I hope you can stay after the reading
tonight and have some lemonade and cookies with us
out in the hall.
Our last reading for this semester
will be one week from tonight, in the terrace
lounge at the student union.
And five students will be reading, Gladys Bean,
Susan Crawford, Mark Jones, Ken Stahl, and Susie Villard.
That's Halloween night.
The next in a series of lectures sponsored by the library
called Writers of the, Writers of the Purple Sage
will be tomorrow night in the Harvill Auditorium at 7:00.
The lecture is by Rudolfo Anaya, and he's calling it An American
Chicano in King Arthur's Court.
And that's also free.
The Harvill building is at the corner of 2nd and Olive.
We are so pleased to present Frank Waters tonight.
I know many of you know his work very well.
His work is very well loved in our area.
He writes biography, books of non-fiction, novels.
Some of his non-fiction books are The Colorado, Masked Gods:
Pueblo and Navajo Ceremonialism, the Book of the Hopi,
Pumpkin Seed Point, Mexico Mystique,
and Mountain Dialogues.
He's written four books of biography, and some of--
I'm not going to read all of his novels
because we'd like for Mr. Waters to have a little time, too.
I'll just read three of the titles--
The Man Who Killed the Deer, The Yogi of Cockroach Court,
and The Woman at Otowi Crossing.
We do have some books for sale in the hall
tonight, this table out here.
Our great pleasure to present to you Frank Waters.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much for the kind introduction,
and I'm happy to see so many of you here.
I've got three selections here to read from, if we have time.
It was suggested that I get something
out of an early book of mine, The Man Who Killed the Deer.
This is a novel that was published in 1942,
and a lot water's gone under the bridge since that time.
This came out and was an absolute instant flop.
It wasn't only because it came out just before Pearl Harbor,
and no one was interested in reading anything like this,
at the time of starting a war, but also
because, at that time in the '40s,
the United States was still nursing
its prejudice against Indians.
Books on Indians, anything about the American Indian
could hardly ever see print of any kind.
Now, since then, of course, we've
become, not quite Indian lovers, but very much accustomed
to seeing a plethora of books about Indians.
And many of them, thank goodness,
beginning to be written by Indians themselves.
Now, this excerpt I'm reading portrays a pueblo and customs,
as I knew them at the time the book was written,
in the late '30s and early '40s.
And times have changed.
The pueblos are modern, and the young children
are not inured in the kivas in the early part of their lives.
But they go to school, and they've
gone to a couple of wars and are very much indoctrinated
into the American way of life.
But this is, I hope, a picture of Indians as to the time
that I knew them.
"As evening dusk began to blur the two
pale splotches on the highest house tops, a third appeared.
For minutes his deep, clear voice sang out sonorously
to all below.
It was like a summons, like muezzin's call at twilight.
Each man stopped to listen, then continued to his task.
A meeting of the council had been called.
The old man walked in slowly and sat down silently on the ledge,
running around three walls.
Palemon wore a new, red blanket and a proud, dark face.
Martiniano a white bandage around his head and a sallow
face.
Being young men, not members of the council,
they seated themselves close to the door,
beside two younger still, already there.
It was a big room.
Scattered on the plank floor were little wooden boxes
filled with clean sand.
The whitewashed walls were clean and bare,
except for the silver headed canes
of authority of the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor hanging
below a picture of Abraham Lincoln, their donor.
The vigas supporting the roof gleamed dark yellow as honey.
A man dipped into the flame a branch of cedar.
As it burned in his hand, he walked about the room,
so that its sharp, clean odor filled the air.
In the middle of the room sat a deal table,
holding one candle, stuck in a shiny black stick of Santa
Clara ware.
The only two chairs in the room were drawn up before it.
In one sat an intelligent looking middle-aged man
in American clothes, save that the heels of his shoes
had been removed and a blanket was wrapped around the middle.
He would probably not open his mouth all evening.
For a while, most of those present spoke Spanish
and understood English.
They would speak tonight only in their own tongue,
but this was his usual post.
The occupant of the other chair drew it back closer
to the fire.
He was the same crag that still jutted out unbroken
into the waves of life.
There was snow in his scraggly hair, moss on his face.
His eyes were like those of a sun hawk, of a mystic,
of an old, old man, who really couldn't focus
very well on mere objects.
They were the most compelling things in the room.
For while those of the Governor, who sat behind him,
saw through all, the passions of weather and men
to the calm heart of all storms, these eyes saw farther.
