Indians of the Desert

JUNE, 1925

BY LEO CRANE

I

WILL YOU ACCEPT APPOINTMENT SUPERINTENDENT MOQUI SALARY EIGHTEEN HUNDRED BOND THIRTY THOUSAND WIRE

A courteous expression that is now rare — ‘Will you accept ? ‘ The mere transposition of a word makes all the difference. ‘You will accept!’ is the tone of recent orders, a reaction of the great war against Prussianism on those who reject with an unctuous civilian horror all idea of militarism.

And yet there is a certain fine discipline and training in the military atmosphere, even a copy of it, as practised at the properly conducted schools and agencies of the farther deserts. One learns to obey in unpleasant things, and feels something of duty and loyalty in acceding. Where there is nothing of civilization for one hundred miles in any direction, not even a telegraph wire, one comes to revere that refreshing bit of bravery, the Flag, whipping above trees, a symbol of authority and order; one thrills at the music of the band; and bugle-calls, in the wine of seven thousand feet above the sea, add a character-forming stimulation. Reveille, mess, retreat — or, at the end of a long day’s drive homeward in the dark, cramped and cold from fifty miles, to hear the solemn notes of ‘taps.’

The night hush of the drowsy desert has succeeded all daylight bustle. The clatter of shops, the hum of machinery, the hiss of steam, have quieted. There are no more calls from children at play. One by one the lamps go out on campus and in quarters, and great Orion burns down the empty spaces to glimpse a scrap of feeble civilization gripped in the aged everlasting hills. Then, on the cold wind, stealthily, comes the eerie chant of a Navajo, riding across the mesa, calling on his gods.

‘Will you accept Moqui?’

That was the country of the Buttes and craggy mesas; of Old Oraibi; of Second Mesa and its broad stairway to the domelike pueblos; of ancient Walpi and its rocky ladder to the sky — the land of ruins dating from the misty dawn of history. Across it the Spaniards had marched, contemporaries of Columbus, their halberds gleaming in the sun; and there the early padres had ruled, their mission bells now silent. The ‘ provinces of Mohoce or Mohoqui,’ as Coronado bade his poet-historian write it down. It was the very heart of the Enchanted Empire.

There were but two persons to give me a modern view of the situation. The Navajo interpreter at my present station was one of those half-educated, half-sullen returned students who would accept the meagre wage when the trader would not, a part of the economic system aimed at cheaply teaching grandfather through his unrespected grandson. He came from that northern country, and his immediate family composed a most insolent gang — a mere detail I discovered later in time of stress.

‘Lots of Navajo up there,’ he said. ‘Those Black Mountain fellows — mean Indians, too. Down here quiet, never any trouble, ‘cause they liked the Chief; but up there, always something doing.’

Having little confidence in the fellow, I discounted his words heavily. But that afternoon came the missionary from down-river.

‘Hello!’ he called to me. ‘What’s this I hear? You — going to Moqui? Well, well; I hope you handle that bunch of mean ones over beyond Oraibi — those Hotevillas. About every four years they flare up. The last was in 1906, so it’s about due now. The present Agent has n’t Christianized those Indians, and the one ahead of him was a bit mild. They need the fear of God put into them. Many Agents? Well, come to think of it, yes. I can recall several of them. One remained four years, but they average about two, as a rule. Let me hear from you sometime.’

A combined Indian Agency, half Hopi, half Navajo, and the two ancient enemies who fraternized on the surface when the Agent was strong enough to compel it. Ninety miles back in the hills. No telephone and no telegraph. And Agents averaged about two years each of service. What happened to them, I wondered. Were they buried there, quietly and without fuss, or did they depart between suns, seeking more peaceful climes? The padres were not successful, and the Spaniards had abandoned the country as hopeless, notwithstanding their usual methods of domination. True, there was such a thing as having a chap on for the good of his soul, after the manner of whimsical Arizona.

I debated the matter seriously before answering that wire. My plans were changing. From six months my exile had been expanded into a year; and the year was now up. Acceptance would mean a longer stay, an habitation enforced, as I should be under bond and no longer free to come and go, with the added chance of failure in an unsought position of responsibility. I had not envied my old Chief. I do not envy any Indian Agent to-day.

