Kwasa the Cliff Dweller
BY
Katherine Atherton Grimes
ILLUSTRATED BY L. J. WILSON
F. A. OWEN PUBLISHING COMPANY,
DANSVILLE, N. Y.
Copyright, 1916, by F. A. Owen Publishing Co.
“It was one that few boys would care to attempt”—[Chapter 2]
Kwasa the Cliff Dweller
CHAPTER I
The Game on the Terrace
“It did,” said Kwasa.
“It didn’t,” said Wiki.
“But I say there were three reds up,” insisted Kwasa.
“And I say one of the dice came up white,” argued Wiki.
“Well,” returned Kwasa good-humoredly, “we will not quarrel about a game. I will throw again.”
Catching up the three small sticks of cane, painted red on the hollowed inner side and white on the upper part, Kwasa tossed them deftly into the air. They came down all together, landing on the stone pavement with the white sides up.
Kwasa gave a cluck of triumph.
“Three whites; better yet.” Reaching across the stone slab covered with a pattern of circles and lines which served as a game board, he carefully moved a white pebble from the mark where it stood to one two spaces nearer the center of the slab.
Wiki seized the dice eagerly. “Well done! Now it is my turn.”
Into the air spun the three sticks again, but as they came down Wiki saw with disappointment that one showed the white side while the other two had fallen with the red uppermost.
“No play,” cried Kwasa.
“But I have one more throw,” said Wiki, and this time three reds gleamed against the gray rock floor.
“One space, anyway,” said Wiki, and this time a red pebble on the farther side of the slab was set one space nearer the center.
Kwasa laughed.
“When I have beaten you I will show you how to hold the dice,” he boasted playfully. “Old Honau showed me the trick. He can bring down the white every time.”
“I am thirsty,” said Wiki, laying down the dice and jumping up.
“So am I,” said Kwasa, “but it is too far down to the spring. Let us go to the reservoir.”
The lads ran lightly across the long, narrow court and climbed a niche staircase hewn in the rock wall at the back of the cliff. A dozen steps brought them to the top of the wall, from which they looked down into a huge hollow in the rock, which appeared to be partly natural and partly the result of human labor. It was nearly full of water, which fed slowly into it from a small stream trickling down from the higher side of the bluff.
On top of the wall stood a graceful olla, or vase-shaped jar of pottery, strikingly ornamented with red and black. About the neck was a short, twisted rope of yucca fiber, long enough to let the jar down to the water. The boys dropped it down and brought it up full, holding it carefully that it might not strike the side of the wall.
“Bah,” said Wiki, tasting it, “it is too warm to drink, now that the sun is on it. I would rather have gone to the spring.”
“Come, then,” cried Kwasa, jumping down from the wall. “If we go to the spring perhaps we may see something of the hunters. It is time they were returning, my grandmother says.”
Kwasa told the truth when he said it was a long way to the spring. For the great rock-built house, or rather cluster of houses, in whose inner court the boys had been playing, was placed three hundred feet from the bottom of a canyon in a huge cavern which Nature had left in the face of the precipitous cliff. Along the outer edge of the cavern, following the outline of the opening, was a high wall of masonry pierced with numerous openings that served as doors and windows. So exactly had the builders matched the color of the rocky cliff face, and so skilfully was the great structure placed in its lofty niche, that a traveler in the canyon below could hardly have told it was there at all.
This outer wall was in some places four stories high. Back of it the building was terraced down to the floor of the cave, each story projecting beyond the one above it so that its roof made a sort of porch for the upper rooms. Rude ladders were everywhere, leading from each story to the next, for the people who lived in this peculiar dwelling liked to go up and down from the outside. Each story was divided into many rooms, most of them rather small, but several near the center of the structure being of good size. In some of these were stone fireplaces for cooking, and one, larger than any of the others, was set apart for ceremonial use.
Back of the great house, or rather village, for it was the home of many families, was a long and narrow court running well back under the sheltering slope of the cavern roof. Here the children could play and the women could weave and grind and make pottery and mats in well-guarded safety, for back of them and overhead rose the mighty arch of the cavern, and between them and the cliff’s edge stood the solid sandstone structure.
