Читать книгу The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais - George Wharton James - Страница 4

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Civilization and barbarism obtrude themselves delightfully at every turn in this Wonderland of the American Southwest, called the Painted Desert Region.

Ancient and modern history play you many a game of hide-and-seek as you endeavor to trace either one or the other in a study of its aboriginal people; you look upon a ceremony performed to-day and call it modern. In reality it is of the past, so old, so hoary with antiquity that even to the participants it has lost its origin and much of its meaning.

History—exciting, thrilling, tragic—has been made in the Painted Desert Region; was being made centuries before Leif Ericson landed on the shores of Vinland, or John and Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol. History that was ancient and hoar when the band of pilgrims from Leyden battled with the wild waves of the Atlantic's New England shore, and was lapsing into sleepiness before the guns of the minute-men were fired at Lexington or Allen had fallen at Bunker Hill.

In the Painted Desert Region we find peoples strange, peculiar, and interesting, whose mythology is more fascinating than that of ancient Greece, and, for aught we know to the contrary, may be equally ancient; whose ceremonies of to-day are more elaborate than those of a devout Catholic, more complex than those of a Hindoo pantheist, more weird than those of a howling dervish of Turkestan.

Peoples whose origin is as uncertain and mysterious as the ancients thought the source of the Nile; whose history is unknown except in the fantastic, though stirring and improbable stories told by the elders as they gather the young men around them at their mystic ceremonies, and in the traditional songs sung by their high priests during the performance of long and exhausting worship.

Peoples whose government is as simple, pure, and perfect as that of the patriarchs, and possibly as ancient, and yet more republican than the most modern government now in existence. Peoples whose women build and own the houses, and whose men weave the garments of the women, knit the stockings of their own wear, and are as expert with needle and thread as their ancestors were with bow and arrow, obsidian-tipped spear, or stone battle-axe.

Here live peoples of peace and peoples of war; wanderers and stay-at-homes; house-builders and those who scorn fixed dwelling-places; poets whose songs, like those of blind Homer and the early Troubadors, were never written, but enshrined only in the hearts of the race; artists whose paints are the brilliant sands of many-colored mountains, and whose brushes are their own deft fingers.

A Freak of Erosion in the Petrified Forest.

Journeying over the Painted Desert to the Hopi Snake Dance.

Its modern history begins about three hundred and fifty years ago when one portion of it was discovered by a negro slave, whose amorous propensities lured him to his death, and the other by a priest, of whom one writer says his reports were "so disgustful in lyes and wrapped up in fictions that the Light was little more than Darkness."

Of its ancient history who can more than guess? To most questions it remains as silent as the Sphinx. The riddle of the Sphinx, though, is being solved, and so by the careful and scientific work of the Bureau of Ethnology, the riddles of the prehistoric life of our Southwest, slowly but surely, are being resolved.

One of the countries comprised in the Painted Desert Region is the theme of an epic, Homerian in style if not in quality, full of wars and rumors of wars, storming of impregnable citadels, and the recitals of deeds as brave and heroic as those of the Greeks at Marathon or Thermopylæ; a poem recently discovered, after having remained buried in the tomb of oblivion for over two hundred years.

Here are peoples of stupendous religious beliefs. Peoples who can truthfully be designated as the most religious of the world; yet peoples as agnostic and sceptic, if not as learned, as Hume, Voltaire, Spencer, and Ingersoll. Peoples to whom a written letter is witchcraft and sorcery, and yet who can read the heavens, interpret the writings of the woods, deserts, and canyons with a certainty never failing and unerring. Peoples who twenty-five years ago stoned and hanged the witches and wizards they sincerely thought cursed them, and who, ten years ago hanged, and perhaps even to-day, though secretly, hang one another on a cross as an act of virtue and religious faith, after cruelly beating themselves and one another with scourges of deadly cactus thorns.

Here are intelligent farmers, who, for centuries, have scientifically irrigated their lands, and yet who cut off the ears of their burros to keep them from stealing corn.

A land it is of witchcraft and sorcery, of horror and dread of ghosts and goblins, of daily propitiation of Fates and Powers and Princes of Darkness and Air at the very thought of whom withering curses and blasting injuries are sure to come.

Here dwell peoples who dance through fierce, flaming fires, lacerate themselves with cactus whips, run long wearisome races over the scorching sands of the desert, and handle deadly rattlesnakes with fearless freedom, as part of their religious worship.

Peoples who pray by machinery as the Burmese use their prayer wheels, and who "plant" supplications as a gardener "plants" trees and shrubs.

Peoples to whom a smoking cigarette is made the means of holy communion, the handling of poisonous reptiles a sacred and solemn act of devotion, and the playing with dolls the opportunity for giving religious instruction to their children.

Peoples who are pantheists, sun worshippers, and snake dancers, yet who have churches and convents built with incredible labor and as extensive as any modern cathedral.

Peoples whose conservatism in manners and religion surpass that of the veriest English tories; who, for hundreds of years, have steadily and successfully resisted all efforts to "convert" and change them, and who to-day are as firm in their ancient faiths as ever. Peoples whom Spanish conquistadors could not tame with matchlock, pike, and machete, nor United States forces with Gatling gun, rifle, and bayonet.

Peoples to whom fraternal organizations and secret societies, for men and women alike, are as ancient as the mountains they inhabit, whose lodge rooms are more wonderful, and whose signs and passwords more complex than those of any organization of civilized lands and modern times.