And yet — the Desert called to me from over beyond those blue-toned Buttes to come and find that intangible something ‘just around the corner.’

So finally, like Kipling’s Pagan, I decided: —

II

I am now glad that I went to the Painted Desert and entered Hopi-land before the advent of the automobile. The going then was a picturesque if toilsome journey. After two days in a farm wagon loaded with my plunder, I reached the first back-country trading-post, and met the official I was to succeed.

That old store at Indian Wells, with its back against the hills, seemed a fanciful place in the twilight of a summer’s day. Across a wide plain lifted purple mesas gashed with red clays, and Rabbit Ear Butte stuck its two inquisitive peaks into the evening sky. There was something far removed in the atmosphere and setting of Indian Wells, something of true desert solitude.

Next day we wended northward across Hauke Mesa, passing the White Cone, a solitary bleached-out pyramid that marks the southeast corner of the Hopi Reservation. Two huge white horses drew us — not a very fast pace, but decidedly a sure one. The vehicle was a mountain spring-wagon, and its one wide seat served three of us, the driver and I simple figures in comparison with the gentleman I was to relieve. This was a large pompous man who had sought the Southwest for his health and had not found all of it — principally because he had not arrived soon enough, and also because he was continually fretted by the vision of his former importance. He had come from the East, from a much larger Governmental position. In fact he had been quite within the shadow of the Cabinet, and was bulwarked with political tradition. He knew the President personally, and immediately told one so; and when he came into the desert he wore — Suffering Pioneers! — a top hat!

It takes a long time to make forty miles in a wagon of that type, whatever the entertainment of political conventions and presidential anecdotes.

In late afternoon we crossed the sandy waste of the Jedito Wash, and came out by a steep rocky road that ascended a high mesa. A short distance to the left were the ruins of Awatobi, that once important pueblo of Tusayan, where El Tovar had his first view of and encounter with the ‘Mohoce’ or ‘Mohoqui’ of the Spanish chronicles. This meeting occurred twenty-five years before the settlement of St. Augustine, and eighty years before the gentlemen from Plymouth reached the historic New England Rock. In 1911, only a series of low walls, the pueblo foundations, were discernible at Awatobi. The place of the old Spanish mission could not be determined. The blowing desert sand had nearly reclaimed the site to solitude and unbroken sterility. But, following the sacred customs of their forefathers, the Hopi were still making trouble for their guardians.

My predecessor told me how he had sought to quiet this antagonism. At great expense he had taken the old Chief, Youkeoma, and several of his retainers on a trip to and through the East. At Washington they were honored by an audience with President Taft. The power and the glory of the American Nation, it was thought, would overwhelm the savage. He might as well have taken a piece of Oraibi sandrock to see the Pope. Not even the size of President Taft impressed the old spiderlike Hopi prophet, as he afterward told me in diplomatic confidence. Youkeoma returned as sullen and as determined as before, made some new medicine with corn meal and feathers, and then repudiated the whole hegira, including President Taft, telling his people that he had seen nothing of importance, that he had received no counsel that contained wisdom, and that he sincerely doubted those men were chiefs of anything. Certainly they were not the mythical ‘Bohannas’ that the Hopi, following their own version of the Messianic legend, expect to come and rule them. And then, having refused to do that which Washington had urbanely decreed, he sat down in his warren of a pueblo, amid the sand and the garbage, to await whatever the white man might see fit to do about it.

That was my inheritance.

‘And there is your Agency,’ said the official, pointing. ‘You can see as far as you like from that place, if you look straight up.’

Below in the great gash were the buildings of the plant, gray, lonelylooking, standing in barren grounds; but large as they were the rocky walls of the cañon dwarfed them. So clear was the air that they appeared as toy houses, cut-outs pasted on a strip of pebbled cardboard. There was a straight line of them, for the cañon, generous enough in other dimensions, had not room for grouping at its bottom.

It was a rough trough hewn by quake and flood. For centuries the waters had torn at it, until their bed was now far below the site of the buildings; and for centuries the sand had drifted in to form rounded domes that buttressed the walls. Each season’s tremors disturbed the shattered rocks, sending some to the bottom in tearing grinding slides and posing others at new angles.

