Kitabı oku: «Alamo Ranch: A Story of New Mexico», sayfa 6

"Marriage was recognized as a religious ceremony, and its obligations strictly enjoined. Their women, we are told, were treated with a consideration uncommon among Indian tribes. It is recorded that their tranquil days were diversified by the feminine occupations of spinning, feather-work, and embroidery, and that they also beguiled the hours by the rehearsal of traditionary tales and ballads, and partook with their lords in social festivities.

"Their entertainments seem to have been grand and costly affairs. Numerous attendants, of both sexes, waited at the banquet; the halls were scented with perfumes, flowers strewed the courts, and were profusely distributed among the arriving guests.

"As they took their seats at the board, cotton napkins and ewers of water were placed before them; for, as in the heroic days of Greece, the ceremony of ablution before and after eating was punctiliously observed by the Aztecs. The table was well provided with meats, especially game, among which our own Thanksgiving bird, the turkey, was conspicuous. These more solid dishes were flanked by others of vegetables, and with fruits of every variety found on the North American Continent.

"The different viands were skilfully prepared, with delicate sauces and pungent seasoning, of which the Mexicans were especially fond. They were further regaled with confections and pastry; and the whole was crowned by an 'afterclap' of tobacco mixed with aromatic substances, to be enjoyed in pipes, or in the form of cigars, inserted in holders of tortoise shell or silver. The meats were kept warm by chafing-dishes. The table was ornamented with vases of silver (and sometimes of gold) of delicate workmanship.

"We are told by the chroniclers that agriculture was, before the Conquest, in an advanced state. There were peculiar deities to preside over it, and the names of the months and of the religious festivals had more or less reference to it. The public taxes were often paid in agricultural produce. As among the Pueblos, Aztec women took part in only the lighter labors of the field, – as the scattering of the seed, the husking of the ripened corn.

"Maize, or Indian corn, the great staple of the North American continent, grew freely along the valleys, and up the steep sides of the Cordilleras, to the high table-land. Aztecs were, we are told, well instructed in its uses, and their women as skilled in its preparation as the most expert New England or Southern housewife.

"In these equinoctial regions, its gigantic stalk afforded a saccharine matter which supplied them with a sugar but little inferior to that of the cane itself (which, after the Conquest, was introduced among them). Passing by all their varieties of superbly gorgeous flowers, of luxuriously growing plants, many of them of medicinal value, and since introduced from Mexico to Europe, we come to that 'miracle of nature,' the great Mexican aloe, or maguey, which was, in short, meat, drink, clothing, and writing material for the Aztec, as from its leaves was made their paper, somewhat resembling Egyptian papyrus, but more soft and beautiful.

"Specimens of this paper still exist, preserving their original freshness, and holding yet unimpaired the brilliancy of color in hieroglyphical painting. It is averred that the Aztecs were as well acquainted with the uses of their mineral as of their vegetable kingdom, deftly working their mines of silver, lead, and tin. It has, however, been contended by Wilson, in his 'New Conquest of Mexico,' that, in spite of Cortez's statement to the contrary, 'it is not to be supposed that the Spaniards found the Aztecs in the possession of silver, since its mining requires a combination of science and mechanical power unknown and impossible to their crude civilization.' He considerately allows them the capability of gathering gold from their rich soil.

"Prescott, on the contrary, tells us that 'they opened veins for the procurement of silver in the solid rock, and that the traces of their labors in these galleries furnished the best indications for the early Spanish miners.'

"Who shall decide when doctors disagree? Not, indeed, a Koshare, whose laudable purpose it is to eschew the wearisome 'gradgrinds' of history, and accept the infinitely more charming conclusions of the romancer.

"Gold, say the chroniclers, was easily gleaned from the beds of their rivers, and cast into bars, or in the form of dust, made part of the regular tribute of the southern provinces of Montezuma's empire. They cast, also, delicately and curiously wrought vessels of gold. Though their soil was impregnated with iron, its use was unknown to this people. As a substitute for this metal, they used, for their tools, a bronze made from an alloy of tin and copper, or of itzli, – a dark transparent metal, found in abundance in their hills. With the former they could cut the hardest substances, such as emeralds and amethysts.

