Chapter VII

The Old Men in Rain God's Cave

AS I drew the curtains, I saw that it was now quite dark outside; the moon had not yet come up. Hannah struck a match to the lamp, and we somehow did feel better, sitting in its light. Then, as before, there came a soft tapping upon the door, without our having heard footsteps nor creaking of the flimsy porch boards.

“It is the young Hopi,” I whispered.

“Yes. But make sure of it,” Hannah told me; and I called out: “Who is there?”

“I, your friend,” came the hissed answer in the voice that we knew, and when I had taken down the bar, the Hopi stepped quickly inside, and we saw that he held in his left hand, close up against his breast, a short, thick-bodied bow and a few arrows.

“Oh, where did you find those?” Hannah cried, as I slammed the door bar back in place.

“In the kiva. In Rain God’s kiva. The old men brought them out to me. The bow cord had rotted; the point wrappings, too. But we have plenty of deer sinew. See: I have made a new cord and rewrapped the points,” he softly answered, and held them close to the lamp. We saw that the points were very small, and all five of them of almost transparent rock.

“Glass-rock points!” I said.

“Obsidian, the archeologists call it.”

I stared at him, open-mouthed, I guess. Here were new words to me. English words, and an Indian speaking them! I did n’t know what to say.

“Silly! You don’t know what an archaeologist is?” cried Hannah.

“A student of the ancient people; of their homes and the things that they made. I have been with one of them; he taught me much; among other things, that this glass rock is obsidian,” the young Hopi explained. And again I was staggered! How very much more than I he knew, and he a desert Indian!

“But how did your old men get past the fallen roof rock and into the cave!” Hannah asked.

“You did not notice that it was broken? No? Well, it was broken in two pieces. We pried them apart with a short pole, got an end of my willow rope around the first piece and dragged it out, all of us pulling, and then we got out the other piece in the same way.

“And now I am going to tell you something that will surprise you,” he went on, as though we had n’t been getting surprises from the time he came in. “But, first, what of the bad men of the forest – have you seen any of them or had news about them “

I answered that we had seen none of them; that the sheriff’s men seemed to be unable to find them.

“Well, now to surprise you,” he said. “When we got the passageway clear and my old men started to crawl in past where the rock had lain, the one in the lead, carrying his light of pitch-pine splinter, came to a sudden stop and cried out so loudly that even I could hear him: ‘Here is death! Here is the skeleton of a man!’

“I could not hear what more he said; just the rumble of voices came to me where I sat, up on top at the edge of the place of descent. But soon they came backing out, one by one, and climbed the willow rope and sat beside me, and old White Deer – he who had carried the light – said: ‘No, brothers, the bones there are the bones of an Apache. I am sure of it, for I held the light high and saw that the leg bones ran down into a pair of rotting, curved-up toes Apache moccasins. Beside the bones is a rusty old cap-lock gun, another proof that he who died there was an enemy. None of our people would have carried a white man’s weapon into the sacred place.’

“‘And now it is defiled, forever defiled by what lies in there. We may as well turn about and go home!’ cried one, in great distress. “‘No! Not so,’ White Deer answered. ‘Look you! Rain God himself dropped that roof rock, trapped our enemy right there in the kiva. No. More than ever he likes his kiva because of what he has done there. He does n’t like the Apaches any more than we do. They don’t pray to him for rain; they hate it because it leaks down through their miserable brush houses and wets their skins.

“‘But if we go in there we cannot escape brushing against what lies in the passage, the Apache bones, the gun, and we shall become tainted and our prayers as nothing,’ said another.

“‘The passage shall be cleared for us: our young student shall clear it,’ White Deer answered.

“‘What? I clear it – I drag out those bones, and the gun; then shall I become tainted!’ I cried

“‘But to keep us free from taint is one reason why we have you with us,’ he told me. ‘Of course you will become tainted, but as soon as we return to Oraibi, you shall be made clean in our Flute Clan kiva.

“‘What is to be done with the enemy things?’ I asked.

“‘You will drag them out of the passage to the edge of the hole going down into the Under World, and when I have said a prayer, you will drop them into it,’ he said; and I followed him down our willow ladder to the ledge, where he lighted the pine splinters for me – “

“But matches are white men’s things!” Hannah cried; and I smiled, for I thought we were to show him how inconsistent his old men were.

