Читать книгу Alamo Ranch: A Story of New Mexico - Sarah Warner Brooks, Sarah Warner Brooks - Страница 6

As it is not proposed to give this record of the doings of the "New Koshare" the circumstantiality of a diary, the chronicler may be allowed to include the ensuing teas, shooting-matches, and all the lighter kosharean festivities in the one general and final statement, that they each came off duly and successfully; and leaving their details "unhonored and unsung," proceed to a more extended account of the Saturday evening entertainments, – as all members of the club were invited to contribute to these evenings, and it was expected that the Minister would, from the storehouse of his travelling experience, contribute liberally to their delectability; and that the Journalist (who naturally thought in paragraphs, and, like the fairy who "spoke pearls," conversed in exquisitely fashioned sentences) would supplement the papers of the Antiquary by his own brilliant talks.

And so it was that on the initial Saturday evening, with a full attendance and great expectations, the Koshare found themselves convened, the president in the chair, the secretary with notebook in hand, and all in dignified attention.

The Antiquary – with this apt quotation from Cumming's "Land of Poco Tiempo" – began his first lecture before the club.

"'New Mexico,'" quoted he, "'is the anomaly of the Republic. It is a century older in European civilization than the rest, and several centuries older still in a happier semi-civilization of its own. It had its little walled cities of stone before Columbus had grandparents-to-be; and it has them yet.'

"There are," stated Mr. Morehouse, "three typical races in New Mexico. The American interpolation does not count as a type.

"Of Pueblo Indians there are nine thousand, 'peaceful, home-loving, and home-dwelling tillers of the soil.' Then, here, and in Arizona, there are about twenty thousand Navajo Indians, – nomad, horse-loving, horse-stealing vagrants of the saddle, modern Centaurs. Then come the Apaches, an uncounted savage horde, whose partial civilization has been effected by sheer force of arms, and inch by inch: who accept the reservation with but half a heart, and break bounds at every opportunity. Last of all come the Mexicans, shrunken descendants of the Castilian world-finders; living almost as much against the house as in it; ignorant as slaves, and more courteous than kings; poor as Lazarus, and more hospitable than Crœsus; and Catholics from A to izzard.

"The Navajos and Apaches," said Mr. Morehouse, "have neither houses nor towns; the Pueblos have nineteen compact little cities, and the Mexicans several hundred villages, a part of which are shared by the invader.

"'The numerous sacred dances of the Pueblos,' says Cummings, 'are by far the most picturesque sights in America, and the least viewed by Americans, who never found anything more striking abroad. The mythology of Greece and Rome is less than theirs in complicated comprehensiveness; and they are a far more interesting ethnological study than the tribes of inner Africa, and less known of by their white countrymen.'

"The Pueblos of New Mexico," explained the Antiquary, "are by no means to be confounded with the Toltecs or Aztecs. It is, however, barely possible that in prehistoric ages the race in possession of Mexico may have had some tribal characteristics of the latter-day Pueblo. As of that remote time, there is not even a traditionary record; this supposition is absolutely conjectural.

"By investigation and comparison it has, however, been proved that the Pueblos have racial characteristics connecting them with some mysterious stage of human life even older than that of the more barbarous Toltecs or Aztecs.

"This race has from time immemorial had its book of Genesis. It is not, like that of the Hebrew, a written record, but has been orally handed down, and with careful precision, beginning with their original emergence, as half-formed human beings, from the dark of the mystic underworld of 'Shipapu' to the world of light.

"After the fashion of most barbarous races, the Pueblo appears originally to have 'pitched his moving tent' in various parts of Mexico; and it may be inferred that he endured many casualities before settling himself in life. It was to tide over this trying epoch in his existence that 'Those Above,' according to tradition, made for the tribes that quaint 'Delight-Monger,' with whom we have already made acquaintance, who led them in their wanderings from the womb of Shipapu to the solid centre of their world; but, as has been already stated, this record, going back to an indefinite period of time, and having only the dubious authority of folk-lore, is only of traditional value.

"The Pueblo, no less than the Aztec, is the most religious of human beings. His ceremonial, like that of the age of Montezuma, is wonderfully and minutely elaborated; and though originating in a civilization less splendid and refined, it is really less barbarous, since its rites have never, like those of the Aztec, included the horrors of human sacrifice and cannibalism.

