USA > Arizona > History of Arizona, Vol. VII > Part 7
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"Nor is the ecclesiastical much distinguished from the civil, with them; for the head chief combines with his political office the caciqueship, or that which in Zuni is distinctively religious, being termed Kiakwemosone, or 'Mastership of the House,'-a kind of high-priesthood. He not only presides at the more important councils, makes treaties with other tribes, etc., directs war parties, and condemns criminals, but also prays, offering sacrifices toward securing rain, propi- tious seasons, and success in the chase for his children, as he terms his nation. He receives, contrary to the Pueblo practice, tithes for his VII-7
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offices, and is usually as wealthy as any member of the tribe, although by no means exempted from labor in the field or the hunt. Neither he nor his subchiefs wear insignia of rank about their persons, so far as I could discover.
"The present head chief, Ko-hot, is nick- named Navajo. He is a man of the most won- derful character. His portrait in profile, as I look upon it, and to the sketching of which he submitted with ease and pleasure, bears a re- markable likeness to Washington. I cannot forbear giving two instances of his judgment, which exemplify his fine sense of justice, but at the same time his unrelenting will, in any measure, however severe, for the good of his own people. When the Apache-Mohaves were moved by the government to San Carlos, one of them, discontented, returned through his former country, and after great suffering reached the home of the Havasupai. He expressed his wish to live with the latter people to the end of his days. Ko-hot convened a council, and after long and fair deliberation concluded that it would be offensive to the Americans should he be harbored, and endanger his own people, lead- ing ultimately, to their removal as well. He therefore informed the Apache that. notwith- standing he was a member of a nation of enemies, he felt for him, but could give him the choice of but two alternatives,-return to San Carlos, or death. The Apache, hoping Ko-hot would relent, replied that die he might, but re- turn to San Carlos he never would. Ko-hot arose, then and there, without one more word, and struck him dead.
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"When the officers of the cavalry expedition called a council, and told Ko-hot that their mis- sion was to determine the borders of his country for all time, and that it remained with him to decide how large it should be, he replied to the following effect : 'My people live by their coun- try and their river. They are small. Let your lines but include the river and the little plain we live on; for why should a small nation wish for a great country ? There are many other nations in the world. Some one of them-the Americans, perhaps, for they are a great people, and talk of making boundaries where we have lived very well for all time without them-might try, some time, if it were large and indivisible, to take our country from us. Where would the
Havasupai go ?' And he would not permit the boundaries to be placed a step above the springs where it leaps down into the pool under the lime- stone barrier.
"Aside from the head chief, perhaps the only representatives of an ecclesiastical order are the well-paid medicine men, some of whom, by virtue of their practices, are a sort of chiefs, and keepers of old traditions and songs, if my informant told the truth. They are believed to possess certain influences over the spirits, and exorcisms which cause disease, as well as over the benevolent spiritistic agencies which assist in its amelioration or cure. Incantation and jugglery are practiced by them, and as the dis- ease or influence is supposed to have an objective spiritual existence, the whole company around a sick person, over whom the doctor is practicing his insane manipulations, rise up at certain in-
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tervals of the song, and pound hard bodies, yell, shoot arrows into the air, and fire off guns, in order to assist the medicine man in its extrac- tion, or in frightening it away. No penalty for failure to cure seems to exist, save personal abuse, unless the doctor be accused of sorcery, in which case he suffers, as is the case with other Indians, the universal punishment of death. Like most other Indians, they have a good un- derstanding of the practice of surgery, and a re- markable knowledge of anatomy.
"Labor is not regularly divided, except be- tween the sexes ; save that among the men, arrow making and some such special arts are more practiced by those who excel in them than by others, and basket-making among the women. The men do all the hunting, bringing the game to camp, and skinning the larger kinds, the women cutting it up and preparing it for dry- ing or cooking. Both men and women gather the agave plant, in its season, with many festivi- ties, vying in the preparation of it for mescal, although the burden of the labor in burning it falls to the women. The men break up the soil, lay out and dig the acequias, etc., performing the heavier agricultural work, as well as the planting, while the women weed the crop and assist in hoeing. When the corn ripens, the women gather it and bring it in, make it ready, and store it in the little stone and adobe gran- aries under the cliffs, and in little obscure rock shelters. They also cook all the foods, make baskets and most other implements of household use, while the men cut out and sew the clothing both for themselves and for the women. Much
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of the heavier part of the work and drudgery falls on the women, who seem, however, per- fectly contented with their really hard lot.
