VI
DORCAS JANE HEARS HOW THE CORN CAME TO THE VALLEY OF THE MISSI-SIPPU;TOLD BY THE CORN WOMAN
It was one of those holidays, when there isn't any school and the Museumis only opened for a few hours in the afternoon, that Dorcas Jane hadcome into the north gallery of the Indian room where her father was atwork mending the radiators. This was about a week after the children'sfirst adventure on the Buffalo Trail, but it was before the holes hadbeen cut in the Museum wall to let you look straight across the bend inthe Colorado and into the Hopi pueblo. Dorcas looked at all the wallcases and wondered how it was the Indians seemed to have so much cornand so many kinds of it, for she had always thought of corn as acivilized sort of thing to have. She sat on a bench against the wallwondering, for the lovely clean stillness of the room encouragedthinking, and the clink of her father's hammers on the pipes fellpresently into the regular _tink-tink-a-tink_ of tortoise-shell rattles,keeping time to the shuffle and beat of bare feet on the dancing-placeby the river. The path to it led across a clearing between littlehillocks of freshly turned earth, and the high forest overhead wasbursting into tiny green darts of growth like flame. The rattles weresewed to the leggings of the women--little yellow and blackland-tortoise shells filled with pebbles--who sang as they danced andcut themselves with flints until they bled.
"Oh," said Dorcas, without waiting to be introduced, "what makes you dothat?"
"To make the corn grow," said the tallest and the handsomest of thewomen, motioning to the others to leave off their dancing while sheanswered. "Listen! You can hear the men doing their part."
From the forest came a sudden wild whoop, followed by the sound of adrum, little and far off like a heart beating. "They are scaring off theenemies of the corn," said the Corn Woman, for Dorcas could see by herheaddress, which was of dried corn tassels dyed in colors, and by a kindof kilt she wore, woven of corn husks, that that was what sherepresented.
"Oh!" said Dorcas; and then, after a moment, "It sounds as if you weresorry, you know."
"When the seed corn goes into the ground it dies," said the Corn Woman;"the tribe might die also if it never came alive again. Also we lamentfor the Giver-of-the-Corn who died giving."
"I thought corn just grew," said Dorcas; "I didn't know it came from anyplace."
"From the People of the Seed, from the Country of Stone Houses. It wasbought for us by Given-to-the-Sun. Our people came from the East, fromthe place where the Earth opened, from the place where the Noise was,where the Mountain thundered.... This is what I have heard; this is whatthe Old Ones have said," finished the Corn Woman, as though it were somesort of song.
She looked about to the others as if asking their consent to tell thestory. As they nodded, sitting down to loosen their heavy leggings,Dorcas could see that what she had taken to be a shock of last year'scornstalks, standing in the middle of the dancing-place, was really tiedinto a rude resemblance to a woman. Around its neck was one of theIndian's sacred bundles; Dorcas thought it might have something to dowith the story, but decided to wait and see.
"There was a trail in those days," said the Corn Woman, "from thebuffalo pastures to the Country of the Stone House. We used to travel itas far as the ledge where there was red earth for face-painting, and totrade with the Blanket People for salt.
"But no farther. Hunting-parties that crossed into Chihuahua returnedsometimes; more often they were given to the Sun.--On the tops of thehills where their god-houses were," explained the Corn Woman seeing thatDorcas was puzzled. "The Sun was their god to them. Every year they gavecaptives on the hills they built to the Sun."
Dorcas had heard the guard explaining to visitors in the Aztec room."Teocales," she suggested.
"That was one of their words," agreed the Corn Woman. "They calledthemselves Children of the Sun. This much we knew; that there was aSeed. The People of the Cliffs, who came to the edge of the WindsweptPlain to trade, would give us cakes sometimes for dried buffalo tongues.This we understood was _mahiz_, but it was not until Given-to-the-Suncame to us that we thought of having it for ours. Our men were hunters.They thought it shame to dig in the ground.
