# Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines/Chapter 6

Table of Contents
CHAPTER VI.
HOUSES OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF NEW MEXICO.
We are next to consider the houses and mode of life of the Sedentary Village Indians, among whom architecture exhibits a higher development, with the use of durable materials, and with the defensive principle super-added to that of adaptation to communism in living. It will not be difficult to discover and follow this latter principle, as one of the chief characteristics of this architecture in the pueblo houses in New Mexico, and in the region of the San Juan River, and afterwards in those of Mexico and Central America. Throughout all these regions there was one connected system of house architecture, as there was substantially one mode of life.
In New Mexico, going southward, the Indians, at the epoch of discovery, were met in a new dress and in an improved condition. They had advanced out of the Lower and into the Middle Status of barbarism; the houses in which they dwelt were of adobe brick or of stone, two, three, four, and sometimes five and six stories in height, and containing from fifty to five hundred apartments. They cultivated maize and plants by means of irrigating canals. The water was drawn from a running stream, taken at a point above the pueblo and carried down and through a series of garden beds. They wore mantles of cotton, as well as garments of skin. The present Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are in the main their descendants. They live, some of them, in the same identical houses their forefathers occupied at the time of Coronado's expedition to Now Mexico in 1541-1542, as ​at Acoma, Jemez, and Taos, and although their plan and mode of life have changed in some respects in the interval, it is not unlikely that they remain to this day a fair sample of the life of the Village Indians from Zuñi to Cuzco as it existed in the sixteenth century.
The Indians north of New Mexico did not construct their houses more than one story high, or of more dm-able materials than a frame of poles or of timber covered with matting or bark, or coated over with earth. A stockade around their houses was their principal protection. In New Mexico, going southward, are met for the first time houses constructed with several stories. Sun-dried brick must have come into use earlier than stone. The practice of the ceramic ait would suggest the brick sooner or later. At all events, what are supposed to be the oldest remains of architecture in New Mexico, such as the Casas Grandes of the Gila and Salinas rivers, are of adobe brick. They also used cobble-stone with adobe mortar, and finally thin pieces of tabular sandstone, prepared by fracture, which made a solid and durable stone wall. Some of the existing pueblo houses in New Mexico are as old as the expedition of Coronado (1540-1542). Others, constructed since that event, and now occupied, are of the aboriginal model. There are at present about twenty of these pueblos in New Mexico, inhabited by about 7,000 Village Indians, the descendants of those found there by Coronado. They are still living substantially under their ancient organization and usages Besides these, there are seven pueblos of the Mokis, near the Little Colorado, occupied by about 3,000 Indians, who have remained undisturbed to the present time, except by Roman Catholic missionaries, and among whom the entire theory of life of the Sedentary Village Indians may yet be obtained. These Village Indians represent at the present moment the type of life found from Zuñi to Cuzco at the epoch of the Discovery, and, while they are not the highest, they are no unfit representatives of the entire class.
The Yucatan and Central American Indians were, in their architecture, in advance of the remaining aborigines of North America. Next to them, probably, were the Aztecs, and some few tribes southward. Holding the third position, though not far behind, were the Village Indians of New Mexico. All alike they depended upon horticulture for subsistence, and ​cultivated by irrigation; cotton being superadded to the maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco, cultivated by the northern tribes. Their houses, with those previously described, represent together an original indigenous architecture, which, with its diversities, sprang out of their necessities. Its fundamental communal type, I repeat, is found not less clearly in the houses about to be described, and in the so-called palace at Palenque, than in the long-house of the Iroquois. An examination of the plan of the structures in Mexico, New Mexico, and Central America will tend to establish the truth of this proposition.
