“Indian country” applies to all lands to which the Indian
title has not been extinguished, even when not within a
reservation expressly set apart for the exclusive occupancy
of Indians. “Indian country” includes reservations set apart
for Indian tribes by treaty, Executive order, or Act of
Congress.—Meritt: The Legal Status of the Indian
The next morning was another day, as I have often heard remarked since;
and whatever the terrors of the night, the crisp, cheerful Arizona
morning brings with it renewed hope and assurance.
The town waked-up; the air held the tonic thrill that comes only from
pine-clad peaks; the yellow dust of yesterday now kept its place. At
this season in Arizona one may expect the wind to rise about noon and
continue its nerve-racking tyranny until sunset. The blessed sunlight
prevents one from remaining depressed, however, and there is always an
end to the windy season, whatever the nerves meantime. When the last
shriek has died away in early summer, it seems there lives a vacuum, a
strange stillness, like that which follows the stopping of a clock.
I found the station platform quite busy that morning. Trains discharged
their hungry freight, and the hotel kitchens fed them in battalions. A
well-stocked news-stand promised that I would not lack for
entertainment. The general spirit of moving life and activity caused
one to forget that the Desert lurked beyond, that these rails were
simply a tiny causeway spanning it for many miles, desolation on either
side.
Chance acquaintance is made easily in the Southwest, and it was not
long before I answered the query of a young man as to where I headed. I
replied that there was a long journey to make, out into the Desert,
among the Indians perhaps. He seemed not to be aware that Indians were
of the immediate locality, and asked: “How far?”
“Oh—about thirty miles.”
“Humph!” he commented, drily; “people in this country go that far to
water a horse.”
The pastime and humor of Arizona is exaggeration. I know now that the
ranchers of the Southwest, and the so-called nomadic Indians, for that
matter, are people of definite localities. An Indian of the Desert will
name and locate his hogan or home camp as specifically as the man of a
city street. Indians are born, live, and frequently die within a very
small area of the Desert. That is why Indians—and you may scoff—are
likely to be lost at night during storms. Their distant travels are
well planned, by daylight, much the same as anyone breaks monotony with
a holiday or business trip. Only those of the most remote desert places
make long journeys as a part of daily routine, and then when need
compels. I have yet to see the man who lived miles from water. Water
decides where any man may live in the Desert—and his animals too.
It was a different story when I aroused a very fat individual who dozed
complacently with his chair propped back against a livery barn. I
inquired about a team for the immense hike I had to make. There were no
automobiles then to traverse the desert, and few were in the little
towns. To-day gasoline and tires, coupled with much swearing, grease,
and shoveling of sand, have conquered most of the desert distances, and
the last time I covered that road was in one of those striped metallic
potato-bugs hatched by that Detroit genius who could not place Benedict
Arnold in his country’s history, but who has made possible thirty miles
the hour as against a former five. Then, or once upon a time, the
horse—or his superior relative, the mule—was indispensable, and the
keeper of a stable was a king of transportation, something akin to Jim
Hill. This one acted just that way. Evidently he had not lost anything
out back.
“Well—” he hummed, doubtfully, “that’s a longish trip, that is. I’ve
made it—” giving me the impression that it had been an unusual effort,
fraught with courage. “I went out there once, but it was two days’ hard
travel, ’cause yeh have to rest the horses over night, returnin’ next
day. That spoils two good days for me, and I have to charge yeh
accordin’. It’ll be thirty dollars. When do yeh want to start?”
“Never, at that rate!” I declared very promptly.
So I went back to the hotel and sent a telegram up the line stating
that I would there remain in comfort until some reasonable means of
travel came in sight. The answer indicated that I had been heard from.
Several days after a rather rough-looking individual called for me and
introduced himself as the Boss.
“I was coming to town anyway,” he said, “but usually I don’t freight my
employees.” Waiving this little matter of custom, I inquired: “How far
is it to the Agency?”
“Twenty-five miles. We’ll make it in less than four hours.”
And we did, for he drove an excellent team of mares, and his reputation
as a driver was like unto that of Jehu.
On the way I explained the purpose and definite length of my visit. He
seemed relieved, for it had been his original suspicion that I, being
from Washington direct, came seeking his job. Having worked in a
newspaper office long enough to learn that one must build absolute
loyalty to the chief, I assured him that his interests were mine, and
thereafter we got along famously. He was a lovable fellow when one had
punctured the sun-dried skin of him, under which there was much to
admire; and not the least was that he felt his tight little Agency to
be the finest spot on earth. And why should he not?
Some few years before this he had drifted into that loop of the Little
Colorado River, a place that for sterile barrenness could not be
matched and that justified few visions. Armed with a single letter of
authority, he had taken charge of the empty landscape. He pitched his
tent beneath an old spreading cottonwood tree. I can imagine his lonely
vigils and his planning under the brilliant desert stars. First, the
well to tap the subcurrent of the river; then, one by one, the
Government buildings, of rough rock quarried from the near-by mesas,
meanwhile engaging and lodging and feeding rougher laborers, and
disputing with contractors, and keeping them all from liquor, until a
little town grew in this river-angle that for centuries had known only
the withered trees, the cooing of many doves, and driftwood. The
grounds were marked and leveled and drained. In springtime the river
flooded the place, but he was not dismayed. An office, warehouses,
shops, and barns were built. Then arose a well-appointed school, with
dormitories for the Indian children, queer desert gamins that for a
time were as frightened rabbits and wept for their smoky camps. There
were kitchens, baths, a laundry, a plant to furnish light and ice and
heat; for while the summer may be broiling, the winter brings its snow
and bitter wind in that unprotected waste. He saw the sick and built a
hospital. There were quarters for his staff of employees. He planted
trees along cement walks; he broke ground for a farm, and planned an
irrigation system with its pumping-plant. His barns held feed against
the winter, and his commissaries flour and clothing. A trader came for
license, and then another; and a grant was made to a little mission
church. Last, but not the least necessary to his desert kingdom, was a
guardhouse for those who disputed his sage counsels. High above it all
floated the Flag, stoutly whipping in the desert wind.