It was disappointing — a lonely, dreary place. No trees or hedges relieved the starved-looking site. There was little to be proud of. As for the natural beauties, one must grow to feel the majesty of worn rocks, tinted in all the shades of weathering sandstone, from saffron through gold to ruddy brown, toned to a thousand delicate hues by the stunted cedars and diversified cacti that struggled from every crevice. In the springtime there would be flowers in the crannies, winsome purple and pink flowers, with here and there the blazing scarlet of the Indian paintbrush; and in springtime too would come the great flocks of migratory birds.

Why build in such a place? The answer is that stereotyped one affecting everything in the desert — water. At the upper end of this cañon lived the springs. Water could be brought to the site without great expense. There was enough to furnish a small settlement, and more than could have been harnessed cheaply at any other point of the territory when the plant was built. Water in greater quantity has been discovered since, but there were no ‘ water-witches ‘ in the provinces of the Mohoqui prior to 1910.

All that day the thunder had muttered sullenly, and occasionally a few drops of rain had fallen on us. It was too early in the year to expect a shower of any consequence, so my guides told me. It was June, and the red-bellied clouds that the Snake Priests watch for do not appear until late August, when they herald the Snake Dance and prove Hopi wisdom; then cloudbursts send torrents through these cañons, and flood the plains, and guarantee the harvest. But, just as we drove up the main road, came a sharp downpour that settled into a rare thing indeed — a steady summer rain.

A group of Indians were standing close as we alighted. This was a delegation of welcome, for the tribes are very curious.

A Navajo grunted: ‘Nahtahni.’ A Hopi said something that brought smiles to their faces. It was interpreted to me as we shook hands around. He said: ‘You must be a good Chief, for you bring the rain.’

III

The Agency consisted of an office, quarters and shops for the clerks, farmers, and mechanics, and a school for about one hundred and fifty pupils of the grammar grades. This was a boardingschool and, in addition to teachers, had a corps of cooks, matrons, laundress, and seamstress, all necessary to the work. In the field, close to the pueblos of the Indians, were five day-schools, serving from fifty to one hundred and twenty children each, and stations for physicians, field nurses, and range men. Therefore the equipment, furniture, and stores of six small settlements had to be inventoried and receipted for at any change of directors.

The outgoing Agent was anxious to have his papers signed, that he might be off to his next post in further search of health. For two weeks we labored over those accounts, and it seemed that it would require another three months — as it did — to adjust and compare and reduce them to something approximating accuracy. So the major part of it was arranged conditionally between us, and I filed my official signature together with bond for thirty thousand dollars, and we two shook hands as cordially as it was possible for men to do who had been debating for a fortnight.

In this manner I became Indian Agent for twenty-two hundred Hopi Indians of the Pueblo stock — maligned under a stupid Departmental label as ‘Moqui’ — who would call me ‘Moungwi’; and for a trifle more of Navajo, the nomads of the desert, who would title me ‘Nahtahni’ — very likely ‘Nahtahni Yezzi,’ meaning Little Chief. They had undoubtedly named my predecessor ‘Nahtahni Tso,’ or Fat Chief.

That time of inventory I recall as a bad dream. Every conceivable article of useless equipment had been dumped on and carefully preserved at that post. The greatest care had been taken of the most useless. Once, when the tailors of Chicago were long on swatches, they presented them to the Indian Service, and to save storage the warehouse custodian had promptly shipped them to the most distant point, the Moqui Agency, in the hope and quite sure belief that they would never come back. Aside from transcontinental railroad charges, Indian wagoners had hauled such precious supplies from the receiving station, one hundred miles, at a cartage of one cent per pound. So it was with hundreds of lamp-chimneys that never fitted a lamp, clothing too small for infants or too large for giants, machetes that were needed in the Cuban cane-fields, tools that Noah would have spurned, and broadcast seeders for use where the Indians planted corn with ceremonial sticks. One warehouse was jammed with wagon-repair material, spokes, fellies, bolsters, and so forth, of dimensions that must have been current in the period of the pioneers.

Some of this waste had been the result of stupid ordering, while much of it grew from the system of yearly contracts — neither of which has changed unto this day. Smith furnishes wagons one year, by virtue of being the lowest bidder, and one must have Smith’s repair parts. Next year Brown has the contract, again by virtue of being the lowest and therefore cheapest bidder; and part of Smith’s material is a dead loss to the Service.

