It is much the same with the old church. A few years since a party of Americans who accompanied me to Zuñi desecrated the beautiful antique shrine of the church, carrying away "Our Lady of Guadalupe of the Sacred Heart," the guardian angels, and some of the painted bas-reliefs attached to the frame of the altar. When this was discovered by the Indians, consternation seized the whole tribe; council after council was held, at which I was alternately berated (because people who had come there with me had thus "plundered their fathers' house"), and entreated to plead with "Wasintona" to have these "precious saints and sacred masks of their fathers" returned to them.
Believing at the time that the Indians really reverenced these things as Christian emblems, and myself reverencing sincerely the memory of the noble missionaries who had braved death and labored so many years in the cause of their faith and for the good of these Indians, I promised either to have the original relics returned or to bring them new saints; and I also urged them to join me in cleaning out the old church, repairing the rents in its walls and roof, and plastering once more its rain-streaked interior. But at this point their mood seemed to change. The chiefs and old men puffed their cigarettes, unmoved by the most eloquent appeals I could make, save to say, quite irrelevantly, that I "talked well," and that all my thoughts were good, very good, but they could not heed them.
I asked them if they did not care for their míssa k‘yakwi or mission-house. "Yea, verily," they replied, with fervor. "It was the sacred place of our fathers, even more sacred than were the things taken away therefrom."
I asked if they would not, then, in memory of those fathers, restore its beauty.
"Nay," they replied, "we could not, alas! for it was the míssa-house of our fathers who are dead, and dead is the míssa-house! May the fathers be made to live again by the adding of meat to their bones? How, then, may the míssa-house be made alive again by the adding of mud to its walls?"
Not long afterward there was a furious night storm of wind and rain. On the following morning, great seams appeared in the northern walls of the old building. I called a council of the Indians and urged that since they would not repair the míssa-house, it be torn down; for it might fall over some day and kill the women and children as they passed through the narrow alley it overshadowed, on their way to and from the spring. Again I was told that my words were good, but alas! they could not heed them; that it was the míssa-house of their fathers! How, if they took it away, would the fathers know their own? It was well that the wind and rain wore it away, as time wasted away their fathers' bones. That mattered not, for it was the work of the beloved, whereof they, the fathers, were aware, but for themselves to move it suddenly away, that were worse than the despoiling of the shrine; for it was the house of the fathers, the shrine only a thing thereof, not a thing of the fathers as verily as was the house itself.
From their point of view this reasoning of the Indians was perfectly consistent, based as it was on their belief that the souls of their ancestors were mediators and that their mortal remains and the places and things thereof were means of invoking them, quite as sacrifices are supposed to be, for the time being, the mortal and mediate parts of the gods and spirits to which they have been offered, hence a potent means of invoking them. This is shown much more clearly in the only other instance of seeming reverence for the church that I can pause to give.
The Zuñis are careful to remove all traces of Catholicism, or rather all symbols of the Mexican religion, from their persons or vicinity during the performance of their sacred dances or rites, seeing to it that no Mexican word, even, is ever spoken in the presence of the Kâ´kâ. If a Mexican or anyone suspected of being a Mexican happens to approach their town during a ceremonial, he is met by watchful sentinels and led, no matter what his rank, condition, or haste, to some sequestered room, where, although courteously treated and hospitably entertained without charge, he is securely locked up and rigorously guarded until after the dance or other observance is over. "The fathers of these Mexicans did violence to our fathers," say the Indians in explanation, "when that our fathers of old called the sacred Kâ´kâ. Therefore, in those days our fathers sought to hide the dancers from their eyes. Our fathers come nigh in breath, when now we call the Kâ´kâ, and they aid our songs and prayers to the beloved Gods of Rain and Wind. How, if they see we have departed from their customs, and reveal these things? Then will they be sad at our forgetfulness of their ways, and filled with fear lest these evil people, beholding, do sacrilege to their precious Kâ´kâ, and will flee away, nor aid our songs and prayers for rain, nor our calls for their beloved presence!"
Nevertheless, in autumn, when the harvest is over, one may see the dilapidated little figure of Saint Francis borne about the pueblo on the eve of the "Feast of the Dead;" and one may see here and there candles burning, or such poor substitutes for them as the Indians can get; and here and there also old rosaries and a few brass crucifixes revealed. Before they fell, one heard, as the night wore on, the ancient church bells hammered; and half forgotten, wholly unintelligible phrases of church Latin chanted. But all this is not in memory of a "saint's day," as would seem, or as one would be told were he injudiciously to inquire. It is the feast and drama of the beloved dead of all days past. And whilst the dead of long, very long ago, must first be summoned by means of their ancient relics which best they knew—the tribal medicines and fetiches, and the songs to them belonging—yet the "old ones of the míssa times knew also these things of the míssa; and so, that they be lured near and come not as strangers, but find means of recognition and movement (manifestation) to us, and happily receive our offerings of food to the fire, they must (in place of the summoning songs and drums and rattles) hear the church bells and chants of the Spaniards and see the things which they, perforce, held to most familiarly and with least fear and secrecy in times of festival while yet they lived in daylight."
I need not add that this fully accounts for the contradictory behavior of the Indians in reference to the old church, the burial ground, and other things pertaining to it. The church could not be rebuilt. It had been dead so long that, rehabilitated, it would be no longer familiar to the "fathers" who in spirit had witnessed its decay. Nor could it be taken suddenly away. It had stood so long that, missing it, they would be sad, or might perhaps even abandon it.