Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1899-05-13
THE PUEBLO INDIANS
The Chicago Records Correspondent
Writes of Their Habits and
Progress,
SOME ANCIENT CUSTOMS
Railway Preparations Being Made for
Heavy Travel in and Through
New Mexico for the Com
ing Season,
Special Correspondence of the Chicago

Record.
Santa Fe, N. NJ, May 4.-The Pueblo
Indians of New Mexico are making no
apparent progress. The government
has provided fine schools for them at
Santa Fee, Albuquerque and other
points, and several hundred of the CON-
ing generation are being taught the
arts and industries of civilization, but
their fathers and mothers still cling to
their ancient customs and retain their
pagan superstitions, which for the most
part are peaceful and poetic and appeal
strongly to sentiment, but are inter-
woven with religious rites hat are cru
ell and barbaric. They are a quiet and
industrious people. They have no NAL
ice and no vices except what they have
initiated from the whites; they mind
their own affairs in a manner that fur
nishes the most civilized community a
commendable example; they keep their
promises and contracts; they are fru-
gal, thrifty and e%nterprising in various
ways, but they prefer their own ancient
customs to the modern methods which
the whites have introduced, and stand
in the way of progress"
What the next generation, now being
educated at the government schools,
may bring forth is an interesting ques-
ton. The children are quick to learn,
they are obedient, studious and eager
for knowledge, but the greater number
of those who have graduated from these
institutions have resumed their ances-
trail habits as soon. as they have re-
turned to the pueblos. This is, of
course, discouraging to their educators,
who see with grief that so little use is
made of the knowledge they have en-
deavored to instill into the youthful
minds. Heredity is stronger than Gull
ture. The habits of centuries refuse to
yield to intellectual treatment. The
missionaries representing several of the
religious denominations in the different
pueblos find the Indians equally tena-
cious of their ancient faith, although it
has yielded considerably to the persist
ence of the Catholic priests, who have
been among them ever since the con-
quest of Mexico, and have taught them
many Of the useful arts as we'll as a
knowledge Of the Christian religion.
The physicians employed by the gov
eminent to doctor them for bodily dis
eases are equally unsuccessful. The In
dams take the medicine, but continue
to practice their heathenish i~ncanta-
tions and depend upon the supernatural
powers of their own medicine men. The
smallpox now prevails among them to
an extent that prohibits strangers from
visiting the pueblos, and has interrupt
ed trade. but the Indians refuse to be
vaccinated, and when a person dies
they distribute the germs of the dis
ease as widely as possible by dividing
his garments and other belongings
among his relatives, by inviting his
friends to the funeral from all the
neighboring villages and exposing the
corpse publicly for the inspection of
men, women and children. Vaccination
should be made compulsory, and the
agency physicians should be required to
enforce sanitary regulations in all the
pueblos. If the stories that are told are
true, some Of the agency doctors are
very neglectful of their duties.
About halfway between Las Vegas
and Santa Fe is a sacred spot-the Naz-
areth of the Aztecs, the old pueblo of
Pecos-where the simple children of the
sun believe that Montezuma was born.
1t matters not that the records Of the
church and state and the truth of his
tory discredit the romantic legend that
is the basis of their religious faith; the
story remains one of the most charm
ing of the folklore of our land. Accord
youth of Montezuma were strangely
similar to those of the Christ. When
he grew to manhood he became their
prophet, priest and king, and when he
disappeared he became a messiah, who,
they devoutly believe, will return to re-
lieve them from their present degrade
ton and restore the glory and the pow
err of an empire of which they have but
the vaguest conception. This belief
seems to be the development of the
Christian theory of salvation on an AZ
tee foundation.
The Aztecs worshiped fire, and Mon
tezuma's principal occupation when he
grew to manhood was to keep the flames
alive on the altar of an ancient estufa
or temple, which stood in his native
villaee of Pecos, a few miles south of q
cluster of shanties that now surround
a water tank and a railroad house thai
bears the Israelitish name of Levy. One
day a great white eagle came and car
ried Montezuma away on it's back. Ev-
erywhere the bird alighted on it's jour
ney southwark a pueblo arose, and the
end of the flight was the base of Popo.
catapetl, where Montezuma founded ar
empire and a dynasty, which reigneC
for centuries, until it was overthrow
by the Spaniards, who killed the king
stripped the temples and palaces ant
enslaved the people.
Before he left Pecos on the aeria
journey Montezuma told the people thai
some time he would come back AGAR
to redeem them, and every morning the
devout and confiding Aztec goes to hi!
housetop at sunrise, and, shading hi:
eyes with his dusky hand, scans the
horizon in the hope that his messiah
will appear. He told them they mus
keep the fire on the altar burning unit
he came, and this injunction wal
obeyed until travel became so frequen
along the Santa Fe trail that the priests