The Basket Woman: A Book of Indian Tales for Children

THE BASKET WOMAN
SECOND STORY

THE BASKET WOMAN

The next time Alan saw the Basket Woman he was not nearly so much afraid of her, though he did not venture to speak of their journey to Pahrump. He said to his mother, "Do you not wish the Indians could have stayed the way they were?" and his mother laughed.

"Why, no, child," she said, "I do not think that I do. I think they are much better off as they are now." Alan, however, was not to be convinced. The next time he saw the Basket Woman he was even troubled about it.

The homesteader had taken his family to the town for a day, and the first thing Alan saw when he got down from the wagon was the Basket Woman. She was sitting in a corner of the sidewalk with a group of other mahalas, with her blanket drawn over her shoulders, looking out upon the town, and her eyes were dull and strange.

A stream of people went by them in the street, and minded them no more than the dogs they stepped over, sprawling at the doors of the stores. Some of the Indian women had children with them, but they neither shouted nor ran as they had done in the camp of Corn Water; they sat quietly by their mothers, and Alan noticed how worn and poor were the clothes of all of them, and how wishful all the eyes. He could not get his mind off them because he could not get them out of his sight for very long at a time. It was a very small town, and as he went with his mother in and about the stores he would be coming face to face with the mahalas every little while, and the Basket Woman's eyes were always sad.

His mother, when she had finished her shopping, gave him a silver dime and told him that he might spend it as he wished. As soon as Alan had turned the corner on that errand there was the Basket Woman with her chin upon her knees and her blanket drawn over her shoulders. Alan stopped a moment in front of her; he would have liked to say something comforting, but found himself still afraid.

Her eyes looked on beyond him, blurred and dim; he supposed she must be thinking of the happy valley, and grew so very sorry for her that, as he could not get the courage to speak, he threw his dime into her lap and ran as fast as he could away. It seemed to him as he ran that she called to him, but he could not be sure.

That night, almost as soon as he had touched the pillow, she came and stood beside him without motion or sound, and let down the basket from her back.

"Do we go to Corn Water?" asked Alan as he stepped into it.

"To my people of old time," said the Basket Woman, "so that you need not be so much sorry."

Then they went out by the mesa trail, where the sage showed duskily under a thin rim of moon. It seemed to Alan that they went slowly, almost heavily. When they came to the parting of the ways, she let down the basket to rest. A rabbit popped, startled, out of the brush, and scurried into the dark; its white tail, like a signal, showed the way it went.

"What was that?" asked Alan.

"Only little Tavwots, whom we scared out of his nest. Lean forward," she said, "and I will tell you a tale about him." So the boy leaned his head against the Basket Woman's long black hair, and heard the story of Little Tavwots and How He Caught the Sun in a Snare.

"It was long ago," said the Basket Woman. "Tavwots was the largest of all four-footed things, and a mighty hunter. He would get up as soon as it was day and go to his hunting, but always before him was the track of a great foot on the trail; and this troubled him, for his pride was as big as his body and greater than his fame.

"'Who is this?' cried Tavwots, 'that goes with so great a stride before me to the hunting? Does he think to put me to shame?'

"'T'-sst!' said his mother, 'there is none greater than thee.'

"'Nevertheless,' said Tavwots, 'there are the footprints in the trail.' The next morning he got up earlier, but there were always the great footprints and the long stride before him.

"'Now I will set me a trap for this impudent fellow,' said Tavwots, for he was very cunning. So he made a snare of his bowstring and set it in the trail overnight, and in the morning when he went to look, behold, he had caught the sun in his snare. All that quarter of the earth was beginning to smoke with the heat of it.

"'Is it you?' cried Tavwots, 'who made the tracks in my trail?'

"'It is I,' said the sun. 'Come now and set me free before the whole earth is afire.' Then Tavwots saw what he had to do, so he drew his knife and ran to cut the bowstring. But the heat was so great that he ran back before he had done it, and was melted down to one half his size. Then the smoke of the burning earth began to curl up against the sky.