"Sedentary agriculturists in summer, the Havasupai produce immense quantities of da- tila, mescal, watertight basketwork, and arrows. Nomadic hunters in winter, throughout the choicest ranges of the Southwest, they have become justly famous for the quantity, fine- ness and quality of their buckskins, which are smooth, soft, white as snow yet thick and dur- able. These buckskins, manufactured into bags, pouches, coats, and leggings, or as raw mate- rial, are valued by other Indian tribes, even as far east as the Rio Grande, as are the silks of China or the shawls of Persia by ourselves. All this material is bartered with the Pueblos for blankets and various products of civilization, the former being again traded to the Hualapai for red and black paints, undressed buckskins, and mountain lion robes. Their red paint, ochre of the finest quality, has such celebrity among the Indian tribes that, reaching the Utes on the north, and the Comanches in Texas, it sometimes travels, by barter from hand to hand, as far east as to the tribes of the Mississippi Valley.
"The engineering skill and enterprise of this little nation are marvellous. Although their appliances are rude, they are able to construct large dams, and dig or build deep irrigating canals, or durable aqueducts, which often pass through hills, or follow considerable heights along shelves of rock or talus, at the bases of the rugged and crooked walls of the canyon.
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The acequias, which have their fountain heads in these canals and viaducts, are wonders of in- tricacy and regularity; yet on uneven ground are laid out in nice recognition of the conformity to unevenness and change of level in the surface they are designed to water.
"Most wonderful of all, however, are their aerial trails. Through the western branch of the canyon, down from the Hualapai country, the trail for horses as well as foot travellers is over promontories, up shelves, along giddy nar- row heights, in and out of recessions, or over stone pecked slopes, such as would dismay civil- ized man, with all his means of moulding the rugged face of nature. At times, so impossible does it seem for any living thing to pass far- ther, that nowhere can the trail be traced; when a turn to some crack in the rock, almost hidden by intervening bowlders, and hewn down with stone hammers to give precarious footing, shows where it goes up or descends. Great ingenuity is shown in continuing the trail along the bare, smooth face of a cliff which slopes at an angle of forty-five, fifty, even sometimes sixty degrees. The surface, after being roughened, is overlaid with little branches of cedar, upon which large sticks and stones of great weight are laid, the whole being filled in with dirt and a sufficient quantity of pebbles to guard against washing
away. If such a surface be interrupted by a crevice, the two sides of the latter are notched, a fragment of rock fitted in, and the whole cov- ered as before described. Considerable nerve is required, however, to pass these trails. The foothold is always uncertain, and one of these
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oblique zones, along the centre of which the trail passes, is bounded below by fifteen hundred feet of jagged, rapidly descending rock masses; above, by two or three hundred feet of beetling, rotten cliffs.
"Besides their horses, which are adventurers as wonderful as the Indians themselves, through their canyon training, they have a few dogs, often wolfish, always mongrel, and six or eight lonely cats, which are extravagantly prized by their possessors, and well fed, yet so worried by dogs and children that they resemble half- starved wild beasts of the feline tribe rather than the descendants of the sleek, domesticated animal of civilization. Not unfrequently beauti- ful little coyotes are to be seen about the camp, and these, as the emblems of his own ancestry, his national deity, are affectionately fondled and petted by the Havasupai; being allowed a place at the family bowl even in preference to the women or children. Add to these certain sand lizards and many noisy birds of prey, kept more for their feathers than as pets, and the list of Havasupai domestication is complete.
"During intervals in the labor of the fields, the men may always be seen gathered in groups of six or ten, chatting together; and the women, always busy, exchange visits while at work about the fire, and the visitor is scarcely distinguish- able from the hostess, as she shares with her all duties in which the latter may be engaged. So also, when at work in the fields, the women are prone to gather in busy little groups, where their talk and merriment, free from the restraint of
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the men, are louder than about the household fire.
