ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT
We dropped down from Buckskin Mountain, from the land of the pine and
spruce and of cold, clear springs, into the grim desolation of the
desert. We drove the pack-animals and loose horses, usually one of us
taking the lead to keep the trail. The foreman of the Bar Z had lent us
two horses for our trip, in true cattleman's spirit; another Bar Z man,
who with his wife lived at Lee's Ferry, showed us every hospitality, and
gave us fruit from his garden, and chickens; and two of the Bar Z riders
helped Archie and Nick shoe one of our horses. It was a land of wide
spaces and few people, but those few we met were so friendly and helpful
that we shall not soon forget them.
At noon of the first day we had come down the mountainside, from the
tall northern forest trees at the summit, through the scattered,
sprawling pinyons and cedars of the side slopes, to the barren, treeless
plain of sand and sage-brush and greasewood. At the foot of the
mountain we stopped for a few minutes at an outlying cow-ranch. There
was not a tree, not a bush more than knee-high, on the whole plain round
about. The bare little ranch-house, of stone and timber, lay in the full
glare of the sun; through the open door we saw the cluttered
cooking-utensils and the rolls of untidy bedding. The foreman, rough and
kindly, greeted us from the door; spare and lean, his eyes bloodshot and
his face like roughened oak from the pitiless sun, wind, and sand of the
desert. After we had dismounted, our shabby ponies moped at the
hitching-post as we stood talking. In the big corral a mob of
half-broken horses were gathered, and two dust-grimed, hard-faced
cowpunchers, lithe as panthers, were engaged in breaking a couple of
wild ones. All around, dotted with stunted sage-brush and greasewood,
the desert stretched, blinding white in the sunlight; across its surface
the dust clouds moved in pillars, and in the distance the heat-waves
danced and wavered.
During the afternoon we shogged steadily across the plain. At one place,
far off to one side, we saw a band of buffalo, and between them and us a
herd of wild donkeys. Otherwise the only living things were snakes and
lizards. On the other side of the plain, two or three miles from a high
wall of vermilion cliffs, we stopped for the night at a little stone
rest-house, built as a station by a cow outfit. Here there were big
corrals, and a pool of water piped down by the cow-men from a spring
many miles distant. On the sand grew the usual desert plants, and on
some of the ridges a sparse growth of grass, sufficient for the night
feed of the hardy horses. The little stone house and the corrals stood
bare and desolate on the empty plain. Soon after we reached them a
sand-storm rose and blew so violently that we took refuge inside the
house. Then the wind died down; and as the sun sank toward the horizon
we sauntered off through the hot, still evening. There were many
sidewinder rattlesnakes. We killed several of the gray, flat-headed,
venomous things; as we slept on the ground outside the house, under the
open sky, we were glad to kill as many as possible, for they sometimes
crawl into a sleeper's blankets. Except this baleful life, there was
little save the sand and the harsh, scanty vegetation. Across the lonely
wastes the sun went down. The sharply channelled cliffs turned crimson
in the dying light; all the heavens flamed ruby red, and faded to a
hundred dim hues of opal, beryl and amber, pale turquoise and delicate
emerald; and then night fell and darkness shrouded the desert.
Next morning the horse-wranglers, Nick and Quentin, were off before dawn
to bring in the saddle and pack animals; the sun rose in burning glory,
and through the breathless heat we drove the pack-train before us toward
the crossing of the Colorado. Hour after hour we plodded ahead. The
cliff line bent back at an angle, and we followed into the valley of the
Colorado. The trail edged in toward the high cliffs as they gradually
drew toward the river. At last it followed along the base of the
frowning rock masses. Far off on our right lay the Colorado; on its
opposite side the broad river valley was hemmed in by another line of
cliffs, at whose foot we were to travel for two days after crossing the
river.
The landscape had become one of incredible wildness, of tremendous and
desolate majesty. No one could paint or describe it save one of the
great masters of imaginative art or literature--a Turner or Browning or
Poe. The sullen rock walls towered hundreds of feet aloft, with
something about their grim savagery that suggested both the terrible and
the grotesque. All life was absent, both from them and from the
fantastic barrenness of the bowlder-strewn land at their bases. The
ground was burned out or washed bare. In one place a little stream
trickled forth at the bottom of a ravine, but even here no grass
grew--only little clusters of a coarse weed with flaring white flowers
that looked as if it throve on poisoned soil. In the still heat "we saw
the silences move by and beckon." The cliffs were channelled into myriad
forms--battlements, spires, pillars, buttressed towers, flying arches;
they looked like the ruined castles and temples of the monstrous
devil-deities of some vanished race. All were ruins--ruins vaster than
those of any structures ever reared by the hands of men--as if some
magic city, built by warlocks and sorcerers, had been wrecked by the
wrath of the elder gods. Evil dwelt in the silent places; from
battlement to lonely battlement fiends' voices might have raved; in the
utter desolation of each empty valley the squat blind tower might have
stood, and giants lolled at length to see the death of a soul at bay.