"'Come again, Tavwots,' cried the sun. So he ran again and ran back, and the third time he ran he cut the bowstring, and the sun was set free from the snare. But by that time Tavwots was melted down to as small as he is now, and so he remains. Still you may see by the print of his feet as he leaps in the trail how great his stride was when he caught the sun in his snare.

"So it is always," said the Basket Woman, "that which is large grows less, and my people, which were great, have dwindled away."

After that she became quiet, and they went on over the mountain. Because he was beginning to be acquainted with it, the way seemed shorter to Alan than before. They passed over the high barren ridges, and he began to look for the camp at Corn Water.

"I see no smoke," said Alan.

"It would bring down their enemies like buzzards on carrion," said the Basket Woman.

"There is no sound of singing nor of laughter," said the boy.

"Who laughs in the time of war?" said she.

"Is there war?" asked Alan.

"Long and bitter," said the Basket Woman. "Let us go softly and come upon them unawares."

So they went, light of foot, among the pines until they saw the wickiups opening eastward to the sun, but many of them stood ruined and awry. There were only the very old and the children in the camp, and these did not run and play. They stole about like mice in the meadow sod, and if so much as a twig snapped in the forest, they huddled motionless as young quail. The women worked in the growing corn; they dug roots on the hill slope and caught grasshoppers for food. One made a noose of her long black hair plucked out, and snared the bright lizards that ran among the rocks. It seemed to Alan that the Indians looked wishful and thinner than they should; but such food as they found was all put by.

"Why do they do this?" asked the boy.

"That the men who go to war may not go fasting," said the Basket Woman. "Look, now we shall have news of them."

A young man came noiselessly out of the wood, and it was he who had sung the new song on the night of feasting and dancing. He had eagle feathers in his hair, but they were draggled; there was beadwork on his leggings, but it was torn with thorns; there was paint on his face and his body, but it was smeared over red, and as he came into the camp he broke his bow across his knee.

"It is a token of defeat," said the Basket Woman; "the others will come soon." But some came feebly because of wounds, and it seemed the women looked for some who might never come. They cast up their arms and cried with a terrible wailing sound that rose and shuddered among the pines.

"Be still," said the young man; "would you bring our enemies down upon us with your screeching?" Then the women threw themselves quietly in the dust, and rocked to and fro with sobbing; their stillness was more bitter than their crying.

Suddenly out of the wood came a storm of arrows, a rush of strange, painted braves, and the din of fighting.

"Shut your eyes," said the Basket Woman, "it is not good for you to see." Alan hid his face in the Basket Woman's dress, and heard the noise of fighting rage and die away. When he ventured to look again on the ruined huts and the trampled harvest, there were few left in the camp of Corn Water, and they had enough to do to find food for their poor bodies. They winnowed the creek with basket-work weirs for every finger-long troutling that came down in it, and tore the bark off the pine trees to get at the grubs underneath.

"Why do they not go out and kill deer as before?" asked Alan.

"Their enemies lurk in the wood and drive away the game," said the Basket Woman.

"Why do they not go to another place?"

"Where shall they go, when their foes watch every pass?" said she.

It seemed to Alan that many days and nights passed while they watched by the camp; and the days were all sorrowful, and always, as before, the best meat was set aside for the strongest.

"Why is this so?" asked the boy.

"Because," said the Basket Woman, "those who are strong must stay so to care for the rest. It is the way of my people. You see that the others do not complain." And it was so that the feeble ones tottered silently about the camp or sat still a long time in one place with their heads upon their knees.

"How will it end?" asked Alan.

"They must go away at last," said she, "though the cords of their hearts are fastened here. But there is no seed corn, and the winter is close at hand."

Then there began to be a tang of frost in the air, and the people gathered up their household goods, and, though there was not much of them, they staggered and bent under the burden as they went up out of the once happy valley to another home. The women let down their long hair and smeared ashes upon it; they threw up their lean arms and wailed long and mournfully as they passed among the pines. Alan began to tremble with crying, and felt the Basket Woman patting him on the shoulder. Her voice sounded to him like the voice of his mother telling him to go to sleep again, for there was nothing for him to be troubled about. After he grew quieter, the Indian woman lifted him up. "We must be going," she said, "it is not good for us to be here."

