Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (2025)

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Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (1)..[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (2) THROUGH
OUR UNKNOWN
,
SOUTHWEST
THE WONDERLAND OF TH·E UNITED STATES-
LITTLE KNOWN AND UNAPPRECIATED-THE
HOME OF THE CLIFF DWELLER AND THE

HOPI, THE FOREST RANGER AND THE NAVAJO,
-THE LURE OF THE PAINTED DESERT[...]•
Author of Tlie Oo1iquest of-the fh·eat N or th1oest,[...]•
L01•ds of the N arth and F reeboot6¥s of the W ilde1'ness.[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (3)[...]1

I THE N -A TIONAL FORESTS • • • • • • I

II NATIONAL F@RESTS O,F THE SOUTHWEST • . 22

III THROUGH THE PBCOS FORESTS • • • · 44
IV THE CITY OF THJl; DEAD • • • • • . 60
V THE EN·CHANTED MESA OF AcoMJ\ • • . 78
VI ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT. • • . . 100

VII ACROSS, THE PAINT-ED DESERT ( continued) . 116
VIII GRAND CANON .AND THE PE.T RIFIE,D FORESTS 137
IX THE GovEJtNOR's PALACE OF SANTA -FE • . 153
X THE GovERN·oR's PALACE ( continured) • . 169
XI TAOS, THE PROMISED L:A-ND • • • . • 183

XII TAos, THE MosT ANCIENT CIT¥ IN AMERICA 196
XIII SAN ANTONIO, THE CAIRO OF AMERICA . . 214

XIV C .ASA GRAN-DE AND THE

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (4) THE ILLUSTRATIONS

Ancient cliff dwellings in the Jeme~ National Fo-rest[...]• • • 4v
In the Coconino Forest .o f Arizona .[...]• • •

Looking over the roofs of the ad.obe houses of thethe water bole on theThe pueblo of W alpi . • • • • • • • • 122 V

The Grand Canon • •[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (5) THE ILLUSTRATIONS·.[...]FACING
Thethe Palace . . •[...]• ., . 188 ✓
Over the roofs of Tao$. . . .• •[...]• • [emailprotected]

A mud house 0£ the Southwest . • •[...]• . ·246 ✓
The Mission of $.a n .Xav-ier . ♦[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (6)[...]INTRODUCTION
AM s.itting in the doorway of a house of tbe
Stone Age - neol[...]troglodytic
man - with a roofless city of the dead lying
in the valley below and the eagJes circling with lonely
cries along the yawning caverns of the cliff face
above.
My feet rest 011 the topmost step of a st0ne stair-
way worn hip-deep in the rocks of eternity by the
moccasined tread of foot-prints that run back, not to
A. D. or B. C., but to those post--glacial reons when
the advances and recessions of an ice i.nvasion from
the Poles left seas where now are dese,r ts; wh·en giat1t
sequoia forests were swept under the sands by the
flood waters, and the mammoth and the dinosaur
and t'he brontosaur wallowed where now nestle farm
hamlets[...]friend by hauljng
him shoulders foremost through the entrance, or
able to speed the parting foe down the steep stair-
way with a rock on his head. Inside,[...]and .stone pillows, and a homemade flour mill
in the form of a flat metate stone witl1 a round[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (7)[...]INTRODUCTION
ing stone on top. From the shape and from the
remnants of pottery sl1ards lyin.g about, I suspect one
of these hewn aleove·s in the inner wall was the place
for the family water jar.
On each side the room are tiny doorways leading
by sto.n e step[...]which ·you enter by ladder and go halfway to
the top of a 500-faot cliff by a series of interior lad-
ders and stone stairs. Flush with the flo@r at the
sides of these doors are the most curious little round
'' cat holes '' thtough the walls - '' cat holes '' for
a people who are not &uppo.sed to have had any
cats; yet the litt.le round holes run from room to
room through .all the walls.
On some of the house fronts are ·painted emblems
of the sµn. Ins-ide., round the wall of the otheI!
houses, runs ~ 'd rawing of the plumed serJ?ent -
,,, Awanya,'' ,.guardian of the waters -whose pres-
ence always ·p resaged go[...]er in a desert
land growing drier and drier as the Glacial Age re-
ceded, and whose ser_p ent emblem in the sky you
could see across the heavens of a starry night in the
Milky Way. Lying -about in other cave houses a[...]e rior ! It isn't a hun-
'd red years ago since the common Christian idea of
angels was fea[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (8)[...]1

,g lacial a.t1ers,1b1eg·a,~.
·' The eJC:ist,enc · of m ,. n in the Glacial ·e· io,d is es~
tahlished, ' sa s ·· inehell, the great w stern geolo•
g,!_· t, _. , hat implies :m an ·d,ur.rng the pe-ri od. when ftour-[...]id.ence pointing to .- mcrica ,as ta 1

Ada a the prrmal b"rthp ace of maa '' .·. ow the
1c:e invas!on bega.n hun,dr · ·•ds of thousa[...]1 1

ye,ars.; a. ,d the, imple · ent of S one ; ge man are 1

,f ou ·. d co -~tetnporan o s · 1th the glacial ilt

The.re is no,t anoth er ,- ,e,cti.on ·11 the "~hol world[...]here, · 0 u C:'a · · :a nder for da· s amid the house.s
1

and ·d ead c1t· . ~,of the· Stone, - ge·; .<~k-er,e yc; i, ,can U,t 1

er.ally sl1ake .ha-nds iilh thethe dcy a,~ __ u~"t dead co.Iection.s[...]fe· -- d oors 1

a ay· from the c.a .,e•hou.s,e her,e I s·t lies a, lit[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (9)[...]pping through Hyrcanian Forests clothed
mostly in the costume Nature gave them; H ·e rber,t
Spencer wo[...]ws, clothed
mostly in -apes' hair. Yet there lies the little lady
the cave to my left, the· long black hair shiny ~nd
lustrous yet, the skin dry as parchment still holding ·
the finger bones together, head and face that of a
human, not an ape, all well preserved ow1ng to the
gypsum dust and the high, dry climate in which the ·
corpse has lain.
In my collection, I have[...]corn
and potte_ry from water jars,• placed with the dead to
sustain them on_the long journey to the Other World.
For the last year, I have wotn a _pih of obs·idiah which[...]d not
myself obtained it from tl1e ossuaries o·f the Cave
Dwellers in the American Southw€st.

Com·e out now to the cave door and look up and
down the canon again! To right and to left for a
height of 500 feet the face of the yellow tu/a preci-
pice is literally pitted with the windows and doors
of ~,he Stone Age City. In the bottom of the valley
is a roofl.ess dwelling of hundreds of rooms - '' the
cormora.nt an.d the bittern possess it; the O\Vl also
an·d the tavefi dwell in it; stones of emptiness; tho.rns
in the palaces; nettles and bra1nbles-in tl1e fortresses;
and the scr.eecl;i owl s-hall rest there.''
'

Listen! You can almost hear it - the fulfillment

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (10)[...]1
of Isaiah's old prophecy-the lonely ' hoo-hoo-
hoo '' of the turtle dove; and the lonelier cry of the
eagle circling, circling round the empty doors of the
upper cliffs I Then, the sharp, short bark-bark-bark
of a fox off up the canon in the yellow pine forests
towards the white snows of the Jemez 'M0untains;
and one nigl1t from my camp in this canon, I heatd
the coyotes howling from the empty caves.
Below are the roofless cities of the dead Sto.ne
Age, and the dancing floors, and the irrigation canals
used to this day, and the stream leaping down from
the Jemez snows, which must once have been a r-qsh-[...]y only in modern men's cl-reams.
Far off to the right, where the worshipers. must
• alw,ays h~ve been in sight of the snowy mountains
and have risen to the rising 0£ the desert sun over
cliffs of -ocher and sands of o[...]•
quoise blue, you can see the great Kiva or Ceremon-
ial Temple of the Stone Age people who dwelt in this
canon. It is a great con-cave hollowed out of the
white pumice rock almost at the cliff top above the
tops of the highest yellow pines. A darksome, cav-
ernous t[...]ul mid-air temple for worshipers when yoq climb
the four or five hu-n.d red ladder steps th~t lead to it
up the face of a white precipice sheer as a wall.
What .sights the priests must have witnessed I I can
understand their worshiping the rising sun as the first
rays came over the cafi.on walls in a shield of fire.
Alcov[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (11)vi INTRODUCTION
the inner w,alls of this chamber, too. Where the
ladd.e r projects up through the floor, you can descerrd
to the hollowe,d underground chamber where tpe
priests and the couneil rn.et; a darksome,. eerie place
with s.ipapu - the holes in the floor - for the mystic
Earth Spirit to come out for the guidance of his peo-
ple. Don't smile at tha.t id[...]iven his nerves
too hard in town? - To go back to the Soil and let
Dame Nature pour her invigorating energies in.to
him:! That's wh-a t the Ear-th Spirit, the Great Earth
Magi-eian, signified to these !)'eople.

Curious how geology and archreology agree on the
rise and ev.apishm,ent of these p'eople. Geology says
that as the ice inv:asion advanced, the .northern. races
were f orc€d south and south till the ,S tone Age folk
living in the roofless City of the Dead on the floor
of the valley were forced to take refuge from them
in the caves hollowed out of the cliff. That was
any time between 20,000 B.C. and 10,000 B.C.
Archreology says as the Utes and the Navajo and
the Apache - Asthapascan stock - came ramping
from the North, the Stone Men were driven from
·t he valleys to the inaccessible cliffs and mesa table
lands. '' It was not until the nomadic robbers
forced the pueblos that the Southwestern people
adopted the. crowded form of existence,'' s·ays Archre-
olo[...]e an ex-plan.ation of our modern
skyscrapers and the real estate robbers of modern
life, doesn't it?

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (12)[...]DUCTION Vll

Then, as the Glacial Age ha'd receded and drought
began, the cave men were forced to come down from
their clif[...]m; for thousands of tons of rock have fallen
from the face of the. canon, and the rooms remain.-
ing are plainly only back rooms. The Hopi and
Moki an·d Zuni have trad.itions of the '' He:a vens
raining £,re; ' 1 and good cobs of[...]be solid lava, or fused adobe.
Pajatito Plateau, the Spanish called this region -
'' place o~f the bird people,·' ' who lived in the cliffs
like sw;illows; but thousands of years before the
Spanish came, the Stone Age had passed and the,
cliff people dispersed.

What in the world am I. taJ'k ing about, and where?
That's the curious pa.r t of it. If it were in Egypt,
or Petree, or amid the sand-covet'ed columns o·f
Phrygia, every tourist compa11y in the world would
be arrangi11g excursions to it; and there would be
sp·ecial chapters devoted to it in the supplementary
readers 0£ the schools; and you wouldn't be - well,
just ait f a[...], yoqr own land?
It is less than forty miles from the r'e.g ular line of
continental travel; $6 a si.n gle rig out, $ 14 a double;
$r to $2 a day at the ranch house where you can
board as you explore the amazing ancient civili~a-
tion of @ur D"Wn American Southwest. This pa.rticu-
lar ruin is in the Frijoles Caiion; but there are hun-

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (13)[...]TION

dreds, thousands, of such ruins all through the South- •
west in Colorado and lJtah and Arizona and New
Mexico. By joining the Arch~ological Society of
Santa Fe, you can go out[...]dicated.

A general passenger agent for one of the largest
transcontinental lines in the Northwest told ,me that
for r 9 r I , where 60",[...]don't kno·w whether his
figures co¥ered ·only the Northwest of which he was
talking, or the w-hole continental traffic as-s·ociation;
but the amazing faet to me· was the _proportion lie
gave - one to our own wonders, eo two for abroad.
I talked to another agent about the same thing. He
thought that the. aver-age tourist who took a trip te
our own Paci[...]spent from $3,000
to $ § ,000, that he thou_g ht the average spendings
of tn.:e t_ourist to Europe sh[...]Tlie Statist of
Londo.n places the total spent by Americans in Europe
at nearer thr[...]rs than one hun-
dred and twenty million.
Of the 3,700,000 people who went to the Seattle

•[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (14)[...]tty safe guess that not 100,000
Easterners out of the lot saw the real West. What
did they see? They saw the Exposition, which was
like any other exposition;[...]ction and
Hood River fruit, which you ca11 buy in the, East for
twenty-five ; and they rode in the rubberneck cars with
the gramophone man who tells Western variations
of the same old Eastern lies; and they came back
thoroug[...]ding a good average of $r,ooo a,pi€Ce. We
scour the Alps for peaks that everybody has climbed,
though there are half a dozen Switzerlands from
Glacier Park in the nortl1 tc Clou,dcroft, New Mex-
ico, witn hunclre[...]ks' holiday. ·we tr-amp tl1rough
Spain for the picturesque, quite oblivious of the fact
that the most picturesque bit of Spain, about 1 0,000
years older than Old Spain, is set right dowh in the
heart of America with turquoise mines from which
the finest jewel in Ki11g Alphons0's crown was[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (15)[...]otograph; and you
won't need to lie about the ones that got away, nor
boast of what it[...]ould take
you a good half-day to count up the nt1r:nber of tour- •-
ist and ste[...]i.n g
excursions to go and apostrophiz·e the Sphinx, an.cl
bark your shirts and swear and sw·e at on the Pyra~
mids. Yt!t it would, be a safe wager th.~t outside of-
ficial scientific circles,[...]hat knows we have a Sphinx 0f ou.r
own in the W e&t that antedates Egyptian archreology
by 8,000 years 1 and stone lions older than the col-
umns of Phrygia, and kings' pa.laces[...]same roo.rps :an.d shaktng hands with a corpse of the
S·t one Age.
A young Westerner, who had graduated from
Harvard, set ottt on the around-the-world tour that
was "to give h,im that wo[...]now him,
asked in choppy English about '' the gweat, the vely
gweat anti-kwatties ih y'or S[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (16)[...]k at him
again in Egypt. They were standing below the chin
of an ancient lady commonly called the Sphinx, when
an English traveler turned to youhg[...]ddle, '' gu·essed they had.''
Then lookin,g over the old jewels taken from the
ruins of Pompeii, he was asked, ' 1 how America was
progressing excavating her ruins; '' and he heard
for the first time in bis life that the finest crown
jewel in Europe came from a mine just across the
line from h.is own home State. The experience gave
him something to think .about.
The incident is typical of many of the I 20,000
people w·ho yearly trek to Europe for h[...]some
European who has 11 a shootin' box'' out in the
Pecos, who tells you about it. Of course,[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (17)[...]1

of the,m lies. . .
Spme -ojol on[...]staying at hotel that are :wea , imitations of the
Waltlor=f a:n.d the Plijza, wh.cr,_· yo·u never g¢'t a sniff
of the r:eal West, no..r met1: anyone b . t tna:velin:g:[...].ers lik:e your.self~ but if you strike away from the
beaten trail, ytJJu can. se_e 't he rea-- We[...]ill
cast you to stay at homt- From Chi-'! go to the
b-~ac~uon
f,.L -.· i,o f. t h~-tj R[...]and if you g0- West " colonist," you -c~n go to the
b.ack.bone of· the Rockies for -a g:oacl deal less than
thirty dollarq. Now cotnes the crucial _point I If
you land 1n a W esfern dty[...]d y9u
will sot see al'Jy more of the We-st than if you h;a.d
gone to Eur()pe. Choo[...]g
ground, ·>undance Caiion, South Da.kot ; or the New
~11ac1er
e -- ·.·. nr ·ar. 'k· .[...].-· e~0~, - e.w . . c reQ, or th.---··e[...],_

White Mountains, A · 1z.on·a ; or the IndL- · Pu 'b lo
• towns 0 1f the Southwest; OP the ·. ;fh.ite Rock le . . ~ on,

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (18)[...]INTRODUCTION XIII

of the Rio Grande, where the most important of the
wonderful prehistoric remains exist; and you can[...]food and cleanliness
will be quite as good as at the Waldorf for from $1.50
to $2 a day. You can usually find the name of the
ranch house by inquiries from the station agent where
you get off. The tanch house may be of adobe and
look squatty; but remember that adobe squattiness
is the best protection against wind and heat; and in-
si[...]ot and cold water, bathroom, 4 nd
m.eals equal to the best hot€ls in Chicago and New
York. In New Yor[...]of such ranch houses all
along th€ backbone of the Rockies.
Next comes the matter of horses and rigs. If
you stay at one of the big hotels, you will pay from
$5 to $10 a day for a rig, an<l $20 for a motor.
Out at the ranch house, you can rent team, driver
aad double[...]uy a burro outright for fro·m $5 to $10. Even
if the burro takes a prize for ugliness, rem.ember he
al[...]s; anq he doesn't
take a prize for bucking, which the broncho often
does. Figuie up now the cost of a month's holiday;
and I repeat - it will[...]tal is still too high, there are
ways of reducing the expense by half. Take your
own tent; and $20 will not exceed '~ the grub box''
contents for a month. Or all tl[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (19)[...]rter your-
self in one of these for n9thing; a11d the sole ex-
pense will be '' the grub box; '' and my tin trunk for
camp cooking ha[...]l ex-
perience of all - along White Rock Canon of the
Rio Grande, in Mesa Verde Parl,, Colorado, are
thousands of plastered caves, the homes of the cliff
dwellers. You reach them by ladder. There i[...]or damp. Camp in one of them
for nothing wherever the water in the brook below
happens to be good. Hundreds of archr[...]n't you? Or if you are not a good
adventurer into the Unknown alone, then join the
summer sthool that goes out to the caves from Santa
Fe every s11,mmer.
Is it safe[...]any Eastern city!
I have slept in ranch cabins of the White Moun-
tains, in caves of the cliff dwellers on the Rio Grande,
in tents on the Sas-katchewan; and I never locked a
door, because there w.asn't any lock; and I n.ever at-
teQ.1pted tb bar the door, because there wasn't any
need. Ca11 you say as much of New York, or Chi-
cago, or Washington? The question may be asked
-Will tl1is kind of a holiday not be hot in summer?
You remember, perhaps, crossing the backbone of the
Rockies some mid-summer, when nearly eyerythin,g
inside the pull1nan car melted into a jelly. Yes, it
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (20)[...]xv

will be hot if you follow the beaten trail; for a rail-
road naturally follows tJ:ie lowest grade. But if you
go back to the ranch houses of the Upper Mesas and
of foothills and canons, you \v[...]winter
wraps each night, and may have to break the
ice for your washing water in the mo rning-I
did.
Another reason why ·so m[...]e cost, another sort of fool wisely promulgates
the lie - a lie worn shiny from repetition - that
'' game is scarce in the West.'' '' No more big
game ' '___, and your ro[...]another - '' trout streams all fished
out.'' In the days when we had to sw-allow logic
undigested i[...]single specific fact was sufficient to refute
the broadest generality that was ever put in the form
· of a syllogism. Well, then,- for a few fa[...]o-game'' lie I
In one hour you can catch in the streams of the
P eco.s, or the Jemez, ot the White Mountains, or
the Upper Sierras of Califor:nia, or the New Glacier
P ark of the North, more trout than you cart put on
a string. If you want confirmation of that fact,
write to the Te:x:as Club that has its hunting lodge
opposite Grass Mountain, and they will send you the
picture of one hour's trout catch. By m[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (21)
XVl INTRODUCTION
I
the string is longer than the height of a water bartel;
and these were .fis[...]Last year, twenty-six beat wet·e shot in the Sangre
de Christo Canbn in three months.
Two ye,ars ago, mountain lions became so th-ick
in the P ecos that hunters were hired to hunt 't hem
for bounty; and the first thing that happened to one
of th,e hunters, hi~ horse was throttled an.cl killed by[...]by 'treeing four lions a few weeks later, and the hun-
ter got three out of the f9ur.
Near Glori eta, you ca,_n ,m·e et a[...]ip, if he
could have got it cashed.
In the White Mountains last year, two of the larg-
est bucks ever known in the Rockies were trailed by
every hunter of note[...]behind a
burro; but tl1e other- still haunts the canons defiant
of repeater.
From the ca:ves of the cliff-dwellers along the Rio
G·rande, you can nightly he:ar the coy0te and the fox
bark as they barked those dim stone ages when the
people of these silent caves hunted here.
. The w,eek I reached Frijales Canon, a flock of wild[...]ge Abbott's Ranch
House not a gun length from the front door.
The morning I was d_riving over the Pajarito
Mesa home from the cliff caves., we· disturbed a herd
of[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (22)[...]ION XVll

is if you follow the beaten trail, just as depleted as
it would be if[...]g game,
what better ground fo·r observation than the Wichita
in Oklahoma? H ere a National Forest has[...]Ove.r twenty buffalo taken from
original stock in the New Yo·r k Park are there -
back on their native[...]their fur ann'1ally.
When they were set loose in the Wichita Ga.me R.e-
sort, they looked up, sniffed the air from all four
quarters, and rambled off to th'e it ancestral pasture
grounds perfectly at home. When the Comanches
heard that the buffalo had come back to the. Wichita, •
the whole tribe moved in a body and camped outside
the fourteen-foot fence. Thete they stayed for tl1e
better part of a week, the buffalo an·d the Coman-
ches, silently viewing each otl1er. It wou[...]est,
which is not only persistent but cruel. When the
worker is a health as well as rest seeker,[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (23)[...]t 1s Ioc -lly c,~lle,d '' a lun,g ,• er; '' and th,e re i ,j ut
en,o,u _,h truth in that lie to make[...]w .. nte d_ <Jin _:h"t:~ beaten
t · ail, •'n the big en~r·a l bot .I, in t ,e ,r ,ai-n . h re
ot[...]_.hich is u t1ally _ie~. 'L et the:
other half be -,~nawn I · 11 'through ·-he West along
th,e backbone of tb·e o,cki,,es., £r,o ·[...]- .nd·- ·· f s11ch tent d,w,ellers all through the
1

ijoc:k y '.,. ounta'in Stat~ ··• : nd the _o: .t is is you make
11

it[...]_ium t-. nt city, y·ou will h._-,, e
to pay all the ·ay from 15 to $25 a · ee for
ho·u,se, bol rd[...]1

y.our o ,'.n catering- the cost w . 11 be j't1st hat you
m ke it. A house i[...], ·t i · am , thev baneful lie t , .a t keeps the -.m, .-_-ic -n
f r·Oni se, ~'n ~ · . _·erica fir.st ,. th. ,t ou·- N @· - , o· l ·.[...]est l r . , " hum n Lnter s · '' l ck II the p1 · 1r..
. ~1q t ,- ·. e :- of' he lh·. ph .[...]tz '· r•
.ce ~ l ck: th,e .·sto ,c m . ,r ..· .· s-'' of'
] . 11[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (24)[...]XlX

I f there be any degree in lies, this is the pastmaster
of them all. Will you tell me why '' the human in-
terest'' of a legend about Dick Tt1rpin[...]gate, England, is any greater to Amer-
icans than the truth about Black Jaok of Texas,
whose head flew off into the crowd, when the sup-
port was removed from his feet and he was ha[...]s a lone-hand train robber.
vVill you tell me why the outlaws of the borderland
between E ngland and Scotland are more interesting
to Americans than the bands of outlaws who used
to frequent H orse-Thief Canon up the Pecos, or
took possession of the cliff-dwellers' caves on the
Rio Grande after the Civil War? Why are Copt
shepherds in Egypt m.ore picturesque. tl1an descend-
ants of the Aztecs herding countless moving_masses
of sheep on our own sky-line, lilac-misty, Upper
Mesas? What is the difference in qual,ity value be-
tween a donkey i[...]g to market and a
burro in New Mexico standing on the -p laza before
a palace where have ruled eighty d[...]relics taken f rom P ompeii more interesting than the
dust-crumbled bodies lying in the caves of our own
cliffs wrapped in cloth woven long before Europe
knew the art of weaving? Why is the Sphinx
more wonderful to us than the Great Stone Face
carved on the rock of a cliff near Cochiti, New Mex-
ico, carved before the Pharaohs reigned; or the stone
lions of an Assyrian ruin more marvelous than the

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (25)[...]u
find a church in England datin.g before William the
Conqueror, you may smack your lips with the zest
of the antiquarian; but you'll find in New Mexico
not far from Santa Fe ruins ,o f a church - at the
Gates of the Waters, Guardian of the Waters-
that w·as a pagan ruin a thousand years old when
the Spaniards came to America.
You may hunt up plaster cast reproduction of
reptilian monsters in the l{ensington Museum, Lon-
don; but you will find the real skeleton of the gen-
tleman himself., with pictures of the three-toed horse

on the rocks, and legends of a Plumed Serpent not
unlike th.e wary fellow who interviewed Eve - all
right here in your own American Southwest, with the
difference in favor of tl1e American legend; for the
Satanic wriggler, who walked into the Garden on his
tail, went to deceive; whereas the Plumed Serpent
of New Mexican legend came to guard the pools
and the springs.
To be sure,, there are 400,000 miles[...]ca by n1otor?. That is what
you can do following the '' Camino Real '' from
Texas to Wyoming, or crossing the mountains of
New Mexico by the great Scenic High\vay built for
motors to tl1e v[...]yourself
in such a maze of tl1e picturesque and the legendary
as you cann0t find a11y,vhere else in the wide world
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (26)[...]from Ox-
ford, En-gland, took quarters in one 0£ the pueblos at
Santa Clara or theteabout to study Ind[...]f crime., She sprang out
of bed and dashed across the placito in her night-
dress to he,r guardian protector i,n the person of' an
old Indian. He ran through the dark to see what
the matter was, while she stood in hiding of the wall
shadows curdling in horr_o r of '' bluggy de€ds.''
'' Pah, '' said the old fellow coming back, '' dat
not'ing ! Young ma[...]British dame; for she could not help seeing
that the old fellow was literally doubling in suffo-
cated[...]it? It "vould pay to let a little daylight ifl
on the abysmal blank regarding the wonder-land of
our own world-wouldn't it?

I don't know whether the affectation recognized
as '' the foreign pose '' comes fo1""e most or hinde[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (27)[...]ODUCTION

most as a cat1se of this neglect of the wonders of our
own land. When you go to our o[...]but broad. He dropped his own name, as-
sumed the pose of a grand d am.e famili ar with the
'
inner penetralia and sacred secrets of the exclusive
circle of the, An1erican Colony in Paris. His books
have ''[...]ey
were broad. Now they are abroad; and, like the
tourist tickets, they are selling two to. one.
The stock excuse among f@reign poseurs for the
two to one pre'ference of Europe to America is that
'' America lacks the pictL1resque, the human, the his-
toric;'' A straight.forwa-ta falsehood y[...]s pretense - is another m atte r. Let us take
the dir-e and damning deficiencies of America 1
'' America lacks the pict11tesque.'' Did the an-
cient dwelling of the Stone Age sot1nd to you as if ·it
lacked the pict11resq11e? I could direct you to fifty
such picturesque spots i11 the S0uthwest alone.
There is the Encha11ted Mesa, with its sister mesa
of Acom[...]of yel-
low tufa for hundreds of feet - amid the Desert
sand, light shimn1ering like a[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (28)the lav-
ende·r light, and Indian riders, brightly clad and pic-
turesque as Arabs, scouring across the plain; all this
reachable two hours' drive from a main railroad.
O r there are the three Mesas of the Painted Desert,
cities on the flat mountain table lands, ancient as the
Aztecs, overlooking such a roll of mountain and
desert and forest as the Tempter could not show
beneath the temple. Or, th€re is the White H ouse,
an ancient ruin of Canon de Chelly[...]European protagonist declares, '' I
dol}'t tnean the ancient and the primeval. I mean
the moclern peo_pled hamlet type.'' All right!
What is the matter v;ith Santa Fe? D raw a circle
from New Or[...]mosaic in hustling, bustling Amer-
ica. There is the Governor's Palace, where three
different nations have held sway; and there is the
Plaza, where the burros trot to tnl:!.rket under loads
of wood picturesque as any donkeys in Spain; and
there is the old Exchange H otel, the end of the Santa
F e T rail, where Stephen B. Elkins came in[...]At one end of a main thorough£ are, you can see the
~ite of the old Spanish Gareta prison, in the walls of
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (29)[...]1.1 want a little Versailles of retreat away
from the braying of the burros and of tl1e humans,
away from the dust of street and of small talk-
then of a 'M ay day wl1en the orchard is in bloo1n and
the air alive with the song of the bees, go to the old
French garden of the late Bishop Lamy I Througl1
the cobwebby sprin:g foliage shi11es the gleam of the
snowy peaks; and the air is full of drean1s preciot1s
as the apple bloom.
Wh.a t was the other charge? Oh, yes - '' lacks
the human,'' whatever that means. Why are leg-
ends o[...]Flagstaff and tl1e Frijoles, ,vhere
renegades of the Civil War used to hide? Why are
the multi-colored peasant workers of Brittany or Bel-
gium more interesting tha11 the gayly 'dressed peons
of New Mexico, or the Navajo boys scouring 1.1p and
down the sandy arroyos? Why is the story of Jack
Cade any more '' ht1man '' than the tragedy of the
three Vermont boys, Stott, Scott and Wilson, hanged
in the Tonto Basin for horses they did not steal
in o:r[...]r assassins might pocket $5,000
of money ,vl1ich the young fello,,1s had brought
out fron1 tl1e East[...]ge11dary heroes of tl1e Old vVorld?
Driven to the last redoubt, your r>rotagonist for
Et1rope against America usually assumes the air 0£
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (30)[...]XXV

superiority supposed to be the peculiar prerogative
of the gods of C)lympus, and decla:res: '' Yes -
but America lacks the histo y and the art of the old
associations in Europe.''
'' Lack[...]aronial
splendor to smart Y ankeedom invading the old ex-
clusive domain in cowhide boots! Go back an,o ther
fifty years·l Y o.u are in the midst of American f eu-
dalism - fur lords of the wilde.rn.ess ruling domains
the area o·f a Europe, Spanish Conquistadore·s march-
ing thr0ugh the desert heat clad Ga,p-a-pie in burnished
mail[...]of those cuirasses dug up in New Mexico with
the bullet hole thr0qgh th:e metal right above the
heart. Another. fifty years. back- an4 the century
war for a continent with the Indians, the downing
of the old civ:ilizatioh of America before a sort of
Christian barbarism, the sword in one harrd, the cross
in the other, and behind the mGunted troops the big
iron chest for the gold - iron chests that you can
see to this day among th·e Spanish families of the
Southwest, rusted from bui:ial .in time of war, but
strong yet as in the centuries when guarded by secret
springs such iron treasure boxes hid all the gold
and the silver of some noble f·amily in New Spain.
When you go back beyond the days of New Spain,
you are amid a civilizatio[...]Egypt's -
an era that can be compared only to the myth age
of the Norse Gods, when Lolci, Spirit of Evil, sm[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (31)[...]ON

with contempt at man's poor efforts to invade the
Realm of Death. It was the age when puny men
of th~ Stone Era were alternately chasing south be-
fore the glacial drift and returning north as the
waters receded,, when h.uge leviathans wallowed a[...]some sort of domesticated creatures are
found in the cave men 1'S houses, centuries befo·r e the
co.ming of horse$ and cattle and sheep with the Span~
ish. The trouble is, up to the present when men
like Curtis and clear old Band.elier .a nd Burbank, and
the whole staff of the Smiths·o nian and the School
of San.ta Fe have gone to. work, we have not taken
the tr0,uble in America to gather -up the prehistoric
legends and ferret Gut their race meaning. We have
fallen tqo completely in the last century un,d er th€
blight of evolt1tion,[...]lf ·t heir time up trees throw-
'ing st<)ne_s on the heads of the othet apes, below, ancl
the other half of th1eir time either Ii.eking their ch.o ps
in gore or draggin.g wives back to caves by the hair
of th€ir heads. You remember Kipling's poem on
the neolithic ryah, and Jack London's fiction. Now
a[...]ng to all
these accre-tions of pseudo-science - 'the remains of
these cave IJ€ople don't sho[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (32)[...]ad dec-
orated pottery ware of which we have lost the pig-
ments, and a knowledge of irrigation which w[...]I
never knew a monkey to possess. Some day, when
the evolutionary piffle has wassed, ·, ve'll study·[...]storic legends and their racial meaning.
As to the '' lack of art," pray wake up! The
late Edwin Abbey declared that the most hope,f ul
school of art in Americ-a was the School of the South.-
west. L ook up Lotave's mural drawings at[...],
but don't talk abo11t '' lack of art.'' Why, in the
ranch house ef Lorenzo Hubbel1, the great Navajo
trader, you'll find a $200,000 collection of purely
Southwestern pictur·es.

H ow many of the two to one protagonists of Eu-
rope know, for instance, that scenic motor highways
already run to the very edge of the grandest scenery
in America? You can motor now fr[...]of it, above
cloud line, above timber line, over the leagueless
sage-bush plains, in and out of the great yellow pine
forests, past Cloudcroft - the skytop resort - up
through the orchard lands of the Rio Grande, across
the very backbone of the Rocki€s over the Santa Fe
Ranges and on north up to the Garden of the Gods
and all the wonders of Colorado's National Park.

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (33) •••
XXVlll INTRODUCTION

With the exce-p tioa of a very bad break in the White
Mountains of Arizo.na, you can motor West past the
southern edge of the Painted Desert, past La,guna
afid Acotna and the Enchanted M~sa, past the Petri-
fied Forests, wher€ a qelt1ge of sand and flood has
burie-d a s.equoia fo_rest and tra11srnuted the beauty
of the tree's life into the be·auty of the jewel, i11to
bats and beams and spars of agate and onyx the
color of t.h e rainhow. Then, bef9re going on dow[...]-01:nia, you can swer,re i-nto Grand Canon,
where the gods of fire ancl flood havo jumbled 'a nd
tumbled the J?.e-aks of Olymp,us dyed blood-ted into
a S'Yirnming canon of lavender and primrose light
deep as the ._highest peaks of the Rockies. -
In Cal1f.orni-a, you can either motor up along th.e
coast past all the old Spanish Missions, o·r go in be-
hind the first ridge of mountains and motor alon_g the
edg.e of the Big Trees and the Yosem.ite and Ta:hoe.
You can't take your car int[...]be~
c.ause you are not allow€d; second, because the risks
of tµe road do not p€rntit it even if yo[...]life-time knowledge
of pretty nearly all parts of the West - and that
from a woman's point of view. Believe me the days
of '' shooti.rt' irori'.s '' and '' faintin' fe,rnales '' are fo~-
ever past, except in the undergraduate's salad dre·ams.
;Y'ou are sa,fBr i.n the cav·e dwellings of the Stone
Age, ira the Pajarito
, Plateau of the cliff '' bird peo-
ple,'' in the Painted Des·ert, among the Indians of

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (34) INTRODUCTION

the N avajq Reserve than you are in Broadway, New
Yor[...]a young
friend of mine - boy or girl- quicker to the West-
ern environment than the Eastern. Y Ou can get into
mischief in the West i.f you ht1nt for it; but the mis-
chief d0esn't come out and hunt you.. Also., 'd anger
spots are self-evident on precipices of the Western
w.ilds. They aren't self-evid:e nt; danger spots are •

glazed and paved to the edges over which youth
goes to smash in the East.

What about cost? Aye, there's the rub!
First, there's the .steamboat tieket to Europe, about
the same price as or more than the average round trip
ticket to the Coast and back; but - please note,
please note well -the agent wl10 sells th,e steamboat
ticket gets from forty to I oo per cent. bigger com-
mission on it than the agent who sells the railroad
tickets; so the man who is an agent for Europe can
afford to advertise fro.rn forty to 100 per c.e nt. more
than the man who sells the purely American ticket.
Secondly, European hotel men are atdepts at
catering to the lure of tl1e American sightseer. ( Of
course they[...]e Amer-
ican West, everybody is busy. Exce)Pt for the real
estate man, they don't care one iota whether[...]pe, a thousand hands
are thrt1st out to point you the way to the interesting
places. Incidentally, also, a[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (35)[...]particle, what you do; or who will point you the way?
The hotels a-re expehsive and for the most part lo-
cated in the most expehsive zene - the commercial
cente.r. It is o.nly wh_e n you get out of the expense
zone a1r,1 ay from commercial centers[...]own tent at fifty cents a day ; but it isn't to the real es-
tate agent's interests to have y9u go away ftom the
commercial center or expense z.one. Who is there
to tell you what or where to see off the line of heat
and tips? Outside the National Park wardens and
National Forest Ran[...]Ch.oose what you want to see; and go
there I The local railroad agent, the local Forest
Ranger, the local ranch nguse, will tell you the rest;
and naturally, when you go i11to the wildern€sS, don't
leave all your cou[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (36) CHAPTER I

THE NATIONAL FORESTS, A SUMMER PLAYGROUND
FOR THE PEOPLE

F a health resort and national pla-yg[...]large littleness an,d slay list-
lessness and set th,e h,u•man spirit free from the
naggin,g worries ancl toil-wear that make you f e,el
like a washed-o.1Jt rag at the ·end of a humdrum
year --- imagine the stampede of the lam·e and the
halt in body and spirit; the railroad .excursions and
reduced tares; the disputations of the physicians and
the rage of th€. tfiougpt-ologists at present coini[...]quarter to
half a billio_n dollars; and it isn't the Coast-to-Coast
trip which the president of a transcontinental to.Id
me at least[...]to slay listless-
ness, would pretty nea rly put the thought-ologists[...]commiss-ion. Yet such a s11mmet resort exists
at the yery doors of €Very American capable of[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (37)2 THE NATI.O NAL FORESTS

the least, $400 at the most. It exists in that '' twi-
light zone '' of[...]d stroug language aad pea-
nut politics known as the National Fore-sts.
In America, we have f ooli[...]means for national
health and sanity and joy in the exuberant life of the
clean out-of-doors. In Ger many, the forests are not
only a source o.f great revenue[...]alth. They are a
holiday playground. In America, the playground
exists, the most wonderful, the most beautiful play-
ground in the w:h ole worl8 - and the most acces-
sible; but we ha.ven't yet discovered it.

Of the three or foqr million people who have
attended th.e Pacific Coast Expositions of the pa~t
ten years, it is a safe wage that half w:ent[...]y seen a
great Exposjtion) but they we'f1t to see the Exposi-
tion as an exponent of the Great West. How much
of the Great West did they r~ally see? They saw
the A1aska Exhibit. Well - the Alas·k a Exhih>it
was afterwards shown in New York. They saw the
special buildings assigned to the special Western
States. Well - the special Western States had
special buildings at the other expositions. What else

•[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (38) THE NATIONAL FORESTS 3
of tl1e purely West they saw, I shall give in the
words of three travelers:
'' Been a great trip[...]do at these places? ''
'' Took a ta_xi and saw the sights, drove through
the parks and so on. Sa,v all the residences and
public buildings. Been a great trip. Tell you the
West is going ahead.''
'' It has been a d-etes[...]an, baggage, hotels,
everything. And how' much of the vVest have we
really seen? Not a glimpse of it. We had all seen
these'\¥estern citie.s before. The,y are ne>t th.e West.
They are bits of the East taken up and set do\vn in
the West. How is the Easterner to see the West?
It isn't seeii:1g it to go flying through t[...]and real life and wild life are
always back from thethe mountains to
ride on a train through the easiest passes and sleep
through most of them. Tel1 us h0w we are to get
out and see and experience the real thing? ''
'' H'm, talk abo1,1t seeing the West'' (This time
from a T~xas banker). ''[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (39)4 THE NATIONAL FORESTS
from the excursion party was when a land boomster
took us up the river to see an irrigation project.
That wasn't see-ing thethe playgroun'd
each was seeki"n,g? Not the duet that went round
the cities in :a sightst eing car and judged the West
from hotel rotu,ndas. Not tl1e New Yorker, who
saw the prairie towns fly past th·e car winclows. Not
the Texans who were guided round a real estate pro-
ject by an E>astern land boomster. And eacli
wanted to find the real thing - had paid money to
find a holiday pla[...]b
apathy and enlarge life. And each complained of
the extortionate ch.arges on every side i:n the city life.
And two out of three went baQ{ a little disappointed
that they had not seen the fab.led w0nders of the
West - the big trees, the peaks at close range, the
famou,s canons., the mou.ntaip lakes, the natural
bridges. When I tried to e;xplain to the New
:forker that at a cost of one-tenth what the big hotels
charge, you could go straight into the heart of the
mountain wester,n wilds., whether you are a man,[...]or group of ,all three - could go
straight out to the fabled wonders of big trees anrl
mountain[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (40)
THE NATIONAL FORESTS 5
Sadder is the case of the invalid migrating West.
He has come with high hopes looking for the
national health resort. Does he find it? Not[...]kers have money,
they take a private house in the eity, where the best
of air is at its worst; but many invalids are scarce of.
money, and come seeking the health resort at great
pecuniary sacrifice. D[...]nfecting themselves with their own
germs till the vety t~lephone booths. have to be
guarded. At[...]I heard three invalids coughing life away along the
corridor where my room h.appen·e d to be. The
charge for those stuffy rooms was $2 artd $3[...]t of $Io for train
fare, I went out to one of the National Forests - the
pass over the Divide I I ,ooo feet, the village center
of the Forest 8,000 feet ,above sea level, the charge
with meals at the hotel $Io a week. Better still,
$10 for a roo[...]much or as little as you like for a fur rug, and the
cost of meals would have been seventy-five cents a
day at the hotel, seventy-five cents for life in air that[...]ant sunshine, air as pure and life-
giving as the sun on Creation's first day. That alti-[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (41)[...],

6 THE NATIONAL
.[...]a nation of ninety million peop1€ scouring
the earth for a playgr0und; and taere is an undis-
cov0ted playground in its own back y.ard, the most
wonderful playgr0u11d or mountain and forest and
lake in the whole worltl; a playground in actual area
half thethe 1.-ailroads thinking
a.b out ? I f three million p€o-p le visite.d an expositio.n
to see the West, how many vvould year.ly visit tl1e
National Forests if the railroads granted facilities,
and the ni.n ety million Americahs knew how? It is
absurd to regard the National Forests purely as
timber; and timb·[...]en-o x; ·a nd you will not find Sarato,g a ir,i the
N ati01nal Forests. N@ither will you find a dress
parade except the painter's brush with its vestt1re of
flame in the up·p er alpine meadows. Ahd you will
not fin[...]or coming too near his cache of pine
cones at the foot: of some giant conifer. There is
small nois'e of things d.o ing in the National Forests;
but -t here is a gre[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (42) THE' NATIONAL FORESTS 7:

rain time, or thunder of avalanche when the snows
come over a far ridge in spray fine as a waterfall.
In fair weather, you may spare yourself the trouble
of a tent and camp under a stretch of sky hung with
stars, resinous of balsams, .spiced with the life of the
cinnamon smells and the ozone tang. There will be
lakes of light as well[...]h. Your bed will be hemlock boughs-be
sure to lay the branch-end out and the soft end in or
you'll dream of sleeping transfixe[...]d and mixed perfumes,
better stay in N ewpott.
The Forestry Department .will not resent your
coming.[...]you
to find camping ground.