"Shungakela, of the Three Feather band, found her at the fork of theTurtle River, half starved and as fierce as she was hungry, but _he_called her 'Waits-by-the-Fire' when he brought her back to his tipi, andit was a long time before we knew that she had any other name. Shebelonged to one of the mountain tribes whose villages were raided by thePeople of the Sun, and because she had been a child at the time, she wasmade a servant. But in the end, when she had shot up like a red lily andher mistress had grown fond of her, she was taken by the priests ofthe Sun.
"At first the girl did not know what to make of being dressed sohandsomely and fed upon the best of everything, but when they paintedher with the sign of the Sun she knew. Over her heart they painted it.Then they put about her neck the Eye of the Sun, and the same day thewoman who had been her mistress and was fond of her, slipped her a seedwhich she said should be eaten as she went up the Hill of the Sun, soshe would feel nothing. Given-to-the-Sun hid it in her bosom.
"There was a custom that, in the last days, those who were to go up theHill of the Sun could have anything they asked for. So the girl asked towalk by the river and hear the birds sing. When they had walked out ofsight of the Stone Houses, she gave her watchers the seed in their foodand floated down the river on a piece of bark until she came ashore inthe thick woods and escaped. She came north, avoiding the trails, andafter a year Shungakela found her. Between her breasts there was thesign of the Sun."
The Corn Woman stooped and traced in the dust the ancient sign of theintertwined four corners of the Earth with the Sun in the middle."Around her neck in a buckskin bag was the charm that is known as theEye of the Sun. She never showed it to any of us, but when she was introuble or doubt, she would put her hand over it. It was her Medicine."
"It was good Medicine, too," spoke up the oldest of the dancing women.
"We had need of it," agreed the Corn Woman. "In those days the Earth wastoo full of people. The tribes swarmed, new chiefs arose, kin huntedagainst kin. Many hunters made the game shy, and it removed to newpastures. Strong people drove out weaker and took away theirhunting-grounds. We had our share of both fighting and starving, but ourtribe fared better than most because of the Medicine ofWaits-by-the-Fire, the Medicine of the Sun. She was a wise woman. Shewas made Shaman. When she spoke, even the chiefs listened. But whatcould the chiefs do except hunt farther and fight harder? SoWaits-by-the-Fire talked to the women. She talked of corn, how it wasplanted and harvested, with what rites and festivals.
"There was a God of the Seed, a woman god who was served by women. Whenthe women of our tribe heard that, they took heart. The men had beenafraid that the God of the Corn would not be friendly to us. I think,too, they did not like the idea of leaving off the long season ofhunting and roving, for corn is a town-maker. For the tending andharvesting there must be one place, and for the guarding of the winterstores there must be a safe place. So said Waits-by-the-Fire to thewomen digging roots or boiling old bones in the long winter. She was awise woman.
"It was the fight we had with the Tenasas that decided us. That was ayear of great scarcity and the Tenasas took to sending their young men,two or three at a time, creeping into our hunting-grounds to start thegame, and turn it in the direction of their own country. When our youngmen were sure of this, they went in force and killed inside the bordersof the Tenasas. They had surprised a herd of buffaloes at Two KettleLicks and were cutting up the meat when the Tenasas fell upon them.Waits-by-the-Fire lost her last son by that battle. One she had lost inthe fight at Red Buttes and one in a year of Hunger while he was little.This one was swift of foot and was called Last Arrow, for Shungakela hadsaid, 'Once I had a quiver full.' Waits-by-the-Fire brought him back onher shoulders from the place where the fight was. She walked with himinto the Council.
"'The quiver is empty,' she said; 'the food bags, also; will you waitfor us to fill one a
gain before you fill the other?'
"Mad Wolf, who was chief at the time, threw up his hand as a man doeswhen he is down and craves a mercy he is too proud to ask for. 'We havefought the Tenasas,' he said; 'shall we fight our women also?'
"Waits-by-the-Fire did not wait after that for long speeches in theCouncil. She gathered her company quickly, seven women well seasoned andnot comely,--'The God of the Corn is a woman god,' she said, sharpsmiling,--and seven men, keen and hard runners. The rest she appointedto meet her at Painted Rock ten moons from their going."
"So long as that!" said Dorcas Jane. "Was it so far from where you livedto Mex--to the Country of Stone Houses?"