Alan wished as they went up over the mountain that she would help him with talk toward forgetting what he had seen, but the long hair fell over her face and she would not talk. He shivered in the basket, and the night felt colder and full of fearsome noises.

"What is that?" he whispered, as a falling star trailed all across the dark.

"It is the coyote people that brought the fire to my people," said the Basket Woman. Alan hoped she would tell him a tale about it, but she would not. They went on down the mountain until they came to the borders of the long-leaved pines. Alan heard the sough of the wind in the needles, and it seemed as if it called.

"What is that?" he whispered.

"It is Hí-no-no, the wind, mourning for his brother, the pine tree," but she would not tell him that tale, either. She went faster and faster, and Alan felt the stir of her shoulders under him. He listened to the wind, and it grew fierce and louder until he heard the house beams creak, for he was awake in his own bed. A strong wind drove gustily across the mesa and laid hold of the corners of the roof.

The next morning the homesteader said that he must go to the campoodie and Alan might go with him. Alan was quite pleased, and said to his mother while she was getting him ready, "Do you know, I think Indians are a great deal better off as they are now."

"Why, yes," said his mother, smiling, "I think so, too."

THE STREAM THAT RAN AWAY

THE STREAM THAT RAN AWAY

In a short and shallow cañon on the front of Oppapago running eastward toward the sun, one may find a clear brown stream called the creek of Piñon Pines. That is not because it is unusual to find piñon trees on Oppapago, but because there are so few of them in the cañon of the stream. There are all sorts higher up on the slopes, – long-leaved yellow pines, thimble cones, tamarack, silver fir and Douglas spruce; but here there is only a group of the low-heading, gray nut pines which the earliest inhabitants of that country called piñons.

The cañon of Piñon Pines has a pleasant outlook and lies open to the sun, but there is not much other cause for the forest rangers to remember it. At the upper end there is no more room by the stream border than will serve for a cattle trail; willows grow in it, choking the path of the water; there are brown birches here and ropes of white clematis tangled over thickets of brier rose. Low down the ravine broadens out to inclose a meadow the width of a lark's flight, blossomy and wet and good. Here the stream ran once in a maze of soddy banks and watered all the ground, and afterward ran out at the cañon's mouth across the mesa in a wash of bone-white boulders as far as it could. That was not very far, for it was a slender stream. It had its source really on the high crests and hollows of Oppapago, in the snow banks that melted and seeped downward through the rocks; but the stream did not know any more of that than you know of what happened to you before you were born, and could give no account of itself except that it crept out from under a great heap of rubble far up in the cañon of the Piñon Pines. And because it had no pools in it deep enough for trout, and no trees on its borders but gray nut pines; because, try as it might, it could never get across the mesa to the town, the stream had fully made up its mind to run away.

"Pray what good will that do you?" said the pines. "If you get to the town, they will turn you into an irrigating ditch and set you to watering crops."

"As to that," said the stream, "if I once get started I will not stop at the town." Then it would fret between its banks until the spangled frills of the mimulus were all tattered with its spray. Often at the end of the summer it was worn quite thin and small with running, and not able to do more than reach the meadow.

"But some day," it whispered to the stones, "I shall run quite away."

If the stream had been inclined for it, there was no lack of good company on its own borders. Birds nested in the willows, rabbits came to drink; one summer a bobcat made its lair up the bank opposite the brown birches, and often deer fed in the meadow. Then there was a promise of better things. In the spring of one year two old men came up into the canon of Piñon Pines. They had been miners and partners together for many years, they had grown rich and grown poor, and had seen many hard places and strange times. It was a day when the creek ran clear and the south wind smelled of the earth. Wild bees began to whine among the willows, and the meadow bloomed over with poppy-breasted larks. Then said one of the old men, "Here is good meadow and water enough; let us build a house and grow trees. We are too old to dig in the mines."

"Let us set about it," said the other; for that is the way with two who have been a long time together: what one thinks of, the other is for doing. So they brought their possessions and made a beginning that day, for they felt the spring come on warmly in their blood; they wished to dig in the earth and handle it.

