At noon the Presbyterian missionary made his annual visit and, with the Agent and the District Nurse and the aid of a harmonium, struck up "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me." The Indians had marched out in their beauty; no ugliness now, no devil frightening, but a serene picture of physical loveliness. The Koshare, spirits of ancestors, mirth-makers, leaders of the dance, had been prohibited this year, their nakedness having been considered unseemly by the white onlookers. But the youth of the village were nearly naked, and nothing short of glory to their Creator.
The dance was like wind in the corn or fast-traveling shadows on the hills; it was like the dimpling of the waves where many waters meet together; it was like the arching of the necks, the waving of the manes of many horses on the prairie; it was like the trembling of morning light upon the mountains and the sea. The snowflakes emulated it but did not succeed. And all who watched seemed turned to stone, to perfect immobility, by the perfection of the movement that they saw. The hundreds of tall Navajos were like statues, and those on the roofs looking down on the wide, brown, sandy, open place of the dance—there were many on the roofs—looked like figures that had survived centuries and looked on unmoved hundreds of time, hundreds of years. They were completely and sharply silhouetted against the mountains and the sky.
The Jemez men were painted a dark yellow, and wore white moccasins threaded with silver bells. In their hands they carried gourds with peas in them which they rattled. 'Twixt their bare arms and an armlet they carried slips of green pine. They were crowned with leaves and feathers, they had turquoise necklaces on their smooth round necks. And their long, coal-black hair hung on their backs to the mount of their hips. The barefooted women wore green tablitas, like crowns, on their heads, and colored fajas about their waists. They had bracelets and rings, they held green branches in their hands. Their dance was a tremble, a departure from calm; the men's dance between them a prolonged ecstasy, a descending out of eternal movement into calm.
They surged up the village street, ever forward, ever more of them, more strung-out, more beautiful—accompanying at the side were dramatic groups in everyday attire, chanting, exhorting the unseen Powers, roaring together fantastic choruses of semimusical gibberish. And the drums beat inexorably, as if they were the voice of the gods, the control whom no one at any time had ever disobeyed.
You are changed to stone, yes, to the stone of the Stone Age. Babbitt has gone; there is only this that you see. Ah, no—for somewhere a church bell has been set a-ringing and a harmonium is playing a hymn; yes, there it is, in much rebellion and complaint—"Nearer, my God, to Thee!" Mr. Babbitt nonchalantly strides in among the dancers and distributes cigarettes which the dancers, being nearly naked, cannot put away. He will not be denied. He photographs the scene. He has a knowing look. The Indian Governor is angered, but what can he do? There is nothing the white man understands except force; neither manners, nor reason, nor what is sacred. So the will of the white man will prevail. The beautiful dancing will cease.
"I give it ten years," said the Forestry agent of the Government. "By that time they will all be citizens. It will be a Presbyterian village."
"Just like a village in the Highlands of Scotland," I hazarded.
The agent smiled. For he was a Highlander by extraction. The Scot, though sentimental at home about "the snowflake that softly reposes" on his native hills, about the heather, the kilt, the bagpipe, and the rest, is often the most unsentimental and prosaic fellow when in the presence of another nation's romance.
However, the Presbyterians have it not all their own way in Jemez. The Catholics claim it as their ground, sanctified by the blood of Franciscan martyrs. They are educating the children and making them, therefore, extremely naughty and ill-behaved during the dance. For they are taught to despise paganism. The pranks played by the children on their dancing fathers and mothers I should prefer not to mention in describing the beautiful dance. Yet they were there and were signs of the times.