Alamo Ranch Part 10

The girls were held from school, and at ten and twelve years of age were traded for ponies, into a bondage worse than any known slavery.

Fourteen Indian policemen are allowed the agent. Their especial duty is to see that the herd of beef cattle for their own eating is properly cared for. The police, each had a cabin to live in; but each, in scorn of this civilized innovation, had carefully planted alongside of his cabin a _tepee_ to sleep in. To get these policemen into civilized clothing, under threat of duress, and to order all _tepees_ away from their cabins, was the agent's first move. Next, it was decided that all children five years old and upwards _must_ be placed in school at the beginning of the school year, whether the parents were willing or not.

Every Indian man was ordered to select a piece of land, and put in his posts. To break up the influence of chiefs or bands, who, claiming the whole country, deterred the people from work, by threats, appears to have been up-hill work; "but now," says the agent (in 1897), "there are no chiefs, and 'work or starve' is the policy." Formerly, government supplies of clothing, wagons, harness, and utensils, as soon as issued, had been packed on burros and sold for a mere song to settlers about the reservation. This abuse was promptly stopped, as also was the making of _tiswin_.

This native drink, made from Indian corn, is said to be more maddening in its effect than any other known intoxicant; Indians brutalized by _tiswin_ fought, as do our own drunkards, and often wounded or killed each other. For corn to make this detestable beverage, an Indian would trade away the last article in his possession.

It was proclaimed by the agent that the maker of this poison would be imprisoned for six months, at hard labor, in the guard-house. This stopped its manufacture, and there are no longer drunken Indians at the reservation. Occasionally they still get liquor at Las Cruces, when sent there for freight.

All supplies are hauled from the railroad over-land. The distance is one hundred and ten miles; about one hundred thousand pounds are annually brought in this way to the reservation, and without harm or loss. Much of the Indian's savagery lies (like Samson's strength) in his hair; to his long, matted tresses he clings tenaciously. As a beginning, Lieutenant Stottler induced one old fellow--a policeman--with the reward of a five-dollar gold piece to cut his precious locks. Thus metamorphosed, he became "the cynosure of all eyes." His squaw made life a burden to him; and thus badgered, he, in turn, pestered the agent to get the entire police force to cut theirs.

It was long before the general consent to part with these cherished tresses could be won; and it became necessary to put some of the Indians in the guard-house to accomplish this reform. Finally, orders were asked from Was.h.i.+ngton, and received, compelling submission to the shearing.

When the Indians saw the Was.h.i.+ngton order, they all gave in, with the exception of a last man, who had to be "thumped into it." Their hair well cut, a raid was made on breech-clout and blanket. Now they all appear in civilized clothing. This seems to have been the turning-point in their wildness.

"Now," says the agent, "they come and ask for scissors and comb to cut their hair, and volunteer the information that they were 'fools to oppose it.'"

About half a dozen of these Indians were found by Lieutenant Stottler with two wives; since none others were permitted, this matrimonial indulgence, polygamy, is, consequently, dying a natural death at Mescalero. It is found hard to control the ancient practice of dropping a wife and taking up another without the troublesome formality of a divorce, which has practically the same result as polygamy. In spite of the slip-shodness of the marriage-tie among the Indians, "they are,"

says the Lieutenant, "about as badly henpecked as it is possible to imagine. Not by the wife, however; but by that ever dreaded being, her mother." He gives in his paper a most amusing account of the relation between the son-in-law and this much-maligned treasure of our higher civilization. "Just why it is," he says, "no Indian has ever been able to explain to me, but an Indian cannot look at his mother-in-law.

"If she enters his _tepee_, he leaves; if he enters and she is within, he flees at once. He cannot stay in her august presence. If his wife and he quarrel, his mother-in-law puts in an appearance, and manages his affairs during his enforced absence so long as she pleases. Perhaps she takes his wife to her own _tepee_, where he dare not follow. In this dilemma, he either comes to terms, or the situation const.i.tutes a divorce.

"Does the agent wish a child brought to school, or a head of a family to take land, and try to farm it, the mother-in-law, if hostile (and she usually is), appears on the scene. Then the head of the family hunts the woods for refuge.

