God's drum

The edition is limited to 750 copies, numbered and signed by the author and the illustrator.

		PAGE
I.	THE CHANTING EARTH
	The Sun’s First Ray	3
	The Wet Grass of Morning	4
	Birds and Frogs	9
	The Pines are Thinking	10
	Day and Night	15
	When We Dance	16
	God’s Drum	17
	The Cities of White Men	18
	The Sun’s Last Ray	23
II.	ON THE PRAIRIE
	The Winds	27
	Dust Eddies	28
	Tumbleweeds	29
	The Thunder	30
	Mirage	35
	The Blizzard	36
	The Eagle, also, Dies	38
	The Trail	43
III.	SPIRIT SONGS
	Each Time I Behold Her	47
	Sunstruck	48
	The Bird of War	53
	The Playthings of Children	54
	A Lock of Hair	55
	Her Robe Is Broidered	56
	Rain-in-the-Face	57
	I am Running	58
	The Last Song	63
	The Dreams are Walking	64
IV.(viii)	THE RED APOCALYPSE
	The Serried Rockies (Boulder)	67
	The Mummy (Estes Park)	68
	The Priests (Estes Park)	74
	Palingenesis	79
	Eschatology	86
	The Origin of Death	88
	To a Child’s Moccasin	93
	The Only Good Indian	99
V.	POEMS OF PUEBLO LAND
	Earth’s Terraced Bowl	103
	The Corn Maidens	128
	Saint Dominic’s Day	145
	Flower Alone	159
	The Pottery Peddler	167
	The Dead Pueblo	173
VI.	AZTEC GODS
	Tezcatlipoca	211
	Xochiquetzal	217
	Quetzalcoatl	218
	Tonatiuh	225
	Xiuhtecutli	231

The art of the Pueblo Indians is so intimately woven into the pattern and fabric of their lives that it can hardly be called an art. It is never merely ornamental, and therefore dispensable; it is the intrinsic and indispensable mode of performing the essential acts of living, and its technique is an immediate reflection of the conditions of life. The forms which adorn the painted olla are those cloud, vegetation, and life forms which are spontaneously associated with the thought of water—a thought which is ever-present among these agriculturists in an arid country. The beads which trick out festal costumes are talismans, emblematic in the very nature of their materials and hues; and the colors which are ceremonially significant are the colors which Nature makes so varied and vivid in the soil and sky and vegetation of the Southwest. Dances themselves are as much in the character of agricultural operations and political duties as of festal holidays; and the Powers and Forces which to us are superstitions or personifications are for them normal presences. We speak of art and symbolism in connection with their modes of aesthetic expression because these are the terms with(104) which we most nearly describe them; but it is always important in interpreting such an art to bear in mind that it has little in common, spiritually, with what in our own culture is analogous to it.

Earth’s Terraced Bowl is an interpretation of the imagery of this Pueblo art-in-life. Its purpose is to aid in our comprehension of a beautiful and ancient culture, setting the coloristic and symbolic elements into relationship with the life which they express. The site described is the plateau above the Rio Grande, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo range, where Santa Fé is built over the ruins of an ancient pueblo, and in its modern development is bringing into new expression the art and architecture of the ancient peoples. The images chosen are, first, the Pueblo woman potter, fashioning her ceremonial bowl, of which the terraced rim is emblem of the cloud-terraces that rise above the mountains in ever-changing variety; second, the man drilling emblematic beads of shell and turquoise, of jet and abalone, such as these Indians have used from beyond the dawn of history; third, the great mid-summer dance, now devoted to the mystery of the union of heaven and earth as it appears in vegetation and in the life which is dependent upon vegetation; and fourth, the festivals of fertility and of harvest, which complete, as it were, the definition of the life of man in this simple setting.

III

With naked bodies striped and daubed,

With flaming parrot crest,

Bright necklaces, and terraced crowns

Adorned with floating featherdowns——

Earth with the sunlight blest!

And ghostly white Koshare clowns,

Like souls that know no rest——

Like living souls with ancient things

Uncannily possessed!

To rattle and drum the dancers come,

The dust-brown earth they beat,

While the singers intone an heathen drone

Where they follow with rhythmic feet——

An heathen drone which their sires had known

Would make the harvest sweet!