As the afternoon wore on, storm boded in the south. The day grew sombre;
to the desolation of the blinding light succeeded the desolation of
utter gloom. The echoes of the thunder rolled among the crags, and
lightning jagged the darkness. The heavens burst, and the downpour
drove in our faces; then through cloud rifts the sun's beams shone again
and we looked on "the shining race of rain whose hair a great wind
scattereth."
At Lee's Ferry, once the home of the dark leader of the Danites, the
cliffs, a medley of bold colors and striking forms, come close to the
river's brink on either side; but at this one point there is a break in
the canyon walls and a ferry can be run. A stream flows into the river
from the north. By it there is a house, and the miracle of water has
done its work. Under irrigation, there are fields of corn and alfalfa,
groves of fruit-trees, and gardens; a splash of fresh, cool green in the
harsh waste.
South of the ferry we found two mule-wagons, sent for us by Mr. Hubbell,
of Ganado, to whose thoughtful kindness we owed much. One was driven by
a Mexican, Francisco Marquez; the other, the smaller one, by a Navajo
Indian, Loko, who acted as cook; both were capital men, and we lived in
much comfort while with them. A Navajo policeman accompanied us as
guide, for we were now in the great Navajo reservation. A Navajo brought
us a sheep for sale, and we held a feast.
For two days we drove southward through the desert country, along the
foot of a range of red cliffs. In places the sand was heavy; in others
the ground was hard, and the teams made good progress. There were little
water-holes, usually more or less alkaline, ten or fifteen miles apart.
At these the Navajos were watering their big flocks of sheep and goats,
their horses and donkeys, and their few cattle. They are very
interesting Indians. They live scattered out, each family by itself, or
two or three families together; not in villages, like their neighbors
the Hopis. They are pastoral Indians, but they are agriculturists also,
as far as the desert permits. Here and there, where there was a little
seepage of water, we saw their meagre fields of corn, beans, squashes,
and melons. All were mounted; the men usually on horses, the women and
children often on donkeys. They were clad in white man's garb; at least
the men wore shirts and trousers and the women bodices and skirts; but
the shirts were often green or red or saffron or bright blue; their long
hair was knotted at the back of the head, and they usually wore
moccasins. The well-to-do carried much jewelry of their own make. They
wore earrings and necklaces of turquoise; turquoises were set in their
many silver ornaments; and they wore buttons and bangles of silver, for
they are cunning silversmiths, as well as weavers of the famous Navajo
blankets. Although they practise polygamy, and divorce is easy, their
women are usually well treated; and we saw evidences of courtesy and
consideration not too common even among civilized people. At one halt a
woman on a donkey, with a little boy behind her, rode up to the wagon.
We gave her and the boy food. Later when a Navajo man came up, she
quietly handed him a couple of delicacies. So far there was nothing of
note; but the man equally quietly and with a slight smile of evident
gratitude and appreciation stretched out his hand; and for a moment they
stood with clasped hands, both pleased, one with the courtesy, and the
other with the way the courtesy had been received. Both were tattered
beings on donkeys; but it made a pleasant picture.
These are as a whole good Indians--although some are very bad, and
should be handled rigorously. Most of them work hard, and wring a
reluctant living from the desert; often their houses are miles from
water, and they use it sparingly. They live on a reservation in which
many acres are necessary to support life; I do not believe that at
present they ought to be allotted land in severalty, and their whole
reservation should be kept for them, if only they can be brought forward
fast enough in stock-raising and agriculture to use it; for with
Indians and white men alike it is use which should determine occupancy
of the soil. The Navajos have made progress of a real type, and stand
far above mere savagery; and everything possible should be done to help
them help themselves, to teach them English, and, above all, to teach
them how to be better stock-raisers and food-growers--as well as smiths
and weavers--in their desert home. The whites have treated these Indians
well. They benefited by the coming of the Spaniards; they have benefited
more by the coming of our own people. For the last quarter of a century
the lawless individuals among them have done much more wrong (including
murder) to the whites than has been done to them by lawless whites. The
lawless Indians are the worst menace to the others among the Navajos and
Utes; and very serious harm has been done by well-meaning Eastern
philanthropists who have encouraged and protected these criminals. I
have known some startling cases of this kind.