"Not so far, but they had to stay from planting to harvest. Of what usewas the seed without knowledge. Traveling hard they crossed the River ofthe White Rocks and reached, by the end of that moon, the mountainoverlooking the Country of Stone Houses. Here the men stayed.Waits-by-the-Fire arranged everything. She thought the people of thetowns might hesitate to admit so many men strangers. Also she had thewomen put on worn moccasins with holes, and old food from the yearbefore in their food bags."
"I should think," began Dorcas Jane, "they would have wanted to put onthe best they had to make a good impression."
"She was a wise woman," said the Corn Woman; "she said that if they camefrom near, the people of the towns might take them for spies, but theywould not fear travelers from so far off that their moccasins hadholes in them."
The Corn Woman had forgotten that she was telling a story older than theoaks they sat under. When she came to the exciting parts she said "we"and "us" as though it were something that had happened to them allyesterday.
"It was a high white range that looked on the Country of Stone Houses,"she said, "with peaks that glittered, dropping down ridge by ridge towhere the trees left off at the edge of a wide, basket-colored valley.It hollowed like a meal basket and had a green pattern woven through itby a river. Shungakela went with the women to the foot of the mountain,and then, all at once, he would not let them go until Waits-by-the-Firepromised to come back to the foot of the mountain once in every moon totell him how things went with us. We thought it very childish of him,but afterward we were glad we had not made any objection.
"It was mid-morning when the Seven walked between the fields, withlittle food in their bags and none whatever in their stomachs, all inrags except Waits-by-the-Fire, who had put on her Shaman's dress, andaround her neck, tied in a bag with feathers, the Medicine of the Sun.People stood up in the fields to stare, and we would have stared backagain, but we were afraid. Behind the stone house we saw the Hill of theSun and the priests moving up and down as Waits-by-the-Fire haddescribed it.
"Below the hill, where the ground was made high, at one side of thesteps that went up to the Place of Giving, stood the house of the CornGoddess, which was served by women. There the Seven laid up theiroffering of poor food before the altar and stood on the steps of thegod-house until the head priestess noticed them. Wisps of incense smokefloated out of the carved doorways and the drone of the priestess likebees in a hollow log. All the people came out on their flat roofs towatch--Did I say that they had two and even three houses, one on top ofthe other, each one smaller than the others, and ladders that went upand down to them?--They stood on the roofs and gathered in the opensquare between the houses as still and as curious as antelopes, and atlast the priestess of the Corn came out and spoke to us. Talk went onbetween her and Waits-by-the-Fire, purring, spitting talk like waterstumbling among stones. Not one word did our women understand, but theysaw wonder grow among the Corn Women, respect and amazement.
"Finally, we were taken into the god-house, where in the half dark, wecould make out the Goddess of the Corn, cut in stone, with green stoneson her forehead. There were long councils between Waits-by-the-Fire andthe Corn Woman and the priests that came running from the Temple of theSun. Outside the rumor and the wonder swelled around the god-house likea sudden flood. Faces bobbed up like rubbish in the flood into thebright blocks of light that fell through the doorway, and were shiftedand shunted by other faces peering in. After a long tune the note ofwonder outside changed to a deep, busy hum; the crowd separated and letthrough women bearing food in pots and baskets. Then we knew thatWaits-by-the-Fire had won."
"But what?" insisted Dorcas; "what was it that she had told them?"
"That she had had a dream which was sent by the Corn Spirit and that sheand those with her were under a vow to serve the Corn for the space ofone growing year. And to prove that her dream was true the Goddess ofthe Corn had revealed to her the speech of the Stone House tribe andalso many hidden things. These were things which she remembered from hercaptivity which she told them."
"What sort of things?"
"Why, that in such a year they had had a pestilence and that the fatherof the Corn Woman had died of eating over-ripe melons. The Corn Womenwere greatly impressed. But she carried it almost too far ... perhaps... and perhaps it was appointed from the beginning that that was theway the Corn was to come. It was while we were eating that we realizedhow wise she was to make us come fasting, for first the people pitiedus, and then they were pleased with themselves for making uscomfortable. But in the middle of it there was a great stir and a man inchief's dress came pushing through. He was the Cacique of the Sun and hewas vexed because he had not been called earlier. He was that kind ofa man.
