Mary Katrine Rice Sedgwick

“ He who can sympathetically understand the import of an Indian ceremonial will alone solve the mystery of what has been bequeathed by immemorial ancestors and of what reigns supreme to-day. To guard their ritual is the jealous care of the older generation. Not only is secrecy imposed by the ruler of their fraternities, but it is in fact their last weapon, whether of defence or of revenge, against the unwarrantable abuse of power and privilege which white over-lordship has wielded over its so-called “wards.” ”

“ Since moving on from point to point in early times was so much the habit of all Indians, the marvel is that these migrating bands stopped in a region so unpromising and infertile as the Great Basin, where the human struggle for existence is of such incalculable proportion that the imagination grows weary; but stop they did, as innumerable pueblo ruins bear tangible witness. By its very aridity the sedentary Indians were assured of a certain protection from their enemies, who would not be so much attracted to the desert as to more luxuriant regions. ”

“ Each heavy burden must be carried up the steep, crooked trail. Yet by slow degrees the long adobe blocks of houses did become habitable again, and life resumed its ancient sway. Little wonder that for long thereafter the Ácomas felt deadly enmity for the Spaniards.
In reconstructing a new life upon the ruins of the old one, we have to take into account a new element—one so alien to all the Ácomas had hitherto known that we shall do well to pause for some understanding of the régime under which Spain adapted these primitive people to civilization. ”

“ However far the eye is carried in the desert of the Southwest, one is never wearied by monotony. Everywhere the undulating sands, hardly held in place by scanty vegetation when the winds blow their wildest, are driven into long rippling waves, or into hillocks, by the Spaniards called lomas. Even while you watch, this shifting, drifting sand takes on many hues. Sometimes it is grey, or pale buff, or almost white, more rarely golden. Out of it grows, here and there, the pungent greasewood, the stunted cedar and the thorny, freakish cacti unfurling gay flags of color to catch the wandering bee. ”

“ How many visitors to the pueblos of the American Indian comprehend the profound reason for the awe that underlies the worship there of what is to the average white man an object of repulsion if not of fear—the rattlesnake? Yet it is easy to understand when explained. It has long been observed that the mysterious force by which all things move, whether on earth, in the sky, or under the sea, is regarded by the savage as so inexplicable that he believes it to be controlled by unseen beings of superhuman power. ”

“ Folk-tales are the happenings of more recent times than those that are concerned with the origin of the race and the heroic demi-gods.
Story-telling by the old men of any semi-civilized society is the pastime of their leisure hours, and is all the literature of the tribe. With the American Indian there were songs and tales for every adventure in their tribal history. Imagination is so vital an element of all that the Indian believes, entering into all he says and does in daily life, that it must never be out of mind in any study of his culture. ”

“ While allowing that the Indian always was and is to-day a pagan, and that his worship of the countless manifestations of nature must be called superstition, let us admit that this worship is, nevertheless, the honest faith of men who “look not beyond the evidence of the senses,” of which its unquenched and never-to-be quenched altar fire is the eternal symbol, to many a serious student a holier thing than priest-made creeds. ”

“ It is as if the Indian said:
You have taken our lands and our freedom of self-government; you have forced upon us gods we neither understand nor love, and an education that teaches us we may deceive and later be absolved. Nothing is left us but our antique heritage of ritual and that we will keep inviolate though we lose our lives. ”

“ There is no path of escape, no possible signal for help to those below. Suddenly a hideous war-cry rends the air, and every Spaniard is assailed by mad savages with war-clubs or is pierced with arrows. From house-tops huge stones [78] are hurled. Brave and alert, the Spaniards sell their lives dearly in a terrible hand-to-hand struggle. Don Juan and Zutucapán meet in mortal combat and the valiant officer falls beneath the blow of a massive war-club. Swift and short we may believe the onset, till, breathless, the few Spaniards still alive succeed in getting together. ”

“ Of all the features of the great lonely stretches of country that one passes under the burning sky of the Southwest, most characteristic are the mesas, those level-topped tables that rise abruptly from the sandy plains, many-colored, and of irregular outline, catching the late afternoon sunlight in such fashion as to bring into view mysterious caverns that often were the early homes of cliff-dwellers. None, of all the mesas, is more striking than Katzímo, rising isolated and abrupt four hundred and thirty feet from a waste of sand. ”

“ Though we to-day after the long sophistication of the years may regard this phase as childish, ignorant, and superstitious, and resent its tyrannous fettering of the human mind, we must remember that it was the only view of life possible at the period of its sway—a life of Nature, speaking with many voices, sensitive to every changing facet of the created world—and that from such rude beginnings all primitive religion and poetry have arisen. ”

“ There is in the decorative addition of painting to pottery something much more valuable than mere ornament, namely, a conventionalized representation, graphically expressed, of the mythology and the social habits of a race, so that even without written records it becomes possible for us to form a fairly clear idea of its cultural development. In short, the study of pottery has disclosed so much of race origins that it is now regarded as essential to an understanding of the history and mythology, and, in many countries, of the industries no less than of the arts, of ancient peoples. ”