"It has been contended that an ignorance of the use of iron must necessarily have kept the Mexican in a low state of civilization. On the other hand, it is urged that iron, if even known, was but little in use among the ancient Egyptians, whose mighty monuments were hewn with tools of bronze, while their weapons and domestic utensils were of the same material. For the ordinary purposes of domestic life, the ancient Mexicans made earthenware, and fashioned cups, bowls, and vases of lacquered wood, impervious to wet, and gorgeously colored.

"Among their dyes, obtained from both mineral and vegetable substances, was the rich crimson of the cochineal, the modern rival of the far-famed Tyrian purple. Later, this coloring material was introduced into Europe, from Mexico, where the curious cochineal insect was nourished with great care on plantations of cactus.

"The Aztecs were thus enabled to give a brilliant coloring to their webs of cotton, which staple, in the warmer regions of their country, they raised in abundance. With their cotton fabrics, manufactured of every degree of fineness, they had the original art of interweaving the delicate hair of rabbits and other animals, which made a cloth of great warmth as well as beauty.

"On this they often laid a rich embroidery of birds, flowers, or some other fanciful device. It is supposed that the Aztec 'silk,' mentioned by Cortez, was nothing more than this fine texture of cotton, hair, and down.

"But the art in which they especially excelled was their plumage or feather-work. Some few existing specimens of this ancient art (one of them a vestment said to have been worn by Montezuma himself) have, we are told, 'all the charm of Florentine mosaic.'

"The gorgeous plumage of tropical birds, especially of the parrot-tribe, afforded every variety of color, and the fine and abundant down of the humming-bird supplied them with a finish of soft aerial tints. The feathers pasted on a fine cotton web were wrought into dresses for the wealthy. Hangings for apartments and ornaments for the temples were thus fashioned. Labor was held in honorable estimation among this people. An aged Aztec chief thus addressed his son: 'Apply thyself to agriculture, or to feather-work, or some other honorable calling. Thus did your ancestors before you. Else, how could they have provided for themselves and their families? Never was it heard that nobility alone was able to maintain its possessor.'

"The occupation of the merchant was held by them in high respect. These were of prime consideration in the body politic, and enjoyed many of the most essential advantages of an hereditary aristocracy. Mexico, as their abundant use among the Aztecs testifies, is especially rich in precious stones. It is the land of the emerald, the amethyst, the turquoise, and the topaz; and that superbest of gems, the fire opal, is native to its generous soil.

"One of Cortez's wedding gifts to his second bride is thus described: 'This was five emeralds of wonderful size and brilliancy. These jewels had been cut by the Aztecs into the shapes of flowers, and fishes, and into other fanciful forms, with an exquisite style of workmanship which enhanced their original value.'

"It was gossiped at court that the Queen of Charles the Fifth had an eye to these magnificent gems, and that the preference given by Cortez to his fair bride had an unfavorable influence on the Conqueror's future fortunes. Among the 'royal fifth' of the Mexican spoils sent by Cortez to the Spanish Emperor, we are told of a still more wonderful emerald. It was cut in a pyramidal shape, and of so extraordinary a size that the base of it was affirmed to have been as broad as the palm of the hand.

"This rich collection of gold and jewelry, wrought into many rare and fanciful forms, was captured on its road to Spain by a French privateer, and is said to have gone into the treasury of Francis the First. Francis, we are told, looking enviously on the treasures drawn by his rival monarch from his colonial domains, expressed a desire to 'see the clause in Adam's testament, which entitled his brothers of Spain and Portugal to divide the New World between them.'

"The Aztec picture writing, rude though it was, seems to have served the nation in its early and imperfect state of civilization.

"By means of it, as an auxiliary to oral tradition, their mythology, laws, calendars, and rituals were carried back to an early period of their civilization.

"Their manuscripts, the material for which has already been described, were most frequently made into volumes, in which the paper was shut up like a folding screen. With a tablet of wood at each extremity, they thus, when closed, had the appearance of books. A few of these Mexican manuscripts have been saved, and are carefully preserved in the public libraries of European capitals. The most important of these painted records, for the light it throws on the Aztec institutions, is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The greater part of these writings, having no native interpretation annexed to them, cannot now be unriddled.

