The Delight Makers

by Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

Lamentations over a dead body are everywhere a sad and sickening performance to witness and to hear. Among the aborigines of New Mexico—among the sedentary tribes at least—the official death-wail is carried on for four days. The number four plays a conspicuous rôle in the lives of those people. And it is natural that it should. Four are the cardinal points, four the seasons, four times five digits depend from hands and feet. The Queres has not even a distinct term for finger or for toe. He designates the former as one above the hand, the latter as one above the foot. Four days the redman fasts or does penance; four days he mourns, for that is the time required by the soul to travel from the place where it has been liberated from the thralls of earthly life to the place of eternal felicity. At the time of which we are speaking, the body was still cremated, and with it everything that made up the personal effects of the deceased.[11] If a man, his clothes, his weapons, his loom, in case he had practised the art of weaving, were burned; if a woman, the cooking utensils were "killed;" that is, either perforated at the bottom or broken over the funeral pyre and afterward consumed. In this manner the deceased was accompanied by his worldly goods, in the shape of smoke and steam, through that air in which the soul travelled toward Shipapu, in the far-distant mythical North. The road must be long to Shipapu, else it would not require four entire days to reach it; and there are neither eating-places nor half-way houses on the way, where the dead may stop for refreshments. Therefore the survivors placed on the spot where the body had rested for the last time an effigy of the dead, a wooden carving, and covered it with a piece of cloth; while by the side of this effigy they deposited food and water, in order that neither cold, hunger, nor thirst might cause the travelling spirit to suffer. But the road is not only long, it is also dangerous; evil spirits lie in wait for the deceased to capture him if possible, and hamper his ultimate felicity. To protect himself against them a small war-club is added to the other necessaries, and to render the journey safe beyond a doubt a magic circle is drawn, encompassing the statuette with a circle of cruciform marks, imitating the footprints of the shashka, or road-runner. As these crosses point in all four directions, it is supposed that evil spirits will become bewildered and unable to pursue the soul in its transit. At the end of the fourth day, with many prayers and ceremonies, the circle is obliterated, and the other objects, including the effigy, are taken away by the shamans to be disposed of in a manner known to them alone.

During the period of official mourning the loud wail was carried on incessantly, or at least at frequent intervals; fasting was practised; the women wept, sobbed, screamed, and yelled. Both sexes gathered daily around the place where the effigy lay, praying loudly for the safe journey and arrival at Shipapu of the defunct. The women alone shed tears on such occasions, the men only stared with a gloomy face and thoughtful mien. They recalled and remembered the dead. What the great master of historical composition has said of the ancient Germans may be applied here also: "Feminis lugere honestum est, viris meminisse."

In the humble abode where Topanashka Tihua had dwelt with his deaf old wife, and where his bloody remains had rested previous to being borne to the funeral pyre, his effigy lay covered by the handsomest piece of cotton cloth that could be found among the homes of the Rito, and a quaintly painted and decorated specimen of pottery contained the drinking-water for his soul. It was dusky in the room, for the window as well as the hatchway afforded little light. Subdued voices sounded from the apartment, monotonous recitals, which the loud refrain, "Heiti-na, Heiti-na," at times interrupted. The poor deaf widow sat with tearful eyes in a corner; her lips moved, but no sound came from them; only, when the leader of the choir broke out with appropriate gesticulations, she chimed in loudly. When at such a signal the other women present began to tear their hair, she did the same, and shouted at the top of her voice like the others, "Heiti-na, Heiti-na!"

Group after group of mourners visited the room, until both clans, Tanyi and Tyame, had performed their duty. Hannay, too, had made her appearance; she had shed tears like a rain-cloud, had howled and whined more than any one else. Her grief was surely assumed, for when Tyope asked her in the evening she told him everything in detail that she had noticed,—how this one had looked, how such and such a one had yelled,—plainly showing that the flood of tears had in no manner impeded her faculties of perception, the sighs and sobs around her in no manner deafened her attentive ear. Tyope listened with apparent indifference, and said nothing. She attended to the weeping part, he not so much to the duty of pious recollection as to that of deep thinking over the new phase which matters had entered upon in consequence of the bloody event.

