The Indians
of
The Painted Desert Region
WORKS BY
George Wharton James
IN AND AROUND THE GRAND CANYON OF THE
COLORADO RIVER IN ARIZONA.
THE INDIANS OF THE PAINTED DESERT REGION.
THE MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA.
INDIAN BASKETRY.
[Illustration: IN THE HEART OF THE PAINTED DESERT.]
The Indians
of the
Painted Desert Region
_Hopis_, _Navahoes_, _Wallapais_,
_Havasupais_
By
George Wharton James
Author of "In and Around the Grand Canyon," etc.
[Illustration]
_With Numerous Illustrations from Photographs_
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1903
_Copyright, 1903_,
BY EDITH E. FARNSWORTH
_All rights reserved_
Published October, 1903
UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON
AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
_To my Wife_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY xiii
CHAPTER
I. THE PAINTED DESERT REGION 1
II. DESERT RECOLLECTIONS 10
III. FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE HOPI 29
IV. THE HOPI VILLAGES AND THEIR HISTORY 44
V. A FEW HOPI CUSTOMS 66
VI. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE HOPI 82
VII. THE HOPI SNAKE DANCE 102
VIII. THE NAVAHO AND HIS HISTORY 124
IX. THE NAVAHO AT HOME 138
X. THE NAVAHO AS A BLANKET WEAVER 160
XI. THE WALLAPAIS 172
XII. THE ADVENT OF THE WALLAPAIS 188
XIII. THE PEOPLE OF THE BLUE WATER AND THEIR HOME 199
XIV. THE HAVASUPAIS AND THEIR LEGENDS 209
XV. THE SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE HAVASUPAIS 220
XVI. THE HAVASUPAIS' RELIGIOUS DANCES AND BELIEFS 248
BIBLIOGRAPHY 265
_ILLUSTRATIONS_
In the Heart of the Painted Desert. _Frontispiece_
A Son of the Desert. _Vignette on Title_
In the Heart of the Petrified Forest. _Facing page_ xvi
A Freak of Erosion in the Petrified Forest. " " 2
Journeying over the Painted Desert to the
Hopi Snake Dance. " " 2
Ancient Pottery dug from Prehistoric Ruins on
the Painted Desert. " " 8
The Painted Desert near the Little Colorado
River. " " 16
Asleep, Early Morning, on the Painted Desert. " " 16
The Colorado River at Bass Ferry, the Vampire
of the Painted Desert. " " 22
Hano, (Tewa) from the Head of the Trail. " " 34
Hopi Women building a House at Oraibi. " " 38
Mashonganavi from the Terrace below. " " 38
Mashongce, an Oraibi Maiden, drying Corn
Meal. " " 42
The Trio of Metates, and Hopi Woman about
to grind Corn. " " 42
An Oraibi Woman shelling Corn in a Basket
of Yucca Fibre. " " 50
The "Burro" of Hopi Transportation. " " 50
An Aged Hopi at Oraibi. " " 54
A Hopi, weaving a Native Cotton Ceremonial
Kilt. " " 54
An Oraibi Basket Weaver. " " 60
An Admiring Hopi Mother. " " 60
Shupela, Father of Kopeli, Late Snake Priest
at Walpi. " " 68
A Hopi Girl, Oraibi. " " 68
Hopi Children, at Oraibi, waiting for a Scramble
of Candy. " " 76
Group of Hopi Maidens at Shungopavi. " " 82
Hopi Woman weaving Basket, her Husband
Knitting Stockings. " " 88
Hopi Woman preparing Corn Meal for making
Doughnuts. " " 88
Hopi "Boomerangs." " " 96
Hopi Ceremonial Drums. " " 96
A Hopi Belle at Shungopavi. " " 100
Blind Hopi Boy, Knitting Stockings. " " 100
The Beginning of the Hopi Snake Dance,
Oraibi, 1902. " " 102
The Chief Antelope Priest depositing Pahos at
the Shrine of the Spider Woman. " " 106
Throwing the Snakes into the Circle of Sacred
Meal. " " 106
Line-up of Snake and Antelope Priests, Antelope
Dance, Oraibi, 1902. " " 110
The Snake Dance at Oraibi, 1902. " " 114
The Snakes in the Kiva at Mashonganavi, after
the Ceremony of Washing. " " 118
After taking the Emetic. Hopi Snake Dance at
Walpi. " " 122
Navaho Silver Necklace and Belt. " " 126