"A savant who, in the middle of the seventeenth century travelled extensively through their country, asserts that, 'so completely had every vestige of their ancient language been swept away from the land, not an individual could be found who could afford him the least clue to the Aztec hieroglyphics.'

"Some few Aztec compositions, which may possibly owe their survival to oral tradition, still survive. These are poetical remains, in the form of odes, or relics of their more elaborate prose, and consist largely of prayers and public discourses, that show that, in common with other native orators, the Aztecs paid much attention to rhetorical effect. The Aztec hieroglyphics included both the representative and symbolical forms of picture-writing.

"They had various emblems for expressing such things as, by their nature, could not be directly represented by the painter; as, for example, the years, months, days, the seasons, the elements, the heavens, and so on.

"A serpent typified time, a tongue denoted speaking, a footprint travelling, a man sitting on the ground an earthquake.

"The names of persons were often significant of their adventures and achievement.

"Summing up this account of Aztec civilization, we find that, although of the countries from which Toltec and Aztec in turn issued tradition has lost the record, it is nevertheless affirmed, by so reliable an historian as Humboldt, that the former introduced into Mexico the cultivation of maize and cotton; that they built cities, made roads, and constructed pyramids. 'They knew,' says this authoritative historian, 'the uses of hieroglyphical paintings; they could work metals, and cut the hardest stones; and they had a solar system more perfect than that of the Greeks and Romans.'

"After their mysterious disappearance from the table-lands of Mexico, the Aztecs, who succeeded them, gradually amalgamated all that was best in their civilization, and, engrafting upon it their own, became as a nation what they were in the time of the second Montezuma, when Cortez and his conquering army treacherously swept their civilization from the face of the earth.

"A thoughtful traveller still finds in Mexico traces of this people, its early possessors.

"The Mexicans, in their whole aspect," he observes, "give a traveller the idea of persons of decayed fortune, who have once been more prosperous and formidable than now, or who had been the offshoot of a more refined and forcible people."

CHAPTER XII

It was but the day after the delivery of this most interesting paper by Mr. Morehouse, that the laggards from Hilton Ranch, who had missed it, and the preceding one, returned to their places at the dinner-table; and on that very afternoon Miss Paulina, with all due formality, announced the engagement of her niece to Mr. Roger Smith. Recovered from the first shock of surprise, the Koshare celebrated the betrothal by a pink afternoon tea, and made such slight engagement offerings as were found available, remote from silversmith, florist, and bric-à-brac dealer.

The ladies gave bureau scarfs, table doilies, and centre-pieces ad infinitum; the Antiquary bestowed a bit of Mexican pottery dating back to the "cliff-dwellers." Leon framed the photographs of the handsome pair in Mexican canes, as an engagement gift; and the most despondent "lunger" of them all had a kindly wish for their young and happy fellow-boarders, setting out on that beautiful life-journey to whose untimely end he, himself, was sadly tending.

Among the more observing of the Koshare, much wonder was expressed at the slow mending of Roger Smith's sprained ankle. It was at the engagement tea that Miss Paulina innocently said, in response to these strictures, "Yes, it did take a long time to cure dear Roger's sprain. Years ago," continued the good lady, "I had the same accident; and, if I remember rightly, in less than a fortnight after the sprain I was walking without any crutches. One would think now," she went on, "that in this lovely dry climate a sprain would mend rapidly; but, though I did my very best, the result was far less prompt than I had hoped."

"Sprains differ," interposed the audacious subject of these remarks, unawed by the disapproving glances of his betrothed; "the surgeons tell us that fractures are both simple and compound. Mine, dear Miss Hemmenshaw, was undoubtedly compound."

This he said by way of accounting to his friends for his tardy convalescence. To himself he thought, looking at this kind, unsuspicious new auntie, "Dear, delicious old goose!"

This is what the niece said when, later, she got this incorrigible lover to herself: "Roger, I am quite convinced that your conscience is seared with a hot iron, whatever that process, supposed to indicate utter moral callousness, may be."

"My dear girl," laughed the unabashed culprit, "I am, as you know and deplore, a good Catholic, and consequently hold with the astute Jesuit Fathers that the end justifies the means."