"The Pueblo, since his exit from the womb of mother Earth, seems to have given his principal attention to the cultivation of its soil. All the same, he appears never to have shirked the less peaceful responsibilities of his tribe, – putting on his war-paint at the shortest notice, to settle the quarrels of his clan.

"Although like most men of savage birth and breeding, cruel in warfare, he seems never to have been abstractedly blood-thirsty, never to have killed, like his ever-belligerent neighbor, the Apache, purely for killing's sake; but, his quarrel once ended, and the present security of his clan well achieved, he has contentedly returned to the peaceful ways of life; diligently sowing, weeding, and harvesting his crops of maize, melons, squashes, and beans, and – ever mindful of the propitiative requirements of 'Those Above' – taking careful heed of his religious duties.

"For a succinct account of the Pueblo cave (or cliff) dwellers," said the Antiquary, "I am largely indebted to Bandelier, from whose valuable Pueblo researches I shall often take the liberty to quote.

"The imperfectly explored mountain range skirting the Rio Grande del Norte is picturesquely grand.

"Facing the river, the foundation of the chain is entirely volcanic.

"Colossal rocks form the abrupt walls of the gorges between these mountains, and are often so soft and friable that, in many places they were easily scooped out with the most primitive tools, or even detached with the fingers alone.

"In these gorges, through many of which run unfailing streams of water, often expanding to the proportions of regular valleys, the Pueblo Indian raised the modest crop that satisfied his vegetable craving.

"As it is easier to excavate dwellings than to pile up walls in the open air, the aboriginal Mexican's house-building effort was mostly confined to underground construction. He was, in fact, a 'cave-dweller,' yet infinitely of more advanced architectural ideas than our own remote forbears of Anglo Saxon cave-dwelling times.

"Most of these residences might boast of from three to four rooms. They were arranged in groups, or clusters, and some of them were several stories high.

"Rude ladders were used for mounting to the terrace or roof of each successive story. The Pueblo had, literally, a hearthstone in his primitive home. His fireplace was supplied with a hearth of pumice-stone. A rudely built flue, made of cemented rubble, led to a circular opening in the front wall of his cave-dwelling. Air-holes admitted their scanty light to these dusky apartments, in which there were not only conveniences for bestowing wearing-apparel, but niches for ornamental pottery, precious stones, and the like Indian bric-à-brac. The ground-floor entrance was a rude doorway closed by a hide, or mat. Plaited mats of Yucca leaves, and deer-hide, by day rolled up in corners of the sleeping-apartments, served for mattresses at night. A thick coating of mud, washed with blood, and carefully smoothed, gave to the floor a glossy effect. Some of the rooms are known to have been in dimension ten feet by fourteen. Their walls were whitewashed with burnt gypsum.

"Though the time when these traditional cliff-dwellers wooed and wed, lived and died in the Rialto vale is long, long gone by, the ruins of their homes may still be seen. Some of them are tolerably intact; others are crumbled away to mere shapeless ruins.

"And now, having described their dwellings, let us note some of the most marked and interesting characteristics of the men and women who made in them their homes.

"We are apt," said the Antiquary, "to accord to our more enlightened civilization the origin of communism; yet, antedating by ages our latter-day socialistic fads, the communal idea enthused this unlettered people, and to a certain extent seems to have been successfully carried out.

"Let not the strong-minded Anglo-Saxon woman plume herself upon the discovery of the equality of the sexes. While our own female suffragists were yet unborn, the Pueblo wife had been accorded the inalienable right to lord it over her mankind.

"Among the Mexican cliff-dwellers, 'woman's rights' seem to have been as indigenous to the soil as the piñon and the prickly pear.

"In the primitive Pueblo domicile, the wife appears, by tribal consent, to have been absolutely 'cock of the walk.' The husband had no rights as owner or proprietor of the family mansion, and, as an inmate, was scarcely more than tolerated.

"The wife, in those ever-to-be-regretted days, not only built and furnished the house, – contributed to the kitchen the soup pot, water jars, and other primitive domestic appliances, – but figured as sole proprietor of the entire establishment.

"The Pueblo woman, though married, still had, with her children, her holding in her own clan. In case of her death, the man's home being properly with his clan, he must return to it.

"The wife was not allowed to work in the fields. Each man tilled the plot allotted him by his clan. The crops, once housed, were controlled by the woman, as were the proceeds of communal hunts and fisheries.

