if there was any one thing in the wide world i wanted to do more than another, it was to visit the new mexican pueblo where my friend tenatsali[7] spent so many years of his strange career. he had discovered it and made it his own and before his death he turned over to me his title to its romance and mystery. this was all he possessed in it, for even the stone house he built with money earned by literary work had dropped from his lavish hands. it happened one winter while crossing the continent i heard there was to be a dance at the pueblo. the news decided me. i stopped off on the railroad, hired a team from the sheriff and had him drive me down to the town. it was winter; snow covered the heights and we were both chilled through when we reached tenatsali’s big stone house, then a trading store. the farmer-agent, a jovial man, who had been the trader in tenatsali’s day, lived in the other end of the building. he welcomed me as an old friend and told me stories of tenatsali until late into the night, as we sat before his fire.
it was in his house tenatsali had remained concealed in the long interval from the time he rode out so debonairly on the war-path to take a scalp, and the arrival of a scalp from washington. he was obliged to perform a scalp-taking feat before he could be admitted to membership among the priests of the bow. as he would not secure a scalp in the orthodox way, he had to get one as best he could. it was a very old scalp, one from the national museum collected by lewis h. morgan many years before.
i slept soundly after the long ride, but, rising betimes, sought a guide that i might go to the village, which is like an ant hill, across the little river, and then climb to the summit of that mesa to the east which overlooks the great valley. the two possible interpreters, youths who had been reared by the trader, were both sequestered in the village as they were to take part in the dance. and so it was decided i could do no better than engage a schoolboy who, while he spoke little or no english, could at least show me the trail up the 176 mesa. in spite of the snow the boy was barefoot, and his single garment was scanty protection from the cold. we crossed the wide stretch of plain, rounded the mesa and took the steep trail on the farther side. it was half obliterated by the snowdrifts, but the boy ran lightly ahead, up and up, stretching me a hand at the steep places until we reached the broad, table top. there in an open shrine stood the image of the war god, ahaiyuta, his plumes bedraggled and blown about by the wind. we passed the ruins covered with spiny cactus and i waited while the boy, nimble as a goat, descended the trail beside the pinnacled rock to visit the old images of the war gods ranged in a row in their immemorial cave. there too he saw, i suppose, the painted jars that held the old masks of sayatasha. when he came back we visited the other war-god shrine and descended the mesa to return across the plain to the store, tired and hungry after our seven-miles’ round.
here we found people from far and near who had come to see the dance. there was jesus, the mexican, and french dan, falstaffian and dissolute. there was the missionary whom later i was to know better and the field matron, a wraith of a woman who went silently among the indians and gave them some drug she had discovered through an advertisement in the “boiler plate” of her home paper. there were the indians who fraternize with the whites, like the albino and the old mormon, or to give him his full name, ten cent mormon, because he had been baptized by the mormons in the early days and received ten cents to bind the bargain.
the conversation at the dinner table where we had a hearty, steaming meal was all about the dance, and even the sheriff was moved to express himself. it was the first time this particular dance had been performed for years. the arrow-swallowing society had given public exhibitions, but on this occasion there was to be tree-swallowing as well. it was plain enough that the agent and the sheriff really believed that the indians had supernatural powers.
the agent accompanied me to the village that afternoon and guided me to a place in the large, central court where i could see the dance to advantage. a red blanket was spread for us to sit upon, and we took our places with the expectant crowd. every living soul 177 in the pueblo, dressed in their best and gayest clothes, lined the roofs of the terraced houses.
few plays are staged more effectively than these performances. the adobe walls of the houses furnish a perfect background. the court seems entirely inclosed and the processions of dancers enter and return by passageways set at right angles on either side. in the centre of the plaza was a long, white, wooden box painted in colors with cloud-terrace and rain symbols which the musicians used as a resonator for their notched-stick rattles. while we talked, the agent pointed out familiar faces like ni?a, the pretty granddaughter of old nayuchi the war chief, and lusalu, the fat governor. the small children played on the edges of the crowd and mud-bedaubed clowns lolled around the painted box. two old men dressed in gala attire, with white smocks and gay bandas and sashes, took up the notched instruments and began scraping them in a rhythmic motion with plectra made of sheep bone. there are few more mysterious and disturbing sounds than this same scraping. the time is perfect, the rhythm inexorable. something was about to happen.
two long processions advanced slowly into the plaza. in single file, keeping perfect time, their turtle-shell, leg rattles in absolute unison, dressed all alike in kilts and armlets, with faces and bodies painted white, the dancers approached each other from opposite sides, and wonderful to behold, each dancer with head thrown back supported a tall spruce tree erect in his mouth. below were the bodies of the white-painted figures, robust and vigorous, and above a moving forest. the processions continued to advance, and curved round the plaza until they displayed their entire length, halted with a loud fanfare of gourd rattles,—and then became still and silent. there were women among them—and one wearing a white, cylinder-shaped mask. some children, neophytes, followed, and on one side a tiny boy with a miniature spruce brought up the rear. the dancers rested, withdrew the trees from their mouths and held them, butts upward with the top boughs resting on the ground. then it was that the full significance of the performance was revealed. the butts, rudely chopped to a tapering point eight or more inches in length, had been entirely swallowed.
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again the strident notes of the rattles sounded. the dancers took up their trees, elevated and adjusted them in their mouths and danced as before. there was the same volume of co?rdinated sounds, of gourd rattles, of resonant shells and the swish, swish of the garments. again the white mask danced on.... it grew dark and i left the plaza, in a daze. what did it all mean—the painted box, the swallowed trees, the white mask?
stewart culin