New Mexico is a poor country for civilized man, but quite well adapted to Sedentary Indians, who cultivate about one acre out of every hundred thousand This region, and the San Juan, immediately north of it, possessed a number of narrow fertile valleys, containing together, possibly, 50,000 inhabitants, and it is occupied now by their descendants (excepting the San Juan) in manner and form as it was then. Each pueblo consisted either of a single great house, or of three or four such houses grouped together; and what is more significant, the New Mexican pueblo is a fair type of those now found in ruins in Yucatan, Chiapas, Guatemala, and Honduras, in general plan and in situation. All the people lived together in these great houses on terms of equality, for their institutions were essentially democratical. Common tenements for common Indians around these structures were not found there by Coronado in 1541, neither have any been found there since. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that any such tenements ever existed around those in Yucatan and Central America. Ever} structure was in the nature of a fortress, showing the insecurity in which they lived.
Since the year 1846, the date of the conquest of New Mexico, a number of military reconnaissances, under the direction of the War Department, have been made in various parts of the Territory. The army officers in charge devoted their chief attention to the physical geography and resources of the regions traversed; but, incidentally, they investigated the pueblos in ruins, and the present condition of the Pueblo Indians. The admirable manner in which they have executed the work is shown by the series of reports issued from time to time by the government. More ​recently, the Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, under Prof. F. V. Hayden, geologist in charge, and also the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, Maj. J. W. Powell, geologist in charge, have furnished a large amount of additional information concerning the ruins on the San Juan and its tributaries, the Cliff Houses on the Mancos River and elsewhere, and the Mold Pueblos. Valuable as this information is to us, it falls short of a full exposition of these several subjects.
At the time of Coronado's expedition to capture the Seven Cities of Cibola, so called in the relations of the period, the aborigines of New Mexico manufactured earthen vessels of large size and excellent workmanship, wove cotton fabrics with spun thread, cultivated irrigated gardens, were armed with the bow, arrow, and shield, wore deer-skins and buffalo robes and also cotton mantles as external garments, and had domesticated the wild turkey." "They had hardly provisions enough for themselves," remarks Jaramillo of the Cibolans, "and what they had consisted of maize, beans, and squashes." What was true of the Cibolans in this respect was doubtless true of the Sedentary Indians in general. Each pueblo was an independent organization under a council of chiefs, except as several contiguous pueblos, speaking dialects of the same language, were confederated for mutual protection, of which the seven Cibolan pueblos, situated probably in the valley of the Rio Chaco, within an extent of twelve miles, afford a fair example. The degree of their advancement is more conspicuously shown in their house architecture.
The present Village Indians of New Mexico, or at least some of them, still manufacture earthen vessels, and spin and weave cotton fabrics in the aboriginal manner, and live in houses of the ancient model. Some of them, as the Molds and Lagunas, are organized in gentes, and governed by a council of chiefs, each village being independent and self-governing. They observe the same law of hospitality universally practiced by the Northern Indians. Upon this subject, Mr. David J Miller, of Santa Fé, writes as follows to the author: "A visitor to one of their houses is invariably ​tendered its hospitality in the form of food placed before him. A failure to tender it is deemed a grave breach of hospitality and an insult; and a declension to partake of it would be regarded as a breach of etiquette. As among-us, they have their rich and their poor, and the former give to the latter cheerfully and in due plenty." Here we find a nearly exact repetition of the Iroquois and Mandan rules of hospitality before given. Whether or not they formerly practiced communism in household groups, I am not informed. Their houses are adapted to this mode of life, as will presently be shown; and upon that fact and their stage of social advancement, the deduction of the practice must for the present rest.
JOINT TENEMENT HOUSES OF VILLAGE INDIANS IN NEW MEXICO.
Zuñi, Fig. 23, is the largest occupied pueblo in New Mexico at the present time. It probably once contained five thousand inhabitants, but in 1851 the number was reduced to fifteen hundred The village consists of several structures, most of them accessible to each from their roof terraces. They are constructed of adobe brick, and of stone embedded in adobe mortar, and plastered over.
In the summer of 1879, Mr. James Stevenson, in charge of the field parties under Major Powell, made an extended visit to Zuñi and the neighboring pueblos, for the purpose of making collections of their implements, utensils, etc., during which time the photographs from which the accompanying illustrations of the pueblos were made. His wife accompanied him, and she has furnished us the following description of that pueblo:
"Zuñi is situated in Western New Mexico, being built upon a knoll covering about fifteen acres, and some forty feet above the right bank of the river of the same name.
