CHAPTER XVI
THE GRAND CANYON AND THE HAVASUPAI CANYON
AGLITTERING day, cool and sweet. Long shadows slanted through the scented Coconino Forest. The Gothic silences of the woods were clean of underbrush as an English park. Endless rows of pines had dropped thick mats of needles on the perfect road, so that our wheels made no sound. Beside these pines of northern Arizona our greener New England varieties seem mere scrubs. Then, unexpectedly, we passed the forest boundaries. Driving a few rods along the open road, we had our first sight of the Canyon at Grand View Point, with the sun setting over its amethyst chasm.
Years before, stepping directly from an eastern train, like most tourists I had seen the Canyon as my first stunned inkling of the extraordinary scale on which an extravagant Creator planned the West. This time, Toby and I had the disadvantage of coming newly to it after being sated with the heaped magnificence of the Rockies. Would its vastness shrink? Would it still take our breath away? I don’t know why people want their breath taken away. In the end, they usually put up a valiant fight to keep it, but at other times, they constantly seek new ways to have it snatched from them. But we need not have worried about the Grand Canyon. It is big enough and old enough to take care of itself. It could drink up Niagara in one thirsty sip, and swallow Mt. Washingtonin a mouthful. It could lose Boston at one end, and New York at the other, and five Singer buildings piled atop each other would not show above the rim.
Not that I mean to attempt a description of the Canyon. To date, millions have tried it, from the lady who called it pretty, to the gentleman who pronounced it a wonderful place to drop used safety razor blades. They all failed. The best description of the Grand Canyon is in one sentence, and was uttered by an author who had never bought a post-card in El Tovar. “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him!”
As I cannot leave blank pages where the Canyon should be given its due, I must be content with skimming along its rim, and dipping here and there down among its mountain tops, like the abashed little birds that plunge twitteringly into its silences. It is so great a pity that most of those who “see” the Canyon do not see it at all. They arrive one morning, and depart the next. They walk a few rods along its edge at El Tovar, visit the Hopi house, and hear the Kolb Brothers lecture. If adventurous, they don overalls or divided skirts, mount a velvet-faced burro who seems afflicted with a melancholy desire to end his tourist-harassed existence by a side-step over Bright Angel. They speak afterward with bated breath—the tourists, not the burros—of the terrors of a trail which is a boulevard compared to some in the Canyon. The first moment, it is true, is trying, when it drops away so steeply that the burro’s ears run parallel with the Colorado, but after several switchbacks they point heavenward again, until Jacob’s Ladder is reached. Few trails in the West are so well graded and mended, and walled on the outside to prevent accident. Being centrallysituated, the Bright Angel gives an open vista of the length and breadth of the Canyon where the coloring is most brilliant and mountain shapes oddly fantastic. It is an excellent beginning, but only a beginning after all.
There are so many ways to “do” the Canyon, that vast labyrinth that could not be “done” in a thousand years! The best way of all is to take a guide and disappear beneath the rim, following new trails and old down to the level of the pyramidal peaks, to the plateau midway between rim and river, then wind in and out of the myriad of small hilly formations clustering about these great promontories which spread out from the mainland like fingers from a hand. The river, a tiny red line when seen from the top, froths and tumbles into an angry torrent half a mile wide. Its roar, with that of its tributaries, never is out of one’s consciousness, echoing upon the sounding board of hundreds of narrow chasms. It is remarkable how soon the world fades into complete oblivion, and this rock-bound solitude is the only existence which seems real. I once spent ten days on the plateau. At the end of a week I had forgotten the names of my most intimate friends, and on the ninth day I spent several minutes trying to recall my own name. I was so insignificant a part of those terrific silences, to have a name hardly seemed worth while. One could forget a great sorrow here within a month. If I had to die within a stated time, I should want to spend the interval within the red walls of the Grand Canyon, the transition to eternity would be so gradual.
canyonIN THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO.
IN THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO.
maidA NAVAJO MAID ON A PAINTED PONY.
A NAVAJO MAID ON A PAINTED PONY.
