The Hopis came on to the foot of the lookout butte and we went down, and asked them up into our little house. They shook their heads. No, they would not go up. By putting the house there, the whites had spoiled their once sacred ground. One of them took up two or three pottery fragments that lay scattered at his feet, examined them, held them out in our view, and told the young Hopi that he was going to say a few words to us.
‘‘White children of good heart,’’ he began, “these are pieces of beautiful ollas left here by our People-of-Peace. They have lain here in the rain and snow and sun a long time, some of them hundreds of years, but you see that they are still smooth, and the different colors of paint as bright as the day the maker put them on. Yes, the pottery of our long-ago people was far better made, the painted figures upon it far more beautiful than our women of to-day can make. But perhaps you are not interested in this.”
“Oh, yes! We are interested! Tell us all about it!” Hannah replied.
“Then let us get out of the wind,” the interpreter said, and led us around to the east side of the butte. But, first, one of the old men pointed off to the great fire and asked: “That is the work of the bad white men you spoke of?”
“Yes. They are trying to burn a little sawmill off there, as well as the forest,” I answered; and he sadly shook his head. Hannah and I sure stood ashamed before the old men; ashamed that they should know how mean were some of our own kind!
We sat down in a little circle, close at the edge of the butte, and the old man continued his tale:
“None of us four have ever been here upon this sacred mountain, nor were our fathers, nor our grandfathers ever here; it was long before their time that our people were obliged to give up their every-spring journeys here to Rain God’s home. But just as though we had been of that long-ago time, we priests know how the ancient ones made the long journey, just what they did when they arrived here. For three days certain ones of the priests prayed and performed their mysteries in the kiva out there at the other end of the mountain, while their people, hundreds and hundreds of them, camped close down there in the timber, praying, too, and waiting for the great day, the fourth day, to come. Early in the morning of that day the people all came up on top, men and women, bringing some of their most valuable things, and little children the toys they most loved, to sacrifice to Rain God. These they placed here and there upon this butte, the very highest point of this highest mountain of all the range, where Rain God loved to sit and look out upon the world, and some they placed around the entrance to his kiva, in which he often performed his great mysteries. And as they set them down upon the rocks they prayed him to accept their poor offerings and to drop his rain plentifully upon their plantings. Men taught their little sons and mothers their little daughters to say those prayers, and guided their little hands in the placing of their toy offerings. Why, in that long-ago time this whole butte was covered with gifts to Rain God: beautiful ollas; bead necklaces; the finest clothing; weapons; children’s buzzers, dolls, and other toys.
“Then, on that fourth morning, the priests came up out of the kiva and danced their dance to Rain God, and made him their offerings. And sometimes he answered their prayers at once, right there gathering his clouds around him and then spreading them out until they dropped their water upon the farthest plantings of the people. And if not at once, he later brought his rains to their plantings: in those times there never was a crop failure. No, not even when the Apaches and Navajos came and attacked the prayers for rain right upon the top of this mountain, killing many of them and destroying their offerings.
‘‘No, not even when the Apaches and Navajos finally prevented our ancient ones coming here to pray — not until long after the coming of the first white men did Rain God at times withhold his rains, allow our plantings to die. At first only one summer in ten, or something like that, but of late, very often. And why? Oh, it is not through our fault, we old people; it is because of what the white men have done to our children, things that we, their fathers, are powerless to prevent.
“When, in that long-ago time, our people from the cliffs of Oraibi sighted those first white men coming across the desert, all sitting on top of huge, strange animals, they feared them. The priests hurried to bar their way with sacred meal, but they paid no attention to it —”
‘‘Oh, ask him to wait! Tell us about the sacred meal,’’ I said to the young Hopi.
The old men all patiently smiled assent, and the young Hopi explained:
“Sacred meal. It was corn meal prepared by the priests in their kiva, and was used for several purposes. When a line of it was sprinkled across a trail leading up into one of our villages, it was a warning to all people, all comers, that they were not wanted up on top, and must turn back.”
The old man nodded, and went on.
“Those white men did not even look at the cross-line of sacred meal, nor pay any attention to the priests standing behind it and motioning them back. Instead, they fired their guns and the people fled before them, almost crazy with fear, for they thought that those strange men had thunder and lightning for their weapons.
“On they came, right up into Oraibi, those white men, and camped in the houses and searched them and the kivas, into which none but the priests were allowed to descend. Yes, they searched every room in the village and the piles of rock around it, for what the people could not understand. Long afterward they learned that it was for gold. Metal that the Hopi had never seen or heard of. Angry because they had found none of it, they left Oraibi, forced their way into each of our six other villages, and then turned off to the west and were seen no more. The priests purified the kivas. Years passed, and the entrance of the white men into their homes became like a bad dream to the people, and at last it was thought that white skins would never again be seen in Hopi land.
‘‘But, after years and years had passed, more white men did come, and because they seemed to be different from the first who had come, because they carried no weapons wherever they went, and were kind and pleasant-voiced, the people made them welcome; gave them a house to live in, food, wood, and the women gladly brought up water for them from the spring at the foot of the cliff. All went well for a time — until the white men learned to speak our language — and then the people learned that they were priests, and trouble began. The Hopi gods were devils, the kivas devils’ holes, the white men said, and forbade the Hopi to pray to any but the white god. And at that the Hopi priests seized those white priests, and carried them to the edge of that high cliff of Oraibi and tossed them off from it: they struck the rocks at the bottom and were dead.
‘‘After that happening, our people saw no more white men for years and years. They who came had been Spaniards. Came at last, and in the time of us four here, a different kind of white men; men of very white skin, and at first they did not bother us. They fought the Apaches and the Navajos; put them upon certain lands and made them tame, and of that we were very glad. Then came, not many years ago, one of them who said that he had been sent by the Great Father of the white men to live with us, and teach us the white men’s ways; we were no longer to live as we had always lived; we were all of us to follow the white men’s trail, on and on, up and up, until we should be just like the white men except for the color of our skins.
“Said our chiefs to him: 'As you came, so may you go, and at once. Tell your Great Father for us that we thank him for his offer of help, but that we do not need it. As we have lived here for hundreds and hundreds of years, so do we intend to live. We ask but one thing of the Great Father, and that is to be let alone.’
“Said the white man: ‘The Great Father has ordered me to remain here with you, and here I stay, and as the Great Father has ordered shall be done for you, so shall it be done.’
“What could we do then? Nothing. We had seen the whites tame our terrible enemies and knew that we few, weaponless Hopis could do nothing against them. This white man brought other white men to help him, and there in our own land they built houses for themselves, and houses for teaching our children their language and their ways, and houses for their gods. And, worst of all, they said that our children must worship their gods, because the Hopi gods were not. That we had made gods of our idle dreams. They