me," he said to himself. "my parents refuse me shelter. my niece, whom i love most, barely looks at me. i shall never go back again." yet, for all these words, when morning came he returned to the lodge.[19] 466. by this time he was very poor, and so were his grandmother and niece. his sandals, made of grass and yucca-fibre, were worn through, and the blanket made of yucca-fibre and cedar-bark, which covered his back, was ragged.[177] but the people in the other lodge were better off. they gave the grandmother and niece food at times; but always watched these closely when they came for food, lest they should carry off something to give the gambler. "let him live," said his parents, "on wood-rats and rabbits as well as he can." 467. the night after he returned from his hunt to the north he slept little, but spent the time mostly in thinking and making plans. what these plans were you shall soon know, for the next day he began to carry them out. his thought for his niece was now the only thing that made him care to stay at home. 468. in the morning after this night of thought he asked his niece to roast for him four wood-rats; he tied these together and set out for the san juan river. when he got to the banks of the river he examined a number of cottonwood trees until he found one that suited him. he burned this down and burned it off square at the base. he kept his fire from burning up the whole trunk by applying mud above the place to be burned. his plan was to make a hollow vessel by which he could go down the san juan river. it was his own plan. he had never heard of such a thing before. the navahoes had never anything better than rafts, and these were good only to cross the river. he lay down beside the log to see where he should divide it, for he had planned to make the vessel a little longer than himself, and he burned the log across at the place selected. all this he did in one day, and then he went home, collecting rats on the way; but he told his niece nothing about the log. he slept that night in the lodge. 469. he went back, next morning, to his log on the banks of the san juan, and spent the day making the log hollow by means of fire, beginning at the butt end. he succeeded in doing only a part of this work in one day. it took him four days to burn the hole through from one end of the log to the other and to make it wide enough to hold his body. at the end of each day's work he returned to his grandmother's lodge, and got wood-rats and rabbits on his way home. 470. the next day, after the hole was finished, was spent in making and inserting plugs. he moistened a lot of shredded cedar-bark and pounded it between stones so as to make a soft mass. he shoved a large piece of this in at the butt end and rammed it down to the tip end. in burning out the log, he had burned, where the tree branched, four holes which he did not need, and these he filled with plugs of the cedar-bark. he prepared another plug to be rammed into the butt from the inside, after he entered the log, and when this was finished he went home to his grandmother's house, collecting wood-rats from his traps as he went. 471. the next morning his niece cooked several wood-rats and ground for him a good quantity--as much as could be held in two hands--of the seeds of tlo`tsózi (sporobolus cryptandrus). this meal she put in a bag of wood-rat skins sewed together. thus provided he went back to his log. he put the provisions into the hole and then proceeded to enter, in person, to see if the log was sound and the hole big enough. he entered, head foremost, and crawled inwards until half of his chest was in the log, when he heard a voice crying, "wu`hu`hu`hú!"[26] and he came out to see who called. he looked in every direction and examined the ground for tracks, but seeing no signs of any intruder he proceeded again to enter the log. this time he got in as far as his waist, when again he heard the cry of "wu`hu`hu`hú," but louder and nearer than before. again he came out of the log and looked around farther and more carefully than he did the first time, going in his search to the margin of the river; but. he saw no one, found no tracks, and returned to his log. on the next trial he entered as far as his knees, when for the third time the cry sounded, and he crept out once more to find whence it came. he searched farther, longer, and more closely than on either of the previous occasions, but without success, and he went back to enter the log again. on the fourth trial, when he had entered as far as his feet, he heard the cry loud and near, and he felt some one shaking the log. he crept out for the fourth time and beheld hastséyalti, the talking god,[73] standing over him. 472. hastséyalti did not speak at first, but told the man by signs that he must not get into the log, that he would surely be drowned if he did, and that he must go home. then hastséyalti walked off a distance from the log and motioned to the navaho to come to him. when nati'nesthani came near the god, the latter spoke, saying: "my grandchild, why are you doing all this work? where do you intend to go with this log?" the man then told the god all his sad story, and ended by saying: "i am an outcast. i wish to get far away from my people. take pity on me. stop me not, but let me go in this log as far as the waters of the old age river (san juan) will bear me." hastséyalti replied: "no. you must not attempt to go into that log. you will surely be drowned if you do. i shall not allow you." four times nati'nesthani pleaded, and four times the god denied him. then the god said: "have you any precious stones?" "yes," replied the man. "have you white shell beads? have you turquoise?" and thus the god went on asking him, one by one, if he had all the original eighteen sacred things[202] that must be offered to the gods to gain their favor. to each of his questions the man replied "yes," although he had none of these things, and owned nothing but the rags that covered him. "it is well," said the god. "you need not enter that log to make your journey. go home and stay there for four nights. at daylight, after the fourth night, you may expect to see me again. have yourself and your house clean and in order for my coming. have the floor and all around the house swept carefully. have the ashes taken out. wash your body and your hair with yucca suds the night before i arrive, and bid your niece to wash herself also with yucca. i shall go off, now, and tell the other divine ones about you." 473. as soon as he came home, nati'nesthani told his niece what things he wanted (except the baskets and the sacred buckskins); but he did not tell her for what purpose he required them, and he asked her to steal them from their neighbors. this she did, a few things at a time, and during many visits. it took her three days to steal them all. on the evening of the third day, after they had washed themselves with the yucca suds, he told her about the baskets and the sacred buckskins which he needed. she went to the neighboring lodge and stole these articles, wrapping the baskets up in the buckskins. when she returned with her booty, he wrapped all the stolen goods up in the skins, put them away in the edge of the lodge, and lay down to rest. he was a good sleeper, and usually slept all night; but on this occasion he woke about midnight, and could not go to sleep again. 474. at dawn he heard, faintly, the distant "wu`hu`hu`hú" of hastséyalti. at once he woke his grandmother, saying: "i hear a voice. the digíni (holy ones, divine ones) are coming." "you fool," she replied. "shut your mouth and go to sleep. they would never come to visit such poor people as we are," and she fell asleep again. in a little while he heard the voice a second time, louder and nearer, and again he shook his grandmother and told her he heard the voices of the gods; but she still would not believe him, and slept again. the third time that he awoke her, when he heard the voices still more plainly, she remained awake, beginning to believe him. the fourth time the call sounded loud and clear, as if cried by one standing at the door. "hear," he said to his grandmother. "is that not truly the voice of a divine one?" at last she believed him, and said in wonder: "why should the digíni come to visit us?" 475. hastséyalti and hastséhogan were at the door, standing on the rainbow on which they had travelled. the former made signs to the man, over the curtain which hung in the doorway, bidding him pull the curtain aside and come out. "grandmother," said the navaho, "hastséyalti calls me to him." "it is well," she answered. "do as he bids you." as he went out, bearing his bundle of sacrificial objects, he said: "i go with the divine ones, but i shall come back again to see you." the niece had a pet turkey[203] that roosted on a tree near the lodge, hastséyalti made signs to the navaho to take the turkey along. the navaho said: "my niece, the gods bid me take your turkey, and i would gladly do it, for i am going among strange people, where i shall be lonely. i love the bird; he would be company to me and remind me of my home. yet i shall not take him against your will." "then you may have my turkey pet," replied the niece. the old woman said to the god: "i shall be glad to have my grandchild back again. will you let him return to us?" hastséyalti only nodded his head. the gods turned the rainbow around sunwise, so that its head,[204] which formerly pointed to the door of the lodge, now pointed in a new direction. hastséyalti got on the bow first. he made the navaho get on behind him. hastséhogan got on behind the man. "shut your eyes," commanded hastséyalti, and the navaho did as he was bidden. 476. in a moment hastséyalti cried again: "open your eyes." the navaho obeyed and found himself far away from his home at tsé`tadi, where the digíni dwelt. they led him into a house in the rock which was full of divine people. it was beautiful inside--the walls were covered with rock crystal, which gave forth a brilliant light. hastséyalti ordered food brought for his visitor. the latter was handed a small earthen cup only so big (a circle made by the thumb and index finger joined at the tips) filled with mush. "what a poor meal to offer a stranger!" thought the navaho, supposing he would finish it in one mouthful. but he ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, from the cup and could not empty it. when he had eaten till he was satisfied the little cup was as full as in the beginning.[205] he handed the cup, when he was done, back to hastséyalti, who, with one sweep of his finger, emptied it, and it remained empty. the little cup was then filled with water and given to the guest to drink. he drank till his thirst was satisfied; but the cup was as full when he was done as it was when he began. he handed it again to hastséyalti, who put it to his own lips and emptied it at a single swallow. 477. the gods opened the bundle of the navaho and examined the contents to see if he had brought all they required, and they found he had done so. in the mean time he filled his pipe and lighted it. while he was smoking, the gods nayénezgani, tó`badzistsíni, and hastséoltoi[206] arrived from to`ye'tli and entered the house. nayénezgani said to the visitor: "i hear that you were found crawling into a hole which you had made in a log by burning. why were you doing this?" in reply the navaho told his whole story, as he had told it to hastséyalti, and ended by saying: "i wished to go to to`ye'tli, where the rivers meet, or wherever else the waters would bear me. while i was trying to carry out this plan, my grandfather, hastséyalti, found me and bade me not to go. for this reason only i gave my plan up and went home." "do you still wish to go to to`ye'tli?" said nayénezgani. "yes," said the navaho, "i wish to go to to`ye'tli or as far down the san juan as i can get." "then you shall go," said the god. 478. nayénezgani went forth from the house and the other gods followed him. they went to a grove of spruce, and there picked out a tree of unusual size. they tied rainbow ropes to it, so that it might not fall with too great force and break in falling. nayénezgani and to`badzistsíni cut it near the root with their great stone knives, and it fell to the north. crooked lightning struck the fallen tree and went through it from butt to tip. straight lightning struck it and went through it from tip to butt. thus the hole was bored in the log, and this was done before the branches were cut away. the hole that crooked lightning bored was too crooked. straight lightning made it straight, but still it was too small. black wind was sent into the hole, and he made it larger, but not large enough. blue wind, yellow wind, and white wind entered the hole, each in turn, and each, as he went through, made it a little larger. it was not until white wind had done his work that the hole was big enough to contain the body of a man. hastséyalti supplied a bowl of food, a vessel of water, and a white cloud for bedding. they wrapped the navaho up in the cloud and put him into the log. they plugged the ends with clouds,--a black cloud in the butt and a blue cloud in the tip,--and charged him not to touch either of these cloudy plugs. when they got him into the log some one said: "how will he get light? how will he know when it is night and when it is day?" they bored two holes in the log, one on each side of his head, and they put in each hole, to make a window, a piece of rock crystal, which they pushed in so tightly that water could not leak in around it. 479. while some of the gods were preparing the log, others were getting the pet turkey ready for his journey, but they did this unknown to the navaho. they put about his body black cloud, he-rain, black mist, and she-rain. they put under his wings white corn, yellow corn, blue corn, corn of mixed colors, squash seed, watermelon seed, muskmelon seed, gourd seed, and beans of all colors. these were the six gods who prepared the turkey: four of the gánaskidi[207] from a place called depéhahatil, one hastséhogan from tse`gíhi,[165] and the hastséhogan from tsé`tadi,--the one who found the navaho entering his cottonwood log and took him home to the house in the rocks. 480. the next thing they had to think about was how they should carry the heavy log to the river with the man inside of it. they put under the log (first) a rope of crooked lightning, (second) a rope of rainbow, (third) a rope of straight lightning, and (fourth) another rope of rainbow. they attached a sunbeam to each end of the log. all the gods except those who were engaged in preparing the turkey tried to move the log, but they could not stir it; and they sent for the six who were at work on the turkey to come to their aid. two of the gánaskidi were now stationed at each end, and two of the hastséhogan in the middle. the others were stationed at other parts. the gánaskidi put their wands under the log crosswise, thus, x. all lifted together, and the log was carried along. some of them said: "if strength fail us and we let the log fall, we shall not attempt to raise it again, and the navaho will not make his journey." as they went along some became tired and were about to let the log go, but the winds came to help them--black wind and blue wind in front, yellow wind and white wind behind, and soon the log was borne to the margin of the river. as they went along, tó`nenili,[98] the water sprinkler, made fun and played tricks, as he now does in the dances, to show that he was pleased with what they were doing. while the gods were at work the navaho sang five songs, each for a different part of the work; the significant words of the songs were these:- first song, "a beautiful tree they fell for me." second song, "a beautiful tree they prepare for me." third song, "a beautiful tree they finish for me." fourth song, "a beautiful tree they carry with me." fifth song, "a beautiful tree they launch with me."[283] 481. when they threw the log on the surface of the water it floated around in different directions, but would not go down stream, so the gods consulted together to determine what they should do. they covered the log first with black mist and then with black cloud. some of the gods standing on the banks punched the log with their plumed wands, when it approached the shore or began to whirl round, and they kept this up till it got into a straight course, with its head pointed down stream, and floated on. when the gods were punching the log to get it into the current, the navaho sang a song, the principal words of which were:- 1. "a beautiful tree, they push with me." when the log was about to go down the stream, he sang:- 2. "a beautiful tree is about to float along with me," and when the log got into the current and went down, he sang:- 3. "a beautiful tree floats along with me."[284] 482. all went well till they approached a pueblo called ki'ndotliz, or blue house,[208] when two of the kisáni, who were going to hunt eaglets, saw the log floating by, though they could not see the gods that guided its course. wood was scarce around blue house. when the men saw the log they said, "there floats a big tree. it would furnish us fuel for many days if we could get it. we must try to bring it to the shore." the two men ran back to the pueblo and announced that a great log was coming down the river. a number of people turned out to seize it. most of them ran down the stream to a shallow place where they could all wade in, to await the arrival of the log, while a few went up along the bank to herald its approach. when it came to the shallow place they tried to break off branches, but failed. they tied ropes to the branches, and tried to pull it ashore; but the log, hurried on by the current, carried the crowd with it. but the next time the log got to a shallow place the kisáni got it stranded, and sent back to the pueblo for axes, intending to cut off branches and make the log light. when the gods saw the people coming with axes they said: "something must be done." they sent down a great shower of rain, but the kisáni held on to the log. they sent hail, with hailstones as big as two fists; but still the kisáni held on. they sent lightning to the right--the people to the left held on. they sent lightning to the left--the people to the right held on. they sent lightning in all directions four times, when, at last, the kisáni let go and the log floated on. now the gods laid upon the log a cloud so thick that no one could see through it; they put a rainbow lengthwise and a rainbow crosswise over it, and they caused the zigzag lightning to flash all around it. when the kisáni saw all these things they began to fear. "the gods must guard this log," they said. "yes," said the chief. "go to your homes, and let the log pass on. it must be holy." 483. the log floated steadily with the stream till it came to a place where a ridge of rocks, standing nearly straight up, disturbs the current, and here the log became entangled in the rocks. but two of the fringe-mouths[209] of the river raised it from the rocks and set it floating again. they turned the log around, one standing at each end, until they got it lying lengthwise with the current, and then they let it float away. 484. thence it floated safely to tó`hodotliz, where the gods on the bank observed it stopping and slowly sinking, until only a few leaves on the ends of the branches could be seen. it was the sacred people under the water who had pulled the log down this time. these were tiéholtsodi, tielín,[210] frog, fish, beaver, otter, and others. they took the navaho out of the log and bore him down to their home under the water. the gods on the bank held a council to consider why the tree stuck. they shook it and tried to get it loose, but they could not move it. then they called on tó`nenili, water sprinkler, to help them. he had two magic water jars, to`sadilyi'l, the black jar, which he carried in his right hand, and to`sadotli'z, the blue jar, which he carried in his left hand; with these he struck the water to the right and to the left, crying as he did so his call of "tu`wu`wu`wú!" the water opened before him and allowed him to descend. he went around the tree, and when he came to the butt he found that the plug had been withdrawn and that the navaho was no longer there. he called up to his friends on the bank and told them what he had found. they spread a short rainbow[211] for him to travel on, and he went to the house of the divine ones under the water. this house consisted of four chambers, one under another, like the stories of a pueblo dwelling. the first chamber, that on top, was black; the second was blue; the third yellow; the fourth white.[18] two of the tielín, or water pets with blue horns, stood at the door facing one another, and roared as tó`nenili passed. he descended from one story to another, but found no one till he came to the last chamber, and here he saw tiéholtsodi, the water monster; tsal, frog (a big rough frog); tsa, beaver, tábastin, otter, tlo`ayuinli'tigi (a great fish), and the captive navaho. "i seek my grandchild. give him to me," said tó`nenili. "shut your mouth and begone," said tiéholtsodi. "such as you cannot come here giving orders. i fear you not, water sprinkler; you shall not have your grandchild." then tó`nenili went out again and told his friends what had happened to him, and what had been said in the house of tiéholtsodi under the water. 485. the gods held another council. "who shall go down and rescue our grandchild?" was the question they asked one another. while they were talking hastsézini[212] (black god), who owns all fire, sat apart and took no part in the council. he had built a fire, while the others waited, and sat with his back to it, as was his custom. "go tell your grandfather there what has occurred," said the others to tó`nenili. the latter went over to where hastsézini sat. "why are they gathered together yonder and of what do they talk so angrily?" said the black god. in answer, tó`nenili told of his adventures under the water and what tiéholtsodi had said to him. hastsézini was angry when he heard all this. "i fear not the sacred people beneath the water," he said. "i shall have my grandchild." he hastened to the river, taking tó`nenili with him, for tó`nenili had the power to open the water, and these two descended into the river. when they reached the room where tiéholtsodi sat, the black god said, "we come together for our grandchild." "run out there, both of you. such as you may not enter here," said tiéholtsodi. "i go not without my grandson. give him to me, and i shall go," said the other. "run out," repeated tiéholtsodi, "i shall not release your grandchild." "i shall take my grandchild. i fear you not." "i shall not restore him to you. i heed not your words." "i never recall what i have once spoken. i have come for my grandchild, and i shall not leave without him." "i said you should not go with him, and i mean what i say. i am mighty." thus they spoke defiantly to one another for some time. at length hastsézini said: "i shall beg no longer for my grandchild. you say you are mighty. we shall see which is the more powerful, you or i," and tiéholtsodi answered: "neither shall i ask your permission to keep him. i should like to see how you will take him from me." when hastsézini heard this he took from his belt his fire-stick and fire-drill.[213] he laid the stick on the ground, steadied it with both feet, and whirled the drill around, pausing four times. the first time he whirled the drill there was a little smoke; the second time there was a great smoke; the third time there was flame; the fourth time the surrounding waters all took fire. then tiéholtsodi cried: "take your grandchild, but put out the flames." "ah," said hastsézini, "you told me you were mighty. why do you implore me now? why do you not put out the fire yourself? do you mean what you say this time? do you really want the fire quenched?" "oh! yes," cried tiéholtsodi. "take your grandchild, but put out the flames. i mean what i say." at a sign from black god, water sprinkler took the stoppers out of his jars and scattered water all around him four times, crying his usual "tu`wu`wu`wú" as he did so, and the flames died out. the water in tó`nenili's jars consisted of all kinds of water--he-rain, she-rain, hail, snow, lake-water, spring-water, and water taken from the four quarters of the world. this is why it was so potent.[67] 486. when the fire was extinguished the three marched out in single file--tó`nenili in front, to divide the water, the navaho in the middle, and hastsézini in the rear. before they had quite reached the dry land they heard a flopping sound behind them, and, looking around, they saw tsal, the frog. "wait," said he. "i have something to tell you. we can give disease to those who enter our dwelling, and there are cigarettes, sacred to us, by means of which our spell may be taken away. the cigarette of tiéholtsodi should be painted black; that of tielín, blue; those of the beaver and the otter, yellow; that of the great fish, and that sacred to me, white." therefore, in these days, when a navaho is nearly drowned in the water, and has spewed the water all out, such cigarettes[12] are made to take the water sickness out of him. 487. the gods took nati'nesthani back to his log. tó`nenili opened a passage for them through the river, and took the water out of the hollow in the log. the navaho crawled into the hollow. the gods plugged the butt again, and set the log floating. it floated on and on until it came to a fall in the san juan river, and here it stuck again. the gods had hard labor trying to get it loose. they tugged and worked, but could not move it. at length the dsahadoldzá, the fringe-mouths of the water, came to help. they put the zigzag lightning which was on their bodies[209] under the butt of the log,--as if the lightning were a rope,--and soon they got the log loose and sent it floating down the river. 488. at the end of the san juan river, surrounded by mountains, there is a whirling lake or large whirlpool called tó`nihilin, or end of the water. when the log entered here it whirled around the lake four times. the first time it went around it floated near the shore, but it gradually approached the centre as it went round again and again. from the centre it pointed itself toward the east and got near the shore; but it retreated again to the centre, pointed itself to the south, and at last stranded on the south shore of the lake. when it came to land four gods stood around it thus: hastséhogan on the east, hastséyalti on the south, one gánaskidi on the west, and one on the north. they pried out one of the stoppers with their wands, and the navaho came out on the land. they took out what remained of the food they had given him, a bow of cedar with the leaves on, and two reed arrows that they had placed in the log before they launched it. this done, they plugged the log again with a black cloud. 489. then the gods spoke to the navaho and said: "we have taken you where you wished to go. we have brought you to the end of the river. we have done for you all that in the beginning you asked us to do, and now we shall give you a new name. henceforth you shall be called áhodiseli, he who floats. go sit yonder" (pointing out a place), "and turn your back to us." he went and sat as he was told, and soon they called to him and bade him go to a hill west of the lake. when he ascended it he looked around and saw the log moving back in the direction whence, he thought, he had come. he looked all around, but could see no one. the gods had disappeared, and he was all alone. he sat down to think. he felt sad and lonely. he was sorry he had come; yet, he thought, "this is my own deed; i insisted on coming here, and had i stayed at home i might have been killed." still the more he thought the sadder he felt, and he began to weep. 490. the mountains all around the lake were very precipitous, except on the west side. here they were more sloping, and he began to think of crossing, when he heard faintly in the distance the gobbling of a turkey. he paused and listened, and soon heard the gobbling again, more distinctly and apparently nearer. in a short time he heard the sound for the third time, but louder and clearer than before. the fourth time that the gobbling was heard it seemed very loud and distinct; and a moment later he beheld, running toward him, his pet turkey, whom he had thought he would never see again. the turkey, which had followed him all the way down the san juan river, now approached its master from the east, as if it were coming to him at once; but when it got within arm's length of the man it retreated and went round him sunwise, approaching and retreating again at the south, the west, and the north. when it got to the east again it ran up to its master and allowed itself to be embraced. (fig. 34 shows the way it approached its master.) "ahaláni, silín (welcome, my pet)," said nati'nesthani, "i am sorry for you that you have followed me, i pity you; but now that you are here, i thank you for coming." 491. the man now began to think again of crossing the mountain in the west, but suddenly night came on. he had not noticed the light fading until it was too dark to begin the journey, and he felt obliged to seek a resting-place for the night. they went to a gulch near at hand where there were a few small cedar-trees. they spread out, for a bed, the dead leaves and the soft débris which they found under the trees and lay down, side by side, to sleep. the navaho spread his bark blanket over himself, and the turkey spread one of its wings over its master, and he slept well that night. 492. next morning they rose early and went out to hunt wood-rats. they went down a small winding valley till they came to a beautiful flat, through which ran a stream of water. "this would be a good place for a farm if i had but the seeds to plant," said the navaho aloud. when he had spoken he observed that his turkey began to act in a very peculiar manner. it ran to the western border of the flat, circled round to the north, and then ran directly from north to south, where it rejoined its master, who had in the mean time walked around the edge of the flat from east to west. this (fig. 35) shows how they went. when they met they walked together four times around the flat, gradually approaching the centre as they walked. here, in the centre, the man sat down and the turkey gambolled around him. "my pet," said the navaho, "what a beautiful farm i could make here if i only had the seeds." the turkey gobbled in reply and spread out its wings. 493. nati'nesthani had supposed that when the gods were preparing the log for him they had done something to the turkey, but what they had done he knew not. now that his pet was acting so strangely, it occurred to him that perhaps it could aid him. "my pet," he said, "can you do anything to help me make a farm here?" the turkey ran a little way to the east and shook its wings, from which four grains of white corn dropped out; then it ran to the south and shook from its wings four grains of blue corn; at the west it shook out four grains of yellow corn, and at the north four grains of variegated corn. then it ran up to its master from the east and shook its wings four times, each time shaking out four seeds. the first time it dropped pumpkin seeds; the second time, watermelon seeds; the third time, muskmelon seeds; the fourth time, beans. "e`yéhe, silín (thanks, my pet). i thought you had something for me," said nati'nesthani. 494. he went away from the flat, roasted wood-rats for a meal, and when he had eaten he made two planting sticks, one of greasewood and one of tsintli'zi[214] (fendleria rupicola). he returned to the flat and began to make his farm. he dug four holes in the east with the stick of tsintli'zi, and dropped into each hole a grain of white corn. he dug four holes in the south with his greasewood stick, and placed in each hole one grain of blue corn. he dug four holes in the west with the tsintli'zi stick, and planted in each one grain of yellow corn. he made four holes in the north with the greasewood, and put in each one grain of variegated corn. with the implement of tsintli'zi he planted the pumpkin seed between the white corn and the blue corn. with the implement of greasewood he planted watermelon seed between the blue corn and the yellow corn. with the stick of tsintli'zi he planted muskmelon seeds between the yellow corn and the variegated corn. with the stick of greasewood he planted beans between the variegated corn and the white corn.[215] he looked all around to see if he had done everything properly, and he went to the west of his farm among the foothills and camped there. 495. he felt uneasy during the night, fearing that there might be some one else to claim the land, and he determined to examine the surrounding country to see if he had any neighbors. next day he walked in a circle, sunwise, around the valley, and this he did for four consecutive days, taking a wider circle each day; but he met no people and saw no signs of human life, and he said: "it is a good place for a farm. no one claims the land before me." each morning, before he went on his journey, he visited his farm. on the fourth morning he saw that the corn had grown half a finger-length above the ground. 496. on the fourth night, after his long day's walk around the valley, when darkness fell, he sat by his fire facing the east, and was surprised to see a faint gleam half way up the side of the mountains in the east. "strange," he said, "i have travelled all over that ground and have seen neither man nor house nor track nor the remains of fire." then he spoke to the turkey, saying: "stay at home to-morrow, my pet; i must go and find out who builds that fire." 497. next day, leaving his turkey at home, he went off to search the mountain-side, where he had seen the gleam; but he searched well and saw no signs of human life. when he came home he told all his adventures to his turkey and said: "it must have been a great glow-worm that i beheld." he got home pretty early in the day and went out to trap wood-rats, accompanied by his turkey. in the evening when he returned to his camp, he looked again, after dark, toward the eastern mountain, and saw the gleam as he had seen it the night before. he set a forked stick in the ground, got down on his hands and knees, and looked at the fire through the fork. (see par. 382.) 498. on the following morning he placed himself in the same position he was in the night before,--putting his hands and knees in the tracks then made,--and looked again over the forked stick. he found his sight directed to a spot which he had already explored well. notwithstanding this he went there again, leaving his turkey behind, and searched wider and farther and with greater care than on previous occasions; but he still saw no traces of human life. when he returned to camp he told his turkey all that had happened to him. that night he saw the light again, and once more he sighted over the forked stick with care. 499. when morning came, he found that he had marked the same spot he had marked before; and though he had little hope he set out for the third time to find who made the distant fire. he returned after a time, only to tell his disappointment to his turkey. as usual he spent the rest of the day, accompanied by the turkey, setting traps for wood-rats and other small animals. after dark, when he saw the distant flame again, he set a second forked stick in the ground and laid between the two forks a long, straight stick, which he aimed at the fire as he would aim an arrow. when this was done he went to sleep. 500. next morning he noted with great care the particular spot to which the straight stick pointed, and set out to find the fire. before he left he said to his turkey: "i go once more to seek the distant fire; but it is the last time i shall seek it. if i find it not to-day, i shall never try again. stay here till i return." while he spoke the turkey turned its back on him, and showed its master that it was angry. it acted like a pouting child. he went to the place on the eastern mountain to which the stick pointed, and here he found, what he had not observed before, a shelf in the rocks, which seemed to run back some distance. he climbed to the shelf and discovered there two nice huts. he thought that wealthy people must dwell in them. he felt ashamed of his ragged bark blanket, of his garment of wood-rat skins, of his worn grass sandals; of his poor bow and arrows; so he took these off, laid them in the fork of a juniper-tree, and, retaining only his breech-cloth of wood-rat skins, his belt, tobacco pouch, and pipe, he approached one of the houses. 501. he pushed aside the curtain and saw, sitting inside, a young woman making a fine buckskin shirt which she was garnishing beautifully with fringes and shells. ashamed of his appearance, he hung his head and advanced, looking at her under his eyebrows. "where are the men?" he said, and he sat on the ground. the young woman replied: "my father and mother are in the other hut." just as the navaho had made up his mind to go to the other house the father entered. doubtless the navaho had been observed while disrobing, for the old man, as he came in, brought the poor rags with him. "why do you not take in my son-in-law's goods?" said the old man to his daughter, as he laid the ragged bundle in a conspicuous place on top of a pile of fine fabrics. poor nati'nesthani hung his head again in shame and blushed, while the woman looked sideways and smiled. "why don't you spread a skin for my son-in-law to sit on?" said the old man to his daughter. she only smiled and looked sideways again. the old man took a finely dressed rocky mountain sheep-skin and a deer-skin,--skins finer than the navaho had ever seen before,--spread them on the ground beside the woman, and said to the stranger: "why do you not sit on the skins?" nati'nesthani made a motion as if to rise and take the offered seat, but he sank back again in shame. invited a second time, he arose and sat down beside the young woman on the skins. 502. the old man placed another skin beside the navaho, sat on it, tapped the visitor on the knee to attract his attention, and said: "i long for a smoke. fill your pipe[216] with tobacco and let me smoke it." the navaho answered: "i am poor. i have nothing." four times this request was made and this reply given. on the fourth occasion the navaho added: "i belong to the ninokádine` (the people up on the earth),[217] and i have nothing." "i thought the ninokádine` had plenty of tobacco," said the old man. the young man now drew from his pouch, which was adorned with pictures of the sun and moon, a mixture of native wild tobacco with four other plants.[218] his pipe was made of clay, collected from a place where a wood-rat had been tearing the ground. he filled the pipe with the mixture, lighted it with the sun,[219] sucked it four times till it was well kindled, and handed it to the old man to smoke. when the latter had finished the pipe and laid it down he began to perspire violently and soon fell into a swoon. the young woman thought her father was dead or dying, and ran to the other lodge to tell her mother. the mother gave the young woman a quantity of goods and said: "give these to my son-in-law and tell him they shall all be his if he restores your father to life." when the daughter returned to the lodge where her father lay, she said to the navaho: "here are goods for you. treat my father. you must surely know what will cure him." they laid the old man out on his side, in the middle of the floor, with his head to the north and his face to the east. the navaho had in his pouch a medicine called ké`tlo, or atsósi ké`tlo,[220] consisting of many different ingredients. where he got the ingredients we know not; but the medicine men now collect them around the headwaters of the san juan. he put some of this medicine into a pipe, lighted it with the sunbeams, puffed the smoke to the earth, to the sky, to the earth, and to the sky again; puffed it at the patient from the east, the south, the west, and the north. when this fumigation was done, the patient began to show signs of life,--his eyelids twitched, his limbs jerked, his body shook. nati'nesthani directed the young woman to put some of the medicine, with water, to soak in an earthen bowl,--no other kind of bowl is now used in making this infusion,--and when it was soaked enough he rubbed it on the body of the patient. 503. "sadáni, sitá (my son-in-law, my nephew)," said the old man, when he came to his senses once more, "fill the pipe for me again. i like your tobacco." the navaho refused and the old man begged again. four times did the old man beg and thrice the young man refused him; but when the fourth request was made the young man filled the pipe, lit it as before, and handed it to the old man. the latter smoked, knocked out the ashes, laid down the pipe, began to perspire, and fell again into a deathly swoon. as on the previous occasion, the women were alarmed and offered the navaho a large fee, in goods, if he would restore the smoker to life. the medicine being administered and the ceremonies being repeated, the old man became again conscious. 504. as soon as he recovered he said: "my son-in-law, give me another smoke. i have travelled far and smoked much tobacco; but such fine tobacco as yours i never smoked before." as on the other occasions, the old man had to beg four times before his request was granted. a third time the pipe was filled; the old man smoked and swooned; the women gave presents to the navaho; the atsósi ké`tlo was administered, and the smoker came to life again. 505. but as soon as he regained his senses he pleaded for another smoke. "the smoke is bad for you," said the navaho. "it does you harm. why do you like my tobacco so well?" "ah! it makes me feel good to the ends of my toes. it smells well and tastes well." "since you like it so well," said the young man, "i shall give you one more pipeful." this time the old man smoked vigorously; he drew the smoke well into his chest and kept it there a long time before blowing it out. everything happened now as before, but in addition to the medicine used previously, the navaho scattered the fragrant yádidinil[221] on the hot coals and let the patient breathe its fumes. the navaho had now four large bundles of fine goods as pay for his services. when the old man recovered for the fourth time he praised loudly the tobacco of the navaho. he said he had never felt so happy as when smoking it. he asked the navaho: "how would you like to try my tobacco?" and he went to the other lodge to fetch his tobacco pouch. while he was gone the wind people whispered into the ear of the navaho: "his tobacco will kill you surely. it is not like your tobacco. those who smoke it never wake again!" 