They come before Saint Dominic,

They dance the growing maize,

Its planting and its tasseling,

Full-bladed summer days,

And the dews and rains that fill the grains,

And the purple harvest haze——

The life that lies in Mother Earth

And in bright Sun-Father’s rays:

(154)

Dancing they sing the antique song

That made the maize to grow

Or ever Christian priest or saint

Their sires had come to know——

Dancing they sing an heathen thing

Out of the long ago——

That brought fair yield to the tilléd field

Dim centuries ago.

Yes, a blessed Saint is Dominic

And blessed folk are they

Who come with dancing feet to meet

Upon his holy day——

Who tapers bring and old songs sing

And reverently pray

Kneeling before his image bright

With its golden-bearded face,

As the priests had taught when first they brought

Their Saint to the dark-skin race,——

Who should keep each year his festival

In their ancient dancing-place.

In 1838 the dozen or so of Indians, who comprised at that time the fading population of Pecos, abandoned their ancient pueblo and took refuge with their kinfolk of Jemez from the unceasing Comanche raids, which for more than a century had been diminishing the tribe. This closed a period of continuous occupation estimated by archaeologists at more than fifteen hundred years, during which the pueblo had become the most powerful in the Rio Grande region. A veritable fortress on its final site,—for it had been removed to the mesa top from an earlier location across the arroyo,—it is believed that Pecos had been founded as a result of the growing attacks of the wild tribes of the Plains and Desert upon the scattered farming communities of the fertile valleys and uplands of the vicinity. For many centuries and through many shifts of the local culture (by no means primitive when Pecos was founded) the community grew in strength—an eastern outpost of the Pueblo civilization. When in 1540 Coronado entered New Mexico in quest of the “seven cities of Cibola,” the people of Cicuyé (a Tewa name by which Pecos became known to the Spaniards) sent a delegation with presents, offering their friendship. Hernando de Alvarado was despatched to the town, where, says the chronicler Castañeda, “the people came out with(174) signs of joy, and brought them into the town with drums and pipes and something like flutes, of which they had a great many; they made many presents of cloth and turquoises, of which there are quantities in that region; and the Spaniards enjoyed themselves for several days.” Of the village Castañeda says: “The houses are all alike, four stories high. One can go over the top of the whole village without there being a street to hinder. There are corridors going all around it at the first two stories, by which one can go around the whole village.... The people of this village boast that no one has been able to conquer them and that they can conquer whatever villages they wish.” It was at Pecos that the Spaniards found the Plains Indian “El Turco,” who told of the wonderful Quivera and lured them on into the expedition toward the Missouri River. When finally Coronado returned to Mexico, Friar Luis, a lay brother, remained at Pecos, one of the two first missionaries of the region. Castañeda writes: “Nothing more has been heard about him; but before the army left Tiguex some men who went to take him a number of sheep met him as he was on his way to visit some other villages.... He felt very hopeful that he was liked at the village [Pecos] and that his teaching would bear fruit, although he complained that the old men were falling away from him. I, for my part, believe that they finally killed him.” Later the Franciscans built at Pecos one of their largest establishments, now a massive ruin.

(183)

III

Time was kindly with this people

In the ancient Vale of Pecos,

In their citadel enseated

High above the scarred arroyo,

High upon the brunting mesa.

There within the storeyed houses

Built about their dancing plaza,

Walled against the foeman’s onslaught,

Walled and towered and ever watchful,

Safe and happy dwelt the people:

With their cornfields round about them

In the pleasant watered valleys,

Fair with corn of many colors

Sacred to the Guardian Mothers——

White of Morn and blue of Zenith,

Yellow for the burning Sunset,

Speckled for the cloudy Northland:

Earth and Sky have many colors,

So the corn has colors many

Sacred to the Guardian Mothers:

With their cornfields and their beanfields,

With their vines of squash and pumpkin,

With their sunflowers and tobacco,

(184)

Dwelt the olden folk of Pecos

Rich and happy in their valley:

And the fires upon their hearth-stones

Glowed at dawn and glowed at twilight,

And the wavering smoke ascended

Quiet into quiet heavens——

Till the city seemed reflected

In the vaporous blue of noonday,

In the gleaming stars of night-time:

And the women at their grinding

Sang the Song of Fruitful Pollen;

And the maidens at their spinning

Sang the Breath-song of the Cotton;

