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Title: Finding the Worth While in the Southwest
Author: Saunders, Charles Francis
Language: English
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[Illustration]
Finding the Worth While
in the Southwest
BY
CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS
Author of “Finding the Worth While in California,”
“The Indians of the Terraced Houses,” etc.
_WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS_
“The Sun goes West,
Why should not I?”
_Old Song._
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
Robert M. McBride & Co.
Published May, 1918
TO
M. H. R.
Kinswoman most dear
This little volume is affectionately inscribed.
PREFACE
No part of the United States is so foreign of aspect as our great
Southwest. The broad, lonely plains, the deserts with their mystery and
color, the dry water courses, the long, low mountain chains seemingly
bare of vegetation, the oases of cultivation where the fruits of the
Orient flourish, the brilliant sunshine, the deliciousness of the pure,
dry air—all this suggests Syria or northern Africa or Spain. Added to
this are the remains everywhere of an old, old civilization that once
lived out its life here—it may have been when Nineveh was building or
when Thebes was young. Moreover, there is the contemporary interest of
Indian and Mexican life such as no other part of the country affords.
In this little volume the author has attempted, in addition to outlining
practical information for the traveler, to hint at this wealth of human
association that gives the crowning touch to the Southwest’s charm of
scenery. The records of Spanish explorers and missionaries, the legends
of the aborigines (whose myths and folklore have been studied and
recorded by scholars like Bandelier, Matthews, Hough, Cushing,
Stevenson, Hodge, Lummis, and others) furnish the raw material of a
great native literature. Painters long since discovered the fascination
of our Southwest; writers, as yet, have scarcely awakened to it.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Santa Fe, the Royal City of St. Francis’s Holy Faith 1
II The Upper Rio Grande, its Pueblos and Cliff Dwellings 20
III Roundabout Albuquerque 43
IV The Dead Cities of the Salines 56
V Of Acoma, City of the Marvellous Rock; and Laguna 68
VI To Zuñi, the Center of the Earth, via Gallup 82
VII El Morro, the Autograph Rock of the Conquistadores 93
VIII The Storied Land of the Navajo 102
IX The Homes of the Hopis, Little People of Peace 116
X The Petrified Forest of Arizona 130
XI Flagstaff as a Base 137
XII The Grand Cañon of the Colorado River in Arizona 150
XIII Montezuma’s Castle and Well, Which Montezuma Never Saw 162
XIV San Antonio 176
XV In the Country of the Giant Cactus 188
XVI Southern California 204
A Postscript on Climate, Ways and Means 222
Index 227
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
An Acoma Indian Dance 72
Laguna, the Mother Pueblo of Seven 73
Bead Maker, Zuñi Pueblo 82
A Street in Acoma Pueblo 83
Old Church, Acoma Pueblo 88
A Sunny Wall in Zuñi 89
Casa Blanca or White House 116
El Morro or Inscription Rock, N. M. 117
In the North Petrified Forest 135
A Corner in Santa Fe, N. M. 136
Old Governor’s Palace, Santa Fe, N. M. 162
Montezuma’s Castle 163
San José de Aguayo 184
San Xavier del Bac, Arizona 185
CHAPTER I
SANTA FE—THE ROYAL CITY OF SAINT FRANCIS’S HOLY FAITH
Someone—I think it was that picturesque historian of our Southwest, Mr.
Charles F. Lummis—has summed up New Mexico as “sun, silence and adobe;”
and of these three components the one that is apt to strike the Eastern
newcomer most forcibly is adobe. This homely gift of nature—hard as
brick in dry weather, plastic as putty and sticky as glue in wet—is the
bulwark of the New Mexican’s well-being. His crops are raised in it; he
fences in his cattle with it; he himself lives in it; for of it are
built those colorless, square, box-like houses, flat-roofed and eaveless
which, on our first arrival in New Mexico, we declared an architectural
abomination, and within a week fell eternally in love with. An adobe
house wall is anywhere from two to five feet thick, a fact that conduces
to coolness in summer, warmth in winter, and economy at all seasons.
Given possession of a bit of ground, you grub up a few square yards of
the earth, mix it with water and wheat chaff, and shovel the mixture
into a wooden mold. You then lift the mold and lo! certain big, brown
bricks upon the ground. These the fiery New Mexican sun bakes hard for
you in a couple of days—bricks that are essentially the same as those of
ancient Babylon and Egypt, and the recipe for which (received by the
Spanish probably from their Moorish conquerors) is one of Spain’s most
valued contributions to America. Old Santa Fe was built entirely of this
material, and most of latter day Santa Fe still is, though there is a
growing disposition on the part of the well-to-do to substitute burned
brick and concrete.
As a rule these adobe dwellings are of one story, and the more
pretentious are constructed partly or entirely about an inner court,
such as in Spain is called a _patio_, but in New Mexico a _plazita_,
that is, a little plaza. A cheerful sanctuary is this _plazita_, where
trees cast dappled shadows and hollyhocks and marigolds bloom along the
sunny walls. Upon it the doors and windows of the various rooms open,
and here the family life centers. By the kitchen door Trinidad prepares
her _frijoles_ and chili, while the children tease her for tidbits; upon
the grass the house rugs and _serapes_ are spread on cleaning days, in
kaleidoscopic array, and beaten within an inch of their lives; here, of
summer evenings Juan lounges and smokes and Juanita swings in the
hammock strumming a guitar, or the family gramophone plays “La
Golondrina.”
Comparisons are always invidious, but if there be among the cities of
the United States, one that is richer in picturesqueness, in genuine
romance, in varied historic, archaeologic and ethnologic interest, than
Santa Fe, it has still I think to make good its claims. The distinction
of being the oldest town in our country, as has sometimes been claimed,
is, however, not Santa Fe’s.[1] Indeed, the exact date of its founding
is still subject to some doubt, though the weight of evidence points to
1605. Nor was it even the original white settlement in New Mexico. That
honor belongs to the long since obliterated San Gabriel, the site of
which was on or near the present-day hamlet of Chamita, overlooking the
Rio Grande about 35 miles north of Santa Fe. There in 1598 the conqueror
of New Mexico, Don Juan de Oñate (a rich citizen of Zacatecas, and the
Spanish husband, by the way, of a granddaughter of Montezuma)
established his little capital, maintaining it there until the second
town was founded. To this latter place was given the name _La Villa Real
de Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís_—the Royal City of Saint Francis of
Assisi’s Holy Faith. Naturally that was too large a mouthful for daily
use, and it was long ago pared down to just Santa Fe, though Saint
Francis never lost his status as the city’s patron. In point of
antiquity, the most that can justly be claimed for it is that it is the
first permanent white settlement in the West.
The situation of Santa Fe is captivating, in the midst of a sunny,
breeze-swept plain in the lap of the Southern Rockies, at an elevation
of 7000 feet above the sea. Through the middle of the city flows the
little, tree-bordered Rio de Santa Fé, which issues a couple of miles
away from a gorge in the imposing Sierra Sangre de Cristo (the Mountains
of the Blood of Christ), whose peaks, often snow-clad, look majestically
down in the north from a height of 10,000 to 13,000 feet. The town is
reached from Lamy[2] by a branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Railway, which climbs due north for 18 miles through an uninhabitated
waste dotted with low-growing piñon, juniper and scrub. At the station a
small army of bus, hack and automobile men greet you with enthusiasm,
and to reach your hotel you have only the choice of them or your own
trotters, for street cars there are none. In Santa Fe, however, no place
is far from any other place—the population is but a scant 8500. Of these
a large percentage is of Spanish blood, and Spanish speech and Spanish
signs engage your attention on every hand.
The hub of the city is the Plaza—warm and sunny in winter, shady and
cool in summer. Seated here on a bench you soon arrive at a lazy man’s
notion of the sort of place you are in. Here the donkeys patter by laden
with firewood—dearest of Santa Fe’s street pictures; here Mexican
peddlers of apples and _dulces_, _piñones_ and shoe-strings ply their
mild trade, and Tesuque Indians, with black hair bound about with
scarlet _bandas_, pass by to the trader’s, their blankets bulging with
native pottery, or, in season, their wagons loaded with melons, grapes,
apples, and peaches. Of afternoons the newsboys loiter about crying the
papers, and you have a choice of your news in English or Spanish; and on
Sundays and holidays the band plays athletically in its little kiosk,
the crowd promenading around and around the while very much as in Old
Mexico, and strewing the ground behind it with piñon and peanut shells.
Close to the Plaza, too, cluster many of the historied spots of Santa
Fe; indeed, the Plaza itself is a chief one. On this bit of ground it is
confidently believed that Oñate must have camped in 1605—if it was
1605—when the capital was transferred from San Gabriel; and there is no
doubt whatever that here was the seething center of the famous Pueblo
revolt of 1680, when 3000 infuriated Indians cooped the entire Spanish
population of Santa Fe within the Governor’s Palace opposite, and kept
them there for a week. Then the whites made a brave sortie, caught and
hanged 50 Indians in the Plaza and escaped to Old Mexico—their exit
being celebrated shortly afterwards in this same Plaza by the Indians’
making a bonfire of all Spanish archives and church belongings they
could lay hands on. Here 13 years later came De Vargas, the re-conqueror
of New Mexico (bearing it is said the very standard under which Oñate
had marched in the original conquest), and with his soldiers knelt
before the reinstated cross. And it was in this Plaza in 1846, during
our Mexican War, that General Stephen Kearny ran up the Stars and
Stripes and took possession of the territory in the name of the United
States. It was the Plaza, too, that formed the western terminus of the
Old Santa Fe Trail—that famous highway of trade that bound New Mexico
with Anglo-Saxondom throughout the Mexican regime in the Southwest and
until the iron horse and Pullman cars superseded mules and Conestoga
wagons. At the old adobe hotel known as La Fonda, a remnant of which
still stands at this writing just across from the southeast corner of
the Plaza, travelers and teamsters, plainsmen and trappers found during
half a century that boisterous brand of cheer dear to the pioneer
soul—cheer made up quite largely of cards, _aguardiente_ and the freedom
of firearms, but gone now, let us trust, out of the world forever since
the world has lost its frontiers.
Facing the Plaza on the north is the ancient _Palacio Real_ or
Governor’s Palace—a long, one-storied adobe building occupying the
length of the block, and faced with the covered walk or portico (they
call such a _portal_ in New Mexico) which in former years was a feature
of every building of importance in Santa Fe. Within its thick walls for
nearly three centuries the governors of New Mexico resided—Spaniards,
Pueblo Indians, Spaniards again, Mexicans and finally Americans.[3] In
1909 the building was set aside as the home of the Museum of New Mexico
(since removed to a handsome edifice of its own in the New Mexico style
of architecture across the street), and of the School of American
Research.[4] Some careful restoration work was then done, necessary to
remove modern accretions and lay bare certain interesting architectural
features incorporated by the original builders, such as the handwrought
woodwork, the fireplaces, doorways, etc., so that the edifice as it
appears today is outwardly very much as it must have looked a century or
two ago. The festoons of dried Indian ears, however, which are said to
have been a rather constant adornment of the _portal_ in old times, are
now, to the relief of sensitive souls, humanely absent. Within, the
Palace is a mine of information for the curious in the history,
archaeology and ethnology of our Southwest, and a leisurely visit to it
makes a useful preliminary to one’s travels about the State. The
building is open to all without charge.
A short block from the Plaza is the Cathedral of San Francisco, whose
unfinished trunks of towers are a prominent feature in Santa Fe’s low
sky-line. You may or may not get something from a visit to it. It is a
modern structure, still incomplete, built upon and about an older church
believed to date from 1622. Beneath the altar reposes all that is mortal
of two seventeenth century Franciscan missionaries to the New Mexico
aborigines. Of one of these, Padre Gerónimo de la Llana, I cannot
forbear a word of mention. He was a true brother of Saint Francis, and
for many years ministered lovingly to the Indians of the long since
ruined pueblo of Quaraí, a place of which more later. At Quaraí he died
in 1659, and his body was interred in the old church there whose walls
still stand, one of the most striking ruins in New Mexico. To his
Indians he was no less than a saint, and when (under attacks from
Apaches, doubtless) they abandoned their pueblos about 1670, they bore
with them what remained of their dear _padre santo_ to Tajique, a pueblo
some 15 miles distant, and buried him there. But in those days Apaches
never ceased from raiding, and from Tajique, too, some years later,
those Pueblo folk were forced to flee—this time across the rugged Sierra
Manzano to Isleta on the Rio Grande. That was a journey of too great
hardship, I suppose, to admit of carrying the now crumbled padre with
them; so he was left in his unmarked tomb in a savage-harried land, to
be quite forgotten until 85 years later (in 1759) pious old Governor F.
A. Marin del Valle heard of him. A search was speedily set on foot and
after a long quest the bones of Padre Gerónimo were found, brought to
Santa Fe, and becomingly once more interred. Then, alas! the poor
brother dropped out of mind again until in 1880, when during some work
upon the new Cathedral, the discovery of an inscription set in the wall
121 years before by Governor del Valle led to the finding of the grave.
I think you will be interested to read the quaint Spanish epitaphs of
this fine old friar, and of his companion, too, Padre Asencio de Zárate,
sometime of Picurís pueblo. They may be found behind the high altar,
which hides them.
Also in the Cathedral, it is believed, rests the mortality of Don Diego
de Vargas, _el Reconquistador_, but unmarked. You will find many an echo
of him in Santa Fe, for he it was who in 1692 re-conquered New Mexico
for Spain after the Pueblo uprising of 1680 had swept the Spaniards out
of the province and for twelve years kept them out. Every year in June
Santa Fe celebrates its De Vargas Day, when a procession, bearing at its
head an image of the Virgin, marches from the Cathedral to the little
Rosario Chapel that is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary (or as Santa
Féans sometimes call her, _La Conquistadora_, the Lady Conqueror). It
occupies the spot, on the city outskirts, where according to tradition
De Vargas knelt on the eve of his second entry into the capital
(December 16, 1693), and invoking the blessing of the Virgin upon his
arms, promised her a chapel if she vouchsafed him victory on the morrow.