Meanwhile, before the railroads have wakened up
to the possibilities· of the National Forests as a play.
ground, how is the lone American man, woman, child,
or group of all three, to find the way to the· National
Forests? What will the outfit cost; and how is the
camper to get established?
Take a map of the Western States. Though there
are bits of National Forests in Nebraska and Kansas
and the Ozarks, for camping and playground pur.
poses draw a line up parallel with the Rockies from
New Mexico to Canada. Your pl[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (43)[...].
8 THE NATIONAL FORESTS
tion in the forests of Colorado. Nearly all are from
8,00[...]ou will h.a ve no diffi-
culty in recognizing the Forests as the train goes pant-
ing up the divide. Wi11dfall, timber· sla.sh, stumps
h-a lf as high as a horse, bru-shwood, the bare poles and
black'ene'd logs of burnt area[...]n. Ttees with two notches ancl a .Blaf/e mark
the Forest bounds; trees with one notch and orte
bla,z-e, the trail; and across that trail, you are out of
the Public Domain in the National Forests. There
is not the slightest chance of your not recognizing the
National Forests. Windfall, there is almost n[...]e trees, all hav1e been cnt o·r stamped with
the U. S. hatchet .for logging off. These Colora'd 9[...]to Utah; and you m.ay vary· your camping
in the National Forests therel by trips ·to the wonder-
ful can,ons out from Ogden, or to the natural bridges
in the Soutq_. In the N atio.nal Forests of California,
you have pretty nearly the best that Amer.ica can
off et you; views of t[...]and
Monterey; cloudless skies ev·e rywhere; the B'ig trees
in the Sequoia F9rest; the Yosemite ip the Stanislaus;
forests in the. northern p a.r t of the State where you
could dance oh the stump of a redwood or build a
cabin out of a single sapling; and everywhere in the
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (44)[...]ar - 't he · 01c , s o:f ·}1,e w . t ~ rs ,a.nd
the whi■te, bur 1ished., shini g pe·aks. I ,e t a[...]1

.in a tented wa,g on through the N'ation.al :F ,o.· est,s frer .-
Colora,do t,o M[...];1 l , d 1 1

the, h.or1eos for a rent . I which I .have forgotten. The,
bor crs of most o·f t -, ; e .: .·ation.-a.l · mrest , may· b«
reached by wagon. The high~r and mor_e intimate
· rails ~ ,3y be. essa[...]1

tbitt out for yours~lf. The.__ e is, ,first of all, your r -·il--
1

·w ay fa_re from the point yQu leave~ Then there is
-[...]~

the, fare -ut t 0 the Fo,r est - U$t1ally not $ r. ·.. Go[...]st~a1ght ~o th e ·super· -~isor or forestf!r Df the disttict.
1[...]1 1

He ·will r ecom 1en,d the best hotel Qf th e little monn-,[...]-: 1·or ~ 1ess~ I'.n
many o,f the tnou,n ta_jn .h amlets ·a -~ o·utfitter-[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (45) IO THE N .Li \TIONAL FORESTS

cost you from $10 to[...]ke an elk-skin leather whi~h
never shrinks in the wet, with a good deal of cork in
the sole to save jars, also a broad sole to save your
foot in the stirru·p; but avoid a con\'7 entiona1 riding[...]oo stiff ! I like an elk-"8kin that
will let the water out fast as it comes in if you ever
have to wade, and which will not shrink in the drying.
If you forswear hotels and take to a[...]misty weather, better carry eatables in what
the .guides call a tin '" .grub box, '' in other word[...]As to be·ds, each to his own taste! Some like the
rolled rubber mattress. Too much trouble for[...]am never comfortable on it. If you camp
near the snow p~faks, a chill strikes up to the small 9f
your b.ack in the small of the rnorn.ing. I don't care
to feel like using a derrick every time I roll over.
The most comfortable bed I know is a piece of
twenty-five cent o,ilcloth laid ove,r the slicker dn hem-
lock boughs, fur rug over th[...]case £or
pillow, and a plain gray blank.et. The hardened
mountaineer will laugh at the next recommendation;
but the town man or woman going out for · play or
h[...]and to attempt sudden harden•
ing entails the en·durance of a lot of aches that are apt
to spoil the holiday. You may say you like the cold
plunge 1n • the •icy water coming[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (46)[...]not
a rubber hath) a $1.50 camp stove to heat the water
in the tent while you are eating your supper out round
the camp fire that burns with suclL a delicious, barky
· smell. Besides, late in the season, there will be ra:ias
and mist. Your camp stove will d.ry out the tent
walls and keep your kit free of ta·in m[...]If ·you camp under direction and within range of the
district forester, I do not think you do.[...]tent- a miner's, preferable to a tepee because the
walls lift ·the canvas roof high enough not to bump
your head[...]u a tin trunk ot gruo box;
$ 1. 50 will coyer the price of oilcloth to ·s pread over
the boughs which you lay all ove,r the floor to keep
you above the earth dam·p ; $2 will buy you a little
tin camp stove to keep the ins1de of your tent warm
and dry tor the hot night bath; $IO•will cover cost of
pail[...]If
you are a good fisherman, you will add to the larder,,
by whipping the mountain streams for trout. If you
nee[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (47)[...]'

12 THE NATIONAL FOREST'S
buy a tepee tent for a bath and[...]ent with a camp stove in it will prove useful fot the
nightly hot bath. .[...]•

What reward d.o you rea·p for all the bother?
You are away from all dust itritati.n g[...]ssi~ility, of i-e-infetting your-
self with your O:\-Vn disease. Except in late autumn
an.cl early s[...]in an atmosphere steeped in sunshine., spier with
the healing resin of the pines and hemlocks and
sp,ruce, that not only scent th,e air but literally perm·e-
ate it with the. essences of their own life. You are
. .

'living far above the v.apors of sea level, in a region
lumino.us of light. Instead of the clang of street car
bel~s and the jangle of nerves tangled from too many
h.umans in town,' you hear the flow a.n d the sing and
the laughter and the trebles of the glacial streams
rejoicing in their race to the sea. You cllmb the
rough hills; and your town lungs blow like a whale
as you climb; and every beat pumps inertia out and
the sun-healing air in. If an invalid, you had better[...]high you should
camp •a nd climb. In town, amid the draperies and
the portieres and the steam-heated rooms, an invalid
is seeking health amid the habitat of mummies. In
th-e Forests_, whether ye>u will or not, you live in sun-
shine that is the very elixir of life; and though the
frost sting at night, .it is t.he sti.n g of pulsing, super-
abundant life, not the lethargy of a gradual decay.

,

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (48) THE NATIONAL FORESTS 13
At the sot1tl1ern edge of the National Forests in
the Southwest dwell the remnants of a race, can be
seen the remnants af cities, stand houses near enough
the train to be touched by your hand, that run back i[...]historic contint1ity to dyna-sties preceding
the Aztecs of Mexico or the Copts of Egypt., When
the pyramids were you·ng, long before-the flood gates
of the Ural 'M ountains had broken before the inun-
dating Aryan hordes that overran the forests ancl.
m0ti11tains of Europe to the edge of the Netherland
seas, this race which you can see[...]eir wool,
working their silver mines, and on the approa.ch of
the enemy, withdrawing to those eagle nests on the
mo1:1ntain tops which you can see, whete only a rope
ladder led up to the city, or uncertain crumbling steps
cut in the face of the sheer red sandstone.
And besides the prehistoric in the Forests ---
what will you find? The pla-ins below you like
a scto11, the receding cities, a patch of smoke.
,y ou had thought that sky above the plains a cloudless
one, air that was pQre, buoyant champagne without
dregs. N ovv the plains are vanishing in a haze of
dust, and you - you are up irt that cloudless air,
where the light hits the rocks in spangles of pare
crystalt and the tang of the clearness of it pricks your
sluggisl1 blood[...]r roofs h<1d been a life with cob ..
webs on the brain and weights on the wings of the
spirit. I wonder if it wasn't? I wonder if the
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (49)14 THE NATIONAL FORESTS
ancients, after all, didn't a(:cord with science in ascrib-
ing to the sun, t0 the god of L ~ght, the source of all
our strength ? Things are accomplished not in the
thinking, but.in the clearness of the thinking; and here
is the realm of pute light.
Presently, the train cai:ryihg you up to the Forests
of the Southwest gives a bump. You are in dark-
ness -[...]u come out, you could drop a stone sheer
down to the plains a ~ouple of miles. That is not so
far as up in South Dakota. In Sundance Canon
off the National Forests there, you can drop a pebble
down seven mile.s. That's not as the crow flies. It
is a-s the train climbs. But patience I The road into
Suadance Canon takes you to the top of the world, to
be sure; but that is only 7,000 feet u[...]tty ne.arly above growth line,
12,000 feet above the sea; at r 1,600 you can take
your lunch inside a snow shed on the Mo·ffat Road.
Long ago, men proved their sup[...]have had a good 100,000
corpses to his credit in the Netherlands. Today, men
make good by co-nquering the elements. For four
ho~rs, this little Colorado road has b-een cork-screw-
ing up the face of a moµntain pretty ,n early sheer as a
w[...]and tt1rn and t\lnnel, some
·engineer fellow .on the job has performed mathe-
matical acrobatics; and some capitalist behind the
engineer - the man behind the modern gun of con-[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (50)[...]-

Fron1 a lookout point 1n the Cecon i.no I:-~orest of Arizonn

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (51) THE NATIONAL FORESTS 15
quest-has paid the cost. In this case, it was David
Moffat paid for our dance in the clouds - a mining
man, who poked his brave little road over the moun-
tains across the desert towards the Pacific.
You come through those uppBr tunnels still higher.
Below, no longer lie the plains, but seas of clouds;
and it is to the everlasting credit of the sense and taste
of Denver people, that they have dotted the outer
margin of this rock wall with slab and log and shingle
cottages, built literally o.n the very backbone of the
continent overlooking such a stretch of cloud and
mountain and plain as I do not know of elsewhere
in the whole world. In Sundance Canon, South
Dakota, summer people have built ~n the bottom of
the gorge. Here, they are dwellers in the sky. //
Rugged pin€s cling to the cliff edge blasted and bare
and wind torn; but dauntlessly rooted in th.e everlast-
ing rocks. Little mini11g hamlets composed of match-
box houses cling to the face of the precipice like card-
boards stutk on a nail. Then, you have passed
through the clouds, and are above timb-er line; and a
lake l[...]ke a pool of pure turquoise; and
you twist round the flank of the great mountain, and
there is a pair of green lakes below you - emerald
jewels pendant from the neck of the old mountain
god; and with a bump and a rattle of the wheels,
clear ov,er the top of the Continental Divide you
go - believe me, a greate[...]ow,, or Alva's shambles of head-
less victims in the Netherlands.
, "l!ou take lunch in a snow shed on the very crest of
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (52)16 THE NATIONAL FORESTS

the Continental Divide. I wish you could taste the
air. It isn't air. It's champagne. It isn't cham-
pagne, it's the very elixir o.f life. There can never
be any shadows here; for there is noth.ing to cast the
shadow. Nightfall must wra.p the w0rld here in a
mantle of rest, irt a vespers of[...]d quiet,
in a crystal of dying chtysoprase above the green
enarneled lake and the fores ts below, looking like
moss1 and the pearl clouds, a sea of fire in the sunset,
and the plain - th,ere are no more plains - this is
the top of the world!
Yet it. is not alwa,ys a vesper quiet in the high
places. When I came back this way a week lat[...]ng as I have never seen in
'M anitoba or Alberta. The high spear grass tossed
before it like the waves of a sea; and the blasted
pines on the cliffs below - you knew why their roots
had take[...]p of tht! rocks like strong natures
in disasttr. The storm mig.h t break them. It could
n9t. bend tgem, nor wrench them from their roots.
The telegraph wires, for reasons that need not be told
ate laid flat on the ground up here.
When you cross, the Divide, you enter the National
Forests._ National Forests above tree l[...]pasturage for sheep from June to September;
and the National Forests administer the grazing

lands for the general use of all the public, instead of
permitting them to he monopolize·d by the big
rancher, who promptly drove the weaker man off by
cutting the throats of intruding flock:s and herds.

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (53) THE ~ATIONAL FORESTS 17
Then, the train is literally racing down hill- with
the trucks bumping heels like the wheels of a wagon
on a sluggi,s h team; and a new tang comes to the
ozone - the tang of resin, of healing balsam, of cin-
namon s[...]h.,
of spiced sunbeams an~ imprisoned fragrance - the
fragrance of tl1ousands upon thousands of years of
d ew and light, of pollen dust and ripe fruit cones;
the attar, not of Persian roses, but of the everlasting

pines.
T he train takes a s[...]nd an escarpment
of ~he mountain;- and you are in the Forests proper,
ser ried rank upon rank of the blue spruce and the
lodgepole pine. No longer spangles o-f light hitting
back frorn the rocks in sparks of fife I The light
here is sifte-cl pollen dust - polle.Q- dust, the pri-
mordial life principle 0f the tree - with the purple,
cinnamon-sce·n ted co11es hang,i ng from th6 gree-n arms
of the conifers like the chevrons, of an en.r anked
army; and the cones tell you so-mew hat of the serv-ice
as the chevrons do of the soldier man. Some coni-
fe rs hold their cones for a year before they send the
seed, whirling, swirling, broadside to the wind, aviat-
ing pixy parachutes, airy armaments for the conquest
of arid hills to new forest growtl:i, thou.g h the process
may take the trifli.hg reon of a thousand years or so.
At one season, when you come to the Forests, the air
is full of the yellow pollen o·f the conifers, gold dust
whose alchemy, could we but know it, would unlock
the secrets of life. At another season - the season
when l happe,n ed to be in the Colorado Forests - the[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (54)18 THE NATIONAL FORESTS
very atmosphere is alive with t[...]rships,
coni·f er seeds sailing browdsitle to ·the wind. You
know why they sail broadside, don't you? If they
dropped plumb like a st,one, the ground would be
seeded below the.hea,v.ily, shaded branches inches deep
in self-·choking, sunless seeds; but when th€ broadside
of the sail to the pixy's airship tacks to the v·eering •

wind, the seed. is -c.arried oat and away and far beyond
the area of the shaded branches-; to be eau.g ht up by
other counter currents of wind and hurled, perfiaps,
down the mountai11 side, destined to forest the naked
side of a cliff a thousand ·y e·a rs hence. It is a fact,
·too, worth remembering and crediting to the wiles
and ways o·f Dame N atute that 4,esttu·ction by' fire
tenets, but to free these conifer seeds from the co,nes;
so that they fall on the bare burn and grow slowly to
maturity• under the protecting nurse·r y of the tremu-
lous poplars and pulsing cottonwoo·ds.

The train has not gone very far in the National
Forests b©fore you see the sleek little Douglas squirrel
scurrying from br·anch to branch.. Etom the tremor
of his tiny body an.d the an.g ry chitter of his parted
teeth, you k-now he is swearing at you to the utmost
limit of his squirrel ( ?) language; but th.at is not
surp.rising. This little rodent of the evergreens is
the connoisseur of all conifers. He, and he alo,ne,
knows the best cones for reproductive seed. No
wonder he is so full of fire when you consider he
diets on the fruit of a the>t1sand y·e ars of sunlight and
dew; so when the ranger seeks seed to reforest the

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (55)

THE NATIONAL FORESTS 19

burned or scant slopes, he rifles the cache o·f this little
furred forester, who suspe[...]bery - robbery - sc - scur - r - there t
Then, the train bumps cind jars to a stop with a
groaning of br~kes on the steep down grade, for a
drink at the red water tank; and you 'd rop off the
high car st€ps with a gla,nce forward to se€ that the
baggage man is dropping. off your kit. The brakes
reverse. With a scrunch, the train is off again,
racing down ·hill, a blur of steamy vapor like a cloud
against the lower hills. Before the rear car has dis,.
appeared round the curve, you h<J-V€ been accoste'd
by a young man[...]ing '
a medal stamped with a pine tree - the ranger,
absurdly young when you consider each ranger
patrols and polices 100,000 ~cres compared to the

r,700 which French and Germ.an ~[...]ten times more
difficult than those confront'ing the Northw€st
Mounted Police, without the military authority which[...]d your pony - men and women
alike ride astride in the Wes.t ern States.[...].

its own accord up the bridle trail to the ranger's
house, in this case 9,000 feet above sea level, I ,ooo
feet above ordinary cloud line. The hammer of a
woodpecker, the scur of a rasping blue jay, th,e
twitter of some red bills, the soft thug of the tJnshod
broncho over the trail of forest mold, no other sound
unless the soul of the sea ftorn the wind harping in
the trees. Better than the jangle of city cars in that

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (56)stuffy hotel toom of the g r: ~itt estecl town, ·sn't
'tl
J. '
ti'

If the:re is snow on tbe peaks aho ., -, you fe l it in
the._ eqol sting of .he air. , . ou hear it ui the tr~bling
laughter, in ihe trills an : f 11s of the broe) . babblirtg
down,, sound s1oft.tnad, 1i'-_i[...]dl~nd wprld~ And
1

all the t me, ·yo have - ,e most absurd S'en&e of being[...]en eye anr,J
e · r · are aft11 d, yo,u will see the light reflected from
the pine ,needlc:s g istening like metal, .and. hear the
click of the same .n€J .-les li e fairy c ·stan·e ts 0f jo[...]len -ed sunbeams sp'ice d with th e in'.cep.se of the
1[...]_:s ; for yo u. -~'l.tt e.nte.ring a. ·tem.p:le, the
1 1 1

teJf1pJ e wher e our ·-f oreJf at -e s made_off~r'i .g, _ to the
1 11

goas al ,old - the teRJp,Je w·hi eh our modern churc res,[...]lly· and phy·sitall : 1

f.rom hreath:1--g, the d.usty street s,weep,in'§. S of :tilth and,
germs whic:h per neate the h"ved town~~ They will
not stay with you her.e.. Oth,_ r dtJ ti - it\ t _i·s -ir, the
golcl dust o.f' sunlight a.ncl -e.sin a-nd. ozone[...], and
h,reathe thri .he-aling, a·~ d lat1gh with the hitter' and[...]he
1

spirit of the ·.-_· oods ha fway? The -· , the wood ·_ will

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (57) CHAPTER II
AMONG THE NATIONAL FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST

OU have not ridden far towards the ranger's
ho1,_1se in th.e Forest bef9re you become aware
that clothing for town i$ not clothing for the
wilds. No matter how hot it may be at mld-day, in
this high, rare air a chill comes soon as the sun begins
to sink. To be comfortable, light flannels must be
worn next the skin, with an extra heavy coat avail-
able - never farther a,vay from yourself than the
pack straps. Night tnay overtake you on a hard
tt[...]ight 'does not matter. You are safer
benighted in the wilds than in New York or Chicago.
If you have camp fire and blanket, night in the wilds
knows nothing of the satyr-faced spirit of evil, sand-
bagger and yeggman, that stalks· the town. ·
To anyone u.s ed to travel in the wilderness, it seems
almost like little boys play[...]ections "3.~ to dress. Yet only a few
years ago,, the world was shocked and horrified by the
death of a town m an exploring the wilds; and that
death was directly traceable to a[...]y one pair of moc-
casins. I have never gone into the wilds for longer[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (58)[...]boots are
1

good onl , -hen the· · c·omb.-11e t o qual~,t ·e _ ,comf : t
a,n[...]1 ·, ·· ,_ l -sl, tio,o:the . ~ : chmbi1g ., a ,cl if . o· ,. ca ,1 .·· n[...]oe ·_ ,anti Celi ', >@y n·a and b ~>te _ co du o:the s,e asoil'ed
,_ ester11er _,eco,:-ni .- 1 es[...].

the and t o din -ry ou .i11 ·-. garments Q' any other
p.a rt o.f the ·~ lcl .a... e. t -.-- prime sent· -~-ls,[...]. pin ', eac ' · [lmer ·n , c for ,: t'S of the,[...],L- 1

-- o -~:s1 de the b ·g tre ou.n t . _ T -o no tch .:s and o e[...]re . ~J-. o.n,e1 .-

no ch anti cine b . ·ze, the · ail; .· t · he · had g 0 e o,[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (59)24 THE FORE'STS OI<"' THE SOUTHWEST
the trail trout fishing. '' I f they had been good path-
finders, they could nave found the way out by fol-
lowing the stream d_own., '' remarked a critic of this
littl[...]chair. How
about it, i·f when you came to follow the stream down,,
it cl).ahced to cut through ,a gorge you couldn't follow,
with such a sheer fil,11 of rock at the sjdes and such a
crisscross of big trees, house-high" that you were
driven back trom the stream a r.rtile or two? You
would ke€p yout di[...]gion is almost impervious to sun-
light; and when the fog blows in or the cle>uds blow
down thick as wool, you will need a pocket compass
to keep the faintest sense of direttiot1. Co.m pass
signs. of f otest-Iore fail here. There are few flowers
under the dense roofing to give yo·u sense of east OJl
west; and you look in v~in tor the moss sign 0'!'1 the
notth bark of the tree. All four sides ate heavily
mossed; and where the little Englishwoman lost her-
sel f, they were in fer:ns to their necks. ·
'' Weren't the kiddies a.fraid? '' I asked.
'' N0t a bit! Bob got the trout ready; and Son
ma'd e a big fii;e. We curled ourselves up round it for
the night; and I wish you could have seen the chil-
dren's delight when the clouds began to roll up below
in the morning. It was like a sea. The youhgsters
had never seen clouds take fire from the sun coming
up below. I want to tell you,, too, that. we put out
every s-p ark of that fire before we left in the morn-
ing.''
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (60)[...]hie~ co,11 · ,ey.s i _s own r;noral for the catnp er 1

1n the ., at· on.al · ·a.rests
It ought ·ot to b[...]1 1

at the -·a . g -r s h 0 -._ -e,. ·.• any of th e ra.[...]1

.m . rr·' d and h·a _, e a houseful o ; th.e·r o n.. Those.
1[...]tever ·for tak ng
_care of _·Ou, In my v1s1t to the V.asqne.z -orest, ·1
h.app', ni~d to ha .· - - letter of .·ntro .uc -!ion to the
rang<&r an•d his moth.,er, · ho toie,k -- e i[...]1

at th ._ station, where the tr- in sto ped1 was anot.h@r
.· er-- ~ elle'.n[...]y ·,o k din .- ·. r· to, sh1a~ - ·ll . o the tune
of ··. 1 o a · · -e . · · 0,[...]1

Fo,._ @s:-~· expec ~·~n.g the .railroads~ e the. r·a,nge :s,1, ,o.r
1[...]er yourself .
nd no-·_ that you ar,e in th.ethe playground 1-

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26 THE FORESTS OFT.PIE SOUTHWEST
for a nation; or yo[...]ntain
climbing; o.r you can go sightseeing in the most mar-
velously beautiful mounta.in scenery in the whole
world; or you Gan prowl round the prehistoric cave
and cliff dwellings of a ra.[...]yptian desert runner whose ,skeieton
1-ies in the B1·itish Museum marked. 20,000 B. C. It
isn't ev,ety day you can wander throu-g h the deserted

chambers of a k,ing's palace wit[...]es in Europe. I haven't heard of any
to visit the silent cities of the cliff and cave dwellers
on the Jemei Plateau of New Mexico, or tne Gila
Rive.r , Arizo·na, or even the ea~ily accessible de:ad
cities of forgotten peoples in the National F0:rest of
Sou,ther-11 Colorado. What race movement in the
first place sent the~e races perching their wonderful
tier-on-tier houses literally on the tip-top of the
world?
The pr-ehistoric remains of th'e Southwest are flow,
of course, under tqe jurisdiction of the Forestry De-
partment; and you can't g0 digging and delv.ing and
carrying relics from the .m iddea heaps and baked
earth'en flo,Jrs without the perm.ission of the Secretary
of Agriculture; but if you go in the spirit of an in-
vestigatqr, you will get that permission.

The question isn't what is there to d o. It is[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (62)[...]...

THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 27
to the National Forests, he stril<es for th e Holy Cross[...]ing suit and
indulge in a daily plunge in the hot pools at Glenwood
Springs. If the light is good and the season yet
early, you can still see the snow in the crevices of the
peak, giving the Forest its name of the Holy Cross.,
People say there is no histo[...]l go pn repeating it.
Take this matter of the '' Holy Cross'' nan1e. If
you go investig[...]you a hard
year's reading just to master the Sp:al'lish legends
alone. Then, if ,you div e into the realm of the cliff 1

dvvellers, ·you will be d1·own·ecl in historic antiquity
before you know. In the Glenwood Springs regio~,
you will not find the remnants 0£ prehistoric people;
but you'll find the hot springs.
Just two warnings: one as to hunting·; the other, a,s
to mountain climbing. There is[...]ts -bear, mountain sheep, elk, deer:;
and the ranger is supposed t© be a game warden; but[...]t Pike's
Peak - a dozen places, and e>nly the mountain
climber and his troglodyte cliff-climbing prototype
know the drunken, frenzied joy of climbing on the
roof of the earth and risking life and limb to stand[...]

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with the kingdoms of the world at your feet. But
unless you ai:e a trained climber, take a guicl·e with
you, or the advice ot some local tnan who knows the
tricks and the rnoods and the wiles and the w.ays of
the upper mountain world. L0.oking from the valley
-up to the pe-ak, a pateh of snow may seem no bigge-r
to you[...]f
it is steep b.eneath that '' table-cloth '' and the for est
shows a slope cl'ean-&w,ept of trees as b[...]b e careful hQW you crGss an.cl recross following
the zigzag trail that eo·tkscrews up below the, fat·
patch of white I I was crossing the Continental
Divide one summer i.n the West whe:n a woman on
the train pointed to a patch of white about ten miles
up the mountain slope and asked if '~ tha.t '' were
''[...]very large snow
field, inde.ed; that we saw only the forefoot of it hang~
ing over the eelge; that the upper part was supposed
to besom€ tw·enty mil[...]anias. A month later, when I
came back that way, the tr4in suddenly slowed up.
The slide h,acl come down and lay in white heaps
across the track three or four miles down into the
valley and up the other si,de. The tracks were safe
enough; for the snow sh,ed threw the slide over the
track on d,own the ,slope; but it bad caught a cluster
of lumbermeh[...]ternal sleep. '' We saw it coming,'' said
one of the survivors, '' and w·e thought we had plenty
of time. It must have been ten miles away. One
of the•men went in to get his wife. Before he c[...]
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THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 29

come out, it was on us. Man and wife and child were
carried down in the house just as it stood without
crushing a timber. It must have been the concussion
of the air - they weren't even bruised whe11 we dug
them out; but the kid couldn't eve11 have wakened up
where it lay in the bed; and the man hadn't reached
the inside room; but they' were dead, all three.''[...]in these moun-
tains; but it cat1ght him. We knew the Jt1ne heat
had loosened those u·p per fields; an[...]want him to go; but there was a man sick back up
the mountain; and he set out. They saw it c0ming;
but[...]ng am0,ng all good mountaineers that it's
'' only the fool who monkeys with a mountain,'' es-
pecially the m·ountain with a whi,te patch above a
clean-swept slope.
And there is another thing for the holiday player: in
the National Forests to do; and it is the thing that I
like best to do. You have been told[...]o believe it -that our mountains in
America lack. the human inte,r ests; lack the picturesque
ch.a racter and race types dotting the Alps, fot instance.
Don't you believe it![...]

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simply its lover of God's Great Outdoors and Peace
and Big Si.lence, living near t@ the Gocl of thethe stars can
bripg him. Wild creatµres of woodl[...]l. You have t0 hunt out
their sec:ret haunts. The same with these Western
mountaineers. Hunt them 9ut; but do it with rever-
ence! I was driving in the Gunnison country with a
local magnate two yea.r s ago. We s.a w again.st the
far skyline a cleft like the arched entrance to a cave;
only t his arcl1 led through the rock to thethe high
country above these battlements and palisades. See
that hole, in the mountain? ''
'' Rough Upper Alpin€. mea[...]r no 1 Open parl{ cot1.ntry with lakes an·a
th.e best of fishing. It t1secl to b,e an alm0st impos[...]has been a hermit •
fellow there for the la$t ten yea·r$, living in his cabin
and hu[...]oes it, h,e says it's to lead people up;
for the glory of God and that sort o.f thing. O.f
-course, the people in the valley think him crazy.''
Gf course., they do. What would we, who love the
valley and its dust and its maniacal jabbei-[...], building trails to lead p€ople up to
see the Glor-y of God? We call those hill~crest dwell-
ers the troglodytes. Is it not we, who are the earth
dwellers, the dust eaters, the insects of t he city ant[...]
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THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 3r
heaps~ the true troglodytes and stihsoilers of the sordid
iniquities? Perhaps, by tl1is, yot1 think there are some
things to do if you go 011t to the National Forests.

Y 6u have been told so often that the National For-
ests lock l:lp timber from use that it comes as a
surprise as you ride up the woodland trail to 'h ear the
song of the crosscut saw and the buzzing htlm of a
mill- perhaps a dt)'ten mil[...]his National Fo1·est. Heaps of sawdi1st emit
the odors of imprisoned flo,vers. Piles of logs lie on
all sides stamped at the end U. S.-timbet sold on tl1e
stump to any lumberman and sc.iled as inspect€d by
the ranget and paid b)' the buyer. To be sure, the
lumberman ca11not have the lumber for nothing; and
it was fo-r nothing that the Fo.rests were seized and
cut under the old regime.
How was the S'poliation effected? Two or three
ways. The law of the public domain used to pe;rmit
burn and windfa[...]en, pt1rely a.ccidentally, you under-
stanEl, the fire sprang up and swept the entire slope •

of g.reen forctst awa[...]harm
than fire in a slow wind in dry weather. The slope

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would be left a sweep of des@late bu[...],
hundreds of thousands, millions G·f actes of' the public
dotnain, wet€ rifled £tee fru1n the _public in this way.
If challenged, I could give the .names of men wh.o be-
cam€ millionaires by 1umbering ia this manner.
That was the. principle of C@ngress when it with-
drew frt1tn public 'domain these vast wooded areas and
created the National Forests to include grazing and
woodlahd not ptope.r ly 4 dministered under public do-
'main. The making of w·indfall to take it free was
stopped. The ranger's job is to prevent fires. Also
he permits the cutting of only ripe, full-grown trees,
or dea'd[...]stunted by cro·w ding; and all
timber sold off the forests must be marked for cut-
ting an·d stamped by the ranger.
But the old spirit assumes prote.an forms.. The
latt st way of working the old trick is through the
homestead law. You have been told that homestead-
ers cannot go in on the National Forests. Yet there,
as you tide along the trail, is a cleared space of 160
acres where a S[...]d her boys are mak-
ing hay; and inquiry elicits the fact that millions of
aeres are yearly hom,esteadecl in the National Forests.
Just as fa's t as they can be surveyed, all farming lands
'in the National Forests are open€d to the home-
stead·er. Where, then, is the, trick? Your farmer
man comes in for a homestead and he picks out r 60
acres where the growth of big trees is so dense they
will[...]

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quarter section. Good I Hasn't the homesteader a
ri,g ht to this profit? He cert.a.inly has, if he gets the
profit; but supposing he doesn't cl€ar more tha[...]ound his cabin, and hasn't a cent of
money to pay the heavy expe,nse of clearing the rest,
and sells out at the end of his homesteading for a few
hundred dollars[...]or a
grabbing o,f timber for a lumbe.r trust?
The same spirit e~plains the furious outcry that
miners ,a re driven off the National Forest land.
Wherever there is genuine m[...]g smelting trust - a merry game worked in one
the vVestern States for several years till the rang-

ers pt1t a stop to 1t.
To build roa"d s through an empire the size of Ger-
many vvbt1ld require larger revenues than the Forests
yet afford; so the experiment is being tried of permit-
ting lumbermen to take the timber free from the
Sp.a ce occupied by a road for the building of the road.
\i\Then yo11 consider that you can drive a span of horses
throt1gh the width of a big conifer, or build a cottage[...]
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Presently, your pony tu1~ns up a by-path. You are
at the ranger's cabin,- pic_turesque to a degree, built[...]or timbers, with slab sides scrap.ed down
to the cinnamon brown, nailed on the hewn wood.
l\!Iany an Eastern country house b[...]ion, or prairie home
resembling nothi;_n g in the world so much as an ugly
packing bo:X,. tni~ht imitate the arcl:1itecture of the
ranger's cabin to the infinite imptove·m ent of appear-[...]ropriateness.
Appropriate11ess I That is' the word. It is a for-
est w9rld; and the ranger tun66· the style of his house
to the trees arou11d him: log walls, log partitions, log[...]o.r en.tra11ce steps. In several cases,
where the cabin had been built of square· hewn timber
with tar paper lining, slabs scraped of the loos·e bark
had been nailed diagonally 011 the outside; and a tnpre
suitable finish to a woo[...]1ld hardly be
d-e vised- surely liletter than the weatl1ered br@wns
and dirty drabs and peeling white-s that you see
defacing the a v©rage fronti~r h9me. Na tu rally
enough,[...]t1ildin.g c;ottages ets play places
have been the first to in1itate this woodsy architecture.
You see the slab-sided, ci.nnamon,-barked cottages
among the city folk who come West to play, and in
the lodges of huntin,g clubs far East as the Great
Lakes·. Personally I should Ii.k e to .see the contagion
spread to the farthest East of city people who are
fleeing the cares of tow·n, '' back to tl1e ·1 and; '' but
when there are taken to the country all the cares of[...]
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the city house, a regiment of servants or hostiles, a[...]n of grandeur demanding such care, it seems
to me the city man is carrying the woes that he flees
'' back to the farm.''
What sort of men are these young fellows living
halfv,ray between heaven and earth on the lonely for-
ested ridges' whose nearest neighbors are the snow
peaks? Each, as stated. previot1sly, patrols[...]ne i11spector, field man on homestead jobs
inside the limits, tree doctor, nurseryman~ When
you conside[...]bany, or from St. Paul to Duluth, witho11t ahy of the
inaccuracy with which a specialist loves to charge the
layman, you may say ·the ranger is a pre.tty busy man.
What sort of tnan is he? Very much the same
type as the Canadian Northwest l\'Iounted Policeman,
witl1 th[...]er. I
think there is a r·e gulation somewhere in the Depart-
ment that a new man older th an forty'-fi[...]0

taken. This insures enthusiasm, weeding out the n1is-
fits, the formation of a body of men trained to the
work; but I am not sure th.at it is not a mistake.
There is a saying among the men of the North that
'' it takes a wise old dog to catch a wary. old wolf; ''
and '' there are: more things in the woods than ever

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taught in l'pe'tee cat- ee - cheesm.'' I am not sute
'that the weathered old dogs, wh9se catechism has been
the woods and tl1e worslcl-, with lots of hard knocks[...]fitted to oope with some of tne dillicul-
ties of the rapger's life tl1an a double-barrel~d post-
graduate from Yale or Biltmore. So much depends
on fist,, and the br ain be,hind th.e fist. I a·m quite sur-e
that m.ahy of the blackgu-a rd tricks assailing tlre F ot-
est Service w·ould slink back to unlighted lairs if the
tricksters had to. deal not with the boys of Eastern
colleges, gentlemen alway,s, but[...]w; but it
would be -a fterwards. Just. nQw, while the rangers
are consulting the red tape, the trickster gets away
with the. goods.
In the mext place,, your For·e st ranger is .n ot clothed
with ·t he authority to back up his· fight which the N.W.
M.P. mah possesses. In theory, your ranger[...]unted Police-
man is a cons.table and justice o;f the p.eace; but when
it comes· to practice, w.h ere the N.W.M.P. has a free
hand on the instant, on the spot, to -a rrest, try, con-
vict and imprison, the Forest ranger is ham.strung
and hampered by offic[...]irate
mill man who opened out a. fusillade in all the pro-
fanity his to.n gue could borrow. The ranger turned
toward me -aghast.[...]

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I want t[...]ldoze a young gov-ernment man int0 believing
that the taking of logs without payment tvas permis-
sible[...]ll out?'' I
asked.
'' Lay a stateli1€nt .of the facts before th@ District
Supervisor. The Super,t.isor will forward all to Den-
ver.. Denver will corm.municate with Washington.
The.n, soon as the thing has been inv€"Stigated,. word
will c0me b[...]top t:h·e clock,
as Jos·h ua played tricks with the sun dial, to prevent
speed.
'' Then, it•'s[...]t? '' I ask·ed.
'' Perhaps lon.g er, '' said the college tnan without a
suspicion of irony, '' and[...]us trouble this-
way ever since he has co.m e to the F qrests. ''
'' And will continue to give you trouble till the law
gives you a free hand to put such blackguards[...]be good.''
'' Yes, that's right. Th.is isn't the first time men
hav·e tried to get away wi[...]

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to them. Once, when I earn~ back to the first Forest
where I served, there was a whal[...]g&
stamped U. S. that we had never scaled. By the
time we could _g et word back from Washington, the.
guilty party ha(! left the State and blame had been
s.hu11ted round on[...]t1'1ose logs.''
It is a common saying in the.Northwest that it takes
eigµt years to make a. go.-0d Mounted Policen1an -
eight years to jou,nce' the·. cluff er out and the mah in;
b-u t in the Forest Service, men ov.et fotty-fiv,e a:te not.
taJ{e11. For meh vvho serve UI} to forty-fiv·e, the in-
ducements 0£ sali.r·y· begin11irtg at[...]h&t suffi.eie.n t to retain
tested veterans. The big lumbet cotnpa11ies w'ill pay
~ tra.i11ed f.o rester more for the $ame work on pri-
va,tely owned timbe;r limits•; so the rangers remain
f·o r the most p.art young. 'VVould the same difficul-
ties ris.e if wise oltl dogs w[...]ardly
tl1ink so.

What manner of man i~ th.e ranger? As we .sat
round th'e little parlor of the 'cabin that nig,h t •in the
Vasquez. For~st, a11 army mart turned foreste[...]tte as he .gazed at his o·wn fancies
through the mica glow of the coal stove. A Denver
boy, whose mother kept ho•use in the cabin, W•as chief

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ranger. In the group was h,is sister,. a teacher in the
village school; and I fancy i:n.o st of the ranger homes
present pretty much the same types, thou.g h one does
not ordinarily expe[...]trains of grand opera
above cloud-liae·. Picture the m~,n dressed in sage-
green Norfolk suits; and yo[...]•
Scott ever painted of the men i11 Lincoln green in
Englamd's borderland for[...]e are traitors and spies an·d Judas
Iscariots in the Service with lip loyalty to public wti!al
and one[...]silver to
betray self-gov,e rnment; b1..1t under the pres·ent regime,
such men are not kept wl1e11 fo[...]rs 1 tl'ie world h as
been ringing with praise of the Northwest Moupted
Police; but tl1e red-coat men have serve'd their clay;
ancl the extension of Provincial Governtnctnt will prac-
tically disband the force in a few y€·ars. Right now,
iI'l the. American West, is a similar picturesque body
of[...]stant fire of slande;tous
mendacity set g0i11g by the thieves and g.rafte,r s whose
ga.me 0f spoliation has been stopped. L et spread-
eagleism look at the figures an'd ponder them, ahd
never f or,g et the[...]them,
when charges are b€ing hurled a•g ainst the Forest
rangers I In the single fire of I(J09 more rangers
lost their lives •than M oit1ited Policemen have died .in
the Ser-vice since I 870, when the force was orga1i~
i:zed.[...]
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vV~s it Nietzsc·he, or Haeckel,[...]ipping from vegetable to animal kil'lg-
dom; the, animal gradin,g up to man; man stretch.ing
his neck to become - what? - is it spirit, the being
of a future world? The tadpole striving for legs and .
wings, till in the course of the centuries it developed
both. The flower flauntin.g its beauty to attract bee[...]e a species- that shall s,u r-
pas.s itself. The tree tryjng to encompass and over-
come the law of its own being - fixity ----- by sending
its see·ds sailing, whivlin.g, aviating the seas of the
air, with wintl fo_t pilot to far distant cl[...]un-washed morning in a ride or
walk throug.h the Nati@nal Forests. You thought
'the tree was an inanimate thing, didrf'·t you? Yet you
find John Muit ahd .D ante clasping hands across the
centuries in agreement tha.t the tree is a living, sensate
th.ing, se·nsate almost as you are; with its se.ven ages
like the sev,en ages of man; with the same ceaseless
1
struggle to survive, t[...]s,
drawing life and strength straig;ht from the sun.
The storm wind ramps through its thrashing
bran[...]do you suppose it is doing? Pre-
,cisely what the storm winds of adversity do to you
~ and me: blowing down the dead leaves, snapping off
the dead branches, making us take tighter hold on the
verities of the eter_nal rocks, teaching us to anchor on

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THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 41
facts, not fictions, destroying our[...]prove our right to be
fit to survive. Woe betide the tree with rotten heart
,vood or mushy anchorage ! You s.ee its fate with
upturned roots still sticky with the useless muck. Not
so different from us humans with mushy creeds that
ean't stand fast ajainst the shocks of life t
You say all this is so much symbolism; but when
the First Great Cause made the tre,e as· well as the
man, is it surprising that the same laws of life .should
govern both? It is the torester, not the symbolist,
who divides the life of the tree into seven ages; just
as it is the poet, net the philosopher, who divides the,
life of man in sev€n ages ;' and it needs n0 Maetet-
linck, or Haeckel, to trace the similarity between the
seven ages. Seedling, sapling, large s{1pling, pole,
large pole 1 standard and set- marking the ages. of
t.he trees - all have the.ir protetypes in the human.
The seedling can grow only u.n der the protecting nurs-
ery of earth, air, moiseur~ and in some cases the shade
ot other tr'ees. ·The youn.g conifers, for instance,
grow best under the protecting nursery o.f poplars
and cottonwoods, as one sees wh·e re the fire has run,
and the qvitk gro,vers are already shading the shy
evergreens. And there is the same infant mortality
a1nong the youhg trees as in human life. To.o much
shade, fire,. drought, passing hoof, disea~e, blight,
weeds out the weaklings up to adolescence. Then,
the real business of living begins - it is a struggle,
a race, a constant contention for the top, fo·r the sun-
light and air arid peace at the top; and many a grand[...]

