Another character is “Tom Sawyer,” a Paiute Indian who lives with the Peaceful People at the East Mesa. As handsome as a Japanese grotesque mask and almost as taciturn, his gravity seems to have telescoped his squat figure and multiplied the wrinkles in his face, half hidden by his lank, grizzled hair. Keen, shrewd eyes has he and very evasive. Tom, however, is not “bad” in the Arizona sense, nor will his make-up allow him to be altogether good. He is, therefore, a man, for which this sketch is to be congratulated. While Tom’s early history may never be known to the world, his step in leaving the Paiute for the Hopi is very much in his favor. Here he fell naturally in his place as serf to Chakwaina, of whom something has already been said.
Tom became washerman for the Fewkes expedition while the party sojourned at Walpi. Percy, who prides himself on his faultless “American,” held the position in former years, but having gotten a few dollars ahead, felt above work at this time. It must be said that Tom is an excellent laundryman. The idiosyncrasies of wayworn civilized garb do not stump him; in fact, he is “ol’ clo’es man” for the whole East Mesa. His many quests for discarded garments to Winslow, Holbrook, and other points on the railroad are always successful. The people of Winslow affirm that wearing apparel often disappears from clotheslines and other exposed situations coincidently with the visits of Hopi, who clear the town of rags as the winds do of loose paper. When the physician of the place lost a pair of overshoes which were reposing on the back kitchen steps, he remembered too late that a Hopi had gone down the alley sometime before. The disappearance of the overshoes can scarcely arouse as much wonder as their presence and utility in arid, dusty Winslow. No doubt Tom has caused many of these mysterious disappearances and the spoils borne northward on his patient burros have promoted a dressed-up feeling among the Hopi braves.
It has not yet been found out whether Tom gave an exhibition of artistic lying or was telling the truth about the following matter. Tom was starting on one of his periodical clothes raids to Winslow, and he was asked to bring back a can of plaster. About a week later Tom returned with the following laconic tale, “Snake bite burro, burro die; me take can back, give to man.”
At the time it was thought that Tom had overloaded his burro with old clothes and had invented the story. There is much to be said on Indian invention. If Tom is living he is still an active citizen of Hopiland.
XI
THE ANCIENT PEOPLE
The Southwest has always been a storied land to its native dwellers. Mountain profile, sweep of plain, carved-out mesa, deep canyon, cave, lava stream, level lake bed, painted desert, river shore, spring and forest are theirs in intimacy, and around them have gathered legends which are bits of ancient history, together with multitude of myths of nature deities reaching back into the misty beginning.
Deep is this intimacy in the practical affairs of life, teaching the way to the salt, the place of the springs, the range of the game, the nest of the honey bee, the home of the useful plants, the quarry of the prized stones, and the beds of clay for pottery, for the desert is home and there is no thing hidden from keen eyes. From far off, too, came in trade shells from the Pacific, feathers from Mexico, buffalo pelts from the Plains, and, perhaps, pipestone from Minnesota, so that the land of sunshine was not so isolated as one might think, and its resources fed, clothed, and ministered to the esthetic and religious needs of numerous tribes of men from the old days to the present.
The white men who tracked across the vast stretches of the “Great American Desert” no doubt saw ruined towns sown over the waste, and perhaps believed them lost to history, little suspecting that within reach lived dusky-hued men, to whom these potsherd-strewn mounds and crumbling walls were no sealed book. The newer explorers have drawn the old-world stories from the lips of living traditionists, and by their friendly aid have gathered the clues which, when joined, will throw a flood of light on the wanderings of the ancient people. Through them it has been learned that each pueblo preserves with faithful care the history of its beginnings and the wanderings of its clans. This at proper times the old men repeat and the story often takes a poetical form chanted with great effect in the ceremonies. As an example of these interesting myths, one should read the Zuñi Ritual of Creation, that Saga of the Americans which reveals a beauty and depth of thought and form surprising to those who have a limited view of the ability of the Indian.
One thing is settled in the minds of the Pueblo dwellers. In the beginning all the people lived in the seven-story cave of the underworld, whence they climbed toward the light and after reaching the surface of the earth, migrated, led by supernatural beings. Where the mythical underworld adventures leave off begins a real account, telling the wanderings of the clans and the laying of the foundations of the multitudinous ruins of the Pueblo region. It may not be possible to connect all the ruinous villages with the migrations of the present Indians, for there is room enough in this vast country to have sunk into oblivion other peoples and languages, as the vanished Piro, who passed away since the white strangers came to Cibola, but much may be done to gather the glittering threads before they slip from sight.