Hopi Prayer Sticks or Pahos. " " 126
An Aged Navaho, looking over the Painted
Desert. " " 131
An Old Hopi at Oraibi. " " 131
Hopi Ceremonial Head-dresses. " " 134
Hopi Bahos and Dance Rattles. " " 134
Kapata, Antelope Priest, at Walpi. " " 140
A Mashonganavi Hopi, going to hoe his Corn. " " 140
The Antelope Priests leaving their Kiva for the
Snake Dance. " " 146
The Widow, Daughters, and Grandchildren of
the Navaho Chief, Manuelito. " " 146
Wife of Leve Leve, Wallapai Chief. " " 156
The March of the Antelope Priests, Oraibi, 1902. " " 156
An Aged Navaho and her Hogan. " " 170
Navaho Family and Hogan in the Painted
Desert. " " 170
Navaho Woman on Horseback. " " 176
The Winner of the "Gallo" Race, at Tohatchi. " " 176
A Wallapai, making a Meal on the Fruit of the
Tuna, or Prickly Pear. " " 188
Wallapai Maiden and Prayer Basket. " " 188
Susquatami, Wallapai War Chief. " " 196
Tuasula, Wallapai Chief. " " 196
Havasupai Fortress and Hue-gli-i-wa, or Rock
Figures. " " 206
Chickapanagie's Wife, a Havasupai, parching
Corn in a Basket. " " 210
A Wallapai Woman pounding Acorns. " " 210
Havasupai Mother and Child. " " 216
A Family Group of Havasupais. " " 216
Waluthanca's Daughter, with Esuwa, going for
Water. " " 230
Lanoman's Wife, a Havasupai. " " 230
Rock Jones, Leading Medicine Man of Havasupais. " " 256
Sinyela, with Esuwa, going for Water. " " 256
INTRODUCTORY
Wild, weird, and mystic pictures are formed in the mind by the very
name--the Painted Desert. The sound itself suggests a fabled rather
than a real land. Surely it must be akin to Atlantis or the Island
of Circe or the place where the Cyclops lived. Is it not a land of
enchantment and dreams, not a place for living men and women, Indians
though they be?
It _is_ a land of enchantment, but also of stern reality, as those who
have marched, unprepared, across its waterless wastes can testify. No
fabled land ever surpassed it in its wondrousness, yet a railway runs
directly over it, and it is not on some far-away continent, but is
close at hand; a portion, indeed, of our own United States.
In our schoolboy days we used to read of the Great American Desert. The
march of civilization has marched that "desert" out of existence. Is
the Painted Desert a fiction of early geographers, like unto the Great
American Desert, to be wiped from the map when we have more knowledge?
No! It is in actual existence as it was when first seen by the white
men, about three hundred and fifty years ago, and as it doubtless will
be for untold centuries yet to come.
Coronado and his band of daring conquistadors, preceded by Marcos de
Niza and Stephen the Negro, reaching out with gold-lustful hands, came
into the region from northern Mexico, conquered Cibola--Zuni--and from
there sent out a small band to investigate the stories told by the
Zunis of a people who lived about one hundred miles to the northwest,
whom they called A-mo-ke-vi. The Navaho Indians said the home of the
A-mo-ke-vi was a Ta-sa-ûn´--a country of isolated buttes--so the
Spaniards called the people Moki (Moqui) and their land "the province
of Tusayan," and by those names they have ever since been known.
Yet these names are not the ones by which they designate themselves and
their land. They are the Hopituh, which Stephen says means "the wise
people," and Fewkes, "the people of peace."
It was in marching to the land of the Hopituh that the Spaniards
designated the region "el pintado desierto." And a painted desert it
truly is. Elsewhere I have described some of its horrors,[1] for I have
been familiar with them, more or less, for upwards of twenty years.
