Vetancurt[396] mentions that the Franciscan friars, between 1630 and 1680, had erected a magnificent "temple" to "Our Lady of the Angels of Porciúncula," and that the walls were so thick that offices were established in their concavities. On each side of this temple, which was erected in the pueblo of Pecos (situated at or near the head of the Pecos River, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fé, New Mexico, on the eastern rim of the Llano Estacado), were three towers. At the foot of the hill was a plain about one league in circumference, to which the Apache resorted for trade. These were the Apache living on the plains of Texas. They brought with them buffalo robes, deer skins and other things to exchange for corn. They came with their dog-trains loaded, and there were more than five hundred traders arriving each year.
Observe that here we have the first and only reference to the use of dog trains by the Apache who in every other case make their women carry all plunder in baskets on their backs. In this same extract from Vetancurt there is a valuable remark about Quivira: "Este es el paso para los reinos de la Quivira."
ANALOGUES OF HODDENTIN.
In the citation from the Spanish poet Villagrá, already given, the suggestion occurs that some relationship existed between the powder scattered so freely during the Spanish "carnestolendas" and the "kunque" thrown by the people of Tusayan upon the Spaniards and their horses when the Spaniards first entered that country. This analogy is a very striking one, even though the Spaniards have long since lost all idea of the meaning of the practice which they still follow. It is to be noted, however, that one of the occasions when this flour is most freely used is the Eve of All Saints (Hallowe'en), when the ghosts or ancestors of the community were to be the recipients of every attention.[397]
In the East, the use of the reddish or purple powder called the "gulál" is widely prevalent, but it is used at the feast of Huli, which occurs at the time of the vernal equinox.
There seems to have been used in Japan in very ancient days a powder identical with the hoddentin, and, like it, credited with the power to cure and rejuvenate.
In the mythical period, from the most ancient times to about B. C. 200, being the period of the so-called pure Japanese "medicine," it is related that Ona-muchi-no-mikoko gave these directions to a hare which had been flayed by a crocodile: "Go quickly now to the river mouth, wash thy body with fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges and spread it about, and roll about upon it; whereupon thy body will certainly be restored to its original state."[398]
There is no indication that in the above case the "pollen of the sedges" had ever occupied a place in the list of foods. It would appear that its magical effects were strictly dependent upon the fact that it was recognized as the reproductive agent in the life of the plant.
No allusion has yet been made to the hoddentin of the Navajo, who are the brothers of the Apache. Surgeon Matthews[399] has referred to it under the name of tqa-di-tinᐟ, or ta-di-tinᐟ, "the pollen, especially the pollen of corn."
This appears to me to be a very interesting case of a compromise between the religious ideas of two entirely different systems or sects. The Navajo, as now known to us, are the offspring of the original Apache or Tinneh invaders and the refugees from the Rio Grande and Zuñi Pueblos, who fled to the fierce and cruel Apache to seek safety from the fiercer and more cruel Spanish.