All along the plateau there are by-trails and half-trails and old trails where immense herds of wild burros congregate, and the bleached bones of their ancestors liethick on the ground. Not an hour’s ride from the Bright Angel Trail is hidden one of the prettiest spots on earth. A little side path which few take leads from it around a great porphyry-colored cliff. Here we made camp after a dry, burning trip, our horses reeking with lather, and gasping with thirst. We rode along a little stream choked with cotton wood saplings.
“Ride ahead,” ordered our sympathetic guide, who had a sense of the dramatic common to most of his profession. He wanted to give us the pleasure of discovering for ourselves. In a moment we came upon it, amazed. Gone was the arid Golgotha we had been struggling through. The stream had widened just where a rocky shelf dropped down to shelter it with a high wall. Low-growing trees and shrubs on the other side left an opening only wide enough to penetrate, and we suddenly entered a miniature grotto which seemed more the work of a landscape artist than of nature. The rock and shrubs enclosed completely a green pool, wide and deep enough to swim in. The water was cold and clear, its bottom fringed with thick velvety moss. The trees met overhead so densely that the sky showed only in tiny flecks on an emerald surface vivified by the reflection of sunlit leaves. The curved rock hiding the pool on three sides was covered arm-deep from top to bottom with maidenhair fern, and sprinkled through this hanging garden were the bright scarlet blossoms of the Indian paintbrush. As a crowning delight three little white cascades trickled through this greenery into the pool. A nymph would want to bathe here. We were not nymphs, but the weather was hot, the guide discreet and the pool so hidden it could not be seen ten feet away.
We camped gratefully over-night here. When Indians were plentiful in the Canyon this was one of their favorite camps. Around the corner of the ledge, we came upon some dry caves showing traces of former habitation. In a little stone oven they may have built I saw the dusty tail of a rattler flicker and disappear among the warm ashes of our fire. The refreshed horses munched all night on the luxuriant grass, sometimes coming perilously near to stepping on our sleeping-bags. Toby woke me at dawn. “Look!” One hundred asses were circled about, gazing fascinated at us. When we moved they galloped to the four winds.
From Bass Camp, kept by William Bass, one of the pioneer guides of the Canyon, it is twenty odd miles by an uncertain wagon trail to Hilltop, for which we started the next morning. Very few of those thousands who visit Grand Canyon yearly even know of the existence of Havasupai Canyon, whose starting point is Hilltop. Fewer visit it. Within its high, pink walls is a narrow, fertile valley, watered by a light blue ribbon of water,—the Land of the Sky Blue water, celebrated in the popular song by Cadman, the home of a little known and very neglected tribe of Indians, the Havasupai. Havasupai means literally Children of the Blue Water. It is a fairy vale, with grottoes and limestone caverns, seven cataracts, three of them higher than Niagara, jungles of cacti, mines of silver and lead, springs running now above, now beneath the earth’s surface, groves of tropical and semi-tropical fruit, in a summer climate as moist and warm as the interior of a hothouse.
arizonaTHE LAND OF THE SKY-BLUE WATER, HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.
THE LAND OF THE SKY-BLUE WATER, HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.
We reached this heaven over an unimproved trail so nearly vertical that had it been any steeper our headswould have preceded our feet. Sometimes our horses balked, and had to be pulled forward by the bridle, the more nervous becoming panicky, and trying to turn back. It takes a bad trail to make a Western broncho do that. Frequently we had to dismount, and avoiding their hoofs, urge them to leap obstructing boulders. Except for the usual mesquite and sage, the trail was barren of vegetation, and the sun found us out and scourged us. Old travelers will speak of Havasupai Canyon as the hottest resort in this world, with even odds on the next. We rejoiced when, an hour later, we rested under a jutting ledge of cliffs where springs called Topocoba made a malodorous pool which had been fouled by many wild horses. Trees and overhanging rocks gave us moderate relief from the burning sun. We reclined, panting, while the horses’ packs were loosened and they made friends with a band of Indian horses which roam the Canyon.