"The Pueblos had their system of divorce. It goes without saying that it was not attended by the red-tape complications of our time. As the husband's continuance under the family roof-tree depended absolutely on his acceptability to the wife, at any flagrant marital breach of good behavior she simply refused to recognize him as her lord. In vain he protested, stormed, and menaced; the outraged better half bade him go, and he went! Thus easily and informally were Pueblo marriages dissolved; and, this summary transaction once well concluded, each party had the right to contract a second marriage.

"The Pueblo Indian is historically known as a Catholic; that is to say, he told his beads, crossed his brow with holy water, and duly and devoutly knelt at the confessional. This done, he tacitly reserved to himself the privilege of surreptitiously clinging to the Paganism of his forbears, and zealously paid his tithe of observances at the ancient shrine of 'the Sun Father' and 'the Moon Mother.'

"Some of the Pueblo tribes are said still to retain the use of that ancient supplicating convenience, 'the prayer-stick.'

"'Prayer-sticks, or plumes,'" explained the Antiquary, "are but painted sticks tufted with down, or feathers, and, by the simple-minded Indian, supposed especially to commend him to the good graces and kindly offices of 'Those Above.' In a certain way, the aboriginal prayer-stick seems to have been a substitute for an oral supplication.

"The Pueblo, pressed for time, might even forego the hindering ceremonial of verbal request, adoration, or thanksgiving, and hurriedly deposit, as a votive offering to his easily placated gods, this tufted bit of painted wood; and, furthermore, since prayer-sticks were not always within reach, it was permitted him in such emergencies to gather two twigs, and, placing these crosswise, hold them in position by a rock or stone. And this childish make-shift passed with his indulgent gods for a prayer!

"The most trivial commonplace of existence had, with the superstitious Pueblo, its religious significance; and it would seem to have been incumbent on him literally to 'pray without ceasing.' Hence the prayer-plume, or its substitute, was, with him, one of the necessities of life. Time would fail me to tell of the ancient elaborate religious rites and superstitions of the Mexican Indian; to recount his latter-day ceremonials, wherein Pagan dances, races, and sports are like the jumble of a crazy quilt, promiscuously mixed in with Christian festas and holy saint-days; and indeed the subject is too large for my sketchy handling. It may not, however, be amiss to notice the yearly celebration of the festival of San Estevan. It may be still witnessed, and seems to have been the original Harvest-home of the Mexican Indian, the observance of which has been handed down in various ways from all times, and among all peoples, and is probably the parent of our Thanksgiving holiday.

"The monks of the early Catholic church, in their missionary endeavor to commend the Christian religion to the pagan mind, took care to graft upon each of the various festas of the Pueblo one of their own saint-day names. Thus it was that the Acoma harvest-home masquerades under the guise of a saint-name, though an absolutely pagan ceremonial.

"It is still observed by them with genuine Koshare delight. There are dances, races, and tumbling, and the carnival-like showering of Mexican confetti from the roofs of adobe houses. In summing up this brief account of the sedentary New Mexican, I quote literally the forceful assertion of Cummings. 'The Pueblos,' says this writer, 'are Indians who are neither poor nor naked; who feed themselves, and ask no favors of Washington; Indians who have been at peace for two centuries, and fixed residents for perhaps a millennium; Indians who were farmers and irrigators, and six-story housebuilders before a New World had been beaten through the thick skull of the Old. They had,' he continues, 'a hundred republics in America centuries before the American Republic was conceived.'

"This peaceably minded people, as has already been stated, are by no means to be confounded with the roving New Mexican aborigines, with the untamed Navajo scouring the plains on the bare back of his steed, or the fierce Apache, murderous and cruel.

"We must not," said Mr. Morehouse, "take leave of the Pueblo, without some reference to the great flat-topped, slop-sided chain of rock-tables that throughout the length and breadth of his territory rises from the sandy plains, the most famous and best explored of which is known as 'La Mesa Encantada,' – 'the Enchanted Mesa.'

"According to tradition the Mesa Encantada gains its romantic name from an event which centuries ago – declares the legend – destroyed the town, then a well-populated stronghold of the Acomas. As a prelude to this legend, let me state that the Pueblo cliff-dwellers often perched their habitations on lofty, sheer-walled, and not easily accessible mesas, a natural vantage-ground from which they might successfully resist their enemies, the nomadic and predatory tribes formerly over-running the country.