The method of checking stores was a grotesque science. Sewing-needles were counted, the unit being a single needle, whereas darning-needles were accepted by the hundred. Anvils, log-chains, sledges, and mason-axes were known by weight, other tools by description, and still other tools were identified by sets. Each textbook, each library and reference volume, — and there were thousands, — was known by its more or less involved title, and so catalogued and counted and charged every three months.

Quite so; there were shoes, men’s, women’s, misses’, boys’, youths’, and children’s, each divided into two sorts, — Sunday and everyday, — twelve classifications, and all counted and all charged. There were boxes of sealingwax, and cobbler’s wax, and beeswax, in quantity; and in the attenuated garden, irrigated by the hand-bucket method, grew something resembling cabbages where free Congressional seeds had been planted. There were no ships of the keel variety; it was too dry — even the fish carried canteens; but there were burros, those pack-ships of the desert, which cheerfully doubled as ‘Arizona nightingales.’ And there was one official king, who, if he did not find that crandall the smith had made in 1893, would have months of explaining to those who did not know then, and do not know now, what a crandall is. After thirty days of this I felt myself going mad; so I started forth to view the domain.

Having had but little experience in the handling of horses, I selected one of my Indian interpreters for Jehu, and so he proved. My idea was that an Indian would not only be a thorough horseman, but would possess the rare faculty of driving equally well after dark. The Indian has the eye of the eagle, say the books, and so on; and those winding, narrow, switchback roads did not invite me after nightfall. Sure enough, my first return to the cañon was made in pitch blackness; but I lolled in the buggy, well wrapped up, enjoying a feeling of perfect security. An excellent thing to have an eagle’s eye, I thought — when suddenly the world tipped and heaved. There was a moment of crashing confusion and complete chaos. The lines and my Indian driver and I were all on the floor of the buggy together, hopelessly mixed and entangled in blankets and foot-brake and nose bags and halters. The vehicle had pitched forward, and seemed to have climbed on to the backs of the struggling horses. Jehu had driven over a six-foot bank into an arroyo. Fortunately the team had taken it straight over, without swerving, and fortunately too those arroyo banks are of crumbling sand. We scrambled out to catch the heads of the horses.

‘What in the blankety-blank did you do that for?’ I cried at the dazed Indian, who, like myself, was very much numbed and scared. ‘Where were your eyes? Could n’t you see the crossing to the left?’

‘Did n’t you see it?’ he mumbled.

‘ I can’t see in this dark — never pretended to; but you — you ‘re an Indian, and — ‘

‘Indian eyes no different from white man’s!’ he announced in his defense, and with complete composure. ‘I can’t see in the dark, either.’

Another precious ideal exploded.

IV

A new Agent at the Cañon headquarters — a greenhorn to boot — and immediately a thousand questions were asked. Questions of Indians, of employees, of missionaries, of traders, of traveling cattlemen and drummers, of tourists, of everyone having an interest in that country, even if ever so little. And the new Agent was to answer them all, promptly, that they might go forth with instructions and permits to do the things that they felt most necessary to themselves. I had brought a little book of regulations from Washington and, too, I thought of the commission. It read: —

All the duties relating to the Moqui schools, Agency, and the Indians contiguous thereto, are hereby devolved upon you as Superintendent.

Rather a large order — depending of course on how sincerely and conscientiously one would view the matter. Here were close to four thousand square miles of territory, having five thousand people of many conditions, three fourths of them uncombed savages — and all their problems devolved upon me.

I remember a particularly worthless Civil Service employee who once said to me: ‘But, Mr. Crane, you take these matters too seriously.’

It was necessary for me to cancel his engagement shortly thereafter. I did this abruptly, for he had shown a strong tendency to go to sleep at the scales. He then emitted another philosophical remark, worthy of a Civil Service employee : —

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will get home just at watermelon time.’

Now one does not have to take the thing seriously. I have followed several Agents who did not. But there is no traditional ‘George’ in the Arizona Desert, and the Agent can always be found. He is the official goat, tagged, manacled, bonded. He may not leave his jurisdiction for longer than one week without having procured special permission; and when he goes the work continues in the hands of irresponsibles under his responsibility and his bond. I spent several evenings with the little book of regulations, and answered my own queries.

