Ancient Pottery dug from Prehistoric Ruins on the Painted Desert.
Ancient Pottery dug from Prehistoric Ruins on the Painted Desert.
A land where volcanic fires and fierce lava flows, accompanied by deadly fumes, noxious gases, and burning flames, have made lurid the midnight skies, and driven happy people from their peaceful homes.
A land through which a mighty river dashes madly and unrestrainedly to the sea, and yet where, a few miles away, a spring that flows a few buckets of water an hour is an inestimable treasure. Yes indeed, where, in sight of that giant river, thirsty men have gone raving mad for want of water, and have hurled themselves headlong down thousand-feet-high precipices in their uncontrolled desire to reach the precious and cooling stream.
A land of rich and florid coloring where the Master Artist has revelled in matchless combinations. It is a land of color,—sweet, gentle, tender colors that penetrate the soul as the words of a lover; fierce, glaring, bold colors that strike as with the clenched fist of a foe.
It is the stage upon which the bronze and white actors of three hundred and fifty years ago played their games of life with ambitions, high as they were selfish, determined as they were bold, and unscrupulous as they were successful.
Ofthe flora and fauna of the Painted Desert Region I have made no study. That they are fascinating the works of Hart Merriam, Coville, Lemmon, Hough, and others of later days, and of the specialists of the earlier government surveys, abundantly testify. There are cacti of varieties into the hundreds, sagebrush, black and white grama, bunch grass, salt grass, hackberry, buck-brush, pines, junipers, spruces, cottonwoods, and willows, besides a thousand flowering plants. There are lizards, swifts, rattlesnakes, scorpions, Gila monsters, vinegerones, prairie dogs, hedgehogs, turtles, squirrels, cottontail and jack-rabbits, antelope, deer, mountain sheep, wildcats, and some bear.
It is more of its physiographic conditions in a general way, however, that I would here write.
Most people's conception of a desert is a flat, level place of nothing but sand. It is sand instead of water; a desert instead of an ocean. Few deserts conform to this conception,—none, indeed, that I know of in the boundaries of the United States. This Painted Desert Region is wonderfully diversified. There is sand, of course, but much rock, many trees, more canyons, some mountains and lava flows, extinct volcanoes, forests, and pastures. The Grand Canyon runs across its northern borders, and it is the vampire river that flows in that never-to-be-described water-way that drains away the water which leaves this the desert region it is; for theColorado has many tributaries, and tributaries of tributaries,—the Little Colorado, Havasu (Cataract) Creek, Canyon Padre, Canyon Diablo, Walnut Creek, Oak Creek, Willow Creek, Diamond Creek, and a score or hundred others.
Its great mountains are the San Francisco range, on the shoulders of which Flagstaff is located, Mount San Mateo, seen from the Santa Fé train near Grants in New Mexico, and Williams Mountain, west of Flagstaff, at the foot of which the railway traveller will see the town of Williams.
Near Flagstaff are a number of extinct volcanoes and great masses of lava flow; from the train at Blue Water to the right a few miles one may see the crater Tintaro—the Inkstand. The Zuni Mountains have many craters, chief of which is the Agua Fria crater, and lava flows from the Zuni Mountains and Mount San Mateo meet in the valley, and one rides alongside them for miles coming west beyond Laguna.
South of Canyon Diablo is a wonderful meteoritic mountain, the explanation of whose existence the scientists have not yet determined. From Peach Springs a large meteoric rock was sent to the Smithsonian, and I have one dug out of a hole of its own making in the Zuni Mountains, both of which weigh upwards of a ton.
To the east of the Canyon Diablo Mountain is Sunset Pass, familiar to the readers of Gen. Charles King's thrilling Arizona stories, and beyond it to the south are Hell's Canyon,—which does not belie its name,—the Verdi Valley, and the interesting Red Rock Country, where numerous cliff and cavate dwellings have recently been discovered and explored by Dr. Fewkes.
Indeed, this whole region is one of cliff and cavate and other forsaken dwellings. Everywhere one meets with them. Desert mounds, on examination, prove to be sites of long-buried cities, and hundreds, nay thousands of exquisite vessels of clay, decorated in long-forgotten ways, have been dug up from them and sent to grace the shelves of museums and speak of a people long since crumbled to dust.
The miner has found it a profitable field for his operations, the Jerome and Congress, with the Old Vulture and similar mines, having made great fortunes for their owners. More than half our knowledge of the country came primarily from the daring and courageous prospectors who risked its dangers and deaths in their search for gold.
The roads in the Painted Desert are long and tedious, and the horses drag their weary way over the scorching sands, the wheels of the wagon sinking in, as does also the heart of the sensitive rider who sees the efforts the poor beasts are making to obey his will. Yet the animals seldom sweat. Such is the rapid radiation of moisture in this dry, high atmosphere that one never sees any of the sweat and lather so common to hard-driven horses in lower altitude.
The food question for horses is often serious if one goes far from the beaten path of traders or Indians. A desert is not a pasture, though its scant patches of grass often have to serve for one. The general custom, where possible, is to carry a small amount of grain, which is fed sparingly night and morning. The horses are hobbled and turned loose in as good pasture as can be found. Hence the first questions asked when determining a camping place are, "What kind of pasture and water does it possess?" There are times when onedare not run the risk of turning the horses loose. Thirsty beyond endurance, they will often travel all night, even though closely hobbled, back to where the last water was secured. Then they must be tracked back, and no more exhausting and disheartening occupation do I know than this.
