The Southwest has always been a storied land to its native dwellers. Mountain profile, sweep of plain, carved-out mesa, deep canyon, cave, lava stream, level lake bed, painted desert, river shore, spring and forest are theirs in intimacy, and around them have gathered legends which are bits of ancient history, together with multitude of myths of nature deities reaching back into the misty beginning.
Deep is this intimacy in the practical affairs of life, teaching the way to the salt, the place of the springs, the range of the game, the nest of the honey bee, the home of the useful plants, the quarry of the prized stones, and the beds of clay for pottery, for the desert is home and there is no thing hidden from keen eyes. From far off, too, came in trade shells from the Pacific, feathers from Mexico, buffalo pelts from the Plains, and, perhaps, pipestone from Minnesota, so that the land of sunshine was not so isolated as one might think, and its resources fed, clothed, and ministered to the esthetic and religious needs of numerous tribes of men from the old days to the present.
[251] The white men who tracked across the vast stretches of the “Great American Desert” no doubt saw ruined towns sown over the waste, and perhaps believed them lost to history, little suspecting that within reach lived dusky-hued men, to whom these potsherd-strewn mounds and crumbling walls were no sealed book. The newer explorers have drawn the old-world stories from the lips of living traditionists, and by their friendly aid have gathered the clues which, when joined, will throw a flood of light on the wanderings of the ancient people. Through them it has been learned that each pueblo preserves with faithful care the history of its beginnings and the wanderings of its clans. This at proper times the old men repeat and the story often takes a poetical form chanted with great effect in the ceremonies. As an example of these interesting myths, one should read the Zu?i Ritual of Creation, that Saga of the Americans which reveals a beauty and depth of thought and form surprising to those who have a limited view of the ability of the Indian.
One thing is settled in the minds of the Pueblo dwellers. In the beginning all the people lived in the seven-story cave of the underworld, whence they climbed toward the light and after reaching the surface of the earth, migrated, led by supernatural beings. Where the mythical underworld adventures leave off begins a real account, telling the wanderings of the clans and the laying of the foundations of the [252] multitudinous ruins of the Pueblo region. It may not be possible to connect all the ruinous villages with the migrations of the present Indians, for there is room enough in this vast country to have sunk into oblivion other peoples and languages, as the vanished Piro, who passed away since the white strangers came to Cibola, but much may be done to gather the glittering threads before they slip from sight.
The journeyings and campings of the ancient people becomes intelligible when the make-up of the present pueblos is known. One finds that every pueblo consists of clans which are larger families of blood relations having certain duties and responsibilities together; a name, such as the bear, cloud, or century plant; certain rites and ceremonies to the beings; clan officers and customs amounting to laws, and a history preserved in the minds of the members. So it will be seen that a tribe among the house-builders is composed of a number of smaller tribes, called clans, each complete and able to take care of itself, forming the present villages. Often in the early days a powerful clan migrated long distances and left members in many different places, because clan law forbids marriage within the clan, and the man must live with the people of his wife. In these migrations portions of a clan would break off and cast their lot with other villages, and often several clans traveled in company, building their pueblos near one another, and thus came the groups of ruins so common in the Southwest.
[253] For this reason, all the present villages have received swarms from other hives and have sent out in turn swarms from the home village, during their slow migrations around the compass. The habits of the ancient people thus led to a constant flux and reflux in the currents of life in the Southwest and in spite of their substantial houses and works costly of labor the Pueblo Indians were as migratory as the tent-dwellers of the Plains, though they moved more slowly. Their many-celled villages on mesas or on the banks of streams, in the cliffs of the profound canyons, dug in the soft rocks or built in the lava caves, were but camps of the wanderers, to be abandoned sooner or later, leaving the dead to the ministrations of the drifting sand.
Nor with the coming of the white people did the wandering cease. There were Seven Cities of Cibola in the subsequent stretch of time, these seven towns were fused into the Pueblo of Zu?i and again came a dispersal and from this great pueblo formed the small summer villages of Nutria, Pescado, and Ojo Caliente. A human swarm built Laguna two centuries ago to swarm again other times. Acoma is mistress of Acomita; Isleta has a namesake on an island in the Rio Grande near El Paso, and in Tusayan the farming pueblo of Moenkapi Hotavila and Ushtioki in the plains in front of Walpi, are late additions. Thus, in times of peace, these hamlets spring up, each having the possibilities of becoming large settlements, and in [254] times of danger they come together to better withstand the common enemy, for the union born of need and strengthened by the coming of wily foes was inculcated by former experiences. But these unions were never close, even between the clans when they forsook their small community houses and came together forming tribes. Between tribes of the same language there were but the faintest traces of combinations for mutual welfare.
Perhaps about the time of the landfall of Columbus a group of tribes began to push their way into the region of the house-builders[19]. These tribes were related and had crept down from the north, where now their kinsfolk live under the Arctic Circle. It was many years before the Apache and Navaho were strong enough to try conclusions with the settled peoples, but when they had gathered to themselves the lawless from many tribes, then began terrible chapters of history which only recently have been written to a finis. Wherever these conscienceless savages ranged were carnage and destruction. The habits of the house-builders changed and the ruins on high mesas and the lookouts on every hill tell plainly how they sought defence from the scouting enemy. The large towns in the Salinas of Manzano passed into oblivion under the attacks of the Apache and began a mythical career as the “Gran Quivira” of treasure [255] hunters. Great was the devastation of which the complete story may never be told, yet nearly every tribe preserves legends of bloody contacts with the Navaho and Apache.
[19] The Early Navaho and Apache. F. W. Hodge, Amer. Anthropologist, July, 1895.
Still at an early period the Navaho became changed from a fierce warrior to a comparatively peaceful herdsman, subject to the maddening vagaries of that most whimsical of gentle creatures, the sheep. Early in the Spanish colonial period the Navaho preyed on the flocks of sheep of the Rio Grande pueblos, where they had been brought by the Conquistadores, and by that act his destiny was altered. Later on, instead of hunting the scalps of his fellow creatures, his flint knife became more useful in removing the wool from the backs of his charges; he thus became famous as a blanket weaver, and soon excelled his teachers in that peaceful art.
Other visitors and neighbors of the Pueblo people were almost as undesirable as the Apache and Navaho. The Comanche of the Plains brought ruin to many a clan by his forays, and his brother, the Ute, from the mountains to the north, was a dangerous enemy to encounter and at many times in the past attacked the villages of the Hopi. To the west were the Yuma and Mohave, to the south were the Pima, extending into Mexico, and in the Cataract Canyon of the Colorado lived the Havasupai deep in the earth. These have been the neighbors of the Pueblos since recorded history began. Also the tent dwellers of the [256] buffalo plains sometimes visited the Pueblos, tracking up the Canadian, and perh............