During the second day of our southward journey the Painted Desert, in
gaudy desolation, lay far to our right; and we crossed tongues and
patches of the queer formation, with its hard, bright colors. Red and
purple, green and bluish, orange and gray and umber brown, the
streaked and splashed clays and marls had been carved by wind and
weather into a thousand outlandish forms. Funnel-shaped sandstorms moved
across the waste. We climbed gradually upward to the top of the mesa.
The yellow sand grew heavier and deeper. There were occasional short
streams from springs; but they ran in deep gullies, with nothing to tell
of their presence; never a tree near by and hardly a bush or a tuft of
grass, unless planted and tended by man. We passed the stone walls of an
abandoned trading-post. The desert had claimed its own. The ruins lay
close to a low range of cliffs; the white sand, dazzling under the sun,
had drifted everywhere; there was not a plant, not a green thing in
sight--nothing but the parched and burning lifelessness of rock and
sand. This northern Arizona desert was less attractive than the southern
desert along the road to the Roosevelt Dam and near Mesa, for instance;
for in the south the cactus growth is infinitely varied in size and in
fantastic shape.
In the late afternoon we reached Tuba, with its Indian school and its
trader's store. Tuba was once a Mormon settlement, the Mormons having
been invited thither by the people of a near-by Hopi village--which we
visited--because the Hopis wished protection from hostile Indian foes.
As usual, the Mormon settlers had planted and cared for many
trees--cotton-woods, poplars, almond-trees, and flowering acacias--and
the green shade was doubly attractive in that sandy desert. We were most
hospitably received, especially by the school superintendent, and also
by the trader. They showed us every courtesy. Mentioning the abandoned
trading-post in the desert to the wife of the trader, she told us that
it was there she had gone as a bride. The women who live in the outposts
of civilization have brave souls!
We rested the horses for a day, and then started northward, toward the
trading-station of John Wetherill, near Navajo Mountain and the Natural
Bridge. The first day's travel was through heavy sand and very tiring to
the teams. Late in the afternoon we came to an outlying trader's store,
on a sandy hillside. In the plain below, where not a blade of grass
grew, were two or three permanent pools; and toward these the flocks of
the Navajos were hurrying, from every quarter, with their herdsmen. The
sight was curiously suggestive of the sights I so often saw in Africa,
when the Masai and Samburu herdsmen brought their flocks to water. On
we went, not halting until nine in the evening.
All next day we travelled through a parched, monotonous landscape, now
and then meeting Navajos with their flocks and herds, and passing by an
occasional Navajo "hogan," or hovel-like house, with its rough corral
near by. Toward evening we struck into Marsh Pass, and camped at the
summit. Here we were again among the mountains; and the great gorge was
wonderfully picturesque--well worth a visit from any landscape-lover,
were there not so many sights still more wonderful in the immediate
neighborhood. The lower rock masses were orange-hued, and above them
rose red battlements of cliff; where the former broke into sheer sides
there were old houses of the cliff-dwellers, carved in the living rock.
The half-moon hung high overhead; the scene was wild and lovely, when we
strolled away from the camp-fire among the scattered cedars and pinyons
through the cool, still night.
Next morning we journeyed on, and in the forenoon we reached Kayentay,
where John Wetherill, the guide and Indian trader, lives. We had been
travelling over a bare table-land, through surroundings utterly
desolate; and with startling suddenness, as we dropped over the edge,
we came on the group of houses--the store, the attractive house of Mr.
and Mrs. Wetherill, and several other buildings. Our new friends were
the kindest and most hospitable of hosts, and their house was a delight
to every sense: clean, comfortable, with its bath and running water, its
rugs and books, its desks, cupboards, couches and chairs, and the
excellent taste of its Navajo ornamentation. Here we parted with our two
wagons, and again took to pack-trains; we had already grown attached to
Francisco and Loko, and felt sorry to say good-by to them.
On August 10, under Wetherill's guidance, we started for the Natural
Bridge, seven of us, all told, with five pack-horses. We travelled
light, with no tentage, and when it rained at night we curled up in our
bedding under our slickers. I was treated as "the Colonel," and did
nothing but look after my own horse and bedding, and usually not even
this much; but every one else in the outfit worked! On the two days
spent in actually getting into and out of the very difficult country
around the Bridge itself we cut down our luggage still further, taking
the necessary food in the most portable form, and, as regards bedding,
trusting, in cowboy fashion, to our slickers and horse blankets. But we
were comfortable, and the work was just hard enough to keep us in fine
trim.