On one occasion we were compelled to camp where there was little pasturage. It rained, and there were two ladies in my party. The covered wagon was emptied and their blankets rolled down in it, so that they could be in shelter. Our driver was a German named Hank. Two of "his horses were mules," and these were tied one to each of the front wheels. The two real horses were tied to the rear wheels. During the night "Pete," one of the mules, got his fore legs over the pole of the wagon, and began to tug and pull so that the ladies were afraid the vehicle might be overturned. Calling to Hank, the poor fellow was compelled to get out of his blankets and in the rain go to Pete's rescue. To their intense amusement the ladies heard him remonstrating with the refractory mule, and almost exploded when he wound up his remonstrances, hitherto couched in quiet and dignified language, "Pete, you are von little tefel."
Some people do not like to hobble a horse, and so they picket him. There are different ways of "picketing" a horse. He may be tied by the halter to a bush, tree, wagon, or stake driven into the ground. But these methods are fraught with danger. I once had a valuable horse at a time when Dr. Joseph LeConte, the beloved professor of geology of the University of California, was spending a month with me in the mountains. We had six horses, and all were "picketed" from the halter, ora rope around the neck. Three times a day we changed them to fresh pasturage. At one of the changing times we found the beautiful black stretched out cold and stiff. In scratching his head the hoof of his hind foot had caught in the rope, and in seeking to free himself he had pulled the rope tighter and tighter until he had strangled himself. The gentle-hearted professor sat down and wept at the tragic end of the noble horse "Duke" he had already learned to love.
To prevent this danger I have often picketed a horse's hind foot to a log heavy enough to drag, so that the hungry animal could move a little in search of food, but not run or get far away. There have been two or three times, however, in my experience, where I could find neither tree, bush, nor stake. Not a rock or log could be found for miles to which the saddle horse I rode could be picketed. What then could I do? Sit up all night to care for my horse? Ride all night? Or do as I heard of one or two men having done, viz., picket the horse to my own foot? I once heard of a man who was dragged to his death that way. His cayuse was startled during the night and started to run. As the rope tightened and he dragged the unhappy wretch attached to him, his fear increased his speed, and not until he was exhausted and breathless did he stop in his wild, mad race. He was found with the corpse, bruised and mangled beyond all recognition, still dragging at the end of the rope.
I had no desire to run such risk. So I did the impossible,—picketed my horse to a hole in the ground.
"Nonsense! Picket a horse to a hole in the ground? It can't be done!"
Indeed! But I did it. Watch me. Cut into the ground (especially if it is a little grassy) and make a hole a little larger than to allow your full fist to enter. As you dig deeper widen the hole below so that it is a kind of a chimney towards the top. Dig fully a foot or a foot and a half down. Then take the rope, which is already fastened at the other end to your horse, wrap the end around a piece of grass, or paper, or a small stone, or anything; put the knot into the hole, and "tamp" in the earth as vigorously as you can. Your horse is then fast, unless he grows desperately afraid and pulls with more than ordinary vigor.
The scarcity of water makes journeying on the Painted Desert a grave and serious problem. The springs are few and far between, and only in the rainy season can one rely upon stony or clay pockets that fill up with the precious fluid. In going from Canyon Diablo to Oraibi there are four places where water may be obtained. First in a small canyon a few miles west of Volz's Crossing of the Little Colorado; then at the Lakes,—small ponds of dirty, stagnant water, where a trading-post is located and where the journey is generally broken for a night. Next day, twenty-two miles must be driven to Little Burro Spring before water is again found, and a few miles further on, on the opposite side of the valley, is Big Burro Spring. Then no more water is found until Oraibi is reached. There are two springs on the western side of the Oraibi mesa, and three miles on the eastern side in the Oraibi Wash is a good well, some sixty feet deep, of cold and good but not over-clear water. There are small pools near Mashonganavi, Shipauluvi, and Shungopavi, but the water is poor at best and very limited in quantity to those who are used to the illimitable flow of ordinary Eastern cities. Thewhole water supply at Mashonganavi, which is by far the best watered town of the middle mesa, would not more than suffice for the needs of a New York or Boston family of six or eight persons, and consternation would sit upon the face of the mistress of either household if such water were to flow through the faucets of her home.
At Walpi there are three pool springs on the west side, but all flow slowly. One is good (for the desert), another is fair, and the third is horrible. Yet this last is almost equal to the supply on the eastern side, where there are three pool springs, only two of which can be used for domestic purposes.
Storms fearful and terrible often sweep across this desert region. I have "enjoyed" several notable experiences in them, storms of sand, of rain, of wind, of lightning, and of thunder, sometimes one kind alone, other times of a combination of kinds. At one time we were camped in the Oraibi Wash not far from the home of the Mennonite missionary, my friend Rev. H. R. Voth. There were seven of us in my party,—five men, two women. Our general custom on making a camp was first of all to choose the best place for the beds of the ladies, and then the men arranged their blankets in picturesque irregularity around them at some distance away, thus forming a complete guard, not because of any necessity, but to make the ladies feel less timid. As my daughter was one of the ladies, I invariably rolled out my blankets near enough to be called readily should there be any occasion during the night.