506. presently the old man returned with a pouch that had pictures of the sun and moon on it, and with a large pipe--much larger than that of the navaho--decorated with figures of deer, antelope, elk, and rocky mountain sheep.[222] the old man filled his pipe, lighted it, puffed the smoke to earth and sky, each twice, alternately, and handed the pipe to the navaho. the young man said: "i allow no one to fill the pipe for me but myself. my customs differ from yours. you ask a stranger for a smoke. i ask no man for a smoke. i pick my own tobacco. other people's tobacco makes me ill; that is why i do not use it." thus he spoke, yet the stuff he had given the old man to smoke was not the same that he used himself. the latter consisted of four kinds of tobacco: glónato, or weasel tobacco, depénato, or sheep tobacco, dsi'lnato, or mountain tobacco, and kósnato, or cloud tobacco.[223] he had different compartments in his pouch for his different mixtures. the old man invited him four times to smoke; but four times the navaho refused, and said at last: "i have my pipe already filled with my own tobacco. i shall smoke it. my tobacco injures no one unless he is ill." he proceeded to smoke the pure tobacco. when he had done smoking, he said: "see. it does me no harm. try another pipeful." 507. he now filled his pipe with the mixture of four kinds of real tobacco and handed it to the old man to smoke. when the latter had finished he said: "your tobacco does not taste as it did before, and i do not now feel the same effect after smoking it as i did at first. now it cools me; formerly it made me perspire. why did i fall down when i smoked it before? tell me, have i some disease?" the navaho answered: "yes. it is yasi'ntsogi, something bad inside of you, that makes the tobacco affect you so. there are four diseases that may cause this: they are the yellow disease, the cooked-blood disease, the water-slime disease, and the worm disease. one or more of these diseases you surely have."[224] the old man closed his eyes and nodded his head to show that he believed what was told him. of course the navaho did not believe what he himself had said; he only told this to the old man to conceal the fact that he had filled the pipe with poisoned tobacco. 508. while all these things were happening the navaho had paid no heed to how the day was passing; but now he became suddenly aware that it was late in the afternoon and that the sun was about to set. "i must hasten away. it is late," he said. "no, my son-in-law; do not leave us," pleaded the old man. "sleep here to-night." he ordered his daughter to make a bed for the stranger. she spread on the floor fine robes of otter-skin and beaver-skin, beautifully ornamented. he laid down on the rugs and slept there that night. 509. next morning the young woman rose early and went out. soon after her departure the old man entered the lodge and said to his guest: "i and my daughter were so busy yesterday with all that you did to me, and all the cures you wrought on me, that we had no time to cook food and eat; neither had you. she has gone now to prepare food. stay and eat with us." presently the young woman returned, bringing a dish of stewed venison and a basket filled with mush made of wild seeds. the basket was such a one as the navahoes now use in their rites.[5] on the atáatlo (the part where the coil terminates, the point of finish), the old man had, with the knowledge of his daughter, placed poison. she presented the basket to the stranger, with the point of finish toward him, as her father had directed her to do, saying: "when a stranger visits us we always expect him to eat from the part of the basket where it is finished." as he took the basket the wind people[75] whispered to him: "eat not from that part of the basket; death is there, but there is no death in the venison." the young man turned the basket around and began to eat from the side opposite to that which was presented to him, saying: "it is my custom to eat from the edge opposite to the point of finish." he did not eat all the mush. he tried the venison stew; but as it was made of dried meat he did not like it and ate very little of it. when he had done she took the dishes back to the other lodge. "from which side of the basket did my son-in-law eat?" asked the old man. "from the wrong side. he told me it was his custom never to eat from the side where the basket was finished," said the young woman. her father was surprised. when a visitor came to him he always tried the poisoned tobacco first; if that failed he next tried the poisoned basket. "my husband says he wants to go home now," said the young woman. "tell him it is not the custom for a man to go home the morning after his marriage. he should always remain four days at least," said the old man. she brought this message back to the navaho. he remained that day and slept in the lodge at night. 510. next morning the young woman rose early again and went to the other lodge. soon after she was gone the old man entered and said to nati'nesthani: "you would do well not to leave till you have eaten. my daughter is preparing food for you." in a little while, after he left, the young woman entered, bringing, as before, a dish of stewed venison and a basketful of mush, which she handed to the navaho without making any remark. but wind whispered: "there is poison all around the edge of the basket this time; there is none in the venison." the navaho ate some of the stew, and when he took the basket of mush he ate only from the middle, saying: "when i eat just as the sun is about to come up, it is my custom to eat only from the middle of the basket." the sun was about to rise as he spoke. when she went back to the other lodge with the remains of the meal, her father asked: "how did he eat this morning?" she replied: "he ate the stew; but the mush he ate only from the middle of the basket." "ahahahá!" said the old man, "it never took me so long, before." the navaho remained in the lodge all that day and all night. 511. the next (third) morning things happened as before: the woman rose early, and while she was gone the old man came into the lodge, saying: "the women are cooking food for you. don't go out till you have eaten." the reason they gave their visitor only one meal a day was that he might be so ravenous with hunger when it came that he would not notice the poison and would eat plenty of it. when the food was brought in, the wind people whispered to the navaho: "poison is mixed all through the mush, take none of it." he ate heartily of the stew, and when he was done he said to the young woman: "i may eat no mush to-day. the sun is already risen, and i have sworn that the sun shall never see me eat mush." when she went back to the other lodge her father asked: "how did my son-in-law eat this morning?" "he ate only of the stew," she said. "he would not touch the mush." "ahahahá," said the old man in a suspicious tone; but he said no more. again the navaho stayed all day and all night. 512. on the fourth morning when the daughter went to prepare food and the old man entered the lodge, he said: "go out somewhere to-day. why do you not take a walk abroad every day? is it on your wife's account that you stay at home so much, my son-in-law?" when the young woman brought in the usual venison stew and basket of mush, wind whispered: "all the food is poisoned this morning." when she handed the food to the young man he said: "i do not eat at all to-day. it is my custom to eat no food one day in every four. this is the day that i must fast." when she took the untasted food back to the other lodge, her father inquired: "what did my son-in-law eat this morning?" and she answered: "he ate nothing." the old man was lying when he spoke; he rose when she answered him and carefully examined the food she had brought back. "truly, nothing has been touched," he said. "this must be a strange man who eats nothing. my daughter, do you tell him anything he should not know?" "truly, i tell him nothing," she replied. 513. when the young woman came back again from her father's lodge, the navaho said to her: "i have a hut and a farm and a pet not far from here; i must go home to-day and see them." "it is well," she said. "you may go." he began to dress for the journey by putting on his old sandals. she brought him a pair of fine new moccasins, beautifully embroidered, and urged him to put them on; but he refused them, saying: "i may put them on some other time. i shall wear my old sandals to-day." 514. when nati'nesthani got back to his farm he found the tracks of his turkey all around, but the turkey itself he could not see. it was evident from the tracks that it had visited the farm and gone back to the hut again. the navaho made four circuits around the hut--each circuit wider than the preceding--to see whither the tracks led. on the fourth circuit he found they led to the base of a mountain which stood north of the hut. "i shall find my pet somewhere around the mountain," thought the navaho. the tracks had the appearance of being four days old, and from this he concluded that the turkey had left the same day he had. it took him four days, travelling sunwise and going spirally up the mountain, to reach the summit, where he found many turkey tracks, but still no turkey. he fancied his pet might have descended the mountain again, so he went below and examined the ground carefully, but found no descending tracks. he returned to the summit and, looking more closely than at first, discovered where the bird had flown away from a point on the eastern edge of the summit and gone apparently toward the east. 515. the navaho sat down, sad and lonely, and wept. "dear pet," he said, "would that i had taken you with me that day when i set out on my journey. had i done so i should not have lost you. dear pet, you were the black cloud; you were the black mist; you were the beautiful he-rain;[225] you were the beautiful she-rain;[137] you were the beautiful lightning; you were the beautiful rainbow; you were the beautiful white corn; you were the beautiful blue corn; you were the beautiful yellow corn; you were the beautiful corn of all colors; you were the beautiful bean. though lost to me, you shall be of use to men, upon the earth, in the days to come--they shall use your feathers and your beard in their rites." the navaho never saw his pet again; it had flown to the east, and from it we think the tame turkeys of the white men are descended. but all the useful and beautiful things he saw in his pet are still to be seen in the turkey. it has the colors of all the different kinds of corn in its feathers. the black of the black mist and the black cloud are there. the flash of the lightning and the gleam of the rainbow are seen on its plumes when it walks in the sun. the rain is in its beard; the bean it carries on its forehead. 516. he dried his tears, descended the mountain, and sought his old hut, which was only a poor shelter of brush, and then he went to visit his farm. he found his corn with ears already formed and all the other plants well advanced toward maturity.[226] he pulled one ear from a stalk of each one of the four different kinds of corn, and, wrapping the ears in his mantle of wood-rat skins, went off to see his wife. she saw him coming, met him at the door, and relieved him of his weapons and bundle. "what is this?" she said, pointing to the bundle after she had laid it down. he opened it. she started back in amazement. she had never seen corn before. he laid the ears down side by side in a row with their points to the east, and said: "this is what we call natán, corn. this (pointing to the first ear--the most northerly of the row) is white corn; this (pointing to the next) is blue corn; this (pointing to the third) is yellow corn, and this (pointing to the fourth) is corn of all colors."[227] "and what do your people do with it?" she asked. "we eat it," he replied. "how do you prepare it to eat?" she inquired. he said: "we have four ways when it is green like this. we put it, husk and all, in hot coals to roast. we take off the husk and roast it in hot ashes. we boil it whole in hot water. we cut off the grains and mix it with water to make mush." 517. she wrapped the four ears in a bundle and carried them to the other lodge to show them to her parents. both were astonished and alarmed. the old man rose and shaded his eyes with his open hand to look at them. they asked her questions about the corn, such as she had asked her husband, and she answered them as he had answered her. she cooked the four ears of corn, each one in a different way, according to the methods her husband described. they increased in cooking so that they made food enough to furnish a hearty meal for all. the old people, who were greatly pleased, said the mush smelled like fawn-cheese.[228] "where does my son-in-law get this fine stuff? ask him. i wish to know, it is so delicious. does he not want some himself?" said the old man to his daughter. she brought a large dish of the corn to her husband in the other lodge, and they ate it together. the navaho had no fear of poison this time, for the food did not belong to the old man. 518. at night when they were alone together she asked him where he got the corn. "i found it," he said. "did you dig it out of the ground?" she asked. "no. i picked it up," was his answer. not believing him, she continued to question him until at last he told her: "these things i plant and they grow where i plant them. do you wish to see my field?" "yes, if my father will let me," the woman replied. 519. next morning she told her father what she had found out on the previous night and asked his advice. he said he would like to have her go with nati'nesthani to see what the farm looked like and to find out what kind of leaves the plant had that such food grew on. when she came back from her father's lodge she brought with her pemmican made of venison and a basket of mush. the wind people whispered to him that he need not fear the food to-day, so he ate heartily of it. when the breakfast was over, the navaho said: "dress yourself for the journey, and as soon as you are ready i shall take you to my farm." she dressed herself for travel and went to the lodge of her parents, where she said: "i go with my husband now." "it is well," they said; "go with him." 520. the navaho and his wife set out together. when they came to a little hill from which they could first see the field, they beheld the sun shining on it; yet the rain was falling on it at the same time, and above it was a dark cloud spanned by a rainbow. when they reached the field they walked four times around it sunwise, and as they went he described things in the field to his wife. "this is my white corn, this is my blue corn, this is my yellow corn, and this is my corn of all colors. these we call squashes, these we call melons, and these we call beans," he said, pointing to the various plants. the bluebirds and the yellowbirds were singing in the corn after the rain, and all was beautiful. she was pleased and astonished and she asked many questions,--how the seeds were planted, how the food was prepared and eaten,--and he answered all her questions. "these on the ground are melons; they are not ripe yet. when they are ripe we eat them raw," he explained. when they had circled four times around the field they went in among the plants. then he showed her the pollen and explained its sacred uses.[11] he told her how the corn matured; how his people husked it and stored it for winter use, how they shelled, ground, and prepared it, and how they preserved some to sow in the spring. "now, let us pluck an ear of each kind of corn and go home," he said. when she plucked the corn she also gathered three of the leaves and put them into the same bundle with the corn; but as they walked home the leaves increased in number, and when she got to the house and untied the bundle she found not only three, but many leaves in it. 521. he explained to her how to make the dish now known to the navahoes as ditlógi klesán,[230] and told her to make this of the white corn. he instructed her how to prepare corn as ditlógin tsidikói,[231] and told her to make this of the blue corn. he showed her how to prepare corn in the form of thábitsa,[232] or three-ears, and bade her make this of the yellow corn. he told her to roast, in the husk, the ear of many colors. she took the corn to the other lodge and prepared it as she had been directed. in cooking, it all increased greatly in amount, so that they all had a big meal out of four ears. 522. the old people questioned their daughter about the farm--what it looked like, what grew there. they asked her many questions. she told them of all she had seen and heard: of her distant view of the beautiful farm under the rain, under the black cloud, under the rainbow; of her near view of it--the great leaves, the white blossoms of the bean, the yellow blossoms of the squash, the tassel of the corn, the silk of the corn, the pollen of the corn, and all the other beautiful things she saw there. when she had done the old man said: "i thank you, my daughter, for bringing me such a son-in-law. i have travelled far, but i have never seen such things as those you tell of. i thought i was rich, but my son-in-law is richer. in future cook these things with care, in the way my son-in-law shows you." 523. the old man then went to see his son-in-law and said: "i thank you for the fine food you have brought us, and i am glad to hear you have such a beautiful farm. you know how to raise and cook corn; but do you know how to make and cook the pemmican[229] of the deer?" "i know nothing about it," said the navaho. (the one knew nothing of venison; the other knew nothing of corn.) "how does it taste to you?" asked the old man. "i like the taste of it and i thank you for what you have given me," replied the navaho. "your wife, then, will have something to tell you." when he got back to the other lodge he said: "my son-in-law has been kind to us; he has shown you his farm and taught you how to prepare his food. my daughter, now we must show him our farm." she brought to her husband a large portion of the cooked corn. 524. when night came and they were alone together she asked him to tell her his name. "i have no name," he replied. three times he answered her thus. when she asked for the fourth time he said: "why do you wish to know my name? i have two names. i am nati'nesthani, he who teaches himself, and i am áhodiseli, he who has floated. now that i have told you my name you must tell me your father's name." "he is called píniltani, deer raiser. i am píniltani-bitsí, deer raiser's daughter, and my mother is píniltani-baád, she deer raiser," the young woman answered. 525. in the morning after this conversation they had a breakfast of mush and venison; but nati'nesthani received no warning from the wind people and feared not to eat. when the meal was over, the young woman said to her husband: "my father has told me that, as you have shown me your farm, i may now show you his farm. if you wish to go there, you must first bathe your body in yucca-suds and then rinse off in pure water." after he had taken his bath as directed he picked up his old sandals and was about to put them on when she stopped him, saying: "no. you wore your own clothes when you went to your own farm. now you must wear our clothes when you come to our farm." she gave him embroidered moccasins; fringed buckskin leggings; a buckskin shirt, dyed yellow, beautifully embroidered with porcupine quills, and fringed with stripes of otter-skin; and a headdress adorned with artificial ears called tsáhadolkohi--they wore such in the old days, and there are men still living who have seen them worn. 526. dressed in these fine garments he set out with his wife and they travelled toward the southeast. as they were passing the other hut she bade him wait outside while she went in to procure a wand of turquoise. they went but a short distance (about three hundred yards)[233] when they came, on the top of a small hill, to a large, smooth stone, adorned with turquoise, sticking in the ground like a stopple in a water-jar. she touched this rock stopple with her wand in four different directions--east, south, west, north--and it sprang up out of the ground. she touched it in an upward direction, and it lay over on its side, revealing a hole which led to a flight of four stone steps. 527. she entered the hole and beckoned to him to follow. when they descended the steps they found themselves in a square apartment with four doors of rock crystal, one on each side. there was a rainbow over each door. with her wand she struck the eastern door and it flew open, disclosing a vast and beautiful country, like this world, but more beautiful. how vast it was the navaho knew not, for he could not see the end of it. they passed through the door. the land was filled with deer and covered with beautiful flowers. the air was filled with the odor of pollen and the odor of fragrant blossoms. birds of the most beautiful plumage were flying in the air, perching on the flowers, and building nests in the antlers of the deer. in the distance a light shower of rain was falling, and rainbows shone in every direction. "this, then, is the farm of my father-in-law which you promised to show me," said the navaho. "it is beautiful; but in truth it is no farm, for i see nothing planted here." she took him into three other apartments. they were all as beautiful as the first, but they contained different animals. in the apartment to the south there were antelope; in that to the west, rocky mountain sheep; in that to the north, elk. 528. when they closed the last door and came out to the central apartment they found deer raiser there. "has my son-in-law been in all the rooms and seen all the game?" he asked. "i have seen all," said nati'nesthani. "do you see two sacrificial cigarettes of the deer above the rainbow over the eastern door?" "i see them now," responded the navaho, "but i did not notice them when i entered." the old man then showed him, over the door in the south, two cigarettes of the antelope; over the door in the west, two cigarettes of the rocky mountain sheep; over the door in the north, the single white cigarette of hastséyalti[234] (the elk had no cigarette), and at the bottom of the steps by which they had entered, two cigarettes of the fawn. "look well at these cigarettes," said the old man, "and remember how they are painted, for such we now sacrifice in our ceremonies." "are you pleased?" "do you admire what you have seen?" "what do you think of it all?" such were the questions the old man asked, and the navaho made answer: "i thank you. i am glad that i have seen your farm and your pets. such things i never saw before." 529. "now, my daughter," said deer raiser, "catch a deer for my son-in-law, that we may have fresh meat." she opened the eastern door, entered, and caught a big buck by the foot (just as we catch sheep in these days). she pulled it out. the navaho walked in front; the young woman, dragging the buck, came after him, and the old man came last of all, closing the doors and putting in the stopple as he came. they brought the buck home, tied its legs together with short rainbows, cut its throat with a stone arrow point, and skinned it as we now skin deer. 530. now deer raiser began again to plot the death of his son-in-law. he found he could not poison him, so he determined to try another plan. in a neighboring canyon, to which there was but one entrance, he kept four fierce pet bears. he determined to invite his son-in-law out to hunt with him, and get him killed by these bears. the rest of that day the navaho remained at home with his wife, while the old man took the hoofs of the slain deer and made with them a lot of tracks leading into the canyon of the bears. 531. on the following morning, while the young woman was cooking in the other lodge, deer raiser came in where the navaho sat and said: "my son-in-law, four of my pet deer have escaped from the farm. i have tracked them to a canyon near by, which has only one entrance. as soon as you have eaten i want you to help me to hunt them. you will stand at the entrance of the canyon while i go in to drive the deer toward you, and you can kill them as they come out. no," said the old man after pausing for a while and pretending to think, "you must go into the canyon, my son-in-law, while i stay at the entrance and kill the deer. that will be better." when about to start on his hunt, the wind people whispered to the navaho: "do not enter the canyon." 532. the two men walked along the steep side of the valley, following the tracks until they came to the high rugged cliffs that marked the entrance to the canyon. "when my deer escape, here is where they usually come," said deer raiser. a little stream of water ran out of the canyon, and here the old man had raised a dam to make a pool. when they reached the pool he said: "here i shall stop to shoot the deer. go you in and drive them out for me." "no, i fear the deer will pass me," said nati'nesthani. four times these words were said by both. at last the old man, seeing that his companion was obstinate, said: "stay here, then, but do not let the deer escape you, and do not climb the hillsides around for fear the deer should see you," and he went himself into the canyon. in spite of all the warnings he had received, nati'nesthani climbed a rocky eminence where he could watch and be out of danger. after waiting a while in silence he heard a distant cry like that of a wolf,[235] woo-oo-oo-oo, and became aware that something was moving toward him through the brush. he soon descried four bears walking down the canyon in single file, about thirty paces apart, alternately a female and a male. the old man had probably told them there was some one for them to kill, for they advanced with hair bristling, snouts up, and teeth showing. when he saw them coming he said, "i am nayénezgani. i am hastséyalti. i am sasnalkáhi. i am a god of bears," and he mentioned the names of other potent gods. as the bears were passing their hidden enemy he drew arrow after arrow to the head and slew them all, one by one. he killed them as they walked along a ledge of rock, and their bodies tumbled down on the other side of the ledge, where they were hidden from view. soon the voice of the old man was heard in the distance crying: "oh, my pets! oh, tsananaí! oh, tse'skodi! (for the bears had names).[236] save a piece for me! save a piece for me!" and a little later he came in sight, running and panting. he did not see his son-in-law till he was right beside him. he showed at once that he was surprised and angry, but he quickly tried to make it appear that he was angry from another cause. "i should have been here. you have let them run by," he cried in angry tones. "oh, no," said the navaho, "i have not let them run by. i have killed them. look over the ledge and you will see them." the old man looked as he was told, and was struck dumb with astonishment and sorrow. he sat down in silence, with his head hanging between his knees, and gazed at the bodies of his dead pets. he did not even thank his son-in-law.[237] 533. why did deer raiser seek the life of his son-in-law? now nati'nesthani knew, and now you shall know. the old man was a diné`yiani, or man-eater, and a wizard. he wanted the flesh of the navaho to eat, and he wanted parts of the dead body to use in the rites of witchcraft. but there was yet another reason; he was jealous of the navaho, for those who practise witchcraft practise also incest. 534. "why did you shoot them?" said the old man at last; "the deer went out before them. why did you not shoot the deer? now you may skin the bears." "you never drove deer to me," said the navaho. "these are what you drove to me. when a companion in the hunt drives anything to me i kill it, no matter what it is. you have talked much to me about hunting with you. now i have killed game and you must skin it." "help me, then, to skin it," said deer raiser. "no. i never skin the game i kill myself.[238] you must do the skinning. i killed for you," said the navaho. "if you will not help me," said the old man, "go back to the house and tell my daughter to come and assist me to skin the bears. go back by the way we came when we trailed the deer." 535. nati'nesthani set off as the deer raiser had directed him. as soon as he was out of sight the old man rushed for the house by a short cut. reaching home, he hastily dressed himself in the skin of a great serpent, went to the trail which his son-in-law was to take, and lay in ambush behind a log at a place where the path led through a narrow defile. as the navaho approached the log the wind people told him: "your father-in-law awaits you behind the log." the navaho peeped over the log before he got too near, and saw deer raiser in his snake-skin suit, swaying uneasily back and forth, poising himself as if preparing to spring. when he saw the young man looking in his direction he crouched low. "what are you doing there?" called the navaho (in a way which let deer raiser know he was recognized),[239] and he drew an arrow on the old man. "stop! stop!" cried the latter. "i only came here to meet you and hurry you up." "why do you not come from behind, if that is so? why do you come from before me and hide beside my path?" said the navaho, and he passed on his way and went to his wife's house. 536. when nati'nesthani reached the house he told his wife that he had killed four animals for his father-in-law, but he did not tell her what kind of animals they were, and he told her that her father sent for her mother to help skin the animals and cut up the meat. the daughter delivered the message to her mother, and the latter went out to the canyon to help her husband. when deer raiser saw his wife coming he was furious. "it was my daughter i sent for, not you," he roared. "what sort of a man is he who cannot carry my word straight, who cannot do as he is told? i bade him tell my daughter, not you, to come to me." between them they skinned and dressed the bears and carried them, one at a time, to his house. he sent to his son-in-law to know if he wanted some meat, and the navaho replied that he did not eat bear meat. when he heard this, deer raiser was again furious, and said: "what manner of a man is this who won't eat meat? (he did not say what kind of meat.) when we offer him food he says he does not want to eat it. he never does what he is told to do. we cook food for him and he refuses it. what can we do to please him? what food will satisfy him?" 537. the next morning after the bears were killed, the young woman went out as usual, and the old man entered during her absence. he said to nati'nesthani: "i wish you to go out with me to-day and help me to fight my enemies. there are enemies of mine, not far from here, whom i sometimes meet in battle." "i will go with you," said the navaho. "i have long been hoping that some one would say something like this to me," 538. they went from the lodge toward a mountain which was edged on two sides by steep cliffs, which no man could climb. on the top of the mountain the old man said there was a round hole or valley in which his enemies dwelled. he stationed his son-in-law on one side of this round valley where no cliffs were, and he went to the opposite side to drive the enemy, as he said. he promised to join the navaho when the enemy started. deer raiser went around the mountain and cried four times in imitation of a wolf. then, instead of coming to his comrade's help, he ran around the base of the hill and got behind his son-in-law. soon after the old man made his cry, the navaho saw twelve great ferocious bears coming toward him over the crest of the hill. they were of the kind called sasnalkáhi, or tracking bears, such as scent and track a man, and follow till they kill him. they were of all the sacred colors,--white, blue, yellow, black, and spotted. they came toward the navaho, but he was well armed and prepared to meet them. he fought with them the hardest fight he ever fought; but at length he killed them all, and suffered no harm himself.[240] 539. in the mean time the old man ran off in the direction of his home, sure that his son-in-law was killed. he said: "i think we shall hear no more of nati'nesthani. i think we shall hear no more of áhodiseli hereafter it will be nati'nesthanini (the dead nati'nesthani). hereafter it will be áhodiselini (the dead áhodiseli).[241] he can't come back out of the tracking bears' mouths." after killing the bears, the navaho found the old man's trail and followed it. presently he came to deer raiser, who was sitting on a knoll. the old man could not conceal his astonishment at seeing the navaho still alive. "when we went out to this battle," said the young man, "we promised not to desert one another. why did you run away from me?" the deer raiser answered: "i am sorry i could not find you. i did not see where you were, so i came on this way. what did you do where i left you? did you kill any of the bears?" "yes, i killed all of them," said nati'nesthani. "i am glad you killed all and came away with your own life, my dear son-in-law," said the old cheat. 540. they started to walk home together, but night fell when they reached a rocky ridge on the way; here they picked out a nice spot of ground to sleep on, built a shelter of brushwood, and made a fire. before they went to rest the old man said: "this is a bad place to camp. it is called kedidi'lyena`a` (ridge of the burnt moccasins)." as they lay down to sleep, one on either side of the fire, each took off his moccasins and put them under his head. the old man said: "take good care of your moccasins, my son-in-law. place them securely." "why does he say these things?" asked the navaho to himself. as he lay awake, thinking of the warning of the old man, he heard the latter snoring. he rose softly, took away the old man's moccasins, put his own in their place, and lay down to sleep with deer raiser's moccasins under his head. later in the night the old man got up, pulled the moccasins from under the young man's head, and buried them in the hot embers. he was anxious to get home next morning before his son-in-law. 541. at dawn the old man aroused his companion with "it is time we were on our road." the young man woke, rubbed his eyes, yawned, and pretended to look for his moccasins. after searching a while he asked: "where are my moccasins? have i lost them?" "huh!" said deer raiser. "you did not listen to what i told you last night. i said that this was the ridge of the burned moccasins." in the mean time, on the other side of the fire, the old man was putting on his companion's moccasins, not noticing that they were not his own. "look. you are putting on my moccasins instead of your own. give me my moccasins," said the navaho, reaching across the fire. he took them out of his companion's hands, sat down and put them on. "now we must hurry back," he said. "i can't see what made you burn your moccasins, but i cannot wait for you. i am going now."[242] 542. before the young man left, his father-in-law gave him a message. "i cannot travel as fast as you on my bare feet. when you go home, tell my daughter to come out with a pair of moccasins and some food, and meet me on the trail." when the navaho got home he said to his wife: "i camped with your father last night, and he burned his moccasins. he is limping home barefoot. he bids his wife to come out and meet him with moccasins and food." the daughter delivered the message to her mother, and the latter went out to meet her husband with moccasins, food, and a brand of burning cedar-bark. when the old man met her he was angry. "why have you come? why has not my daughter come?" he asked. "your son-in-law said that i should come," the old woman replied. "oh, what a fool my son-in-law is," cried deer raiser. "he never can remember what he is told to say." he ate his food, put on his moccasins, and hurried home with his wife. 543. when deer raiser visited his son-in-law on the following morning he said: "i warn you never to stray alone to the east of the lodge in which you dwell. there is a dangerous place there." the old man went home, and the navaho pondered all day over what his father-in-law had said, and during the night he made up his mind to do just what the old man had told him not to do. 544. when nati'nesthani had eaten in the morning he dressed himself for a journey, left the lodge, and travelled straight to the east. he came to a steep white ridge;[243] when he had climbed this about half way, he observed approaching him a man of low stature. his coat, which fitted him skin-tight, was white on the chest and insides of the arms, while it was brown elsewhere, like the skin of a deer. he wore on his head a deer-mask, with horns, such as deer-hunters use. he carried a turquoise wand, a black bow with sinew on the back, and two arrows with featherings of eagle-tail. he was one of the tsidastóidine`.[244] when the men met, the stranger, who had a pale face,[245] looked out from under his mask and said: "whence come you, my grandchild?" "i come, my grandfather, from a place near here. i come from the house of píniltani," the navaho answered. "my grandchild, i have heard of you. do you know how my cigarette is made?" said the man with the deer-mask. "no, my grandfather, i never heard of your cigarette," was the reply. "there is a cigarette[12] for me, my grandson," said the stranger. "it is painted white, with a black spot on it, and is so long (second joint of middle finger). it should be laid in the fork of a piñon-tree. i am now walking out, and am going in the direction whence you came. there are people living behind the ridge you are climbing. you should visit them, and hear what they will have to tell you." 545. the navaho climbed the ridge; and as he began to descend it on the other side, he observed below him two conical tents, such as the indians of the plains use. the tents were white below and yellow above, representing the dawn and the evening twilight. as he approached the tents he observed that two games of nánzoz were being played,--one beside each tent,--and a number of people were gathered, watching the games. as he advanced toward the crowd a man came forward to meet him, saying: "go to the lodge in the south. there are many people there." he went to the lodge in the south, as he was bidden. a woman of bright complexion, fairer than the navahoes usually are, the wife of the owner of the lodge, came out and invited him to enter. 546. when nati'nesthani entered the lodge he found its owner seated in the middle. the latter was a man past middle age, but not very old. he was dressed in a beautiful suit of buckskin embroidered with porcupine quills. he pointed to a place by his side, and said to the navaho: "sit here, my grandchild." when the navaho was seated his host said: "whence do you come? the people who live up on the earth are never seen here." "i come from the house of píniltani," the young man answered. "oh! do you?" questioned the host. "and do you know that deer raiser is a great villain; that he kills his guests; that he talks softly, and pretends friendship, and lures people to stay with him until he can quietly kill them? has he never spoken thus softly to you? how long have you been staying with him?" "i have dwelt with him for many days," nati'nesthani answered. "ah!" said his host. "many of our young men have gone over there to woo his daughter; but they have never returned. some are killed on the first day; others on the second day; others on the third day; others on the fourth; but no one ever lives beyond the fourth day. no one has ever lived there as long as you have." "he seems to be such a man as you describe him," said nati'nesthani. "he has been trying to kill me ever since i have been with him." "you must be a wise man to have escaped him so long; your prayer must be potent; your charm must be strong,"[246] declared the host. "no, truly, i know no good prayer; i possess no charm," the navaho replied, and then he went on to tell how he came into that country, and all that happened to him, till he came to the house of deer raiser. "he is rich, but he is no good. that daughter of his is also his wife, and that is why he wants to poison her suitors," said the owner of the lodge, and then he described four ways in which píniltani killed his guests. the navaho remained silent. he knew all the ways of the deer raiser, but he pretended not to know. then the host went on: "the house of deer raiser is a place of danger. you will surely be killed if you stay there. i am sorry you are in such bad company, for you seem to be a good man." "you speak of deer raiser as a great man; but he cannot be so great as you think he is. four times have i killed him with, smoke, and four times have i brought him to life again," said the navaho, and then he related all his adventures since he had been with píniltani. 547. the host thanked him for having slain the bears, and went out to call the players and all the crowd that stood around them to come to his tent. they came, for he was their chief, and soon the tent was crowded. then he spoke to the assembly, and told them the story of the navaho. there was great rejoicing when they heard it. they thanked nati'nesthani for what he had done. one said that deer raiser had killed his brother; another said he had killed his son; another said the bears had slain his nephew, and thus they spoke of their many woes. 548. the people were of five kinds, or gentes: the puma people, the blue fox people, the yellow fox people, the wolf people, and the lynx people, and the host was chief of all. 549. the chief ordered one of his daughters to prepare food for the visitor. she brought in deer pemmican. the navaho ate, and when he was done he said: "i am now ready to go, my grandfather." "wait a while," said the chief. "i have some medicine to give you. it is an antidote for deer raiser's poison." he gave his visitor two kinds of medicine; one was an object the size of the last two joints of the little finger, made of the gall of birds of prey,--all birds that catch with their claws; the other was a small quantity (as much as one might grasp with the tips of all the fingers of one hand) of a substance composed of material vomited by each of the five animals that were the totems of this people. "now have no fear," said the chief. "the bears are slain, and you have here medicines that will kill the wizard's poison. they are potent against witchcraft."