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old tree reache.s the top only when ripe for death.
Others live on their three scote years and ten, their
centuries, and in the case of the sugar pines aud se-
quoias, their decades of centuries. First comes the
self-pruning, the branches -shaded by their neighbors
dying and dro[...]rms, of strength against ·strengtp., there is in the
storm wind, every wr~nch tightening grip to the rocks,
some trees €Ven sending dow.n extr.a roots like guy
ropes for anchorhold, The tree unctowded by its
fellows $hoots up straight[...]es spelling its years in a century
c.ensus. It is the crowded trees that show their al-
most human craf[...]or shaded , twist-
ing and bending, ever seeking the lig_h t, and sp.r ead-
ing 9ut only· wh:en they reach room £or shoulder swing
at the toR, with su·ch a mecha.nism of pumpin,g 1na-
c.[...]1oist barrels of water up £rom secret
springs in the earth as man has not devised for his
own use. Arid now, when the crown has widened
out to stµi and air, it stpps[...]es' and canoes and s~ils,
and wings, to overcome the law of its own fixity -
life striving to surpass itself, as the symbolists and the
scientists s-ay, though ·symbolist and sci,e nt[...]'s hearls if you suggested that they
both preach the very same thing.
And a lost tree is like a lost lif·e ; utter l0ss, boot-
less waste, You see it i11 the bleached skeleton spars
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (78) THE FORESTS OJ:.· THE SOUTHWEST 43
of the dead forest where the burn has run. You see
it where the wasteful lumberman has come cutting
half-growns[...]four feet high with piles o-f dry slash to carry the
first chance spark. ·T he leaf 1itte.r here would have
enriched the soil and the waste slash would keep the
poor of an Eastern city in fuel. Once, at a public
meeting, I happened to m·ention the range·r ' s rule that
stumps must be cut no higher than eighiteen inches, and.
. the fact that. in the big tree region of the Rocky
Mountains many stumps a-re left three and four feet
high. Someone took smiling exc~ption to the height .
of those stumps. Yet in the redwood and Douglas
fir country stump,s are cut[...]s besides ourselves; and they
were residents of the mountain. I thought of those
h0tels back in the cities daily turning away health
seekers.
,t How is it you haven't more people here, when

the cities can't take care of all the people who come?''
I asked the woman of tl1e house.
'' People don't seem to know about the National
Forests,'' she said. '' They think the forests are
only places for ltJmber a11d[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (79) CHAPTER III
THROUGH THE PE.COS NATIONAL FORESTS OF NEW[...]re
you can cook an egg by laying it on the sand
any day in the year., winter or summer. Yet when I
went into the Pecos National Forest, I put on the
heaviest flan·nels I have ever worn in n.o rther[...]dequate~ We were
blocked l?y four feet of snow on the trail; and one
morning I bad to break the ice in my bedroom pitcher
to get washing water. To be sure, it is hot enough in
New Mexico at all seasons of the year; and you can
cook that egg all right it you keep dow·n 011 the desert
sands of the southern lowlands and mesas; but New
Mexico isn't[...]'ll firrd your egg in cold storage if you go into the
different National Forests, for mgst of them lie above
an altitude of 8,000 feet; and at th·e headwaters of
the Pecos, you are between 10,000 ancl 1,3,000 feet
high, according as you catnp on Baldy Pecos, or the
Truchas, or Gra.ss Mountain, or in Horse-Thief
Canon.
There are· several other. ways· in which the Na-
, 44
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (80) THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 45
tional Fo[...]of all, they are cheap;, and that is not true of
the majority of trips through the vVest. Ordinar.il'y,
it costs more to take a trip to the wilds of the West
than to go to Europe. ,v11at with enormous d[...]than to San Fran-
cisco; but this is not true of the Forests of New Mex-
ico. Prices have no t yet been jacked up to '' all the
traffic will stand.'' The constant half-hour leak of
tips at eveFy tur.n is unknown. I f yGu gave a tip to
any of the ranch people who take care of you in the
National Forests of 'Mexico, the chances are they
would hand it back, leaving you a good deal stnaller
than you feel when you run the gauntlet of forty
servitors lined up in a C-0ntin[...]·., In
letters of gold, let it be written across th.e face of the
heavens - There is still a no-tifJ, land. As pric[...]ico, you can literally take a
holiday cheaper i11 the National Forests than you can
stay at home. Once you have reached the getting
off place from the transcontinental railroad, it will cost
you t.o go into the Forests $4 an hour by motor, and
the roads are good enough to make a long trip fast.
I n fact, you can set do,vn the cost of going in and out
at not less tha11[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (81) 46 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS
weeks' holicl~y. To ·_ ent a hm -. s ·by the month w~ould
probably not co t $,20. Set . our[...]at : ~ - ·. -. Jtere will you go? All ·_ hrough the
_ atu:mal For,i,eSts of New Mexico ar,e ranch h[...]1

with :a w~sh bas·· - at the 'back doo·r · and a to le·r towel
·that has[...]11 long
1

pas,. e,d i.n the ra ches o,f . · ew . ·. c•e ico. The c· ances[...]1

will loo · 0t1t either on the litt c co,u · tya.r d in the cen-
1

ter, o· from th,c pia·~za ,out~j1d e do .n the , alleys; and
some her ·. alo · g the. co,urtyar· · or pi tzza f:ac~ng the
v:a ·1,ey , ~i 1 be a modern bathroom ~-th h,o[...]1

water'. The d n:n.g- oom and ti _, 1,.ng-roo· · i]l be
after the tyle of th e old. Fr,·. ncisc · n ission[...]ecture th,~,t omina tes all t.-e arcl1itectu _ of th.e
South ·est - -c,on,·ca arcb es. ,o,peni :_g[...]r e .h,a fwaJ u.p ; and this is. lfj~ all od d.s: the. be.st type
1 1

of room £0~ the health seeker . ho goes to • ew ··. ex-
Jc[...]hou ing ·elos e to1.n ··igl1bors In factt·, the number of
heal h _~ket s living in: ~1c[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (82)[...]-
ger to ordinary comers seeking a holiday in the Na-
tional Forests. On the .o ther hand, there is no hard-
ship worked on the invalid. For a sum varying from •[...]p:1ade for send-
ing in meals~ .
The next surprise about the National Forests of
New Mexico is the excellence of roads· and trails.
You can go into the very heart of most of the Forests
by motor, of all of the Forests by team (be sure to
hire a strong wagon) ; and you can ride almost to the
last lap of the highest peaks along bridle trails that
are easy to the veriest beginner. In the Pecos Forest
are five or six hundred miles of suel1 trails cut by the
rangers as their p,atrol route; and New Mexit[...]een cuttin.g a graded wagon road
clear acr9ss the ridges of two mountain ranges, a
great scenic[...]to ten thousand feet above sea level.. One
of the most marvelous roads in the world it will be
when it is finished, slcirting inaccessible ca.iions, shy
Alpfn€ lakes and the eternal snows all through such
a forest of huge mast pole yellow pine as might be
the park domain of some old baronial lord on the
Rhine. This road is now built halfway from each
end. I t is not clear of snow at the highest points
till well on to the end of May; but you can enter the
P ecos at any season at right anglgs to this road, go-
ing up the canon from south to north.
T he great surprise in the National Forests of New

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (83)~8 THROUGH THE PECOS FOR,ESTS
Mexico is the gr-eat plenitude of game; and I suppose
the Pecos of New Me:xic0 and the vVhite Mountains
of Arizona are the only seetions of America of which
this c,a n still be said. In two hours, you can pull out
of the Pecos more trqut {,_cyan yo.u r entire cam·p can[...]ll so frequent that
they constitute a pe.ril to the deer, and the Forest
S~rv,ice actually needs hunters to clear them out for
p,reservation ef the turkey and deer. As for bear,
as many as eight have been trapped in three weeks
oh the Sangre de Christo Range. In one of the
canons forking o.ff the P0cos at right angles, twenty-
six wer·e trappe[...]of New Mexico are
second in grandeur to none in the world. l?eople here
'h ave not caught the climbing rna:n ia yet; that will
come. But there[...]t
1

awaiting the conq,ueror, an·d the scenery of the Upper
Pe·cos might be a s.ection of· the Alps or Canadian
Rockies set bodily clown in New[...]ew York or
Washington, which seems to prove that the N.ational
Forests are as much a possession to the East as to the
West.
You can strike into the Pecos in one of three ways:
by Santa Fe, by Las Vegas, or by Glori eta, all on the

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (84)[...]•

THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 49.
main line of the railroad. I entered by way of Glori-
eta because snow still packed the upper portions of the
scenic highway from Santa Fe and Las Vegas. As
the train pants up over the arid hills, 6,000, 7,000,
7,500 feet, you would n[...]st behind
these knolls of scrub pine and juniper, the foothills
rolling back to the mountains, whose snow peaks you
can see on the blue horizon, present a heavy growth
of park-like[...]-r and Engelmann sp,ruee. Ten years ago, be-
fore the P ec0s was taken in the National Forests,
goats and sheep ate these· young pine seedlings down
to the ground; but of late, herds have been permitted
only where the seedlings have made headway enough
to resist tram[...]and thrifty
as if set out by nurserymen. I n all, the Pecos Forest
includes some 750,000 acres; and in addition to nat-
ural .seeding, the Forest men are yearly harrowing in
five or six hu[...]re
densely wooded than in its primeval state.
The train dumps you off at Glorieta, a little adobe
Mexican town hedged in by the arid foothills, with
ten-acre farm patches along the valley stream, of won-
derfully rich soil, every acre under the ditch, a home-
made system of irrigatio11 which dates back to I ndian
days when the Spanish first came in the fifteen hun-
dreds and found the same little checkerboard farm

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (85)r50 THROlJGH THE PECOS FORESTS

patches under the same primitive ditch system. N,
glance tells you[...]·a re
goat ranches,. Tlie goats scrabble up over the hills;
and on the valley frelcls the fa:rm€r taises corn and
oats en@ugh to support his family antl his stock. We,
in the Ea.st, who pay from $17 5 to $250 for a hors·e,[...]€at
at $a a sheep. To be sure, this mean-s that the peon
Mexiea.n farmer does not wax opulent, but he[...]k€d up three
centuries ago and set down here in the wiltl-erness' of
New Mexico, with a s,prinkliv,g[...]ndescripts seeking doors
in and out of .mischief. The children in bright red
and blue prints playing out squat in tn.e frttsh-plowed
furrows, the women with red s-hawls over heaqs,
brighter skirt-s· tucked up, spra\vling round the ad0be
house 'doorways, the goats bleatin,g on the red, sand
hills - all complete the illusion th~t you have waked
up in sorpe pictures[...]Spain. What
Quebec is to Canada, New Mexico is to the United
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (86) THROUGH THE PE,COS FORESTS 51
States - a mosaic in color; a bit of the Old World
set down in the New; a relic of tl1e historic and the
picture,Sgue nqt yet sa;ndpapered into the commo11-
place by tpe friction o,f progress and d[...]folk ,a re happy just to
be alive, undisturbed by the '' over-Weaning -a mbition
that over-vaulteth its[...]n socia,l envy
and class hate. '' Qur peop]e, h0, the,y are not am-
bish r '' said an old 'M exican to[...],'' pointing to all
his own earthly belongings in the Jittle whitewashed
adobe room, '' and now I will[...]' Mighty goo'1, '' though I w,a s not thinking of the
poem. I was. thinking of the 'spirit that is contented
enough to see p.o etry i.n · the great white mountains
th,r ough the door ol a little whitewashed adobe roo111 ;
and i[...]donned an old milita,.ry
cap€, and came out in the sunlight to have me ph,oto-
graph him, so that hi[...]have decide'd whic'h
of them.any ranch houses in the Pecos Fo rest you will[...]hl;\ve not decided, a fe:w words of
inquiry with the station age,nt or a Forest Service man
wil[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (87)[...]1

perh , s sh ·ul : .plain.. The custom o i ·a ing
str ·11 et s has aris ·n[...]1

but luc .~.1.Iy for o ,_tsi de -, the ,c, _. s .om sur ~,-.. s,:: o,.- y re- ~[...]any disco d o,f ner· es u.ntun :: d b·_·,. the j'ar of to·wn[...]ing: th· : f .· r _st g 0 · h thick _._ . in . the lit-
1

tl c·heckerb _· r . f , lrms takin_g n more a ;: d ~ore the
·appe.a r,.ance of _tt e -.,e -t th,· n o the de i _ .,. hich
the, ,ra1: r,oads trave: Pr .sentl ·,[...]lo"-g, ]ow,, ~, hit e ··- sh ed ~. rich hous.e, th.e _ ,o end$[...]1 1

.· oming b nck in an L roL1 · d the co·u,rt, the main e .~
1[...]1

trrance 0n the oth _r _- i de of' i . You expected to find[...]late· t mutic~II r,- e,qrd .,
arnd close by the d ··, _npoo rt . here ha.ng · a grizzly, a,i,[...]1:

ranch b ell h _ng o the· ~1 - tz, . after h,- I _ .~ion of
1

the · _- -~- ion -.
·. fr r dinne , you o ovet to the S . ,r iso 's office
for - :cl· ice o . o-~n _ u , the (: ·n.on. -·c >,, ic~-11 ·[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (88)S4 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS
watching the sunset through the colored windows and
dreaming of· the dev.otees whose ideals had been built
into th·e stones of these qu.iet walls.
Three miles lower down the valley is a still older
church built in - well, they tell you all the way from
I 548 and I 600 to I 7-00. I dare say the middle date
i's the nearest right. At all events, the bronze bell
of this old ru'in dated before 1700; and when prepara-
tions were under way for the Chicago World's Fair,
these old Mission bells were so much in demand that
the prices went: up to $500; and the M -exicans of Pe-
cos were so fearful of tl\e des[...]arried this ancient bell away and buri·e d it in the
mountains - where, ao man knows: it has never since
been found. You have been told so often that the
mountai11s of America lack human artd historic in[...]abov@ sea level, ancl much of it o.n t:he
top of the snow peaks between ten and thirteeh thou-
sand fe[...]At eight o'clock Tuesday, April I 8, I set out up the
canon with a span of stout, heavy horses, an exce[...]know mountain
travel, I do not need to· describe the trails up Pecos
Caiion. I conside,r it a safer ro[...]it so. It
isn't a trail for a motor car., th0ugh the, scenic high-
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (89) THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 55
way cutting[...]it is
finished; and it is11't a trail for a fool. The pedes-
trian who jumps forward ,and then back in[...]ersaults
down this trail if trying experiments in the way of
jumping. The trail is just the width of the wagon,
and it clings to the mou.ntain side above the brawling
waters in Pecos Canon, now d©wn on a level with the
torrent, now high up edging round ramparts of rock
sheer as a wall. You load your wagon the heavier
on the inner side both going and coming; and you sit
with your weight on the inner ,side; and the driver
keeps the brakes pretty well jamm.e d dow·n on sharp
in-curves and the h·orses headed close in to the wall.
vVith eare, there is no danger whatever. Lumber
tean1s traverse the road every day~ With careless-
ness - well, last summer .a rig and sp.a n and four oc-
cup~nts went over the edge p.ead first: nobody hurt,
as the steep slope is heavily wooded and you can't
slide far.
Ranch after ranch you pass with the little portable
houses for '' the tent dwellers; '' and let it be empha-
sized that[...]Cabins and camps
of city people from Texas, from the Pacific Coast,
from Europe, dot the level knolls where the big pines
stand like sentinels, and the rocks shade from wind
and heat, and the eddying brook encircles natural lawn
in trout 'pools and miniature waterfalls. Wherever
the canon widens to little fields, the Mexican farmer's
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (90)56 THROUGH THE PEco·s FORESTS
adobe hut stands b-y the roadside \Vith an intake ditch
to irrigate the farm. The road cor,k-screws up and
up, in and out1, round rock flank and rampart and bat-
tlement, where the cafion fork's to right and le-ft up
other forested canons, many of wbJch, save for the
hunter, have never known huma.n tread. Straight
ahead north there, as you d·bclge re>und the rocky
abutments crisscrossing the stream at a doze·n fords,
loom w_alls and dotnes of snaw, Baldy Pecos, a great
ridge o.f white, the two Truchas Peaks, going up i.n
sharp summits. The roacl is called twenty miles as
the cr·o w flie..s; but this is not a trail as the crow flies.
You are zigzagging back on ybur own t[...]ere fs n0 lje as bi,g as t.he length of a
mile in the mou.n tains, especially when th:e wheels go
over stones half their own size. Where the sn@'W
peaks re~tr their summits is the head of Pecos Caiion
- a sort of snow top to the. sides of a triangle, the
Santa Fe R.ange shutting off the left on the west, the
Las Vegas or San,g re de Christo Mountains walling
in the tight on th~ east. I know of nothing like it
for grandeur i,n A.niei:ica except the Rockies round[...]n Canada.
I had pt1t on heaviest flann·els in the n1orning; a11d
no\v donned i11 addition a co·,vboy slicker and was cold
- this ln a lflnd where the Ea.s terner thinks you can
sizzJe eggs by laying them on the sand. An old Mex-
ican jumps i11to the front seat with tl1e driv,er near a
deserted mining camp, and the two sing snatches of
Spanish songs as_we ascend the ca.n on. Promptly at
twelv·e , Toma.s o turns back and asks me the time.
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (91)[...]1

w -· ,iso.r 's Ran,ch marks the end of ·the Rg'O n ro· d
up _he canon., From thi · po i[...]1

f 00 t or horseb, ck; an.d though th.e s,iow p ; ,aks see;m
1 1

to , all in the no rtb, ·the . are really fifteen ·. ile .-. away[...]1

· p to the r ·ght, above a grove of white aspens
str-"a[...]1

Gr·ass Mounta·n. We zigz.ag up the Iaby s itchback
tral ' pa t he ran.g r s log[...]hunting lod :
of so·me Texas club, thro ugh the fenc ed ra:nch field's[...]1

other impo r'• a; --t. f'eature of the '' ten.t ,dw 11 ._ r,s ,,, in 1[...]. _._ e ico. T.be ,,e i ·. _,othing wo.rs e for th.e Con-
•••
1[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (92)58 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS
almost ideal for recovery; and tha[...]g light farming, ranching, or
fruit growing with the s·ea.rch for health. We passed
the invalid's camp chair on this ranch where'' brqnch[...]lookout station for
fires on tl1e- Upper Pecos. The W?rld literally lies
at your feet. Y oq have al.l the e;xaltation of the
mountain climber without the travail and, labor; for
the rangers have cut an easy trail up the ridge; ancl

you stand with the snow wall o·f the peaks on y0ur
north, the crumpled, purpling masses of the Santa Fe
Range across the Pecos Canon, and the whole Pecos
Valley "below you. Not a fire c~n start u·p f OJ: a. hun-
dred miles but the mushroom cone of smoke is visible
from Grass MoiJ,ntain. and the rangers spur to the
work of ptJfting the fire out. Tho~gh thou.s ands of
outsiders· carn[...]ar,
not $ 50 loss has occurred through fire; and the fire
patrol costs less than $4 7 a year. The'' why'' of this
compared to the fire-swept regions of Idaho is simply
.a matter of trails. The. rangers have cut five or six
hundre-d miles of trails all throug~ the Pecos, along
which they can spur at brea~eck speed to put out
fires. In Ida,ho and Washington, th,anks to the petty
spites O't local congr-essmen and senators, the Service
has been so crippled by lack of funcls t[...]eavy Northwest timber;
and men cannot get out on the ground soon enough to
stop the fire w·hile it is small. So harslily has the
small-minded policy of penuriousness reacted on the[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (93)[...]HRO .·GH Tf.lE PECOS FORES S l9
Service in the .· ·. . Orthwest th•· t la.st year the ra. gers
ha d to take up a subscription amo.nrg them elv s to
1

bury the men who peri .· hed fighting fir~. Pe .os Serv-[...]e an·d in,c-endia-
1

ristn in the old days·; bllt that 1s a sto y long_past; a:nd[...]4o to preven~ fires·
We walk.ed. a croS's the almost flat table of Gras.s[...]unt in and lo,ok~d. down t~e e,ast .s,id€ into. the Las
ega.s Cano, . Four ieet cJ'£ now still clung to the
east .sid.€ of Grass, Moqntain, al~ost a, straigh.t pre:ci-
·p1ice; n,d ac·ross thethe
Sa · · gre de Cbri to . ange. A pretty legend[...]hristo R,ange ; ·and becaus.e peop'le:
rep~:a t th.e f oolish. statem·c nt t at AmeriiC:'3. s m.o·un[...]all repeat it·, · 1}.e~g,h it isl so
v ry old. The holy . tltl:re was jogging along on his
mule one[...]denly, t .- e mule st.o_ p.ped mid;way
n the t ail. Th e .holy father look _d up su,cld .nly f[...]1

his book of de tl iions.. The rose-.tinted .a f'te.rglow of'
an Aipine. sunset lay o.n the glistening -rnow~ s; of the
grlea t s1len t' rij rige He m ·. -_t'et ed. ·[...]1

'' Praise b,e God,'' he. said; '' fo- .the Bl00,d. of· 1

Chri~·t ; .,, and al[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (94)[...],.,
THE CI'fY OF THE DEAD IN FRIJOLES CANON[...].
A'M silting in one of the caves of the StQne A_ge.
This is- not fiction but[...]eolithic times
lived. I am writing in one of the cliff houses where
they Ii·ved, sitting on the floor with my feet· resting on
the steps of an eatrance stone stairway worn hip•de-ep
through the volcanic rock by: the rnoccasined ·t read
of reons of ages. Thi-ough the cave door, lookittg
for all the world from the o,utside like a pigeon box,
I can see on the floor 0£ the valley a community house
0f hundreds of room[...]and women
- -

'danced the May-pole before Julius Cre-sar was born,
before - if Egyptian archreologists be correct - the
dyna:sties of th6 Nile erected Py,ramid and[...]s - f 0r twelve miles,, to be correct -
ate 'the>usands of such cave houses against the face
of the cliff, as the one in which I now write. Boxed
up by the .snow-covered Jemez (Hamez) Mountains
at one end,. with a black basalt gash in the rock at the
other e·nd thtougl-1 which roars a m[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (95)[...]1

d . d and.. @ne h.~foi-e the ._pan:i -rd: came to · mer~ ca ,:
- .n1sh_e -[...]I c·.
_ .g : ti n d --t t run _er lymn·g in the Br·it-sh , _us.eum •.[...]f o, ba. I 1ng :_· nd ta ,owls ,ho.o ting ~from the dead
I

'"lent city of the y,dlo · cliff --all I fell to wondering
on th~s[...]f ,om
.- : , one o,f fh _'S e. ca -·es; -n ,- the e ,o,n the far: ,, f ·s tern 1

I Jt~- 11n- ·a re the .s t1 s of the Je, : ~z .- ., m1nt,ains, - hic:-_1[...]1

an,d :masses th~ t m rk the p~tilential de .tfuction off
1
0th -r I·.1 i ___ n ac, ~ 'i l There: remar onl . the -t - na[...]r c> , t'i i , · · a.--,cl of either,. n,o t· the ve ~ 1

- t .[...], ,
guess is . s go.od as n.,e · , er's · and the scv nt1 t'S[...]

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D. So there you are· I You have as good a right to a
g,u ess as the highest sciehtist of them all; and while I
refrain from speculation, I want to put on record the
definite, provable fact that thes.e peop}e of the Stone
Age WePe not the gibbering, monke·y -tailed maniacs of
<?law finger n•ails and simian jaw which the half-baked
pseudo-evolllt.i onist loves to p[...]a character working at
Judge A.b·b 0tt's in the Valley said-'' Sur@, monkey
men wud a' had a[...]thro' thim
cliffs and makin' thi;m holes in the roek:s.'' Remnants
.of sharcl. and pottery, s[...]d skins found wrapped a,s cere-
ments rot1nd the dead all pr6¥e that these men were a
s~dent[...]ing wild
1

boars through the forests, 'th€se pedple were cultivat-
ing corn on the Upper and Lowe:r Mesas. When
lmpe·r ial Rome's comm.on popt1lace boasted few gar-
• ments 0ut the ones in which they had been born, these
peop[...]fiber and rushes.
WMen European courts trod the stately over floors of
filthy rush.es, the:s-e cliff dwellers 'h ad flooring of plaster[...]u c.(ln see with your own ey;es by examining
the caves and skeleto,ns of the J emez F orc;sts; and the
fine glaze o.f the beautiful pottery work is as lost a.n
ar't as the pi,g me.n ts of old Italy.

As you go into the Pecos Forests to play, so you go
into the Jemez to dream. Y·ou go to Pecos to hunt

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and fish. So you do to the Jem.ez i but it is historic
fact you are hunti~g and a reconstruction of the record
of man you are lishing for. As, the Pecos Forests ap-
peal to the strenuous holiday ht1nter - the man who
considers he has not had his fun till he[...]inging fish 0n a line like beads on a string - so the
Jemez ap,p eals to the dreamer, the s·cholar~ the scien-
tist, the artist; and I can imagine no more ideal ( nor
cheaper) holiday th-a n to join the Arherican School of
Archa:1ology, about which I h[...]mes in here with scientists from evety quarter of
the world every midsummer to camp, and dig, and
delve., and revel in the past of moonlight nights round .
campfires before retiring to sleeping quarters in the
caves along the face of the cliff, The School has
been a going concern for only a few ye[...]ver I 50 scientists came in from every quarter
of the globe.
Spite of war-nings tio l}1e contrary given to me both
East and West, the trip to the Jemez is one of the
easiest and cheapest yot,1 can make in America. Y[...]t and unpleasant about Santa Fe.
First, it is the most picturesque and antique spot in
America, not[...]l-hills engirt by snow sky-line
for eighty miles; the honking of a motor blending
with the braying of a l\liexican burro trotting to[...]
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64 THE CITY OF THE DEAD
and New America; str·eets with less system and order
about them than an ant hill, with a moclern[...]will make you mind your P's and
Q's and toe the sanitary scratch if you are apt to be
slack; the c.himes, and chimes and chimes yet .a gain of[...]. I never quite know
whether I am entering by the front door or the back;
the Palace where Lew Wallace wrote Ben Hur, and
e[...]s with Lotave's beautift1l mural paintings of
the Cliff Dwellers, and where the Historical Society
has neither toom not money[...]is such a mine of history.
Such is Santa Fe; the only bit of Europe set down in
America; I venture to say the only picturesque spot in
.L\meriaa, yet undistoveted by the jaded globe-trotter.
Second, I want to put[...]ht
und~r a bushel. Ask a Santa Fe, man why in the
world, with all its attraction of the picturesque, the
antique, the snowy mountains,. and the weak-lunged
one's ideal climate, it has so fe[...]you with a tlepreciatory shru.g that , r it's off the
main line~''' '' Off the main line? '' So is Quebec
off the main line; y~t 200,000 Americans a year see it.
So is Yosemite off the main line; and 10,, 060 people go
out to it every year-. I have never heard that the
Nile and the Pyramids and the Sphinx were on the

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These tlta\.vin_gs above the. entrance to a cliff d ,veiling in
the Jen1ez Forest look like p resent-day schoo[...]
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, main line; ye[...]a delight
to me to visit a place untrodden by the jaded globe-
trotter, for I am one myself; but[...]that prevents Santa Fe blowing its own horn, or the
old exclusive air bequeathed t0 it by the grand dons of
Spain that is a verse to soundi11g the b.rass band, I love
the appealing, picturesque, inert laz1ness of it all[...]tter to ask: '' Why go to Egypt, when you
have the won'd ers of an Egypt unexp,lored in your- own
land? Why sc0ur the crowdecl Alp1, when the
snowy domes of the Santa Fe a·nd Jemez and Sa11gre
de Christo li[...]hotel? '' If Santa Fe, as it is, were known
to the big general public, 200,000 teiurists a year[...]delight within its purlieus; and while I like
the places untrodden by travelers, still-being an
outsider, myself,- I should like the outsiders to
know the same delight Santa Fe has given me.
To finish w·ith the things of the mundane, you strike
in to Santa Fe from a desolate little junction called
Lamy, where the railroad has b1,1ilt a picturesque
little doll's hougoe of a hotel after the fashion of an old
Spanish mansion. To reach the Jemez Forests where
the ruins of the C'av:e Dwell€rs eJC;ist, you can drive or
motor ( to certain sections only) or ride. As the dis-
tance is forty miles plus, you will find[...]days, it will cost you
from $ r o to $ r 4 for the round trip. If you go in on
a burro, you can buy the burro eutright for $5 or $10.
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·( Don't mind if your feet do d,rag on the ground. It
will save bein.g pitched.) If you go out with the
American School of Archre·ology (Address San[...]you ~till
less, perhaps not $z. Once out, in th.e oanons of the
Cave Dwell,ers, you can either camp out with[...]or quarter yourself fre0 of charge
in one of the thousands o;f cliff caves anq cook your
own food; or sleep in the eave.s and p.ay for your
meals at the ranch. At most, your living expenses
will not[...]ing, they need not be $ r a day..
One of the stock excuses for Americans .n ot seeing
their own country is that the cost is s0 extortionate.
Does this sound exto[...]ivery because I was not sure how
else to find the way. We left Santa Fe at six A. M.,
the clouds still titigeirtg the sand-hills. I hav'e heartl
Eastern art critics say that artists of the Southwest
laid on ·their colors t00 strongly[...]that morning from Santa Fe. Gregoir·e Pedilla, the
Mexican driver, grew quite concern,e d at my[...]d-natured nonsense to en-
tertain me; and all the while, I wa,nted n0thing but
quiet to revel in the intoxication of shifting color.
Twenty miles more or less, we rattled pv-er the sand-
hilla before we began to climb i[...]
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THE CITY OF THE DEAD
time we had crossed the muddy, swirling Rio Grande
and left the railroad behind an'd passed a deserted
lumber camp and met only two Mexican teams on the
way.
From below, the t:rail up looks app,alling. It seems
to be a[...]back on itself, up and up, till it drops over the top of
the sky-line; but the seeming riskiness is entirely decep-
tive. Tra¥el wears the sott volcanic tJt/a hub deep
in ash dust, ~o that th,e wheels could not slide off if
they tried; and on.ce you are really on the elimb, the
ascent is much more. gradual than it looks.[...]abit
of looki,ng baQ{; but you will miss half the joy of .going
up to the Pajarito Plateau if you do not look back[...]•
towards Santa Fe. The town is hidden in the sand-
·hills. The wreaths have gone off the mountain, and
the great white d9mes ·stand out from the sky for a
distance of eighty .miles plain as if at your fe.et, with
the gashes of purple and lilac where the passes cut
into the range. Then your horses take their last turn[...]e
plainly why you have to drive 40 -miles in order to go
20. Here, W 'hite Rock Canon Jines both sicles of the'
Rio Grande - precipices steep and sheer as walls, cut
sharp off at the top as a huge square block; and com-
ing into this canon at right angles are the canons
where lived the anci€nt Cliff Dwellers - some of
them hundre·ds of feet above the Rio Grande, with
opening barely wide enough to let the mountain
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streams fall through. To reach these inaccessible
canons, you must drive up over the mesa, though the
driver take·s you ftorh eight to ten thou&and fe[...]We lunched in a little water canon, which gashed
the mesa side where a mountai•n stream came down.
S[...]two hours of lunching time, for in some parts
of the Southw,est many of tl1e streams are alkali; ancl
a stream from the sn:ows is better than win,e. Beyond
our lunching place came the real reason for this par~
ticula:r aaiion being i[...]a W estetn horse can
take. T hen, we em€rged 9n the high upper
m esa - acres and acres of it, thousands of acres of it,
open like a park but shaded by the stately yellow pine,
and all of it above ordinary[...]t snowy range of opal peaks beyond. We fol-
lowed the trail at a rattling pace - the Archreological
School had placed signs on the trees to Frijoles
Canon - and presently, by great mounds of building
stone coveted feet deep by the dust and debris ot
a.ges, beca,me awar,e that we w·e re on historic ground. •

Nor can the theory of d,r ought explain the abandon-
ment of this mesa., While it rains heavily only two
months in the year - July an:d At1gt1st - the mesa is
so high that it is subject to sprinkling rains all months
of the year; to be sure n0t enough for springs, but
ampl[...]d for
water, these sky-top dwellers had access to the water

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canons both before[...]face; or see a mountain Ii.on slink away, or hear the
bark of coyote and fox. •
'' Is this it, Greg.o ire? '' I asked. The mound
seemed irregularly to cov·e r several acre[...]e-
goire e;xpectantly.
I had not to wait long. The wagon road suddenly
broke off short and plumb as if you tossed a biscuit
over the edge of the Flatiron roo·f. I got out and
looked down and th[...]ou~ht I was afraid
to come down. It wasn't that I The thing so far
surpassed anythin,g I h-a d ever dreamed ot· seen; and
the color - well - those artists accused of over-
col[...]Picture to yourself two precipices three times the
height 0f Niagara, three times the height of the
Metropolitan Tower, sl1eer as a wall of blocked
y[...]wider apart than you can
shout across, ending in the snows of the Jemez to the
right, shut in black basalt walls to the left, forested
with the heavy pines to the v·ery edge and down the
blocky tiers of rocks and escarpments running into
blind angles where rain and sun have dyed the terra
cotta pumice blood-red. And picture the face of the

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cliff under your feet, the sides of the massive rocks
eroded to the sha.r,es of tents and tepees and beehives,
pi[...]d winding recess and port-
holes - a cify o.f the dead,, silent as the dead, old
-almost as time I
The wind came soughing up the ca:iion with the
sound of the sea. The note of a lonely song sparrow, ,
brek~ the silence in a stab. Somewhere, down among
the tender green, lining the canon stream, a mourning
dove uttered her sad threnody - thern, silence and
the soughing winti; then, more silence; then, if I had
done what I wanted to, I would have sat down on the
edge of the cafio-n wall and let the palpable past come
touching rne out of the silence.
A community house of some hundreds of rooms lay
directly under me in the floor of the v·_alley. This
was once a populous city twelve miles long, a city o.f
one long street, with the houses tier on tier above each
other, rea~hed by ladders, and steps worn hip-deep ih
the stone. Where had the p.eo:gle gone; and wbiy?
What swept their civiliz-ati.on away? When clicl the
age-old silence fall? Seven thousand people do not
leave the ,ity of their building and choice, of their[...]- do not
leave without good reason. What was the reason?
What gave this p1ace of beauty and security .a nd thrift
over to the habitation of bat and wolf? Why did
the dead race go? Did they Hee panie~stricken, pur-
sued like deer by the Apache and the Ute and the

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1

th,ere ~s the sacretl cerem.oni:al un ·_. ,rgitou-n d ch.a her[...]1

s,c·rpent, guardian. ie,f the springs; -he.re· t'h e young
bgi. s ere t - , ,e[...]a silent th.r oat., ,., s·ays tl1e .a dage- ,o f the"
mo d.tr11 .P ueblo, Indi ,~ , ,, Whe,1 the f'oofish sp~,.ak,
1

keep th0u silent. u "Wh-e , th0u g est on the trail,
carry ,only .. light blanket.,'·' Go 0 ta[...]d life I
And there f Ftl1er do n. th-e valle,y is the stone circle
or dancing_· '~:lJ10r --· h ere t'he p._·o··- J-- ,_ ame .·ciwn f,ro __[...]te m~ ke merry and -~·fl ·esa in r - _· "t _m the.
emqt~on':' w ich other nat~on.s exp,ress in. p 0[...]g· I ..

sta,n,d -. -~n th.,e •dancing ·o··ok 9lace ,~ .o ·· n ther,e.[...]:. Ji-e, the'-waaon· d·o ··n ,t;=he·r·e,i , ' 7 h1.C- sa[...]l ji;

d,own slo · -nd I come with. the batses., one . y on.e ''
It o · .de, a g[...]1 1 _ 0

ladders tmc,ed up zigzag a.gainst the Fb. iron Build·
h1g and the Flatiron ullding three times h" gher than
1 _1·[...]d ~al h ·rcler tha:n it really
, and the trail .has ,sin ce been ·troprov,ed _ T '[...]

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steps cut in the volcanic tu/a or white pumice are so.ft
I
and[...]this wonderful Frijoles
Cafion accessible to the public, or if th€ Archreological
School can raise the means and cooperate with the
Forestry Service trail ma:kers 1 a broad graded wagon
road should be cut d0wn the face of this canon, graded
gradually enough for a m6t9r. The day that is done,
vis.itors will .number not[...]~n this na:rrow,, steep tier of
600 steps all the, building tn,ate-r ial, all the furnitt1re,
and all the farm implements for their charming ranch
place; but tnere the m.atet:ials are and there is no other
t rail[...]arched ceremonial cave hu11dreds of feet µp the face
of the p.re.cipice. The cave was first discovered by
Jt1dge and Mrs. Abbott on one of their S11nday a·fter'-
noon walks. The Arch.reological School under Dr.
1-levvitt cleated 011t the debr is and accumulated erosio·n
of ce11turies and put th,e ceremonial chamber in its
original co11dition. '' Re.storing the ruins·'' does not
mean '' m·anufacturing rt1ins. '' It means digging out •

the erosion that has wash.e d and washed for thousands
of years down the hillsides duri11g the annual rains.
All the caves have been originally pla.s teted in a sort

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and he, charr d oo,den 'b _ms. flf ·the , -oked, a ieh _· .·
1

C'eili[...]1 1

On the ,8.oors 1s a S0 rt of .r ocl bottom of p aster 0[...], , .1g,. "''ng to·· ; ., 1

. 't is in the pro c. s of d·i,gging down to _h-s fl · o-r. .[...]1

in H . rva,rd and Yale and the Siniths,on'-an and th[...]·.

Santa, Fe P'alace, a,n d the Field , . useu111 of Chic go~[...]eet of e.rosion ha·v,e o ,er
1

la ·e:1 the original flo,oring. ·w h,en diggin: __~ do·w.n[...],o·tless cham,. 1

hers seen from the hilltop on the floor of the vaUe:y
as. _-. ug from a mound of d@b ·is. I[...]1

for their labors of r'eS toration.;_ and the £,a ct that Dr"[...]1

Hewitt was, a, loc:al man h.as added to the ·effectiven.es,:
of the -·· ork, _tor he has, b ee,n 1n a position ·_.[...]e ies and
r·umo: s of d'·sco ·cries ~.n any of the ngme,ro _s Ea .· ··s
up the RlQ GI?ande. For insta,nce, wh·e:a about half-
- ,ay 1down th,e tra· I t'ha ·fir.st d.ay" at the Frij oles C ,ii.on, 1

or R[...]lled, I met on an
1

abrupt bend in the trail a .-u. blo ,_ n.dian f om :.'anta
C[...]

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pearls - Juan Gonzales, one of the workers· in the
canon, who knows e,very foot of the Rio Grande.
Standing against the white pumice background, it was
fot an instant as if one of the cave people had stepped
from the past. Well, ,it was Wan, as we outsiders
call him, who one day brought word to the Arckreo-
logical workers that he had found in the pumice dust
in one of the caves the body of a woman. The cave
was cleane.d out or restored., and proved to[...]ind other chambets,
which had be·en worn away by the centuries' wash.
The cerements of the body proved to be a, wov.~n cloth
like burlap, and beaver skin. There you may see the
body ly,ing to-day, provi11g that these people uncler-
stood the art of weaving lo~ befo.r e the Flemings
had learned the craft from Oriental trade.
You ceuld ·stay in the Rito Canon for a year and
find a cave of fresh interest each day. Fot instance,
there is the one where the form of a huge plumed
serpent has been etched like a tp.olding rou.n d under
the arched roof. The s-ertDent, it was, that guarded
the p0ols· and the springs; and whe11 one considers
where snakes are oftehest found, it is n0t surprising
that the~se-rpent should have been taken as a toterri
emblem. Many of the chambers show six o-r seven
holes in the floor - places to connect with the Great
Earth Magician bel9w. Little alcoves were carved
in the a,rclJ.ed walls for the urns of meal and w-a ter;
and a sacred fireplace was r,egarded with somewhat
the same veneration as ancient Orientals prese[...]
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has come and carve[...]gan
symbols. Other large arched caves have housed the
wandering flocks of goats and sheep in the days of the
Spanish regime; and there are other cave.s where
horse thieves and outlaws, who infested the West
after the Civil War, hid secure from detection. In
fact, if these caves could speak they '' would a tale
unfold. ''
The aim of ·t he Archreological Society is year by
year to restore portions till the whole Rito is restored;
but at the present rate of financial aid, complete resto,-
r[...]ke place inside a century. When
you consider that the Rito is only one of many pre-
historic areas of N[...]me philanthropist would place a million or two at
the disposal of the Archreological Society. If this
were done, no place on e-arth could rival th,e Rito; for
the funds would make possible not only the restoration
of the thousands of mounds buried under tons of
debris, but it.would mak:e the Canon accessible to the
general public by easier, nearer roads. The inaccessi-
bility of the Rito may be in harmony with its ancient
character[...]ives thou.-
sands of tourists to Egypt instead of the Jemez
Forests.
There are other things to do in the Canon besides
explore the City· of the Dead. Wander down the
bed of the stream. You are passing through parks
of stately[...]rs which no botanist
has yet classified. There is the glo·be cactus high up

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on the black basalt rocks, blood-reel an'd fiery as if
dyed irt the very essence of the sun. There is the
mountain pink, c:ompared to which our garden and[...]as white woman corn-
pa-r e'd to a Hopi. There is the short-stemme·d Eng-
lish field daisyJ white abov[...]n sings i.n '' ·M aud.; '' Presently, you notice
the stream banks crushing together, th.e waters tum-
bling, the pumice changing to granite and basalt; and
you ar[...]as·

;mist.
Follow fa·r fher down I The canon is no longer a
valley. It is a corridor bet[...]show only a slit of sky overhea,d; and to follow the
stream bed, you must wade. Beware how you do that
on a warm day when a th,a;w of snow on the peaks
might cau,se a sudd·en ftec$het; for if the waters rose
l1ere, there would be no esc~pe ! The day we went
aow,n a th.aw was not the clanger. It w;as cold; the
clouds were loom.ing rain, and th·e re was a high wind.
We crept along the rock wall. Narrower and darker
_grew the passageway. The wind came funneling up
w·ith a mist of spray from below; and the mossed
rocks on which w·e w-a ded wete slippery[...]v e looked over I Down - down -
down - tumbled the waters of the Rito, to one b1ack
basin .in a waterfall, then over a ledge to another in
spray, then down - down - down to the Rio
G,r ande_, many feet belQw. You come back from the
brink with a little shiver, but it was a s[...]
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THE CITY OF THE DEAD 77
delight. No wonder 'd ear old Bandelier, ti1e first of
the great archreologists to study this region, opens l1is
quaint myth with the simple words - ' ' The Rito is a
beautiful place. ''[...]

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CHAPTER V
THE ENCHANTED MES.A: OF ACOMA
'

HEY call it '' the Enchanted Mesa,'' this
island of·[...]at it isn't. Why quarrel whether or not this is
the Enchanted Mesa? T ,he whole reg10n is an En-
ch[...]ent, romance and fact,
chivalry ·and deviltry, the stately grandeur of the old
Sp;:1.nish don and the smart bl:lsiness tric,ks of moaern
Yankeedom.
Shut your mind to the cl1ildish quarrel whether
there is ~ heap of old :p ottery shards o,n top of th.a t
mesa, or whether the. i:nan who said there -was carried
rt up with him; wheth.er the Hopi hurled the Span·iards
oft that p.articular cliff; .or off another l S.hut your
mind to the childish, preseot-day bickering, and the
past comes troop·ing before you in pajnted pa[...]stirring than fiction can create.
First marcH the enran-ked old Spanish dons encased in
.a rmo.r-[...]or to leg '.greaves, in this hot land
w·h ere the v·ery touch of metal is a burn. Back at[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (114)[...]1

Hopi m -sas wit the bulJe.t holie - quare ab,ove the
heart. Of course, your old Spah1sh d·o.-s ar e f.ollo ed
b.· ca.v.alry on the :fi.nest 0 f mounts,,. and ne:ar the·
1

lea.;_ e · ri des the - r1cst. ·$,w ord an.d cross ~ode gra.n,dly[...]down ignomm"ou ly befo et e fie ce onslaught of the
enraged Hopi. ·1 confess it do·es _ no t ma '~e much 1

oifference to m-e whether the ·SJJianiards were hu. led
·c, death f~om . is m[...]1

that other ahead. th'efe,, w·itl1 :the villag _on t·he tip-top
o,f th - cliff .· ik·e[...]-n ·,__ ries t e c ·os ·went·· dewn w1f .-, the s·word before
sa ag . onslaught. --_-· at tyt a-s we11 a __ soldier blood
dyed t'he e ,ochet"~walled c-~,-·.s- dee.p.er _
r ed t~an the·i r
1

crimson sands.
hen out o.f the romantk pa.st comes another e.r.a.
'The a --~o ·wa,r t ,.o s hav·e obtainecl. hors,;es• from. the,
1

S_.[...]e d 1

f'oe to the H opi people a~rosa A · i:zona a.nd . "e:w
1[...]h se mesas. to .r a •·d ti- e f:lock and $teal the wiv of'
1

the Hopi; and t e H ,- pi wives take revenge by con-
quering their conqueror, t>rin _ ng the a_ffi and crafts
pi people~ sil,1 cr, wo[...]· ---_-ing, basketry
- i.nto the ·.· a · a·}o tribe. I c•onf. s c··[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (115)[...]r a secomll a ·ter nightfall. · I
can'' t see the· Potnt to this bre,aking of hiSitorical heads
1

ov,er; triftes. The point is that alter t,he inco,:ning of
5pani· h horses and ,Spanish .fi eat:ms, the avajos le;.
cam·e a. terror to the H opi, -, h.,o, ook refu _e 011 the
1

·upp erm,ost t•p,.-top of ·th.,e .highest mesas th e.y co ~ld.fin ,.
1[...]s older th.an·
1 1

the tr,aditions o,f Egypt. Draw a line from the M a.,n-
za.no For~ts ea,t of Albuquerque · est thfQugh Islcta.
and Laga.aa and .~oma an·d Zu~iii and. the th--ee mesas.
of Arizona to Oraibi and Hotovtl e for ,400 mifos to
the .fflr ,w~est, an.d along th.at lin e you will fin[...]all, ~l diem what you
wil , which a·nteel · te the corru . g of the Spania ds by so
many r: tuties that not even .a tradition of their
,abject,remainecl "\¥he ~ the c.onq , croi,s o;tme. Some o,f
h. se ru.ins -[...], temples, wh·a t? nd ·· h t re,dueed the: nat.ion
t · at o··, ce people.d -t.h,am t0[...]·e.n
thousand Hopi all told? Do you oot see how th.e
p·a st of bis w_ hole Enchanted M c;sa, th[...]tes
.as to date:s -a nd broken c,rockcry?
·The.re · re prehis,,- oric ,cl~ ff d ·- elli[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (116)[...]n th t .a
Incli · m· n h rul r f the 1ouseho .
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (117)[...]TED MESA OF ACOMA 81
see the modern descendants of these prehistoric Cliff
·Dwellers, you can see them along the line of the
National Forests from the Manzanos east of Albu.
querque to the Coconino and Kaibab at Grand Canon
in Arizona. Let me explain here also that the Hopi
are variously known as Moki, Zuni, Pueblos[...]name; and as such, I shall refer to them, though
the western part of their reserve is known as Moki
L[...]toured '' by sight.seers, I pref erred to go
to the less frequented pueblos at Laguna and Acoma,
just south of the western Manzano National Forests,
and on up to the three mesas of the Moki Reserve in
Arizona. Also, when you drive across Moki Land,
you can cr<;>ss the Navajo Res-erve, and so kill two
birds with one stone.
Up to the present, the inconveni.ence of reaching
'A coma will effe·ctu[...]n town where there is no hotel at two
o'clock in the morning, or else take, a freight, which
you reach[...]b wire fence
,-- there is no immed.iate danger of the objective point
being rushed by tourist traffic. This is a mistake both
for the tourist and for the traffic. If anything as
unique ann wonderf[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (118)[...]Acoma's Enchanted Mesa in a
year, and h.a lf thethe
day betore I went out, a traveler ,all the way from
Germany had dropped off th·e transcontinental and
taken a local £neight f 0r the Hopi tow·ns. When a
tourist wants to see th[...]dred willirtg palms out to collect a nd poi_n t the way;
but whem a tourist leaves the beaten trail in Ametica,
if he asks too many[...]wasn't
in a good mood when he dropp·e d off the f teight train
~t Laguna. Good rooms you can always get at the
'M armons, but there is no regular meal place except
the section house. If you are a good Westerner,: you[...], or take cheerful pot luck
as it comes; but the German wasn't a good West•
erner; and it d[...]av.e butter
served up mi:,(:ed with flies to the tune of the land-
laqy's complaint that ' ' it didn't {?<[...]hey tell you outside that it is a hard drive, all the
way from tW~nty-five to thirty miles to Acoma[...]it I For once, Western miles are
too short.. The drive is barely eighteen miles and as
easy as on a paved city street; but the Getman had left
most of his temper at Laguna. When he reached
the fo0t of the steep acclivity leading up to the town
of Acoma on the very cloud-crest of a rampart rock
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (119)[...]he started up without one and, of
course, missed the way. How he ever reached the
top without breaking his neck is a wonder. The
Indians show·ed me the way he had come an<l said
they could nqt have don[...]d not left at Laguna he scattered
sulphnrously on the rocks before h·e reached the -crest
of Acoma; and when he had climbed the perilous w-ay,
he was too fatigued to go on through the town. The
whole episode is typically characteristic of our[...]als, another at
Acoma, a good woman in charg_e at the Laguna end
to put up the lunches, a $Io a month Indian boy to
show tourists the way up the ctiff - and thousands of
travelers would go i'n a[...]with satisfaction.
Yet here i_s Acoma, literally the Enchanted_, unlike
anything else in th.e whole wide world; and it is shut
off from the sightse·er because enter,prise is lacking to
put in $100 worth of equipment and set the thing
going. Is it any wonder people say that Europeans
live on the opportunities Americans throw away? If
Acoma were in Germany, they would be diverting the
Rhine round that way so you could se€ it by moo[...]five, and
drive out from Alb.u querque a mile to the freight
yards, where it was rieoessary to wet one[...]ditch and crawl under a barb wire fence to
reach the caboose. The desert sunrise atoned for
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (120) 84 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA
all - air pure wine, the red-winged blackbirds, thou-
sands of them, whistling sheer joy of life alQng the
overflow swamps of the irrigation canals. The train
passes close enough to the pueblo of Isleta for you to
toss a stone 'into th·e hack yards o·f the little a'd obe
dwellings·; but Isleta at best is now a white-man edition
of Hopi. type. Few of the houses run up tier on tier
as in thij true pueblo; and the goFgeous sk:irts and
shirts seen on the figures moving round the doors are
nothin.g more nor less than store c[...]•
dy·es. In the true Hop.i pueblo,. these ,garments would
be sun-dyed brown skin, on the. youn,g er children, and
home-woven, vegetable-dyed fab·ric oh the grown-ui;>s.
Th,e true Hopi skirt is nothing more n.o r less than a[...]hawl ov'e r nature's undergarments
comp_letes the native costume; and the little monkey-
shaped bare f e·e t cramped from lon.g scrambling over
the tocks get better grip on ste·€p stone stairs than
ciV'ilized boots, though rn~ny of the pueblo women are
now affecting the latter.
The freight trai.n climbs ancl. climbs irrto the gypsum
country of terrible drought, where nothing grows
except under the ditch, and the cattle lie dead of thirst,
and the wind blows a ht1rricane of 'dus,t that a.Imost
knocks you off your feet.
The railroad passes almost thr0u,g h the lower
streets of Laguna; so that when[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (121)[...]l\tIESA OF ACOMA 85

up to the Spanish Church that crowns the hill.. You
get off at Laguna, but do not waste much time there;
for the glories of Laguna are past. Long ago - in
the fifties or thereabouts - the dam to tl1e lagoon
which gives the community its name broke, letting go
a waste of flood waters; and since that time, the men
of Laguna h~ve had to go away for work, the women
only remaining constantly at the village €hgaged
herding their flocks and m.a ki[...]should be stated here in utter contradicti·on to the Her-
bert Spencer school of sociology that among the Hopi
the women not only rule but own the house and all that
therein is. The ma.n may claim tl1e corn patch out-
side the to·w n limits, where you see rags stuck on sticks
marking each owner's bounds; or if he attends the
flocks he may own them; but the woman is as sup.re-me
a ruler in the house as in the Navajo tribe, where the
supreme deity is female. If the man loses affection
for his spouse, he may gather[...]an, I guess he - a bad
boy - he leave me.''
If the wife tires of her lord, all she has to do is
hang the saddle and bridle 011tside. My gentleman
takes the hint and must be off.
I set this fact down bec[...]an first
hand, writ~ nonsensical deductions about the evolution