"Their extreme exclusiveness has preserved to the Zuñians their strong individuality, and kept their language pure. According to Major Powell's classification, their speech forms one of four linguistic stocks to which may be traced all the pueblo dialects of the southwest. In all the large area which was once thickly dotted with settlements, only-thirty-one remain, and these are scattered hundreds of miles apart from Taos, in Northern New ​Mexico, to Isleta, in Western Texas. Among these remnants of great native tribes, the Zuñians may claim perhaps the highest position, whether we regard simply their agricultural and pastoral pursuits, or consider their whole social and political organization.
"The town of Zuñi is built in the most curious style. It resembles a great beehive, with the houses piled one upon another in a succession of terraces, the roof of one forming the floor or yard of the next above, and so on, until in some cases five tiers of dwellings are successively erected, though no one of them is over two stories high. These structures are of stone and 'adobe.' They are clustered around two plazas, or open squares, with several streets and three covered ways through the town.
"In Zuñi, as elsewhere, riches and official position confer importance upon their possessors. The wealthy class live in the lower houses, those of moderate means next above, while the poorer families have to be content with the uppermost stories. Naturally no one will climb into the garret who has the means of securing more convenient apartments, under the huge system of "French flats," which is the way of living in Zuñi. Still there is little or no social distinction in the rude civilization, the whole population of the town living almost as one family. The Alcalde, or Lieutenant-Governor, furnishes an exception to the general rule, as his official duties require him to occupy the highest house of all, from the top of which he announces each morning to the people the orders of the Governor, and makes such other proclamation as may be required of him.
"Each family has one room, generally the largest in the house, where they work, eat, and sleep together. In this room the wardrobe of the family hangs upon a log suspended beneath the rafters, only the more valued robes, such as those worn in the dance, being wrapped and carefully stored away in another apartment. Work of all kinds goes on in this large room, including the cooker}, which is done in a fire-place on the long side, made by a projection at right angles with the wall, with a mantel-piece on which rests the base of the chimney. Another fire-place in a second room is from six to eight feet in width, and above this is a ledge shaped somewhat like a Chinese awning. A highly-polished slab, fifteen or twenty inches in size, is raised a foot above the hearth. Coals are heaped beneath this slab, and upon it the Waiavi is baked. This delicious kind of bread is made of meal ground finely and spread in a thin batter upon the stone with the naked hand. It is as thin as a wafer, and these crisp, gauzy ​sheets, when cooked, are piled in layers and then folded or rolled. Light bread, which is made only at feast times, is baked in adobe ovens outside the house When not in use for this purpose the ovens make convenient kennels for the dogs and play-houses for the children. Neatness is not one of the characteristics of the Zuñians. In the late autumn and winter months the women do little else than make bread, often in fanciful shapes, for the feasts and dances which continually occur. A sweet drink, not at all intoxicating, is made from the sprouted wheat. The men use tobacco, procured from white traders, in the form of cigarettes from corn-husks; but this is a luxury in which the women do not indulge.
"The Pueblo mills are among the most interesting things about the town. These mills, which are fastened to the floor a few feet from the wall, are rectangular in shape, and divided into a number of compartments, each about twenty inches wide and deep, the whole series ranging from five to ten feet in length, according to the number of divisions. The walls are made of sandstone. In each compartment a flat grinding stone is firmly set, inclining at an angle of forty-five degrees These slabs are of different degrees of smoothness, graduated successively from coarse to fine. The squaws, who alone work at the mills, kneel before them and bend over them as a laundress does over the wash-tub, holding in their hands long stones of volcanic lava, which they rub up and down the slanting slabs, stopping at intervals to place the grain between the stones. As the grinding proceeds the grist is passed from one compartment to the next until, in passing through the series, it becomes of the desired fineness. This tedious and laborious method has been practiced without improvement from time immemorial, and in some of the arts the Zuñians have actually retrograded"
Elevations of the principal pueblos of New Mexico have from time to time been published. They agree in general plan, but show considerable diversity in details. Rude but massive structures, they accommodated all the people of the village in security within their walls.