[247] 550. when the navaho went back to the house where his wife was, she said: "my father has been here inquiring for you. when i told him you had gone to the east he was very angry, and said that he told you not to go there." soon the old man entered and said fiercely: "why have you gone to the east? i told you not to go there. i told you it was a bad place." the young man made no reply, but acted as if he had seen and heard nothing while he was gone, and in a little while deer raiser calmed down and acted as if he wished to be at peace again with his son-in-law; but before he left he warned him not to go to the south. nati'nesthani pondered on the words of his father-in-law that night, and made up his mind to again disobey him when morning came. 551. next day, when he had eaten, he dressed himself for a journey and walked toward the south. he came, in time, to a blue ridge, and when he was ascending it he met a little man, much like the one he had met the day before, but he had a bluish face. instead of being dressed to look like a deer, he was dressed to look like an antelope; he wore an antelope hunting-mask with horns, he carried a wand of haliotis, and a bow made of a wood called tselkáni, with no sinew on the back, and he had arrows trimmed with the tail feathers of the red-tailed buzzard.[248] like the little man of the east, he was also one of the tsidastói people. he told the navaho how to make the cigarette that belonged to him, to make it the length of the middle joint of the little finger, to paint it blue, spot it with yellow, and deposit it in the fork of a cedar-tree. the little man told the navaho to go on over the ridge till he came to two lodges and to listen there to what the people would tell him. he went and found two lodges, and people playing nánzoz, and had all things happen to him nearly the same as happened to him in the east. when he returned home he had again an angry talk from his father-in-law, and was warned not to go to the west; but again he determined to pay no heed to the warning. 552. when he went to the west, next day, he found a yellow ridge to cross. the little man whom he met had a yellowish face; he was armed and dressed the same as the little man of the east, except that he had no horns on his deer-mask, for he represented a doe. he described to the navaho how to make a cigarette sacred to himself, which was to be painted yellow, spotted with blue, and deposited in a piñon-tree, like the cigarette of the east. other events happened much as on the two previous days. 553. on the fourth of these forbidden journeys the navaho went to the north. the ridge which he had to cross was black. the little man whom he met was armed and dressed like the man in the south, but he had no horns on his mask. his face was very dark. the cigarette which he described was to be painted black and spotted with white; it was to be the same length as the cigarette of the south, and disposed of in the same way. 554. when he got home from his fourth journey, his father-in-law came into the lodge and reviled him once more with angry words; but this time the navaho did not remain silent. he told the old man where he had been, what people he had met, what stories he had heard, and all that he knew of him. he told him, too, that he had learned of cigarettes, and medicines, and charms, and rites to protect him against a wizard's power. "you have killed others," said nati'nesthani, "you have tried to kill me. i knew it all the time, but said nothing. now i know all of your wickedness." "all that you say is true," said the old man; "but i shall seek your life no more, and i shall give up all my evil ways. while you were abroad on your journeys you learned of powerful sacrifices, and rites, and medicines. all that i ask is that you will treat me with these." his son-in-law did as he was desired, and in doing so performed the first atsósi hatál.[249] 555. after treating his father-in-law, nati'nesthani returned to his people, taught them all he had learned while he was gone, and thus established the rite of atsósi hatál among the navahoes. then he went back to the whirling lake of tó`nihilin, and he dwells there still. the great shell of kintyél. 556. kintyél,[72] broad house, and ki'ndotliz, blue house,[208] are two pueblo houses in the chaco canyon. they are ruins now; but in the days when kinníki lived on earth many people dwelt there. not far from the ruins is a high cliff called tse`dezá`, or standing rock. near these places the rite of yói hatál,[250] or the bead chant, was first practised by the navahoes, and this is the tale of how it first became known to man:-557. two young men, one from kintyél and one from ki'ndotliz, went out one day to hunt deer. about sunset, as they were returning to ki'ndotliz, weary and unsuccessful, they observed a war-eagle soaring overhead, and they stopped to watch his flight. he moved slowly away, growing smaller and smaller to their gaze until at length he dwindled to a black speck, almost invisible; and while they strained their sight to get a last look he seemed to them to descend on the top of standing rock. in order to mark the spot where they last saw him they cut a forked stick, stuck it in the ground fork upward, and arranged it so that when they should look over it again, crouching in a certain position, their sight would be guided to the spot. they left the stick standing and went home to ki'ndotliz.[251] 558. in those days eagles were very scarce in the land; it was a wonder to see one; so when the young men got home and told the story of their day's adventures, it became the subject of much conversation and counsel, and at length the people determined to send four men, in the morning, to take sight over the forked stick, in order to find out where the eagle lived. 559. next morning early the four men designated went to the forked stick and sighted over it, and all came to the conclusion that the eagle lived on the point of tse`dezá`. they went at once to the rock, climbed to the summit, and saw the eagle and its young in a cleft on the face of the precipice below them. they remained on the summit all day and watched the nest. 560. at night they went home and told what they had seen. they had observed two young eagles of different ages in the nest. of the four men who went on the search, two were from kintyél and two were from ki'ndotliz, therefore people from the two pueblos met in counsel in an estufa, and there it was decided that ki'ndotliz should have the elder of the two eaglets and that kintyél should have the younger. 561. the only way to reach the nest was to lower a man to it with a rope; yet directly above the nest was an overhanging ledge which the man, descending, would be obliged to pass. it was a dangerous undertaking, and no one could be found to volunteer for it. living near the pueblos was a miserable navaho beggar who subsisted on such food as he could pick up. when the sweepings of the rooms and the ashes from the fireplaces were thrown out on the kitchen heap, he searched eagerly through them and was happy if he could find a few grains of corn or a piece of paper bread. he was called nahoditáhe, or he who picks up (like a bird). they concluded to induce this man to make the dangerous descent. 562. they returned to the pueblo and sent for the poor navaho to come to the estufa. when he came they bade him be seated, placed before him a large basket of paper bread, bowls of boiled corn and meat, with all sorts of their best food, and told him to eat his fill. he ate as he had never eaten before, and after a long time he told his hosts that he was satisfied. "you shall eat," said they, "of such abundance all your life, and never more have to scrape for grains of corn among the dirt, if you will do as we desire." then they told him of their plan for catching the young eagles, and asked him if he were willing to be put in a basket and lowered to the nest with a rope. he pondered and was silent. they asked him again and again until they had asked him four times, while he still sat in meditation. at last he answered: "i lead but a poor life at best. existence is not sweet to a man who always hungers. it would be pleasant to eat such food for the rest of my days, and some time or other i must die. i shall do as you wish." 563. on the following morning they gave him another good meal; they made a great, strong carrying-basket with four corners at the top; they tied a strong string to each corner, and, collecting a large party, they set out for the rock of tse`dezá`. 564. when the party arrived at the top of the rock they tied a long, stout rope to the four strings on the basket. they instructed the navaho to take the eaglets out of the nest and drop them to the bottom of the cliff. the navaho then entered the basket and was lowered over the edge of the precipice. they let the rope out slowly till they thought they had lowered him far enough and then they stopped; but as he had not yet reached the nest he called out to them to lower him farther. they did so, and as soon as he was on a level with the nest he called to the people above to stop. 565. he was just about to grasp the eaglets and throw them down when wind whispered to him: "these people of the pueblos are not your friends. they desire not to feed you with their good food as long as you live. if you throw these young eagles down, as they bid you, they will never pull you up again. get into the eagles' nest and stay there." when he heard this, he called to those above: "swing the basket so that it may come nearer to the cliff. i cannot reach the nest unless you do." so they caused the basket to swing back and forth. when it touched the cliff he held fast to the rock and scrambled into the nest, leaving the empty basket swinging in the air. 566. the pueblos saw the empty basket swinging and waited, expecting to see the navaho get back into it again. but when they had waited a good while and found he did not return they began to call to him as if he were a dear relation of theirs. "my son," said the old men, "throw down those little eagles." "my elder brother! my younger brother!" the young men shouted, "throw down those little eagles." they kept up their clamor until nearly sunset; but they never moved the will of the navaho. he sat in the cleft and never answered them, and when the sun set they ceased calling and went home. 567. in the cleft or cave, around the nest, four dead animals lay; to the east there was a fawn; to the south a hare; to the west the young of a rocky mountain sheep, and to the north a prairie-dog. from time to time, when the eaglets felt hungry, they would leave the nest and eat of the meat; but the navaho did not touch it. 568. early next day the pueblo people returned and gathered in a great crowd at the foot of the cliff. they stayed there all day repeating their entreaties and promises, calling the navaho by endearing terms, and displaying all kinds of tempting food to his gaze; but he heeded them not and spoke not. 569. they came early again on the third day, but they came in anger. they no longer called him by friendly names; they no longer made fair promises to him; but, instead, they shot fire-arrows at the eyry in hopes they would burn the navaho out or set fire to the nest and compel him to throw it and the eaglets down. but he remained watchful and active, and whenever a fire-arrow entered the cave he seized it quickly and threw it out. then they abused him and reviled him, and called him bad names until sunset, when again they went home. 570. they came again on the fourth day and acted as they had done on the previous day; but they did not succeed in making the navaho throw down the little eagles. he spoke to the birds, saying: "can you not help me?" they rose in the nest, shook their wings, and threw out many little feathers, which fell on the people below. the navaho thought the birds must be scattering disease on his enemies. when the latter left at sunset they said: "now we shall leave you where you are, to die of hunger and thirst." he was then altogether three nights and nearly four days in the cave. for two days the pueblos had coaxed and flattered him; for two days they had cursed and reviled him, and at the end of the fourth day they went home and left him in the cave to die. 571. when his tormentors were gone he sat in the cave hungry and thirsty, weak and despairing, till the night fell. soon after dark he heard a great rushing sound which approached from one side of the entrance to the cave, roared a moment in front, and then grew faint in the distance at the other side. thus four times the sound came and went, growing louder each time it passed, and at length the male eagle lit on the eyry. soon the sounds were repeated, and the female bird, the mother of the eaglets, alighted. turning at once toward the navaho, she said: "greeting, my child! thanks, my child! you have not thrown down your younger brother, donikí."[285] the male eagle repeated the same words. they addressed the navaho by the name of donikí, but afterwards they named him kinníki, after the chief of all the eagles in the sky. he only replied to the eagles: "i am hungry. i am thirsty." 572. the male eagle opened his sash and took out a small white cotton cloth which contained a little corn meal, and he took out a small bowl of white shell no bigger than the palm of the hand. when the indian saw this he said: "give me water first, for i am famishing with thirst." "no," replied the eagle; "eat first and then you shall have something to drink." the eagle then drew forth from among his tail feathers a small plant called eltíndzakas,[252] which has many joints and grows near streams. the joints were all filled with water. the eagle mixed a little of the water with some of the meal in the shell and handed the mixture to the navaho. the latter ate and ate, until he was satisfied, but he could not diminish in the least the contents of the shell vessel. when he was done eating there was as much in the cup as there was when he began. he handed it back to the eagle, the latter emptied it with one sweep of his finger, and it remained empty. then the eagle put the jointed plant to the navaho's lips as if it were a wicker bottle, and the indian drank his fill. 573. on the previous nights, while lying in the cave, the navaho had slept between the eaglets in the nest to keep himself warm and shelter himself from the wind, and this plan had been of some help to him; but on this night the great eagles slept one on each side of him, and he felt as warm as if he had slept among robes of fur. before the eagles lay down to sleep each took off his robe of plumes, which formed a single garment, opening in front, and revealed a form like that of a human being. 574. the navaho slept well that night and did not waken till he heard a voice calling from the top of the cliff: "where are you? the day has dawned. it is growing late. why are you not abroad already?" at the sound of this voice the eagles woke too and put on their robes of plumage. presently a great number of birds were seen flying before the opening of the cave and others were heard calling to one another on the rock overhead. there were many kinds of eagles and hawks in the throng. some of all the large birds of prey were there. those on top of the rock sang:- kinnakíye, there he sits. when they fly up, we shall see him. he will flap his wings.[286] 575. one of the eagles brought a dress of eagle plumes and was about to put it on the navaho when the others interfered, and they had a long argument as to whether they should dress him in the garment of the eagles or not; but at length they all flew away without giving him the dress. when they returned they had thought of another plan for taking him out of the cave. laying him on his face, they put a streak of crooked lightning under his feet, a sunbeam under his knees, a piece of straight lightning under his chest, another under his outstretched hands, and a rainbow under his forehead. 576. an eagle then seized each end of these six supports,--making twelve eagles in all,--and they flew with the navaho and the eaglets away from the eyry. they circled round twice with their burden before they reached the level of the top of the cliff. they circled round twice more ascending, and then flew toward the south, still going upwards. when they got above the top of tsótsil (mt. taylor), they circled four times more, until they almost touched the sky. then they began to flag and breathed hard, and they cried out: "we are weary. we can fly no farther." the voice of one, unseen to the navaho, cried from above: "let go your burden." the eagles released their hold on the supports, and the navaho felt himself descending swiftly toward the earth. but he had not fallen far when he felt himself seized around the waist and chest, he felt something twining itself around his body, and a moment later he beheld the heads of two arrow-snakes[258] looking at him over his shoulders. the arrow-snakes bore him swiftly upwards, up through the sky-hole, and landed him safely on the surface of the upper world above the sky. 577. when he looked around him he observed four pueblo dwellings, or towns: a white pueblo in the east, a blue pueblo in the south, a yellow pueblo in the west, and a black pueblo in the north. wolf was the chief of the eastern pueblo, blue fox of the southern, puma of the western, and big snake of the northern. the navaho was left at liberty to go where he chose, but wind whispered into his ear and said: "visit, if you wish, all the pueblos except that of the north. chicken hawk[254] and other bad characters dwell there." 578. next he observed that a war party was preparing, and soon after his arrival the warriors went forth. what enemies they sought he could not learn. he entered several of the houses, was well treated wherever he went, and given an abundance of paper bread and other good food to eat. he saw that in their homes the eagles were just like ordinary people down on the lower world. as soon as they entered their pueblos they took off their feather suits, hung these up on pegs and poles, and went around in white suits which they wore underneath their feathers when in flight. he visited all the pueblos except the black one in the north. in the evening the warriors returned. they were received with loud wailing and with tears, for many who went out in the morning did not return at night. they had been slain in battle. 579. in a few days another war party was organized, and this time the navaho determined to go with it. when the warriors started on the trail he followed them. "whither are you going?" they asked. "i wish to be one of your party," he replied. they laughed at him and said: "you are a fool to think you can go to war against such dreadful enemies as those that we fight. we can move as fast as the wind, yet our enemies can move faster. if they are able to overcome us, what chance have you, poor man, for your life?" hearing this, he remained behind, but they had not travelled far when he hurried after them. when he overtook them, which he soon did, they spoke to him angrily, told him more earnestly than before how helpless he was, and how great his danger, and bade him return to the villages. again he halted; but as soon as they were out of sight he began to run after them, and he came up with them at the place where they had encamped for the night. here they gave him of their food, and again they scolded him, and sought to dissuade him from accompanying them. 580. in the morning, when the warriors resumed their march, he remained behind on the camping-ground, as if he intended to return; but as soon as they were out of sight he proceeded again to follow them. he had not travelled far when he saw smoke coming up out of the ground, and approaching the smoke he found a smoke-hole, out of which stuck an old ladder, yellow with smoke, such as we see in the pueblo dwellings to-day. he looked down through the hole and beheld, in a subterranean chamber beneath, a strange-looking old woman with a big mouth. her teeth were not set in her head evenly and regularly, like those of an indian; they protruded from her mouth, were set at a distance from one another, and were curved like the claws of a bear. she was nastsé estsán, the spider woman. she invited him into her house, and he passed down the ladder. 581. when he got inside, the spider woman showed him four large wooden hoops,--one in the east colored black, one in the south colored blue, one in the west colored yellow, and one in the north white and sparkling. attached to each hoop were a number of decayed, ragged feathers. "these feathers," said she, "were once beautiful plumes, but now they are old and dirty. i want some new plumes to adorn my hoops, and you can get them for me. many of the eagles will be killed in the battle to which you are going, and when they die you can pluck out the plumes and bring them to me. have no fear of the enemies. would you know who they are that the eagles go to fight? they are only the bumblebees and the tumble-weeds."[256] she gave him a long black cane and said: "with this you can gather the tumble-weeds into a pile, and then you can set them on fire. spit the juice of tsildilgi'si[257] at the bees and they cannot sting you. but before you burn up the tumble-weeds gather some of the seeds, and when you have killed the bees take some of their nests. you will need these things when you return to the earth." when spider woman had done speaking the navaho left to pursue his journey. 582. he travelled on, and soon came up with the warriors where they were hiding behind a little hill and preparing for battle. some were putting on their plumes; others were painting and adorning themselves. from time to time one of their number would creep cautiously to the top of the hill and peep over; then he would run back and whisper: "there are the enemies. they await us." the navaho went to the top of the hill and peered over; but he could see no enemy whatever. he saw only a dry, sandy flat, covered in one place with sunflowers, and in another place with dead weeds; for it was now late in the autumn in the world above. 583. soon the eagles were all ready for the fray. they raised their war-cry, and charged over the hill into the sandy plain. the navaho remained behind the hill, peeping over to see what would occur. as the warriors approached the plain a whirlwind arose;[258] a great number of tumble-weeds ascended with the wind and surged around madly through the air; and, at the same time, from among the sunflowers a cloud of bumblebees arose. the eagles charged through the ranks of their enemies, and when they had passed to the other side they turned around and charged back again. some spread their wings and soared aloft to attack the tumble-weeds that had gone up with the whirlwind. from time to time the navaho noticed the dark body of an eagle falling down through the air. when the combat had continued some time, the navaho noticed a few of the eagles running toward the hill where he lay watching. in a moment some more came running toward him, and soon after the whole party of eagles, all that was left of it, rushed past him, in a disorderly retreat, in the direction whence they had come, leaving many slain on the field. then the wind fell; the tumble-weeds lay quiet again on the sand, and the bumblebees disappeared among the sunflowers. 584. when all was quiet, the navaho walked down to the sandy flat, and, having gathered some of the seeds and tied them up in a corner of his shirt, he collected the tumble-weeds into a pile, using his black wand. then he took out his fire-drill, started a flame, and burnt up the whole pile. he gathered some tsildilgi'si, as the spider woman had told him, chewed it, and went in among the sunflowers. here the bees gathered around him in a great swarm, and sought to sting him; but he spat the juice of the tsildilgi'si at them and stunned with it all that he struck. soon the most of them lay helpless on the ground, and the others fled in fear. he went around with his black wand and killed all that he could find. he dug into the ground and got out some of their nests and honey; he took a couple of the young bees and tied their feet together, and all these things he put into the corner of his blanket. when the bees were conquered he did not forget the wishes of his friend, the spider woman; he went around among the dead eagles, and plucked as many plumes as he could grasp in both hands. 585. he set out on his return journey, and soon got back to the house of spider woman. he gave her the plumes and she said: "thank you, my grandchild, you have brought me the plumes that i have long wanted to adorn my walls, and you have done a great service to your friends, the eagles, because you have slain their enemies." when she had spoken he set out again on his journey. 586. he slept that night on the trail, and next morning he got back to the towns of the eagles. as he approached he heard from afar the cries of the mourners, and when he entered the place the people gathered around him and said: "we have lost many of our kinsmen, and we are wailing for them; but we have been also mourning for you, for those who returned told us you had been killed in the fight." 587. he made no reply, but took from his blanket the two young bumblebees and swung them around his head. all the people were terrified and ran, and they did not stop running till they got safely behind their houses. in a little while they got over their fear, came slowly from behind their houses, and crowded around the navaho again. a second time he swung the bees around his head, and a second time the people ran away in terror; but this time they only went as far as the front walls of their houses, and soon they returned again to the navaho. the third time that he swung the bees around his head they were still less frightened, ran but half way to their houses, and returned very soon. the fourth time that he swung the bees they only stepped back a step or two. when their courage came back to them, he laid the two bees on the ground; he took out the seeds of the tumble-weeds and laid them on the ground beside the bees, and then he said to the eagle people: "my friends, here are the children of your enemies; when you see these you may know that i have slain your enemies." there was great rejoicing among the people when they heard this, and this one said: "it is well. they have slain my brother," and that one said: "it is well. they have slain my father," and another said: "it is well. they have slain my sons." then great wolf, chief of the white pueblo, said: "i have two beautiful maiden daughters whom i shall give to you." then fox, chief of the blue pueblo in the south, promised him two more maidens, and the chiefs of the other pueblos promised him two each, so that eight beautiful maidens were promised to him in marriage. 588. the chief of the white pueblo now conducted the navaho to his house and into a large and beautiful apartment, the finest the poor indian had ever seen. it had a smooth wall, nicely coated with white earth, a large fireplace, mealing-stones, beautiful pots and water-jars, and all the conveniences and furniture of a beautiful pueblo home. and the chief said to him: "sadáni, my son-in-law, this house is yours." 589. the principal men from all the pueblos now came to visit him, and thanked him for the great service he had done for them. then his maidens from the yellow house came in bringing corn meal; the maidens from the black house entered bringing soap-weed, and the maidens of the white house, where he was staying, came bearing a large bowl of white shell. a suds of the soap-weed was prepared in the shell bowl. the maidens of the white house washed his head with the suds; the maidens of the black house washed his limbs and feet, and those of the yellow house dried him with corn meal. when the bath was finished the maidens went out; but they returned at dark, accompanied this time by the maidens of the blue house. each of the eight maidens carried a large bowl of food, and each bowl contained food of a different kind. they laid the eight bowls down before the navaho, and he ate of all till he was satisfied. then they brought in beautiful robes and blankets, and spread them on the floor for his bed. 590. next morning the navaho went over to the sky-hole, taking with him the young bees and the seeds of the tumble-weeds. to the former he said: "go down to the land of the navahoes and multiply there. my people will make use of you in the days to come; but if you ever cause them sorrow and trouble, as you have caused the people of this land, i shall again destroy you." as he spoke, he flung them down to the earth. then taking the seeds of the tumble-weeds in his hands, he spoke to them as he had spoken to the bees, and threw them down through the sky-hole. the honey of the bees and the seeds of the tumble-weeds are now used in the rites of yói hatál, or the bead chant. 591. the navaho remained in the pueblos of the eagle people twenty-four days, during which time he was taught the songs, prayers, ceremonies, and sacrifices of the eagles, the same as those now known to us in the rite of yói hatál;[259] and when he had learned all, the people told him it was time for him to return to the earth, whence he had come. 592. they put on him a robe of eagle plumage, such as they wore themselves, and led him to the sky-hole. they said to him: "when you came up from the lower world you were heavy and had to be carried by others. henceforth you will be light and can move through the air with your own power." he spread his wings to show that he was ready; the eagles blew a powerful breath behind him; he went down through the sky-hole, and was wafted down on his outstretched wings until he lit on the summit of tsótsil. 593. he went back to his own relations among the navahoes; but when he went back everything about their lodge smelt ill; its odors were intolerable to him, and he left it and sat outside.[260] they built for him then a medicine-lodge where he might sit by himself. they bathed his younger brother, clothed him in new raiment, and sent him, too, into the lodge, to learn what his elder brother could tell him. the brothers spent twelve days in the lodge together, during which the elder brother told his story and instructed the younger in all the rites and songs learned among the eagles. 594. after this he went to visit the pueblo of kintyél, whose inmates had before contemplated such treachery to him; but they did not recognize him. he now looked sleek and well fed. he was beautifully dressed and comely in his person, for the eagles had moulded, in beauty, his face and form. the pueblo people never thought that this was the poor beggar whom they had left to die in the eagles' nest. he noticed that there were many sore and lame in the pueblo. a new disease, they told him, had broken out among them. this was the disease which they had caught from the feathers of the eaglets when they were attacking the nest. "i have a brother," said the navaho, "who is a potent shaman. he knows a rite that will cure this disease." the people of the pueblo consulted together and concluded to employ his brother to perform the ceremony over their suffering ones. 595. the navaho said that he must be one of the atsá`lei,[261] or first dancers, and that in order to perform the rite properly he must be dressed in a very particular way. he must, he said, have strings of fine beads--shell and turquoise--sufficient to cover his legs and forearms completely, enough to go around his neck, so that he could not bend his head back, and great strings to pass over the shoulder and under the arm on each side. he must have the largest shell basin to be found in either pueblo to hang on his back, and the one next in size to hang on his chest. he must have their longest and best strings of turquoise to hang to his ears. the wind told him that the greatest shell basin they had was so large that if he tried to embrace it around the edge, his finger-tips would scarcely meet on the opposite side, and that this shell he must insist on having. the next largest shell, wind told him, was but little smaller.[262] 596. three days after this conference, people began to come in from different pueblos in the chaco canyon and from pueblos on the banks of the san juan,--all these pueblos are now in ruins,--and soon a great multitude had assembled. meantime, too, they collected shells and beads from the various pueblos in order to dress the atsá`lei as he desired. they brought him some great shell basins and told him these were what he wanted for the dance; but he measured them with his arms as wind had told him, and, finding that his hands joined easily when he embraced the shells, he discarded them. they brought him larger and larger shells, and tried to persuade him that such were their largest; but he tried and rejected all. on the last day, with reluctance, they brought him the great shell of kintyél and the great shell of ki'ndotliz. he clasped the first in his arms; his fingers did not meet on the opposite side. he clasped the second in his arms, and the tips of his fingers just met. "these," said he, "are the shells i must wear when i dance." 597. four days before that on which the last dance was to occur, the pueblo people sent out messengers to the neighboring camps of navahoes, to invite the latter to witness the exhibition of the last night and to participate in it with some of their alíli (dances or dramas). one of the messengers went to the chelly canyon and there he got gánaskidi, with his son and daughter, to come and perform a dance. the other messengers started for the navaho camp at the foot of tsótsil on the south (near where cobero is now). on his way he met an akáninili, or messenger, coming from tsótsil to invite the people of the chaco canyon to a great navaho ceremony. (you have heard all about the meeting of these messengers in the legend of the mountain chant. i shall not now repeat it.)[263] the messengers exchanged bows and quivers as a sign they had met one another, and the messenger from kintyél returned to his people without being able to get the navahoes to attend. this is the reason that, on the last night of the great ceremony of yói hatál, there are but few different dances or shows. 598. on the evening of the last day they built a great circle of branches, such as the navahoes build now for the rites of the mountain chant (fig. 37), and a great number of people crowded into the enclosure. they lighted the fires and dressed the atsá`lei in all their fine beads and shells just as he desired them to dress him. they put the great shell of kintyél on his back, and the great shell of ki'ndotliz on his chest, and another fine shell on his forehead. then the navaho began to dance, and his brother, the medicine-man, began to sing, and this was the song he sang:- the white-corn plant's great ear sticks up. stay down and eat. the blue-corn plant's great ear sticks up. stay down and eat. the yellow-corn plant's great ear sticks up. stay down and eat. the black-corn plant's great ear sticks up. stay down and eat. all-colored corn's great ear sticks up. stay down and eat. the round-eared corn's great ear sticks up. stay down and eat.[287] 599. this seemed a strange song to the pueblo people, and they all wondered what it could mean; but they soon found out what it meant, for they observed that the dancing navaho was slowly rising from the ground. first his head and then his shoulders appeared above the heads of the crowd; next his chest and waist; but it was not until his whole body had risen above the level of their heads that they began to realize the loss that threatened them. he was rising toward the sky with the great shell of kintyél, and all the wealth of many pueblos in shell-beads and turquoise on his body. then they screamed wildly to him and called him by all sorts of dear names--father, brother, son--to come down again, but the more they called the higher he rose. when his feet had risen above them they observed that a streak of white lightning passed under his feet like a rope, and hung from a dark cloud that gathered above. it was the gods that were lifting him; for thus, the legends say, the gods lift mortals to the sky. when the pueblos found that no persuasions could induce the navaho to return, some called for ropes that they might seize him and pull him down; but he was soon beyond the reach of their longest rope. then a shout was raised for arrows that they might shoot him; but before the arrows could come he was lost to sight in the black cloud and was never more seen on earth. notes. 1. how and when the name navajo (pronounced na'va-ho) originated has not been discovered. it is only known that this name was given by the spaniards while they still claimed the navaho land. the name is generally supposed to be derived from navaja, which means a clasp-knife, or razor, and to have been applied because the navaho warriors carried great stone knives in former days. it has been suggested that the name comes from navájo, a pool or small lake. the navahoes call themselves diné` or diné, which means simply, men, people. this word in the various forms, dénè, tinnéh, tunné, etc., is used as a tribal designation for many branches of the athapascan stock. 2. the carrizo mountains consist of an isolated mountain mass, about 12 miles in its greatest diameter, situated in the northeast corner of arizona. it is called by the navahoes dsilnáodsil, which means mountain surrounded by mountains; such is the appearance of the landscape viewed from the highest point, pastora peak, 9,420 feet high. 3. the san juan river, a branch of the colorado of the west, flows in a westerly direction through the northern portion of the navaho reservation, and forms in part its northern boundary. it is the most important river in the navaho country. it has two names in the navaho language: one is sánbito` (water of old age, or old age river), said to be given because the stream is white with foam and looks like the hair of an old man; the other is to`baká (male water), given because it is turbulent and strong in contrast to the placid rio grande, which the navahoes call to`baád, or female water. (see note 137.) perhaps the river has other names. 4. tu-in-tsá is derived from to` or tu (water) and intsá or intsá (abundant, scattered widely). the name is spelled tuincha, tuintcha, and tunicha on our maps. the tuincha mountains are situated partly in new mexico and partly in arizona, about 30 miles from the northern boundary of both territories. they form the middle portion of a range of which the chusca and lukachokai mountains form the rest. the portion known as tuintsá is about 12 miles long. the highest point is 9,575 feet above sea-level. the top of the range, which is rather level and plateau-like, is well covered with timber, mostly spruce and pine, and abounds in small lakes and ponds; hence the name tuintsá. 5. the basket illustrated in fig. 16 is made of twigs of aromatic sumac (rhus aromatica, var. trilobata). it is 13' in diameter and 3-3/8' deep. in forming the helical coil, the fabricator must always put the butt end of the twig toward the centre of the basket and the tip end toward the periphery, in accordance with the ceremonial laws governing the disposition of butts and tips (see notes 12 and 319). the sole decoration is a band, red in the middle with black zigzag edges. this band is intersected at one point by a narrow line of uncolored wood. this line has probably no relation to the "line of life" in ancient and modern pueblo pottery. it is put there to assist in the orientation of the basket at night, in the dim light of the medicine-lodge. in making the basket, the butt of the first twig is placed in the centre; the tip of the last twig, in the helix, must be in the same radial line, which is marked by the uncolored line crossing the ornamental band. this line must lie due east and west on certain ceremonial occasions, as for instance when the basket, inverted, is used as a drum during the last five nights of the night chant. the margin of this, as of other navaho baskets, is finished in a diagonally woven or plaited pattern, and there is a legend, which the author has related in a former paper,[321] accounting for the origin of this form of margin. if the margin is worn through or torn, the basket is unfit for sacred use. the basket is one of the perquisites of the shaman when the rites are done; but he, in turn, must give it away, and must be careful never to eat out of it. notwithstanding its sacred uses, food may be served in it. fig. 25 represents a basket of this kind used as a receptacle for sacrificial sticks and cigarettes. in this case the termination of the helix must be in the east, and the sacrifices sacred to the east must be in the eastern quarter of the basket. fig. 17 shows the other form of sacred basket. it is also made of aromatic sumac, and is used in the rites to hold sacred meal. the crosses are said to represent clouds, and the zigzag lines to indicate lightning. 6. the ceremonies of "house dedication" are described at some length by mr. a. m. stephen in his excellent paper on "the navajo,"[329] and he gives a free translation of a prayer and a song belonging to these rites. 7. a-na-yé, or a-ná-ye, is composed of two words, aná and yéi or ye. aná, sometimes contracted to na, signifies a member of an alien tribe,--one not speaking a language similar to the navaho,--and is often synonymous with enemy. ye (see par. 78) may be defined as genius or god. the anáye were the offspring of women conceived during the separation of the sexes in the fourth world. 8. ti-é-hol-tso-di is a water god, or water monster, a god of terrestrial waters,--not a rain god. he seems akin to the unktehi of the dakotas. he is said to dwell in the great water of the east, i.e., the atlantic ocean. although commonly spoken of as one, there is little doubt that the navahoes believe in many of the tiéholtsodi. probably every constant stream or spring has its own water god, (see note 152.) a picture of this god is said to be made in a dry-painting of the rite of hozóni hatál, but the author has not seen it. tiéholtsodi is described as having a fine fur, and being otherwise much like an otter in appearance, but having horns like a buffalo. (see pars. 140, 187, 484, 485.) 