Other pests are mosquitoes, gnats, and a small black fly which, in certain seasons, persistently lodges in the eye, causing considerable annoyance, and sometimes distress and pain. There are not many mosquitoes, though at times they are troublesome enough to satisfy one for their scarcity.
Many of the women are expert basket makers, and in my book on Indian Basketry I have fully explained their methods of work and the charming nature of their designs. The Havasu Canyon is a basket maker's paradise, for the stream is lined for miles with willows suitable for this work.
The process of making strands or splints of the willows is a very simple and primitive one. Here as I sit writing (Sept. 14, 1901), Chickapanagie's squaw has a lot of willow shoots before her. Taking hold of one end of the splint in her teeth, she pulls away the cuticle with her fingers. These alone are her tools, and it is astonishing the rapidity and regularity with which the process is accomplished.
As soon as a girl can frame her fingers to the work of basket making she is required to begin. It is very interesting to watch the small children in their endeavors to make the rougher baskets, and then, as they grow in skill, try the finer work. Pul-a-gas´-a-a is not more than eight years of age, and yet a basket—kű-ű—she brought to me was one of her own make, and it now occupies a place in my collection. The work is irregular and crude, but shows skill, and if the child has patience to stick to it, in time she will become one of the most accomplished basket makers of the tribe.
As soon as possible after attaining puberty the Havasupai girls marry, generally between the ages of thirteen and fourteen. The parents themselves urge these early marriages. Whether they fear the loss of virtue in their daughters from evil white men, or the degenerate young men of their own tribe, I do not know, but several parents have told me that the sooner their girls marry, after they are marriageable, the better pleased they are.
Marriage is generally arranged by purchase. When a young man sets his affections upon any particular girl, he contrives to show his preference for her, and, as soon as he finds that his attentions are agreeable, he visits his fair one's father or nearest male relative, and without parley begins to bargain for her as he would for a horse or any other commodity. The standard price for a wife is ten to twenty dollars, and where a trade cannot be made with a pony or blanket, the money itself is offered. The bargaining completed, there are no further preliminaries or ceremony, except that, three weeks or so before the wedding, the bridegroom takes up his residence in the hawa of the bride's parents. He is treated as one of the family, and at night rolls himself up in his blanket and sleeps alongside his prospective kinsfolk on the floor of the domicile. At the end of three weeks, if the contracting young folks are satisfied that their dispositions are harmonious, and if the marriage settlement is satisfactory, the wedding takes place. The groom takes his bride, the old folk take the medium of purchase, and the company laughs and banters the young husband and wife. The man takes the woman to his hawa, and the announcement of their marriage is made by the fact that they are living together and have assumed marital relationship.
Sometimes an obdurate father or mother will refuse to sell a daughter, and thus expresses disapprobation of the suggested match. Occasionally, as among more civilized people, the young couple mournfully, but dutifully, acquiesce in the decision of the older people, but, more often—even, also, as white young people do—they rebel, and take the decision into their own hands by eloping and living together. This ends the matter. The ethics of the tribe are such that cohabitation once entered upon, the parents have no authority to declare the marriage void. And, as a further penalty for his obdurate obstinacy, the father loses the ten dollars or its equivalent he might have had by being kind and complaisant to the desires of the young couple.
The Havasupais are polygamists, and believe in having as many wives as they can buy and support. At the time of his death Kohot Navaho had three wives living with him, and I personally know of two others that he had discarded on account of old age. When Hotouta, his oldest son, was living, his mother was a thrust-out member of Navaho's household. She was almost blind and decrepit, and Navaho with a wave of his hand and ten words had dismissed her from his bed and board. Hotouta had a tender heart and used to speak very bitterly about the injustice of this custom which allowed an old and helpless wife thus mercilessly to be discarded.
Shortly before Navaho's death his oldest wife evidently "ruled the roost," and it certainly must have been by other means than her physical beauty. And yet she was vain of her good looks, for, when I made her husband's photograph, she became my strong ally in persuading him to sit before the camera, on condition that I would make a "sun-picture" of her own beautiful physiognomy and enchanting tout ensemble. When I made the photograph, she secured her petticoats between her legs in such a manner as to make them appear like rude trousers, and when I commented upon the unfeminine appearance and asked her to spread out her skirts in orthodox style, she boxed my ears with a manner at once decisive, haughty, and jocular, and bade me proceed as she was or not at all. The second wife was a meek kind of a creature, who seemed to be entirely under the dominion of wife number one; but the youngest wife, a buxom woman of twenty-three or four summers, evidently knew how to hold her own, for she once or twice refused to obey wife number one, though she readily obeyed the same request when given by Navaho personally. This woman is now married to my old host, Waluthama.