The Moki Pueblos are supposed to be the towns of Tusayan, visited by a detachment of Coronado's expedition in 1541. Since the acquisition of New Mexico they have been rarely visited, because of their isolation and distance from American settlements.
The accompanying illustration of Wolpi, Fig. 25, one of these pueblos, is from a photograph taken by Major Powell's party.
This account leaves a doubt whether the stories receded from the inclosed court outward, or from the exterior inward. Lieutenant Ives does not state that he passed through the building into the court and ascended to the first platform from within, and yet the remainder of the description seems to imply that he did, and that the structure occupied but three sides of the court, since he states that "the houses are three rooms deep and open upon the interior court." The structure was three stories high.
The above engraving was prepared for an article by Maj. Powell, on these Indians. Two rooms are shown together, apparently by leaving out the wooden partition which separated them, showing an extent of at least thirty feet. The large earthen water-jars are interesting specimens of Moki ​pottery. At one side is the hand mill for grinding maize. The walls are ornamented with bows, quivers, and the floor with water-jars, as described by Lieutenant Ives.
In places on the sides of the bluffs at this and other pueblos, Lieutenant Ives observed gardens cultivated by irrigation. "Between the two," he remarks, "the faces of the bluff have been ingeniously converted into terraces. These were faced with neat masonry, and contained gardens, each surrounded with a raised edge so as to retain water upon the surface. Pipes from the reservoirs permitted them at any time to be irrigated."
The measurements of the two edifices were furnished to the writer in 1864 by Mr. John Ward, at that time a government Indian agent, by the procurement of Dr. M. Steck, superintendent of Indian affairs in New Mexico Among further particulars given by Mr. Ward are the following:
"The thickness of the walls of these houses depends entirely upon the size of the adobe and the way in which it is laid upon the wall; that is, whether lengthwise or crosswise. There is no particular standard for the size of the adobes. On the buildings in question the adobes on the upper stories are laid lengthwise, and will average about ten inches in width, which gives the thickness of the walls. On the first story or ground rooms the adobes are in most places laid crosswise, thus making the thickness of these walls just the length of the adobe, which averages about twenty inches. The width of an adobe is usually one-half its length, and the thickness will average about four inches. The floors and roofs are coated with mud mortar from four to six inches thick, which is laid on and smoothed over with the hand. This work is usually performed by women. When the right kind of earth can be obtained the floor can be made very hard and smooth, and will last a very long time without needing repairs The walls both inside and out are coated in the same manner. On the inside, however, more care is taken to make the walls as even and smooth as possible, after which they are whitewashed with yesso or gypsum,"
Several rooms on the ground floor were measured by Mr. Ward and found to be, in feet, 14 by 18, 20 by 22, and 24 by 27, with a height of ceiling averaging from 7 to 8 feet. In the second story they measured, in feet, 14 by 23, 12 by 20, and 15 by 20, with a height of ceiling varying ​from 7 to 71/4 feet. The rooms in the third, fourth, and fifth stories were found to diminish in size with each story. There is probably a mistake here, as the main longitudinal partition walls must have been carried up upon each other from bottom to top. A few of the doorways were measured and found to range from 21/2 feet wide by 41/2 feet high and 21/3 feet wide by 410/12 feet high. The scuttles or trap-doors in the floors, through which they descended into these rooms by means of ladders, were 3 feet by 21/2, 3 feet by 2, and 110/12 by 21/2 feet; and the window openings through the walls were, in inches, 14 by 14, 8 by 16, 16 by 20, and 18 by 18.