9. tsús-kai or tsó-is-kai is the name given by the navahoes to a prominent conical hill rising 8,800 feet above sea-level, in northwestern new mexico, about twenty-six miles north of defiance station on the atlantic and pacific railroad. it is called chusca knoll, chusca peak, and choiskai peak by geographers. it rises abruptly four hundred feet or more above the level of the neighboring ridge, is visible at a great distance from the south (but not from the north), and forms a prominent landmark. the navahoes limit the name tsúskai to this knoll, but the mexicans, and following them the americans, apply the name in different forms (chusca mountains, sierra de chusca, chuska, chuskai, tchuskai, etc.) to the whole mountain mass from which the knoll rises. the name, not accurately translated, contains the words for spruce (tso) and white (kai). 10. the bath forms an important part of the navaho rites, being administered on many occasions, and it is often mentioned in the tales. it usually consists of a suds made in a water-tight wicker basket by soaking the root of some species of yucca (see note 88) in water; the root of yucca baccata being usually preferred, as it seems richest in saponine. after the application of the suds, the subject is commonly rinsed off with plain water and dried by rubbing on corn meal. in different ceremonies different observances are connected with the bath. in the myth of "the mountain chant,"[314] pp. 389, 390, a bath is described as part of the ceremony of the deer-hunt. it is given, no doubt, in preparing for the hunt, for practical as well as religious reasons. it is important that the hunter should divest himself as much as possible of his personal odor when he goes to kill game. 11. pollen (navaho, thaditín) is obtained, for sacred uses, from various plants, but indian corn is the chief source of supply. the pollen is carried in small buckskin bags, which also usually contain small sacred stones, such as rock crystal and pyrophyllite, or small animal fetishes. the administration or sacrifice of pollen is a part of all rites witnessed, and almost always follows or accompanies prayer. it is used in different ways on different occasions; but the commonest way is to take a small pinch from the bag, apply a portion of it to the tongue and a portion to the crown of the head. for some purposes, the shaman collects a quantity of pollen, puts it in a large bag, immerses in it some live bird, insect, or other animal, and then allows the prisoner to escape. this is supposed to add extra virtue to the pollen. in one kind called i`yidezná a bluebird, a yellowbird, and a grasshopper are put in the pollen together. in note 49 we have a mythic account of pollen put on the young of the sea monster and then preserved. pollen which has been applied to a ceremonial dry-painting is preserved for future uses. pollen in which a live striped lizard has been placed is used to favor eutocia. the term thaditín is applied to various things having the appearance of an impalpable powder, such as the misty hues of the horizon in the morning and evening, due in arizona more frequently to dust in the air than to moisture. captain bourke, in "the medicine-men of the apache,"[295] chapter ii., describes many modes of using pollen which exist also among the navahoes. 12. the following are a few additional observances with regard to kethawns:-in cutting the reed used for a series of cigarettes, they cut off a piece first from the end nearest the root, and they continue to cut off as many pieces as may be necessary from butt to point. the pieces, according as they are cut, are notched near the butt (with a stone knife), so that the relations of the two extremities of the piece may not be forgotten. all through the painting of the cigarettes, and the various manipulations that follow, the butt end must be the nearer to the operator, and the tip end the farther away from him. since the cigarette-maker sits in the west of the medicine-lodge facing the east, the cigarettes, while there, must lie east and west, with the tips to the east. if a number of cigarettes are made for one act of sacrifice, the first piece cut off is marked with one notch near the base, the second piece with two notches, the third piece with three notches, the fourth piece with four notches, all near the butt ends. this is done in order that they may always be distinguished from one another, and their order of precedence from butt to tip may not be disregarded. when they are taken up to be painted, to have the sacred feathers of the bluebird and yellowbird inserted into them, to be filled with tobacco, to be sealed with moistened pollen, or to be symbolically lighted with the rock crystal, the piece that came from nearest the butt (the senior cigarette, let us call it) is taken first, that nearest the tip last. when they are collected to be placed in the patient's hands, when they are applied to his or her person, and finally when they are taken out and sacrificed, this order of precedence is always observed. the order of precedence in position, when sacrifices are laid out in a straight row, is from north to south; the senior sacrifice is in the northern extremity of the row, the junior or inferior in the southern extremity. when they are laid out in a circle, the order is from east back to east by the way of the south, west, and north. the gods to whom the sacrifices are made have commonly also an order of precedence, and when such is the case the senior sacrifice is dedicated to the higher god, the junior sacrifice to the lower god. when it is required that other articles, such as feathers, beads, powdered vegetable and mineral substances, be sacrificed with the cigarettes, all these things are placed in corn-husks. to do this, the husks are laid down on a clean cloth with their tips to the east; the cigarettes are laid in them one by one, each in a separate husk, with their tip ends to the east; and the sacred feathers are added to the bundle with their tips also to the east. when dry pollen is sprinkled on the cigarette, it is sprinkled from butt to tip. when moist pollen is daubed on the side of the cigarette, it is daubed from butt to tip. (from "a study in butts and tips.")[319] the hollow internode of the reed only is used. the part containing the solid node is discarded and is split up, so that when thrown away the gods may not mistake it for a true cigarette and suffer disappointment. all the débris of manufacture is carefully collected and deposited to the north of the medicine-lodge. the tobacco of commerce must not be employed. a plug of feathers, referred to above, is shoved into the tube from tip to butt (with an owl's feather) to keep the tobacco from falling out at the butt. the moistened pollen keeps the tobacco in at the tip end. the rules for measuring kethawns are very elaborate. one or more finger-joints; the span; the width of the outstretched hand, from tip of thumb to tip of little finger; the width of three finger-tips or of four finger-tips joined,--are a few of the measurements. each kethawn has its established size. this system of sacrifice is common among the pueblo tribes of the southwest, and traces of it have been found elsewhere. fig. 23 represents a thing called ketán yaltí, or talking kethawn (described in "the mountain chant,"[314] p. 452), consisting of a male stick painted black and a female stick painted blue. fig. 24 shows a kethawn used in the ceremony of the night chant; a dozen such are made for one occasion, but male and female are not distinguished. fig. 25 depicts a set of fifty-two kethawns, used also in the night chant: of these the four in the centre are cigarettes lying on meal; the forty-eight surrounding the meal are sticks of wood. those in the east are made of mountain mahogany, those in the south of forestiera neo-mexicana, those in the west of juniper, and those in the north of cherry. a more elaborate description of them must be reserved for a future work. 13. "sacred buckskin" is a term employed by the author, for convenience, to designate those deerskins specially prepared for use in making masks and for other purposes in the navaho rites. the following are some of the particulars concerning their preparation; perhaps there are others which the author has not learned: the deer which is to furnish the skin must not be shot, or otherwise wounded. it is surrounded by men on foot or horseback, and caused to run around until it falls exhausted; then a bag containing pollen is put over its mouth and nostrils, and held there till the deer is smothered. the dead animal is laid on its back. lines are marked with pollen, from the centre outwards along the median line of the body and the insides of the limbs. incisions are made with a stone knife along the pollen lines, from within outwards, until the skin is opened; the flaying may then be completed with a steel knife. when the skin is removed it is laid to the east of the carcass, head to the east, and hairy side down. the fibulæ and ulnæ are cut out and put in the skin in the places where they belong,--i.e., each ulna in the skin of its appropriate fore-leg, each fibula in the skin of its appropriate hind-leg. the hide may then be rolled up and carried off. both ulnæ are used as scrapers of the skin. if masks are to be made of the skin, the fibulæ are used as awls,--the right fibula in sewing the right sides of the masks, the left fibula in sewing the left sides of the masks. other rules (very numerous) for making the masks will not be mentioned in this place. fibulæ and ulnæ other than those belonging to the deer that furnished the skin must not be used on the latter. 14. this mask, made of leaves of yucca baccata, from which the thick dorsal portions have been torn away, is used in the rite of the night chant. the observances connected with the culling of the leaves, the manufacture of the mask, and the destruction of the same after use, are too numerous to be detailed here. the author never succeeded in getting such a mask to keep (the obligation on the shaman to tear it up when it has served its purpose seemed imperative), but he was allowed to take two photographs of it, one before the fringe of spruce twigs was applied, the other when the mask was finished, as shown in fig. 26. 15. the following account taken from "the prayer of a navajo shaman,"[315] and repeated here at the request of mr. newell, shows how definitely fixed was the limit of this part of the tale in the mind of the narrator:-"in none of my interviews with him (hatáli nez) had he shown any impatience with my demands for explanations as we progressed, or with interruptions in our work. he lingered long over his meals, lighted many cigarettes and smoked them leisurely, got tired early in the evening, and was always willing to go to bed as early as i would let him. when, however, he came to relate the creation myth, all this was changed. he arrived early; he remained late; he hastened through his meals; he showed evidence of worry at all delays and interruptions, and frequently begged me to postpone minor explanations. on being urged to explain this change of spirit he said that we were travelling in the land of the dead, in a place of evil and potent ghosts, just so long as he continued to relate those parts of the myth which recount the adventures of his ancestors in the nether world, and that we were in danger so long as our minds remained there; but that when we came to that part of the tale where the people ascend to this--the fifth and last world--we need no longer feel uneasy and could then take our time. his subsequent actions proved that he had given an honest explanation. "it was near sunset one afternoon, and an hour or more before his supper time, that he concluded his account of the subterranean wanderings of the navajos and brought them safely through the "place of emergence," in the san juan mountains, to the surface of this world. then he ceased to speak, rolled a cigarette, said he was tired, that he would not be able to tell me any more that night, and left me. "after his departure i learned that he had announced to some of his friends during the day that he would have to pray at night to counteract the evil effects of his journey through the lower world. after his supper he retired to the apartment among the old adobe huts at defiance in which he had been assigned room to sleep. i soon followed, and, having waited in the adjoining passage half an hour or more, i heard the voice of the old man rising in the monotonous tones of formulated prayer. knowing that the rules of the shaman forbade the interruption of any prayer or song, i abruptly entered the room and sat down on the floor near the supplicant." (thus the prayer in question became known to the author.) 15a. "tune us the sitar neither low nor high."--the light of asia. 16. hatál, in navaho, means a sacred song, a hymn or chant,--not a trivial song: hence the names of their great ceremonies contain this word, as dsilyi'dze hatál (the mountain chant); klédzi hatál (the night chant), etc. the man who conducts a ceremony is called hatáli (chanter or singer). as equivalents for this word the author uses the terms shaman, priest, medicine-man, and chanter. one who treats disease by drugs is called azé-eli'ni, or medicine-maker. 17. no antecedent. we are first told to whom "they" refers in paragraph 139. 18. in symbolizing by color the four cardinal points, the navahoes have two principal systems, as follows:- east. south. west. north. first system white. blue. yellow. black. second system black. blue. yellow. white. both systems are the same, except that the colors black and white change places. the reasons for this change have not been satisfactorily determined. in general, it seems that when speaking of places over ground--lucky and happy places--the first system is employed; while, when places underground--usually places of danger--are described, the second system is used. but there are many apparent exceptions to the latter rule. in one version of the origin legend (version b) the colors are arranged according to the second system both in the lower and upper worlds. in the version of the same legend here published the first system is given for all places in the lower worlds, except in the house of tiéholtsodi under the waters (par. 178), where the east room is described as dark and the room in the north as being of all colors. yet the indian who gave this version (hatáli nez), in his prayer of the rendition (note 315), applies the second system to all regions traversed below the surface of the earth by the gods who come to rescue the lost soul. although he does not say that the black chamber is in the east, he shows it corresponds with the east by mentioning it first. hatáli natlói, in the "story of nati'nesthani," follows the first system in all cases except when describing the house of tiéholtsodi under the water, where the first chamber is represented as black and the last as white. although in this case the rooms may be regarded as placed one above another, the black being mentioned first shows that it is intended to correspond with the east. in all cases, in naming the points of the compass, or anything which symbolizes them, or in placing objects which pertain to them (note 227), the east comes first, the south second, the west third, the north fourth. the sunwise circuit is always followed. if the zenith and nadir are mentioned, the former comes fifth and the latter sixth in order. the north is sometimes symbolized by "all colors," i.e., white, blue, yellow, and black mixed (note 22), and sometimes by red. in the myth of dsilyi'dze hatál[314] (the story of dsi'lyi` neyáni) five homes of holy people underground are described, in all of which the second system is used. see, also, note 111, where the second system is applied to the house of the sun. in the story of the "great shell of kintyél" at the home of the spider woman underground, in the sky world, the east is represented by black and the north by white. (see par. 581 and note 40.) 19. there are but three streams and but nine villages or localities mentioned, while twelve winged tribes are named. probably three are supposed to have lived in the north where no stream ran, or there may have been a fourth river in the navaho paradise, whose name is for some reason suppressed. references to the sacred number four are introduced with tiresome pertinacity into all navaho legends. 20. version b.--in the first world three dwelt, viz.: first man, first woman, and coyote. 21. the swallow to which reference is made here is the cliff swallow,--petrochelidon lunifrons. 22. the colors given to the lower worlds in this legend--red for the first, blue for the second, yellow for the third, and mixed for the fourth--are not in the line of ordinary navaho symbolism (note 18), but they agree very closely with some moki symbolism, as described by victor mindeleff in his "study of pueblo architecture,"[324] p. 129. the colors there mentioned, if placed in order according to the navaho system (note 18), would stand thus: red (east), blue (south), yellow (west), white (north). mixed colors sometimes take the place of the north or last in navaho symbolism. possibly moki elements have entered into this version of the navaho legend. (see par. 91.) 23. version b.--in the second world, when first man, first woman, and coyote ascended, they found those who afterwards carried the sun and moon, and, beyond the bounds of the earth, he of the darkness in the east, he of the blueness in the south, he of the yellowness in the west, and he of the whiteness in the north (perhaps the same as white body, blue body, etc., of the fourth world in the present version. see par. 160). sun and first woman were the transgressors who caused the exodus. 24. version b.--when the five individuals mentioned in note 23 came from the second world, they found the "people of the mountains" already occupying the third world. 25. version b.--the people were chased from the third world to the fourth world by a deluge and took refuge in a reed, as afterwards related of the flight from the fourth world. 26. in the navaho tales, when the yéi (genii, gods) come to visit men, they always announce their approach by calling four times. the first call is faint, far, and scarcely audible. each succeeding call is louder and more distinct. the last call sounds loud and near, and in a moment after it is heard the god makes his appearance. these particulars concerning the gods' approach are occasionally briefly referred to; but usually the story-teller repeats them at great length with a modulated voice, and he pantomimically represents the recipient of the visit, starting and straining his attention to discern the distant sounds. nearly every god has his own special call. a few have none. imperfect attempts have been made in this work to represent some of these calls by spelling them; but this method represents the original no better than "bob white" represents the call of a quail. some of the cries have been recorded by the writer on phonographic cylinders, but even these records are very imperfect. in the ceremonies of the navahoes, the masked representatives of the gods repeat these calls. the calls of hastséyalti and hastséhogan are those most frequently referred to in the tales. (pars. 287, 378, 471, etc.) 27. yellow corn belongs to the female, white corn to the male. this rule is observed in all navaho ceremonies, and is mentioned in many navaho myths. (pars. 164, 291, 379; note 107, etc.) 28. an ear of corn used for sacred purposes must be completely covered with full grains, or at least must have been originally so covered. one having abortive grains at the top is not used. for some purposes, as in preparing the implements used in initiating females in the rite of klédzi hatál, not only must the ear of corn be fully covered by grains, but it must be tipped by an arrangement of four grains. such an ear of corn is called tohonoti'ni. 29. the navaho word nátli or nu'tle is here translated hermaphrodite, because the context shows that reference is made to anomalous creatures. but the word is usually employed to designate that class of men, known perhaps in all wild indian tribes, who dress as women, and perform the duties usually allotted to women in indian camps. such persons are called berdaches (english, bardash) by the french canadians. by the americans they are called hermaphrodites (commonly mispronounced "morphodites"), and are generally supposed to be such. 30. these so-called hermaphrodites (note 29) are, among all indian tribes that the author has observed, more skilful in performing women's work than the women themselves. the navahoes, in this legend, credit them with the invention of arts practised by women. the best weaver in the navaho tribe, for many years, was a nátli. 31. masks made from the skins of deer-heads and antelope-heads, with or without antlers, have been used by various indian tribes, in hunting, to deceive the animals and allow the hunters to approach them. there are several references to such masks in the navaho tales, as in the story of nati'nesthani (par. 544) and in the myth of "the mountain chant," page 391.[314] in the latter story, rites connected with the deer mask are described. 32. the quarrel between first man and first woman came to pass in this way: when she had finished her meal she wiped her hands in her dress and said: "e`yéhe si-tsod" (thanks, my vagina). "what is that you say?" asked first man. "e`éhe si-tsod," she repeated. "why do you speak thus?" he queried; "was it not i who killed the deer whose flesh you have eaten? why do you not thank me? was it tsod that killed the deer?" "yes," she replied; "if it were not for that, you would not have killed the deer. if it were not for that, you lazy men would do nothing. it is that which does all the work." "then, perhaps, you women think you can live without the men," he said. "certainly we can. it is we women who till the fields and gather food: we can live on the produce of our fields, and the seeds and fruits we collect. we have no need of you men." thus they argued. first man became more and more angry with each reply that his wife made, until at length, in wrath, he jumped across the fire. 33. during the separation of the sexes, both the men and the women were guilty of shameful practices, which the story-tellers very particularly describe. through the transgressions of the women the anáye, alien gods or monsters, who afterwards nearly annihilated the human race, came into existence; but no evil consequences followed the transgressions of the men. thus, as usual, a moral lesson is conveyed to the women, but none to the men. 34, 35. notes 34 and 35 are omitted. 36. version a.--water in the east, black; south, blue; west, yellow; north, white. in the ceremony of hozóni hatál a picture representing tiéholtsodi and the four waters is said to be made. 37. version a says that the nodes were woven by the spider, and that different animals dwelt in the different internodes. version b says that the great reed took more than one day to grow to the sky; that it grew by day and rested by night; that the hollow internodes now seen in the reed show where it grew by day, and the solid nodes show where it rested by night. some say four reeds were planted to form one, others that one reed only was planted. 38. version b.--the turkey was the last to take refuge in the reed, therefore he was at the bottom. when the waters rose high enough to wet the turkey he gobbled, and all knew that danger was near. often did the waves wash the end of his tail; and it is for this reason that the tips of turkeys' tail-feathers are, to this day, lighter than the rest of the plumage. 39. version a.--first man and first woman called on all the digging animals (i'ndatsidi dáltso) to help. these were: bear, wolf, coyote, lynx, and badger. first, bear dug till he was tired; then coyote took his place, and so on. when badger was digging, water began to drip down from above: then they knew they had struck the waters of the upper world, and sent locust up. locust made a sort of shaft in the soft mud, such as locusts make to this day. 40. version a says there were four cranes; version b, that there were four swans. both versions say that the bird of the east was black, that of the south blue, that of the west yellow, and that of the north white. (see note 18.) 41. two versions, a and b, have it that the bird passed the arrows through from mouth to vent, and vice versa, but all make the locust pass his arrows through his thorax. another version relates that two of the birds said: "you can have the land if you let us strike you in the forehead with an axe." locust consented. they missed their aim and cut off his cheeks, which accounts for his narrow face now. version a relates that the arrows were plumed with eagle-feathers. 42. version a.--the locust, before transfixing himself with the arrows, shoved his vitals down into his abdomen; then he changed his mind and shoved them high into his chest. that accounts for his big chest now. 43. a small lake situated somewhere in the san juan mountains is said to be the place through which the people came from the fourth world to this world. it is surrounded, the indians tell, by precipitous cliffs, and has a small island near its centre, from the top of which something rises that looks like the top of a ladder. beyond the bounding cliffs there are four mountain peaks,--one to the east, one to the south, one to the west, and one to the north of the lake,--which are frequently referred to in the songs and myths of the navahoes. these indians fear to visit the shores of this lake, but they climb the surrounding mountains and view its waters from a distance. the place is called ha-dzi-naí, or ni-ho-yos-tsá-tse, which names may be freely translated place of emergence, or land where they came up. the san juan mountains abound in little lakes. which one of these is considered by the navahoes as their place of emergence is not known, and it is probable that it could only be determined by making a pilgrimage thither with a party of navahoes who knew the place. mr. whitman cross, of the united states geological survey, who has made extensive explorations in the san juan mountains, relates that trout lake is regarded by the indians as a sacred lake; that they will not camp near it, and call it a name which is rendered spirit lake. this sheet of water is designated as san miguel lake on the maps of hayden's survey. it lies near the line of the rio grande southern railroad, at the head of the south fork of san miguel river. it has no island. a small lake, which accords more in appearance with the navahoes' description of their sacred lake, is island lake. this has a small, rocky island in the middle. it is situated on a branch of the south fork of mineral creek, three miles southeast of ophir, colorado, at an altitude of 12,450 feet. prof. a. h. thompson has suggested that silver lake, about five miles southeasterly from silverton, colorado, may be the place of emergence. this lake is 11,600 feet above sea-level, and is surrounded by four high mountain peaks, but it has no island. 44. version a.--gánaskidi struck the cliffs with his wand. "gong ê'" it sounded, and broke the cliffs open. version b.--he of the darkness of the east cut the cliffs with his knife shaped like a horn. 45. version a.--they prayed to the four winds,--the black wind of the east, the blue wind of the south, the yellow wind of the west, and the white wind of the north,--and they sang a wind-song which is still sung in the rite of hozóni hatál. version b.--they prayed to the four winds. 46. the kisáni, being builders of stone houses, set up a stone wall; the others, representing the navahoes, set up a shelter of brushwood, as is the custom of the navahoes now. 47. tsi-di'l, or tsin-di'l is a game played by the navaho women. the principal implements of the game are three sticks, which are thrown violently, ends down, on a flat stone, around which the gamblers sit. the sticks rebound so well that they would fly far away, were not a blanket stretched overhead to throw them back to the players. a number of small stones, placed in the form of a square, are used as counters; these are not moved, but sticks, whose positions are changed according to the fortunes of the game, are placed between them. the rules of the game have not been recorded. the other games were: dilkón, played with two sticks, each the length of an arm; atsá, played with forked sticks and a ring; and aspi'n. 48. version a.--coyote and hastsézini were partners in the theft of the young of tiéholtsodi. when coyote saw the water rising, he pointed with his protruded lips (as indians often do) to the water, and glanced significantly at his accomplice. first man observed the glance, had his suspicions aroused, and began to search. 49. other variants of the story of the restoration of tiéholtsodi's young speak of sacrifices and peace offerings in keeping with the indian custom. version a.--they got a haliotis shell of enormous size, so large that a man's encircling arm could barely surround it. into this they put other shells and many precious stones. they sprinkled pollen on the young and took some of it off again, for it had been rendered more holy by contact with the bodies of the young sea monsters. then they put these also into the shell and laid all on the horns of tiéholtsodi; at once he disappeared under the earth and the waters went down after him. the pollen taken from the young was distributed among the people, and brought them rain and game and much good fortune. version b.--"at once they threw them (the young) down to their father, and with them a sacrifice of the treasures of the sea,--their shell ornaments. in an instant the waters began to rush down through the hole and away from the lower worlds." 50. some give the name of the hermaphrodite who died as natliyilhátse, and say that "she" is now the chief of devils in the lower world,--perhaps the same as the woman chief referred to in the "prayer of a navaho shaman." [315] version b says that the first to die was the wife of a great chief. (see note 68.) 51. version a describes the making of the sacred mountains thus: soon after the arrival of the people in the fifth world (after the first sudatory had been built and the first corn planted), some one said: "it would be well if we had in this world such mountains as we had in the world below." "i have brought them with me," said first man. he did not mean to say he had brought the whole of the mountains with him, but only a little earth from each, with which to start new mountains here. the people laid down four sacred buckskins[18] and two sacred baskets[5] for him to make his mountains on, for there were six sacred mountains in the lower world, just as there are six in this, and they were named the same there as they now are here. the mountain in the east, tsisnadzi'ni, he made of clay from the mountain of the east below, mixed with white shell. the mountain of the south, tsótsil, he made of earth from below mixed with turquoise. the mountain of the west he made of earth mixed with haliotis or abalone shell. the mountain of the north he made of earth mixed with cannel coal.[158] dsilnáotil he made of earth from the similar mountain in the lower world, mixed with goods of all kinds (yúdi althasaí). tsolíhi he made of earth from below, mixed with shells and precious stones of all kinds (inkli'z althasaí). while they were still on the buckskins and baskets, ten songs were sung which now belong to the rites of hozóni hatál. the burdens of these songs are as follows:- 1st. long ago he thought of it. 2d. long ago he spoke of it. 3d. a chief among mountains he brought up with him. 4th. a chief among mountains he has made. 5th. a chief among mountains is rising. 6th. a chief among mountains is beginning to stand. 7th. a chief among mountains stands up. 8th. a cigarette for a chief among mountains we make. 9th. a chief among mountains smokes. 10th. a chief among mountains is satisfied. when the people came up from the lower world they were under twelve chiefs, but only six of them joined in the singing these songs, and to-day six men sing them. when the mountains were made, the god of each of the four quarters of the world carried one away and placed it where it now stands. the other two were left in the middle of the world and are there still. a pair of gods were then put to live in each mountain, as follows: east, dawn boy and dawn girl, called also white shell boy and white shell girl; south, turquoise boy and turquoise girl; west, twilight boy and haliotis girl; north, darkness (or cannel coal) boy and darkness girl: at dsilnáotil, all-goods (yúdi-althasaí) boy and all-goods girl; at tsolíhi, all-jewels (inkli'z-althasaí) boy and all-jewels girl. version b speaks of the making of only four mountains, and very briefly of this. 52. tsis-na-dzi'n-i is the name of the sacred mountain which the navahoes regard as bounding their country on the east. it probably means dark horizontal belt. the mountain is somewhere near the pueblo of jemez, in bernalillo county, new mexico. it is probably pelado peak, 11,260 feet high, 20 miles n.n.e. of the pueblo. white shell and various other objects of white--the color of the east--belong to the mountain. 53. tse`-gá-di-na-ti-ni a-si-ké (rock crystal boy) and tse`-gá-di-na-ti-ni a-tét (rock crystal girl) are the deities of tsisnadzi'ni. they were brought up from the lower world as small images of stone; but as soon as they were put in the mountain they came to life. 54. tsó-tsil, or tsó`-dsil, from tso, great, and dsil, a mountain, is the navaho name of a peak 11,389 feet high in valencia county, new mexico. its summit is over twelve miles distant, in a direct line, east by north, from mccarty's station on the atlantic and pacific railroad. it is called by the mexicans san mateo, and was on september 18, 1849, named mt. taylor, "in honor of the president of the united states," by lieut. j. h. simpson, u.s. army.[328] on the maps of the united states geological survey, the whole mountain mass is marked "san mateo mountains," and the name "mount taylor" is reserved for the highest peak. this is one of the sacred mountains of the navahoes, and is regarded by them as bounding their country on the south, although at the present day some of the tribe live south of the mountain. they say that san mateo is the mountain of the south and san francisco is the mountain of the west, yet the two peaks are nearly in the same latitude. one version of the origin legend (version b) makes san mateo the mountain of the east, but all other versions differ from this. blue being the color of the south, turquoise and other blue things, as named in the myth, belong to this mountain. as blue also symbolizes the female, she-rain belongs to san mateo. plate iii. is from a photograph taken somewhere in the neighborhood of chavez station, about thirty-five miles in a westerly direction from the summit of the mountain. 55. dot-li'-zi lá-i na-yo-á-li a-si-ké, boy who carries one turquoise; na-tá lá-i na-yo-á-li atét, girl who carries one (grain of) corn. 56. do-kos-líd or do-ko-os-li'd, is the navaho name of san francisco mountain, one of the most prominent landmarks in arizona. the summit of this peak is distant in a direct line about twelve miles nearly north from the town of flagstaff, on the atlantic and pacific railroad, in yavapai county, arizona. the precise meaning of the indian name has not been ascertained, but the name seems to contain, modified, the words to` and kos, the former meaning water and the latter cloud. it is the sacred mountain of the navahoes, which they regard as bounding their land on the west. the color of the west, yellow, and the various things, mostly yellow, which symbolize the west, as mentioned in the myth, are sacred to it. haliotis shell, although highly iridescent, is regarded by the navahoes as yellow, and hence is the shell sacred to the mountain. in navaho sacred songs, the peak is called, figuratively, the wand of haliotis. plate ii. is from a photograph taken on the south side of the mountain, at a point close to the railroad, two or three miles east of flagstaff. 57. the name na-tál-kai a-si-ké (white corn boy) is from natán (corn), lakaí (white), and asiké or iské (boy). the name natáltsoi atét (yellow corn girl), comes from natán (corn), litsói (yellow), and atét (girl). in paragraph 291 mention is made of the creation of a white corn boy and a yellow corn girl. it is not certain whether these are the same as the deities of dokoslíd, but it is probable the navahoes believe in more than one divine pair with these names. 58. depe'ntsa, the navaho name for the san juan mountains in southwestern colorado, is derived from two words,--depé (the rocky mountain sheep) and intsá (scattered all over, widely distributed). these mountains are said to bound the navaho land on the north. somewhere among them lies níhoyostsátse, the place of emergence (note 43). black being the color of the north, various black things, such as pászini (cannel coal),[158] blackbirds, etc., belong to these mountains. there are many peaks in this range from 10,000 to 14,000 feet high. 59. tha-di-tín a-si-ké (pollen boy), a-nil-tá-ni a-tét (grasshopper girl). in paragraphs 290, 291, these are referred to again. in a dry-painting of klédzi hatál, grasshopper girl is depicted in corn pollen. 60. dsil-ná-o-til seems to mean a mountain encircled with blood, but the navahoes declare that such is not the meaning. they say it means the mountain that has been encircled by people travelling around it, and that, when estsánatlehi and her people lived there they moved their camp to various places around the base of the mountain. of course this is all mythical. had the author ever seen this mountain, he might conjecture the significance of the name; but he does not even know its location. the name of the carrizo mountains, dsilnáodsil, meaning mountain surrounded with mountains, is nearly the same; but when the writer visited the carrizo mountains in 1892 he was assured by the indians that the sacred hill was not there. dsilnáotil is rendered in this work encircled mountain, which is only an approximate translation. it is altogether a matter of conjecture why goods of all kinds--yúdi althasaí (see note 61)--are thought to belong to this mountain. 61. yú-di nai-di-si's-i a-si-ké, boy who produces goods, or causes the increase of goods; yú-di nai-di-si's-i a-tét (girl who produces goods). yódi or yúdi is here translated "goods." it originally referred to furs, skins, textile fabrics, and such things as indians bartered among themselves, except food and jewels. the term is now applied to nearly all the merchandise to be found in a trader's store. 62. tso-lí-hi, or tso-lín-i, is one of the seven sacred mountains of the navaho country. its location has not been determined, neither has the meaning of its name. perhaps the name is derived from tsó, the spruce (pseudotsuga taxifolia). we can only conjecture what relation the mountain may have to jewels. 63. tsoz-gá-li, a large yellow bird, species undetermined. 64. in-kli'z nai-di-si's-i a-si-ké (boy who produces jewels); in-kli'z nai-di-si's-i atét (girl who produces jewels). inkli'z means something hard and brittle. it is here translated "jewels" for want of a better term. it is not usually applied to finished jewels, but to the materials out of which the navaho jewels are made, such as shells, turquoise in the rough, cannel coal, and other stones, many of which are of little value to us, but are considered precious by the navahoes. 65. a-ki-da-nas-tá-ni, signifying one-round-thing-sitting-on-top-of-another, is the navaho name of an eminence called on our maps hosta butte, which is situated in bernalillo county, new mexico, 14 miles n.n.e. of chavez station on the atlantic and pacific railroad. this butte or mesa has an altitude of 8,837 feet. being surrounded by hills much lower, it is a prominent landmark. 66. tse`-ha-dá-ho-ni-ge, or mirage-stone, is so called because it is thought in some way to look like a mirage. the writer has seen pieces of this in the pollen bags of the medicine-men, but never could procure a piece of it. they offered to exchange for another piece, but would not sell. a stone (chinese idol) which they pronounced similar was analyzed by the chemists of the united states geological survey in washington, and found to be silicate of magnesia, probably pyrophyllite. such, perhaps, is the mirage-stone. the author offered the chinese idol to one of the shamans in exchange for his mirage-stone; but, having heard that the stone image represented a chinese god, the shaman feared to make the trade. 67. tó`-la-nas-tsi is a mixture of all kinds of water, i.e., spring water, snow water, hail water, and water from the four quarters of the world. such water tó`nenili is supposed to have carried in his jars. water used to-day in some of the navaho rites approximates this mixture as closely as possible. 68. the subject of the dead belonging to the sun and the moon is explained at length in the version of náltsos nigéhani (version b) thus: "on the fifth day (after the people came up to the surface of this world) the sun climbed as usual to the zenith and (then) stopped. the day grew hot and all longed for the night to come, but the sun moved not. then the wise coyote said: 'the sun stops because he has not been paid for his work; he demands a human life for every day that he labors; he will not move again till some one dies.' at length a woman, the wife of a great chief, ceased to breathe and grew cold, and while they all drew around in wonder, the sun was observed to move again, and he travelled down the sky and passed behind the western mountains.... that night the moon stopped in the zenith, as the sun had done during the day; and the coyote told the people that the moon also demanded pay and would not move until it was given. he had scarcely spoken when the man who had seen the departed woman in the nether world died, and the moon, satisfied, journeyed to the west. thus it is that some one must die every night, or the moon would not move across the sky. but the separation of the tribes occurred immediately after this, and now the moon takes his pay from among the alien races, while the sun demands the life of a navaho as his fee for passing every day over the earth." 