Beyond the sunset

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

His brow wrinkled in what might have been perplexity.

"Who can say?" he answered, with a shrug. "They are children. Perhaps they have killed enough meat to feed them a while."

At times he would be more communicative, and we discussed the beliefs of his people and their social and religious organization. They were in many ways the most civilized Indians I have seen, and they seemed all the more so, meeting them, as we did, after prolonged contact with the depraved tribes we had encountered west of the Sky Mountains and along the coast of the Western Ocean.

Perhaps because of the inaccessible character of their situation, they were essentially unwarlike, wrapped up in the pursuit of agriculture and the raising of turkeys. Certain of these birds they bred especially for the sacred flock attending on the shrine of Massi for the purpose of supplying feathers, with which women wove remarkably beautiful screens and robes. Their crops were as good as those obtained by European husbandmen, and much better than those ordinarily reaped by our own farmers in America, notwithstanding that their only tools for cultivation were pointed sticks and the most primitive kinds of rakes and hoes.

Wiki said, in one of his conversational moods, that their traditions taught them that long ago this barren land of rocks was much richer than it now was, and at that distant time their people were very numerous in this locality. But in the course of ages the climate changed, and with it the nature of the country. The rivers dried up; the deposits of soil were blown away; vegetation died; the sun's heat became so fierce as to wither growing things, except in a few favored spots.

About the same time there was a succession of eruptions of hordes of savages from the north, low-browed, ferocious people, akin, perhaps to the Awataba—and on the same count to the people of Homolobi themselves. These were the Shunwi, or "Flesh Creatures," as they called themselves—who overran many villages, driven mad by starvation probably and aided by an enormous numerical superiority. And the populations of other villages, disheartened by these experiences, moved away into the South, where conditions were more favorable, and gradually lost touch with those who had remained in the home-land of the race.

The coming of the Spaniards sealed the doom of all of them. To Wiki, who evidently had visited the Spanish colonies, possibly had indulged in the occasional Indian plots to regain independence and restore the dominance of the red race under a new Montezuma, the tragedy of his people was very apparent. He had seen village after village on the outskirts of the rock desert conquered and Christianized. His life was dedicated to an effort to protect Homolobi from the universal fate. This was the reason for his equivocal reception of our party. It was the reason, too, I suspect, for his uncertain attitude toward us after he had saved our lives. He was not sure how best to make use of us, whether it would more aptly serve his purpose to let us go or to sacrifice us to the superstitious wrath and priestly politics of Kokyan's faction.

The hub of the situation, indeed, was the factional politics that rent the village. As Kachina had told us, the priestly organization was likewise the political superstructure of the social life of the community. The council of wise men was really a council of the priests, with a handful of others selected by and under the control of the priests. They not only regulated the religious life of the village, but exerted a general supervision over its agricultural and industrial undertakings, adjusted inter-family or clan disputes, made and administered laws, interpreted traditions, and in event of war furnished the military leadership that was required.

The one-sided intellectuality which resulted was probably the cause of the decline of the race. This was the judgment of Tawannears, who was best qualified to estimate their tribal characteristics, combining in his mind, as he did, the training and outlook of red man and white. He took a keen interest in the problem, despite his absorption in his own tangled thoughts and his strange infatuation with Kachina, which was to lead to the crisis of our affairs. And it was largely through him and the attraction which he possessed for the girl, with all her weird power and influence, that we were enabled to gain a really intimate view of the drama which was centering around our three alien lives.

Briefly, it was the old, old story of all communities. Wiki represented the wisdom of age. Fifteen years before, I gathered, he had acquired preponderating power when he went out into the desert, as he said, "to fast and ask a message forecasting the future," and returned with the woman-child who grew to be Kachina, and who, he told the village, had been sent to him by Massi to serve the temple and dance in honor of the Ruler of the Dead. His own shrewd intellect combined with the Latin grace of the girl and her original personality had strengthened his position so that he ruled practically supreme, being able to ignore, if he chose, the rival authority of old Angwusi, who represented the women in the hierarchy.