Part 10

And, after that, the next best thing is to be a Southerner, either by birth or descent. People who have Southern blood in their veins are very proud of it and can join a club on the strength of it; and some of them do a lot of talking about it. The definition is rather elastic--anybody whose ancestors worked on the Southern Pacific is eligible, I think.

Of course, there are a lot of real Southerners; but there are a whole lot more who--so it seemed to me--are giving remarkably realistic imitations of the type known in New York as the Professional Southerner. San Francisco excels in Southerners--the regular kind and the self-made kind both.

I was out there too early in the year to meet the justly celebrated San Francisco flea. He's a Native Son, too; but there isn't so much bragging being done on his account.

LOOKING FOR LO

Looking for Lo

IF it is your desire to observe the Red Indian of the Plains engaged in his tribal sports and pastimes wait for the Wild West Show; there is sure to be one coming to your town before the season is over. Or if you are bloodthirsty by nature and yearn to see him prancing round upon the warpath, destroying the hated paleface and strewing the soil with his shredded fragments, restrain your longings until next fall and then arrange to take in the football game between Carlisle and Princeton. But, whatever you do, do not go journeying into the Far West in the hope of finding him in great number upon his native heath, for the chances are that you won't find him there in great number; and if you do he will probably be a considerable disappointment to you; because, unless he is paid for it, the red brother absolutely declines to be picturesque.

I am reliably informed that he is still reasonably numerous in Oklahoma, in North and South Dakota, and in Montana and Washington; but my itinerary did not include those states. I did not see a live Indian--that is to say, a live Indian recognizable as such--in Nevada or in Colorado or in Utah, or in a four-hour run across one corner of Wyoming.

In upward of a thousand miles of travel through California I saw just one Indian--a bronze youth of perhaps twenty summers and, I should say, possibly half that many baths. He was wearing the scenario of a pair of overalls and a straw hat in an advanced state of decrepitude, and he was working in a truckpatch; if a native had not told me what he was I would have passed him by for a sunburnt hired hand.

I saw a few Indians in New Mexico and a few more in Arizona, but not a great many at that; and these, as I found out later, were mainly engaged to linger in the vicinity of stations and hotels along the line for the purpose of adding a touch of color to the surroundings and incidentally selling souvenirs to the tourists.

Mind you, I'm not saying there are not plenty of Indians in those states; but they mostly stay on their reservations and the reservations unfortunately are not, as a rule, near the railroad stations. A traveler going through the average small Southern town sees practically the entire strength of the colored citizenry gathered at the depot and jumps at the conclusion that the population is from ninety to ninety-five per cent. black. In the West he sees maybe one little Indian settlement in a stretch of five or six hundred miles, and he figures that the Indian is practically an extinct species.

Of course, though, he is not extinct. In these piping commercial days of acute competition he has no time to be gallivanting down to the depot every time a through train rolls in, especially as the depot is frequently eighty or ninety miles distant from his domicile. He is closely confined at home turning out souvenirs. It is a pity, too, that he cannot spare more of his time for this simple and inexpensive pleasure. In one week's study of the passing tourist breed he could see enough funny sights and hear enough funny things--unintentionally funny things--to keep his family entertained on many a long winter's evening as they sit peacefully in the wigwam making knickknacks for the Eastern trade.

No, sirree! Those Southwestern tribes are far from being extinct--especially the Navajos. You can, in a way, approximate the tribal strength of the Navajos by the number of Navajo blankets you see. From Colorado to the Coast the Navajo blanket carpets the earth. I'll bet any amount within reason that in six weeks' time I saw ten million Navajo blankets if I saw one. As for other things--bows and arrows, for example--well, I do not wish to exaggerate; but had I bought all the wooden bows and arrows that were offered to me I could take them and build a rustic footbridge across the Delaware River at Trenton, with a neat handrail all the way over. Taking the figures of the last census as a working basis I calculate that each Navajo squaw weaves, on an average, nine thousand blankets a year; and while she is so engaged her husband, the metal worker of the establishment, is producing a couple of tons of silver bracelets set with turquoises. For prolixity of output I know of no female in the entire animal kingdom that can compare with the Navajo squaw--unless it is the lady Potomac shad.

Right here I wish to claim one proud distinction: I went from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back again--and I did not buy a single blanket! Since the return of the Lewis & Clark expedition I am probably the only white person who has ever done this. Goodness knows the call was strong enough and the opportunities abundant enough; blankets were available for my inspection at every railroad station, at every hotel, and at every one of two hundred thousand souvenir stores that I encountered--but I was under orders from headquarters.

As we were bidding farewell to our family before starting West, our wife said to us in firm, decided accents: "I have already picked out a place where we can hide the Cheyenne war-bonnet. We can get rid of the moccasins and the stone hatchets and the beadwork breastplates by storing them in a trunk up in the attic. But do not bring a Navajo blanket back to this already crowded establishment!" So we restrained ourselves. But it was a hard struggle and took a heroic effort.