It is a scant half-hour’s stroll thither from the Plaza, and you will
enjoy the walk through the city’s half foreign scenes, though the
building itself is disappointing because of its handling by tasteless
renovators. Much more picturesque, though modernized with an astonishing
steeple, is the little church of Guadalupe, standing amid Lombardy
poplars on the south bank of the river. A quiet, reposeful, little
temple, this, with beautifully carved ceiling beams and a curious, if
crude, altar-piece representing the appearances of Mexico’s Heavenly
Patroness to Juan Diego.
Of the churches in Santa Fe, however, the one that is made most of by
visitors, is the square-towered adobe of San Miguel. It is a pleasant
twenty-minute walk from the Plaza (and, by all means, do walk when you
go, for the way thither is too picturesque to be whisked over in an
automobile)—through quiet, unpaved streets lined with one-storied adobe
houses and often too narrow to accommodate any but a mere thread of
sidewalk, where you bump into burros and, like as not, have utter
strangers tip their hats to you with a _buenos dias, señor_. You pass
the Bishop’s sequestered gardens and the high-walled grounds of the
Convent and Academy of the Sisters of Loretto, with glimpses through a
postern gate of old-fashioned flower beds; and further on, the touching
little cemetery of the Sisters, each simple grave marked by a cross
whereon vines and fragrant flowers lean lovingly; and so, on stepping
stones, to the south side of the little Rio de Santa Fe. Then mounting
the hill past more gardens where hollyhocks—_la barra de San José_ (St.
Joseph’s rod) the New Mexicans call them—nod at you over the walls, and
children prattle in Spanish and women sing at their work, there you are
before old San Miguel.
Your first feeling is a bit of a shock, for the renovator’s hand has
fallen heavily upon San Miguel and, frankly speaking, it is a rather
hideous old church as viewed from the street. When, however, you have
rung the sacristan’s bell and a Christian Brother from the adjoining
Catholic college has come with the keys to usher you within, you pass in
a twinkling into the twilight heart of the Seventeenth Century. Here are
blackened, old religious paintings said to have been carried by the
Conquistadores as standards of defense in battle; a wonderful old bell
inscribed with a prayer to St. Joseph and bearing an all but illegible
date that looks surprisingly like 1356, and maybe it is; a charming old
wooden cross-beam supporting the _coro_, or choir gallery, its color
mellowed by time and its surface carved with rude but beautiful flutings
and flourishes by some long-vanished hand of the wilderness; and so
on—all delightfully embellished by the naïve expositions of the kindly
Brother who acts as cicerone. And do not leave without a glimpse through
the side door of the sunny quiet garden close, that lies between the
church and the college building. As to the age of San Miguel, there has
been much misinformation given—claims of its dating from 1543 being
quite groundless. The known fact is that it was established as a chapel
for the Mexican (Tlascalan) Indians who were part of the original Santa
Fe colony. It therefore dates from some time on the hither side of 1605.
In 1680 it suffered partial destruction in the Pueblo uprising, though
its walls survived; and, after some repairs by order of De Vargas, it
was finally restored completely in 1710, by the Spanish governor of that
time, the Marquis de la Peñuela. The record of this fact inscribed in
Spanish upon the main beam of the gallery is still one of the
interesting “bits” in the church. Probably it is safe to call San Miguel
the oldest existing building for Christian worship in the United States.
If you are in a hurry you may “do” Santa Fe and its immediate environs
in a carriage or an automobile in a couple of days, and departing
secretly think it a rather overrated little old place. To get into the
atmosphere of it, however, you should drop hurry at its gates and make
up your mind to spend at least a week there, and longer if you can.
Lounge in the Plaza and watch the ebb and flow of the city life that
gathers here; drop into the Indian trading stores and get a taste for
aboriginal art. White man’s schooling has brought about of late years a
decline in the quality of Indian handicraft, but there is still a lot of
interest in these Santa Fe curio shops—Navajo and Chímayo blankets,
Pueblo pottery, Navajo silver jewelry, Apache baskets, moccasins,
bead-work, quaint tobacco pouches, Spanish and Mexican things—_serapes_,
_mantillas_, rusty daggers, old silver snuff boxes—and what not. Mount
the hill at the city’s northern edge, and sit on the ruined walls of the
old _garita_ (where the Mexican customs used to be levied upon imports
by the Santa Fe Trail). There you get a magnificent bird’s-eye view of
the city in its mountain fastness, and if the day be waning you will
have a sunset for your benediction, long to remember. Extend your
rambles sometimes to the outskirts for unadvertised sights—the little
ranches with their outdoor threshing floors of beaten earth where in
August you may see the wheat tramped out by horses, sheep or goats, and
winnowed by tossing in the breeze; _paisanas_ washing their linen on
stones by the brookside as in Italy or Spain; and the gaunt _descansos_
or crosses of rest, marking stopping places of funerals, and carving in
illiterate Spanish scrawled upon the wood, prayers for the repose of
departed souls. If you are fortunate enough to have a little Spanish,
your enjoyment will be enhanced by stopping at humble doorways for a bit
of chat with Juan Bautista the woodchopper, or Maria Rosalía the
laundress. You will be civilly welcome, if you yourself are civil, and
be handed a chair, if there be one, and will be refreshed to learn
something of the essential oneness and kindliness of the human family
whether clothed in white skin or brown. It is this pervading air of Old
Worldliness that makes the peculiar charm of Santa Fe for the leisurely
traveler—its romance and its history are not altogether hidden away in
books, but are an obvious part of its living present.
Moreover, Santa Fe is the starting point for numerous interesting
out-of-town trips. These are story for another chapter.[5]
CHAPTER II
THE UPPER RIO GRANDE, ITS PUEBLOS AND ITS CLIFF DWELLINGS
Of course you must make the trip—a half day will suffice for it—from
Santa Fe to Tesuque, a village of the Pueblo Indians 9 miles to the
north, and you should pronounce it _Te-soo´kay_. If your knowledge of
Indians has been limited to the variety seen in Wild West Shows and
historical pictures, you will be surprised at those you find at Tesuque.
This is a quaint adobe village around a spacious plaza upon which an
ancient, whitewashed Catholic church faces. The houses when of more than
one story are built terrace-like, so that the roof of the first story
forms a front yard to the second. Ladders lean against the outer walls,
by which access is gained to the upper rooms. The population of about
150 live very much like their Mexican neighbors, raising by irrigation
crops of corn, beans, peaches, melons, and alfalfa, accepting meanwhile
from the liberal hand of Nature rabbits, _piñones_ and wild plums, and
pasturing sheep and cattle on the communal pueblo lands which Spain
granted them centuries ago and which our Government confirmed to them
upon the acquisition of New Mexico. Their method of town building is not
borrowed from the whites, but is their own; and because the Spanish
Conquistadores of the sixteenth century found the region sprinkled with
such permanent villages, called _pueblos_ in Spanish, they named the
people Pueblo Indians—a term which well characterizes them in
contra-distinction to the nomadic tribes, whose villages moved as the
tribe moved.
Tesuque is a type of a score or so of pueblos scattered along a line of
some 300 miles in northern New Mexico and Arizona. Formerly the dress of
these Indians was quite distinctive, but association with the whites has
modified its quality of late years, though it still retains some of the
old features—particularly in the case of the women, who are more
disposed than the men to conservatism. Their native costume is a dark
woolen gown belted at the waist and falling a little below the knees,
and a sort of cape of colored muslin fastened about the neck and hanging
down the back. The lower part of the legs is often swathed in a buckskin
extension of the moccasins in which the feet are encased. The hair is
banged low upon the forehead and both women’s and men’s are clubbed at
the back and bound with red yarn. The native attire of the men is a
loose cotton shirt worn outside short, wide trousers. Instead of a hat a
narrow _banda_ of colored cotton or silk is bound about the hair.
Each village has its local government—and a very competent sort it is—of
a democratic nature, a governor, as well as a few other officials, being
elected annually by popular vote. Besides these, there is a permanent
council of old men who assist in the direction of affairs. Most of the
Pueblo Indians are nominal adherents to Roman Catholicism, but have by
no means lost hold of their pagan faith. On the patron saint’s day a
public fiesta is always held. After mass in the church, there are native
dances and ceremonies, accompanied by feasting continuing well into the
night. November 12, St. James’s Day, is the day celebrated by Tesuque,
and visitors are many.[6]
The Pueblos are as a class industrious, fun-loving, and friendly to
white visitors. They are naturally hospitable and quickly responsive to
any who treat them sympathetically and as fellow human beings. The
lamentable fact that white Americans have too often failed in this
respect, acting towards them as though they were animals in a zoo, is
largely responsible for tales we hear of Indian surliness and ill-will.
Pueblo women are skillful potters, and while Tesuque does not now excel
in this art, one may pick up some interesting souvenirs both in clay and
beadwork. At any rate, you will enjoy seeing these things being made in
the common living-room of the house, while the corn is being ground on
the _metates_ or mealing stones, and the mutton stew simmers on the open
hearth. A knowledge of values first obtained at reputable traders’ shops
in Santa Fe, is advisable, however, before negotiating directly with the
Indians, as they are becoming pretty well schooled in the art of
charging “all the traffic will bear.” Tesuque produces a specialty in
the shape of certain dreadful little pottery images called “rain gods,”
which must not be taken seriously as examples of sound Pueblo art.[7]
Thirty-three miles north of Santa Fe on the Denver and Rio Grande
Railway is the village of Española, where a plain but comfortable hotel
makes a convenient base for visiting several points of interest in the
upper Rio Grande Valley. A mile to the south is Santa Clara pueblo,[8]
long famous for its beautiful shining black pottery almost Etruscan in
shape. The clay naturally burns red, but a second baking with the fuel
(dried chips of cattle manure), pulverized finely and producing a dense
black smoke, gives the ware its characteristic lustrous black. Seven
miles further down the river but on the other side, is another pueblo,
San Ildefonso, a picturesque village of 125 Indians, near the base of La
Mesa Huérfana. This is a flat-topped mountain of black lava, on whose
summit in 1693, several hundred Pueblos entrenched themselves and for
eight months stubbornly resisted the attempts of the Spanish under De
Vargas to bring them to terms. That was practically the last stand of
Pueblo rebeldom, which thirteen years before had driven every Spaniard
from the land. San Ildefonso has public fiestas on January 23 and
September 6.
Six miles north of Española and close to the Rio Grande is San Juan
pueblo, with a population of about 400 Indians. Here one is in the very
cradle of the white civilization of the Southwest. At this spot in the
summer of 1598, Don Juan de Oñate—he of the Conquest—arrived with his
little army of Spaniards, his Franciscan missionaries, his colonist
families, a retinue of servants and Mexican Indians, his wagons and
cattle, to found the capital of the newly won “kingdom” later to be
called New Mexico. The courtesy of the Indians there, who temporarily
gave up their own houses to the Spaniards, was so marked that their
pueblo became known as _San Juan de los Caballeros_ (Saint John of the
Gentlemen). Oñate’s settlement—of which no vestige now remains—is
believed to have been situated just across the Rio Grande from San Juan,
about where the hamlet and railway station of Chamita now stands. San
Juan pueblo is further distinguished as the birthplace of Popé, the
Indian to whose executive genius is due the success of the Pueblo
Rebellion of 1680. A picturesque figure, that same Popé, of the timber
dramatic heroes are made of. It is said that, while meditating the
rebellion, he journeyed to the enchanted lagoon of Shípapu, the place
where in the dim past the Pueblos had emerged from the underworld and
whither they return at death. There he conferred with the spirits of his
ancestors, who endued him with power to lead his people to victory.[9]
The San Juan women make a good black pottery similar to that of Santa
Clara. On Saint John’s Day, June 24, occurs a public fiesta, with
procession and dances, attracting visitors, white and red, from far and
near.
Having got thus far up the Rio Grande, let nothing deter you from
visiting Taos (they pronounce it _Towss_). By automobile it is about 50
miles northeast of Española or you can reach it quite expeditiously by
Denver & Rio Grande train to Taos Junction and auto-connection thence
about 30 miles to Taos.[10] Situated in a fertile plain, 7000 feet above
the sea, in the heart of the Southern Rockies, Taos is one of the most
charming places in America. It is in three parts. There is the outlying
hamlet Ranchos de Taos; then the picturesque Mexican town Fernandez de
Taos, famous in recent years for a resident artist colony whose pictures
have put Taos in the world of art; and lastly, there is the pueblo of
Taos. From very early times the pueblo has played an important role in
New Mexican history. It was here the San Juaneño Popé found the readiest
response to his plans of rebellion. Later the location on the confines
of the Great Plains made it an important trading center with the more
northern Indians. The annual summer fair for _cambalache_, or traffic by
barter, held at Taos in the latter part of the eighteenth century, was a
famous event, the Plains tribes bringing skins and furs and Indian
captives to trade for horses, beads and metal implements. The commercial
opportunities combined with the fertility of the soil and an unfailing
water supply led to the founding of Fernandez de Taos by whites. In the
days of Mexican supremacy part of the traffic over the Santa Fe Trail
passed this way and a custom house was here. The ruins of a large adobe
church in the pueblo form a memento of the troublous days of 1847, when
a small rebellion participated in by Mexicans and a few Taos Indians
took place here and the American governor, Bent, was murdered. At
Fernandez de Taos, the famous frontiersman Kit Carson lived for many
years, and here his grave may still be seen.
