CHAPTER II. MESAS AND BUTTES.
From the Grand Canyon of the Colorado a great plateau extends southeastward through Arizona nearly to the line of New Mexico, where this elevated land merges into the Sierra Madre. The general surface of this plateau is from 6,000 to 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. It is sharply defined from the lowlands of Arizona by the Mogollon Escarpment. On the northeast it gradually falls off into the valley of the Little Colorado, and on the north it terminates abruptly in the Grand Canyon.
Various tributaries of the Gila have their sources in this escarpment, and before entering the desolate valley below they run in beautiful canyons which they have carved for themselves in the margin of the plateau. Sometimes these canyons are in the sandstones and limestones which constitute the platform of the great elevated region called the San Francisco Plateau. The escarpment is caused by a fault, the great block of the upper side being lifted several thousand feet above the valley region. Through the fissure lavas poured out, and in many places the escarpment is concealed by sheets of lava. The canyons in these lava beds are often of great interest.
On the plateau a number of volcanic mountains are found, and black cinder cones are scattered in profusion. Through the forest lands are many beautiful prairies and glades that in midsummer are decked with gorgeous wild flowers. The rains of the region give source to few perennial streams, but intermittent streams have carved deep gorges in the plateau, so that it is divided into many blocks. The upper surface, although forest-clad and covered with beautiful grasses, is almost destitute of water. A few springs are found, but they are far apart, and some of the volcanic craters hold lakelets. The limestone and basaltic rocks sometimes hold pools of water; and where the basins are deep the waters are perennial. Such pools are known as "water pockets."
This is the great timber region of Arizona. Not many years ago it was a vast park for elk, deer, and antelope, and bears and mountain lions were abundant. This is the last home of the wild turkey in the United States, for they are still found here in great numbers. San Francisco Peak is the highest of these volcanic mountains, and about it are grouped in an irregular way many volcanic cones, one of which presents some remarkable characteristics. A portion of the cone is of bright reddish cinders, while the adjacent rocks are of black basalt. The contrast in the colors is so great that on viewing the mountain from a distance the red cinders seem to be on fire. From this circumstance the cone has been named Sunset Peak. When distant from it ten or twenty miles it is hard to believe that the effect is produced by contrasting colors, for the peak seems to glow with a light of its own.
In centuries past the San Francisco Plateau was the home of pueblo-building tribes, and the ruins of their habitations are widely scattered over this elevated region. Thousands of little dwellings are found, usually built of blocks of basalt. In some cases they were clustered in little towns, and three of these deserve further mention.
A few miles south of San Francisco Peak there is an intermittent stream known as Walnut Creek. This stream runs in a deep gorge 600 to 800 feet below the general surface. The stream has cut its way through the limestone and through series of sandstones, and bold walls of rock are presented on either side. In some places the softer sandstones lying between the harder limestones and sandstones have yielded to weathering agencies, so that there are caves running along the face of the wall, sometimes for hundreds or thousands of feet, but not very deep. These natural shelves in the rock were utilized by an ancient tribe of Indians for their homes. They built stairways to the waters below and to the hunting grounds above, and lived in the caves. They walled the fronts of the caves with rock, which they covered with plaster, and divided them into compartments or rooms; and now many hundreds of these dwellings are found. Such is the cliff village of Walnut Canyon. In the ruins of these cliff houses mortars and pestles are found in great profusion, and when first discovered many articles of pottery were found, and still many potsherds are seen. The people were very skillful in the manufacture of stone implements, especially spears, knives, and arrows.
East of San Francisco Peak there is another low volcanic cone, composed of ashes which have been slightly cemented by the processes of time, but which can be worked with great ease. On this cone another tribe of Indians made its village, and for the purpose they sunk shafts into the easily worked but partially consolidated ashes, and after penetrating from the surface three or four feet they enlarged the chambers so as to make them ten or twelve feet in diameter. In such a chamber they made a little fireplace, its chimney running up on one side of the wellhole by which the chamber was entered. Often they excavated smaller chambers connected with the larger, so that sometimes two, three, four, or even five smaller connecting chambers are grouped about a large central room. The arts of these people resembled those of the people who dwelt in Walnut Canyon. One thing more is worthy of special notice. On the very top of the cone they cleared oif a space for a courtyard, or assembly square, and about it they erected booths, and within the square a space of ground was prepared with a smooth floor, on which they performed the ceremonies of their religion and danced to the gods in prayer and praise.