They saw the stormy soul of creation within the calm.
They were the eyes that watched the sunsets from the highest
housetop to make solar observations as the sun left
its house mountain.
That determined, for his people, the solstice
in times for ceremonial dances.
He was the Cacique, holding hereditary office for life.
On the ledge behind him, on each side of the Governor,
sat the Lieutenant Governor, the War Captain, the Fiscal,
and their assistants, and all the Kiva Chiefs.
And about them sat the old men with faces sharp as hawks
and old and wrinkled as cedar bark,
with blankets drawn up around their shoulders.
Nearly 40 men, all old.
The door was closed and still, they sat unspeaking,
hunching blankets closer.
It was a terrible tension, the deathless silence, the dim
light, and the dark somber faces now shrouded,
so that only the eyes stared out black and bright as beads.
It was as if they had gathered to read,
from symbols, those meanings, which were themselves symbols
of a life, whose substance they could,
they felt but could not see, whose edges they
touched like the shape of a door, but could not open.
The Governor broke.
He grinned a little toothlessly and picked up a brown paper bag
from the floor to slide across the table.
The interpreter walked with it around the room,
passing, pausing before each man.
It was a roll of huge, black tobacco leaves folded when
damp, and now dry and hard--
punche from the mountains of Mexico, strong as the kick
off a horse.
Each man chuckled and made a little joke
as he broke off a pinch, crushed it between calloused palms,
and rolled a cigarette.
They sat, and smoked, and spit into the little wooden boxes
filled with sand on the floor before them.
Now, the silence, impregnated with smoke,
seemed thicker, heavier, and the tension held again.
As each man threw away his stub, he leaned back against the wall
and drew the blanket up around his head.
They might all have been settling for a sleep.
Then, suddenly, the talk, measured, slow,
polite, and wary--
the Governor began it.
Martiniano here and these two boys,
they have got themselves into trouble.
They have caused trouble in the air.
There will be more.
There is much to consider.
Is it not true or has my tongue betrayed me?
Ai, ai, ai.
Well then, let us consider it fully and calmly like men.
Not all women are chattering magpies.
Let us move evenly together.
Martiniano here and these two boys,
they went into the mountains.
A deer was killed.
They were arrested.
Now, let the young men speak.
Filadelphio, are you ready to empty your heart?
God knows, will help us, will give us medicine.
Filadelphio spoke.
Like his companion, he was just 20,
with short hair and better known by his Spanish name.
This is what I say, it makes two days I started with Jesus here
and Martiniano, whom you see also.
We went up the low trail, the high trail.
We crossed the stream.
We entered the canyon.
We went past the Saltillo, past the beaver dams.
We came to the small mountain pastures among the aspens,
and then it was dark.
We slept.
Low and measureless, his voice went on.
We got up.
It was gray and cold.
We had nothing left to eat.
We thought we were all go back now,
but Martiniano saw the fresh spoor of a deer.
He said, I will just put a shell in my gun.
I will just kill that deer.
My wife will like fresh meat, so we started forth,
myself on one side, Jesus on the other, Martiniano in the middle
and ahead.
What man does not know how a deer bounds up the slope when
startled in the brush?
We saw it.
Martiniano shot it.
It fell dead.
Down to the vega we carried it.
The sun was high.
It was past dinnertime.
Two men rode up on horseback, white men, government men.
They were angry.
They said, it is past the government time for killing
deer on government land.
We arrest you.
Come now and pay heavy fines, and one man on his horse
led away Jesus and me on foot.
Martiniano did not look up.
He was busy taking out the deer's insides.
Hes said, I am Indian.
I am hungry.
Why should I hurry for government men?
We heard no more.
We saw no more.
We went to the jail.
The Jefe took our names.
He looked into our faces and said, there may be heavy fines.
I would have your fathers come see me,
and we came back as we were bid, and now, my heart is empty.
This I say.
It had taken nearly a half hour, and it took Jesus almost as
long to confirm it.
But these were mere details.
What was the substance of this action?
Why did two young men go with Martiniano into the mountains,
without food, to stay all night away from their beds?
Are we not all in one nest?
Jesus tried not to look surprised.
Why did one go to the mountains?
What man did not go to the mountains?
There were the stars, the moon, the shimmer of brittle leaves.
There was, if the truth be emptied from the heart,
the sweet smelling sachet growing on high and which
the young girls treasure.
Moreover, there was this about the fresh spoor of a dear.
One minute, a man had no thought.