"The children are always boisterously at play, the girls with the boys, and are touchingly affec- tionate toward one another. The youth gather on level spots and run races, or play games of chance by the hour. They are fond of display- ing themselves on horseback; two, sometimes even three, mounting some little pony, and wildly galloping up and down the paths which thread the cornfields where the women and girls are at work. They improve their marksmanship and gain local celebrity, vying with one another in firing at the marks of nature's hand about the great cliffs of their subterranean home.
"Councils among the members of the tribe are incessant, though very rarely attended by the chiefs in a body, and never, save on occasions of the utmost gravity, by the head chief, Ko-hot.
"As illustrative of this, I may give the fol- lowing example: When I entered the canyon, warned of the characteristics of the Havasupai by Pu-la-ka-kai, I made a rule, in the first coun- cil, that any trade sealed by the customary hand- shake and 'a-ha-ni-ga,' or 'thanks,' should be regarded as final. During one of the four days of our stay, Pu-la-ka-kai traded one of his hides for a quantity of things, among which was a famously large buckskin. The next morning, the evil-looking, one-eyed fellow who had pur- chased the horse returned to trade back, or have the difference split by a return of the buckskin. Pu-la-ka-kai asked my permission, and I tersely refused. The man went away, soon coming back with a noisy, low-browed crowd, which increased
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in size and noisiness, until, toward evening, it was like bedlam about the hut of my still neutral host. Finally, a subchief advanced, and told me I must consent to a retrade. I declined. He then begged me, and my Indians, alarmed, be- came importunate. Still I refused. Pu-la-ka- kai pointed to a scar over his eyebrow, which he wore, he said, in remembrance of a former pro- ceeding of the kind, and once more implored me, for the sake of his and Tsai-iu-tsaih-ti-wa's wives and children, to consent. Now and then a man would leave, presently returning with a gun carelessly strapped over his shoulder, and I saw that things were growing serious; but I re- mained obdurate, paying no apparent attention to my own arms, yet seeing that they were within easy reach. After a little while, I sud- denly drew one of the two revolvers in my belt, sheathed it again, and stepping over to the dis- contented, one-eyed scoundrel, grabbed him by the arms, and ejected him from the premises. Immense excitement prevailed, but I quietly went back with a smile to my writing. The head chief was summoned. He came, gravely, through the babbling crowd, eating a kind of cake of cornmeal and sunflower seeds. I rose and greeted him pleasantly, spreading a blanket for him to sit on; and as he sat down, with a smile, he broke the cake in two, handing me the larger piece. I began to explain my writing to him, and, after conversing a little while, he said : 'I am about to go. You observe that I am never to be found in crowds of those who wrangle and gossip. It makes a father sad to see the foolish- ness of his children. It fills me with thoughts
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to see my people make fools of themselves, to hear them make meaningless noise; therefore I stay away from them. When they have any- thing to say to me, or you wish to see me, my hut stands under the cottonwoods, down by the river, and my fields are in front of it.' With- out a word in reference to our trouble, without so much as a well directed glance at the heated crowd, he went away as he had come, a picture of imperturbable dignity and gravity. The wranglers, in the most shamefaced manner, gave up alike their dispute and its object.
"The coming stranger is heralded by the first observer, the chief waiting at his own house to receive him or his embassy. Any hut at which he first alights, even though the poorest, is al- most sacredly regarded as his home. The in- mates flock out, however suspiciously they may regard him, remove the saddles and packs from his animals, arrange them around the sides of the dwelling, invite him to enter, seat him on the best blanket or robe, and immediately im- provise a meal for him, offering him, meanwhile, a drink of fresh water. During his wanderings about the village, wherever he may enter, he will almost surely find someone eating, even though it be late at night, and he will invariably be invited to partake.
