A pinyon-juniper woodland in winter.
The items of wearing apparel most important to the early people, perhaps, were sandals. In the Southwest it is difficult, if not out of the question, to go barefoot outdoors; even the toughened Indian feet could not have been impervious to cactus spines. A great deal of time and skill was expended, therefore, in the devising of footgear. From the days of the Basketmakers, the sandal most in favor had been woven of yucca, the plant with slender swordlike leaves sometimes known as Spanish-bayonet. Yucca is to be found in one species or another throughout the one-time land of the Pueblos. Such intensive use was made of it by the early people that it is almost surprising that it could have survived. As mentioned previously, yucca was the favorite fiber for cordage, and essentially it was cordage which made up the best types of sandals. A twilled weave of small-diameter cords was carefully shaped to the foot, the edges were neatly bound, then lashings to tie around the ankle and over the toes were made to finish the job. A sole of this sort was durable and had remarkable nonskid qualities, as anyone who has worn modern rope-soled shoes can testify. Cruder, more quickly made sandals were plaited together from the unworked blades of the narrow-leaf yucca, the resulting weave looking rather like modern palm-frond matting.
Mule deer.
RELIGION.
It has been said that “Man cannot live by bread alone.” Nowhere is the truth of this better illustrated than in the history of the Pueblo Indian who, in spite of appalling difficulties to achieve the physical sustenance of life, found much time to develop a spiritual life. The principal evidences of a widespread ancient religion are, of course, the remains of kivas, found in all the old communities. Although details of the use of prehistoric kivas cannot be established, some ideas of their use can be inferred from the part that kivas play in the modern Pueblo religion. The kiva rituals practiced today are traditional in the highest degree, and in all likelihood have descended in their basic form from centuries-old origins.
Hence it is perhaps valid to assume that the following conditions prevailed here at Bandelier 600 years ago: The principal social and religious organization was a society or clan; each such organization had its own kiva; and in their kiva the men of the group conducted ceremonies to honor and propitiate many deities, which were personified in birds and beasts, the elements, and natural forces.
Certain parts of these ceremonies were very likely performed outside the kiva, so that others of the village might also participate—and thus originated the spectacular public dance dramas which visitors nowadays so greatly enjoy at the modern pueblos. Indian dances, as the 20th-century Southwest knows them, are usually short-term public displays of long-term private rituals entailing days of prayer and chanting in the privacy of the kiva. The best known of these Pueblo ceremonies is chiefly a prayer for rain—The Hopi Snake Dance. Others may be prayers for success in the hunt, for productivity of crops, or for healing the sick.
The complexity of the Pueblo religion is increased by the fact that it is indivisibly allied to social and family organization. In the Pueblo scheme of worship, there is not, and seemingly never was, any elite group of “medicine men” or chief practitioners of religion; each person has a part in religious observances, his respective role growing more important as he advances in seniority within a ceremonial organization. With responsibility for the conduct of worship thus placed on all the people, religion is an extremely pervasive force and enters into much of the daily life of each individual.