The next minute, there he had but one thought.
Has it not always been so with our people?
Jesus was very modest about these things.
His voice was very low.
No man reproached him with word or look,
but still, his heart told him that he
had been too confident in his assertions and assumptions,
too bold in speaking thus.
And he sat down, a little too haughtily to mask his shame,
and wondering what his father would say to him tomorrow.
Now, Palemon spoke forth.
He, too, was a young man.
And would not be regarded--
and would be so regarded till he was 50,
but he had a wife and children.
He worked his land.
He did his ceremonial duties, and so he
was old enough to empty his heart in proud humility.
My wife was in bed.
My children was, were in bed.
I was in bed.
They were asleep, but I was not asleep.
So I lay awake and wondered, why I looked this way and that way,
into my body, my mind, my heart.
You know how it is when there is something in the air.
You cannot touch it.
You cannot think it.
You cannot feel it, but it is there.
I listened to the heart of my body.
I listened to the heart of the mountain.
And I knew that something was wrong, so I waited.
I heard grandfather coyote cry.
I heard him cry four times.
I went out and saddled my mare, and I listened
to the heart of my body.
And I listened to the heart of the mountain,
and I knew I had done well.
Grandfather coyote no longer cried.
He was no longer angry, but grandfather crow
and his brothers were calling, Palemon, Palemon.
So I rode up to the mountain, and they
stopped calling because I came.
I rode up the canyon, past the beaver dams,
until the tall pale aspens.
Above me, the night people came out clear.
Morning Star Older Brother showed me the way,
so I came to where the trail winds up
to cross the crest of the mountains.
The little end dipped down into the lake,
a little blue eye of faith.
I could hear the great heart of the mountain.
I could hear my own heart, and they were one,
so I went no farther.
And there I found him, Martiniano,
with his broken head, so I brought him down.
This I say, you know how it is, the things that no words speak,
but which live in all our hearts,
and now, my heart is empty, too.
No man applauded him by word or look.
They sat face bowed, eyes downward,
wrapped in blankets, swathed in silence,
but this silence was pregnant with the ever looming mystery.
And the tentacles of mind and heart
groped through it, to feed its-- feel its shape,
and form, and substance.
Palemon knew he had spoken well.
He slept modestly on his bench, no longer
conscious of his new red blanket.
A council meeting is a strange thing.
The fire crackles, the candle gutters,
and the old men set stolidly on their benches.
When a man speaks, they do not interrupt.
They lower their swathed heads or half close their eyes, so as
not to encourage or embarrass him with a look.
And when the guttural Indian voice finally stops,
there is silence, a silence so heavy
and profound, that it squashes the kernel of truth
out of his words and leaves the meaningless husk, mercilessly
exposed.
And still, no man speaks.
Each waits courteously for another,
and the silence grows around the walls,
handed from one to another until all the silence is one silence.
And that silence has the meaning of all
so the individuals vanish.
It is all one heart.
It is the soul of the tribe.
A council meeting is one half talk and one half silence.
The silence has more weight, more meaning,
more intonations than the talk.
It is angry, impatient, cheerful, but masked
by calmness, patience, dignity.
Thus the members move evenly together.
Now it suddenly thickened.
It boiled over.
It was the taut silence of a hunter
the moment before striking.
Ai, now, let us look at the center of this trouble.
Now, let Martiniano, Martiniano put out his face in his belly
before us, and so speak so as to empty his heart.
God knows and will help us, he'll give us medicine.
Martiniano began to speak.
He had a cinnamon sallow pain wracked
face and a bloody white bandage around his head.
He was not as young as Filadelphio and Jesus,
or as old as Palemon.
His face and demeanor showed that he was at once
of the old and the new, and then it
was not the first time he had been caught between them.
His voice was sullen, but respectful.
I went to the mountains, and I took my rifle.
I wanted to kill a deer, he stated defiantly.
The council does not give me the privilege of others
since I have come back from a white school.
It would not give me my turn at the thresher for my oats,
my wheat, so I had to thresh them the old way
with my animals' hoofs.
It took me a long, long time--
what should have taken but a day.
Then my friend, the good white trader,
loaned me his machine for one sack out of 10.
Yet it was two days after hunting season that I finished.
Should my wife be without fresh meat,
a skin for boots and moccasins?
Should I go without my rights for two days
for a white man's law?
The white man's government that took me away to school.
What is the difference between killing
a deer on Tuesday or Thursday?
Would I not have killed it anyway?