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (122)[...]position has been
one of absolute equality among the Hopi from the
~arliest traditi0ns of the, race.
At Laguna, you ·can obtain rooms wit[...], as I said before, take chance luc_k outside
at the section house. A word as to Mr. Marmon
and Mr. Pratt, two of the best known white men in
the Indian communities of the Southwest. Where
white m_en have foregathered with Indians, it has usu-
ally been f@r the higher race ·t o come down to the level
of the lower people. Not so with Marmon and Pratt I
If you ask how it is that the pueblos of Laguna and
Acoma ~re so superior to c1ll oth€r Hopi communities
of the Southwest, the ans·w·e r invariably is '' the influ-
ence of the two l\1ar1nons and P ratt. '' Coming
West as surveyors in the early seventies the two Mar-
mons and Pratt opened a trading store, married
Indian women and set themselves tei. civilize. the whole
pueblo. After almost four years' pow:'"wow[...]hildren, two boys and a girl, to go to
school in the East at Carlisle. To-day, those three
children are•leading citizens ot the Southwest. Later
on, the trouble was not to induce childten to go, but to
handle the hundreds eager to be sent. To-day, there I

is a governmeht school here, and the two pueblos of
Laguna and Acoma are among the cleanest and most
a.dvanced of the Southwest. Fifteen hundred souls
' there are, livin-g in the hills-ide tiered-town, where you
may see the transition from Indian to white in the sub-

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (123)[...]87
stitution of downstairs doo1·s for the ladders that for-
merly led to entrance tl1rough the ro0f. Out at
Acoma, with its 700 sky dwellers pe[...]un-
dreds of feet straight as arrow-flight above the plain,
you can count the number of do,ors on one hand.
Acoma is still pur[...]speaks a word of English; but it is
Hopi unde·r the far-reaching a11d c_ivilizing in.flu@nce
of '' Marmon and Pratt.'' The streets - rst, 2,ncl
and 3rd, they call them - of the cloud-cliff town a.r e
swept clean as a white housewife's floor. Inside, the
three sto.r y h.ouses are all whitewashed. To be sure, a
hen and her flock occupy th·e r.0of of the first story.
Perhaps a butr<r may stand sleepily on the next roof.;·
but then 1 the living quarters are in the third story, with
a window like the porthole of a ship looking out over
the precipice across the rolling_, purpling, shi·mmering
mesas for hundr,eds and hunclreds of miles, till the sky-
line loses itself in heat haze and snow pe1l)ks. The
inside of these thi1:d story rooms is spotlessly clea·n, big
ewers of washing water on the floor, nr-eplaces in the
corners with sticks burning upright, doorways ope[...]p.otles~ly ele~n where water must be car-
ried on the women's heads and backs any distance up
from 500 to r,500 feet. Yet I found some of the
missionaries an'd government teachers and nuns arnong
the Indians curiously discouraged about ·resu[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (124)[...]cher and every other discouraged
worker among the Indians first to A,coma and then,
say, to the Second Mesa of the Mo.ki Reserve. In
Acoma, I would not be afra.[...]et, and camp aad sleep and
eat for a week. At the Second 'Mesa; where miijsion
work has barely begun - well, though the crest of the
pea,k is swept by the fo.u r winds of heaven and disin-
fected by a[...]n, I could barely· stay
• 0ut two hours; and the next time I _go, r i11 take a large
pocket ha[...]ge and traditions
and belief, but hum.a.n. At the Second Mesa_ , you fall
to raking your memory of Whitechapel and the
Bow-~ry for types as sodden and putrid and de[...]take you ou:t to Ac0m,a.; and please remembe:r, the dis-
.tance is not twenty-five or fift,y mil[...]motor: if you have one.
Set out early in the day, and you escape the hea.t.
Sun up; the yellow::.t hFoated meadowlarks liltin,g and
tossing their liquid g0ld notes straight to heaven; the
d~sert flowers such a mass of gorgeous, voluptuous
oloom as dazzle the eye - ca-ctus, blood-te·d and gold
·[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (125)[...]-:.c{l-- -h •,< -eld o,men att~r-e,d do wn the· tr i.l f.rom[...]1

from the , llow po l , o he . an Jose R:i er, jats of[...]I

have en, or wo,me:n o,f th.e GangeJ. Then, the
I

morn.1ng l-i< ght .· -.. t -es the. s,t e 1es of tb: t ,, i-. --tDI\Vered[...]1

.Spa 1is:h -issi on ~ n the c·rest ol the hill;, and d1e dull[...]1

-ello . S 11 Jose· and the tu gi.d, m.uddy river fi,o ~-S·
pu e , .o ld · t1d the r ght bath s the sancl:y! parched
· , sa,,s an d t 'h.:e pu[...]th he·re and th.el ,c in th e .d istant sky-li e the[...]· 0 y o·v er · t-light, pure l"g .t, &plit by the; shim-
1[...]i r into tainbow colo·t ·..,.
tra.nsf 0rmin.g the. s:a-r1d--cha .g·e d atmosph ere into an.[...]now t at t'h e 'b:1g g_0> e cactu.r shin.es! With the[...]of a Burma ru _ -,y h,ere when it j,9i· dull in th.e East-
1

1e n conse:rv·atory·, be cius e. herl! is 0£ the ._ f?ry, es,s-enee[...]1

o:f the . un. Th ~- wi _d popp1e shme on the dese t
sa ·, ds like stars becau e, like the st . · s, they draw

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (126)90 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA
their life from the sun. .And the blue ·forget-me-nots
are lik·e bits of heaven, because their face,s shine with
the light of an unclouded sky from dawn to dark.
Y01.1 see the cQuntless herds of sheep at'ld goats and
cattle a-n d horses b·elonging to the Indian pueblos,
herded, pe·rhap,s, by· .a little girl on horseback, or a
coupl'e of boys lying among the sage brush; but the
figures come tQ your eye unreal and out of all per-
spective, the ho.rse.s and cattle,. exaggerated by heat
mirage, long an·d leggy like camels in Egypt, the boys
and girls li(ted by the refraction of light cle-ar off
earth altogether, un)::eal ghost figures, the bleating
lambs ,a nd kids envel0ped i.n a purple,[...]ng and unreal as a.
poet's vision.
It adds to the glamour of th,e unreal as the sun
mounts higher, 11n.d the planed ramnart mo·untain
walls encirclimg the mesa begin to shimmer and ,shift
and lift fr@m e.a rth in mirage altogether.
You hear th.e bleat-bleat of the lambs, and come
full in the midst of h&rds of thousand$ going cl.own to
a wa,[...]ese Indians are not poor; not poor
by any mt~ans. The-ir pottery and baskets bring them
ready money. Their sheep give them meat and wool;
and the little c0rn patches suffice for m-ea.l.
The_n the blank wall of the purple mountains opens;
arfd you pass into a large saucer-shaped valley engirt
as "before by the troweled yellow tufa walls; a lake of
light, wher~ the flocks lift in mirage, lanky and unreal.
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (127)[...]AC0iv1A 91

Alm9st the spell -a nd lure of a S2.I:iara ate upon y·ou,[...]b of towering granite in a purple sea.
It is the Enchanted Me-sa.
'[...]r, grunts and points at it
with his whip. '' The Encha11ted Mesa, '' he says.
I stop to p[...]; '' Ho·dge says '' no. '' Both men
climbed the rock, though Hill Ki tells me cenficlen-
tia[...]'' when it came to thr0w-
ing a rope up over the end of the rock, to pull the
climber u·p as if by pulley. Marmon and Pra[...]ut '' they weren't scare. '' As we
pass from the end to the side of the Enchanted Mesa,
it is seen to be an oblong s[...]r to within distance of
throwini a rope over the top. The quarrel between

I,

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (128)[...]d Hodg-e has w,axe'd hott'er and hotter as to
the Enchanted Mesa w-itl1out any finale to the dispute;
and far be it from an outsicler like myself to umpire
w-arfare -a mid the gods of the antiqu.ariar1; but isn't it
possible that a custom among the Acom-a I ndians may
explain the whole m11tter; and t:h.at both men may be
partly rignt? Miss McLain, who was in the Indian
Service at Laguna, rep.arts that once[...]structed in
fh·e ,mysteries of Hopi faith in the underground council
roo,m or k:i'&a., i-t is[...]ne Acomas to blind-
fold him and send hitn to the top of the En-ch-a.n.t~tl
Mesa for a n,i ght's lonely vi[...]blation to th-e spirits. Tl1ese jars· e:i,cplain the pi:es-
enc.e of potte$y,. which Lummis descri[...]tlenee to ·a t least periodic in.habiting
of the Mesa,. The ab~ence ,o f house ruins, on the
other, hand, would e.xplain why Hodge scouted Lum-
mis' theory. The India11s e;x-plainecl to Miss McLain
tha,t a.[...],

$'ubstantia-te.
B11t what matters the quarrel? Is not the, whole
region ah Enchanted M·esa, one of the weir,dest bits
of the l'f ew World? You have barely .rounded the
Enchanted Mesa, when ~nother oblong colossus looms
to the fore, sheer precipice, but accessible by, tiers of
sand and stone at the far end;, tl1at is, acc€ssible by
handhold and foothold. Loolc again! Along the
top of the walled precipice, a crest to tl1e towering[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (129)[...]93
slab, is a human wall, the wall · of an adobe st 'eetful
of houses, li tle wr.ndcr . · look1.ng out fl 1 · ·. :i h the 1

pr cip~ ce. line like the portholes of a ship. ·. he · . you
s,ee: somethi..ng ·ed flutte,r ,a nd move ait' the, v1: 'Y edge.of
·he ro,ck t,op - Ho-pi urchi[...]1

looks fo · al the world like t e top story of a cat .e
,above a moat. ...

.t _ herf ot of the sa . d h·11, I as·k .Flill Ki, why, now
th _[...]_-_

and. arou.nd the ston e st'ep - i\Rd stone l ,,d'1ers, a_.d[...]p,.
A ·, I am lo·o.king ·OU.n d fo:r the bnegin.nin,g 8f a[...]trail up, a 1'-ttle, H.o_ pi gir:. come·s 0 from the 1 11[...]girl; and.
her· stockin1 .· cam.e only to the an:k1 e·s,, Lea·v-in-g t:he fee·t 1

ha ·e. Th .· fe t gf all the Hopi are abnormalty small,
a m,osit[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (130)[...]CHANTED MESA OF ACOM-I\
purely cause a,nd effect. The foot is not flat and
broad, becauS'e it is constantly clutching foothold up
and down these rocks. I saw all the Hopi W'omen
look at r.ny broad-soled, bo.x-to-ed 01,1tin:g boots in
ama,zement. At hard spots in the climb, they would
turn a.n,d point to my boots and ofter me help till I
sh0w:ecl th€m that the sole, though thick, was pliable

as a moccas1n.
The little girl signaled; did I want to ,go up?
I nod.decl.
Sht signaled; would I go up the hard, steep, quick
way; _or the long, easy path by· the sand? As the
stone steps seemed to give handhold well as foothold,
and the saind promised to roll you back fast as you
climbed up, I sigpal@d the hard way; antl off we set.
I asked her how old sh[...]her eyes. She thot1ght a minute;
then pointed to the sand, and winn:owed one hand -as
of wincl-the sand storm; and so we kept an active
conversation[...]be bad boy,'' too, by a11d
by? Will you acquire the best, or the worst, of the
white civiti,zation. tl1at is encreaching[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (131)[...]-

of k dale ~ . nd a puts .: , a~d the har - as.:ee ,t on e 0 f
I _[...]1 1

thethe La,gq; · a people
had told me to look out 'for myself. l'd find the
Acoll12s uncommonly sh~p,.
Th _:t clime is as sy to the .A c ~masc· as, yoi'uF horn.el[...]duo,us ·.o
th·,e outs· d~ th :.n ,a cl~~ b up the wh·ole l£n.gth ,o,f the·
Washingtot1. - · orium ent, or up the . et· bp,olitan[...]as · ·ell as sto.ne · ·-eps ~ and wh·,· -re the r o·ck steps a:te·
1[...]1

if the a
ajo had come[...]s and
~p}t, -~cdid place tor sla,u,g ht ~·- of the Sp,a,nis:h ·S•Qldicrs,
'Who s·c,aled A·cotn[...]1

stone ·step 1 and we ·re O ' - top of the white lime::tone·
1

Mesa, in the t.o .. ,ri Cl.f AC'oma,_with it& I st, 2:n[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (132) the .first root reached by a movable ladd r, the next
two roofs b stone ,teps.
1

I sh,all n,o't -~ttetnpt to deac.ribe the view from ·above~
Tak~ Washington' · Shaft; mul[...]. et 1t
-down. in, Sa.ha -a. D sert, c 1m.'b, t 0 the top a·nd look, 1 ,[...]. e vaew fr,0111 ._ coma-. .Is the t~rtp[...]-- p an' -st:e 1 :,,
· ow -. I understoo . . The wa.ter po-Qls were· but g -l·nt.s
c-

o~f s11 er on the yello, "- sa11ids. . ·he ffo·, ks of sh e .•
a.pd gqats lao·ke, like :a hts. The varopart _r:.· cks th,a t
~ngirt th-e v'.alley[...]1

the, 't'1p.S o _ ·the lar mesJts -ei1u.ld be se en scrub for-[...]e p,ass
a deep po,o, of was'te w ~ te,r f om the b.0 use,s. ,., lying,[...]h e ro,eks, and Oi,n a,ero.~Q t '·i ~ squa:re to the twin.~
1

· .- r[...]~ d
graveyard. The · hole rne a •s solid, har:d rock; nd[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (133)- ~1;;./J~---~~:--.rj

.-\t the \i\~ h,oi],,e on ,.,, m..1 r;kji'r[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (134)[...]gugh
to fill in a depression for a burying place. The bones
lie thick on the surface soil. The graveya.rd is now
literally a bank of human limes[...]asked my little guide to take me to Marie
lteye, the only Acoma who speaks English; and I
meet her now steppiqg smartly across the square, feet
encased in boots at least four sizes[...]me of her seven years' life at Car-
lisle. 1-t is the one wis'h of her heart that she may[...]ns hate white schools.
She takes me across to the far edge of the Mesa,
where her sisters, the finest potte,ry makers of Acoma,
are burning th:e[...]cost me
$5 to $IO down at tl1e railroad or $15 in the East;
but there is the question of taking it out in my camp
kit; and I content myself with a little black-brown
basin at the same price, which Marie has used in her
own house[...]years. As a memento
to me, she writes her name in the bottom.
Her house we ascended by ladder to a[...]of stone
steps to a second roof. Off this roof is the door to
a third story room ; and a cleaner[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (135)[...]TED MESA OF ACOMA
seen in a white wom-an's house. The fire,place is in
one corner, the broom in the other, a window between
looking out of the precipice wall over such a vi·ew
as ,a n ea.gle[...]ood and jars of drinking water stand in niches in
the wall. The aGlohe floor is hard as cement, and
clean. All wa11s and the ceiling ,are whitewashed.
The place is spotless.
'' Where do yot1 jleep, Ma[...]ee1 seme.time.''
Attd as she speaks, cotne up the stone .stairs from
the r'oorn belpw, her father and br<;>ther, arnazed t[...]one through
HopiandMokiandNavajoL~d.
An.d all the other hoQses visited are clean as
Marie's. Is the fact testimony to Carlisle, or the
twiri-toweired church over there, o,r Marmon and[...]this I do know1. that
Acoma is as different from the other I-Iopi or Moki
mesas as Fifth Avenue is from the Bow@ry.
All the time I was in the houses, my little guide
had been waiting' wistfully at the bottom of the
ladd~r; and the children uttt red shouts of glee to see
me co:me down the ladder face out inste.ad of back-
war·ds· as the Acemas descend.
We descended 'ttorn the Mesa by the sand-hills
instead of the rock -ste.ps, preceded by an escort of
romping c[...]d I ,say tl1e same of
a three hours' visit amid the gan1ins of New .York,
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (136)[...]COMA 99
or London? At the foot of the cliff, we shook hands
all round and said good-by; afld when I looked b-ack
up the valley, tl1e children were still waving and[...]all I have to say is it is infinitely superior to the
hoodlum life of ot1r cities and towns.[...]your people ate Indi.
ans, or Aztecs?'' and the answer came without a
moment's hesitation -[...]like Navajo ancl. Apaches.''
Oppo-sfte the Ench.a nted Mesa, I looked back.
My[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (137) · CHA;PTER VI
ACROSS THE PAJNTED DESE'RT THRO UGH NAVAJO
LAND

HEN you leave the Enchanted Mesa at
Acoma~ to fol1o"v the unbeaten trail on
through the Nation.a l Forests, you may
take one of t,h ree c[...]into Zuni Land from Gallup.
Or you may go down in the White Mounta.ins of
Ar,jzona from Holbrook; and here it s.h o.u ld ·b e staJted
that the White Mountains are one of the great un-
hunted game resorts of the Southwest. Some of the
best trout brooks 0£ the West are to be found t1nder
the snows of the Continental Divid.e. Deer and
bea.r and mountain cat are as ple;nti-ful as· before the
coming of the white man - and likely to remain so
many a day, ·for the region is one of the most rugged
and torbiclcling in the Wes.tern States. Add to the
clanger of sheer rock declivity, an almost desett[...]trud.ers - and you can understand "\-vhy some of
the most magnificent sp·ecimens of blacl{-tail in the
world roam the peaks and mesas here undisturbed[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (138)[...]01

by the hunter ·· ~o, on your ay into th White
· o[...]ul ·te-
hi-1 tor1c .d el . .1 - / ·sl , .s in the -rijales- of . : ,cw _-· I xico,
10 r th e[...]pic --ft\ c·e :-nd reach e · only by latlders; the latter, a
1 1[...]1

1540 the- ,paniards hi!d no Emot 1t gle n.'ng of their
p,r e.histo . ic occu~ -:ts~ Also on ·-a -· · way into the
1

_ .hit~ Mou.-[...]1 1

natural b _f~dg._ in the ·10 l~, a brid,g _ so hug.e tha~[...]s -ction f11,rB1s. can be- Gttlt.iv:at.ed abio.ve the
1

c _ntral sp.an~-
0 r yoli may skip. t-he short. tr'J : out tc;, iuni off the[...]1

thro,ug· - th,e . _ ·bite Mountar·~_Js ----.... tw·o -e·el<.ij at the
very s·h.o .rtest, and yo,u ·s . ould fflalfe it s· - - -'and lea·· ,-e
G'.a l _p, just at the .St:at--e line o·f · ,~tii;ona,, d. iv:e nort:h-
we _t a.cross the. avajo R ,e serve a .d. Mo~kj Land ·to
_·o

the Coconino Forests and h.e Tusayam aacl the l(ai-
b1ab1 - ·□ ·.nd th:e Grand Can on up toward the -St:~t~ 1[...]1

only for oile of the e tht ee trips,. ta . e the ast one ;
f,o r if leads yo·u across ;. ~ -~-[...]wre of color al!ld light and
r-e.motcness w·th the .· ang of hig:h, c;;ool, lavender[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (139)102 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
of gaudy-colored sand_, with the romance and the
adventure and the movement of the most p.icturesque
horsemen and her dsmen in Ameri[...]at all I You know that as soGn as you go
up over the first high m€-sa from the beaten highway
and ·d rop down over into ai1Qthe[...]saw. It isn't America at ·all! It's Arabia;
and the Bedouins of ouf Painted Besert are these
Navajo boys - a red sear£ biiadirig back the hair,
the hair in a l1a,rcl-knottecl. c0il ( not a b.raid),[...]haki trousers or white cotton
pantaloons slit te> the kne,e, and m:o·ceasins, with m0re
silver-work, a[...]essings as
would put an Arab's Damascus tinsel to the blush.
Go up to the top of one of the r-eo sand knobs - you
see these Navajo riders everywhere, coming out of
their hogan houses amon:g the juniper g.roves, cr·oss-
ing the yellow plain, scouring down the dry arroyo
beds, infinitesimal specks of color mo[...]ncl. Or else you see
where a-t night a11d morning the water comes up
through the arroyo heel in pools of stlv·e r; receding
only durlng the heat of the day; an.d moving thro11gl1
the j uniper groves, 0ut from the oqb,er rocks that
scre€n the des:ert like the wings Gf. a theater, d0wn
the ·p anting sand bed or tl1e dead river, trot vast
herds of sheep an.cl goats, the young bleat- bleating
till the air -quivers - driven by little Navajo girls on
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (140)h1ors b.ark , born to the s,a ddl , as the t:ana-a•·,.ail Cree
1s ·-.orn to the. canoe.
Ii ·yo·u. n ·· ,go to Z ufii find an d th.,e · .hi te : - oun-
1~ , 1

ta in Forest an.d the P2rintetl Desttrt, then cheoise tl1e
Pai1t d D ese t. It wi " gi · · e· you ,a -1 the -~·,e-nsations
1

of a trip t:o the O ·i nt w~t . out thie @ -pense or dis-
co,.m fo[...]at iLct i~ worth taking home ·.. ;th you.
Al _o, the ea d 0,f the trip wi l drop you n ea.r your nex-t[...]1

jumping ,off pla.c1e - in the Coconino ~ n . Tusa:" n.
1

o ·,ests of th.e G a- cl Cafi6n. ·-_nd the lu -e of the rr·
ant1q - -sti.11 ,draws' Y,•0a, if[...]lata11t a ,d impudent 1 @ ( 1gn.oi a.hc-e, 1·ke 'the bi.g[...]he» it is ,e mptiest),,.
'· that Ameriea lacks the pic_1 resque ·and hi s-torie, ,,,[...]1

ruin ·f .· merica.," de la · . d one of the lead~ ,g eth jo•
lo 1cal scholar - of the -·~rl d i.n the :Sc.he,ol 0 ~ ,ch,~-[...]1- .· -

019,g y at Rome,. c,l the mo.re undecided we bec1ome·
1
· liethcr the c_•·_il.'·zation o,f th.e Orient p:receded th·a t
0f A ' e-rica,, ,o r that of' Amie.-rica prec.ed ed the ,Q,·r"e:n.t.''
1[...]For insi- an e, 0,n your ·- ·.a ac.i:oss the ·P ·a1nt -: t)[...]1

Chal y) , and rn 0 ,ne of the rock wall . h-.gh ~hove the
1

t,ream: y[...]d i · high
arch,es a·nd groi.ne:d chambers from th. e sol.id strJne, a 1

pr,ehist[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (141) 104 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
, dozen of our national White House. Who built the
aerial, hidden and secluded palace? What[...]to those questions. Your ·guess is as good as the.
next; and you haven't to go all the Way to Persia,
or the Red Sea, or Tibet, to 'do your guessing, but[...]and driver $ 14. In fact, you can go into
the Painted Desert with a well-planned trip of six
months; and a-t the end of your tri·p you will know, as,
y,ou could not at the-beginning, that you have barely
entered the m.argi11 of the wonclers in this Navajo
Land,.
To strike int·o the Painted Desert, you ~art leave
tne beaten[...]on; but to cross it, you sh0u.ld
enter at th.e extreme east and 'drive- west, 0r enter
w[...]L0cal liver:y·men have drivers
who know' the. w.ay ftorn point to point; and the
charge, including driver, horses and ha:y[...]ake
along, a white, or Inclian, who knows the trails of the
vast Reserve~ for water is as rare as radium and only
a local man knows the location of those pools where
you will b_e spending your no.oning and ca,mp fo·r the
night. Camp in the Southwest at any other season
than the two rainy months - .July and August-[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (142)the
v·el et blue. of p-an y for r-0,of., ,a .1d the sta.-s will
1

~w1~ ·.~ d.0 n. so elos e i - th,e ar·~, cl€ar Des.e rt ·:air that[...]e Jae ·'. o'~la11terns.~. Because. y 0 ~. are in the 1 1

Desert, d , ·t i't del[...]d, y as a blast out 0 f a fur,·- acel though. the· heat is 1

n ·. _:r s -r6'"n:,~.; bu[...]e~t, and
the ·· ight · ill be as chilly ·as if ·•ou wer[...]dian ··· o,rthwe·st . 1

. .p to the pre.~, .nt,I tJ1e Missio,n a£ St. Michaet.'·s,.[...], ha. . - _b n ope·n t 0 all comers · ·r ouing the Des.[...]1

egarded as an .insult. It ls a type o: the old~time
bar 0_~.ial Spanish .hospital· ty, when[...]a . d ey ry co.m·. ·r . a.s. W•elc.olm ed to the -es,tive
1

'boa .- d, •~ nd if you[...]' .

by th~ lor d of th~. ma. ,.io r with th.e s··mple ·and abso-[...]ake greec1ily ,and literally, with no sen ~ of the
it,ohle -se ob·lige w. ··ch bln.ds rec[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (143)106 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
to an age when the Quantity travel quite as much a~
the Quality. For instance, everyone who has crossed
the Painted Desert knows that Lorenzo Hubbell,
who is commonly called the King of Northern Ari-
zona, has yearly spent thou[...]ced and stay uaurged and depart reluctantly. .
In the old days, when y0ur, Spanish grandee enter'"
tain[...]ell, it may work out in Goldsmith's comeey,
whete the two travelers mistake a mansiori for an inn.
But where the. arrivals came in r~lays of ttorn one to
a dozen[...]e·a k
out in patronizing prin,t, it is ti.me for the Mission and
Da_y's Ranch and Mr. Hubbell's trading posts to
have kit<i:hen qttarters for sueh as they. In the old
days:, Quality s•a t above the salt; Quantity sat below
it and slept in rushes .s pread 011 the floor. I ,vould
respectfully off er a suggestion as to salti,t1g clown
much of the freshness that weekly pesters the fine old
baronial ho.spitality of fh·e Painted D[...]orm.e d his host that. he didn't care to rise
for the family breakfast but would take his at such
an ho•u.r. There was the drurnmer who ordered the
gaughter of th~ hous~ '' to hustle; the fodder ,'~
-
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (144) ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 107

There was the lady who stayed unasked for three
weeks, then departed to write ridiculous caricatures
of the very roof that had sheltered her. There was
the Governme-n t man who calmly ordered his host to
have breakfast ready at three in the morning. His
host wo11ld not ask his colored help to rise at such an
hour and wit.h his own hands prepared the breakfast,
when the gu-est looked lazily through th.e wind0w and
seeing a stotm btewirtg '' thought he'[...]go quick; and you will go th-is
.instant. ''
The Painted Desert is bound to become as well •

known to Am-erican travelers as Algiers an@ the
northern rim of the Sahara to the thousands, of Euro-
pean tourists, who yearly flock s-outn of the Mediter-
ranean. When that time comes, a differen[...]revail, so I would advise all visitors going into
the Navajo country to take their own food and camp
kit an.cl horses, eitl1er rented from an 011tfitter at the
'
starti,n g point, or bought outright. At St. Michael's
Mission, and Ganado, and the Three Mesas, and
Graibi, you can pick up the neeessary local guide.
We ent€.]:ed the Painted Desert by way of Gallup,
hiring driver and team locally. Motors are avail-
able for th,e first thi.r ty miles of the trip, though out
of the question for the main I 50 miles, owing to the
heavy sand, fine as flour; but they happened to be out
of commission the day we wanted them.

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (145) 1·08 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
The trail rises and rises from the sandy levels of
the railroad town till you are presently on the high
north€rn mesa among scrub juniper and[...]mosphere, as life-giving as atty
frost air of the North. The yt:llow ocher rocks close
ori. each side in w[...],
w·h ete they charge t en tents a glass for the privilege .
of their sprin·g . There i$ the same pro fusion of gor-
geous desert flowers, qyed in the very essence of the
sun, as you saw round the Ene~anted M ,e sa - globe
eaetus and yellow p[...]pod rnottle·d as its vroto-
type's skin. And the trail still climbs till you dro,p
sheer over the eeige of the sky-line and se,e a. new
world swimming below[...]henn lights are of hyperbo.r ean realm.
It is the Painted Desert~ and it isn't a flat sand plain[...]purple anel red hills receding f t·.om you i.o. the waves
of a -s ea to the beltedr misty mountains rising up sheer
\
in[...]ow
rock, and three Zuni boys are loping along the trail
in f tont of you - red headband, hair in a brai,d, recl
sash, velvet trousers - the n1ost famous runners of
all Indian tribes in spite ot their short, squat st'ature.
The Navajo trusts to his p9t1y, and so is a slack
runner. Also, he is not so well nourished as the
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (146) ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 109

Zuni[...]Holbrook,
eighty miles in a day. Or you hear the tinkle of a
bell, and see some little Navajo[...]ffect. So
Rachel was watering her flocks when the Midianitish
herder$ drove her from tl1e spring; and you see the
same rivalry for possession of th.e waterhole in our
own desert country ,as a·nc[...]· tells of that
othe-r storied land.
The hay stacks, huge, tent-shaped tufa rocks to the
right of t;he road, mark the approach to St. Michael's
Mission. Where one great rock has splintered from

the main w·all is a curious .p henomenon noted by al[...]d ho·rns, etched in perfect
ot1tline against the face of the tock. The driver
tells you it is a trick of rain and stain, but a knowl-
edge of the tricks of lightni-I'lg stam,p.ing pictures on[...]another explanation.
Then you have crossed the .bridge and the red-
tiled roofs of St. Michael's loom above the hill, and
you drive up to an obl(';)ng, white, green-shuttered
building as silent as the grave - St. Michael's 'Mis-
sion, where th•e Franciscans for seventeen years have
been holding the gateway to the Navajo Reserve.
Below the hill is a little square log shack, the mission
printing press. Behind, another shack, the post-
office; and of:f beyond the hill, the ranch house of Mr. •[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (147) 110 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
.a nd Mrs. Da.y, two of the best known characters on
the Arizona frontier. A mile down the arroyo is
the co,n vent school, Miss Drexel's Mission for the
Indians; a fine, massive structure of brick and stone,
equal to -a ny of the famotls Jesuit and Ursuline schools
so famous in the history o_f Que·hec.
And at this• litt[...]ozen build-
ings, is being lived over agai'n the same heroic drama
that Father Vim.a.qt and Mother Mary pf the Incar-
nation opeped in New Franee three cen[...]elf-abnegation and
practical religion. Also, the work of M .iss Dre:X:e_l's
missiona.ries prorni~.es to be more perm.anent.than that
to the Huro·ns and Al,gonquins of Qu~bec. They are[...]mission. They are le-avimg them Indians with
the leaven of a new grace wo.r king in their hearts.
The Navajos are to.:day 22,0.@0 strong, and on the
increase. The Hurons and Algonquins -alive to-day,
·you ca[...]m
p'illar to post, they wer:e destroy.e.d by the civilization
they had embraced; but the N.a vajos have a realm
perfectly ~dapted to[...]hment on th.at R.eserve, Father Web-
bet, of the Fr~nciscans, has set his face like adamant.[...]putting up
mon-uments to these workers among the Navajos .

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (148) ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 111

Meanw[...]ow· nor care what they are
doing.
You enter the silent hallway and rit:}g a ge>ng. A
Navajo inte[...]ather Berrard will
be d.o wn; aro.d when you meet the cowled Franciscan
in. his rough, brown cassock, w[...]ight shut your eye.s and imagine y0urself back in the
Quebec consistories of· three centuries ago. There is
the s·ame poverty, the s·a rpe qu.iet devotion, the same
consecrated se.h olarship, the same study of race and
legend, as made the Jesuit missions famou-s all
through Eu.rope bf the Sev enteenth C-ehtYry. Why,[...]e
priests and two lay helpers, is sustai11ed 0.11 the s·m all
sum of $ I ,000 a year; and out e>f his[...]y a ptinting press
apd issue a sehol-arly work on the Navajos, costing
him $1,500 I
Next morning, wh[...]Miss
Drexel's Mission School, cl.r ove us back to the Frart-
ciscan's house, we saw pi::oofs of a second volume on
the Navajos, which Father B·e rrard is i-ssuing; a c[...]oud. Th·e n he shows us what will ·easily
prove the masterpiece of his Iif e - , hun.d reds of draw·-
ings, which, for t_h e last ten years, he has been having
the medicine men of the Navajos make for their

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (149) 1-ifl ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
'

legends, of -all the a11thentic, known patterns of their
blankets and the· meanings, of their baskets and what
they mean, ancl of the heavenly Gonstellations, which
'
are much the same as ours except that the .names are
those o-f the coyote and eagle and other desert crea-

tures instead o·f the Latin app.ellatio.ns. Lungren
.and Burbank an[...]artists, who have
passed this way, suggested th.e idea. Som@@ne sent
Father Bertar d folrbs of[...]series of d.rawi.ngs
that excels anytqjng in the Smithso.nian Institute of
Washington or-the Field M11seum of C,hicago. For
instance, thet.e is the map of the sk-y and of the milky
way with the four cardihal points marked in the
Navajo colors, white, blue, black and y~llow, with
th'e legend dr-aw.n of the '' .g r,e,at medicin.e man '"
putting the star,s in th@irplace·s.in, the sky, when along
comes Coyote, steals )the mystery bag •o f· stars - and
puff,, with one breath he ha:s mischievously sent the
divine sparks scattering helter-skelte.r all over the face
of heaven. There is the legend of '' the spider
maid '' teaching the Navajos to w€ave their wonder-
ful blanket's, though the Hopi deny this and assert
th.at th·eir women captured in war were the ones who
taught the Navajos'the art of' weaving. There is the
picture ,of the Navajo transnJigrati,on of souls up the
twelve deg~ees of a huge corn stalk, £or all the world
like the Hindoo legend. ·o f a soul's travail up to life.
You must not forget how similar tnany of the Indian

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drawings are to Orie11tal work. Thent there is the
picture of the supreme woman deity of the, Navajos.
Does tl1at recall any Mother of Life in[...]ogists had founde·d •

their studies on the Indian's own account of himself,
rather than their own scrap13y version of what the
Indian told. themt we sh@uld have got somewhere in
our kno.w ledge of the relationsh_ips of th€ human race.
Father B[...]ts are. a gold mine in
themselvest and would save the squandering oy E}ast-
ern buyers of thousands a y[...]in dis-
.guise, with overcoa.t collar turned up, the priest went
to examine the alleg€d wonder. It was a palpable
cheat manufactured in the E -a st for the benefit of
gullible to.u rists.
'' Where di[...]get that vegetable
green?'' Father Berrard asked the u.nsusp'ecfin,g
'd ealer.
'' From frog ponds,'' an~wered the store man of a
region where water is scarce as[...]ot yet finished his collection
of drawings, for the m edicine men will reveal certain
secrets only when the moon a11d stars a:re in a certain
position; but he vows tl1at when the book is finished

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and when he has saved tn'1>ney[...]should probably
have· been put up at eitherc the Fr·anciscan Mission, or
Day's Ranch ,; but being w0tnen we were condu~ted a
mile f arth.er 'd own the arroyo to Miss Drexel's Mis-
sion School for[...]graclt. There
are in all fourteen members of the sisteihood here,
much th·e same type o.f Wf>men ,in biFth an·d station
and tra,inin,g as the polished no.bility ·t h.at fot1nded the
first· r@ligious institutions. of New France. P erhaps,
because thethe t empta-ti00 to be good
shc;>uld be grea. te[...]si0n to be evil.
Sisters are playing tag with the little Indiarn girls in
one yatd; laymen helper·s tearching Nav.ajo boys base,.
ball on the ogen ~o.m mon; and f"rom o.ne of the t1pper
halls comes the sou.n d of a brass band tuning up for
future festiv·ities.
We were presently ensconced in the quarters,· set
aside for guests; roo[...]
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two gen[...]em.p tations
on our plates and gatl1ered news g.f the big, outside
world. Then Mother J osephine catne[...]yes.
Presently, you hear a b.ugle-call signa,l the boys
f1·om play; ·a nd the bell S'o unds t0 pra:ye2rs; and a
great ~tillness[...]l btrt for tl1e bright blan'l{eted folk
camped on the hill t9 the right - {retie figures seen
against the pink glow of the fading light.
Next morning we attended mass in[...]ttle black-eyed faces behding over their
prayers, the chanting o.f gently nurtured voices from
the stalls - is it the Dese·r t we are in, or an Qa:sis
watered[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (153) CHAPTER VII
ACROSS TH.E PAINTE]) DESERT TH'ROUGH NAVAJO[...]HERE ar e two ways to travtl evert off the
beaten trail. One is to take a map, stake
.- out pins on the points you are going to
visit, then pace up t[...]n g,oing at that pace, you can get a sense
of the wonderful coloring of the Painted Desert, of
the, light lying in shimmering heat layers split by the
ref r.action of the dusty air in prismatic hues, of an
atmo·s phet~ with the tang of t1orther.n ozone and the
resinous scent 0f incense and fratikincense and
myrrh. Y oli can see the Desert flowers that vie with
the sun in, brilliant coloring; and feel the Desert
night sky come down so close to you that you want
to reach up a hand and pJuck the jack•o'-lante,r n
stars swinging $0 low through the pansy-velvet mist.
You can even catch a flying glimpse of the most
pictu·resque Indian race in Amer~ica, the Navajos.
Their hogans or circt1lar, mud-wattled houses, are
always somewhere near the watering pools and rock
springs; and jt1st when you think you are most alone,
· driving through the sagebrush and dwarf jurtiper,[...]
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the bleat of a lamb is apt to call your attenti0n to[...]lls and vales, only your Easte1'n rivers flow all the
time, an,d your Desert rivers are apt to disappear
through evaporation and sink btlow the s-urface dur-
ing the heat of the day, comin,g up again in floods
during the rainy months, -and in p0ols during the
cool of morning and evep.ing.
But on a flying triR, you oan't le~rn the secret
moods <:}f the Painted Desert. You can't clraw so
much of its at[...]you away in its blue-gray-lilac mist~ as
wrapped the seers of old in clairveyant p.r ophetic
ecstasy. On a flyihg trip, you can lear·n little or
nothing of the Arab life of our own Desert nomads.
Y o.u have to depend on Blue Book reports of "' the
Navajos being a dangero·us,. warlike race 1' blasted
into submission by the effulgent glory of this, that,
and the other military martinet writi.n g himself down
a he_ro. vVhereas, if you go out leisurely among the
traders and missionaries ancl Indians themselv·es,
who - mare's the pity - have no hand in preparing
official[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (155)[...]•

118 ACROSS THE PAINTED DES'ER,_f
quiet, pastoral race who h_ave for tht@e hundred
years been the v,ii;:tims of white man greed and white
man l[...]ome in-
stances.. We were having lunch.eon in the priests'
refectory of the Franciscan Mission; and f·o r the
benefit of those who imagine that missionaties to the
Indians are fat and bloated on three hundred a year,
I should like to set down t,he fact that the re,f ectory
was in a sort of back kitch.en, t[...]g rnurderot1sly
right and left.
'' In the fir$t place,'' answered the Fran,eiscan,
'' that Indian ought not to have bee11 in Cincinnati
at all. In the seeo.nd tplace, he ought not to have
been there alone. In the third place, he had great
ptov0cation. ''
Here is the story, as 1 gathered it from traders
and m.i'ss:ionaries and Indians. The Navajo was
having t rouble over title to hicS land. That was
wron·g the ntst on the part of the white man. It was
n.e,cessary for him to go to Wasliitigto.n to lay his
grievance before the Government. Now for an
Indian to go to Washi[...]t was for Stanley to go to Da·rk@st A frica.
The trip ought not to have been necessary if o[...]

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but the local agency provided him with an i.ntet-
preter. Tl:ie next great worry to the Navajo was
that he could not get access to '' The Great White
Fat her.'' There were intermi11ab[...]e and de-
lay. Finally, when he got access to the I ndian Of-
fice, he could get n6 definite, p[...]to a poor Indian, he set out for home;
and at the station in Washing,ton, the interpreter l€ft
him. The N a,,ajo could not speak on·e word of
Englis[...]ca rs in Cineinnati, h ustled and
jostled by the cro'\-v ds, he suddenly felt fo t his purse
-he had bee·n robb ed. Now, the Navajo code is
if another tribe injures his·[...]ight a11d left.
T he white man newspaper told the story of the mur-
derous a:5sault in Bane l1ead lines; but it clid11't tell
the 'Story of wrongs arrd pl'ocrastination. T he I n-
dian Office righted th,e land matter; but that d.idn't
undo tl1e damage. Through the efforts of tlre mis-
sionaries and the· traders, tl1e Indian was permitted
t o plea[...], he has been released under
bonds.
· The most notorious case of wro11g an,d outrage[...]

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was that of a few years ago, when the Indian agent
peremptorily ordered a _Navajo to bri11g his c)iild
in to th.e Agency School. Not -so did Marmon an·d
Pratt sway the Incli·ans at Laguna, when the Pueblos
there were persuaded to send their c:hild[...]mptory orders for children to come to
sGhool; but the rna-rtinet mandate w·e.nt forth. Now,
the Indian treaty, that provides the child shall be
sent to school, also stipulates that the school shall
l5e placed within reach of tne child; and the Navajo
kn.ew t'hat he was within his right i11 refusing to let
the chili leave home when the Govern.ment h-ad
failed to place the school within such distance of his
li.ogan. He was thep. warned by the agent that un-
le.ss the child were sent within a certain time, troops-
w&[...]d they were still within their right
in refusing. The·re eaIJ be no doubt bt1t that if Ca:p-
tain Will[...]elf, had been in direct command
'
of the cretachment,
.
the cowardly. murder would not
have occurre<si; but the Navajos were only Indians;
and the troops arrived o,n the scene in charg,e of a
hopelessly incompetent subo[...]a bully bu.t a most arrant c0ward. Ac-
cording to the traders and the missionaries and the
Indians themselves, the Navajos were not even
armed. Fourteen of t[...]
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ACROSS THE PAINTED D·E SERT 12r

ers, who have talked witl1 the N avaj0s present, say
the troopers surrounded the hogan in the dark, a
soldier's gun went off by mistake and the command
was given in hysterical fright to '' fire.'' The In-
dians were so terrified that they dashed out to hide
in the sagebrush. '' Bravery I Indian bravery,-
pah," one officer of the detachment was afterwards
heard to exclaim. Two N[...]lawyers, without any defense whatsoever,
without the hearing of witnesses, without any fair
trial whatsoever, the captives were sente,nced to the
penitentiary. It needed only a finishin-g touch t[...]te; and that
came when a little missionary voiced the general
sense of outrage by writing a letter to a[...]investigate; and it was a·n
easy matter to scare the wits out of the little preacher
and declare the investigation closed. In fact, it was
one of the things that woulcl not bear investigation;
but the evidence still exists in Navajo Land, with
more, which space forbids here but which cotnes un-
der the sixty-fifth Article of War. The officer
guilty of this outrage has since been exa[...]ubordinate officer.
These are other secrets of the Painted Desert you
will daily con if you g[...]