He smiled too, and answered:

“We have with us the fire tools of the Flute kiva: a piece of flat wood, and a sharpened stick, like an arrow-shaft. The point of it is set against the flat wood and surrounded with dry rotten wood, and then the stick is twirled between the palms of one’s hands until it burns into the flat wood and sets the rotten wood afire. That is the way we make fire; the ancient way; the one pure way!

“Well, I took the light and crept into the passage and soon came to the Apache bones and the gun lying beside them. I found, also, a rotting rawhide pouch containing many bullets, and then a powder horn, and when I shook it and found that it was

empty, I laughed, for I knew just what that Apache enemy had done: he had gone into Rain God’s kiva to destroy whatever offerings my people had placed there, and when he found that Rain God had trapped him, he had fired his gun, hoping that his people, camped somewhere below, would hear it and come to him. So long as he had powder he had hope; but when he fired the last charge of it, and no one came, then he knew that he must die. Oh, I am sure that he then tore at that fallen rock until his fingers bled. And every time that he cried out to his Apache gods to help him, Rain God mocked him. He suffered terribly from thirst; from hunger; and after days of suffering, died.

“‘Ah, ha, Apache dog! You would do wrong to our sacred kiva!’ I said, and got below the bones and the other things and began pushing and tossing them ahead of me up the passage, and with them an old knife in its rotting sheath, until I had them all out upon the open ledge. Beyond them stood White Deer, and above, looking down at us, the other old men. White Deer made a certain prayer, and then a sign to me. I swept the whole pile of things from the ledge into that straight-down hole in the mountain that goes to the Under World. We heard them striking, rattling from wall to wall of it for a long time. Said White Deer, then: ‘Our people down there in that rich and happy land, from which we all came and to which we shall all return – they will rejoice over the presents that we have just dropped down to them. They will dance over those Apache bones!’ And then he took the light from me and crept into the passage. I climbed up on top and sat with the others, awaiting his return.

“He was gone so long that we began to be worried about him. But at last he came out upon the ledge and climbed up to us, and handed me the ancient bow and arrows, the points that had dropped from them, and told me to repair them and we should then have a real weapon of defense. Just as the description of the kiva had been preserved by the priests of the Flute Clan, so had he found it, he said, except that there remained in place only one of the sacred ollas, a beautiful, small-neck, white olla with paintings in black of rain clouds, lightning, and the winds. All the others had been smashed upon the rock floor, no doubt by the Apache whom Rain God had trapped. There was much dry, powder-like brush scattered about, remains of the beds of priests of the long ago, and under a heap of it he had found the bow and arrows.

“Well, my old men have kept me busy all day, bringing up brush for their beds and wood for their fires, and there they are, comfortable in the kiva, and beginning the long and secret Rain God ceremonies that we hope will bring much water to our plantings, away out there in the desert.

“And I” – he cried, straightening up, clapping his hands together, his eyes shining – “if all goes well, next spring I, too, shall be a priest of the Flute’ Clan, and I shall know all the secrets of the kiva, and be praying for heavy rains for the gardens of my people.”

“And what will your teachers say to that?” Hannah asked him.

“Oh, they will be mad, very mad at me; they will call me names!”

“I don’t understand you,” I told him. “Hating white men’s ways and religion, as you do, why have you learned all that they could teach you?”

He looked at me and at Hannah very earnestly before he answered. “I will tell you,” he said, “for I am sure that you two must have pity for my poor people. At first I did not try to learn. It then came to me that it would be well to understand English, for I could stand around and know what the whites were saying about my people, what more wrongs they planned to do them. Our priests heard about my intention and urged me to learn all that I could get out of my teachers, and from books, so that I can be a wise interpreter for them, for the Hopi people. Oh, how hard I have studied! I have learned much! It is now planned that I shall become a priest of the Flute Clan, and then go to Washington, face the President, and demand that certain things be done for us. I shall say to him that the Constitution of the United States guarantees religious liberty to us all, yet his Department of Indian Affairs forcibly takes our children from our homes and obliges them to learn a religion that is not ours. I shall say to him that we want to be as free as the white people are. I shall ask him to recall the agent, and other men he has placed with us, and to order the different missionaries to get off from our land, to keep entirely away from our villages, his school-teachers, too, so that we People-of-Peace be left to the peace that is rightfully ours.”

