Chapter VI

The Wrongs of the Hopis

I DROPPED my bucket and started up the trail as fast as I could go, and as a runner found that I was nothing: with a few leaps the young Hopi and his four old priests were ahead of me, leaving me, snatching up here and there a stone as they ran. After Hannah’s cry of “George! George! Come quick!” we heard her no more. Something terrible had happened to her, I was sure. It was but a little way – a hundred yards – to the little clearing on top of the ridge. As I came into it, well behind the others, I saw that the cabin door was closed. Hannah’s cry for help had been in the open, or we should not have heard it so plainly, if at all. I believed that she had gone out into the timber; that she had been suddenly overpowered there by some one, or, maybe, Double Killer, or she would have kept calling me. I was in a terrible state of mind. And then, what relief! The cabin door swung open and she came running to us, pistol in one hand, my rifle in the other.

“I went out in there,” she cried, as I took the weapon from her, “– out into those spruces for dry twigs to start the fire, and a man was lying there. He sprang up, and I turned and ran to the cabin, screaming for you, and got inside and barred the door. Oh, how frightened I was! I was sure the man would catch me before I could get to the cabin!”

“He chased you?” I cried.

“When he sprang up he came straight toward me. How far he followed I don’t know. I did n’t dare look back. I just kept running until I got inside, and when I turned to shut and bar the door he was not in sight.”

“But you saw him! Was he white, or an Apache?”

“I don’t know. It was all so dim in there, the branches were so thick that I did n’t get a good look at him. I did n’t have time to look at him: I had to run!” she answered.

I did n’t know what to say to this. I sure was mad. Not afraid, though; I just wanted to get sight of any one who would chase my sister.

The young Hopi had been telling his priests what we were saying, and one of them now asked: “Have you any enemies?”

“There are some bad men in the forest,” I answered, and went on to tell them about the deserter, who, we believed, had stolen our food, and about the I.W.W. firebugs. And when I had finished, one of the old men spoke to the others in a low, sad voice.

“What did he say?” I asked the interpreter.

“These were his words,” he solemnly replied: “‘Whites, Apaches, Navajos, all of the tribes we know, are murderers, thieves, liars! We alone are People-of-Peace. We do no wrong to any of them, yet how they make us suffer!’”

Now, what answer could we make to that? None. It was true. Hannah and I stood ashamed before those gentle old men. Not for ourselves, but for those of our kind who were mean to them.

“Well, let us all try to learn who was the man in the timber, whether Apache or white,” the young Hopi proposed.

“But your old men have no weapons – they will be afraid to go in there,” I said.

He spoke to them and they all nodded assent, gripping more tightly the rocks they held. We went across the clearing and into the spruces, and Hannah showed us just where she had seen the man. Under the low-branching tree the dead needles were packed as though he had lain there a long time; all night, perhaps. Along the way that he had chased her, only a few yards, the needles were only slightly pressed by his footsteps. We cut a circle around the place; then a larger one, and, down on the slope of the ridge, one of the old men called us to him and pointed to tracks in a bare stretch of ground; broad-heel shoetracks far apart, leading down into the canyon. I needed but one look at them: “The deserter! He is back again!” I said to Hannah. She did not answer; she just shivered a bit as though she were cold. I explained to the others that I knew the tracks; that they were made by the man who had camped down in the canyon, and several times stolen our food.

“It is well for us that he was n’t an Apache, to come again with a lot of his people to take our scalps and dance over our bodies,” one of the old men remarked.

“Sister, this sure does settle it! I can’t fireguard all day and watch all night for this thieving deserter! I am going to call for help,” I said.

“Don’t you do it!” she cried. “I am not afraid, now. If I had had my pistol when I first came out, you would have heard my shot instead of my scream for help.”

“No! Don’t call people up here: I will help you, stand watch nights for you,” the young Hopi pleaded. “With you two, we feel at ease; we know that your hearts are right. But with a lot of white men up here, laughing, sneering at us, oh, my old men could not do that they have come so far to do. To fail now would just about kill them!”

“All right! All right! We’ll just go on as we are,” I told him.

Our Hopi friends, of course, refused to eat with us. They would go back to the spring for a time, they said. Hannah and I had a hurried breakfast and a silent one. Just before seven o’clock, while we were washing the dishes, the telephone rang my call, rang it twice before I could get to the receiver, and when I answered, my ear ached with the Supervisor’s shout: “Big fire somewhere near the sawmill! Go up top as fast as you can leg if, and report!”