What are the duties and responsibilities of an Indian Agent?

On a closed reservation, where the Indians are noncitizen wards, the Agent acts the following parts: —

1. He is the Disbursing Officer for all activities, and will expend $100,000 or more yearly, the reserve’s allotment of funds, without including the moneys of individual Indians that may be deposited with him.

2. He directs a corps of employees, persons procured from the Civil Service grab-bag (persons he does not select), a gregarious and vagarious outfit, consisting of physicians, nurses, stockmen, farmers or range men, mechanics, teachers; and he often coöperates with the Irrigation or other services and their corps.

3. When there is construction work of any kind, from quarters and schools to roads and bridges, he often designs these things, always passes on the efficiency, and nearly always directs the actual work.

4. As Chief Health Officer he should know enough to advise and support the physicians, who require more of direction and guidance than one would imagine; and among the Indians he is in great measure responsible for the legality of their actions. In times of epidemic he must lead.

5. He is the Chief of Indian Police.

6. He is a special deputy officer of the Liquor Service, a branch designed for the suppression of the liquor traffic among Indians.

7. He is Judge of the Indian Court, with the powers of a magistrate, unless there is an intelligent Indian who may be commissioned so to act. Such are not in the Arizona Desert. If there should be intelligent Indians to act, the Agent has appellate power.

8. He is the Game Warden.

9. He holds hearings, determines heirs, and probates estates.

10. He often makes allotment of lands to Indians and determines values.

11. He is superintendent of Indian trade, recommends those persons who seek Governmental license to trade with Indians at designated trading-posts, and is expected to regulate the prices of that trade in accordance with market conditions.

12. Should the Indians have moneys accruing from supervised activities, such as the leasing or sale of lands, or from stockselling, and so forth, the Agent first sets his approval on the leases or sales, and thereafter acts as banker of the money.

13. As banker again, he makes loans to Indians under the Government’s reimbursable plan, whereby an Indian may purchase of the Agent live stock or implements, materials, tools, or seed, with borrowed money, and repay such loans during a period of years.

14. In the Navajo country, he guarantees the genuineness of the famous Navajo blanket before it goes to market.

15. He should encourage Indian agriculture, seek to improve their live-stock holdings, and generally strengthen their industries.

16. Under an Act of the Legislature of Arizona, he issues marriage licenses as a clerk of the court, and may solemnize marriage.

17. He is to see that all Indian children between the ages of six and eighteen years attend school; to provide and equip properly the schools; and to improve if possible the sanitary and moral conditions of the Indian communities.

18. In some places — and the Moqui Reservation is one — he should police and protect Indian ceremonies, such as the Snake Dance.

19. He has authority to make minor regulations in good judgment for the government of Indian country of his jurisdiction; and in larger measures, if he is informed and possesses a backbone, he usually sways the policy of the Service as it affects his people.

20. The laws of the State do not apply directly to his territory, but serve as guides in those cases not specifically covered by Federal Law, and through him as Agent.

Have you had enough? If these are not sufficient in number to be convincing, there are a few others in the two thousand amendments issued since 1904.

V

Now the Indians drifted in to greet their new Chief. Although possessed by a great curiosity, they came shyly, diffidently, as is the Indian way. One would suppose that a grand council of braves would have been called to introduce a new Agent with some semblance of formality, a thing that impresses a primitive people. But not so. The old Agent — who was Agent no longer, and glad that someone else had succeeded to the petty headaches, which are worse than the problems — packed his gear and departed. It was up to me to meet the savage in the course of business, and to make what impression I could.

The prominent men of the several districts were not at all backward in telling me how influential they were. The Navajo came first, and with reason, for they held five sixths of the range by right of might, and were eager to impress one that they should not be disturbed.

Came Hostin Nez, ‘the Tall Man,’ a lean shrewd genius, who could remember the captivity after Carson’s campaigns. He stood proudly erect, and yet had an ingratiating manner that was part of his profession; for, besides dominating a large faction of his people and being the hereditary chief of all the Navajo, he was a Medicine Man of high degree. From the north came old Billa Chezzi, better known as ‘Crooked Fingers’ because of a crippled hand, who had in him nothing that was sullen or criminal, perhaps, but who pictured a bloodthirsty pirate on a desperate mission.