We began by retracing our steps to the head of Marsh Pass and turning
westward up Laguna Canyon. This was so named because it contained pools
of water when, half a century ago, Kit Carson, the type of all that was
best among the old-style mountain man and plainsman, traversed it during
one of his successful Indian campaigns. The story of the American
advance through the Southwest is filled with feats of heroism. Yet,
taking into account the means of doing the work, even greater dangers
were fronted, even more severe hardships endured, and even more striking
triumphs achieved by the soldiers and priests who three centuries
previously, during Spain's brief sunburst of glory, first broke through
the portals of the thirst-guarded, Indian-haunted desert.
At noon we halted in a side-canyon, at the foot of a mighty cliff, where
there were ruins of a big village of cliff-dwellers. The cliff was of
the form so common in this type of rock formation. It was not merely
sheer, but reentrant, making a huge, arched, shallow cave, several
hundred feet high, and at least a hundred--perhaps a hundred and
fifty--feet deep, the overhang being enormous. The stone houses of the
village, which in all essentials was like a Hopi village of to-day, were
plastered against the wall in stories, each resting on a narrow ledge.
Long poles permitted one to climb from ledge to ledge, and gave access,
through the roofs, to the more inaccessible houses. The immense size of
the cave--or overhanging, reentrant cliff, whichever one chooses to call
it--dwarfed the houses, so that they looked like toy houses.
There were many similar, although smaller, villages and little clusters
of houses among the cliffs of this tangle of canyons. Once the
cliff-dwellers had lived in numbers in this neighborhood, sleeping in
their rock aeries, and venturing into the valleys only to cultivate
their small patches of irrigated land. Generations had passed since
these old cliff-dwellers had been killed or expelled. Compared with the
neighboring Indians, they had already made a long stride in cultural
advance when the Spaniards arrived; but they were shrinking back before
the advance of the more savage tribes. Their history should teach the
lesson--taught by all history in thousands of cases, and now being
taught before our eyes by the experience of China, but being taught to
no purpose so far as concerns those ultra peace advocates whose heads
are even softer than their hearts--that the industrious race of advanced
culture and peaceful ideals is lost unless it retains the power not
merely for defensive but for offensive action, when itself menaced by
vigorous and aggressive foes.
That night, having ridden only some twenty-five miles, we camped in
Bubbling Spring Valley. It would be hard to imagine a wilder or more
beautiful spot; if in the Old World, the valley would surely be
celebrated in song and story; here it is one among many others, all
equally unknown. We camped by the bubbling spring of pure cold water
from which it derives its name. The long, winding valley was carpeted
with emerald green, varied by wide bands and ribbons of lilac, where the
tall ranks of bee-blossoms, haunted by humming-birds, grew thickly,
often for a quarter of a mile at a stretch. The valley was walled in by
towering cliffs, a few of them sloping, most of them sheer-sided or with
the tops overhanging; and there were isolated rock domes and pinnacles.
As everywhere round about, the rocks were of many colors, and the colors
varied from hour to hour, so that the hues of sunrise differed from
those of noonday, and yet again from the long lights of sunset. The
cliffs seemed orange and purple; and again they seemed vermilion and
umber; or in the white glare they were white and yellow and light red.
Our routine was that usual when travelling with a pack-train. By
earliest dawn the men whose duties were to wrangle the horses and cook
had scrambled out of their bedding; and the others soon followed suit.
There is always much work with a pack-outfit, and there are almost
always some animals which cause trouble when being packed. The sun was
well up before we started; then we travelled until sunset, taking out a
couple of hours to let the hobbled horses and mules rest and feed at
noon.
On the second day out we camped not far from the foot of Navajo
Mountain. We came across several Indians, both Navajos and Utes,
guarding their flocks and herds; and we passed by several of their
flimsy branch-built summer houses, and their mud, stone, and log winter
houses; and by their roughly fenced fields of corn and melons watered by
irrigation ditches. Wetherill hired two Indians, a Ute and a Navajo, to
go with us, chiefly to relieve us of the labor of looking after our
horses at night. They were pleasant-faced, silent men. They wore broad
hats, shirts and waistcoats, trousers, and red handkerchiefs loosely
knotted round their necks; except for their moccasins, a feather in
each hat, and two or three silver ornaments, they were dressed like
cowboys, and both picturesquely and appropriately. Their ornamented
saddles were of Navajo make.
