The two heroes of America"s Indian wars--Frontenac of the North, De Vargas of the South--were contemporaries. It will be remembered how up on the St. Lawrence and among the Mohawk tribes of New York, a wave of revolt against white man rule swept from 1642 to 1682. It was not unnatural that the red warrior should view with alarm the growing dominance and a.s.sumption of power on the part of the white. In Canada, we know the brandy of the white trader hastened the revolt and added horror to the outrages, when the settlements lying round Montreal and Quebec were ravaged and burnt under the very cannon mouths of the two impotent and terrified forts. The same wave of revolt that scourged French Canada in the eighties, went like wild fire over the Southwest from 1682 to 1694. Was there any connection between the two efforts to throw off white man rule? To the historian, seemingly, there was not; but ask the Navajo or Apache of the South about traders in the North, and you will be astonished how the traditions of the tribes preserve legends of the Athabascan stock in the North, from whom they claim descent. Ask a modern Indian of the interior of British Columbia about the Navajos, and he will tell you how the wise men of the tribe preserve verbal history of a branch of this people driven far South--"those other Denes," he will tell you. Traders explain the wonderful way news has of traveling from tribe to tribe by the laconic expression, "moccasin telegram."
Whether or not the infection of revolt spread by "moccasin telegram"
from Canada to Mexico, the storm broke, and broke with frightful violence over the Southwest. The immediate cause was religious interference. All pueblo people have secret lodges held in underground _estufas_ or _kivas_. To these ceremonies no white man however favored is ever admitted. White men know as little of the rites practiced in these lodges by the pueblo people as when Coronado came in 1540. To the Spanish governors and priests, the thing was anathema--abomination of witchcraft and sorcery and secrecy that risked the eternal d.a.m.nation of converts" souls. There was a garrison of only 250 men at the Palace; yet already the church boasted fifty friars, from eleven to seventeen missions, and converts by the thousands. But the souls of the holy _padres_ were sorely tried by these _estufa_ rites, "_platicas de noche_," "night conversations"--the priests called them. Well might all New Spain have been disturbed by these "night conversations." The subject bound under fearful oath of secrecy was nothing more nor less than the total extermination of every white man, woman and child north of the Rio Grande.
Some unwise governor--Trevino, I think it was--had issued an edict in 1675 forbidding the pueblos to hold their secret lodges in the _estufas_. By way of enforcing his edict, he had forty-seven of the wise men or Indian priests (he called them "sorcerers") imprisoned; hanged three in the jail yard of the Palace as a warning, and after severe whipping and enforced fasts, sent the other forty-four home. Picture the situation to yourself! The wise men or governors of the pueblos are always old men elected out of respect for their superior wisdom, men used to having their slightest word implicitly obeyed. Whipped, shamed, disgraced, they dispersed from the Palace, down the Rio Grande to Isleta, west to the city on the impregnable rocks of Acoma, north to that whole group of pueblo cities from Jemez to Santa Fe and Pecos and Taos. What do you think they did? Fill up the underground _estufas_ and hang their heads in shame among men? Then, you don"t know the Indian!
You may break his neck; but you can"t bend it. The very first thing they did was to gather their young warriors in the _estufas_. Picture that scene to yourself, too! An old rain priest at San Ildefonso, through the kindness of Dr. Hewitt of the Archaeological School, took us down the _estufa_ at that pueblo, where some of the bloodiest scenes of the rebellion were enacted. Needless to say, he took us down in the day time, when there are no ceremonies.
[Ill.u.s.tration: An adobe gateway of old-world charm in Santa Fe]
The _estufa_ is large enough to seat three or four hundred men. It is night time. A few oil tapers are burning in stone saucers, the pueblo lamp. The warriors come stealing down the ladder. No woman is admitted.
The men are dressed in linen trousers with colored blankets fastened Grecian fashion at the waist. They seat themselves silently on the adobe or cement benches around the circular wall. The altar place, whence comes the Sacred Fire from the G.o.ds of the under world, is situated just under the ladder. The priests descend, four or five of them, holding their blankets in a square that acts as a drop curtain concealing the altar. When all have descended, a trap door of brush above is closed.
The taper lamps go out. The priests drop their blankets; and behold on the altar the sacred fire; and the outraged wise man in impa.s.sioned speech denouncing white man rule, insult to the Indian G.o.ds, destruction of the Spanish ruler!