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great lone Reserve and do not take with you the
lightning-express habits of urban life.
For instance, in the account of the Cav·e Dwellers
of the Frij0les reference was made to the Indian
legend of '' the heavens rai.ning fire'' ( volcanic ac-
tion) apd driving the prehistoric Pueblo peoples
from their ancient dwe[...].
M'ichael''s, who has f0rgotten .m ore lore than the
scient-ists will ever· :pick up, told m~ of a gt[...]erfect s11ecimens of corn -which seems to
sustain the lt1dian legend of volcanic outbqrst having
destroyed fhe ancient nations here. The slab was
sent Ea~t to a museum in Brooklyn. Some[...]e.

A·s we had not yet lea:i'ne·d h0w to do the Painted
D .e sert, we went forw·ard by the mail wagon f roin
St. Michael's to Mr. Hubbell's[...]one-eyed Navajo driver sat in front. We were
in_the Desert, but o-ur ~ray led through the p-ark-like
vistas of the rn.a st-high yellow pine, a region of such
hlgh, rare, dry air that nQt a blade of grass grows
below the conifers,. The soil is as dry a-s ·d ust a,nd
fine as flour; a[...]0

to evaporation; but it is not hot. The mesa runs
up to. an altitude of almost 9,000 fee[...]yant lift to yo11r heart-beats
and a clearing of the cobwebs from your braia. You

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (160)[...],eas. -·· ands 011, Q}esa t1igh above the plan1[...]
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th.ick and hard to b - a-the. ·. · ·d you ca.n g'O hara
h.ere ~nd not tir e, aAcl atand 011 the crest 0 f me,sas 1[...]1

a-n d. W ' · ve your arm:s ab ov-e th,e top of th~ wtr 1 ·. 1[...]So -1gh you a e - you did not eahz.e 1t - that the
rim of· encircling mounta·'.ns is only· a tiny[...]b,e,as,:t
- t -'hes,e higli lev,.els,., ·The reason is, of ,~ou·rse,
5fil

the :~carcity of· .wate~,, thou,gh n o r wa.y @u't: just
brlow thi· me a at the side of a . '.r arroyo we found
o,. e of the. wa_ys1d e spr·n!ls that · ·ake lif e of any[...]1

Then the trail bega.n d,r o pJJi·ng dow •. , down itt[...].a ts .and. sheep s:eemed to be catnlng Gut.·
of the · um per hi l , to the: · ·aterin-. pool,, ·he ded as
usual by little g· rb; for the custom is to dower ea •h
ch__- ·td[...]

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men rode up and down the arroyo bed as graceful
and gayly caparisoned as Arabs, or lounged around
the store building s.m oking. Huge wool wagons
loaded three lay'e rs de'ep with the season's fleece
stood in front of the rancho. W Qin en with children
squatted on the ground, but the thing that struck you
first as always in the Painted Decsert was color: color
in the bright headbands; color in the clos-e-·f itting
plush shir-ts; color in the Ger.man town blankets -
for the Navajo blanket is too heavy for Desert use;
color in the lemon and lilac belts across the sunset
sky; color, more color, in t.he blood-red[...]he;r e riders or herds of sheep were scourin_g
up the sandy arroyo. No wonder Burbank and
Lungten afid Curtis go mad over the color of this
subtle land of mystery a11d half-to[...]sert scenes of this land, you have missed
some of the best work being dqne- in the art world
to-day. If this work were done in Europ[...]us it
comm-a nds only its hundreds. Nothing that the Pte-
Ra_phaelites ever did in the Holy, Lands · equals in
expressiveness and pow-er L1mgren's studies of the
Desert; though th€ Pre-Raphae]ites commande-cl[...]our artists one thousand
and tvv'o thousand.
The Navajo dtiver nodded back to us that this
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (163) ACROSS THE PAINTEB DESERT 125

was Ganado[...]r.
Lorenzo Hubbell has already entered history in the
mal<,ings of Arizona and as l1e shuns the limelight
quite as '' mollycoddl@s '' (his fa-vor[...]not be
out of place. First, as to his house: from the out-
side you see the typical squat adobe oblong so suited
to a climate where hot winds ate the ene1nies to
comfort. You notice as y0u enter the front door
that the walls are hvo feet or m,o re thick. Then
you take[...]r with benches and stiff chairs backed up
against the wall. Instead, ;you see a huge living-
room forty or fifty feet long, eveJy sguare foot of
the walls covered by paintings a11d drawings o·f
Western life. Evt~ry artist of note (with the ex-
ception of one) who h-as done a picture on the South-
west ~n th:e last thirty years is represen[...]s here. You could .spend. a good week stucly-
ing the pa.inti-n gs of the Hubbell Ranch. Inclt1ding
sepias, oils and waterc[...]most
300 pictures. By chance, you look up to the
rafite:r ed ceiling; a specimen 0£ every kind of rare
basketry made by the India11s ha,n gs from the beams.
On the floor lie Navajo rugs of priceless value a[...]

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blankets. On the walls of the office are more pic-
rures; on the Boors" more rugs; in the s.a f es and
case-s., specimens of rare silver-work that somehqw
again remind you of the. affinity between Hind00 and
N a,rajo. Mr. Hu[...]r busi11esa in wool, and yearly e.xtel'1ds
to the Navajos credit for amounts runnin,g from
tw·[...]which they have never yet betrayed.
Along the walls of the living-toon:i are doors
opening to the sleeping apartments; and in e~ch of
the many gue.s t rooms are more pictures, more ru-gs.
Behind the livin,g-toom is a placito flanked ·by the
• kitchen and cook's quarters.
Now wh[...]-a1'1d; a m,an with friend'S,
who would lil<e the privilege of ·d ying for him; also
with enem[...]tl1e pr,i'Vilege of
helping him to die. What the, chief factors of the
Huds~n's Bay Cpmpany us.ed to b,e., to the Indians of
tl1e North, Lorenzo Hubbell has been to the Indians
of' the Desert --- frie-ncl, guard, counselor, with a[...]befriend when help was needed;
always and to the l1ilt an enemy to ·the cheap-jack
politician wbo came to exploit the Indian, though
he might have to ·beat the rascal ~~t his 0wn ga,me ot
putting ttp a bigger bl1rff. In appearance, a fine type
of the cou rtly Spanish-American gentleman with[...]
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Castilian[...]keeps you guessing
as to how m.uch more graciou's the ne;x:t court~sy can
be than the last, and a funny anecdote t0 cap every
climax. Y[...]b-
bell that time was when he as nonchalantly cut the
cards for $30,000 and as gracefully lost it all,[...]imself. It .is from others you
must learn that in the great cattle and sheep war,
in which I 56 men lost their lives, it was he who led
the n.ative Me:lcican sheep ow,n ers against the ag•
gressive cattle crowcl. They are all friends now,
the oldtime enemies 1 and have buri-ed their feud;
an[...],vill not fo.tce Mr. Hubbell to open
his mouth on the s.ubjee.t. In fact, it was a pair of
the '' rustlers'' themselves who told me of the time
that tl1e c0wboys took a swoop into the Navajo Re-
serve ahd stampeded off 306 of the Indians' best
horses; but they had reck:oned with[...]ll. I.n twenty-:four hours- :h e had gat together the
swiftest riders of the N ava1os; and in another
tv;renty-four hours, he had pursued the thieves I 2 5
miles into the wildest canons of Arizona al\d had
r,escued every horse. One of t'he mem, whom he had
pur.sued, wiped the sweat from his brow in memory '
of it. He is more than a type of the Spanish-
American gentleman. He is a type of the 111an that
the Desert produces: quiet, soft sp0ke.n - pow[...]

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p o .es h:is lo . e , y uymg.
The ,-7: _-a~ajo·s are to-d,ay by l<Jrn.g oclcls the m.ost
p1rospl!r·o1u s I.nd'" ans in _-_ mfric;[...]n fifty to st . enty, e nts a head irt Wool on
th.e av·e ra_ge, still it ,eo,s ts n_o,thing to kc,ep[...]go,ats. Both. f1:rn· S a su,p..p l o-f me,_ t. The hi :- es[...]I! II!

of ra -sil~ver, bul ion f?": m the ,s-, anr rd.s; llut t~ , _. ay:,
they· 111~el[...]bra.c,. letsl anti
leather, -1-~.Its.I wit_ti the fifty~c@:1- t coins· changed into
fta -e r bl[...]s. 1

If yo _~buy th~~r thi11.~s-· n th,e 'big Western cities, he,y
are,, Cf>stl~y as, C[...]r ,e is a very sl: '.f)le way of CCL · p trng
the: value. , ir-st, -a -~e- the value of t' 1e coin f 0 m 1

which th,ethe tutgu0··se happens t'0 b, ; and JOU ha e th,[...]1

bought 0 1. t Qn 'the Re~· ·rvJ!.
1

Among, th,e , _av jos,, the •'a.men w -~ ve t , e 'bla,n•
kets a, t4 ba, .ets., among , h,. ki, the m· ll, while 1[...]1

,. the, · omen ar . th ,g:r eat potte y mak rs..[...]

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to ·the, int: cac · of the . or ,,., the pla·n nati e w,ool
colors ,_ blac. . gra~_, , l1[...]f om s: _,nty ce.n ts to , 1.,2; a, p,01.1n,d _; the,
fine bayetta or re · . _, ea · ~, ~- h1ch is :[...]r:abilrty,.
fetching pre ty nearly· a ~y pric e th.e o . -ner asks,.[...]1

s :a _e,s, situck up in. the gr011ntd r~t1tch - ~s - a:nd w- t _;cd[...]1

too h:-avy f _r the climl_-_ te., H e 't1Se,s th e c·heap and[...]1

driver who .kne · the. tr,a.·1, . _- e -·, · t out' ftt.orn ,G anadP[...]1

up -to the pres,e nt -._ ,_,_ . ubb e '1 b.as fr eely[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (168) ,n ot beca,u.se th,e pub:.li c t:rve _ , r., Hubbell less., but[...]''

- - 91
m or,e.
1

Th,e mornin,g air --~- --u, e i ine. The hi ls ---ere1

veiled i 1·1[...]p·ne -- 1,o ·• h -.. th,e r · d sunrise tam e[...],
w, ere littL boy . and girls · . re <,riV1 g the sheep
an. go.ats up and dow:a fr,om t ,,e wat[...]tly, . s you dPi ,.,· _- n,o rth , , _-,.- ,a rd the .e. swim
thr,o _~,g h t , e o,p aline ha,ze pee ]hat to, the, D esert,[...]on
11 1

t'he sumrn·t- th Franci~co - ~ o.,u.n tain,s· 0 f Flagst ff 1

fa~ to the South· a.nd Y'O a "_ on. h•'. g · :_~-ge'brus[...]Ji en it to nothing hut t .e app,ea,rance of the sea
at sunrise OF suns -t · hen_ a sor,t of misty I . v · nder
li:g'ht fol 0 W'S th.e red glo, -.. Th.~ . ·titesa leads[ yo l[...]_ ·e·-s _ _ _,. the_ n-or. l1er_n b·_r e· ,It·_ o·,f·. t·_·'b[...]ert eo-m ri · -s th: Ka,i. ~-ab :-0 r,est, an,d _the
1 ~J 1[...]1 1

th,e M as o ,·the _, oki ,a. >id · -avajo Lan,d lying Ji e[...]a edge be e -ft th s, tw.o belt .
The.nl to ·a'·'dS mid d·-, ) y,our tra·i h[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (169)[...]r down a sand banl{ and find yourself between
the yellow pumice walls of a blind citl-de-sac in the
roclt. - r.iooning plaee - wl1ere a tiny trickle of
pure spring water pours out of the uppe1· angle of
r~ck, forming a pool in a natural basin of stone.
H ere cowboys of the long•ago days, when this ,vas
a no-man's-la[...]from
pollution and painted hands of blood on the walls
of the cave roof abov,~ the ·spri·ng. Wfierev'e·r you
find pools in the Des·ert, there the D½s~·r t silence is
broken by life; 11nbrok[...]e Jays arid bltrebir,ds
flashing phantoms in. the sunli,ght, th·e wild doves
fluttering in flo[...]' J

This spring is about 'half of the- fifty-five miles
between GanadG> and I{·e:a1n's Canon; a-nd the last •

half of the trail is but a continuance of the first:
more lilac-colo.r ed mesas higl1 above the top of the
world, with the enGireling p<3aks like the edge o-f an
invetted bowl, a sky above. blue as the bluest 't u -
quoise; then the cedared lower hills. redol.@11t of ever-
g-re.ens; a drop amid the pumice rocks @f the 1ovver
world, and you are i'n Keam's Canon, driving along
the bank of an arroyo trenched by floods, steep as a[...]•
carved wall. You pass th~ ru_ins of the old govern-
ment school, where the floods drove, the scholars out,
and s.e e th-e big rock commemo[...]arson's
· famous fight long ago, and come. on the new Indian
schools where I 50 little[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (170) 10 2 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
in every respect as the be·st educational institutions
of the East. At the Agency- Otlie~ hef-e you must
obtain a petmit to •g<:> bfi into Moki Land·; for the
Three M€sas and Qraibi and. Hotoville are the
Ultima Thule of the trail acr0ss the Painte<il Desert.
Here you fincl tribes comjp1etely untouched by civili-
zation and as hostile to it (as the name Hotoville
signifies) a:s when the Spa:ni();rd first came among
them. 1n faet, the Gnly remnants of Spanish inHu-
en€e·- left at some of these me'sas are the dwa-:rfed
peach· orc·hards growing in the arid santls. These
were planted centuries agq by the Spanish padres.
The tr4ding post manai ecl by Mr. Lorenzo Hub-
bell,[...]his
father's establish,rnent at Ganado. Here is the same
fiqe old Spani,sh hospitali.ty. Bere, too,[...]n paintings.
There a:r.e rugs from every part of the Navajo Land,
and specimens of p0ttery 'from the ThTee Mesas -
especially f.r@m N am,paii1 the wonclerful w·ornan pot-
tery maker of the First Mesa -- and fine silver-work
gathered from the NaYajo ·silversmiths. And with
it all is th,e graeious periection of tl1.e art th~t' con-
ceals art, the air that you are <;:onf erring a favor
on the host to a.ccept rest in a little rose-covered
bower of two too.ms a-nd a parlor p}laced at the com-
mand of gu'ests.
· The last lap of the drive across the Painted Des-
ert is by all odcls the hardest stretch of the r.oad, as
well as the most intete6tin,g. It is here the Mokis,
or H opi, have their reservation in the very heart
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (171)[...]1, 1

ab,o,ve -the pla'ins - ·of y ll0w , ifa and hite , yp um[...]1

but f-0r ·the C e:st he perch the · oki village, .
1[...]·p
the -,arrt1W a·cc1i ' ~ i s l ·ad. ng O the: .e m..: s,a er ~ S:ts ·the
1 e

·, ti[...]of · 12a"nted Oi. d at their ·feet
receding: to the very -drop ov -r th . sky- ine, with
tones an~ ha[...]s·irggesti.011s o-f opaline
sno peaks s mming in the lila>c haze hu d: eds of
miles a.way., , CllJ wou[...]_ as ~org,e()Us ,- ad ·b.1·illi1ant as· ·;11 the G- ~nd
Cari.on.. But _ou ree th· ir little fa.rm ps.tc.b ~ among
the sand b"Uo · s b .lr9, · -_ the pgach tr; . s almost up""
roote·tl 'by the viol nee o~ ·the . _ "nd, iter ~~lly and
t ·. uly, a stone plllC'@d - h -re the corn h-_ s been p a ,t _id
to ~rev,ent seecd incl pl nt ~t from being hl0wn away..
Or f the . a~ajo , . il raitied t . e · . :old,. ,ou coul[...]1

in_g w· ~r up to th., - \e hi _ ltopJ;,.; bt1t th day oi r~id
an,d f[...]1

lea ned one good rea~ot'l why the dw •lltrs of thi
land mnst keep to the hi:gh rock cr-®ts. Cros i'ng
th·e high rn,es:[...]1

and th.en it blew some. .o e~'' B· the ime we

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (172)134 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
reached the sandy plain b"elow, such a hurricane had
broken a[...]of Labrador, when for six hours
we could not see the sea: for the foam. Tl1e billov.rs
of sand literally liftecd. Yoi1 could not see the
sandy plain for ,a dust fine a,s flour that wiped[...]land.mark three feet ahead of your horses'
noses. The w~eels sank hub cleep in sand. e>f
trail, not a sign was left; and you he~rd the same
angry roar a·s in a hurricane at sea. But like the
eter.oa,._l roclrs, dim and serene a,n d high above the
turmoil, stood the First M.esa village of M0ki L and.
Perhaps after[...]they we re doing when they built .so. higl1
above the dust storms. Twice the rear wheels lif ted
for a glori@us upset; but we veered and tacked a-n d
whipped the ·fagged horses on. For three hours the
hurricane lasted, an:d when finally it sank with an
angry growl and we came ou~ of the fifteen miles of
sand into sagebl:'ush .and looked back., the rosy tinge
of an afterglow lays on the ,gr-ay pile of stone where
the Moki town crests th,e top of the lofty mesa.
In justice to travelers and D ese[...]c.ertain spring months. So mu€h in
fairness to the Pain.ted Desert. Next, I haye
cursorily g.iven slight details of the Desert storm,
because I don't want any pleasure seekers to think
the Painted Desert can be cros·sed with the comfort
of a Pullman car. You have to pay[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (173) ACROSS THE p ' I _--T, D DES[...]es ible t · lker ~.
· ,,ell ·- e came to the p,o int wh-e,re not ,a soul in 1

the ca. rr•·a,ge c,ould utt ·r a. -,, ,o r d fo.r[...]~

old~timer we o: .g ht to ha ._. ti,: d et han · 'k,e r ch1e ,~-s[...]ros,s ou-.r mo ths. Glas e·s , c had to .k ·eep the cl , t[...]1

tn get rid of ,i ·•
Of the Thr·ee · · , esas and, Oraib,i and Hoto,ville,[...]and n t~
,rally ,au g . d ·m.b ith ,}Qy o.f the beauty o ~ .t ~-n '
10
1 •• ou 0 .-[...]1

on the bak" nf( ha e rode ·1d stood above '£ · ufas,[...]Pueb1lo s li1ld th~ir reli~g1ous .rite - bef ore the c,oming
1[...]1

of the Spamia.rds.
Of the 10 -; i to _-. s,, Oraibi :·s, perha.pts, cl _.[...]1

a. d b,. tter tha · th,e T ·_ e ,_,_ esa . The mesas, are i :-
1

descr~bably,[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (174)136 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT
quarters,, the adobe hard as cement, tl1e rooms di-
vided into s[...], cooking room, meal
bin, etc. Also, being nearer the formation of the
Grand Caiio11, the coloring surrounding the Mesa is
almost as gorgeot1s as the Can9,n.
I£ it had not been that the season was ver:gir1g on
the su.m m€t ta1ns, which floo'd the Little Colorado,
we sqould ha-ve go1,1e on from Oraibi to the Grand
Canon. But the Littl~ Colorado is ft1ll of quicks'cl,,nds,
dan,g[...]n of a generous host's horses;·
so we came bac1( the way we had entered. As we •
drove down the win.ding trail that corkscrews from
Oraibi to the sand plain, ,a grot1p of Moki women[...]nd met us just as
we were tu'r ning out ba-cks on the Mesa.
''We love you,'' exclaimed an old woman extend-
ing her hand ( the Gove,r nment d0cto.r interpreted
for us),[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (175)[...]area 0 f on~ ·and g,:ate k ·lo· t1 1

as the Petrified Foi-ests, the upland pine parks of · he
ra·,ne,isc:o (Junta ins round. Flag,-ta-f[1 the ,-~u ·t ter-
- 1-

r'tory of the Grand Ca.~,on, a · d the - estern s op, be~
't _een th~ Co,11ti.n .• ntal Divi dc an -_ th,e P.ci i,c 1

~ 'eedless. to s[...]could spend a go, -d two weeks in each area, and the .
1
Co,me-a · ·ay c,onsc1ous that yot1 had s,eei:i Qt1 -y the ~egin.. 1

n.i~gs of t'he - onder.s i.n each. Fo - instance, th[...]ri ed,. · lso, aft~,r y.,oq have v'~e,w·e,d the ca~o s an,d
upla:. d. pine pa-tks a,nd 'S.n.o,v.[...]ngs round Flagstaff and ha; e r~co· ,e red fro m th,e
1[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (176) 138 THE GRAND CANON -
in the Desert., you may strike south and see the
Aztec ruins of Montezuma's Castle and Monte-
~ijma's Well, or go yet farther afield to the Great
Natural Bridge of ·s outhern Arizona, or[...]slow a great crater-like cavity supposed to mark
the sinking of some huge meteorite.
Of the Grand Ca:iion little need be said here; not
because there is nothin,g to say, but because all the
superlatives you can pile on, all the sc1entific
explanations yo,u can give, are so utterly inadequate.
You can count on one hand the number of men who
have explored the whole length of the Grand Canon
- 200 miles - and hundreds of the lesser caiio11s
that strike off sidewise from Gr[...])Gplored and u.nexploitecl. Then, whe.n you cross
the Continental Divide and come on down to the
Angel~s Forests iri from Los Ang«les, a.nd the Clev·e- -
land in from San Diego, you are in[...]e of
200 people a month go out to one ot other of the
Petrified Forests. From Flagstaff, I oo people a
month go in to see the eliff dwellings. Not less
.~han 30,000 people a year visit the Grand Canon
tnd 100,000 people yearly camp and holiday in the
J\ngel€s and Cleveland Forests. And we are but
at the be.ginning of tb,e discovery of our own Western
Wonderland. Who shall say that the National

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (177) ~

THE GRAND CANON 139
Forests are not the People's 'Playground of all
America; that they do not belong to the East as
much as to the West; that East and West are not
alike concerned in maintaining and protecting them ?
You strike into the Pet1~ified Forest's ·from Adam-
ana or Holbrook. Adamana admits you to one sec-
tion of the petrified area, Holbrook to another-·
both equal[...]u go out in a big tally-ho with several others in
the rig, the charge wi]l be from $1.50 to $2.50. If
you hire a driver and fast team for yourself, the
charge will be from $4 to $6. Both places have
ho[...]$ r. 5o in
Holbrook, to $2 and $2.50 at Adamana. The hotel
puts up your luncheon and water keg, and the trips
can be made, with the greatest ease in a day.
Don't go to the P etrified Forests e}..'J)ecting thrills
of the big knock-you-down variety I To go from
the spacious glories of the boundless Painted Desert
to the little 2,000-acre aTea of the, Petrified Forests
is like passin,g from a big Turner or· Watts canvas in
the Tate Gallery, London, to a tiny study in blue
mis[...]ike Tennyson and Bobby Burns and Words-
worth, ' ~the flower in the crannied wall '' has as
much beauty for you as the ocean or a mountain,
you'll come away touched with the mystery of that
Southwestern Wonderland quite as much as if you
had come out of all the riotous intoxic,a tion of color
in the Painted Desert.

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (178)[...],-,J. '
THE GR,A ND CANON
In fa,t t, you driv'e across tne southern rim of the
Painted
. .
Dese,r t to reach the Petrified ForecSts. You
~ .

are crossing the aromatic, s.a gey-sm,e1ling dry plain
.Pi[...]ountry. A sandy
arroyo trenches and cuts the, plail'l h_ere. A gravelly-
hillotk hunc[...]nd just w,hen you are hav-
ing an eye to the re~r w·heel brake, or glancing ·back
to see whether the fat man is on the up or down
sjde, your eye is caught by, spangles of rainbow light
on the ground, by huge blood-colored roc~s the
shape of a tallen tree with 0nctusted stone bark on
the outside and wedges and slabs and· pillars of pure
on~ a,n.d agate in the middle. Som,ehow you think
of that Navajo le gend of the toy0te spilling the stars
on the face of the sky, and you wonder what marvel-
maker am_o ng the gods of medicifle-m~fl spilled h,is
hQge[...]' Why, loolt,,
th,a t's a tree! '' a.n d the tally-ho spills its occupants
ou,t helte[...]incrusted column hidden at both en-ds
in the sand, and shouts out that the visible p,a tt. of
the recumb.ent ttunk is 130 feet long. There was
a scientist _along with us the day we went out, a man
frorn Belgiu.m in charge ·o f the tare forests of Jav.a ;
and he deGlared[...]pro,n e, pillared "giants must be sequoias of the same
at1cient family as California·'s g[...]etrified trees lie
so deeply buri,e d in the s-and that only treetops and[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (179)There is nothing else r en1otely re-<,_e111bli11g the Grand Cai'i@M in tbe known w0rld 1 a nd no[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (180) "'-J

THE G RAND CA-WON
sections of the trt1nks a11d broken bits of small upper
branches[...]place beneath. these hillocks of gravel and sand.
The depth and exte.nt of the fore.s t below this· ancient
ocean bed are unkno[...]d and swept and
piled up these sand hills~ Bef0re the Desert was an
ancient sea; and before the sea was an ancient sequoia
forest; and it takes a[...]its full growth; and that about
gets you back to the Ancient of Days busy in his
W 0rkshop .m aking Man out of mud, and Earth ot1t
of Chaos.
But the r e is another s-ide to the P ·e trified Forests
besides a prehistoric, geologic one. St;>Iit one of the
big or little pieces of pet1·ified wood o.p en., and yo:u
find pure 011yx, pure agate, the colors of the rainbow,
which every youngster has tried to catch[...]ugh.t by a Master Hand and transfi¾ed forever in
the eternal rooks. Cros·swi·se, the split ·s hows· ·t he
concentric circles of the wood grain in blues a,n.d
purples and r eds and carmines and golds and lilacs
and primrose pinks. Split the ston·e longitudinally
and you have the 'Sarne colors in wate.r-waves bril-
liant as a di[...]hard you
can only br€ak it along th€ grain of the ancient wood,
so hard, fortu11ately, that it almo[...]s has bee11 a
blessing in disguise; foi♦ before the Petrified Forests
were m,a de by Act of Congress a N atio.n al Park, or
Monument, the petrified wood was exploited com-

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (181)141. THE GRAND CANON -
nre-rcially and shipped avv[...]s t0 be pol-
ished. You ean see s·otne shafts of the polished
specimens i11 ~ny of the big Easterµ museums; but
it was found that the petrified wood requir-ed ma-
chinery as expe·nsive and ,:fine as for diamoflds to
effect a hard polish, ana the thJng was not com-
merci-ally po.ss.ible; so the PetriEetl Ro rests will never
be vandalized.
You lunch uncler a natural bridge formed. by the
huge shaft o.f a prone giant, artd ste,p o·ff mo[...]n emperor's thr@ne ;. bat always you come back
to the first pleasures of a ch.ild- picking up the
smaller pebbles, each pebble as if there had been[...]into coloted diarnon.ds.
I said do·n 't g~ to the Petrified FoTests eocpecting
a big th.rill. Yet if you have. ey,es that really see,
and go th.e.r e a"fter a rain when every siAgle bit of
to·ck is ashine with the colors of brokfn rainbows;
or go there at high n_[...]back in spa.ngles of light - there is. something the
matter with you if you don't have a big thrill wi[...]B.''
Thert is another pleasure on your trip to the
Petrified Forests·, which you will get if you kn[...]letely miss if you cl@n·'t. All these
drivers to the Forests are old-timers of th·e days
wh<tn Arizona was a No-Man's-Land. For instance,
Al Stevens9n, the custodian at Adamana, was one of
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (182)[...]143
the: me,n alo:ng ith. Commo ,or e Owen o,f' S,a·n Di[...]1

and Be;r t Potter of' the o,testry De,_pa ·tm ,nt, Wa h•
ington , ho esc[...]1

f~o,m a lyn.chi.ng art i.~ the old sh eep and cat ~[e[...]· it .· and doz , · ~ of of e.rs h can tell of the
old, , ilcl, pjon,~ er ·...ays -, h :n. a man ha[...]in q .1 _k~ ·· t . Holbr 0.ok. yo,.. can get ·the story
1 1 1

of the Sho,w Lo , Ra:n,eh and al ·t 'he . 50,0,0 0 wort[...]11 thre g th1 Pa"- t d Desen yon a e jus
Gn the othe·r s.icltt ,o f a · •@il f -em th.·e Land · .f rue
RomaIJ.ce ,. but ·y,ou'll npt[...]· t . 11 a · preciate hy the. scientist , · .· o.nde~r w-he,th-e ·
t ·e ant'qmty of t1e O ieat is old a,,s th.e antiquity of
ou ,o-:-' ·-~ .~.·~ e: icJa.[...]es not ive up to its fl, n op,-
portunit es It i the gat- ay to many Azt c r ·ns
- · m -c ·.[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (183)[...],_,
144 THE GRAND CANON

able precipices ,a nd have bricked up the faces _of
these w.i th adobe. As far as 1 know, not so much
as the turn of a spade has ever been attempted in
excavation. The · debris of centuries lies on the
£loo.rs of tbe hou§es; and the adobe brick in front
is gradually crumbling and r_olling down the preci-
pice· into Walnut Canon. Nor is there[...]ries.
You find bits of pottery an.cl shard in the debris piles;
and the day we went out, five minutes' scratching
ove[...]oor unearth0,d bits of wampum
shell that from the perforations had evidently been
used as a necklace. The Forestry Se-rvice nas a
man stationed here to guard the old riiins; but the
Government might easily go a step fur-th er a[...]nly drop down to a footpath that takes you t0
the brink of circling gray st@ne canons many hun-
dreds of feet d"eep. Along the top letlges of these
amid suc;h rocks as mountain sheep might f reg_uent
are
, the cliff houses· - hundre·ds and hundreds. of[...]o one has yet explored. At t he bot-
tom o·f the lonely, silent, dark carton wa·s evidently
once a stream; ouf no stream_has flowed here in the

memory of the white race; and the cliff houses give
evid·ence of even g.r eater · age than the caves.
Only forty-seven. miles south of Fl[...]f to take you out at from $4 to $6
a day; and the r-e are ranch houses near the Ca·stle

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (184) THE GRAND CA.NON 145

and the Well, where you can stay at very trifling
cost, i[...]surprise to see here at Flagstaff,
wedged between the Painted Desert and the arid
plains of the South, the snow-capf)ed peaks of the
Francisco Mountains ranging from I 2,000 to 13,-
000 feet high, an easy climb to the novice. Only
twenty miles out at Oak Creek is- one of the best
trout brooks of the ~outhwest; and twenty-five miles
out is a ranch h[...]n wh.ere h'ea1th
and holiday seekers can stay all the year in the Verde
Valley. It is from East Verde that you go to the
Natural Brid.ge. The central span of this brid-ge
is I oo feet from the creek bottom, and the creek
itself deposits l_ime so r apid.ly th.at if[...]once encrusts an@ petrifies.
Also at Flagstaff is the famous L Gwe11 Observatory.
In fact, if Flagstaff[...]guides, cheap tally-hos and camp out-
fitters on the sp0t, it could as e.asily have 101000
tourists a[...]ha:s between 100 and 200.•

· When you reach the Grand Cafion, you have c.ome
to the utte-r most wonder of the Southwestern Won-
der World. There is nothing els[...].
There is n9thing else remotely resembling it in the
known world; and no one has yet been heard of who
h.a s come to the Grand Canon and gone away disap•
pointed. If the Grand Canon were in Egypt or the
Alps, it is safe to wager it would be visited by every
one of the 300,000 Americans who yearly throng[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (185)[...]A go o ff --· :

op the C,;.iion Qn a campJng t ip of weeks or mont:hs.
Once you re~eh the r"m of th@ Ca on, you can
ea111-.p under· y:onr.[...]day.. 0 ¥Ou. 1- a.y g·e·t ~: nt qua~te ·s at the[...]ai_,-cor,ding
to th~ nu.rrilier 0 £ hor~'e$ and the site o,f your pa,rty~[...]~a:ii@•n
as a narrow ,tl.eft o.r ttench. •. n th.e rocks s~eldom mor-e
than a ·few ·hundred· feet[...]rk. to CaQa.d.- 1 as
1

wide -as the city of ,, ew Tork is long; and as dee"p
s.Ti:\.ight as a. plummet as the C·ana,dian R ocki e1 o,r[...]iaht ~d·ro,p _mi.,e deep,l or se.ven m·1~s. :as the trail

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (186)[...]THE GR[...]ll
I°'ngt·h--. d-'- o·z-' /!:!J•'nS o·f· ·the-m- ·.m e-a-ch m-·11e 11' -e~· t,i!i·1'b- ·al[...]1

moµnt:ain, you have to _go up. At the Grand ,Canon
ou come to h~ brink of t e sageb[...]after peak,
y ou lose coa·n t 0,f · thj_m, in the m,st. of plrimros"e. fire
1[...]1

In fact, if thethe h·eigh.: ,o f the1Se ma~sive
p,ea·: _ :s . imm ·11 .. in eo,unt[...]a' ker ,_
d,o .: :n Bright _. ·, g el Trail to the ban , of' t:he Co lo- 1[...]1

_ , fourte,e~ mil .· s - and o · rlook the panorama of
the Canon tw·enty miles in all directio s. If[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (187)[...]1

tr: m across the Colorad,o River, t,o the · a·bab Pla-
teau on the other side~ In. fact, if you S' _ayed at the
Grand Can.on a year and were .n ot a:fr,a1 cl of[...]you rea·ch . · I To · ar you a e told two ,of
'th,e ~rst th~ng.s to d,o a c take the dri .:e·, -thr,ee
1[...]~

Don't!' Sa e you.r do .ars and wa · the.m. bo h.
By carriage, th,e · a·,. leads th.ro11 - 'h t e pine .- ,oods
back ftom the r· Pl for three nnles to each point
By walking~ l]U can .·. -eep en an excellent 'trrail close
to the. ri ~~ antd. do -ach in t, enty m1 · ·u t,es; for the
foot trails are. 'b arely a mile long. ._· lsQ by ~-. a- --
in,1g, 011 can es~ape the lo,u d. .mo uthe .- , bu. 1- ·o· c =d[...]g ·--, n ,- hjallow kn,t r ~ledge of
etoion to the · hoe carriag, ful ju t at t e moment
you want t[...]enes an d bi,~c -:io ·ing on,c anQthe·r from ·the 'Wing~,
1

of this huge amp i.t'h,eater~ Th,e -. pace filling talker
is still ba -ling ,o ut abo·ut ''· the might po ers of

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THE GRAND CANON 149
erosion '[...]ower '' for his
next sermon. Personally, I prefer the old pagan
way of expressing thes·e things in the ·s hort cut of a
personifying god who d,id a smashing big business
with th.e hammer of Thor, or the sea ~orses: of N ep-
tune or the forked lightnings of old loud-thundering
Jove.
You can walk down Bright Angel Trail to the
river at the bottom of the Canon; bt1t unless your
legs have a pair of very good benders under the
knees, you'll not be able to walk up that trail the
same day, for the w-a y down is steep as ·a stair and
the distance is sev·en miles. In that case, better
spend the ni'ght at the camp known as the lndian
Gardens, half-way do·w n in a beautifully watered
dell; or else have the regt1lat daily party bring down
the mules for you to the river. Or y·ou can join
the regular tGurist party both g@iAg down and com-
in[...], two of us rose at
four A. M . and walketl down the trail dut-in.g sunrise,
leavi~g order~ for a special guide to fetch mules
down for us to the ·r iver. Spac_e forbids details· of
the tramp, except to say it was worth the effort,
twice over w0rth the effort in spite of knees that s,e nt
up pangs a1[...]r a week.
It had rained heavily all night and the path was
very slippery; but if rain brings out the colors of

•[...]

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150 THE GRAND CANON
the Petrified Forests, you can imagine what it does[...]wide ahd ,vell shored up at tl1e outer
edg,e. The foliage lining the trail was dripping
wet; and the sunlight. struelc baick from each leaf in
spa[...]d. An incense as o,f morning wor-
ship filled the air with the odor of cedars and cloves·
and wild nutmeg pinks and yucca bloom. Thete
are man¥ mbre birds below the Canon rim than
above it; an~d the dawn was filled with snatches <;>f
song from[...]es and water
ousels, whose notes w·ere lik:e the tinkle of pure
water. What looked like a tiny red hillock from the
rim above is now seen to be a mighty mountain[...]r to pe,ak,
with walls smooth as if p1aned by the Artificer of all
Eternity. In any other place[...]w·ee.n
these peaks would ·be ·dignified by the names of
oa.fions. Here, they arlt mere wings to the main
stage setting of the Grand Canon. We reached the
Indian Garden's Camp, in time for breakfast and
rested an hou.r before, go.ing on down to the niver.
The trail £ollowed a gentle descent over sand-hills[...]irst, then suqdenly it began
to qrop sheet in the se.c tion known as the Devil's
Corkscrew. The heat became sizzling as you de-
scended; but the grandeur grew more imposing from ·
the stupendous heigl1t and sheer sides of the bril-
liantly colored g,o rges and masses of shadows above.
Then the Devil's Corkscrew fell into a sandy dell

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THE GRAND CANON 151

where a tiny waterfall trickled with the sound of
the voice of many wate·rs in the · great silence. A
cloudburst would fill this gorge in about a jiffy; but
a cloudburst is the last thing on earth you need
expect in this land[...]d no water.
Suddenly, you turn a rock an,gle, and the yellow,
muddy, turbulent flood of th·e Colorado[...], tempestuous, noisy, sullen and d·ar1(, filling the
narrow" canon with tl1e war pf t ock ..igainst wa[...]appear colossal p~aks sheer up and down, penning
the angry river between black walls. It was no
longer[...]a thunder s,hower re-
verberating hack in some of the valleys of the
Canon; and the rain falling between us and tl1e red
rocks was a~ a curtain to the scene shifting of those
old earth and mountain and water gods hidin·g in
the wings o.f the vast ~mphitheater.
And if y0u want a wilder, m[...]oint. I know a great many wild
mountain trails in the Rockies, North an.cl South;
1Jut I have never kno[...]er beauty and sl1e::!t daring. You
go out rou,n d the ledges of precipice after precipice,
where. nothi[...]feet straight as a stone could drop, nothing but the
sure-foot ~dness ot yot1r horse; ot1t and out, round
and round peak after peak, till you are on the tip
top and outer edge of one of the high€st mountains
in the Canon. This is the trail of old Louis

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Boucher, one of the beauty-loving souls who first
fou_nd his way into the ceJ,lter of the Cafion ancl built
his own trail to one o[...]rst ·haunts.. lJouis
used to live under the arch f0r-med by the Dripping
Sprin,g s; but Loqis has long since left, and the trail
is falling away and is now one. for[...]th,at kiJ'ld of •

a trarl,, take the trip; for it is the best and wildest
view of the Canon; but t:a-k e two days to it, an·d
sleep at Louis' deserted camp uhder the Dripping
Springs. Yet ,if you do.n't like[...]ake your will and
what would h,ap.peri if the, gravel slipped from your
horse's feet one of these places where the next tur11
seems to jump off into .a tmosphere, then wait; for
the day must surely co·me when all o~f the Grand
Caiion's 2 I 7 miles will be made as easily arid safely
a.ccessible to the American public as Egypt.

•[...]

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THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE OF SANTA FE

T lies to the left of the city Plaza-a long, low,
one-'story building flanking the whole len.g th of
one side of the Plaza·, with big yellow pine
pillar~ supporti11g the arcade above the public walk,
each pillar surmounted by the fluted arch.itrav·e pe-
ct1li.ar to Spanish-Moor[...]d, very sleepy, very
remote from latter-day life, the most un-Ame1·ican
thing in all Am•erica, the o.nly governor's palace
from Athabasca to the Gulf of Me*ico, from Sitka
to St. Lawrence, that[...]hundred years
a.g o - back:, back beyond tna t to the days when
there we1·e no white men 1·n America. Uncover the
outer plaster in the six-foot thickness of the walls
in the Gqvernor's Palace of Santa Fe, and what do
you .find? Solid adobe and brick? Not mt:1ch t
The wa11ed-11p, conical fireplaces and me,a l bins and
corn caves of a pueblo people who. lived on the site
of modern Santa Fe hundreds of years ·before the
Spanish fou,mcled this capital here in I 6[...]

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Reed- whethe:r any prehistoric race d,velt where
Santa Fe nGw stands. Only in the summer of I 91 2.,
when it was necessary to r€place some old l?eallls and
cut some arches through the six-foot walls was it
cliscovered th,at the huge partitions covered in their
centers walls antedating the coming of the Span-
iards - walls with the little cop.ical fireplaces of In-
dian pueblos, with such meal bins and corn shelve_s
as you find in the prehist0ric cave d,vellings.
We have suc·h a passion f@r destroying the old
and replacing it with the n.ew in America that you
can scarcely place your hand on a structure in the
New W 0rld th.a t stands intact as it was before
the Revolution. We somehow or other take it for
g,r a[...]ilings ancil dumb, majestic dignity.
To this, the G0vernor's Pa1aue ot Santa Fe .is the
bne and co)p.plete e~ce.p tion in Am,erica. It flaraks
the cottonwoods of the Plaza, yellow adobt in the
sunlight · very o.ld, very sleepy~ very remote f[...]that travelers scour Europe to find . Look up to
the vigas, or heams 0£ the ceiling, yellowed and
b.r owned and mellowed with age. Those vigas
have witnessed strange figures stalking the spacious
halls. below. If the ceiling beams could throw their
m.emo-ries on s·[...]rama of vari~d personages as
no other :palace in 'the world l1as witnessed. Leave
out the h~ckneyed tale of General Lew Wallace

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writing '' Ben Hur" in a back room of the Palace;
or the fact that three different flags flung their folds[...]ows that
Spanish power gave place to MexiGan, and the Mex-
ican regime to American rule. Also, that General
Lew v'\Tallace wrote '' Ben Hur '' in a back room of
th,e Palace, w11i1e he was gover,n or of New Mexico.
A[...]nta Fe, itself, is a bit of old Spain set down in
the modern United St2tes of America. The don-
keys trotting to market under loads of wood, the
ragged peon riders bestriding burros no higher than
a saw horse, the natives t talking _past in bright
serape or blank[...]ite traded
from Indian tribe to Indian tribe, all the way from
the Gulf of Mexico to the interior of New Spain., is
brought before the vic.e roy. Do you know who he
is? He is Jean l,'Archeveque, the Fre-nch-Canadiar-1
lad who helped to murder La Sa[...]exas.

What are the Freach d.oi11g down
on Trinity Bay? Do they in ten cl to explore and
claim this part of America, too? In the abuses of
slavery among the Indians for five years, the lad
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156 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE
has paid the terrible penalty for the crime into which
he was betrayed b,y his youth. I[...]w Spain; •SO he is enrolletcl in tl1e guards
ot the Span.ish Viceroy of Sa11ta Fe; and he is sent
out[...]me to as v-iolent a death. as
he ha·d brought to the great Fre,nch explorer, La
Salle.
Or take a panorama of a later day. It is just
before the fall of Spanis-h rule. The Governor sits
in his Ealace at Santa Fe, a migl1tie.r autocrat' than
the Pope in Rome; for, as the Russiari$ say, '' God is
high in His H eav•ens," and the, King is far 4Way-,
and those who want justice in[...]pay - p-a y- pay in gold coin that can be put in
the iron chest of the viceroy. (Y.ou can see speci-
mens of those iron[...]et - chests with. a dozen secret springs to guard
the f arnily fortune of the .h idden gold bullion.) A
woib.an bursts into the presence of the Viceroy, an:d
throws herself on her knees. It is a terrible tale -
the kind of tale we are too finical to tell in thes·[...]saying there are not
many such tales to be tbld. The wornan's young
sister has married an officer of the Viceroy's ring.[...]