“And if the President refuses – he may even refuse to see you – what then ? “ Hannah asked.

He smiled. “Then I shall go to the newspaper men,” he answered. “I shall give them a story of our wrongs and of our demands that they will gladly print. Once the people of this great country read it, I am sure that our wrongs will be righted.”

For a moment or two Hannah and I could do nothing but stare at one another and at the young Hopi; we both felt that, compared with him, we were but little children in our knowledge of the world and its ways.

And then he said: “I am going to try you out. Tell me which side you take in this matter – our side, or that of the men in Washington who force us to live according to their rules!”

“Your side!” – “Oh, your side, of course!” we cried.

“Ah! I knew that you would,” he said, clapping his hands. “Yes, it is just as my good, wise archaeologist friend says. More than once he has told me that ours is a just plea for liberty!”

We talked on, then, about other things, and finally I said to him that he had not yet told us his name. He laughed, and replied: “My first teachers gave me a name – no matter what it is; I do not like it. My real name is Singing Frog.

“Ha! You laugh!” he went on, turning to Hannah, and smiling, too. “Well, with us that is a very old and honorable name. The frog is a bringer of rain. With us he is sacred: no Hopi would think of killing one. We have a Frog Dance that is a very beautiful ceremony. When our gardens parch from want of water, our priests take our young men to the head of a wash, and there, after they have prayed Ancient Frog for water, and have sung the song of the frog, the young men all start off down the wash, jumping like frogs, and rolling loose stones before them just as a cloudburst takes them rolling and grinding down. That ceremony often brings the rain.”

Sister and I did not even smile when he told us that; we felt that it was not for us to try to talk him out of his strange beliefs. But mention of the frog brought back to me something that I had had in mind, and I said to him: “I guess you will say that we have done wrong, but anyhow I am going to tell you: we have hunted around, up on top, and found a lot of things, beads, arrow-points, some strangely carved sticks, and a turquoise frog, that now, since talking with you, we know must have been left there by your long-ago Hopi people.” And then I told Hannah to get the things. She brought them from, under her bunk and spread them out on the table, and the Hopi gave a little cry when he saw the turquoise frog: “Oh, what would n’t I give to have one like that ! “ he said. “Not that one, for we may not take anything that has been given to the gods. That is a piece of very ancient work, and is itself a perpetual prayer for rain. The sticks are prayer sticks, offerings to Rain God, as are the beads and other things.”

“What is the white material that the turquoise is set in?” Hannah asked.

“You do not know! Why, that is a cutting from the half of a clam-shell from the Gulf of California; and that made the piece all the more powerful, for the clam, as well as the frog, is a bringer of water. Some priest of the long ago valued it as he did his life; our people of that time must have been in desperate need of rain, for him to have offered it here with his prayers.”

“Oh, go on; do tell us more! “ Hannah begged.

“Yes, I will,” he answered. “I will tell you something that our priests never knew until it was told to them by my good friend – by the archaeologist I have mentioned. Do not ask me his name, for he has told me to give it to no one until I have made my trip to Washington, and perhaps not even then.

“Before this great student came to us, learned our language, and at last was invited into our kivas to take part in the secret ceremonies of our priests, this much we knew about ourselves: we knew that we Hopis are a mixed people; a people of different clans. That our main clan, the Water Clan, came into this country from the south long before the coming of the first white man, and were here in time joined by clans of Shoshones, from the north, and clans of Pueblos from the east, all seeking refuge from the Apaches and Navajos, and at last together forming the Hopi tribe, the People-of-Peace. It was the greatest of these clans, the Water Clan, that furnished the religion for the tribe, and also the art of making beautiful pottery, and of weaving cotton cloth. The Water Clan was the last remnant of the numerous people who once had made irrigated gardens of the Salt River and Gila River valleys, and there built large pueblos in which to live. I, myself, have seen the ruins of one of these, the Casa Grande as the whites call it, about forty miles east of Phoenix. The main house of that pueblo was four stories high, with walls of concrete six feet thick, and the most of it, after hundreds and hundreds of years, still stands. Safe in their great houses, and with full canals of water for their plantings, the people were happy, there in that hot country–Giant Cactus Land. And then came the Apaches and the Navajos and drove them northward, up the rivers that you call the Verde, the Salt, the Gila, and the Tonto. In the valleys they built small pueblos, and homes in the cliffs, constantly attacked by their enemies, until, at last, after several hundred years of moving and building and abandoning, the few who survived made their last stand out there in the desert, where we are to-day. That much we knew about ourselves.