Of the punished medicine men, one of the most incensed was an elderly Indian called Pope, said to be originally from San Juan, but at that time living in Taos. I don"t know what ground there is for it, but tradition has it that when Pope effected the curtain drop round the sacred fire of the _estufa_ in Taos, he produced, or induced the warriors looking on breathlessly to believe that he produced, three infernal spirits from the under world, who came from the great war-G.o.d Montezuma to command the pueblo race to unite with the Navajo and Apache in driving the white man from the Southwest. If there be any truth in the tradition, it is not hard to account for the trick. Tradition or trick, it worked like magic. The warriors believed. Couriers went scurrying by night from town to town, with the knotted cord--some say it was of deer thong, others of palm leaf. The knots represented the number of days to the time of uprising. The man, for instance, who ran from Taos to Pecos, would pull out a knot for each day he ran. A new courier would carry the cord on to the next town. There was some confusion about the untying of those knots. Some say the rebellion was to take place on the 11th of August, 1682; others, on the 13th. Anyway, the first blow was struck on the 10th. Not a pueblo town failed to rally to the call, as the Highlanders of old responded to the signal of the b.l.o.o.d.y cross.
New Mexico at this time numbered some 3,000 Spanish colonists, the majority living on ranches up and down the Rio Grande and surrounding Santa Fe. The captain-general, who had had nothing to do with the foolish decrees that produced the revolt, happened to be Don Antonio de Otermin, with Alonzo Garcia as his lieutenant. In spite of no women being admitted to the secret, the secret leaked out. Pope"s son-in-law, the governor of San Juan, was setting out to betray the whole plot to the Spaniards, when he was killed by Pope"s own hand.
Such widespread preparations could not proceed without the Mission converts getting some inkling; and on August 9, Governor Otermin heard that two Indians of Tesuque out from Santa Fe had been ordered to join a rebellion. He had the Indians brought before him in the audience chamber on the 10th. They told him all they knew; and they warned him that any warrior refusing to take part would be slain. Here, as always in times of great confusion, the main thread of the story is lost in a multiplicity of detail. Warning had also come down from the alcalde at Taos. Otermin scarcely seems to have grasped the import of the news; for all he did was to send his own secret scouts out, warning the settlers and friars to seek refuge in Isleta, or Santa Fe; but it was too late.
The Indians got word they had been betrayed and broke loose in a mad l.u.s.t of revenge and blood that very Sat.u.r.day when the governor was sending out his spies.
It would take a book to tell the story of all the heroism and martyrdom of the different Missions. Parkman has told the story of the martyrdom of the Jesuits in French Canada; and many other books have been written on the subject. No Parkman has yet risen to tell the story of the martyrdom of the Franciscans in New Mexico. In one fell day, before the captain-general knew anything about it, 400 colonists and twenty-one missionaries had been slain--butchered, shot, thrown over the rocks, suffocated in their burning chapels. Pope was in the midst of it all, riding like an incarnate fury on horseback wearing a bull"s horn in the middle of his forehead. Apaches and Navajos, of course, joined in the loot. At Taos, out of seventy whites, two only escaped; and they left their wives and children dead on the field and reached Isleta only after ten days" wandering in the mountains at night, having hidden by day. At little Tesuque, north of Santa Fe, only the alcalde escaped by spurring his horse to wilder pace than the Indians could follow. The alcalde had seen the friar flee to a ravine. Then an Indian came out wearing the priest"s shield; and it was blood-spattered. At Santa Clara, soldiers, herders and colonists were slain on the field as they worked. The women and children were carried off to captivity from which they never returned. At Galisteo, the men were slain, the women carried off.
Rosaries were burned in bonfires. Churches were plundered and profaned.
At Santo Domingo, the bodies of the three priests were piled in a heap in front of the church, as an insult to the white man faith that would have destroyed the Indian _estufas_. Down at Isleta, Garcia, the lieutenant, happened to be in command, and during Sat.u.r.day night and Sunday morning, he rounded inside the walls of Isleta seven missionaries and 1,500 settlers, of whom only 200 had firearms.