And they wove their baskets singing,

Singing modelled earthen vessels,

Painted brown and black and yellow

With the symbols of the Cloud-Folk,

Of the Mist-Folk and the Rain-Folk,

And the sudden zig-zag Lightning——

And they left the life-line broken

For the spirit of the vessel

That it might not be imprisoned

In the moulded clay forever:

And the menfolk in the cornfields

Sang the Song of Winter Breaking,

(189)

Sang the Springtime and the Seeding,

Sang the Tasseling and Summer,

Sang the Fruitfulness of Harvest,

And the Life that stirs in all things:

And within their sacred Kivas,

Where the Priests and Elders gathered

Round their Totems and their Altars,

Underneath the painted symbol

Of the Plumed and Crested Serpent,

There they sang their Spirit Ancients

And the deeds of mighty Heroes,

Of the Brothers armed with sunbeams

Where they slew the hateful monsters

When the Primal People wandered

And the World was in its making:

And within the sacred Kivas

Said the prayers their sires had taught them,

That the tribe might live forever

Fathered by the Shining Heaven,

Mothered on Earth’s fruitful bosom,

With the Winds forever breathing

Fourfold Life from out the Quarters

Of the fourfold World man dwells in:

And the men and women gathered,

And the young men and the maidens,

(190)

And the children and the strangers,

When above the Kivas flaunted

Banners brilliant with bright feathers

Telling of the coming feast-day

With the dancing and the chanting

And the altars set with prayer-plumes,

Where the grave-faced Priests and Elders

Smoked before the sacred emblems

Of the Powers that watched the nation:

In the ancient Vale of Pecos,

In its days of peace and plenty,

When the people lived securely

In their citadel enseated

High above the scarred arroyo,

High upon their granite mesa.

IV

Blessed is the martyr’s crown

And valiant were they who wore

In Francis’ name the corded gown

And to the heathen bore

The Cross of Christus crucified,

With thorn-pressed brow and piercéd side

And body wounded sore:

(195)

Like valiant soldiers they did come

To preach their Gospel mild

And find them sweetest martyrdom

Within an heathen wild——

St. Francis’ men, who turned to kiss

The Crucifix, and met their bliss,

And on their murderers smiled.

Bruit had come to the Pecos folk

Of warrior-men from Heaven,

Who strid strange beasts and in thunders spoke

And armed them with red levin——

Who bannered their hosts with new gods and dread

And shook the land with a terrible tread

Where they searched for the Cities Seven:

And the Priests and the Elders wafted high

The smoke of their questioning prayer,

And they asked of Earth and they asked of the Sky

And they asked of the Lords of the Air——

And the signs breathed peace, and they were content,

And unto the strangers their captains they sent

With gifts and with covenants fair.

For why should they fear the stranger’s face

When the Powers whom their sires had known

Had boded them well from the Sacred Place

With its ancient divining stone?

(196)

Why should men fear who through perilous past

By their strong gods warded were mighty at last

Into a nation grown?

So with flute and with drum and with gala cheer

Forth they thronged them to greet

The steeled and glittering Cavalier

And the Friar with way-worn feet——

And the men of Spain found pleasant rest,

And the ovens glowed, and each grateful guest

Warm-scented the odors sweet:

Oh, the men of Spain in Pecos town

Were welcomed with joyous array,

Whose folk little dreamed as the dusk closed down

That their Sun had ended that day——

That an Age of the Red Man’s World was past,

And down from their altars his gods were cast

To silently vanish away!

Oh, who could the bitterness and the blood

Of their lurid morrow know?

Where the aged shaman sat grim with his brood

Of the Spirits of long ago,

And the lonely friar with his lifted sign

Stood watching the riders in drifting line

Pass out to the morning glow:

(201)

And who should rue his martyr’s crown

To the valiant soul who wore

In Francis’ name the corded gown

And to the heathen bore

The Cross of Christus crucified,

With thorn-pressed brow and piercéd side

And body wounded sore?

In after years they came again

In corded robe and cowl,

The army of St. Francis’ men,

With book and adz and trowel——

And they builded their church and their masses said,

And they pastored the living and prayed for the dead,

And succored them many a soul:

And the folk of the ancient citadel

To Christian rites were born,

And they harkened to a Christian bell,

And they prayed to Christ each morn——

And sometimes in the fading day

Their olden altars, in decay,

With plumes they did adorn.