Where the cave roof slanted down to meet the floor there were other rooms, built close in under the rock. These were storerooms where food was kept. In them were great piles of beans and corn, rolls of piki or paper bread which the women were forever baking over the fireplaces, and immense quantities of buffalo meat, dried and pounded fine and laid away between layers of tallow. In one of these rooms was kept the colored corn and beans used in the sacred rites which were held at certain times in the ceremonial hall, or in the queer, underground chamber in the center of the court.
Above the cavern the cliff rose sheer and unbroken for hundreds of feet, but below it the rocky wall fell more unevenly to the valley far below. The vivid brown and yellow and red of the upper expanse was varied only here and there by clumps of cedar or pinon or scrub oak, with scattering bunches of yucca and cactus between, but on the lower slope the vegetation was somewhat more dense. All had the same reddish-brown tinge, for it had been a long time since the rains of the last spring had washed away the wind-blown dust which whirled down in clouds from the bare and forbidding surfaces above.
Across the canyon rose another bluff, but this was unbroken from top to bottom by ledge or cavern. To the southwest the canyon swept away majestically, broadening in the distance to a stretch of comparatively level land through which, in the rainy season, a small river ran. At the head of the canyon, some distance to the northeast, was a large spring of sweet, cold water, which, supplemented by the reservoir at the back of the cavern, furnished an ample supply for the village.
Down the steep stairway leading from the village to the valley Kwasa and Wiki went quickly. A stranger would have had a hard time finding the half-hidden niches cut in the face of the cliff, but the boys, sure-footed as mountain goats, were soon in the valley, running eagerly toward the spring.
“Hush,” warned Kwasa, suddenly crouching behind a tuft of brown yucca.
Looking where he pointed, Wiki saw the slender figure of a young man bending over the spring. He drank eagerly, then taking his cupped hands, poured the cool water over his dusty limbs as if seeking relief in its freshness. His face, the boys saw as he turned it toward them, was weary and seared with the hot, reddish-brown dust, but young and pleasant, and he did not appear to be much older than themselves.
“He is none of our people,” whispered Wiki.
“No, but I like him,” exclaimed the impulsive Kwasa.
“How do you know?” asked Wiki sharply. “He may be a spy of the Utes for all we know.”
“No,” said Kwasa, “for if he were—”
“Here are the hunters,” cried Wiki joyfully, forgetting all caution and jumping up as a band of men turned into the canyon from the lower side.
“They are well laden,” observed Kwasa. “The men of the Snakes never hunt in vain.”
The young man at the spring, hearing their voices, suddenly straightened himself and looked eagerly about. Seeing the boys running toward the hunting band, he followed slowly, his hand resting cautiously upon his spear shaft, but his frank, brown face expressing nothing but friendliness.
CHAPTER II
The Warning
The long line of hunters, laden with the game secured by a week’s vigorous chase, was at the niche stairway before the boys reached them. Impatient to be in the court when they should arrive, to partake in the welcoming ceremony, the boys could not wait until the last of the procession had filed up the dizzy rock steps. Long before, in their explorations about the canyon, they had discovered another way to reach the cavern, steeper and more perilous, but entirely passable for boys whose lives had been spent in scaling cliffs and finding footholds in all sorts of precarious places.
Running around a projecting spur and diving through a thicket of scrub oaks, Kwasa and Wiki were at the second stairway in a moment. [It was one that few boys of to-day would care to attempt]. It ran almost straight up the side of the cliff, and in many places they had to pull themselves from ledge to ledge by straggling tufts of wiry grass or by the tough, well-rooted clumps of grease-wood brush. At one spot, to bridge a particularly smooth and difficult part of the ascent, a pole with sticks bound upon it at intervals to make a sort of rude ladder had been swung down from a rocky ledge above.
Up this dangerous ascent Kwasa led the way nimbly, Wiki following close behind him. The young stranger, after looking doubtfully for a moment from the hunting band to the boys, finally plunged through the thicket and took the steeper path, reaching the top only a moment after Kwasa and Wiki had landed with a final active spring upon the safe ledge at the rim of the cavern.
“I must speak to your chief quickly,” he said gravely, as Kwasa, who in the excitement had forgotten all about the stranger at the spring, looked at him in surprise.