I do not write of that of which I have merely heard, but "mine eyes
have seen," again and again, that which I describe. I have been almost
frozen in its piercing snow-storms; choked with sand in its whirling
sand-storms; wet through ere I could dismount from my horse in its
fierce rain-storms; terrified and temporarily blinded by the brilliancy
of its lightning-storms; and almost sunstruck by the scorching power of
the sun in its desolate confines. I have seen the sluggish waters of
the Little Colorado River rise several feet in the night and place an
impassable barrier temporarily before us. With my horses I have camped,
again and again, waterless, on its arid and inhospitable rocks and
sands, and prayed for morning, only to resume our exhausting journey in
the fiercely beating rays of the burning sun; longing for some pool of
water, no matter how dirty, how stagnant, that our parched tongues and
throats might feel the delights of swallowing something fluid. And last
year (1902), in a journey to the home of the Hopi, my friends and I saw
a part of this desert covered with the waters of a fierce rain-storm
as if it were an ocean, and the "dry wash" of the Oraibi the scene of
a flood that, for hours, equalled the rapids of the Colorado River. We
were almost engulfed in a quicksand, and a few days later covered with
a sand-storm; all these experiences, and others, in the course of a few
days.
[1] "In and Around the Grand Canyon."
Stand with me on the summit of one of the towering mountains that
guard the region and you will see such a landscape of color as exists
nowhere else in the world. It suggests the thought of God's original
palette--where He experimented in color ere He decided how to paint the
sunset, tint the sun-kissed hills at dawn, give red to the rose, green
to the leaves, yellow to the sunflowers, and the varied colors of baby
blue-eyes, violets, portulacas, poppies, and cacti; where He concluded
to distribute color throughout His world instead of making it all
sombre in grays or black.
Look! here is a vast flat of alkali, pure, dazzling white, shining
like a vivid and horrible leprosy in the noon-day sun; close by is an
area of volcanic action where a veritable "tintaro"--inkstand--has
overflowed in devastating blackness over miles and miles. There are
pits of six hundred feet depth full of black gunpowder-like substance,
gardens of hellish cauliflowers and cabbages of forbidding black lava,
and tunnels arched and square of pure blackness. Yonder is a mural
face a half thousand feet high and two hundred or more miles long. It
is nearly a hundred miles away, yet it reveals the rich glowing red of
its walls, and between it and us are large "blotches" of pinks, grays,
greens, reds, chocolates, carmines, crimsons, browns, yellows, olives,
in every conceivable shade, and all blending in a strange and grotesque
yet attractive manner, and fascinating while it awes. It is seldom one
can see a rainbow lengthened out into flatness and then petrified; yet
you can see it here. Few eyes have ever beheld a sunset painted on a
desert's sands, yet all may see it here.
It is a desert, surely, yet throughout its entire width flows a monster
river; a fiendish, evil-souled river; a thievish, murderous river; a
giant vampire, sucking the life-blood from thousands of square miles
of territory and making it all barren, desolate, desert. And this
vampire river has vampire children which emulate their mother in their
insatiable thirst. Remorselessly they suck up and carry away all the
moisture that would make the land "blossom as the rose," and thus add
misery to desolation, devastation to barrenness.
It is a desert, surely, yet planted in its dreary wastes are
verdant-clad mountains, on whose summits winter's snows fall and
accumulate, and in whose bosoms springs of life are harbored.
It is a desert, surely, yet it is fringed here and there with dense
forests, and in the very heart of its direst desolation threads of
silvery streams lined with greenish verdure seem to give the lie to the
name.
It is desert, barren, inhospitable, dangerous, yet thousands of people
make it their chosen home. Over its surface roam the Bedouins of the
United States, fearless horsemen, daring travellers, who rival in
picturesqueness, if not in evil, their compeers of the deserts by the
Nile. Down in the deep canyon water-ways of the desert-streams dwell
other peoples whose life is as strange, weird, wild, and fascinating as
that of any people of earth.
[Illustration: IN THE HEART OF THE PETRIFIED FOREST.]
This is the region and these the people I would make the American
reader more familiar with. Other books have been written on the Painted
Desert. One was published a few years ago, written by a clever American
novelist, and published by one of America's leading firms, and I
read it with mingled feelings of delight and half anger. It was so
beautifully and charmingly written that one familiar with the scenes
depicted could not fail to enjoy it, although indignant--because of the
errors that might have been avoided. It claims only to be fiction. Yet
the youth of the land reading it necessarily gain distinct impressions
of fact from its pages. These "facts" are, unfortunately, so far from
true that they mislead the reader. It would have been a comparatively
slight task for the author to have consulted government records and
thus have made his references to geography and ethnology correct.