Taos pueblo, housing an Indian population of about 500, is the most
northern in New Mexico, and perhaps the most perfect specimen existing
of Pueblo architecture. It consists of two imposing pyramidal house
clusters of 5 to 7 stories—aboriginal apartment houses—and between them
happily flows the little Rio de Taos sparkling out of the Glorieta Cañon
near whose mouth the pueblo stands. The three-mile drive or walk from
Fernandez de Taos is very lovely, with the pueblo’s noble background of
mountains before you, their purple and green flanks wonderfully mottled
and dashed in autumn with the gold of the aspen forests. The men of Taos
are a tall, athletic sort, quite different in appearance from the more
southern Pueblos. They wear the hair parted in the middle and done at
the side in two braids which hang in front of the shoulders. They are
much addicted to their blankets; and one often sees them at work with
the blankets fastened about the waist and falling to the knees like a
skirt. In warm weather they sometimes substitute a muslin sheet for the
woolen blanket, and few sights are more striking than a Taos man thus
muffled to his eyebrows in pure white.
Annually on September 30th occurs the _Fiesta de San Gerónimo de Taos_,
which is one of the most largely attended of all Pueblo functions.
Crowds of Americans, Mexicans and Indians (a sprinkling of Apaches among
Pueblos of several sorts) line the terraced pyramids and make a scene so
brilliant and strange that one wonders that it can be in America. The
evening before, near sundown, there is a beautiful Indian dance in the
plaza of the pueblo, the participants bearing branches of quivering
aspens. With the sunset light upon the orange and yellow of the foliage
as the evening shadows gather, it is an unforgettable sight. Yes, you
must by all means see Taos. There are hotel accommodations at Fernandez
de Taos.[11]
But Española serves, too, as a base for outings of quite another sort.
One of these is to the remarkable prehistoric cliff village known as the
Puyé in the Santa Clara Cañon, about 10 miles west of Española. Here at
the edge of a pine forest a vast tufa cliff rises, its face marked with
pictographs of unknown antiquity and honeycombed with dwellings of a
vanished people, probably ancestors, of some of the present-day
Pueblos.[12] These cliff chambers are quite small, and their walls bear
still the soot from prehistoric fires. Climbing by an ancient trail to
the summit of the mesa of which the cliff is a side, you come upon the
leveled ruins of what was once a magnificent, terraced community house,
built of tufa blocks and containing hundreds of rooms. Rambling from
room to room, picking up now a bit of broken pottery, now a charred
corn-cob, poking into the ashes of fireplaces where the last embers were
quenched before history in America began, you experience, I hope, a
becoming sense of your youth as a white American. And the view from this
noble tableland—a view those ancient people had every day of their
lives! One wonders had they eyes to see it—the lovely valley of the Rio
Grande, purple chain after chain of mountains on every side, the jagged
peaks of the Sangre de Cristo, the Glorietas, the Jemes, and dim on the
far horizon, the Sierra Blanca in Colorado.
Also dotting the same plateau (this region by the way, is now called
Pajarito[13] Park) are numerous other prehistoric community houses—the
Otowi (with its curious tent-like rock formations), the Tsánkawi, the
Tchrega—all of absorbing interest to the archaeologic mind, but offering
not much that seems new to the average tourist who has seen the Puyé.
One, however, known as the Tyuonyi in the cañon of the Rito de los
Frijoles[14] should not be missed. It may be reached via Buckman, a
station on the D. & R. G. 12 miles south of Española. Thence it is about
15 miles over all sorts of a road to the brink of Frijoles Cañon. A
steep foot-trail there leads you down, a thousand feet or more, into the
gorge and after a short walk you are at the comfortable ranch house of
Judge A. G. Abbott, custodian of the Bandelier National Monument, under
which name the neighboring ruins are officially designated by the United
States Government, which owns them.[15] Considered merely as scenery,
the little, secluded cañon is one of the loveliest spots in New Mexico,
with its stretches of emerald meadows, its perennial stream and its
peaceful forest of stately pines. But it is the human interest given by
the vacant houses of a forgotten race—the cavate dwellings of the pink
and white tufa cliffs and the ruined communal dwellings on the cañon
floor and on the mesa top near by—that brings most visitors. That noted
ethnologist, the late Adolf F. Bandelier, wrote a romance with the scene
laid here and at the Puyé. It is entitled “The Delightmakers,” and a
reading of it will not only lend a living interest to these places, but
yield a world of information as to the mind and customs of the Pueblo
Indians. Visitors have the School of American Archaeology at Santa Fe to
thank for the painstaking work of excavation extending over years, that
uncovered many of these ancient dwelling places of their centuries of
accumulated debris.
To return to Española. Ten miles to the eastward in the valley of the
Santa Cruz river is the quaint little church of Santuario, a sort of New
Mexican Lourdes, famous these many years for its miraculous cures. A
trip thither makes a noteworthy day’s outing. It may be done by
automobile over a road of many tribulations, but a horse and buggy are
more satisfactory and far more in keeping with the primitive country. My
own visit was achieved on foot, eased by a lift of a couple of miles
from a kindly Mexican on horseback, who set me up behind him, _en
ancas_, as they call it. It was mid-August—a season which in northern
New Mexico is as sunshiny and showery as a sublimated Eastern April. The
intense blue of the sky was blotted here and there with piled-up cloud
masses, which broke at times in streamers of rain upon the purple ranges
of the Sangre de Cristo ahead of me—and after that, descending shafts of
light. As soon as I had crossed the Rio Grande and Española was behind
me, I was in pure Mexico. The Santa Cruz Valley is an agricultural
region, but it is the agriculture of centuries ago that is in vogue
there. Wheat, for instance, is trodden out by horses, sheep or goats, on
outdoor threshing floors of beaten earth, winnowed by tossing shovelfuls
into the air, washed of its grit and dirt in the nearest _acéquia_, then
spread out in the sun to dry, and finally ground in primitive little log
mills whose rumbling stones are turned by tiny water wheels. Little New
Mexican Davids, bare of foot and dreamy-eyed, loiter along behind their
nibbling flocks in the stubble of the shorn fields or the wild herbage
of the river bottom. Peaches and melons, onions and corn, lie drying on
the roofs, and strips of meat hang “jerking” from stretched lines in the
_plazitas_ of the houses. The cross is still a dominant feature in this
land of yesterday. Now it glitters on the belfry of the family chapel
among the trees of some ranch; now it is outlined against the sky on the
crest of a hill, a _calvario_ of the Penitentes;[16] now it crowns a
heap of stones by the wayside, where a funeral has stopped to rest.
Of the villages strewn along this delightful way, some are hamlets of
half a dozen straggling little adobes drowsing under their rustling
cottonwoods. Others are more important. One particularly I
remember—Santo Niño. That means “village of the Holy Child,” and His
peace that placid morning seemed to rest upon it. The streets were
narrow shady lanes, where irrigation ditches running full made a
murmuring music, flowing now by adobe walls, now by picket fences where
hollyhocks and marigolds and morning-glories looked pleasantly out. It
was a village not of houses merely, but of comfortable old orchards,
too, and riotous gardens where corn and beans, chilis and melons locked
elbows in happy comradery. I think every one I met was Mexican—the women
in sombre black rebosos, the men more or less unkempt and
bandit-appearing in ample-crowned sombreros, yet almost without
exception offering me the courtesy of a raised hand and a _buenos dias,
señor_. Santa Cruz de la Cañada—another of these villages—deserves a
special word of mention, for next to Santa Fe it is the oldest
officially established _villa_ (a form of Spanish organized town), in
New Mexico, dating as such from 1695, though in its unincorporated state
antedating the Pueblo Rebellion. Long a place of importance, its ancient
glory paled as Santa Fe and Albuquerque grew. Today it numbers a scant
couple of hundred inhabitants, but it is interesting to the tourist for
its fine old church facing the grassy plaza of the village. The church
interior is enriched with a number of ancient pictures and carvings of
an excellence beyond one’s expectations.
Then there is Chímayo, into which you pass just before crossing the
river to Santuario. To the general public Chímayo appeals because of its
blankets and its apricots, but to me it remains a place of tender memory
because of a certain hospitable _tienda de abarrotes_ (or, as we should
say, grocery store). Entering it in the hope of finding crackers and
cheese, wherewith to make a wayside luncheon, I was given instead a
characteristic Mexican meal as exquisitely cooked as ever I had; yet it
was but a couple of corn tortillas, a bowl of pink beans done to
liquidity, and a cup of black coffee. As to the blankets of Chímayo,
they are woven in sizes from a pillow-cover to a bed-spread, of
Germantown yarn, and you find them on sale everywhere in the curio shops
of the Southwest, competing in a modest way with the Navajo product. The
weaving is a fireside industry, prosecuted in the intervals of other
work both by women and men, and the bump-bump of the primitive looms is
the characteristic melody of the place.
I had to ford the little river, shoes and stockings in hand, to reach
Santuario, and was not sure when I got there. An old _paisano_, sitting
in the shade of a wall, informed me, however, that the little cluster of
adobes on a hillside, into which I soon came from the river, was really
the place—“of great fame, señor. Here come people of all nations to be
cured—Mexicans, Americans, Apaches—from far, very far.” The adobe
church, half hidden behind some huge cottonwoods, was open—of crude
construction without and within, but very picturesque. Passing within
the wooden doors, which are curiously carved with a maze of lettering
that I found it impossible to decipher, I was in a twilight faintly
illumined by the shining of many candles set upon the floor in front of
a gaudy altar. Upon the walls hung beskirted figures of saints in
various colors and wearing tin crowns. There were, too, crude little
shrines upon which pilgrims had scrawled their names. A figure of San
Diego on horseback with a quirt on his wrist, cowboy style, was
particularly lively, I thought. In a room adjoining the altar is a hole
from which pilgrims take handfuls of earth—red adobe, apparently—the
outward instrumentality that is depended upon for the cures.
The history of this queer chapel is interesting. Long before it was
built the efficacy of that hole of earth was believed far and wide, and
the place resorted to by health seekers. Finally in 1816 a pious
_paisano_ named Bernardo Abeyta, who had prospered greatly in his
affairs, was impelled to erect this church as a testimony of gratitude
to God. Dying he bequeathed it to Doña Carmen Chaves, his daughter, who
kept for all comers the church and its pit of healing, and lived in a
modest way upon the fees which grateful pilgrims bestowed upon her.
After her death, the property descended to her daughter, who maintains
it in the same way. It is said the fame of the spot is known even in old
Mexico, whence pilgrims sometimes come.[17] The earth is utilized either
internally dissolved in water, or outwardly made into a mud wash and
rubbed on the body. The chapel is dedicated to _El Señor de
Esquipulas_—the Christ of Esquipulas—Esquipulas being a little village
of Guatemala whose great church enshrines a famous image of the Lord
believed to perform miraculous cures.
For a glimpse in small compass of the unsuspected picturesqueness of
rural New Mexico, I know of nothing better than this little jaunt from
Española to Santuario.
NOTE: Horseback tours through the Pecos and Santa Fe National Forests
are practicabilities, with Santa Fe, Española or Buckman as a base.
There is a company or two at Santa Fe that make a specialty of
outfitting parties, furnishing riding and pack animals, cooks and all
needful accessories, for a fixed sum. Trout fishing is good in many of
the mountain streams. You may arrange your own itinerary, or if you do
not know what you want, trips will be outlined to suit your particular
interests. In the latter event, a consultation with the Supervisor of
the Santa Fe National Forest, whose office is in Santa Fe, would be
helpful. For people of sound wind who like to see the world from
mountain tops, a trip over the Dalton Trail to the Pecos River and
thence to the Truchas Peaks is repaying. From that elevation of about
13,000 feet, there is a magnificent outlook over much of New Mexico
and some of Colorado and Arizona.
CHAPTER III
ROUNDABOUT ALBUQUERQUE
Albuquerque is the metropolis and trade heart of central New Mexico, and
the talk of its solid citizens runs naturally on cattle and wool, mines
and lumber, grapes and apples and the agricultural glories of the Rio
Grande valley. The average tourist gives it only the half-hour during
which the train stops there, and remembers it mainly for the noteworthy
Harvey Indian collection at the station (a liberal education, by the
way, in the handicraft of the Southwestern aborigines) and for the
snap-shots he tried to take (and was foiled in) of the picturesque
Pueblo pottery sellers on the platform.[18] In itself, indeed, the busy
little city has not a great deal that is distinctive enough to interest
tourists excepting the Spanish quarter known as Old Albuquerque, on the
outskirts—a picturesque survival of the Hispanic regime. There stands
the old church dedicated to the city’s patron saint, San Felipe. As a
base to visit certain other places, however, Albuquerque is very
convenient. For instance, there is the pueblo of Isleta, 12 miles south.
It is from Isleta that many of the pottery makers come whom you see
offering their wares on the railway platform at Albuquerque, and a
pleasant day may be put in rambling about the streets of the pueblo,
chatting and trafficking with the hospitable people, who are a very
wide-awake, independent sort of Indians. You may go thither by train; or
you may drive (a much better way), following the west bank of the Rio
Grande, and enjoying the beauty of a typical bit of rural New Mexico,
now austere and sun-scorched, now relenting in vineyards, fields of corn
and lush alfalfa, and orchards of apple and peach, sandwiched between
sleepy little Mexican villages smothered in trees and old-fashioned
flowers. Much of New Mexico is as foreign in aspect as Spain, and the
flat-roofed, eaveless ranch houses, low and rambling, with enclosed
plazitas, and high-walled corrals adjoining, into which the teams are
driven at night and the gates shut to the outer world, bring to you the
atmosphere of Don Quixote or Lazarillo de Tormes. Architecturally,
Isleta differs widely from the orthodox pueblo type, its houses being
usually of one story and extended over a liberal area, as must needs be
to shelter its thousand or so of people. They are quite up-to-date
farmers, these Isleteños, and the pueblo is as busy at harvest time as a
beehive, what with fruit drying, corn husking, and alfalfa baling.[19]
Their homes are generally neatly kept, often adorned within with
bright-colored blankets, pretty water ollas, and the whitewashed walls
hung with pictures of Virgin and saints—impressing you as homes of a
thrifty and well-doing race. Indeed these people are reputed the richest
of all the Pueblos. It is, I believe, a matter of record that in 1862,
when a detachment of the United States army was stranded penniless in
New Mexico, an Isleta Indian loaned it $18,000 cash, simply taking the
commander’s receipt as evidence. After waiting patiently for twelve
years for the government to have the politeness to return the money
without being asked for it, and hearing nothing, he and the governor of
Isleta, accompanied by the local United States Indian agent, made a trip
to Washington to see about it. Through the personal interest of
President Grant, the money was at last returned.