What of Captain-General Otermin, cooped up in the Governor"s Palace of Santa Fe, awaiting the return of his scouts? The reports of his scouts, one may guess. Reports came dribbling in till Tuesday, and by that time there were no Spanish left alive outside Santa Fe and Isleta. Then Otermin bestirred himself mightily. Citizens were called to take refuge in the Palace. The armory was opened and arquebuses handed out to all who could bear arms. The Holy Sacrament was administered. Then the sacred vessels were brought to the Governor"s Palace and hidden. There were now 1,000 persons cooped up in the Governor"s Palace, less than 100 capable of bearing arms. Trenches were dug, windows barricaded, walls fortified. Armed soldiers mounted the roofs of houses guarding the Plaza and in the streets approaching it were stationed cannon.
Having wiped out the settlements, the pueblos and their allies swooped down on Santa Fe, led by Juan of Galisteo riding with a convent flag round his waist as sash. To parley with an enemy is folly. Otermin sent for Juan to come to the Palace; and in the audience chamber upbraided him. Juan, one may well believe, laughed. He produced two crosses--a red one and a white one. If the Spaniards would accept the white one and withdraw, the Indians would desist from attack; if not--then--red stood for blood. Otermin talked about "pardon for treason," when he should have struck the impudent fellow to earth, as De Vargas, or old Frontenac, would have done in like case.
When Juan went back across the Plaza, the Indians howled with joy, danced dervish time all night, rang the bells of San Miguel, set fire to the church and houses, and cut the water supply off from the yard of the Palace. The valor of the Spaniards could not have been very great from August 14th to 20th, for only five of the 100 bearing arms were killed.
At a council of war on the night of August 19th, it was decided to attempt to rush the foe, trampling them with horses, and to beat a way open for retreat. Otermin says 300 Indians were killed in this rally; but it is a question. The Governor himself came back with an arrow wound in his forehead and a flesh wound near his heart. Within twenty-four hours, he decided--whichever way you like to put it--"to go to the relief of Isleta," where he thought his lieutenant was; or "to retreat"
south of the Rio Grande. The Indians watched the retreat in grim silence. The Spanish considered their escape "a miracle." It was a pitiful wresting of comfort from desperation.
But at Isleta, the Governor found that his lieutenant had already retreated taking 1,500 refugees in safety with him. It was the end of September when Otermin himself crossed the Rio Grande, at a point not far from modern El Paso. At Isleta, the people will tell you to this day legends of the friar"s martyrdom. Every Mexican believes that the holy _padre_ buried in a log hollowed out for coffin beneath the chapel rises every ten years and walks through the streets of Isleta to see how his people are doing. Once every ten years or so, the Rio Grande floods badly; and the year of the flood, the ghost of the friar rises to warn his people. Be that as it may, a few years ago, a deputation of investigators took up the body to examine the truth of the legend. It lies in a state of perfect preservation in its log coffin.
The pueblos had driven the Spanish south of the Rio Grande and practically kept them south of the Rio Grande for ten years. Churches were burned. Images were profaned. Priestly vestments decked wild Indian lads. Converts were washed in Santa Fe River to cleanse them of baptism.
All the records in the Governor"s Palace were destroyed, and the Palace itself given over to wild orgies among the victorious Indians; but the victory brought little good to the tribes. They fell back to their former state of tribal raid and feud. Drought spoiled the crops; and perhaps, after all, the consolation and the guidance of the Spanish priests were missed. When the Utes heard that the Spanish had retreated, these wild marauders of the northern desert fell on the pueblo towns like wolves. There is a legend, also, that at this time there were great earthquakes and many heavenly signs of displeasure. Curiously enough, the same legends exist about Montreal and Quebec. Otermin hung timidly on the frontier, crossing and recrossing the Rio Grande; but he could make no progress in resettling the colonists.
Comes on the scene now--1692-98--Don Diego de Vargas. It isn"t so much what he did; for when you are brave enough, you don"t need to do. The doors of fate open before the golden key. He resubjugated the Southwest for Spain; and he resubjugated it as much by force of clemency as force of cruelty. But mark the point--it was _force that did it, not pow-wowing and parleying and straddling cowardice with conscience_. De Vargas could muster only 300 men at El Paso, including loyal Indians. On August 21, 1692, he set out for the north.