We had not been in our blankets long, that night, before a fearful thunder and rain-storm burst upon us.We had all gone to bed tired after our long and weary day watching the Hopi ceremonies, and the camp equipage was not prepared for a storm. It was pitch dark except for the sharp flashes of lightning which occasionally cut the blackness into jagged sections, and the deluge of rain waited for no squeamishness on my part. Hastily jumping up, I ran to and fro in my bare feet and night garments, caught up a big wagon sheet, and endeavored to spread it over the exposed beds of the ladies. The wind was determined I should not succeed, but I am English and obstinate. So I seized camera cases, valises, boxes of canned food, and anything heavy, and placed them upon the edges of the flapping canvas. Running back and forth to the wagon, the lightning every now and again revealed a drenched, fantastic figure, and I could hear suppressed laughter and giggles from under the blankets whence should have issued songs of thankfulness to me. But "it was ever thus!" I succeeded finally in pinning down the canvas, and had just rolled my wet and shivering form in my own drenched blankets, when Mr. Voth, with a lantern in his hand, came and simply demanded that the ladies come over to warmth and shelter in his hospitable house. Hastily wrapping themselves up, they started, blown about by the wind and flaunted by the tempest. The sand made it harder still to walk, and out of breath and wildly dishevelled, they struggled up the bank of the Wash and were soon comfortably ensconsed indoors. Then, strange irony of events, the storm immediately ceased, the heavens cleared, the stars shone bright, the cool night air became delicious to the nostrils and tired bodies, and we who remained outside had a sleep as ineffably sweet as that of healthful babes, while theladies sweltered and rolled and tossed with discomfort in the moist heat that had accumulated in the closed rooms.
The Painted Desert near the Little Colorado River.
The Painted Desert near the Little Colorado River.
Asleep, Early Morning, on the Painted Desert.
Asleep, Early Morning, on the Painted Desert.
A few years later I was again at Oraibi, and strangely near the same camping place. This time my companions were W. W. Bass, whose early adventures have been recounted in my "In and Around the Grand Canyon," a photographer, and a British friend of his who had stopped off in California on his way home from Japan. Mr. Britisher had contributed a small share towards the expenses of the expedition, but with insular ignorance he had presumed that his small mite would pay the expenses of the whole outfit for a long period. It must be confessed that we had had a most arduous trip. The Painted Desert had shown its ugly side from the very moment we left the railway. Four miles out we had been stopped by the most terrific and vivid lightning-storm it has ever been my good fortune to witness and to be scared half out of my wits with. At Rock Tanks we had another storm. We had been jolted and shaken on our way out to Hopi Point of the Grand Canyon, and had come so near to perishing for want of water that we fell on our knees and greedily drank the vilest liquid from an alkali pool, a standing place of horses, on our way to the Little Colorado. At the old Tanner Crossing of that stream we had had another rain and lightning-storm near unto the first in fury, and in which our British friend had been caught in his blankets and nearly frightened to death. In the Moenkopi Wash he was offended because I left the wagon to ride to the home and accept the hospitality of the Mormon bishop, which he interpreted again with insular ignorance to mean a palace, a place of luxury, exquisiterestfulness, good foods, and delicious iced wines, while he was left to beans, bacon, flapjacks, and dried fruit, and a roll of blankets on the rough and uneven ground. (It didn't make any difference that I explained to him next day that I had slept on a grass plot with one quilt and no pillow, cold, shivering, and longing for my good substantial roll of Navaho blankets, left for him to use if he so desired, and that our "banquet" had been coarse bread and a bowl of milk.) Then we had had another storm at Toh-gas-je, which I had partially avoided by riding on ahead in the light wagon of the Indian agent who piloted us, while he—Mr. Britisher—was in the heavier ambulance. The next night we camped, attempting to sleep on the stony slopes of the hillside at Blue Canyon in wretchedness and misery, because it was too late when we arrived to dare to drive down into the canyon. The next day we drove over the Sahara of America, a sandy desert which even to the Hopis is the most a-tu-u-u (hot) of all earthly places. That noon we camped in the dry wash of Tnebitoh, where we had to dig for water, waiting for it slowly to seep into the hole we had dug. It was a sandy, alkaline decoction, but we were glad and thankful for it, and the way the poor horses stood and longingly looked on as we waited for the inflow was pitiable. At night we camped some twelve or fifteen miles farther on, without water, hobbling the horses and turning them loose. I had engaged an Indian to go with us from Blue Canyon as helper and guide, so I sent him, in the morning, to bring in the horses. Two or three hours later he returned, with but one of the animals, and said he had tried to track the others, but could not do so. Imagine what our predicament would have been, in the heart ofthe desert, without horses and water, and many miles away from any settlement. There was but one thing to be done, and Mr. Bass at once did it. Putting a bridle on the one horse, he rode off barebacked after the runaways. Knowing the character of his mules, he aimed directly for the Tnebitoh. When he arrived at the spot where we had watered the day before, he found that, with unerring instinct, the horses had returned to this spot and had dug new watering places for themselves. Then, scenting the cool grass of the San Francisco Mountains, they had aimed directly west, and, hobbled though they were, the tracks showed they were travelling at a lively rate of speed. Knowing the urgency and desperateness of our case, Bass followed as fast as he could make his almost exhausted animal go, and after an hour's hard riding saw, in the far-away distance, the three perverse creatures "hitting" the trailless desert as hard as they could. Jersey, a knowing mule, was in the lead. He soon saw Bass, and, seeming to communicate with the others, they turned and saw him also. Jack (the other mule) and the horse at once showed a disposition to stop, but Jersey with bite and whinney tried to drive them on. Finding his efforts useless, he stopped with the others, and, when Bass rode up, allowed himself to be "necked" (tied neck to neck) with the other two. Horses and man were as near "played out" as we cared to see them when, later in the day, they returned to camp.