This oasis is one of the last links in the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the horror of the fifties. Few know that when John Lee escaped by what afterward was named Lee’s Ferry into the Grand Canyon, and thence by some devious route then known only to himself, and even now known to very few, to this refuge, he subsisted here for nearly two years on what he could shoot and trap while Federal officers scoured Utah for him. He found a rich vein of lead which is still unworked, and by melting ore from it traded it to the Navajos for ammunition. He finally worked his way back to Lee’s Ferry, where he was recognized and captured. I was told that he was a relative,—I believe an uncle,—of Gen. Robert E. Lee.
We looked up, on reaching the bottom of the trail, tofind Hilltop almost directly overhead, or so it seemed. The descent at this part of the canyon actually measures about 2600 feet, and a plumb line dropped from a horizontal one drawn over the precipice for 42 rods would strike the bottom of the trail. Every bit of merchandise reaching the little village of the Havasupai must be carried on mule-back down this helter-skelter mass of boulders and winding ledges. Once an enterprising superintendent (of whom the Havasupai have had all too few) tried to import a melodeon for the benefit of the church services he instituted for the Indians. It reached the bottom, but it was too entangled with burro bones and twisted wires to be of any use except as a curiosity.
To reach the village, one follows the winding river bed for several miles between cliffs of beautifully colored sandstone, flame, pink or purple as the light plays on it. Some of these walls stand nearly a thousand feet high. The river, nearly dry now, and occasionally disappearing underground, had been a torrent in the spring, as we saw from the black water marks high over our heads. During the winter, the Indians are obliged to live in caves halfway up these walls, while the river inundates their villages, carrying away their flimsy willow houses on its tide. Some Havasupai take to Hilltop for the winter. Then when the river returns to its banks in spring and the Havasupai climb down from their chilly caves, the valley becomes a little Paradise, luxuriant and secret. The little pale blue stream is bordered all along its course with beds of watercress a dozen feet deep, sharpened deliciously by the lime water in which it grows. The bleak and thorny mesquite is transformed by masses of feathery leaves, and its heavily pollened yellow catkins fill the narrowvalley with a scent like lilies and willow sap. The willows native to this region wear slenderer leaves than our home trees, and are festooned with fragrant lavender flowers, shaped like doll orchids. Never have I seen such lavishness of cactus in bloom. The prickly pear creeps with its giant claws across the sand, its red blossoms giving place to rows of unsightly purple bulbs, which later in the year make good eating.
arizonaHORSEMAN IN HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.The small dark spot on the edge of the floor of the canyon is the Horseman, givingan idea of the scale.
HORSEMAN IN HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.
The small dark spot on the edge of the floor of the canyon is the Horseman, givingan idea of the scale.
We gathered armfuls of the watercress, our first bit of green food in weeks, for the West lives mainly by virtue of the can-opener, and has yet to discover the value of vitamines. Our horses splashed to their knees in the cooling stream. From time to time a sharp turn in the canyon displayed long vistas from lateral canyons, ending in far-off mountains which may have been part of the Father of all Canyons. Frequently the river dropped underground, as rivers do here, taking all the spring verdure with it, and reappeared again to make a veritable Happy Valley, the like of which few ever see on this earth.
Narrow at the entrance, it widens to an oval surrounded by thousand-foot walls glowing with color, its floor of new alfalfa shining like green enamel. Giant, shady cottonwoods line the river and the lazy road meandering beside it along the valley. A deep blue sky, nearly hidden by sun-flecked leaves, arches over rose-red cliffs. Before the agency, women, with stolid dark faces and head-dresses made of four brilliant handkerchiefs sewn together into a long scarf, gathered, chattering with excitement at sight of the white women, making simple friendly overtures, offering us yellow plums, and giggling good-naturedly at our riding breeches. They themselveswore calico skirts billowing to the ground, in a style popular in the eighties.
The agent hospitably put his house at our disposal, though he was preparing to leave soon for another post. He was a homesick man. Life in Paradise is bad for the civilized. He and his wife were the only white people in the canyon, and he admitted that at times the Indians were too much with him;—while we were there, in fact, they camped all day on his lawn. And since all that he uses must be packed down the trail, he was obliged to dispense with most unessentials and many essentials. It must be admitted, too, that this reservation has been usually neglected by the Indian Commissioners, which makes life hard both for the agent and the tribe.
