I
For countless generations a gentle brown people had dwelt high on the top of a mesa—far in the desert. Their houses rose like native forms of sandstone ledges on the crest of the rocky hills—seemed indeed a part of the cliffs themselves.
To join the old women climbing the steep path laden with water bottles of goatskin, to mingle with the boys driving home the goats—and to hear the girls chattering on the roofs was to forget modern America. A sensitive nature facing such scenes shivered with a subtle transport such as travelers once felt in the presence of Egypt before the Anglo-Saxon globe trotter had vulgarized it. This pueblo was a thousand years old—and to reach it was an exploration. Therefore, while the great Mississippi Valley was being overrun these simple folk lived apart.
They were on the maps of Arizona, but of this they had no knowledge and no care. Some of them were not even curious to see the white man who covered the mysterious land beyond the desert. The men of mystery in the tribe, the priests and the soothsayers, deeply resented the prying curiosity and the noisy impertinence of the occasional cowboy who rode across the desert to see some of their solemn rites with snakes and owls.
The white men grew in power just beyond the horizon line, but they asked no favors of him. They planted their corn in the sand where the floods ran, they guarded their hardy melons, and gathered their gnarled and rusty peaches year by year as contentedly as any people—chanting devout prayers and songs of thanksgiving to the deities that preside over the clouds and the fruitful earth. They did not ask for the corrugated-iron roofs of the houses which an officious government built for them, nor for the little schoolhouse which the insistent missionary built at the foot of their mesa.
They were a gentle folk—small and round and brown of limb, peaceful and kindly. The men on their return from the fields at night habitually took their babes to their arms—and it was curious and beautiful to see them sitting thus on their housetops, waiting for supper—their crowing infants on their knees. Such action disturbed all preconceived notions of desert dwellers.
They had their own governors, their sages, their physicians. Births and deaths went on among them accompanied by the same joy and sorrow that visit other human beings in greener lands. They did not complain of their desert. They loved it, and when at dawn they looked down upon the sapphire mists which covered it like a sea, song sprang to their lips, and they rode forth to their toil, caroling like larks.
True, pestilences swept over them from time to time—and droughts afflicted them—but these they accepted as punishment for some devotional remission on their part and redoubled their zealous chants. They had no doubts, they knew their way of life was superior to that of their neighbors, the Tinné; and their traditions of the Spaniards who had visited them, centuries before, were not pleasant—they put a word of fervent thanks into their songs that “the men of iron” came no more.
But this new white man—this horseman who wore a wide hat—who sent pale-faced women into the desert to teach a new kind of song, and the worship of a new kind of deity—this restless keen-eyed, decisive Americano came in larger numbers year by year. He insisted that all Pueblan ways were wrong—only his were right.
Ultimately he built an Iron Khiva near the foot of the trail, and sent word among all the Pueblo peoples that they should come and view this house—and bring their children, and leave them to learn the white man’s ways.
“We do not care to learn the white man’s way,” replied the head men of the village. “We have our own ways, which are suited to us and to our desert, ways we have come to love. We are afraid to change. Always we have lived in this manner on this same rock, in the midst of this sand. Always we have worn this fashion of garments—we did not ask you to come—we do not ask you to stay nor to teach our children. We are glad to welcome you as visitors—we do not want you as our masters.”
“We have come to teach you a new religion,” said the missionary.
“We do not need a new religion. Why should we change? Our religion is good. We understand it. Our fathers gave it to us. Yours is well for you—we do not ask you to change to ours. We are willing you should go your way—why do you insist on our accepting yours?”
Then the brows of the men in black coats grew very stern, and they said:
“If you do not do as we say and send your children to our Iron House to learn our religion, we will bring blue-coated warriors here to make you do so!”
Then the little brown people retreated to their rock and said: “The iron men of the olden time have come again in a new guise,” and they were very sad, and deep in their cavelike temples in the rocks, they prayed and sang that this curse might pass by and leave them in peace once more.
Nevertheless, there were stout hearts among them, men who said: “Let us die in defense of our homes! If we depart from the ways of our fathers for fear of these fierce strangers—our gods will despise us.”
These bold ones pushed deep into the inner rooms of their khivas, and uncovered broken spears, and war clubs long unused—and restrung their rude bows and sharpened their arrows, while the sad old sages sang mournful songs in the sacred temples under ground—and children ceasing their laughter crept about in coveys like scared quail—dreading they knew not what.
Then the white men withdrew, and for a time the Pueblans rejoiced. The peaceful life of their ancestors came back upon them. The men again rode singing to the purple plain at sunrise. The old women, groaning and muttering together, went down to the spring for water. The deft potters resumed their art—the girls in chatting, merry groups, plastered the houses or braided mats. The sound of the grinding of corn was heard in every dwelling.
But there were those who had been away across the plain and who had seen whence these disturbing invaders came—they were still dubious—they waited, saying: “We fear they will come again! They are like the snows of winter, bitter and not to be turned aside with words.”