Some twelve or fifteen miles farther east, in another volcanic cone, a rough crater is found, surrounded by piles of cinders and angular fragments of lava. In the walls of this crater many caves are found, and here again a village was established, the caves in the scoria being utilized as habitations of men. These little caves were fashioned into rooms of more symmetry and convenience than originally found, and the openings to the caves were walled. Nor did these people neglect the gods, for in this crater town, as in the cinder-cone town, a place of worship was prepared.
Many other caves opening into the canyon and craters of this plateau were utilized in like manner as homes for tribal people, and in one cave far to the south a fine collection of several hundred pieces of pottery has been made.
On the northeast of the San Francisco Plateau is the valley of the Little Colorado, a tributary of the Colorado River. This river is formed by streams that head chiefly on the San Francisco Plateau, but in part on the Zuni Plateau. The Little Colorado is a marvelous river. In seasons of great rains it is a broad but shallow torrent of mud; in seasons of drought it dwindles and sometimes entirely disappears along portions of its course. The upper tributaries usually run in beautiful box canyons. Then the river flows through a low, desolate, bad-land valley, and the river of mud is broad but shallow, except in seasons of great floods. But fifty miles or more above the junction of this stream with the Colorado River proper, it plunges into a canyon with limestone walls, and steadily this canyon increases in depth, until at the mouth of the stream it has walls more than 4,000 feet in height. The contrast between this canyon portion and the upper valley portion is very great. Above, the river ripples in a broad sheet of mud; below, it plunges with violence over great cataracts and rapids. Above, the bad lands stretch on either hand. This is the region of the Painted Desert, for the marls and soft rocks of which the hills are composed are of many colors - chocolate, red, vermilion, pink, buff, and gray; and the naked hills are carved in fantastic forms. Passing to the region below, suddenly the channel is narrowed and tumbles down into a deep, solemn gorge with towering limestone cliffs.
All round the margin of the valley of the Little Colorado, on the side next to the Zuni Plateau and on the side next to the San Francisco Plateau, every creek and every brook runs in a beautiful canyon. Then down in the valley there are stretches of desert covered with sage and grease wood. Still farther down we come to the bad lands of the Painted Desert; and scattered through the entire region low mesas or smaller plateaus are everywhere found.
On the northeast side of the Little Colorado a great mesa country stretches far to the northward. These mesas are but minor plateaus that are separated by canyons and canyon valleys, and sometimes by low sage plains. They rise from a few hundred to 2,000 or 3,000 feet above the lowlands on which they are founded. The distinction between plateaus and mesas is vague; in fact, in local usage the term mesa is usually applied to all of these tables which do not carry volcanic mountains. The mesas are carved out of platforms of horizontal or nearly horizontal rocks by perennial or intermittent streams, and as the climate is exceedingly arid most of the streams flow only during seasons of rain, and for the greater part of the year they are dry arroyos. Many of the longer channels are dry for long periods. Some of them are opened only by floods that come ten or twenty years apart.
The region is also characterized by many buttes. These are plateaus or mesas of still smaller dimensions in horizontal distance, though their altitude may be hundreds or thousands of feet. Like the mesas and plateaus, they sometimes form very conspicuous features of a landscape and are of marvelous beauty by reason of their sculptured escarpments. Below they are often buttressed on a magnificent scale. Softer beds give rise to a vertical structure of buttresses and columns, while the harder strata appear in great horizontal lines, suggesting architectural entablature. Then the strata of which these buttes are composed are of many vivid colors; so color and form unite in producing architectural effects, and the buttes often appear like Cyclopean temples.
There is yet one other peculiarity of this landscape deserving mention here. Before the present valleys and canyons were carved and the mesas lifted in relief, the region was one of great volcanic activity. In various places vents were formed and floods of lava poured in sheets over the land. Then for a time volcanic action ceased, and rains and rivers carved out the valleys and left the mesas and mountains standing. These same agencies carried away the lava beds that spread over the lands. But wherever there was a lava vent it was filled with molten matter, which on cooling was harder than the sandstones and marls through which it penetrated. The chimney to the region of fire below was thus filled with a black rock which yielded more slowly to the disintegrating agencies of weather, and so black rocks rise up from mesas on every hand. These are known as volcanic necks, and, being of a somber color, in great contrast with the vividly colored rocks from which they rise and by which they are surrounded, they lend a strange aspect to the landscape. Besides these necks, there are a few volcanic mountains that tower over all the landscape and gather about themselves the clouds of heaven. Mount Taylor, which stands over the divide on the drainage of the Rio Grande del Norte, is one of the most imposing of the dead volcanoes of this region. Still later eruptions of lava are found here and there, and in the present valleys and canyons sheets of black basalt are often found. These are known as coulees, and sometimes from these coulees cinder cones arise.
