FullReads

“There signed with his sword, Vargas, who reconquered the pueblos after the rebellion–yes, they rebelled again and again. On the other side of the Rock you can read how Governor Nieto carried the faith to them. They came and went, the Iron Shirts, through two hundred years. You can see the marks of their iron hats on some of the rafters of Zuni town to this day, but small was the mark they left on the hearts of the Zunis.”

“Is that so!” said the Road-Runner, which is a polite way of saying that you think the story worth going on with; and then cocking his eye at the inscription, he hinted, “I have heard that the Long Gowns, the Padres who came with them, were master-workers in hearts.”

“It is so,” said the Condor. “I remember the first of them who managed to build a church here, Padre Francisco Letrado. Here!” He drew their attention to an inscription almost weathered away, and looking more like the native picture-writings than the signature of a Spanish gentleman. He read:–

“They passed on the 23d of March of 1832 years to the avenging of the death of Father Letrado.” It was signed simply “Lujan.”

“There is a Telling of that passing and of that soldier which has to do with the gold that was never found.”

“Sons eso,” said the Road-Runner, and they settled themselves to listen.

“About the third of a man’s life would have passed between the time when Onate came to the founding of Santa Fe, and the building of the first church by Father Letrado. There were Padres before that, and many baptizings. The Zunis were always glad to learn new ways of persuading the gods to be on their side, and they thought the prayers and ceremonies of the Padres very good Medicine indeed. They thought the Iron Shirts were gods themselves, and when they came received them with sprinklings of sacred meal. But it was not until Father Letrado’s time that it began to be understood that the new religion was to take the place of their own, for to the Indians there is but one spirit in things, as there is one life in man. They thought their own prayers as good as any that were taught them.

“But Father Letrado was zealous and he was old. He made a rule that all should come to the service of his church and that they should obey him and reverence him when they met, with bowings and kissings of his robe. It is not easy to teach reverence to a free people, and the men of the Ant Hill had been always free. But the worst of Father Letrado’s rulings was that there were to be no more prayers in the kivas, no dancings to the gods nor scatterings of sacred pollen and planting of plumes. Also–this is not known, I think–that the sacred places where the Sun had planted the seed of itself should be told to the Padres.”

“He means the places where the gold is found mixed with the earth and the sand,” explained the Road-Runner to Dorcas Jane and Oliver.

“In the days of the Ancients,” said the Condor, “when such a place was found, it was told to the Priests of the Bow, and kept in reverence by the whole people. But since the Zunis had discovered what things white men will do for gold, there had been fewer and fewer who held the secret. The Spaniards had burnt too many of those who were suspected of knowing, for one thing, and they had a drink which, when they gave to the Indians, let the truth out of their mouths as it would not have gone when they were sober.

“At the time Father Letrado built his first chapel there was but one man in Hawikuh who knew.

“He was a man of two natures. His mother had been a woman of the Matsaki, and his father one of the Onate’s men, so that he was half of the Sun and half of the Moon, as we say,–for the Zunis called the first half-white children, Moon-children,–and his heart was pulled two ways, as I have heard the World Encompassing Water is pulled two ways by the Sun and the Moon. Therefore, he was called Ho-tai the Two-Hearted.