Mr. Ward then proceeds: "No room has more than two windows; very few have more than one. The back rooms usually have one or more round holes made through the walls from six to eight inches in diameter. These openings furnish the apartments with a scanty supply of light and air. The first story or the ground rooms are usually without doors or windows, the only entrance being through the scuttle-holes or doors in the roof, which "are within the rooms comprising the story immediately above. These basement rooms are used for store-rooms. Those in the upper stories are the rooms mostly inhabited. Those located in the front part of the building receive their light through the doors and windows before described. The back rooms have no other light than that which goes in through the scuttle-holes and the partition walls leading from the front rooms; that is, where a room is so situated as to have both. Others again have no other light than that which enters through the holes already described. Such rooms are always gloomy. Some families have as many as four or five rooms, one of which is set apart for cooking, and is furnished with a large fire-place for the purpose. Those who have only two or three rooms usually cook and sleep in the same apartment, and in such cases they cook in the usual fireplace, which stands in one corner of the room. No perceptible addition has been made to either of the buildings for many years; and it is evident that after the death or removal of their owners they were entirely neglected. Those in good condition are still occupied. From the best information attainable the original buildings were not erected all at one time, but were added to from time to time by additional rooms, including the second, third, and more stories. There are no regular terraces, the roof of ​the rooms below answering that purpose. Thus it is that no entire circuit can be made around any one of these stories, the only thing that can be called a terrace being the narrow space left in front of some of the rooms from the roofs of the lower rooms."
Mr. Ward seems to object to the word "terrace" in defining the platform left in front of each story as a means of access to its apartments and to the successive stories. It was used by the early Spanish writers to explain the same peculiarity found in many of the great houses in the pueblo of Mexico and elsewhere over Mexico, the roofs being flat and the stories receding from each other. While this platform is not in strictness a terrace, the term expresses this architectural feature with sufficient clearness. The two structures at Taos are large enough to accommodate five hundred persons in each, the inmates living in the Indian fashion. They were occupied in 1864 by three hundred and sixty-one Taos Indians.
"Each terrace is reached," remarks Mr. Miller before mentioned, speaking of the pueblos in general, "by a wooden ladder, first from the ground and afterward from the one below; and ingress and egress to and from the rooms below is on the inside in the room above through trap-doors and upon ladders. It is wonderful to see with what agility the Indian children and the dogs run up and down these ladders. Nowhere is there any side communication between the rooms in the great building, and but one family occupy each series of rooms situated one above the other." This last statement is too broadly made, as we have seen that Mr. Ward has given the measurements of doors through partition walls. Such doors will also be shown in a subsequent engraving. But there is no doubt of the fact that the number of lateral rooms communicating with each other was small, and that the families or groups, if such existed, united in a communal household, were separated from each other by solid partition walls, a fact which will reappear in the house-architecture of Yucatan.
In 1877, David J. Miller, esq., of Santa Fé, visited the Taos Pueblo at my request, to make some further investigations. He reports to me the following facts: The government is composed of the following persons, all of whom, except the first, are elected annually: 1. A cacique or principal sachem. 2. A governor or alcalde. 3. A lieutenant-governor. 4. A war ​captain, and a lieutenant war captain. 5. Six fiscals or policemen." The cacique," Mr. Miller says, "has the general control of all officers in the performance of their duties, transacts the business of the pueblo with the surrounding whites, Indian agents, etc., and imposes reprimands or severer punishments upon delinquents. He is keeper of the archives of the pueblo; for example, he has in his keeping the United States patent for the tract of four square leagues on which the pueblo stands, which was based upon the Spanish grant of 1689; also deeds of other purchased lands adjoining the pueblo. He holds his office for life. At his death, the people elect his successor. The cacique may, before his death, name his successor, but the nomination must be ratified by the people represented by their principal men assembled in the estufa." In this cacique may be recognized the sachem of the northern tribes, whose duties were purely of a civil character. Mr, Miller does not define the duties of the governor. They were probably judicial, and included an oversight of the property rights of the people in their cultivated lands, and in rooms or sections of the pueblo houses. "The lieutenant-governor," he remarks, "is the sheriff to receive and execute orders. The war captain has twelve subordinates under his command to police the pueblo, and supervise the public grounds," such as grazing lands, the cemetery, estufas, &c. The lieutenant war captain executes the orders of his principal, and officiates for him during his absence, or in case of his disability. The six fiscals are a kind of town police. It is their duty to see that the catechism (Catholic) is taught in the pueblo, and learned by the children, and generally to keep order and execute the municipal regulations of the pueblo under the direction of the governor, who is charged with the duty of seeing to their execution."