On August 28, St. Augustine’s Day, occurs the annual public fiesta, with
the usual open air Indian dances after mass in the church. The large
circular _estufa_, or native ceremonial chamber, entered by a ladder let
down through an opening in the roof, is a conspicuous feature of the
pueblo. You will find such places, in one form or another, in all the
Pueblo villages, and in the Cliff Dwellers’ towns. They were originally
used as the sleeping apartments of the men. Nowadays the men sleep at
home, but the _estufas_ are still resorted to by them as a sort of
club-room or lounge when religious ceremonies are not going on inside.
Despite membership in the Roman Catholic Church the average Pueblo’s
main hold on the unseen that is eternal is through his primitive pagan
faith, whose rites he still practices. Entrance to the _estufas_ is not,
as a rule, readily granted to white people, and should never be
undertaken without permission first obtained. As a matter of fact, there
is on ordinary occasions nothing to see but a dimly lighted chamber with
bare floor and walls, and a small, boxed-in fire-pit near the base of
the ladder.
To the big old adobe church of Saint Augustine in the center of the
pueblo, there attaches a queer legend sure to delight the traveler whose
interest is less in historical verities than in the fanciful flights of
the human mind. I refer to the tradition of the Rising of Padre
Padilla’s Coffin. Among the Franciscan friars who accompanied Coronado
on his famous march to what he called Quivira—the country of the Wichita
Indians in Kansas—was Padre Juan de Padilla. This intrepid servant of
God (when Coronado turned homeward), remained with two lay brothers on
the Kansas plains with the view of Christianizing those Indians. The
outcome of the matter was that he was killed by them on November 30,
1544. Now tradition has it that somehow in the heavenly ordering, the
body of the martyred padre got miraculously transferred from Kansas to a
place under the church altar at Isleta; and it is firmly believed (and
the belief is backed up by the circumstantial testimony of solid
citizens) that periodically the coffin, which is a section of a hollowed
cottonwood trunk, rises plainly to view in the church, disclosing to
whomsoever may then be present, the padre rather mummified but still in
his black whiskers. To prove it there are people who will show you bits
of his gown nipped off surreptitiously by eye-witnesses and preserved as
precious amulets.[20]
Northward from Albuquerque for 40 miles, the beautiful valley of the Rio
Grande contains much of appeal to the student of history and of Indian
life. That is the region called in the chronicle of Coronado’s
expedition, the Province of Tigüex (pronounced _tee-wesh_); and here
that doughty conquistador spent his first New Mexican winter (1540-41)
at a pueblo now vanished, in the neighborhood, it is believed, of the
picturesque town of Bernalillo[21] 17 miles north of Albuquerque. It was
a winter so marked with wanton deeds of deviltry by the soldiery towards
the peaceably disposed natives, that the whole region was soon seething
in revolt—but helpless revolt because of the guns and horses of those
profligate swashbucklers, who disgraced the Christianity they professed.
Several pueblos are still extant in that stretch. There is Sandia, a
moribund little place 10 miles from Albuquerque, and within walking
distance of Alameda Station on the railway, but hardly worth the trip.
North of Bernalillo a couple of miles is a summer pueblo, Ranchitos de
Santa Ana (the little farms of Santa Ana), occupied during the growing
season by Indians whose home pueblo, Santa Ana, is a dozen miles to the
northwest in a virtual desert overlooking the saline flats of the Jemes
River. Thither they go to dwell in winter and eat up the crops raised in
summer beside the great river. In the same direction 13 miles beyond
Santa Ana (25 from Bernalillo) is the important pueblo of the Jemes
(_Hay´-mes_) Indians, about 500 in number.[22] The village is
beautifully situated at the mouth of San Diego Cañon. Its public fiesta
is held on St. James’s Day, November 12, and is much attended by
Americans, Mexicans, Pueblos, Navajos and Apaches. The region nearby is
sprinkled with ruins of old pueblos which are the subject of
considerable literature of the antiquarian sort. A capital and reliable
popular article on the Jemes Indians by Mr. A. B. Reagan, appeared in
the April, 1917, issue of “El Palacio,” the journal of the
Archaeological Society of New Mexico. A few miles before reaching Jemes
the traveler passes the once powerful, but now small pueblo of Sia
(_See-a_), with a population of barely 100. Its decline is attributed in
part to remorseless inter-killing on suspicion of witchcraft, a sort of
superstition that the Pueblos, unlike ourselves, have not yet outgrown.
Its festival is on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady,
and is attended by many visiting Indians, especially Navajos, who give
it a special tinge of picturesqueness. From Albuquerque Jemes may be
reached directly by auto-mail stage which passes the pueblo and then
proceeds 13 miles further to Jemes Springs postoffice in San Diego
Cañon. Near this place are some medicinal springs of local repute—iron,
soda and sulphur—and a modest hotel of the country sort. The stage
leaves Albuquerque daily except Sunday, and if you do not mind a bit of
roughing it, the trip (about 50 miles to Jemes pueblo) will be an
experience to talk about.
Continuing up the Rio Grande from Bernalillo, you next come (10 miles
from Bernalillo, or 3 from Algodones Station on the Santa Fe) to the
pueblo of San Felipe at the foot of a long, black, treeless mesa on the
west bank of the river. Its fine, white Mission church, dating back some
200 years, is a prominent sight from the car windows of Santa Fe trains.
The ruins of a previous church and pueblo of the San Felipeños are
visible on the summit of the mesa, and a climb to them will reward you,
at least with a fine view of the Rio Grande valley. San Felipe’s
principal public fiesta is held May 1.
Another dozen miles up the river—but now on the east side—is the pueblo
of Santo Domingo, whose 800 Indians are about the most set-in-their-ways
of any in New Mexico. This conservatism serves, however, to make their
Green Corn Dance (held on August 4, the feast day of their patron Saint
Dominic), of especial worth, because the ceremony has been comparatively
little debased by the hybrid innovations which are spoiling many of the
native rites of the Pueblos. There are some preliminary ceremonies the
afternoon before, which it is interesting to view. The pueblo is easily
reached, as it is but a couple of miles from Domingo station on the
Santa Fe railway. The visitor is forewarned that there is a particularly
strong objection at Santo Domingo to picture-taking and cameras are
blacklisted. Even artists of the brush have been ejected from the
village. In passing, it should be stated that the dances of the Pueblos
are not jollifications as among white people, but religious
ceremonials—expressions of thanksgiving to their supernal protectors for
blessings received and prayers for favors to come, as rain and bountiful
crops. Santo Domingo is famous for its beautiful pottery—a heavy ware,
but remarkable for an almost Greek grace of form, adorned with geometric
designs in black on pink or creamy white.
Still ascending the Rio Grande, you reach (by a pleasant drive of 10
miles from Domingo Station) the pueblo of Cochití (_co-chee-teé_), where
the ethnologist Bandelier once lived for a time, and studied the race he
came to know so well. It has more the appearance of a Mexican village
than of an Indian pueblo, for the houses are generally of one story and
detached one from another. The people, too (there are about 250), seem
more or less Mexicanized, but are hospitable and good-natured. The local
tradition is that it was the ancestors of the Cochiteños who occupied
the cliff dwellings of the Rito de los Frijoles. One who is robust
enough for horseback tours may secure a guide at Cochití and ascend to
that wild and beautiful region by immemorial trails through a rugged
mountain country dotted with ruins of several former homes and shrines
of the Cochití people, who in prehistoric times seem to have been
confirmed wanderers. The principal public fiesta at this pueblo occurs
on July 14, Saint Bonaventure’s Day, and is well worth attending, though
I know of no especial features distinguishing it. Pottery is made here,
too—some of it of a queer type running to animal forms, corpulent and
impossible. Both Cochití and Santo Domingo may be readily visited in one
day, if arrangements are made in advance through the Santa Fe agent at
Domingo. They are equally easy of access from Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
CHAPTER IV
THE DEAD CITIES OF THE SALINES
Southeasterly from Albuquerque some 20 miles the Manzano Mountains lift
their piny crests and drift southward to the Gallinas. From their feet
eastward stretches the wide treeless Estancia Valley, and in the lap of
it lies a noteworthy cluster of saline ponds and lagoons, whose bitter
waters, shining in the blistering sun, are a mockery to the thirsty.
These are “the accursed lakes”[23] of Pueblo tradition—originally fresh
and abounding in fish, they say, but now lifeless and undrinkable,
cursed of the ancient gods because of the sinfulness of a witch who
dwelt there once. If you would know how this change came about, you
should read the tale called “The Accursed Lake” in Mr. Charles F.
Lummis’s delightful book “Pueblo Indian Folk Stories.” These lakes are
all heavily alkaline except one and that is saline—a source of salt from
time immemorial to the Indians of the pueblos. Coming from near and far,
they would plant their prayer plumes by its white margin and sprinkle
its waves with sacred meal in recognition of the divine largesse they
were about to receive. For the Indian tradition is that this lake was
the abode of a divinity whom they called Salt Old Woman or Salt Mother,
and the salt was her free gift to men. She is circumstantially described
as wearing white boots and a white cotton dress, and carrying in her
hand a white abalone shell, which was so soft and pliable that she could
fold it like a handkerchief.[24] It is said the salt of this lake has
found its way through barter to Parral in Old Mexico.
To the tourist the attraction in the Estancia Valley is the presence of
some quaint old plaza villages dating from the days of the Spanish
occupation, and certain imposing ruins of Franciscan Mission churches of
seventeenth century construction standing in the midst of crumbled
Pueblo towns. These are not in the open valley but in the foothills of
the Manzanos and the Gallinas, and are easily visited from Mountainair,
an American town on the “Belén Cut-off” of the Santa Fe Railway. Here is
a small hotel, and automobiles may be hired.
The most famous of the ruins is the Gran Quivira at the edge of the
Gallinas foothills, 24 miles south of Mountainair. They are the remains
of a large pueblo of low, stone houses, covering altogether about 80
acres and once housing perhaps a couple of thousand souls. There are the
ruins of several _estufas_, of irrigation works, and of two Christian
churches. The pueblo occupies the narrow crest of a ridge overlooking a
vast, lonely, cedar- and piñon-dotted plain that reaches to far-off,
dreamy mountain ranges. It is in a solitude of solitudes wrapped in the
silence of death, and as almost everywhere in the plateau region of
northern New Mexico and Arizona, one has the feeling of being alone on
the roof of the world, though the elevation here is really but 6800
feet. The most conspicuous feature of this shattered town is the larger
of the two churches whose gaunt, gray, roofless walls of flat limestone
pieces laid in mortar and rising to a height of 30 feet, are visible to
the traveler long before he reaches the place. Seen “from the northeast,
through vistas of cedars and junipers,” to quote Bandelier, “the ruins
shine in pallid light like some phantom city of the desert.” Adjoining
the church, are the ruins of a _convento_ of several small rooms and a
refectory, built about an interior courtyard. The whole has an
unfinished appearance, and Bandelier believed that work on the building
was suddenly interrupted and never resumed.
Indeed, the whole place is shrouded in mystery—its beginning and its end
are alike in the twilight. No record has been left by the old
chroniclers of any mission called Gran Quivira; but there is frequent
mention by them of Tabirá, whose location fairly corresponds to this.
That was a town of the Piro Pueblos, where an important Mission was
established about 1630 by Padre Francisco de Acevedo. It ceased to be
heard of after half a century, and it is believed that repeated raids of
the barbarous Apaches—the red terror of the peacable Pueblos—caused the
abandonment of the village. In all human probability that Tabirá is this
Gran Quivira, but how the latter name became attached to these ruins has
never been satisfactorily explained; for, as has already been stated,
Quivira was Coronado’s name for the country of the Wichitas, far away in
Kansas. The Piro people, who are believed to have inhabitated this
pueblo (and that of Abó, of which something shortly), are about as
extinct as their towns. Only an insignificant remnant, and these
speaking an alien tongue, exist today, in the Mexican State of
Chihuahua.
The hill which the Gran Quivira ruins occupy is of limestone, and
underlaid, as limestone hills often are, with hollownesses that give
back in places an audible echo to one’s footfalls. Popular fancy has
been caught by these givings-off of the underworld, and all sorts of
fables have attached themselves to this desolate place. These have
mostly to do with buried treasure. It has been thought, for instance,
that here in the caverns of this hill is really the store of gold and
jewels, the hope of which, like a will-of-the-wisp, lured Coronado on
and ever on, to disappointment and a broken heart. Another tradition
(quoted by Mr. Paul A. F. Walter, in “The Cities That Died of Fear”[25])
tells of a hidden cave in the hill where the last Piros are said to have
retreated with their belongings, including vast treasure brought from
Mexico by the Franciscan Fathers,[26] and that an earthquake sealed them
and their treasure up together. Of course, such stories have brought
hither innumerable treasure seekers, who for years have gophered the
hill industriously but have got nothing but sore muscles, arrowheads,
and broken pottery. The most picturesque of these delvers was a blind
woman, a Mrs. Clara Corbyn, who acquired homestead rights on the north
end of Gran Quivira. Lacking the wherewithal to finance excavations, she
traveled the country over from the Pacific to the Atlantic, endeavoring
to procure money backing for her scheme, and to that end even wrote a
musical romance, which she called “La Gran Quivira.” Failing, she died
not long ago in Los Angeles—of a broken heart, it is said—and the Museum
of New Mexico eventually secured her homestead interest.[27] The major
portion of these ruins belongs to the United States, forming the Gran
Quivira National Monument.