He paused to twang at the council
the arrows of accusing silence.
It missed the mark or, perhaps, the mute
impenetrability of those rows of covered faces
was too sturdy a shield.
Martiniano resumed.
This I told the government man who remained
with me as you have heard.
I did not have to look up to hear his angry voice,
to feel the hate steaming from his body.
You dirty Indian who kills deer out
of season in this government's National Forest.
I am going to ride up to that old mine for rope,
to tie you up.
Try to run away, and I'll shoot you like a dog.
So he went away.
I laid back the flap of the skin.
I cut off a piece of my deer.
I had no fear.
I had hunger.
I had not eaten the day before.
While it cooked over the coals, I hid my deer in the bushes,
but before I could eat it, he came back.
The rope was on the saddle horn.
The rifle raised to my breast.
His face was red with anger.
I turned over the meat.
What Indian makes a foolish move before an angry white man's
gun, but raised my hands to wipe off my fingers on my hair.
At that moment, he struck with the Iron of his gun,
across my head.
I woke up my head was cracked open.
Blood ran down my face.
He had taken my knife.
My hands were tied behind my back.
When he kicked me, I tried to stand up.
He lifted me like a sack of meal to the rump of his horse.
We started off.
[CLEARS THROAT]
I could not sit up but fell upon his back.
Blood ran down his shirt.
This made him very angry.
He put me up front.
Still I bled and kept falling, save for his hand
upon my collar.
Now, my thoughts returned.
I said, there is a thing I must do,
which every man does behind a bush.
You understand.
It is this hurt, which makes my kidneys weak.
He stopped the horse.
I fell off and stood up.
Pardon, I said, but my hands are tied behind my back.
Oh no, you don't, he said, and with his rifle butt,
he swept open the front of my trousers.
See, how he tore off the buttons.
His eyes hard as black obsidian, Martiniano stated quietly.
One leg forward, showing the gaping flap
of his bloodstained trousers.
No one looked.
They saw it in his face.
If he had done more than that, Martiniano stated quietly,
there would be more for this venerated council to consider.
I would have killed him.
But now, a shade on the apologetic side, I
went noisily into the bushes, where I quietly waded upstream
against the noise of the falls.
I hid in water, deep between the logs of a beaver dam.
I heard him saul--
I heard him call.
I saw him plunging through the bushes to find me.
Suddenly, he rode off.
For a long time, I cut at my rope on the sharp rocks.
When my hands were free, I crawled back up the trail.
I was weak, but the thought of my deer meat made me vomit.
I knew I was sick, so I lay down beside the stream.
And strangely, when the morning star rose,
though I was cold, and weak, and ill, I felt good.
I felt good because I knew help would come.
It came.
It was Palemon.
This I say with my face and my belly put out before you.
And now, my heart is empty.
Had they all fallen asleep--
these rolls of old men slumped against the walls,
the whitewash rubbing off on their blankets, head down,
or arm upraised to shut out the last sputtering pulgado
of candle?
If so, they continued dozing.
Somebody spat noisily into one of the little sandboxes.
Well, here were the facts thrust down the maw of silence.
You could hear them being digested.
And so, one after another, with proper pause,
the guttural Indian voices began to speak.
Let us move evenly together, brothers.
This young man was an Indian, born in our pueblo,
belonging to our tribe.
Or was it-- was he, properly speaking?
There was the definition of an Indian by the government--
so much Indian blood, land ownership, all that.
But there was the definition of an Indian by the council,
according to his conformance to custom,
tradition, his participation in ceremonies.
This young man has been lax.
He has disobeyed us.
We have punished him.
Now, he has disobeyed, disobeyed the laws of the government
outside likewise.
What have we to do with this that we should interfere?
The voices kept creeping around the room.
In the government office 200 miles away,
there is that Indian lawyer, our mouth in many matters.
There is the judge in town, a short walk.
Are we to turn this young man alone over to the judge?
Or are we to call this Indian lawyer?
And what are we to tell him?
We must move evenly together.
We must be one mind, one heart, one body.
Silence spoke.
It spoke the loudest of all.
Finally, the old Cacique interrupted it.
It was true that the young men nowadays did not
observe such proper steps.
And it was true that the game was
becoming scarce because of it.
Was it true that next, the water would fall, fail him,
the air become dull and tasteless,
the life go out of the land?
So I would have you consider whether it is not
time to be more strict with our young men, so corrupted
with evil modern ways, lest we ourselves dwindle
and vanish entirely.