"The sight of several stalwart bucks hiding behind doors, barrels, and trees, because a dried-up, wizened squaw heaves in sight, is a spectacle that would be ludicrous, were it not for its far-reaching results. As an Indian may take, in succession, many wives, who still stand to his credit, the agent has, practically, many mothers-in-law to contend with.

Consequently, these family magnets have been officially informed that the guard-house awaits any of them who may be found maliciously interfering with the families of their children.

"Hard labor added to this sentence, it is hoped, may at length have the effect of breaking up this absurd superst.i.tion."

By this account it may be seen that "one of the most far-fetched notions that ever entered into the minds of men" is found domesticated among the Mexican aborigines. It is a.s.serted, as a chronological fact, that the Mexican Pueblos "invented the mother-in-law joke gray ages before it dawned upon our modern civilization."

The lamented Cus.h.i.+ng, in his account of the "restful, patriarchal, long-lonely world" of his research, tells us that he found the mother-in-law a too p.r.o.nounced factor in the Zuni family circle; and, as we know, in our own higher civilization the mother-in-law, held in good-natured reprobation, serves to point many a harmless jest.

White enthusiasts--with whom the "wrongs of the Indian" are a standing grievance--but imperfectly realize the difficulty of taming these savages, getting them well off the warpath, and making them cleanly and self-supporting. It may, therefore, be well to present the side shown us by the agent in his able paper of statistical facts.

"The Apache tribe," he tells us, "has one hundred and sixteen children at school,--nineteen at Fort Lewis, Colorado, and ninety-seven at the reservation boarding-school. Each child has one-half day in cla.s.s and one-half day of industrial work. The girls take their turns in the laundry, sewing-room, and kitchen, and at dormitory work. The boys do the heavy work in the kitchen and laundry, chop the wood, and till the farm under the charge of the industrial teacher. All the vegetables for their use are raised on the farm, and the surplus sold.

"The aim of the school is to teach the rising generation of Apaches how to make a living with the resources of the reservation, and, in time, to become self-supporting.

"To this end useful rather than fancy trades are taught. Boys are detailed with the blacksmith and carpenter, to learn the use of common tools. To do away with the inborn contempt of the aboriginal male for the women of his tribe, boys and girls at the reservation are not only trained to study, recite, and sit at meals with girls, but a weekly 'sociable' is held for the scholars.

"On such nights they have games and civilized dances. Every boy is required formally to approach and request, 'Will you dance this dance with me?' and to offer his partner his arm when the reel, quadrille, etc., is finished, and escorting her to her seat, leave her with a polite 'thank you.'"

In the agent's report for the years 1896-97, "this year," he says, "the Indian boys raised twenty-five thousand pounds beets, twenty thousand pounds cabbage, one thousand pounds cauliflower, five hundred pounds turnips, one thousand four hundred pounds celery, five hundred pounds radishes, one thousand four hundred pounds of onions, nineteen thousand pounds of pumpkins and squash, four hundred pounds of peas, nine hundred and sixty pounds of corn, six thousand five hundred pounds of potatoes, besides cuc.u.mbers, pie-plant, and asparagus.

"The school has a pen of swine, a flock of chickens, and a fine herd of milch cows; and all the hay and fodder for them and the horses are raised on the farm. Oats and corn are purchased from the Indians, who, in 1895, raised one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

"The adult Indians," he adds, "cut this year one hundred and sixty cords of wood for the school, for which I paid them two dollars and fifty cents per cord. In the winter of 1896 the industry of blanket-making was introduced into the reservation. Navajo blanket-makers were employed to teach to the Mescalero women their incomparable method of carding, spinning, and dyeing wool, and weaving blankets. Twenty of the Mescaleros," boasts the agent, "can to-day make as good blankets as the Navajos themselves.

"The reservation is mountainous, and one of the finest sheep ranges in the country. Government has allowed five thousand sheep for general distribution at the reservation, and in addition, five hundred head for the school; where a room is now set aside for the looms of the older girls, who will, in their turn, become instructors in this useful art.

This puts into their hands another opportunity to become self-supporting."

The visitors from Mesilla Valley were kindly admitted behind the scenes at the reservation, to make acquaintance with its people, both old and young; and were highly interested and entertained by the picturesqueness of the Indian character.

The Grumbler had brought his camera along. He was a skilled amateur photographer, and had offered his services in that capacity to the little party.