“Yes! Right away!” I shouted back. Hannah had heard him as plainly as I. “Oh, the firebugs again! And the wind blowing! This is terrible!” she cried, flinging the dishcloth upon its nail and stuffing some bread and things into our lunch sack, and her pistol into the holster at her hip.

We locked the door behind us, although that was almost useless; without doubt Henry King had a key to fit the lock. I had noticed as well as Hannah that there was a stiff southwest wind, and had hoped that there was no fire in the forest for it to spread. As we neared the top of the trail it blew stronger, and, once we were clear of the spruces, it was that hard we had to lean against it the rest of the way up to the lookout.

We scrambled up into the little house, and I swung the chart sight onto the fire, and stepping across to the telephone, gave the Supervisor the degree.

“The firebugs again! Describe it!” he shouted.

“Set in four places in a line of maybe a mile north and south, and spreading fast! The sky that way is black with smoke!” I thought that I heard him swear as he hung up.

Far a time Hannah and I by turns watched the fire with the glasses, and now and then could see the awful red flames break skyward up through the rolling black blanket of smoke. With the aid of the strong wind, the I.W.W. firebugs were at last carrying out their threat. If they did not succeed in burning the sawmill, they were anyhow destroying the great firs and pines that it was to turn into lumber, and it would have to be moved – at great expense – to another locality. I tell you that we sure felt bad, watching that wicked burning of our beautiful forest. And the meanness of it! Out there in the great world, why were people so mean ? Why were they always fighting, stealing, doing everything that was mean to one another?

We presently saw the Hopis coming up on the summit, and said Hannah: “I thought that I could never like Indians, but they are different. I just love those Hopi Indians, those People-of-Peace, because, George, they are just like us, here in these little mountain settlements. We do no wrong to one another, nor to outsiders. Why can’t all the world be like us?”

“You’ve sure got me! All I know is that they just can’t be good, and that is all there is to it. I don’t want to think about it any more, it makes me sick.”

The Hopis came on to the foot of the lookout butte and we went down, and asked them up into our little house. They shook their heads. No, they would not go up. By putting the house there, the whites had spoiled their once sacred ground. One of them took up two or three pottery fragments that lay scattered at his feet, examined them, held them out in our view, and told the young Hopi that he was going to say a few words to us.

“White children of good heart,” he began, “these are pieces of beautiful ollas left here by our People-of-Peace. They have lain here in the rain and snow and sun a long time, some of them hundreds of years, but you see that they are still smooth, and the different colors of paint as bright as the day the maker put them on. Yes, the pottery of our long-ago people was far better made, the painted figures upon it far more beautiful than our women of to-day can make. But perhaps you are not interested in this.”

“Oh, yes! We are interested! Tell us all about it” Hannah replied.

“Then let us get out of the wind,” the interpreter said, and led us around to the east side of the butte. But, first, one of the old men pointed off to the great fire and asked: “That is the work of the bad white men you spoke of?”

“Yes. They are trying to burn a little sawmill off there, as well as the forest,” I answered: and he sadly shook his head. Hannah and I sure stood ashamed before the old men; ashamed that they should know how mean were some of our own kind!

We sat down in a little circle, close at the edge of the butte, and the old man continued his tale:

“None of us four have ever been here upon this sacred mountain, nor were our fathers, nor our grandfathers ever here; it was long before their time that our people were obliged to give up their every-spring journeys here to Rain God’s home. But just as though we had been of that long-ago time, we priests know how the ancient ones made the long journey, just what they did when they arrived here. For three days certain ones of the priests prayed and performed their mysteries in the kiva out there at the other end of the mountain, while their people, hundreds and hundreds of them, camped close down there in the timber, praying, too, and waiting for the great day, the fourth day, to come. Early in the morning of that day the people all came up on top, men and women, bringing some of their most valuable things, and little children the toys they most loved, to sacrifice to Rain God. These they placed here and there upon this butte, the very highest point of this highest mountain of all the range, where Rain God loved to sit and look out upon the world, and some they placed around the entrance to his kiva, in which he often performed his great mysteries. And as they set them down upon the rocks they prayed him to accept their poor offerings and to drop his rain plentifully upon their plantings. Men taught their little sons and mothers their little daughters to say those prayers, and guided their little hands in the placing of their toy offerings. Why, in that long-ago time this whole butte was covered with gifts to Rain God:beautiful ollas; bead necklaces; the finest clothing; weapons; children’s buzzers, dolls, and other toys.