Abó, that other dead pueblo of the Piros, is about 12 miles southwest of
Mountainair, or 4 miles west of Abó station on the Santa Fe Railway.
Gran Quivira you see on its hilltop for miles before you reach it, but
of Abó your first view comes with the shock of an unexpected delight.
Your car climbs a hill through a bit of wooded wilderness, and, the
crest attained, there flashes on your sight from below, an exquisite
little sunlit valley. In the midst of it is a hillock, and on and about
this is scattered the desolated, roofless pueblo with its noble church,
ruined too, of San Gregorio de Abó. A thread of living water—the Arroyo
de Abó—cuts its way through the valley which is bounded on the west by
the lovely chain of the Manzanos. Unfortunately, the ruin of the old
church still goes on—the decay hastened, I believe, by the fact that
latter-day settlers have borne off much of its stone and timber for
their private use. As it now stands, the high, jagged walls of the
building resemble as much as anything a gigantic broken tooth, and
standing in this solitary place are picturesque to a degree. The
material is red sandstone and the edifice dates from about 1630—the
founder being the same Padre de Acevedo that is credited with
establishing Gran Quivira. He died here at Abó, and was buried in the
church on August 1, 1644. This pueblo, like Gran Quivira, is believed to
have been abandoned because of Apache raids, and was extinct before the
great rebellion of 1680.[28]
A few miles from the old pueblo, and close to the railway line there are
some low cliffs, forming one side of a gorge once called _El Cañon de la
Pintada_, or the Painted Rocks of Abó Cañon. This spot is a sort of
aboriginal picture gallery worth a visit by the curious in such matters.
The sheltered places on the cliff-face are adorned for a considerable
distance with drawings of evident antiquity in various colors—yellow,
green, red, white. They are mostly representative of human figures, one
or two apparently of the clowns who play prankish parts in many of the
present-day Pueblo ceremonies. Others are symbols that still survive in
the religious rites of the Pueblos.
Eight miles northwest of Mountainair (and a little more due north of
Abó) is Quaraí, another forsaken pueblo, the ruins of whose fine old
Mission church may be seen a mile away. My own first view of it was
dramatic enough, the red, sandstone walls 20 feet high or more, gaunt
and jagged, silhouetted sharply against a sky black with storm clouds
whence rain banners wavered downward, and athwart them now and then
forked lightnings shot and spit. Quaraí was a walled town, and some
excavation work, done recently by the Santa Fe archaeologists, has
brought to light among other things the remains of a round community
building resembling the Tyuonyi in the Cañon Rito de los Frijoles.[29]
Close at hand is a cottonwood grove refreshed by an abundant spring, a
favorite picnic ground for the country folk roundabout. Other ruins in
the vicinity and signs of ancient fields here and there indicate that
Quaraí was a place of importance in its day, and doubtless for a long
time before the Spanish occupation. Its church is believed to have been
built about 1628 and was dedicated to La Inmaculada Concepcion. This was
the Mission of that Padre de la Llana whose remains, after much travel,
are now at rest beneath the altar in the Cathedral at Santa Fe.
About 7 miles northward from Quaraí, nestling at the foot of Manzano
Peak,[30] is an excellent example of the old-fashioned plaza village,
called Manzano, which is Spanish for apple tree. The reason for the name
is the presence there of a couple of ancient apple orchards, which are
believed to date back to the time of the Franciscan Missions, and
doubtless were set out by the Fathers of Quaraí, some 250 years ago. The
village is of the typical adobe architecture of New Mexico, and though
not so old as it looks, having been settled about 1825, it is very
foreign of aspect. With its plaza, its old-fashioned flowers in the
gardens, its houses massed one above another on the side of a hill that
is topped by a great wooden cross, its murmurous _acéquia_, and its fine
old Spanish _torreon_ or tower of defense, Manzano holds features of
picturesqueness enough to be worth a trip in itself. A unique feature of
the place is the Manzano Lake which occupies a depression in the midst
of the village—a charming sheet of water, beautiful and fragrant in
season with water lilies. The source of the Lake is a magnificent spring
hardby. To reach it, one climbs the hillside a quarter-mile or so, and
then descends into a shaded hollow, where the cool water gushes up into
a colossal bowl, and brimming over quickly sinks into the ground to
re-appear below and form the village lake. The spring is locally known
as _El Ojo del Gigante_—the Giant’s Eye—and is famed throughout the
State as a very marvel among springs.
If one have time and inclination, the Estancia Valley, its lakes and
ruins and Mexican villages may be made the objective of a trip by
automobile from Santa Fe or Albuquerque. The roads in good weather are
fair, as unimproved roads go, and in the mountain part pass through a
wooded region of much loveliness—sunny park-like forests of pine and
oak, with numerous rivulets and charming wild gardens. From Albuquerque
to Mountainair by this route is about 75 miles.
CHAPTER V
OF ACOMA, CITY OF THE MARVELLOUS ROCK, AND LAGUNA
The oldest occupied town in the United States, and in point of situation
perhaps the most poetic, is Acoma (_ah´co-ma_), occupying the flat
summit of a huge rock mass whose perpendicular sides rise 350 feet out
of a solitary New Mexican plain.[31] It is situated 15 miles southwest
of the Santa Fe Railway station of Laguna, where modest accommodations
are provided for travelers who stop over. The inhabitants of Acoma,
numbering about 700, are Pueblo Indians, whose ancestors founded this
rockborne town before the white history of the Southwest began. Coronado
found it here in 1540. _El Peñol Maravilloso_—the Rock Marvellous—the
old chroniclers called it. “A city the strangest and strongest,” says
Padre Benavides, writing of it in 1630, “that there can be in the
world.”
They will take you from Laguna to Acoma in an automobile over a road,
little better than a trail, whose traversability depends more or less on
weather conditions not only that day, but the day before.[32] It winds
through a characteristic bit of central New Mexico landscape, breezy,
sunlit and long-vistaed, treeless save for scattering piñon and juniper.
Wild flowers bespangle the ground in season; and mountains—red, purple,
amethystine, weather-worn into a hundred fantastic shapes—rise to view
on every hand. In July and August the afternoon sky customarily becomes
massed with cloud clusters, and local showers descend in long, wavering
bands of darkness—here one, there another. Traveling yourself in
sunshine beneath an island of clear turquoise in such a stormy sky, you
may count at one time eight or ten of these picturesque streamers of
rain on the horizon circle. Jagged lightnings play in one quarter of the
heavens while broken rainbows illumine others. Nowhere else in our
country is the sky so very much alive as in New Mexico and Arizona in
summer. Nowhere else, I think, as in this land of fantastic rock forms,
of deep blue skies, and of wide, golden, sunlit plains, do you feel so
much like an enchanted traveler in a Maxfield Parrish picture.
Though the cliffs of Acoma are visible for several miles before you
reach the Rock, you are almost at its base before you distinguish any
sign of the village—the color of its terraced houses being much the same
as that of the mesa upon which they are set. The soft rocky faces have
been cut into grotesque shapes by the sand of the plain which the winds
of ages have been picking up and hurling against them. There are strange
helmeted columns, slender minarets and spires that some day perhaps a
tempest will snap in two, dark, cool caverns which your fancy pictures
as dens of those ogreish divinities you have read of Indians’ believing
in.
Your first adventure at Acoma—and it is a joyous one—is climbing the
Rock to the village on top. There are several trails. One is broad and
easy, whereby the Pueblo flocks come up from the plains to be folded for
the night, and men ahorseback travel. Shorter is the one your Indian
guide will take you, by a gradual sandy ascent, to the base of the
cliff. There you are face to face with a crevice up which you ascend by
an all but perpendicular aboriginal stairway of stone blocks and
boulders piled upward in the crack. Handholes cut in the rock wall
support you over ticklish places, until finally you clamber out upon the
flat summit. In Coronado’s time you would have been confronted there by
a wall of loose stones which the Acomas had built to roll down on the
heads of the unwelcome. Today, instead, the visitor is apt to be greeted
by an official of the pueblo exacting a head-tax of a dollar for the
privilege of seeing the town, and picture-taking extra!
I think this precipitous trail is the one known as _El Camino del Padre_
(the Father’s Way), which is associated with a pretty bit of history.
The first permanent Christian missionary at Acoma was the Franciscan
Juan Ramirez. Now the Acomas had never been friendly to the Spaniards,
and it was only after a three days’ hard battle in 1599, resulting in
the capture and burning of the town by the Spaniards, that the Indians
accepted vassalage to that inexplicable king beyond the sea.[33]
Naturally, no friendly feeling was engendered by this episode; so when
this Padre Ramirez, years afterward, was seen approaching the Rock one
day—it was in 1629—quite alone and unarmed save with cross and breviary
(having walked all the way from Santa Fe, a matter of 175 miles) the
Acomas decided to make short work of him. The unsuspecting father
started briskly up the rocky stairway, and when he came within easy
range, the watching Indians shot their arrows at him. Then a remarkable
thing happened. A little girl, one of a group looking over the edge of
the precipice, lost her balance and fell out of sight apparently to her
death. A few minutes later, the undaunted padre whom the shelter of the
cliff had saved from the arrows, appeared at the head of the trail
holding in his arms the little child smiling and quite unharmed. Unseen
by the Indians, she had lit on a shelving bit of rock from which the
priest had tenderly lifted her. So obvious a miracle completely changed
the Indians’ feelings towards the long-gowned stranger, and he remained
for many years, teaching his dusky wards Spanish and so much of
Christian doctrine as they would assimilate. It was this Fray Juan
Ramirez, it is said, who had built the animal trail which has been
mentioned.
[Illustration]
AN ACOMA INDIAN DANCE
The dances of the Pueblo Indians are not social diversions but
serious religious ceremonies.
[Illustration]
LAGUNA, THE MOTHER PUEBLO OF SEVEN
This pueblo, languishing while neighboring Acoma flourished,
borrowed the latter’s picture of St. Joseph to change her fortune,
prospered accordingly, and then refused to return the picture, thus
precipitating a lawsuit unique in our annals.
Most visitors spend a couple of hours at Acoma, and return the same day
to the railroad. This, at a pinch, suffices for a ramble about the
streets, and for looking into doorways for glimpses of the primitive
family life, chaffering with the women for the pretty pottery for which
Acoma is famed,[34] and for a visit to the natural rock cisterns whence
girls are continually coming with dripping ollas balanced on their
heads. And of course, there is the old adobe church with its balconied
_convento_, to be seen. It dates from about 1700. As the Rock was bare
of building material, this had all to be brought up from below on the
backs of Indian neophytes—the timbers from the mountains 20 miles away.
The graveyard is a remarkable piece of work founded on the sloping rock
by building retaining walls of stone (40 feet high, at the outer end)
and filling in with sandy earth lugged patiently up from the plain.
A conspicuous feature in the view from the Rock of Acoma is a solitary
mesa or rock-table, 3 miles to the northward, which the Acomas call
Katzímo, and the Spaniards named _La Mesa Encantada_ (the Enchanted
Mesa). Its flat top is 430 perpendicular feet above the plain, and can
now be reached only with scaling ladders and ropes. Formerly there was a
single trail up the side. The Indian tradition is that long, long ago,
before the coming of the white invaders, the village of the Acomas
occupied the summit. One day, while all the population except a few old
people were working in the fields below, a tempest completely swept away
the upper part of the trail; so that the inhabitants could never again
reach their homes. They began life over again by building a new pueblo
on the Rock of Acoma.[35]
The annual public fiesta of Acoma is held September 2, the day of San
Estéban Rey—that is, of St. Stephen the King, Acoma’s patron saint and
Hungary’s. It is attended by a picturesque crowd of Mexicans, Navajos
and Pueblos, besides a sprinkling of Americans. Among the visitors are
thrifty Isleteños, their farm wagons loaded with melons, grapes and
peaches for sale and barter. As on all such occasions in the Rio Grande
pueblos, there is first a great clanging of the church bells to get the
people to mass; after which, the saint’s statue beneath a canopy is
brought out from the church, and all the people march in procession
behind it, the cross, and the padre, while to the accompaniment of a
solemn chant the firing of guns and a wild clamor of discordant church
bells, the image is carried to a booth of green boughs in the plaza,
there to rest and receive the homage of the people. Throughout the day
baskets heaped with fruit, loaves of bread, vegetables and candles are
laid at the saint’s feet, and at intervals the edibles are handed out to
the crowd, or tossed in the air to be scrambled for amid much hilarity.
In the afternoon there is an Indian dance, participated in by men and
women in colorful costumes, the women’s heads adorned with _tablitas_
(curious, painted boards set upright and cut into shapes symbolic of
clouds and what not). A choir of men with a drum made of a section of
cottonwood log, supplies the music, chanting in unison the ancient songs
of thanksgiving efficacious long before St. Stephen was ever heard of in
Acoma, and not to be lightly abandoned. At sundown the saint is returned
to his place in the church, and the evening is given over to such
jollity as personal fancy dictates, usually including a _baile_, or
dance, by the Mexicans and such white folk as stay, and it must be
confessed, too often a surreptitious bout with John Barleycorn smuggled
in by bootleggers.