The second day's march was long. At one point we dropped into and
climbed out of a sheer-sided canyon some twelve hundred feet deep. The
trail, which zigzagged up and down the rocky walls, had been made by the
Navajos. After we had led our horses down into the canyon, and were
lunching by a spring, we were followed by several Indians driving large
flocks of goats and sheep. They came down the trail at a good rate, many
of them riding instead of leading their horses. One rather comely squaw
attracted our attention. She was riding a weedy, limber-legged
brood-mare, followed by a foal. The mare did not look as if it would be
particularly strong even on the level; yet the well-dressed squaw,
holding before her both her baby and her long sticks for
blanket-weaving, and with behind her another child and a small roll of
things which included a black umbrella, ambled down among the broken
rocks with entire unconcern, and joked cheerily with us as she passed.
The night was lovely, and the moon, nearly full, softened the dry
harshness of the land, while Navajo Mountain loomed up under it. When
we rose, we saw the pale dawn turn blood-red; and shortly after sunrise
we started for our third and final day's journey to the Bridge. For some
ten miles the track was an ordinary rough mountain trail. Then we left
all our pack-animals except two little mules, and began the hard part of
our trip. From this point on the trail was that followed by Wetherill on
his various trips to the Bridge, and it can perhaps fairly be called
dangerous in two or three places, at least for horses. Wetherill has
been with every party that has visited the Bridge from the time of its
discovery by white men four years ago. On that occasion he was with two
parties, their guide being the Ute who was at this time with us. Mrs.
Wetherill has made an extraordinarily sympathetic study of the Navajos
and to a less extent of the Utes; she knows, and feelingly understands,
their traditions and ways of thought, and speaks their tongue fluently;
and it was she who first got from the Indians full knowledge of the
Bridge.
The hard trail began with a twenty minutes' crossing of a big mountain
dome of bare sheet rock. Over this we led our horses, up, down, and
along the sloping sides, which fell away into cliffs that were scores
and even hundreds of feet deep. One spot was rather ticklish. We led
the horses down the rounded slope to where a crack or shelf six or eight
inches broad appeared and went off level to the right for some fifty
feet. For half a dozen feet before we dropped down to this shelf the
slope was steep enough to make it difficult for both horses and men to
keep their footing on the smooth rock; there was nothing whatever to
hold on to, and a precipice lay underneath.
On we went, under the pitiless sun, through a contorted wilderness of
scalped peaks and ranges, barren passes, and twisted valleys of
sun-baked clay. We worked up and down steep hill slopes, and along
tilted masses of sheet-rock ending in cliffs. At the foot of one of
these lay the bleached skeleton of a horse. It was one which Wetherill
had ridden on one of his trips to the Bridge. The horse lost his footing
on the slippery slide rock, and went to his death over the cliff;
Wetherill threw himself out of the saddle and just managed to escape.
The last four miles were the worst of all for the horses. They led along
the bottom of the Bridge canyon. It was covered with a torrent-strewn
mass of smooth rocks, from pebbles to bowlders of a ton's weight. It was
a marvel that the horses got down without breaking their legs; and the
poor beasts were nearly worn out.
Huge and bare the immense cliffs towered, on either hand, and in front
and behind as the canyon turned right and left. They lifted straight
above us for many hundreds of feet. The sunlight lingered on their tops;
far below, we made our way like pygmies through the gloom of the great
gorge. As we neared the Bridge the horse trail led up to one side, and
along it the Indians drove the horses; we walked at the bottom of the
canyon so as to see the Bridge first from below and realize its true
size; for from above it is dwarfed by the immense mountain masses
surrounding it.
At last we turned a corner, and the tremendous arch of the Bridge rose
in front of us. It is surely one of the wonders of the world. It is a
triumphal arch rather than a bridge, and spans the torrent bed in a
majesty never shared by any arch ever reared by the mightiest conquerors
among the nations of mankind. At this point there were deep pools in the
rock bed of the canyon, with overhanging shelves under which grew
beautiful ferns and hanging plants. Hot and tired, we greeted the chance
for a bath, and as I floated on my back in the water the Bridge towered
above me. Then we made camp. We built a blazing fire under one of the
giant buttresses of the arch, and the leaping flame brought it
momentarily into sudden relief. We white men talked and laughed by the
fire, and the two silent Indians sat by and listened to us. The night
was cloudless. The round moon rose under the arch and flooded the cliffs
behind us with her radiance. After she passed behind the mountains the
heavens were still brilliant with starlight, and whenever I waked I
turned and gazed at the loom of the mighty arch against the clear night
sky.