I recall one blanket, done in gray and black and red and white, and decorated with the figures of the Thunder Bird and the Swastika, the Rising Sun and the Jig Saw, and other Indian signs, symbols and emblems. It was with the utmost difficulty that I wrenched myself away from the vicinity of this treasure. And then, when I got back home, feeling proud as Punch over having withstood temptation in all its forms, almost the first words I heard, spoken in tones of deep disappointment, were these: "Well, why didn't you bring a Navajo blanket for the den? You know we've always wanted one!" Wasn't that just like a woman?

Though I refrained from seeking bargains in the blankets of the aborigine, I sought diligently enough for the aborigine himself. I had my first glimpse of him in Northern New Mexico just after we had come down out of Colorado. Accompanied by his lady, he was languidly reposing on the platform in front of a depot, with his wares tastefully arranged at his feet. As a concession to the acquired ideals of the Eastern visitor he had a red sofa tidy draped round his shoulders, and there was a tired-looking hen-feather caught negligently in his back hair; and his squaw displayed ornamented leggings below the hems of her simple calico walking skirt. But these adornments, I gathered, constituted the calling costume, so to speak.

When at home in his village the universal garment of the Pueblo male is the black sateen shirt of commerce. He puts it on and wears it until it is taken up by absorption, and then it is time to put on another. These shirts do not require washing; but, among the best Pueblo families, I understand it is customary--once in so often--to have them searched. And thus is the wild life of the West kept down.

Farther along the line, in Arizona, we met the Hopi and the Navajo--delegations from both of these tribes having been imported from the reservations to give an added touch of picturesqueness to the principal hotel of the Grand Canon. The Hopi, who excels at snake dancing and pottery work, is a mannerly little chap; and his daughter, with her hair done up in elaborate whorl effects in fancied imitation of the squash blossom--the squash being the Hopi emblem of purity--is a decidedly attractive feature of the landscape.

The Hopi women are industrious little bodies, clever at basket weaving--and the men work, too, when not engaged in attending lodge; for the Hopis are the ritualists of the Southwest, and every Hopi is a confirmed joiner. Their secret societies exist to-day, uncorrupted and unchanged, just as they have survived for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. In the Hopi House at Grand Canon there is a reproduction of a kiva or underground temple. It isn't underground--it is located upstairs; but in all other regards it is supposed to conform exactly to one of the real ceremonial chambers of the Hopis. The dried-mud walls are covered thickly with symbolic devices, painted on; and there is an altar tricked out with totems of the Powamu clan, one of the biggest of these societies.

Just in front of the altar, with its wooden figures of the War God, the God of Growing Things, and the God of Thunder, is a sand painting set in the floor like a mosaic. When one of the clans is getting ready for a service the official high priest or medicine man of that particular clan sprinkles clean brown sand upon the flat earth before the altar and upon this foundation, by trickling between his thumb and forefinger tiny streams of sands of other colors, he makes the mystic figures that he worships. After the rites are over he obliterates the design with his hand, leaving the space bare for the next clan.

In the Hopi House at Grand Canon a sand painting sacred to the Antelope clan is preserved under glass for the benefit of visitors. The manager of the establishment, a Mr. Smith, who has spent most of his life among the tribes of Arizona, told us a story about this.

Two years ago this summer, a party of Mystic Shriners on an excursion visited the canyon. Mr. Smith chaperoned one group of them on their tour through the Hopi House. In the sand painting of the kiva they seemed to find something that particularly interested them. They put their heads together, talking in undertones and pointing--so Smith said--first at one design and then at another. An old Hopi buck, a priest of the Antelope clan, was lounging in the low doorway watching them. What the Shriners said to one another could have had no significance for him, even admitting that he heard them, for he did not understand a word of English; but suddenly he reached forth a withered hand and plucked Smith by the sleeve. I am letting Smith tell the rest of the tale just as he told it to us:

"The Hopi pointed to one of the Shriners, an elderly man who came, I think, from somewhere in Illinois, and in his own tongue he said to me: 'That man with the white hair is a Hopi--and he is a member of my clan!' I said to him: 'You speak foolishness--that man comes from the East and never until to-day saw a Hopi in his whole life!' The medicine man showed more excitement than I ever saw an Indian show.

"'You are lying to me!' he said. 'That white-haired man is a Hopi, or else his people long ago were Hopis.' I laughed at him and that ruffled his dignity and he turned away, and I couldn't get another word out of him.

"As the Shriners were passing out I halted the white-haired man and said to him: 'The Hopi medicine man insists that you are a Hopi and that you know something about his clan.' 'Well,' he said, 'I'm no Hopi; but I think I do know something about some of the things he seems to revere. Where is this medicine man?'

"I pointed to where the old Indian was squatted in a corner, sulking; he walked right over to him and motioned to him, and the Hopi got up and they went into the kiva together. I do not know what passed between them--certainly no words passed--but in about ten minutes the Shriner came out, and he had a puzzled look on his face.

"'I've just had the most wonderful experience,' he said to me, 'that I've ever had in my whole life. Of course that Indian isn't a Mason, but in a corrupted form he knows something about Masonry; and where he learned it I can't guess. Why, there are lodges in this country where I actually believe he could work his way in.'"

Not being either a Mason or a Hopi, I cannot undertake to vouch for the story or to contradict it; but Smith has the reputation of being a truthful man.