 | Mahala Joe |  |
Austin, Mary. "Mahala Joe."
Atlantic Monthly 94 (1904): 44-53.
IN the campoodie of Three Pines, which you probably know better by its Spanish name of Tres Pinos, there is an Indian, well thought of among his own people, who goes about wearing a woman's dress, and is known as Mahala Joe. He should be about fifty years old by this time, and has a quiet, kindly face. Sometimes he tucks up the skirt of his woman's dress over a pair of blue overalls when he has a man's work to do, but at feasts and dances he wears a ribbon around his waist and a handkerchief on his head as the other mahalas do. He is much looked to because of his knowledge of white people and their ways, and if it were not for the lines of deep sadness that fall in his face when at rest, one might forget that the woman's gear is the badge of an all but intolerable shame. At least it was so used by the Paiutes, but when you have read this full and true account of how it was first put on, you may not think it so.
Fifty years ago the valley about Tres Pinos was all one sea of moving grass and dusky, greenish sage, cropped over by deer and antelope, north as far as Togobah, and south to the Bitter Lake. Beside every considerable stream which flowed into it from the Sierras was a Paiute campoodie, and all they knew of white people was by hearsay from the tribes across the mountains. But soon enough cattlemen began to push their herds through the Sierra passes to the Paiutes' feeding-ground. The Indians saw them come, and though they were not very well pleased, they held still by the counsel of their old men; night and day they made medicine and prayed that the white men might go away.
Among the first of the cattlemen in the valley about Tres Pinos was Joe Baker, who brought a young wife, and built his house not far from the campoodie. The Indian women watched her curiously from afar because of a whisper that ran among the wattled huts. When the year was far gone, and the sun-cured grasses curled whitish brown, a doctor came riding hard from the fort at Edawick, forty miles to the south, and though they watched they did not see him ride away. It was the third day at evening when Joe Baker came walking toward the campoodie, and his face was set and sad. He carried something rolled in a blanket, and looked anxiously at the women as he went between the huts. It was about the hour of the evening meal, and the mahalas sat about the fires watching the cooking pots. He came at last opposite a young woman who sat nursing her child. She had a bright, pleasant face, and her little one seemed about six months old. Her husband stood near and watched them with great pride. Joe Baker knelt down in front of the mahala, and opened the roll of blankets. He showed her a day-old baby that wrinkled up its small face and cried.
"Its mother is dead," said the cattleman. The young Indian mother did not know English, but she did not need speech to know what had happened. She looked pitifully at the child, and at her husband timidly. Joe Baker went and laid his rifle and cartridge belt at the Paiute's feet. The Indian picked up the gun and fingered it; his wife smiled. She put down her own child, and lifted the little white stranger to her breast. It nozzled against her and hushed its crying; the young mother laughed.
"See how greedy it is," she said; "it is truly white." She drew up the blanket around the child and comforted it.
The cattleman called to him one of the
"Tell her," he said, "that I wish her to care for the child. His name is Walter. Tell her that she is to come to my house for everything he needs, and for every month that he keeps fat and well she shall have a fat steer from my herd." So it was agreed.
As soon as Walter was old enough he came to sleep at his father's house, but the Indian woman whom he called Ebia came every day to tend him. Her son was his brother, and Walter learned to speak Paiute before he learned English. The two boys were always together, but as yet the little Indian had no name. It is not the custom among Paiutes to give names to those who have not done anything worth naming.
"But I have a name," said Walter, "and so shall he. I will call him Joe. That is my father's name, and it is a good name, too."
When Mr. Baker was away with the cattle Walter slept at the campoodie, and Joe's mother made him a buckskin shirt. At that time he was so brown with the sun and the wind that only by his eyes could you tell that he was white; he was also very happy. But as this is to be the story of how Joe came to the wearing of a woman's dress I cannot tell you all the plays they had, how they went on their first hunting, nor what they found in the creek of Tres Pinos.
The beginning of the whole affair of Mahala Joe must be laid to the arrow-maker. The arrow-maker had a stiff knee from a wound in a long gone battle, and for that reason he sat in the shade of his wickiup, and chipped arrow points from flakes of obsidian that the young men brought him from Togobah, fitting them to shafts of reeds from the river marsh. He used to coax the boys to wade in the brown water and cut the reeds, for the dampness made his knee ache. They drove bargains with him for arrows for their own hunting, or for the sake of the stories he could tell. For an armful of reeds he would make three arrows, and for a double armful he would tell tales. These were mostly of great huntings and old wars, but when it was winter, and no snakes in the long grass to overhear, he would tell Wonder-stories. The boys would lie with their toes in the warm ashes, and the arrow-maker would begin.