Though this natural garden has long harbored various tribes, the length of the Havasupais’ tenancy and origin is uncertain. They are possible akin to the Wallapis and Yumas. Their history tells of a slow drifting northward from the Tonto basin, then the San Francisco peaks, and later, the Grand Canyon. Their skin is intensely brown, almost mulatto, their short, black hair in ill-kempt thatches. Having long known bitter poverty, they lack the beautiful silver trappings of their northern neighbors. The tribe has dwindled to a few hundred people. For years they had to travel more than a hundred miles to a government physician; consequently tubercular ulcers, trachoma and other revolting diseases ravaged the tribe, leaving the fortunate survivors so unbeautiful to behold, and unpleasant to live among that reservation agents, often inferior themselves, treated them with scant sympathy or open contempt. The men are fair farmers, and the women rival the Pomos in basketry,but their remoteness prevents their making a living thereby. Their lovely valley is too narrow for the sheep grazing of the Navajos, and no oil wells have made them millionaires, like the Cherokees. With the winter floods, their life becomes meager and rheumatic. The government seems to assume that the unimportant handful, so inconveniently remote, is likely to die out soon,—so why trouble about them?
canyonPANORAMA OF HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.click picture to enlarge
PANORAMA OF HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.
click picture to enlarge
Visitors are so rare that we were the centre of an admiring group on the agent’s lawn. Havasupai from nine months to ninety years freely commented on our every move. They imitated us as we ate apricots, and imitated us as we threw away the pits. The chief’s wife, a bride from the Wallapi, centered her fascinated gaze on Toby, and nearly sent that young lady into hysterics by faithfully repeating every word and inflection she uttered.
Though of the sincerest flattery, this mimicry finally palled, and we made our way to what we had been told was a secluded nook of the river, where we might bathe unmolested. Seclusion was essential, as we had to bathe as the small boy does, sans clothes and sans reproche. We found the nook, the river shaded by dense osiers, but its shore bordering the main street of the village. Several Havasupai rode by our swimming hole, and we ducked, in danger, like some of Toby’s films, of overexposure. Their heads turned as gentlemen’s naturally would in such circumstances,—or, not to be ambiguous,—away. These Havasupai, though dirty and unread, were gentlemen, according to the definition of a certain Pullman porter I once met.
Being about to descend from an upper berth on acrowded sleeper I had inquired of the porter if the berth below was occupied.
“Yas’m,” the porter replied. “A man, lady. But he’s a gen’lman. He’s turned his face to the wall. An’ now he is a shuttin’ his eyes. Take youah time, lady.”
I relate our adventure, not to flaunt our brazen conduct—the valley registered one hundred odd in the twilight, and you would have done as we did,—but to illustrate the rightness of certain Indian instincts, not confined to these few Havasupai.
It was the following day, when we explored the lower Cataract canyon, that we had our supreme experience in bathing, the bath of baths, before which Susanna’s, Marat’s, Anna Held’s, Montezuma’s, Hadrian’s, Messalina’s, Diana’s and other famous ablutions were as naught. Our ride took us into the lower village, past the prim board houses the government erects and the Indians refuse to inhabit, to the clusters of thatched mud and reed huts which they prefer. The chief of the tribe sat before his dwelling, his family about him to the third and fourth generation, including his new Wallapi wife. We bought baskets from him, prompting him to call “Hanegou” after us.
“What does ‘Hanegou’ mean?” asked Toby.
“It means ‘fine,’ ‘all right,’ ‘how do you do’ or ‘good-by’,” answered the guide.
It seemed a convenient sort of word, as it has several lesser meanings as well. As we rode along I amused myself by inventing a conversation in Havasupai, quite a long imaginary conversation between two Havasu bucks. It is remarkable how quickly I can pick up a language.
1st. Havasu. “Hanegou?” (How do you do?)
2d. Havasu. “Hanegou.” (How doyoudo?)
1st. Hav. “Hanegou.” (Fine.)
2d. Hav. “How are crops?” (In Havasupai, of course).
