The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais

by George Wharton James

There are now three medicine-men in the tribe, the chief of whom is Rock Jones, whose Havasupai names are suggestive. They are: Pa-a-hu-ya´ and In-ya-ja-al´-o, the former signifying "black," the other "the rising sun." At-nahl, whose name means a "sack," is the second in importance, and the youngest is Ma-tō-mā´, commonly known as Bob. I have just asked Lanoman which is the best medicine-man of the three, and his reply when I asked "Who makes the sick people well the quickest?" was: "All same. All no good. All make people dead pretty quick!"

Death is supposed to be, in every case, the departure of the spirit from the body, and when the sick person is approaching death the friends and relatives, led by the medicine-man, will often sit around the invalid and sing their petitions to the departing spirit in the hope that it may be led to repent and return to the body. If the patient recovers, the medicine-man takes the credit (and what pay he can get) for the return of the spirit, and goes about in high feather, recounting to all he meets the new instance of his wonderful and occult power.

One of the greatest insults that can be offered to the friends of a dead Havasupai is to refer to him. The reason given to me for this is that whenever a thought is sent after a dead person it either prevents his spirit continuing the journey to Shi-pa-pu, or leads him to desire to return to earth, neither of which are good for a Havasupai.

One of the school teachers informed me that she once, in reconvening the school after a holiday, read out the name of a child that had recently died. The moment the name was pronounced several of both boys and girls burst out, some into a wild wailing and others into fierce and angry denunciations of the wicked white woman who had thus arrested the spirit of the deceased on its journey to the underworld.

The last night of our first visit the Havasupais had a Sick Dance. When one of their number is very sick or about to die, the medicine-man summons the principal men and women of the camp to dance around him, in the hope of driving away the disease. It so happened that during our visit one of the young bucks was very sick, and a dance was ordered for Saturday evening. It was quite a distance away from our camp, and Vesna, whose guest we were that night, informed us that we would not be welcomed. The welcome would have been overlooked but for our need of rest, and as it was a mile or two away, it was decided not to attend, although we could hear the incantations at intervals during the night. The dance, however, was similar to such dances elsewhere. The sick man was placed in the open air and a circle formed around him, while a slow and solemn dance was engaged in by those in the circle, and all participated in the chanting of an incantation. This was kept up during the entire night, the voices of the singers at times pitched to a very high key. As soon as one in the circle grew tired, he dropped out and another took his place, but the dance and chant never ceased. If a sick man survives the noise and din and wakefulness of this until morning, it is probable that his vitality will carry him through, and he will recover.

If death is thought to be certainly near, the best clothes of the wardrobe are brought out and placed upon the dying person. A woman's best dress is not too good for her to die in, and a man's finest garments, even to the broadcloth cast-off "Prince Albert" received through the kindness of some white friend in the East, is deemed the only appropriate gear in which to meet the dread summons to Shi-pa-pu. When life is extinct the dressed-up body is wrapped in the best blanket the hawa affords, and is then ready for the period of wailing and mourning. Relatives and friends of the deceased come and sit in the hawa, and as the spirit moves them they raise their voices in lamentation, or, singing the bravery, the daring, the good deeds of the deceased, ask for him a safe journey to the dread secret places of the underworld. Nothing can be more doleful than to hear these sad lamentations in the dead of the night. All is still, except the never-silent stream which steadily keeps up its murmur as it flows over the stones. Otherwise the very Angel of Silence seems to be brooding over the scene, for the babble of the creek merely accentuates the nearly perfect stillness. Suddenly a loud, long, minor wail rises from the hawa in the midst of the willows, and one feels that he can see the sound ascend to the heights of these enclosing walls, striking here and there, and then rebounding to opposing walls, until the canyon is full of voices, wailing one against the other and making a spirit chorus of infinite sadness and distress. The imagination unconsciously suggests that these echoing wails are the sympathizing spirit voices of men and women—former inhabitants of this canyon of the willows—who have come to weep with those who weep for their dead loved ones.