(202)

V

Still do the valley’s ancient hills,

Oblivious of man’s passing years,

Renew their bloom with the summer sun

And gloam with gray cloud-fallen tears:

Above their purple crests still climb

The storm’s dark streamers ’thwart the heaven——

Like ghosts of old marauders come

Bright-arrowed with the jagged levin:

And still upon the mesa top

The dead pueblo’s ruined walls

Flare back defiance where the light

In crimson splendor o’er them falls:

About the plaza strewn with shards

Like phantom footsteps fitful go

The phantom winds and idly shift

The downs of thistles to and fro:

And sway the purple huaco’s spires,

And bend the sunflower’s yellow head

O’er wild verbenas lavender

And Indian paintbrush saffron-red:

(203)

And ruffle faint the placid pool

That gathers on the kiva’s floor

To mirror still the cloudy forms

Pictured upon its walls of yore:

While in the chambers long untrod

The broken vigas and the clay

Imprinted with the builder’s hand

Yet crumble in their slow decay:

And underneath the mounded stones

That mark the ancient wall and keep,

With gaud and trinket nigh their bones,

Do they that builded sleep their sleep:

There, warded by the broken church

And tumulus that bears the Rood,

Rememberless the ruins lie,

Dead, mid the valley’s solitude:

Above them, with his pinions spread

Majestic in his noiseless flight,

The Eagle wheels; then soars him far

To vanish in the western night.

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Tonatiuh	Frontispiece
The Sun’s First Ray	7
Day and Night	13
The Sun’s Last Ray	21
Mirage	33
The Trail	41
The Bird of War	51
The Last Song	61
The Mummy (Estes Park)	71
The Priests (Estes Park)	77
Palingenesis	83
To a Child’s Moccasin	91
The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian	97
Earth’s Terraced Bowl—I	107
Earth’s Terraced Bowl—II	119
The Corn Maidens	131
Saint Dominic’s Day—I	143
Saint Dominic’s Day—II	151
Flower Alone	157
The Pottery Peddler	165
The Dead Pueblo—I	171
The Dead Pueblo—II	181
The Dead Pueblo—III	187
The Dead Pueblo—IV	193
The Dead Pueblo—V	199
Tezcatlipoca	209
Xochiquetzal	215
Quetzalcoatl	221
Xiuhtecutli	229

The Project Gutenberg eBook of God's drum

God’s Drum

Transcriber’s Notes

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I THE CHANTING EARTH

GOD’S DRUM

THE SUN’S FIRST RAY

THE WET GRASS OF MORNING

BIRDS AND FROGS

THE PINES ARE THINKING

DAY AND NIGHT

WHEN WE DANCE

GOD’S DRUM

THE CITIES OF WHITE MEN

THE SUN’S LAST RAY

II ON THE PRAIRIE

THE WINDS

DUST EDDIES

TUMBLEWEEDS

THE THUNDER

MIRAGE

THE BLIZZARD

THE EAGLE, ALSO, DIES

THE TRAIL

III SPIRIT SONGS

EACH TIME I BEHOLD HER

SUNSTRUCK

THE BIRD OF WAR

THE PLAYTHINGS OF CHILDREN

A LOCK OF HAIR

HER ROBE IS BROIDERED

RAIN-IN-THE-FACE

I AM RUNNING

THE LAST SONG

THE DREAMS ARE WALKING

IV THE RED APOCALYPSE

THE SERRIED ROCKIES

THE MUMMY (Estes Park)

THE PRIESTS (Estes Park)

PALINGENESIS

ESCHATOLOGY

THE ORIGIN OF DEATH

TO A CHILD’S MOCCASIN

I

II

“THE ONLY GOOD INDIAN IS A DEAD INDIAN”

V POEMS OF PUEBLO LAND

EARTH’S TERRACED BOWL

EARTH’S TERRACED BOWL

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

THE CORN MAIDENS

SAINT DOMINIC’S DAY

FLOWER ALONE

THE POTTERY PEDDLER

THE DEAD PUEBLO

THE DEAD PUEBLO

I

II

III

IV

V

VI AZTEC GODS

TEZCATLIPOCA

XOCHIQUETZAL

QUETZALCOATL

TONATIUH

XIUHTECUTLI

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

I
THE CHANTING EARTH

II
ON THE PRAIRIE

III
SPIRIT SONGS

IV
THE RED APOCALYPSE

V
POEMS OF PUEBLO LAND

VI
AZTEC GODS