Delight Makers

Alphonse Bandelier Adolph Francis

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. This story is the result of eight years spent in ethnological and archaeological study among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. The first chapters 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 bestowed upon the Tehuas the same interest and attention I had previously paid to their neighbours the Queres. I was prompted to perform the work by a conviction that however scientific works may tell the truth about the Indian, they exercise always a limited influence upon the general public; and to that public, in our country as well as abroad, the Indian has remained as good as unknown. By clothing sober facts in the garb of romance I have hoped to make the Truth about the Pueblo Indians more accessible and perhaps more acceptable to the public in general.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819912019
• Langue: English

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PREFACE
This story is the result of eight years spent inethnological and archæological study among the Pueblo Indians ofNew Mexico. The first chapters were written more than six years agoat the Pueblo of Cochiti. The greater part was composed in 1885, atSanta Fé, after I had bestowed upon the Tehuas the same interestand attention I had previously paid to their neighbours the Queres.I was prompted to perform the work by a conviction that howeverscientific works may tell the truth about the Indian, they exercisealways a limited influence upon the general public; and to thatpublic, in our country as well as abroad, the Indian has remainedas good as unknown. By clothing sober facts in the garb of romanceI have hoped to make the "Truth about the Pueblo Indians" moreaccessible and perhaps more acceptable to the public ingeneral.
The sober facts which I desire to convey may bedivided into three classes, – geographical, ethnological, andarchæological. The descriptions of the country and of its natureare real. The descriptions of manners and customs, of creed andrites, are from actual observations by myself and otherethnologists, from the statements of trustworthy Indians, and froma great number of Spanish sources of old date, in which the PuebloIndian is represented as he lived when still unchanged by contactwith European civilization.
The descriptions of architecture are based uponinvestigations of ruins still in existence on the sites where theyare placed in the story.
The plot is my own. But most of the scenes describedI have witnessed; and there is a basis for it in a dim traditionpreserved by the Queres of Cochiti that their ancestors dwelt onthe Rito de los Frijoles a number of centuries ago, and in asimilar tradition among the Tehuas of the Pueblo of Santa Clara inregard to the cave-dwellings of the Puye.
A word to the linguist. The dialect spoken by theactors is that of Cochiti for the Queres, that of San Juan for theTehuas. In order to avoid the complicated orthography latterlyadopted by scientists for Indian dialects, I have written Indianwords and phrases as they would be pronounced in continentallanguages. The letter [=a] is used to denote thesound of a in "hare."
To those who have so kindly assisted me, – inparticular to Rev. E. W. Meany of Santa Fé, and to Dr. Norton B.Strong, of the United States Army, – I herewith tender my heartfeltthanks. AD. F. BANDELIER
SANTA FÉ, NEW MEXICO.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The aim of our good and lamented friend in writingthis book was to place before the public, in novelistic garb, anaccount of the life and activities of the Pueblo Indians before thecoming of white men. The information on which it is based was theresult of his personal observations during many years of studyamong the sedentary tribes of New Mexico and in Spanish archivespertaining thereto in connection with his researches for theArchæological Institute of America. He spent months in continuousstudy at the Tehua pueblo of San Juan and the Queres pueblo ofCochití, and the regard in which he was held by the simple folk ofthose and other native villages was sincerely affectionate.Bandelier's labors in his chosen field were commenced at a timewhen 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 first with enthusiastic favor. It seemed unlikethe great student of technical problems deliberately to write abook the layman might read with interest and profit; but his objectonce comprehended, the volume was received in the spirit in whichthe venture was initiated and for a long while search for a copyhas often been in vain.
Bandelier has come unto his own. More than oneserious student of the ethno-history of our Southwest has franklydeclared that the basis of future investigation of the kind thatBandelier inaugurated will always be the writings of that eminentman. Had he been permitted to live and labor, nothing would havegiven him greater satisfaction than the knowledge that the peopleamong whom he spent so many years are of those who fully appreciatethe breadth of his learning and who have been instrumental in thecreation, by proclamation of the President, of the "BandelierNational Monument," for the purpose of preserving for futuregenerations some of the archæological remains he was the first toobserve and describe. F. W. HODGE. SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,WASHINGTON, D. C., September 25, 1916.
