CHAPTER XVIII
THE LAND OF THE HOPIS
IN starting for Hopiland, that little island set in the ocean of the Navajo’s country, we had anything but a definite idea whether we should arrive at our destination, but we hoped for the best. We were used by now to steering our craft by desert signs, as a navigator steers his ship. The desert continually impresses one with its resemblance to the sea,—opalescent, glittering in the sun, its sands ribbed as by waves; sky and horizon meeting in unbroken monotony, and mesas floating on its surface like purple islands. We were dazed by its vast distances and always changing beauty. We made for great promontories looming up in a sea of sand; tacked and veered to the next landmark; skirted reefs of rock; and looked for windmills, arroyos and buttes to guide us as a mariner does for lighthouses and buoys. For us who had always known the restriction of well-marked, prim highways, it was a keen pleasure to rely on our newly awakened primitive faculties. For the first time we sensed the reality of expressions that the protected artificiality of cities had made valueless before. For the first time water was not a commodity which inevitably flows when a tap is turned; but the difference between life and death. Old Bible phrases became real in their vivid poetry. “Cattle upon a thousand hills,”—we passed them every day. “The shadow of a great rock in a weary land” we learned to avail ourselves of from the pitiless heat with deep gratitude. For a brief time, we had become as pastoral and elemental as David or Jacob.
Keams Canyon we reached at sundown,—a tiny, jagged little place, oddly charming, with hills packed behind it and a few government buildings striding the canyon. In that easy-going land, those who directed us had taken for granted that we should be looked after, regardless or perhaps because of the fact that Hopiland has neither hotel nor boarding house in its confines. The traveler must camp or depend on private hospitality, which is not, probably because of frequent abuse, as ungrudging as it is reported to be. We could have camped, but desert touring is exhausting, and by nightfall we seldom had strength left to attempt it. We were dog-weary from the heat and bad roads, but no hospitable door opened to us, as we had been assured they would. The agent was away, and we were directed from house to house, no inmate wanting us himself, but each thinking his neighbor might. At last a man more solicitous than the rest thought the minister might take us in. And he did, most cordially.
Here and there on the reservations we heard talk among traders and old settlers against the missionaries;—they were officious, or lazy, or ignorant of Indian psychology, or bigoted. Yet by far the finest hospitality we met on Indian reservations was from missionaries, and altogether we gained a general impression that they were mainly disinterested and sincere. Their work is far from remunerative, and they are resigned to constant discouragement.
After serving us with supper, the missionary invited us to a prayer meeting in his parlor. Four Indians and two babies comprised the prayer meeting. Slicked up and awkward, their faces shining with soap, they proved once more that clothes make the man. An Indian who is terrifying and dignified in beaded buckskin is only stolid in overalls and necktie. To the tune of a parlor melodeon they dismally sang “Brighten Up the Corner Where You Are,” though it was obvious from their expressions and the wails of the babies that if it were left to them the Corner would stay just as it Was. I could not help wondering, with all respect to the sincerity of our host, what advantage there was in offering Billy Sunday’s elementary twaddle to a people whose language is so subtle that a verb paradigm often has 1500 forms. But surely, when the Indian is taught to discard his own arts and crafts and culture, let us give him substitutes of an equally high standard from our viewpoint. Pater might pass over his head, but Poor Richard would not, for his homely commonsense would find an echo in the Indian’s own native philosophy. Probably the most valuable thing the missionary and his wife had to offer they thought the least of,—their warm friendliness and human interest in each convert and backslider, their folksy neighborliness with red people, and the unconscious example of their straightforward lives.
Keams Canyon is only eleven miles from the first mesa, and our car was soon climbing dunes of sand toward the base of the long, bold mesa on which Walpi is built. From below we could hardly discern the tiny villages perched on the cliff, so perfectly were the buildings fused with the gray rock itself, both in color and mass. Even the black specks which marked the position of doors and windows seemed like natural crevices in the rock. Mont St. Michel is the only other place I know where architecture is so completely one with its foundations.
As we climbed to Polacca, the Indian hamlet at the base of Walpi, the ruts became so deep that at the last we were buried to the hubs. A dozen little Indians, giggling and shy like boys the world over, ran to help us push, but their help was of little value. All our questions, though they are taught English at school, passed over their heads, and their replies were limited to “Yes” or “No,” shouted so hoarsely that we jumped involuntarily whenever they spoke. For an hour we chopped brush in the broiling sun, backed and shifted gears till the wheels caught at last, and we plunged up hill to the trader’s. He told us we were the first of a dozen cars stalled there that week to extricate ourselves.
The village seemed deserted as we passed through. Finally we met with a red-haired man with a vague chin who advised us to camp near the spring, to which he promised to direct us.
“Everybody in town seems to have gone to the next mesa,” commented Toby.