This I say, he ended.
Dios knows, will help us, will give us medicine.
But there is one thing were-- more to consider, the deer.
Ceremonially, we sprinkled meal and pollen to our Father Sun,
and when we killed a deer, we laid his head toward the east
and sprinkled him with maize and pollen.
And we dropped drops of his blood and bits of his flesh
on the ground for our Mother Earth.
It was proper so.
We knew that the deer knew this, and was satisfied
for we knew that the life of the deer was continued in our life,
as it in turn was continued in the life
all around us, below us, and above us.
But this deer's permission was not obtained.
What have we done to the deer, our brother?
What have we done to ourselves?
So the night grew thin as the thinnest gray blanket
around the walls.
The embers heaped upon the growing gray ashes.
The little wooden sandbox is filled with cigarette stubs.
The two sentinels came in a last time for warmth.
In with them stalked daylight.
And now the old men rose and stretched their stiff bent
limbs.
They gathered their blankets about their dark faces and bent
shoulders.
They hobbled out across the plaza in the dawn dusk.
The meeting of the council was over.
They were one body, one mind, one heart.
They moved evenly together."
[APPLAUSE]
Can you give us a little bit [INAUDIBLE]??
Uhuh.
Can you hear me in the back?
Or is rather weak?
[INAUDIBLE]
OK.
I'll read-- That's the way I remember Indians,
and their customs and manner of thinking 40 some years ago.
Now, of course, they, the council
has a new, modern government mill, built council chambers.
They have secretaries.
They have carpet, wall to wall carpets,
and the TV there, typewriters, and so on, very modern.
I think, however, that there's a substratum of feeling that
does not come out to we, white people, who call on them there.
Now, this next excerpt I'm going to read you,
is taken from a short book Pumpkin Seed Point
that I wrote telling some of my own personal experiences,
when I lived among the Hopi people for about
three years in 1959 to '61, to do research
for The Book of the Hopi.
That Book of the Hopi is a very long, long book that consists
of the ceremonial myths, the creation myths, and the clan
migrations, and the meaning of all the rituals and ceremonies
in the annual cycle that was given to me
and a helper, a Hopi by the name of Oswald Fredericks,
who called himself White Bear.
But this book was just my own personal experiences
while working on that long, that long, longer book.
There's something in the air that, I
think, you will tie into, that will tie us back
to the previous reading.
[CLEARS THROAT]
"It was a long walk home to the little house
just under Pumpkin Seed Point.
The distance wasn't far, scarcely a half mile.
What made it seem long was the cold and the snow, darkness
and silence.
The acrid cold ate like a corrosive through woolen
scarf, wrapped around my eyes and ears.
The snow covering the rutted dirt road was frozen hard.
Every step squeaked shrilly in the silence.
Under the gritty winter stars, the earth
spread out flat and bare, save for the jagged, rocky mesa
jutting forth at Pumpkin Seed Point.
In the faint, luminous starlight,
a small stone building emerged in empty space--
the post office, farther off, the white clapboard Mennonite
mission church loomed up, a pale ghost, shunned even on Sunday
by all but a few converts.
To us right, squatted the low sprawling trading post.
It was an island in a sea of frozen mud, covered with snow.
A naked electric light bulb blared
through its iron barred windows, and there
sounded the putt, putt, putt of the coughing gasoline engine
that generated its juice.
They were the only light and sound
in this modern Hopi village of Kiakochomovi,
which we know as New Oraibi.
Beyond and behind the trading post, I trudge most of the--
past most of the houses in town, sturdy little buildings
of stone, hewn from the rocky mesas,
a few plastered over with adobe.
Others were mere hovels, set into the side of the hill.
They all had been dark and lifeless since eight o'clock.
Even the gaunt Indian dogs lay quiet and shivering
in front of the doors, barred against witches.
The hill was not high, but it was a problem in all weathers.
There my stood now--
There my car stood now, securely locked
against stray Navajos, its windshield covered with ice.
Slipping and panting now, I reached the top of the hill.
To the left, backed against the rocky slope of Pumpkin Seed
Point huddled a cluster of houses.
In front of it, to the right, lay a huge pile of firewood
that supplied many of the families.
This was desert country and the great logs
had been brought from mountains as far away as 100 miles.
Most of them were cedar or juniper,
for cedar splits easily and burns fast.
It is no good for fireplaces.