“But,” began Kwasa, “this is no time—”
“All times are alike when danger threatens,” said the youth impatiently. “Tell me with whom I should speak.”
Kwasa pointed to a little group of men who stood a little apart from the rest, waiting to greet the hunters as they came up, one by one, over the edge of the cliff.
“Mosu is a priest,” he said, indicating a tall old man with a band of flat red and black beads bound about his forehead. “Honau is very wise, too, and then there is Bimba—”
But the young stranger had hurried away and was accosting Mosu, the tall priest, respectfully. Before he had spoken many words the whole group was listening intently, and in a few minutes the court was hushed and all came crowding about to see what this unusual interruption might mean.
Presently the lad stopped speaking and Mosu held up his hand for attention.
“This young man is Sado. He comes from the Seven Cities to bring us tidings to which it were well to listen, for the Utes are again on the warpath, and the Buffalo and Fox clans have sent out runners to warn all to the southward. They reached Walpi yesterday, and from there this messenger brings us word, that we, too, may be in readiness for an attack.”
“But surely we are safe—”
“They can not reach our village—”
“We could hold the cliff against a thousand, even—”
A babel of voices broke out anxiously. Mosu held up his hand again.
“All you say is true,” he said. “When our fathers came here from the Great Mesa, driven out by the savages from the far north, they sought a place where they might rest secure from attack. And here they found it.” He waved his hand toward the great walls of rock rising protectingly all about them.
“But we must eat, and planting time is near. Those who stay in the village are indeed secure, but what of the men who must plant the seeds and care for the grain in the far fields? We must say farewell to Waka (the sun) with full storehouses, and with heaped fuel for the cold days of winter. And if the thieving Utes swarm down upon our fields and carry off our corn and beans and squashes, what then? Then there is the danger while we plant and harvest. The Watcher in the High Tower must indeed be keen of eye to guard every path that leads to the fields. It is of these things we must think. And in the meantime,” he broke off abruptly, “this lad is weary and hungry. See that he has refreshment and rest. We must not send him back to the Seven Cities to tell of our ingratitude for a friendly deed.”
But Sado shook his head.
“There are many others to warn,” he said earnestly. “I must not stay, though the thought of rest is tempting. But first I will eat—”
“Has the Snake Clan no runners?” interrupted Mosu proudly.
Old Honau stepped out from the group.
“I am not fleet of foot as when I was young,” he began, “but rather than suffer this brave lad to go farther without rest, I myself will take the warning to the farthest clan.”
But a dozen lads were already pressing forward, Kwasa and Wiki among them. Motioning Honau kindly aside, four of the tallest and strongest were quickly chosen, and Mosu, drawing them to one side, had Sado repeat carefully the message he had brought.
“The Rainbow people are yonder,” he said, pointing southwestward down the open canyon. “And the Bear Clan is not far from them. It is a three days’ journey—”
“They must take plenty of meat and piki,” called one of the women, hurrying forward. “We will fill the food-bags well. It is a long way, but, praise to Waka, the new springs are filling and they cannot suffer from thirst.”
Immediately there was a great bustle in the court. Women ran here and there, bringing new sandals of tough fiber for the feet of the messengers, and thick woolen blankets for the cool nights in the canyons. The skin food-bags were quickly filled and strapped over the slender young shoulders, and Kwasa, as leader, was given a heavy new spear in addition to the bows and arrows which they all carried.
At last all was ready, and the lads stood forth to be sprinkled with the sacred meal from the handsome red and black bowl in Mosu’s hands.
“The Old Ones be with you,” muttered the priest, as he strewed the meal in a circle about them, and upon the boys’ bowed heads.
“Come back quickly,” called many anxious voices as, one by one, the lads dropped down the niche stairway. Kwasa, the last one to descend, stooped as he left the court and picked up the three red and white dice with which he and Wiki had been playing so short a time before.
“For luck,” he laughed, as he dropped them into the deerskin pouch that hung at his belt.
“Luck is in the hands of the Old Ones, not in painted sticks,” muttered Tcua, the old grandmother of Kwasa, watching the lads with anxious eyes as they filed down the canyon and out of sight. “May they bring back my son’s son safely—a good lad—a good lad.”