69. many of the indians tell that the world was originally small and was increased in size. the following is the version of náltsos nigéhani (b): "the mountains that bounded the world were not so far apart then as they are now; hence the world was smaller, and when the sun went over the earth he came nearer to the surface than he does now. so the first day the sun went on his journey it was intolerably hot; the people were almost burned to death, and they prayed to the four winds that each one would pull his mountain away from the centre of the earth, and thus widen the borders of the world. it was done as they desired, and the seas that bounded the land receded before the mountains. but on the second day, although the weather was milder, it was still too hot, and again were the mountains and seas removed. all this occurred again on the third day; but on the fourth day they found the weather pleasant, and they prayed no more for the earth to be changed." 70. the story of the making of the stars is told in essentially the same way by many story-tellers. it is surprising that hatáli nez totally omitted it. the following is the tale as told by náltsos nigéhani: "now first man and first woman thought it would be better if the sky had more lights, for there were times when the moon did not shine at night. so they gathered a number of fragments of sparkling mica of which to make stars, and first man proceeded to lay out a plan of the heavens, on the ground. he put a little fragment in the north, where he wished to have the star that would never move, and he placed near it seven great pieces, which are the seven stars we behold in the north now. he put a great bright one in the south, another in the east, and a third in the west, and then went on to plan various constellations, when along came coyote, who, seeing that three pieces were red, exclaimed, 'these shall be my stars, and i will place them where i think best;' so he put them in situations corresponding to places that three great red stars now occupy among the celestial lights. before first man got through with his work, coyote became impatient, and, saying, 'oh! they will do as they are,' he hastily gathered the fragments of mica, threw them upwards, and blew a strong breath after them. instantly they stuck to the sky. those to which locations had been assigned adhered in their proper places; but the others were scattered at random and in formless clusters over the firmament." see "a part of the navajo's mythology," pp. 7, 8.[306] 71. the following are some of the destroyers who sprang from this blood:- tse`nagahi, travelling stone. tsindilhásitso, great wood that bites. bitsóziyeada`a`i, sánisdzol, old age lying down. tse`tlahódilyil, black under cliffs. tse`tlahódotli'z, blue under cliffs. tsé`tlahaltsó, yellow under cliffs tsé`tlahalkaí, white under cliffs. tse`tlahóditsos, sparkling under cliffs. tsadidahaltáli, devouring antelope. yeitsolapáhi, brown yéitso. lokáadikisi, slashing reeds. "you see colors under the rocks, at the bottoms of the cliffs, and when you approach them some invisible enemy kills you. these are the same as the tse`tlayaltí`, or those who talk under the cliffs." thus said hatáli nez when questioned. 72. kintyél or kintyê'li.--this name (from kin, a stone or adobe house, a pueblo house, and tyel, broad) means simply broad pueblo,--one covering much ground. it is applied to at least two ruined pueblos in the navaho country. one of these--the pueblo grande of the mexicans, situated "twenty-two or twenty-three miles north of navaho springs," a station on the atlantic and pacific railroad, in arizona--is well described and depicted by mr. victor mindeleff in his "study of pueblo architecture."[326] the other--the kintyél to which reference is made in this story--is in the chaco canyon, in new mexico. with its name spelled "kintail," and rendered "the navajo name for ruin," it is mentioned by mr. f. t. bickford,[293] and one of his pictures, probably representing kintyél, is here reproduced (fig. 36). in the journal of american folk-lore, april-june, 1889, the author says: "i have reason to believe that this pueblo is identical with that seen and described in 1849 by lieut. j. h. simpson, u.s.a., under the name of pueblo chettro kettle." 73. the name has-tsé-yal-ti, spelled according to the alphabet of the bureau of ethnology "qastcéyalçi" may be translated talking god, or talking elder of the gods. hastséyalti is otherwise called yébitsai, or the maternal grandfather of the gods. he is a chief or leader among several groups of local divinities who are said to dwell at kininaékai, in the chelly canyon, at tse'nitse, tsé`híhi, and at various other sacred places. although called a talking god, the man who personates him in the rites never speaks while in character, but utters a peculiar whoop and makes signs. in the myths, however, the god is represented as speaking, usually after he has whooped and made signs. (par. 472.) he is a beneficent character, always ready to help man and rescue him from peril. he is sometimes spoken of and prayed to as if there were but one, but the myths show that the navahoes believe in many gods of this name, and in some prayers it is distinctly specified which one is meant by naming his home in connection with him. in plate i. he is shown, as represented in the dry-paintings, carrying a tobacco bag made of the skin of abert's squirrel (sciurus aberti). in the picture the black tips of toes, nose, and ears, and the reddish (chestnut) spot on the back of the squirrel, are carefully indicated. the dry-painting shows the more important characters of the mask worn by the personator,--the eagle-plumes at the back, the owl-feathers at the base of the plume-ornament, and the peculiar symbols at mouth and eyes,--but it does not show the cornstalk symbol over the nose. fig. 27, taken from a photograph, shows the mask trimmed with its collar of fresh spruce boughs, as it appears when used in the dance of naakhaí on the last night of the ceremony of klédzi hatál. the personator of hastséyalti has his whole person clothed, while the representatives of other gods go nearly naked. the proper covering for his back is a number of finely dressed deerskins, one over another, tied together in front by the skins of the legs; but of late years the masquerader often appears in an ordinary calico shirt. the symbol surrounding each of the holes for the eyes and mouth is this [symbol]. it is said to represent the storm cloud hanging above, and the mist rising from below to meet it. thus cloud and mist often appear in the mountains of the navaho land during the rainy season, hastséyalti or the yébitsai is the principal character in the great rite of klédzi hatál, or the night chant. our people, who often go to witness the public performance of the last night in this rite, call it the yébitsai (yáybichy) dance. the songs and prayers in which hastséyalti is mentioned are numerous. for the points in which fig. 2, plate i., agree with fig. 1, plate i., see note 74. 74. has-tsé-ho-gan, spelled with alphabet of bureau of ethnology, qastcéqogan, may be freely translated house god. hastséhogan is one of the leading personages in each of the local groups of the yéi, or divine beings, who dwell in caves and old cliff-dwellings. he is commonly spoken of as if there were but one; but an examination of the myths shows that the navahoes believe in many of these gods. those of tse`gíhi, tsé`nihogan, tsé`nitse, kininaékai, and the sacred mountains are the ones most commonly worshipped. in most myths he appears as second in authority to hastséyalti, the talking god, but occasionally he is represented as equal or even superior to the latter. he is a farm god as well as a house god. to him are attributed the farm-songs sung during the night chant (see note 322), and many other songs. he is a beneficent character and a friend to man. there are many songs and prayers in his honor. in the rite of klédzi hatál, or the night chant, he is represented in the dance by a man wearing a collar of spruce, a blue mask decorated with eagle-plumes and moccasins, with shirt and leggings, which should be (but of late years are not always) of buckskin. he is depicted in the dry-paintings thus (see plate i., fig. 1): he wears a black shirt ornamented with four star-like ornaments embroidered in porcupine quills, and having a fancy fringe of porcupine quills at the bottom; white buckskin leggings; colored garters; quill-embroidered moccasins, tied on with white strings; long ear-pendants of turquoise and coral; bracelets of the same; an otter-skin (hanging below the right ear), from which depend six buckskin strings with colored porcupine quills wrapped around them; a cap-like (male) mask painted blue, fringed with red hair, and adorned with eagle-plumes and owl-feathers. he carries a staff (gis) painted black (with the charcoal of four sacred plants), streaked transversely with white, and adorned with a single cluster of turkey tail-feathers arranged as a whorl, and two eagle plumes, which, like the plumes on the head, are tipped with small, downy eagle-feathers. the yellow stripe at the chin indicates a similar stripe on the mask actually worn, and symbolizes the yellow light of evening (nahotsóí). the neck of this as well as the other divine figures is painted blue, and crossed with four stripes in red. some say that this indicates the larynx with its cartilaginous rings; others say that it represents the collar of spruce-twigs; others are uncertain of its meaning. if it does not represent the spruce collars, it represents nothing in the costume of the masquerader, which, in other respects, except the quill embroideries, agrees closely with the picture, hastséyalti is also a dawn god, hastséhogan a god of evening. 75. in the navaho tales, men frequently receive friendly warnings or advice from wind gods who whisper into their ears. some story-tellers--as in the version of the origin myth here given--speak of one wind god only, whom they call simply ni'ltsi (wind); while others--as in the story of nati'nesthani--speak of ni'ltsi-diné` (wind people) and niltsiázi-diné` (little wind people) as the friendly prompters. 76. the game of nánzoz, as played by the navahoes, is much the same as the game of chungkee played by the mandans, described and depicted by catlin in his "north american indians,"[296] vol. i., page 132, plate 59. a hoop is rolled along the ground and long poles are thrown after it. the mandan pole was made of a single piece of wood. the pole of the navahoes is made of two pieces, usually alder, each a natural fathom long; the pieces overlap and are bound together by a long branching strap of hide called thágibike, or turkey-claw. 77. these shells may not be altogether mythical. possibly they are the same as those described in the story of "the great shell of kintyél" given in this book. 78. vague descriptions only of bé-ko-tsi-di so far have been obtained. he is not represented by any masked characters in the ceremonies, or by any picture in the dry-paintings. no description of his appearance has been recorded, except that he looks like an old man. there is a myth concerning him of which a brief epitome has been recorded. there are four songs of sequence connected with this myth. if a navaho wants a fine horse, he thinks he may get it by singing the second and third of these songs and praying to békotsidi. in his prayer he specifies the color and appearance of the horse desired. some say that békotsidi made all the animals whose creation is not otherwise accounted for in the myths. others say that he and the sun made the animals together. others, again, limit his creation work to the larger game animals and the modern domestic animals. in this paragraph (228) it is said he is the god who carries the moon, while in paragraph 199 it is said the moon-bearer is kléhanoai. perhaps these are two names for one character. some say he is the same as the god of the americans. 79. bayeta, spanish for baize. the variety of baize which finds its way into the navaho country is dyed some shade of crimson, and has a very long nap. it is supposed to be made in england especially for the spanish-american trade, for each original bale bears a gaudy colored label with an inscription in spanish. it takes the place in the southwest of the scarlet strouding which used to form such an important article in the trade of our northern tribes. the bright red figures in the finer navaho blankets, fifteen years or more ago, were all made of threads of ravelled bayeta. 80. the coyote, or prairie-wolf (canis latrans), would seem to be regarded by the navahoes as the type, or standard for comparison, among the wild canidæ of the southwest. the coyote is called mai; the great wolf, maítso, which means great coyote; and the kit fox (vulpes velox) is called maidotli'z, which means blue or gray coyote. 81. some versions say there were twelve brothers and one sister in this divine family, making thirteen in all. in this version the narrator tells how another brother was created by estsánatlehi to make up for the loss of léyaneyani, who left the brotherhood. (par. 417.) although called diné` nakidáta, or the twelve people, these brothers are evidently divinities. true, they once died; but they came to life again and are now immortal. they are gifted with superhuman powers. 82. the sweat-house of the navahoes (par. 25, fig. 15) is usually not more than three feet high. diaphoresis is produced on the principle of the turkish (not the russian) bath. while the indians of the north pour water on the hot stones and give a steam bath, the navahoes simply place stones, heated in a fire outside, on the floor of the sweat-house, cover the entrance with blankets, and thus raise a high heat that produces violent perspiration. when the occupant comes out, if the bath is not ceremonial, he rolls himself in the sand, and, when his skin is thus dried, he brushes the sand away. he usually returns then to the sweat-house, and may repeat the operation several times in a single afternoon. if the sweat is ceremonial, the bath of yucca suds usually follows (see note 10), and the subject is dried with corn meal. 83. one version relates that, before they entered the sudatory, coyote proposed they should produce emesis by tickling their throats,--a common practice among the navahoes. he placed a large piece of pine bark before each, as a dish, and bade yélapahi keep his eyes shut till he was told to open them. that day coyote had fared poorly. he had found nothing to eat but a few bugs and worms, while yélapahi had dined heartily on fat venison. when the emesis was over, coyote exchanged the bark dishes and said to yélapahi: "open your eyes and see what bad things you have had in your stomach. these are the things that make you sick." the giant opened his eyes and beheld on the bark a lot of bugs and worms. "it is true, my friend, what you tell me," he said. "how did i get such vile things into me? no wonder i could not run fast." coyote then told the giant to go before him into the sudatory, and when the giant had turned his back the hungry coyote promptly devoured the contents of the other dish of bark. 84. the word tóhe (englished thóhay), which may be interpreted stand, stick, or stay, is, in various rites, shouted in an authoritative tone when it is desired that some object shall obey the will of the conjurer. thus in the dance of the standing arcs, as practised in the rite of the mountain chant, when an arc is placed on the head of a performer, and it is intended that it should stand without apparent means of support, the cry "tóhe" is frequently repeated. (see "the mountain chant,"[314] p. 437.) 85. the statement that the hair of the gods, both friendly and alien, is yellow, is made in other tales also. the hair of the ceremonial masks is reddish or yellowish. (see plates iv. and vii.) the hair of the gods is represented by red in the dry-pictures. dull tints of red are often called yellow by the navahoes. various conjectures may be made to account for these facts. 86. the bridge of rainbow, as well as the trail of rainbow, is frequently introduced into navaho tales. the navaho land abounds in deep chasms and canyons, and the divine ones, in their wanderings, are said to bridge the canyons by producing rainbows. in the myth of "the mountain chant," p. 399 (note 314), the god hastséyalti is represented as making a rainbow bridge for the hero to walk on. the hero steps on the bow, but sinks in it because the bow is soft; then the god blows a breath that hardens the bow, and the man walks on it with ease. a natural bridge near fort defiance, arizona, is thought by the navahoes to have been originally one of the rainbow bridges of hastséyalti (see fig. 38.) 87. the spiders of arizona are largely of the classes that live in the ground, including trap-door spiders, tarantulas, etc. 88. this legend and nearly all the legends of the navaho make frequent allusions to yucca. four kinds are mentioned: 1st, tsási or haskán. yucca baccata (torrey); 2d, tsasitsóz, or slender yucca, yucca glauca (nuttall), yucca angustifolia (pursh); 3d, yebitsasi, or yucca of the gods, probably yucca radiosa (trelease), yucca elata (engelmann); 4th, tsasibité or horned yucca, which seems to be but a stunted form or dwarf variety of yucca baccata, never seen in bloom or in fruit by the author. tsási is used as a generic name. all kinds are employed in the rites, sometimes indifferently; at other times only a certain species may be used. thus in the sacred game of kesitsé,[176] the counters are made of the leaves of y. glauca; in the initiation into the mystery of the yébitsai, the candidate is flogged with the leaf of y. baccata. fig. 26 represents a mask used in the rites of klédzi hatál, which must be made only of the leaves of y. baccata, culled with many singular observances. all these yuccas have saponine in their roots (which are known as tálawus or foam), and all are used for cleansing purposes. all have, in their leaves, long tough fibres which are utilized for all the purposes to which such fibres may be applied. one species only, yucca baccata, has an edible fruit. this is called haskán (from hos, thorny, and kan, sweet), a name sometimes applied to the whole plant. the fruit is eaten raw and made into a tough, dense jelly, both by the navaho and pueblo indians. the first and second kinds grow abundantly in the navaho country; the third and fourth kinds are rarer. fig. 40 represents a drumstick used in the rites of klédzi hatál, which must be made only of four leaves of yucca baccata. the intricate observances connected with the manufacture, use, destruction, and sacrifice of this drumstick have already been described by the author.[321] 89. the cane cactus is opuntia arborescens (engelm.). 90. tsiké sas nátlehi means literally young woman who changes to a bear, or maid who becomes a bear. to judge from this tale, it might be thought that there was but one such character in the navaho mythology and that she had died. but it appears from other legends and from rituals that the navahoes believe in several such maidens, some of whom exist to this day. the hill of tsúskai (note 9) is said in the myth of dsilyi'dze hatál to be the home of several of the tsiké sas nátlehi now. it would seem from the songs of dsilyi'dze hatál that the maid who becomes a bear of later days is not considered as malevolent as the first of her kind. her succor is sought by the sick. 91. see par. 26. from the language of this story, the conclusion may be drawn that death is not the only thing that renders a house haunted or evil but that, if great misfortune has entered there, it is also to be avoided. 92. this remark must refer only to the particular group whose story is traced. according to the legend, other bands of diné` who had escaped the fury of the alien gods, existed at this time, and when they afterwards joined the navahoes they were known as diné` digíni (holy or mystic people). (see pars. 385 and 387.) 93. the gods, and such men as they favor, are represented in the tales as making rapid and easy journeys on rainbows, sunbeams, and streaks of lightning. such miraculous paths are called eti'n digíni, or holy trails. they are also represented as using sunbeams like rafts to float through the air. 94. compare this account with the creation of first man and first woman. (pars. 162-164.) 95. es-tsá-na-tle-hi (par. 72) is never represented in the rites by a masquerader, and never depicted in the sand-paintings, as far as the author has been able to learn. other versions of the legend account for her creation in other ways. version a.--first man and first woman stayed at dsilnáotil and camped in various places around the mountain. one day a black cloud descended on the mountain of tsolíhi, and remained there four days. first man said: "surely something has happened from this; let some one go over there and see." first woman went. she approached the mountain from the east, and wound four times around it in ascending it. on the top she found a female infant, who was the daughter of the earth mother (naestsán, the woman horizontal) and the sky father (yádilyil, the upper darkness). she picked up the child, who till that moment had been silent; but as soon as she was lifted she began to cry, and never ceased crying until she got home to dsilnáotil. salt woman said she wanted the child. it is thought the sun fed the infant on pollen, for there was no one to nurse it. in twelve days she grew to be a big girl, and in eighteen days she became a woman, and they held the nubile ceremony over her. twelve songs belong to this ceremony. version b only says that first woman found the infant lying on the ground and took it home to rear it. (see "some deities and demons of the navajos,"[313] pp. 844, 846.) 96. yol-kaí es-tsán signifies white shell woman. yolkaí is derived by syncope from yo (a bead, or the shell from which a bead is made) and lakaí (white). estsán means woman. as far as known, she is not represented by a character in any of the ceremonies, and not depicted in the dry-paintings. 97. note omitted. 98. tó`-ne-ni-li or tó-ne-ni-li, water sprinkler, is an important character in navaho mythology. he is a rain-god. in the dry-paintings of the navaho rites he is shown as wearing a blue mask bordered with red, and trimmed on top with life-feathers. sometimes he is represented carrying a water-pot. in the rite of klédzi hatál, during the public dance of the last night, he is represented by a masked man who enacts the part of a clown. while other masked men are dancing, this clown performs various antics according to his caprice. he walks along the line of dancers, gets in their way, dances out of order and out of time, peers foolishly at different persons, or sits on the ground, his hands clasped across his knees, his body rocking to and fro. at times he joins regularly in the dance; toward the close of a figure, and when the others have retired, pretending he is unaware of their departure, he remains, going through his steps. then, feigning to suddenly discover the absence of the dancers, he follows them on a full run. sometimes he carries a fox-skin, drops it on the ground, walks away as if unconscious of his loss; then, pretending to become aware of his loss, he turns around and acts as if searching anxiously for the skin, which lies plainly in sight. he screens his eyes with his hand and crouches low to look. then, pretending to find the skin, he jumps on it and beats it as if it were a live animal that he seeks to kill. next he shoulders and carries it as if it were a heavy burden. with such antics the personator of tó`nenili assists in varying the monotony of the long night's performance. though shown as a fool in the rites, he is not so shown in the myths. 99. they manipulated the abdominal parietes, in the belief that by so doing they would insure a favorable presentation. this is the custom among the navahoes to-day. 100. among the navahoes, medicine-men act as accoucheurs. 101. other versions make estsánatlehi the mother of both war gods, and give a less imaginative account of their conception. version a.--the maiden estsánatlehi went out to get wood. she collected a bundle, tied it with a rope, and when she knelt down to lift it she felt a foot pressed upon her back; she looked up and saw no one. three times more kneeling, she felt the pressure of the foot. when she looked up for the fourth time, she saw a man. "where do you live?" he asked. "near by," she replied, pointing to her home. "on yonder mountain," he said, "you will find four yuccas, each of a different kind, cut on the north side to mark them. dig the roots of these yuccas and make yourself a bath. get meal of tohonoti'ni corn (note 28), yellow from your mother, white from your father (note 27). then build yourself a brush shelter away from your hut and sleep there four nights." she went home and told all this to her foster parents. they followed all the directions of the mysterious visitor, for they knew he was the sun. during three nights nothing happened in the brush shelter that she knew of. on the morning after the fourth night she was awakened from her sleep by the sound of departing footsteps, and, looking in the direction that she heard them, she saw the sun rising. four days after this (or twelve days, as some say) nayénezgani was born. four days later she went to cleanse herself at a spring, and there she conceived of the water, and in four days more to`badzistsíni, the second war god, was born to her. version b.--the sun (or bearer of the sun) met her in the woods and designated a trysting place. here first man built a corral of branches. sun visited her, in the form of an ordinary man, in the corral, four nights in succession. four days after the last visit she gave birth to twins, who were nayénezgani and to`badzistsíni. (see "a part of the navajos' mythology,"[306] pp. 9, 10.) 102. version a thus describes the baby basket of the elder brother: the child was wrapped in black cloud. a rainbow was used for the hood of the basket and studded with stars. the back of the frame was a parhelion, with the bright spot at its bottom shining at the lowest point. zigzag lightning was laid on each side and straight lightning down the middle in front. niltsátlol (sunbeams shining on a distant rainstorm) formed the fringe in front where indians now put strips of buckskin. the carrying-straps were sunbeams. 103. the mountain mahogany of new mexico and arizona is the cercocarpus parvifolius, nutt. it is called by the navahoes tsé`estagi, which means hard as stone. 104. round cactus, one or more species of mammilaria. sitting cactus, cereus phoeniceus, and perhaps other species of cereus. 105. yé-i-tso (from yéi, a god or genius, and tso, great) was the greatest and fiercest of the anáye, or alien gods. (par. 80, note 7.) all descriptions of him are substantially the same. (see pars. 323, 325, 326.) according to the accounts of hatáli nez and torlino, his father was a stone; yet in par. 320 and in version b the sun is represented as saying that yéitso is his child. perhaps they mean he is the child of the sun in a metaphysical sense. 106. this part of the myth alludes to the trap-door spiders, or tarantulæ of the southwest, that dwell in carefully prepared nests in the ground. 107. by life-feather or breath-feather (hyiná biltsós) is meant a feather taken from a live bird, especially one taken from a live eagle. such feathers are supposed to preserve life and possess other magic powers. they are used in all the rites. in order to secure a supply of these feathers, the pueblo indians catch eaglets and rear them in captivity (see pars. 560 et seq.); but the navahoes, like the wild tribes of the north, catch full-grown eagles in traps, and pluck them while alive. this method of catching eagles has been described by the author in his "ethnography and philology of the hidatsa indians."[305] 108. pollen being an emblem of peace, this is equivalent to saying, "put your feet down in peace," etc. 109. version a in describing the adventure with spider woman adds: there were only four rungs to the ladder. she had many seats in her house. the elder brother sat on a seat of obsidian; the younger, on a seat of turquoise. she offered them food of four kinds to eat; they only accepted one kind. when they had eaten, a small image of obsidian came out from an apartment in the east and stood on a serrated platform, or platform of serrate knives. the elder brother stood on the platform beside the image. spider woman blew a strong breath four times on the image in the direction of the youth, and the latter became thus endowed with the hard nature of the obsidian, which was to further preserve him in his future trials. from the south room came a turquoise image, and stood on a serrated platform. the younger brother stood beside this. spider woman blew on the turquoise image toward him, and he thus acquired the hard nature of the blue stone. to-day in the rites of hozóni hatál they have a prayer concerning these incidents beginning, "now i stand on pésdolgas." (see note 264.) 110. in describing the journey of the war gods to the house of the sun, version a adds something. at tó`sato or hot spring (ojo gallina, near san rafael), the brothers have an adventure with tiéholtsodi, the water monster, who threatens them and is appeased with prayer. they encounter old age people, who treat them kindly, but bid them not follow the trail that leads to the house of old age. they come to hayolkál, daylight, which rises like a great range of mountains in front of them. (songs.) they fear they will have to cross this, but daylight rises from the ground and lets them pass under.... they come to tsalyél, darkness. wind whispers into their ears what songs to sing. they sing these songs and tsalyél rises and lets them pass under. they come to water, which they walk over. on the other side they meet their sister, the daughter of the sun, who dwells in the house of the sun. she speaks not, but turns silently around, and they follow her to the house. 111. according to version a, there were four sentinels of each kind, and they lay in the passageway or entrance to the house. a curtain hung in front of each group of four. in each group the first sentinel was black, the second blue, the third yellow, the fourth white. the brothers sang songs to the guardians and sprinkled pollen on them. 112. version a gives the names of these two young men as black thunder and blue thunder. 113. the teller of the version has omitted to mention that the brothers, when they entered the house, declared that they came to seek their father, but other story-tellers do not fail to tell this. 114. four articles of armor were given to each, and six different kinds of weapons were given to them. the articles of armor were: peské (knife moccasins), pesistlê' (knife leggings), pesê' (knife shirt), and pestsá (knife hat). the word "pes" in the above names for armor, is here translated knife. the term was originally applied to flint knives, and to the flakes from which flint knives were made. after the introduction of european tools, the meaning was extended to include iron knives, and now it is applied to any object of iron, and, with qualifying suffixes, to all kinds of metal. thus copper is peslitsí, or red metal, and silver, peslakaí, or white metal. many of the navahoes now think that the mythic armor of their gods was of iron. such the author believed it to be in the earlier years of his investigation among the navahoes, and he was inclined to believe that they borrowed the idea of armored heroes from the spanish invaders of the sixteenth century. later studies have led him to conclude that the conception of armored heroes was not borrowed from the whites, and that the armor was supposed to be made of stone flakes such as were employed in making knives in the prehistoric days. the mokis believe that their gods and heroes wore armor of flint. 115. the weapons were these:- atsinikli'ska (chain-lightning arrows) hatsilki'ska or hadilki'ska (sheet-lightning arrows) sa`bitlólka (sunbeam arrows) natsili'tka (rainbow arrows) peshál (stone knife-club) hatsoilhál, which some say was a thunderbolt, and others say was a great stone knife, with a blade as broad as the hand. some say that only one stone knife was given, which was for nayénezgani, and that only two thunderbolts were given, both of which were for to`badzistsíni. the man who now personates nayénezgani in the rites carries a stone knife of unusual size (plate iv.); and he who personates to`badzistsíni carries in each hand a wooden cylinder (one black and one red) to represent a thunderbolt. (plate vii.) 116. version a adds that when they were thus equipped they were dressed exactly like their brothers black thunder and blue thunder, who dwelt in the house of the sun. 117. the man who told this tale explained that there were sixteen poles in the east and sixteen in the west to join earth and sky. others say there were thirty-two poles on each side. the navahoes explain the annual progress of the sun by saying that at the winter solstice he climbs on the pole farthest south in rising; that as the season advances he climbs on poles farther and farther north, until at the summer solstice he climbs the pole farthest north; that then he retraces his way, climbing different poles until he reaches the south again. he is supposed to spend about an equal number of days at each pole. 118. many versions relate that the bearer of the sun rode a horse, or other pet animal. the navaho word here employed is lin, which means any domesticated or pet animal, but now, especially, a horse. version a says the animal he rode was made of turquoise and larger than a horse. such versions have great difficulty in getting the horse up to the sky. version a makes the sky dip down and touch the earth to let the horse ascend. of course the horse is a modern addition to the tale. they never saw horses until the sixteenth century, and previous to that time it is not known that any animal was ridden on the western continent. version b merely says that the sun "put on his robe of cloud, and, taking one of his sons under each arm, he rose into the heavens." 119. version b says they all ate a meal on their journey to the sky-hole. version a says that they ate for food, at the sky-hole, before the brothers descended, a mixture of five kinds of pollen, viz.: pollen of white corn, pollen of yellow corn, pollen of dawn, pollen of evening twilight, and pollen of the sun.[11] these were mixed with tó`lanastsi, all kinds of water.[67] 120. tó`-sa-to or warm spring is at the village of san rafael, valencia county, new mexico. it is about three miles in a southerly direction from grant's, on the atlantic and pacific railroad, five miles from the base and eighteen miles from the summit of mount taylor, in a southwesterly direction from the latter. the lake referred to in the myth lies about two miles southeast of the spring. 121. according to version a, the monsters or anáye were all conceived in the fifth world and born of one woman (a granddaughter of first woman), who travelled much and rarely stayed at home. according to version b, the monsters were sent by first woman, who became offended with man. 122. version a gives, in addition to tsótsil, the names of the other three hills over which yéitso appeared. these were: in the east, sa`akéa`; in the south, dsilsitsí (red mountain); in the west, tse`lpaináli (brown rock hanging down). 123. version a.--"hragh!" said he, with a sigh of satisfaction (pantomimically expressed), "i have finished that." 124. yiniketóko! no etymology has been discovered for this expression. it is believed to be the equivalent of the "fee fa fum!" of the giants in our nursery tales. 125. version b.--this bolt rent his armor. 126. it is common in this and all other versions to show that evil turns to good (see pars. 338, 345, 349, et al.) and that the demons dead become useful to man in other forms. how the armor of yéitso became useful to man, the narrator here forgot to state; but it may be conjectured that he should have said that it furnished flint flakes for knives and arrow-heads. 127. other versions state, more particularly, that, in accordance with the indian custom, these names were given when the brothers returned to their home, and the ceremony of rejoicing (the "scalp-dance") was held for their first victory. nayénezgani is derived from na, or aná (alien or enemy: see note 7); yéi, ye or ge (a genius or god; hence anáye, an alien god or giant: see par. 80); nezgá` (to kill with a blow or blows, as in killing with a club); and the suffix ni (person). the name means, therefore, slayer of the alien gods, or slayer of giants. as the sounds of g and y before e are interchangeable in the navaho language, the name is heard pronounced both nayénezgani and nagénezgani,--about as often one way as the other. in previous essays the author has spelled it in the latter way; but in this work he gives preference to the former, since it is more in harmony with his spelling of other names containing the word "ye" or "yéi." (see par. 78.) to`-ba-dzis-tsí-ni is derived from to` (water), ba (for him), dzistsín (born), and the suffix ni. the name therefore means, literally, born for the water; but the expression badzistsín (born for him) denotes the relation of father and child,--not of a mother and child,--so that a free translation of the name is child of the water. the second name of this god, naídikisi, is rarely used. 128. about 40 miles to the northeast of the top of mt. san mateo there is a dark, high volcanic hill called by the mexicans el cabezon, or the great head. this is the object which, according to the navaho story-tellers, was the head of yéitso. around the base of san mateo, chiefly toward the east and north, there are several more high volcanic peaks, of less prominence than el cabezon, which are said to have been the heads of other giants who were slain in a great storm raised by the war gods. (see pars. 358, 359.) plate v. shows six of these volcanic hills. the high truncated cone in the distance (17 miles from the point of view) is el cabezon. captain clarence e. dutton, u.s.a., treats of the geologic character of these cones in his work on mount taylor.[299] plate v. is taken from the same photograph as his plate xxi. in lieut. simpson's report,[328] p. 73, this hill is described under the name cerro de la cabeza, and a picture of it is given in plate 17 of said report. it is called "cabezon pk." on the accompanying map. 129. to the south and west of the san mateo mountains there is a great plain of lava rock of geologically recent origin, which fills the valley and presents plainly the appearance of having once been flowing. the rock is dark and has much resemblance to coagulated blood. this is the material which, the navahoes think, was once the blood of yéitso. in some places it looks as if the blood were suddenly arrested, forming high cliffs; here the war god is supposed to have stopped the flow with his knife. plate vi. shows this lava in the valley of the rio san josé, from a photograph supplied by the united states geological survey. 130. version a adds some particulars to the account of the return of the brothers to their home, after their encounter with yéitso. they first went to azíhi, the place at which they descended when they came from the sky, and then to kainipéhi. on their way home they sang twenty songs--the nidotátsogisin--which are sung to-day in the rites of hozóni hatál. near dsilnáotil, just at daybreak, they met hastséyalti and hastséhogan, who embraced them, addressed them as grandchildren, sang two songs, now belonging to the rites, and conducted the young heroes to their home. 131. té-el-get, tê-el-ge'-ti and del-gét are various pronunciations of the name of this monster. in the songs he is sometimes called bi-té-el-ge-ti, which is merely prefixing the personal pronoun "his" to the name. the exact etymology has not been determined. the name has some reference to his horns; tê, or te, meaning horns, and bité, his horns, in navaho. all descriptions of this anáye are much alike. his father, it is said, was an antelope horn. 132. arabis holböllii (hornemann), a-ze-la-dil-té-he, "scattered" or "lone medicine." the plants grow single and at a distance from one another, not in beds or clusters. (see "navajo names for plants,"[312] p. 770.) 133. version a relates that they sang, while at work on these kethawns, six songs, which, under the name of atsós bigi'n, or feather songs, are sung now in the rite of hozóni hatál. 134. version a says that the horns of téelget were like those of an antelope, and that nayénezgani cut off the short branch of one as an additional trophy. 135. tse`na'-ha-le. these mythic creatures, which in a previous paper, "a part of the navajos' mythology,"[306] the author calls harpies, from their analogy to the harpies of greek mythology, are believed in by many tribes of the southwest. according to hatáli nez they were the offspring of a bunch of eagle plumes. 136. tsé`-bi-ta-i, or winged rock, is a high, sharp pinnacle of dark volcanic rock, rising from a wide plain in the northwestern part of new mexico, about 12 miles from the western boundary of the territory, and about 20 miles from the northern boundary. the navahoes liken it to a bird, and hence the name of winged rock, or more literally rock, its wings. the whites think it resembles a ship with sails set, and call it ship rock. its bird-like appearance has probably suggested to the navahoes the idea of making it the mythic home of the bird-like tse`na'hale. 137. there are many instances in navaho language and legend where, when two things somewhat resemble each other, but one is the coarser, the stronger, or the more violent, it is spoken of as male, or associated with the male; while the finer, weaker, or more gentle is spoken of as female, or associated with the female. thus the turbulent san juan river is called, by the navaho, to`baká, or male water; while the placid rio grande is known as to`baád, or female water. a shower accompanied by thunder and lightning is called niltsabaká, or male rain; a shower without electrical display is called niltsabaád, or female rain. in the myth of nati'nesthani the mountain mahogany is said to be used for the male sacrificial cigarette, and the cliff rose for the female. these two shrubs are much alike, particularly when in fruit and decked with long plumose styles, but the former (the "male") is the larger and coarser shrub. in the myth of dsilyi` neyáni another instance may be found where mountain mahogany is associated with the male, and the cliff rose with the female. again, in the myth of nati'nesthani a male cigarette is described as made of the coarse sunflower, while its associated female is said to be made of the allied but more slender verbesina. instances of this character might be multiplied indefinitely. on this principle the north is associated with the male, and the south with the female, for two reasons: 1st, cold, violent winds blow from the north, while gentle, warm breezes blow from the south; 2d, the land north of the navaho country is more rough and mountainous than the land in the south. in the former rise the great peaks of colorado, while in the latter the hills are not steep and none rise to the limit of eternal snow. a symbolism probably antecedent to this has assigned black as the color of the north and blue as the color of the south; so, in turn, black symbolizes the male and blue the female among the navaho. (from "a vigil of the gods.")