These two men who, in the mining camps where they were known, were called "Shorty" and "Long Tom," and had almost forgotten that they had other names, built a house by the water border and planted trees. Shorty was all for an orchard, but Long Tom preferred vegetables. So they did each what he liked, and were never so happy as when walking in the garden in the cool of the day, touching the growing things as they walked and praising each other's work.

"This will make a good home for our old age," said Long Tom, "and when we die we can be buried here."

"Under the piñon pines," said Shorty. "I have marked out a place."

So they were very happy for three years. By this time the stream had become so interested it had almost forgotten about running away. But every year it noted that a larger bit of the meadow was turned under and planted, and more and more the men made dams and ditches to govern its running.

"In fact," said the stream, "I am being made into an irrigating ditch before I have had my fling in the world. I really must make a start."

That very winter by the help of a great storm it went roaring down the meadow over the mesa, and so clean away, with only a track of muddy sand to show the way it had gone. All the winter, however, Shorty and Long Tom brought water for drinking from a spring, and looked for the stream to come back. In the spring they hoped still, for that was the season they looked for the orchard to bear. But no fruit set on the trees, and the seeds Long Tom planted shriveled in the earth. So by the end of summer, when they understood that the water would not come back at all, they went sadly away.

Now what happened to the creek of Piñon Pines is not very well known to any one, for the stream is not very clear on that point, except that it did not have a happy time. It went out in the world on the wings of the storm and was very much tossed about and mixed up with other waters, lost and bewildered. Everywhere it saw water at work, turning mills, watering fields, carrying trade, falling as hail, rain, and snow, and at the last, after many journeys, found itself creeping out from under the rocks of Oppapago in the canon of Piñon Pines. Immediately the little stream knew itself and recalled clearly all that had happened to it before.

"After all, home is best," said the stream, and ran about in its choked channels looking for old friends. The willows were there, but grown shabby and dying at the top; the birches were quite dead, but stood still in their places; and there was only rubbish where the white clematis had been. Even the rabbits had gone away. The little stream ran whimpering in the meadow, fumbling at the ruined ditches to comfort the fruit-trees which were not quite dead. It was very dull in those days living in the canon of Piñon Pines.

"But it is really my own fault," said the stream. So it went on repairing the borders with the best heart it could contrive.

About the time the white clematis had come back to hide the ruin of the brown birches, a young man came and camped with his wife and child in the meadow. They were looking for a place to make a home. They looked long at the meadow, for Shorty and Long Tom had taken away their house and it did not appear to belong to any one.

"What a charming place!" said the young wife, "just the right distance from town, and a stream all to ourselves. And look, there are fruit-trees already planted. Do let us decide to stay."

Then she took off the child's shoes and stockings to let it play in the stream. The water curled all about the bare feet and gurgled delightedly.

"Ah, do stay," begged the happy water, "I can be such a help to you, for I know how a garden should be irrigated in the best manner."

The child laughed and stamped the water up to his bare knees. The young wife watched anxiously while her husband walked up and down the stream border and examined the fruit-trees.

"It is a delightful place," he said, "and the soil is rich, but I am afraid the water cannot be depended upon. There are signs of a great drought within the last two or three years. Look, there is a clump of birches in the very path of the stream, but all dead; and the largest limbs of the fruit-trees have died. In this country one must be able to make sure of the water supply. I suppose the people who planted them must have abandoned the place when the stream went dry. We must go on farther." So they took their goods and the child and went on farther.

"Ah, well," said the stream, "that is what is to be expected when one has a reputation for neglecting one's duty. But I wish they had stayed. That baby and I understood each other."

He had quite made up his mind not to run away again, though he could not be expected to be quite cheerful after all that had happened; in fact, if you go yourself to the cañon of the Piñon Pines you will notice that the stream, where it goes brokenly about the meadow, has quite a mournful sound.

THE COYOTE-SPIRIT AND THE
WEAVING WOMAN

THE COYOTE-SPIRIT AND THE WEAVING WOMAN

The Weaving Woman lived under the bank of the stony wash that cut through the country of the mesquite dunes. The Coyote-Spirit, which, you understand, is an Indian whose form has been changed to fit with his evil behavior, ranged from the Black Rock where the wash began to the white sands beyond Pahranagat; and the Goat-Girl kept her flock among the mesquites, or along the windy stretch of sage below the campoodie; but as the Coyote-Spirit never came near the wickiups by day, and the Goat-Girl went home the moment the sun dropped behind Pahranagat, they never met. These three are all that have to do with the story.