It does not do to go out upon the Painted Desert without some practical person who is capable of meeting all serious emergencies that are likely to arise.
The next day we drove on to Oraibi, in the scorching sun, over the sandy hillocks, where no road wouldlast an hour in a wind-storm unless it were thoroughly blanketed and pegged down. We were all hot, weary, and ill-tempered. Thinking to help out, I volunteered to walk up the steep western trail to the mesa top and secure some corn at Oraibi for our horses, so that they could be fed at once on reaching our stopping place on the east side. When we started I had suggested the hope that we might be able to stop in the schoolhouse below the Oraibi mesa, as I had several times done in times before; but when the wagon arrived there, and I came down from the mesa, it was found to be already occupied by persons to whom it had been promised by the Indian agent. Camping, then, was the only thing left open to us, until I could see the Hopis and rent one of their houses. Down we drove to the camp, where alone a sufficiency of water was to be found. This explains our close proximity to the camp of the earlier year. We were just preparing our meal when a fierce sand-storm blew up. Cooking was out of the question; the fire blew every which way, and the sand filled meat, beans, corn, tomatoes with too much grit for comfort. This was the last straw that broke the back of Mr. Britisher's complacency. He had bemoaned again and again the leaving of his comfortable home to come into this "God-forsaken region," in a quest of what our crazy westernism called pleasure, and now his fury burst upon me in a manner that dwarfed the passion of the heavens and the earth. While there was a refinement in his vituperation, there was an edge upon it as keen as fury, passion, and culture could give it. I was scorched by his scarifying lightnings, struck again and again by his vindictive thunderbolts, tossed hither and thither by his stormy winds, and lifted heavenwards and thendashed downwards by the tornadoes and whirlwinds of his passion. It was dazzling, bewildering, intensely interesting, and then fiercely irritating. I stood it all until he denounced my selfishness. There's no doubt I am selfish, but there is a limit to a fellow's endurance when another fellow claims the discovery and rubs it in upon you until he abrades the skin. So I raised my hand and also my voice: "Stop, that's enough. Dare to repeat that and I'll tie you on a horse and send you back to the railway in charge of an Indian so quickly that you'll wonder how you got there. Selfish, am I? I permitted you to come on this trip as a favor to my photographer. The paltry sum you paid me has not found one-fourth share of the corn for one horse, let alone your own food, the hire of the horses, wagon, and driver. To oblige you I have allowed you the whole way to ride inside my conveyance that you might talk together, while I have sat out in the hot sun. If any help has been needed by Mr. Bass in driving, I have willingly given it instead of calling upon you. I have done all the unpacking and the packing of the wagon at each camp, morning, noon, and night. I have done all the cooking and much of the dish-washing, and yet you have the impudence and mendacity to say I have been selfish. Very well! I'll take myself at your estimate. In future I'll take my seat inside the ambulance; you shall do your share of helping the driver. You shall do your share of the packing; and if you eat another mouthful, so long as you remain in my camp, you shall cook it yourself. I have spoken! And when I thus speak I speak as the laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not, nor change!"
The Colorado River at Bass Ferry, the Vampire of the Painted Desert.
The Colorado River at Bass Ferry, the Vampire of the Painted Desert.
"Well, —— says you are selfish!" burst out the somewhat cowed man.
"Then I put him on the same plane as I put you; and if ever either of you dares to make that charge again, I will—"
Well, never mind what I, in my, what I still believe to be, just anger threatened. I turned away, went and secured an Indian's house, and that night we removed there.
But I wish I had the space to recount how those two unfortunates and misfortunates cooked their own meals and mine and Bass's. It is a subject fit for a Dickens or a Kipling. No minor pen can do justice to it. How they came and asked with quiet humility, "What are we going to have for supper?" and how I replied, "Raw potatoes, so far as I am concerned!" Neither knew whether a frying-pan was for skimming cream from a can of condensed milk or for making charlotte russes. Neither could boil water without scorching it. But surreptitiously (with my secret connivance) Bass gave the tyros gentle hints and finally "licked them" into fourth-rate cooks, so that I reaped the reward of their labors in selfishly and shamelessly taking some of the concoctions they had slaved over.
I know this plain, unvarnished tale reveals me a "bad man from Bodie," but I started out to give a truthful account of the Painted Desert and its storms, and this "tempest in a frying-pan" in camp cannot well be ignored by a veracious chronicler.