IN MEMORY
One day of August, 1888, in the teeth of aparticular New Mexico sand-storm that whipped pebbles the size of abean straight to your face, a ruddy, bronzed, middle-aged man,dusty but unweary with his sixty-mile tramp from Zuñi, walked intomy solitary camp at Los Alamitos. Within the afternoon I knew thathere was the most extraordinary mind I had met. There and thenbegan the uncommon friendship which lasted till his death, aquarter of a century later; and a love and admiration which will beof my dearest memories so long as I shall live. I was at firstsuspicious of the "pigeon-hole memory" which could not only tell mesome Queres word I was searching for, but add: "Policárpioexplained that to me in Cochití, November 23, 1881." But Idiscovered that this classified memory was an integral part of thisextraordinary genius. The acid tests of life-long collaborationproved not only this but the judicial poise, the marvelous insightand the intellectual chastity of Bandelier's mind. I cannotconceive of anything in the world which would have made him trimhis sails as a historian or a student for any advantage here orhereafter.
Aside from keen mutual interests of documentary andethnologic study, we came to know one another humanly by the hardproof of the Frontier. Thousands of miles of wilderness and desertwe trudged side by side – camped, starved, shivered, learned andwere Glad together. Our joint pursuits in comfort at our homes (inSanta Fé and Isleta, respectively) will always be memorable to me;but never so wonderful as that companioning in the hardships ofwhat was, in our day, the really difficult fringe of the Southwest.There was not a decent road. We had no endowment, no vehicles.Bandelier was once loaned a horse; and after riding two miles, ledit the rest of the thirty. So we went always by foot; my big cameraand glass plates in the knapsack on my back, the heavy tripod undermy arm; his aneroid, surveying instruments, and satchel of thealmost microscopic notes which he kept fully and precisely everynight by the camp-fire (even when I had to crouch over him and theprecious paper with my water-proof focusing cloth) somehow bestowedabout him. Up and down pathless cliffs, through tangled cañons,fording icy streams and ankle-deep sands, we travailed; noblankets, overcoats, or other shelter; and the only commissary afew cakes of sweet chocolate, and a small sack of parched popcornmeal. Our "lodging was the cold ground." When we could find a cave,a tree, or anything to temper the wind or keep off part of therain, all right. If not, the Open. So I came to love him as well asrevere. I had known many "scientists" and what happened when theyreally got Outdoors. He was in no way an athlete – nor evenmuscular. I was both – and not very long before had completed mythirty-five-hundred-mile "Tramp Across the Continent." But I neverhad to "slow down" for him. Sometimes it was necessary to uselaughing force to detain him at dark where we had water and aleaning cliff, instead of stumbling on through the trackless nightto an unknown "Somewheres." He has always reminded me of John Muir,the only other man I have known intimately who was as insatiate aclimber and inspiring a talker. But Bandelier had one advantage. Hecould find common ground with anyone . I have seen him withPresidents, diplomats, Irish section-hands, Mexican peons, Indians,authors, scientists and "society." Within an hour or so he waseasily the Center. Not unconscious of his power, he had anextraordinary and sensitive modesty, which handicapped him throughlife among those who had the "gift of push." He never put himselfforward either in person or in his writing. But something about himfascinated all these far-apart classes of people, when he spoke.His command of English, French, Spanish, and German might have beenexpected; but his facility in acquiring the "dialects" of railroadmen and cowboys, or the language of an Indian tribe, was almostuncanny. When he first visited me, in Isleta, he knew just threewords of Tigua. In ten days he could make himself understood by thehour with the Principales in their own unwritten tongue. Of course,this was one secret of his extraordinary success in learning theinner heart of the Indians.
I saw it proved again in our contact with theQuíchua and Aymará and other tribes of Peru and Bolivia.
I have known many scholars and some heroes – butthey seldom come in the same original package. As I rememberBandelier with smallpox alone in the two-foot snows of theManzanos; his tens of thousands of miles of tramping, exploring,measuring, describing, in the Southwest; his year afoot and alonein Northern Mexico, with no more weapon than a pen-knife, on thetrails of raiding Apaches (where "scientific expeditions" ten yearslater, when the Apache was eliminated, needed armed convoys andpack-trains enough for a punitive expedition, and wrote pretentiousbooks about what every scholar has known for three hundred years) Ideeply wonder at the dual quality of his intellect. Among them all,I have never known such student and such explorer lodged in onetenement.
We were knit not only thus but in the veryintimacies of life – sharing hopes and bereavements. My first son,named for him, should now be twenty-two. The old home in Santa Féwas as my own. The truly wonderful little