CHAPTER XIII

It was in the sunny, lengthened days of early March that the Antiquary, the Journalist, the star boarder, and the Grumbler undertook their long-projected trip to the Sacramento Mountains, there to visit the Government Reservation, nestled in the sheltered Mescalero Valley, which gives its name.

Well equipped with camping conveniences, the four Koshares set forth on their journey of one hundred and twenty-five miles.

It was their intention to "make haste slowly," and nothing could better have suited the leisurely pair of Mexican horses, and the equally easy-going Mexican driver, who, with his team, had been hired for the expedition. The first night of their journey was passed beneath the open sky, with the rounded moon riding clear and fair above them, and the desert of sand and sage-brush all about them. On the second, they lodged at the solitary dwelling of a ranchman, whose nearest neighbor was thirty-five miles distant.

At the journey's end, they were cordially received by Lieutenant Stottler, Government Agent at the Mescalero Reservation, and throughout their visit were treated by him with a kindly hospitality and a genial courtesy beyond praise.

Of the Apache, now transformed by the iron hand of civilization from a blood-thirsty savage to a passably decent and partially self-supporting member of the republic, it has been aptly said that Nature has given him "the ear of the cat, the cunning of the fox, and the ferocious courage and brutishness of the gray wolf."

The whole vast realm of his native ranges, desert though they seem, are known to teem with ever-present supplies for his savage menu.

There are found fat prairie mice, plump angle-worms, gray meat of rattlesnake and lizard, and of leathery bronco, – all easy-coming "grist for that 'unpernickety' mill," his hungry stomach.

Is he minded for a vegetable diet, for him the mescal lavishly grows; and the bean of mesquite, reduced to meal, makes him palatable cakes. Fruit of Spanish bayonet dried in the sun, and said thus to resemble dates, is at hand for his dessert; and of mountain acorns alone he may make an excellent and nutritious meal.

From the primeval years this belligerent savage is said to have especially harried that dismal waste in New Mexico known as Jornado del Muerta, "Journey of Death."

This awful desert is declared to be literally "the battle-ground of the elements." In the winter it is made fearful by raging storms of wind and snow, in which frozen men and animals leave their bodies, as carrion prey, to the hungry mountain wolf. In later times it is "the skulking place of unscrupulous outlaws, and many a murdered traveller makes good the name it bears."

It is thus finely depicted by a modern traveller: "Near the southern boundary of New Mexico stretches a shadeless, waterless plateau, nearly one hundred miles long, and from five to thirty miles wide, resembling the steppes of northern Asia. Geologists tell us this is the oldest country on the earth, except, perhaps, the backbone of Central Africa; at least, the one which has longest been exposed to the influence of agents now in action. The grass is low and mossy, with a wasted look; the shrubs are soap-weed and bony cactus; the very stones are like the scoria of a furnace. It is sought by no flight of bird; no bee or fly buzzes on the empty air; and, save the lizard and horned frog, there is no breath of living thing. One might fancy that this dreary waste had served its time, had been worn out, unpeopled, and forgotten."

In the (not long past) day of his power and might, to steal and murder, under the show of friendship; to beat out the brains of unsuspecting men; to carry off to captivity, worse than death, the women and larger children, was, with the Apache, merely a question of opportunity.

In the Apache war – ending in October, 1880, and lasting but a year and a half, – it is estimated that more than four hundred white persons were scalped and tortured to death with devilish ingenuity.

The details of Indian fighting are everywhere much the same; but in strategy and cruelty that of the Apache surpasses all the sons of men. Victorio, the chief who led the war with his band, was surrounded at last, and captured, and killed in the mountains of Mexico.

With the death of Victorio (whose only son, Washington, was shot in the fall of 1879, leaving no one to succeed him) the cause was lost.

His wife, we are told, after Victorio's death, cut off her hair, in the old Greek fashion, and buried it, – an offering to the spirit of this fallen chief, to whom (devil though he was) she was devoted.

It is told of Rafael, one of Victorio's band, that when maddened by tiswin (an intoxicant made by the Indian from corn), he fatally stabbed his wife, and, after her death, overcome with penitence, sacrificed all his beads and most of his clothes to the "dear departed," cut his and his children's hair short, and sheared the manes and tails of his horses. These manifestations of anguish over, he went up into a high hill, and howled with uplifted hands.