Next morning early we started on our toilsome return trip. The pony
trail led under the arch. Along this the Ute drove our pack-mules, and
as I followed him I noticed that the Navajo rode around outside. His
creed bade him never pass under an arch, for the arch is the sign of the
rainbow, the sign of the sun's course over the earth, and to the Navajo
it is sacred. This great natural bridge, so recently "discovered" by
white men, has for ages been known to the Indians. Near it, against the
rock walls of the canyon, we saw the crumbling remains of some
cliff-dwellings, and almost under it there is what appears to be the
ruin of a very ancient shrine.
We travelled steadily at a good gait, and we feasted on a sheep we
bought from a band of Utes. Early on the afternoon of the sixth day of
our absence we again rode our weary horses over the hill slope down to
the store at Kayentay, and glad we were to see the comfortable ranch
buildings.
Many Navajos were continually visiting the store. It seems a queer thing
to say, but I really believe Kayentay would be an excellent place for a
summer school of archæology and ethnology. There are many old
cliff-dwellings, some of large size and peculiar interest, in the
neighborhood; and the Navajos of this region themselves, not to mention
the village-dwelling Hopis, are Indians who will repay the most careful
study, whether of language, religion, or ordinary customs and culture.
As always when I have seen Indians in their homes, in mass, I was struck
by the wide cultural and intellectual difference among the different
tribes, as well as among the different individuals of each tribe, and
both by the great possibilities for their improvement and by the need of
showing common sense even more than good intentions if this improvement
is to be achieved. Some Indians can hardly be moved forward at all. Some
can be moved forward both fast and far. To let them entirely alone
usually means their ruin. To interfere with them foolishly, with
whatever good intentions, and to try to move all of them forward in a
mass, with a jump, means their ruin. A few individuals in every tribe,
and most of the individuals in some tribes, can move very far forward at
once; the non-reservation schools do excellently for these. Most of them
need to be advanced by degrees; there must be a half-way house at which
they can halt, or they may never reach their final destination and stand
on a level with the white man.
The Navajos have made long strides in advance during the last fifty
years, _thanks to the presence of the white men in their neighborhood_.
Many decent men have helped them--soldiers, agents, missionaries,
traders; and the help has quite as often been given unconsciously as
consciously; and some of the most conscientious efforts to help them
have flatly failed. The missionaries have made comparatively few
converts; but many of the missionaries have added much to the influences
telling for the gradual uplift of the tribe. Outside benevolent
societies have done some good work at times, but have been mischievous
influences when guided by ignorance and sentimentality--a notable
instance on this Navajo reservation is given by Mr. Leupp in his book
"The Indian and His Problem." Agents and other government officials,
when of the best type, have done most good, and when not of the right
type have done most evil; and they have never done any good at all when
they have been afraid of the Indians or have hesitated relentlessly to
punish Indian wrong-doers, even if these wrong-doers were supported by
some unwise missionaries or ill-advised Eastern benevolent societies.
The traders of the right type have rendered genuine, and
ill-appreciated, service, and their stores and houses are centres of
civilizing influence.
Good work can be done, and has been done, at the schools. Wherever the
effort is to jump the ordinary Indian too far ahead and yet send him
back to the reservation, the result is usually failure. To be useful the
steps for the ordinary boy or girl, in any save the most advanced
tribes, must normally be gradual. Enough English should be taught to
enable such a boy or girl to read, write, and cipher so as not to be
cheated in ordinary commercial transactions. Outside of this the
training should be industrial, and, among the Navajos, it should be _the
kind of industrial training which shall avail in the home cabins and in
tending flocks and herds and irrigated fields_. The Indian should be
encouraged to build a better house; but the house must not be too
different from his present dwelling, or he will, _as a rule_, neither
build it nor live in it. The boy should be taught what will be of actual
use to him among his fellows, and not what might be of use to a skilled
mechanic in a big city, who can work only with first-class appliances;
and the agency farmer should strive steadily to teach the young men out
in the field how to better their stock and practically to increase the
yield of their rough agriculture. The girl should be taught domestic
science, not as it would be practised in a first-class hotel or a
wealthy private home, but as she must practise it in a hut with no
conveniences, and with intervals of sheep-herding. If the boy and girl
are not so taught, their after lives will normally be worthless both to
themselves and to others. If they are so taught, they will normally
themselves rise and will be the most effective of home missionaries for
their tribe.