"He spoke sharply to the Chief Corn Woman to know why strangers werereceived within the town without his knowledge.
"Waits-by-the-Fire answered quickly. 'We are guests of the Corn, OCacique, and in my dream I seem to have heard of your hospitality towomen of the Corn.' You see there had been an old story when he wasyoung, how one of the Corn Maidens had gone to his house and had beenkept there against her will, which was a discredit to him. He was soastonished to hear the strange woman speak of it that he turned and wentout of the god-house without another word. The people took up theincident and whispered it from mouth to mouth to prove that the strangeShaman was a great prophet. So we were appointed a house to live in andwere permitted to serve the Corn."
"But what did you do?" Dorcas insisted on knowing.
"We dug and planted. All this was new to us. When there was no work inthe fields we learned the ways of cooking corn, and to make pots.Hunting-tribes do not make pots. How should we carry them from place toplace on our backs? We cooked in baskets with hot stones, and sometimeswhen the basket was old we plastered it with mud and set it on the fire.But the People of the Corn made pots of coiled clay and burned it hardin the open fires between the houses. Then there was the ceremony of theCorn to learn, the prayers and the dances. Oh, we had work enough! Andif ever anything was ever said or done to us which was not pleasant,Waits-by-the-Fire would say to the one who had offended, 'We are onlythe servants of the Corn, but it would be a pity if the same thinghappened to you that happened to the grandfather of your next-doorneighbor!'
"And what happened to him?"
"Oh, a plague of sores, a scolding wife," or anything that she chancedto remember from the time she had been Given-to-the-Sun. _That_ stoppedthem. But most of them held us to be under the protection of the CornSpirit, and when our Shaman would disappear for two or three days--thatwas when she went to the mountain to visit Shungakela--_we_ said thatshe had gone to pray to her own gods, and they accepted that also."
"And all this time no one recognized her?"
"She had painted her face for a Shaman," said the Corn Woman slowly,"and besides it was nearly forty years. The woman who had been kind toher was dead and there was a new Priest of the Sun. Only the one who hadpainted her with the sign of the Sun was left, and he was doddering."She seemed about to go on with her story, but the oldest dancing womaninterrupted her.
"Those things helped," said the dancing woman, "but it was her thoughtwhich hid her. She put on the thought of a Shaman as a man puts on thethought of a deer or a buffalo when he goes to look for them. That whichone fears, that it is which betrays one. She wa
s a Shaman in her heartand as a Shaman she appeared to them."
"She certainly had no fear," said the Corn Woman, "though from the firstshe must have known--
"It was when the seed corn was gathered that we had the first hint oftrouble," she went on. "When it was ripe the priests and Caciques wentinto the fields to select the seed for next year. Then it was laid up inthe god-houses for the priestess of the Corn to keep. That was in caseof an enemy or a famine when the people might be tempted to eat it.After it was once taken charge of by the priestess of the Corn theywould have died rather than give it up. Our women did not know how theyshould get the seed to bring away from the Stone House except to ask forit as the price of their year's labor."
"But couldn't you have just taken some from the field?" inquired Dorcas."Wouldn't it have grown just the same?"
"That we were not sure of; and we were afraid to take it without thegood-will of the Corn Goddess. Centcotli her name was. Waits-by-the-Firemade up her mind to ask for it on the first day of the Feast of the CornHarvest, which lasts four days, and is a time of present-giving andgood-willing. She would have got it, too, if it had been left to theCorn Women to decide. But the Cacique of the Sun, who was alwayswatching out for a chance to make himself important, insisted that itwas a grave matter and should be taken to Council. He had never forgiventhe Shaman, you see, for that old story about the Corn Maiden.
