Slike strani
PDF
ePub

they are symbols of certain ideas. The women are the chief mourners and are grief stricken at their loss. The great altitude of the town with the consequently rare and pure air prevents odors.

"Their form of courtship and marriage is very simple. In this part of their life neither priests nor civil officials have anything to do. When a young man seeks a wife he pays court to a maiden of his own choosing, and if he is favored she sends him a basket of variously colered peki, or peky, which signifies that she is willing to marry him. Then he, with all his people, visits her family, and they have a little fete. This is returned, when the young man goes away with the girl, now his bride, and lives in her house. These people are very moral and hold in most sacred regard the family life. They do not marry sisters or cousins, and they invariably go out of their family or gens to select wives or husbands.

"The Moquis, it is said, believe in a great spirit, who lives in the sun and who gives them light and heat. With the Moquis there are male and female in the idea of deity; the earth is the female, and all living things are the issue.

"The Moquis know one all-wise and good spirit, Cotukinuniwa, "The Heart of the Stars.' They have also Balikokon, the Great Water Snake, the spirit of the element of water, and they see him in the rains and snows, the rivers and springs, the sap in the trees and the blood in the body. The whole Moqui heavens are filled, too, with Katcina, angels, or literally, 'those who have listened to the Gods.' All

the great dead men of the Moqui nation at some time before they died, saw Katcina and received messages from them, and some of the chiefs now living have seen them, too. As it is so often found in the religion of a people who are low in mental development, and in whose pitiful lives the hours of trial and privation and sorrow are much more numerous than the happy ones, the spirit of good, though all-wise, is not all-powerful, so it is found here. Cotukinuniwa loves his children and would send to them nothing but good; but that he cannot always do, for Balilokon is sometimes stronger than he, and wills evil. Yet it would not be right to call Balilokon the spirit of evil, for he is by no means always so. When he is pleased the mists and rains fall gently and the sap runs lustily through plants and trees, giving them vigorous growth; the springs and rivers are full, but clear, giving abundance of good water to the people and their flocks, and the blood flowing in the veins of the children of the tribe is the blood of health; but Balilokon is sometimes angered and the rains come not at all, or come in deluges that destroy; the rivers are dry or are raging floods; the sap is withdrawn from the plants and trees and they die, and the blood of the people flows through their veins but to poison. There have been times when the anger of Balilokon it seemed no ceremony or prayer could appease; then hundreds of the people went down to death, and one time, away in the dim past, so many moons ago that their wisest one cannot tell how many, he sent a great flood that covered nearly all the earth, and but very few of the people and not many

of the beasts were saved. Balilokon, having it in his power to do so much of evil, is the god most prayed to, and in his name almost all the ceremonies are held. At the foot of the cliff at the southern point of the mesa is a large rock (Moqui luck shrine) with a nearly flat top, about 8 feet in size, and a few yards to one side of it is a well worn trail. On the top of the rock are thousands of pebbles, seemingly every one that could possibly be lodged there, and around the base are other thousands that have fallen. It is the great luck stone, and from time immemorial have the children of the villages gone there to get forecasts of their lives. Each little devotee of the blind goddess selects three pebbles, and while walking down the trail, throws them, one by one, upon the rock. If but one pebble lodges, the thrower will know much of sorrow and disappointment, yet his efforts will sometimes bear good fruits. If two pebbles stay he will find more than the average of success, and if all three lodge upon the top he may march onward boldly, for what can withstand him? Should all the little stones fall off, what then? Well, the child can ask himself but one question, 'Why was I born?"

666

""In the "neck" or "saddle" which connects the first of the Moqui 'islands' or rock (the first or eastern mesa, on which is Walpi) with the main tableland, is a shrine of great importance. It is a little inclosure of slabs of stone surrounding a large stone fetich, which has been carved into a conventional representation of the sacred snake. In two small natural cavities of the dance rock are also kept other large fetiches.'

(Charles F. Lummis, in 'Some Strange Corners of Our Country.' 1892.)

"At points about the Moqui villages are altars and shrines, on or in which are idols made of wood or pottery, and at which the Moquis individually worship. Near Oraibi is a noted Phallic shrine. The Moqui worship or devotional acts are largely private. Their communal and public worship are generally by dancing or in games. Some of these shrines may be the remains of the old Catholic worship."

CHAPTER IX.

THE HOPI (OR MOQUI) (Continued).

CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES-RELIGION LACK OF RELIGION-NO SACRED FIRESMOQUI GODS.

Mr. Donaldson, in the same publication quoted in the preceding chapter, also gives the following:

"The Moqui Pueblos of Arizona and Pueblos of New Mexico are citizens of the United States by virtue of the laws of the Mexican republic.

"So good an authority as Governor L. Bradford Prince, of New Mexico, ex-Chief Justice of the Territory, in his History of New Mexico, page 327, says:

66

"By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo all inhabitants of New Mexico, except those who chose formally to retain the character of Mexican citizens, became citizens of the United States, with the same rights and privileges as all other citizens.'

"The Moqui Pueblos were then inhabitants of New Mexico as well as the Pueblos. Neither formally, after the treaty, announced their intention to remain citizens of Mexico, but, on the contrary, have aided the United States with soldiers in war and by remaining good citizens in peace. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, in its inhibition of citizenship to Indians not taxed, does not apply to the Moqui Pueblo or Pueblo Indians (not taxed), because the same could not set aside

« PrejšnjaNaprej »