.
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу - страница 5
"Facing the river, the foundation of the chain is entirely volcanic.
"Colossal rocks form the abrupt walls of the gorges between these mountains, and are often so soft and friable that, in many places they were easily scooped out with the most primitive tools, or even detached with the fingers alone.
"In these gorges, through many of which run unfailing streams of water, often expanding to the proportions of regular valleys, the Pueblo Indian raised the modest crop that satisfied his vegetable craving.
"As it is easier to excavate dwellings than to pile up walls in the open air, the aboriginal Mexican's house-building effort was mostly confined to underground construction. He was, in fact, a 'cave-dweller,' yet infinitely of more advanced architectural ideas than our own remote forbears of Anglo Saxon cave-dwelling times.
"Most of these residences might boast of from three to four rooms. They were arranged in groups, or clusters, and some of them were several stories high.
"Rude ladders were used for mounting to the terrace or roof of each successive story. The Pueblo had, literally, a hearthstone in his primitive home. His fireplace was supplied with a hearth of pumice-stone. A rudely built flue, made of cemented rubble, led to a circular opening in the front wall of his cave-dwelling. Air-holes admitted their scanty light to these dusky apartments, in which there were not only conveniences for bestowing wearing-apparel, but niches for ornamental pottery, precious stones, and the like Indian bric-à-brac. The ground-floor entrance was a rude doorway closed by a hide, or mat. Plaited mats of Yucca leaves, and deer-hide, by day rolled up in corners of the sleeping-apartments, served for mattresses at night. A thick coating of mud, washed with blood, and carefully smoothed, gave to the floor a glossy effect. Some of the rooms are known to have been in dimension ten feet by fourteen. Their walls were whitewashed with burnt gypsum.
"Though the time when these traditional cliff-dwellers wooed and wed, lived and died in the Rialto vale is long, long gone by, the ruins of their homes may still be seen. Some of them are tolerably intact; others are crumbled away to mere shapeless ruins.
"And now, having described their dwellings, let us note some of the most marked and interesting characteristics of the men and women who made in them their homes.
"We are apt," said the Antiquary, "to accord to our more enlightened civilization the origin of communism; yet, antedating by ages our latter-day socialistic fads, the communal idea enthused this unlettered people, and to a certain extent seems to have been successfully carried out.
"Let not the strong-minded Anglo-Saxon woman plume herself upon the discovery of the equality of the sexes. While our own female suffragists were yet unborn, the Pueblo wife had been accorded the inalienable right to lord it over her mankind.
"Among the Mexican cliff-dwellers, 'woman's rights' seem to have been as indigenous to the soil as the piñon and the prickly pear.
"In the primitive Pueblo domicile, the wife appears, by tribal consent, to have been absolutely 'cock of the walk.' The husband had no rights as owner or proprietor of the family mansion, and, as an inmate, was scarcely more than tolerated.
"The wife, in those ever-to-be-regretted days, not only built and furnished the house, – contributed to the kitchen the soup pot, water jars, and other primitive domestic appliances, – but figured as sole proprietor of the entire establishment.
"The Pueblo woman, though married, still had, with her children, her holding in her own clan. In case of her death, the man's home being properly with his clan, he must return to it.
"The wife was not allowed to work in the fields. Each man tilled the plot allotted him by his clan. The crops, once housed, were controlled by the woman, as were the proceeds of communal hunts and fisheries.
"The Pueblos had their system of divorce. It goes without saying that it was not attended by the red-tape complications of our time. As the husband's continuance under the family roof-tree depended absolutely on his acceptability to the wife, at any flagrant marital breach of good behavior she simply refused to recognize him as her lord. In vain he protested, stormed, and menaced; the outraged better half bade him go, and he went! Thus easily and informally were Pueblo marriages dissolved; and, this summary transaction once well concluded, each party had the right to contract a second marriage.
"The Pueblo Indian is historically known as a Catholic; that is to say, he told his beads, crossed his brow with holy water, and duly and devoutly knelt at the confessional. This done, he tacitly reserved to himself the privilege of surreptitiously clinging to the Paganism of his forbears, and zealously paid his tithe of observances at the ancient shrine of 'the Sun Father' and 'the Moon Mother.'
"Some of the Pueblo tribes are said still to retain the use of that ancient supplicating convenience, 'the prayer-stick.'
"'Prayer-sticks, or plumes,'" explained the Antiquary, "are but painted sticks tufted with down, or feathers, and, by the simple-minded Indian, supposed especially to commend him to the good graces and kindly offices of 'Those Above.' In a certain way, the aboriginal prayer-stick seems to have been a substitute for an oral supplication.
"The Pueblo, pressed for time, might even forego the hindering ceremonial of verbal request, adoration, or thanksgiving, and hurriedly deposit, as a votive offering to his easily placated gods, this tufted bit of painted wood; and, furthermore, since prayer-sticks were not always within reach, it was permitted him in such emergencies to gather two twigs, and, placing these crosswise, hold them in position by a rock or stone. And this childish make-shift passed with his indulgent gods for a prayer!
"The most trivial commonplace of existence had, with the superstitious Pueblo, its religious significance; and it would seem to have been incumbent on him literally to 'pray without ceasing.' Hence the prayer-plume, or its substitute, was, with him, one of the necessities of life. Time would fail me to tell of the ancient elaborate religious rites and superstitions of the Mexican Indian; to recount his latter-day ceremonials, wherein Pagan dances, races, and sports are like the jumble of a crazy quilt, promiscuously mixed in with Christian festas and holy saint-days; and indeed the subject is too large for my sketchy handling. It may not, however, be amiss to notice the yearly celebration of the festival of San Estevan. It may be still witnessed, and seems to have been the original Harvest-home of the Mexican Indian, the observance of which has been handed down in various ways from all times, and among all peoples, and is probably the parent of our Thanksgiving holiday.
"The monks of the early Catholic church, in their missionary endeavor to commend the Christian religion to the pagan mind, took care to graft upon each of the various festas of the Pueblo one of their own saint-day names. Thus it was that the Acoma harvest-home masquerades under the guise of a saint-name, though an absolutely pagan ceremonial.
"It is still observed by them with genuine Koshare delight. There are dances, races, and tumbling, and the carnival-like showering of Mexican confetti from the roofs of adobe houses. In summing up this brief account of the sedentary New Mexican, I quote literally the forceful assertion of Cummings. 'The Pueblos,' says this writer, 'are Indians who are neither poor nor naked; who feed themselves, and ask no favors of Washington; Indians who have been at peace for two centuries, and fixed residents for perhaps a millennium; Indians who were farmers and irrigators, and six-story housebuilders before a New World had been beaten through the thick skull of the Old. They had,' he continues, 'a hundred republics in America centuries before the American Republic was conceived.'
"This peaceably minded people, as has already been stated, are by no means to be confounded with the roving New Mexican aborigines, with the untamed Navajo scouring the plains on the bare back СКАЧАТЬ