Peoples industrious and peoples studiously lazy, honest and able in thievery, truthful and consummate liars, cleanly and picturesquely dirty, interesting and repulsively loathsome, charming and artistically hideous, religious and cursedly wicked, peaceful and unceasingly warlike, lovers of home and haters of fixed habitations.

Here are peoples who dwell upon almost inaccessible cliffs, peoples of the clouds, and, on the other hand, peoples who dwell in canyon depths, where stupendous walls, capable of enclosing Memphis, Thebes, Luxor, Karnak, and all the ruins of ancient Egypt, are the boundaries of their primitive residences.

The Painted Desert Region is a country where rattlesnakes are washed, prayed over, caressed, carried in the mouth, and placed before and on sacred altars in religious worship.

Where the worship of the goddess of reproduction with all its phallic symbolism is carried on in public processionals, dances, and ceremonials by men, women, maidens, and children without shameful self-consciousness, yet where dire penalties, even unto mutilation and death, are visited upon the unchaste.

Where polygamy has been as openly practised as in the days of Abraham, and possibly from as early a time, and where to-day it is as common to see a man who, openly, has two or more wives, as in civilized lands it is common to see him with but one. And yet it is a land in which polygamy is expressly forbidden by United States law, and where numbers of arrests have been made for violation of that law.

Where religious rites are performed, so mystic and ancient that their meaning is unknown even to the most learned of those who partake in them.

Indeed, the Painted Desert Region, though a part of the United States of America, is a land of peoples strange, unique, complex, diverse, and singular as can be found in any similar area on the earth, and the physical contour of the country is as strange and diverse as are the peoples who inhabit it.

It is a land of gloriously impressive mountains, crowned with the snows of blessing and bathed in a wealth of glowing colors, changing hues, and tender tints that few other countries on earth can boast.

On its eastern outskirt is a portion of one of the largest cretaceous monoclines in the world, and near by is a natural inkstand, half a mile in circumference, from which, centuries ago, flowed fiery, inky lava which has now solidified in intensest blackness over hundreds of miles of surrounding country.

It is a land of mountain-high plateaus, edged with bluffs, cliffs, and escarpments that delight the distant beholder with their richness of coloring and wondrous variety of outline, and thrill with horror those who unexpectedly stand on their brinks.

It is a land of laziness and indifferent content, where everything is done "poco tiempo"—"in a little while"—and where "to-morrow" is early enough for all laborious tasks, and yet a land of such tireless energy, never-ceasing work, and arduous labor as few countries else have ever known.

A land where people live in refinement, education, and all the luxuries of twentieth-century civilization side by side with peoples whose dress, modes of living, habits of eating and sleeping, styles of food and cookery are similar to those of the subjects of Boadicea and Caractacus.

In the Painted Desert Region the root of one dangerous-looking prickly cactus is used for soap, and the fruit of another for food.

Here horses dig for water, and mules are stimulated by whiskey to draw their weighty loads over torrid deserts and up mountain steeps.

It is a land of ruins, desolate and forlorn, buried and forgotten, with histories tragic, bloody, romantic; ruins where charred timbers, ghastly bones, and demolished walls speak of midnight attacks, treacherous surprises, and cruel slaughters; where whole cities have been exterminated and destroyed as if under the ancient commands to the Hebrews: "Destroy, slay, kill, and spare not."

A desert country, and yet, in spots, marvellously fertile. Barren, wild, desolate, forsaken it is, and yet, here and there, fertile valleys, wooded slopes, and garden patches may be found as rich as any on earth.

Where atmospheric colorings are so perfect and so divinely artistic in their applications that weary and desolate deserts are made dreams of glory and supremest beauty, and harsh rugged mountains are sublimated into transcendent pictures of tender tints and ever-changing but always harmonious combinations of color.

A land where rain may be seen falling in fifty showers all around, and yet not a drop fall, for a year or more, on the spot where the observer stands.

A land of sculptured images and fantastic carvings. Where water, wind, storm, sand, frost, heat, atmosphere, and other agencies, unguided and uncontrolled by man, have combined to make figures more striking, more real, more picturesque, more ugly, more beautiful, and more fantastic than those of the angels, devils, saints, and sinners that crown and adorn the ancient Pagan shrines of the Orient and the more modern Christian shrines of the Occident;—a veritable Toom-pin-nu-wear-tu-weep—Land of the Standing Rocks—more gigantic, wonderful, and attractive than can be found elsewhere in the world.

Where sand mountains, yielding alike to the fierce winds of winter and the gentle breezes of summer, slowly travel from place to place, irresistibly controlling fresh sites and burying all that obstructs their path.

A land where, in summer, railway trains are often stopped by drifting sands blown by scorching winds over almost trackless Saharas, and where, in winter, the same trains are stopped by drifting snows blown over the same Saharas now made Arctic in their frozen solitude.

A land where once were vast lakes in which disported ugly monsters, and on the surface of which swam mighty fish-birds who gazed with curious wonder upon the enormous reptiles, birds, and animals which came to lave themselves in the cooling waves or drink of their refreshing waters.

But now lakes, fishes, reptiles, and animals have entirely disappeared. Where placid lakes once were lashed into fury by angry winds are now only sand wastes and water-worn rocks where the winds howl and shriek and rave, and mourn the loss of the waters with which they used to sport; and the only remnants of prehistoric fishes, reptiles, and animals are found in decaying bones or fossilized remains deep imbedded in the strata of the unnumbered ages.