Great River - Paul Horgan

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years to go through before they were men; but boys passing the stage of discovering the gods were no longer children. There were other stages of adulthood denied. They could not smoke until they had qualified in the hunt, killing deer, buffalo, rabbit and coyote. If boys were found breaking the rules, they were thrown into the river, in punishment.

      Though punishment played less part in the lives of children than fear. Unless children behaved well, they would be in danger from giants and bogeymen who knew all. Once a year the bogeymen, wearing fearful masks, came to the pueblo and knew exactly which children to visit and scold. They knew all the bad things that parents had been harping on. They appalled the children, who had heard of one giant, for example, who went every day to a pueblo near the black mesa in which he lived, and stole children, took them home, and ate them. The bogeymen made threats. The children shivered. And then their parents in anguish begged them not to take the children or hurt them, they were sure the children would be better boys and girls from now on, wouldn’t they, children? With sobs and shudders the children promised. The bogeymen rattled their masks. No, who could be sure. Threats and horrors were renewed. The parents pleaded. Promises were repeated. At last the dreadful visitors consented to go, for this time. But remember and beware!

      Happier children were favored with the protection of the masked gods, the kachinas, who rewarded their goodness.

      In the morning, waking up, one of the children in the family was sent out to make a prayer, sprinkling sacred meal or pollen to the sun. Then came duties, and then play. The boys tried all the games played by the men. They practiced the kick-race, which the men ran on a course sometimes as long as forty miles, circling out by landmarks and back to the pueblo. Two teams played, each kicking a lump about five inches in size made of hair stuck with pinyon gum. The men could kick the ball twenty yards. The boys tried. They also played a game using a curved stick with which they knocked a deerskin ball filled with seeds. The winner was the one who broke the ball. They liked to run relay races, wearing tufts of down to make them light as birds. All running games were valuable, they said, because they kept the sun running in its course. The boys pitched little stones at a larger target stone. They threw darts and practiced with bow and arrow. Boylike, they discovered things to do with things, and took the fruit of the ground-tomato which had a puffy envelope over it and, by smacking it against their foreheads, made a fine loud pop.

      Children were desired and cherished and given all that their families could give, of things and powers and certainties. The blessings of life came from the parents, the ancestors, to whom gratitude and veneration were due. On the hot afternoons of the summer, when the sky blue had golden shimmers over it from heat, and the cottonwoods were breathless and the river ran depleted in and out of their shade, there rose on the hot silver distance the big afternoon rain clouds, with their white billows and black airy shadows. They had promise and blessing in them—rain and life. The people pointed to them and said to the children with love and thanks, “Your grandfathers are coming.”

      The people did not consider that the cloud that made the rain that fell on the mountain thus made the river. Long ago, when they lived on the mesas and plateaus, far from the valleys, they needed water direct from the clouds to make their crops grow. In dry times they took water out to the plants in jars and spilled it carefully on the roots. Sometimes when heavy rain brought fast floods, they channelled the runoff to their fields. Running waters took usually the same channel, deepening it, widening it, turning its soil over. The people began to use such places in which to plant, so that their crops would receive the water that fell and ran.

      When they came to the river and through generations settled their life along its farming plain, they saw that if water could run into the river from all the uplands, then on the immediate floor of the valley it was in many places possible to run water out of the river to the fields. Nearly a thousand years ago Pueblo people were irrigating their fields through well-laid canals and ditches. The river had in some places sharp steep deep walls of rock which ran for many miles. But most of these hard-buried canyons opened out as the river went downstream into wide flat valleys whose floor on each side of the riverbed was lush with growing grasses, plants and trees. In such places the people placed many of their towns. The river was accessible. They used it and it sustained them.

      There were thirty thousand people, living in at least thirty, perhaps up to seventy, towns on the Rio Grande of central and northern New Mexico. They cultivated in all about twenty-five thousand acres, through irrigation from the river and its tributaries, and by the use of controlled floodwater. They grew corn, beans, pumpkins, gourds and cotton. They said it was the leaves that made the plants grow, because when the leaves dropped off, the plants stopped growing. The leaves could be watched. Roots were below ground and could not be watched. But even things that could be watched might mean nothing. Pollen from corn was sacred and used in many a prayer; it was part of the great plant which gave life; but nobody noticed what pollen did to make more corn.

      Seed corn was kept into the second season before it was planted. Each town used its own, and refused to plant that of other towns, for, they said, the corn was the same as the people. Sowing was assisted by much prayer. Under the waxing moon of April the corn was planted, so it would grow as the moon grew, for under a waning moon the corn paused in its growth. Each farmer made his own prayer, and conducted his own ritual. One said this:

      Mother, Father, you who belong to the great Beings, you who belong to the storm clouds, you will help me. I am ready to put down yellow corn and also blue corn, and red corn and all kinds of corn. I am going to plant today. Therefore, you will help me and you will make my work light. You will not make it heavy and also you will make the field not hard. You will make it soft.

      The river water was let into the ditches to run to the fields. As the sluices were opened, the farmers prayed and threw feathers upon the first seeking ruffles of the muddy water in the dry ditches whose winter reeds had been burned down. As plants grew the farmers cultivated them with sharpened sticks. Each plant had its own little crater of shaped earth to conserve water. The fields were laid in long narrow strips touching at their ends to the river course so that each would have access to water. The farming lands were owned by the town, and each family man’s share was assigned to his use by the cacique’s council.

      The growing plants had enemies that had to be watched out for. So, in a place commanding a good view of the fields and the country beyond them, the old men who could no longer do the work of irrigating and cultivating served as guardians of the fields. For this duty a lookout was built, eight or ten feet square and two stories high. Four posts held up the deck of the second floor and a brush roof over the top. There were no side walls, for the view had to be clear. But brush was sometimes set along one side as a windbreak. Under the platform, in the ground, there was a first floor made of a shallow pit with a fireplace and food storage. The guard sat up on top. Women came and prepared his food in the pit below him, while he kept up his watch against enemies. Sometimes they were Navahos, Apaches, Comanches who grew no food for themselves but knew where to find it all done for them. Sometimes it was birds who came to flock through the tender new plants and strip them clean. Small riverside animals sometimes found a crop to their taste and had to be scared away. The watchman often had a dog with him who could give chase, or bark an alarm, or simply doze and scratch companionably and affirm by his devoted presence how suitably things were arranged, with one to lead and one to follow, and behind both, the need, the power and the responsibility of the earthen town whose life came from the river.

      As crops matured, the people danced for rain in late spring, full summer, and early fall. Then came the harvest. First the melons were taken in and stored, and then the corn. In many towns the ground was swept clean before the corn was brought through the streets from the fields. Everyone, men, women and children, took part in the harvest, which lasted for several days. It was a happy time, full of social exchange and pleasure. Neighbors helped one another. The storage bins were ready. The year’s hard work was over for a spell. Peace and plenty repaid virtue. The winter was coming when nothing would grow. The days would be bright, the nights cold, sometimes there would be ice on the river. The cottonwoods would turn golden and keep their dried leaves. The stalks and grasses by the water would be rods of rusty brown and black and pink and pale gold. In the fields, the corn husks would dry and crackle in

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