The Essential Writings of James Willard Schultz. James Willard Schultz
Don’t ask!” he grimly answered, and rang off.
Shortly before ten o’clock our friend came up on to the crest of the summit, advancing toward us and waving his hands, and we soon met him.
“My old men have taken a liking to you two,” he said. “Only my archaeologist friend, of all the whites, has seen this Rain God ceremony, but just now, just as I was about to ask that you might see it. White Deer told me to come for you. Are n’t you glad?”
Dear, kind old men, my heart goes out to them, to all the Hopi people,” Hannah answered for us.
“Would that all the whites were of the same heart as you!” he said.
We walked on along the crest of the mountain, passed the cave hole, thirty or forty yards down the west slope, and came to a stand. Our friend said that we should there be quite close to the old men when they came up on top from the kiva. We seated ourselves upon some slabs of rock and waited for their coming. Our friend called our attention to Escodilla Mountain, thirty or forty miles to the east at the edge of New Mexico, its long high crest ending abruptly almost at the desert’s edge, and said that the Zuhi Indians went to its summit to pray for rain. Their pueblo in the desert was not more than a hundred miles north and west of the mountain. Hundreds of years back they had lived in the valley of the Little Colorado, and by means of their irrigating ditches had raised fine harvests of corn and other things. And then they, like the Hopi people, had been driven out into the desert by the Apaches and Navajos.
A slight disturbance of the rock caused us to turn suddenly and look the other way, and Hannah and I almost cried out at what we saw: the four old men coming up on to the summit from the cave hole, but apparently old men no more. They came stepping lightly up like so many boys, and, except for their moccasins, and broad-aproned breech clout — blue-black, with red, zigzag stripes, symbol of the lightning — were perfectly naked. Their bodies were painted a dull red.
All in line they came up on to the summit, not fifty yards from us, came to a sudden stop and raised their hands to the sky, and White Deer made a short prayer — to the sky gods, our friend whispered. They then looked down and prayed to the gods of the Under World, and in turn faced the east, the west, the north, and the south, saying a short prayer in each direction. That done, they began to sing, and, oh, what a strange, low, sad song it was. I can’t begin to say how it affected Hannah and me. I saw tears in her eyes, and I think that there were some in mine. Our friend was holding a hand to his eyes, and his lips were moving — in prayer, I thought.
The song ended, and the old men danced to the east to an accompaniment of lighter song, and then to the three other points of the compass, at last sitting down to rest.
“Soon begin their heavy prayers! You shall see! Oh, they are going to pray hard to Rain God,” said our friend.
“Can’t you tell us a little of what they will say?” Hannah asked.
“Yes, a little of it. They will cry to him: ‘O powerful god, have pity upon us, your Hopi people! Look down upon our paintings: see how the short sprouts of corn fade and the leaves of the squash vines droop! O powerful Rain God, spread your cloud-blanket above them, make it leak plentifully down upon them! Soak the earth plentifully with your water, O powerful one, so that our plants shall have full growth! Do this for us soon, powerful one, else our little ones, our women, we ourselves die upon our desert cliffs from want of food!’ There! that is some of the first prayer they will say.”
The old men arose, stood facing the east, and White Deer began the prayer, the others at times joining in it. They then sang for a time, danced, said more prayers, and when almost out of breath, sat down for another rest, and kept looking up in all directions at the sky. All the morning flocks of small, fleecy white clouds had been drifting slowly southwestward, and now they had merged, most of them, into several clouds of great extent, white-edged, dark in the center, and turning darker and drifting ever so slowly around the summit of our mountain, and Mount Ord, close to the west. And presently a flash of lightning leaped from the cloud close above us and just south of the lookout, and then came a loud rumble of thunder. The old men leaped to their feet, raised their hands toward the cloud, and all four went wild with excitement, shouting, singing, praying, dancing, repeatedly raising their hands and then dropping them, fingers down extending, a most suggestive sign for falling rain.
Our friend became as excited as they were. He, too, stared up at the big cloud coming nearer, at other clouds slowly drifting toward it from the east and north, prayed in a voice that became more and more tense, occasionally turning to us and whispering hoarsely:
“Rain God is coming!”
“He has heard our prayers! He accepts our offerings!”
“Oh, my friends! Rain God is good! He is going to water our poor gardens!” This last after another flash of lightning and a peal of thunder almost over our heads.
And at that those old men just about went crazy: they trembled as they cried out their appeals and waved their hands to the cloud. And, yes, I've just got to say it: Hannah and I became tremendously excited too. Of course, we did n’t believe that those poor old men were bringing the rain, if rain were really coming, but we could no more help sharing in their hopes and fears than we could help breathing. And we wanted rain as badly as they did, driving downpours of rain to put out the forest fires; to give life to our planted fields and the grass of our cattle range; and to put an end to the awful work of the fire-setters! A sudden shock of cold rain in our faces brought us to our senses, but increased the old men’s wild appeals to the sky, and our friend said to us: Go! Run to your little place over there. I will join you as soon as my old men go back into the kiva.”
We ran, circling past the old men and on along the crest up to the lookout, thunder and lightning booming and flashing all around us, and the rain becoming more and more heavy. We were quite wet when we got into the shelter of the station. I turned straight to the telephone, and when I reported the storm, the Supervisor shouted: ‘‘Good! Good! I hope it will rain a week!”
We built a fire in the little stove and waited for our Hopi friend to come to us. The thunder and lightning ceased; a great cloud rested upon the mountain and darkened the day; the rain came steadily down: it was killing the forest fires. We were very happy.
“Oh! Our bear skin: the rain will spoil it!” Hannah suddenly exclaimed.
“No, it is so well stretched that it will not be hurt — not if we keep the sun from it while it dries,” I told her. And, anyhow, I planned to cover it with what canvas we had.
The telephone was now every few minutes ringing the office, and we listened in. Green’s Peak, Nutrioso, Escodilla, Alpine, and the far-south stations of the Blue Range, were all reporting heavy rain. The storm was general, not local. It would surely last long enough to put out the fires. We waited impatiently for our Hopi friend to come, so that we could tell him the good news.
He came, a half-hour later, and smilingly stood and looked in at us through the open door: “Come in! Come in out of the wet!” I called to him.
“But I want to be wet!” he answered. “I want the rain to soak into me, for then I just feel that it is soaking into our gardens out there in the desert. Oh, are n’t my old priests powerful! They brought this rain: Rain God could not refuse their prayers and prayer offerings!”
“We have been listening to the telephone reports: rain is falling all over this great forest,” sister told him.
“Yes! Of course it is! Did you think that my priests prayed for just one little place? They asked for plenty for the whole country. They prayed and prayed Rain God to put out the forest fires as well as to give new life to our plantings! ”
“And what are they doing now?” I asked.
“Feasting, there in the kiva. Smoking sacred cigarettes. Singing their song of thanks to Rain God!” he answered.
“Well, let us go down to the cabin and feast, too,” Hannah proposed.
“But we have a lunch here,” I said.
“Oh,