child, there are deploring clucks, but the girl's parents care tenderly for the little one and its advent makes no difference in the mother's chances for a good marriage. Also the child does not suffer socially for its unfortunate birth, which is more humane at least than our method of treating such children. The children
of a marriage take the mother's name and belong to her clan. She has absolute control of them until the girl reaches a marriageable age; then Dad collects the marriage price.
Another thing we civilized parents might take into consideration. Indian babies
are never punished by beating or shaking. It is the Indian idea that anything which injures a child's self-respect is very harmful. Yet Indian children are very well-behaved, and their respect and love for their elders is a beautiful thing. I have never seen an Indian child cry or sulk for anything forbidden it.
Schools for Reservation children are compulsory, but whether they are altogether a blessing or not is still doubtful. To take an Indian child away from its own free, wild life, teach it to dress in white man's clothes, eat our food, sleep in our beds, bathe in white-tiled bathtubs, think our thoughts, learn our vices, and then, having led them to despise their own way of living, send them back to their people who have not changed while their children were being literally reborn—
what does this accomplish? Doesn't Aesop tell us something of a crow that would be a dove and found himself an outcast everywhere? We are replacing the
beautiful symbolism of the Indian by our materialism and leaving him
bewildered and discouraged. Why should he be taught to despise his hogan, shaped after the beautiful rounded curve of the rainbow and the arched course of the sun in his daily journey across the sky—a type of home that has been his for generations? Do we ever stop to think why the mud hut is dome-shaped, why the
door always faces the east?
I have been watching one Hopi family for years. In this case simple housekeeping, plain sewing, and suitable cooking have been taught to the girl in school. The mother waits eagerly for the return of the daughter from school so
that she can hear and learn and share what has been taught to her girl. Her efforts to keep pace with the child are so intense and her pride in her improved home is so great that it is pitiful. Isn't there some way the elders can share the knowledge we are trying to give the younger generation, so that parents and children may be brought closer together rather than estranged?
No matter what color the skin, feminine nature never varies! Let one squaw get a new calico dress, and it creates a stir in every tepee. The female population gathers to admire, and the equivalent to our ohs and ahs fills the air. It takes something like twenty yards of calico to make an Indian flapper a skirt. It must be very full and quite long, with a ruffle on the hem for good measure. There is going to be no unseemly display of nether limbs. When a new dress is obtained it is put on right over the old one, and it is not unusual for four or five such billowing garments to be worn at once. A close-fitting basque of velvet forms the top part of this Navajo costume, and over all a machine-made blanket is worn.
Store-made shoes, or more often the hand-made moccasins of soft doeskin trimmed with silver and turquoise buttons, are worn without stockings. The feet
of Indian women are unusually small and well-shaped. The amount of jewelry that an Indian wears denotes his social rank, and, like their white brothers, they adorn the wife, so that it is not unusual to see their women decked out until they resemble prosperous Christmas trees. Many silver bracelets, studded with the native turquoises, strings and strings of silver beads, and shell necklaces, heavy silver belts, great turquoise earrings, rings and rings, make up the ensemble of Navajo jewelry. Even the babies are loaded down with it. It is the family pocketbook. When an Indian goes to a store he removes a section of jewelry and
trades it for whatever takes his fancy. And one thing an Indian husband should
give fervent thanks for—his wife never wears a hat.
Our Indian sisters are not the slaves of their husbands as we have been led to believe. It is true that the hard work in the village or camp is done by the squaws, but it is done cheerfully and more as a right than as a duty. In olden times the wives kept the home fires burning and the crops growing while the braves were on the warpath or after game. Now that the men no longer have these pursuits, it never occurs to them to do their wives' work. Nor would they
be permitted to do it.
After the rugs, baskets, or pottery are finished, the husband may take them to the
trading-post or depot and sell them; but the money must be turned over to the wife or accounted for to her full satisfaction.
All the Indian women are tireless and fearless riders. They ride astride, with or without a saddle, and carry two or three of the smaller children with them.
However, if there is only one pony, wifie walks, while her lordly mate rides.
That is Indian etiquette.
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Chapter XIV: THE PASSING SHOW
Tourists! Flocks of them, trainloads and carloads! They came and looked, and passed on, and were forgotten, nine-tenths of them at least.
Anyone who is interested in the study of human nature should set up shop on the
Rim of the Grand Canyon and watch the world go by. I have never been able to
determine why Eastern people can't act natural in the West! For instance: Shy spinster schoolma'ams, the essence of modesty at home, catch the spirit of adventure and appear swaggering along in the snuggest of knickers. They would
die of shame should their home-town minister or school president catch them in
such apparel. Fat ladies invariably wear breeches—tight khaki breeches—and with them they wear georgette blouses, silk stockings, and high-heeled pumps. I
have even seen be-plumed chapeaux top the sport outfit. One thing is a safe bet
—the plumper the lady, the snugger the breeches!
Be-diamonded dowagers, hand-painted flappers, timid wives from Kansas, one and all seem to fall for the "My God" habit when they peer down into the Canyon. Ranger Winess did tell me of one original damsel; she said: "Ain't it cute?"
I was standing on the Rim one day, watching a trail party through field glasses, when a stout, well-dressed man stopped and asked to borrow my glasses. He spoke of the width and depth of the Canyon, and stood seemingly lost in contemplation of the magnificent sight. I had him classified as a preacher, and I mentally rehearsed suitable Biblical quotations. He turned to me and asked, "Do you know what strikes me most forcibly about this place?"
"No, what is it?" I hushed my soul to listen to some sublime sentiment.
" I haven't seen a fly since I've been here! "
I was spluttering to White Mountain about it and wishing I had pushed him over
the edge, but the Chief thought it was funny. He said the man must have been a
butcher.
