The Chief Singer of the Tepecano
There was unusual activity around the house of Don Pancho, a little thatch-roof hut of oval shape, possibly fifteen feet by eight. Two large posts supported a framework of poles on which was laid a gabled thatching of grass. Only toward the center of the house could one stand upright, and a strong push would have sent tumbling outside, the stones heaped in a wall without the use of mortar or mud, which filled the space between the eaves and the bare ground.
The unwonted stir in the house of Don Pancho did not betoken any epoch-making occurrence even in the uneventful history of the little village of Azqueltán which sheltered the remnants of the Tepecano tribe. It was merely that Don Pancho was awaiting the birth of his child. And so the women of the immediate neighborhood gathered inside the hut while the men conversed in low tones without. Francisco alone passed freely in and out. At last, after a longer pause within, he slipped quietly out of the door.
“Gracias a Dios! It is a son,” he said quietly and produced from somewhere a bottle of sotol[8] bought on his last journey to the nearest “civilized” village against this very event. The men crowded around him and drank heartily to the health of the newcomer. With true politeness they congratulated the father and then slipped away into the darkness toward their own little hovels. Only the squalling of the infant broke upon the stillness of the mountain air.
Again an air of unusual activity pervaded the village. Word had come that the cura from the neighboring town would arrive that day to say mass. The church and the adjoining curato had been opened and aired, the dirt swept from the floor and the dust from the crude figures of the crucifixion. For the little church was the pride of Azqueltán. A generation ago it had been built of adobe brick and stone quarried by civilized artisans, and its white front faced the torrid rays of the sun as valiantly as it did the sulphurous flames of hell. The little courtyard, too, shone with a freshly-swept air, not a blade of grass nor a speck of green marring its smooth surface.
At last sharp eyes detected a cavalcade slowly descending the tortuous path. Hastily Francisco climbed the shaking ladder to the roof of the church and seized the clapper. Well did he realize the importance of his office as mayor-domo of the church! And never while he lived would the Sr. Cura arrive without proper greeting! One of the several bells was still uncracked, and to it Francisco devoted particular attention. The bells held a place hardly second to the church itself in Don Pancho’s affections, for had they not been imported at enormous expense from that far away capital, the City of Mexico? A final clang and Francisco hastened down the quaking ladder to be the first to kneel before the jocund padre and kiss his hand. Roused by the pealing of the bells the inhabitants of the little valley began to wander in. Reverently they entered the church, kneeling on the brick floor, the men and women on opposite sides, while mass was said.
The service finished, the Aguilars, Francisco and Julia, his wife, stood up, bearing the child. Beside them stood Juan Márquez and his wife, as godfather and godmother. A few drops of water resented, a few ritual words, and Mother Church had gathered another soul to her bosom. José María was the name the cura entered in his record.
But had these intervening weeks been entirely uneventful in the life of little José or Pepe, as he was familiarly called? By no means! Francisco was too conscientious a man to take any chances with his son’s welfare. For centuries before the padres had told them of God and Christ, the forefathers had worshiped Father Sun, Mother Moon and Elder Brother Morning Star. In fact it was quite obvious that God was the Sun, the Virgin María the Moon and Jesus the Morning Star. For did not the beautiful picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe hanging in the church show her standing on the moon? The two religions could not be antagonistic, but merely supplementary, thought Francisco, as far as he thought on the subject at all. Nevertheless, there was no use arguing with the cura about it, for he would not understand. And so, immediately after the birth of little Pepe, Francisco made four prayer sticks with little squares of colored yarn attached, and went and deposited them at secret altars on the hills to east, north, west and south, breathing a prayer at each place for the health and fortune of his child.
Little José grew up to boyhood, his status in the world a rather anomalous one—a little lower than the half-blood Mexican peon on the rolling country to the south, a little above the pagan Huichol in the mountains, yet despised by both. Yet that worried him little. For was he not surrounded by loving parents and friends and a not ungenerous nature? To north and south stretched the canyon or barranca of the Bolaños, a great rent in the earth’s crust, carved out through countless ages by the little silvery rivulet hiding in its bottom. Hardly more than a brook in the dry season, it swelled to an impassable, turbulent torrent during the rains. On either side rose the steep sides of the barranca, those to the east leading to the rolling, flat country populated by the “neighbors,” the Mexicans, while to the west the mountains rose higher and higher to form the great Sierra Madre range in which lived the pagan Huichol and Cora Indians. Occasionally small groups of Huichol passed by or through the village on their way to or from their mountain homes, and José peeked at them from behind the shelter of his mother’s skirts, and wondered at their strange dress with many little woven bags around the waist, their queer hats, their bows and arrows.