These two represented communities of Navajo, living and roaming north, south, east, and west of the Hopi mesa settlements, and by whom the Hopi have been throttled from the range. There were lesser men, headmen of groups of families, each having something of distinction in his manner of personal eccentricity.

But for the most part my Navajo business was with Hostin Nez. He was a Judge of the Indian Court, and carried a ‘pretty paper’ — a ragged commission lithographed in bright colors. We had many a long and dispassionate argument, he rolling cigarettes in pieces of newspaper, which he evidently preferred to the ‘saddle blankets’ that came in packages, and wiping his lips now and then with a Turkish towel that was draped about his neck — a fashion in neckcloths that he affected. I never knew Hostin Nez to lose patience, and he would return again and again to a point at issue in the hope of gaining advantage. In appearance a Tatar chieftain, and in methods a Talleyrand.

‘Think of it, Nahtahni,’ he said to me, very shortly after our first meeting, ‘I have never had a wagon. Here I am, an influential man among my people, and all the others have been favored. When the children first went to school, the Agents used to give each father a wagon; but that was years ago, and my children are men, and I have never had a wagon.’

Now this was hard lines, for a Navajo who did not possess a wagon was prevented from hauling freight, at that time a most lucrative occupation, and the camp need for a vehicle of some sort was great. The Navajo has to haul wood and water, and must somehow transport his products of wool and hides to the trader. So I promised him a wagon from the next lot received.

This would not be a present. The Indians of the Empire are independent and self-supporting; they do not receive rations; and the Nahtahnis do not make presents of implements or other necessary things. The Indians paid for such issues by laboring on the roads and at other constructive work of the jurisdiction, and were credited at current rates for laborers. The ‘wagon’ meant the issue of a full freightingoutfit — everything save the horses, of which the Navajo have a surplus.

But Hostin Nez sent his son to sign the receipt for the issue. This was Hostin Nez Bega Number Four, indicating that there were other scions numbered one, two, and three, and perhaps even others bearing more fanciful Indian names. A great suspicion dawned on me. The issue-papers for several years back were examined, and lo! old Talleyrand had worked that game many times. He had never received a wagon; but each of his sons had received wagons after the father had made the plea for himself. When they went for freight, the Nez outfit comprised a caravan, and at the scales their pay-checks totaled hundreds of dollars. Hostin Nez did not go for freight. He was the Main Guy, and procured the wagons.

When I taxed the Chief with this, he was not offended. He smiled benignly and repeated: ‘But, Citcili’ (my younger brother), ‘I have never had a wagon.’ We let it go at that.

VI

Hardly had I moved the big desk to a place where I could see the Indians as they came in at the main door, in order that their pleas would not have to filter down through clerks, when the quiet of the summer afternoon was broken by cries of dismay and excited grief. A Navajo came running, weeping, his manner hysterical. He rushed into the office and stammered: ‘Charlie Bega, he dead — kill — Charlie Bega.’

For the moment I thought someone had been murdered, but the Navajo interpreter quickly explained: ‘His son has just died. Their hogan is down the cañon near the mine, and he came to tell you of it, and he wants a coffin built and a grave dug.’

The doctor came in to confirm this statement, and added: ‘The carpenter makes coffins for the people. The Navajo have a great fear of the dead, and they will not bury when it is possible to have the work done by someone else. We usually send a squad of men to prepare a grave, and the parson conducts a little service. If you say so, I will tell him.’

It was late afternoon, and would soon be twilight. ‘You may tell the carpenter,’ I said to the interpreter, ‘and we will arrange this funeral for to-morrow morning.’

‘Pardon me, sir, but they have queer customs. No member of that family will eat until the body is disposed of; and they must purify themselves by sweat-baths and ceremonies. When one dies close to the Agency, we help them bury at once.’

My first inclination was not to be ruled by such superstition; and then I thought how little four centuries of progress around them and fifty years of American influence had changed the Navajo. Like his desert, he has remained untouched, unaffected.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Have things made ready to-night.’

And I shall never forget my first Indian funeral. At different times since, and among other tribes and circumstances, I have had more of excitement and not a little anxiety at funerals. But this was my first in the desert.

