The Delight Makers Read online

  THE DELIGHT MAKERS

  by

  ADOLF F. BANDELIER

  With an Introduction by Charles F. Lummis

  Illustrated

  Portrait of the Author]

  New York Dodd, Mead and CompanyPublishersCopyright, 1890by Dodd, Mead and CompanyCopyright, 1916by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.Copyright, 1918by Mrs. Fanny R. BandelierPrinted In U. S. A.

  PREFACE

  This story is the result of eight years spent in ethnological andarchaeological study among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. The firstchapters were written more than six years ago at the Pueblo of Cochiti.The greater part was composed in 1885, at Santa Fe, after I had bestowedupon the Tehuas the same interest and attention I had previously paid totheir neighbours the Queres. I was prompted to perform the work by aconviction that however scientific works may tell the truth about theIndian, they exercise always a limited influence upon the generalpublic; and to that public, in our country as well as abroad, the Indianhas remained as good as unknown. By clothing sober facts in the garb ofromance I have hoped to make the "Truth about the Pueblo Indians" moreaccessible and perhaps more acceptable to the public in general.

  The sober facts which I desire to convey may be divided into threeclasses,--geographical, ethnological, and archaeological. Thedescriptions of the country and of its nature are real. The descriptionsof manners and customs, of creed and rites, are from actual observationsby myself and other ethnologists, from the statements of trustworthyIndians, and from a great number of Spanish sources of old date, inwhich the Pueblo Indian is represented as he lived when still unchangedby contact with European civilization.

  The descriptions of architecture are based upon investigations of ruinsstill in existence on the sites where they are placed in the story.

  The plot is my own. But most of the scenes described I have witnessed;and there is a basis for it in a dim tradition preserved by the Queresof Cochiti that their ancestors dwelt on the Rito de los Frijoles anumber of centuries ago, and in a similar tradition among the Tehuas ofthe Pueblo of Santa Clara in regard to the cave-dwellings of the Puye.

  A word to the linguist. The dialect spoken by the actors is that ofCochiti for the Queres, that of San Juan for the Tehuas. In order toavoid the complicated orthography latterly adopted by scientists forIndian dialects, I have written Indian words and phrases as they wouldbe pronounced in continental languages. The letter [=a] is used todenote the sound of a in "hare."

  To those who have so kindly assisted me,--in particular to Rev. E. W.Meany of Santa Fe, and to Dr. Norton B. Strong, of the United StatesArmy,--I herewith tender my heartfelt thanks.

  AD. F. BANDELIER

  SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO.

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  PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

  The aim of our good and lamented friend in writing this book was toplace before the public, in novelistic garb, an account of the life andactivities of the Pueblo Indians before the coming of white men. Theinformation on which it is based was the result of his personalobservations during many years of study among the sedentary tribes ofNew Mexico and in Spanish archives pertaining thereto in connection withhis researches for the Archaeological Institute of America. He spentmonths in continuous study at the Tehua pueblo of San Juan and theQueres pueblo of Cochiti, and the regard in which he was held by thesimple folk of those and other native villages was sincerelyaffectionate. Bandelier's labors in his chosen field were commenced at atime when a battle with hardship was a part of the daily routine, andhis method of performing the tasks before him was of the kind thatproduced important results often at the expense of great suffering,which on more than one occasion almost shut out his life.

  Because not understood, _The Delight Makers_ was not received at firstwith enthusiastic favor. It seemed unlike the great student of technicalproblems deliberately to write a book the layman might read withinterest and profit; but his object once comprehended, the volume wasreceived in the spirit in which the venture was initiated and for a longwhile search for a copy has often been in vain.

  Bandelier has come unto his own. More than one serious student of theethno-history of our Southwest has frankly declared that the basis offuture investigation of the kind that Bandelier inaugurated will alwaysbe the writings of that eminent man. Had he been permitted to live andlabor, nothing would have given him greater satisfaction than theknowledge that the people among whom he spent so many years are of thosewho fully appreciate the breadth of his learning and who have beeninstrumental in the creation, by proclamation of the President, of the"Bandelier National Monument," for the purpose of preserving for futuregenerations some of the archaeological remains he was the first toobserve and describe.

