From San Anton’ on, as we left behind us the big mushroom cities of Texas, the country became more and more sparsely settled. The few people we met, mostly small farmers ploughing their fields primitively, bade us a courteous good day in Spanish, for in this country Mexico spills untidily into the United States. We soon forgot altogether that we were in the States. First we came upon a desert country, vast and lonely, with golden sand in place of grass, spiny, stiff-limbed cactus for trees, and strangely colored cliffs of lemon and orange and livid white. After days of this desolation we emerged upon the valley of the Rio Grande where its many tributaries rib the desert as they run from snowy peaks to join its muddy red waters. The air here is crystal keen, warmed by intense sun, cooled by mountain winds, and sweetened by millions of piñons dotting the red hillsides. Lilac and blue mountains ring the valley on both sides, and from them emerald fields of alfalfa, sparkling in the sun, slope down to the old, winding stream. Because its silt is so fertile, one race has succeeded another here—cliff-dwellers, Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and American—and a remnant of each, save the earliest, has clung where living is easy. So we came all along the Rio Grande for a hundred miles to little groups of towns, each allotted to a different race keeping itself to itself, Mexican, American, and Indian.
It was under the deep-blue night sky that we saw our first pueblo town. Out of the plains, it came surprisingly upon us. Solitary meadows with bands of horses grazing upon them, a gleam of light from an adobe inn at a crossroad, a stretch of darkness, strange to our desert-accustomed senses because of the damp breath from the river and snow-capped peaks beyond—then the barking and yelping of many mongrel dogs, and we were at once precipitated into the winding, barnyard-cluttered alleys of Isleta, feeling our way through blind twists and turns, blocked by square, squat gray walls of incredible repose and antiquity, caught in the mesh of a sleeping town. Instantly we had a sense, though no light was struck nor any voice heard through the darkness, of Isleta awake and alert, quickening to our invasion.
We were already a little awed by our encounter with the Rio Grande. Since twilight and quickly falling night came on, we had crossed and recrossed the sullen brown waters many times, feeling its menacing power, like a great sluggish reptile biding its time, not the less because the suspension bridges above it creaked and swung and rattled under our weight. The mystery of driving after dark in an unfamiliar country sharpened our susceptibilities to outside impressions. We felt the river waiting for us, like a watchful crocodile; a sudden misturn in the shadows, or a missing plank from a bridge, and our vague sensation of half-fear, half-delight, might at any moment be crystallized by disaster. It was a night when something dramatic might fittingly happen, when the stage-setting kept us on the sharp edge of suspense.
The Pueblo Indian, we had heard, differed from other Indians, being gentler and more peaceably inclined than the Northern races. We were not such tenderfeet as to fear violence, scalping, or sudden war-whoops from ochre-smeared savages. But it was our first experience with Indians (the first in our lives, in fact), save those tamed nomads who peddle sweet-grass baskets and predict handsome husbands along the New England beaches. We were a little expectant, a little keyed to apprehension. We knew, as if we had been told, that a hundred or more of this alien race had waked from their sleep, and lay with tightened muscles waiting for the next sound. Increased yelping from the mongrel pack might bring them swarming about our car, and we had no experience in dealing with them; no knowledge of their prejudices or language to trade with. In our haste we circled through the town twice, threading corrals and back yards. Suddenly, the town still tensely silent, we emerged into a shallow plaza. Crossing directly before our lights came a young man, tall and supple, his straight short locks bound with a scarlet fillet, his profile clear and patrician, and over his shoulders a scarlet robe, covering his white cotton trousers. As he passed us, unmoved and stolid, he spoke one word of salutation, and continued on his way across the silent plaza.
Simple as was the incident, the flash of scarlet against the blue-black sky, the dignity and silence of the Indian, made the climax we had been awaiting. Nothing else happened. But it had been a night whose setting was so sharply defined, its premonitions so vibrantly tense with drama, that only that little was needed to carve it on our memory.
We saw the town later, in broad daylight, swept by an unclean sand-storm, pitilessly stripped of romantic atmosphere. But the romance was obscured, not obliterated, for its roots are sunk deep in the past. Isleta has one of the finest built-up estufas of the pueblo towns. It has a thousand inhabitants, whose proximity to the railroad gives them the blessing or curse of the white man’s civilization. It has a church, whose ancient adobe flanks have been topped by two wooden bird-cages for steeples, for when the Indian adopts our ideas, his taste is rococo; when he clings to his own art, he shows a native dignity and simplicity. Lastly, Isleta has a ghost, well authenticated, and attested to by a cardinal, an archbishop, a governor, and other dignitaries, to say nothing of Juan Pancho, a man who does not lie. It is probably the oldest ghost in the United States.
About the time of the first Spanish penetration into the Southwest, a friar made his way to the Pueblo country through the hostile tribes to the east. In one of the towns north of Santa Fé, probably Tesuque, he found shelter and a home. The friendly Indians, although keeping him half-prisoner, treated him kindly. He soon gained their respect and affection, as he applied his knowledge of medicine to their physical, and as a priest administered to their spiritual needs, without giving offense to the Pueblos’ own beliefs. He seems to have been a gentle and tactful creature, who won his way by the humane Christianity of his daily life. Gradually, as they became better acquainted with him, they admitted him to the inner circle of village life, even to the sacred ceremonies and underground rituals of the kiva. He was taught the significance of their medicine and of their tribal and religious symbols. Almost forgetting his alien blood, they had made him one of themselves on the day, twenty years later, when news came of the approach of armed conquistadores, with Coronado at their head, seeking plunder and the treasures of Cibola the legendary. Whether such treasure existed has never been known. If it did, the secret was closely guarded by the Indians. Perhaps the monk had been made their confidant. At any rate, he knew enough to make certain factions in the tribe regard him as an element of danger, when he should again meet with men of his own race, hostile to the people of his adoption. Would he remain true, thus tempted? It was a question of race against individual loyalty, and one Indian, more fanatic and suspicious than his brothers, cut the Gordian knot of the difficulty with a dagger, planted squarely in the back of the God-fearing friar.
THE CHURCH AT ISLETA.
A church, whose ancient adobe flanks have been topped by two wooden bird-cages for steeples.