The carpenter made a substantial box, much too large, I thought; but when the body was placed in it, wrapped in new blankets, decked with silver ornaments, with the dead boy’s saddle, bridle, and quirt at the foot, it was none too large. They could ill afford to part with those blankets and silver things, and especially that saddle. But he must be caparisoned and equipped for his new life in the ghostly land where he would go a-roaming.

A half-dozen of the employees climbed into the wagon that would carry the body to the grave. Among them was a visitor, a noted geologist who has made the Empire his study, and who took his share of labor along with the rest. The minister from the Baptist Mission met us at the gate. The burial ground was a desolate place across the arroyo, in a little hollow of those great drifted dunes, shunned by the Indians and not very inviting to anyone. By the time the grave was ready it was quite dark and lanterns had been lighted.

‘Do you wish a commitment service, sir?’ asked the minister. I did not at once understand him, having to learn that the new Agent decides everything, and I had thought he would take his place as the man of prayer without request. He had a short ritual for pagans, and this was one of them. It was solemn and sufficient.

‘Dust to dust . . .’ and the tossing of earth on the box followed. Four of the men began filling in the grave. I had looked around for the relatives of the dead; as yet none were in evidence, but out of the dusk came two strange Navajo leading a pony. It was a very good animal, as desert mounts go. And the missionary presented to me a serious problem.

‘They wish to kill the horse. Will you permit that?’

And there was something in his tone of voice that indicated a hope I would deny something as an innovation. Again I called for an explanation.

‘The Navajo always kill a horse at the grave,’ said the trader.

‘It seems a merciless thing to do—that’s a good pony.’

The missionary brightened. He had little use for pagan customs and longed for an arbitrary decision.

‘It is the custom of the people,’ said the trader, an honest man who advised me for many days thereafter. ‘You may not like it, and — you may be strong enough to stop it.’ There was doubt in his voice. ‘But it is their custom.’

It went against the grain; but there stood the Indians with the animal — silent, waiting. This problem had been presented to many Agents perhaps.

‘If we do not kill it mercifully with a gun, they will only go away and beat it to death with rocks,’ said the trader. ‘It must be done to-night. I have brought a rifle.’

The desert custom of the Navajo won its first round.

The two Indians led the pony to the head of the grave and, seeming to understand that we had settled it, scuttled away in the shadows. The trader leveled his rifle and shot that very good pony through the brain. It leaped forward convulsively, and plunged down, knee-deep, in the soft earth of the grave. The dead had a mount.

VII

Now the first complaints were filed with me, and soon increased to scores. The Hopi has suffered for many years because of the willful depredations of his too close neighbor, the Navajo; and the Navajo in turn has community troubles of his own. The Indian welcomes opportunity to speak his piece in court, and if permitted will promptly set up as prosecutor and spring to the rapid cross-examination of witnesses.

A docket having once been opened, word seemed to go forth to the mesas and the cañons to bring in their complaints. The cases became legion. One would begin to examine witnesses in so simple a matter as horse-stealing, record quite a bit of evidence, to discover suddenly that the animal in question had disappeared eleven years gone, the complaint having been duly entered by seven different Indian Agents sitting at this and other Agencies. It became necessary to impose a statute of limitations.

_ The first real trial concerned a Medicine Man and his collar-bone. One Horace Greeley, of Sitchumnovi, in the First Mesa District, at that time reputed to be seventy-four years old, and by profession a bonesetter, had not pleased a member of his tribe. Or perhaps he had conjured only too well with the misplaced anatomy of the patient, and charged according to his skill. At any rate, a relative of the patient took umbrage, and proceeded to handle Horace in a rough and unseemly manner. Among other things damaged was Horace’s own collar-bone. He could not very well set this himself, and naturally distrusted his confreres; so he was forced to send for the Agency physician. Otherwise I should not have heard of the case. But Horace being found with a fractured collar-bone and numerous contusions, the matter was reported, and his complaint entered for the next session of court.

The Regulations of the Indian Service direct that the Court of Indian Offenses shall consist of two or more intelligent and trustworthy Indians, acting as judges, whose verdicts shall be reviewed by the Indian Agent should an appeal be taken to him. As many Indians do not understand their right of appeal, the Agent is compelled to be present either to sustain or to overrule the verdicts.

