Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/508

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

towards the cardinal points. When they danced, they jumped, pranced, pirouetted, and at last circled rapidly, revolving much as the dervishes are described as doing. This must have been hard work, because their bodies were soon moist with perspiration, which made them look as if they had been coated with oil.

"Klashidn," the young man who had led me down, said that the orchestra was now singing to the trees which had been planted in the ground, and I then saw that a fourth "medicine man," who acted with the air of one in authority, had taken his station within. When the dancers had become thoroughly exhausted, they would dart out of the ring and disappear in the gloom to consult with the spirits; three several times they appeared and disappeared, at each return dancing, running, and whirling about with increased energy. Having attained the degree of mental or spiritual exaltation necessary for satisfactory communion with the denizens of the other world, they remained absent for at least half an hour, the orchestra rendering a monotonous refrain, mournful as a funeral dirge. At last a thrill of expectancy ran through the throng, and I saw that they were looking anxiously for the incoming of the "medicine men." When they arrived all the orchestra stood up, their leader slightly in advance, holding a bunch of cedar in his left hand. The "medicine men" advanced in single file, the leader bending low his head, and placing both his arms about the neck of the chief in such a manner that his wands crossed, he murmured some words in his ear which seemed to be of pleasing import. Each of the others did the same thing to the chief, who took his stand first on the east, then on the south, then on the west, and lastly on the north of the little grove through which the three pranced, muttering a jumble of sounds which I cannot reproduce, but which sounded for all the world like the chant of the "Hooter" of the Zunis at their Feast of Fire. This terminated the great "medicine" ceremony of the night, and the glad shouts of the Apaches testified that the incantations of their spiritual advisers or their necromancy, whichever it was, promised a successful campaign.

Captain Crawford, whose services, both in pursuit of hostile Apaches and in efforts to benefit and civilize those who had submitted, had won for him the respect and esteem of every manly man in the army or out of it who had the honor of knowing him,