One day he folded up his tent and walked into his capital. The town was
not finished—true; it was not perfect—true. Already he could see the
mistakes of a pioneer hand, similar to those of the Mormons who had
settled in that country generations before, and whose record was a
graveyard. It is not finished to-day, and several successors have added
their work to his. It may eventually be a folly and a failure in the
sense of profits, for where the Mormons failed in those early days of
zealotry who can hope to succeed? Ah! in the sense of material
profits—Yes! But where had been nothing but the blind Desert and the
savage river, nothing but the blow-sand and the horned toad, he had
created an outpost of civilization to reach and serve and protect a
helpless people who, theretofore, had only their desert demons.
As far as he could see to the north, where the red-toned mesas raised
their twisted shoulders above the desert rim, where the dim blue crowns
of monster lava-buttes loomed against the sky, to the edge of the
world, it seemed, the domain was his kingdom. Twelve hundred human
beings hailed him “Nahtahni,” which is Chief, and listened to his
advice. His was the only voice they heeded without suspicion, for had
they not been driven from this land in midwinter, by armed men, packing
their few possessions through the snow? And had it not required a
fighting President of the United States to restore to them this pitiful
inheritance? No less, indeed!
But to them, people of no contrasts, was it not a wonderful
inheritance—that all-embracing stage, from the Red Mesa where the
tumbled rocks stood in rings, “Children at Play”; from the Sapphire
Lakes and the restless river to the country of the Moqui, guarded by
the lava buttes, those somber blue-clad gods of the northern sky? And
was it not the Desert!
Perhaps—no doubt of it—that Great White Father had sent this curious
Nahtahni from his own household. The world has four corner-posts, one
the Desert and one that is Washington. They could remember those nights
when they first gathered around his tent under the gnarled old
cottonwood, the surly river’s murmur in their ears, their glowing fires
matching his against the stars. He had told them of his mission. And he
was not afraid of white men—had sent some of them briskly about their
business. His commission read—they knew it by his action—that all
pertaining to their peace and welfare devolved on him; that he was
responsible for their best interests. His mark upon a “nultsose” was
the money of the land. His police wore the eagle button. Truly this was
a man to be respected; and he was their Chief.
So at his command they brought children to the school, for it seemed he
had a peculiar fondness for children; and yet he had no sheep to herd.
A strange fellow! They came in from their corrals and patches to work
for implements and livestock; they hauled the stores and coal from the
railroad, herding their wiry ponies with many a wild cry; they found
that his queer blue papers could be exchanged for the hard silver
dollars of the West.
And to this Chief they came too with foolish complaints and childish
misfortunes; to him they came when ill and trembling, and him they
sought when old and hungry, shivering against the desert wind, forsaken
by their own cruel kindred, fearing that the jackals would pick their
bones. In all that trading country they knew him as the one who would
not barter.
His real title was—no matter; there must be tags and labels; actually,
by law and practice, he was a desert czar, distributing his bounty,
holding his courts of justice. Of course he was, and so are they all,
each and every one. What came you out to see? A jurist splitting hairs
and fearing to say too much, a ferret of accounts, a listening
politician, a sutler and his bales? How many such can boast that they
have constructed anything? This man had built a sanctuary, and he ruled
a kingdom. He was the “Nahtahni!” That was enough, and what is needed,
in the Desert.
When they did not call him that, affectionately they dubbed him
“Sack-hair,” because he wore a wig, and since one day, to their general
consternation, his scalp had blown off into a bush. From Beck-a-shay
Thlani, the man of many cattle, to the blind old woman of the tribe, he
was counselor and friend. The curious, animal-like children loved him.
They would scramble down the walks to take his hand and toddle by his
side. He was justly proud of his work and of his industrious alien
people; perhaps, in their silent desert way, they were proud of him.
A little of this he told me modestly as we rolled over the road along
the river. The greater part I learned in my own time, as did the
Indians before me. He enlivened the recital by a few choice Southwest
legends, made for and kept alive by greenhorns like myself. He showed
me where the last great flood had eaten away huge sections of the lower
flat and spread all over. The river was now a wide desolation of sand,
glowing, sullen in the sun. In flood time this was no plaything of a
stream. Its mark was on the country, a mile wide. I could have walked
across it dry-shod, and since that time I have crossed it swimming a
horse, and wondering when I should go off to tow at his tail. Tangled
masses of matted greasewood, like shingle of the beaches, and trunks of
cottonwoods, picked clean of bark and twig, white as bleaching bones,
were piled on the bars. Over at one side remained a shallow pool,
holding dull fish as captives; and several lean ponies came to suck
eagerly at the turgid water. Away off in the flat, he pointed out my
first mirage: the pretty view of a marshy place bordered by reeds,
cool, inviting—yet a dusty desert falsehood. Suddenly it faded,
vanished in thin air, to reveal nothing but brilliant sunlight on a
baking floor. Drifting clouds cast long shadows on the sand. A tiny
whirlwind twirled its dust-spout higher and higher and glided across
the plain.
Then, from a little rise, he waved his whip toward a distant object,
black against the western sun. It was very far away, and looked like a
bird-house on a pole.
“That’s the Agency,” he said.
And indeed it was, for without it existence there was impossible. It
was the stand-tank, most necessary thing in that land of precious
water. Just at dark we swung through the gates. I had reached my first
desert camp, on the edge of the Enchanted Empire.