"As soon as the townspeople found that the Caciques were consideringwhether it was proper to give seed corn to the strangers, they began toconsider it, too, turning it over in their minds together with a greatmany things that had nothing to do with it. There had been smut in thecorn that year; there was a little every year, but this season there wasmore of it, and a good many of the bean pods had not filled out. Iforgot," said the Corn Woman, "to speak of the beans and squashes. Theywere the younger sisters of the corn; they grew with the corn and twinedabout it. Now, every man who was a handful or two short of his cropbegan to look at us doubtfully. Then they would crowd around the Caciqueof the Sun to argue the matter. They remembered how our Shaman had goneapart to pray to her own gods and they thought the Spirit of the Cornmight have been offended. And the Cacique would inquire of every one whohad a toothache or any such matter, in such a way as to make them thinkof it in connection with the Shaman.--In every village," the Corn Womaninterrupted herself to say, "there is evil enough, if laid at the doorof one person, to get her burned for a witch!"
"Was she?" Dorcas Jane squirmed with anxiety.
"She was standing on the steps at the foot of the Hill of the Sun, thelast we saw of her," said the Corn Woman. "Of course, our women, notunderstanding the speech of the Stone Houses, did not know exactly whatwas going on, but they felt the changed looks of the people. Theythought, perhaps, they could steal away from the town unnoticed. Two ofthem hid in their clothing as much Seed as they could lay hands on andwent down toward the river. They were watched and followed. So they cameback to the house where Waits-by-the-Fire prayed daily with her hand onthe Medicine of the Sun.
"So came the last day of the feast when the sacred seed would be sealedup in the god-house. 'Have no fear,' said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'for mydream has been good. Make yourselves ready for the trail. Take food inyour food bags and your carriers empty on your backs.' She put on herShaman's dress and about the middle of the day the Cacique of the Sunsent for them. He was on the platform in front of the god-house wherethe steps go up to the Hill of the Sun, and the elders of the town werebehind him. Priests of the Sun stood on the steps and the Corn Womencame out from the temple of the Corn. As Waits-by-the-Fire went up withthe Seven, the people closed in solidly behind them. The Cacique lookedat the carriers on their backs and frowned.
"'Why do you come to the god-house with baskets, like laborers of thefields?' he demanded.
"'For the price of our labor, O Cacique,' said the Shaman. 'The gods arenot so poor that they accept labor for nothing.'
"'Now, it is come into my heart,' said the Cacique sourly, 'that thegods are not always pleased to be served by strangers. There are signsthat this is so.'
"'It may be,' said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'that the gods are not pleased.They have long memories.' She looked at him very straight and somebodyin the crowd snickered."
"But wasn't it awfully risky to keep making him mad like that?" askedDorcas. "They could have just done anything to her!"
"She was a wise woman; she knew what she had to do. The Cacique _was_angry. He began making a long speech at her, about how the smut had comein the corn and the bean crop was a failure,--but that was because therehad not been water enough,--and how there had been sickness. And whenWaits-by-the-Fire asked him if it were only in that year they hadmisfortune, the people thought she was trying to prove that she hadn'thad anything to do with it. She kept reminding them of things that hadhappened the year before, and the year before. The Cacique kept growingmore and more angry, admitting everything she said, until it showedplainly that the town had had about forty years of bad luck, which theCacique tried to prove was all because the gods had known in advancethat they were going to be foolish and let strangers in to serve theCorn. At first the people grew excited and came crowding against theedge of the platform, shouting, 'Kill her! Kill the witch!' as one andthen another of their past misfortunes were recalled to them.
"But, as the Shaman kept on prodding the Cacique, as hunters stir up abear before killing him, they began to see that there was something morecoming, and they stood still, packed solidly in the square to listen. Onall the housetops roundabout the women and the children were as still asimages. A young priest from the steps of the Hill, who thought he mustback up the Cacique, threw up his arms and shouted, 'Give her to theSun!' and a kind of quiver went over the people like the shiver of stillwater when the wind smites it. It was only at the time of the New Fire,between harvest and planting, that they give to the Sun, or in greattimes of war or pestilence. Waits-by-the-Fire moved out to the edge ofthe platform.
"'It is not, O People of the Sun, for what is given, that the gods growangry, but for what is withheld,' she said, 'Is there nothing, priestsof the Sun, which was given to the Sun and let go again? Think, Opriests. Nothing?'