To bring his household under the focus of that apparatus was no easy task for the courteous agent. An Indian is nothing if not a believer in witches. In his aboriginal mode of life witch-hunting and witch-punis.h.i.+ng are among his gravest occupations. He pursues them with a vigorous hand, and with a superst.i.tious zeal equal to that of the most persistent white man in the palmiest days of Salem witch-hunting and witch-burning. The Mescaleros, to a soul, are believers in witchcraft.

The camera, as might be seen from its effect, was plainly bewitched.

They would have none of it.

The school children, having no choice, must needs range themselves in scared, sullen rows, and be "took" under compulsion.

Suspiciously eying the operator, they sullenly took their prescribed pose, and heedless of the immemorial request, "Now look pleasant," went sourly through the terrible ordeal.

Some of the older girls, pleased with the novelty, submitted more cheerfully; but the younger pupils, looking askance at the white men, covered their faces, so far as was possible, with hair, or hands, and were thus providentially carried safely through this process of bewitchment.

Some of the schoolboys had fine, intelligent faces; of others, the Grumbler subsequently observed that "they were the kind that grow up and scalp white settlers."

A curious young squaw, from the opened slit of her _tepee_, watched the approach of the party with their bedevilled machine. Her position was excellent; but no sooner had the operator arranged his camera for a snap shot at this picturesque subject, than, with a scared yell, the woman bounded out of range, closing behind her the aperture--her front door.

The result was merely an uninteresting view of an Indian _tepee_, which is like nothing more than a mammoth ant-hill, minus the symmetry and nice perpendicular of that more intelligently fas.h.i.+oned structure.

Two incorrigible squaws in "durance vile" for making _tiswin_, as they sullenly served their sentence of hard labor at the reservation woodpile, looked defiantly up from their task of chopping fuel, and scowled viciously at the witch machine and its abettors.

They, however, succeeded in getting a fairly good picture of these hideous-faced beings, as "withered and wild" as the uncanny sisters who brewed "h.e.l.l broth" before the appalled Macbeth, beneath the midnight moon, on Hampton Heath.

A mild-eyed Indian woman, whose peaceful occupation was to scrub the reservation floors, kindly submitted to the bother of being put into a picture, along with the insignia of her office,--a scrubbing-pail.

Not so "Hot Stuff," a highly picturesque squaw, claiming the proud distinction due to the "oldest inhabitant." This "contrairy" female, impervious to moral suasion, was finally induced to pose before the terrible "witch-thing" by the threat of having her rations withheld until her consent to be "taken" was obtained. Scared and reluctant, she was at last photographed; but required Lieutenant Stottler to protect her with his arm through the perils of this unfamiliar ordeal. This he good-naturedly did, and is immortalized along with this aged squaw.

After an interesting visit of two nights and a day at the reservation, the Koshare turned their faces towards Mesilla Valley, where, after two uneventful days, they arrived in safety, full of the novelties encountered, charmed with the courteous and gentlemanly agent, but wearied with the long ride, and heartily glad to return to white civilization.

CHAPTER XIV

It was at the close of the week succeeding that of the little journey across the mountains that the Koshare held their last Sat.u.r.day evening session. To punctuate the finality of this gathering, a variation from the usual programme was proposed by the Antiquary. Members of the Club were requested to supplement his brief paper by giving such written or verbal statements, along the same line as their own research might enable them to make. To this proposal many of the Koshare had agreed, and had come well primed for lively discussion.

The attendance was unusually full, nearly all the boarders, in addition to the regular Club members, being in attendance.

The Antiquary led with the following interesting paper, which, as he explained, was, in a way, supplementary to those on the Aztecs.

"As the Tezcucans were of the family of the Aztecs," began Mr.

Morehouse, "and are said far to have surpa.s.sed them in intellectual culture and the arts of social refinement, some slight notice of their civilization may not prove irrelevant.

"Ixtilxochitl is the uneuphonious name of the native chronicler, purporting to be a lineal descendant of the royal line of Tezcuco, who has given us his highly colored narrative of the Tezcucan civilization.

It may be prefaced with the information that Ixtilxochitl (who flourished so late as the century of the Conquest) has had his reputation so torn to tatters by the critics of later years that he has, figuratively, 'not a leg to stand on.'