“Then, on that fourth morning, the priests came up out of the kiva and danced their dance to Rain God, and made him their offerings. And sometimes he answered their prayers at once, right there gathering his clouds around him and then spreading them out until they dropped their water upon the farthest plantings of the people. And if not at once, he later brought his rains to their plantings: in those times there never was a crop failure. No, not even when the Apaches and Navajos came and attacked the prayers for rain right upon the top of this mountain, killing many of them and destroying their offerings.

“No, not even when the Apaches and Navajos finally prevented our ancient ones coming here to pray – not until long after the coming of the first white men did Rain God at rimes withhold his rains, allow our plantings to die. At first only one summer in ten, or something like that, but of late, very often. And why! Oh, it is not through our fault, we old people; it is because of what the white men have done to our children, things that we, their fathers, are powerless to prevent.

“When, in that long-ago time, our people from the cliffs of Oraibi sighted those first white men coming across the desert, all sitting an top of huge, strange animals, they feared them. The priests hurried to bar their way with sacred meal, but they paid no attention to it –”

“Oh, ask him to wait! Tell us about the sacred meal,” I said to the young Hopi.

The old men all patiently smiled assent, and the young Hopi explained:

“Sacred meal. It was corn meal prepared by the priests in their kiva, and was used for several purposes. When a line of it was sprinkled across a trail leading up into one of our villages, it was a warning to all people, all comers, that they were not wanted up an top, and must turn back.”

The old man nodded, and went on.

“Those white men did not even look at the cross-line of sacred meal, nor pay any attention to the priests standing behind it and motioning them back. Instead, they fired their guns and the people fled before them, almost crazy with fear, for they thought that those strange men had thunder and lightning for their weapons.

“On they came, right up into Oraibi, those white men, and camped in the houses and searched them and the kivas, into which none but the priests were allowed to descend. Yes, they searched every room in the village and the piles of rock around it, for what the people could not understand. Long afterward they learned that it was for gold. Metal that the Hopi had never seen or heard of. Angry because they had found none of it, they left Oraibi, forced their way into each of our six other villages, and then turned off to the west and were seen no more. The priests purified the kivas. Years passed, and the entrance of the white men into their homes became like a bad dream to the people, and at last it was thought that white skins would never again be seen in Hopi land.

“But, after years and years had passed, more white men did come, and because they seemed to be different from the first who had come, because they carried no weapons wherever they went, and were kind and pleasant-voiced, the people made them welcome; gave them a house to live in, food, wood, and the women gladly brought up water for them from the spring at the foot of the cliff. All went well for a time – until the white men learned to speak our language – and then the people learned that they were priests, and trouble began. The Hopi gods were devils, the kivas devils’ holes, the white men said, and forbade the Hopi to pray to any but the white god. And at that the Hopi priests seized those white priests, and carried them to the edge of that high cliff of Oraibi and tossed them off from it: they struck the rocks at the bottom and were dead.

“After that happening, our people saw no more white men for years and years. They who came had been Spaniards. Came at last, and in the time of us four here, a different kind of white men; men of very white skin, and at first they did not bother us. They fought the Apaches and the Navajos; put them upon certain lands and made them tame, and of that we were very glad. Then came, not many years ago, one of them who said that he had been sent by the Great Father of the white men to live with us, and teach us the white men’s ways; we were no longer to live as we had always lived; we were all of us to follow the white men’s trail, on and on, up and up, until we should be just like the white men except for the color of our skins.

“Said our chiefs to him: ‘As you came, so may you go, and at once. Tell your Great Father for us that we thank him for his offer of help, but that we do not need it. As we have lived here for hundreds and hundreds of years, so do we intend to live. We ask but one thing of the Great Father, and that is to be let alone.’

“Said the white man: ‘The Great Father has ordered me to remain here with you, and here I stay, and as the Great Father has ordered shall be done for you, so shall it be done.’

“What could we do then? Nothing. We had seen the whites tame our terrible enemies and knew that we few, weaponless Hopis could do nothing against them. This white man brought other white men to help him, and there in our own land they built houses for themselves, and houses for teaching our children their language and their ways, and houses for their gods. And, worst of all, they said that our children must worship their gods, because the Hopi gods were not. That we had made gods of our idle dreams. They said that our beliefs were all lies; that there was no Under World, from which we came and to which we return when we die. They said that their gods made us, as well as the whites, and that if we would not believe, would not pray as they did, then would we go to a place of terrible fire when we die, and forever burn.