Women are regarded by the Apaches as an incumbrance. They are of so little account that they are not even given a name. Mothers mourn at their birth.

The Indians occupying a reservation of seven hundred square miles in southern New Mexico, and numbering, at the present writing, about four hundred and fifty souls, are typical Apaches, and closely related by blood to the other Apaches of Arizona and New Mexico. They exhibit the usual race characteristics, – of ignorance, stubbornness, superstition, cruelty, laziness, and treachery.

In December, 1894, Lieutenant Stottler first assumed the charge of these Indians. In spite of the fact that for many years a generous government had supplied them annually with rations, clothing, working implements, etc., they were then living in tepees, or brush shelters, on the side hills; clad in breech-clout and blanket, wearing paint, and long hair, and thanklessly receiving their rations of beef, flour, coffee, sugar, salt, soap, and baking-powder. A few of them condescended to raise corn and oats; but acres of tillable land on the reservation were still unused.

"They were," says Lieutenant Stottler, in an able and interesting report, "not only contented with this order of things, but desirous and determined to prolong it indefinitely."

Fifty per cent of their children were in school, but the parents were wholly opposed to their education. Among them were twenty strong, broad-shouldered Indian adults, educated at the expense of thousands of dollars, yet still running about the reservation in breech-clout and blanket, wilder than any uneducated Indian on it.

The girls were held from school, and at ten and twelve years of age were traded for ponies, into a bondage worse than any known slavery.

Fourteen Indian policemen are allowed the agent. Their especial duty is to see that the herd of beef cattle for their own eating is properly cared for. The police, each had a cabin to live in; but each, in scorn of this civilized innovation, had carefully planted alongside of his cabin a tepee to sleep in. To get these policemen into civilized clothing, under threat of duress, and to order all tepees away from their cabins, was the agent's first move. Next, it was decided that all children five years old and upwards must be placed in school at the beginning of the school year, whether the parents were willing or not. Every Indian man was ordered to select a piece of land, and put in his posts. To break up the influence of chiefs or bands, who, claiming the whole country, deterred the people from work, by threats, appears to have been up-hill work; "but now," says the agent (in 1897), "there are no chiefs, and 'work or starve' is the policy." Formerly, government supplies of clothing, wagons, harness, and utensils, as soon as issued, had been packed on burros and sold for a mere song to settlers about the reservation. This abuse was promptly stopped, as also was the making of tiswin.

This native drink, made from Indian corn, is said to be more maddening in its effect than any other known intoxicant; Indians brutalized by tiswin fought, as do our own drunkards, and often wounded or killed each other. For corn to make this detestable beverage, an Indian would trade away the last article in his possession.

It was proclaimed by the agent that the maker of this poison would be imprisoned for six months, at hard labor, in the guard-house. This stopped its manufacture, and there are no longer drunken Indians at the reservation. Occasionally they still get liquor at Las Cruces, when sent there for freight.

All supplies are hauled from the railroad over-land. The distance is one hundred and ten miles; about one hundred thousand pounds are annually brought in this way to the reservation, and without harm or loss. Much of the Indian's savagery lies (like Samson's strength) in his hair; to his long, matted tresses he clings tenaciously. As a beginning, Lieutenant Stottler induced one old fellow – a policeman – with the reward of a five-dollar gold piece to cut his precious locks. Thus metamorphosed, he became "the cynosure of all eyes." His squaw made life a burden to him; and thus badgered, he, in turn, pestered the agent to get the entire police force to cut theirs.

It was long before the general consent to part with these cherished tresses could be won; and it became necessary to put some of the Indians in the guard-house to accomplish this reform. Finally, orders were asked from Washington, and received, compelling submission to the shearing.

When the Indians saw the Washington order, they all gave in, with the exception of a last man, who had to be "thumped into it." Their hair well cut, a raid was made on breech-clout and blanket. Now they all appear in civilized clothing. This seems to have been the turning-point in their wildness.

"Now," says the agent, "they come and ask for scissors and comb to cut their hair, and volunteer the information that they were 'fools to oppose it.'"