For this sudden death of the maseua was for his designs a most fortunate occurrence. The only man who in the prospective strife between the clans might have taken an attitude dangerous, perhaps disastrous, to his purposes, was now dead; and the office which that man held had become vacant. There was but one individual left in the tribe who might yet prove a stumbling-block to him; that was the Hishtanyi Chayan. But the great medicine-man was not so much a man of action as a man of words, and the force of his oracular utterances Tyope hoped to destroy through the powerful speeches of the Koshare Naua and the strong medicine of the Shkuy Chayan. The plans of Tyope had been immensely furthered by the terrible accident; they had advanced so much that he felt it indispensable to modify them to some extent. Terror and dismay were great at the Rito, and the council had been adjourned sine die. There could be no thought of a fresh accusation against Shotaye until the four days of official mourning were past, and the campaign against the enemy, which the bloody outrage imperatively called for.

The murder by the Tehuas, as Tyope and the others believed, of the principal war-chief of the tribe, at a time when the two tribes were without any communication with each other, was too great an outrage not to demand immediate revenge. The murder could not have been the result of a misunderstanding or accident, else the scalp would not have been taken by the murderer. It was premeditated, an act of deliberate hostility, a declaration of war on the part of the Tehuas. The dead man's scalp had certainly wandered over to the caves of the northern tribe; it was certainly paraded there in the solemn scalp-dance by which the Tehuas, beyond all doubt, publicly honoured and rewarded the murderer.

Tyope knew that the Queres were of one mind and that the official mourning alone kept them from replying to this act of unjustifiable hostility by an attack upon the Puye, but he also knew that as soon as the four days were past a campaign against the Tehuas would be set on foot. The Hishtanyi Chayan had retired to work, and that meant war! He and the Shikama Chayan fasted and mourned together; their mourning was not only on account of the great loss suffered by the tribe in the person of the deceased; they bewailed a loss of power. That power had gone over into the enemy's ranks with the scalp of the murdered man.

Although the death of Topanashka was for Tyope an event of incalculable benefit, he had exhibited tokens of regret and sorrow. His manner was dignified; he did not mourn in any extravagant fashion, but conducted himself so that nobody could suspect the death of the old man to be anything else than a source of regret to him. Furthermore, he intended by his own example to foster the idea among his tribal brethren that the outrage was so grave that it demanded immediate and prompt redress. The carrying out of this redress was of the greatest importance to him. The sooner it was executed the better it would suit his plans.

During the last interview of Tyope with the young Navajo, the latter had charged him with having asked the Dinne to kill the old maseua during an incursion which his tribe were to make into the valley of the Rito. It was true that Tyope had suggested it, but he had not told the Navajo all that he designed through this act of treachery. His object was not merely to rid himself of the person of Topanashka; he sought an opportunity of becoming the ostensible saviour of his tribe in the hour of need. If the Dinne had made the premeditated onslaught, he would, after he had given them time to perform the murder, have appeared upon the scene, driven off the assailants, and thus recommended himself to the people for the vacant position of war-chief. The game was a double one on his part; first he was to betray his kinsfolk to the Navajos, and secondly to turn against the Navajos in defense of the betrayed ones. Tyope realized that it was a very dangerous game, and he had therefore desisted and even gone so far as to repel the young Navajo at the risk of his own life.

As matters stood, all had gone far better than he ever hoped for. Without complicity on his part, Topanashka had been put out of his way; and the office coveted by Tyope was vacant. An important military enterprise was to follow at once. Tyope intended to go on this campaign at all hazards, in order to distinguish himself as much as possible. This he was able to do, for he possessed all the physical qualities necessary for a powerful Indian warrior, and he was very crafty, cunning, bold and experienced. He belonged to the society of war magicians, and held in his possession most of the charms and fetiches used for securing invincibility. There was no doubt in his mind that he would return from the war-path crowned with glory and with scalps, provided he was not killed. Should he return alive, then the time would come for him to set the Koshare Naua to work to secure him the desired position. Once made maseua he would resume his former plans, push the case against Shotaye to the bitter end, and try to divide the tribe. For the present the two objects had to be set aside. The expedition against the Tehuas must take the lead of everything else.