“Why do you come here without Moungwi, then?” they demanded. “He should introduce you to us. We do not know you. Moungwi is not here. Why do you come in the back way, from Winslow, and call a council without Moungwi?”
Indians are often peculiarly consistent. They did not regret that recent fracas with Moungwi, when they had seized him by the beard and threatened to toss him bodily from the gigantic Chimopovi cliffs,—action prevented only by his Navajo police threatening to open fire,—but they did know something of official courtesy between and among all Moungwis or Chiefs, and there is such a thing as having the proper entrée, even with an Indian tribe in the far-removed hills. Very likely the Commissioner said something about the respect due his office; when arose a big Indian, who declaimed to this astonishing effect:—
“This man comes here alone, and he has a crooked mouth. His words go two ways. He is no Commissioner of Indian Affairs, or the Moungwi would be here to tell us. I myself saw this man working with a shovel on the railroad section-gang not three weeks ago. Don’t listen to him. He will lead you the wrong trail.”
Now this was a terrible blow to dignity, and hurt all Washington. Matters did not improve, and by 1906 the trouble had increased to the point where troops were necessary once again. They came. They rehearsed their parts perfectly, and prisoners were taken. A special inspector was sent in to observe matters, and he found himself in a very embarrassing position. The one hundred [[152]]captives had arranged a hunger strike. Receipts for their prison mess-equipment had been demanded of them, in strict accordance with the farcical methods of accounting then in vogue. The true Hopi hostile, loyal to high-priest Youkeoma, has never signed for anything. He is reared to be wary of the white man’s papers. As he cannot read them for himself, he classes everything in the nature of a document along with the white man’s word, as illustrated by the first army officer who betrayed him.
“If they won’t sign, let them starve,” said the soldier in this case, and he was not at all worried about it. But the special inspector was very much worried about it. He had to be more careful of his civil job; so he managed early one morning, with the seductive aroma of boiling coffee and the alluring scent of fried bacon, to develop a hungry Judas among the younger men, who signed for the whole lot; and lo! by such means all tribulation was avoided.
This time seventeen leaders were sent to Fort Huachuca, seventy-two were put to work on the roads of the reserve, and a lot of younger men, rebels in embryo, were dispatched to distant Indian schools, in the belief that enforced education would bring calm to their troubled spirits. Eight of these young men went to Carlisle. I had to deal with them when they returned, some seven years later. In fact, the Commissioner of that time advised me that they would prove a help in administering the affairs of the reservation. They returned arrayed in the clothing of the white man, but only three of them showed any signs of repentance. Those of the Hotevilla, with one exception, shucked the clothing promptly and went back to the blanket. They were sullen and suspicious, and they had not lost their memories.
I did not blame them in great measure, for at least four [[153]]had been married men when taken from the pueblo. Their wives now had other consorts, other children. The children of the rebel fathers would not forgive them, because they repudiated the faithless wives. The fathers blamed the Government for not protecting their households. And the women said to me:—
“You took our men. We were left alone. We had to keep the children alive, and this meant tending the fields and the sheep. Speak not to us of morals.”
At least that was the English meaning of their argument and reproof, whatever the Hopi terms of it. Quite so many “’Lispeths”: “You are all liars, you English”; and in the same manner their sons and daughters took to their “own unclean people savagely.”
Now a tribal marriage is a legal marriage, or so the courts have decreed, of course far removed from the haunts of the alien and having no specific knowledge of him or of his conditions. So, in strict accordance with sacred property rights and the Great Book of Platitudes, it was my duty to say to the outfit assembled: “You, hussies, are guilty of adultery, and many of your children are illegitimate; while you, impenitent rebels, may not take other wives, since by so doing you would commit bigamy; and each of you, every one, all and several, to wit, should have long terms in the guardhouse.”