"On meeting a stranger or a long-absent friend, the Havasupai grasps him by the hand, moving it up and down in time to the words of his greeting; and, as he lets go, lifts his own hollow palm toward his mouth, then, with a sud- den and graceful motion, passes it down over his heart. As an evidence of confidence in a
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newly made friend, a Havasupai will sometimes give to him that whereby, in the native belief, even the giver's life may be taken through sor- cery,-a hair, a bit of his skin, or a piece of his finger nail,-this being an inviolable contract of peace and mutual regard. Several of these hairs lie among my notes, as less pleasant than pathetic mementoes of such regard. Indeed, a number of my own locks are doubtless still cher- ished in sundry medicine bags, hanging from the wattled walls of my homes in Havasupai- gidri. One poor, aged fellow, observing me trim my nails one day, carefully gathered the cuttings together, and piteously begged me, by look and gesture, not to resent the liberty he had taken, or deprive him of his treasures.
"When a man dies among them, he is bathed and painted, dressed in all his richest apparel, and laid, with his face toward the rising sun, to await the funeral ceremonials. Throughout the fields and orchards, usually with corn and sun- flowers growing all around them, with vines and brambles covering them, are scattered little mounds of earth and ashes. These are the
funeral pyres. Over the summit, a huge collec- tion of wood is piled, and the dead, together with his various possessions, is laid upon the pile. This is lighted by the son and heir, or nearest other relative, and, as the flames shoot up and envelop the body, he who applied the light throws all his worldly possessions, together with those he has inherited, upon the burning pyre, slaying his favorite dogs and horses, and adding them to the last sacrifice. Upon the wings of the last film of smoke, the soul of his
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father rises, to wander whither it will,-to come back, and bring the summer rainclouds, to min- ister in many ways to the wants of his children; while the naked mourner sadly wends his way homeward, 'to begin life anew, as did his father,' he will tell you.
"The spirits of those for whom the last offer- ing has been neglected, become unhappy and evil ghosts, which, together with the souls of the enemy whose scalp has not been taken and burned, torment the living with the weird voices of the night or the lone moanings of the wind on the pine covered mesas; or, as demons of disease and death, obey the behest of the dread sorcerer, or war against the good offices of the happier souls.
"They are fairly acquainted with the princi- pal constellations, giving them names, and regu- lating the planting and hunting seasons by their movements.
"The grammatic structure of their language, though inferior to that of the Zuni, is neverthe- less quite regular. Intonation, as with the Chinese, repetition, as with the natives of Aus- tralia, are employed to vary the shades of mean- ing in words. Most of the consonants not occur- ring in other Indian tongues are common in the Havasupai, which is strikingly soft and rapid. Just as the music of the Zunis has caught the spirit of the desert winds, so have both the music and the language of the Havasupai been infused with the sounds of the rushing waters by which they are surrounded. As I listened to the weird song of a doctor, one night, it seemed more like the echoes of water in a cavern, or in resounding
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nooks of the deep canyon, than like the music of a human being.
"It is indeed, an interesting question how far man's environments, climatic, physical, even biologic, have influenced the sound of his music and language. Possibly of the same family of Indians as the Zunis, there are, nevertheless, ele- ments of sound in the music and words of the Havasupai, unpronounceable by the Zuni, never heard in his music. On the other hand, the music of the Hualapai, on the plains to the west- ward, the undoubted fathers of the Havasupai, is as strangely in keeping with the wild, dry, forest-clad hills and valleys of his native land.
"Possessing nothing but a rude architecture, their art is correspondingly crude, being mostly confined to the patterns on their basket work, and the paintings on their bows and arrows. The basket work, by virtue of the regular arrangement of the splints, is often beautiful. But few people live, however, whose apprecia- tion of art seems as great compared with their limited practice of it.
"They are mimics, but their dances-a few rude shuffles, half religious, half social-are neither representative nor picturesque, as are the cachinas or ka-kas of the Pueblos. 'We know of these things,' said Ko-hot, 'but we are the children of the Coyote, and he did not teach our fathers to make themselves happy or pros- perous by such means; therefore, our fathers did not teach us.'
"The Havasupai have, among themselves, few of the crimes which destroy the peace of most nations. A great family in a single house, they
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have learned to do to others as they would be done by ; not as a golden rule,-ah, no !- but as policy. They are virtuous, and, although base liars, are honest in the use of property to an incredible extent. Not the smallest possession of another is ever appropriated by one of them, and a button or insignificant bead, lost in the sands, would invariably be brought to us, if found by either children or the staggering grey- head. The parents are excessively fond of their children, and the latter, though wild and inde- pendent, and never corrected by cross word or sharp blow, are remarkably obedient.