It throws out too many sparks, but the Hopis
couldn't afford fireplaces, and they conserved every splinter
to burn in their cooking stove.
So all day long, every day, you would see men hacking away
at these great twisted tree trunks,
and women and children patiently gathering up
chips and splinters.
This hilltop was a focal point of life
for more than the wood pile.
It was also Crier's Point for here
the village crier stood to cry out important news
and announcements.
Somehow, he always chose early morning for the chore.
You were blasted out of bed by his guttural, singsong voice.
Rushing to the window, you saw this devil's advocate,
one foot propped up on the wood pile, shouting into space.
Hopi is a voluble language.
It took him five minutes or more to inform the waiting
world of momentous news.
What it had been this morning, paradoxically,
was the announcement the Independent of Gallup,
New Mexico was now starting to deliver newspapers
to the reservation for the first time.
This step in progress, it was unnecessary to prophesy,
would go unheeded.
It was easier to listen to the village crier.
How damnable cold it was.
But the key to my little house was waiting under the stone,
beside the door, and the beam of a flashlight guided it
into the lock.
The first spurt of the gas light illuminated the room.
In one corner was a small butane gas stove.
From this ran a small pipe to a gas
light fixture, mounted on the wall,
above the bed in the opposite corner.
Its location was awkward.
The light was not bright enough to work by at a table,
against the window, nor was the kerosene lamp
I brought with me, when I moved in.
So by necessity, I worked at the table by daylight
and wrote up my notes in bed at night.
There were two other pieces of furniture
in the room, a dresser in the dark corner and a spare chair.
It had seemed strange to me, when I first
moved in, to be warned to lock the door at night.
I don't mind the neighbors peeking in the windows.
They'll soon get used to me, I answered.
Stray Navajos won't break in either.
They steal only what's left outside.
White Bear shook his head.
You don't think any Hopis will object so much
to what we're doing that they'll come to make a fuss, do you?
White Bear shook his head more solemnly.
I have been warned to tell you that if you are in earnest,
you will have a manifestation of some kind
to prove your sincerity.
That might frighten you, so lock the door.
It seemed odd to me that a mere locked door
would keep out either a witch or a good spirit
if it chose to enter.
But White Bear refused to say more.
But that night, long after midnight,
I was suddenly awakened by a noise
that sounded like gravel being thrown against the window pane.
I lay stiffly in bed until there sounded another and louder
splatter against the glass.
Then I jumped up and flung open the door.
No one, nothing was there.
The hilltop, the village was dark and silent.
There was only the reflection of that bare globe in the trading
post below and the putt, putt, putt of the coughing engine.
[PAGES FLIPPING]
[COUGHING]
Among the events that broke the Bear for us,
it was a series of strange dreams that came to me.
They began in a curious manner, soon
after the mysterious incident of gravel being
thrown against the window.
Entering Mr. And Mrs. Fredericks, the two Bears,
apartment late one afternoon, I saw an old man in his late 70s
sitting on the couch with White Bear.
He was dressed in a ragged red sweater and baggy pants,
his scraggly gray hair falling in bangs to his chin,
and tied with homespun cotton into a chignon in back.
Tears were streaming down his dark wrinkled face.
He would wipe them off with the hand, still
darker and more wrinkled, and continue talking to White Bear.
He gave the impression of a man torn by a wracking sincerity.
His words, interpreted by heart--
White Bear, bore this out.
I don't blame the white people for their genius
to transmit power through their many kinds of machine,
but I am not impressed with these machines.
They are crude mechanical contraptions
that may break down.
We Hopis don't need them.
We know how to manifest our powers, the same powers
without matches.
I will tell you about these powers
and how the stars help us.
He stayed for dinner for a short time
and gratefully accepted a package
of cigarettes before White Bear drove him home.
He returned elated.
Don Qochhongva, the old man, he said,
was the chief religious leader in Hotevilla,
really of all the Hopi villages.
He was going to tell us what he knew.
Moreover, he was going to persuade other religious, kiva,
and clan chiefs to help us, too.
Our worries were over.
I told him about that gravel.
He trusts you.
He said to tell you that you will now
have four important dreams.
You will see.
A couple of nights later, the first dream came.
I was suddenly aware that there were two men in the room.
My first impulse was to jump out of bed
and throw the catch on the door as I had been told,
but the men were already inside and looked quite harmless.
They were probably two traveling salesman,
old fashioned drummers of the sort,
who occasionally drove through the reservation peddling
knickknacks from home to home.