Last year, fate designed that we camp at exactly the same spot. The two wagons came to rest at about the same place where the ambulance stood, and exactly the same wind and sand-storm blew up before we had been there half an hour. I had with me a long,eight-feet-high strip of canvas belonging to a very large circular tent. To ward off the force of some part of the storm we stretched this canvas from the trunk of one cottonwood tree to another, and moved our camp to the sheltered side. That was an insult to the powers of the storm. The wind fairly howled with rage, and pulled and tugged and flapped that canvas in a perfect fury of anger. Then as we huddled in its shelter, a sudden jerk came, and up it was ripped, from top to bottom, in a moment, and the loose ends went wildly flying and flapping every way. In the blowing sand I fled with the ladies to Mr. Voth's ever-hospitable house, but it was as hot as—well! no matter—in there. Outside, the cottonwoods were bowed over in the fury of the wind, and the sand went flying by in sheets. It was easy then to understand the remark of one experienced in the ways of the Painted Desert Region: "If you ever buy any real estate here, contract to have it anchored, or you'll wake up some morning and find it all blown into the next county." The flying sand literally obliterated every object more than a few feet away.
Now in this last case I had the pleasure—as peculiar a pleasure as it is to watch the coming of a hurricane at sea—to see the oncoming of this storm. We were enjoying perfect calm. Suddenly over the Oraibi mesa there came a great brown mass that stretched entirely across the country. It was the tawny sand risen in power and majesty to drive us from its lair. It was so grand, so sublime, so alive, that just as I instinctively rush to my camera at sight of an interesting face, I dashed towards it to secure a photograph of this new, gigantic, living manifestation. But in its fierce furyit swept upon us with such rapidity that I was too late. We were covered with it, buried in it. As darkness leaps upon one and absorbs him, so did this storm absorb us. In an hour or so its greatest fury subsided; then we thought we would build our camp-fire and proceed to our regular cooking. How the wind veered and changed, and changed again as soon as the fire began to ascend. That is a point to watch in building a camp-fire. Be sure and locate it so that its smoke won't blow upon you when you sit down to eat. In this case, however, it would not have mattered. In my notebook I read: "We have changed the camp-fire three times, and no matter where we put it, the smoke swoops down upon us. Even now while I write I am half blinded by the smoke, which ten minutes ago was being blown in the opposite direction." So that if these few pages have an unpleasant odor of camp-fire smoke about them, the reader must charge it to the wilful ways of the wind on the Painted Desert.
Elsewhere I have spoken of the mystery brooding over the peoples of this land. It is also existent in the very colors of it, whether noted in early morning, in the glare of the pitiless Arizona noon, or at sunset; in the storm, with the air full of sand, or in the calm and quiet of a cloudless sky; when the sky is cerulean or black with lowering clouds; ever, always, the color is weird, strange, mysterious. One night at Walpi several of us sat and watched the colorings in the west. No unacquainted soul would have believed such could exist. To describe it is as impossible as to analyze the feelings of love. It was raining everywhere in the west; and "everywhere" means so much where one's horizon is not limited. The eye there roams over whatseem to be boundless distances. In all this space rain was falling. The sun had but half an hour more to live, and it flooded the sky with an orange crimson. The rain came down in hairy streaks brilliantly illuminated. The sun could be discerned only as a dimly veiled face, with the light shed below it—none above—in graceful curves. Then the orange and crimson changed to purple, deepening and deepening into blackness until day was done.
Sometimes the lighting up of the desert in the early morning gives it the effect of a sea-green ocean, and then the illusion is indescribably wonderful. At such times, if there are clouds in the sky, the reflections of color are as delicate and beautiful as the tintings of the sea-shells.
One night standing on the mesa at Mashonganavi looking east and south, the vast ocean-like expanse of tawny sand and desert was converted by the hues of dying day into a gorgeous and resplendent sea of exquisite and delicate color. On the further side were the Mogollon Buttes,—the Giant's Chair, Pyramid Butte, and others,—with long walls, which, in the early morning black and forbidding, were now illumined and etherealized by the magic wand of sunset.
If, however, one would know another of the marvellous charms of this Painted Desert Region let him see it in the early summer, after the first rains. This may be the latter part of June or in July and August. Then what a change! One seeing it for the first time would naturally exclaim in protest: "Desert? Why, this is a garden!"
A thin and sparse covering of grass, but enough to the casual observer to relieve the whole land fromthe charge of barrenness; the black and white grama grasses, with their delicate shades of green; and a host of wild flowers of most exquisite colors in glorious combinations. Here masses of flaming marigolds and sunflowers; yonder patches of the white and purple tinted flowers of the jimson-weed, while its rich green leaves form a complete covering for the tawny sand or rocky desolation beneath. Here are larkspurs, baby blue-eyes, Indian's paint brush, daisies, lilies, and a thousand and one others, the purples, blues, reds, pinks, whites, and browns giving one a chromatic feast, none the less delightful because it is totally unexpected.