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He has[...]ell
keeps record. She had fled to her father; but the
father, fearin.g the power of the Vieeroy, had sent
her back to the man; and the man has killed her
with his brutalities. (I have this whole story from
a li11eal descendant of the family.) The woman
throws back her rebozo, drops to her knees be-fere
the Viceroy, and dema.nds justice. The Viceroy
thin_ks and thinks. A woman more or less I What
does it matter? .The woman's father had been
,

a·f raid to act, evidently. The husband is. a member
of the govetnmen-t ring. Interference might stir up
an u[...]t has she to pay? Th.is Vicere>y will
do nothing. The vvoman rises ·slowly, i11cr·edulous.
Is this justice.? She denounces the Viceroy in fiery,
impassioned speech. Th_e Viceroy smiles and twirls
his mustachios. What can a woman do? The
woman proclaims her imprecation o-f a court that[...]e went back to her home. It
was just about where the pretty Spanish house of
Mr. Morley of the Archreological School stands to-
day. She gathered up all the loose gold she could
and bou11d it in a belt around her waist. Then she
took the most powerful horse .she had from tl1e kraal,

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158 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE

saddled l1im a11cl rode out absolutely alone for the
city 0£ Old Me]:ico - 900 miles as the trail ran.
Apaches, Comanches, N a,,ajos, beset the way. She
rode at night and slept by day. The trail was a
desert waste of waterles.s, bare,[...]ck-
sand rivers and blistering h.eat. God, or the Virgin
to whQm she constantly· p.rayecl, or her own dauntless
spirit, must have piloted the way; for she reached
the old city of Mexico, laid her case before the
King's representatives, and won th,e day. Her sis,.
ter's death was avenged. The l1usband was tried
and executed: .an,d the Viceroy was deposed. Most
of us know of almos[...]s liter,ally been guilty
of every crime o·n -the hurna11 calendar. Yet we
don't at risk of lif[...]Span-
ish po,veT f ell in N ew Mexico because the.re came a
tim'e whet:1 thet,e was neither justiee no,r retribution
in any of the courts.
Other panoramas there were beneath the age-
mellowetl beams or the, Palace ceiling, panoramas
of Comanche and Na[...].

Ute was once struck dead in the Governor's pres-
ence. Certainly, all f0ur tribes wrought havoc and
raid to the very doors er£ the Palace. Within only
\
the la$t century, a Comanche chief and his warriors
came to Sa11ta Fe demandi11g the daughter of a lead-

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ing tracler in marriage for the chief's son. The
garrison was weak, in sp,ite of ft1stian and rust[...]tplates and velvet doublets
and boots half way to the waist - there were sel-
dom more than 200 soldiers, and the pt1sillanimous
Governor counseled deception. He tolGl the Co-
m·anche that the trader's d·a ughter had died, and or-
dered the girl to hide. The only peace that an
Indian respects - or a.n y other man, for that matter
- is the peace that is a vict9ry. The Indian sus-
pected that the answer was the answer of the coward,
a lie, and came back with his Comanche warriors.
While the soldiers huddled i...'1side the Palace walls,
the tow•n was raided. The trader was murdered
and the daughter carried off to the Comanches,
where she died of abuse. When these tragedies· fell
on daughters of the Pilgrims i·n New England, the
Saxon strain of the warrior women in their blood
rose- to meet the challe-nge of fate.; and they brained
their captors with an ax; but no such warrior strain
was in the blood of the daughters 9£ Spain. By re-
ligion, by nationality, by tradition, the Spanish girl
was the purely convent pr0duct: womanhood pro-
tected by a ten-foot wall. When the wall fell away,
she was helpless as a hot-house flower set ot1t amid
violent winds.
Diagonally across the Plaza from the Governor's
Palace stands the old Fonda, or Exchange Hotel,
whence catne the lon,g caravans of American traders
on the Santa Fe Trail. Behind tl1e Palace about a
quarter of a mile, was the Gareta 1 a sort of com-

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bined custom house and prison. The combination
was deeply· expressive of Spanish tule in those early
days, for indepen·d ent of what the American's white-
tented wazgon might co.nt~in -b[...]$500 was
lev,i ed against each mule-team wagon of the Ameri-
can trad~r. Did a trader protest, or hola[...]romptly clapped in irons. It w,,as eheaper to
pay the duty than buy a release. The walls of
both the Fonda and the Gareta were of tremendous
thickne-ss-; four to S:[...]id adobe, which was
hard as our modern cement. In the walls behind
the Ga.r eta and on t'.he walls behind th·e Palace, pitted
b·ulle.t holes have been found. Beneath the holes •

was embeddetl Human hair.
Nothing more picturesqu.e exists in America's past
than the panor,a ma of this old Santa Fe Trail.
Santa Fe was to the Trail what Cairo was to the
caravans coming up out of the Des·e rt in Egypt.
Twitchell, the moderl} historian, and Gregg, the old
chronicler 0f last· c,entury's Trail, give, wo.n clerfully
vivid pictures of the comi,n g of the caravans to the
Palace. '' As the ~aravans asceqded th~ ridge which
overlooks the,, city, the clamorings of tb,e men and
the rejoicings o.f the b,u ll whackers could be heard
on every .side. Even the animals seemed to par-
ticipate in, the humor 0£ their riders. I doubt
whether the first sight of Jeru~alem b,,r ought the
.
cru.s aders more tumultuous and s·o ul-enrapturing
JOy.
' ,,,,
We talk of the picturesque fur trade of the North,

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whe[...]hundred
strong penetrated every river and lake of the wil-
derness of the Northwest. Let us take a look at
these caravan brigades of the traders of the South-
west I Teams were hitched tandem to the white-
tented wagons. Drivers did not ride in the wagons.
They rode astride mule or horse, with lon[...]fore team. I don1 t know how they do it;
but when the drivers lash these whips out full length,
they cat.1se a crackling li.k e pistol shots. The owner
of the caravan was usually some gentleman adven-
turer f[...]one of tb.ese scou,ts. Governor
Ber1t wa~ one of the traders. Stephen Be> El.kins
fitst came to New Mexico with a bull whacker's cara-
va n. In the morning, every teamster would vie
with his fellew[...]set.,,. A n
up r oar of whinnyi ng and braying, the clank of
cl1ains, and then the captain's sho-µt - '' Stretch out,''
when the lon.g · line of twenty or thirty white.tented
wagons would rt1mble out f@r the journey of thirty
to sixty days across the plains. Each wagon had
five yoke of oxe11[...]

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turage were chosen ahead by the scouts. Wagons
kept to.g ether in groups of fot[...]ctrcle for defense with nien and beasts inside thethe scouts and sharp--
shooters could bring down. A[...]pasturage; and then stampede mules
and oxen. In the confusion, wa,gor,is would be
o verturned and looted.
As the lqng white caravans c.a me to their jour-
ney's en.d a,t SAnta Fe, literally the whole Spanish
and Indian population crowded to the Plaza in front
of the Palace. ~' Los Americanos I Los Carros!
La Caravana ! ' ' - were the shouts rmging througl1
tl1e streets; and Santa F[...]week's fair or barter. Wagons
were lin.ed up at the custom house; and the trade'r
pr~s,ented himself before fhe Spanish ,g[...]oft spolcen, very pro-
ft1se of compliments w,as the in.tervi-e,v; but divested
of profound bows and flowery cop:ipliments, it ended
'in the American paying $ 500 a- w:agon, or losi.ng his
goods. The goods were then bartered at a stag-
.gering advan[...]h sold at $2 5 a
yard, linen at .$ 4 a yard, and the price on other[...]
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goods[...]reciot1_s stones.
Trav·e lers from Mexico to the outside world went
by stage or private om.nibus w[...]of stories could be ,vtitten of adventures
among the yot14g Spanish nobility going out to se·e
the world. The stage fare ,rarie.d f.r om $ 160 to
$2 50 far as the Mississippi. Though Stephen B.
Elki11s went to Ne[...]ld
bullion past ·t he highwaym·e11 who infested the .st.age
route., was. always a probl€m. I knqw o[...]b.and's drafts and Elkins' gold rpund her waist.
The w-ay grew hotter and hotter. The Gld lacly
unstrapped the buckskin retitule - looking, for all
the world, like a, woman's carry-all - and threw- it
up on top of the stage. An hour larer, hig·hwaymen
'' went through '' the passengers. Ri11gs, watches,
jewels, coin w·ere take11 off the travelers; and the
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mail bags were looted; but the bandits never thought
of examining the old bag on top of the stage, in
which w-a s gold w,orth all tl1e rest of the loot.
In th0se days, gambling was the un,iversal passion
of high and low in N e[...]who had taken o,rer
tens of th0usa11ds in the barte·r of the caravan,
wasted it over the gaming table before dawh of the
next day. The Fonda, or old Exchange Hotel, was
the center of high play; but it may as well be a.c-
knowle-d ged, the highest play of all, the wildest
stakes w,e re often laid in tt1e Govethor's Palace.
Luckily, the passion for destroying the old has not
invaded Santa Fe. The people want their Palace
preserved as it was, is_, and ever shall be; a11d the
recent restoration has been, not a reconstruction, but
a taking away of all the modern and adventitious.
• '
Where modern pillars have been placed under the
long front portico, they are be'ing replaced by the
old -portal type of pillat - the lluted ca-p ital across
th>e main column supporting the. roo,f beams. This
type of portal has com[...]es and gardens.
Th€ main entrance of the Palace is square in the
center. You pass into what must. have been the
ancient reeeption room leading to an audience cham-
ber· ,ot1 the left. What amazes you is the, enormous
thickness of these adobe walls.[...]an open door laid
back is not wider tha,n the thickness of the wall.[...]

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To-day the reception hall and, indeed, the rooms of
the center Palace present some of the finest mural
paintings in America. These have been placed on
the walls by the Archreological School of America
which with tl1e I-1ist@rical Society occupies' the main
portions of the old building. You see drawings of
the coming of the first Spanish caravels, of Coro-
nado, of Don Diego de Vargas, who was the
Frontenac of the So.uthwest, reconquetin.g the prov-
inces in 1680-94, abot1t the same time that the greaf
Frontenac was playing his part in French Canada.
There are pictures, too, <Df the carava11s crossing the
plaiFJs, of the coming of Amel'ican oc.ct1patio,n, of
the Mo1{i and Hopi and Zt1ni ptreblos, of the Mis-
sions of whicl1 or1ly rui11.s to-day m.arl~ the sites in
the Jemez, at Sandia, and away ot1t- in the Desert
of Abo.
To the left of the reception roon1 is an excellent
art gallery of Southwestern subjects. Here, artists
of the growing Southweste111 ScJ;iool s.e nd their work[...]ition and sale. It is significant that within
the last few yeais prices have gofle up frotn a fe:w[...]us;ands. N ausbaum's

photographic work of the modern Ind-i an is one of
the striking features of the Palace. 0£ course,
there are pictures by Curtis and Burbank and Sharpe
and others of the Southwestern School; but perh,a ps
the most interesting rooms to the newcome,r, to the
visitor, who d0esn't know that we have an ancient
Ametica1 are those where the fi1t1ral drawings are
devoted to the cave dwellers and prehistoric races.[...]
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These were done by Carl Lotave of Paris out on
the ground of the ancient races. In conception and
execution, they are among the finest murals in Amer-

1ca.
'
Long ago 1 the Governor's Palace had twin tow-
ers and a chapel. Bells in the old Spanish churches
were not tolled. They were struck gong fashion
by an attendant, who ascended the towers. These
bells weve cast of a very fine quality of old copper;
and the to'ne was largely. de~ermined by the quality
of the cast. Old Mission qells are ·scarce to-day in
Ne[...]lectors offer .as high as $1 ,500
a,nd $3,000 for the genai.ne article. Vesper b·ells •[...]•
play~d a great p.att ih the life of the glc:l Spanish
r.eg,ime. Ladies might be p.romenad.ing the Plaza,
wo rkmen busy over their tasks, gamblers hard at
the w,heel and dice. At ves{i}er call, men;, wo,men
a[...]nee,s; anq for a inOttl'ent
silence fell, all but the calling of the vesper bells.
Then the bells <;eased ringing, a.n d life went on in
• •
its no1sy stream.
No account o·f the Governor's Palace ,vould be
complete without s.orne mention of the ma,rvels of
dress amof\g the. dons and donas 0f the old regime.
Could we see them promenadin.g the Pla:za ancl the
Palace a,s they paraded their gayety less than ha[...]we wot1ld imagine ourselves in some
play house of th,e French Court in its most luxurious
days. I[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (206)[...]liets with a .-_ it· in th··: Ce ._ te , ov,e. the _ho,ul[...]r . ·_ 'om.en of p os1tion wore·. not ha1 , but the
1

sil[...]I

end back aicr·oss the left shoulder~. O n the str-eet, 1

the f'a te , as almc)' t co ered liy· this scar£.,[...]1 1

S1Um bly th.e purp ose _as t 0 conc l ch:_-, rm_,. ut[...]1

·a 1ng hla ir and. a scar,f 0.f the finest cfil,.·, r an.d te.- -[...]tur,e t at c·ould 'bc boug:ht tn Cliina. o·- the Ind1 e.':, :,t
1[...]·ke,.. 'They come do · ·-
1

in the .-pl n·sh f amili,es frotn th,c d._-; s- , he the ves~,
sel · ,mf the, tr,a.ders of MeJ<ico ,. r,affic ed · 1.t]t Chin[...]1

.· arying all the way from .· ~oo to 2 1.000.
The don 0 f· "f ~shiofi, dressied ev·e 1 rn 0 e ,·[...]ssion ith bot- n, ,n
1

and . . omen.; and the Gnest type of old jew. Ivy- in
Ameri.c,a· to-d~[...]1

·· h e. h-- t of the don wa th.e · id.~. .brimm.-d somb1. e.to.
1[...]bras·· ;
bu.t th · trousers were at q·n·c:e the glory antl the
vanity o.f t.h.e · ·ea,. r. Gold a:nd ,ii · er butto,ns or- 1

n · mented the seams of th , le.gs ·from hip to ·' ne.e.
The~e . · ere gold cl sp·s, : t t'he garter and .gol . ,
cla>.ps at the. knee. -· silk sash with tass,eled co,,,[...]0r f , inge ,banging do -n O e sidre tO·fJ ·. the - la ~ of
1

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costume. Bridles and horse trappings were gor-
geous with silver, the pommel and stirrups beiI1:g
overlaid with it. The bridle was a barbacrous silver
th,ing with a bit cruel enough to control tigers; and
the rowels of the spurs were two or three inches
long.
No, thes[...]century ago; but thot1gh they
were not people of the playhouse, as they almost
seem to us, they are essentially a play-people.
The Spaniard of the Southwest lived, not to work,
bYt to play; and when he worked, it w~s only that
he might play the h~rde_r. Los Americanos ·came
and c'hanged all that. They tur-necl the Spanish
play-world up side down ancl put work on top.
Roam through the Governor's Palace 1 Call up the
old ga,y life! We undoubtedly handle more money
than 'th.e Spanish dons and donas of the old days;
but frankly - which stand for the ·more joy out of
life; those laughing phi[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (208)[...]a -1 'th e traditions. clingi~·n g rou.nd the old 1

1?.alace at Sa.nta Fe[...]1

Doa Diego de. VargaJ, the: r·econ,1,ueror of·[...],,
_ea l ., for . · o and a quarter cen .uries, the .· -eople
of e : _·e~ico h,a e com:m emorated D[...]·. •

ict ory by a proc~ss· on to the ch·u r ch whic·'h he built
1[...]1

re:I-,gioi'U_ ce-· em ony·;· for the- ima,g:,e o.f the 'Virg~n,[...]-~'ch D e Va .g,as use . when h.~ pla:n ted the Croi.ss.
11

on the Plaza in f ont of the 'P alace and sang the
Te De .m· · . ith th e a,- s e : .bll~d F.ra.nc[...]1

t·h e same im,age no . · u:s ·d 1n ·the theatri ca proc·es~
1[...]1

ion of t'he r'· ligi,ous ce·,·e:mony yearly celebrated by[...]1

in .· m _rica. The ery Indians · hose ancestors De
· arg·as'[...]d,. now ·y .arly r,eenact th·e
.- ce.ne -_ of the struggle · of' their fo,refathers fo thro,·w
·[...]1

the . ery officer·s ho marched . 1th De Var-g[...]

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quering heroes. Co[...]sible.
De Vargas, nirpself, was to the- Southwest what
Frontenac was to Fren[...]us motiv·es, w·h o believed only in
the peace that is a victory, put the f ea.r of God in
the hearts of his enemies, and built. on that ·f~ar[...]funds ·; bt1t in neither case
could the charges, be sustainetl. Bluff warriors, not[...]ame through all charges unscathed.
The two heroes of Amerioa's Irtai'an wars -
Frontenac of the North, De Vargas of the S.o uth -
were contemporaries. It will be reme:mbered how
up on the St. Law-rence and among the Mohawk
tribes of New York, a wave of[...]o I 6 82. It was not un-
natural that the red warrior should view with alarm
the- growing dominance and assumpti0n 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 th·e settlements[...]

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potent and terrified forts. The same wave of
revolt that scot1rged French Canada in the eighties,
went like wild fire over the Southwest from 1682
to I 694. Was there any connection b€tween the
two efforts to throw off white man rt1le? 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 astQnished how the tra-
ditions of the tribes preserve legends of the Atha-
ba·scan stock in the North, from who.m they claim
descent. Ask a modern Indian of the interior of
British Colum.b ia about the Navajos, and he will
tell you how the wise in~n of the tribe preserve
verbal history of a branch o.f thi[...]other Denes,~' he will tell you.
Tracers exRlain th.e wond.€rful .way news has of
trave1i11g from tribe to tribe, by the laconic expres-
sion, '' moccasin telegram.~,
Whether or not the infection 01 revolt &pread by
'' rnoccasih telegr[...]orm broke, and broke with frightful violence over
the Southw-est. The i1nmediate cause -was religious
interference. All[...]ed i'S ever
admitted. White men know as little of the rites
practiced in these lodges by the pueblo people as
when Coronado came in 1540. To the Spanish
goverhors and priests, the thing was anathema -
abomination of witchcraft and sorcery and secrecy
that risked the eternal damnation of converts' souls.

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There was a garrison of only 2 50 men at the Pal-
ace; yet already the church boasted fifty friars, from
eleven to seventeen missions, and convl:rts by the
thousa·nds. But the 'Souls of the h.oly padres were
sorely trietl by these estufa rites, '' platicas de
no che,'' '' night conversations''- the priests called
them. Well might all New Spain have been dis-
turbed by these '' night conversatiohs.'' The sub-
ject bound under fearful oath of secrecy wars nothing
more nor less than the total extermination of' every
white man, woman a·n d child north .o f the Rio
Grande.
Some unwise governor - Trevino, I think it WijS
- had iss11ed an edict in r 67 5 forbidding the
pueblos to hold their s€cret lodges in the estu/as.
By way of enforcing his edict, he hi;!.d forty-seven
of the wise men or Indian priests (he called them
''sorcerers'') imprisonoed; hanged three in the jail
yard of the Falace as a warning., and after sev·ere
whipping and enforced fasts, sent the other forty•
four home. Picture the situatioa. to you.rself I The
wise men or governors of the pueblos are always old
men electe·d out of respe[...]ipped, sh,arn.ed, disgraced, they
dispe.rsed from the Palace., down the Rio Grande
to Isleta, west to the city on the impt'egnable rocks
of Acoma, nor.th to that whole[...]os and Taos.
What clo you think they did? Fill up the under-
ground estufas and hang their heads[...]
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This adobe gate,,;ay is aJ11ong the la11dn1arks of
Santa Fe

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men? Then, you don't know the Indian! You
may break his neck; but you can't bend it. The
very first thing they did was to gather their young
war riots in the estufas. Picture that scene to your-
self, too I An old rain priest at San Ildefonso,
through the kindness of Dr. Hewitt of the Archa!-
ological School, took us down the estufa at that
pueblo, where some of the bloodiest scenes of the
rebellion were ena.cted. Needless to say, he took
us down in the day time, when there are no cere-

monies.
The estufa is large enough to seat three or four
hund[...]e. A few oil tapers
are burning in stone saucers, the pueblo lamp. The
warriors come stealing down the ladder. No
woman is admitted. The men are dressecl in linen
trousers with colored blankets fastened Grecian
fashion at the waist. They seat themselves silently
on the adobe or cement benches around the circular
wall. The altar place, whence comes the Sacred
Fire from the gods of the under world, is situatea
just under the ladder. The priests descend, four
or five of them, holding th[...]n a square
that acts as a drop curtain concealing the altar.
When all have descended, a trap door of brush
above is closed. The taper lamps go out. The
priests drop their blankets; and behold on the altar
the sacred fire; and the outraged wise man in im-
passioned speech de.nouncing white man _rule, insl1lt
to the Indian gods, destruction o.f the Spanish ruler ·1
Of the punished medicine men, one of the mos£

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incensed ·was an elderly I[...]it,
but tradition has it that when Pppe effected the cur-
tain drop round the sacred fire of the estufa in Taos,
he produced, or induced the warriors looking on
breathlessly to belie'\Tee that he produced, three in-
fernal spirits from the under world, who came from
the great wa,r-god Montez·u1na to command the
pueblo race to unite wi't h the Navajo and Apache
in cl.r iving the white man frotn the Southwest. If
there be any truth in the tradition, it is n0t hard to
account for the trick.. Tradition or trick, it worked
like magie. The warriors bfelie~ed. Courier~ went
scurrying by night from .tow~ to town, with the
knotted cord- S'ome say .it was of deer thong,
other s of palm leaf. The knots represented the
nurrtber of days to the time of uprising. Thethe cord on to the next tow11. There
w:as some confusion ab.o ut the u.ntyihg of those knots.
Some say t}:ie rebellipn was to take place on the 11th
of August, 16.8·2; others, on th.e 13th. Anyway,
the first blow was .,s truck on the 10th,. Not a pueblo
town failed to rally to the call, as the Highl°3.nders
of old responded to the signal of the bloody cross.
New· Mexico at this time numbe[...]tl1e m.aj.ority liv·i ng on ranches up
and d0wn the Rio Grande and su.r rounding Santa
Fe. The captain-general, who had had nothing to[...]

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do with the foolish decrees that produced the revolt,
happened to be Don Antonio de Otermin, wi[...]utenant. In spite of no·
women being admitted to the secret, the secret leaked
out. Pope's son-in-law, the governor of San Juan,
was setting out to betray the whole plot to the
Spaniards, when he was killed by Pope's own hand.[...]a Fe had been
ordered to join a rebellion. He had the Indians
brought before him. in the audience chamber on the
r oth. They told him all they knew.; and they
war[...]Here, as alwa·ys in tim€s of great
confusion, the main thread of the story is lost in a
multiplicity of detail. Warning had also come
down from the alcalde at Taos. Otermiµ scarcely
seems to have grasped the import of the news; for
all he. did was to send his own secret scouts outi
warning the settlers and friars to seek refuge in
Isleta, or Santa Fe; but it was too late. The In-
dians got word they had been betrayed and bro[...]lust of revenge and blood that very
Saturday when the gov-ernor was -sending out his

spies.
It would take a book to tell the story of all the
heroism and martyrdom of the different Missions.
Parkman has told the story of the martyrdom of the
Jesuits in French Canada; arid many other books
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (216) 176 'THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE

have bee11 written on the subject. No Parkman has
yet risen to tell the story of the martyrdom of the
Frahciscans in New Mexico. In one fell day, be-
fore the captain-gener,a l }{hew anythjng about it, 400[...]eea slain
- b.utche.red, sh0t, throw·n over the rocks, su.ffo-
cated in their burning_ cha.pels. Pope was in the
midst of· it all, riding like an i.n carnate fury ort
horseback wearing a bqll''s horn in the middle of his
fo.r ebead. Apaches a.n d Navajos, of course, joined
in the loot. At Tabs, out of se'\Fenty whites, two[...]t'hey left their wives and children
dead on the field and reached Isleta 0nly after ten
days' wandering in the mountains at night, having
hiddea by clay. At little Tesuque, north of Santa
Fe, o.nly the aicalde escaped by spurring his horse
to w~ilder P,ace than the Indians could foilow. The
alcalde had seen the friar flee to a ravine. Then
an Indian cam·e out wearing the priest's shield; and
it wa-s blood-spattered[...],
.h erders and eolonists w,e re sl'ai'r,i on the neld as they
worked. The women and children were carried off
to captivity from which they nev·e r returned. At
• Galisteo, the men were slain, the women carried off .
Ro.s·a ries were burned[...]plundered and prefarted. At San·t o Domingo, the
botlies o.f the three p·riests were piled in a heap in
front of the chutcn, as a:n insult to the white man
faith that would ha·ve destroyed the Ind.ian estit/as.
Down at Isleta, Garcia, the lieutenant, happe.n ed to
be in comma[...]

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THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 177_
day morning, he rounded inside the walls of Isleta
seven mi.ssionaries and I ,50[...]What of Captain-General Qtermin, cooped up In
the Governor's Palace of Sa.nta Fe, awaiting the re-
turn of his scouts? The reports of his scouts, one
may guess. Reports[...]ily. Citizen:s were called to
take reft1ge in the Palace. The armory was opened
and arquebuses handed out to all who could bear
arms. The HG>ly Sacran1ent was admin·isterecl.
Then the sacred vessels were brought to the Gov-.
ernor's Palace and hidden. There were now 1,000
persons cooped up in the Governor's Palace, less
than 100 capable of b[...]0

soldiers mounted the to9fs of houses guarding the
Plaza and in the streets ap_p roaehing it were sta-
tioned cannon.
Having wiped out th,e settler:nents, the pu,e blos and
their allies swo,oped down on S[...]y is folly.
Otermin sent for Jt1an to come to the Palact~; an,d
in the audience chamber upbraided him. Juan,. one
ma[...]two
crosses - a red d11e and a white one. If the
Spaniards would accept the white. one and vvithdraw,
the Indians would desist from attack; if not -

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then - red stood for ble>od. O[...]en he should have strucK
• I
the impudent fellow to earth, as De Vargas, or old
F[...]one in like case.
When Jt1an went back across the Plaza, the lne
dians howled w,ith joy, danced dervish time all night,
rang the bells of Saa Miguel, set fire to the church
and houses, and cut the ,vater supply off f·rom the
yard o.f the Palace. The valot of the Spaniards
could not have been v{:ry great from August 14th
to 20th, for only five of the 100 bearing arms were
killed. At a council of war on the night of August
1.9th, it was de.eidee:l ta attempt to rush the foe,
tramplin.g them with hor!res, and to beat a[...]ere killed
in this rally;. but it is a que$tion. The Governor
'himse.lf came back with an a.rrow wound[...]-.whichever way you
like to put, it-'' to g.o to the relief of Isleta,'' where
he thought his lieutenant was; or '' to retreat ,,,
so.uth of the Rio Grande. The Indians watche·d
the retr-eat in grim silet:1ce. The Spanish consid-
ered. their escape '' a miracle.[...]omfort .fr:om desperation.
B·u t at Isleta, the Governor· found that his
lieutenant hafd alread[...]aking r, 500
refugees in safety with him. It was the end of
Septembe,r when Otetmin himself crossed th.e Rio
Grande, at a point not far from modetri El Paso.
At Isleta, the people will t·ell you to this day legends
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of the friar's martyrdom. Every Mexir:an believes
that the holy padre buried in a log hollowed out for
coffin beneath the chapel rises eve·ry ten ye,a rs and
walks through the streets of Isleta to see how his
people. are doing. Once every ten years or so, the
Rio Grande floods badly; and th·e year of the flood.,
the ghost of the friar rises to warn his people. Be
that as it may[...]ars ago,. a: eleputation of
investigators took up the body to examine the truth
of the. legend. It lies in a state of p·e rfect preserva-
tion in its log coffin.
The pueblos had driven the Spanish south of the
Rio Grande and practically l{ep,t them so.utq. of the
Rio Grande for ten years. Churc1'ies W€.re burt[...]in Santa
Fe River to cleanse them of baptism. Alt the
records in the Govern.o r's Pal~ce we-re destr-oyed,
a·nd the Palace itself given @v-er to wild orgies
-a mong the victorious Indians_; but the victory
brought little good to the tribes. They fell back
to their former state of tribal raid and feud.
Drought spoiled the crops;. and perhaps, after all,
the consolation and the guidance of the Spanish
priests were missed. When the Utes heard that the
Spanish had retreated, these wild marauders of the I

northern desert fell on the ;pueblo towns like wolves.
There is a legend,. a[...]avenly signs of dis-
pleasure. Curiously enough, the same legends exist
about Mo•n treal an[...]

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iqly on the £rontier, crossing and rectossing the Rio
Grande; but he_ could rnake no p.ro.gress in re-
settling the colonists.
Comes . on the scene now- 1692-98 - Don
Diego de Varg;is. It isn[...], you don't ne~d to do.
0

The doors of fate open before the golden key. He
iesubjugated the Sou.th-west for Spain; and he re-
subjugated it as much by force of clemency as force
of cruelty. But ma.rk the p.o int - it was f oree that
did.it., not pow--wi[...]l Indians.
On August 2 r, r 692, he set out fo·r the north.
It has taken many v-olumes to tell of the victories
0£ Frontenac. It would take as many again to t~
late the victories of· De Vargas. He. w;is accom-
panied, of course, by the ·fearless and quenchless
friars. All the pueblos passed on the way north
he found abandoned; but when he reached Santa
Fe on the 13th of September, he found it held and
fortified by the Indians. The Indi·ans were furi-
ously defiant; they would pe[...]er -
never! De Vargas surrounded them and cut off
the water sup,ply. The friars approached under
flag of ttuce. Be.fore ni[...]dered without striking a blow. One after
another, the pueblos were visited and pacified; but
it was not all easy v·ictory. The Indians did not
relish an order a year later to give up occupation
of the Palace and retite to their own villages. I[...]

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December they closed all entrances to the Plaza and
refused to surrender. De Vargas had prayers read,
raised the picture of the Virgin on the battle flag,
and advanced. Javelins, boiling water, arrows, as-
sailed the advancing Spaniards; but the gate of the
Plaza stock~de was attacked and burned. Rein-
forcements came to the Indians, and both sides .rested
for the night. During the night, the Indian gov-
ernor hanged himself. Next morning, seventy vf
the Indians were seized and cQurt-martialed on the
spot. De Vargas planted his flag on th,e Plaza,
erected a cross and thanked God.
One of the hardest fights of '94 ·was out on the
Black Mesa, a huge precipitous squ,a·r e of[...]so. This mes<l, was a
famous prayer shrine to the Indians and is· ven·e rated
as sacred to this day. All sides are sheer but that
towards the river.
- Down this is a n[...]hurled on
climbers' heads. De Vargas stormed the Black
Mesa, on top of which great numb·e ts of rebels had
taken refuge. Four days, the attack lasted, his 100
soldiers repeatedly reaching the edge of t.he summit
only to be hurled down.. After ten days ·the. siege
had to be abandoned, but famine had aone its work
among the Indians. For five years, the old general
slept in his boots and scarcely left the warpath. It
, was at the siege of the Black Mesa that he is said
to have made the vow to build a chapel to the Vir-
gin; and it is his siege of Sartte Fe that the yearly
De Vargas
, Ce[...]

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r8~ THE GOVERNOR'S P,ALA.CE
And in tht end, .h1 died in.[...]ic~ t -:jrections that
h.-e should be bx1ri td 1n th.e. cht1 ch 9.f Santa -_ e
1

1

' 'un.d er the 'high .a ·tar ·ben ath t . ~e pla.ce w·here the ·
1

priest _puts· his feet when he says mass." The body
• d.· to t"h· e iiar1s1·
was[...]' state·
a d inferred b en -ath th1e ·ltar; and the ·n e: Y.ar;gas1
1

ci~[...]f tne qu,ainte -t
1

ceremooie,s- of the old Governo.r''s: Palace.[...]

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CHAPTER XI
TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND AND ANCIENT CAPITAL
OF THE s·o uTHWEST

·S Quebec i~ the shrine of historical pilgrims
in the North, and Sal-em i11 New England;
so Tao-s is the Mecca of students of history
and lovets of art in the Sotlthwest. Here came the
Spanish kn.jghts mounted and in arm9r pla:te half a
century before the landing of the Pilgrims on
Plymouth Rock. They had not only crossed the
sea biat had trav ersed the desert from Old Mexico
,[...]rivers where hors·e.s and riders
swamp·ecl ·in the quicksands. To Taos came Fran-
ciscan padrei long[...]stoelc-
ades at Port Royal or ,Q,ueb~c. Just a,s the Jesuits
won the wilderness of the up-country by r,:,ia._rtyr
blood, so tl1e Franciscans attacked th€- strongholds
of paganism amid the pu·eblos qf the Sot1th.
Spanish ·conquis_tadores have been re,pFesented as
wading through blo0d to victory, with the sword in
one hand, the cross in the 'o ther; but that picture is
only half the truth. Let it be remembered that the
Spanish were the oiily conquerors in America wh(:)
gave the Indians perpett1al title, intact and forever,
to the land occupied when the Spanish came -
x83

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which titl~s the Indians hold to this day. Also,
while rude soldie[...]t Bernalillo
in Coro11ad,o's expedition of 15.40, the cro,vrt stood
spo.nsor for the well-being and salvation of the In-
d.ian1's sot1l. Wher ever the conqueror marched, the
sandale.d and penniles,s Francisca,J1 remained and too
often paicl th.e pe11alty o,f the soldier's ctimes·. In
the Tusa·y an Desert, at Ta:0s, at Zuni, at Acotna,
you will find Missio11s that date back to the expedi-
tion of Coro11ad0; and cit eyery single ·M ,i-ssion the
padres paid. fQr their eaurage and their faith wi[...].
But 'baos traditions date back farther than the com-
ing of the white man. C.hristians have their Cl1rist,
northern Indian,s their H iawatha, at1d the pueblo
p·e@191e their B·ah-tah--ko, or grand ca[...]•
their p·eople from the ravages of Apache and N avaj.o
in the fa,r We$t to the [emailprotected] Land of ve.rdant
p1ains and watered valleys below the mighty tnouh-
1

tai•ns of Taos. Montezuma was to the Southwest,
not the Cl1rist, but th(} Adam, the Moses, the
Joseph. Ca'.8.~ Grande in SC)uthern .i\rizona was the
Gar€le·n of Eden, '' the pl.:rc.e of the Morning Glow; ' l
but wh.en war attd pestil'ence and ravaging foe and
droutl1 d1·ove the pueblos fro.m their Garden of
Eden, the Bah-tah-k0 w-as the Moses to lead them
to the Promised Land at Taos. When d,id he live?
The oldest man does not know. Th~ p11eblos had[...]

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much the same to-day at Taos as they did when the
white man first came. The men wear store trousers
instead of woven line[...]le difference at Taos
between 1912 ancl 1540. The whitewashed Mis-
sion church stands in the center of the pueblo; but
the old estufas, or kivas, are still used for religio[...]maintenance
of Ind.ian law. You can still see the Indians thresh-
ing their graih by the tramplrng of goats on a
threshir1g floor, or the run of burros round and
rouqd a kraal chased by a boy, while a man scrapes
a\vay the grain and forks asicle the chaff. , There
are white man's courts aod white man's laws, down
at the white rnan's town of Ta·o s; but the Indian has
little faith .in, and less respect[...]police, his own prison and his own
penalties. The wealth oJ Mida-s would not tempt
a Ta0s Indian to ex:change his life in the tierecl
adobe villages for all that civ:ili~a[...]an
Jones, lures him o.ff for a year or two to the great
cities of the East;. but the call of the wilds lures him
back to his own beehive houses. He has plenty to
eat and plenty to wear, the love of his family, the
open fields and the friendsh,ip of his gods - what
more ca[...]

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Don't leave the Southwest without s.eeing Taos.
It might be part of TtJrkey, or ·Persia, or In<iia. It
is the most t1n.,Arnetican thing in America; a.nd yeti
it is the most typi<Zal of those aficient days in
America, when there ,vas no white man. Just here,
be.fore the eth.nologist arises to correct me, let it be
•[...]rather
fro,ni tl1e Ae.te:cs, o,r Toltecs o.f the South. While
th,e Na:¥ajo and Apache and Ute legends are of a
gteat migration from Athab~sca of the North, the
pueblo legend is of a coming from the Great Under-
world of the South.

The ea-siest way to reach Taos is by the anci€.n t
city of Santa Fe. You go by rail tQ Servilleta, or
Barramcas, then stage it ol}t to the Indian pueblos.
B.etter wire for your stage accommodation from the
railroad. We did not wire,. and wh•€n we left the
railroad, we found seven people and a $tage with
space for only fotJr. The railroad leads almost
straight north from San[...]ere
is little sign o.f water after you leav,e the Rio Grande,
for water does not flow uphill; and you are at an
altitud'e of 8,000 feet when you cross the Divide.
You pass through fruit orchards along the river, low
headed and h,eavy with apples. T·hen cbm•e the In-
dian villag-es, San II defonso, and Espanola, and
Santa Clara, where the strings of red chile bake in
the sunlight agai.nst the glare adobe. Women go[...]

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up from the pools vvith jars of water on their heads.
Children come selling the famous Santa Clara black:
pottery at the train windo,w s; ano on the trail across
the river, you see Mexican drovers with long lines
of burros and pack hor-ses winding away into the
mountains. Women and girls in bright blankets
and[...]eads and skin like wrinkled
parchment stand round the doors of tl1e little square
adobe houses ; and sitting in the sl1ade are the old
people - people of a great a,ge, I b4 one old woman
numbered her years. As you ascend the Upper
Mesas of the Rio Grap.de, )'OU are in a region ,where
nothing[...]inon and juniper. There is not
a sign of life but the browsing sheep and goats.
Just where the train shcrots in north of San Ildefonso,
if you know wl1ere to look on t,h.e right, you can see
the famous Black Mesa, a hiuge square of black
basaltic rock almost 400 feet l1igh, which was the
sacred shrine of all Indians hereabouts for a hun[...],est., you can still see its prayer
shrines, and. the footworn p_ ath where refugees from
war ran down to the river for, water fro m enc:amp-
,m ent on the crest. Away to the left, the moun-
tains seem to crumple up in purple folds ~[...]-White Rock Cafid'n - marks Paja-
rito Plateau, the habitat of the ancient cave
dwellers. On the north .side of the Black Mesa,
you can see the opening to a huge cave. This was
a prayer shrine and reft1ge in time of war for the
Santa Clara Indians.

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Then., when you have reach.ed almost the top of
the world a.n d see no more sheep he,tds, the trains
,pull tlf at an isolated, forsaken little station; and
late in the afternoon you get o-ff at Servilleta.
A school teacher, his wife and his two children,
also left the train at t,his· point. Our group con-
s,iste·d of three. The- driver of the stage - a
f arnous frontiersman, Jo. Dunn - made[...]ted vehicle. It added
piqt1ancy, if not sport, to the twilight drive to know
that on€ of the two bronchos in harness had never
been driven bef[...];g, abd stampede them into a p9und, or rope
them. The captive is then .sold f op amounts vary-
ing f,ro[...]rather than .strength.
There is a ri.g·g ing to the bridle that throws a horse:
if he kicks; and our[...]f-
fered himself to be handled by a young girl of the
p,a rty.
Twilig·h t 0n the Upper Mesas is a thi_n g not to
be told in words and only dimly tolcl, on canvas.
There is the primrose a·fte1:glow, so famous in the
Alps. The purple mountains drape them·selves in
lav[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (229)[...]p1 ,e ~. eo ·, _e - • UJ~;,-,. i11 _ thr,ou_gh
the jun p .hi.I -~ m.· ·G[...]· n r e. · rom the
pi o t 1~ Il _• t -1 1n -[...]ng th at r foe . eo i .' out fo .- the nigb.t
ru - -o the i , 1 o :l Or o· ,1~[...],. an·d -o ·__ n unc:la ~.- ,. -. · · nd. In the tw~er1ty,. .ile
dri - ou 1l ee- peth -p[...]t:_ l _ ·hone line i1.
_ 12c i t f.o · the tel -ph ne fr,_ . n the rou.&h
. ai1 u miig ht be i11 a:1 l t ,[...]t e ea -,- th. - ,· Hl t[...]
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canons narrow -as a stone's toss have gashed de-ep
trenches through the living rocks and with a whir
of swift wate.r s co.me to.gether at the famous place
known a·s the Brid.g e. You have come on ·y our old
fr1end the Rio Grande again, .n arrow and deep and
blue from the m,ountain snows, an altogether djf- •

f e.r ent stream from. the muddy Rio of the low-e r
levels·. Here it is joined by the Arro_y0 Ho.n·d o,
anot!her cafiort sla:s hed through the tocks in a deep.
trench - both riv&rs silver in the moonlight, with a
rush of rapids coming up the -g reat hei:ght like ,vind
in tr,ees,, o·r the waves of the sea.
· What a host of old frontier worthies mus[...]nder, when they first came to this sheer jump off
the earth! First the mailed warriors unde1: Cor-
onado; then the cowled Franciscans; then Fremont
and Kit Ca:~·s.o,n an.d Beaubien and Governor Bent
a_n d Manuel Lisa, the fur trader, and a host of other
knights of .moElern adventure.
I suppose a p~0p-er picture of the Bridge, ot
Arroyo Hondo, cannot be taken:; for a[...]ts
have been coming this way for a hundred years.
The two canofis ate S0 close together and so walled[...]picture ex-
cept fron1 a,n airship.. It is as if the earth we.r e
sudd,enly rentf anti y:ou l@ol{ed do[...]arns. Don't mind wbnderitlg how you will go
down! The bronehos will manage that, where 3n

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Eastern horse would breal{ his neck and yot1rs, too.
The driver jams on brakes; and you drop down a
terribly steep grade in a series of switchbacks, or
zigzags, to the Btidge. It is the rnost spectacularly
steep road I know in America.[...]ight; and there isn't ar1y-
thing between you and the drop but your horses'
good sense. It is one of the places where you don't
want to hit your horse; for if he }umps, 't he wagon
will not keep to the trail. It will go over taking
you and the horse, too.
But, before yot1 know it, you have switched round
the last turn and are rattling across the Bridge.
Some Mex·ican teamsters are in camp below the rock
wall of the river. The reflection gf the figures and
firelight and precipices in the deep waters calls up
all sorts of ta1es of Arabia[...]and old lawless days. Then, you pull up sharp
at the t0ll house for :supper., as quajnt an inn as any-
thing in Switzerland or t he Him alayas. The back
of the hot1se is fhe rock wall of the canon. The
f rant is ad.obe. The halls are long and low and
narr·ow, with low-roofed rooms off the front side
only. Frorn the Bridge you can go on to Taos by
moto r in moonlight; but the whole way by stage
and motor in one day makes a hard triR, ana there
is as mt1ch of interest at the Bridge as at Taos.
You don't expect to find. sett[...]r
underwor ld, do you? Well, drive a few miles up
the Arroyo Hondo, where the stream widens ouf
into garden patch farms,[...]

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speci,mens of isolate@ humans as exist ,anywhere in
the world · ·relics of the religious fanaticism of
the secret lodges, of the Middle Ages - Penitentes,
or Flagellantes, or[...]p·eople, w·ho yearly
at Lent re-enact all the sorrows of the Procession
to the G:ross, and u.ntil very recent years even re-
enacted the Crucifixion.
After .s upper we strolled out down the canon.
It is i·mpossible to e;xaggerate its bea·uty. Ea-ch gash
is· only" the width of the river with sides• str·aight
as wall~. The walls are yellow ancl black basalt,
all spotted with red where the burning bush has
been touched by the f rbsts. The tivers are clear,
cold blue, because they are but a little way from
the springs in the snows. ·snows and clear water
and ·frost in the Desert? Yes: that is as the Desert
is in rl~ality, not in geography books. Below the
Brid.ge, y0u can follow the R'io Grande down to
some f amoqs hot springs; ,a nd in this section,, the
air is literally spi.cy with. the oil of sagebrush. At
daybreak, you see the water ousels singing above
the tapids, and you tnay catch the lilt of a mocking-
bird,. or &ee a bluebL~d e[...]ome frost-touched
berries. It is Octeber; but the goldfinch.es, which
have long since left us in the North, are in myriads
here.
The second day at the Bridge, we drove u:13 the
Arroyo Hondo to see the Penitentes. It is the only
way I know that you can personally vi·sit a people
who in every cha.ra,cteri$tic belong to the Twelfth
Century. The ·houses of the Arroyo Hondo are

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very small and very poor; for the Pe·nitente is think-
ing not of this world but of the world to come.
The orchards are amazingly old. These people
and[...]been here for centuries
and as isolated from the rest of the world as if
living back five centuri€s. The P€nitente is not an
Indian; he is a peon. Pueblo Indians repudiate
Penitente practices. Neither is the Penitente a
Catholic. He is really a relic of the. secret lodge
orders that overran Europe with religious disorders
and fanatic practices in the Twelfth Century. Ex-
cept for the Lenten processions, rites are practiced
at night. There are the Brothers of the Light -
La Luz - and the Brothers of the Darkn·ess -Las
Tinieblas. The meeting halls are known as Mora-
dos; and tho[...]or. Women meet in
one lod,ge, men in another. The sign ma-nual of
membership is a cross tattooed on forehead, chin or
back. When a death occurs, the b.ody is taken to
· the Morado, and a wake held. After Penitente
rite[...]is called in for
final services ; and ·up to the present, the priests have
been unable to break the strength of these secret
lodges. Members are[...]t is com-
monly charged that politicians join the Penitentes
to get votes and doctors to get patients. Ea:ster
and Lent mark the grand rally of the year. On one
hill above the Arroyo Hondo, you can see a suc-
cessi[...]
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194 TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND
themselves senseless with cactus b[...]d carrying a •
great cross to which thethe procession of I 907.
The procession emerges from the Morado chanting
in low, doleful tune the Mi:serere. First come the
Flagellantes, or rrta:rchers, :sco.-urging tnei-r naked
backs with cactus ·belts and whips. Next march the
cross carriers with a rattling of iron chains fastened
to the feet; then, the general congregation. The
march terminates at a great cross erected on a hilltop
to simulate Golgotha.. Why do the P.eople do it?
'' To appease divine wrath,'' th.e[...]o ur eivilized life?
Because '' Julia O'Grady and the Captain's latly
are the same as two pins under their skiras.'' Be-
cause[...]d
these dolorous processions are only a reflex of the
dark emotions hidden in a narrow canon shut off
from the rest of the world.
They were not dolorous emotions that found vent
as we qrove back down .Arroyo Hondo to the Bridge.
Our diiver got out a mot1th organ. Then he played
and sa-ng snatc·hes of d.ance tunes of the old, old days
in the True West.