  F. W. HODGE.

  SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, D. C., _September 25, 1916._

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  NOTE

  A SPECIAL interest attaches to the illustrations, now first included inthis edition. Many of them are from photographs made by Chas. F. Lummisin 1890, under the supervision of Bandelier, and with special referenceto "The Delight Makers," then being written. These two friends were thefirst students to explore the Tyuonyi and its neighborhood. In rain andshine, afoot, without blankets or overcoats, with no more provision thana little _atole_ (popcorn meal) and sweet chocolate, they climbed thecliffs, threaded the canons, slept in caves or under trees, measured,mapped and photographed the ruins and landscapes with a 40-pound camera,and laid the basis-notes for part of Bandelier's monumental "FinalReport" to the Archaeological Institute of America.

  A few later photographs from the same hand show part of the excavationdone in the Tyuonyi by the School of American Archaeology--through whoseloving and grateful efforts this canon has been set apart as a NationalMonument bearing the name of its discoverer and chronicler,

  ADOLF F. BANDELIER.

  Thanks are due also to Hon. Frederick C. Hicks, M.C., for six veryinteresting photographs of the Zunis and their country.

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  IN MEMORY

  One day of August, 1888, in the teeth of a particular New Mexicosand-storm that whipped pebbles the size of a bean straight to yourface, a ruddy, bronzed, middle-aged man, dusty but unweary with hissixty-mile tramp from Zuni, walked into my solitary camp at LosAlamitos. Within the afternoon I knew that here was the mostextraordinary mind I had met. There and then began the uncommonfriendship which lasted till his death, a quarter of a century later;and a love and admiration which will be of my dearest memories so longas I shall live. I was at first suspicious of the "pigeon-hole memory"which could not only tell me some Queres word I was searching for, butadd: "Policarpio explained that to me in Cochiti, November 23, 1881."But I discovered that this classified memory was an integral part ofthis extraordinary genius. The acid tests of life-long collaborationproved not only this but the judicial poise, the marvelous insight andthe intellectual chastity of Bandelier's mind. I cannot conceive ofanything in the world which would have made him trim his sails as ahistorian or a student for any advantage here or hereafter.

  Aside from keen mutual interests of documentary and ethnologic study, wecame to know one another humanly by the hard proof of the Frontier.Thousands of miles of wilderness and desert we trudged side byside--camped, starved, shivered, learned and were Glad together. Ourjoint pursuits in comfort at our homes (in Santa Fe and Isleta,respectively) will always be memorable to me; but never so wonderful asthat companioning in the hardships of what was, in our day, the reallydifficult fringe of the Southwest. There was not a decent
road. We hadno endowment, no vehicles. Bandelier was once loaned a horse; and afterriding two miles, led it the rest of the thirty. So we went always byfoot; my big camera and glass plates in the knapsack on my back, theheavy tripod under my arm; his aneroid, surveying instruments, andsatchel of the almost microscopic notes which he kept fully andprecisely every night by the camp-fire (even when I had to crouch overhim and the precious paper with my water-proof focusing cloth) somehowbestowed about him. Up and down pathless cliffs, through tangled canons,fording icy streams and ankle-deep sands, we travailed; no blankets,overcoats, or other shelter; and the only commissary a few cakes ofsweet chocolate, and a small sack of parched popcorn meal. Our "lodgingwas the cold ground." When we could find a cave, a tree, or anything totemper the wind or keep off part of the rain, all right. If not, theOpen. So I came to love him as well as revere. I had known many"scientists" and what happened when they really got Outdoors. He was inno way an athlete--nor even muscular. I was both--and not very longbefore had completed my thirty-five-hundred-mile "Tramp Across theContinent." But I never had to "slow down" for him. Sometimes it wasnecessary to use laughing force to detain him at dark where we had waterand a leaning cliff, instead of stumbling on through the trackless nightto an unknown "Somewheres." He has always reminded me of John Muir, theonly other man I have known intimately who was as insatiate a climberand inspiring a talker. But Bandelier had one advantage. He could findcommon ground with _anyone_. I have seen him with Presidents, diplomats,Irish section-hands, Mexican peons, Indians, authors, scientists and"society." Within an hour or so he was easily the Center. Notunconscious of his power, he had an extraordinary and sensitive modesty,which handicapped him through life among those who had the "gift ofpush." He never put himself forward either in person or in his writing.But something about him fascinated all these far-apart classes ofpeople, when he spoke. His command of English, French, Spanish, andGerman might have been expected; but his facility in acquiring the"dialects" of railroad men and cowboys, or the language of an Indiantribe, was almost uncanny. When he first visited me, in Isleta, he knewjust three words of Tigua. In ten days he could make himself understoodby the hour with the Principales in their own unwritten tongue. Ofcourse, this was one secret of his extraordinary success in learning theinner heart of the Indians.