Then who can tell of the glory of the hundreds of cacti in bloom, great prickly monsters, barrel shaped, cylindrical, lobe formed, and yet all picked out in the rarest, most dainty flowers the eye of man ever gazed upon? Look yonder at the "hosh-kon," one of the yucca family, a sacred plant to the Navahoes. Its dagger-like green leaves are crowned and glorified with the central stalk, around which cluster a thousand waxen white bells, and this one is only a beginning to the marvellous display of them we shall see as we ride along. The greasewood veils its normal ugliness in revivified leaves and a delicate flossy yellow bloom that makes it charming to the eye. Even the sagebrush attains to some charm of greenness, and where the juniper and cedar and pine lurk in the shades of some of the rocky slopes, the deepest green adds its never-ending comfort and delight to the scene.
Yet you look in vain for the rivers, the creeks, the babbling brooks, the bubbling fountains, the ponds, that charm your eye in Eastern landscapes. Oh, for the Adirondacks,—the lakes and streams which abound onevery hand. If only these could be transplanted into this desert to give their peculiar delights without any of their drawbacks,thenthe Painted Desert Region would be the ideal land.
It would never do to bring the Adirondack flies and gnats and mosquitoes; its hot, sultry nights and muggy, sweltering days. No! These we can do without. We would have its advantages, but with none of its disadvantages.
How futile such wishes; how childish such longings! Each place is itself; and, for myself, I love the Painted Desert even in its waterlessness, its barrenness, and its desolation. Think of its stimulating altitude, its colors, its clear, cloudless sky, its glorious, divine stars, its delicious evening coolness, its never-disturbed solitudes, its speaking silences, its romances, its mysteries, its tragedies, its histories. These are some of the things that make the Painted Desert what it is—a region of unqualified fascination and allurement.
Threegreat fingers of rock from a gigantic and misshapen hand, roughly speaking, pointing southward, the hand a great plateau, the fingers mesas of solid rock thrust into the heart of a sandy valley,—this is the home of the Hopi, commonly and wrongly termed the Moki. The fingers are from seven to ten miles apart, and a visitor can go from one finger-nail to another either by descending and ascending the steep trails zigzagged on the fingers' sides, or he can circle around on the back of the hand and thus in a round-about manner reach any one of the three fingers. These mesa fingers are generally spoken of as the first or east mesa, the second or middle mesa, and the third or west mesa. They gain their order from the fact that in the early days of American occupancy Mr. T. V. Keam established a trading-post in the canyon that bears his name, and this canyon being to the east of the eastern mesa, this mesa was reached first in order, the western mesa naturally being third.
On the east mesa are three villages. The most important of all Hopi towns is Walpi, which occupies the "nail" of this first "finger." It is not so large as Oraibi, but it has always held a commanding influence, which it still retains. Half a mile back of Walpi is Sichumavi, and still further back Hano, or, as it is commonly and incorrectly called, Tewa.
About seven miles—as the crow flies—to the west is the second or middle mesa, and here are Mashonganavi, Shipauluvi, and on an offshoot from this second mesa, separated from it by a deep, sand-filled ravine, is Shungopavi.
Ten miles farther to the west is Oraibi, which marks the farthest western boundary of pueblo civilization.
Oh! the pathos, the woe, the untold but clearly written misery of the centuries in these cliff-built houses of the mesas, these residences that are fortresses, these steep trail-approached and precipice-protected homes. In a desert land, surrounded by relentless, wary, and vigilant foes, ever fighting a hard battle with the adverse conditions of their environment, short of water, of firewood, and with food grown in the desert-rescued lands below where at any moment the ruthless marauder might appear, there is no wonder that almost every elderly face is seamed and scarred; furrowed deeply with the accumulated centuries of never-ceasing care. Mystery here seems at first to reign supreme. It stands and faces one as a Presence. It hovers and broods, and you feel it even in your sleep. The air is full of it. The very clouds here are mysterious. Who are these people? From whence came they? What is their destiny? What fearful battles, race hatreds, devastating wars, led them to make their homes on these inaccessible cliffs? How did they ever conceive such a mass of elaborate ceremonial as now controls them? Solitary and alone they appear, a vast question mark, viewed from every standpoint. Whichever way one looks at them a great query stares him in the face. They are the chief mystery of our country, an anachronism, an anomaly in our twentieth-century civilization.
When we see the ruins of Egypt, India, Assyria, we look upon something that is past. Those peopleswere: they pertain to the ages that are gone. Their mysteries are of lives lived in the dim ages of antiquity. But here are antique lives being lived in our own day; pieces of century-old civilizations transplanted, in time and place, and brought into our time and place; the past existent in the present; the lapse of centuries forgotten, and the days of thousands of years ago bodily transferred into our commercial, super-cultured, hyper-refined age.
The approach to the first mesa from Keam's Canyon is through a sandy country, which, in places, is dry, desolate, and bare. But here and there are patches of ground upon which weeds grow to a great height, plainly indicating that with cultivation and irrigation good crops could be raised. As we leave the mouth of the canyon the singular character of this plateau province is revealed. To the south the sandy desert, in lonesome desolation, stretches away as far as the eye can reach, its wearisome monotony relieved only by the close-by corn-fields of the Hopis and the peculiar buttes of the Mogollons. With the sun blazing down upon it, its forbidding barrenness is appalling. Neither tree, shrub, blade of grass, animal, or human habitation is to be seen. The sand reflects the sun's rays in a yellow glare which is irritating beyond measure, and which seems as if it would produce insanity by its unchangeableness.