[328] 138. version a.--the young birds were the color of a blue heron, but had bills like eagles. their eyes were as big as a circle made by the thumbs and middle fingers of both hands. nayénezgani threw the birds first to the bottom of the cliff and there metamorphosed them. 139. the etymology of the word tse'-da-ni (englished, chedany) has not been determined. it is an expression denoting impatience and contempt. 140. on being asked for the cause of this sound, the narrator gave an explanation which indicated that the "hottentot apron" exists among american indians. the author has had previous evidence corroborative of this. 141. version b here adds: "giving up her feathers for lost, she turned her attention to giving names to the different kinds of birds as they flew out,--names which they bear to this day among the navajos,--until her basket was empty." 142. tse`-ta-ho-tsil-tá`-li is said to mean he (who) kicks (people) down the cliff. some pronounce the name tse`-ta-yi-tsil-tá`-li. 143. in versions a and b, the hero simply cuts the hair of the monster and allows the latter to fall down the cliff. 144. na-tsis-a-án is the navaho mountain, an elevation 10,416 feet high, ten miles south of the junction of the colorado and san juan rivers, in the state of utah. 145. thus does the navaho story-teller weakly endeavor to score a point against his hereditary enemy, the pah ute. but it is poor revenge, for the pah ute is said to have usually proved more than a match for the navaho in battle. in version a, the young are transformed into rocky mountain sheep; in version b, they are changed into birds of prey. 146. this is the place at which the bináye aháni were born, as told in par. 203. the other monsters mentioned in part ii. were not found by nayénezgani at the places where they were said to be born. 147. other versions make mention, in different places, of a salt woman, or goddess of salt, ásihi estsán; but the version of hatáli nez does not allude to her. version a states that she supplied the bag of salt which nayénezgani carried on his expedition. 148. tsi-dil-tó-i means shooting or exploding bird. the name comes, perhaps, from some peculiarity of this bird, which gives warning of the approach of an enemy. 149. hos-tó-di is probably an onomatopoetic name for a bird. it is said to be sleepy in the daytime and to come out at night. 150. version b says that scalps were the trophies. 151. in all versions of this legend, but two hero gods or war gods are prominently mentioned, viz., nayénezgani and to`badzistsíni; but in these songs four names are given. this is to satisfy the indian reverence for the number four, and the dependent poetic requirement which often constrains the navaho poet to put four stanzas in a song. léyaneyani, or reared beneath the earth (par. 286), is an obscure hero whose only deed of valor, according to this version of the legend, was the killing of his witch sister (par. 281). the deeds of tsówenatlehi, or the changing grandchild, are not known to the writer. some say that léyaneyani and tsówenatlehi are only other names for nayénezgani and to`badzistsíni; but the best authorities in the tribe think otherwise. one version of this legend says that estsánatlehi hid her children under the ground when yéitso came seeking to devour them. this may have given rise to the idea that one of these children was called, also, reared beneath the earth. 152. the following are the names of places where pieces were knocked off the stone:- bisdá, edge of bank. to`kohokádi, ground level with water. (here nayénezgani chased the stone four times in a circle; the chips he knocked off are there yet.) daatsi'ndaheol, floating corn-cob. nitati's, cottonwood below ground. sasdestsá`, gaping bear. béikithatyêl, broad lake. nánzozilin, make nánzoz sticks. aki'ddahalkaí, something white on top (of something else). anádsil, enemy mountain. sásbito`, bear spring (fort wingate). tse`tyêliski'd, broad rock hill. tsadihábitin, antelope trail ascending. kinhitsói, much sumac. tsúskai (chusca knoll). lestsídelkai, streaks of white ashes. dsilnáodsil, mountain surrounded by mountains (carrizo mountains.). tisnáspas, circle of cottonwood. the above, it is said, are all places where constant springs of water (rare in the navaho land) are to be found. some are known to be such. this gives rise to the idea expressed in note 8. there is little doubt that the navahoes believe in many of the tiéholtsodi. probably every constant spring or watercourse has its water god. 153. version a adds an account of a wicked woman who dwelt at ki'ndotliz and slew her suitors. nayénezgani kills her. it also adds an account of vicious swallows who cut people with their wings. version b omits the encounter with sasnalkáhi and tsé`nagahi. 154. possibly this refers to pueblo legends. 155. version b, which gives only a very meagre account of this destructive storm, mentions only one talisman, but says that songs were sung and dances performed over this. 156. such pillars as the myth refers to are common all over the navaho land. 157. version a makes nayénezgani say here: "i have been to ni`indahazlágo (the end of the earth); to`indahazlágo (the end of the waters); to yaindahazlágo (the end of the sky); and to dsilindahazlágo (the end of the mountains), and i have found none that were not my friends." 158. pás-zin-i is the name given by the navahoes to the hard mineral substance which they use to make black beads, and other sacrifices to the gods of the north. specimens of this substance have been examined by prof. f. w. clark of the united states geological survey, who pronounces it to be a fine bituminous coal of about the quality of cannel coal; so it is, for convenience, called cannel coal in this work. it is scarce in the navaho land and is valued by the indians. 159. this refers to large fossil bones found in many parts of arizona and new mexico. 160. ha-dá-ho-ni-ge-di-ne` (mirage people), ha-dá-ho-nes-tid-di-ne` (ground-heat people). hadáhonestid is translated ground-heat, for want of a more convenient term. it refers to the waving appearance given to objects in hot weather, observed so frequently in the arid region, and due to varying refraction near the surface of the ground. 161. the ceremony at tsinlí (chinlee valley) was to celebrate the nubility of estsánatlehi. although already a mother, she was such miraculously, and not until this time did she show signs of nubility. such a ceremony is performed for every navaho maiden now. the ceremony at san francisco mountain occurred four days after that at tsinlí. it is now the custom among the navahoes to hold a second ceremony over a maiden four days after the first. on the second ceremony with estsánatlehi they laid her on top of the mountain with her head to the west, because she was to go to the west to dwell there. they manipulated her body and stretched out her limbs. thus she bade the people do, in future, to all navaho maidens, and thus the navahoes do now, in the ceremony of the fourth day, when they try to mould the body of the maiden to look like the perfect form of estsánatlehi. version a makes the nubile ceremony occur before the child was born. 162. dsil-li-zi'n, or dsillizi'ni (black mountain), is an extensive mesa in apache county, arizona. the pass to which the myth refers is believed to be that named, by the united states geological survey, marsh pass, which is about 60 miles north of the moki villages. the name of the mesa is spelled "zilh-le-jini" on the accompanying map. 163. to`-ye't-li (meeting waters) is the junction of two important rivers somewhere in the valley of the san juan river, in colorado or utah. the precise location has not been determined. it is a locality often mentioned in the navaho myths. (see par. 477.) 164. the following appeared in the "american naturalist" for february, 1887:-"in the interesting account entitled 'some deities and demons of the navajos,' by dr. w. matthews, in the october issue of the "naturalist" (note 306), he mentions the fact that the warriors offered their sacrifices at the sacred shrine of thoyetli, in the san juan valley. he says that the navajos have a tradition that the gods of war, or sacred brothers, still dwell at thoyetli, and their reflection is sometimes seen on the san juan river. dr. matthews is certain the last part is due to some natural phenomenon. the following account seems to furnish a complete explanation of this part of the myth. several years ago a clergyman, while travelling in the san juan valley, noticed a curious phenomenon while gazing down upon the san juan river as it flowed through a deep canyon. mists began to arise, and soon he saw the shadows of himself and companions reflected near the surface of the river, and surrounded by a circular rainbow, the 'circle of ulloa.' they jumped, moved away, and performed a number of exercises, to be certain that the figures were their reflections, and the figures responded. there was but slight color in the rainbow. similar reflections have no doubt caused the superstitious indians to consider these reflections as those of their deities."--g. a. brennan, roseland, cook county, illinois, january 12, 1887. 165. tse`-gí-hi is the name of some canyon, abounding in cliff-dwellings, north of the san juan river, in colorado or utah. the author knows of it only from description. it is probably the mcelmo or the mancos canyon. it is supposed by the navahoes to have been a favorite home of the yéi or gods, and the ruined cliff-houses are supposed to have been inhabited by the divine ones. the cliff ruins in the chelly canyon, arizona, are also supposed to have been homes of the gods; in fact, the gods are still thought to dwell there unseen. chelly is but a spanish orthography of the navaho name tsé`gi, tséyi or tséyi. when a navaho would say "in the chelly canyon," he says tséyigi. the resemblance of this expression to tse`gíhi (g and y being interchangeable) led the author at first to confound the two places. careful inquiry showed that different localities were meant. both names have much the same meaning (among the cliffs, or among the rocks). 166. the expression used by the story-teller was, "seven times old age has killed." this would be freely translated by most navaho-speaking whites as "seven ages of old men." the length of the age of an old man as a period of time is variously estimated by the navahoes. some say it is a definite cycle of 102 years,--the same number as the counters used in the game of kesitsé (note 176); others say it is "threescore years and ten;" while others, again, declare it to be an indefinite period marked by the death of some very old man in the tribe. this indian estimate would give, for the existence of the nuclear gens of the navaho nation, a period of from five hundred to seven hundred years. in his excellent paper on the "early navajo and apache,"[301] mr. f. w. hodge arrives at a much later date for the creation or first mention of the tse`dzinki'ni by computing the dates given in this legend, and collating the same with the known dates of spanish-american history. he shows that many of the dates given in this story are approximately correct. while the tse`dzinki'ni is, legendarily, the nuclear gens of the navahoes, it does not follow, even from the legend, that it is the oldest gens; for the diné` digíni, or holy people (see note 92), are supposed to have existed before it was created. 167. tse`-dzin-ki'n-i is derived from tse` (rock), dzin (black, dark), and kin (a straight-walled house, a stone or adobe house, not a navaho hut or hogán). tse` is here rendered "cliffs," because the house or houses in question are described as situated in dark cliffs. like nearly all other navaho gentile names, it seems to be of local origin. 168. the rock formations of arizona and new mexico are often so fantastic that such a condition as that here described might easily occur. 169. the author has expressed the opinion elsewhere[318] that we need not suppose from this passage that the story-teller wishes to commiserate the tse`tláni on the inferiority of their diet; he may merely intend to show that his gens had not the same taboo as the elder gentes. the modern navahoes do not eat ducks or snakes. taboo is perhaps again alluded to in par. 394, where it is said that the thá`paha ate ducks and fish. the navahoes do not eat fish, and fear fish in many ways. a white woman, for mischief, emptied over a young navaho man a pan of water in which fish had been soaked. he changed all his clothes and purified himself by bathing. navahoes have been known to refuse candies that were shaped like fish. 170. a common method of killing deer and antelope in the old days was this: they were driven on to some high, steep-sided, jutting mesa, whose connection with the neighboring plateau was narrow and easily guarded. here their retreat was cut off, and they were chased until constrained to jump over the precipice. 171. the name to`-do-kón-zi is derived from two words,--to` (water) and dokónz (here translated saline). the latter word is used to denote a distinct but not an unpleasant taste. it has synonyms in other indian languages, but not in english. it is known only from explanation that the water in question had a pleasant saline taste. 172. the arrow-case of those days is a matter of tradition only. the indians say it looked something like a modern shawl-strap. 173. in the name of this gens we have possibly another evidence of a former existence of totemism among some of the navaho gentes. haskánhatso may mean that many people of the yucca gens lived in the land, and not that many yuccas grew there. 174. from the description given of this tree, which, the indians say, still stands, it seems to be a big birch-tree. 175. tsin-a-dzi'-ni is derived by double syncopation from tsin (wood), na (horizontal), dzin (dark or black), and the suffix ni. the word for black, dzin, in compounds is often pronounced zin. there is a place called tsi'nadzin somewhere in arizona, but the author has not located it. 176. ke-si-tsé, or kesitsé, from ke (moccasins), and sitsé (side by side, in a row), is a game played only during the winter months, at night and inside of a lodge. a multitude of songs, and a myth of a contest between animals who hunt by day and those who hunt by night, pertain to the game. eight moccasins are buried in the ground (except about an inch of their tops), and they are filled with earth or sand. they are placed side by side, a few inches apart, in two rows,--one row on each side of the fire. a chip, marked black on one side (to represent night), is tossed up to see which side should begin first. the people of the lucky side hold up a screen to conceal their operations, and hide a small stone in the sand in one of the moccasins. when the screen is lowered, one of the opponents strikes the moccasins with a stick, and guesses which one contains the stone. if he guesses correctly, his side takes the stone to hide and the losers give him some counters. if he does not guess correctly, the first players retain the stone and receive a certain number of counters. (see note 88.) a better account of this game, with an epitome of the myth and several of the songs, has already been published.[316] 177. there are many allusions in the navaho tales to the clothing of this people before the introduction of sheep (which came through the spanish invaders), and before they cultivated the art of weaving, which they probably learned from the pueblo tribes, although they are now better weavers than the pueblos. the navahoes represent themselves as miserably clad in the old days (par. 466), and they tell that many of their arts were learned from other tribes. (par. 393.) 178. allusion is here made to the material used by indians on the backs of bows, for bow-strings, as sewing-thread, and for many other purposes, which is erroneously called "sinew" by ethnographers and travellers. it is not sinew in the anatomical or histological sense of the word. it is yellow fibrous tissue taken from the dorsal region, probably the aponeurosis of the trapezius. 179. the navaho country abounds in small caves and rock-shelters, some of which have been walled up by these indians and used as store-houses (but not as dwellings, for reasons elsewhere given, par. 26). such store-houses are in use at this day. 180. the legends represent the navahoes not only as poorly clad and poorly fed in the old days, but as possessing few arts. here and elsewhere in the legends it is stated that various useful arts became known to the tribe through members of other tribes adopted by the navahoes. 181. another version states that when the western immigrants were travelling along the western base of the lukachokai mountains, some wanted to ascend the tse`inlín valley; but one woman said, "no; let us keep along the base of the mountain." from this they named her base of mountain, and her descendants bear that name now. this explanation is less likely than that in par. 393. 182. this statement should be accepted only with some allowance for the fact that it was made by one who was of the gens of thá`paha. 183. punishments for adultery were various and severe among many indian tribes in former days. early travellers mention amputation of the nose and other mutilations, and it appears that capital punishment for this crime was not uncommon. if there is any punishment for adultery among the navahoes to-day, more severe than a light whipping, which is rarely given, the author has never heard of it. the position of the navaho woman is such that grievous punishments would not be tolerated. in the days of góntso even, it would seem they were scarcely less protected than now, for then the husband, although a potent chief, did not dare to punish his wives--so the legend intimates--until he had received the consent of their relatives. 184. for the performance of these nine-days' ceremonies the navahoes now build temporary medicine-lodges, which they use, as a rule, for one occasion only. rarely is a ceremony performed twice in the same place, and there is no set day, as indicated by any phase of any particular lunation, for the beginning of any great ceremony. many ceremonies may be performed only during the cold months, but otherwise the time for performance is not defined. there is a tradition that their customs were different when they lived in a compact settlement on the banks of the san juan river (before they became shepherds and scattered over the land); that they then had permanent medicine-lodges, and exact dates for the performance of some ceremonies. in paragraph 411 we hear of a ceremony which lasted all winter. 185. for a description of this ceremony see "the mountain chant: a navaho ceremony,"[314] by the author. it is an important healing ceremony of nine days' duration. the rites, until the last night, are held in the medicine-lodge and are secret. just after sunset on the last day, a great round corral, or circle of evergreen branches, is constructed, called ilnásdzin, or the dark circle of branches. this is about forty paces in diameter, about eight feet high, with an opening in the east about ten feet wide. from about eight p.m. on the last night of the ceremony until dawn next morning, a number of dances, dramatic shows, medicine rites, and tricks of legerdemain are performed in this corral, in the presence of a large group of spectators,--several hundred men, women, and children. no one is refused admittance. fig. 37 shows the dark circle of branches as it appears at sunrise when the rites are over, and, in addition to the original opening in the east, three other openings have been made in the circle. fig. 30 shows the alíl (rite, show, or ceremony) of nahikáï, which takes place on this occasion, and it is designed largely for the entertainment and mystification of the spectators. the performers march around (and very close to) the great central fire, which emits an intense heat. their skin would probably be scorched if it were not heavily daubed with white earth. each actor carries a short wand, at the tip of which is a ball of eagle-down. this ball he must burn off in the fire, and then, by a simple sleight-of-hand trick, seem to restore the ball again to the end of his wand. when this is accomplished, he rushes out of the corral, trumpeting like a sand-hill crane. in "the mountain chant" this is called a dance, but the movements of the actors are not in time to music. nahikáï signifies "it becomes white again," and refers to the reappearance of the eagle-down. the show is very picturesque, and must be mystifying to simple minds. 186. tse`-zin-di-aí signifies black rock standing (like a wall). it might mean an artificial wall of black rock; but as the result of careful inquiry it has been learned that the name refers to a locality where exists the formation known to geologists as trap-dyke. it cannot be averred that it is applied to all trap-dyke. 187. slaves were numerous among the navahoes, and slavery was openly recognized by them until 1883, when the just and energetic agent, mr. d. m. riordan, did much to abolish it. yet as late as 1893, when the writer was last in the navaho country, he found evidence that the institution still existed, though very occultly, and to a more limited extent than formerly. 188. some translate háltso as yellow valley, and give a different myth to account for the name. as most navaho gentile names are undoubtedly of local origin, there may be a tendency to make all gentile names accord with the general rule. 189. the word here translated pet (lin) means also a domestic animal and a personal fetish. (see par. 63.) 190. although this name, bi-tá`-ni, seems so much like that of bitáni that one might think they were but variants of the same word, they are undoubtedly distinct names and must not be confounded. 191. this is believed to be the notable landmark called by the whites sunset peak, which is about ten miles east of san francisco peak, in yavapai county, arizona. sunset peak is covered with dark forests nearly to its summit. the top is of brilliant red rock capped by a paler stratum, and it has the appearance, at all hours of the day, of being lighted by the setting sun. 192. this locality is in apache county, arizona, about sixty miles from the eastern boundary and twelve miles from the northern boundary of the territory. a sharp volcanic peak, 6,825 feet high above sea-level, which marks the place from afar, is called "agathla needle" on the maps of the united states geological survey, and on the accompanying map, which was compiled from the government maps by mr. frank tweedy of the geological survey. 193. the navahoes are aware that in lands far to the north there are kindred tribes which speak languages much like their own. they have traditions that long ago some of their number travelled in search of these tribes and found them. these distant kinsmen are called by the navaho diné` nahotlóni, or navahoes in another place. 194. a version has been recorded which says that, on the march, one woman loitered behind at deer spring for a while, as if loath to leave; that for this reason they called her deer spring, and that her descendants became the gens of that name. the same version accounts in a similar manner for the names given at the magic fountains. the women did not call out the names of the springs, but they loitered at them. 195. the story of the deer spring people affords, perhaps, the best evidence in favor of the former existence of totemism to be found in the legend. assuming that the immigrants from the west had once totemic names, we may explain this story by saying that it was people of the deer gens who stayed behind and gave their name to the spring where they remained; that in the course of time they became known as people of the deer spring; and that, as they still retain their old name in a changed form, the story-teller is constrained to say that the fate of the deer is not known. perhaps the name of the maitó`dine` (par. 428) may be explained in somewhat the same way. (see "the gentile system of the navajo indians," p. 107.[318]) 196. the more proper interpretation of ho-na-gá`-ni seems to be people of the walking place, from ho (locative), nága (to walk), and ni (people). it is not unreasonable to suppose that, like nearly all other navaho gentile names, this name has a local meaning, and that the story here told to account for its origin is altogether mythical. 197. this episode indicates that kindness and pity are sentiments not unknown to the navahoes, and that (though there are many thieves) there are honest men and women among them. 198. na-nas-te'-zin, the navaho name for the zuñi indians, is said to be derived from aná (an alien or an enemy), naste (a horizontal stripe), and zin (black). some say it refers to the way the zuñians cut their hair,--"bang" it,--straight across the forehead; others say it is the name of a locality. 199. kin-a-á`-ni, or kin-ya-á`-ni, means people of the high pueblo house,--the high wall of stone or adobe. the name kinaá` might with propriety be applied to any one of hundreds of ruins in the navaho country, but the only one to which the name is known to be given is a massive ruin six or seven stories high in bernalillo county, new mexico, about seventeen miles in a northerly direction from chaves station, on the atlantic and pacific railroad. this ruin consists of unusually large fragments of stone, and looks more like a ruined european castle than other old indian dwellings. it seems too far east and south, and too far away from the settlements on the san juan, where the western immigrants finished their journey, to be the place, as some say it is, from which the gens of kinaá`ni derived its name. the high stone wall which the immigrants passed en route, mentioned in par. 435 in connection with the gens of kinaá`ni, may be the place to which the legend originally ascribed the origin of the name. there are many pueblo remains around san francisco mountain. the name is written "kin-ya-a-ni" on the accompanying map. 200. plate i., fig. 1, shows a yébaad, or female yéi or goddess, as she is usually represented in the dry-paintings. the following objects are here indicated: (1) a square mask or domino, which covers the face only (see fig. 28), is painted blue, margined below with yellow (to represent the yellow evening light), and elsewhere with lines of red and black (for hair above, for ears at the sides), and has downy eagle-feathers on top, tied on with white strings; (2) a robe of white, extending from the armpits to near the knees, adorned with red and blue to represent sunbeams, and fringed beautifully at the bottom; (3) white leggings secured with colored garters (such as indians weave); (4) embroidered moccasins; (5) an ornamental sash; (6) a wand of spruce-twigs in each hand (sometimes she is shown with spruce in one hand and a seed-basket in the other); (7) jewels--ear-pendants, bracelets, and necklaces--of turquoise and coral; (8) long strips of fox-skin ornamented at the ends, which hang from wrists and elbows. (for explanation of blue neck, see note 74.) in the dance of the nahikáï, there are properly six yébaad in masquerade; but sometimes they have to get along with a less number, owing to the difficulty in finding suitable persons enough to fill the part. the actors are usually low-sized men and boys, who must contrast in appearance with those who enact the part of males. each yébaad actor wears no clothing except moccasins and a skirt, which is held on with a silver-studded belt; his body and limbs are painted white; his hair is unbound and hangs over his shoulders; he wears the square female mask and he carries in each hand a bundle of spruce twigs, which is so secured, by means of strings, that he cannot carelessly let it fall. occasionally females are found to dance in this character: these have their bodies fully clothed in ordinary woman's attire; but they wear the masks and carry the wands just as the young men do. while the male gods, in plate i., except dsahadoldzá, are represented with white arms, the female is depicted with yellow arms. this symbolism is explained in note 27. 201. the exact etymology of the word na-ti'n-es-tha-ni has not been determined. the idea it conveys is: he who teaches himself, he who discovers for himself, or he who thinks out a problem for himself. we find the verb in the expression nasinítin, which means, "teach me how to do it." here the second and third syllables are pronouns. although the hero has his name changed after a while, the story-teller usually continues to call him nati'nesthani to the end of the story. often he speaks of him as the man or the navaho. 202. the eighteen articles here referred to are as follows: 1, white shell; 2, turquoise; 3, haliotis shell; 4, pászini or cannel coal; 5, red stone; 6, feathers of the yellow warbler; 7, feathers of the bluebird; 8, feathers of the eagle; 9, feathers of the turkey; 10, beard of the turkey; 11, cotton string; 12, i`yidezná;[11] 13, white shell basket; 14, turquoise basket; 15, haliotis basket; 16, pászini basket; 17, rock crystal basket; 18, sacred buckskin. (see note 13.) these were the sacred articles which the gods were said to require in the myths of klédzi hatál and atsósidze hatál. in the myths of the former rite they are mentioned over and over again, to the weariness of the hearer. they are all used to-day in the rites mentioned, except the five baskets. now ordinary sacred baskets (note 5, par. 28) are used; the jeweled baskets are legendary only. 203. the knowledge of domestic or pet turkeys is not new to the navahoes. the pueblo indians of the southwest have kept them for centuries. the navahoes declare that in former years they kept pet turkeys themselves; but this seems doubtful, considering their mode of life. a conservative navaho will not now eat turkey flesh, although he will not hesitate to shoot a wild turkey to sell it to a white man. 204. in the navaho dry-paintings the rainbow is usually depicted with a head at one end and legs and feet at the other. the head is represented with a square mask to show that it is a goddess. it is apotheosized. (see fig. 29.) in one of the dry-paintings of the mountain chant the rainbow is depicted without limbs or head, but terminating at one end with five eagle-plumes, at the other end with five magpie-plumes, and decorated near its middle with plumes of the bluebird and the red-shafted woodpecker. (see "the mountain chant," p. 450.[314]) 205. this magic cup figures in many other navaho myths. (see paragraph 572.) 206. has-tsé-ol-to-i means the shooting hastsé (par. 78), or shooting deity. as the personator of this character always wears a female mask (fig. 28), it would seem that this divinity of the chase, like the roman diana, is a goddess. the personator (a man) carries a quiver of puma skin, a bow, and two arrows. the latter are made of reed, are headless, and are feathered with the tail and wing feathers of the red-tailed buzzard (buteo borealis), tied on with fibrous tissue. the tips of the arrows are covered with moistened white earth and moistened pollen. each arrow is at least two spans and a hand's-breadth long; but it must be cut off three finger-widths beyond a node, and to accomplish this it may be made a little longer than the above dimensions. there are very particular rules about applying the feathers. the man who personates hastséoltoi, in a rite of succor in the ceremony of the night chant, follows the personators of the war gods. while the patient stands on a buffalo robe in front of the medicine-lodge, the actor waves with the right hand one arrow at him, giving a peculiar call; then, changing the arrows from one hand to another, he waves the other arrow at the patient. this is done east, south, west, and north. the actor repeats these motions around the lodge; all then enter the lodge; there the patient says a prayer, and, with many formalities, presents a cigarette to the personator (after he has prayed and sacrificed to the war gods). the three masqueraders then go to the west of the lodge to deposit their sacrifices (that of hastséoltoi is put under a weed,--gutierrezia euthamiæ, if possible). when this is done, they take off their masks, don ordinary blankets,--brought out by an accomplice,--hide the masks under their blankets, and return to the lodge in the guise of ordinary indians. some speak as if there were but one hastséoltoi, and say she is the wife of nayénezgani. others speak as if there were one at every place where the yéi have homes. 207. the gán-as-ki-di are a numerous race of divinities. their chief home is at a place called depéhahatil (tries to shoot sheep), near tse`gíhi, north of the san juan; but they may appear anywhere, and, according to the myths, are often found in company with the yéi and other gods. they belong to the mountain sheep people, and often appear to man in the form of rocky mountain sheep. in the myths of the night chant it is said that they captured the prophet of the rites, took him to their home, and taught him many of the mysteries of the night chant. in the treatment accompanying these, the tendo-achillis of a mountain sheep is applied to an aching limb to relieve pain; the horn is pressed to an aching head to relieve headache; and water from the sheep's eye is used for sore eyes. the gánaskidi are gods of plenty and harvest gods. a masquerader, representing one of these, sometimes appears in an act of succor about sundown on the last day of the night chant, following representatives of hastséyalti and dsahadoldzá. he wears the ordinary blue mask of a yébaka with the fringe of hair removed. he carries a crown or headdress made of a basket from which the bottom has been cut, so that it may fit on the head. the basket crown is adorned with artificial horns; it is painted on the lower surface black, with a zigzag streak to represent lightning playing on the face of a black cloud; it is painted red on the upper surface (not shown in picture), to indicate the sunlight on the other side of the cloud; and it is decorated with radiating feathers, from the tail of the red-shafted woodpecker (colaptes mexicanus), to represent the rays of the sun streaming out at the edge of the cloud. the god is crowned with the storm-cloud. the horns on the crown are made of the skin of the rocky mountain sheep (sewed with yucca fibre); they are stuffed with hair of the same, or with black wool; they are painted part black and part blue, with white markings; and they are tipped with eagle-feathers tied on with white string. on his back the actor carries a long bag of buckskin, which is empty, but is kept distended by means of a light frame made of the twigs of aromatic sumac, so as to appear full; it is decorated at the back with eagle-plumes, and sometimes also with the plumes of the red-shafted woodpecker; it is painted on the sides with short parallel white lines (12 or 16), and at the back with long lines of four colors. this bag represents a bag of black cloud, filled with produce of the fields, which the god is said to carry. the cloudy bag is so heavy, they say, that the god is obliged to lean on a staff, bend his back, and walk as one bearing a burden; so the personator does the same. the staff, or gis, which the latter carries, is made of cherry (new for each occasion); it is as long as from the middle of the left breast to the tip of the outstretched right hand; it is painted black with the charcoal of four sacred plants; it bears a zigzag stripe in white to represent lightning, and it is trimmed with many turkey-feathers in two whorls, and one eagle-feather. these properties and adornments are conventionally represented in the dry-paintings. (see plate i., fig. 5.) the red powder thinly sprinkled over the eagle-plumes at the back represents pollen. the cloud bag is tied on the god, says the myth, with rainbows. the yellow horizontal line at the chin in the picture represents a yellow line on the mask which symbolizes the evening twilight. the actor wears a collar of fox-skin (indicated by mark under right ear) and ordinary clothing. the elaborate ceremony of succor will not be described here. gánaskidi means humpback. the name is sometimes given nánaskidi. 208. the only ki'ndoliz, or ki'ndotliz (blue house), the writer knows of is a ruined pueblo of that name in the chaco canyon; but this can hardly be the blue house referred to in the myth. there is probably another ruin of this name on the banks of the san juan. 209. the dsahadoldzá, or fringe-mouths, are a class of divine beings of whom little information has been gained. they are represented in the rite of klédzi hatál by sand-paintings, and by masqueraders decked and masked as shown in the pictures. there are two kinds,--fringe-mouths of the land and fringe-mouths of the water (plate i., fig. 3), or thastlátsi dsahadoldzá; the latter are the class referred to in this story. the zigzag lines on their bodies shown in the pictures represent the crooked lightning, which they used as ropes to lift the log. on the mask (shown in the dry-painting) the mouth is surrounded by white radiating lines; hence the name fringe-mouths. the actor who represents the fringe-mouths of the land has one half of his body and one half of his mask painted black, the other half red. he who represents the fringe-mouths of the water has his body painted half blue and half yellow, as shown in plate i., fig. 3. both wear a similar mask and a similar crown or headdress. the crown consists of a basket from which the bottom has been cut, so that it may fit on the head; the lower surface is painted black, to represent a dark cloud, and is streaked with white to represent lightning; the upper surface (not shown in the painting) is colored red, to represent the sunlight of the back of the cloud; and feathers of the red-shafted woodpecker are attached to the edge, to represent sunbeams. so far, this crown is like that worn by gánaskidi (note 207). ascending from the basket crown is a tripod of twigs of aromatic sumac, painted white; between the limbs of the tripod finely combed red wool is laid, and a downy eagle-feather tips each stick. the actor carries in his left hand a bow adorned with three eagle-plumes and two tufts of turkey feathers, and in his right hand a white gourd rattle, sometimes decorated with two whorls of feathers. his torso, arms, and legs are naked, but painted. he wears a shirt around his loins, and rich necklaces and ear pendants. all these things are plainly indicated in the dry-paintings. the fox-skin collar which he wears is vaguely shown by an appendage at the right ear. the angles of the white lightning on the chest and limbs of the actor are not as numerous as in the paintings. 210. tielín are ferocious pets that belong to tiéholtsodi, the water monster, and guard the door of his dwelling. they are said to have blue horns. 211. na-tsi-li't a-kó-di (short rainbow), the fragmentary or incomplete rainbow. 212. has-tsé-zin-i signifies black hastsé, or black god. there are several of them (dwelling at tsení`hodilyil, near tse`gíhi), but the description will be given in the singular. he is a reserved, exclusive individual. the yéi at other places do not visit him whenever they wish. he owns all fire; he was the first who made fire, and he is the inventor of the fire-drill. it is only on rare occasions that he is represented by a masquerader at a ceremony. when it is arranged to give a night chant without the public dance of the last night (and this seldom occurs), black god appears in a scene of succor[206] on the evening of the ninth day in company with three other gods,--nayénezgani, to`badzistsíni, and hastséoltoi. it is said that the personator is dressed in black clothes; wears a black mask, with white marks and red hair on it, and a collar of fox-skin; and that he carries a fire-drill and a bundle of cedar-bark. the author has never seen hastsézini represented either in a dry-painting or in masquerade, and he has therefore never witnessed the scene or ceremony of succor referred to. this ceremony, which is very elaborate, has been described to the author by the medicine-men. the actor has to be well paid for his tedious services, which occupy the whole day from sunrise to sunset, though the act of succor lasts but a few minutes. 213. the fire-drill is very little used by the navahoes at the present time,--matches and flint-and-steel having taken its place; but it is frequently mentioned in the myths and is employed in the ceremonies. of the many aboriginal fire-drills, described and depicted by dr. walter hough in his excellent paper on "fire-making apparatus,"[302] that of the navahoes is the rudest. it looks like a thing that had been made to order. 214. tsin-tli'-zi signifies hard, brittle wood. 215. it is probable that the various peculiar acts described in this paragraph have reference to agricultural rites still practised, or recently practised, by the navahoes, but the writer has never witnessed such rites. 216. the navahoes now universally smoke cigarettes, but they say that in ancient days they smoked pipes made of terra-cotta. fragments of such pipes are often picked up in new mexico and arizona. the cliff-dwellers also had pipes, and these articles are still ceremonially used by the mokis. the navahoes now invariably, in ceremonies, sacrifice tobacco in the form of cigarettes. but cigarettes are not new to the southwest: they are found in ancient caves and other long-neglected places in new mexico and arizona. 