"The priests, huddled on the stairs, began to question among themselves,and Waits-by-the-Fire turned to the people. 'Nothing, O Offspring ofthe Sun?'
"Then she put off the Shaman's thought which had been a shield to her.'Nothing, Toto?' she called to a man in the crowd by a name none knewhim by except those that had grown up with him. She wasGiven-to-the-Sun, and she stood by the carved stone corn of thegod-house and laughed at them, shuffling and shouldering like buffaloesin the stamping-ground, and not knowing what to think. Voices began tocall for the man she had spoken to, 'Toto, O Toto!'
"The crowd swarmed upon itself, parted and gave up the figure of theancient Priest of the Sun, for they remembered in his day how a girl whowas given to the Sun had been snatched away by the gods out of sight ofthe people. They pushed him forward, doddering and peering. They saw thewoman put back her Shaman's bonnet from her head, and the old priestclap his hand to his mouth like one suddenly astonished.
"Over the Cacique's face came a cold glint like the coming of ice onwater. 'You,' he said, 'you are Given-to-the-Sun?' And he made a gestureto the guard to close in on her.
"'Given-to-the-Sun,' she said. 'Take care how you touch that whichbelongs to the gods, O Cacique!'
"And though he still smiled, he took a step backward.
"'So,' he said, 'you are that woman and this is the meaning of thoseprophecies!'
"'I am that woman and that prophet,' she said with her hand at herthroat and looked from priests to people. 'O People of the Sun, I haveheard you have a charm,' she said,--'a Medicine of the Sun called theEye of the Sun, strong Medicine.'
"No one answered for a while, but they began to murmur among themselves,and at last one shouted that they had such a charm, but it was not forwitches or for runaway slave women.
"You _had_ such a charm,
' she said, for she knew well enough that thesacred charm was kept in the god-house and never shown to the peopleexcept on very great occasions. She was sure that the priests had neverdared to tell the people that their Sacred Stone had disappeared withthe escaped captive.
"Given-to-the-Sun took the Medicine bag from her neck and swung it inher fingers. _'Had!'_ she said mockingly. The people gave a growl;another time they would have been furious with fright and anger, butthey did not wish to miss a syllable of what was about to happen. Thepriests whispered angrily with the guard, but Given-to-the-Sun did notcare what the priests did so long as she had the people. She signed tothe Seven, and they came huddling to her like quail; she put thembehind her.
"'Is it not true, Children of the Sun, that the favor of the Sun goeswith the Eye of the Sun and it will come back to you when the Stonecomes back?'
"They muttered and said that it was so.
"'Then, will your priests show you the Eye of the Sun or shall I showyou?'
"There was a shout raised at that, and some called to the priests toshow the Stone, and others that the woman would bring trouble on themall with her offenses. But by this time they knew very well where theStone was, and the priests were too astonished to think of anything.Slowly the Shaman drew it out of the Medicine bag--"
The Corn Woman waited until one of the women handed her the sacredbundle from the neck of the Corn image. Out of it, after a littlerummaging, she produced a clear crystal of quartz about the size of apigeon's egg. It gave back the rays of the Sun in a dazzle that, to anyone who had never seen a diamond, would have seemed wonderfullybrilliant. Where it lay in the Corn Woman's hand it scattered littleflecks of reflected light in rainbow splashes. The Indian women made thesign of the Sun on their foreheads and Dorcas felt a prickle ofsolemnity along the back of her neck as she looked at it. Nobody spokeuntil it was back again in the Medicine bundle.
"Given-to-the-Sun held it up to them," the story went on, "and there wasa noise in the square like a noise of the stamping-ground at twilight.Some bellowed one thing and some another, and at last a priest of theSun moved sharply and spoke:--
"'The Eye of the Sun is not for the eyes of the vulgar. Will you letthis false Shaman impose on you, O Children of the Sun, with acommon pebble?'
"Given-to-the-Sun stooped and picked up a mealing-stone that was usedfor grinding the sacred meal in the temple of the Corn.
"'If your Stone is in the temple and this is a common pebble,' said she,'it does not matter what I do with it.' And she seemed about to crush iton the top of the stone balustrade at the edge of the platform. Thepeople groaned. They knew very well that this was their Sacred Stone andthat the priests had deceived them. Given-to-the-Sun stood resting onestone upon the other.