This valley of the Little Colorado is also the site of many ruins, and the villages or towns found in such profusion were of mueh larger size than those on the San Francisco Plateau. Some of the pueblo-building peoples yet remain. The Zuni Indians still occupy their homes, and they prove to be a most interesting people. They have cultivated the soil from time immemorial. They build their houses of stone and line them with plaster; and they have many interesting arts, being skilled potters and deft weavers. The seasons are about equally divided between labor, worship, and play.
A hundred miles to the northwest of the Zuni pueblo are the seven pueblos of Tusayan: Oraibi, Shumopavi, Shupaulovi, Mashongnavi, Sichumovi, Walpi, and llano. These towns are built on high cliffs. The people speak a language radically different from that of the Zuni, but, with the exception of that of the inhabitants of Hano, closely allied to that of the Utes. The people of Hano are Tewans, whose ancestors moved from the Rio Grande to Tusayan during the great Pueblo revolt against Spanish authority in 1680-96.
Between the Little Colorado and the Rio San Juan there is a vast system of plateaus, mesas, and buttes, volcanic mountains, volcanic cones, and volcanic cinder cones. Some of the plateaus are forest-clad and have perennial waters and are gemmed with lakelets. The mesas are sometimes treeless, but are often covered with low, straggling, gnarled cedars and pifions, trees that are intermediate in size between the bushes of sage in the desert and the forest trees of the elevated regions. On the western margin of this district the great Navajo Mountain stands, on the brink of Glen Canyon, and from its summit many of the stupendous gorges of the Colorado River can be seen. Central in the region stand the Carrizo Mountains, the Lukachukai Mountains, the Tunitcha Mountains, and the Chusca Mountains, which in fact constitute one system, extending from north to south in the order named. These are really plateaus crowned with volcanic peaks.
But the district we are now describing, which stretches from the Little Colorado to the San Juan, is best characterized by its canyons. The whole region is a labyrinth of gorges. On the west the Navajo Creek and its tributaries run in profound chasms. Farther south the Moencopie with its tributaries is a labyrinth of gorges; and all the streams that run west into the Colorado, south into the Little Colorado, or north into the San Juan have carved deep, wild, and romantic gorges. Immediately west of the Chusca Plateau the Canyon del Muerta and the Canyon de Chelly are especially noticeable. Many of these canyons are carved in a homogeneous red sandstone, and their walls are often vertical for hundreds of feet. Sometimes the canyons widen into narrow valleys, which are thus walled by impassable cliffs, except where lateral canyons cut their way through the battlements.