"The steep wall of the Acoma Mesa, with its solitary trail, surmounted by means of hand and foot holes pecked in the solid rock, was so well defended that a single man might keep an army at bay. What fear, then, should these Acomas have of their enemies?

"The Acomas, like other Pueblo Indians, have from time immemorial been tillers of the soil.

"From the fertile sands of their valley and its tributaries they won by patient toil such harvests of corn, beans, squashes, and cotton as secured them a simple livelihood; and 'their granaries,' it is asserted, 'were always full enough to enable them, if need be, to withstand a twelvemonth's siege.' How long the top of Katzimo, the site of the Enchanted Mesa, had been inhabited when the catastrophe recorded in the legend befell, no man may say, not even the elders of the tribe; this much is, however, known, – the spring-time had come. The sun-priest had already proclaimed from the housetops that the season of planting was at hand. The seeds from last year's harvest had been gathered from the bins; planting-sticks had been sharpened, and all made ready for the auspicious day when the seer should further announce the time of repairing to the fields. On that day (so runs the tale), down the ragged trail, at early sunrise, clambered the busy natives; every one who was able to force a planting-stick into the compact soil, or lithe enough to drive away a robber crow, hurried to the planting. Only a few of the aged and ailing remained on the mesa.

"While the planters worked in the hot glare of the valley below, the sun suddenly hid his face in angry clouds. The busy planters hastened their work, while the distant thunder muttered and rolled about them. Suddenly the black dome above them was rent as by a glittering sword, and down swept the torrent, until the entire valley became a sheet of flood. The planters sought shelter in the slight huts of boughs and sticks from which the crops are watched.

"The elders bodingly shook their heads. Never before had the heavens given vent to such a cataract.

"When the sudden clouds as suddenly dispersed, and the sun-lit crest of Katzimo emerged from the mist, the toilers trudged toward their mountain home. Reaching the base of the trail, they found their pathway of the morning blocked by huge, sharp-edged pieces of stone, giving mute testimony of the disaster to the ladder-trail above.

"The huge rock mass, which had given access to the cleft by means of the holes pecked in the trail-path, had in the great cloud-burst become freed from the friable wall, and thundered down in a thousand fragments, cutting off communication with the mesa village. The Acomas, when asked why their ancestors made no desperate effort to reach the sufferers whose feeble voices were calling to them from the summit for succor, but left their own flesh and blood to perish by slow starvation, gravely shook their heads.

"The ban of enchantment had already, for these superstitious pagans, fallen upon the devoted table-land; it had become 'La Mesa Encantada.'

"The publication by Mr. Charles F. Lummis, who resided for several years at the pueblo of Iselta, of the story of Katzimo, the tradition of which was repeated to him by its gray-haired priests some twelve years ago, aroused the interest of students of southwestern ethnology in the history of 'La Mesa Encantada,' and, subsequently, Mr. F. W. Hodge was directed by the Bureau of American Ethnology, of the Smithsonian Institute, to scale the difficult height of this giant mountain, for the purpose of supplementing the evidence already gained, of its sometime occupancy as a Pueblo town. His party found decided evidence of a former occupancy of the mesa, such as fragments of extremely ancient earthenware, a portion of a shell bracelet, parts of two grooved stone axes, lichen-flecked with age. Here, too, was an unfeathered prayer-stick, a melancholy reminder of a votive offering made, at the nearest point of accessibility, to 'Those Above.'

"'When I consider,' says Mr. Hodge, in his charming paper, 'The Enchanted Mesa,' published in the 'Century Magazine,' some three or four years ago, 'that the summit of Katzimo, where the town was, has long been inaccessible to the Indians, that it has been swept by winds, and washed by rains for centuries, until scarcely any soil is left on its crest, that well-defined traces of an ancient ladder trail may still be seen pecked on the rocky wall of the very cleft through which the traditionary pathway wound its course; and, above all, the large number of very ancient potsherds in the earthy talus about the base of the mesa, which must have been washed from above, the conclusion is inevitable that the summit of 'La Mesa Encantada' was inhabited prior to 1540, when the present Acoma was discovered by Coronado, and that the last vestige of the village itself has long been washed or blown over the cliff.'"

With this account of the Enchanted Mesa, Mr. Morehouse, amid general applause, ended his interesting paper on the Pueblo Indians; and after a short discussion by the Club of the ancient and modern characteristics of these remarkable aborigines, the Koshare, well pleased with the success of its endeavor to combine improvement with delight, adjourned to the next Monday in January.

