We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
^5 A ^
Pueblo Legend^.
(Biograph)
By MARION C. LANGDON
p <s\ op <s\ op ts\ o-p <<
IN ancient Isleta was happiness. It was spring, and from everywhere about the great pueblo there echoed the sound of the tom-tom, the chanting of the singers, the swishing rhythm of the dance, as file after file of braves pranced along, their bodies swaying to their weird songs, their eyes now toward the heavens, now rolling from side to side. It was spring in Isleta — day of happiness, day of the Dance of the Green Boughs, day of rejoicing. It was spring, day of love, and Taoa, the Great Brother of the Pueblo tribe, had heard the call.
He stood a bit apart from the great court, where lines of panting racers struggled on and on toward the goalmark, spurred by the cheers of squaws and braves and children. For a moment he watched the file of dancers, their decorations of green branches swinging and waving in the air as they trailed along. Then he turned and, descending the ladders which led from their heights of the pueblos, hurried thru the bushes and shrubbery to where the glaring reflection of the sun told of the Lake of the Great Spring. The Great Brother allowed a little exclamation to come from him as he hastened forward. Beside the crude little altar of stones and twigs at the edge of the lake, there stood a form of a girl — a form he knew.
"Little Stranger!" he said, and there seemed to enter a tone of softness into his guttural voice, "Little Stranger ! ' '
She looked up into his face, her snapping, black eyes shining with that something which has existed ever since the world was made.
"I was lonely, Taoa," she answered. "Old Miji would not let me stay up there. She said I did not belong; that I was just a Hopi. She asked why I did not go back to my own tribe. ' '
"Miji is walking toward the setting sun," the Great Brother laughed. "She is looking with jealous eyes because yon are young and fair!" Suddenly his face grew serious. ' ' You are not going away, ' ' he added slowly. "It is I "
Little Stranger started.
"You?" she asked, "you?" Then suddenly: "The Sun Priest!"
Taoa nodded his head.
' ' You heard him tell the story of the sky-stone, how it fell ages ago and broke into little bits, how we all have some of them, but how the great piece still is out there, waiting to give us all happiness. It will bless the city, Little Stranger. I must go — and go until I find it."
He turned his eyes toward the faraway mountains, stretching on in a great blue line of silhouette in the distance. He stood still, nor did he turn at the quavering voice beside him.
"And the wedding blanket "
"Must wait until I have found the sky-stone. ' '
He was speaking now with a forced stoicism. His face was hard; the muscles of the jaws protruded. ' ' The
87