The Weaving Woman, whose work was the making of fine baskets of split willow and roots of yucca and brown grass, lived alone, because there was nobody found who wished to live with her, and because it was whispered among the wickiups that she was different from other people. It was reported that she had an infirmity of the eyes which caused her to see everything with rainbow fringes, bigger and brighter and better than it was. All her days were fruitful, a handful of pine nuts as much to make merry over as a feast; every lad who went by a-hunting with his bow at his back looked to be a painted brave, and every old woman digging roots as fine as a medicine man in all his feathers. All the faces at the campoodie, dark as the mingled sand and lava of the Black Rock country, deep lined with work and weather, shone for this singular old woman with the glory of the late evening light on Pahranagat. The door of her wickiup opened toward the campoodie with the smoke going up from cheerful hearths, and from the shadow of the bank where she sat to make baskets she looked down the stony wash where all the trails converged that led every way among the dunes, and saw an enchanted mesa covered with misty bloom and gentle creatures moving on trails that seemed to lead to the places where one had always wished to be.

Since all this was so, it was not surprising that her baskets turned out to be such wonderful affairs, and the tribesmen, though they winked and wagged their heads, were very glad to buy them for a haunch of venison or a bagful of mesquite meal. Sometimes, as they stroked the perfect curves of the bowls or traced out the patterns, they were heard to sigh, thinking how fine life would be if it were so rich and bright as she made it seem, instead of the dull occasion they had found it. There were some who even said it was a pity, since she was so clever at the craft, that the weaver was not more like other people, and no one thought to suggest that in that case her weaving would be no better than theirs. For all this the basket-maker did not care, sitting always happily at her weaving or wandering far into the desert in search of withes and barks and dyes, where the wild things showed her many a wonder hid from those who have not rainbow fringes to their eyes; and because she was not afraid of anything, she went farther and farther into the silent places until in the course of time she met the Coyote-Spirit.

Now a Coyote-Spirit, from having been a man, is continually thinking about men and wishing to be with them, and, being a coyote and of the wolf's breed, no sooner does he have his wish than he thinks of devouring. So as soon as this one had met the Weaving Woman he desired to eat her up, or to work her some evil according to the evil of his nature. He did not see any opportunity to begin at the first meeting, for on account of the infirmity of her eyes the woman did not see him as a coyote, but as a man, and let down her wicker water bottle for him to drink, so kindly that he was quite abashed. She did not seem in the least afraid of him, which is disconcerting even to a real coyote; though if he had been, she need not have been afraid of him in any case. Whatever pestiferous beast the Indian may think the dog of the wilderness, he has no reason to fear him except when by certain signs, as having a larger and leaner body, a sharper muzzle, and more evilly pointed ears, he knows him the soul of a bad-hearted man going about in that guise. There are enough of these coyote-spirits ranging in Mesquite Valley and over towards Funeral Mountains and about Pahranagat to give certain learned folk surmise as to whether there may not be a strange breed of wolves in that region; but the Indians know better.

When the coyote-spirit who had met the basket woman thought about it afterward, he said to himself that she deserved all the mischance that might come upon her for that meeting. "She knows," he said, "that this is my range, and whoever walks in a coyote-spirit's range must expect to take the consequences. She is not at all like the Goat-Girl."

