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Show 282 WESTERN WILDS. waist to a little below the knees. Heavy sandals protect the feet. But this dress is only conventional, and they often appear entirely naked, except the girdle and breech- clout. The women wear a heavy Avoolen dress, of their own manufacture, consisting of a single skirt and sort of half- waist, which leaves one arm and breast bare. Polyg-amy prevails to a slight extent. Chino and Misiamtewah each have two wives, but from what little they said on the subject, I conclude they consider it a burden rather than a privilege. The women are rather homely, short and stumpy I think from carrying loads upon their heads. None of them will compare with the graceful and shapely Navajo girls; nor are they prolific. The town at the south end of the mesa is slowly falling to ruins ; not half the houses are inhabited, and through the other towns there are many abandoned dwellings, now used for stables and sheep- pens, or for storing hay. The kindly law of nature will not permit increase in a country which can only furnish a bare living. Moqui means " Dead Man," and Moquina may be translated " Little Dead Town." This is the half- abandoned town on the south end of the mesa; and I was informed by Jacob Hamlin that some five years before my visit most of the inhabitants there died of small- pox. The Tegua town, th^ one we first enter on coming up the cliff, has a language quite distinct from the ordinary Moqui. Those who have examined say the Tegua is the same as that spoken by the Pu-eblos near the city of Mexico. If true, this is a most important fact, and to my mind goes far to supply the missing link in Baron Hum-boldt's history of the Aztecs. Governor Arny, of Santa Fe, collected many facts on this subject, but whether they have been published I know not. Among these people are many albinoes, with sickly white skin, red hair and pinky eyes. Many romantic stories have been told as to the origin of these white Indians, the most sensational being that they are descendants of some Scotchmen, carried away by the Spaniards in their war against Queen Elizabeth; that they were sent to work in the mines of Mexico, escaped in a body and joined the Indians. The un- romantic truth is, they are Indians as much as the others. Their whiteness is simply a disease. If the term be medically cor-rect, I would call it a species of American leprosy. We need not go far to find the causes: a people living in this dry climate, on hard, dry food, in the midst of burning sands, drought, and misery, and shut up in these little isolated communities, where the same families have intermarried in all probability for a dozen generations. The |