In Horace Greeley's "Overland Journey," published more than half a
century ago, there are words of sound wisdom on this subject. Said
Greeley (I condense): "In future efforts to improve the condition of the
Indians the women should be specially regarded and appealed to. A
conscientious, humane, capable Christian trader, with a wife thoroughly
skilled in household manufactures and handicrafts, each speaking the
language of the tribe with whom they take up their residence, can do
[incalculable] good. Let them keep and sell whatever articles are
adapted to the Indians' needs ... and maintain an industrial school for
Indian women and children, which, though primarily industrial, should
impart intellectual and religious instruction also, wisely adapted in
character and season to the needs of the pupils.... Such an enterprise
would _gradually_" [the italics here are mine] "mould a generation after
its own spirit.... The Indian likes bread as well as the white; he must
be taught to prefer the toil of producing it to the privation of lacking
it." Mrs. Wetherill is doing, and striving to do, much more than Horace
Greeley held up as an ideal. One of her hopes is to establish a "model
hogan," an Indian home, both advanced and possible for the Navajos now
to live up to--a half-way house on the road to higher civilization, a
house in which, for instance, the Indian girl will be taught to wash in
a tub with a pail of water heated at the fire; it is utterly useless to
teach her to wash in a laundry with steam and cement bathtubs and
expect her to apply this knowledge on a reservation. I wish some admirer
of Horace Greeley and friend of the Indian would help Mrs. Wetherill
establish her half-way house.
Mrs. Wetherill was not only versed in archæological lore concerning
ruins and the like, she was also versed in the yet stranger and more
interesting archæology of the Indian's own mind and soul. There have of
recent years been some admirable books published on the phase of Indian
life which is now, after so many tens of thousands of years, rapidly
drawing to a close. There is the extraordinary, the monumental work of
Mr. E.S. Curtis, whose photographs are not merely photographs, but
pictures of the highest value; the capital volume by Miss Natalie
Curtis; and others. If Mrs. Wetherill could be persuaded to write on the
mythology of the Navajos, and also on their present-day psychology--by
which somewhat magniloquent term I mean their present ways and habits of
thought--she would render an invaluable service. She not only knows
their language; she knows their minds; she has the keenest sympathy not
only with their bodily needs, but with their mental and spiritual
processes; and she is not in the least afraid of them or sentimental
about them when they do wrong. They trust her so fully that they will
speak to her without reserve about those intimate things of the soul
which they will never even hint at if they suspect want of sympathy or
fear ridicule. She has collected some absorbingly interesting
reproductions of the Navajo sand drawings, picture representations of
the old mythological tales; they would be almost worthless unless she
wrote out the interpretation, told her by the medicine-man, for the
hieroglyphics themselves would be meaningless without such translation.
According to their own creed, the Navajos are very devout, and pray
continually to the gods of their belief. Some of these prayers are very
beautiful; others differ but little from forms of mere devil-worship, of
propitiation of the powers of possible evil. Mrs. Wetherill was good
enough to write out for me, in the original and in English translation,
a prayer of each type--a prayer to the God of the Dawn and the Goddess
of Evening Light, and a prayer to the great Spirit Bear. They run as
follows:
PRAYER TO THE DAWN
"Hi-yol-cank sil-kin Natany,
Tee gee hozhone nas-shad,
Sit-sigie hozhone nas-shad
She-kayge hozhone nas-shad,
She-yage hozhone nas-shad,
She-kigee hozhone nas-shad,
She-now also hozhone nas-shad.
"San-naga, Toddetenie Huskie be-kay, hozhone nas-shad
Na-da-cleas, gekin, Natany,
Tes-gee hozhone nas-shad
She-kayge hozhone nas-shad,
She-kigee hozhone nas-shad
She-yage hozhone nas-shad
She-now also hozhone nas-shad,
"Hozhone nas clee, hozhone nas clee,
Hozhone nas clee, hozhone nas clee."
PRAYER TO THE DAWN (TRANSLATION)
"Dawn, beautiful dawn, the Chief,
This day, let it be well with me as I go;
Let it be well before me as I go;
Let it be well behind me as I go;
Let it be well beneath me as I go;
Let it be well above me as I go;
Let all I see be well as I go.
"Everlasting, like unto the Pollen Boy;
Goddess of the Evening, the beautiful Chieftess,
This day, let it be well with me as I go;
Let it be well before me as I go;
Let it be well behind me as I go;
Let it be well beneath me as I go;
Let it be well above me as I go;
Let all I see be well as I go.
"Now all is well, now all is well,
Now all is well, now all is well."
(The Navajos believe in repeating a prayer, both in anticipatory and in
realized form, four times, being firm in the faith that an adjuration
four times repeated will bring the results they desire; the Pollen Boy
is the God of Fertilization of the Flowers.)