The Coyote-Spirit had often watched the Goat-Girl from the top of Pahranagat, but because she was always in the open where no lurking-places were, and never far from the corn lands where the old men might be working, he had made himself believe he would not like that kind of a girl. Every morning he saw her come out of her leafy hut, loose the goats from the corral, which was all of cactus stems and broad leaves of prickly-pear, and lead them out among the wind-blown hillocks of sand under which the trunks of the mesquite flourished for a hundred years, and out of the tops of which the green twigs bore leaves and fruit; or along the mesa to browse on bitterbrush and the tops of scrubby sage. Sometimes she plaited willows for the coarser kinds of basket-work, or, in hot noonings while the flock dozed, worked herself collars and necklaces of white and red and turquoise-colored beads, and other times sat dreaming on the sand. But whatever she did, she kept far enough from the place of the Coyote-Spirit, who, now that he had met the Weaving Woman, could not keep his mind off her. Her hut was far enough from the campoodie so that every morning he went around by the Black Rock to see if she was still there, and there she sat weaving patterns in her baskets of all that she saw or thought. Now it would be the winding wash and the wattled huts beside it, now the mottled skin of the rattlesnake or the curled plumes of the quail.

At last the Coyote-Spirit grew so bold that when there was no one passing on the trail he would go and walk up and down in front of the wickiup. Then the Weaving Woman would look up from her work and give him the news of the season and the tribesmen in so friendly a fashion that he grew less and less troubled in his mind about working her mischief. He said in his evil heart that since the ways of such as he were known to the Indians, – as indeed they were, with many a charm and spell to keep them safe, – it could be no fault of his if they came to harm through too much familiarity. As for the Weaving Woman, he said, "She sees me as I am, and ought to know better," for he had not heard about the infirmity of her eyes.

Finally he made up his mind to ask her to go with him to dig for roots around the foot of Pahranagat, and if she consented, – and of course she did, for she was a friendly soul, – he knew in his heart what he would do. They went out by the mesa trail, and it was a soft and blossomy day of spring. Long wands of the creosote with shining fretted foliage were hung with creamy bells of bloom, and doves called softly from the Dripping Spring. They passed rows of owlets sitting by their burrows and saw young rabbits playing in their shallow forms. The Weaving Woman talked gayly as they went, as Indian women talk, with soft mellow voices and laughter breaking in between the words like smooth water flowing over stones. She talked of how the deer had shifted their feeding grounds and of whether the quail had mated early that year as a sign of a good season, matters of which the Coyote-Spirit knew more than she, only he was not thinking of those things just then. Whenever her back was turned he licked his cruel jaws and whetted his appetite. They passed the level mesa, passed the tumbled fragments of the Black Rock and came to the sharp wall-sided cañons that showed the stars at noon from their deep wells of sombre shade, where no wild creature made its home and no birds ever sang. Then the Weaving Woman grew still at last because of the great stillness, and the Coyote-Spirit said in a hungry, whining voice, —

"Do you know why I brought you here?"

"To show me how still and beautiful the world is here," said the Weaving Woman, and even then she did not seem afraid.

"To eat you up," said the Coyote. With that he looked to see her fall quaking at his feet, and he had it in mind to tell her it was no fault but her own for coming so far astray with one of his kind, but the woman only looked at him and laughed. The sound of her laughter was like water in a bubbling spring.

"Why do you laugh?" said the Coyote, and he was so astonished that his jaws remained open when he had done speaking.

"How could you eat me?" said she. "Only wild beasts could do that."

"What am I, then?"

"Oh, you are only a man."

"I am a coyote," said he.

"Do you think I have no eyes?" said the woman. "Come!" For she did not understand that her eyes were different from other people's, what she really thought was that other people's were different from hers, which is quite another matter, so she pulled the Coyote-Spirit over to a rain-fed pool. In that country the rains collect in basins of the solid rock that grow polished with a thousand years of storm and give back from their shining side a reflection like a mirror. One such lay in the bottom of the black cañon, and the Weaving Woman stood beside it.

Now it is true of coyote-spirits that they are so only because of their behavior; not only have they power to turn themselves to men if they wish – but they do not wish, or they would not have become coyotes in the first place – but other people in their company, according as they think man-thoughts or beast-thoughts, can throw over them such a change that they have only to choose which they will be. So the basket-weaver contrived to throw the veil of her mind over the Coyote-Spirit, so that when he looked at himself in the pool he could not tell for the life of him whether he was most coyote or most man, which so frightened him that he ran away and left the Weaving Woman to hunt for roots alone. He ran for three days and nights, being afraid of himself, which is the worst possible fear, and then ran back to see if the basket-maker had not changed her mind. He put his head in at the door of her wickiup.