"You can see," said the arrow-maker, "on the top of Waban the tall boulder looking on the valleys east and west. That is the very boundary between the Paiute country and Shoshone land. The boulder is a hundred times taller than the tallest man, and thicker through than six horses standing nose to tail; the shadow of it falls all down the slope. At mornings it falls toward the Paiute peoples, and evening it falls on Shoshone land. Now on this side of the valley, beginning at the campoodie, you will see a row of pine trees standing all upstream one behind another. See, the long branches grow on the side toward the hill, and some may tell you it is because of the way the wind blows, but I say it is because they reach out in a hurry to get up the mountain. Now I will tell you how these things came about.
"Very long ago all the Paiutes of this valley were ruled by two brothers, a chief and a medicine man, Winnedumah and Tinnemaha. They were both very wise, and one of them never did anything without the other. They taught the tribes not to war upon each other, but to stand fast as brothers, and so they brought peace into the land. At that time there were no white people heard of, and game was plenty. The young honored the old, and nothing was as it is now."
When the arrow-maker came to this point, the boys fidgeted with their toes, and made believe to steal the old man's arrows to distract his attention. They did not care to hear about the falling off of the Paiutes; they wished to have the tale. Then the arrow-maker would hurry on to the time when there arose a war between the Paiutes and the Shoshones.
"And so they might," said the arrow-maker, "but at last their hearts turned to water. The tribes came together on the top of Waban. Yes; where the boulder now stands, for that is the boundary of our lands, for no brave would fight off his own ground for fear of the other's medicine. So they fought. The eagles heard the twang of the bowstring, and swung down from White Mountain. The vultures smelled the smell of battle, and came in from Shoshone land. Their wings were dark like a cloud, and underneath the arrows flew like hail. The Paiutes were the better bowmen, and they caught the Shoshone arrows where they struck in the earth and shot them back again. Then the Shoshones were ashamed, and about the time of the sun going down they called upon their Medicine Men, and one let fly a magic arrow,—for none other would touch him,— and it struck in the throat of Tinnemaha.
"Now when that befell," went on the arrow-maker, "the braves forgot the word that had gone before the battle, for they turned their backs to the Medicine Man, all but Winnedumah, his brother, and fled this way from Waban. Then stood Winnedumah by Tinnemaha, for that was the way of those two, whatever happened, one would not leave the other. There was none left to carry on the fight, and yet since he was so great a chief the Shoshones were afraid to take him, and the sun went down. In the dusk they saw a bulk, and they said, 'He is still standing,' but when it was morning light they saw only a great rock, so you see it to this day. As for the braves who ran away, they were changed to pine trees, but in their hearts they are cowards yet, therefore they stretch out their arms and strive toward the mountain. And that," said the arrow-maker, "is how the tall stones came to be on the top of Waban. But it was not in my day nor my father's." Then the boys would look up at Winnedumah, and were half afraid, and as for the tale, they quite believed it.
The arrow-maker was growing old. His knee hurt him in cold weather, and he could not make arrow points fast enough to satisfy the boys, who lost a great many in the winter season shooting at ducks in the tulares. Walter's father promised him a rifle when he was fifteen, but that was years away. There was a rock in the canon behind Tres Pinos with a great crack in the top. When the young men rode to the hunting they shot each an arrow at it, and if it stuck it was a promise of good luck. The boys scaled the rock by means of a grapevine ladder, and pried out the old points. This gave them an idea.
"Upon Waban where the fighting was, there must be a great many arrow points," said Walter.
"So there must be," said Joe.
"Let us go after them," said the white boy; but the other dared not, for no Paiute would go within a bowshot of Winnedumah; nevertheless, they talked the matter over.
"How near would you go?" asked Walter.
"As near as a strong man might shoot an arrow," said Joe.
"If you will go so far," said Walter, "I will go the rest of the way."
"It is a two days' journey," said the Paiute, but he did not make any other objection.
It was a warm day of spring when they set out. The cattleman was off to the river meadow, and Joe's mother was out with the other mahalas gathering taboose.
"If I were fifteen, and had my rifle, I would not be afraid of anything," said Walter.
"But in that case we would not need to go after arrow points," said the Indian boy.
They climbed all day in a bewildering waste of boulders and scrubby trees. They could see Winnedumah shining
"It is like the false water in the desert," said Walter. "It goes farther from you, and when you get to it there is no water there."
"It is magic medicine," said Indian Joe. "No good comes of going against medicine."
"If you are afraid," said Walter, "why do you not say so. You may go back if you like, and I will go on by myself."