In these mountains, plateaus, mesas, and canyons the Navajo Indians have their home. The Navajos are intruders in this country. They belong to the Athapascan stock of British America and speak an Athapascan language, like the Apaches of the Sierra Madre country. They are a stately, athletic, and bold people. While yet this country was a part of Mexico they acquired great herds of horses and flocks of sheep, and lived in opulence compared with many of the other tribes of North America. After the acquisition of this territory by the United States they became disaffected by reason of encroaching civilization, and the petty wars between United States troops and the Navajos were in the main disastrous to our forces, due in part to the courage, skill, and superior numbers of the Navajos and in part to the character of the country, which is easily defended, as the routes of travel along the canyons present excellent opportunities for defense and ambuscade. But under the leadership and by the advice of Kit Carson these Indians were ultimately conquered. This wily but brave frontiersman recommended a new method of warfare, which was to destroy the herds and flocks of the Navajos; and this course was pursued. Regular troops with volunteers from California and New Mexico went into the Navajo country and shot down their herds of half-wild horses, killed hundreds of thousands of sheep, cut down their peach orchards which were scattered about the springs and little streams, destroyed their irrigating works, and devastated their little patches of corn, squashes, and melons; and entirely neglected the Navajos themselves, who were concealed among the rocks of the canyons. Seeing the destruction wrought upon their means of livelihood, the Navajos at once yielded. More than. 8,000 of them surrendered at one time, coming in in straggling bands. They were then removed far to the east, near to the Texas line, and established on a reservation at the Bosque Redondo. Here they engaged in civilized farming. A great system of irrigation was developed; but the appropriations necessary for the maintenance of so large a body of people in the course of their passage from savagery to civilization seemed too great to those responsible for making grants from the national treasury, and just before 1870 the Navajos were permitted to break up their homes at the Bosque Redondo and return to the canyons and cliffs of their ancient land. Millions were spent in conquering them where thousands were used to civilize them, so that they were conquered but not civilized. Still, they are making good progress, and have once more acquired large flocks and herds. It is estimated that they now have more than a million sheep. Their experience in irrigation at the Bosque Redondo has not been wholly wasted, for they now cultivate the soil by methods of irrigation greatly improved over those used in the earlier time. Originally they dwelt in hogans, or houses made of poles arranged with much skill in conical form, the poles being covered with reeds and the reeds with earth; now they are copying the dwelling places of civilized men. They have also acquired great skill in the manufacture of silver ornaments, with which they decorate themselves and the trappings of their steeds.
Perhaps the most interesting ruins of America are found in this region. The ancient pueblos found here are of superior structure, but they were all built by a people whom the Navajos displaced when they migrated from the far North. Wherever there is water, near by an ancient ruin may be found; and these ruins are gathered about centers, the centers being larger pueblos and the scattered ruins representing single houses. The ancient people lived in villages, or pueblos, but during the growing season they scattered about by the springs and streams to cultivate the soil by irrigation, and wherever there was a little farm or garden patch, there was built a summer house of stone. When times of war came, especially when they were invaded by the Navajos, these ancient people left their homes in the pueblos and by the streams and constructed temporary homes in the cliffs and canyon walls. Such cliff ruins are abundant throughout the region, intimately the ancient pueblo peoples succumbed to the prowess of the Navajos and were driven out. A part joined related tribes in the valley of the Bio Grande; others joined the Zuni and the people of Tusayan; and stall others pushed on beyond the Little Colorado to the San Francisco Plateau and far down into the valley of the Gila.
Farther to the east, on the border of the region which we have described, beyond the drainage of the Little Colorado and San Juan and within the drainage of the Rio Grande, there lies an interesting plateau region, which forms a part of the Plateau Province and which is worthy of description. This is the great Tewan Plateau, which carries several groups of mountains. The western edge of this plateau is known as the Nacimiento Mountain, a long north-and-south range of granite, which presents a bold facade to the valley of the Puerco on the west. Ascending to the summit of this granite range, there is presented to the eastward a plateau of vast proportions, which stretches far toward Santa Fe and is terminated by the canyon of the Rio Grande del Norte. The eastern flank of this range as it slowly rose was a gentle slope, but as it came up fissures were formed and volcanoes burst forth and poured out their floods of lava, and now many extinct volcanoes can be seen. The plateau was built by these volcanoes - sheets of lava piled on sheets of lava hundreds and even thousands of feet in thickness. But with the floods of lava came great explosions, like that of Krakatoa, by which the heavens were filled with volcanic dust. These explosions came at different times and at different places, but they were of enormous magnitude, and when the dust fell again from the clouds it piled up in beds scores and hundreds of feet in thickness. So the Tewan Plateau has a foundation of red sandstone; upon this are piled sheets of lava and sheets of dust in many alternating layers. It is estimated that there still remain more than two hundred cubic miles of this dust, now compacted into somewhat coherent rocks and interpolated between sheets of lava. Everywhere this dust-formed rock is exceedingly light. Much of it has a specific gravity so low that it will float on water. Above the sheets of lava and above the beds of volcanic dust great volcanic cones rise, and the whole upper region is covered with forests interspersed with beautiful prairies. The plateau itself is intersected with many deep, narrow canyons, having walls of lava, volcanic dust, or tufa, and red sandstone. It is a beautiful region. The low mesas on every side are almost treeless and are everywhere deserts, but the great Tewan Plateau is booned with abundant rains, and it is thus a region of forests and meadows, divided into blocks by deep, precipitous canyons and crowned with cones that rise to an altitude of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet.