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (235) TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 195[...]when you catch her, a double doze."

" The cock flies out and the hen flies in -
All hands round and go it agen."

In fact, if you want to find the old True West,
you'll find it undiluted and pristine on the trip to
Taos.

•[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (236) CHAPTER XII

TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY IN AMERICA

AOS, Santa Fe and E l Pa,s o - these were to
the S;outhwest what Port Royal, Quebec and[...]pch Canada, or Bos-
ton, Salem ana Jam es town t0 the colonists of the
pre-Revolutionary days on the Atlantic. El Paso
was the gateway cily from the old Spanish Domin-
ions of the South. Santa Fe was the ce-n tral m~li-
t~ry post, and Taos was the watch tow,e r on the
very outskirts of the baGk-of-beyond of Spanish ter-
ritory in the wild'erness land of the New W oritl.
Before Santa Fe becar.ne the terminus of the trail
for American trad·e rs f1~-0m Missouri and Kansa.s,
Taos was the terminus of the old fur trader trail,
in the days when Louisiana extended from New Or-
leans t[...]ne.cklace antl brac€let. What Green's Hole
and the Three Tetons wete to the Middle West,
Taos was to the Southwest. Mountains round Taos[...]

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from the peaks more than half the year; and moun-
tain torrents water the valley with a system of irriga-
tion that never fails. Coming out of the mountains
from the north, Taos was the natural halfway house
on the trail south to Old Mexico. Comin-g out of
the Desert from the sot1th, Tao-s was the last walled
city seen before the plunge into the wilderness of
forests and mountains in the No-Man's-Land 0f the
north. '' Walled city,'' you say, t, before the com-
ing of white men to the West? '' Yes, you carr
see those very walls to-day, walls antedating the
coming of Coronado in r 540 by hundreds of years.
No motor can climb up and down the ste½p switch-
back to the Arroyo Hondo of the Bridge. Cars
taken over that tra:il must be towed; but from the
Bridge, you can go on to Taos by motor. As you
ascend the mesa above the river bed, you s~e the
mountains ahead rise in black basalt li.ke castellated
walls, with t0we.r and battlement jagged into the
very· clouds. Patches of yellow and red splotch the
bronzing forests, where frost has touched the foli-
age; and you have.n't gone very many miles into the
lilac mist of the morning light - shimmering as it
always shimmers abov,e the sagebrush blue and sandy
gold of the Uppet Mesas - before you hear the
laughter of living water~ coming down from the
mountain snows. One understands why the Indians
chose the uplands; while the white man, who came
after, had to choose the sh~dowy bottoms of th€
walled-in canons. Som~one, back im the good old
'[...]
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something about '' t_rav'eling on the wings of the
morning.'' I can't put in woPds what h-e meant;[...]adualJy
that you dort;t realize that you ate 'in the lap,, not
of mountains-,. but of m'ou-ntain pea[...]primrose, or gold,
or ted as blood according to the hou-rs and the mood
of hours; an€! if you want to carry the metap,h or
still fatthe-r, you may truthfully add that the hours
on these hi_g h uplands are dancing hours.[...]time to be a heavy, slow thing that op-
,presse$ the soul.
As the streams laugh d@wn from the mou,ntains,
ranch@s grow more and more frequ.ent. It is charac-
teristic of the West that you don't cross the aceg_uias
on briclg'es. You cr,©ss, them on two planks, with risk
to your car if the driver· swerve at the st~eting wheel.
All the houses are red earth adobe, thick of wall to
shut out both heat and cold, with a smell of juniper
wood in the £replaces of each 1·00.m. Mt1ch of this
land -[...]w~s given by Spa;in four centu-·
ties ago, and the same title holds to-day in spite of[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (239)[...]-·bite ~quatters'· att,~mp.t to bre.a k do ·:n the law by,
cutting: the •.· ire o · the pastuf;e £e -c s an -~taking-the 1

~a.s . to-the cgu . s. It ·· a.· ·.n th-:ts way that squatt[...]ica _ and cotnmis· 10n took e• idertG . on the$e titles,,
in the -u.atr·el b. t -. een · an.· ee squatter and Sp,anish
don.. b· ·t thethe
1[...]•· · ._: •co, I k ,o , of vnly one held by the 6:unily of
theth,e sto ·y
ill he t Id ., It ~11 not m~ak .·[...]bill o - hea 'th .o ·.;o,me- family fo _,unes of the
S@uthlites ... 'e:rJur1e, ., !,.- a[...]a . ln · sucli small lt ances tha r
they -re in the au.ct· o· - a t fo h,.igb st b·ct fotged[...]-
th-e e wer·e fu e least a. di m,os decent of' the cri ·\ es g,f-
1[...]ae son's
color red instead of- gray~ mul .. iply the trimes by
.· . - i ste ,d of two · an[...]

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the land-jockey ~eriod of N·ew Mexican history.
Something of this sort is going on at Taos to-day
among the pueblos for their land, and down at Saca-
ton a:mong the Pimas for wate-r. Treaty guara.n-
teed the I ndian his ·rights, bt1t at Tao.s the squatter
cut the pueblo fences and carried the case to court.
At Sacaton, t_he big sq1.1atter, the- irtigation company,
took the Pimas' water; so that the I11dian can no
longer raise crops. If you want to know what the
courts do in these cases, ask the pueblo governC'.>r at
T aos; or the Pima chief at Sac.a ton.

It is late September. A parrot calls OlJlt in Span-
ish from the center of the patio whe re our rooms[...]0

look out on art .arcade running round the court i_n a
perfect square. A mocking-bird trills saucily from
his cage amid th.e cos·m os roloom. Don.k ·eys and bur-
ros amble past the reat .g ate with loatls ot wood
stta pped to th@ir backs. Your back window looks
out on the courtyard. Your front window faces the
street across £r0m a plaza, or city s1quare. Sta[...]to waist, stalk with quick,
nervous tread alo,ng the plaz,a; fo,r it is the £east of
Saint Geronim,o pres€Iitly. The whole town is i.n
festal attire. There will be d[...]rude. theatricals, and horse and foot
races; and the plaza is agog with ·sightseers. No,
it i[...]

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Spain[...]onplace America out
at Taos -white man's Taos, at the old Columbia.
Hotel, which is the last of the old-time 'Spanish inns.
As you motor i11to the town, the long rows of great
cotton,voods and poplars attest the great age of the
place. Throt1gh windows deep s·et in adobe case-
ment and flush with the street, yot1 catch glimpses of
inner patios where olearidets and roses are still in
bloom. Then you see the roof windows of artists'
studios., and find yourself not o·nly in an old Spanish
town but in the midst of a modem art colony, which
has been call[...]e unique coloring,
form and antiquity of life in the Southwest. A few
years ago, when Lungren and Philips and Sharpe
and a dozen others began ,p ortraying the. marvelous
coloring of the Southwestern Desert with its almost
Arab life, the public refused to accept sach spectacu-
lar, un-A[...]lector t.h at would mount up to pric-e.s paid for the.
best work of Watts and Whistler. It is a bruta,l
way to put att in terms of the dollar bill; but it is
sometimes the only way to make a people realize
there are prop[...]own country.
Columbia Hotel is really one of the famous old

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (242)[...]'-

202 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY

Spa.nish mansions occupying almost the entire. side
of .a plaza square. Ftqm its street entrance, you
can see down the little alleyed street where dwelt
Kit Carson in the old days. His old home is almost
a wreck to-day, and there does not seem to be the
slightest mov€meht to convert it into a s.h rine w·h ere
the hundreds of sights.eers who come to the Indian
dances could brush up memories of old fron[...]are really only four streets in Taos,
all facing the Plaza or town square. Other streets
are, alleys r[...]alcalde,'' it does not seem so
very £ar back to the days when Spanish dons lounged
rot;1nd the Plaza w~a.ring silk capes and velvet trou-
s·ers[...]p-a-pie, and Spanish grand dames
stole glances at the outside world through the lattices
of the mansion houses. In some of these old Span-
is.h hol,l.ses, you will ·find. the deep casement windows
very .h igh in the wall. · 1· asked a descendant of one
of the old Spanish families why th,a,t was. '' For
pr:ot[...]sh women were not supposed to see,
or be seen by, the outside world.''
The pueblo proper lies abo~t four miles out from
the white man's town. Lagu·na, Acoma, Zufi.i, the
Three Mesas of the Tusayan Desert - all lie on
hillsides., or on the very crest 0£ high acclivities.
Taos is the exce.p tion among purely Indian pueblos.
It lies in the lap of the valley among the mountains,[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (243)[...]w white·wa.-. ed _. ·:ssio church st,a.nd·s in the
1

1center of th,e illa1.'~e, but -you can still ,s.ee the old.
one pitted with cannon~ba . at1d bullet, wher -. Gen•
e al Price helled -it •n the u r"sing of he pueblo'
f A .[...]_gons.
E~cept' .-Qr these, you ar·e ·b~ack. in th.e d·ays of Coro-
nado. .· 11 the ho s s can ·be enter d only by
la·dders that ascend to the. -. oafs, a ·: 1d ca11 be dra· - n
u.p 1
the pueblo way of' bolt· ng the d,oor·. The
-

hou ,-· s :r11,,n u··p t·h[...]rs1elf t.h at
you are not in th O -ient. Down by the stream, .
. om n ·w:·t h re an.ti blue _nd ·[...]1

ashing blankets by beating them in the flowing
water. Go up the uece s1on oF ladder to -·he very

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (244) 204 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY
top of a five storied hot1se, and look out. You can
see the pasture fields, where the herds graze in com-
mon. On the outskirts of the village, men and boys
are threshing, that is[...]raal, with a flag stuck
up to show which w-ay the wind blows, one man fork-
ing chaff with tne wihd, another scraping th.e g,rain
outside th,e circle.
Glance ins-ide the houses. The upstairs is evi-
dently the living-room; for the fireplace is here,
and the pot is on. Off the living-room are corn and
meal bins-, and you can see the metate or stone on
which the corn is ground by the women as in the days
of Gld Testament record. Though there is a new
Mission church dating from the uprising in th.e
forties,, and an old Mission church dating almost
from I 540, you €an see from the roof d0zens of
estufas, where the men are practicing for ·t heir
dances and masked theatricals,. Tony, the assistant
• governor, an educated man o·f ab[...]shows, acts .as our guide,
and tells us about the squatters. trying to g,e t the
Indian Ia·nd. How would you like an intruder to
sit down in the middle ·o f your farm and fe-nce off
160 acres? The lndians didn't like it, and Gut the
fences. Then the troops. were s€nt out. That was
in 191 o _ , a typical '' uprising,'' when the white
man has both troops and courts on his side. The
case has ,gone to the cou-rts, and Tony doesn't expect
it to be set[...]ikes their
own form of government better than the white man's.
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (245) TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY zo5-
All this he tells you in the softest, coolest voice, for
Tony is not only assi[...]to keep white men from bringing in liquor during
the festal week. They yearly elect their own gov•
e[...]office. Is there a d~spute over
crops, or cattle? The governor's word settles it
without any rigmarole of talk by lawyers.
'' Supposing the guilty map doesn't obey the gov-
ernor? '' we ask.
'' Then we send 011r own police, and take him, and
put him in the stocks in the lock-up,'' and he takes
us around and shows us both the stocks and the
lock-up. These stocks clamp dow·n a man's head a[...]om naturally wouldn't remain disobedient long.
The metl1od of voting is older than the white
man's ballot. The Ir1diat1s enter the estufa. A
mark is drawn across the s~and. Two men a.re nomi-
nated. (No - women do not vote; the vvomen rule
the house absolutely. The men rule fields and crops
and village courtyard.) The voters then signify
their choice by mar1,s on the sa11d.
Hou~es are built and occupied commt:1nally, and
ground is held in com1non; but the p;,-oduct of each
man's and each woman's labor is his or her own
and not in common - the nearest approach to so-
cialistic life tl1at America has yet known. The peo-
ple here speak a language different fr·om the other
pueblos, and this places their orig[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (246) -2 06 TAOS, THE MOST AN,CIENT CITY
back as the origin of Anglo-$axon races. Another
' feature[...]as·sacredly guarded among Pu·eblos as among
the ancient Jews. The population remains almost
stationary; but the bad admixtures of a mongrel race
a·re unknown..
We call the head man of the pueblo the governor,
but the Spanish know ni.m as a ·c.a:ciq,ue. Associated
with hitn ,a re the old men-·m.ayores, or council;
and this council of wise old men enters so intimately
into the lives of the people tha,t it advises the young
men: as to ma·rriage. We have preachers in our
religious ranks. The Pueblos have proclaimers
who harangue from the housetops", or estufas.. As
women st_oop over 'the metates grinding the meal,
m-en sing good ch.eer from the door. The chile,
or .r ed pepper, is pulve;-ized betwee.n stones the same
as ·the grain. Though openly Catholio and in at-
tendance on the Mission church, the pueblo people
still pra.ctice all the secret rites of Montezuma; and
in all the course of ,four C'enturies of contact, white
men have never been able to learn the ceremonies
ot the estufas.
Women never enter the estufas.
Who were the first white men to see Taos r It is
not certa[...]aca a-nd his three companions,
shipwrecked on the ~oast of Florida in the N arvae·z[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (247)e;JJ.peditmn, ·. ·:ho wandered · est ard ac oss the con•
tine:n'f fr·om Tao s to L ,-', gun __n.d Ac0ma. As the1

legend n1 1S th ey were: .· a ~-e slav . 8 by the Indian ,[...]0

ieon of r540. _Pr cedin the form«I m"litary ad•
- . -nee ,0 1f Coronado.,, the Franc:i can F· ay Mar -,o s de
iz and two l[...]I■

h,and _ to pr_p,a r e the w~ ay,. Ft,a y _.,,arc,os ,a dvan,e·d
1

l om the Gulf of Ca.lifornra. e,astw, ,rd. One can[...]1

of 15·,J· ., G0, in 0 the Y1lm __ V _lley in Se.>temb·er,!.
1 1

The heat· is cf· a d ~ ns·en~ss· yon can cyt ·w.[...]1

m,o,dern G·allup_, he . ,as met with the warning ,,, Go
1[...]promptly
killed th·em an,d thr·ew t.h·em over the rocks. Fray
arco s went on with th·e lay br[...]1

called. '' cil:;,ola '' oWt· ,g to the great nu.m-ber a·£ huf•
£'a o . ,k: · s. .[...]mp.•
Fr, y , - cos' ·r·ep" , enc0 uraged the, Emper,0r' of 1 1[...]1

told in half t I n g s of the world. The Spa .-
1

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (248)[...]an abundance of hides .a nd woven cloth. When
the- soldiers saw Zuni, they broke out in jeers and
cu.rses at the priest. P0.o r Fray Marcos was think-
in,g mo[...]ed embarrassment to New
Spain.
Across the Desert to the Three Mesas and the
Canon of the Colorado, east again to A~oma and the
Enchanted Mes.a, up to the pueblo town now .k nown
as th.e city of Santa Fe, into the Pecos, and north,
yet north of Taos·, Coronad·o 's expedition practically
rnatle a c:ircuit of all the Southwest from the Colo-
rado River to East Kansas. The knightly adven-
turers did not find gold, ancl we may guess, as winter
came on with heavy snows in the Upper Desert,
they were in no very good mood;[...]dventurers and Pueb-
, los which lasted down to the middle of the Nine-
teenth Cetitury. At the pueblo now known as
Be,t nalillo, the soldiers demanded blankets to protect
them from the cold. The Indians stripped their
houses to help their visitors., but in the melee and no
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (249) TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 209

doubt in the ill humor of both sides there were at-
tacks and insults by the white aggressors, and a state
of siege lasted for two months. Practically from
that date to I 840, the pueblo towns were a unit
against the white man.
The last great upris.ing was just afte·r the Ameri-
can Occupation. Bent, the ,g reat trad'e r of Bent's
Fort on the Arkansas, was go¥e,rnor. N'.it Carson,
who had run away from. the saddle.r's trade at six_.
teen and for whom a reward of one cent was offered,
had joined the Santa Fe caravans and was how living
at Taos, an influential man among the Indians. Ac-
cording to Col. Twitchell, whose wo1k is tl1e most
complete on New Mexico and who received the ac-
count direct from the governor'.s daughter, Governor
Bent knew that danger was brew·ing. The Pueblos
had witnessed Spanish. powe,r ov·erthrowa; then, the
expulsion of Mexican rule. Why should they,
thems[...]ilitary escort; but
a trader all his life -a mong the Indians, be flouted
dan,ger. Traders' rum had inflamed the Indians.
They had crowded in from their pueblo town to the
plaza of Taos. lnsurrectiortary Mexicans, w,h o h[...]icy
regarding Span.ish land titles, had harangued the
Indians into a fl.are of resentful passion. Governor
Bent and his family were in bed in the house you
can see over to the left of the Plaza. In the kraal

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (250)210 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY

were plenty of horS'es for escape, but the family were
awakened at daybreak by a rabble crowding into
the central courtyard. Kit Gatson's wife, Mrs.
Bent, Mrs. Boggs and her children hurried irtto the
shelter of an inner room. Young Alfredo Bent,
only ten years old, pulled his gun from the rack
with the words-'' Papa, let us fight;'' but Bent
had gone to the door to parley with the leaders,.
Taking advantage of the checl~, the women and an
Indian slave dug a hole with a poker and spoon un-
der the, ad'obe wall of the room into the next house.
Through this the family crawled away from the be-
sieged room to the next house, Mrs. Bent last, call-
ing for her hus[...]oo late.
Governor ,
Bent was shot in the face as he expostu-
lated; cJubbed down and literally scalped alive. He
dragged himself across the floor,. to follow his wife;
J?ut Indians came up through the hole and down over
the ro@f and in through the window's ; and Bent ·fell
dead at the feet of his family.
The family were left prisoners in the room with-
out food, or clothing except night dresses, all that
day and the next night. At daybreak friendly lylexi-
cans brought food, and the women were taken away
disguised as squaws. Once, when searching Indiani
came to the house of the old !\1exic.an who had shel-
tered the family, the rcescuer threw the searchers
off by setting his '' squaws '' to grinding meal on
the kitchen floor. Kit Carson, at this time, un-
fortunately happened to be in California. He was
the one ma.n who could have restraine.d the Indians.

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (251) TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 211

The Indians then proceeded down to the Arroyo
Hondo to catch sotne mule loads of whiskey and pro-
visions, which were expected through the narrow
canon. The mill where. the mules had been unhar-
nessed was surrounded that night. The teamsters
plugged up windows and loaded for 'the fray that
must come with daylight. Seven times the Indians
attempted to rush an assat1lt. Each time, a rifle
shot puffed £tom the mill and an Indian leaped 'into
the air to fall back dead. Then the whole body of
500 Indians poured a simulta11eous volley into the
mill. Two of the Americans insiae fell dead. A
third was severely wounded. By the afternoon of
the second day, the Americans were witl1out balls o·r
powder. The Indians then crept up aod set fire to
the mill. The Americans hid themselves among the
stampeding stock of the kraal. Night was coming
on. The Pueblos were crowding round in a circle.
The survivin.g Americ-ans opened tho gates and made
a dash in the dark for the mountains. Two only es-

caped. The rest were lanced and scalped as they
ran; and irt the loot of the teams, fhe Indians are
supposed to have secured s[...]y January 23rd, General Price had marched out
at the head of five compa11ies, from old Fort Marcy
at[...]s. He had 353 n1e11 a11d four
cannon. You can see the marks yet on the old Mis-
sion at Taos, where the cannon-balls battered down
the adobe walls. The Indians did not wait his com•
ing. They met him r ,500 strong on the heights of a

l

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (252)~12 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY
mesa at Santa Cruz. The Indians made wild efforts
to capture the wagons to the rea.r of the artillery;
but when an In'c{ian rabble meets artillery, there is
only one possible issLte. The Indians fled, leaving
thirty-six killed ancl forty-five wou-nd·e d. No rail-
way led up the Rio Grande at that early date; and
i,t was a- more n·o ta,ble feat for the troops to advahce
up the rtarro,ving canons than to defeat the foe. At •
Embudo, six: or seven huntired Pueblos lined the rock
walls under hiding of cedar and pifion. The soldiers
had to climb to shoot; .and agaip the Indians CO\illd
not withsta.n d trained fire. The[...]d
and sixty wounded here. Two feet of snow lay on
the trail as the troops ascended the uplands; and it
was February 3rd b.efore they re.[...]had been drawn up, every winclow barricacled,
and the h.igh walls of· the tierecl. ~reat houses w·e r:e
bristling with rifle b·a rrels; but rifle def ertse could 11ot
withstand the big shells of the assailants. The two
pueblos were completely surrounded. A six pounder
was brou.ght with-in ten yards of the walls. A shell
was fired - the church. wall battered down, and the
dragoons rushed through the br€ach. By, the night •
of Feb. 4th, old men, women and children bearing
the cross came suing _fot p{}ace. The ringleader,
Tomas, was delivered to General Price; and the
troops drew off with a loss of seven killed and forty•
five wounded. The -Pueblos loss was not less than
200. Thus ended the last attempt of the Pueblos
to oV'erthrow alien dominati9n; and this attempt
would not have been made if the Indians had not
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (253) TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 213

been sp[...]n 'Swathed all in white came creeping
down one of the upper ladders. They could not
throw off white rul[...]ve withstood white influences as
completely as in the days when they sent the couriers
spurring with the knotted cord to rally the tribes to
open revolt.[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (254)[...]I
'
SAN ANTONIO? THE CAIRO OF AMERICA

F y.ou want to plunge[...]as you have mooas .
~ ou explain that the ocean voyage is half the
attraction to Europe.an travel. There may be[...]ow people who
would like ·t o believe. that the Atlantic could b·6
llridg.ed; but if y.ou are keen on an oceafi voyage, you
can reach the Egypt of America by boat to Flo·rida,
then west by rail; or by boat straight to any of th.e
Texas harbors. B:y way of Florida, you can tak€
your fill of the historic and antiqu•e and the pictur-
esque in St. At1gustine and Pensa:co[...]f there are any yarns of rarer tlavor in
all th.e resorts of Europe than in the old quarters of
these three places, I hav,e nevei- h·e ard of them.
You can drink of the spring of the eli;x:ir of life in
St. Augustine, an,d l,o.se yourself in the trenches of
old Fort Bar.rancas at Pensacola, and wander at will
in the old French town of New Orleans. Each
place wa.s 011ce a pawn in the gambl€s of European
statesmen. Ea,ch has heard the clang of armed
knights, the sword in one hand, the cross in the
other. Each has seen the pirate fleet with death's
.b~ad oh the flag at the masthead come tacking up

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (255) SAN ANTONIO 215

the bays, sometimes to be -shattered and sunk by
cannon shot from the fort bastions. Sometimes the
fort itself was scuttled by the buccaneers~- once, at
least, at Fort Barrancas, i[...]s captured for ransom succeeded i11
plunging into the sea within sight of her watch.i ng
father.
But whether you enter the Egypt of Arperica by
rail overland., or by sea, San Antonio is the gate-
way city from the south t0 the land of play and
mystery. It is to the Middle West w·h at Quebec is
to Canada, what Cairo is to Egypt - the gateway,
the meeting place of old and nevv, of Latin and
Saxon[...]t, of North and South.. At-
mosphere? Physically, the atmosphere is cham-
pagne: spiritually, )rou have not gone te..Q p,aces from
the station before you feel a flavor as of old ,vine.
There are the open Spanish plazas riotous with
bloom flan-k ed by Spanish-Moorish ruins flush €ln the
pavement, with skyscr:aper hotels that are the last
word in modernity. Live oaks heavy ~ith Span[...]y tied on its back. A motor comes bumping ove·r
the roads ---- such roads as only the antique can boast

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (256)[...]t to see cow,boys cuttit1g such figµre eights in
the air as a motor cann,o t execute on antique pave-
ment.
You enter a hotel and ima,g ine you are in the
Plaza, New York, or the Ritz, London; but stay!
The frieze above the .m arble walls isn't gilt; ,a nd it
isn't tapestry. The frie~e is a long panel in bronze
all,o-reli~vo. I th.ink it is a testimonial to San An-
tooio's sense of the fitness of things tha:t that frieze
is hot of Rom[...]et'inged ladies and tame fawns. It is a frieze of
the cowb,oys taking a stampeding herd up the long
tra.i1 - dtifting and driving but held together by a·
rough fellow· in top. boots and sombrero; and the
rotun,d a has a frieze of cowboys because that th[...]n real life; and I don't know any-
where els-e in the world you can get it. There are
three such huge h[...]besides a score
of lesser ones, to take ea.re of the 30,000 tourists
who come from the Middle West to winter in San
Antonio; but[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (257)011e•tenth the numb e· of
1[...]~l, ·so San __ .·. 1.-
1

ton10 ·s 0 n the oa-d t 0 Old . ·exiieQ an d a.11 the for--
1[...]nd scum of
. he :e arth us,ed to ]re in ait. for the p ass.i g bull. 0[...]1

Mission dating back to the early s:cven ten hund eds
and n 0t a st9n,e 's t-\row :a way·, one of th.e tn.o st :fa.~
1

ffi 0US ,g a[...]I I

Southwest the s· te of the old -ii e-r -:ICi'ng, ·. •here[...]" when h Clalled
his " pardner "' p t nam - , in the Silver King; or
th ere w·oul be crack· e of' m[...]1

the game ent on morning, noon a.-d night. The
- . 1 , ions a e crumbling reins So ·s the Sdve·r King.
F ont . rsmen will te l you regretfulty of the good

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (258)[...]forever gone, whe~ th~ night passed but
dully if the cowboys did n.o t shoot up all the saloons
and '' hurdle '' the gaming tables.

Yeste.raay, it was cowboy and[...]n-
tonio. To-day, it is polo and tourist·;, and the. transi-
tion is a natural growth. One would hate to think
of the risks of the Long Trail, £or miners from Old
Mexico to Fort[...]ort Worth to Wyoming ancl St. Louis, and not see
the risks rewarded i.n fortunes to these trail makers.
The cowboy and miner of the olden days - the
cowboy and miner who survived., that is - ~re the
capitalists taking the-ir plea sure in San A.ntonio to-
day. It w.rs natural that"the cow pony bred to keep-
ing its feet in mid-ait, or on earth, ~hould develop
into the finest type of polo pony ever know.n. For
years, the polo clubs of the North, Lenox, Long
Island, Milbrook, have made a[...]a high, clear plateau rimmed by o'lue
ridges .in the distance. Recently, a polo ground of
3,200 acres has been laid ot1t; and the polo clubs
of the North are to be invited to San Antonio for
the winter fiestas. As Fort Sam Houston bo.a·sts
one of the best polo clubs o,f the S.b-uth, competition
is likely to attract the sportsmen from far and
near.

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (259)[...]a . 't worth tw·o cen.t s an acre, out-,
:side the ,:·_ iss."on · alls., has ,j umped to b e a met[...]1

· an city of o . er 100,000; how it is- the center of the
,great: truck and ir.__ igation farm district. F[...]here is an imm,ense reserva-•
tion outsi . :e the city where a.s ma,,ny· as 20., :-oo men
can practice mim:c ·. ar. The da · ot' two cents or
e.. en . 1 ,0 __ n acre[...]t.. Land under t e d:~'tch is, to 0 v,aluable for the 1

rat n,g ,o f t .,' ~pty a~res[...]- ,_, . y,clu wil feel a, I fe t th·a t it was. the. daantles,
s,pir· t o · the old regime _' at fi,re·d the blood of thethe mart .' r om of her oic and errib ,e de-[...]1

fe.,at. Th,en,, whe , y ou thin,k that the Bag· 0 f the
1[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (260) SAN ANTONIO

like the cause rises on eagles' wings to new height,[...]tory. It was so in Te:Kas.
Wh@n you visit the Missions of San Antonio, go
alone,; or go with a kindred spirit. Don't talk!
Let the mysticism and wonder 0f it sink in your s·o ul !
Soak yourself in the traditions of the P,a st. Let the
dead h,a nd of the P4st r each out and touth you.
You will live over ag;ain the heroism of the Alamo,
the he,r oi's m that preceded the Alamo - that of the
Fr.ancise.a ns who tramped 300 leagues across the des-
ert of Old Mexico to est,ablish these Missions; th.e
herois·m that p,receded the Franciscans -that of La
Salle traveling thrice 300 leagues to establi~h the
cross on the Gulf of Mexico, and perishing by as-
sassin's hand as he turned on the backward march.
You will see the iron cross to his memory at Levaca.
It was because La $a1le, the Frenchman, found h.is
way to th.e Gult, that Spairt stirred up the viceroy's
of Ne:w Mexico to send swo;r d and cross over ~he
desert· to establish forts in the country of- th·e TeJas

(Tex·a ns) .
Do yol! realize wh·a t that means? When I cross
the arid hills of the Rio Grande, I travel in a car
cooled by ele~t[...]. These men marched - ·most of
them on foot, the cowled priests· in sandals, the
knights in ai:rnor plate from head to heel - over
cactus sands. Do you woader that they died on the
way? Do y0u ,vonder that the marchers coming
into the well-watered plains Qf the San Antonio with
festooned live oaks overhanging the green waters,

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (261)[...]t their string of Missions of
which th~ chief was the one no-w known as '' The
Alamo ' ' - the Mission of the cotton\vood trees?
Six different flags have flown over the land of
the Tejas: the French, the Spanish, the Me:x:ican,
the Republic of Texas; the Con-f ederate, the Union.
In such a struggle fo't ascendancy, needle[...]s sl:}.ed righteously a,nd. unrighteously;
but of the battle fought at the Alamo, no justificll-
tion need be given. It is part of American history,
but it is the kin·d of histqry that in other nations
goes to m[...]ns. Deta.ils ate in every
school book. Santa Ana, the newly risen Mexican
dictator, had ordered the 30,000 Ame.r icans who
liv,e d in Texas, to disar[...]citizens and com,p_a triots,'' w.rote Travis
from the doomed Alamo Mission, to 1-'Io-u ston and
the other leadets outside, ,., I am besieged, by a th[...]twenty-four
hours and have not lost a man. . . . The gar-risort

is to be put to the swo·td if the place is taken. I
have answered the S'tlmmons with a Gannon shot and
our flag still waves proudly fro.m the walls. I shall
never surrender, nor retreat. I call on you in the
name of liberty, and of everything dear to the Ameri-
can character, to come to our aid with all despatch.
The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily, a[...]
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In the fort with Travis were I So men under Bowie
and Ct'oekett. The siege began on -Feb. 23,, 1836,
and ended on March 6th. Besides tlr-e fronti·e rsmen
in the fort wer·e two women, two children and ·
two slaves. The Mission was arranged in a great
quadrangle f[...]i·rti_g.at1ort ditches both to front and rear. The gar-
rison had succee9ea in gettin.g i1:iside the walls about
thirty bu·she'l:s of corn and e[...]cattle; so there
was no da-n ger of fatnine. The btg courtyard was
in the rear. Thtil convent projected out in front of
the courtyard. To the left angle of the convent was
the c:h·apel 0r Mission of the Alamo. Santa Ana
had come across the desert with 51000 men. To the
dem,,tnd for surrender, Tra'\tis answered with a can..
no1,1 shot. The M exican leader thep hung the re~d
flag above his camp and ordered the band to play
. '' no quarter.'' Fo,r eight days, shells came ,h u.r tling
ih·side the walls inc€ssantly, dawn to dark,, dark t[...]

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their way out through the besiegin,g li.ne. The be-
siegers at this time consisted of 2,500 infantrymen
bunched close to the walls of the Alamo - too close
to be shot from above, and 2,500 cavalry and in-
fantry back on the Plaza ahd encircling the Mission
to cut off all avenue of escape.
Travis drew a line on the ground with his svvord.
'' Every man w[...]rst? March 1 ''
Every man leaped over the line but Bowie, who
was ill on a cot bed.
'' Boys, move my cot over the line,'' he said.
At four o'clock next morning, the siege was re,.
sumed. The bugle blew a single blast. With picks,
crowbars and ladders, the Mexicans closed jn. The
besi~ged waited breathlessly. The Mexicans placed
the ladders a,n d began scaling. The sharpshooters
inside the walls waited till the heads appear€d above
the walls - then fired. As the top man fell back,
the one b.eneath o_n the ladder stepped in the dead
man's place. Then the Americans clubbed their
guns and fought hand to hand. B,y that, the Mexi-
cans knew that ammunition was exhausted and the
defenders few. The walls were. scaled and battered
d0wn first in a far corner of the convent yatd. Be-
hind the chapel door, piles of sa-nd had been stacked.
From the yard, tho Texans were driven to the con-

vent, from the convent to the chapel. Travis fell
shot at the breach in the yard wall. Bowie was
bayoneted on the cot where he lay. Crocl{ett was
clubbed to death just outside the chapel door to the

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the Alamo. The doors were rammed and rushed.
Not a Texan sur[...]hancel and stalls. These were se,qt across to
the main camp. The bodies of the 18 2 heroes were
piled in a pyramid with fa,gots; and fitecd. So
ended the Battle of the Alamo, one of the most ,

terrible defeats and[...]ssary to relate that Sam Houston
exacted from the Mexicans on the battlefield of San
Jacinto a terrihle punishn[...]at Houston ca:me to almost 1,700.
Such is the story of one of $an Antonio's Mis-
sior:is. O[...]fall to dust. It
was nightfall when I went to the three on the out-
skirtsor the city. Two have little left but the walls
and tp:e towers. A third is still used[...]worship> by a little settlement of Mexicans. The

slant light of sunset came through the darkened,
vacant windows, the tiers of W€a~hered. stalls, the
em,p ty, twin-towered b.e lfries. You co,u ld see where
the well stood, the bake huuse, the school. Shrub-
bery planted by the monks has grown wild in the
coutty;ards; but y·ot1 can still call up the picture of
the c.o wled priests chanting prayers. The Missions

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are ruins; but the hope that animated them, the fire,
the her,oism, tl1e dauntless faith, still bu.r n in Texas
blood as the sunset flame shines through the dis-
mantled windowso

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (266)[...]CHAPTER XIV
CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA

F someone should tell you of a secon[...]Canon gashed through wine-colored rocks in the
purple light i;>'eculiar to the i,tplands of· very
high mountains - a seco.nd Gr[...]d as household birds
anq every mart's door was in the roof and his door•
ste.p a ladcler that h·e ca[...]u
w.ould thimk it pure imagination, wouldn't you?
The Lilliputians away out in '' Gulliver's Travels,''[...]ith live fire without being
burned, and walked UR the faces o.f precipic·e-s ~s a
Hy walks up a[...]

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child. Who were[...]ago that neither his-
tory nor tradition has the faintest echo of their
existence. Whe·re did[...]arby, home-staying
Am€rica; so when boys of the Forest S·ervice pulled
Little Zeke out of hi[...]d him only twenty-
thr,ee inches long, thdugh the hair stickin.g to the
skull was gray arid the te,e th were those of an adult
- as it happen[...]shipped him away to be stored out of
sight in the cellars of the Smithso:nian, at Washi11g-
ton. As Zeke has been asleep since thethe most wonderful specimens of a ptehistoric
dwarf race ever found to be shipped out of the
country.
It was in the Gila Canon that the Forestry Serv•
ice boys f oun.d him. By some chance, they at once
dubbed the little mummy '' Zeke.'' The Gila is a
typical bo:K~cafion, wallecl as a tunnel, eolored in
fire tints like the Grand Canon, literally terrace·d

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and honeycombed with the cave dwellings of a pre-
historic race. It lies some fifty miles as the crow
flies from Silver City; but the way the crow Bies and
the way man travels are-an altogether di·fferent story
in the wild la.n ds of the Gila Mountains. Y o t1 'll
have to make the most of the. way on horseback with
tents for h,otels, or better still the stars ·f or a roof.
Besides, what does it matter when or how the little
scrub of a twenty-three-1nch man lived an;[...]n dwelt; and we don't
want those ideas disturbed. The cave men - ask
Jack London if you don't believe i[...]sters, who
munched raw beef and dra.gged women by the hair
of the head to pitch-bl~ck, d-ark as night, smoke-be-
grimed caves. That is the way they got tlieir
wives. ( Perhaps, if Little Z[...]libel. He
might think that our '' blond~beast '' th.e ories are a
reflex of our own civilization[...]

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pads. So if you understood as much about Zeke's
history as you do about the Pyramids, you'd settle
some of tl1e biggest dispu[...],' 1
which have something more or less to do with the
salvati0n and damnation of the soul.
How is it known that Zeke is a type of a[...]? Because
other like specimens have been found in the same
area in the last ten years; and because the window.s
and the doors of the cave dwell_ings of the Gila
would not admit anythitlg but a dwarf race.[...]thirty-siX: and
forty inches; but no specin1ens. the size of the mum-
mies in other prehistoric dwellings have been found
in the Gila. For i11stance, down at Casa Grande,
they found skeletons buried in the gypsum dust of
back chambers; but these skeletons were six-footers,
and the roofs of the Casa Grande chambers were
for tall men. Up in the Frijol~s caye dwellings,
they have dug out of the tuf a dust of ten centuries
bodies .swathed in wo[...]at Zeke to know that he is not, as we
understand the word, an Indian, Was he an an,.
cestor of the Aztecs or the Toltecs?
Though you cannot go out to the Gila by motor
to a luxurious hotel, there are com[...]e . a type of life unique and pictu.resqu'e as in
the Old World - countless flocks of sheep herded
by soft-Yoiced peons. It is the only section yet left

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in th·e West where freighters with double teams and
riders with bull whips wind in and eut of the narrow
caiions with their long lines of tented wagons. It
is still a laud where game is plentiful as in the old
days, trout and turkey and grouse and deer an[...]-a lion., and even bighorn, though ·
the last named are under protection of closed sea-
so[...]afraid to tell ,an Easterner'
or town dweller of the hunt of these old trappers
of the box c·afi.0ns; but as many a-s thirteen bear
have been killed on the Gila in three weeks. The
altitude of the trail from Silver City to the Gila
runs from ~,ooo to 9, I 50 feet. When you ha[...]thing else1 It means burros for pack animals. In
the Southw€st it means forests of huge yellow pines[...]ark, warm, clear days, cool
nights, and though in the d·e sert, none of the heat'
nor the dust of the desert.
It is the ideal land for tubetculosi~, though all
invalids[...]re
attempting any altitude ov·er 4,000 feet. And the
Southw't!st has w,o rked out an ideal system of t[...]or tents floored and boarded half-
way· up, with the upper half of the wall a curtain
window, and a little sfove[...]

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thiey don''t c I the tent. c.1.ty s,anitar1um- Th.ey-
1call[...]of a ;prehi-St-0ric d .a· f? Please tio.t e the p,oi t.s.
Cliff and ca.ve aw,mlli ~·gs are not the ame.. ·Cliff
dwellin:,gs are, ho,uscs made by build. n.g, u·p the f ·ont
of ,a, natur:al arch. T-his fr ,r1t wall[...]ult as it sounds w'he~n ·.~o, . ·u con~ider the ro,ek is[...]cll·ng ·: may ru fiv,e stor.·e: ,:_p. ·nsid,e the rock.,
natural stone s ~ep leadin,g f rem tier t[...].•

precipices 500 to 1,000 feet. The cliff dwellings
a,r ,e mostly, ,ntere,d- by narr[...]h - ledge of a p _, e,cip· ce sh e.- a~, .a -all The 6rs:t
story of the cave dw Ii ,as "·as ente ·e d by a light
ladd·er,, _h1ch the ow11er coul d .. r w up after him .[...]

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232 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA

projectiles. A man with a rock in his hand in the
d,o orway of either type of dwelling, could swiftly
and deftly and politely speed the parting gue~t with[...]th
evidences of s-ttth teligious ceremony as in the cave
houses. Perl)aps the difference between cliff folk
and cave folk woJ[...]t,he cliff peop:le were to ancient life what ·the East
Side is to us: the cav·e people what upper Fifth
Av,enue represents. One the riff-raff, the weak., the
poor, dtiven to the waJl ;. the other, the strong, the
secure and defenaed.
You go to one s€ct[...]on exists of their history? Scientists go up to
the Rio Grande in New Mexico, see evidence of
a'nci[...]and they at once p,t ono.unce ,_
desic_catio.n. The earth is burning up at the rate of
an inch or two of water in a centuzy; moisture is
, receding toward the Poles as it has in Mars, till
Mars 'is mostly ati~, sun-parched desert round its
middle apd ice r0und the Poles. Good 1 When
you look down from the cliff dwellings of Walnut
Canon, near F[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (273)the water: sank below the le ·el of the spri gs, tbe
people .h ad to move out, · · er'f[...]o., 1

do, n to the cave d ·elling·s -_ the Gila.. The bot- 1[...]unfa.lin,g moe.ntain __pr:i.ng - Why, then, di d the[...]_e m.oved in one can e,asily under•
s,t·a - _. Th,e, box c.afions :are so nar'row t~ha.t hal i- a
doz[...]hes could
Ke€ 0Ut an arm·y 0£ ene , , ie,s,~ 'The ho·u.-t!'S were S:O
1[...]1

built that a ·h.·1 . could de ·e- d th.e door :·2y.. ith ,a 1

club; and :,·- her'e ·the ho use~ ha _e lo,n g hallways a.n.d[...]1

C n guess the inmate W 0 uld not be idle ,. bile the 1 1

~-enture ome· intrud er was we[...]1

Al o,, the bottoms of the~•e bo,c.-ca.iions, afforded tit"le I
cotrt fie -ds. The ce·n tral st earn permitted easy irr1~
.g-a ·i .n o . each side. by tappin,g. the water<.-Il hi;g· c.·
·u·, :, 11.n(l t,h je w[...]1

con1pl1Shed by the shou de·r blade of a dee~ ed as
a hoe.[...]

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oped into six-foot modern Pimas and PaIJagoes? It
is said the Navajo and Apache c,a me originally from
Athabasca stock. Maybe; but the Pimas a.nd
Papagoes claim their Garden of Eden right in the
Southwe,st. They call their Garden of Eden by the
picturesque name of '' Morning Glow.''
How reach :the caves of the dwarf race?
To the Gila group, yo·u must go by way of Silver
Ci[...],g o in with Forest Service men, for
this is the Gila Nation~l Forest and the men know
the trails. You will 6nd ranch houses near, w·h ere[...]Or you may take your
own blanket and sleep in the caves. Perfectly safe
- believe :m.e., I have[...]ve room, y0u need not
fear b·e lng followed. The. caves are clean as if
kalsomined from centuries and centuries of wash
and wind. You may hea.r the w·olves bark--- b.ark
- bark under your pill[...]-foot preci,pice walls. Also
if it is cold in the caves, you will find in the corner
of nearly all, a small, high fireplace, where the glow
of a few burning juniper ~ticks will drive out the
chill.
' '

What did they eat[...]t
racesi they were not great meat eaters; and the

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CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 235

probabilities are that fish were tabooed. Y"ou find
remains of game in the caves, but these are chiefly
feather decorations, prayer plumes to waft petitions
to the gods, or bones used as tools. On the other
hand, there is abundance of dried corn in the caves,
of gourds and squash seeds; and every cave has a
metate, or grinding stone. In many of the caves,
there are alcoves in the solid wall, where meal was
stored; and of water j[...]ve been cotton or
linen. You see it wrapped round the bodies of the
mummies and come on it in the accumulation of vol-
canic ash.
Near many of the ruins is a liuge empty basin or
pit, which must h[...]ere impounded during siege of war.
Like conies of the rocks, or beehives of modern sky•
scrapers, these denizens lived. T he most of the
muntmies have been fot1nd in sealed up chambers at
the backs of the main houses; but these could hardly
have been gen[...]these dwarf mummi€s, placed in sealed vaults
to the rear of the Gila caves? Perhaps a favorite
·father, brother, oi- sister; perhaps a governor of the
tribe, who perished during siege and could not be
taken out to the common burial ground.
Picture to yours[...]

