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The indignity and outrage of this and other similar acts have embittered the Moquis until they have lost what little respect they ever had for Christianity and civilization. The policy of the government is to make them do whatever they do not want to do, to break up the family and scatter its members.
"Yes," declared the scientist, bitterly. "First you pretended that you were sent out by a magazine to search for me, and get some points as to my great work here among the Zunis, the Hopis and the Moquis. But I soon discovered that you had another motive in trying to find Professor Oswald.
Moreover, if we take this route we shall pass the Moquis. The independent Moquis are a fragment of the ancient ruling race of New Mexico. They live in stone-built cities on lofty eminences. They weave blankets of exquisite patterns and colors, and produce a species of pottery which almost deserves the name of porcelain."
Several years ago a man was sent out from Washington to teach the Moquis agriculture, but before a year had passed the teacher had to buy corn from the Indians. They make baskets and pottery, weave cloth and dress skins for their own use and to barter in trade with their neighbors.
She was quite amazed when she learned that this was not a wedding, but a rain-dance, and that the maidens whom she had admired were boys dressed up in female raiment, the customs of the Moquis not allowing women to take part in public spectacles. "What exquisite delicacy!" was her consolatory comment. "Well, well, this is the golden age, truly."
If it be objected, that the smoking of a pipe would hardly justify the setting up of a memorial stone, I answer, that even now the Moquis Indian, ere he takes his first whiff, bows reverently toward the four quarters of the sky in succession, and that the loftiest monuments have been reared to perpetuate fame, which is the dream of the shadow of smoke.
"Anyhow," the other continued, "it pleases me to believe so; and that the Moqui is even now hurrying to make connections with the hermit in this mysterious Echo Cave. There's still another reason, though, why I picked out this course up the river, instead of going down. It is connected with the fact that the Moquis have their homes in this quarter."
Camp then; the wagons were parked as usual in a hollow square; the half-starved animals were unharnessed and allowed to fly at the abundant grass; the cramped and wearied travellers threw themselves on the ground with delight. "What a charming people these Monkeys are!" said Aunt Maria, surveying the neat and smiling villagers with approval. "Moquis," Coronado corrected her, with a bow.
They are as unique and picturesque as is the land which they inhabit; and the dead are no less so than the living. The Pueblo Indians, with which the Moquis are classed, number altogether about ten thousand and are scattered in twenty-six villages over Arizona and New Mexico. They resemble each other in many respects, but do not all speak the same language.
You know that these Moquis pick up a lot of good coin from the travelers who come and go at the Grand Canyon." "Why, yes," Bob went on to say, "I've always heard that one of the sights of this wonderland was the snake dance of the Moquis. I read an account of it in a magazine once.
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