Though I refrained from seeking bargains in the blankets of the aborigine, I sought diligently enough for the aborigine himself. I had my first glimpse of him in Northern New Mexico just after we had come down out of Colorado. Accompanied by his lady, he was languidly reposing on the platform in front of a depot, with his wares tastefully arranged at his feet. As a concession to the acquired ideals of the Eastern visitor he had a red sofa tidy draped round his shoulders, and there was a tired-looking hen-feather caught negligently in his back hair; and his squaw displayed ornamented leggings below the hems of her simple calico walking skirt. But these adornments, I gathered, constituted the calling costume, so to speak.
When at home in his village the universal garment of the Pueblo male is the black sateen shirt of commerce. He puts it on and wears it until it is taken up by absorption, and then it is time to put on another. These shirts do not require washing; but, among the best Pueblo families, I understand it is customary—once in so often—to have them searched. And thus is the wild life of the West kept down.
Farther along the line, in Arizona, we met the Hopi and the Navajo—delegations from both of these tribes having been imported from the reservations to give an added touch of picturesqueness to the principal hotel of the Grand Cañon. The Hopi, who excels at snake dancing and pottery work, is a mannerly little chap; and his daughter, with her hair done up in elaborate whorl effects in fancied imitation of the squash blossom—the squash being the Hopi emblem of purity—is a decidedly attractive feature of the landscape.
The Hopi women are industrious little bodies, clever at basket weaving—and the men work, too, when not engaged in attending lodge; for the Hopis are the ritualists of the Southwest, and every Hopi is a confirmed joiner. Their secret societies exist to-day, uncorrupted and unchanged, just as they have survived for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. In the Hopi House at Grand Cañon there is a reproduction of a kiva or underground temple. It isn't underground—it is located upstairs; but in all other regards it is supposed to conform exactly to one of the real ceremonial chambers of the Hopis. The dried-mud walls are covered thickly with symbolic devices, painted on; and there is an altar tricked out with totems of the Powamu clan, one of the biggest of these societies.
Just in front of the altar, with its wooden figures of the War God, the God of Growing Things, and the God of Thunder, is a sand painting set in the floor like a mosaic. When one of the clans is getting ready for a service the official high priest or medicine man of that particular clan sprinkles clean brown sand upon the flat earth before the altar and upon this foundation, by trickling between his thumb and forefinger tiny streams of sands of other colors, he makes the mystic figures that he worships. After the rites are over he obliterates the design with his hand, leaving the space bare for the next clan.
In the Hopi House at Grand Cañon a sand painting sacred to the Antelope clan is preserved under glass for the benefit of visitors. The manager of the establishment, a Mr. Smith, who has spent most of his life among the tribes of Arizona, told us a story about this.
Two years ago this summer, a party of Mystic Shriners on an excursion visited the cañon. Mr. Smith chaperoned one group of them on their tour through the Hopi House. In the sand painting of the kiva they seemed to find something that particularly interested them. They put their heads together, talking in undertones and pointing—so Smith said—first at one design and then at another. An old Hopi buck, a priest of the Antelope clan, was lounging in the low doorway watching them. What the Shriners said to one another could have had no significance for him, even admitting that he heard them, for he did not understand a word of English; but suddenly he reached forth a withered hand and plucked Smith by the sleeve. I am letting Smith tell the rest of the tale just as he told it to us:
"The Hopi pointed to one of the Shriners, an elderly man who came, I think, from somewhere in Illinois, and in his own tongue he said to me: 'That man with the white hair is a Hopi—and he is a member of my clan!' I said to him: 'You speak foolishness—that man comes from the East and never until to-day saw a Hopi in his whole life!' The medicine man showed more excitement than I ever saw an Indian show.
"'You are lying to me!' he said. 'That white-haired man is a Hopi, or else his people long ago were Hopis.' I laughed at him and that ruffled his dignity and he turned away, and I couldn't get another word out of him.
"As the Shriners were passing out I halted the white-haired man and said to him: 'The Hopi medicine man insists that you are a Hopi and that you know something about his clan.' 'Well,' he said, 'I'm no Hopi; but I think I do know something about some of the things he seems to revere. Where is this medicine man?'