There are no accommodations for visitors at Acoma, but if you have a
taste for mild adventure you will enjoy—in retrospect anyhow—lodging a
night or two with some family in the village, if you have brought your
own provisions. This gives you a leisurely opportunity to watch the
people at their daily tasks, and to enjoy the exquisite outlook at
evening and early morning from the Rock. A night on an Acoma housetop
beneath the brilliant stars is like being transported to Syria. Take it
as a rule that if you desire to learn anything worth while of Indian
life, you must abandon hurry; and the more you pump an Indian, the less
he will tell you. The best things in the Southwest come to the waiting
traveler, not to the hustler. As to the language, in every pueblo there
is someone who talks English enough to act as interpreter, but if you
know a little Spanish, you may do without any intermediary in the Rio
Grande villages.
The natural pendant to a visit to Acoma is one to Laguna pueblo, 2 miles
from the station of the same name.[36] Like Acoma, it is built upon a
rock, but Laguna’s is merely a low outcropping little above the level of
the ground. The pueblo is full of picturesque bits, and the fall and
rise of the streets continually give you skyey silhouettes, the delight
of artists who like liberal foregrounds. The mature coloring of the
houses in time-mellowed, pearly tones, coupled with the fact that the
old trail leading from the outskirts of the pueblo to the spring is worn
deep in the rock floor by the wear of generations of moccasined feet,
gives one the impression that Laguna is of great antiquity.
Nevertheless, it is not, having been founded about 1697. In 1699 it
received its name San José de la Laguna—Saint Joseph of the Lake—the
appropriateness of which is not now apparent as there is no lake there.
In those days, however, there was a lagoon nearby, due largely to the
damming of the little River San José by beavers. English is very
generally spoken in this pueblo.
Some 60 years ago Laguna was the defendant in a curious lawsuit brought
against it by Acoma. Fray Juan Ramirez—he of the _Camino del Padre_—had
put Acoma under the patronage of Saint Joseph, spouse of Our Lady and
patron of the Church Universal, and in the Acoma church the saint’s
picture hung for many years, a source of local blessing as the Acomas
firmly believed. Now while Acoma prospered Laguna had many
misfortunes—crop failures, sickness and so on; and with a view to
bettering matters Laguna asked Acoma for the loan of Saint Joseph. This
request was granted with the understanding that the loan should be for
one month only. But alas, recreant Laguna, once in possession, refused
to give back the picture, which was proving as “good medicine” there as
had been the case at Acoma. At last the padre was called on to settle
the dispute and he suggested that lots be drawn for it. This was done
and the picture fell to Acoma. The Lagunas proved poor losers, however,
and made off with the painting by force—which enraged the Acomas to the
fighting point, and war was only averted by the padre’s persuading them
to do what a Pueblo Indian is very loth to do, submit the case to the
white man’s courts. Lawyers were engaged by both pueblos, and after a
hot wrangle involving an appeal to the Supreme Court of New Mexico, the
picture was awarded to Acoma. Evidently the saint himself approved the
judgment, for tradition has it that when the Acoma delegation appointed
to fetch the picture back were half way to Laguna, their astonished eyes
were greeted by the sight of it reposing under a mesquite bush.
Evidently, upon receipt of the news, it had set out of its own accord
for home!
In proof of which the traveler today may see the painting in the old
church at Acoma.[37]
Laguna’s principal public fiesta is held annually on September 18, and
adds to the usual ceremonies of the saint’s day at a pueblo the features
of a country fair, for the Lagunas are notable agriculturists. The
Mission church interior at Laguna, by the way, possesses features of
interest in the way of Indian decoration and ancient Spanish paintings,
particularly those of the altar done on stretched hide. Visitors may be
accommodated in Indian houses, if they court that experience, or at the
residence of a Protestant missionary near by. The National Old Trails
transcontinental highway passes the pueblo.
CHAPTER VI
TO ZUÑI, THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, VIA GALLUP
Gallup, New Mexico, has never made much of a stir as a tourist center,
but like many a spot of modest pretensions, it is deserving beyond its
gettings. As an example of the “city beautiful” it is not, in my
judgment, a success; but as a base and a fitting-out point for some of
the most interesting parts of the Southwest, it is to be heartily
commended.[38] Particularly is this so now that the motor car has so
largely supplanted the horse-drawn vehicle for excursions afield. There
are comfortable hotel accommodations and there are Harvey meals
obtainable.
[Illustration]
BEAD MAKER, ZUÑI PUEBLO
Necklaces of flat, round beads made from sea shells form a common
adornment of Pueblo Indians.
[Illustration]
A STREET IN ACOMA PUEBLO
The ladders afford means of access to the upper stories.
From Gallup (which is on one of the main automobile routes followed by
transcontinental motorists) good trips radiate in many directions—85
miles to Cañon de Chelly, for instance, and its cliff dwellings amidst
surpassing scenery; 75 miles to the Pueblo Bonito ruins in Chaco Cañon;
125 miles to the Hopi country; 42 miles to Zuñi pueblo; 75 miles to
Inscription Rock of the Conquistadores. The great Navajo reservation
with its picturesque aboriginal life reaches almost to Gallup’s back
door, and even the Mesa Verde National Park,[39] can be done from Gallup
in 4 or 5 days for the round trip, if the weather conditions are right.
This chapter has to do with the famous Indian pueblo of Zuñi, which lies
to the south, about 2½ hours by motor car. The road is all sorts from a
motorist’s standpoint; so be your own best friend and take it
good-naturedly, for fussing will not mend it. In a few minutes you are
beyond sight of houses and railroads, and in a twinkling Time’s clock
has whirled back a couple of centuries. You pass, perhaps, a Navajo
woman astride her pony, a sheepskin or two tied to the saddle, on her
way to the trader’s for coffee and tobacco; and then a Mexican teamster
crouching over a bit of camp-fire where his chili and beans are stewing,
his wagon piled high with wool sacks drawn up by the roadside. Now a
solitary adobe ranch house, or a lone trader’s log hut is seen in a
wilderness of sagey plain; and now a flock of sheep drift into the road
out of the piñon- and cedar-scrub, a couple of bright-eyed Navajo
children shepherding in their wake. By and by you pass another sort of
Indian on horseback, a slightly built man with long jet-black hair
lifted by the breeze, a red _banda_ encircling it—he is a Zuñi. And then
topping a low hill, you are greeted by the distant sight of a long
flat-topped mesa, creamy pink against a blue sky. It is Towa-yálleni,
Zuñi’s Mountain of the Sacred Corn. A turn in the road, and the great
yellow plain of Zuñi spreads out before you, the Zuñi River threading
its midst, and on its bank the old pueblo humps itself like a huge
anthill, hardly distinguishable in color from the plain itself.
Zuñi (with a population of some 1600) is historically perhaps the most
interesting of all the Pueblo towns, for it is the present-day
representative of those Seven Cities of Cíbola, the fable of whose
wealth led to the discovery of New Mexico in the sixteenth century.
There really were seven Zuñi villages in Coronado’s time, all of which
have long since disappeared, though sites of at least five are known.
The present Zuñi pueblo seems to have been built about the year 1700,
replacing that one of the ancient seven known as Hálona. This occupied
the opposite or south bank of the river in Coronado’s time—a spot now
partially covered by the buildings of a white trader.
If you are going to hold your car and return to Gallup the same day,
there will probably be 3 or 4 hours available for a stroll about the
pueblo. The houses, of a characteristic reddish tone, rise from
one-storied structures on the outskirts to 5 stories at the center of
the town, and you will enjoy mounting by ladders and stepping stones to
that uppermost height for the lovely view over the plain to the
mountains that hem in the Zuñi valley. The narrow streets without
sidewalks open out now and then into small plazas, and some communicate
with one another by tunnels. Beehive ovens squat upon the roofs in
dome-like fashion and contribute a suggestion of the Orient—of Cairo or
Syria. Dogs, turkeys, pigs and burros have equal right with humanity in
the cramped thoroughfares, and if one is of a cleanly habit, one needs
to watch one’s steps. But dirt and picturesqueness were ever comrades,
and Zuñi is truly picturesque. From the open door issues the hum of the
busy mealing stones, and the fragrance of the crushed corn; perhaps,
too, to your ravished ears, the high-keyed melody of grinding songs
shrilled by the women as they work.
Look in, and if your manner is respectful and the girls not over shy,
you will be allowed the enjoyment of a charming picture of kneeling,
swaying bodies and of down-turned faces veiled in falling hair. Ollas of
native ware stand about with water; parti-colored blankets of Navajo or
Zuñi weave hanging from wall or ceiling give a touch of brightness in
the dim light of the room; in the triangular corner fireplace dinner
simmers within a bowl of native pottery set upon the coals. If fortune
favors you there may be a potter at her moulding, or, in the street,
jars being fired or bread being put to bake in the adobe ovens; or in
some plaza a ceremonial dance in costume may be in progress. Zuñi is
still comfortably pagan—the ancient Catholic church is a ruin and the
modern Protestant mission is by no means overworked—and throughout the
year the red gods of Zuñi have homage paid them in many a ceremony rich
in symbolism and pure beauty.[40]
On the outskirts of the pueblo in August, one may have a sight of wheat
thrashing on the open-air thrashing floors, the grain being trodden out
in oriental fashion by horses, sheep or goats. Or there may be a
straight-away horse race over the plain with a picturesque crowd looking
on; or a _gallo_ race, the part of the rooster (_gallo_) humanely taken
in these latter days by a sack buried to the neck in the sand. A quieter
feature of interest is the quaint little vegetable gardens on a slope by
the river—each tiny garden enclosed with a thin adobe wall. These are
tended by the women who daily bring water in ollas and pails to irrigate
the plants.
[Illustration]
OLD CHURCH, ACOMA PUEBLO
Dating from about 1700. Tradition has it that it was 40 years in
building. All material was carried up on Indians’ backs from the
plain 350 feet below, by an almost precipitous trail.
[Illustration]
A SUNNY WALL IN ZUÑI
The men of Zuñi are famous knitters. This one is making his wife a
pair of leggings.
A short walk from the pueblo brings you to Hepatina (_hay´-pa-tee-na_) a
stone shrine erected on the plain, which in the Zuñi conception, marks
the center of the earth; for the unreconstructed Zuñi believes naturally
enough, just as your and my ancestors did a few centuries ago, that the
earth is flat. Hither in the days of long ago, a guardian divinity of
the Zuñis brought them as to the safest place in the world—the farthest
from the edge—preceding them in the form of a water strider. The
double-barred cross, which you will see sometimes on Zuñi pottery, or
fashioned in silver, is the symbol of that divine guide. There has been,
by the way, some good pottery made at Zuñi, and the visitor interested
in that art may still enjoy the adventure of a house-to-house ceramic
hunt with chances of a pleasurable outcome.
The accommodations for visitors in the pueblo are very limited. Perhaps
one of the couple of white resident traders or the school teacher may be
complaisant enough to take you in; and there are certain Indian houses
where lodging can surely be had. If you are not of a meticulous sort, I
would recommend a stop-over long enough at least to visit the mesa
Towa-yálleni, which Cushing has put into literature as Thunder Mountain.
It looks near the pueblo, but is really 4 miles distant. On its summit
centuries ago there was a pueblo of the Zuñis, the broken down walls of
which, overrun with cactus and brush, are still quite evident. Curious
pictographs of the ancients may be traced on many a rock; and if one
knows where to look, there are pagan shrines where prayer plumes are yet
offered to the Divine Ones. Among such are those of the Twin War Gods,
whose home is believed to have been on Towa-yálleni—“little fellows that
never give up.” I was once informed by a Zuñi, “gone away now may be
gone up, may be gone down; _quien sabe_?”[41] It was on this mountain
the Zuñis found a refuge after their losing fight with Coronado in 1540;
and again in 1632 they retreated hither after killing their missionary,
Padre Letrado, of whom we shall hear again at Inscription Rock in the
next chapter. And here they were in 1692 when De Vargas forced their
surrender in the re-conquest. Tradition has it, too, that here long,
long ago, the people fled for safety when an offended deity flooded them
out of their villages in the plain; and the water still rising, a
desperate sacrifice was called for. A boy and a girl were tossed from
the summit into the angry flood. In a twinkling, the children were
transformed into pinnacles of rock and the waters sank appeased. You can
see these spires of stone today from Zuñi, and old people will tell you
that the one with a double point is the boy. A peculiar virtue resides
in that petrified humanity it seems. If a childless couple resort to the
base of the pinnacles and there plant prayer plumes, there will be
granted to them the children of their desire.
There are trails, steep and rough, up Towa-yálleni’s sides, and if you
can make the trip with an intelligent and communicative old Zuñi (most
of the young ones seem to know or care little about the ancient things),
you will have a remarkable outing. An hour or two spent on that lonely
breeze-swept, sun-kissed mesa-top, with the ruined town, its broken
shrines, its historic and legendary memories, will induct you, as no
amount of reading will, into the atmosphere of the Southwest’s romantic
past. There used to be—and for all I know still is—a trail that a rider
on horseback can follow, at the northeastern side of the mesa. The
ancient peach orchard through which it wound owes its existence to seed
brought to Zuñi by the Spaniards.
NOTE: Five miles northeast of Zuñi, is Black Rock, where travelers
with an interest in Government education of the Indians may see a
Reservation School in operation. Within a radius of 15 or 20 miles of
the main pueblo are 3 farming villages occupied in summer by Zuñis to
be near certain tracts of tillable land. One of these, Ojo Caliente,
15 miles southwest of Zuñi, is close to the site of ancient
Háwikuh—the first Pueblo town seen by white men. Upon it in 1539,
intrepid Fray Marcos de Niza looked down from a nearby height, and
then, warned by the murder of his avant-courier, the negro Estévanico,
beat a prudent retreat to Mexico. Coronado captured the place in the
following year, and thence made his first report of the famous 7
cities to the viceroy in Mexico. It is the scene of one of the most
charming of Cushing’s Zuñi folk tales, “The Foster Child of the Deer.”