Joe would not make any answer to that. They were hot and tired, and awed by the stillness of the hills. They kept on after that, angry and apart; sometimes they lost sight of each other among the boulders and underbrush. But it seemed that it must really have been as one or the other of them had said, for when they came out on a high mesa presently there was no Winnedumah anywhere in sight. They would have stopped then and taken counsel, but they were too angry for that, so they walked on in silence, and the day failed rapidly, as it will do in high places. They began to draw near together and to be afraid. At last the Indian boy stopped and gathered the tops of bushes together, and began to weave a shelter for the night, and when Walter saw that he made it large enough for two he spoke to him.
"Are we lost?" he said.
"We are lost for to-night," said Joe, "but in the morning we will find ourselves."
They ate dried venison and drank from the wicker bottle, and huddled together because of the dark and the chill.
"Why do we not see the stone any more?" asked Walter in a whisper.
"I do not know," said Joe. "I think it has gone away."
"Will he come after us?"
"I do not know. I have on my elk's tooth," said Joe, and he clasped the charm that hung about his neck. They started and shivered, hearing a stone crash far away as it rolled down the mountain side, and the wind began to move among the pines.
"Joe," said Walter, "I am sorry I said that you were afraid."
"It is nothing," said the Paiute. "Besides, I am afraid."
"So am I," whispered the other. "Joe," he said again after a long silence, "if he comes after us what shall we do?"
"We will stay by each other."
"Like the two brothers, whatever happens," said the white boy, "forever and ever."
"We are two brothers," said Joe.
"Will you swear it?"
"On my elk's tooth."
Then they each took the elk's tooth in his hand and made a vow that whether Winnedumah came down from his rock, or whether the Shoshones found them, come what would, they would stand together. Then they were comforted, and lay down holding each other's hands.
"I hear some one walking," said Walter.
"It is the wind among the pines," said Joe.
A twig snapped. "What is that?" said the one boy.
"It is a fox or a coyote passing," said the other, but he knew better. They lay still, scarcely breathing, and throbbed with fear. They felt a sense of a presence approaching in the night, the whisper of a moccasin on the gravelly soil, the swish of displaced bushes springing back to place. They saw a bulk shape itself out of the dark; it came and stood over them, and they saw that it was an Indian looking larger in the gloom. He spoke to them, and whether he spoke in a strange tongue, or they were too frightened to understand, they could not tell.
"Do not kill us!" cried Walter, but the Indian boy made no sound. The man took Walter by the shoulders and lifted him up.
"White," said he.
"We are brothers," said Joe; "we have sworn it."
"So," said the man, and it seemed as if he smiled.
"Until we die," said both the boys. The Indian gave a grunt.
"A white man," he said, "is—White." It did not seem as if that was what he meant to say.
"Come, I will take you to your people. They search for you about the foot of Waban. These three hours I have watched you and them." The boys clutched at each other in the dark. They were sure now who spoke to them, and between fear and fatigue and the cramp of cold they staggered and stumbled as they walked. The Indian stopped and considered them.
"I cannot carry both," he said.
"I am the older," said Joe; "I can walk." Without any more words the man picked up Walter, who trembled, and walked off down the slope. They went a long way through the scrub and under the tamarack pines. The man was naked to the waist, and had a quiver full of arrows on his shoulder. The buckthorn branches whipped and scraped against his skin, but he did not seem to mind. At last they came to a place where they could see a dull red spark across an open flat.
"That," said the Indian, "is the fire of your people. They missed you at afternoon, and have been looking for you. From my station on the hill I saw." Then he took the boy by the shoulders.
"Look you," he said, "no good comes of mixing white and brown, but now that the vow is made, see to the keeping of it." Then he stepped back from them and seemed to melt into the dark. Ahead of them the boys saw the light of the fire flare up with new fuel, and shadows moved between them and the flame, which they knew for the figures of their friends. Swiftly as two scared rabbits they ran on toward the glow.
When Walter and Joe had told them the story at the campoodie, the Paiutes made a great deal of it, especially the arrow-maker.
"Without a doubt," he said, "it was Winnedumah who came to you, and not, as some think, a Shoshone who was spying on our land. It is a great mystery. But since you have made a vow of brothers, you should keep it after the ancient use." Then he took a knife of obsidian and cut their arms, and rubbed a little of the blood of each upon the other.
"Now," he said, "you are one fellowship and one blood, and that is as it should be, for you were both nursed at one breast. See that you keep the vow."
"We will," said the boys solemnly, and they went out into the sunlight very proud of the blood upon their bared arms, holding by each other's hands.
| Mahala Joe | |