And then she went down to grind corn for piki, for waiting in idleness is hard.
CHAPTER III
In the Season of Planting
“The door of the Sun-House is open!”
From mouth to mouth flew the word, brought at sunrise from the High Tower far up the cliff where Bimba, the Watcher, kept anxious count of the days till the planting season should begin.
As if by magic the court was filled with busy men, women and children. Waka had come back once more to bring them plenty. It had not been in vain that every morning and evening they had thrown sacred meal toward the rising and the setting Sun, beseeching him to return quickly from his long journey to the south. And now the glad news had come that he had at last touched the peak far away to the east that marked his final favor, and they might get the seeds ready.
Nor was that their only cause of rejoicing. For Kwasa and his companions had returned the night before, worn and weary from their long, swift race to the far-off neighbors at the southwest, but triumphant and proud. They brought word that the Rainbow people and their near kinsmen, the Bear Clan, were ready at a moment’s notice to join them against the dreaded common foe, whether Ute or Apache. Moreover, in the nine days since Sado had left them word had come that in a terrible battle between the Utes and the Pueblo people of the Seven Cities the foe had been repulsed with great slaughter, and had fled, broken and disabled, to their northern mountain fastnesses to nurse their wounds. For the time the danger of attack was over.
So, though the older men of the village still felt some anxiety, the planting was at last to be begun under much more favorable circumstances than they had feared. The women chatted gayly as they brought out the precious seeds to be sorted, sharpened new planting sticks, and baked great sheets of piki to pack in the big food-baskets that were to go with the planters to the distant fields. The children tumbled about on the terraces or played games in the angles of the gray walls, even they noticing the relief in the air which had been so full of dire rumors.
But Kwasa and Wiki, with their two companions, were more excited than any of the rest. For their service as messengers they were to be “adopted,” or consecrated, into the rank of men, and henceforth would take a dignified place in the Clan, though they were some years younger than usual for such an honor. For the first time they were to witness the invocation of the mysterious deities of the cloud and the sun, which took place in the kiva, the sacred underground chamber whose hatchway opened into the court. Mosu, who as head priest was the person of supreme authority on such occasions, had even promised them that they might act as novices at the annual ceremony of the Blessing of the Seeds.
When the boys were not following Mosu about they lingered in fascinated anticipation about the sloping entrance to the kiva, through which protruded the long ends of the ladder leading to the depths below. They had many times descended through the trap-door on the surface to the great, dusky chamber of the kiva, but never had they been allowed to witness any of the sacred rites, except such as were held in the court and were open to women and children. And now that they were to be admitted as men to the significant symbolism of the ancient service, they felt awed and excited by turns.
Kwasa’s grandmother, old Tcua, had long ago told him the mystic tradition of the Creation, whose sacred story was perpetuated by the solemn ceremonies in the dimly lighted chamber. And now, in awed tones, Kwasa repeated it to Wiki and the others as they sat huddled in an angle of the lower terrace near the opening to the kiva.
“There were no people then—there were only animals. They lived far under the ground in dark caves. But the Old Ones heard them moaning and crying in the dark. They heard the fox, and the bear, and the duck, and the wolf, all crying, crying in the dark. And they were sorry.”
Old as the tale was, the boys listened with breathless interest.
“So the Old Ones dropped a seed through sipapuh[1] and immediately up sprang a wonderful stalk of corn. It grew up, and up, and up, until at last its head rose into the sunlight of the Upper World. Then, one at a time, the fox, and the wolf, and the duck, and all the other animals and birds, came up the great stalk and stood in the light of Waka, the Sun. And they were no longer animals, but men and women. We must never forget this, or the Old Ones will forget us, and we would once more be animals, back in the middle of the earth, crying and moaning for the light.”
“But what of the snakes?” whispered Wiki. “My father says there are more than a hundred in the kisi.” He nodded toward a brush-covered shelter near the kiva.
“Hush,” replied Kwasa, looking furtively about. “They are the prayer-bearers, and carry to the Old Ones the prayers of the Snake Clan for rain, that the crop may thrive. But we must not speak of that now; it is not well to talk too much of the gods so near the place where they dwell.”