Little dreamed Roger Smith as, that night, after the Club entertainment, he handed the Hemmenshaw ladies to their wagon, for the return ride to Hilton Ranch, that the very next week he was to undertake, on their behalf, a hand-to-hand encounter with a blood-thirsty Apache. Yet so was it ordained of Fate.

It has already been stated that these ladies were but day-boarders at Alamo Ranch, occupying, together with Sholto, a Mexican man-of-all-work, the Hilton Ranch, a good mile distant from the boarding-house.

Louise Hemmenshaw, usually in exuberant health, was ill with a severe influenza. It was the third and cumulative day of this disease. Sholto had already been despatched to Brown's for the dinner; Miss Paulina had, in this emergency, undertaken to turn off the breakfasts and suppers from her chafing-dish.

After replenishing, from the wood basket, the invalid's chamber fire, Miss Paulina administered her teaspoonful of bryonia, gave a settling shake to her pillow, and hurried down to fasten the back door behind Sholto.

Lingering a moment at the kitchen window, the good lady put on her far-off glasses for a good look across the mesa, stretching – an unbroken waste of sage-brush and mesquite-bush – from the Hilton kitchen garden to the distant line of the horizon.

As she quietly scanned the nearer prospect, Miss Paulina's heart made a sudden thump beneath her bodice, and quickened its pulses to fever-time; for there, just within range of her vision, was the undoubted form of an Apache savage, clad airily in breech-clout, and Navajo blanket. Skulking warily along the mesa, he gained the garden fence and sprang, at a bound, over the low paling. For a moment the watcher stood paralyzed with wonder and dismay.

Meantime, under cover of a rose-trellis, the Apache, looking bad enough and cunning enough for any outrage, coolly made a reconnoisance of the premises. This done, still on all-fours, he gained the bulkhead of the small dark vegetable cellar beneath the kitchen. It chanced to have been inadvertently left open.

With a satisfied grunt (and eschewing the paltry convenience of steps) he bounded at once into its dusky depths.

Summoning her failing courage, this "Daughter of the Revolution" resolutely tiptoed out the front door, and, with her heart in her mouth, whisking round the corner of the devoted house, shot into place the stout outside bolt of the bulkhead door.

This feat accomplished, she made haste to gain the safe shelter of the adobe dwelling. She next looked well to the bolt fastening the trap-door at the head of the ladder-like stairway leading perilously from the kitchen to the dim region below, where the Apache might now be heard bumping his head against the floor-planks, in a fruitless endeavor to discover some outlet, from this underground apartment, to the family circle above. With the frightful possibility of a not distant escape of her prisoner, the good lady lifted her heart in silent prayer, and hurrying promptly to the chamber of her niece, gave a saving punch to the fire, a glass of port wine to the invalid, and, feigning an appearance of unconcern, left the room, and slipped cautiously down to the kitchen. Here she dragged an ironing-table, a clothes-horse, and a wood-box on to the trap-door, and breathlessly waited for the Apache's next move.

And now, a step might be heard on the driveway, followed by a rap at the front door.

Prudently scanning her visitor through the sidelight, and assuring herself that he was no breech-clouted savage, but a fellow white man, Miss Paulina let in through the narrowest of openings, – who but their friend the Harvard man! "Dear soul!" tearfully exclaimed the good lady, while Roger Smith stood in mute wonder at the warmth of her greeting.

It was but the work of a moment to explain the situation and acquaint him with the peril of the moment.

Sholto, at his leisurely Mexican pace, now opportunely appeared at the back door with the hot dinner.

"There is a time for all things," said the "president of Chapter 18th," as (having pulled the bewildered Mexican inside) she vigorously shot the door-bolt in place, deposited the smoking viands on the sideboard, and thus addressed him. "Sholto," said Miss Paulina, "I have an Apache here in the cellar. For the time being his ability to work us harm is limited; but an Apache is never nice to have round; and, besides, he must have terribly bumped himself poking round there all this time in the dark. One would not unnecessarily hurt even a savage. We must therefore let him up, bind him fast, and take measures for delivering him to the police at Las Cruces. Here is a clothes-line: it is good and strong; make up a lasso, and when I open the trap-door, as his head bobs in sight, throw it, and then help Mr. Smith haul him out, and tie him."