The Making of the Great West (Illustrated Edition). Samuel Adams Drake
is made to fit, so as to crush the grain by pressure of the hand.
The unfermented dough is rolled out thin so that after baking it may be put up in rolls, like paper. It is then the color of a hornet's nest, which indeed it resembles. Ovens, for baking, are kept on the housetops.
The processes of spinning and weaving, than which nothing could be more primitive, are thus described by Lieut. Emory, as he saw it done on the Gila, in 1846.
"A woman was seated on the ground under one of the cotton sheds. Her left leg was turned under with the sole of the foot upward. Between her great toe and the next a spindle, about eighteen inches long, with a single fly, was put. Ever and anon she gave it a dexterous twist, and at its end a coarse cotton thread would be drawn out. This was their spinning machine. Led on by this primitive display, I asked for their loom, pointing first to the thread, and then to the blanket girded about the woman's loins. A fellow who was stretched out in the dust, sunning himself, rose lazily up, and untied a bundle which I had supposed to be his bow and arrows. This little package, with four stakes in the ground, was the loom. He stretched his cloth and began the process of weaving."
But these self-taught weavers were behind their brethren of the pueblos, whose loom was of a more improved pattern. One end of the frame of sticks, on which the warp was stretched, would be fastened to the floor, and the other to a rafter overhead. The weaver sat before this frame, rapidly moving the shuttle in her hand to and fro, and so forming the woof.
HIEROGLYPHICS, GILA VALLEY.
Pottery was in common use among them as far back as we have any account of the Pueblo Indians. Jars for carrying and holding water were always articles of prime necessity, though baskets of wicker-work were sometimes woven water-tight for the purpose.
Pueblo Government. Each pueblo is under the control of a head chief, chosen from among the people themselves. When any public business is to be transacted, he collects the principal chiefs in the underground cell, previously mentioned, where the matter that has brought them together is discussed and settled.
The pueblos also have officers, corresponding with the mayor and constables6 of a city, whose business it is to preserve order. In every pueblo there is also a public crier who shouts from the housetops such things as it may concern the people at large to know.
In some of the pueblos there is an abandoned Spanish mission church of unknown antiquity. The one at Acoma has a tower forty feet high with two bells in it, one of which is lettered "San Pedro, A.D. 1710." The church at Pecos is a picturesque ruin.
Footnotes
1. Zuñi have been studied by Mr. F. H. Cushing, who joined the tribe for the purpose.
2. Underground Cells, Spanish Estufas, were circular, without doors or windows, and had a kind of stone table, or altar, in them. One at Taos was surrounded with a stockade, and entered through a trap-door.
3. The Mandans say that the roots of a grape-vine, having penetrated into their dark abode, revealed to them the light of the upper world. By means of this vine, half the tribe climbed to the surface. Owing to the weight of an old woman the vine broke, leaving the rest entombed as before.
4. The Pimos live along the Gila, having moved up from the Gulf Coast within fifty years. They are a pastoral and agricultural people.
5. Montezuma of the traditions is not the Montezuma of Spanish-conquest celebrity.
6. Mayor and Constable. The first is called an al´cal´de, the second an al´gua´zil.
Last Days of Charles V. and Philip II.
We have here reached the high-water-mark of Spanish advance into territory now embraced within the United States. The moment seems well chosen in which to take a parting look at the two great men of their age, whose talents and energy had builded an empire so vast that, when the master-hand was taken away, it tottered to its fall.
Last Days of Charles V. Charles V. is thought to have hastened his death by the indulgence of so strange a whim, that one is led to doubt the soundness of his intellect.
He chose, now in his lifetime, to have his own funeral obsequies performed. For the purpose he laid himself down in his coffin which the monks then lifted on their shoulders and bore into the church. When the bearers had set the coffin down in front of the altar, the solemn service for the dead was chanted, the Emperor himself joining in all the prayers said for the repose of his soul. In the hush which followed the last office paid to the illustrious dead, all the attending monks passed silently out of the church, leaving Charles to pray alone in his coffin.
"The chamber in the Escurial Palace where Philip II. died is that in which he passed the three last years of his life, nailed by the gout to a sofa. Through a narrow casement, his alcove commanded a view of the high altar of the chapel. In this manner, without rising, without quitting his bed, he assisted every day at the holy sacrifice of the mass. His ministers came to work with him in this little chamber, and they still show the little wooden board which the king made use of when writing, or signing his name, by placing it upon his knees."
Tombs of Charles and Philip. "At the right and left of the altar, at the height of about fifteen feet, are two large parallel niches hollowed out in the form of a square. The one at the left is the tomb of Charles V., that at the right of Philip II. At the side of Philip II., who is on his knees in the attitude of prayer, are the prince, Don Carlos, and the two queens whom Philip successively espoused, all three also on their knees in prayer. Underneath, one may read in letters of gold:
PHILIP II., KING OF ALL THE SPAINS,
OF SICILY, AND OF JERUSALEM,
REPOSES IN THIS TOMB, WHICH HE
BUILT FOR HIMSELF WHILE LIVING.
"The Emperor Charles V. is also represented on his knees in the act of prayer. He too is surrounded by a group of kneeling personages who are identified in the inscription, of which we give only part.
TO CHARLES V., KING OF THE ROMANS,
HIGH AND MIGHTY EMPEROR, KING OF
JERUSALEM, ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA,
HIS SON PHILIP.
"All these statues are of gilt bronze, of a grand style and admirable effect. Those of the two sovereigns, above all, with their armorial mantles, are of a severe magnificence."—Alex. Dumas, the Elder.
Sword and Gown in California.
California is the name1 given in an old Spanish romance to a fabulous island of the sea lying out toward the Indies.
After a time, the Spaniards found out that what they had supposed to be a large island2 was really a peninsula, so the name presently spread