“We know much more now. Our archaeologist friend tells us that away down in Old Mexico he has seen ruins, also named the Casas Grandes, where once lived the ancestors of the builders of the Gila River and Salt River pueblos. That he has proved by his finds there of pottery and other things. And why did our far-back fathers abandon that rich country? There was good reason for it, he says.

When the first white men that entered Mexico, the Spaniard Cortez and his soldiers, came to the great city of the Aztecs and conquered it, they found stored there in houses twenty thousand human skulls, skulls of people that the Aztecs every year sacrificed to the sun. The Aztec warriors were, of course, as time went on, obliged to go farther and farther from home to capture people for these yearly sacrifices, and at last they began making attacks upon our fathers, and finally obliged them to flee from their homes and fields.

“ So, there you have the history of us as we know it. Is it not a pitiful story! From the earliest times down to this very day we have been a persecuted people, we whose one desire has been to live in peace among our fields of corn, and worship our gods as they command us to do.”

Our friend’s face was very sad as he ended his tale, and Hannah and I felt sorry for him and his People-of-Peace, We told him that we did, but somehow could n’t put into words all that we felt. And we were glad that he had become friendly to us. He had given us a new and a true outlook: never again should we think that all Indians were lazy, worthless, treacherous, and cruel savages. The Apaches were all that, but the Hopis, People-of-Peace, why, they had many traits that some of our white people might well copy!

“Well, I told you that I would stand watch for you to-night, and I think it is time for you to sleep,” our friend told us.

“Oh, I don’t think there is any danger; that grub-stealing deserter has n’t the sand to make a night attack upon us,” I said.

“But Henry King is n’t the only bad man in this forest. I am more afraid of those I.W.W. firebugs than I am of him. I say that we stand watch, by turns, all night!” cried Hannah.

Of course we counted her out of that, and then our friend insisted upon taking the watch alone, and we went out, and sister barred the door behind us. We sat upon the edge of the little porch for some time, listening for any suspicious sounds, but heard none; heard nothing but the hooting of owls away down in the canyons. A faint light in the east told us that the moon would soon appear, and my friend said that he would go across the little clearing and into the thick spruces to keep his watch. He went, and I turned the corner of the cabin and got into my bunk.

I awoke with a start, and the feeling that all was not well with us. The moon was shining straight down into the clearing and I could plainly see all that part of it not shut off from me by the cabin. Nothing was moving there, but I had no more than raised up when I heard something behind me, around on the west side of the cabin; something moving with footsteps so light that I could barely hear them: “The deserter, the firebugs are here!” I thought, as I looked back over my shoulder, at the same time lying back upon my pillow. I don’t know why I did that. I just did it, and of course just as soon as my head struck the pillow I could only look straight out from me, and eastward down the clearing to the spruces where – if he had n’t fallen asleep – our friend was watching the cabin. And now that I was back flat upon my bed, I dared not sit up again, for whoever was there behind the cabin was no doubt looking around the corner of it, and would put a bullet into me the instant I started to rise up. No, the one thing for me to do was to lie perfectly still and pretend that I was asleep. The man then might pass me – he could not see my rifle that I was gripping under my coverings – and once his back was to me I would have the drop on him. If he had not come to the cabin straight from the west, then our Hopi watcher had already seen him, and we should be two against one. That thought helped a lot. All the same, I sure was scared. And now I again heard the soft footsteps. My heart thumped faster then than ever and my throat went dry. I closed my eyes so that I could barely see through the trembling lids. The night prowler was coming nearer. I fancied that I could hear him breathe.