While supper was being prepared an aged squaw tottered into camp and sat
down. She wailed and beat her breast and finally was persuaded to tell
her troubles. It seemed that she and her husband had lived in this hewa
until his death a year or two before. Then the hewa was thrown open to
the sky and abandoned, as is their custom. She disliked to mention his
name because he might hear it in the spirit world and come back to see
what was being said about him.

"Don't you want him to come back?" I asked idly, thinking to tease her.
Her look of utter terror was answer enough and shamed me for my
thoughtlessness. These Indians have a most exaggerated fear of death.
When one dies he and his personal belongings are taken to a wild spot
and there either cremated or covered with stones. No white man has ever
been permitted to enter this place of the dead. Any hour of the day or
night that a white man approaches, an Indian rises apparently from out
of the earth and silently waves him away. Until a few years ago the best
horse of the dead Indian was strangled and sent into the Happy Hunting
Ground with its owner, but with the passing of the older generation this
custom has been abandoned.

From a powerful and prosperous tribe of thousands this nation has
dwindled down to less than two hundred wretched weaklings. Driven to
this canyon fastness from their former dwelling-place by more warlike
tribes, they have no coherent account of their wanderings or their
ancestors. About all they can tell is that they once lived in cliff
dwellings; that other Indians drove them away; and that then Spaniards
and grasping whites pushed them nearer and nearer the Canyon until they
descended into it, seeking refuge. They are held in low esteem by all
other Indian tribes and never marry outside of their own people.