It is needless, I hope, for me to say I have honestly endeavored to
avoid the method here criticised. The bibliography incorporated as part
of this book will enable the diligent student to consult authorities
about this fascinating region.
But now comes an important question. What are the boundaries of the
Painted Desert? I am free to confess I do not know, nor do I think any
one else does. The Spaniards never attempted to bound it, and no one
since has ever had the temerity to do so. In Ives's map of the region
he endeavored to explore, and of which he wrote so hopelessly, he
places the Painted Desert in that ill-defined way that geographers used
to follow in suggesting the location of the Great American Desert.
The _conditions_ of color and barrenness that first suggested the name
exist over a large area; you find them in the plateaus of southern
Utah and the wild wastes of southern Nevada; they exist in much of New
Mexico and southwestern Colorado. In Arizona if you sweep around north,
west, south, and east, they are there. Northward--in the cliffs and
ravines of the Grand Canyon country, in Blue Canyon, in the red mesas,
the coal deposits, and in the lava flows around the San Francisco
Mountains; westward--in the wild mountains and wilder deserts that
lead to the crossings of the Colorado River, past the craters, lava
flows, Calico Mountains, and Mohave Desert of the country adjoining the
Santa Fé Route, and the Salton Sea, mud volcanoes, purple cliffs, and
tawny sands of the Colorado Desert of the Sunset Route of the Southern
Pacific; southward--in the Red Rock country, Sunset Pass, the meteorite
beds of Canyon Diablo, the great cliffs of the Mogollon Plateau, the
Tonto Basin, the Verdi Valley, and away down, over the Hassayampa,
through the Salt River Valley, past the Superstition and other purple
and variegated mountains, into the heart of northern Mexico itself;
eastward--to the Petrified Forest, across into New Mexico to Mount
San Mateo, by the cliffs, craters, lava flows, alkali flats, gorges
and ravines of the Zuni Mountain country and as far as the Rio Grande
at Albuquerque, where the basalt is scattered about in an irregular
way, as if the molten stuff had been washed over the country from
some titanic bucket, and left to lie in great inky blots over the
bright-colored soils and clays.
To me, _all this_ is Painted Desert region, for much of it is painted
and much is desert. Indeed, if one Painted Desert were to be staked off
in any one of the above named States, ten others, equally large, could
be found in the remaining ones.
It is a wonderful region viewed from any standpoint. Scenic! It is
unrivalled for uniqueness, contrasts, variety, grandeur, desolateness,
and majesty. Geologic! The student may here find in a few months what a
lifetime elsewhere cannot reveal. Artistic! The artist will find it his
rapture and his despair. Archæologic! Ruins everywhere, cavate, cliff,
and pueblo dwellings, waiting for investigation, and, doubtless, scores
as yet undiscovered. Ethnologic! Hopi, Wallapai, Havasupai, Navaho,
Apache, and the rest; with mythologies as fascinating and complex
as those of old Greece; with histories that lose themselves in dim
legend and tradition, and that tell of feuds and wars, massacres and
conflicts, that extend over centuries.
In the first chapter I have briefly named some of the wonders and
marvels of this fascinating land, and though in barest outline, "the
half has not been told."
It will be noticed that I have not rigidly adhered to the subjects as
indicated by the heads of the chapters. I have preferred a discursive
rather than a rigid style, for I deem it will prove itself the more
interesting to the generality of my readers, and I merely call
attention to it so that my critics may know it is not done without
intent.
Of the Indians of this region I have room to write of four tribes
only, viz., the Hopi, the Navaho, the Wallapai, and the Havasupai. Of
the former much has been written in late years, owing to the interest
centred in their thrilling religious ceremony, the Snake Dance. Of the
Navaho considerable is known, but of the Wallapai and Havasupai there
is little known and less written. Indeed, of the Wallapai there is
nothing in print except the brief and cursory remarks of travellers,
and the reports of the teachers of the recently established schools
to the Indian Department. No one is better aware than myself of the
incomplete and fragmentary character of what I have written, but this
book is issued, as others that have preceded it from my pen, in accord
with my desire to place in compact form for the general reader reliable
accounts of places and peoples in the United States hitherto known only
to the explorer and scientist.
