The Delight Makers Part 2

"You are right, the day is long yet and the houses near. We will go slower."

Bowing his head again he went on at a slower gait.

Shyuote followed in silence. Although surprised at the change in his brother's looks, he did not for a moment entertain the thought or desire of inquiring into the cause of it. He was fully satisfied that as long as Okoya did not see fit to speak of the matter, he had no right to ask about it: in short, that it was none of his business.

Meanwhile dark and dismal thoughts were chasing each other within the elder brother's soul. Doubt and suspicion became more and more crushing.

He was tempted to break the spell and interrogate Shyuote once more, even to wrench from him, if needs be, a full explanation. The boy was old enough to enjoy that great and often disagreeable quality of the American Indian, reticence. Furthermore, he might have been forbidden to speak.

If the Indian is not an ideal being, he is still less a stolid mentally squalid brute. He is not reticent out of imbecility or mental weakness.

He fails properly to understand much of what takes place around him, especially what happens within the circle of our modern civilization, but withal he is far from indifferent toward his surroundings. He observes, compares, thinks, reasons, upon whatever he sees or hears, and forms opinions from the basis of his own peculiar culture. His senses are very acute for natural phenomena; his memory is excellent, as often as he sees fit to make use of it. There is no difference between him and the Caucasian in original faculties, and the reticence peculiar to him under certain circ.u.mstances is not due to lack of mental apt.i.tude.

He does not practise that reticence alike toward all. A great number of examples seems to establish the fact that the Indian has developed a system of casuistry, based upon a remarkably thorough knowledge of human nature. Certain matters are kept concealed from some people, whereas they are freely discussed with others, and _vice versa_. The Indian hardly ever keeps a secret to himself alone; it is nearly always shared by others whom the matter directly concerns. It may be said of the red man that he keeps secrets in the same manner that he lives,--namely, in groups or cl.u.s.ters. The reason is that with him individualism, or the mental and moral independence of the individual, has not attained the high degree of development which prevails among white races.

When Europeans began to colonize America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the social organization of its inhabitants presented a picture such as had disappeared long before on the continent of Europe.

Everywhere there prevailed linguistic segregation,--divisions into autonomous groups called tribes or stocks, and within each of these, equally autonomous cl.u.s.ters, whose mutual alliance for purposes of sustenance and defence const.i.tuted the basis of tribal society. The latter cl.u.s.ters were the clans, and they originated during the beginnings of the human family. Every clan formed a group of supposed blood-relatives, looking back to a mythical or traditional common ancestor. Descent from the mother being always plain, the clan claimed descent in the female line even if every recollection of the female ancestor were lost, and theoretically all the members of one clan were so many brothers and sisters. This organization still exists in the majority of tribes; the members of one clan cannot intermarry, and, if all the women of a clan die, that clan dies out also, since there is n.o.body left to perpetuate it. The tribe is in reality but a league; the clan is the unit. At the time we speak of, the affairs of each tribe were administered by an a.s.sembly of delegates from all its clans who at the same time arbitrated inevitable disputes between the several blood-relations.

Each clan managed its own affairs, of which no one outside of its members needed to know anything. Since the husbands always belonged to a different consanguine group from their wives, and the children followed their mother's line of descent, the family was permanently divided.

There was really no family in our sense of the word. The Indian has an individual name only. He is, in addition, distinguished by the name of his clan, which in turn has its proper cognomen. The affairs of the father's clan did not concern his wife or his children, whereas a neighbour might be his confidant on such matters. The mother, son, and daughter spoke among themselves of matters of which the father was not ent.i.tled to know, and about which he scarcely ever felt enough curiosity to inquire. Consequently there grew a habit of not caring about other people's affairs unless they affected one's own, and of confiding secrets to those only whom they could concern, and who were ent.i.tled to know them. In the course of time the habit became a rule of education.

Reticence, secrecy, discretion, are therefore no virtues with the Indian; they are simply the result of training.

Okoya too had been under the influence of such training, and he knew that Shyuote, young as he was, had already similar seeds planted within him. But uncertainty was insufferable; it weighed too heavily upon him, he could no longer bear it.

"Umo," he burst out, turning abruptly and looking at the boy in an almost threatening manner, "how do you know that I dislike the Koshare?"

Shyuote cast his eyes to the ground, and remained silent. His brother repeated the query; the little fellow only shrugged his shoulders. With greater insistence the elder proceeded,--

"Shyuote Tihua, who told you that the Delight Makers are not precious to me, nor I to them?"

Shyuote shook his head, pouted, and stared vacantly to one side. He manifestly refused to answer.

Cold perspiration stood on the brow of the elder brother; his body quivered in anguish; he realized the truth of his suspicions. Unable any longer to control himself he cried,--

"It is my mother who told them!"

Trembling, with clenched hands and gnashing teeth, he gazed at the child unconsciously. Shyuote, frightened at his wild and menacing att.i.tude, and ignorant of the real cause of his brother's excitement, raised his hand to his forehead and began to sob.

A shout coming from the immediate vicinity aroused and startled Okoya. A voice called out to him,--

"Umo!"

He looked around in surprise. They were standing close to the cultivated plots, and a man loomed up from between the maize-plants. He it was who called, and as soon as Okoya turned toward him he beckoned the youth to come nearer. Okoya's face darkened; he reluctantly complied, leaped over the ditch, walked up to the interlocutor, and stood still before him in the att.i.tude of quiet expectancy with downcast eyes. Shyuote had dropped to the ground; the call did not interfere with his sobs; he pouted rather than grieved.

