Pioneer Playhouses of Tombstone

Photography By Joseph Muench

THE Papago Indians of Southern Arizona have embraced the faith of the white man. There are Catholics, Protestants and Mormons among them. They try to dress and to live as much like the white man as they can and they follow our customs. So the Baby Shrine, between Santa Rosa and the Covered Wells, is all the more surprising. Its story goes back a long way into the past, but the spot is still maintained and each year a ceremony is conducted there to commemorate the babies for whom it was first erected. The story is simplicity itself. Long, long years ago, before the white man came, there was, one season, a shortage of water. The tribal ceremonies all over the southwest are filled with prayers for rain, the life-giving water needed to bring crops to fruition, and without which no creature can exist. Even now, the modern traveler is reminded by the many reservoirs and irrigation projects of the value of water and the necessity for its conservation. In that season, long since past, when the rain did not fall, the crops began to dry up. The wells were getting low. Yet the chants for rain had been duly sung. The priests had led the villagers through all the annual ceremonies. Still not a cloud came into the sky. The wild life was dying of thirst. Soon people, too, would die. It was then that the caciques said there was one last chance for the inter-cession of the spirits with the gods who brought the rainclouds. The people lis tened anxiously. Anything, any sacrifice, any ceremony which had been left undone, they were eager to perform for the hope of water. Yet when the priests had spoken there was a long silence. It was a terrible price to pay! Three babies must be put into the ground as a sacrifice! Legend does not relate how the babies were chosen, nor yet how three mothers were induced to part with their children. Yet the tribe must live. The babies would die anyway, if they had no water. So, one one dreadful day, in the presence of all the people, the three babies were lowered into a hole in the ground. The spirits must have interceded for the Indians with the rain gods. The sacrifice must have been accepted for the water came. Crops were big and the

Papago Baby Shrine

wells were high. It rained and rained and rained. But the Papagos seemed to have found the price very high. When a year rolled around they gathered again at the sacrifice spot and built a baby shrine. In the center of the hole, rocks were piled and a few stripped branches of occotillo were thrust into the ground to keep them in place. Beyond the pile, making a crude circle and boundary for the dancing area, more branches of the cactus were set up, so close together that they formed a sort of wall. Here dances in honor of the innocent and unfortunate babies were held. Each year since that time the Papagos have returned. The old branches are pulled out and thrown onto piles nearby and new ones are put in their places. The piles have grown large and they have blackened under the weather. The recent sticks reach frantically and nakedly toward the blue Arizona sky. An artificial water bird, or is it a stork, used in the last ceremony, leans against the ocotillo stalks. Go and see the Baby Shrine. Go when the earth is thirsting for water, when the sun is like a weight upon the head. Go when the sky has not a cloud, and there is no promise of a cloud. Then, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Mormon, or of any other faith, feel the need of the intercession of the three babies with the gods of the rain clouds, with the giver of water!.