18 
- 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
STORIES ABOUT THE PUEBLO 
INDIANS OF THE SOUTHWEST 
A Tribe Which Lives as it Did Before the Landing of 
Columbus, and Where Ancient Rites Still Prevail 
[By M. J. Brown, Editor Little Valley (N. Y.) Hub.) 
They say everybody likes an In- 
dian. Anyhow there is a romance 
and a sentiment around him that ap- 
peals to Americans. 
A photographer will snap an In- 
dian girl, with a blanket around her, 
and a pair of leggins on, print the 
picture on post cards, and tourists 
go crazy over them. 
A singer will spread the maid on 
a nickelodium canvas, give her a sort 
of a running water name, attach 
pigeon ragtime to a few words of 
mountains and teepees, and we 
crowd the doors to see her. 
But here’s telling you that the 
Indian maiden, the old squaw, the 
young buck or the medicine man 
look a heap better from a motion 
picture machine than at close range. 
Believe me, distance lends a heap 
of enchantment. 
At forty rods an Indian maiden is 
a real Minnehaha, a Pocahontas, a 
Waneita, but at close range the pic- 
turesqueness vanishes and_ the 
clothes worn around her sturdy form 
conceal all claims to divinity, and 
she couldn’t entice me from a happy 
home. 
Before I go into the Indian busi- 
ness proper, let me tell you a little 
incident that scattered my halo. 
I was at a little Indian trading 
station on the Denver & Rio Grande 
in the New Mexico mountains. The 
hotel accommodations were all right 
in price, but a little too jammed up 
for an Astoria. One big room was 
all there was to room assignment. 
There were three beds and five of 
us. One miner was so awfully dirty 
that no one had sand enough to 
double with him, so a big Norwegian 
picked me for his ‘‘buddy’’ and 
crawled into my bed. Between the 
quartet of snores, and my side part- 
ner’s nightmare, there was no trance 
state for me, and the minute day- 
light showed color I quit the nest. 
The morning was very cold, and 
as there was no sitting room I hunt- 
ed the kitchen. The maid of the 
range was one of those picturesque 
but ugly Pueblo girls, dressed as 
her people used to dress way back 
in the untutored past. The searlet 
blanket hid the waist line, the leg- 
gins left much to guess at, and the 
moccasins were all of number 7, 
double E. The straight black hair 
in two braids hung down over her 
shoulders, in front, and they were 
very much a nuisance, as the ends 
constantly dangled in’ the frying pan 
of eggs, or got tangled up with the_ 
pancake batter. But one does not 
mind this, when they become aceus- 
tomed, for as the driver stated, the 
Indian hairs are big and strong, and 
when you pull one out of a biscuit 
it doesn’t break. 
I sat watching the Indian girl get 
breakfast, and tried to think of Cap- 
tain John Smith. Then she turned 
to me and said, ‘‘Get the milk.’’ I 
went out on the gallery and brought 
in a bucket. ‘‘Take it back—get the 
other.’’ I went out and exchanged 
pails. “‘No wayna. Go back.’’ But 
I told Laughing Eyes if she wanted 
any other variety of milk to go hunt 
it, as I belonged to the union and 
couldn’t work before breakfast. 
When I started this Indian maiden 
incident I had something more on 
my notebook, and it should have fol- 
lowed the braids of hanging hair. 
But I thought you might be reading 
this.just before dinner, and I spared 
you. The omission had to do with a 
severe cold in the head and my pa- 
gan had no handkerchief. And it 
made it slightly inconvenient to mix 
the biscuit dough. 
And now for something about the 
Indians. 
The Pueblo Indians are probably 
as interesting a tribe as there is in 
this country. They are industrious, 
are farmers, are workers, are home 
people, and haye great love of fam- 
ily. Yet with all these virtues they 
are much like the rattlesnake—good 
if you don’t step on them. 
Unlike the Apaches, these first 
Americans are not wandering Be- 
douins of the desert, but they live as 
they did and were long before 
Columbus ever set his foot on their 
soil—live a domestic life, tillers of 
the soil and workers of mines. 
There are seattered through New 
Mexico and Arizona, dozens of ruins 
of ‘‘community houses,’’ entire vil- 
lages under one roof, houses that 
were once forts, and where those 
Pueblo Indians used to live in the 
days of the survival of the fittest. 
T had a list of a dozen or more of 
these most interesting ruins down on 
my route eard, and had intended to 
have passed several days among 
them, but the worst blizzards known 
to the territory for many years, 
spread over northern New Mexico 
for days, and it made the trip simply — 
impossible. And so I had to content 
myself with a brief visit to the pu- 
eblo of Isleta, and to leave further 
explorations until my next trip. 
I have a string of notes a yard long 
regarding the red men of Isleta, but 
as the series is nearly to an end, and 
as this one letter must cover the 
notes, I look through them and won- 
der which will most interest. 
The Pueblos have been a bad 
bunch in the past, a tribe as cruel 
and as bloodthirsty as any in this 
Indian country, and there was point- 
ed out to me a building where my 
friend said was hidden away hun- 
dreds of specimens of ‘‘sacred hair,”’ 
scalps of Commanches, Mexicans, 
missionaries and soldiers of the early 
days. 
And today when the ‘‘mad dance’’ 
is held this sacred horde of ‘‘barks’’ 
is brought out and danced over. 
The ‘‘mad dance?’’ No, I did not 
see it, and I am told that no white 
man, unless adopted by a tribe, ever” 
did see it and live to tell of it. They 
hold them here in Isleta today and 
no man dare to attempt to see them. 
They last for four days. 
A blinding snow storm shortened 
my stay in Isleta and I saw but an 
outline of the pueblo and but a mea- 
gre few of the many wonderful and 
strange sights. There was pointed 
out to me the village estufa—a build- 
ing with a diameter of perhaps fifty — 
feet—round and low, without a door 
or window. Here are performed the 
ancient old rites, and here the olden 
superstitions are given full play; 
here the human scalps repose and 
here are where the young Indians 
are given their first lessons in old — 
mythology. 
The only way to get into the estu- 
fais by climbing up the outer walls 
with a ladder, pulling up the ladder 
and descending by it. It is said that 
there are many weird and grewsome 
sights to be seen in this hidden house 
but that no white man ean ever see 
them. 
As we drove back to the Isleta sta- 
tion I noted in the outskirts of the 
town, what I would eall a garbage 
dump in our country—a piece of 
ground strewn with eyerything— 
earthenware, bows, arrows, utensils, 
rope, saddles, ete. My friend told 
me this was Isleta’s ‘‘killing place.” 
When an Indian dies one of the euri- 
ous ceremonies is the sending of 
property along for the use-of the 
—P ee ee 
