cusHiNG] THE ZUNIS ON THUNDER MOUNTAIN. 331 



the heights were scaled they reared archers' booths and heaps of sliug- 

 stones and munitions of heavy rocks. 



There, continually providing for the conflict which they knew would 

 sooner or later reach even their remote fastnesses (as speedily it began 

 to reach the Eio Grande country), they abode securely for more than ten 

 years, living strictly according to the ways of their forefathers, wor- 

 shiping only the beloved of war and the wind and rain, nor paying 

 aught of attention to the jealous gods of the Spaniard. 



Then at last Diego de Vargas, the reconquistador of New Mexico, 

 approached Zuniland with his force of font soldiers and horsemen. 

 TfSeZunis, learning this, poisoned the waters of their springs at Pescado 

 aiid near the entrance to the valley with yucca juice and cactus spines, 

 am 1, t h( y say, " with the death-magic of corpse shells ; so that the horses 

 and men, drinking tkere, were undone or died of bloating and bowel 

 sickness." lu this latter statement the historians of Vargas and the 

 ZuiSi traditions agree. But the captain general could not have stormed 

 tEe^ock of Cibola. With the weakened force remaining at his com- 

 mand his eftbrts were doubly futile. Therefore, where now the new 

 peach orchards of the Zunis grow on the sunlit sand slopes, 80(i feet 

 below the northern crest of the mesa their fathers so well defended in 

 those days, Vargas cam])ed his army, with intent to besiege the heathen 

 renegades, and to harass and pick off such stragglers as came within 

 the range of his arquebuses. 



Now, however, the good friar whom the Indians called Kwan 

 Tatchui Lok'yana ("Juan Gray-robed-fatlier of-us"), was called to 

 council by the elders, and given a well-scraped piece of deerskin, 

 whitened with prayer meal, and some bits of cinder, wherewith to make 

 markings of meaning to his countrymen. And he was bidden to mark 

 thereon that the Zufus were good to those who, like him, were good to 

 them and meddled not; nor would they harm any who did not harm 

 their women and children and their elders. And that if such these 

 captains and their warriors would but choose and promise to be, they 

 would descend from their mountain, nor stretch their bowstrings more. 

 But when they told their gray father that he could now join his peoi)le 

 if that by so doing he might stay their auger, and told him so to mark 

 it, the priest, so the legend runs, "dissembled and did not tell that 

 he was there, only that the fathers of the Ashiwi were good now;" for 

 he willed, it would seem, to abide with them all the I'est of his days, 

 which, alas, were but few. Then the hide was tied to a slingstone 

 and taken to the edge of the mesa, and cast down into the midst of 

 the watchful enemy by the arm of a strong warrior. And when the 

 bearded foemen below saw it fall, they took it up and curiously 

 questioned it with their eyes, and finding its answers perfect and its 

 import good, they instant bore it to their war captain, and in token of 

 his consent, they waved it aloft. So was speech held and peace forth- 

 with established between them. 