There is no fixed period for this wailing, but as soon as it is satisfactorily concluded the body is tenderly thrown across the best horse owned by the deceased, if a man,—or ridden by her, if a woman,—and, accompanied by other animals conveying some of his or her most desirable treasures, is taken to the burial or burning ground. Prior to the advent of the white man the Havasupais practised cremation, and between Bridal Veil and Mooney Falls, and also on the rim of the Grand Canyon, at a place since named Crematory Point, the remains of scores of burned bodies of men and women and also of horses were recently to be seen. For it was deemed of the greatest importance to give the spirit of the deceased the spirit of his dead horse, upon which he might ride to the dark abode of the underworld. Before it was burned, the horse must be strangled, and this was done by tightly tying a strip of wet buckskin around his neck, and, as it dried, it rapidly contracted and thus strangled the doomed animal. Then both human being and animal were burned.

But even this was not considered a sufficient offering to the powers of the dead. Returning to the village, a peach tree in the orchard of the dead man was cut down that it might also be "dead" and thus accompany its owner to the spirit world and give him its refreshing fruit there. On the death of a chieftain or great warrior, several peach trees—thapala—are cut down.

Of late years, however, these customs of cremation, strangling of horses, burning of treasures, and cutting down of peach trees have not been as universal as formerly. Hotouta, the oldest son of Kohot Navaho, the last of the old chiefs, had great influence with his people, and Mr. Bass succeeded in convincing him of the extravagant folly of thus wasting on the dead, to whom the sacrifices were of no benefit, that which could be of so much use to the living. Consequently his influence materially helped to change the custom from cremation to ground interment. Later, after Hotouta's death, when several families had gone back to the old habit of cremation, others exercised their influence with the Havasupais to lead them to abandon the old custom. These endeavors were all effective to a large extent, and, when Captain Navaho, the last great Kohot the Havasupais will ever have, died in 1898, he was buried instead of being cremated. Late in 1897, however, the son of Sinyela died, and though in many things Sinyela is one of the most progressive of the Havasupais, he and his brother took the boy's body across a horse, tied an axe to the corpse, and started up the canyon towards Topocobya. When they returned the axe had been used, the horse was strangled, and burned bones of human and equine bodies in a side gorge attest the hold the old superstitions and customs still have upon the Havasupai mind.

And again in the summer of 1899—May or June—when the daughter of the present Kohot and wife of Lanoman (another son of Sinyela) died, Lanoman felt that nothing short of the old and time-honored method of cremation would be suitable for the daughter of the new chief and the wife of so smart and bright an Indian as himself. For Lanoman knew more English, perhaps, than any other Havasupai, and was afflicted with the not uncommon complaint of great self-esteem and conceit. Accordingly, the body was clothed in the finest blankets of the wardrobe, and many precious things were taken with it to the Havasu Canyon below Mooney Falls. Tenderly the body was lowered down the already nearly useless ladder, and after suitable wailing, the funeral pyre was built, the body placed thereupon, more wood heaped around and over the body, and then the whole fired. When the body was destroyed, the mourners returned, kicking down the upper portion of the ladder as they did so, that no other Havasupai should be burned there, and also that no white foot should again desecrate the sacred precincts of the lower Havasu Canyon. Then, that the favorite horse of the woman thus honored after her death should follow her to the underworld, it was taken to the edge of the plateau above, from which the descent to Bridal Veil and the upper portion of Mooney Falls is made, the wet strip of buckskin tied around its neck, and, as the cord dried and tightened, and the poor animal began to reel and totter in its death struggles, it was given a push, tumbled over the edge, and—instead of descending to the lower canyon at the foot of the Falls where the burned body was—fell on the shelves of limestone accretions which terrace the canyon at the side of the Falls, bounded from one terrace to another, and then, to the infinite disgust of the mourners, lodged there. And there it still remains—or what is left of it, for, as I passed by in July, 1899, though I could not see the animal, the frightful odor of the carrion ascended to the very heavens.