To the right of us are the extremities of the sandstone plateaus, of which the Hopi mesas are the thrust out fingers. Here and there are breaks in the plateau which seem like openings into rocky canyons. Before us, ten or more miles away, is the long wall of the firstmesa, its falling precipices red and glaring in the sun. Immense rocks of irregular shape lie about on its summit as if tumbled to and fro in some long-ago-forgotten frolic of prehistoric giants. Right before us, and at about the mid distances of the "finger" from the main plateau, the mesa wall is broken down in the form of a U-shaped notch or gap,—from which Walpi, "the place of the gap," obtains its name; and it is on the extremity of the mesa, beyond this notch, that the houses of the Hopi towns can now clearly be discerned. Just beyond the notch a little heap of houses, apparently of the same color as the mesa itself, appears. Then a little vacant space and another small heap, followed by another vacancy with a larger heap at the extreme end of the mesa. These heaps, beginning at the notch, are respectively Tewa, Sichumavi, and Walpi.
Dotting the slopes of the talus at the foot of the mesa precipices are corn-fields, peach orchards, and corrals for burros, sheep, and goats.
As we approach nearer we see that the first mesa is rapidly losing its distinctively Indian character. The policy of the United States Government, in its treatment of these Indians, is to induce them, so far as possible, to leave their mesa homes and reside in the valley nearer to their corn-fields. As their enemies are no longer allowed to molest them, their community life on these mesa heights is no longer necessary, and the time lost and the energy wasted in climbing up and down the steep trails could far better be employed in working in the fields, caring for their orchards, or attending to their stock. But while all this sounds well in theory, and on paper appears perfectly reasonable, it fails to take into consideration the influence ofheredity and the personal passions, desires, and feelings of volitional beings. As a result, the government plan is not altogether a success. The Indian agents, however, have induced certain of the Hopis, by building houses for them, to consent to a partial abandonment of their mesa homes. Accordingly, as one draws nearer, he sees the stone houses with their red-painted corrugated-iron roofs, the schoolhouse, the blacksmith's shop, and the houses of the teachers, all of which speak significantly of the change that is slowly hovering over the Indian's dream of solitude and desolation.
But after our camp is made and the horses sent out in the care of willing Indians to the Hopi pastures, we find that the trails to the mesa summit are the same; the glaring yellow sand is the same; the red and gray rocks are the same; the fleecy and dark clouds that occasionally appear at this the rainy time are the same; the glaring, pitiless sun with its infernal scorching is the same; and we respire and perspire and pant and struggle in our climb to the summit in the same old arduous fashion. Above, in Hano, Sichumavi, and Walpi, the pot-bellied, naked children, the lithe and active young men, the not unattractive, shapely, and kindly-faced young women, with their peculiar symbolic style of hair-dressing, the blear-eyed old men and women, the patient and stolid burros, the dim-eyed and pathetic captive eagles, the quaint terraced-houses with their peculiar ladders, grotesque chimneys, passageways, and funny little steps, are practically the same as they have been for centuries.
There are two trails from the valley to the summit of the first mesa on the east side, one at the point, and three on the west side. We ascend by the northeasterntrail, which, on reaching the "Notch" or "Gap," winds close by an enclosure in which is found a large fossil, bearing a rude resemblance to a stone snake. All around this fossil, within the stone enclosure, are to be found "bahos," or prayer sticks, which have been brought by the devout as their offerings to the Snake Divinities. From time immemorial this shrine has been in existence, and no Hopi ever passes it without some offering to "Those Above," either in the form of a baho, a sprinkling of the sacred meal, the ceremonial smoking to the six cardinal points, or a few words of silent but none the less devout and earnest prayer.
At the head of this trail is Hano, and from this pueblo we can gain a general idea of Hopi architecture, for, with differences in minor details, the general styles are practically the same. Where they gained their architectural knowledge it is hard to tell, and who they are is yet an unsolved problem. It is pretty generally conceded, however, that all the pueblo peoples of Arizona and New Mexico—of whom the Hopis are the most western—are the descendants of the race, or races, who dotted these territories and southern Colorado with ruins, and who are commonly known as the Cliff and Cave Dwellers. But this is thrusting the difficulty only a few generations, or scores of generations, further back. For we are at once compelled to the agnostic answer, "I don't know!" when asked who are the Cliff Dwellers. Who they are and whence they came are still problems upon which such patient investigators as J. Walter Fewkes is working. He has clearly confirmed the decision of Bancroft and others which affirmed the identity of the Cliff and Cave Dwellerswith the Hopis and other pueblo-inhabiting Indians of the Southwest.
Hano, (Tewa) from the Head of the Trail.
Hano, (Tewa) from the Head of the Trail.
Although of different linguistic stocks and religion, the homes of the pueblo Indians are very similar. Almost without exception the pueblos built on mesa summits are of sandstone or other rock, plastered with adobe mud brought up from the water-courses of the valley. Those pueblos that are located in the valley, on the other hand, are generally built of adobe.