It has taken many volumes to tell of the victories of Frontenac. It would take as many again to relate the victories of De Vargas. He was accompanied, of course, by the fearless and quenchless friars. All the pueblos pa.s.sed on the way north he found abandoned; but when he reached Santa Fe on the 13th of September, he found it held and fortified by the Indians. The Indians were furiously defiant; they would perish, but surrender--never! De Vargas surrounded them and cut off the water supply. The friars approached under flag of truce. Before night, Santa Fe had surrendered without striking a blow. One after another, the pueblos were visited and pacified; but it was not all easy victory. The Indians did not relish an order a year later to give up occupation of the Palace and retire to their own villages. In December they closed all entrances to the Plaza and refused to surrender. De Vargas had prayers read, raised the picture of the Virgin on the battle flag, and advanced.
Javelins, boiling water, arrows, a.s.sailed the advancing Spaniards; but the gate of the Plaza stockade was attacked and burned. Reinforcements came to the Indians, and both sides rested for the night. During the night, the Indian governor hanged himself. Next morning, seventy of the Indians were seized and court-martialed on the spot. De Vargas planted his flag on the Plaza, erected a cross and thanked G.o.d.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A view of part of San Ildefonso, New Mexico, showing the famous Black Mesa in the background]
One of the hardest fights of "94 was out on the Black Mesa, a huge precipitous square of basalt, frowning above San Ildefonso. This mesa was a famous prayer shrine to the Indians and is venerated as sacred to this day. All sides are sheer but that towards the river. Down this is a narrow trail like a goat path between rocks that could be hurled on climbers" heads. De Vargas stormed the Black Mesa, on top of which great numbers of rebels had taken refuge. Four days the attack lasted, his 100 soldiers repeatedly reaching the edge of the summit only to be hurled down. After ten days the siege had to be abandoned, but famine had done its work among the Indians. For five years, the old general slept in his boots and scarcely left the warpath. It was at the siege of the Black Mesa that he is said to have made the vow to build a chapel to the Virgin; and it is his siege of Santa Fe that the yearly De Vargas Celebration commemorates to this day. And in the end, he died in his boots on the march at Bernalillo, leaving in his will explicit directions that he should be buried in the church of Santa Fe "under the high altar beneath the place where the priest puts his feet when he says ma.s.s." The body was carried to the parish church in his bed of state and interred beneath the altar; and the De Vargas celebration remains to this day one of the quaintest ceremonies of the old Governor"s Palace.
CHAPTER XI
TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND AND ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE SOUTHWEST
As Quebec is the shrine of historical pilgrims in the North, and Salem in New England; so Taos is the Mecca of students of history and lovers of art in the Southwest. Here came the Spanish knights mounted and in armor plate half a century before the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. They had not only crossed the sea but had traversed the desert from Old Mexico for 900 miles over burning sands, amid wild, bare mountains, across rivers where horses and riders swamped in the quicksands. To Taos came Franciscan _padres_ long before Champlain had built stockades at Port Royal or Quebec. Just as the Jesuits won the wilderness of the up-country by martyr blood, so the Franciscans attacked the strongholds of paganism amid the pueblos of the South.
Spanish _conquistadores_ have been represented as wading through blood to victory, with the sword in one hand, the cross in the other; but that picture is only half the truth. Let it be remembered that the Spanish were the only conquerors in America who gave the Indians perpetual t.i.tle, intact and forever, to the land occupied when the Spanish came--which t.i.tles the Indians hold to this day. Also, while rude soldiers, or even officers, might be guilty of such unprovoked attacks as occurred at Bernalillo in Coronado"s expedition of 1540, the crown stood sponsor for the well-being and salvation of the Indian"s soul.
Wherever the conqueror marched, the sandaled and penniless Franciscan remained and too often paid the penalty of the soldier"s crimes. In the Tusayan Desert, at Taos, at Zuni, at Acoma, you will find Missions that date back to the expedition of Coronado; and at every single Mission the _padres_ paid for their courage and their faith with their lives.
But Taos traditions date back farther than the coming of the white man.
