cnsHiNG] NATIVE REGARD FOR THE OLD CHURCH. 337 



abandoned, though recognized even by themselves iis a " direful place 

 in daylight." 



It is much the same with the old church. A few years since a party 

 of Americans who accompanied me to Zuni desecrated the beautiful 

 antique shrine of the churcli, carrying away" Our Lady of Guadalupe 

 of the Sacred Heart," the guardian angels, and some of the painted bas- 

 reliefs attached to the frame of the altar. When this was discovered 

 by the Indians, consternation seized the whole tribe; council after coun- 

 cil was held, at which I was alternately berated (because people who 

 had come therewith me had thus "plundered their fathers' house"), 

 and entreated to plead with " Wasintona " to have these " precious 

 saints and sacred masks of their fathers" returned to them. 



Believing at the time that the Indians really reverenced these things 

 as Christian emblems, and myself reverencing sincerely the memory of 

 the noble nussionaries who had braved death and labored so niaiiy 

 years in the cause of their faith and for the good of these Indians, I 

 promised either to have the original relics returned or to bring them 

 new saints; and I also urged them to join me in cleaning out the old 

 church, repairing the rents in its walls and roof, and plastering once 

 more its rain-streaked interior. But at this point their mood seemed 

 to change. The chiefs and old men puffed their cigarettes, nnmoved 

 by the most eloquent appeals I could make, save to say, quite irrele- 

 vantly, that I " talked well," and that all my thoughts were good, very 

 good, but they could not heed them. 



I asked them if they did not care for their missa hyakici or mis- 

 sion-house. " Yea, verily," they replied, with fervor. " It was the 

 sacred place of our fathers, even more sacred than were the things 

 taken away therefrom." 



I asked if they would not, then, in memory of those fathers, restore 

 its beauty. 



"Nay," they replied, "we could not, alas! for it was the; missa-house 

 of our fathers who are dead, and dead is tlie missa-house! May tlie 

 fathers be made to live again by the adding of meat to their bones? 

 How, then, may the missa-house be made alive again by the adding of 

 mud to its walls?" 



Xot long afterward there was a furious night storm of wind and rain. 

 On the following morning, great seams appeared in the northern walls 

 of the old buihling. I called a council of the Indians and urged that 

 since they would not repair the missa-house, it be torn down; for it 

 might fall over some day and kill the women and children as they 

 passed through the narrow alley it overshadowed, on their way to 

 and from the spring. Again I was told that my words were good, 

 but alas! they could not heed them; that it was the missa-house of 

 their fathers ! How, if they took it away, would the fathers know their 

 own? It was well that the wind and rain wore it away, as time wasted 

 away their fathers' bones. That luattered not, for it was the work of 

 1,3 ETH 22 



