A writer in the San Diego Union shows how tenaciously the Indians cling to the ceremonies of the past. He says:
The opening of the government's new irrigation ditch was preceded the night before by the same ceremony of praise and thanksgiving that the Indians used to hold before ever a padre raised a cross among them. In a rectangular enclosure made of green willows they assembled about a log fire. They seated themselves in a circle just beyond the line of fading light, their swarthy faces being discernible only as a dim streak in the dark; but before the fire, his rough and seamed face illuminated by the unsteady flames which leaped, as now and then he picked at a brand, and revealed his audience as motionless as though chiseled out of lava, stood the aged Cecelio Chuprosa. His hands were clasped behind his back and his head bowed. At long intervals, he spoke briefly in his native tongue, his soft gutterals coming so slowly that one could count the vowels. A drawn-out low, weird monotone was the only response from that rock-like circle just beyond the light. Now and then some old woman emerged from the darkness and danced beside the burning logs while she chanted some wild incantation and was lost again in that stoic, stolid, silent circle.
Finally two padres appeared on the scene. They said nothing, but the Indians soon slunk away. The padres do not approve of the rites of pagan days, and they love their padres.
Still amid the weird savagery of that scene, there were many evidences of civilization. The old men and women wore cowhide boots and shoes which covered their feet with corns. Instead of the peace-pipe, the glow of the cigarette dawned and died everywhere through the stoic night. Oil-filled lanterns took the place of the starlight the Indians formerly used to find their way home by, and one old wabbling woman wheeled her grand-papoose to the meeting in the latest style of perambulator.
Chuprosa is 96 years old and has not a gray hair on his head. He has worn his war paint, been on the warpath, and fought in all the tribe's battles from his youth up. He is particularly proud of the valor he displayed in the battle of Alamitos, which occurred sixty-six years ago.
Now Chuprosa is a baseball fan. He roots at all the games between the teams of his and neighboring reservations. Recently he rode forty miles on horseback to Warner's Ranch to see a game and when he returned he was so stiff that he had to be lifted out of the saddle, but he rubbed his aching legs a little and laughed, for he had rooted his favorite team to victory.
Among the Franciscan monks who came from San Luis Rey to attend the Pala fiesta was another old battler who had fought through two wars and won two medals for valor from his country. One of them is the far-famed and much coveted iron-cross which German royalty and the Kaiser himself salute whenever it is seen on the breast of a veteran. But Father Damian,—and that is his only name in the cloister where he has lived now for thirty-eight years,—threw these honors into the sea and with head bowed he appeared one day at the door of a monastery and asked that he might henceforth follow only the standard of the cross.
He was given a brown robe with a cowl and a pair of sandals for his feet, and the hero of wars which Germany waged against Austria and France, lost even his name and, becoming a carpenter, gave his life in building schools and churches.
Father Damian and Chuprosa met for the first time at the Pala fiesta. The monk could speak no Spanish and the Indian no German, but they soon became interested in each other when, through an interpreter, each told of the battles the other had fought. Although seventy-two years old, the father is still rugged except that he feels the effect of cholera which attacked his regiment in the war with Austria. "One morning," he said, "one hundred in my regiment alone remained on the ground when the bugle called us. They had died overnight of cholera."
