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How The Man Of Two Hearts Kept The Secret Of The Holy Places
by
“It is true,” said the Condor, “that after the Indians had forgotten them, white men rediscovered many of their sacred places, and many others that were not known even to the Zunis. But there is one place on Thunder Mountain still where gold lies in the ground in lumps like pine nuts. If Father Letrado could have found it, he would have hammered it into cups for his altar, and immediately the land would have been overrun with the Spaniards. And the more Ho-tai thought of it, the more convinced he was that he should have told him.
“Toward the end of two years when it began to be rumored that soldiers and new Padres were coming to K’iakime to deal with the killing of Father Letrado, Ho-tai began to sleep more quietly at night. Then his wife knew that he had made up his mind to tell, if it seemed necessary to reconcile the Spaniards to his people, and it was a knife in her heart.
“It was her husband’s honor, and the honor of her father, Chief Priest of the Bow; and besides, she knew very well that if Ho-tai told, the Priests of the Bow would kill him. She said to herself that her husband was sick with the enchantments of the Padres, and she must do what she could for him. She gave him seeds of forgetfulness.”
“Was that a secret too?” asked Dorcas, for the Condor seemed not to remember that the children were new to that country.
“It was peyote. Many know of it now, but in the days of Our Ancients it was known only to a few Medicine men and women. It is a seed that when eaten wipes out the past from a man’s mind and gives him visions. In time its influence will wear away, and it must be eaten anew, but if eaten too often it steals a man’s courage and his strength as well as his memory.
“When she had given her husband a little in his food, Flower-of-the-Maguey found that he was like a child in her hands.
“‘Sleep,’ she would say, ‘and dream thus, and so,’ and that is the way it would be with him. She wished him to forget both the secret of the gold in the ground and the fear of the Padres.
“From the time that she heard that the Spaniards were on their way to K’iakime, she fed him a little peyote every day. To the others it seemed that his mind walked with Those Above, and they were respectful of him. That is how Zunis think of any kind of madness. They were not sure that the madness had not been sent for just this occasion when they had need of the gods, and so, as it seemed to them, it proved.
“The Spaniards asked for parley, and the Caciques permitted the Padres to come up into the council chambers, for they knew that the long gowns covered no weapons. The Spaniards had learned wisdom, perhaps, and perhaps they thought Father Letrado somewhat to blame. They asked nothing but permission to reestablish their missions, and to have the man who had scalped Father Martin handed over to them for Spanish justice.
“They sat around the wall of the kiva, with Ho-tai in his place, hearing and seeing very little. But the parley was long, and, little by little, the vision of his own gods which the peyote had given him began to wear away. One of the Padres rose in his place and began a long speech about the sin of killing, and especially of killing priests. He quoted his Sacred Books and talked of the sin in their hearts, and, little by little, the talk laid hold on the wandering mind of Ho-tai. ‘Thus, in this killing, has the secret evil of your hearts come forth,’ said the Padre, and ‘True, He speaks true,’ said Ho-tai, upon which the Priests of the Hawikuhkwe were astonished. They thought their gods spoke through his madness.