About half a dozen of these Indians were found by Lieutenant Stottler with two wives; since none others were permitted, this matrimonial indulgence, polygamy, is, consequently, dying a natural death at Mescalero. It is found hard to control the ancient practice of dropping a wife and taking up another without the troublesome formality of a divorce, which has practically the same result as polygamy. In spite of the slip-shodness of the marriage-tie among the Indians, "they are," says the Lieutenant, "about as badly henpecked as it is possible to imagine. Not by the wife, however; but by that ever dreaded being, her mother." He gives in his paper a most amusing account of the relation between the son-in-law and this much-maligned treasure of our higher civilization. "Just why it is," he says, "no Indian has ever been able to explain to me, but an Indian cannot look at his mother-in-law.

"If she enters his tepee, he leaves; if he enters and she is within, he flees at once. He cannot stay in her august presence. If his wife and he quarrel, his mother-in-law puts in an appearance, and manages his affairs during his enforced absence so long as she pleases. Perhaps she takes his wife to her own tepee, where he dare not follow. In this dilemma, he either comes to terms, or the situation constitutes a divorce.

"Does the agent wish a child brought to school, or a head of a family to take land, and try to farm it, the mother-in-law, if hostile (and she usually is), appears on the scene. Then the head of the family hunts the woods for refuge.

"The sight of several stalwart bucks hiding behind doors, barrels, and trees, because a dried-up, wizened squaw heaves in sight, is a spectacle that would be ludicrous, were it not for its far-reaching results. As an Indian may take, in succession, many wives, who still stand to his credit, the agent has, practically, many mothers-in-law to contend with. Consequently, these family magnets have been officially informed that the guard-house awaits any of them who may be found maliciously interfering with the families of their children.

"Hard labor added to this sentence, it is hoped, may at length have the effect of breaking up this absurd superstition."

By this account it may be seen that "one of the most far-fetched notions that ever entered into the minds of men" is found domesticated among the Mexican aborigines. It is asserted, as a chronological fact, that the Mexican Pueblos "invented the mother-in-law joke gray ages before it dawned upon our modern civilization."

The lamented Cushing, in his account of the "restful, patriarchal, long-lonely world" of his research, tells us that he found the mother-in-law a too pronounced factor in the Zuni family circle; and, as we know, in our own higher civilization the mother-in-law, held in good-natured reprobation, serves to point many a harmless jest.

White enthusiasts – with whom the "wrongs of the Indian" are a standing grievance – but imperfectly realize the difficulty of taming these savages, getting them well off the warpath, and making them cleanly and self-supporting. It may, therefore, be well to present the side shown us by the agent in his able paper of statistical facts.

"The Apache tribe," he tells us, "has one hundred and sixteen children at school, – nineteen at Fort Lewis, Colorado, and ninety-seven at the reservation boarding-school. Each child has one-half day in class and one-half day of industrial work. The girls take their turns in the laundry, sewing-room, and kitchen, and at dormitory work. The boys do the heavy work in the kitchen and laundry, chop the wood, and till the farm under the charge of the industrial teacher. All the vegetables for their use are raised on the farm, and the surplus sold.

"The aim of the school is to teach the rising generation of Apaches how to make a living with the resources of the reservation, and, in time, to become self-supporting.

"To this end useful rather than fancy trades are taught. Boys are detailed with the blacksmith and carpenter, to learn the use of common tools. To do away with the inborn contempt of the aboriginal male for the women of his tribe, boys and girls at the reservation are not only trained to study, recite, and sit at meals with girls, but a weekly 'sociable' is held for the scholars.

"On such nights they have games and civilized dances. Every boy is required formally to approach and request, 'Will you dance this dance with me?' and to offer his partner his arm when the reel, quadrille, etc., is finished, and escorting her to her seat, leave her with a polite 'thank you.'"

In the agent's report for the years 1896-97, "this year," he says, "the Indian boys raised twenty-five thousand pounds beets, twenty thousand pounds cabbage, one thousand pounds cauliflower, five hundred pounds turnips, one thousand four hundred pounds celery, five hundred pounds radishes, one thousand four hundred pounds of onions, nineteen thousand pounds of pumpkins and squash, four hundred pounds of peas, nine hundred and sixty pounds of corn, six thousand five hundred pounds of potatoes, besides cucumbers, pie-plant, and asparagus.