To all the writers of the United States Bureau of Ethnology and the
Smithsonian Institution, as well as those of other departments of the
Government who have written on the region, I gratefully acknowledge
many indebtednesses, especially to Powell, Fewkes, Matthews, Stephen,
Hodge, Hough, Hrdlicka, Cushing, and Shufeldt.
To those who know the persistency and conscientiousness of my labors
in my chosen field, and the pains I take both by observation and
from the works of authorities to gain accurate knowledge, and my
_over_-willingness to acknowledge by pen and voice those to whom I am
indebted, it will not be necessary to state that I have endeavored to
make this book a standard. If I have failed to give credit where it was
due, I do so now with an open heart.
For the kindly reception my work in the printed page and on the
platform has received in the past I hereby express my grateful
acknowledgments.
GEORGE WHARTON JAMES.
AUTHOR AMPHITHEATRE,
BASS CAMP,
GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA.
_THE INDIANS OF THE
Painted Desert Region_
CHAPTER I
THE PAINTED DESERT REGION
Civilization and barbarism obtrude themselves delightfully at every
turn in this Wonderland of the American Southwest, called the Painted
Desert Region.
Ancient and modern history play you many a game of hide-and-seek as you
endeavor to trace either one or the other in a study of its aboriginal
people; you look upon a ceremony performed to-day and call it modern.
In reality it is of the past, so old, so hoary with antiquity that even
to the participants it has lost its origin and much of its meaning.
History--exciting, thrilling, tragic--has been made in the Painted
Desert Region; was being made centuries before Leif Ericson landed on
the shores of Vinland, or John and Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol.
History that was ancient and hoar when the band of pilgrims from Leyden
battled with the wild waves of the Atlantic's New England shore, and
was lapsing into sleepiness before the guns of the minute-men were
fired at Lexington or Allen had fallen at Bunker Hill.
In the Painted Desert Region we find peoples strange, peculiar, and
interesting, whose mythology is more fascinating than that of ancient
Greece, and, for aught we know to the contrary, may be equally ancient;
whose ceremonies of to-day are more elaborate than those of a devout
Catholic, more complex than those of a Hindoo pantheist, more weird
than those of a howling dervish of Turkestan.
Peoples whose origin is as uncertain and mysterious as the ancients
thought the source of the Nile; whose history is unknown except in the
fantastic, though stirring and improbable stories told by the elders
as they gather the young men around them at their mystic ceremonies,
and in the traditional songs sung by their high priests during the
performance of long and exhausting worship.
Peoples whose government is as simple, pure, and perfect as that of the
patriarchs, and possibly as ancient, and yet more republican than the
most modern government now in existence. Peoples whose women build and
own the houses, and whose men weave the garments of the women, knit the
stockings of their own wear, and are as expert with needle and thread
as their ancestors were with bow and arrow, obsidian-tipped spear, or
stone battle-axe.
Here live peoples of peace and peoples of war; wanderers
and stay-at-homes; house-builders and those who scorn fixed
dwelling-places; poets whose songs, like those of blind Homer and
the early Troubadors, were never written, but enshrined only in the
hearts of the race; artists whose paints are the brilliant sands of
many-colored mountains, and whose brushes are their own deft fingers.
[Illustration: A FREAK OF EROSION IN THE PETRIFIED FOREST.]
[Illustration: JOURNEYING OVER THE PAINTED DESERT TO THE HOPI SNAKE
DANCE.]
Its modern history begins about three hundred and fifty years ago
when one portion of it was discovered by a negro slave, whose amorous
propensities lured him to his death, and the other by a priest, of whom
one writer says his reports were "so disgustful in lyes and wrapped up
in fictions that the Light was little more than Darkness."
Of its ancient history who can more than guess? To most questions it
remains as silent as the Sphinx. The riddle of the Sphinx, though, is
being solved, and so by the careful and scientific work of the Bureau
of Ethnology, the riddles of the prehistoric life of our Southwest,
slowly but surely, are being resolved.