Christians have their Christ, northern Indians their Hiawatha, and the pueblo people their Bah-tah-ko, or grand cacique, who led their people from the ravages of Apache and Navajo in the far West to the Promised Land of verdant plains and watered valleys below the mighty mountains of Taos. Montezuma was to the Southwest, not the Christ, but the Adam, the Moses, the Joseph. Casa Grande in southern Arizona was the Garden of Eden, "the place of the Morning Glow;" but when war and pestilence and ravaging foe and drouth drove the pueblos from their Garden of Eden, the Bah-tah-ko was the Moses to lead them to the Promised Land at Taos. When did he live? The oldest man does not know. The pueblos had been at Taos thousands of years, when the Spanish came in 1540; and, it may be added, they live very much the same to-day at Taos as they did when the white man first came. The men wear store trousers instead of woven linen ones; some wear hats instead of a red head band; and there are wagons instead of drags attached to a dog in shafts. But apart from these innovations, there is little difference at Taos between 1912 and 1540. The whitewashed Mission church stands in the center of the pueblo; but the old _estufas_, or _kivas_, are still used for religious ceremony, and election of rulers, and maintenance of Indian law. You can still see the Indians threshing their grain by the trampling of goats on a threshing floor, or the run of burros round and round a kraal chased by a boy, while a man sc.r.a.pes away the grain and forks aside the chaff. There are white man"s courts and white man"s laws, down at the white man"s town of Taos; but the Indian has little faith in, and less respect for, these white man courts and laws, and out at Taos has his own court, his own laws, his own absolute and undisputed governor, his own police, his own prison and his own penalties. The wealth of Midas would not tempt a Taos Indian to exchange his life in the tiered adobe villages for all that civilization could offer him. Occasionally a Colonel Cody, or Showman Jones, lures him off for a year or two to the great cities of the East; but the call of the wilds lures him back to his own beehive houses. He has plenty to eat and plenty to wear, the love of his family, the open fields and the friendship of his G.o.ds--what more can life offer?
Don"t leave the Southwest without seeing Taos. It might be part of Turkey, or Persia, or India. It is the most un-American thing in America; and yet, it is the most typical of those ancient days in America, when there was no white man. Just here, before the ethnologist arises to correct me, let it be put on record that the Taos people do not consider themselves Indians. They claim descent rather from the Aztecs, or Toltecs of the South. While the Navajo and Apache and Ute legends are of a great migration from Athabasca of the North, the pueblo legend is of a coming from the Great Underworld of the South.
The easiest way to reach Taos is by the ancient city of Santa Fe. You go by rail to Servilleta, or Barrancas, then stage it out to the Indian pueblos. Better wire for your stage accommodation from the railroad. We did not wire, and when we left the railroad, we found seven people and a stage with s.p.a.ce for only four. The railroad leads almost straight north from Santa Fe over high, clear mesas of yellow ocher covered with scrub juniper. There is little sign of water after you leave the Rio Grande, for water does not flow uphill; and you are at an alt.i.tude of 8,000 feet when you cross the Divide. You pa.s.s through fruit orchards along the river, low headed and heavy with apples. Then come the Indian villages, San Ildefonso, and Espanola, and Santa Clara, where the strings of red chile bake in the sunlight against the glare adobe. Women go up from the pools with jars of water on their heads. Children come selling the famous Santa Clara black pottery at the train windows; and on the trail across the river, you see Mexican drovers with long lines of burros and pack horses winding away into the mountains. Women and girls in bright blankets and with eyes like black beads and skin like wrinkled parchment stand round the doors of the little square adobe houses; and sitting in the shade are the old people--people of a great age, 104 one old woman numbered her years. As you ascend the Upper Mesas of the Rio Grande, you are in a region where nothing grows but pinon and juniper. There is not a sign of life but the browsing sheep and goats. Just where the train shoots in north of San Ildefonso, if you know where to look on the right, you can see the famous Black Mesa, a huge square of black basaltic rock almost 400 feet high, which was the sacred shrine of all Indians hereabouts for a hundred miles. On its crest, you can still see its prayer shrines, and the footworn path where refugees from war ran down to the river for water from encampment on the crest. Away to the left, the mountains seem to crumple up in purple folds with flat tops and white gypsum gashed precipices. One of these gashes--White Rock Canon--marks Pajarito Plateau, the habitat of the ancient cave dwellers.
On the north side of the Black Mesa, you can see the opening to a huge cave. This was a prayer shrine and refuge in time of war for the Santa Clara Indians.
Then, when you have reached almost the top of the world and see no more sheep herds, the trains pull up at an isolated, forsaken little station; and late in the afternoon you get off at Servilleta.
