Then came the food regulations; and food in the Desert is a limited fare at best. The Indian menu is slim enough, and much of it in flour. He had no use for substitutes that the trader was compelled to have him purchase, and when his horses disdained cornmeal as fodder, the Navajo began to be aggrieved. He had offered to help Washington with his prowess, no mean gift, and he could not see how an empty stomach helped campaigns.
But came the first call for Indian help that could be accepted. A bazaar was advertised, to be held in Washington, the proceeds to finance a hospital unit. The Indians [[228]]were invited to contribute curios. Knowing Hopi thriftiness, I did not feel that they would respond in great measure. I sent out the call and waited. When lo! for a time the sale of pottery to trading-posts ceased. My warehouse began to overflow with the donations. Hopi pottery is fragile; does not ship well; and I felt that so generous a response should have good packing for the journey of twenty-six hundred miles to Washington. I know how much they gave in clay products, for I personally packed the major part of it. There was not time to ship by freight, express gave no insurance against breakage, so it was forwarded by parcel post. There was a trifle of silverware; a rug or two of Hopi weave; there were reed plaques, and small baskets, and pottery,—bowls and trays and plates and odd forms,—hundreds of pieces. A tenderly whimsical thought: the vision of some wounded lad finding relief through an old Hopi woman’s moulding and baking clay figures, far from the hysteria of the cities, far from the guns and stench of war, but contributing the one thing she knew, while humming some chant, perhaps of ancient battles.
Next came the bond sales.
Now there was a deal of press-shouting anent the millions invested by Indians in Liberty Bonds; and the Indians did invest millions in these securities. But an explanation throws an illuminating light on the Bureau’s puffery. Indian Agents, having Indian moneys in their control, bought most of those bonds. There is nothing much to shout over, or for that matter to weep over,—as a certain Commissioner was wont to do when his emotions slipped,—if an Agent calls in old Jimmie Crowfeet, and says to him: “Jimmie, you have twenty thousand dollars to your account, from the sale of your dead children’s lands, the [[229]]leasing of your own and your wife’s allotments, and the careful manner in which I have marketed your cattle. Now you will need but two thousand dollars to cover the next several years. I propose that you place the remainder of your money in Government bonds at four per cent. Savvy? You help Washington. Washington help you sometime mebbeso.”
If Jimmie did not understand all at once, it was done for him anyway. In any case, it was done. The Bureau directed it. And that’s that. A trifle different from the story pushed into the Sunday supplement.
But with the Hopi—the Hopi had no moneys in the hands of his Agent. The Hopi has not had lands for sale—thank God who made the Desert! and the Hopi has not had lands to lease, thank God who was stingy with the water. He sells his cattle for himself, and places the results down in that pocket which is his own.
It would have to be a selling campaign; and I had first to convince the Hopi, rude, unlettered, and suspicious always of documents, especially those of Government, that this green paper would prove the same as fifty or one hundred dollars in hard silver.
He knew of the country’s need and danger. It was easy to explain that soldiers, armies, must have guns, ammunition, clothes, blankets, medicines, and grub. The Hopi has to have all of these himself, even on a peace footing. For him to propose to give curios, manufactures, even corn, his staff of life, was simple; but the Agent was asking for money, in lots of fifty, hundreds, and other multiples, the security being a piece of green paper that the Hopi could not read, that would be hard to safeguard from fire or theft, and that might prove only as good as some other promises of our slow-moving Uncle in the [[230]]East, who had often forgotten him and at least once betrayed him.
THE AUTHOR IN THE HEART OF HIS ENCHANTED EMPIRE