the revolting execution of a score of Navajos who had
been apprehended as spies by the Zunis. These unfortunates came to
their village as visiting guests, it being in the time of the harvest
of maize, when these Indians celebrate their great Thanksgiving feast.
A young Navajo chief, who led the visiting party, aroused the ire of
the old medicine chief of the tribe, who had lately added a new
attraction to his household, beshrewing himself with another lovely
young squaw. It was said that the enamored damsel had made preparations
to elope with the gallant Navajo chief, but was betrayed by the
telltale barking of the dogs, great numbers of which infest all Indian
villages. The old doctor accused the Navajos of espionage and had them
taken by surprise and imprisoned in an underground foul den. Then met
the chiefs of the tribe in their estufa, or secret meeting place, to
pass judgment on the culprits. The old medicine chief smoked himself
into a trance in order to receive special instructions from the great
Spirit regarding the degree of punishment to be inflicted on the
unlucky Navajos. After sleeping several hours, he awoke and announced
that he had dreamed the Navajos were to be clubbed to death. After
sunrise the next morning these poor Indians met their doom in the
public square of the village unflinchingly in the presence of the whole
population.

They were placed in a row, facing the sun, about ten feet apart. A Zuni
executioner, armed with a war club, was stationed in front of each
victim, and another one, armed likewise, stood behind him. A war chief
raised his arms and yelled, and forty clubs were raised in air. Then
the great war drum, or tombe, boomed out the knell of death. There was
a sickening, crashing thud, and twenty Navajos fell to earth with
crushed skulls, each cabeza having been whacked simultaneously, right
and left, fore and aft, by two stone clubs in the hands of a pair of
devils.

It had always been an enigma to me that the Pueblo Indians, who were
not to be matched as fighters against the Apache and Navajo had been
able to defend their villages against the onslaught of these fierce
tribes, their hereditary enemies. Don Juan Mestal enlightened me on
that topic. He said the explanation therefor was to be found in a
certain religious superstition of the Navajos and Apaches, which
circumstance the Pueblo Indians took advantage of and exploited to the
saving of their lives. When they had reason to e