A school teacher, his wife and his two children, also left the train at this point. Our group consisted of three. The driver of the stage--a famous frontiersman, Jo. Dunn--made eight; and we packed into a two-seated vehicle. It added piquancy, if not sport, to the twilight drive to know that one of the two bronchos in harness had never been driven before. He was, in fact, one of the bands of wild horses that rove these high juniper mountains. Mexicans, or Indians, watch for the wild bands to come out to water at nightfall and morning, and stampede them into a pound, or rope them. The captive is then sold for amounts varying from $5 to $15 to anyone who can master him. It need not be told here, not every driver can master an unbroken wild horse. It is a combination of confidence and dexterity, rather than strength. There is a rigging to the bridle that throws a horse if he kicks; and our wild one not only kept his traces for a rough drive of nearly twenty miles but suffered himself to be handled by a young girl of the party.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The pueblo of Taos, New Mexico, whose inhabitants trace their lineage back centuries before the advent of the Spanish conquistadores]
Twilight on the Upper Mesas is a thing not to be told in words and only dimly told on canvas. There is the primrose afterglow, so famous in the Alps. The purple mountains drape themselves in lavender veils. Winds scented with oil of sagebrush and aroma of pines come soughing through the juniper hills. The moon comes out sickle-shaped. You see a shooting star drop. Then a dim white group of moving forms emerges from the pines of the mountains--wild horses with leader scenting the air for foe, coming out for the night run to the drinking pools. Or your horses give a little sidewise jump from the trail, and you see a coyote loping along abreast not a gun-shot away. This is a sure-enough-always-no-man"s-land, a jumping-off place for all the earth--too high for irrigation farming, too arid for any other kind of farming, and so an unclaimed land. In the twenty-mile drive, you will see, perhaps, three homesteaders" shanties, where settlers have fenced off a square and tried ranching; but water is too deep for boring. Horses turned outside the square join the wild bands and are lost; and two out of every three are abandoned homesteads.
The Dunn brothers have cut a road in eighteen miles to the Arroyo Hondo, where their house is, halfway to Taos; and they have also run a telephone line in.
Except for the telephone wires and the rough trail, you might be in an utterly uninhabited land on top of the world. The trail rises and falls amid endless scented juniper groves. The pale moon deepens through a pink and saffron twilight. The stillness becomes almost palpable--then, suddenly, you jump right off the edge of the earth. The flat mesa has come to an edge. You look down, sheer down, 1,000 feet straight as a plummet--two canons narrow as a stone"s toss have gashed deep trenches through the living rocks and with a whir of swift waters come together at the famous place known as the Bridge. You have come on your old friend the Rio Grande again, narrow and deep and blue from the mountain snows, an altogether different stream from the muddy Rio of the lower levels. Here it is joined by the Arroyo Hondo, another canon slashed through the rocks in a deep trench--both rivers silver in the moonlight, with a rush of rapids coming up the great height like wind in trees, or the waves of the sea.
What a host of old frontier worthies must have pulled themselves up with a jerk of amaze and dumb wonder, when they first came to this sheer jump off the earth! First the mailed warriors under Coronado; then the cowled Franciscans; then Fremont and Kit Carson and Beaubien and Governor Bent and Manuel Lisa, the fur trader, and a host of other knights of modern adventure.
I suppose a proper picture of the Bridge, or Arroyo Hondo, cannot be taken; for a good one never has been taken, though travelers and artists have been coming this way for a hundred years. The two canons are so close together and so walled that it is impossible to get both in one picture except from an airship. It is as if the earth were suddenly rent, and you looked down on that underworld of which Indian legend tells so many wonder yarns. Don"t mind wondering how you will go down!
The bronchos will manage that, where an Eastern horse would break his neck and yours, too. The driver jams on brakes; and you drop down a terribly steep grade in a series of switchbacks, or zigzags, to the Bridge. It is the most spectacularly steep road I know in America. It could not be any steeper and not drop straight; and there isn"t anything between you and the drop but your horses" good sense. It is one of the places where you don"t want to hit your horse; for if he jumps, the wagon will not keep to the trail. It will go over taking you and the horse, too.
But, before you know it, you have switched round the last turn and are rattling across the Bridge. Some Mexican teamsters are in camp below the rock wall of the river. The reflection of the figures and firelight and precipices in the deep waters calls up all sorts of tales of Arabian Nights and road robbers and old lawless days. Then, you pull up sharp at the toll house for supper, as quaint an inn as anything in Switzerland or the Himalayas. The back of the house is the rock wall of the canon.