"They are not fair dealing toward the enemy. Ko-hot told me, with strange frankness, that a few years ago his people joined other Indians in war against the whites, and, regarding them as enemies, stole horses and cattle from them whenever they could, bringing them down into the canyon, where they either sacrificed them or killed and ate them. 'But,' he added, 'the time has come when I see this is wrong, and my people will listen to me when I tell them to smile on the Hai-ko (American), to ask him to eat, and to let his poorest or most tempting posses- sion lie in the place it has been laid in; for has not the Hai-ko given to my children the hard metal and the rich garments you see all around you ? (This with a proud wave of the hand to- ward the array of wornout clothing in the coun- cil, and a downward glance at his own thread- bare soldier coat and well-patched breeches.) I am young (he was nearly fifty), but am I not old enough to remember how my people dug the soil with wooden hoes, or cut the poles of their
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cabins with stone axes, and skinned the deer with a knife of flint ? No, I take the father of the Land of Sunrise (Washington) by the hand, and my father of the Land of Sunset (General Wilcox) do I grasp by the hand, that we may look one upon another with smiling faces.'
"The worship of the Havasupai consists of prayers, made during their smokes, or at the hunting shrines, which are merely groups of rude pictographs along nooks or caves in the walls of the canyon. Here, seated on the ground, the worshipper blows smoke to the north, west, south and east, upward and down- ward; then says, in a low tone, some simple prayer, only one of which, addressed to the spirit of the Deer-God, I was able to record :
"'Let it rain, that grass may grow for the deer,
Go not away, O deer, from my arrows and weapons. Thou art ours; by thee do we live.
Go not away, but remain to minister to our wants, to accept of my sacrifices.'
"The Havasupai believes that the source of his river is sacred and pure; that polluted by the touch of man it would cease to give forth its waters, and the rocks of the canyon would close forever together.
"Ko-hot told me, one morning, the following beautiful story of the origin and history of his nation :-
"'When the world was new it was covered with waters, save where a single mountain peak to the north looked out above their surface. Here, alone, wandered the great Coyote. Mankind lived in the four dark cave-plains of earth, be- low this mountain, until, under the guidance of a great cacique, they journeyed up from one to
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the other, and were finally led out into the light of the sun, through a hole in the mountain. No sooner had the leader come out than he was over- whelmed by the bright light and the angry waters, and died; and while the people were weeping and wondering what they should do, the Coyote came, and said to them, 'Burn the body of your father, and scatter the ashes thereof upon the face of the water; then they will begin to dry away and the earth will grow hard.' 'Alas! we have no fire,' said the people. So the Coyote volunteered to fetch it, and forthwith ran far away in search of it. When he had gone, and the people, wondering if he would re- turn, were still mourning, the bluebottle fly, who was sunning himself on a dry branch, comforted them by saying that he would make fire for them. So, raising his wings, he rubbed them against each other, until the sparks flew out from them and ignited the branch he was perched on. The people collected great quantities of wood, laid the body of the cacique thereon, and set fire to it with the branch the bluebottle fly had lighted.
" 'The Coyote, who saw from afar the smoke of the fire they had kindled, was angry, and, run- ning back as fast as he could, came to the place just as the body was consumed. But the heart still remained, and, rushing into the fire, he grabbed it in his mouth, and ran away with it. The fire was so hot that it singed his face and forepaws; hence, to this day, the face and fore- paws of the coyote are black. He ate only a part of the heart, burying the rest; hence, also,
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it is the nature of the coyote to bury his food away in the ground.
"'Where the Coyote buried the heart a corn plant grew, and upon its stalk were six ears of corn,-yellow, white, variegated, black, blue, and red; hence, corn springing from the heart of man, is his life to this day. As the nations of men came out one after another, each was given an ear of corn; yellow to the Zuni, white to the Moqui, variegated to the Northern nations, a very little black to the Apache, and blue to the Hualapai; but the Havasupai, coming last, had only a little red ear given them by the fathers (gods).
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