For many centuries the Tewan Plateau, with its canyons below and its meadows and forests above, has been the home of tribes of Tewan Indians, who built pueblos, sometimes of the red sandstones in the canyons, but oftener of blocks of tufa, or volcanic dust. This light material can be worked with great ease, and with crude tools of the harder lavas they cut out blocks of the tufa and with them built pueblos two or three stories high. The blocks are usually about twenty inches in length, eight inches in width, and six inches in thickness, though they vary somewhat in size. On the volcanic cones which dominate the country these people built shrines and worshiped their gods with offerings of meal and water and with prayer symbols made of the plumage of the birds of the air. When the Navajo invasion came, by which kindred tribes were displaced from the district farther west, these Tewan Indians left their pueblos on the plateau and their dwellings by the rivers below in the depths of the canyon and constructed cavate homes for themselves; that is, they excavated chambers in the cliffs where these cliffs were composed of soft, friable tufa. On the face of the cliff, hundreds of feet high and thousands of feet or even miles in length, they dug out chambers with stone tools, these chambers being little rooms eight or ten feet in diameter. Sometimes two or more such chambers connected. Then they constructed stairways in the soft rock, by which their cavate houses were reached; and in these rock shelters they lived during times of war. When the Navajo invasion was long past, civilized men as Spanish adventurers entered this country from Mexico, and again the Tewan peoples left their homes on the mesas and by the canyons to find safety in the cavate dwellings of the cliffs; and now the archaeologist in the study of this country discovers these two periods of construction and occupation of the cavate dwellings of the Tewan Indians.
North of the Rio San Juan another vast plateau region is found, stretching to the Grand River. The mountains of this region are the La Plata Mountains, Bear River Mountains, and San Miguel Mountains on the east, and the Sierra El Late, the Sierra Abajo, and the Sierra La Sal on the west, the latter standing near the brink of Cataract Canyon, through which the Colorado flows immediately below the junction of the Grand and Green. Throughout the region mountains, volcanic cones, volcanic necks, and coulees are found, while the mountains themselves rise to great altitudes and are forest-clad. Some of the plateaus attain huge proportions, and between the plateaus labyrinthian mesas are found. Buttes, as stupendous cameos, are scattered everywhere, and the whole region is carved with canyons.
Grand River heads on the back of Long's Peak, in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. At the foot of the mountain lies Grand Lake, a sheet of emerald water that duplicates the forest standing on its brink. Out of the lake flows Grand River, gathering on its way the many mountain streams whose waters fill the solitude with perennial music - a symphony of cascades. In Middle Park boiling springs issue from depths below and gather in pools covered with con-fervae. Leaving Middle Park the river goes through a great range known as the Gore's Pass Mountains; and still it flows on toward the Colorado, now through canyon and now through valley, until the last forty miles of its course it finds its way through a beautiful gorge known as Grand River Canyon. In its principal course this canyon is a bright red homogeneous sandstone, and the walls are often vertical and of great symmetry. Farther down, its walls are rugged and angular, being composed of limestones.
The principal tributaries from the south are the Blue, which heads in Mt. Lincoln, and the Gunnison, which heads in the Wasatch Mountains. These streams are also characterized by deep canyons and plateaus, and mesas abound on every hand. Between the Grand River and the White River, farther to the east, the Tavaputs Plateau is found. It begins at the foot of Gore's Pass Range and extends down between the rivers last mentioned to the very brink of Green River, which is in fact the upper Colorado. Between the Grand River and the foot of this plateau there is a low, narrow valley with mesas and buttes. Then the country suddenly rises by a stupendous line of cliffs 2,000 or 3,000 feet high. These cliffs are composed of sand stones, limestones, and shales, of many colors. The stratification in many places is minute, so that they have been called the Book Cliffs.