One was dressed in a reddish brown suit with one coat
button off, and the other in a rumpled dark blue suit.
Don't be alarmed, said the [AUDIO OUT] salesmen peddling
knickknacks from home to home.
One was dressed in a reddish brown suit,
with one coat button off, and the other
in a rumpled dark blue suit.
Don't be alarmed, said the man in the reddish brown suit.
We're ghosts, and you should know that ghosts are just
like people, except that they live
in a world invisible to you.
We travel in great migrations, something like wild geese,
along a traditional route from way above Bering Strait down
to the tip of South America.
My own home between trips is Northern Alaska.
My partner here hails from the lower Argentine.
The one in the dark blue suit was just
as sensible and friendly, although his voice
sounded a little more stern.
We've dropped by to tell you that this place is
directly on our route back and forth between the poles.
You're on the line now.
Mind what I say.
Stay on the line now.
Next morning, I related this occurrence to White Bear.
He was curiously excited, demanded full detail.
No, I don't remember their faces at all, I explained,
just the clothes.
I couldn't tell the race or nationality,
so it must have been a dream.
Anyway, the light was out when I awoke this morning.
White Bear rushed over to Mama Bear's house
and then drove up to see old Don Qochhongva.
When he came back, he assured me that my visitors
had been the sacred mythical twins, Palongawhoya
and Poqanghoya.
One of whom was stationed at the north pole of the world
axis and the other south pole.
Their duties were to keep the earth properly rotating
and to send out calls for good or warning
through the vibratory centers of the earth.
See, you're on the line to receive
their vibratory messages, White Bear told me.
You must be careful to stay on the line as they told you.
The second dream came within a week.
I dreamed that I was driving my car back
from Hotevilla on the high and northeastern tip of the mesa.
The downhill grade was steep, swinging around
the bend of the cliff wall.
This semicircle of sheer rock escarpment
enclosed a high valley, sloping down to the flat desert below.
It was barren and forbidding, littered
with huge boulders and debris from the talus slopes
of the cliffs.
But suddenly, it filled with a glowing pink light,
beautiful beyond description.
As I swung closer around the bend,
I saw the valley completely filled
with a thick orchard of cherry, peach, and apricot trees,
whose branches and blossoms filtered
the sunlight with a strange pinkish glow.
At the same moment, I could feel the warmth of the glow
suffusing my whole body.
A good dream, said White Bear next morning, his face beaming
like a full Hopi moon.
That's the place where the racetrack and stone
piles of the twins are, the shrines of the Oaqol
and Lalakon maidens, and all the rock writing from the far past.
Everything is going to blossom out for us.
We'll ask old Dan.
[PAGES FLIPPING]
Dan was getting ready to go into the kiva for several nights
and, when we left, White Bear simply
said that he couldn't go into all of this
until he got out of the kiva because he
was beginning the purification rites for the coming ceremony.
It was now late in November, and the first
of the great ceremonies in the annual cycle
was beginning, was beginning.
Wúwuchim was a solemn and important ceremony.
It recreated the first dawn of creation
and was a ceremonial supplication
for the germination of all forms of life
on earth, plant, animal, and man.
No white man and no Hopis were, save its participating members,
were allowed to witness major ceremonies.
My dream came while he was still in the kiva,
and it took the shape of a vivid fantasy.
I was awakened one night by the sound of someone walking
around the house, a measured steady tread,
accompanied by a curious, faint rattle at every step.
As I listened, the pace of the steps increased.
The rattling grew louder, until it
seemed as though the house were encircled by running figures.
I flung out of bed and rushed to the window.
No one, nothing moving was visible in the moonlight.
The sound increased in patient volume,
rising in pitch to a steady whine.
The feeling suddenly struck me that I
was encircled by a swiftly revolving ring,
at once invisible and impenetrable.
What it might be, I could not imagine.
I dare not open the door and stick my head outside.
I felt curiously safe within the house.
I went back to bed.
A moment later, with the last shrill and hollow whine,
the sound stopped, and I fell asleep.
Old Dan interpreted later, when he taped an explanation
of the Wúwuchim ceremony.
At the beginning of the ceremony, a line of cornmeal
was drawn on the ground, around the kiva to seal it off
from all trespassers.
On the dread Night of the Washing of the Hair,
all roads were closed by cornmeal.
Villagers living in houses close to the kiva were evacuated.
To further protect the initiates from all worldly contamination,
Two Horn and One Horn guards kept encircling the kiva,
each carried a long lance and wore on his left leg, a turtle
shell rattle, which sounded the stamp of his measured tread.