Okoya's interlocutor was a man of strong build, apparently in the forties. His features, although somewhat flat and broad, created a favourable impression at first; upon closer scrutiny, however, the eyes modified that impression. They were small, and their look piercing rather than bright. His costume was limited to a tattered breech-clout of buckskin. A collar of small white sh.e.l.ls encircled the neck, and from this necklace dangled a triangular piece of alabaster, flat, and with a carving on it suggesting the shape of a dragon-fly. His hair streamed loose over the left ear, where there was fastened to the black coa.r.s.e strands a tuft of grayish down.

This individual eyed Okoya in silence for a moment, as if inspecting his person; then he inquired,--

"Where do you come from?"

The young fellow looked up and replied,--

"From below," pointing to the lower end of the gorge.

"What did you hunt?" the other continued, glancing at the bow and arrows of the boy.

"Tzina;" and with perceptible embarra.s.sment Okoya added, "but I killed nothing."

The man seemed not to heed the humiliation which this confession entailed, and asked,--

"Have you seen tracks of the mountain-sheep down yonder?"

"Not one; but I saw at a distance on the slope two bears very large and strong."

The other shook his head.

"Then there are no mountain sheep toward that end of the Tyuonyi," he said, waving his left hand toward the southeast, "thank you, boy," at the same time extending his right to the youth. Okoya grasped it, and breathed on the outside of the hand. Then he said, "hoa umo," and turned and sauntered back to where his little brother was still squatting and pouting, morose and silent.

The man had also turned around, bent down, and gone on weeding the corn.

Withal he did not lose sight of the boys; on the contrary, an occasional stealthy glance from his half-closed eyes shot over where they met.

Shyuote rose from the ground. His eyes were dry, but he glanced at his brother with misgivings as well as with curiosity. The latter felt a sudden pang upon beholding the childish features. The short interruption, though annoying at first, had diverted him from gloomy thoughts. Now, everything came back to his mind with renewed force,--the same anguish, the feeling of utter helplessness in case of impending danger, indignation at what he believed to have been base treason on the part of his mother,--all this rushed upon him with fearful force, and he stood again motionless, a picture of wild perplexity. His face betokened the state of his mind. Shyuote did not dare to inquire of him further than to ask a very insignificant question,--namely, who the man was that had called.

Okoya answered readily, for this query was almost a relief,--a diversion which enabled him to subdue his agitation. "Tyope Tihua," he said hastily, "wanted to know if I had seen any mountain sheep. I told him that I had only seen bear-tracks. Let him follow those," he growled.

"Come on, satyumishe, it is getting late."

While this conversation had been carried on, the boys, now hurrying and now slackening their pace, had arrived within a short distance of the tall clay-pile, which was seen to be a high polygonal building, apparently closed on all sides. Between them and this edifice there was still another lower one, not unlike an irregular honeycomb. About forty cells, separated from each other by walls of earth, carried up from the ground to a few inches above the terraced roof, const.i.tuted a ground-floor on which rested a group of not more than a dozen similar cells. The walls of this structure were of stones, irregularly broken and clumsily piled, but they were covered by a thick coating of clay so that nothing of the rough core remained visible. Instead of doors or entrances, air-holes, round or oval, perforated these walls.

The house appeared empty. No smoke flitted over the flat roof; the coating was so recent that many places were hardly dry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (Upper picture) A modern Indian Dance]

[Ill.u.s.tration: (Lower picture) An estufa]

North of this building, a circular structure thirty feet in diameter rose a few feet only above the soil, like the upper part of a sunken cylinder. Its top was flat, and large flags of stone formed a rough staircase leading to its roof. In the centre, a square opening appeared, out of which a tall beam, notched at regular intervals like a primitive ladder, protruded, and down which also the beam disappeared as if extended into the bowels of the earth. This edifice, half underground, half above the soil, was what to-day is called in New Mexico an _estufa_.[2] This Spanish word has become a technical term, and we shall hereafter use it in the course of the story as well as the designations _tshikia_ and _kaaptsh_ of the Queres Indians.

The estufas were more numerous in a single pueblo formerly than they are now. Nor are they always sunken. At the Rito there were at least ten, five of which were circular chambers in the rock of the cliffs. These chambers or halls were, in the times we speak of, gathering places for men exclusively. No woman was permitted to enter, unless for the purpose of carrying food to the inmates. Each clan had its own estufa, and the young men slept in it under the surveillance of one or more of the aged princ.i.p.als, until they married, and frequently even afterward.

There the young men became acquainted with the affairs of their individual connections, and little by little also with the business of the tribe. There, during the long evenings of winter, old men taught them the songs and prayers embodying traditions and myths, first of their own clan, then of the tribe.[3] The estufa was school, club-house, nay, armory to a certain extent. It was more. Many of the prominent religious exercises took place in it. The estufa on special occasions became transformed into a temple for the clan who had reared it.

From the depths of this structure there came a series of dull sounds like beats of a drum. The youngsters stopped short, and looked at each other in surprise.

"The new house," whispered Okoya, "which the Corn clan have built here is empty, yet there is somebody in its estufa. What may this mean?"

"Let us look into it," eagerly suggested Shyuote.

"Go you alone!" directed the elder brother. "I will walk on, and you can overtake me by-and-by."

That suited Shyuote. He crept stealthily toward the round building.

There was an air-hole in the rim which rose above the ground. Crouching like a cat, the boy cautiously peered through this opening, but quickly withdrew with an expression of disappointment. The underground chamber was not even finished; its walls were dark and raw, the floor rough, and on this floor a half-dozen young fellows in every stage of dress or undress were lounging. One of them mechanically touched a small drum with a stick, while two or three of the others were humming a monotonous tune to the rhythm of his rappings. Shyuote stole away in evident discontent; his curiosity was satisfied, but at the expense of his expectations.