nact
the scenes of the struggles of their forefathers to throw off white
rule. Young Mexicans, descendants of the very officers who marched with
De Vargas in his campaigns of 1692-3-4, take the part of the conquering
heroes. Costumes, march, religious ceremonies of thanks, public
festival--all have been kept as close to original historic fact as
possible.

De Vargas, himself, was to the Southwest what Frontenac was to French
Canada--a bluff soldier animated by religious motives, who believed only
in the peace that is a victory, put the fear of God in the hearts of his
enemies, and built on that fear a superstructure of reverence and love.
It need not be told that such a character rode rough-shod over official
red-tape, and had a host of envious curs barking at his heels. They
dragged him down, for a period of short eclipse, these Lilliputian
enemies, just as Frontenac's enemies caused his recall by a charge of
misusing public funds; but in neither case could the charges be
sustained. Bluff warriors, not counting house clerks, were needed; and
De Vargas, like Frontenac, came through all charges unscathed.

The two heroes of America's Indian wars--Frontenac of the North, De
Vargas of the South--were contemporaries. It will be remembered how up
on the St. Lawrence and among the Mohawk tribes of New York, a wave of
revolt against white man rule swept from 1642 to 1682. It was not
unnatural that the red warrior should view with alarm the growing
dominance and assumption of power on the part of the white. In Canada,
we know the brandy of the white trader hastened the revolt and added
horror to the outrages, when the settlements lying round Montreal and
Quebec were ravaged and burnt under the very cannon mouths of the two
impotent and terrified forts. The same wave of revolt that scourged
French Canada in the eighties, went like wild fire over the Southwest
from 1682 to 1694. Was there any connection between the two efforts to
throw off white man rule? To the historian, seemingly, there was not;
but ask the Navajo or Apache of the South about traders in the North,
and you will be astonished how the traditions of the tribes preserve
legends of the Athabascan stock in the North, from whom they claim
descent. Ask a modern Indian of the interior of British Columbia about
the Navajos, and he will tell you how the wise men of the tribe preserve
verbal history of a branch of this people driven far South--"those other
Denes," he wil