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same trails until the path is deep-worn in not penetrate very far into the Zuni body. the rock.

By ten o'clock the farmers whose fields lie not too far out in the desert return to the village and have their first meal of the day, rest, and again return to the fields. Many of the men have their farms a great distance away, and will remain out all day, or perhaps for several days. With the closing of the day the women again go to the springs for water. The farmers return from the desert, and the youth or aged shepherd, whose flock drifted tide-like across the sand-dunes in the early day, will be seen drifting back to the corrals half-way up the cliffs. The evening life is one full of village cheer. It is the hour when all are gathered about the home. With the setting of the sun the crier again calls out in wise council to his people the news of the day and the plans for the morrow. Men and women go from housetop to housetop; wrinkled old priests of the order have a quiet smoke with their brother priests; young men, with youth's blood pulsing in their veins, join the family group, hoping to catch a glimpse from the dark-eyed maiden, whose quaint hairdressing symbolizes the sacred squash-blossom of the desert. Low songs in the caressing tone of the Hopi float out on the still evening air. The very atmosphere seems to breathe of contentment, and one has but to close his eyes to the few things of modern life which have crept in to feel that this is as it has been for untold generations.

Five days' march to the east of the Hopi Villages is Zuni, all that is left of the seven cities of Cibola, the goal of Coronado's great march into the desert, the scene of much of Cushing's life-work; a group of proud villages dwindled to a single one having a life most complete in mythology. It is a life so rich, in fact, that Mrs. Stevenson found it a task of many years to record it in its entirety, and her magnificent work is a splendid illustration of the religion and philosophy of the Indian. Many of the Zuni ceremonies are like those of the Hopi. Each has, without doubt, borrowed from the other many features of ritualistic work. The Zuni is delightfully conservative. They accepted the teachings of the church at the point of Coronado's guns. As it was accepted then, so it is now; evidently it did

From that day to this many of the children are baptized into the church, but this does not lessen one of the thousands of prayer plumes planted to the gods of their fathers. After generations of labor and martyrdom by the patient Friars the church was abandoned and has long since fallen into decay. All that is left of it is the plot of the dead. Here for generation after generation they have buried their dead, clinging to the sacred spot as only an Indian can. Neither priest nor chief can drive them from it.

Acoma, the dauntless, was first noted by Fray Marcos de Niza in 1539, but was first visited by Coronado's men a year later. Then for forty-three years the Acomas were undisturbed by the Castilians. The second visit was by Antonio de Espejo in 1583. After this Juan de Oñate visited the Pueblos in 1598, and later this same year Juan de Zaldivar visited them with a small troop. The Acomas showed resentment of this encroachment by killing onehalf the number. This was followed, some months later, by a second force of the Spaniards, who stormed and subdued the village, killing a large portion of the tribe. Theirs was a stubborn resistance against the encroachment of the white man. In them we see emphasized the character of all the Pueblo people. Superficially smiling and hospitable, and, as long as all goes to their liking, most kindly. Anger them, and they are fiends. A purring cat with an everready claw.

To fortify this cunning the Acomas have far more bravery than the other people of the Pueblos. They claim never to have been conquered. Spanish history, however, does not bear them out in this. It is one of the three most picturesque of the Pueblos: Walpi, in Arizona; Acoma and Taos, in New Mexico.

In days of old, to get from the valley to the mesa and reach the street of Acoma, we had only the choice of winding, precipitous trails cut in the walls of the rock. Of late years there is a new trail for the use of man and beast, more winding and picturesque, entering the village through a fortress-like natural gateway.

The water-supply of the village is, in most part, from small reservoirs in the rock filled from the rainfall, and as a reserve supply there are two large, deep

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reservoirs, one fed by a tiny spring. The women, with beautifully decorated earthen jars poised gracefully on their heads, coming and going from the wells, make a picture long living in the mind.

The Acoma fields are far away at Acomita. There, during the summer, they dwell in tiny box-like adobe houses and till their small but well-kept farms, journeying back to their cliff-perched home for all ceremonial occasions. They are, as a people, and have been for generations, devout followers of the Catholic Church. This fact has not, however, in any way seriously affected their primitive religion or crowded out one of their pagan ceremonies. They are a positive argument that a people can be loyal followers of two religious creeds at one and the same time.

In the valley of the Rio Grande we find many small villages. The buildings are usually one story in height, and, from their location in the valley, lack the picturesque features of Walpi and Acoma. Here, differing from Hopiland, and like Zuni and Acoma, farming is by irrigation. Compared to the Hopi, it is princely. Compared to the white man's farming, theirs is petty. Prehistoric irrigation by the dwellers in this region was probably of the simplest order-small ditches drawn from the stream, the water dipped in earthen jars and carried out to the crops. This form of irrigation necessarily meant that very limited areas could be cultivated. Slight evidence is seen which would lead us to believe that Indians of prehistoric time used other system than this in irrigating their fields. In the valley of the Gila, even where the ditches were miles in length and carried a considerable volume of water, it is probable that the actual application of water was made by carrying it in jars rather than by flooding. To look at the cultivated portion of the Rio Grande valley from a slight elevation, it is a field of grain and other crops divided into squares of slightly different shades of green, reminding one of a patchwork - quilt carried wholly in one color. Their principal crop is wheat. This they care for in the simplest way: when ripe, they harvest it with a hand sickle, and the gleaned crop is gathered at the threshing ground, which is simply a plot smoothed and enclosed with a rough At the time of threshing, the

horses belonging to the family are turned into the enclosure and driven around in a circle until the grain is threshed from the straw. Then with forks they separate the straw and chaff from the grain, sift it in a large box-sieve with a perforated bottom made of rawhide, and then, for the final cleaning, take it to the small streams or canals and wash it. In this washing the grain is taken in large coarse baskets, carried down to the water and stirred about in the basket, the chaff and lighter matter floating away with the current. The clean grain is then spread out on cloths to dry. This drying must be finished the day of washing, and to hurry it the grain is taken in baskets, held high in the air and let sift slowly to the ground. This is repeated time after time until it is thoroughly dried. For daily use, such as is wanted they grind on the hand mealingstone or metate.

Here, too, among these villages we see the church religion blended with the primitive one. Generation after generation of patient padres have worked and laid down their lives, many in their own red blood at the hands of those whose souls they thought to save. The Indian cannot yet see how or why his soul should be lost. To-day, when we talk to an old man of the village of religion he will tell us, with certainty, that he believes in the true God of the priests. "Yes, I know you believe in the true God, but the story of that God is all written in the big Book. I want to talk with you of your own God, Poseyamo, who lived once on earth and who went long ago to the South." His face lights as if he, himself, was already entering the eternal paradise of his fathers. "Do you know Poseyamo? Tell me about him, and tell me, will he soon come back to care for his children? The signal fire burns at the old shrine on the one night of each seven. It has burned thus many lifetimes to show him that we are faithful and that we wait. Tell him to come soon or I will not be here to see him." And so it is; that which their forefathers accepted for policy's sake they have grown, in a measure, to take for granted, but cling to the old with but slightly shaken faith. They plant their crops as of old, by the star which governs each special growth. The Navajo plants his corn by the Pleiads, but the Pueblo farmer

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