The Essential Writings of James Willard Schultz. James Willard Schultz
we had n’t been getting surprises from the time he came in. “But, first, what of the bad men of the forest — have you seen any of them? or had news about them?”
I answered that we had seen none of them; that the sheriff’s men seemed to be unable to find them.
“Well, now to surprise you,” he said. “When we got the passageway clear and my old men started to crawl in past where the rock had lain, the one in the lead, carrying his light of pitch-pine splinter, came to a sudden stop and cried out so loudly that even I could hear him: ‘Here is death! Here is the skeleton of a man!”
“I could not hear what more he said; just the rumble of voices came to me where I sat, up on top at the edge of the place of descent. But soon they came backing out, one by one, and climbed the willow rope and sat beside me, and old White Deer — he who had carried the light — said: ‘No, brothers, the bones there are the bones of an Apache. I am sure of it, for I held the light high and saw that the leg bones ran down into a pair of rotting, curved-up toes Apache moccasins. Beside the bones is a rusty old cap-lock gun, another proof that he who died there was an enemy. None of our people would have carried a white man’s weapon into the sacred place.”
“And now it is defiled, forever defiled by what lies in there. We may as well turn about and go home!’ cried one, in great distress.
“No! Not so,’ White Deer answered. ‘Look you! Rain God himself dropped that roof rock, trapped our enemy right there in the kiva. No.
More than ever he likes his kiva because of what he has done there. He does n’t like the Apaches any more than we do. They don’t pray to him for rain; they hate it because it leaks down through their miserable brush houses and wets their skins.’
“But if we go in there we cannot escape brushing against what lies in the passage, the Apache bones, the gun, and we shall become tainted and our prayers as nothing,’ said another.
“‘The passage shall be cleared for us: our young student shall clear it,’ White Deer answered.
“‘What ? I clear it — I drag out those bones, and the gun; then shall I become tainted!’ I cried
“‘But to keep us free from taint is one reason why we have you with us,’ he told me. ‘Of course you will become tainted, but as soon as we return to Oraibi, you shall be made clean in our Flute Clan kiva.’
“‘What is to be done with the enemy things?’ I asked.
“‘You will drag them out of the passage to the edge of the hole going down into the Under World, and when I have said a prayer, you will drop them into it,’ he said; and I followed him down our willow ladder to the ledge, where he lighted the pine splinters for me — ”
‘‘But matches are white men’s things!” Hannah cried; and I smiled, for I thought we were to show him how inconsistent his old men were.
He smiled too, and answered:
“We have with us the fire tools of the Flute kiva: a piece of flat wood, and a sharpened stick, like an arrow-shaft. The point of it is set against the flat wood and surrounded with dry rotten wood, and then the stick is twirled between the palms of one’s hands until it burns into the flat wood and sets the rotten wood afire. That is the way we make fire; the ancient way; the one pure way!
“Well, I took the light and crept into the passage and soon came to the Apache bones and the gun lying beside them. I found, also, a rotting rawhide pouch containing many bullets, and then a powder horn, and when I shook it and found that it was empty, I laughed, for I knew just what that Apache enemy had done: he had gone into Rain God’s kiva to destroy whatever offerings my people had placed there, and when he found that Rain God had trapped him, he had fired his gun, hoping that his people, camped somewhere below, would hear it and come to him. So long as he had powder he had hope; but when he fired the last charge of it, and no one came, then he knew that he must die. Oh, I am sure that he then tore at that fallen rock until his fingers bled. And every time that he cried out to his Apache gods to help him. Rain God mocked him. He suffered terribly from thirst; from hunger; and after days of suffering, died.
“‘Ah, ha, Apache dog! You would do wrong to our sacred kiva!’ I said, and got below the bones and the other things and began pushing and tossing them ahead of me up the passage, and with them an old knife in its rotting sheath, until I had them all out upon the open ledge. Beyond them stood White Deer, and above, looking down at us, the other old men. White Deer made a certain prayer, and then a sign to me. I swept the whole pile of things from the ledge into that straight-down hole in the mountain that goes to the Under World. We heard them striking, rattling from wall to wall of it for a long time. Said White Deer, then: ‘Our people down there in that rich and happy land, from which we all came and to which we shall all return — they will rejoice over the presents that we have just dropped down to them. They will dance over those Apache bones!’ And then he took the light from me and crept into the passage. I climbed up on top and sat with the others, awaiting his return.
“He was gone so long that we began to be worried about him. But at last he came out upon the ledge and climbed up to us, and handed me the ancient bow and arrows, the points that had dropped from them, and told me to repair them and we should then have a real weapon of defense. Just as the description of the kiva had been preserved by the priests of the Flute Clan, so had he found it, he said, except that there remained in place only one of the sacred ollas, a beautiful, small-neck, white olla with paintings in black of rain clouds, lightning, and the winds. All the others had been smashed upon the rock floor, no doubt by the Apache whom Rain God had trapped. There was much dry, powder-like brush scattered about, remains of the beds of priests of the long ago, and under a heap of it he had found the bow and arrows.
‘‘Well, my old men have kept me busy all day, bringing up brush for their beds and wood for their fires, and there they are, comfortable in the kiva, and beginning the long and secret Rain God ceremonies that we hope will bring much water to our plantings, away out there in the desert.
“And I ” — he cried, straightening up, clapping his hands together, his eyes shining — “if all goes well, next spring I, too, shall be a priest of the Flute Clan, and I shall know all the secrets of the kiva, and be praying for heavy rains for the gardens of my people.”
“And what will your teachers say to that?” Hannah asked him.
“Oh, they will be mad, very mad at me; they will call me names!”
“I don’t understand you,” I told him. ‘‘Hating white men’s ways and religion, as you do, why have you learned all that they could teach you? ”
He looked at me and at Hannah very earnestly before he answered. “I will tell you,” he said, “for I am sure that you two must have pity for my poor people. At first I did not try to learn. It then came to me that it would be well to understand English, for I could stand around and know what the whites were saying about my people, what more wrongs they planned to do them. Our priests heard about my intention and urged me to learn all that I could get out of my teachers, and from books, so that I can be a wise interpreter for them, for the Hopi people. Oh, how hard I have studied! I have learned much! It is now planned that I shall become a priest of the Flute Clan, and then go to Washington, face the President, and demand that certain things be done for us. I shall say to him that the Constitution of the United States guarantees religious liberty to us all, yet his Department of Indian Affairs forcibly takes our children from our homes and obliges them to learn a religion that is not ours. I shall say to him that we want to be as free as the white people are. I shall ask him to recall the agent, and other men he has placed with us, and to order the different missionaries to get off from our land, to keep entirely away from our villages, his schoolteachers, too, so that we People-of-Peace be left to the peace that is rightfully ours.’’
‘‘And if the President refuses — he may even refuse to see you — what then?” Hannah asked.
He smiled. “Then I shall go to the newspaper men,” he answered. “I shall give them a story of our wrongs and of our demands that they will gladly print. Once the people