“The same Shaman can pour seeds and kernels of corn out of a hollow stalk until all about him are heaping piles of grain that could not be crowded into a thousand hollowed cornstalks. Medicine men of all tribes can cure the sick, heal the injured, get messages out of the air and do many seemingly impossible things.
“Navajos abhor snakes as much as we do, but Moquis hold them sacred. Before their famous snake dance, during which they hold living rattlesnakes in their mouths and bunches of them wriggling in each hand, they anoint their bodies with the juice of an herb, and drink an herb tea; both said to be medicine against snakebite. At all events they don’t seem to suffer more than a trifling indisposition even when they are bitten in the face. One theory is—and it certainly sounds reasonable—that from early childhood the snake priests are given infinitesimal doses of rattlesnake poison until by the time they reach manhood they are immune to any ill effects.”
We had by this time wandered out of the Indian room and seated ourselves in the big rocking-chairs on the veranda of the Alvarado, Mr. X. with us. Every now and then he stopped and said that he thought he had talked about enough, but we were insatiable and always begged him to tell us some more. Of the many things he told us, the most interesting of all were stories of the medicine men and the combination of articles that constitutes each individual’s own fetich or “medicine.” To this day not only medicine men, but chiefs, would as soon be parted from their own scalp-locks, as from this talisman. Each has his own medicine that can never be changed, though upon occasion it may have a lucky article added to it. Most commonly the fetich is composed of a little bag made of the pelt of a small animal and filled with a curious assortment of articles such as bear’s claws, wolf’s teeth, things that are associated with the wearer’s early prowess in the world, or more likely a former existence. At all events, an Indian’s standing and power in his tribe is dependent upon this fetich, and to lose it is to lose not only power but caste—much more than life itself.
In the days past of the Redman’s war prowess, this sort of “medicine” worn by warriors most especially, was supposed to grant them supernatural powers to kill enemies and preserve their own life. If they were wounded or killed, it meant that the enemy’s medicine was even more powerful. But using the word “medicine” in our sense, their “medicine men”—healers—certainly know of mysteriously potent cures, the secrets of which no white man understands.
Their most usual way of effecting a cure is, apparently, to dance all night in a circle around the afflicted person, with curative results that are too uncannily like magic to be believable. One case that Mr. X. vouched for personally was that of a child that was dying of blood poison. Two white surgeons of high repute said that the child had scarcely a chance of living even by amputating an arm that had mortified beyond any hope of saving; and that without the operation, its death was merely a question of hours. The Indian parents refused to have it done, and insisted upon taking the child to the Reservation. The white doctors declared the child could not possibly survive such a journey but as, in their opinion, it could not live long anyway, the parents might as well take it where they pleased. They started for the Reservation. It was Sunday. “Four sleeps we come back, all right,” said the father. On Thursday, the fourth day, exactly, back they came again with the child well, and its arm absolutely sound. That a mortified arm should get well, comes close to the unbelievable—even though vouched for, as in this case, by several reputable witnesses.
As a case of mental telepathy, Mr. X. told us that time and time again he had known Indians to get news out of the air. An old Navajo one day cried out suddenly that his squaw was “heap sick.” He was so excited that he would not wait for Mr. X. to telegraph and find out if there was any truth in his fear, nor would he wait for a train, but started on a pony to ride to the Reservation. After he had gone a telegram came saying that the squaw had been bitten by a rattlesnake and was dying.
After a while the topic turned upon our own trip. We had intended to ship the car at Albuquerque, but the road from Santa Fé had been so good we were encouraged to go further and Mr. X.’s enthusiasm settled it.
“Having come down into this part of the country,” he said, “you really ought not to miss seeing some of the wonders of our Southwest. The Pueblo of Acoma is a little out of the way, but there is nothing like it anywhere. ‘The city of the sky’ they call it—I won’t tell you any more about it—you just go and look at it for yourselves. Isleta, a short distance south from here, is a pueblo that lots of tourists go to see, and Laguna is fairly well known, too. They are both on your road if you go to Gallup. Acoma is off the beaten track but you wait and send me a postcard if it is not worth considerable exertion, even to behold it from the desert. The Enchanted Mesa, the higher one that you come to first, is interesting chiefly because of its story. The truth of it I can’t vouch for, but it is said to have been inhabited once by people who reached its dizzy summit by a great ladder rock that leaned against its sides. One day in a terrific storm while the men were all plowing in the valley below, the rock ladder was blown down and the women and children were left in this unscalable height to perish. Laguna is about halfway between here and the continental divide, or about one-third of the distance to Gallup. Acoma is perhaps eighteen miles south of Laguna where you can get a guide and also more definite information. Or you can just go south across the plain by yourselves, fairly near the petrified forest later—no, that not until you are on the way to Holbrook. You also skirt the edge of the lava river—I don’t think you’d know it was anything to look at unless you were told. At the time of the eruption, the lava on the surface cooled while that underneath it was still boiling, and the steam of the boiling mass burst through the hardened surface and splintered it like broken glass. Glass is in fact the substance it most resembles. The country is full of stories of men and animals that have tried to cross it, but neither hoofs nor cowhide boots have ever been made that can stay intact on its gashing surface.
To See the Sleeping Beauty of the Southwest, the Path Is by No Means a Smooth One to the Motorist