As the crucial hour approached, when the initiates
went through a reenactment of the emergence,
other world spirits then came to encircle the kiva with swirling
rings of invisible power.
If there were any doubts as to the astounding similarity
between this ritual and my own fantasy,
they were dispelled on the last day of the ceremony, when
I saw the Two Horn and One Horn priests come out of the kiva,
stamping their rattle legs as they successively
encircled the kiva, the plaza, the village, and the shrine.
A weird and barbarically beautiful procession--
gliding from dusk into the darkness
of the immeasurable past.
My fourth dream followed in ceremonial sequence
as preparations were being made for Soyal, the second ceremony,
whose rite coincided with the winter solstice.
Soyal was one of the greatest of the Hopi ceremonies.
I knew nothing about their rites as yet,
but I dreamed that I was sitting in a kiva on a low bench
in the middle of the floor.
The light was dim, but I could see
that the bench was placed on a cornmeal line, that
ran from east to west, as if marking the path of the sun's
journey overhead.
An altar loomed before me.
I paid no attention to it for someone was behind me.
All I could see were the hands that
reached round behind me to unfasten the belt at my waist.
They were old, and dark, and wrinkled.
They took off all my clothes, every stitch.
Then they washed my hair in soapy water.
I could tell by the smell that the suds were made of amole,
the roots of soap-weed yucca.
When this was done, a tiny hawk feather was tied to the hair
at the top of my head, and over my shoulder
was thrown a beautiful cape, pure white, hand woven,
a little coarse, but soft as cotton.
All this time, I was sitting with my bare legs stretched out
before me and with my hands in my lap.
Those strange dark hands now lifted my feet to the bench
and placed my own hands under my armpits,
so that my elbows stuck out on each side.
It was an uncomfortable position.
In a little while, the hands reappeared
with a bowl of queer tasting liquid,
which I was given to drink.
I didn't like its faint odor either.
It took me some time to drink it down.
After this, I was left alone, still
sitting in that awkward, winglike position.
My arms and legs began to cramp.
I began to feel ill from the bowl of liquid I had drunk.
It made me want to vomit and go to the bathroom.
This, I seemed to know was impossible.
There just wasn't anywhere to go,
so I sat there gagging, cramped, and uncomfortable.
Waiting for what?
Why, for a taxi to arrive and drive me off in a hurry.
A New York taxi with a little yellow light on top and meter
clicking away inside.
It didn't come, and the next thing I knew,
I was awake in bed feeling quite comfortable.
Old Dan seemed pleased by the dream,
but made only one direct comment--
the liquid given me to drink was ngakuyi, a medicine water
made from the bones of fierce animals,
such as the bear, mountain lion, and wolf,
ground and mixed with water.
It was drunk for inner purification,
reacting on the nervous centers of the body.
Ordinarily, it did not make anyone sick,
he said, but to one of a different race like myself,
it might possibly act as an emetic.
As Soyal was predominantly a Bear Clan ceremony,
we went to Papa Bear for an explanation of the rituals.
He confirmed the use of ngakuyi by all participating members
and described how a path of cornmeal
was drawn from east to west, symbolizing the road of life
for all plants, birds, animals, and men on earth.
All forms of life were symbolically
hatched by a woman, who was guarded, was escorted
into the kiva and is seated on a specially woven plaque filled
with seeds and prayer feathers.
Here, she squatted like a setting hen
during the ceremony, patiently hatching the germinated seeds
and prayers of her people.
She was commonly called Hawk Maiden
because the young neophytes or initiates were always
called kekelt, fledgling hawks, naked save for a white cotton
manta thrown over their shoulder and a tiny hawk feather tied
to the hair at the top of their heads.
They were made to sit with their feet up,
hands tucked under their armpits,
and elbow sticking out.
This signified that they were fledglings, too
weak yet to fly with their spiritual wings.
How often I saw them later in the kiva, little boys,
patiently squatting in their cramped positions,
watching with mesmeric wonder, the strange masked
shapes dancing before them.
This series of dreams that had come as foretold by old men
had accumulated effect upon me.
I felt a warm and strange attachment
to this obdurate, old mystic in his ragged red sweater
and looked forward to more dreams under his guidance."
[APPLAUSE]
You want another eight pages or should I stop?
Sure.
Are you all tired of this?
No, no.
OK.
Well, this, you'll be glad to know, is a short one.