217. ni-no-ká-di-ne` (people up on the earth) may mean people living up on the mountains, in contradistinction to those dwelling in canyons and valleys; but other tribes use a term of similar meaning to distinguish the whole indian race from the whites or other races, and it is probable that it is used in this sense here and in other navaho myths. the people whom nati'nesthani now meets are probably supposed to be supernatural, and not indians. 218. the plants mixed with the tobacco were these: tsohodzilaí`, silátso (my thumb), a poisonous weed, azébini`, and azétloi. it has not been determined what plants these are; but the navaho names are placed on record as possibly assisting in future identification. 219. in the navaho ceremonies, when sacred cigarettes are finished, and before they are deposited as offerings to the gods, they are symbolically lighted with sunbeams. (see par. 94.) the statement made here, that the hero lighted his pipe with the sun, refers probably to this symbolic lighting. 220. ke'tlo is a name given to any medicine used externally, i.e., rubbed on the body. atsósi ke'tlo means the liniment or wash of the atsósi hatál, or feather ceremony. it is also called atsósi azé (feather medicine), and atsósi tsíl (feather herbs). 221. yá-di-di-nil, the incense of the navaho priests, is a very composite substance. in certain parts of the healing ceremonies it is scattered on hot coals, which are placed before the patient, and the latter inhales actively the dense white fumes that arise. these fumes, which fill with their odor the whole medicine-lodge, are pungent, aromatic, and rather agreeable, although the mixture is said to contain feathers. the author has obtained a formula for yádidinil, but has not identified the plants that chiefly compose it. 222. these are the animals he raises and controls, as told in par. 527. 223. the navahoes say they are acquainted with four kinds of wild tobacco, and use them in their rites. of these the author has seen and identified but two. these are nicotiana attenuata which is the dsi'lnato, or mountain tobacco; and nicotiana palmeri, which is the depénato, or sheep tobacco. n. attenuata grows widely but not abundantly in the mountains of new mexico and arizona. n. palmeri is rare; the writer has seen it growing only in one spot in the chelly canyon. it has not been learned what species are called weasel tobacco and cloud tobacco; but one or more of the three species, n. rustica, n. quadrivalvis, and n. trigonophylla, are probably known to the navahoes. 224. the description of these diseases given by the narrator of this tale is as follows: "patients having these diseases are weak, stagger, and lose appetite; then they go to a sweat-house and take an emetic. if they have li'tso, or the yellow disease, they vomit something yellow (bile ?). if they have til-litá, or cooked blood disease, they vomit something like cooked blood. those having the yellows have often yellow eyes and yellow skin. thatli't, or slime disease, comes from drinking foul water full of green slime or little fish (tadpoles ?). tsoxs, worms, usually come from eating worms, which you sometimes do without knowing it; but tsi'lgo, tapeworm, comes from eating parched corn." probably the last notion arises from the slight resemblance of the joints of tænia solium to grains of corn. this little chapter in pathology from hatáli natlói is hardly in accordance with the prevalent theory that savages regard all disease as of demoniac origin. 225. the adjective yazóni, or yasóni, here used, which is translated "beautiful," means more than this: it means both good (or useful) and beautiful. it contains elements of the words yatí`, good, and of inzóni, nizóni, and hozóni, which signify beautiful. 226. according to the navaho myths and songs, the corn and other products in the gardens of the yéi or divine ones grow and mature in a very short time. the rapid growth of the crops in nati'nesthani's farm is supposed to result from the divine origin of the seed. 227. the order in which nati'nesthani lays down the ears of corn is the order in which sacrificial cigarettes, kethawns, and other sacred objects, when colored, are laid down in a straight row. the white, being the color of the east, has precedence of all and is laid down first. the blue, the color of the south, comes next, for when we move sunwise (the sacred ceremonial circuit of the navahoes) south follows immediately after east. yellow, the color of the west, on the same principle, comes third; and black (in this case mixed) comes fourth. mixed is properly the coloring of the upper region, and usually follows after black; but it sometimes takes the place of black. these apparently superfluous particulars of laying down the corn have a ceremonial or religious significance. in placing sacred objects ceremonially in a straight row, the operator proceeds southward from his starting-point, for this approximates the sunwise circuit, and he makes the tip ends point east. 228. pín-i-az bi-tsó (fawn-his-cheese), or fawn-cheese, is a substance found in the abdomen of the fawn. a similar substance is found in other young mammals. they say it looks like curds, or cottage cheese, and that it is pleasant to the taste. they eat it raw. the author has not determined by observation what this substance is. dr. c. hart merriam, of the department of agriculture, suggests that it is the partly digested milk in the stomach of the fawn, and this is probably the case. 229. the dish offered to nati'nesthani is called by the navahoes atsón, which is here translated "pemmican." it consists of dried vension pounded on a stone and fried in grease. 230. to make di-tló-gi kle-sán, cut the grain off the ear, grind it to a pulp on a metate, spread out the embers, lay a number of green corn leaves on them, place the pulp on the leaves, put other leaves on top of the pulp, rake hot embers over all, and leave it to bake. 231. di-tló-gin tsi-di-kó-i is made of a pulp of green corn ground on a metate, like ditlógi klesán. the pulp is encased in husks, which are folded at the ends, and is then placed between leaves and hot coals to bake. 232. thá-bi-tsa (three-ears) is made also of pulp of green corn. this is placed in folded cones made of husks; three cones being made of one complete husk, whose leaves are not removed from their stem. it looks like three ears fastened together, whence the name. it is boiled in water. 233. the story-teller said: "about as far as from here to jake's house,"--a distance which the writer estimated at 300 yards. 234. over the east door, one cigarette, that for the male, was made of mountain mahogany (tsé`estagi, cercocarpus parvifolius), perforated, painted blue, and marked with four symbols of deer-tracks in yellow; the other cigarette, that for the female, was made of cliff rose (awétsal, cowania mexicana), painted yellow and marked with four symbols of deer-tracks in blue. over the south door the cigarette for the male was made of sunflower (indigíli), painted yellow and dotted with four symbols of antelope-tracks in blue; the cigarette for the female was made of "strong-smelling sunflower" (indigíli niltsóni, verbesina enceloides), painted white and dotted with four symbols of antelope-tracks in black. over the west door, the cigarettes were of the same material as those in the east; but one was painted black with symbols of deer-tracks in blue, and the other was painted blue with symbols of deer-tracks in black. at the bottom of the steps, one of the cigarettes was painted black and dotted with four symbols of fawn-tracks in yellow; the other was painted yellow and dotted with four symbols of fawn-tracks in black. the above was written from the description of the narrator. the writer has never seen such cigarettes; but they are said to be employed in some navaho ceremonies at the present time. in this series of cigarettes the colors are not in the usual order,[18] but there may be a special symbolism for these animals, or the variation may arise because they are the cigarettes of a wizard and therefore unholy. 235. when driving game to a party in ambush, the navahoes often imitate the cry of the wolf. in this myth the old man is supposed to give the cry, not to drive the bears, but to make nati'nesthani believe that deer are being driven. 236. the name tsa-na-naí is derived from tsan, which means dung. tse'-sko-di means spread-foot. the narrator said the other bears had names, but he could not remember them. 237. "he did not even thank his son-in-law" is an instance of sarcasm. 238. the bear is a sacred animal with the navahoes; for this reason the hero did not skin the bears or eat their flesh. the old man, being a wizard, might do both. 239. há-la-dzi-ni? means "what are you doing?" but it is a jocose expression, used only among intimate relations, or relations by marriage. in employing this interrogatory the navaho gave the old man to understand that he was recognized. 240. this episode of the twelve bears is the weakest and least artistic in the tale. moreover, it details a fifth device on the part of deer raiser to kill his son-in-law. under ordinary circumstances we should expect but four devices. it seems an interpolation, by some story-teller less ingenious than he who composed the rest of the tale, introduced to get the men out together once more, so that, on their way home, the incident of the burnt moccasins might occur. the latter incident has been previously recorded by the writer in another connection. (see note 242.) 241. among the navahoes, when a person dies, the suffix ni, or ini, is added to his (or her) name, and thus he is mentioned ever afterwards. 242. before the story of nati'nesthani was obtained, the writer had already recorded this tale of the burnt moccasins in a version of the origin legend. in the latter connection it is introduced as one of the coyote tales. the mischievous coyote is made to try this trick on his father-in-law; but the latter, warned by the wind, foils the coyote. 243. the ridge which he crosses in the east and also those which he crosses later in the south, west, and north are colored according to the regular order of navaho symbolism. 244. the narrator described the bird called tsi-das-tó-i thus: when a man passes by where this bird is sitting, the latter does not fly off, but sits and looks at the man, moving its head in every direction. it is about the size of a screech-owl. 245. it must not be supposed that in this and the following paragraph, when pale-faced people are mentioned, any allusion is made to caucasians. the reference is merely symbolic. white is the color of the east in navaho symbolism: hence these people in the east are represented as having pale faces. for similar reasons the man in the south (par. 551) is said to have a blue face, the man in the west (par. 552) a yellow face, and the man in the north (par. 553) a dark face. (see note 18.) 246. bi-za (his treasure), something he specially values; hence his charm, his amulet, his personal fetish, his magic weapon, something that one carries to mysteriously protect himself. even the divinities are thought to possess such charms. the songs often mention some property of a god which they say is "bi'za-yedigi'ngo" (the treasure which makes him holy or sacred). (see par. 367 and note 280.) 247. these medicines are still in use among the navahoes. the medicine made of gall consists mostly of gall of eagles. if a witch has scattered evil medicine on you, use this. if there are certain kinds of food that disagree with you, and you still wish to eat them, use the vomit medicine. hunters obtain the materials when they go out hunting. all the totemic animals named (puma, blue fox, yellow fox, wolf, and lynx, see par. 548) vomit when they eat too much. so said the narrator. 248. buteo borealis. the tail is described as red ("bright chestnut red," coues) by our ornithologists; but the navahoes consider it yellow, and call the bird atsé-litsói, or yellow-tail. 249. a-tsó-si-dze ha-tál, or a-tsó-si ha-tál means feather chant or feather ceremony. the following particulars concerning the ceremony were given by the narrator of the story. dry-paintings are made on the floor of the medicine-lodge much like those of the klédzi hatál, and others are made representing different animals. it is still occasionally celebrated, but not often, and there are only four priests of the rite living. it lasts nine days, and it has more stories, songs, and acts than any other navaho ceremony. a deer dance was part of the rite in the old days, but it is not practised now. the rite is good for many things, but especially for deer disease. if you sleep on a dry, undressed deer-skin or foul one, or if a deer sneezes at you or makes any other marked demonstration at you, you are in danger of getting the deer disease. 250. yó-i ha-tál, or yói-dze ha-tál (bead chant), is a nine days' ceremony, which is becoming obsolete. the author has been informed that there is only one priest of the rite remaining; that he learned it from his father, but that he does not know as much about it as his father did. 251. the device of setting up forked sticks to assist in locating fires seen by night and in remembering the position of distant objects is often mentioned in the navaho tales. (see pars. 382 and 497.) 252. equisetum hiemale, and perhaps other species of equisetum, or horse-tail. 253. ["klis-ka', the arrow-snake, is a long slender snake that moves with great velocity,--so great that, coming to the edge of a cliff when racing, he flies for some distance through the air before reaching the ground again. the navahoes believe he could soar if he wanted to. he is red and blue on the belly, striped on the back, six feet long or longer. sometimes moves like a measuring-worm."] from the above description dr. h. c. yarrow, formerly curator of reptiles in the smithsonian institution, is of the opinion that the arrow-snake is bascanium flagelliforme. 254. accipiter cooperii, called gíni by the navahoes. 255. compare with description of spider woman and her home in paragraph 306. it would seem that the navahoes believe in more than one spider woman. (may be they believe in one for each world.) in paragraph 581 we have an instance of black being assigned to the east and white to the north. (see note 18.) 256. there are several plants in new mexico and arizona which become tumble-weeds in the autumn, but the particular weed referred to here is the amarantus albus. it is called tlotáhi nagi'si, or rolling tlotáhi, by the navahoes. tlotáhi is a name applied in common to several species of the amarantaceæ and allied chenopodiacæ. (see "navaho names for plants."[312]) the seeds of plants of these families formerly constituted an important part of the diet of the navahoes, and they still eat them to some extent. 257. tsil-dil-gi'-si is said to mean frightened-weed, scare-weed, or hiding-weed, and to be so named because snakes, lizards, and other animals hide in its dense foliage when frightened. it is a yellow-flowered composite, gutierrezia euthamiæ (t. and g.), which grows in great abundance in arizona and new mexico. it is used extensively in the navaho ceremonies in preparing and depositing sacrifices, etc. 258. whirlwinds of no great violence are exceedingly common throughout the arid region. one seldom looks at an extensive landscape without seeing one or more columns of whirling dust arising. 259. in the full myth of yói hatál, as told by a priest of the rite, a complete account of the ceremonies, songs, and sacrifices taught to the navaho would here be given; but in this account, told by an outsider, the ritual portion is omitted. 260. in the myth of the "mountain chant,"[314] p. 410, it is stated, as in this tale, that the wanderer returning to his old home finds the odors of the place intolerable to him. such incidents occur in other navaho myths. 261. in the rite of the klédzi hatál, or the night chant, the first four masked characters, who come out to dance in the public performance of the last night, are called atsá`lei. from this story it would seem that a similar character or characters belong to the yói hatál. 262. these great shells are perhaps not altogether mythical. similar shells are mentioned in the origin legend (pars. 211, 213, 226), in connection with the same pueblos. shells of such size, conveyed from the coast to the chaco canyon, a distance of 300 miles or more, before the introduction of the horse, would have been of inestimable value among the indians. 263. in the myth recorded in "the mountain chant: a navaho ceremony,"[314] p. 413, there is an account of a journey given by a courier who went to summon some distant bands to join in a ceremony. from this account the following passage is taken: "i ... went to the north. on my way i met another messenger, who was travelling from a distant camp to this one to call you all to a dance in a circle of branches of a different kind from ours. when he learned my errand he tried to prevail on me to return hither and put off our dance until another day, so that we might attend their ceremony, and that they might in turn attend ours; but i refused, saying our people were in haste to complete their dance. then we exchanged bows and quivers, as a sign to our people that we had met, and that what we would tell on our return was the truth. you observe the bow and quiver i have now are not those with which i left this morning. we parted, and i kept on my way toward the north." in par. 597 of "the great shell of kintyél" reference is made to the same identical meeting of couriers. it is interesting to observe how one legend is made to corroborate the other,--each belonging to a different rite. 264. pésdolgas is here translated serrate knife. a saw is called benitsíhi, but in describing it the adjective dolgás is used for serrate. the pésdolgas is mentioned often in song and story. it is said to be no longer in use. descriptions indicate that it was somewhat like the many-bladed obsidian weapon of the ancient mexicans. 265. the cliff-ruin known as the white house, in the chelly canyon, arizona, has been often pictured and described. it is called by the navahoes kin-i-na-é-kai, which signifies stone house of the white horizontal streak (the upper story is painted white). the name white house is a free translation of this. the navaho legends abound in references to it, and represent it as once inhabited by divinities. (see par. 78 and fig. 22.) 266. hát-das-tsi-si is a divinity who is not depicted in the dry-paintings, and whose representative the author has not seen. he appears rarely in the ceremonies and is thus described: the actor wears an ordinary navaho costume, and an ordinary yébaka mask adorned with owl-feathers, but not with eagle-plumes. he carries on his back an entire yucca plant with the leaves hanging down, and a large ring, two spans in diameter, made of yucca leaves (to show that he is a great gambler at nánzoz). he carries a whip of yucca leaves, and goes around among the assembled crowd to treat the ailing. if a man has lumbago he bends over before the actor and presents his back to be flagellated; if he has headache he presents his head. when the actor has whipped the ailing one, he turns away from him and utters a low sound (like the lowing of a cow). when he can find no more people to whip, he returns to the medicine-lodge and takes off his mask. the cigarette (which the author has in his possession) appropriate to this god is painted black, and bears rude figures of the yucca ring and the yucca plant. it is buried east of the lodge beside a growing yucca. ten songs are sung when the cigarette is being made, and a prayer is repeated when the work is done. the yucca which the actor carries must have a large part of its root-stock over ground. it is kicked out of the ground,--neither pulled nor cut. the principal home of the divinity is at tsasitsozsakád (yucca glauca, standing), near the chelly canyon. 267. the following is a list of the twenty-one divinities represented by masks in the ceremony of the klédzi hatál:- male. 1. hastséyalti. 2. gánaskidi. 3. tó`nenili. 4. nayénezgani. 5. to`badzistsíni. 6. dsahadoldzá. 7. hastsézini. 8. hastséhogan. 9. hátdastsisi.[266] 10. hastséltsi.[271] 11. tsóhanoai. 12. kléhanoai, or tléhanoai. 13. hastsébaka. each, for the first seven, wears a different mask. the last six wear masks of one pattern, that of yébaka. (see plate i., fig. 1.) female. 14. hastséoltoi. 15 to 21. hastsébaad, or goddesses. all the female characters wear masks of one kind. (see fig. 28 and plate i., fig. 3.) 268. the language of the eleventh census is quoted here, although it differs slightly from the official report of the count of 1869, made by the acting agent, capt. frank t. bennett, u.s.a. captain bennett says the count was made on two separate days, october 2d and 18th, and gives the number of indians actually counted at 8,181. (report of commission of indian affairs for 1869, p. 237.[298]) 269. plate iv. represents a man dressed to personate nayénezgani, or slayer of the alien gods, as he appears in an act of succor in the ceremony of the night chant, on the afternoon of the ninth day, in company with two other masqueraders (to`badzistsíni[270] and hastséoltoi[206]). the personator has his body painted black with charcoal of four sacred plants, and his hands painted white. he wears a black mask which has a fringe of yellow or reddish hair across the crown and an ornament of turkey's and eagle's feathers on top. five parallel lines with five angles in each, to represent lightning, are painted on one cheek of the mask (sometimes the right, sometimes the left). small, diamond-shaped holes are cut in the mask for eyes and mouth, and to the edge of each hole a small white shell is attached. on his body there are drawn in white clay the figures of eight bows; six are drawn as shown in the picture and two more are drawn over the shoulder-blades. all these bows are shown as complete (or strung) except those on the left leg and left side of the back, which are represented open or unstrung, as shown in the plate and fig. 41. the symbol at the left leg is made first, that on the left shoulder last of all. all the component lines of the symbol are drawn from above downward; fig. 41 shows the order in which they must be drawn. the symbols must all turn in one direction. the personator wears a collar of fox-skin, a number of rich necklaces of shell, turquoise and coral, a fine skirt or sash around his loins (usually scarlet baize, bayeta, but velvet or any rich material will do), a belt decorated with silver, and ordinary moccasins. he carries in his right hand a great stone knife, with which, in the scene of succor, he makes motions at the patient and at the medicine-lodge to draw out the disease. the patient prays to him, and gives him a cigarette painted black and decorated with the bow-symbols in white. this cigarette is preferably deposited under a piñon-tree. a dry-painting of this god has never been seen by the author, and he has been told that none is ever made. 270. plate vii. represents the personator of the war god, to`badzistsíni, or child of the water, as he appears in the act of succor described in notes 206 and 269. his body and limbs are painted with a native red ochre; his hands are smeared with white earth; and eight symbols are drawn in his body in white,--two on the chest, two on the arms, two on the legs, and two on the back, partly over the shoulder-blades. as with the bow-symbols of nayénezgani (note 269), two of the symbols are left open or unfinished,--that on the left leg (painted first) and that over the left shoulder-blade (painted last), to indicate (some say) that the labors of the god are not yet done. fig. 42 shows the order and direction in which each component line of the symbol must be drawn. the symbols represent a queue, such as the navahoes now wear (fig. 31). some say these figures represent the queue of the god's mother, others say they represent the scalps of conquered enemies; the latter is a more probable explanation. the personator wears a mask painted also with red ochre (all except a small triangular space over the face, which is colored black and bordered with white); and it is decorated both in front and behind with a number of queue-symbols (the number is never the same in two masks, but is always a multiple of four). the mask has a fringe of red or yellow hair, and a cockade of turkey-tail and a downy eagle-feather. the holes for the eyes and mouth are diamond-shaped, and have white shells attached to them. the actor carries in his left hand a small round cylinder of cedar-wood painted red, and in his right a cylinder of piñon painted black. with these, in the scene of succor, he makes motions at the patient and at the lodge. like his companion, the personator of nayénezgani, he wears a collar of fox-skin (vulpes velox); rich necklaces of shell, turquoise, and coral; a skirt or sash of bayeta, or some other rich material; a belt adorned with plaques of silver; and ordinary moccasins. the sacrificial cigarette which he receives is painted red, marked with the queue-symbols, and deposited under a cedar-tree. no dry-painting of to`badzistsíni has been seen by the author, and he has been assured that none is made. 271. the name has-tsél-tsi (red god) is derived from hastsé (god, see par. 78) and litsí (red). the red god, it is said, is never depicted in dry-paintings. the author has never seen the character in masquerade; it seldom appears,--only on the rare occasions when there is no dance of the naakhaí on the last night of the night chant. he seems to be a god of racing. the following account of him is from verbal description: red god is one of the yéi, and dwells wherever other yéi dwell (hence there are many). his representative never appears in an act of succor and never helps the patient. a fast runner is chosen to play the part. he goes round among the assembled indians and challenges men, by signs and inarticulate cries, to race with him. if he wins, he whips the loser with two wands of yucca leaves (culled with special observances) which he carries. if he loses, the winner must not whip him. if the loser begs him to whip softly he whips hard, and vice versa. his body is painted red and has queue-symbols drawn on it, like those of to`badzistsíni (plate vii.). his mask, which is a domino and not a cap, is painted red and marked with circles and curves in white. his cigarette is prepared on the fourth day, but it is not given to him to sacrifice; it is placed by other hands. song and prayer accompany the preparation and sacrifice of the cigarette. the latter is painted red, and decorated in white with queue-symbols, either two or four; if four, two are closed or complete, and two open or incomplete. (note 270.) navaho music. by prof. john comfort fillmore. 272. the twenty-eight songs which i have transcribed from phonographic records made by dr. washington matthews have very great scientific interest and value, inasmuch as they throw much light on the problem of the form spontaneously assumed by natural folk-songs. primitive man, expressing his emotions, especially strongly excited feeling, in song, without any rules or theories, must, of course, move spontaneously along the lines of least resistance. this is the law under which folk-melodies must necessarily be shaped. the farther back we can get toward absolutely primitive expression of emotion in song, the more valuable is our material for scientific purposes; because we can be certain that it is both spontaneous and original, unaffected by contact with civilized music and by any and all theories. in such music we may study the operation of natural psychical laws correlated with physical laws, working freely and coming to spontaneous expression through the vocal apparatus. these navaho songs are especially valuable because they carry us well back toward the beginnings of music-making. one only needs to hear them sung, or listen to them in the admirable phonographic records of dr. matthews, to be convinced of this from the very quality of tone in which they are sung. in all of them the sounds resemble howling more than singing, yet they are unmistakably musical in two very important particulars: (1) in their strongly marked rhythm; (2) in the unquestionably harmonic relations of the successive tones. i shall deal with them, therefore, under the two heads of rhythm and harmonic melody. 1. rhythm.--mr. richard wallascheck, the distinguished author of "primitive music," has lately called attention to the importance of sonant rhythm. not only does the rhythmic impulse precede the other musical elements, but the superiority of sonant rhythm is such as to serve as an incitement to tone-production. rhythm tends to set the voice going; and of course vocal sounds, which constitute the first music, do not become music until they are rhythmically ordered. they tend to become so ordered by a natural law of pulsation which need not be discussed here. the regularly recurring pulsations, which specially show themselves in all prolonged emissions of vocal sounds, tend also to form themselves in metrical groups; speaking broadly, these metrical groups are usually twos or threes, or simple multiples of twos or threes. this is so, for the most part, in savage folk-music, in our most advanced culture-music, and in all the development which comes between. the metrical grouping into fives or sevens is comparatively rare; but i have found it more frequently by far in savage folk-music than in our music of civilization. the most striking characteristic of the metrical grouping of tones in the navaho songs here given is the freedom with which the singer changes from one elementary metre to the other; i.e. from twos to threes and vice versa. so in the compound metres: two twos and three twos, or two threes and three threes, are intermingled with the utmost freedom, so that few of them can be marked in the notation with a single-time signature. or, if they are, there is almost sure to be an exceptional measure or two here and there which varies from the fundamental metrical type. thus, the first song on cylinder no. 38 has metrical groupings of three threes and of two threes; i.e. 9/8 and 6/8 time. the two songs on cylinder no. 41 have three twos and two twos, treating the eighth note as a unit; or, better, 2/4 and 3/4 metre, mingled at the pleasure of the singer. nearly all the songs vary the metre in this way. the one on cylinder no. 62 has an exceptionally rich variety of metrical arrangement; while the second one, on cylinder no. 38, is exceptionally simple and monotonous in metre and rhythm. a few of them, like no. 25, recorded on cylinder no. 143, are singularly irregular. this song would seem to be based on a grouping of simple twos (2/4 time, equal to 4/8) as its fundamental metrical conception; yet a great many measures contain only three eighth notes, and some contain five or even six. the song numbered 28, on cylinder no. 144, has a 8/8 metre as its foundation, but varied by 2/4, equal to 4/8. in respect of metrical grouping, these navaho songs do not differ in any essential characteristic from the songs of the omahas, the kwakiutls, the pawnees, the otoes, the sioux, and other aboriginal folk-music, nor from that of other nations and races, including our own. the complexity of metrical arrangement has been carried much farther by some other tribes, notably the omahas and the kwakiutls, than by the navahoes, so far as appears from the present collection of songs. there is no record here of an accompanying drum-beat, so that, if the combinations of dissimilar rhythms which are so common in the two above-named tribes exist among the navahoes, they are yet to be recorded and transcribed. 2. harmonic melody.--these songs seem to be a real connecting link between excited shouting and excited singing. in quality of tone they are shouts or howls. in pitch-relations they are unmistakably harmonic. some of them manifest this characteristic most strikingly. for example, the two songs on cylinder no. 41 contain all the tones which compose the chord of c major, and no others. the second one on cylinder no. 38 has the tones d and f sharp and no others, except in the little preliminary flourish at the beginning, and here there is only a passing e, which fills up the gap between the two chord-tones. d is evidently the key-note, and the whole melody is made up of the tonic chord incomplete. the first song on the same cylinder is similarly made up of the incomplete tonic chord in c minor; only the opening phrase has the incomplete chord of e flat, the relative major. cylinder no. 49 has nothing but the tonic chord in c major, and the chord is complete. no. 61 has the complete chord of b flat minor and nothing else. no. 62 is made up mainly of the chord of f major complete. it has two by-tones occasionally used, g and d, the former belonging to the dominant and the other to both the sub-dominant and relative minor chords. song no. 9 on cylinder no. 100 has the incomplete chord of d sharp minor, with g sharp, the sub-dominant in the key, as an occasional by-tone. the last tone of each period, the lowest tone of the song, sounds in the phonograph as if the singer could not reach it easily, and the pitch is rather uncertain. it was probably meant for g sharp; but a personal interview with the singer would be necessary to settle the point conclusively. song no. 10, on the same cylinder, has the complete tonic chord in d sharp minor and nothing else except the tone c sharp, which is here not a melodic by-tone, but a harmonic tone, a minor seventh added to the tonic chord. this is curiously analogous to some of the melodies i heard in the dahomey village at the world's fair, and also to some of the melodies of our own southern negroes. song no. 11, on the same cylinder, has the same characteristics as no. 9. nos. 12 and 13, on cylinder no. 135, contain the complete chord of d flat and nothing else. the two songs on cylinder no. 138 contain the complete chord of c major and nothing else, except at the beginning, where a, the relative minor tone, comes in, in the opening phrase. as a rule, whatever by-tones there are in these songs are used in the preliminary phrase or flourish of the song, and then the singer settles down steadily to the line of the tonic chord. the two songs recorded on no. 139 have the complete major chord of b flat, with g, the relative minor, as a by-tone. the two songs on no. 143 are in c sharp minor and embody the tonic chord, with f sharp, the sub-dominant, as a by-tone. only the first of the two begins with the tone b, which does not occur again. song no. 27, on cylinder no. 144, embodies only the complete chord of c sharp minor. no. 28 has the same chord, with f sharp as a by-tone. the two songs on no. 145 are in d minor and are made up mainly of the tonic chord. the by-tones used are g and b flat, which make up two thirds of the sub-dominant chord, and c, which belongs to the relative major. no. 32, on cylinder no. 146, has more of diatonic melody. it is in g major, and embodies the chord of the tonic with by-tones belonging to both the dominant and sub-dominant chords, one from each chord. no. 33, on the same cylinder, is less melodious, but has the same harmonic elements. cylinder 147 has two songs in d major which embody the tonic chord complete, with slight use of a single by-tone, b, the relative minor. the same is true of song no. 36, on cylinder no. 148. song no. 37, on the same cylinder, has the major chord of c and nothing else. there are two striking facts in all this: (1) when these navahoes make music spontaneously,--make melodies by singing tones in rhythmically ordered succession,--there is always a tone which forces itself on our consciousness as a key-note, or tonic, and this tone, together with the tones which make up its chord (whether major or minor), invariably predominates overwhelmingly; (2) whenever by-tones are employed, they invariably belong to the chords which stand in the nearest relation to the tonic. i do not care at present to go into any speculations as to why this is so. no matter now what may be the influence of sonant rhythm; what may be the relations of the psychical, physiological, and physical elements; how sound is related to music; how men come to the conception of a minor tonic when only the major chord is given in the physical constitution of tone. all these questions i wish to waive at this time and only to insist on this one fact, viz.: that, so far as these navaho songs are concerned, the line of least resistance is always a harmonic line. if we find the same true of all other folk-melodies, i can see no possible escape from the conclusion that harmonic perception is the formative principle in folk-melody. this perception may be sub-conscious, if you please; the savage never heard a chord sung or played as a simultaneous combination of tones in his life; he has no notion whatever of the harmonic relations of tones. but it is not an accident that he sings, or shouts, or howls, straight along the line of a chord, and never departs from it except now and then to touch on some of the nearest related chord-tones, using them mainly as passing-tones to fill up the gap between the tones of his tonic chord. such things do not happen by accident, but by law. that these navahoes do precisely this thing, no listener can doubt who knows a chord when he hears it. but the same thing is true of all the folk-music i have ever studied. hundreds of omaha, kwakiutl, otoe, pawnee, sioux, winnebago, iroquois, mexican indian, zuñi, australian, african, malay, chinese, japanese, hindoo, arab, turkish, and european folk-songs which i have carefully studied, taking down many of them from the lips of the native singers, all tell the same story. they are all built on simple harmonic lines, all imply harmony, are all equally intelligible to peoples the most diverse in race, and consequently owe their origin and shaping to the same underlying formative principles. mr. wallascheck has called attention to the fact that the rhythmic impulse precedes the musical tones, and also to the part played by sonant rhythm in setting tone-production going. the rhythmic impulse is doubtless the fundamental one in the origination of music. but when the tone-production is once started by the rhythmic impulse, it takes a direction in accordance with the laws of harmonic perception. i was long ago forced to this conclusion in my study of the omaha music; and these navaho songs furnish the most striking corroboration of it. how else can we possibly account for the fact that so many of these songs contain absolutely nothing but chord tones? how can we escape the conclusion that the line of least resistance is a harmonic line? is it not plain that, in the light of this principle, every phenomenon of folk-music becomes clear and intelligible? is there any other hypothesis which will account for the most striking characteristics of folk-music? every student must answer these questions for himself. but i, for my part, am wholly unable to resist the conviction that the harmonic sense is the shaping, formative principle in folk-melody. [in the numbers of the land of sunshine (los angeles, cal.), for october and november, 1896, under the title of "songs of the navajos," the poetry and music of this tribe have already been discussed by professor fillmore and the author. all the music which follows (see pp. 258, 279-290), except that of the "dove song," was written by professor fillmore.] 273. dove song. (see par. 50.) music by christian barthelmess. slow. wos wos nai-di-la a a, wos wos nai-di-lo o o, wos wos nai-di-la a a, tsi-nol-ka-zi nai-di-la a a, ke-li-tsi-tsi nai-di-la a a, wos wos nai-di-lo o o. texts and interlinear translations. 274. asseveration of torlino (in part). naestsán bayántsin. earth (woman horizontal), for it i am ashamed. yádilyil bayántsin. sky (dark above), for it i am ashamed. hayolkál bayántsin. dawn, for it i am ashamed. nahotsói bayántsin. evening (land of horizontal yellow), for it i am ashamed. nahodotli'zi bayántsin. blue sky (land or place of horizontal blue), for it i am ashamed. tsalyél bayántsin. darkness, for it i am ashamed. tsóhanoai bayántsin. sun, for it i am ashamed. si sizíni beyastí`yi bayántsin. in me it stands, with me it talks, for it i am ashamed. 