"The regular time for meeting in the estufa is the last day. of December, annually, for the election of officers for the ensuing year. The cacique, governor, and principal men nominate candidates, and the election decides. There may also be a fourth nomination of candidates, that is, by the people. In the election, all adult males vote; the officers first, and then the general public. The officers elected are at the present time sworn in by the United States Territorial officials."
​At the time of their discovery the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico generally worshipped the sun as their principal divinity. Although under constraint they became nominally Roman Catholic, they still retain, in fact, their old religious beliefs. Mr. Miller has sent me some information upon this subject concerning the pueblos of Taos, Jemez, and Zia.
"Before the Spaniards forced their religion upon the people, the pueblo of Taos had the Sun for their God, and worshipped the Sun as such They had periodical assemblages of the authorities and the people in the estufas for offering prayers to the Sun, to supplicate him to repeat his diurnal visits, and to continue to make the maize, beans, and squashes grow for the sustenance of the people. 'The Sun and God,' said the governor (Mirabal) to me, 'are the same. We believe really in the Sun as our God, but we profess to believe in the God and Christ of the Catholic Church and of the Bible. When we die, we go to God in Heaven. I do not know whether Heaven is in the Sun, or the Sun is Heaven. The Spaniards required us to believe in their God, and we were compelled to adopt their God, their church, and their doctrines, willing or unwilling. We do not know that under the American Government we may exercise any religion we choose, and that the National Government and the church government are wholly "disconnected. We have very great respect and reverence for the Sun. We fear that the Sun will punish us now, or at some future time, if we do evil. The modern pueblos have the Sun religion really, but they profess the Christian religion, of which they know nothing but what the Catholic religion teaches. They always believed that Montezuma would come again as the messiah of the pueblo. The Catholic religion has been so long outwardly practiced by the people that it could not now, they think, be easily laid aside, and the old Sun religion be established, because it is looked upon as established by the law of the land, and therefore necessarily practiced. Nevertheless, the Indians will always follow and practice, as they do, both religions. If,' said the governor, 'one Indian here at this pueblo were to declare that he intended to renounce and abandon the religion of his fathers (the worship of the Sun) and adopt the Christian religion as his only faith, and another Indian were to declare that he intended to repudiate the Christian religion and adopt and practice only the Sun religion, the former ​would be expelled the pueblo, and his property would be confiscated, but the other would be allowed to remain with all his rights'
"There are three old men in the pueblo whose duty it is to impart the traditions of the people to the rising generation. These traditions are communicated to the young men according to their ages and capacities to receive and appreciate them. The Taos Indians have a tradition that they came from the north; that they found other Indians at this place (Taos) living also in a pueblo; that these they ejected after much fighting, and took and have continued to occupy their place. How long ago this was they cannot say, but it must have been a long time ago. The Indians driven away lived here in a pueblo, as the Taos Indians now do."
Mr. Miller also communicates a conversation had with Juan José, a native of Zia, and José Miguel, a native of Pecos, but then (December, 1877) a resident of the pueblo of Jemez, which he wrote down at the time, as follows: "Before the Spaniards came, the religion of Jemez, Pecos and Zia, and the other pueblos, was the Montezuma religion. A principal feature of this religion was the celebration of Dances at the pueblo. In it, God was the sun. Seh-un-yuh was the land the Pueblo Indians came from, and to it they went when dead. This country (Seh-un-yuh) was at Great Salt Lake. They cannot say whether this lake was the place where the Mormons now live, but it was to the north. Under this great lake there was a big Indian Pueblo, and it is there yet. The Indian dances were had only when prescribed by the cacique. The Pueblo Indians now have two religions, that of Montezuma, and the Roman Catholic. The Sun, Moon, and Stars were Gods, of which the greatest and most potent was the Sun; but greater than he was Montezuma. In time of drought, or actual or threatened calamity, the Pueblo Indians prayed to Montezuma, and also to the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The old religion (that of Montezuma) is believed in all the New Mexican pueblos. They practice the Catholic religion ostensibly; but in their consciences and in reality the old religion is that of the pueblos. The tenets of the old religion are preserved by tradition, which the old men communicate to the young in the estufas. At church worship the Pueblo Indians pray to God, and also to Montezuma ​and the Sun; but at the dances they pray to Montezuma and the Sun only. During an actual or threatened calamity the dances are called by the cacique. They have two Gods; the God of the Pueblos, and the God of the Christians. Montezuma is the God of the Pueblo."
