The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 19, 1899, Page 18

43 , 78, 2. £ 55 \ S < 4 = = 2 \ =7 AN \ \ r\ e \ AR Hous E MAN has at last wit- ret rites of woman e Moqui neighbors, the se of the other whom people are fa- ke the ways and ‘s, when risited mple- t the lived clent -in ‘the are regarded by the Mo- no difficulty in g a number of the 'Moqul cere- I well aware that there ting secr: conne gious rites of the In was entirely ignorant. 1de to learn was check ind that as an outsider the re which b rt he m his investigation. hen telling me the tigations, t it was esthood I must get at the distinctly fire any other of which I ever were unitke , very long time, and to convince the Indians and that I did not wtion 1 gained to st 1 brought d where they er their priest- the secrets of les, for the more the Moqui ritual caves temples that I cresting he more I was the Moquis had sent on such an > is a living, ned in these It was in one ¢ th ssed what to me ng as could be sec rest because I white man whor permitted to be pr sion. , To the Mogqui fi eathing th Its creation is to him \ctly the sz as the birth of a child. < a sacred creation, however, and the ame as great a trib- as he can concelve of—no one is per- 1 to light either a pipe or cigarette it. And when vou stop to think that Indian all things begin and end e you see the significance of in pays to th with the 2 smo) ritual observed in the creation of s so simple that it is impressive. ood present e in front.of the al- priest upon whom falls the duty of bringing the fire into being takes 4 piece of wood dnd in that notch -es a stick which nearly fills it. This k he Directly be- The members of the priest st apfdly rotatek. neath arth has been covered with ghredded cedar. A hush that Js impres- elve follows, nothing being heard except the grinding noise made by the two pieces The friction of the wood is con- not more than'a minute when on the cedar, and then blaze is instantly nursed is of sufficlent size to per- The of wood tinu 1 for ark falls 1 er. The and present mit a torch to be lighted from it. sacred fire has come into being. “Then one of the priests is selected to YING THE ‘SACRED FIRE FRor To HOUSE - RS <> S!o oc\FOQ i o> >4 A4 -ople have numbe > within the last vear white T taken to going to the village The, village is located about eighty mile number of different degrees and I suc- ceeded in being admitted to four of the priesthoods. ~ Further progress was re- fused me by the older priests on the west of the Grand Canyon and thirty ground that they did not think I could miles from the Santa Fe Railroad. The stand the ordeal. 1 rather doubt the railroad people have been running excur- truth of that statement, because I do not sions from the road to the village at the .k the ordeal was very severe, judg- time the snake dance, the flute dance and from what I had already endured. et dance have taken place. The As it Is, however, I was enabled through ave been loaded into four- . mbership of the priesthood to gain ven to the village, where a dge of the aboriginal rites that night; witnessed the d to the railroad the has to been unknown to history. 1 know of none more interesting than t of the creation of fire. has caused the In- of the white man ask every visitor to following day. dians to learn the w in one respect—they here Is a great deal more to learn the Mogquis, but every vear robs contribute some money in return for the of more and more of their wborigi- privilege of seeing the dance, and in this ten years' time I belleve way quite a-deal of money is put into circulation among them. When I first nction will have entirely the absence of an epi- which I took several the tribe can about hold of number: The "out- pox which forced me to re- al d wppeared. In a censu ago shi ywn_in T what it knew them they did not know was to have money. “By nature the Moquls are a D people. They are short of statu 8 ht. At first they clung Vv to the customs of their ancestors ful e and closely ni turn ast is likely to car off a great many of the Moquis, and a loss of this resented the first attempt made to intro- sort made up, duce the white mm\'iuluv.‘ on among “Besides this decimation of the tribe, them. I remember when I first visited st after it had been them years ago, e a e he news from hou the squaw dectded to try to educate them, a young of tuel is lieutenant of cavalry with six men rode over to my camp from the railroad to get rch in every dwelli the vil- some information about the Moquis. He was on his w to another village, a larger one, where he proposed to enforce not be al- to dle out nmer comes. the: Government order that some of the h e day of the Indian children be sent to an Indian following is school, a building for which had been and incanta- serected fifteen miles distant. The leu- ., of a nature which tenant wanted me to go with him, but I refused, because it would have been fatal to my plan to learn the Indian rites. . “The cavalrymen camped th me that night, and the next morning rode over to the other village. That afternoon they returned, but without any children. The leutenant said that when he reached the not permit of description. It is ail £ the line of the Indlans’ idea of the esemblance of the birth of fire to that of & human being. “The ceremonies do not, I think, have the same weight with the younger genera- tion of Indians that they do_with the village he found every Inhabitant armed and saw that if he attempted any force he and his soldiers would be wiped out. He sald-he was going back to the rail- road and telegraph for four companies of cavalry to come from the nearest fort to his assistance. The Indians, he said, would be made to;give up their children. “FThe days went by and'all sorts of rumors began to circulate as to what was elders. In fact, T am inclined to belleve that the younger element would willing- Iy break away from this sort of thing if it could. This ceremony of the fire crea- tlon seemed all the more interesting to me ‘becauso it is an undenfable fact that the rites I saw in the caves had never before been witnessed by a white man. “The Moqul priesthood is made up of & cormiNGg TO THE (OUNCIL going to happen. I had learned the In- dian language fairly well, and the old chiefs told me that over at the other vil- lage they believed the whole United States army, whatever that was, was coming. A few days later I noticed a commotion among the Indians, and saw away out on the prairie a long line of blue marching in our direction. It proved to be the four companies of regulars, headed by Major, now Adjutant-General, Corbin. The troops went into camp on the mesa beldw the clift where the ob- stinate villagers lived. I camped with them, and the next morning Major Cor- bin sent a message up to the Indians to send down six of their chiefs for a par- le ame down After a bit “After a while the chie and were very meck indeed. the colonel ordered an advance, and we marched up to the village. What was our amazement to find the place deserted. There was not an Indian in sight. But at last one of our prisoners told me that they were out on the point—that is, a point of land stretching out north away from the village and out of sight of the dwellings. We followed this up and found it to be true. There they were, huddled together, S0 men, women and children expecting to be killed, I suppose. had no idea there were So many men in the world, and were simply terri- fied at the thought that Washington—for to the Indian every Government official and the Government is Washington—had come out in such array against them. “Major Corbin talked to them and e: plained how impossible it was for them to resist Washington and how their chil- dren were going to be educated whether they wanted them to be or not. Just to emphasize his words about the power of the soldiers, the Major ordered one of the two mountain howitzers discharged. Now those howitzers arried a very tu little shell which would make a decided com- motion. The gun was discharged and threw the shell about a mile out on the mesa, where it tore the sand up and dug a big hole. The indians were almost par- alyzed with fright, except one of the chiefs whom the troops were holding as hostages. .At the report of the gun he went over the side of the cliff, which must have been at least twenty feet high, as If he had been shot, and though the troops fired in the direction he had gone and hunted for him, we never saw him again. “After parleving a while longer. Major Corbin induced the chiefs to select a number of children to be sent to the school, smoked the pipe of peace with the head men and led his troops back to railroad, taking the young Indians him. That was the end of the Moqui at- tempt to resist ‘Washington's' ideas of education.” It may surprise some r to have it recalled that even Burns, who has been designated, par excellence, the rd of Nature,” neither in his poetry nor his letters shows any appreciation of the picturesque in nature. From his farm at Mossgiel he commanded one of the finest views in Scotland, embracing Ben-L mond, Ben-Venue and the other moun- tains keeping watch around Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, d the exquisite Firth of Clyde with its numerous lochs winding away northward among tae lonely pastoral’ hills of Argyleshire. Above all, Arran, with its grandly ro- mantic mountain farms, was daily before as weil as the giant mass of ing sentinel-like, sheer and soli- out of the w where the firth merges into the Irish Sea. Yet not once wiil you find him making mention of this noble land and sea scape so constantly in his view. In his northern tour he trav- ersed for twenty-two days some of the grandest scenery in the Highlands, vet nowhere do his writings testify to any adequate appreciation of it.—J. Hunter in March Lippincott's. o e e e e e The amount spent on patent medicines annually is something like $12,500.000. A Spanish bull-fighter's fee for a spe- cial performance js about 15000 pesetas ($3000). If you were on the would appear to be six larger than the sun does to re this planet. The finest tomb in Great Britain is un- doubtedly that of the Duke of Hamilton, in the grounds of the Duke's seat. It cost over $1,000,000. “Herr' Delicatessen seems very happy. this morning.” “Yes; his sausage took a blue ribbon at the Dog Show.''—Life. moon_the earth y-four times dents of