The front is adobe. The halls are long and low and narrow, with low-roofed rooms off the front side only. From the Bridge you can go on to Taos by motor in moonlight; but the whole way by stage and motor in one day makes a hard trip, and there is as much of interest at the Bridge as at Taos. You don"t expect to find settlers in this dim silver underworld, do you? Well, drive a few miles up the Arroyo Hondo, where the stream widens out into garden patch farms, and you will find as odd specimens of isolated humans as exist anywhere in the world--relics of the religious fanaticism of the secret lodges, of the Middle Ages--Penitentes, or Flagellantes, or Crucifixion people, who yearly at Lent re-enact all the sorrows of the Procession to the Cross, and until very recent years even re-enacted the Crucifixion.
After supper we strolled out down the canon. It is impossible to exaggerate its beauty. Each gash is only the width of the river with sides straight as walls. The walls are yellow and black basalt, all spotted with red where the burning bush has been touched by the frosts.
The rivers are clear, cold blue, because they are but a little way from the springs in the snows. Snows and clear water and frost in the Desert?
Yes: that is as the Desert is in reality, not in geography books. Below the Bridge, you can follow the Rio Grande down to some famous hot springs; and in this section, the air is literally spicy with the oil of sagebrush. At daybreak, you see the water ousels singing above the rapids, and you may catch the lilt of a mocking-bird, or see a bluebird examining some frost-touched berries. It is October; but the goldfinches, which have long since left us in the North, are in myriads here.
The second day at the Bridge, we drove up the Arroyo Hondo to see the Penitentes. It is the only way I know that you can personally visit a people who in every characteristic belong to the Twelfth Century. The houses of the Arroyo Hondo are very small and very poor; for the Penitente is thinking not of this world but of the world to come. The orchards are amazingly old. These people and their ancestors must have been here for centuries and as isolated from the rest of the world as if living back five centuries. The Penitente is not an Indian; he is a peon. Pueblo Indians repudiate Penitente practices. Neither is the Penitente a Catholic. He is really a relic of the secret lodge orders that overran Europe with religious disorders and fanatic practices in the Twelfth Century. Except for the Lenten processions, rites are practiced at night. There are the Brothers of the Light--La Luz--and the Brothers of the Darkness--Las Tinieblas. The meeting halls are known as Morados; and those seen by us were without windows and with only one narrow door. Women meet in one lodge, men in another. The sign manual of membership is a cross tattooed on forehead, chin or back. When a death occurs, the body is taken to the Morado, and a wake held. After Penitente rites have been performed, a priest is called in for final services; and up to the present, the priests have been unable to break the strength of these secret lodges. Members are bound by secret oath to help each other and stand by each other; and it is commonly charged that politicians join the Penitentes to get votes and doctors to get patients. Easter and Lent mark the grand rally of the year. On one hill above the Arroyo Hondo, you can see a succession of crosses where Penitentes have whipped themselves senseless with cactus belts, or dropped from exhaustion carrying a cross; and only last spring--1912--a woman marched carrying a great cross to which the naked body of her baby was bound. We pa.s.sed one cross erected to commemorate a woman who died from self-inflicted injuries suffered during the procession of 1907.
The procession emerges from the Morado chanting in low, doleful tune the Miserere. First come the Flagellantes, or marchers, scourging their naked backs with cactus belts and whips. Next march the cross carriers with a rattling of iron chains fastened to the feet; then, the general congregation. The march terminates at a great cross erected on a hilltop to simulate Golgotha. Why do the people do it? "To appease divine wrath," they say; but they might ask us--why have we dipsomaniacs and kleptomaniacs and monstrosities in our civilized life? Because "Julia O"Grady and the Captain"s lady are the same as two pins under their skins." Because human nature dammed up from wholesome outlet of emotions, will find unwholesome vent; and these dolorous processions are only a reflex of the dark emotions hidden in a narrow canon shut off from the rest of the world.
They were not dolorous emotions that found vent as we drove back down Arroyo Hondo to the Bridge. Our driver got out a mouth organ. Then he played and sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of dance tunes of the old, old days in the True West.
"Allamahoo, right hand to your partner And grand hodoo."