This account of the Sun worship of the Taos Indians, in which is intermingled that of Montezuma, and the further account of the worship of Montezuma at the pueblos of Zia and Jemez, with the recognition of the worship of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, are both interesting and suggestive. It is probable that Sun worship is the older of the two, while that of Montezuma, as a later growth, remained concurrent with the other in all the New Mexican pueblos without superseding it. In this supernatural person, known to them as Montezuma, who was once among them in bodily human form, and who left them with a promise that he would return again at a future day, may be recognized the Hiawatha of Longfellow's poem, the Ha-yo-went′-ha of the Iroquois. It is in each case a ramification of a widespread legend in the tribes of the American aborigines, of a personal human being, with supernatural powers, an instructor of the arts of life; an example of the highest virtues, beneficent, wise, and immortal.
"They have," remarks Mr. Miller, "one curious custom which has always been observed in the pueblo. It is for some one (sometimes several simultaneously) to seclude themselves entirely from the outer world, abstaining absolutely from all personal communication with others, and devoting themselves solely to prayer for the pueblo and its inhabitants. This seclusion lasts eighteen months, during which they are furnished daily, by a confidential messenger, with a little food, just enough to preserve life, and during which time they may not even inquire about their wives or children or be told anything of them though the messenger may know that some of them are sick or have died The food the recluse is permitted to use is corn, beans, squashes, and buffalo and deer meat; that is, such food as was used before the coming of the Spaniards. This religious seclusion is in honor of the Sun. It is one of the rites of the ancient religion of the Pueblo, preserved and practiced now. One of the old men I talked with said that he had himself the previous year emerged from this hermitage; three others were now in, they having retired to exile in February, 1877, and will emerge in August, 1878, then to learn the news of the previous year and a half."
* ↑ "They have no cotton-wool growing, because the country is cold, yet they wear mantles thereof, as your honor may see by the show thereof; and true it is, that there was found in their houses certain yarn made of cotton-wool."—Coronado's Relation, Hakluyt's Coll. of Voyages, London ed., 1600, iii, 377.
* ↑ "Their garments were of cotton and deer skins, and the attire, both of men and women, was after the manner of Indians of Mexico. * * * Both men and women wore shoes and boots, with good soles of neat's leather—a thing never seen in any part of the Indies."—Voyages to New Mexico, by Friar Augustin Rueyz, a Franciscan, in 1581, and Antonio de Espejo in 1583. Explorations for Railroad Route, &c., Report Indian Tribes, vol. iii, p. 114.
* ↑ "We found here Guinea cocks [turkeys], but few. The Indians tell me in all these seven cities that they eat them not, Itut that they keep them only for their feathers. I believe them not, for they are excellent good, and greater than those of Mexico."—Coronado Rel., Hakluyt, iii, 377.
* ↑ Relation of Capt. Juan Jaramillo, Coll. Terneaux-Compans, ix,369.
* ↑ Ex. Doc. No. 41, 1st session 30th Congress, 1848, p. 462.
* ↑ Colorado Exploring Expedition, p. 121.
* ↑ Relation of Castenada, Coll. H. Ternaeux-Compans. ix, 138. Trans, of American Ethnological Society.
* ↑ Colorado Exploring Expedition, p. 120.
* ↑ Mr. Bandelier has since ascertained that they are organized in gentes.
* ↑ The Iroquois have a similar tradition of the ancient existence of an Indian village under Otsego Lake in Now York.