From the cliffs many salients are projected into the valleys, and within deep re-entering angles vast amphitheaters appear. About the projected salients many towering buttes, with pinnacles and minarets, are found. The long, narrow plateau is covered with a forest along its summit, and, though it rises abruptly on the south side from Grand River Valley, it descends more gently toward the White River, and on this slope many canyons of rare beauty are seen. Plateaus and mesas and canyons and buttes characterize the region north of White River and stretch out to the Yampa. The Yampa itself has an important tributary from the northwest, known as Snake River. Just below the affluence of the Snake with the Yampa a strange phenomenon is observed. Right athwart the course of the river rises a great dome-shaped mountain, with valley stretches on every side, and through this mountain the river runs, dividing it by a beautiful canyon, through which it flows to its junction with the Green. This canyon is in soft, white sandstone, usually with vertical walls varying from 500 to 2,000 feet in height, and the river flows in a gentle winding way through all this stretch. To the east of this plateau region, with its mesas and buttes and its volcanic mountains, stand the southern Rocky Mountains, or Park Mountains, a system of north-and-south ranges. These ranges are huge billows in the crust of the earth out of which mountains have been carved. The parks of Colorado are great valley basins enclosed by these ranges, and over their surfaces moss agates are scattered. The mountains are covered with dense forests and are rugged and wild. The higher peaks rise above the timber line and are naked gorges of rocks. In them the Platte and Arkansas rivers head and flow eastward to join the Missouri River. Here also heads the Rio Grande del Norte, which flows southward into the Gulf of Mexico, and still to the west head many streams which pour into the Colorado waters destined for the Gulf of California. Throughout all of this region drained by the Grand, White, and Yampa rivers, there are many beautiful parks. The great mountain slopes are still covered with primeval forests. Springs, brooks, rivers, and lakes abound, and the waters are filled with trout. Not many years ago the hills were covered with game - elk on the mountains, deer on the plateaus, antelope in the valleys, and beavers building their cities on the streams. The plateaus are covered with low, dwarf oaks and many shrubs bearing berries, and in the chaparral of this region cinnamon bears are still abundant.
From time immemorial the region drained by the Grand, White, and Yampa rivers has been the home of Ute tribes of the Shoshonean family of Indians. These people built their shelters of boughs and bark, and to some extent lived in tents made of the skins of animals. They never cultivated the soil, but gathered wild seeds and roots and were famous hunters and fishermen. As the region abounds in game, these tribes have always been well clad in skins and furs. The men wore blouse, loincloth leggins, and moccasins, and the women dressed in short kilts. It is curious to notice the effect which the contact of civilization has had upon these women's dress. Even twenty years ago they had lengthened their skirts; and dresses, made of buckskin, fringed with furs, and beaded with elk teeth, were worn so long that they trailed on the ground. Neither men nor women wore any headdress except on festival occasions for decoration; then the women wore little basket bonnets decorated with feathers, and the men wore headdresses made of the skins of ducks, geese, eagles, and other large birds. Sometimes they would prepare the skin of the head of the elk or deer, or of a bear or mountain lion or wolf, for a headdress. For very cold weather both men and women were provided with togas for their protection. Sometimes the men would have a bearskin or elkskin for a toga; more often they made their togas by piecing together the skins of wolves, mountain lions, wolverines, wild cats, beavers, and otters. The women sometimes made theirs of fawnskins, but rabbitskin robes were far more common. These rabbitskins were tanned with the fur on, and cut into strips; then cords were made of the fiber of wild flax or yucca plants, and round these cords the strips of rabbitskin were rolled, so that they made long ropes of rabbitskin coils with a central cord of vegetal fiber; then these coils were woven in parallel strings with cross strands of fiber. The robe when finished was usually about five or six feet square, and it made a good toga for a cold day and a warm blanket for the night.
The Ute Indians, like all the Indians of North America, have a wealth of mythic stories. The heroes of these stories are the beasts, birds, and reptiles of the region, and the themes of the stories are the doings of these mythic beasts - the ancients from whom the present animals have descended and degenerated. The primeval animals were wonderful beings, as related in the lore of the Utes. They were the creators and controllers of all the phenomena of nature known to these simple-minded people. The Utes are zootheists. Each little tribe has its Shaman, or medicine man, who is historian, priest, and doctor. The lore of this Shaman is composed of mythic tales of ancient animals. The Indians are very skillful actors, and they represent the parts of beasts or reptiles, wearing masks and imitating the ancient zoic gods. In temples walled with gloom of night and illumed by torch fires the people gather about their Shaman, who tells and acts the stories of creation recorded in their traditional bible. When fever prostrates one of the tribe the Shaman gathers the actors about the stricken man, and with weird dancing, wild ululation, and ecstatic exhortation the evil spirit is driven from the body. Then they have their ceremonies to pray for the forest fruits, for abundant game, for successful hunting, and for prosperity in war.