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236 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA

700 feet high, literally punctured wi[...]d doll house open cave doors. It is sun-
set. The rock-s of these . '
box-canons in the South-
west are of a peculiar wine-colored re[...]r else dead gt,ay" and gypsum white. Owing
to the great altitude - some of the ruins are 9,000
feet above sea level, I ,ooo a.h ove ~alley bottom -
thethe Southwestern School accoqnt £or this by the fact
o.f desert dust being ~ silt fine as flour, which acts
like crystal or .g lass in splitting the ra·y s of wh:ite
light iJ11to its prismatic[...]theory and 1nay b·e quite wr.o ng) is -that the air is so
rare at altitu,d,es above 6,000 f~e[...]ol-
ors, then in elem entary colors that give the reds and
purples and, fire tints predotriin:a[...]fiery rainbow coloirs.
111-e sunset fades. The shadows come down like
invisible wings. 'T he twilight deepens. The stars
prick through the indigo blue of a desert sky like
lighted candles; and there flames up in the doorway
of cavern window and door the deep red of juniper

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and cedar log glow in the fireplaces at the corner of
each room. The mourning dove utters his plain-
tive wail. Y o.u hear the yap-yap of fox and coyote
far up among the big timbers between you and the
snows. Then a gong rin.gs. (Gong? In a metal-
less age? Yes, the gong is a flint bar struck by the
priest with a bo.ne clapper.) The· dancers come
down out of the ca,,es to the dancing floors in the
middle of the narrow canon. You can see the danc-
ing rings yet, where the feet of a thousan.d years
have beaten the raw earth hard. Men only dance.
These are not seX: dances. They are dances of
thanks to the gods for tne harvest home of corn; or
for victory. T .he gon.g ceases clapping. The camp-
fires that scent the canon with junipet smells, flicker
and ~ade and die. Th·e rhythmic beat of the feet
that dance ceases and fades in the darkness.
That was ten thousand years agone,. Where are·
the races that danced to the beat of the' priest's clap-
p·e r gong?
I wakened one morning in one of the Frijoles
caves to the mournful wail of the turtle dove; an·o
there came back that old prop'[...]me cold shivers down my spine as a child - that
the habitat of the races who fear not God shall be
the haunt of bitter,n and hoot owl and bat and
fox.

I don't know what reas0n there is for it, neither
do the Indians of the Southwest know; but Casa
Grande, the Great House, or the Place of the Morn-[...]

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i_ng Glow, is to them the Garden of Eden of their
race traditions; the scene of their mythical '' golden
age,'' when there were no Apaches raiding the crops,
nor white men stealing land away; when life was a
perpetual Happy Hunting Grou.nd, only the hunters
didn't kjll, and all animals could talk, an.cl the Desert
was an antelope plain knee-deep in p,asturage and
flowers, and the springs were all full o·f running
water.
Casa Grande is undoubtedly the oldest of all the
prehistoric rui:ns in the United States. It lies some
eighteen to twenty-five miles, according to the road
you follow, south of the station called by that name
on the Southern Pacific Railroad. It isn't supposed
to rain in the aesert a·fter the two summer months,
nor to blow dust storms af[...]asa Grande early in October; and a d.ay
later the rain was falling in floods. The drive can
be macle with ease in an afternoon;[...]yourself two days, and stay out for a night at the
tents of Mr. Pinkey, the Government Custodian of
the ruins.
The ruin its.e lf has been s·e t aside as a perpetua[...]ing mesquite ~nd greasewood and cactus, where the
giant suaharo st<J>nds like a columned ghost[...]contortions as if in pain. From tip to root, the

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great trunk was literally pitted with the holes pecked
through by little desert birds for w[...], centuries and centuries old,'' he said; '' an_d
the queer part is that in this section of the .m esa
water is sixty fe et below the surface. Their roots
don't go down sixty feet. Where do they get the
water? I guess the bark acts as -cement or rubber
preventing evaporation.. The spines keep the des-
ert animals off, and ·d uring the rainy season the cac-
t1,1s drinks t1p all the water he's going to need for
the year, and stores it up in that big tank reservoir[...]ecan orchards.''
Far .as you could look were the little adobe houses
and white tents -of the pioneers, stretching barb wire
lines round 160-ac[...]th a faith
to put Moses to shame w·hen he struck the rock for
a sprin,g . These settlers have to bore down the
sixty feet to water level with very inadequate to[...]und and round, to pump up water. It looks
like '' the faith that lays it down and dies." Slow,[...]

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the water· is turned in the ditch, and it will not ·seem
such tedious wo[...]ust how
h.a rd and lonely· it is, drive past the homesteads just
at night£all as I did. The white tent stands in the
middle of a barb wire fence strung along juni[...]use, no s- table, no build-
ings of any sort. The ho.rses. a,r e staked out. A
woman is cooking a meal above the chip fire. A lan-
tern h·angs on a bush in front of the tent flap. Miles
ahead you see another lantern gleam and swihg, and
dimly discern the outlines of atlothe.r tent - the
'
homesteader's nearest neig. ..[...]y
thousand people. Like mus-hrooms overnight, the
little towns spring up on irrigation lands.
You catch the first glimpse of the ruins about
eighteen mile_s out- a red roof p[...]tyards, a.p d four or five other com-
poutids the sr'Le of this central house, like the b,as- .
tions at the four corners- of a larg~, old-fashioned
walled fort. The walls are adoee of tremendous
thickn,ess - six feet in the house or temple part,
from one to three in the stockade - ~ thickness that
in an a.ge of only ·stone weapons must have been im-
penetrable. The do0rs are so very low as to ~orttpel
a[...]
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enter; and the supposition is thi$ was to prevent the
entrance of an enemy and give the doorkeeper a
chance to eject unwelcome visitors. Once inside, the
ceilings are high, tirnberea with vi.gas of cedar[...]n
carried in a horseless age a hundred miles from the
mountains. The house -is laid out on rectan-g ular
lines, and the halls straight enough but so narrow
as to comp,el[...]re that has pu.z zled scientists both here and in
the cave dwellings. Doors were, o·f course, open
squares off the halls or other rooms; but in addition
to these openings, you will fincl close to the floor of
each room, little round '' cat holes,''[...]walls four or five feet thick are fr~quently
O!'l the side of. the room opposite the fireplace.
Few.kes and others think they .m ay have been ven-
tilator shafts to keep the smoke from blowing
back in the room, but in Casa Grande they are in
rooms where[...]would it not have been as simple to call through the
opening? Yet another e_xplanation is tb,at they were
for drainage purpose, the cave man's first rude at-
tempt at modern[...]

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must h-ave housed a whole tribe in ti.me of religious
festival or war; so you come b-a ck to the explanation
of ventilator shafts.
The ceilitigs of Casa Grande are ex:traordinaTily
high; and bodies found buried in se,a led up cham-
b~rs b~hind the ruins of the other compounds are
five or six: feet long, sh·owing this was no elwarf race.
The rooms do -not run off rectangular halls as our
ro[...]Bodies found at Casa Grande
lie flat, h eaded to the east. Bod.ies found in the
c:av·es are trussed up knees to chin, but as usual the
bodies found at Casa Grande hav,e been shipped
aw[...]where they were found.
Lower alti't u,d,e, or the g,reat age, or' the quality
of the clays, may account ·for the peculiarly rich
sha.d'e s of the pottery found at Casa Gra·nde. The
purples and reds and browns are tin,ged an almost
iridescent gre.en,. R.un.ning back from the Great
House is a hea:v·y wall as of a farmer courtyard.
Backing and flanking the walls appear to have
been othijr houses, smaller but built in the same
fashion as Casa Grande. Stand on these ru.i ned
w-alls, or in the doorway of the Great House, and
you can see that five suc[...]
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CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 243

been the main court of the com-pound are elevated
earthen sta-ge-s or platforms three to six feet high,
solid mounds. Were these the foundations of other
Great Houses, or platforms for the religious theat-
ricals ahd ceremonials which enter so largely into
the lives of Southweste·r n Indians? At one place is
the dry bed of a very ancient reservoir; but how was
water conveyed to this big community well? The
river is two miles away, and no spring is vi·sible here.
Though you can see the footpatl1 of sandaled feet
worn in the very rocks of eternity, an irrigation
ditch has[...]en located. This, however,
·p roves nothing; for the sa11d ·s torms of a single yea c
would bury the springs fout feet deep. A truer ih-
dication of the great age of the reservoir is the old
tree growin.g up out of the center; a11d that brings
up the q·uestion how we knew the age of the.se an-
cient ruins - th,at is,, the age within a hundred years
or s0. Ask settlers r[...]asa Grande must
be thousands of years older than the other ruins of
tl1e Southwest.
Why?
Fir[...]Grande in I 540, when he mar-ched north a<::ross
the countty? He r€cords seei.n g an ancient Great[...]I 540, Casa
Grande was an abandoned ruin. Kino, the great

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Jesuit, was the first w·h ite man known to have visited
the Great Hotlse; and he gathered the Pimas and
Papagoes about and said mass there a.b out I 694.
What a weird scene it must have been - the Sac.atol'l
Mountains glimmering in the clear morning light;
the shy Indians in gaudy tunics and yucca fiber
p[...]& halls to
watch what to tl1em must have been the gorgeous
' vestments of the priest. Then f·ollowecl the eteva..
tion of the host, ·t he bo·wing of the heads, the raising
of the standard of the Cross; ahd a new era, that
has not boded w½ll for the Pimas and Papagoes, was
JJishered in. Then the Indians scattered to their
aatelop·e plains and to the mountains; and the ·p riest
went oh to the Mission of San Xavier del Bae.
- 4 - - ,

The J e-suits suffered expulsion, ~nd Garcez, th_e[...]Gar'cez says that it was a trad•ition
among the Moki of the northern desert that they
had originally come f ram tl'>.e south, from the Mom•
ing Glow of Casa Grande, and that they had inhab..
ite.d the box,,.can0ns 0f the Gila in the days when
they were '' a little people.'' This esta]:>Iishes Casa
Grande as prior to the cave dwellings of the Gila
01~ Frijoles; and the cave dwellings were pra.etically
contemporane0us with th.e Stone Age. and the last
cehturie,s of the Ice Age. Now, the cave dwelling~
had been abandontd for centuries before the Span•
iards came. This puts the cave age contemporane-
ous with o,; prior to the C,hristian era.
In the very center of the Casa Grande reservoir,

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a.cross the doorways of caves in Frijoles Canon, grew •

trees that have taken centuries to come to maturity.
The Indian tradition is that soon after a very
great flood of turbulent waters., in the days when the
Desert was knee-deep in grass, the Indian Go·ds came
from the Underworld to dwell in Casa. Grande.
(Not so ver[...]theories of evolution
and transmigration, is it?) The people waxed so
numerous that they split off in two great families.
One migrated to the south -the Fimas, the Papa-
goes, the Maricopas; the others crossed the moun-
tains to the north - the Zunis, the Mokis, the
Hopis.
Yet another proof of the g.reat antiquity is in the
language. Between Papa.go and Moki tongue is
not the faintest resemblance. Now if you trace the
English language back to the days of Chaucer, you
}{now that it is still English. If you trace it back to
55 B. C. when the Roman and Saxon conquerors
came, there are still[...]d very few similarities in physical
conformation. The only likeness€s a.re in types of
structure in a[...]s and Pitna of baskets; and both people as-
cribe the art of weaving to lessons learned from
their goddess, the Spider Maid.

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There ,a re few fireplaces among the ancient dwell-
ings of the Pimas and Papagoes, but lots of fire pits
- sipapus - where the spirits of the Gods came
throu,g h from the Underworld. Dancing floors,
may pole rings, aboun,d among the cave dwellings:
mouncls and platforms and courts among the Casa
Grande ruins. The sun and the serpent were fa-
vored symbols to both people, a[...]peuts sig-
nified n:e arness of water s.p rings,, the greate,s.t need.
of the peopl€. You can see amohg the caye dwell-
ings where earthquakes have tumbled d[...]; and b.oth Moki and Papago
have traditions of '' the heavens raining fire:''
It has been sug_gested by scientists to.at the cliffs
were ci,ties of refuge in times of wat, the c.a~es and
Great H ,ouses w,ere permane,n t dwell[...]ed because there w,ere no kivas or temples
amon.g the cli'ff rtrins, and many exist amon·g the
caves and Great Hous·es. Cushing and Hough and
I[...]de as
a temple or gt:eat eommunity h0us,e, wher,e the
tribes of the Southwest re13aired semi-annually for
their relig[...]als.
W€ moderns e~press our emotions through the
rhythm of song, o.f dance, of orchestra, of play, of
e>pera, of· art. The Indian had his pictographs on
the rocks for ar~, and his potter·y and weaving to
e:x:press his cra.ftsma,nship ;· but the_rest of his artistic
natare was expresse_d chieJl[...]us cet€monial
or theatrical da·nce, similar to the old :m iracle plays

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (287)[...].I\ part of Sprtiee TJ:ee If ons.e, aH1ong the cliff d\vellings of i\1Iesa \ Terde National
Park, Col'Ora<l0. The ruin con-ta ins j J4 roon1s[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (288) o.£ the _ .-id.die ~ ,· g , · n.1 --ta[...]1

lo· 'er. p __ · l g a. _ute; and. the
1[...]1

t - 1s. b· ·. :_h -i Bute dance. The. e I cl _a · of[...]~ s the
Isr.a.,- l~te:, cle _n~1n . of· p rs-o-r1 l ~[...]1

The mas k dance - of the Sou.- ·h · es'. a.r _ .m ch mis-[...]t -· ·- ue ,o r ,p,erhap,s all c .·- e. Y · t th,ethe Eir·d Dance re· ·re,- I[...]llttl e. Th: re is . 1 ,d nee of the
'' m.ud-head,s ' Hav:-e e -o _,,, mud--h _ads[...],

dl·ng li e at · - _y t rn o.f the w11 ? T ere is the
1[...]1•

danc . of the gl ,ttpns and th _ monsters Ha · . e - e
n,o[...]:a d inh -itan.ie e and -;.- · -~ronment. The India.n 1[...]' . 1 1 n 1ters.
·crh.ap S O' - e o.f the mo:t b ~ ~ utiful C ~remonia 8 is[...]th . corn. d -ric . P1cru.r·e te ·yo~ · .]f the. _:~iJtJa.s
cro de 1d , -h pec ato,ts'[...]

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2481 CASA G.R ANDE AND THE GILA
rounds the ,altar fi;r,,e.. The audience sits breathless
• in th,e dark. Musicians stri'k·e up a beating on the
stone go,rtg. A flute player tri-lls his air. The blan-
kets drop. In the flare of the alt1vr fire is seen a
field of corn, round which the actors dance. The
pril3sts rise. The blankets hide the, fire. It is the
Indian turtain drop. When you look again, the[...]her pageant of dancers, nor field of corn. So
the play goe.s on, - a dozen acts typ,ifyiflg a dozen[...]-
tle, don't cry out like a child. Pull o.u t the arrow.
Slip off and die with silence i:n the throat.''" '' When
you go to the ht1nt, travel with a light blanket.'·' We
talk o.f getting baek to Mother Earth. The Indian
chants endless songs to the wonder of the Great
Earth Magician, c:r eator of life and c[...]eories of .life
c'r eation; and this, too, is the subject of a dance:
Then ca,me dar,k days., Tribes from the far
Athabasca came down like the. Vandals of E·u rope
- Navajo and Apache, relentless warriors. From
Great House·s the people of the Southwest retired to
cliffs and caves. When the Spaniar·ds came with
firearms an,d horses, the situ.ati,on ,vas: almost one of
e~termination for the sedentary Indians-; and they re-
tired to such h·eights as tl1e high m.esas of the
Tusayan De,sert. Whether when white man stopped
raid by the warlike t ribes, it was better or worse for
the peaceful Pima and Papago and Mo.ki, it is hard

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to say; for the white man began to take the Indian's
water and the Indian's land. It's a story of slow
tragedy l1ere. In the days of the overland rush to
California, when every foot of the trail was beset
by Apache and Navajo, it was the Pima and P apago
offered shelter and protection to the white over-
Jander. What does the Indian know of '' prior
rights'' in filing for water? H~ve not these waters
been his since the days of his for efathers, when men[...]1

came with their families from the Morning Glow to
the box-canons of the Gila and Frijoles? If prior
rights mean anything, has not the Pima prior rights
b; ten thousand years? But the Pima has not a
1

little slip of government paper called a deed. The
bi·g irrigation companies have tapped the streams
above the Indian Reserve; and the waters have been

diverted. They don't come to the India;ns any

more. All the Indian gets is th.e overflow of the
torrential rains - that only btihgs the alkali wash
to the surface of the land and does not flush it off.
The Pi.m a can no longer raise. crops. Slowly and[...]people he loyally protected as they crossed the con-
ti11ent to Californ:ia.
What are the American people .going to do about
it? Nothing, of course. Wh,en the wrong has
bee11 done and the tribe reduced to extermination by[...]

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250 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA
brochure about an e):(terminated people. Mean-

time, the children of the Pitnas and Papagoes have
not enough to eat owing to the white man ta.king all
their water. Th.ey ar€ th€ people of '' tlie Golden
Age,'' '' the MoTning Glow.''
We drov·e b.a.ck from[...]over tlie a.ntelo_pe plains. I looked back to the
crumb1io.g ru.ig·s of the Great House, and its five com-
poands, where the men and women and ch.iJdren of
the Morning Glow came to clanc,e and worship ae-
cordimg to all the light they had. Its 'tallin.g walls
and d[...]nd fading outlines. seemed typ-
• ical of the passing of thethe memory o'f men, fqrever.
Evolutionists[...]not survive•
.
Th.e Spa·niard of the Southwest shrugs his gay
shoulde.r[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (292)[...]XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION, TUCSON, ARIZONA

T is the Desert. Incense and frankincense,
fragrance of roses and resin of pines, cedar
smells smoking in the sunlight, scent the air.
Sunrise comes over the mountain rim in shafts of a
chariot wheel; and the mountains, engirting the Des-
ert round and round, are themselves veiled i[...]gible and shimmering as dreams - a mist shot
with the gold of sunlight; and the air is champagne,
ozone, nectar. Except in the dead heat of mid.
summer, snow shines opal f tom the mountain peaks;
and in the outline of yon Tucson Range, the figure
of a giant can be seen lying prone, face to sunlight,
face to stars, face to the dews of heaven, as th.e faces
of god-like races ever are.
You wind round a juniper grove-'' cedars of
Lebanon,'' the Old Testament would call it. There
is the silver tinkle of a bell; and the flocks come
down to the watering pools, flocks led by maidens, as
in the days of Rachael and Jacob; and the shepherds
- only they call them '' herders,'' fight for first place
round the water pool, as they did in the days of
Rachael and Jacob. Then, you come to a walled
spring where date palms shade the ground. And the
SSI

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (293)[...]SSION
maidehs are there, <, drawing :water from the well,''
carrying water in ollas on their he~ds,[...]perfect :poise and _perfeet grace, daughters of
the Desert, hard lovers, hard haters, veiled as all
mysteries are veiled.
Y Oll turn but ~. spur in the mou.t1tains: you dip
into a valley smokin·g with the dews of the morn-
ing; or come up a mesa,- .a nd a winged ho[...]nen, sash of rain:bow colors; and you ate
-a mid the dwellings of men.. Strings of red chile
like ga·r lands of huge red corals ha.n g a.gainst the
sun-baked brick 0 :t clay. Curs come out and bark
at the heels of your horse - that i~ why t.he Oriental[...]om thei·t kiln fires of she.ep manure, at you,
the rem.ote passerby. The basket workers weave
and weave like the Three Fates of Life. O,ne old
woman is so a.g ed[...]t she
mu·s t sit inside her basket to carry out the pattern of
·w hat life is to her; and the sunlight strikes back from
tlie hea:t-baked walls in a glare that stabs t1:ie eye;
and you hear the tinkle of the b.~lls from the water-
ing po·ols.
Th·efl, suddenly, fo[...]time, you see It.
You have turned a spur of the Mountains·, dipped
into a valley, come up on the Mesa into the sunlight,
and ·there It is - the ete1°nal m<;>untains wit,h their
etetnal lavender veil round the valley like the tiered
seats of a coliseum, the mist like a theater drop
curtaill. where[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (294)f:anc , an,d_ n th ~ _1 st of the ,g -eat a, ,l1.1t ,a t ,-
r· ~ es , n 1slan1 d rock; -_ , d on the isl-an d rock ts a[...]1

g ot:o; · ,nd in th _gr,o t o is the fig,ure of -the, Mother
1[...]1

c•te.rna p·u rity -and be ow the ·islan o·- rock in
I[...]I

the m:1 st 0f th e am,ph . the,a ter :som et 'ing s ·,ms into
1[...]1

- bite, glaringl . , hite as th,e e·ry splfotlessness of[...]o'~_,ers an,d
min rets and elfries, be'to ·ening the reaching of· 1[...]1

the spi --t of -- an · .p to God; li ons b e'tw•een the. 1 1

archc . of' the r'OOfed piazzas, ,-JS betok ening .he .io.n-'[...]~ alms befo, _- arch ed, wh'i-~e : all Srhut. out the,
1[...]y OQ dip •nto -_ · . a.' ley, th e S e·n.t 0 the Ce,dars 1 1[...]1

in ·you.r n,o st ils and lung·s, the peace of God in. your
heart. Then y·o,u com, ·[...]floating
p Jac es, on ,he · _1 e, a,pp,-oaching the p 1· lac es 0 £ _,1
1[...]· 001~· h. minare.t ·
a,nd t . in O' ·. n of the Alha.mbra. in Sp'a ln ?
1[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (295)[...]t is October 3rd in Tucson, Arizona; not far from
the borders of Old Mexico as the rest of the world
reckon distance. The rain has been falling in tor•
rents. Rain_ is not supposed to .fall in the Desert,
but it has bee-n coming .down in slaat torreBts ancl the
s~y is reflected everywfu,ere in the road-side pools.
The air is soft as rose petals, for the altitude is[...],o'OO feet; too high to be langtiiid, tob low for
the ,sting of autumn frosts.
We motor, fir_st, through th,e old Spanish town -
relies of a grandet1r that Ame[...]to-day, a grandeur more of spirit than dis_play. The
old 5panisli grandee never counted his dollars, nor
me~sured up the value of a meal to a gu.est. But he
counted honor dear as the Virgin MaiJ,. and made
a gamble of life, ancy hated tensely as he loved. The
old ma,nsion houses are fallen in disr~p qte, to-day.
They are givea o,v er, for the most part to Chinese
and Japanese- merchants; but through the open win-
dows you can still see pl.aa-a s and Ra[...]a nders are in perpetual bloom
a:.n d roses climb th.e trellis work,, and the par-r ot
calls out '' swear words ' 1 of ·Spanis[...]e hall,
but where rags ancl tatters flaunted from the clothes
lines of negro and Japanese and Chinese tenant, I
cot1ld riot but think of the torn flags that mark the
most heroic a.ction of regimel'ltS.
From the Spanish Town of Tucson, which any
other n[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (296)[...]255
and capitalized in dollars for the tourist, you pass
modern mansions that wisely foll0w the Spanish-
Moorish type of architecture, most suited to Desert
atmosphere.
Then you come on the Tucson Farms Company
Irrigation project, now sagebrush and cactus land
put under the ditch from Santa Cruz River and
turned over to settlers from Old Mexico - who were
driven out by the Revolution - for $2 5 an acre.
You see the lonely eyed worn.an pioneer sitting at the
door of the tent flap.
Moisture steams up from the river like a morning
incense to the sun. The Tucson Range of mountains
shimmers. Giant cactus stand ghost-like, centuries
old, amid the mesquite bush; and in the columnar
bole of the cactus trees you see the holes where the
little desert wren has pecked through for watet i[...]season.
Then, btrfore you know it, you are in the Papago
Indian Reserve. The finest basket makers of the
world, these Papagoes are. They make baskets of
such close weave that they will hold water, and you
se·e the Papago Indian women with jars - ollas - of
water on their head going up and down from the
water pools. Basket makers weave in front of tfie
sun-baked adobe walls where hang the red strings
of chile like garlands. On the whole, the Indian
faces are very happy and good. They do not care
for wealth, these children of the Desert. Give them
'' this day their daily[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (297)256 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION

Then the mountains close in a cup round the shim..
mering valley. In the c~nter of the valle_y rises an
islan·d of rock, the rock of the Grotto of the Vir-
gin; and a white dome and twin towers show,[...]pointing to
Heaven, and lions in white all along the roof typi-
fyin.g the stren•g th that is of God. There is a dome
in the middle of the roof line - that is the Moorish •

influe.nce brought in by Spain. There are twin towers
on each side; and in the towers on the right hand side
are three brass b.ells to c·all[...]matins and
vespers. I·t may· be said here that the French Mis•
sion may always be kqown by its single spire and
cross; the Spanish Mission by its twin towers and
bells. The French Mission rings its bell. The
Sp.anis·h Mission strikes its bells with a hammer or
go~g. One utters cheer. The other sounds a rich,
low, mellow call to wotship. The walls and pillars
and arches a.r e all marble white; and you are looking
on one of the mQst anciemt Missi,ons o·f the New
Word- San Xavier del Bae, of Tucson, Arizona.
The whole effect is so oriental as to be startling.
The wl1it<'; dome might be Indian or Persi_an, but th.e
pQinted arches and minarets a·r e unmistakably Moor-
ish- that is, Moorish brought- across by Spain.
The entrance is under a,n arched white wall, ,and the
courtyard looks out behind th·r ough arched white
gateway to the distant mountains.
Here four sisters of St. J6seph conduct a school
for the little Papagoes·; and what a school it is! It
might do honor to the Alhambra. Palms line the

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (298)[...]257

esplanade in front of the arched, walled entrance.
Collie dog.s rise lazily 1111d er the deep embrasures of
the arched plaiz.as. A parrot calls out some Spanish[...]e Persian
kitten frisks its plumy tail across the brick-paved walk
of the i11ner patio; and across the courtyard I catch
a glimpse of two Shetland p[...]repose, of antiquity, of apartness,
rests on the marble white Mission, as of oriental
dreams a[...]ropean antiquity and cul-
ture.
I ring the bell of the reception room to the right
of the church entrance. Not - a. sound but the echo
of my own ring! I enter, cross through the parlor
and come on th e Spanish patio or cent[...].
What a place for prayers an@ meditation and the
soul's repose I Arched promenad'es line both sides
of the inner court. Here J esuit and Franciscan
monks have walked and prayed and meditated sin_ce
the Sixteenth Century. By the hum as of busy bees
to the right, I locate the schoolrooms, and come on
the office of the Mother Superior Aquinias.
What a pity so[...]e at-
tractive and kindly than evil; and all the little In-
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (299)25·8 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION
dian wards of the four schoolrooms look happy and
human and red-blooded as the Mother Superior.
A collie pup flounders round us up and down the
court walk where the old missiona111 monks suffered
cruel martyrdom. Poll, the parrot, utters senten-
tious comment; and the £hetland ponies, whinny
greetings to their mistr[...]goodness, does, it?
But it is when you enter the church that you get
the real surprise. Three times, the desertion of this •

Mission was f orce·d by massacre and pillage. Twice
it wa,s abandoned owi ng to the expulsion of Jesuit
and Franciscan by- temporal power. Fo.r seventy
y·ears, the only inhabitants o-f a temple stately as the
Alhambra were the night bats, the Indian herders,
the border outlaws of the United States and Mexico.
Yet, wh.en you enter, the walls are covere.d with won-
derful mural painting. Saints' statues stand about
the altar, and grouped about the dome of the. groined
ceiling are such pa'intings as would do honor to a
European Cathedral.
The brick and adobe walls are from two to six
feet thick.. Not a nail has ever been driven in the
adobe edifice. The doors ate of old wood in
hijge panels mortised and dovetailed together~ The
latch is an iron bar carved like a Damascus sword.
The altar is a mass of gilding and purple. To b.e
sure, the saints' fingers have been hacked off by
wandering[...]d Indian; but you
find that sort of vandalism in the British Museum
and Westminster Abbey. The British Muieum had[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (300)[...]years, this an-
cient :tv1ission stood open to the winds of heaven and
the torrential rains and the midnight bats. Only
the faithfulness of an old Indian chief kept the sacred
vessels from desecration. '\,Vhen the fathers were
expelled for political reasons, old Jose, of the
Papagoes, carried off the sacred chalices and candles
till the padres should return, when he brought them
from[...]ples are usually built in one long, clear
arch. The roof of San Xavier del Bae is a series
of the most perfect groined domes, with the deep
embrasures of the windows on each side colored shell
tints in wave-lines. Because of the height and depth
of the windows, the light is wonde·rfully clear and
soft. The church is used now only by Indian chil-
dren; a[...]a mag-
nificent temple in which to worship? To the left
of the entrance is a wonderful old baptismal font
. of pure copper, which has been the envy of all col-
lectors. One wonders looking at the ancient vessel
whether it was baptized with the blood of all the
martyrs who died for San Xavier - Francesca Gar[...]is a window in this baptis-
try, too, that is the envy of critics and collectors.
It is set more deeply in the wall than any window in
the Tower of London, with pointed Gothic top that
sends shafts of sunlight clear across th.e earthen
· floor.
From the baptistry I ascended to the upper tow-
ers. The stairs are old timber set in adobe and
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (301)[...]gh solid w·alls of a thickness of sbt feet.
The view from the belfries above is , wonderful.
YQu see the mouqtains shimme,ring in the haze.
You see the little square adobe matchbox houses o~f
Papago Indians, with the red chile hanging against
the wall, and the women coming from the spring,
al'td th,e m·en husking the corn. You w·o,nd.er if when
San Xavier was[...]r
'\>Vould be an im.preg:nable fo.rtress. Yet the priests
of San Xavrer were three times utterl[...]by
Indians.
Wh,en yot1 come to seek the history o,f San Xavier,
you will find it as difficult to get, as a guide out to
th,e Mission. As a pqrely tollrist resort, leaving[...]I
took me the-bcttter pai-t of a day ·to nnd out that
San[...]. th.is is typical of tl:1e difficulty of getting the
real histgty of the place. Jesuit Relations of Ne"'·
F·r a.nce[...]r. J esuit Relations of New Spain,
who knows? The Franciscans succee·ded the J esuits;
and the Franciscans do not read the history of· the
Jesuits. It con1es as a shock to k11ow that Spanish
padroes were on the Colorado and Santa Cruz at
•[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (302) SAN XAVIER D E L BAC MISSI ON 2·6 1

the time J acques Cartier was exploring the St. Law-
rence. We have always believed that Spanisl1
conquistadores slaughtered the Indians most ruth-
lessly. Study the mission records and you get an-
other impression,[...]oting'' it 600, 700,
900 miles from Old Mexico to the inmost recesses
of the Desert caiions. I n late days, when a friar
set o[...]save him from
death; for there were stretches of the journey ninety
miles without water, infested every mile of the v-,ay
by Apacl1es; and these str,etches were known as the
Journeys of Death. Whe11 you think of the rutl1-
less slaughter of the conquistadores, think also of
the friars tramping the parched sand plains for 900
1niles.
While F ray J uan de la Asuncion and Pedro Nadol
are the first missionaries known in Arizona about
1538, Father Kino was the great missionary of 1681
to 1690, officiating at the Arizona Missions of San •

Xavier del Bae and Tumacacori. There are reports
of the J esuits being among the Apaches as early as
1630 - ·s ay early as the days of the Jesuits in C.a n-
ada; but who the missionaries were, I am unable to
learn. Rebellion and massacre devastated the Mis-
sions in 1680 and in 1727; but by 1754, the mis~
sionaries were back at San Xavier and had
t[...]ferent puttblos. I n 1767, for political reasons> the
J esuits suffered expulsion; and the F ranciscans came[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (303)[...]s told before, 600 and 900 miles.
It was under the Franciscans that the present struc-
ture of San Xavier was built. Garcez was the most
fa-mous of the Franciscans. He spent seven years
amon.g the Pimas and Papagoes a11d Yumas; but
one hot midsummer Sunday-July 17, 1781 -
during early mass, the Ind-ians rose and ·slew four
priests, all the 5panish soldiers and all the Spanish

servants. Garcez was amon·g the martyrs. San
Xavier, as it at present stands·,[...]pelled. Tumacacori and San ~avier were
:,.lways the m_ost important of the Arizona Missions.
Originally quite as magnifice[...]h earthly in its very
architecture; and this is the spirit in which it was
originally built. At daybreak, a bell called the
• builders to prayers of consecration. At nightfall,
vesper bells sent the laborer home, with the blessing
of the church. For the most part, the workers were
Mexicans and Indians; and as far as can be gathered
from the annals, voluntary workers. The Papagoes
an.cl Pimas at that time numbered 5,000, of whom 500
lived rou.n d the Missions, the rest spending the sum•
mers hunting in th,e mountain!.
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (304)[...]IER DEL BAC MISSION z63
When the American Government took over Ari-
zona, San Xavier went under the diocese of New
Mexico. From Santa Fe, New Mexico,[...]across desert mountains and canons,
every foot of the way infested by Apache warriors;
and the heroism of that ttail was marked by the same
courage and constancy as signalized the founding
and maintenance of the other early Spanish Mis-

s1ons.
It would[...]tion; and
San Xavier stands to-day as it stood in the sixteen
hundreds, when Father Kino, the famous mathe-
matician and Jesuit from Bavaria, came wandering
up from the Missions of Low·e.r California, preach-
ing to the Yumas and Pimas of the hot, smoking
hot, Gila Desert, and held mass in Casa Grande, the
Great House or Garden of Eden of the Indian's
l\forning Glow. A lucky thing it is that restoration
did not imply change in San Xavier; for the Mis-
sion floats in the shimmering desert air, unearthly,
eerie, unreal,[...]rble, twin-towered,
roof domed and so dazzling in the sunlight to the
unaccustomed eye that you somehow know why
rows of restful, drowsy palms were planted in line
along the front of the wall.
Perhaps it is that it comes on you as such a cor11-
plete surprise. Perhaps it is the desert atmosphere
in this cup of the mountains; but all the otner mis-
sions of the Southwest are adobe $ray, or e~rth[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (305)[...]ven ~ er o'f drab ·Hite~
.ash,
There is the g· a,nt, centur ·-old · •· es ert c,actu.[...]1

twis,ted and gnarleiti -- .ith ag,e like the tre es in. Dantes 1

I·n·f c.rno, but · ith b~ rd nests1 1._ . the pillared trunk's
~.h ere- little -. ·r ensi peck throug.h the bark for w.a ter.[...]n h.as, just dismount~d 1

b·mn eath the shad.e of a fine old twisted t·)ak: but · -C·[...]1

tai1 s .h_.mn ·. ing ~n the vall ey s,ee - ~ ta ,slee·p. 1[...]y i-leep~-.. T·1. e sualight sl ~eps
a-g·ainst t'he glar'e ·w hite ·wal s. The hLlge old rn.or~
tised door to t e. ch. _rc_i_ s[...]nt and
a, leep 1
he do 0 r of the Mission, p ··rlo st .nds. o,pen[...]1

Yo u ·ing the gong., T~e soun.d stabs the sle,ep·.n-g
1

sil~nce, a,n.d you a·· m[...]ri ·a r and _esu?t p, -iest cort1e alking a ong, th,e
1[...]1

area ed .P•aveme · t of the in e, out 'tya.t,,d to ask y,ou
·· ha.t al th[...]asleep·.. Y'ou cr0s1s thi-0 g'h t.he parlor to the inAe,r 1[...]three sides 1

with the four·tt, sid e lo,okin,g· thro·ugh_a w on de.r[...]1 1

h~,gh arched, gateway out to the far moun ·ains+
Polly turns 011 h,er p·[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (306)[...]BAC MISSION 265

to sleep. The white Persian kitten frisks his white-
plumed tai[...]'' woof.'' They
ar•ch their pointed noses with the fine old aristocratic
air of the unspoken qu.estion: wl1.at are you of the
Twe11ty Century doing wanderi11g back into the
mystery and mysticism a11d quietude of the relig.ious
sixteen l1undred? But if you keep on going, you
will find the gentle-voiced sisterhood teaching the
little Pimas and Papagoes in the schoolr.oorns.
San Xavier, arcliitecturally, is sheer deli.ght to the
eye. The style is almost pure Moorish. The yard
walls are arched in harmony with the arched outline
of the roof; and in the inner courtyard you will no-
tice the Spanish lion at the intersection of all the
roof arches. In front of the Mission buildings is a
:yvalled space of some si•;xty by forty feet., where the
Indians used to a,ssemble for discussion or[...]On th·e fro1.1t wall in higl1
relief are placed the ar1ns of St. Francis of 1\:ssisi,
and in the sacristry· to the right of the altar y·ot:1 will
find mu·r al drawings and a p[...]ncisea·n and Jesuit. This is
easily ex,plai11ed. The Franciscans came up over-
land across the D esert from the City of Mexico.
The Jesuits came up inta11d from their Mission on
th,e Gulf of California. Father R:ino, the Jesuit,
from a Bavarian university, was the first missionary
to hold services amohg the Pimas and Pap.agoes 1
afld if he did not lay the foundations of San Xa,rier,[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (307)[...]_y his immediate success·o rs.
1

The escut.cheon of the --r~,ncisca.ns ,o·n the ·wall is
a t.wisted cor·d and a. cross on wh1c.b are. nailed th,e
1

arms of -th-e Christ a·nd the, .arm of .Sit. Fra.neis.. 'T he
Christ arm is, b[...]ston.e and brick... It is I oo by thl"'rty feet. The
traflseJ;,t on ea,ch side of the nave ru,n;s 0 ut ·twen~y-,[...].p e feet ,sq.ua_
1
~e. The ro of above tlie nave .i sup-[...]1

cupola above the altar is :.f ty fe . t to the dome.
TM other vault~ ara cJl1ly thirty feat high. The
'Window .a.r e high ·in the cle~~·story .and set so d,eeply
In the, ca.s emcnt t.hat th-e light filling ,on the mu,ral
paintin.gs · nd fresca work is sifted and softened_
Practically all the walls, wpo1a, dome; transept,
n·ave, .ar,e c,ov[...]r (al .Pi!iiRtings~ There l,si
t·h e ,coming of t'he 1Spir:t to th,e Disciples. T·he ,e,-
is the Last Suppe:e. There is the Concep ion.
.Teher,e 1s the R.osa.ry ~ Th cre. •s th.,e H cld.en Li..f e of
1

th.e Lor•d.
The n:iain ak•r. has evidently been. constucted
by the Je,suit-s ;· for the ,tatue o,f St. Francis Xavie
-tan _sf below the Virgin betw~e,n figures- of S,t
P,cte.r and. S:'t. Faul :a nd Gocl,, th,e,· C:re,a.tor. On the
gr-0Ule:d ar'Qhes af tho d0'fflC are figure;S of th,e W 1· C
1

Mea, the Flight. to E,gypt,l the Sh.ephe:rtls., tlie An.w
n1:1nc1ation.. Gilded ar[...]l tints _a dorn tbe m_a,·.,n a!t,a r. Statues of the
saint ._- stand in the akG.>ves .and niches of the p1lla -· ·

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (308)[...]267
and vaults. Two small doors lead up to the towers
from the main door. Look well at these doors and
stairways. Not a nail has been driven. The doors
are mortised· of solid pieces. The first flight of
stairs leads to the choir. Around the choir are more
mural paintings. Two more twists of the winding
stair; and you are in the b'e lf ry. Twenty.two more
steps bring you to the summit of the tower - a gal-
I
leried cupola, seventy-five feet above the ground,
where you may look out on the whole world.
. Pause for a moment, and look out. The moun-
tains shimmer in their pink mists. The sunlight
sleeps against the adobe walls of the sca:ttered In•
dian house. You can hear the drone of the ch1l-
dren from the schoolrooms behind th,e Mission.
You can see the mortuary chap,el clown to the right
and the lions supporting the arches of 'the Mission
roof. Father Kino was a famous Europe[...]and
he came to found a Mission amid arabs of the Ameri-
can Desert. The hands that wrought these paint•
ings_ on the walls were not the hands of bunglers.
They were the hands 0f artists, who wrought in love
and dev[...]Priests, whose names even have been lost in the
chronicles, were murdered on the altars here, thrown
down the stairs, cut to pieces in their own Mission[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (309)[...]of twelve soldiers for these long t ,ip$ ,; bu · the sol-
die,rs,' v-ice·s made so mEch trouble f-0r the ho ly fath-[...]_y brothe~. S:aridaled mis:siqnatie.s.
tramped the cactus de,ser· in Ju·n.e, whc.a the: he·at was 1

.h1t ~[...]Jo· trampe,tI from th·e Gulf
of Cafifornia to the Gila,, and from the Gila to the 1

Rio Ota:nd'e. You :[...]y was · hrown. ove · a precipice ; or
slain on the high kar of -San Xa ·1et A:nd always,
the priest opposed the outrage$ of the sold1e ,Y,, th~
inJustire of tlie ruling rings. Fa·the.r M_ino petitions
the r.oyal house oif Spitin in 1686 that cQnverts be not
f orci ly; se··zed and " dragged of to slavery in the. -

m:[...]d ~ t·be abuse . '' He gets ~ .re,spite. from the King
for all conv~rts for twenty ears~ He do,es -n.ot _per..
mit aonv,e·rts .to ·be take:n as slaves in the mines or
slaves ·1n the pearl tishcr.irs; so the ruling ri.ngs of
Old Me)Gico obstruct his[...]

Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (310) SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION z69
The fathers weave their own clothing, grow
their own food, and hold the fort against the
enemy as against the subtle designs of the Devil.
These fathers mix their own mortar, make
their own bricks, cut their own beams, lay the plaster
with their own hands. Now, remember that the
priests who did all this were men who had been ar[...]favorites of Europe. Father Kino was, himself,
of the royal house of Bavaria. But jealousy left
the Missions unprotected by the soldiers. Soldier
vices roused the Indians to fury; and the priests
were the first to fall victims. Go across the Moki
Desert. You will find peach orchards planted by
the friars; but you cannot find the graves of the dead
priests. We considered the Apaches a dangerous
lot as late .as 1880. In 1686[...]d Apache land alone. I canno't
find any record of the Spanish Missions at this pe-
riod ever receiving[...]st pay their wages and keep.
Well, by and by, the jealousy of the governing
ring, kept from abusing the Indians by the priests,
brought about the expulsion of the Jesuits. The
Franciscans took up the work where the Jesuits left
off. Came another political upheaval. The Fran•
ciscans were driven out. San Xavier's broken win•
dows blew to the rains and winds of the seven
heavens. Cowboys, outlaws~ sheep her[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (311)[...]It was completely cleaned out
'and taken over by the church as a Mission for the
Indi,ans.
To-day, no one worships in San Xavier but the
little Indian scholars. Look at the drawings of
Christ, of the Virgin, of the Wise M:en I Look at
the dreams of faith wrought into the ·aged and beau-
tiful walls J Frankly-let us @[...]ino have clone better to have continued to grace
the courts of Bavaria?
In the old da,ys, Pima and Papago roped their
wives as[...]th-e fancy ·prompted, abused
.them to death. On the walls of Sah Xavier is the·
Annunciation to the Virgih, another view of birth
ap.d womanhood. In the 0ld d·ay,s, the Indians killed
a child at birth, if they didn't want it. On the
walls of Sart Xavie-r are pictured the wise men ador-
ing a Child. ~partish rings and t[...]trusts want
them .to-day. Behold a Chri'st upon the walls set-
ti.ng free the slaves I Was it all worth while? It
depends on your point of view and what you want.
Though the wi1;,1ds of the seven heavens blew through
San Xavier for[...]
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert (312)[...]BAC MISSION 2r7 I
dreams; pointing the way, not to gain, but to good-
ness; making for a[...]ful heaven life
might be.

THE END


•[...]

MD

NO COPYRIGHT - UNITED STATES. The organization that has made the Item available believes that the Item is in the Public Domain under the laws of the United States, but a determination was not made as to its copyright status under the copyright laws of other countries. The Item may not be in the Public Domain under the laws of other countries. Please refer to the organization that has made the Item available for more information. http:[...]
This book is about the many places visited by the author throughout Arizona, New Mexico, and[...]

Agnes Christina Laut, Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States, Little Known and Unappreciated, the Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo, the Lure of the Painted Desert. Arizona Memory Project, accessed 10/06/2025, https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/165763

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