1st. Hav. “Hanegou.” (All right.)
2d. Hav. “Hanegou!” (Fine!)
1st. Hav. “Hanegou.” (Well, good-by.)
2d. Hav. “Hanegou!” (Good-by, yourself!)
Then the two would pass on, each no doubt thinking of the other, “What a card that fellow is—always getting off some new wheeze!”
Before the chief’s Hanegous had died away, we were riding through an enchanting glade, half forest, half orchard. Golden, luscious apricots hung so low that we picked handfuls as we rode under the trees. Then the tangle of half-tropical growth grew thicker, till the whole red-walled valley was a mass of feathery verdure. It opened suddenly upon the river at a broad quiet ford, through which the horses splashed eagerly.
“Look back,” said the guide. Over our shoulders we saw a sight that alone would have repaid us for our two days’ ride. Framed by the green jungle, a delicate exquisite white waterfall high above us fell into a series of rocky basins, with the water from these making smaller shadows and rapids until it reached the ford. They were the Navajo Falls, which in a country less prodigal of wonders would have a reputation all to themselves.
As we continued up and down through the thicket, a veritable flight of stone steps too steep for descending on horseback dismounted us, and again quite casually we looked to our right, and saw falls twice the height ofNiagara. But Niagara cannot display the same background of vivid cliffs, long canyon vistas, tangled and matted with tropical trees and vines, nor its perfect pool of aquamarine. But to name a waterfall Bridal Veil is like naming a Smith offspring John.
Mooney’s Fall, the third and grandest of all in this rare canyon, was more appropriately named, though whether in reverence or irreverence is hard to judge. For this was doubly Mooney’s Fall. Mooney was a prospector, intent on investigating some of the rich veins of lead, gold and silver still unexplored in this canyon. In descending a cliff sheer enough to daunt anyone but an old prospector, he lost his hold. His skeleton was found months later by our own guide, William Bass, at the foot of the falls now bearing his name. Sheer precipices lead to the pool at the base of the cascade, and to reach it, we left our horses and entered a limestone tunnel ingeniously worked in and out the soft rock, and thus threading our way finally reached the bottom, and stood exulting in the suddenly cool air, electric with white spray, falling into the great pool below. Like the caves through which we crawled, the cliff behind the falls was of red limestone, not solid rock but like carved lace, or rather, like the Japanese wave symbol, which seemed to have frozen eternally when at its crest. And this was covered with ferns and moss and bright flowers, while blue birds flashing over the pool in flocks were singing their joy at reaching this cool haven.
fallsMOONEY’S FALL, HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.
MOONEY’S FALL, HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.
Here was our bath de luxe. I am sure no king or courtesan ever found one more nearly perfect. While the guides explored another canyon, we swam to our hearts’ content, cool for the first time in days. The whitelime bottom gave the pool a jewel clearness. Though it came to our shoulders it looked only a few inches deep. Spray-drenched, we swam as near as we dared to the great cascade, which set the pool dancing in eternal waves. When we finished our swim we were invigorated as if a dozen masseuses had spent the day over us.
Our last night in this Eden known only to a few brown Adams and Eves, when the heat became too intense for sleep indoors, I took a blanket and spread it under the trees. The full moon made the little valley more of a Paradise than ever. I lay and watched the light climb the massive cliffs that wall in the canyon entrance, till it reached the two grotesquely shaped pillars surmounting either cliff. The Havasupai have a legend concerning these monoliths, so oddly perched that they command oversight of the whole village. They are not really rocks, but gods,—the tutelary gods of the tribe. One the Havasupai call the Old Lady, while the other is naturally the Old Man. For centuries they have guarded their people. Yes, but the breath of scandal touches even gods,—and even gods of stone. For one morning, years ago, a chief of the tribe rose unusually early,—and saw,—don’t let it go any further, although I had it very straight,—he saw the Old Man returning hastily to his rock. At four o’clock in the morning, mind you! Easy enough to guess where he’d been.
But I fell asleep watching, and when I awoke the Old Man and Old Lady were still sedately on their pillars. Well, that was a long while ago, after all, and gods will be gods.