“Didn’t you send them letters—write to them to come?”
“No.”
“Well,” he concluded, “I didn’t send for them. They are no friends of mine. And you say they are not friends of yours. Why should we care about it? Let them fall off.”
But notwithstanding his unconcern, every year I had a rope stretched there, and compelled the daring to stand behind it. This too prevented them from crowding the dancers, which the Indians appreciated; for when a man is juggling an angry snake he doesn’t crave close company, and I have seen an annoyed dancer thrash a tourist across the face, using a live snake as his whip.
Some day the breaking of house rafters, or a flurry of panic at the mesa edge may present tragedy as a closing feature of this ceremony. “Let them fall off” may yet have a grim sound.
The rites are conducted by the Indians with solemnity and reverence. It is not a show in a juggler’s booth, to be guyed and ridiculed. But when one of the poisonous [[251]]snakes has coiled, and is hissing and rattling and striking, just the time when one would think spectators would become more tense, that is when taunts are flung and a perfect bedlam of thoughtless merriment arises. Were there fewer visitors, as at minor ceremonies, they would be reproved; but the Hopi are a patient people, and they never insisted that these strangers behave themselves; they only expected that the visitor would keep his place, and not attempt to join the dance, a thing that some wild whites—including a few wild women—are only too ready to do. You now see all the standpoint of the old priest.
Each tourist packs one of those devices sold by Mr. Eastman. At many of the ceremonies, particularly the Flute Dance, cameras are barred by the Hopi, and I had their restriction respected. But when I proposed to increase the tribe’s revenue by taxing each visitor a dollar for the camera privilege, the clan thought it good business, and asked me to arrange it. I had camera tags prepared, and the trails to the top policed. Each policeman was accompanied by a representative of the clan, who sold the tags, and who carried a sack of money to change anything up to a fifty-dollar bill. Usually twenties were thrust forward, and promptly nineteen hard, cumbersome cart-wheels were dumped into the canny tourist’s lap. It was disconcerting to those who sought that form of evasion. Occasionally came one who demanded a decision of the Supreme Court against this outrage, chanting invariably that he was a taxpayer, and often adding that he knew Wilson, or whoever happened to occupy the place of Chief Magistrate. But backing the collector was the imperturbable Indian policeman, who did not pay taxes and who did not know Wilson. The policeman knew Moungwi [[252]]only, who had been found ready to “stand behind,” as an officer put it. Either pay “una peso,” “shu-kashe-vah,” “thathli ibeso,” or “one iron-man,” in Spanish, Hopi, Navajo, or Americanese, whatever language you cared to have it in, or surrender that black devil-box in which a man’s spirit may be imprisoned.
One dollar! Yet there were many who sought to evade, and forced unpleasantness; there were a few who flatly refused to pay and yielded their kodaks; there was even one who tried to steal a moving-picture film, who was hunted down at night in the black desert, caught in the early morning, handcuffed, lodged in the Agency hoosegow, and had his precious record confiscated for Uncle Samuel, who preserves it in Washington to-day. This tricky envoy of a famous news-service has related in a magazine his harrowing experience, giving me full credit as his one-time host. I have not space in which to analyze his inaccuracies. Suffice it to say that he cost one very tired and harassed Moungwi and two hard-boiled rangemen a night’s rest. He should know that every trail to the railroad was watched, and he would just as surely have been apprehended and had his outfit confiscated had he escaped to the Mecca of Los Angeles, that windy city out of which he worked. The jurisdiction of the Indian Agent extended there, or for that matter anywhere, in connection with a plot affecting his wards.
There was a midnight conference with the visiting official then acting as Commissioner, who, surrounded by loneliness and an empty sterility, not having at his beck a Law Board, seemed bewildered. For once, delay could not be sought by mail. There was no one to receive the buck. A Departmental order was being laughed at. Despite the possibility of ridicule, the visiting mandarin [[253]]feared that I might jar the gentle traditions and affect several votes in Southern California.
“I can handle him on the reservation,” I said, anxious to be off. “What I want to know, and all I want to know, is, do you authorize me to follow him to the Coast?”