No one can doubt that the Indians chose these elevated mesa sites for purposes of protection. With but one or two almost inaccessible trails reaching the heights, and these easily defendable, their homes were their fortresses. Their fields, gardens, and hunting-grounds were in the valleys or far-away mountains, whither they could go in times of peace; but, when attacked by foes, they fled up the trails, established elaborate methods of defence, and remained in their fortress-homes until the danger was past.
The very construction of the houses reveals this. In none of the older houses is there any doorway into the lowest story. A solid wall faces the visitor, with perhaps a small window-hole. A rude ladder outside and a similar one inside afford the only means of entrance. One climbs up the ladder outside, drops through a hole in the roof, and descends the ladder inside. When attacked, the outer ladder could be drawn up, and thus, if we remember the crude weapons of the aborigines when discovered by the white man, it is evident that the inhabitants would remain in comparative security.
Of late years doors and windows have been introduced into many of the ancient houses.
It is a picturesque sight that the visitor to the Hopi towns enjoys as he reaches the head of the trail at Hano. The houses are built in terraces, two or three stories high, the second story being a step back from the first, so that a portion of the roof of the first story can be used as the courtyard or children's playground of the people who inhabit the second story. The third story recedes still farther, so that its people have a front yard on the roof of the second story. At Zuni and Taos these terraces continue for six and seven stories, but with the Hopis never exceed three. The first climb is generally made on a ladder, which rests in the street below. The ladder-poles, however, are much longer than is necessary, and they reach up indefinitely towards the sky. Sometimes a ladder is used to go from the second to the third story, but more often a quaint little stairway is built on the connecting walls. Equally quaint are the ollas used as chimneys. These have their bottoms knocked out, and are piled one above another, two, three, four, and sometimes five or six high. Some of the "terraces" are partially enclosed, and here one may see a weaver's loom, a flat stone for cookingpiki(wafer bread), or a beehive-like oven used for general cooking purposes. Here and there cord-wood is piled up for future use, and now and again a captive eagle, fastened with a rawhide tether to the bars of a rude cage, may be seen. The "king of birds" is highly prized for his down and feathers, which are used for the making of prayer plumes (bahos).
There does not seem to have been much planning in the original construction of the Hopi pueblos. There was little or no provision made for the future. Thefirst houses were built as needed, and then as occasion demanded other rooms were added.
It will doubtless be surprising to some readers to learn that the Hopi houses are owned andbuilt(in the main) by the women, and that the men weave the women's garments and knit their own stockings. Here, too, the women enjoy other "rights" that their white sisters have long fought for. The home life of the Hopis is based upon the rights of women. They own the houses; the wife receives her newly married husband into her home; the children belong to her clan, and have her clan name, and not that of the father; the corn, melons, squash, and other vegetables belong to her when once deposited in her house by the husband. She, indeed, is the queen of her own home, hence the pueblo Indian woman occupies a social relationship different from that of most aborigines, in that she is on quite equal terms with her husband.
In the actual building of the houses, however, the husband is required to perform his share, and that is the most arduous part of the labor. He goes with his burros to the wooded mesas or cottonwood-lined streams and brings the roof-timbers, ladder-poles, and door-posts. He also brings the heavier rocks needed in the building. Then the women aid him in placing the heavier objects, after which he leaves them to their own devices.
Being an intensely religious people, the shamans or priests are always called upon when a new house is to be constructed. Bahos—prayer plumes or sticks—are placed in certain places, sacred meal is lavishly sprinkled, and singing and prayer offered, all as propitiation to those gods whose especial business it is to care for thehouses.
It is exceedingly interesting to see the women at work. Without plumb-line, straight line, or trowel they proceed. Some women are hod-carriers, bringing the pieces of sand or limestone rock to the "bricklayers" in baskets, buckets, or dish pans. Others mix the adobe to the proper consistency and see that the workers are kept supplied with it. And what a laughing, chattering, jabbering group it is! Every tongue seems to be going, and no one listening. Once at Oraibi I saw twenty-three women engaged in the building of a house, and I then got a new "side light" on the story of the Tower of Babel; The builders of that historic structure were women, and the confusion of tongues was the natural result of their feminine determination to all speak at once and never listen to any one else.
I photographed the builders at Oraibi, and the next day contributed a new dress to each of the twenty-three workers. Here are some of their names: Wa-ya-wei-i-ni-ma, Mo-o-ho, Ha-hei-i, So-li, Ni-vai-un-si, Si-ka-ho-in-ni-ma, Na-i-so-wa, Ma-san-i-yam-ka, Ko-hoi-ko-cha, Tang-a-ka-win-ka, Hun-o-wi-ti, Ko-mai-a-ni-ma, Ke-li-an-i-ma.
The finishing of the house is as interesting as the actual building. With a small heap of adobe mud the woman, using her hand as a trowel, fills in the chinks, smooths and plasters the walls inside and out. Splashed from head to foot with mud, she is an object to behold, and, as is often the case, if her children are there to "help" her, no mud-larks on the North River, the Missouri, or the Thames ever looked more happy in their complete abandonment to dirt than they. Then when the whitewashing is done with gypsum, or thecoloring of the walls with a brown wash, what fun the children have. No pinto pony was ever more speckled and variegated than they as they splash their tiny hands into the coloring matter and dash it upon the walls.