In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

They dance six long dances, and after each, in a processional bacchanalia, leave the scene of the dance, and with splendor of waving color, file upward on ladders on to the roofs of the houses and disappear through holes in the roof into the two kivas, or council chambers of the men and of the women.

It is also a Mexican holiday, and near by goes a dilapidated "merry-go-round," worked by hand by two men, with the wretchedest burble of music, a torn canvas roof, and a flag. Somewhere, also, in the background, a cowboy is riding a bucking bronco while dark-eyed Mexican youth looks on.

But the mud huts of the Indians and the freshly made, green-branched street shrines of St. John and the Madonna are the real background of the fiesta. The last dance of the afternoon is danced bowingly and worshipfully into a green alcove, where stands a little silver and white Virgin, and an old Mexican is sitting beside her, playing dreamily on a violin. In one respect at least the Indians are not as they were. They have become Catholics. I am told that is merely a polite acquiescence on their part, and though with their faces they bow to the Madonna their hearts know her not.

In the course of the summer we rode to seven or eight Indian villages; sometimes to dances, sometimes just to see the villages themselves and the normal way of life in them. And we were much besought to buy turquoise rings and bracelets and brightly woven saddle blankets and rugs. Some visitors to Santa Fe bought great quantities of these things, and one of the poets disported five or six large silver and turquoise rings on his fingers and had more still in a drawer. Nearly all the ladies of Santa Fe had waist belts adorned with silver conches. The Indians work the same turquoise mines which have been theirs immemorially, and they mine also silver, though I think not a little of their silverware is now derived from molten dollars. Paper money seems always inacceptable to the Indians. So one always carries a weight of silver in one's pockets when traveling in these parts.

Each pueblo is a community and lives a communal life. Their land is held in common, and is inalienable. I believe their title derives from the King of Spain, legalized by the Mexican Republic and recognized by the United States when they conquered the country. Much of the best land, however, has been stolen from them. There are many squatters, both English- and Spanish-speaking. In many places their water has been diverted, and they have been left stranded on yellow sands. They have never been able to defend themselves in civilized courts, being incapable of grasping the procedure—and they have suffered accordingly. All this summer and autumn there raged a campaign fostered by the artists and literary colony in Santa Fe, for the protection of the Indians and the institution of new works of irrigation to give them back their lost water. Thanks to this campaign a spoliatory measure which passed the United States Senate, commonly called the "Bursum Bill," was recalled. The object of this Bill has been chiefly to give a legal title to the squatters. There is a good deal of hope that, having frustrated the passing of this bill, the Indian Committee of Santa Fe will have been able to introduce into Congress a highly practical measure which at the same time would help and protect the Indians, benefit the squatters, and pay for itself. This is a bill for new irrigation works and compensatory land grants to the Indians.

The great problem of living is that of water, and more than half the Indian dances are prayers to a nature god for rain. The description which I give here of our ride to Santo Domingo pueblo to their greatest festival may give some suggestion of the desert and the Indians praying for rain.

We rode down from the mountains with their green pastures to the parched valleys and plateaus, and were told irrigation had ceased for want of water. The river beds and channels and dykes were yellow and dry and scorching. Rivers, instead of broadening out, grew less as they flowed—attenuated. They became trickles, they became the mere wetness of the tongue in the mouth, they disappeared.

Even the cactus has withered. The roselike cactus blossoms of the higher mountains are no more. The fresh, green, spiny stalks are brown and frightful in death. There is no grass for the horses, and the only green things on the waste are rank, poisonous, deep-rooted weeds which draw their sustenance from the moisture which is far below.

The bones of dead cattle tell a melancholy tale of thirst. Woe to the herd of the cowboys who do not know where water is to be found. They are driving their herds over vast distances—from California into Texas or beyond; they are taking their time, feeding well as they go. Or they ought to be feeding well. And the cowboy's mind-map of the world is one of hidden springs and constant pastures. So they have driven the herds upwards, even though that be out of their way. For there is no water or pasture below.

Our horses would fain return. When we rest them at noon they trail their reins after them and start homeward and are not easily captured. We have found alkali water in the depths of an arroyo. The horses try to drink it but lap up bitter sand instead. They quit trying to drink it and lie down on it instead and try to roll in it.