And did I not have two such judges, all properly commissioned? Did not Hostin Nez have a treasured ‘pretty paper,’ and was not Hooker Hongave an equal judge? Did not the Government, looking for justice, generously crowd on each of them the princely salary of seven dollars, each and every month, ‘fresh and fresh’? Now was the time to avail myself of native wisdom.

Judge Hooker was a figure in the First Mesa community. At one time he had been a Hopi of the Hopi, and had fought the new system of schools and regulation with all his crude ability. To-day he is hated by pagans because he has tried to assimilate the doctrines of Christianity, and is looked on by some Christians as an arch-hypocrite. Such are the trials of the savage.

Actually he is a childish old fellow who has tried to merit the confidence of the mission folk, with little concept of where paganism ends and Christianity begins. His greatest sacrifice in life has been the abandonment of tribal ceremonies. From his house below the mesa can be seen the famous Walpi dance-ledge, like a miniature stage high in the thin air, thronged on pagan festal days with multicolored costumes, where faintly sound the chanting and the drums. But he never attends these feasts of rhythm and song, save at the biannual Walpi Snake Dance, when he joyfully receives a dispensation from the Agent to go as an official of the Government, he being a Judge and the authorized Crier. Many times did he cry down the aimless chatter of tourists during my administration, that solemn announcements might be made to the brethren, and the visitors cautioned against the making of vile photographs and unseemly levity. Garbed in a magnificently beaded waistcoat that had decked some long-vanquished Sioux warrior, and bearing his staff of office, a knotted club out of Africa, he presents a strange and not undignified figure on these occasions.

Therefore the two who shared the woolsack were contrasts. Hostin Nez, a Navajo pagan of the pagans, a Medicine Man, a leader of chants and a priest of the sand-paintings; Hooker Hongave, a simple-minded savage who had turned halfway toward the Church, with the low-toned booming of hidedrums in his ears, and in his heart, perhaps, a longing for the mysticism of his ancient people.

The day of hearing having been reached, and all assembled, the Judges listened to the story of old broken Greeley, who had by no means recovered and was still swathed in bandages. The accused was a burly fellow under forty, powerful enough to have challenged a middleweight, who did not deny or extenuate the assault.

‘It is a very bad thing that this man has done,’ said Judge Hooker, clucking his tongue and shaking his head sadly.

‘ Yes, my brother,’ agreed the Navajo jurist. ‘It is a serious thing and it must not happen again. We must make an example of this man so all the people will know of it.’

‘We will,’ said Hooker; and they withdrew to frame up a sentence.

From their determined expressions I feared that the prisoner would get at least a year in the hoosegow — an embarrassing piece of business, for the Regulations do not recognize any charge as deserving more than ninety days, and the Territorial Court had thought three years sufficient for cold-blooded murder in a recent Indian case. The Judges reappeared.

‘He is a bad man,’ said Hooker.

‘Yes, he is a dangerous fellow,’ said Hostin Nez.

‘And so we will send him to jail for — ten days.’

‘Ten days!’ I cried out. ‘Why, he nearly killed Greeley. That old man will suffer for weeks. You mean ten weeks, don’t you?’

‘No,’ they said. ‘Ten days is a long time in jail.’

The appellate power came into action.

‘Your decision, gentlemen, is overruled.’

Hooker brightened, expecting a remission of at least five days, which would save his face at the mesa, and perhaps prevent the prisoner from hating him for many years.

‘The prisoner will be confined for the period of sixty days, and during that time will be employed at hard labor.’ Hooker gasped, trembled, and was speechless.

‘You are a man without mercy,’ declared old Hostin Nez.

That was my last session of the Indian Court in the Hopi-Navajo country with native judges sitting. One might as well expect justice from a goose.

For an Agent who wishes to evade responsibility, the ‘judges’ are an excellent smoke-screen. He can always say: ‘It was done by the prisoner’s own people’ — Pilate’s method. Aside from its having all the elements of farce, it breeds dissatisfaction and illwill among the people, while teaching them nothing.

Thereafter I paid the salaries, and pleasantly chatted with the old gentlemen when they visited the Agency; but of their legal wisdom I wanted nothing. The Court proceeded to business without them.