“So it is with us to-day. Oh, how we suffer from seeing our children taken from us and taught these different ways of life! But though they are taught, though under the eyes of their teachers they speak the white men’s prayers, in their hearts the most of them are at the same time praying to our own gods. A few really do believe the teachings of the whites, and in punishing them for it, our gods punish us all. Because of them, strange and terrible diseases carry many of us away. Because of them, Rain God neglects to water our plantings. Oh, we are poor, very poor, we People-of-Peace!

“And now, you two young fire-watchers upon this sacred mountain, why have we told you all these our troubles! Because we ask your pity and your help. We ask you, while you sit up there in your little house watching this great forest, to watch also for us, that for four days none come to disturb us, out there at the other end of the mountain. Far have we come across the desert, here to beg Rain God to punish us all no longer for the unbeliefs of the few, and we must not be disturbed. Will you do that for us! If any come, your friends maybe, or whoever, will you say nothing to them about us, will you try to keep them from wandering out to the sacred kiva!”

“Yes ! Yes! Of course we will!” cried Hannah.

“We will do our best to protect you,” I told them.

And at that those old men gave great sighs of relief; smiled happily at us: and in the eyes of the one who had done the talking I was sure that I saw tears.

“You will need a rope. Down in the cabin is a rope ladder that we will loan you,” I said to the interpreter.

“But we can use nothing of white men’s make. I shall make a rope of twisted willows,” he answered.

“How can you, without a knife!”

“Two sharp-edged stones shall be my knife,” he said.

They turned from us, to go to the spring after the things they had left there, and to make their rope, and we went up into the lookout. The fire off to the north seemed to be burning as fiercely as ever.

“Well, now we know why so many beads, arrow-points, and pieces of pottery are here,” I said.

“Yes. This little butte was a shrine: a shrine to Rain God. The things that the old-time people scattered here were their presents to him. I don’t care if their beliefs were but dreams. Just think of them coming up here from their far-away homes to pray for water for their corn. How beautiful their faith!”

“Yes. And my dream, it, too, comes to nothing: the old man said that his long-ago people had no gold; had never heard of it! And I thought that there would likely be a lot of it in my cave find! Well, they can’t get into the cave without a crowbar to loosen the fallen roof rock. We shall be first into it after all.”

“Don’t be too sure of that. I just feel that the old men will find some way to get into it,” said Hannah.

The little party soon came back up the trail with their packs of food and things, and with the glasses we made out that they each carried an olla – filled with water, of course. Somewhat behind them was the young Hopi, carrying a large bundle of willows upon his back. They all went out along the crest of the mountain, and then down to the cave hole in the west slope and out of our sight. I felt bad that I could n’t be with them to see just what they did there.

Along toward noon the wind ceased blowing. The smoke from the four great fires rose straight up, turned from dense black to a dark gray color and to less volume. We were glad: the men down there would be able to fight the fires with some chance of success. At twelve o’clock I reported no other fires started, and we went down to the cabin for lunch, at the edge of the clearing pausing and making sure that no one was in it. Everything inside was just as we had left it: we had expected to find the place stripped of food. At one o’clock we were back in the lookout. The four fires seemed to be burning as steadily as ever, and we feared that the Supervisor had been unable to get enough men to fight them. That was a long afternoon to us. As the hours passed, we wanted more and more to know what chance there was of the fires being extinguished. And we were all on edge to know what the Hopis were doing out at the other end of the mountain. At six o’clock, when I made my evening report, the office clerk told me that the Supervisor was out at the fires, and that, from what he could learn, they seemed to be steadily spreading. The men who set them had not been caught – not seen, even.

As we were leaving the lookout, I said to Hannah that we might at least go out along the summit far enough to see what the Hopis were doing at the cave hole, but she shortly answered: “We shall do nothing of the kind! You know that they do not want to be spied upon!”

Again we found that nothing had been taken from the cabin during our absence. I brought in a lot of stovewood, and water from the spring, and we cooked a big supper, and then no more than tasted it. We were too anxious to enjoy the meal. We dreaded the coming night. Soon after sunset we barred the cabin door and sat in the darkness. After a time I asked Hannah what she was thinking about?

“I am wondering if Henry King has fallen in with those firebugs and become one of them,” she answered.

“Just what I was thinking. I believe that he has joined them, and is rustling what food they eat. How I wish I knew where they hide out!” I said.

“Oh, let’s draw the curtains and light the lamp! I just can’t bear sitting here in the darkness, thinking about those terrible men!” she cried.