PRAYER TO THE BIG BLACK BEAR
"Shush-et-so-dilth-kilth
Pash dilth-kilth ne-kay ba-she-che-un-de-de-talth;
Pash dilth-kilth ne-escla ba she chee un-de-de-talth;
Pash dilth-kilth ne-ea ba she chee un-de-de-talth;
Pash dilth-kilth ne-cha ba she chee un-de-de-talth;
Ba ne un-ne-ga ut-sen-el-clish; net saw now-o-tilth a
Sit saw now-o-tilth go-ud-dish-nilth;
Ba sit saw ne-egay go-ud-dish-nilth;
Ne change nis-salth dodo ne;
Ne change nis-salth do-ut-saw-daw;
Ne change nis-salth ta-de-tenie nus-cleango-ud-is-nilth;
es-ze, es-ze, es-ze, es-ze."
PRAYER TO THE BIG BLACK BEAR (TRANSLATION)
"Big Black Bear,
With your black moccasins, like unto a knife, stand between me and
danger;
With your black leggins, like unto a knife, stand between me and danger;
With your black shirt, like unto a knife, stand between me and danger,
With your black hat, like unto a knife, stand between me and danger;
With your charm send the lightning around you and around me;
By my charm tell the evil dream to leave me;
Let the evil dream not come true;
Give me medicine to dispel the evil dream;
The evil has missed me, the evil has missed me, the evil has missed me,
the evil has missed me."
(The fourfold repetition of "the evil has missed me" is held to insure
the accomplishment in the future of what the prayer asserts of the past.
Instead of "hat" we could say "helmet," as the Navajos once wore a black
buckskin helmet; and the knife was of black flint. Black was the war
color. This prayer was to ward off the effect of a bad dream.)
* * * * *
On August 17, we left Wetherill's with our pack-train, for a three days'
trip across the Black Mesa to Walpi, where we were to witness the
snake-dance of the Hopis. The desert valley where Kayentay stands is
bounded on the south by a high wall of cliffs, extending for scores of
miles. Our first day's march took us up this; we led the saddle-horses
and drove the pack-animals up a very rough Navajo trail which zigzagged
to the top through a partial break in the continuous rock wall. From the
summit we looked back over the desert, barren, desolate, and yet with a
curious fascination of its own. In the middle distance rose a line of
low cliffs, deep red, well-nigh blood-red, in color. In the far distance
isolated buttes lifted daringly against the horizon; prominent among
them was the abrupt pinnacle known as El Capitan, a landmark for the
whole region.
On the summit we were once more among pines, and we saw again the
beautiful wild flowers and birds we had left on Buckskin Mountain. There
were redbells and bluebells and the showy Indian paint-brushes; delicate
white flowers and beautiful purple ones; rabbit-brush tipped with pale
yellow, and the brighter yellow of the Navajo gorse; and innumerable
others. I saw a Louisiana tanager; the pinyon jays were everywhere;
ravens, true birds of the wilderness, croaked hoarsely.
From the cliff crest we travelled south through a wild and picturesque
pass. The table-land was rugged and mountainous; but it sloped gradually
to the south, and the mountains changed to rounded hills. It was a dry
region, but with plenty of grama-grass, and much of it covered with an
open forest of pinyon and cedar. After eight hours' steady jogging along
Indian trails, and across country where there was no trail, we camped by
some muddy pools of rain-water which lay at the bottom of a deep
washout. Soon afterward a Navajo family passed camp; they were
travelling in a wagon drawn by a mule and a horse, and the boys of the
family were driving a big herd of sheep and goats. The incident merely
illustrated the real progress the Indians are making, and how far they
already are from pure savagery.
Next morning the red dawn and the flushed clouds that heralded the
sunrise were very lovely. Only those who live and sleep in the open
fully realize the beauty of dawn and moonlight and starlight. As we
journeyed southward the land grew more arid; and the water was scarce
and bad. In the afternoon we camped on a dry mud-flat, not far from a
Navajo sheep-farmer, who soon visited us. Two Navajos were travelling
with us; merry, pleasant fellows. One of them had a .22 Winchester
rifle, with which he shot a couple of prairie-dogs--which he and his
friend roasted whole for their supper, having previously shared ours.
Next day at noon we climbed the steep, narrow rock ridge on whose summit
rise the three Hopi towns at one of which, Walpi, the snake-dance was to
be held. The clustered rock villages stood in bold outline, on the cliff
top, against the blue sky. In all America there is no more strikingly
picturesque sight.