“It is the custom of the people,” said the trader, an honest man who advised me for many days thereafter. “You may not like it, and—you may be strong enough to stop it”—there was doubt in his voice;—“but it is their custom.”
It went against the grain; but there stood the Indians with the animal, silent, waiting. This problem had been presented to many Agents, perhaps.
“If we do not kill it mercifully with a gun, they will only go away and beat it to death with rocks,” said the trader. “It must be done to-night. I have brought a rifle.”
The desert custom of the Navajo won its first round.
The two Indians led the pony to the head of the grave, and, seeming to understand that we had settled it, scuttled away in the shadows. The trader leveled his rifle and shot that very good pony through the brain. It leaped forward convulsively, and plunged down, knee-deep, in the soft earth of the grave. The dead had a mount.
It was black night by this time, and we filed back to the Agency, where I felt better for having the electric lights. There had been something gruesome in the whole proceeding. But it was a custom of the people, as the trader had said, and in other ways I learned from him that it is not wise for a strange Chief at once to take his people by the throat.
Now the first complaints were filed with me, and soon increased to scores. The Hopi has suffered for many years because of the willful depredations of his too close neighbor, the Navajo; and the Navajo in turn has community troubles of his own. There were complaints of damage to fences, and of ruined crops, and of peeled orchards; of [[130]]the stealing of ponies, and the re-branding and butchering of cattle, the pillage of houses, and the unwarranted seizure and holding of precious water-holes; complaints of domestic wrangles and social scandals, of blighted love and too ardent affections; of marriage portions and the current price of brides, of mothers-in-law—ye Gods! even of witchcraft! Descent and distribution included not only real and personal property such as we know, for came a Medicine Man claiming to have inherited the paraphernalia of a deceased tribal doctor, and requested that I decide ownership, according to the rules, in the dried head of a dead crane.
The Indian welcomes opportunity to speak his piece in court, and if permitted will promptly set up as prosecutor and spring to the rapid cross-examination of witnesses. He will even incriminate himself if there is chance of making things unpleasant for someone else; and those of the accused found guilty and sentenced invariably request a chance to peach on some other poor devil who has evaded punishment. Witchcraft seldom appears in the open, but I recall one case that was unusual.
The favorite son of a Tewa died, and the father looked about him for someone on whom to blame this calamity. Indian grief, seldom long-lived, may be the more quickly assuaged if one can fix the blame. Suddenly the bereaved father discovered that a certain neighbor was a witch. He did not like the man anyway. So, finding him prowling around the house,—urged by a sympathetic curiosity, no doubt,—the parent seized him and dragged him into the room with the dead.