Extensive excavations have recently been made there by Government
ethnologists.
CHAPTER VII
EL MORRO, THE AUTOGRAPH ROCK OF THE CONQUISTADORES
Thirty-five miles eastward from Zuñi (2 hours by automobile, if the
roads are dry) is a huge rock mass of pale pink sandstone whose sides
rise sheer a couple of hundred feet against a turquoise sky. It stands
in the midst of a lonely plain whose wild grasses are nibbled by the
passing flocks of wandering Navajos, and so far as I know, there is no
nearer human habitation than the little Mormon settlement of Ramah,
through which you pass to reach the rock. This cliff has a story to tell
of such unique interest that the United States Government has acquired
the mesa of which it is a spur for a National Monument. It is known as
Inscription Rock, or El Morro (the latter a not uncommon
Spanish-American designation for a bold promontory), and was a landmark
as early as the sixteenth century for the Spanish expeditions bound
between Santa Fe, Acoma and Zuñi. Water, feed, and wood were here
available, as they are today, making the foot of the high cliff a good
camping place, and here as a matter of fact during the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, many a Spanish military party did
camp, and having rested themselves and their cattle, went on refreshed
to do the errands of their King and Church.
And hither one day in 1849, just after New Mexico had become part of the
United States, came Lieut. J. H. Simpson, U. S. A., with some troopers
on a military reconnaissance, and discovered that the base of the cliff
was a veritable album of those old Conquistadores; bearing not only the
names of the Spanish explorers but frequently an accompaniment of date
and comment that form important contributory evidence touching the early
history of the Southwest. Simpson made copies of a number of the
inscriptions, and these were published with translations (not always
accurate) in his report to the Secretary of War.[42] Most of those
recordings carved in the soft rock with sword or dagger point are still
fresh and legible, so little have centuries of dry New Mexico weather
worn the clear-cut lettering. If you go to see them, you will be a
dry-as-dust indeed if you do not feel an odd sort of thrill as you put
your finger tips upon the chiseled autographs of the men who won for
Spain an empire and held it dauntlessly. For most of these records are
not idle scribblings of the witless, but careful work by people with a
purpose, whose names are mentioned in the documents of the time. Here
are the names, for instance, of Oñate, the conqueror, and of De Vargas,
the re-conqueror, the very flower of the warrior brotherhood. The Rock
is a monument such as has no duplicate in the country; and some day when
our historians have got the Southwest in proper perspective, and waked
up to a realization of the heroism and romance that went into the making
of it, El Morro will perhaps be really protected (if its priceless
inscriptions survive so long) and not left as it is now to vandal
tourists to hack and carve their silly names upon.
It takes knowledge of old Spanish abbreviations to get at the sense of
many of the records, but even the casual visitor cannot but be struck by
the artistry that characterizes many of the petrographs. One who has
Spanish enough to give zest to the quest could easily spend a couple of
days, camped at this fascinating spot, spelling out the quaint old
notations, peopling again in fancy this ancient camp-ground with the
warriors of long ago in helmet and cuirass, their horses housed in
leather; and ever with them the Franciscan soldiers of the Cross in gray
gown and cord with dangling crucifix. Then there is the enjoyment of the
place itself—the sunny solitude, and the glorious, extended views, the
long blue line of the Zuñi Mountains, the pale spires of La Puerta de
los Gigantes (the Giants’ Gate). Then, if you like, is the climb to the
mesa’s summit for yet wider views, and a sight of the ruined old pueblo
there, whereof history has naught to tell—only tradition, which says
that it was once a Zuñian town.
There is some doubt as to the earliest inscription on the Rock. One
questionable writing, unsigned, appears to be 1580. Next in point of
antiquity is the undoubted record of Oñate, cut across an earlier Indian
petrograph, and reads _literatim_: “Paso por aqi el adelantado don jua
de oñate del descubrimiento de la mar del sur a 16 del abril del 1606.”
(That is: Passed by here the provincial chief Don Juan de Oñate from the
discovery of the South Sea on 16th of April, 1606.) The discovery he
records as of the South Sea (i.e., Pacific Ocean) was really of the Gulf
of California, for Oñate doubtless believed as most of the world did in
his day that California was an island. Oddly enough, though, he made a
mistake in the date, which documentary evidence proves to have been 1605
not 1606.
The inscription of De Vargas, the reconqueror, following the Pueblo
rebellion of 1680, reads: “Aqui estaba el Genl Dn. Do de Vargas quien
conquisto a nuestra santa fe y la real corona todo el nuevo Mexico a su
costa año de 1692.” (Here was the General Don Diego de Vargas who
conquered to our holy faith and the royal crown all New Mexico, at his
own expense, year of 1692.)
Records of especial interest, too, are two of 1629, telling of the
passing by of Governor Silva Nieto. One is in rhymed verse[43] and
refers to Nieto as the “bearer of the Faith to Zuñi;” that is, he had
acted as escort of the first Christian missionaries to pagan Zuñi. A
tragic sequel to that inscription is a short one that is so abbreviated
that scholars have had a hard tussle with it. The puzzle has been
solved, however. You will know this petroglyph by the signature Lujan, a
soldier, and the date 1632; and it reads, Englished: “They passed on 23
March 1632 to the avenging of Padre Letrado’s death.” Zuñi did not take
kindly to its missionaries and killed them periodically. This Padre
Letrado was one of the martyrs—shot to death as he preached, holding out
his crucifix to his murderers.[44]
In delicate, almost feminine, characters is a modest inscription that
reads, translated: “I am from the hand of Felipe de Avellano, 16
September, soldier.” There is something touching, I think, about that
personified periphrase, and I am glad that, in spite of the omission of
the year, historians have identified the writer. He was a common soldier
of the garrison at Zuñi after the reconquest, and met death there in
1700.
It is unfortunate that this noble and unique monument should be left
exposed as it is to vandals. Almost every white visitor thinks it is his
duty to scratch his name up alongside the historic ones and there is no
guardian to forbid—only an unregarded sign of the Department of the
Interior tacked on a nearby tree. A year ago the Department, in response
to private representation, promised to put up a fence of protection, and
perhaps this has been done; but a fence is a perfectly inadequate
measure. If the East possessed one such autograph in stone (of Joliet,
or La Salle, or Cartier), as El Morro bears by the half dozen, I wonder
if the few hundred a year necessary to support a local guardian would
not be forthcoming? When will our nation take seriously the colonial
history of the Southwest as just as much its own as that of the Atlantic
side of the Continental Divide?
At the shortest, it is a matter of two days to achieve a visit to El
Morro from the railway. Gallup is the best stop-off. There an automobile
may be hired, and the night spent at Ramah, where accommodations may be
had at the trader’s unless you prefer to camp at the Rock itself, which,
if you like such adventure and are prepared, is a joyous thing to do.
CHAPTER VIII
THE STORIED LAND OF THE NAVAJO
The Navajos are the Bedouins of our Southwest, and there are about
22,000 of them—a fine, independent tribe of Indians occupying a
semi-desert, mountainous reservation in northwestern New Mexico,
northeastern Arizona and a small corner of Utah. Indeed they occupy
somewhat more, for they are confirmed rovers and are frequently found
setting up their _hogans_, shepherding their sheep, and weaving their
blankets, well across their government-fixed borders. One is sure to see
some of them in Gallup, where they come to trade—the men generally in
dark velveteen shirts worn loose outside the trousers, their long,
black, uncut hair filleted about with red _bandas_ and caught up behind
in a club or knot. Both men and women are expert riders, sitting their
ponies as firmly as centaurs; and both are extravagantly fond of silver
jewelry, of which they often wear small fortunes in necklaces, belts,
bracelets, rings and buttons hammered by their own silversmiths from
coin of Mexico. If you see them wearing blankets, as you will when the
weather requires it, these will be the gaudy products of Yankee looms,
which they buy for less than the price they receive for their own famous
weave. So, thrifty traders that they are, they let the white folk have
the latter and content themselves with the cheaper machine-made article
bought from an American merchant.
It is part of the fun of a visit to the Hopi towns that you must cross a
section of the Navajo Reservation and thus get a glimpse of life in the
latter; but there is a special trip which I would like to recommend from
Gallup as a starting point, that brings one more intimately into touch
with the tribe. That is to Chin Lee and the Cañon de Chelly,[45] about
100 miles northwest of Gallup. There is a choice of roads, so that the
going and returning may be by different routes. The trip may be done by
time economists in an automobile in two or three days, but a more
enjoyable plan for easy-going folk is to take eight or ten days to it by
horseback or wagon, camping by the way. And do it preferably in
September or early October, for then the mid-year rains are usually
over, the air clear and sparkling, and feed for horses sufficiently
abundant. The elements that enter into the landscape are primarily those
that go to the making of the grandeur of the Grand Cañon region, but
scattered and distant, not concentrated. There is a similar sculpturing
of the land into pinnacles and terraces, cones perfect or truncated,
battlemented castles and airy spires, appearing, when afar, mistily in
an atmosphere of amethyst and mauve and indefinite tones of yellow and
pink. Now the road threads open, sunny forests of pine and oak, the
latter in autumnal dress of crimson and gold and surprising you with
acorns as sweet as chinquapins. Again, it traverses broad, unwatered,
semi-desert plains dotted with fragrant sage-brush and riotous
sunflowers, the only animated things in sight being prairie dogs and
jackrabbits, or an occasional band of Navajo ponies. As the morning
advances, cumulus clouds rise in stately squadrons above the horizon and
move across the sky dropping drifting shadows; at noon over a fire of
sage stumps you heat up your beans and brew your coffee in the grateful
shade of your wagon; night finds you at some hospitable trader’s post,
or enjoying your blankets at the sign of _La belle étoile_. Only at long
intervals will you come upon sign of human life. At Fort Defiance, 30
miles north of Gallup, is a Government Reservation school for the
Navajos, and a mile from it an Episcopal medical mission—a living
monument to the loving interest of Miss Eliza Thackara in these Indians.
Eight miles south of Fort Defiance is the Franciscan Mission of St.
Michael’s to the Navajo, where, if you are interested, the hospitable
Brothers can show you what sort of a job it is to transform an ungroomed
savage into Christian semblance. At Ganado, Arizona, 45 miles from
Gallup, is the trading post of Mr. J. L. Hubbell, whose name for a
generation has in that part of the world been a synonym for
hospitality.[46]
Nevertheless, there is more life than you see, for the native _hogan_,
or one-roomed dwelling of logs covered with earth, is so inconspicuous
that you may pass within a few rods of one and never detect it. The
Navajos do not congregate in villages but each family wants a lot—miles,
indeed—of elbow room.
Chin Lee, mentioned above, is not Chinese as it sounds, but the Navajo
name of a spacious valley into which Cañon de Chelly debouches. If you
have a taste for mythology, it will interest you to know that here,
according to tradition, Estsán-atlehi (the chief goddess of the Navajo
pantheon and wife of the Sun-god), traveling from the east once camped
with her attendant divinities for a great ceremony and a footrace. She
was on her way to her home in the great water of the west, where in a
floating house she still lives, and receives her lord the Sun every
evening when his daily work is finished.[47] There is a trading post at
Chin Lee, and beyond the broad flat in front of it is the entrance to
Cañon de Chelly. This is a narrow, tortuous rift in the earth, some 20
miles long, whose perpendicular sides of red sandstone rise 800 to 1000
feet. Opening into it are two side gorges, Monument and Del Muerto
Cañons. A shallow stream of sweet water—sometimes, however, hidden
beneath the sands—creeps along the cañon floor, widens in the plain into
the Rio de Chelly, and flowing northward joins the San Juan in southern
Utah. So in time does it contribute its bit to the tawny flood that
pours through the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.[48]
The interests that hold the visitor in Cañon de Chelly are several.
There is, first, the stupendous scenery. Men and animals traversing this
level floor seem pygmies at the foot of the smooth, vertical walls,
carved and stained by the master-artist Time working through who knows
how many milleniums. The windings of the gorge keep one in perpetual
expectancy of something going to happen just around the corner, and
create an atmosphere of mystery that is little short of thrilling. In
places the cañon widens out in sunlit coves and wild-grass meadows,
where clustered reeds[49] rustle and wild flowers bloom. Quite as often,
though, the walls are so close together that the sunshine never reaches
the bottom and the grim surroundings suggest some overwhelming picture
of Doré’s.
Then there are the ancient dwellings in the cliffs—little, crumbling
cities of the dead. Perched high up in shallow cavities of the flat
wall, some are inaccessible except by ladders; others, may be reached by
scrambling up talus slopes. One famous one, known as Mummy Cave, in
Cañon del Muerto, should by all means be visited; but even more striking
is one in the main cañon called _La Casa Blanca_ or the White House. The
upper story of this majestic ruin, which strikingly resembles some
medieval castle, is colored white; and the whole line of the immense
edifice set high above the earth and projected against the dark
background of a natural cavity in the enormous cliff, makes a dramatic
picture. The effect is heightened when we learn that in Navajo folk-lore
it plays a part as the abode of certain genii or minor divinities who,
the faithful believe, still haunt the edifice.
In places the cliffs are prehistoric art galleries, adorned with
pictographs of unheard-of birds and animals, human hands outspread,
geometrical designs, and attenuated figures of men in various attitudes.
Lastly, there is the interest of a present-day Indian life, for the
cañon is the free, joyous home of numerous Navajo families, that come
and go as fancy dictates. Their _hogans_, often with a hand-loom for
blanket weaving[50] swung from a nearby tree are set inconspicuously
here and there at the base of the towering cliffs, wherever there is a
bit of land suitable for the raising of corn, beans and melons. Peach
orchards, too, are here, from seed of Spanish introduction centuries
ago. Flocks of sheep and goats are continually on the move up and down
the cañon, which is musical with their bleatings and the wild melody of
the shepherds’ songs. It is a picturesque sight at evening to see the
homing bands crowding into the primitive folds which sometimes are a
mere crevice in the rock walls with a rude fence thrown across the
opening.