“ Who will go to Ácoma and become by slow degrees a familiar and trusted dweller among the people, even as Cushing did at Zuñi? That person alone, I am convinced, talking their language, eating their food, observing quietly their customs, will avail to penetrate the heart of the Ácoma secret. ”

“ From the plumed serpent to the adoration of the bird is an easy transition for the Indian mind. Do we not read in the wisdom of Solomon: “There be three things which are too wonderful for me; and the chief of these were the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock”? And in truth what is more enviable than a bird, that, spurning the earth, may overtop the clouds, pouring out his melody as he soars ”

“ To-day there is a colony of about five hundred Indians resident upon the lofty peñol. The rich heritage of migration tradition, of folk-lore concerning the adventures of their prehistoric ancestors, no less than the more tangible evidence of a hardy and adventurous tribe within the period of historic record, furnishes plenty of material for the interested student. From the shadowy north by way of legendary halting-places [165] to Wukoki on the Little Colorado and so to the very solid, glowing mass of Katzímo and on to Ácoma itself we have followed their pilgrimage. ”

“ This merely suggestive sketch of the ceremonials which are to the Indian the most intimately important occupation of his life may be closed with a summary by Mrs. Stevenson, who says:
Their sociology and religion are so intricately woven together that the study of one can not be pursued without the other, the ritual beginning at birth and closing at death. Their religion is not one mainly of propitiation but rather of supplication for favor and payment of the same, and to do the will of the beings to whom they pray. This is the paramount occupation of their life. ”

“ Such races as those still run at Ácoma and at Zuñi are visible proof that the physical vigor characteristic of the Pueblo tribes in days of old has not vanished. The invading Spaniards were not seldom amazed by the indomitable courage of the Indians in facing hardships and their endurance of cruel suffering without blenching. The stoicism with which they bear wounds with no outcry is not achieved without much discipline, and the Indian from his childhood is no stranger to pain. ”

“ Myths represent incidents long past and not to be repeated, those which occurred in the morning of the world when man had few or none of his present customs and arts. Folk-tales, on the other hand, are busied with more recent events and may even be woven about present-day occurrences. The myth therefore appeals especially to the imagination and the emotions, and to that deep-seated belief of the Indian that the world of sense and the world of spirit are so intimately linked that the former is ruled in minutest detail by the latter. ”

“ As the Reverend J. Owen Dorsey, a first authority on the subject, puts it: “Even man himself may become mysterious by fasting, prayer, and vision,” and this was indeed the chief function of the cacique, who by acts such as these expiated vicariously the sins of his clan.
If the dictum of a wise man be justified, that “every man is to a greater or less extent a dual personality,” the American Indian should rank as the most evenly developed of all human creatures, since duality is the essence of his being. ”

“ The contempt shown for their rich heritage of poetic ceremony has wounded the Indian in his deepest and holiest susceptibilities, especially when this criticism is accompanied by a Federal ban upon their periodic festivals, upon their native costume, and limitations upon their freedom in pursuing their crafts and their whole manner of life. One is forced to conclude that we have not yet, as the governing race, really understood the task or the responsibility that we assumed in taking over as wards human beings with an individuality highly sensitive and highly developed. ”

“ Since the outcome of migration is more or less permanent settlement, some allusion to the adaptation of the Indian to the natural environment in which he elected to remain is pertinent here. If upon the flat plain, his adobe of pinkish yellow or brown sinks into the sandy background and seems a mere outcropping of the rounded hills close by; if upon the mesa-top, the houses look as if carved from the cliff itself and defy all approach. The lack of all domestic animals among the Pueblos, a notable fact, was of course a very serious handicap to them. ”

“ To conclude: games, like every other aspect and detail of the Indian community, are socio-religious in essence, and hark back in many tribes to their origin myths. Here we find the description of a
series of contests in which the demiurge—first man, culture hero—overcomes some foe of the human race by exercise of superior cunning, skill or magic. [The primal gamblers seem always to have been] the divine Twins, miraculous offspring of the Sun, who live in the East and West, who rule night and day; summer and winter. They are the morning and evening stars. ”

“ The Spaniard was the pioneer invader and conqueror. The American should have grasped his opportunity as trustee of a rich and original element in the land. Trustees accept a duty and responsibility along with new power, the success or failure of which lies within their own hands. But the white man began by imposing upon the Indian a religion so unlike his own that it soon became a weapon of deceit, and a dangerous impediment to their mutual understanding. ”

“ After one has witnessed a Corn Dance in an open plaza, one cannot restrain a sigh of regret that so much of color and of harmony with the environing scene has been lost to the daily life of a world grown drab and over-conventionalized.
In the matter of dress the Indian is going through a transition period. His native costume is fast disappearing, since the children, after being put into American schools and given dreary American clothing, are apt to feel conspicuous and uncomfortable if they return to the dress of the pueblo. ”