XVI
FIDDLES AND DRUMS
For you and I are past our dancing days.—Romeo and Juliet.
Having had charge of the Hopi for a longer period than any other official of the United States Government,—eight years and two months, to be exact,—I venture to picture them and their empire. To have visited and counseled with them, to have wrangled with them, to have traveled long distances in all sorts of weather because of their childish factional quarrels; to have arrested and judged and disciplined them; even married them,—if that may be separately classed,—to have cared for them in severe illnesses and advised in times of stress; to have ransomed them from enemies; to have espoused their uninteresting cause in the face of Departmental opposition; and when their meagre business of living was over to have buried them—well, this ought to embrace an angle of vision.
Yet, I hesitate. Reflection cautions me that this may be presumption; for, after all, what do I know of the Hopi Indians?
During those eight long years I met on the reservation thousands of visitors—students and their mentors; painters and etchers and sculptors of distinction, and those who thought they were; photographers and lens-artists; ethnologists, philologists, and sociologists; ballyhoo men from Eastern department-stores and half-wits taking an outing; journalists and authors and publishers; geologists and [[192]]common “water-witches”; motion-picture men and others wearing puttees; actors and lecturers; composers, musicians, and vocalists; museum scouts and “scratchers”; clergymen and soldiers; Oxford men, Harvard men, men from Bonn; retired statesmen and unretiring politicians; representatives of foreign governments; persons from the far-famed city of New York; tourists, and caparisoned dudes, and simple guides; plain gentlemen and plainer roughnecks.
Some of them sought me out courteously to explain their missions, some of them just happened to see me en passant, and a few earnestly avoided me. The permit system was very irksome to those who did not have a good excuse. And I listened to many theories concerning the Hopi and their curious customs, and I made a brave effort to answer in some pleasant manner ten thousand questions. Finally, I prepared a plea in avoidance:—
“Don’t ask me. I have lived here only six years. Ask the chap camped now at the trader’s post—he came last week.”
I plagiarized this method from a brother superintendent who knew much of the Navajo and their rare designs in weaving.