One of the countries comprised in the Painted Desert Region is the
theme of an epic, Homerian in style if not in quality, full of wars
and rumors of wars, storming of impregnable citadels, and the recitals
of deeds as brave and heroic as those of the Greeks at Marathon or
Thermopylæ; a poem recently discovered, after having remained buried in
the tomb of oblivion for over two hundred years.
Here are peoples of stupendous religious beliefs. Peoples who can
truthfully be designated as the most religious of the world; yet
peoples as agnostic and sceptic, if not as learned, as Hume, Voltaire,
Spencer, and Ingersoll. Peoples to whom a written letter is witchcraft
and sorcery, and yet who can read the heavens, interpret the writings
of the woods, deserts, and canyons with a certainty never failing and
unerring. Peoples who twenty-five years ago stoned and hanged the
witches and wizards they sincerely thought cursed them, and who, ten
years ago hanged, and perhaps even to-day, though secretly, hang one
another on a cross as an act of virtue and religious faith, after
cruelly beating themselves and one another with scourges of deadly
cactus thorns.
Here are intelligent farmers, who, for centuries, have scientifically
irrigated their lands, and yet who cut off the ears of their burros to
keep them from stealing corn.
A land it is of witchcraft and sorcery, of horror and dread of ghosts
and goblins, of daily propitiation of Fates and Powers and Princes
of Darkness and Air at the very thought of whom withering curses and
blasting injuries are sure to come.
Here dwell peoples who dance through fierce, flaming fires, lacerate
themselves with cactus whips, run long wearisome races over the
scorching sands of the desert, and handle deadly rattlesnakes with
fearless freedom, as part of their religious worship.
Peoples who pray by machinery as the Burmese use their prayer wheels,
and who "plant" supplications as a gardener "plants" trees and shrubs.
Peoples to whom a smoking cigarette is made the means of holy
communion, the handling of poisonous reptiles a sacred and solemn act
of devotion, and the playing with dolls the opportunity for giving
religious instruction to their children.
Peoples who are pantheists, sun worshippers, and snake dancers, yet who
have churches and convents built with incredible labor and as extensive
as any modern cathedral.
Peoples whose conservatism in manners and religion surpass that of the
veriest English tories; who, for hundreds of years, have steadily and
successfully resisted all efforts to "convert" and change them, and
who to-day are as firm in their ancient faiths as ever. Peoples whom
Spanish conquistadors could not tame with matchlock, pike, and machete,
nor United States forces with Gatling gun, rifle, and bayonet.
Peoples to whom fraternal organizations and secret societies, for men
and women alike, are as ancient as the mountains they inhabit, whose
lodge rooms are more wonderful, and whose signs and passwords more
complex than those of any organization of civilized lands and modern
times.
Peoples industrious and peoples studiously lazy, honest and able in
thievery, truthful and consummate liars, cleanly and picturesquely
dirty, interesting and repulsively loathsome, charming and artistically
hideous, religious and cursedly wicked, peaceful and unceasingly
warlike, lovers of home and haters of fixed habitations.
Here are peoples who dwell upon almost inaccessible cliffs, peoples of
the clouds, and, on the other hand, peoples who dwell in canyon depths,
where stupendous walls, capable of enclosing Memphis, Thebes, Luxor,
Karnak, and all the ruins of ancient Egypt, are the boundaries of their
primitive residences.
The Painted Desert Region is a country where rattlesnakes are washed,
prayed over, caressed, carried in the mouth, and placed before and on
sacred altars in religious worship.
Where the worship of the goddess of reproduction with all its
phallic symbolism is carried on in public processionals, dances, and
ceremonials by men, women, maidens, and children without shameful
self-consciousness, yet where dire penalties, even unto mutilation and
death, are visited upon the unchaste.
Where polygamy has been as openly practised as in the days of Abraham,
and possibly from as early a time, and where to-day it is as common
to see a man who, openly, has two or more wives, as in civilized lands
it is common to see him with but one. And yet it is a land in which
polygamy is expressly forbidden by United States law, and where numbers
of arrests have been made for violation of that law.
Where religious rites are performed, so mystic and ancient that their
meaning is unknown even to the most learned of those who partake in
them.