"'The Sun has been angry with you,' she said, 'but the Goddess of theCorn saves you. She has brought back the Stone and the Sacrifice. Do notshow yourselves ungrateful to the Corn by denying her servants theirwages. What! will you have all the gods against you? Priestess of theCorn,' she called toward the temple, 'do you also mislead the people?'
"At that the Corn Women came hurrying, for they saw that the people wereboth frightened and angry; they brought armsful of corn and seeds forthe carriers, they took bracelets from their arms and put them for giftsin the baskets. The priests of the Sun did not say anything. One of thewomen's headbands slipped and the basket swung sideways.Given-to-the-Sun whipped off her belt and tucked it under the basket rimto make it ride more evenly. The woman felt something hard in the beltpressing her shoulder, but she knew better than to say anything. Insilence the crowd parted and let the Seven pass. They went swiftly withtheir eyes on the ground by the north gate to the mountain. The priestsof the Sun stood still on the steps of the Hill of the Sun and theireyes glittered. The Sacrifice of the Sun had come back to them.
"When our women passed the gate, the crowd saw Given-to-the-Sun restorewhat was in her hand to the Medicine bag; she lifted her arms above herhead and began the prayer to the Sun."
* * * * *
"I see," said Dorcas after a long pause; "she stayed to keep the Peopleof the Sun pacified while the women got away with the seed. That wassplendid. But, the Eye of the Sun, I thought you saw her put that in thebuckskin bag again?"
"She must have had ready another stone of shape and size like it," saidthe Corn Woman. "She thought of everything. She was a wise woman, and solong as she was called Given-to-the-Sun the Eye of the Sun was hers togive. Shungakela was not surprised to find that his wife had stayed atthe Hill of the Sun; so I suppose she must have told him. He asked ifthere was a token, and the woman whose basket she had propped with hergirdle gave it to him with the hard lump that pressed her shoulder. Sothe Medicine of the Sun came back to us.
"Our men had met the women at the foot of the mountain and they fled allthat day to a safe place the men had made for them. It was for that theyhad stayed, to prepare food for flight, and safe places for hiding incase they were followed. If the pursuit pressed too hard, the men wereto stay and fight while the women escaped with the corn. That was howGiven-to-the-Sun arranged it.
"Next day as we climbed, we saw smoke rising from the Hill of the Sun,and Shungakela went apart on the mountain, saying, 'Let me alone, for Imake a fire to light the feet of my wife's spirit...' They had beenmarried twenty years.
"We found the tribe at Painted Rock, but we thought it safer to come oneast beyond the Staked Plains as Given-to-the-Sun had advised us. At RedRiver we stopped for a whole season to plant corn. But there was notrain enough there, and if we left off watching the fields for a day thebuffaloes came and cropped them. So for the sake of the corn we camestill north and made friends with the Tenasas. We bought help of themwith the half of our seed, and they brought us over the river, theMissi-Sippu, the Father of all Rivers. The Tenasas had boats, round likebaskets, covered with buffalo hide, and they floated us over, twoswimmers to every boat to keep us from drifting downstream.
"Here we made a town and a god-house, to keep the corn contented. Everyyear when the seed is gathered seven ears are laid up in the god-housein memory of the Seven, and for the seed which must be kept for nextyear's crop there are seven watchers"--the Corn Woman included thedancers and herself in a gesture of pride. "We are the keepers of theSeed," she said, "and no man of the tribe knows where it is hidden. Forno matter how hungry the people may become the seed corn must not beeaten. But with us there is never any hunger, for every year fromplanting time till the green corn is ready for picking, we keep all theceremonies of the corn, so that our cribs are filled to bursting. Look!"
The Corn Woman stood up and the dancers getting up with her shook therattles of their leggings with a sound very like the noise a radiatormakes when some one is hammering on the other end of it. And when Dorcasturned to look for the Indian cribs there was nothing there but thefamiliar wall cases and her father mending the steam heater.
SIGN OF THE SUN AND THE FOUR QUARTERS]