275. beginning of origin legend. to`bilhaski'digi haádze lakaígo ta`i'ndilto; tsin water with hill central in to the east white up rose; day dzilínla tsi'ni. sadaádze dotli'zgo ta`i'ndilto; they thought it they say. to the south blue up rose; tábitsin indzilté tsi'ni. inádze litsógo still their day they went around they say. to the west yellow ta`i'ndilto; ininála á`le tsi'ni. akógo náhokosdze up rose; evening always it showed they say. then to the north dilyi'lgo ta`i'ndilto; akógo dazintsá dádzilkos tsi'ni. dark up rose; then they lay down they slept they say. to`bilhaski'di to`altsáhazlin; water with hill central water flowed from in different directions; haádze la ilín, sadaágo la ilín, la inádze ilín to the east one flowed, at the south one flowed, one to the west flowed tsi'ni. haádze ilínigi ban kéhodziti; they say. to the east where it flowed its border place where they dwelt; sadaádze eltó`; inádze eltó` ban kéhodziti to the south also; to the west also its border place where they dwelt tsi'ni. they say. haádze tan holgé; sadaádze nahodoóla holgé; to the east corn a place called; to the south nahodoóla a place called; inádze lókatsosakád holgé. haádze asalái to the west reed great standing a place called. to the east pot one holgé; sadaádze to`hádzitil holgé; a place called; to the south water they come for often a place called; inádze dsillitsíbehogán holgé. haádze to the west mountain red made of house a place called. to the east léyahogan holgé; sadaádze tsiltsi'ntha earth under house a place called; to the south aromatic sumac among holgé; inádze tse`litsíbehogán holgé. a place called; to the west rock red made of house a place called. holatsí dilyi'le kéhati inté. holatsí litsí kéhati inté. tanilaí ants dark lived there. ants red lived there. dragon-flies kéhati inté. tsaltsá kéhati inté. wointli'zi kéhati lived there. (yellow beetles) lived there. beetles (?) hard lived inté. tse`yoáli kéhati inté. kinli'zin there. stone carriers (beetles) lived there. bugs black (beetles) kéhati inté. maitsán kéhati inté. andi'ta tsápani kéhati lived there. coyote-dung (beetles) lived there. besides bats lived inté. totsó` kéhati inté. wonistsídi kéhati inté. there. (white-faced beetles) lived there. locusts lived there. wonistsídi kaí kéhati inté. nakidátago diné` aísi locusts white lived there. twelve people these dezdél. started (in life). haádze hahóse to`sigi'n tsi'ni; sadaádze to`sigi'n to the east extended ocean they say; to the south ocean tsi'ni; inádze to`sigi'n tsi'ni; náhokosdze to`sigi'n they say; to the west ocean they say; to the north ocean tsi'ni. haádze to`sigi'n bígi tiéholtsodi sitín tsi'ni. they say. to the east ocean within tiéholtsodi lay they say. natáni inlíngo; hanantáï tsi'ni. sadaádze to`sigi'n chief he was; chief of the people they say. to the south ocean bígi thaltláhale sitín tsi'ni. natáni inlin'go; hanantáï within blue heron lay they say. chief he was; chief of the people tsi'ni. inádze to`sigi'n bígi tsal sitín tsi'ni. natáni they say. to the west ocean within frog lay they say. chief inlíngo; hanantáï tsi'ni. náhokosdze to`sigi'n bígi he was; chief of the people they say. to the north ocean within idní`dsilkai sitín tsi'ni; hanantáï tsi'ni. thunder mountain white lay they say; chief of the people they say. tígi itégo hazágo kédahatsitigo; e'hyidelnago in this way they quarrelled around where they lived; with one another ahádaztilge tsi'ni. e'hyidelnago estsáni altsan they committed adultery they say. with one another women several tatsikíd tsi'ni. yúwe tséhalni tsi'ni. tiéholtsodi committed crime they say. to banish it they failed they say. tiéholtsodi haádze "hatégola doléla? hwehéya to the east "in what way shall we act? their land holdá`odaka`la." sadaádze thaltláhale halní the place they dislike." to the south blue heron spoke to them tsi'ni. inádze "kat si dokoné kehadzitídolel," tsal they say. to the west "now i (say) not here shall they dwell," frog hatsí natáni inli'ni, hatsí tsi'ni. náhokosdze he said chief he was, he said they say. to the north idní`dsilkai "ta`kadá` hádzeta dahízdinolidi" tsi'ni. thunder mountain white "quickly elsewhere they must depart" they say. haádze tiéholtsodi ahánadazdeyago to the east tiéholtsodi when again they committed adultery alkinatsidzé tohatsí tsi'ni. sadaádze among themselves again fought nothing he said they say. to the south thaltláhale tatohanantsída tsi'ni. inádze tsal natáni blue heron again said nothing to them they say. to the west frog chief inlinéni tatohanantsída tsi'ni. náhokosdze he formerly was again said nothing to them they say. to the north idní`dsilkai tatohanantsída tsi'ni. thunder mountain white again said nothing to them they say. tóbiltahozondala tsi'ni. not with pleasant ways, one they say. tin naikálago takonáhotsa tsi'ni. sadaádze four again ends of nights again the same happened they say. to the south kéhodzitini takonátsidza tsi'ni; kinatsidzé tsi'ni. the dwellers did the same again they say; again they fought they say. haádze la estsánigo la dinégo yahatsaáz inté; to the east one woman one man tried to enter two together there; tsehodineltsa, tsi'ni. sadaádze thaltláhale sitínedze they were driven they say. to the south blue heron to where he lay yahanátsataz inté; tsenáhodineltsa again they tried to enter two together there; again they were driven out tsi'ni. inádze tsal natáni inli'nedze they say. to the west frog chief to where he was yahanátsataz inté; tsenáhodineltsa again they tried to enter two together there; again they were driven out tsi'ni. náhokosdze tsenáhodineltsa "tóta ní`yila. they say. to the north again they were driven out. "not one of you. dainoká` hádzeta," ho`doní tsi'ni. andi'ta aibitlé keep on going elsewhere," thus he spoke they say. besides the same night nahodoóla bai'ndadzitigo iská' tatoastetsáda nahodoóla they discussed it the end of the night they did not decide tsi'ni. na`déyayilkágo tiéholtsodi hayálti tsi'ni. they say. after dawn tiéholtsodi began to talk they say. "todadotsáda tsiní`yitsinyasti hádis tadidotsíl "you pay no attention all i said to you anywhere you will disobey; ní`yila` hádzeta tanelída; koné tóta ti` ni dasakádgi kat all of you elsewhere must go; here not this earth upon stand in now tóta;" hodoní tsi'ni. not;" thus he said they say. estsánigo tin iskágo basahatsilágo tsi'ni. among the women four ends of nights, till they talked about it they say. tín iská` api'nigo názditse inté tsi'ni, four ends of nights in the morning as they were rising there they say, haádze hatísi lakáigo taigánil tsi'ni; andi'ta sadaádze to the east something white it appeared they say; besides to the south eltó` taigánil tsi'ni; naakoné inádze eltó` taigánil also it appeared they say; again here to the west also it appeared tsi'ni; andi'ta náhokosdze eltó` taigánil tsi'ni. dsil they say; besides to the north also it appeared they say. mountains ahyéna`a` náhalini silín tsi'ni; tatobitá`hazani. rising up around like it stretched they say; without opening. to`ahyéintsil tsi'ni; to`tobityió, tatódizaatego water all around they say; water not to be crossed, not to be climbed ahyéintsilin tsi'ni. táako tahadiltél tsi'ni. flowed all around they say. at once they started they say. ahyéiltégo nihiziilté tsi'ni; they went around in circles thus they went they say; yabiilté tsi'ni. dilkógo. táado tan indazdéti they went to the sky they say. it was smooth. thence down they looked tsi'ni; to` i'ndadiltlayengi; to` toahotéhida tsi'ni. they say; water where it had risen; water nothing else there they say. nité kondé la haznolán tsi'ni; tsi dotli'z léi; there from here one stuck out they say; head blue it had; hatsotsí tsi'ni; "kónne," tsiné, "haádzego he called to them they say; "in here," he said, "to the eastward ahótsala" tsi'ni. akónne ooilté tsi'ni; binaká` a hole" they say. in here they went entering they say; through it ilté tsi'ni bagándze hasté tsi'ni. they went they say; to the upper surface they came out they say. dotli'zeni hastsósidine` ati'nla tsi'ni. hastsósidine` the blue one swallow people belonged to they say. swallow people kéhatil tsi'ni. hogánin togólgo nazni'l, lived there they say. the houses rough (lumpy) scattered around, tsi'ni; háhosi` yilá` tsi'ni. bilathádze they say; a great many were placed they say. toward their tops dahatsózgo; áde yahadáhaztsa` tsi'ni. háhosi` they tapered; from that gave entrance an opening they say. a great many diné` altsí kotgá tsi'ni. háalahazlín tsi'ni. people collected together they say. they crowded together they say. 276. song of estsánatlehi. aieneyá. (no meaning.) eó eá aiá ahèea aía eeeaía ainá. (a meaningless prelude twice repeated.) i. 1. yéinaezgani sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. nayénezgani for me he brings, (meaningless.) 2. kat bitéelgeti sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. now téelget for me he brings, (meaningless.) 3. tsi'da la bidzái sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. truly one his lung for me he brings, (meaningless.) 4. diné` nahostli'di. sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. people are restored. for me he brings, (meaningless.) haía aína aiyéya aína. (meaningless refrain after each stanza.) ii. 1. kat to`badzistsíni sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. now to`badzistsíni for me he brings, (meaningless.) 2. tseninaholi'si sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. tse`náhale for me he brings, (meaningless.) 3. tsi'da la bitái, sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. truly one his wing, for me he brings, (meaningless.) 4. diné` nahostli'di. sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. people are restored. for me he brings, (meaningless.) iii. 1. kat léyaneyani sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. now léyaneyani for me he brings, (meaningless.) 2. tse`tahotsiltá`li sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. tse`tahotsiltá`li for me he brings, (meaningless.) 3. tsi'da bitlapi'le sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. truly his side-lock for me he brings, (meaningless.) 4. diné` nahostli'di. sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. people are restored. for me he brings, (meaningless.) iv. 1. kat tsówenatlehi sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. now tsówenatlehi for me he brings, (meaningless.) 2. bináye tsagáni sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. bináye aháni for me he brings, (meaningless.) 3. tsi'da la binái sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. truly one his eye for me he brings, (meaningless.) 4. diné` nahostli'di. sa` niyi'nigi, yeyeyéna. people are restored. for me he brings, (meaningless.) in line 1, stanza i., nayénezgani is changed to yéinaezgani, and in line 1, stanza iv., bináye aháni is changed to bináye tsagáni. nahostli'di in the last line of each stanza is rendered here "restored," but the more exact meaning is, not that the original people are called back to life, but that others are given in place of them. this verb is used if a man steals a horse and gives another horse as restitution for the one he stole. 277. song of nayénezgani (nayénezgani bigi'n). i. atsé estsán nayénezgani yihaholni'z, atsé estsán nayénezgani began to tell her of, bitéelgeti yilhaholni'z, téelget began to tell her of, nayé holóde yihaholni'z. anáye from where they are began to tell her of. ii. estsánatlehi to`badzistsíni yilhaholni'z, estsánatlehi to`badzistsíni began to tell her of, tse`nahalési yilhaholni'z, tsé`nahale began to tell her of, nayé holóde yilhaholni'z. anáye from where they are began to tell her of. iii. atsé estsán léyaneyani yilhaholni'z, atsé estsán léyaneyani began to tell her of, tse`tahotsiltá`li yilhaholni'z, tse`tahotsiltá`li began to tell her of, nayé holóde yilhaholni'z. anáye from where they are began to tell her of. iv. estsánatlehi tsówenatlehi yilhaholni'z, estsánatlehi tsówenatlehi began to tell her of, bináye tsagáni yilhaholni'z, bináye aháni began to tell her of, nayé holóde yilhaholni'z. anáye from where they are began to tell her of. prelude, refrain, and meaningless syllables are omitted from this text. 278. song of nayénezgani. i. kat nayénezgani koanígo digíni, now slayer of the alien gods thus he says a holy one, kat tsóhanoai koanígo, now the sun thus he says, digi'n yiká` sizíni koanígo. holy thereon he stands thus he says. ii. kat to`badzistsíni koanígo digíni, now child of the water thus he says a holy one, kat kléhanoai koanígo, now the moon thus he says, digi'n yiká` holési koanígo. holy thereon he goes forth thus he says. iii. kat léyaneyani koanígo digíni, now reared under the earth thus he says a holy one, kat tsóhanoai koanígo, now the sun thus he says, digi'n yiká` sizíni koanígo. holy thereon he stands thus he says. iv. kat tsówenatlehi koanígo digíni, now changing grandchild thus he says a holy one, kat kléhanoai koanígo, now the moon thus he says, digi'n yiká` holési koanígo. holy thereon he goes forth thus he says. meaningless parts omitted. koanígo is from kónigo, which is the prose form. 279. song of nayénezgani. i. kat yénaezgani la disitsáya. now slayer of the alien gods (nayénezgani) one i hear him. ya benikásde la disitsáya. sky through from one i hear him. bíniye tsíye ti'snisad lée. his voice sounds in every direction (no meaning). bíniye tsíye dígini lée. his voice sounds holy, divine (no meaning). ii. kat to`badzistsíni la disitsáya. now child of the water one i hear him. to` benikásde la disitsáya. water through from one i hear him. bíniye tsíye ti'snisad lée. his voice sounds in every direction (no meaning). bíniye tsíye dígini lée. his voice sounds divine (no meaning). iii. kat léyaneyani la disitsáya. now reared under the ground one i hear him. ni` benikásde la disitsáya. earth through from one i hear him. bíniye tsíye ti 'snisad lée. his voice sounds in every direction (no meaning). bíniye tsíye dígini lée. his voice sounds divine (no meaning). iv. kat tsówenatlehi la disitsáya. now changing grandchild one i hear him. kos benikásde la disitsáya. clouds through from one i hear him. bíniye tsíye ti'snisad lée. his voice sounds in every direction (no meaning). bíniye tsíye dígini lée. his voice sounds divine (no meaning). nayénezgani changed to yénaezgani; bine (his voice) changed to bíniye; digi'n changed to dígini, for poetic reasons. preludes and refrains omitted. 280. a song of nayénezgani. i. kat nayénezgani nahaníya, now slayer of the alien gods he arrives, pes dilyi'li behogánla ásde nahaníya, knives dark a house made of from he arrives, pes dilyi'li da`honíhe ásde nahaníya. knives dark dangle high from he arrives. nizáza dinigíni, síka tóta. your treasures you holy one, for my sake not. ii. kat to`badzistsíni nahaníya, now child of the water he arrives, pes dolgási behogánla ásde nahaníya, knives serrate a house made of from he arrives, pes dolgási da`honíhe ásde nahaníya. knives serrate dangle high from he arrives. nizáza dinigíni, síka not. your treasures you holy one, for my sake tóta. iii. kat léyaneyani nahaníya, now reared under the earth he arrives, pes althasaí behogánla ásde nahaníya, knives of all kinds a house made of from he arrives, pes althasaí da`honíhe ásde nahaníya. knives of all kinds dangle high from he arrives. nizáza dinigíni, síka tóta. your treasures you holy one, for my sake not. iv. kat tsówenatlehi nahaníya, now changing grandchild he arrives, pes litsói behogánla ásde nahaníya, knives yellow yellow a house made of from he arrives, pes litsói da`honíhe ásde nahaníya. knives yellow dangle high from he arrives. nizáza dinigíni, síka tóta. your treasures you holy one, for my sake not. in endeavoring to explain the meaning of this song, the singer related that nayénezgani said to his mother, "you are the divine one, not i." she replied, "no, you are the divine one." they were exchanging compliments. then he said, "not for my sake, but for yours, were these treasures (weapons, etc.) given by the sun. they are yours." for the meaning of bizá (his treasure), see note 246. nizá or ni'za means your treasure; the last syllable is here repeated perhaps as a poetic plural. the houses of knives are said to be the different chambers in the house of the sun. meaningless syllables are omitted in this text. 281. song of the sun. i. kat nayénezgani sideyáïye, now slayer of the alien gods i come (or approach) with, pes dilyi'li behogánde sideyáïye, knives dark from house made of i come with, pes dilyi'li da`honíde sideyáïye, knives dark from where they dangle high i come with, sa` alíli sideyáïye, aníhoyéle for me an implement of the rites i come with, to you dreadful aineyáhi ainé. (no meaning). ii. kat to`badzistsíni sideyáïye, now child of the water i come with, pes dolgási[264] behogánde sideyáïye, knives serrate from house made of i come with, pes dolgási da`honíde sideyáïye, knives serrate from where they dangle high i come with, sa` alíli sideyáïye, for me an implement of the rites i come with, anídiginle aineyáhi ainé. to you sacred (divine, holy) (no meaning). iii. kat léyaneyani sideyáïye, now reared beneath the earth, i come with, pes althasaí behogánde sideyáïye, knives of all kinds from house made of i come with, pes althasaí da`honíde sideyáïye, knives of all kinds from where they dangle high i come with, sa` alíli sideyáïye, aníhoyéle, for me an implement of the rites i come with, to you dreadful, aineyáhi ainé. (no meaning). iv. kat tsówenatlehi sideyáïye, now changing grandchild i come with, pes litsói behogánde sideyáïye, knives yellow from the house made of i come with, pes litsói da`honíde sideyáïye, knives yellow from where they dangle high i come with, sa` alíli sideyáïye, anídiginle for me an implement of the rites i come with, to you sacred aineyáhi ainé. (no meaning.) alíl or alíli means a show, dance, or other single exhibition of the rites (see fig. 30). it also means a wand or other sacred implement used in the rites. it is thought that the colored hoops for raising a storm, described in par. 355, are the alíli referred to in this song. 282. song of the sun. i. siní` eé deyá aá, deyá aá, my mind approaches, approaches, tsínhanoai eé deyá aá, the sun god approaches, ni`ninéla` eé deyá aá, border of the earth approaches, estsánatlesi bigáni yúnidze deyá aá, estsánatlehi her house toward the hearth approaches, sána nagái eé deyá aá, in old age walking approaches, biké hozóni eé deyá aá. his trail beautiful approaches. siní` eé deyá aá, deyá aá. my mind approaches, approaches. ii. siní` eé deyá aá, deyá aá, my mind approaches, approaches, kléhanoai eé deyá aá, the moon god approaches, ni`ninéla` eé deyá aá, border of the earth approaches, yolkaí estsán bigáni yúnidze deyá aá, yolkaí estsán her house toward the hearth approaches, sána nagái eé deyá aá, in old age walking approaches, biké hozóni eé deyá aá. his trail beautiful approaches. siní` eé deyá aá deyá aá. my mind approaches, approaches. yúni, here translated hearth, is a certain part of the floor of the navaho lodge. yúnidze means in the direction of the yúni. the expressions sána, nagái and biké hozóni appear in many songs and prayers, and are always thus united. their literal translation is as given above; but they are equivalent to saying, "long life and happiness;" as part of a prayer, they are a supplication for a long and happy life. hozóni means, primarily, terrestrially beautiful; but it means also happy, happily, or, in a certain sense, good. estsánatlehi is often called, in song, estsánatlesi, and tsóhanoai is often called (apparently with greater propriety) tsínhanoai. siní` = si'ni. the syllables not translated are meaningless. 283. significant words of songs of the log, first set. first song:- tsin nizóni sa` nii'nitha. tree (log, stick) beautiful for me they fell. second song:--tsin nizóni sa` haídile. tree beautiful for me they prepare or trim. third song:--tsin nizóni sa` haiyidíla`. tree beautiful for me they have prepared. fourth song:--tsin nizóni silá` yidití`yi`. tree beautiful with me they carry. fifth song:--tsin nizóni silá` tháiyiyitin. tree beautiful with me they put in the water. the word for beautiful is usually pronounced inzóni, not nizóni as above. 284. significant words of songs of the log, second set. first song:--tsin nizóni silá` neyilgó`. tree beautiful with me they push. second song:--tsin nizóni silá` yidisél. tree beautiful with me floats. third song:--tsin nizóni silá` yiyilól. tree beautiful with me moves floating. 285. words of the eagle. ahaláni siáz! e`yéhe siáz! nitsi'li ta greeting, my child! thanks, my child! your younger brother down toadainini'lda, donikí. you did not throw, donikí. 286. song of the eagles.--a song of the bead chant. i. aóoóo aiá-hená an an anaié anaié. (meaningless prelude.) kinnakíye yéye saaíyista an an, kinnakíye there he sits, hayáaaá yéye saaíyista an an, when he rises, there he sits, yiltsá aá yéye saaíyista an an, we shall see, there he sits, talpíl aá yéye saaíyista an an. he will flap, there he sits. aiadoséye aiadoséye an an an ohaneyé. (meaningless refrain.) kinnakíye = kinníki. the vocables not translated have no meaning now. 287. song of the ascension. i. aió éo éo éo he, éo óo éo éo he. (meaningless prelude.) 1. tsi'natan alkaí eé eé, plant of corn white, 2. bidági tso ínyan eé. its ear sticks up in great to eat. 3. nantá anán tosé tosé. stay down. tosé eyé eyé. ii. (repeat prelude as in stanza i.) 1. tsi'natan dotli'z eé eé, plant of corn blue, 2. bidági tso ínyan eé. its ear sticks up in great to eat. 3. nantá anán tosé tosé. stay down. (repeat refrain as in stanza i.) iii. (repeat prelude.) 1. tsi'natan altsói eé eé, plant of corn yellow, 2. bidági tso ínyan eé. its ear sticks up in great to eat. 3. nantá anán tosé tosé. stay down. (repeat refrain.) iv. (repeat prelude.) 1. tsi'nataa zi'ni eé eé, plant of corn black, 2. bidági tso ínyan eé. its ear sticks up in great to eat. 3. nantá anán tosé tosé. stay down. (repeat refrain.) v. (repeat prelude.) 1. tsi'nat althasaí eé eé, plant of corn all kinds or colors, 2. bidági tso ínyan eé. its ear sticks up in great to eat. 3. nantá anán tosé tosé. stay down. (repeat refrain.) vi. (repeat prelude.) 1. tsi'natan ditsól eé eé, plant of corn round (nubbin), 2. bidági tso ínyan eé. its ear sticks up in great to eat. 3. nantá anán tosé tosé. stay down. (repeat refrain.) great changes are made in some of the words in this song for prosodic reasons. tsi'natan, tsi'nataa, and tsi'nat (1st lines) are all from tsil (plant) and natán (corn), bidági (2d lines) is from bidí (its ear), iá` (it sticks up), and gi (in). alkaí (line 1, stanza i.) = lakaí. altsói (line 1, stanza iii.) = litsói. 288. prayer of first dancers from the ceremony of the night chant. 1. tse`gíhigi, tse`gíhi in 2. hayolkál behogángi, dawn made of house in, 3. nahotsói behogángi, evening twilight made of house in, 4. kósdilyil behogángi, cloud dark made of house in, 5. niltsabaká behogángi, rain male made of house in, 6. á`dilyil behogángi, mist dark made of house in, 7. niltsabaád behogángi, rain female made of house in, 8. thaditín behogángi, pollen made of house in, 9. aniltáni behogángi, grasshoppers made of house in, 10. á`dilyil dadinlági, mist dark at the door, 11. natsílit bikedzétin, rainbow his trail the road, 12. atsinikli'si yíki dasizíni, zigzag lightning on it high stands, 13. niltsabaká yíki dasizíni, rain male on it high stands, 14. hastsébaka, deity male, 15. kósdilyil nikégo nahaíniya`. cloud dark your moccasins come to us. 16. kósdilyil nisklégo nahaíniya`. cloud dark your leggings come to us. 17. kósdilyil niégo nahaíniya`. cloud dark your shirt come to us. 18. kósdilyil nitságo nahaíniya`. cloud dark your headdress come to us. 19. kósdilyil binininlágo nahaíniya`. cloud dark your mind enveloping come to us. 20. niki'dze idní`dilyil dahitágo nahaíniya`. you above thunder dark high flying come to us. 21. kosistsín bikégo dahitágo nahaíniya`. cloud having a shape at feet high flying come to us. 22. intsekádo kósdilyil beatsadasyélgo dahitágo your head over cloud dark made of far darkness high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 23. intsekádo niltsabaká beatsadasyélgo dahitágo your head over rain male made of far darkness high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 24. intsekádo á`dilyil beatsadasyélgo dahitágo your head over mist dark made of far darkness high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 25. intsekádo niltsabaád beatsadasyélgo dahitágo your head over rain female made of far darkness high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 26. intsekádo atsinikli'si hadahatilgo dahitágo your head over zigzag lightning high out flung high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 27. intsekádo natsílit adahazlágo dahitágo nahaíniya`. your head over rainbow high hanging high flying come to us. 28. nita`lathá`do kósdilyil beatsadasyélgo dahitágo your wings on ends of cloud dark made of far darkness high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 29. nita`lathá`do niltsabaká beatsadasyélgo dahitágo your wings on ends of rain male made of far darkness high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 30. nita`lathá`do á`dilyil beatsadasyélgo dahitágo your wings on ends of mist dark made of far darkness high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 31. nita`lathá`do niltsabaád beatsadasyélgo dahitágo your wings on ends of rain female made of far darkness high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 32. nita`lathá`do atsinikli'si hadahati'lgo dahitágo your wings on ends of zigzag lightning high out flung high flying nahaíniya`. come to us. 33. nita`lathá`do natsílit adahazlágo dahitágo nahaíniya`. your wings on ends of rainbow high hanging high flying come to us. 34. kósdilyil, niltsabaká, á`dilyil, niltsabaád bil cloud dark, rain male, mist dark, rain female with it benatsidasyélgo nahaíniya`. made of near darkness come to us. 35. ni`gidasyél nahaíniya`. on the earth darkness come to us. 36. aíbe natátso nitadeél biági tálawus with the same great corn floating over at bottom foam yilto`lín esi'nosin. with water flowing that i wish. 37. nigel islá`. your sacrifice i have made. 38. nadé hilá`. for you smoke i have prepared. 39. siké saáditlil. my feet for me restore (as they were). 40. sitsát saáditlil. my legs for me restore. 41. sitsís saáditlil. my body for me restore. 42. si'ni saáditlil. my mind for me restore. 43. siné saáditlil. my voice for me restore. 44. ádistsin nalíl saádilel. this day your spell for me take out. 45. ádistsin nalíl saani'nla`. this day your spell for me remove (take away). 46. sitsádze tahi'ndinla`. away from me you have taken it. 47. nizágo sitsa` nénla`. far off from me it is taken. 48. nizágo nastlín. far off you have done it. 49. hozógo nadedestál. happily (in a way of beauty) i recover. 50. hozógo sitáhadinokél. happily my interior becomes cool. 51. hozógo siná nahodotlél. happily my eyes, i regain (the power of). 52. hozógo sitsé dinokél. happily my head becomes cool. 53. hozógo sitsát nahodotlél. happily my limbs i regain. 54. hozógo nadedestsíl. happily again i hear. 55. hozógo sáhadadoltó`. happily for me it is taken off. 56. hozógo nasádo. happily i walk. 57. tosohododelnígo nasádo. impervious to pain i walk. 58. sitáhago sólago nasádo. my interior light i walk. 59. saná` nislíngo nasádo. my feelings lively i walk. 60. hozógo kósdilyil senahotlédo. happily (in terrestrial beauty) clouds dark i desire (in abundance). 61. hozógo á`dilyil senahotlédo. happily mists dark i desire. 62. hozógo sedaahuiltyído senahotlédo. happily passing showers i desire. 63. hozógo nanisé senahotlédo. happily plants of all kinds i desire. 64. hozógo thaditín senahotlédo. happily pollen i desire. 65. hozógo dató` senahotlédo. happily dew i desire. 66. hozógo natálkai yasóni ni`dahazlágo happily corn white good beautiful to the end of the earth ni`yilokaí. may (it) come with you. 67. hozógo natáltsoi yasóni ni`dahazlágo happily corn yellow good beautiful to the end of the earth ni`yilokaí. may come with you. 68. hozógo natadotli'zi yasóni ni`dahazlágo happily corn blue good beautiful to the end of the earth ni`yilokaí. may come with you. 69. hozógo nataalthasaí yasóni ni`dahazlágo happily corn of all kinds good beautiful to the end of the earth 70. hozógo nanisé yasóni ni`dahazlágo happily plants of all kinds good beautiful to the end of the earth ni`yilokaí. may come with you. 71. hozógo yúdi althasaí yasóni ni`dahazlágo happily goods of all kinds good beautiful to the end of the earth ni`yilokaí. may come with you. 72. hozógo inkli'z althasaí yasóni ni`dahazlágo happily jewels of all kinds good beautiful to the end of the earth ni`yilokaí. may come with you. 73. tíbe ni`yitsi'de hozógo ni`yilokaí. with these before you happily may come with you. 74. tíbe ni`yikéde hozógo ni`yilokaí. with these behind you happily may come with you. 75. tíbe ni`yiyági hozógo ni`yilokaí. with these below you happily may come with you. 76. tíbe ni`yikígi hozógo ni`yilokaí. with these above you happily may come with you. 77. tíbe ni`yinagidáltso hozógo ni`yilokaí. with theseall around you happily may come with you. 78. tibikégo hozógo nahodolál. in this way happily you accomplish your tasks. 79. hozógo nastúwin ta`nishyítinolil. happily old men they will look at you. 80. hozógo sáni ta`nishyítinolil. happily old women they will look at you. 81. hozógo tsilké ta`nishyítinolil. happily young men they will look at you. 82. hozógo tsiké ta`nishyítinolil. happily young women they will look at you. 83. hozógo asiké ta`nishyítinolil. happily boys they will look at you. 84. hozógo atéte ta`nishyítinolil. happily girls they will look at you. 85. hozógo altsíni ta`nishyítinolil. happily children they will look at you. 86. hozógo intanitaí` ta`nishyítinolil. happily chiefs they will look at you. 87. hozógo taidoltá` ta`nishyítinolil. happily scattering in different directions they will look at you. 88. hozógo nitailté ta`nishyítinolil. happily getting home they will look at you. 89. hozógo thaditínke etíngo nitailtéde. happily pollen trail on road they get home. 90. hozógo ninádahidoka. happily may they all get back. 91. hozógo nasádo. happily (or in beauty) i walk. 92. sitsi'dze hozógo nasádo. me before toward happily i walk. 93. sikéde hozógo nasádo. me behind from happily i walk. 94. siyági hozógo nasádo. me below in happily i walk. 95. siki'dze hozógo nasádo. me above toward happily i walk. 96. siná dáltso hozógo nasádo. me around all happily i walk. 97. hozóna hastlé, in happiness (or beauty) again it is finished (or done), 98. hozóna hastlé, in beauty again it is finished, 99. hozóna hastlé, in beauty again it is finished, 100. hozóna hastlé, in beauty again it is finished, free translation of prayer. 1. in tse`gíhi (oh you who dwell!) 2. in the house made of the dawn, 3. in the house made of the evening twilight, 4. in the house made of the dark cloud, 5. in the house made of the he-rain, 6. in the house made of the dark mist, 7. in the house made of the she-rain, 8. in the house made of pollen, 9. in the house made of grasshoppers, 10. where the dark mist curtains the doorway, 11. the path to which is on the rainbow, 12. where the zigzag lightning stands high on top, 13. where the he-rain stands high on top, 14. oh, male divinity! 15. with your moccasins of dark cloud, come to us. 16. with your leggings of dark cloud, come to us. 17. with your shirt of dark cloud, come to us. 18. with your headdress of dark cloud, come to us. 19. with your mind enveloped in dark cloud, come to us. 20. with the dark thunder above you, come to us soaring. 21. with the shapen cloud at your feet, come to us soaring. 22. with the far darkness made of the dark cloud over your head, come to us soaring. 23. with the far darkness made of the he-rain over your head, come to us soaring. 24. with the far darkness made of the dark mist over your head, come to us soaring. 25. with the far darkness made of the she-rain over your head, come to us soaring. 26. with the zigzag lightning flung out on high over your head, come to us soaring. 27. with the rainbow hanging high over your head, come to us soaring. 28. with the far darkness made of the dark cloud on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring. 29. with the far darkness made of the he-rain on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring. 30. with the far darkness made of the dark mist on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring. 31. with the far darkness made of the she-rain on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring. 32. with the zigzag lightning flung out on high on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring. 33. with the rainbow hanging high on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring. 34. with the near darkness made of the dark cloud, of the he-rain, of the dark mist, and of the she-rain, come to us. 35. with the darkness on the earth, come to us. 36. with these i wish the foam floating on the flowing water over the roots of the great corn. 37. i have made your sacrifice. 38. i have prepared a smoke for you. 39. my feet restore for me. 40. my limbs restore for me. 41. my body restore for me. 42. my mind restore for me. 43. my voice restore for me. 44. to-day, take out your spell for me. 45. to-day, take away your spell for me. 46. away from me you have taken it. 47. far off from me it is taken. 48. far off you have done it. 49. happily i recover. 50. happily my interior becomes cool. 51. happily my eyes regain their power. 52. happily my head becomes cool. 53. happily my limbs regain their power. 54. happily i hear again. 55. happily for me (the spell) is taken off. 56. happily i walk. 57. impervious to pain, i walk. 58. feeling light within, i walk. 59. with lively feelings, i walk. 60. happily (or in beauty) abundant dark clouds i desire. 61. happily abundant dark mists i desire. 62. happily abundant passing showers i desire. 63. happily an abundance of vegetation i desire. 64. happily an abundance of pollen i desire. 65. happily abundant dew i desire. 66. happily may fair white corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you. 67. happily may fair yellow corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you. 68. happily may fair blue corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you. 69. happily may fair corn of all kinds, to the ends of the earth, come with you. 70. happily may fair plants of all kinds, to the ends of the earth, come with you. 71. happily may fair goods of all kinds, to the ends of the earth, come with you. 72. happily may fair jewels of all kinds, to the ends of the earth, come with you. 73. with these before you, happily may they come with you. 74. with these behind you, happily may they come with you. 75. with these below you, happily may they come with you. 76. with these above you, happily may they come with you. 77. with these all around you, happily may they come with you. 78. thus happily you accomplish your tasks. 79. happily the old men will regard you. 80. happily the old women will regard you. 81. happily the young men will regard you. 82. happily the young women will regard you. 83. happily the boys will regard you. 84. happily the girls will regard you. 85. happily the children will regard you. 86. happily the chiefs will regard you. 87. happily, as they scatter in different directions, they will regard you. 88. happily, as they approach their homes, they will regard you. 89. happily may their roads home be on the trail of pollen (peace). 90. happily may they all get back. 91. in beauty (happily) i walk. 92. with beauty before me, i walk. 93. with beauty behind me, i walk. 94. with beauty below me, i walk. 95. with beauty above me, i walk. 96. with beauty all around me, i walk. 97. it is finished (again) in beauty, 98. it is finished in beauty, 99. it is finished in beauty, 100. it is finished in beauty. remarks on the prayer. this prayer is addressed to a mythic thunder-bird, hence the reference to wings; but the bird is spoken of as a male divinity, and is supposed to dwell with other yéi at tse`gíhi. the prayer is said at the beginning of work, on the last night of the klédzi hatál. the shaman speaks it, verse by verse, as it is here recorded, and one of the atsá`lei or first dancers, repeats it, verse by verse, after him. the word hozó means, primarily, terrestrial beauty. its derivative hozógo means in a beautiful earthly manner. hozóni means beautiful on the earth, locally beautiful (inzóni refers to the beauty of objects and persons); hozóna signifies again beautiful. but the meanings of these words, and others of similar derivation, have been extended to mean happy, happiness, in a happy or joyful manner, etc. in a free translation they must be rendered by various english words. the four final verses have been previously recorded by the author as hozóni haslé (qojòni qaslè), but he now regards the form hozóna hastlé as more correct.[289] this expression, repeated twice or four times, according to circumstances, ends all navaho prayers, yet recorded. it is analogous to the christian amen. 289. in a few instances, in this work, a navaho word may be found spelled or accentuated with slight differences in different places. it must not be inferred from this that one form is correct and the other not. as usage varies in the languages of the most cultured races, so does it vary (only in greater degree) in the languages of the unlettered. a word was often heard differently pronounced and was therefore differently recorded by the author. an effort has been made to decide on a single standard of form and always to give preference to this; but, in a few cases, variations may have been overlooked. words sometimes undergo great changes when they become parts of compound words. where the form of a word in this work varies from that presented in previous works by the author the variation may be accounted for, in some cases by the difference in the alphabets used, and in others by the changes of opinion which have come to him in time, as the result of a more extended experience or a more advanced study of the language. 290. note 290 is omitted. bibliographic notes. by frederick webb hodge. for the convenience of the reader, a list of the principal works referred to in this book, and of all papers on the subject of the navahoes written by the author, is here given. 291. backus, e. an account of the navajoes of new mexico. (in schoolcraft, information respecting the history, condition and prospects of the indian tribes of the united states, part iv. pp. 209-215, philadelphia, 1854.) 292. bancroft, hubert howe. the native races of the pacific states of north america, vol. iii., new york, 1875. 293. bickford, f. t. prehistoric cave-dwellings. (in century illustrated monthly magazine, new york, vol. xl. no. 6, pp. 896-911, october, 1890.) 294. bourke, john gregory. snake dance of the moquis of arizona, new york, 1884. 295. ---the medicine-men of the apache. (in ninth annual report of the bureau of ethnology, pp. 443-595, washington, 1892.) 296. catlin, george. letters and notes on the manners, customs, and condition of the north american indians, etc., two vols., london, 1841. 297. census. report on indians taxed and indians not taxed in the united states (except alaska) at the eleventh census: 1890, washington, 1894. 298. commissioner of indian affairs. report of, to the secretary of the interior, for the year 1867, washington, 1868. the same for 1870, washington, 1870. 299. dutton, clarence e. mount taylor and the zuñi plateau. (in sixth annual report of the u.s. geological survey, pp. 105-198, washington, 1886.) 300. eaton, j. h. description of the true state and character of the new mexican tribes. (in schoolcraft, indian tribes, part iv. pp. 216-221, philadelphia, 1854.) 301. hodge, frederick webb. the early navajo and apache. (in american anthropologist, vol. viii. no. 3, pp. 223-240, washington, july, 1895.) 302. hough, walter. fire-making apparatus in the united states national museum. (in report of national museum 1887-88. pp. 531-587, washington, 1890.) 303. letherman, jona. sketch of the navajo tribe of indians, territory of new mexico. (in smithsonian report for 1855, pp. 283-297, washington, 1856.) 304. mason, otis tufton. cradles of the american aborigines. (in report of national museum 1886-87, pp. 161-235, washington, 1889.) 305. matthews, washington. ethnography and philology of the hidatsa indians. (department of the interior, united states geological and geographical survey, miscellaneous publications no. 7, washington, 1877.) 306. ---a part of the navajo's mythology. (in american antiquarian, vol. v. no. 3, pp. 207-224, chicago, april, 1883.) 307. ---navajo silversmiths. (in second annual report of the bureau of ethnology, pp. 169-178, washington, 1883.) 308. ---a night with the navajos. by zay elini. (in forest and stream, vol. xxiii. pp. 282-283, new york, nov. 6, 1884.) 309. ---navajo weavers. (in third annual report of the bureau of ethnology, pp. 371-391, washington, 1884.) 310. ---the origin of the utes. a navajo myth. (in american antiquarian, vol. vii. no. 5, pp. 271-274, chicago, september, 1885.) 311. ---mythic dry-paintings of the navajos. (in american naturalist, vol. xix. no. 10, pp. 931-939, philadelphia, october, 1885.) 312. ---navajo names for plants. (in american naturalist, vol. xx. pp. 767-777, philadelphia, september, 1886.) 313. ---some deities and demons of the navajos. (in american naturalist, vol. xx. pp. 841-850, philadelphia, october, 1886.) 314. ---the mountain chant: a navajo ceremony. (in fifth annual report of the bureau of ethnology, pp. 379-467, washington, 1887.) 315. ---the prayer of a navajo shaman. (in american anthropologist, vol. i. no. 2, pp. 149-170, washington, april, 1888.) 316. ---navajo gambling songs. (in american anthropologist, vol. ii. no. 1, pp. 1-19, washington, january, 1889.) 317. ---noqoìlpi, the gambler: a navajo myth. (in journal of american folk-lore, vol. ii. no. ii. pp. 89-94, boston and new york, april-june, 1889.) 318. ---the gentile system of the navajo indians. (in journal of american folk-lore, vol. iii. no. ix. pp. 89-110, boston and new york, april-june, 1890.) 319. ---a study in butts and tips. (in american anthropologist, vol. v. no. 4, pp. 345-350, washington, october, 1892.) 320. ---some illustrations of the connection between myth and ceremony. (in memoirs of the international congress of anthropology, pp. 246-251, chicago, 1894.) 321. ---the basket drum. (in american anthropologist, vol. vii. no. 2, pp. 202-208, washington, april, 1894.) 322. ---songs of sequence of the navajos. (in journal of american folk-lore, vol. vii. no. xxvi. pp. 185-194, boston and new york, july-september, 1894.) 323. ---a vigil of the gods--a navajo ceremony. (in american anthropologist, vol. ix. no. 2, pp. 50-57, washington, february, 1896.) 324. mindeleff, victor. a study of pueblo architecture: tusayan and cibola. (in eighth annual report of the bureau of ethnology, pp. 3-228, washington, 1891.) 325. morgan, lewis henry. ancient society or researches in the lines of human progress from savagery, through barbarism to civilization, new york, 1877. 326. powers, stephen. tribes of california. (contributions to north american ethnology, vol. iii., washington, 1877.) 327. schoolcraft, henry rowe. information respecting the history, condition and prospects of the indian tribes of the united states, part iv. philadelphia, 1854. 328. simpson, james h. report of an expedition into the navajo country in 1849. (in senate ex. doc. 64, 31st cong., 1st sess., washington, 1850.) 329. stephen, a. m. the navajo. (in american anthropologist, vol. vi. no. 4, pp. 345-362, washington, october, 1893.) melodies [1] recorded on the phonograph by washington matthews, and noted from the cylinders by john c. fillmore. no. 1. song of the approach of the war gods. [music notation] no. 2. song of the war gods. [music notation] no. 3. twelfth yikaígin or daylight song. [music notation] no. 4. a song of the naakhaí, or dance of the last night of the night chant. [music notation] no. 5. a song of the naakhaí. composed by thomas torlino. [music notation] no. 6. seventh song in the farm of hastséhogan. [music notation] no. 7. tenth and eleventh songs in the farm of hastséhogan. [music notation] no. 8. fifteenth song in the farm of hastséhogan. [music notation] this song offers some very curious metrical problems. no. 9. twenty-second song in the farm of hastséhogan. [music notation] no. 10. twenty-third song in the farm of hastséhogan. [music notation] this indian howls so that it is much more difficult than usual to be sure of the pitch-relations. also it is hard to tell, in many places, whether he means a double or a triple rhythm. no. 11. twenty-fifth song in the farm of hastséhogan. [music notation] note [1] see note 272. 