Indeed, the Painted Desert Region, though a part of the United States
of America, is a land of peoples strange, unique, complex, diverse,
and singular as can be found in any similar area on the earth, and the
physical contour of the country is as strange and diverse as are the
peoples who inhabit it.
It is a land of gloriously impressive mountains, crowned with the snows
of blessing and bathed in a wealth of glowing colors, changing hues,
and tender tints that few other countries on earth can boast.
On its eastern outskirt is a portion of one of the largest cretaceous
monoclines in the world, and near by is a natural inkstand, half a mile
in circumference, from which, centuries ago, flowed fiery, inky lava
which has now solidified in intensest blackness over hundreds of miles
of surrounding country.
It is a land of mountain-high plateaus, edged with bluffs, cliffs, and
escarpments that delight the distant beholder with their richness of
coloring and wondrous variety of outline, and thrill with horror those
who unexpectedly stand on their brinks.
It is a land of laziness and indifferent content, where everything
is done "poco tiempo"--"in a little while"--and where "to-morrow" is
early enough for all laborious tasks, and yet a land of such tireless
energy, never-ceasing work, and arduous labor as few countries else
have ever known.
A land where people live in refinement, education, and all the luxuries
of twentieth-century civilization side by side with peoples whose
dress, modes of living, habits of eating and sleeping, styles of food
and cookery are similar to those of the subjects of Boadicea and
Caractacus.
In the Painted Desert Region the root of one dangerous-looking prickly
cactus is used for soap, and the fruit of another for food.
Here horses dig for water, and mules are stimulated by whiskey to draw
their weighty loads over torrid deserts and up mountain steeps.
It is a land of ruins, desolate and forlorn, buried and forgotten,
with histories tragic, bloody, romantic; ruins where charred timbers,
ghastly bones, and demolished walls speak of midnight attacks,
treacherous surprises, and cruel slaughters; where whole cities have
been exterminated and destroyed as if under the ancient commands to the
Hebrews: "Destroy, slay, kill, and spare not."
A desert country, and yet, in spots, marvellously fertile. Barren,
wild, desolate, forsaken it is, and yet, here and there, fertile
valleys, wooded slopes, and garden patches may be found as rich as any
on earth.
Where atmospheric colorings are so perfect and so divinely artistic in
their applications that weary and desolate deserts are made dreams of
glory and supremest beauty, and harsh rugged mountains are sublimated
into transcendent pictures of tender tints and ever-changing but always
harmonious combinations of color.
A land where rain may be seen falling in fifty showers all around,
and yet not a drop fall, _for a year or more_, on the spot where the
observer stands.
A land of sculptured images and fantastic carvings. Where water,
wind, storm, sand, frost, heat, atmosphere, and other agencies,
unguided and uncontrolled by man, have combined to make figures more
striking, more real, more picturesque, more ugly, more beautiful,
and more fantastic than those of the angels, devils, saints, and
sinners that crown and adorn the ancient Pagan shrines of the Orient
and the more modern Christian shrines of the Occident;--a veritable
Toom-pin-nu-wear-tu-weep--Land of the Standing Rocks--more gigantic,
wonderful, and attractive than can be found elsewhere in the world.
Where sand mountains, yielding alike to the fierce winds of winter
and the gentle breezes of summer, slowly travel from place to place,
irresistibly controlling fresh sites and burying all that obstructs
their path.
A land where, in summer, railway trains are often stopped by drifting
sands blown by scorching winds over almost trackless Saharas, and
where, in winter, the same trains are stopped by drifting snows blown
over the same Saharas now made Arctic in their frozen solitude.
A land where once were vast lakes in which disported ugly monsters, and
on the surface of which swam mighty fish-birds who gazed with curious
wonder upon the enormous reptiles, birds, and animals which came to
lave themselves in the cooling waves or drink of their refreshing
waters.
But now lakes, fishes, reptiles, and animals have entirely disappeared.
Where placid lakes once were lashed into fury by angry winds are now
only sand wastes and water-worn rocks where the winds howl and shriek
and rave, and mourn the loss of the waters with which they used to
sport; and the only remnants of prehistoric fishes, reptiles, and
animals are found in decaying bones or fossilized remains deep imbedded
in the strata of the unnumbered ages.
[Illustration: 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.