  I saw it proved again in our contact with the Quichua and Aymara andother tribes of Peru and Bolivia.

  I have known many scholars and some heroes--but they seldom come in thesame original package. As I remember Bandelier with smallpox alone inthe two-foot snows of the Manzanos; his tens of thousands of miles oftramping, exploring, measuring, describing, in the Southwest; his yearafoot and alone in Northern Mexico, with no more weapon than apen-knife, on the trails of raiding Apaches (where "scientificexpeditions" ten years later, when the Apache was eliminated, neededarmed convoys and pack-trains enough for a punitive expedition, andwrote pretentious books about what every scholar has known for threehundred years) I deeply wonder at the dual quality of his intellect.Among them all, I have never known such student and such explorer lodgedin one tenement.

  We were knit not only thus but in the very intimacies of life--sharinghopes and bereavements. My first son, named for him, should now betwenty-two. The old home in Santa Fe was as my own. The truly wonderfullittle woman he found in Peru for mate--who shared his hardships amongthe cannibals of the Amazonas and elsewhere, and so aided and stillcarries on his work--I met in her maiden home, and am glad I may stillcall her friend.

  Naturally, among my dearest memories of our trampings together is thatof the Rito, the Tyuonyi. It had never in any way been pictured before.We were the first students that ever explored it. He had discovered it,and was writing "The Delight Makers." What days those were! The weatherwas no friend of ours, nor of the camera's. We were wet and half-fed,and cold by night, even in the ancient tiny caves. But the unforgettableglory of it all!

  To-day thousands of people annually visit the Tyuonyi at ease, and campfor weeks in comfort. The School of American Archaeology has a summersession there; and its excavations verify Bandelier's surmises. Normalstudents and budding archaeologists sleep in the very caves (identified)of the Eagle People, the Turquoise, Snake and other clans. And in thatenchanted valley we remember not only the Ancients, but the man who gaveall this to the world.

  During the six years I was Librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library,far later, no other out-of-print book on the Southwest was so eagerlysought as "The Delight Makers." We had great trouble in getting our owncopy, which slept in the safe. The many students who wished copies oftheir very own were referred to dealers in Americana, who searched forthis already rare volume; and many were proud to get it, at last, atten, fifteen and even twenty times its original price. It will always bea standard--the most photographic story yet printed of the life of theprehistoric Americans.

  CHARLES F. LUMMIS.

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  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Portrait of the Author _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGEThe East End of the Canon of the Tyuonyi 8A Modern Indian Dance 18An Estufa 18Rito de los Frijoles: Cavate Rooms in Cliff; Ruinsof Talus Pueblo at the Foot of Cliff 38A Westerly Cliff of the Habitations of the Tyuonyi,Showing Second and Third Story Caves, andSome High Lookout Caves 70A Navajo Hogan 88The Heart of the Tyuonyi: The Excavated LowerStory of the Great Terraced Communal House 88Rito de los Frijoles: A Cliff Estufa of the Snake-Clan 116The Dance of the Ayash Tyucotz 140Indian Pueblo Dances of To-day: Lining Up for theDance; The "Clowns" 164Type of Old Indian Woman 186Juanico: A Member of the Modern Village-Council 224The Hishtanyi Chayan, or Chief Medicine Man 256Looking Out from One of the Weathered Cave-Roomsof the Snake-Clan 320Rito de los Frijoles: Looking Out from the CeremonialCave 384Ruins of an Ancient Pueblo 472A Modern Pueblo 486

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