In another room danced the Firegod, naked blackened, ugly. His whole body was soot colored and he had, like a string about his middle, the meanest of loin cloths. Far from being a Firegod he seemed an uncouth savage. But with him danced two Shaleco Birds, a Longhorn, and six Mudheads, and they made an astonishing medley.
Away in a corner, long-haired, long-faced, sat the chorus, with wide-open mouths, never ceasing their Ho-i-ho, ho-ho-ho, ha-ha-ha-ha, and beating on their tiny drums. Resplendent scarlet and orange colors lined the walls, the blanket cloaks of the tall, Moorish-looking Navajo Indians. Wampum glittered on every wall. Eyes glittered also. Glittered also the embroidered vests and strange blue horns of the Shaleco Birds—only the Mudheads made dissonance and disharmony, bubbling through their mud masks and calling out obscenities and bad jokes and posturing misshapenness. But all moved, back and forth, back and forth, tripping it, turning, marking time, waving hands to the time of the tomtoms in the corner.
What the Spaniards of Coronado thought of all this has not been recorded. Their eyes sought gold—but this is not a gold country; the Indians do not wear it, do not seek it. Even to take all their silver and turquoise away is not to equal one or even one tenth of the value of one of Montezuma's presents to Hernan Cortes. They must have been annoyed. The Shalecos, the Mudheads, the Longhorns! Had they ridden five hundred leagues to see these?
They had no poets with them, only brutal soldiers and vulgar priests. They were even capable of burning these innocent Indians alive, and proposed, as a lesson in their Christianity, to burn two hundred of them at once in one day. Even that was waste of time when the question of gold was in the mind. Behold, a clever Indian has started the story of Golden Quivira, and will lead Coronado a thousand miles further into the desert, away from Cibola which asks only to be left in peace.
The Spaniards in Southern Mexico found gems innumerable and gold without price, and they obliterated without a thought Aztec culture. But in the North they found nothing but sand and cactus, and so left the Indians for the most part at peace.
So to-day at the "center of the earth" the Shalecos still come down from the mountains and dance for the children of Cibola. We watched them till dawn—then we returned to our room. Emily, our little Zunyi hostess, was sleeping in my blanket on the floor, and was alarmed and about to get up again when she saw us return, but I gently put her back on the floor and patted her on the cheek so that she settled down to sleep again. The rest of us lay down on the floor in the miscellany of blankets and wraps and slept as we could for an hour or two till the sun came up. For it had been a tiring night, even for us who merely looked on.
Only next noon did I encounter Wilfrid Ewart, though he also had been pilgrimaging from room to room and dance to dance the night long. Which shows how much was happening in Zunyi when two friends could thus miss one another all night.
"What happens to-day?" he asked of a tall friendly Indian standing bareheaded in the snow.
"Shaleco go way back up into the mountains. Not come for another year," said he playfully. "Way up ... and no come for another year. Next year Shaleco come again."
And in a little while the six Shaleco Birds came out of the houses and crossed the river, and the Longhorns came, and the Firegod, and the one I call the Child of Dawn, and they danced in the snow which had melted under the noonday sun and in the mud. First the Longhorns danced alone. Then they returned to the pueblo and its streets and roofs, and smote men and women on their backs; once, thwack, twice, thwack, whilst the fleet-footed Shalecos danced by the river's edge.