During the wars which for many years marked the intercourse of the
Navajos with the whites—both Spaniards and Americans—the Cañon de Chelly
was a notable stronghold of the red men. It was here that in 1864 Kit
Carson and his troopers at last succeeded in breaking the backbone of
the Indian resistance. Today the Navajos are as peaceable as the
Pueblos.
According to Navajo legends, the boundaries of their land were marked
out for them by the gods who brought them up through the great reed from
the lower world.[51] These landmarks were in the form of mountains
especially created for the purpose of earth brought from the lower
world, and were seven in number. Of these the Sacred Mountain of the
East is believed to be Pelado Peak, 20 miles northeast of Jemes pueblo
and it was made fast to the earth by a bolt of lightning; the Sacred
Mountain of the South is known to be Mount San Matéo, 20 miles or so
northwest of Laguna pueblo, held in place by a great stone knife thrust
through it from summit to base; the Sacred Mountain of the West, is the
San Francisco Mountain, 12 miles north of Flagstaff, Arizona, fastened
down by a sunbeam; and the Sacred Mountain of the North is some one of
the San Juan range, which a rainbow held in place. The other three are
peaks of the mid-region, only one of which, Hosta Butte in Bernalillo
County, New Mexico, has been identified.[52] Two of these mountains are
plainly visible from the Santa Fe Railway trains and by motorists
following the National Old Trails transcontinental highway—namely, the
San Francisco Mountain (12,611 feet) and Mount San Matéo (11,389 feet).
Both are extinct volcanoes. The vicinity of Mount San Matéo (which is
also known as Mount Taylor)[53] is the scene of a thrilling tradition.
There it was that the Navajo Gods of War (children of the Sun and of the
Waterfall), mounted upon a rainbow, met and slew with lightning bolts
the boy-eating giant, Ye-itso. The latter was a monster so huge that the
spread of his two feet was a day’s journey for a man, his footfalls were
as thunder, and when he drank his draught exhausted a lake. His head,
cut off by the War-gods and tossed away, was changed into El Cabezon, a
truncated cone of a mountain visible 40 miles northeast from San Matéo;
and his blood flowing in a deluge to the south and west is what we white
folk in our ignorance call a hardened lava-flow, as we watch it from the
car window for miles westward from McCarty’s. Look at it again with the
eyes of faith, and is not its semblance that of coagulated, blackened
blood?
So you see in this glorious Southwest we may still follow in the very
footsteps of the gods, and regard the world as it seems through the eyes
of a primitive and poetic race—see in the lightning the weapon of the
red gods, in the rainbows their bridges to traverse chasms withal, in
the sunbeams their swift cars of passage. There is something rather
exhilarating, I think, to know that in our materialistic America there
is a region where the Ancient Ones still haunt as in the youth of the
world. To be sure the white man’s schools are operating to break up this
primitive faith; but the ingrained genius of a race is not made over in
a generation. One may stumble still upon Navajo religious ceremonies,
held in the open, with their picturesque rites and maskings and wild
music. They differ markedly from the ceremonies of the Pueblos, and are,
as a rule, undertaken under the charge of medicine men primarily for the
cure of the sick. There are no fixed dates for any of these ceremonies,
and casual travelers do not often see them, as they are most likely to
be held during the cold weather, when few visitors care to penetrate
into the country. An exceedingly interesting adjunct of many of the
Navajo rites is the dry sand painting, of a symbolic character and often
of striking beauty, made in color upon a prepared flooring of sand. The
design is “drawn” on this by dribbling upon it the dry ground
pigments—white, red, yellow, black and gray—from between the artist’s
thumb and fore-finger. The picture must be done in one day, several men
sometimes working upon it at once. When completed the sick man is placed
upon it and treated; and after that, the picture is obliterated.[54]
CHAPTER IX
THE HOMES OF THE HOPIS, LITTLE PEOPLE OF PEACE
Now that the automobile has become a common mode of travel even in the
desert, you may reach the pueblos of the Hopi Indians quite comfortably
from Gallup.[55] The distance is about 130 miles to the first of the
villages. The road is via St. Michael’s (where the Franciscan Brothers
maintain a Mission for the Navajos); Ganado, where Mr. J. L. Hubbell’s
trading post stands; and Keam’s Cañon, where Mr. Lorenzo Hubbell,
hospitable son of a hospitable father, has another trading post. As far
as Ganado (70 miles) the way is identical with the first part of one
road to the Cañon de Chelly. From Ganado westward there are 60 miles of
pure wilderness, semi-desert, treeless, but in summer and autumn
splendid in places with sheets of wild flowers in purple and yellow. On
every hand—sometimes near, sometimes afar—are the characteristic mesa
formations of the Southwest carved by the elements into curious shapes
to which the fancy readily suggests names. One that you will pass is a
strikingly good model of a battleship’s dismantled hull, and goes by the
name of Steamboat Rock—a pleasant conceit for this desert, which, the
geologists tell us, was once a sea bottom. Nowhere is sign of humanity,
save perhaps, some wandering Navajos or a chance traveler like yourself.
[Illustration]
CASA BLANCA OR WHITE HOUSE
A prehistoric Cliff dwelling set amidst the stupendous scenery of
the Cañon de Chelly, Arizona—the reputed haunt of certain Navajo
gods.
[Illustration]
EL MORRO OR INSCRIPTION ROCK, N. M.
This remarkable cliff bears near its base a score or more of
autographs carved in the stone by the Spanish conquerors during the
17th and 18th centuries.
At last there comes a change over the country ahead of you—a
transfiguration to broad sweeps of pink and pallid yellow, with here and
there a streak of white or of green, and on the far horizon a wall of
purple. The Painted Desert is before you, and upon the very tip of a
long promontory streaked horizontally with brown and red and yellow, and
laid upon the desert like a gigantic arm thrust out, you see the
castellated sky-line formed by the pueblos of the First Hopi Mesa. The
geography of the Hopi country is like this: Three long, narrow mesas
extending fingerlike into the Painted Desert, the tips about 10 miles
each from the next. On the First Mesa (which is the easternmost) are
three villages in an almost continuous row—Hano (called also Tewa),
which you plump breathlessly into at the top of the one steep trail
which is your means of access to all; then Sichúmovi, and lastly, at the
mesa’s extremity with all the desert in front, is Walpi, a most
picturesque pile rising in terraces to 4 stories and suggesting some
mediaeval fortress. The Second Mesa is forked at its tip, with
Mishóngnovi and Shipaúlovi set superbly along one tine, and
Shimópovi[56] on the other. On the Third Mesa stands old Oraibi, largest
and until recently most populous of all. Some years ago, however, it
suffered a secession of fully half its population, who are now
established a few miles away on the same mesa forming the independent
pueblos of Hótavila and Bácavi.[57]
The situation of these little towns is magnificent beyond words,
overlooking the Painted Desert, ever changing, ever wonderful, ever
challenging the spiritual in you, and stretching to where the San
Francisco Peaks, the Mogollones and the White Mountains notch the dim
horizon line. The elevation (6000 feet above the sea) and the purity and
dryness of the air, combine to make the climate particularly healthful
and enjoyable. Winter brings frosts and some snow, alternating with
brilliant sunshine. Summer, the season that interests the average
visitor, is as a rule delightful—the afternoon thunder showers of July
and August being only a refreshment and a source of added
picturesqueness in the form of superb cloud effects, spectacular
lightning, and splendid rainbows. Mid-day is warm enough for old men to
loiter in the sun in a costume that is pared down to a breech clout and
little children joyously wear nothing at all; yet both need covering in
the shade. As for the summer nights, they are always deliciously cool
and for outdoor sleeping are ideal. The flat-roofed, eaveless houses are
usually of flat stones laid in mud mortar, and though terraced, do not
usually exceed two or three stories in height. The arrangement is in
streets and plazas, the _kivas_ or ceremonial chambers (corresponding to
the _estufas_ of the Rio Grande pueblos) being underground and reached
by a descending ladder, whose upper part—two rungless poles—stick
picturesquely up in the air. There is a growing tendency to build the
new houses at the bases of the cliffs, particularly at the First and
Third Mesas—a reversal to first principles; for when Don Pedro de Tovar,
a lieutenant of Coronado, with Padre Juan de Padilla (of whom we heard
at Isleta) and a few soldiers, visited in 1540 this province of Tusayan,
as they called the country, they reported the Hopis dwelling at the foot
of the mesas. It was only later, probably after the Pueblo Rebellion of
1680, that the towns were rebuilt upon the mesa summits where we now
find them. The sites of two former Walpis may still be traced below the
First Mesa together with the ruins of an ancient Franciscan Mission,
some of whose timbers, they say, form part of the existing pagan
_kivas_. The Hopi never took kindly to missionary effort by the whites.
Every _padre_ among them was murdered at the time of the Rebellion, and
they would never tolerate another. Even kind Padre Garcés (of whom we
shall hear in a subsequent chapter) the Oraibians kept sitting outdoors
in a street corner for two days, and then evicted him from their town.
In 1700, one pueblo whose inhabitants showed a hospitable feeling to the
preaching of a persistent friar, was attacked by neighboring Hopis, set
on fire and such of the inhabitants as were not killed, were carried to
other towns. Of that pueblo—its name was Awátobi—you may see some ruined
remnants yet about 9 miles southeast of Walpi.[58]
The attraction that draws most visitors to the country of the Hopi
Indians is the famous Snake Dance held annually in August. The date is a
movable one and not known positively until 9 days in advance, when the
information may be had of the Santa Fe railway officials, who make it a
point to be posted. This remarkable ceremony, in which live snakes, a
large proportion of them venomous rattlers, are handled by the dance
participants as nonchalantly as if they were kittens, is in fact a
prayer for rain, in which the snakes (never harmed or their fangs
extracted as is sometimes ignorantly supposed), are intermediaries
between the people and the gods of water. It is moreover the
dramatization of a Hopi myth concerning the origin of the two
clans—Antelope and Snake—who perform the ceremony. The myth has to do
with the adventures of a young man who, impelled by curiosity to know
where the river waters went, made a trip on a hollow log down the
Colorado to its mouth. There he had many dealings with the Snake people,
in whose ways he was instructed by the friendly Spider Woman. Finally he
married the Snake chief’s daughter, and brought her to his own country.
The first children of this union were snakes, which the Hopis drove
away, but the next were human, and these, the ancestors of the present
Snake Clan, came to Walpi to live. The entire ceremony continues
throughout 9 days, and is conducted secretly in the underground _kiva_
until near sunset of the last day. Then the priests dramatically emerge
into the upper air, and the dance with the snakes occurs. It is all over
in about half an hour, but that half hour is what brings the crowd—about
the most thrilling and wide-awake performance that is offered anywhere
in America. Though the Snake Dance takes place annually, all the
villages do not hold it the same year. The most frequented presentations
are those at Walpi, held in the odd years, as 1917, 1919, etc., and at
Oraibi, the latter in the even years, as 1918, 1920, etc.
The Snake Dance attracts largely through the horror awakened in most of
us by reptiles, though it possesses many elements of majestic beauty,
too. There are numerous other Hopi ceremonies whose dominant feature to
the white onlooker is simple beauty; for instance, the picturesque Flute
ceremony held at springs below the mesas, and then along the ascending
trails to the mesa-top accompanied by songs, the music of native flutes
and the scattering of flowers. This ceremony, which is also the
dramatization of a legend[59] as well as an invocation for rain,
alternates with the Snake Dance, being held at about but not at the
identical time with it, and always at other pueblos than those holding
the Snake Dance. This permits attenders at one to witness the other
also. Then at all the pueblos there are the autumnal Basket Dances of
the women, and in spring and summer the many beautiful Katchina Dances.
Katchinas are the deified spirits of the Hopis’ ancestors, and are
intercessors with the greater gods for divine favors for the Hopis. They
are supposed to reside amid the San Francisco Peaks, where the home of
the Sun god is, the great dispenser of blessings. Their annual visits
(Indians of the pueblo impersonating the gods) are the occasions of much
merry-making, of songs and processions, and dances in mask and gay
costumes. Each god has his distinctive mask and dress, and the queer
little wooden “dolls” (as the traders call them, though “Katchina” is
the better word), which the visitors find in Hopi houses are careful
representations of these, made for the children of the household to
familiarize themselves with the characteristic aspect of each divinity.
“These dances,” to quote Mr. Walter Hough, whose excellent little work,
“The Hopi,” should be read by every intending visitor, “show the
cheerful Hopi at his best—a true spontaneous child of nature. They are
the most characteristic ceremonies of the pueblos, most musical,
spectacular and pleasing. They are really more worthy of the attention
of white people than the forbidding Snake Dance, which overshadows them
by the elements of horror.”
Visitors who allow themselves to be hurried up to the Hopi towns the day
before the Snake Dance and then packed off home the next morning, as
most of them do, may think they have had a good time, but it is largely
the bliss of ignorance. They do not know what they have missed by not
spending a week or two. To be sure accommodations are limited and
primitive, but one must expect to rough it more or less in Indian
country. Still the Hopis are not savages and one can be made
comfortable. It is generally possible to rent one of the small houses at
the foot of the mesa, if one does not bring one’s own camp outfit, and
there are traders at most of the villages where supplies of necessaries
may be obtained. Climb the trail to the sunny, breeze-swept mesa top;
get acquainted with the merry, well-behaved little children—easy enough,
particularly if you have a little stock of candy; watch the women making
_piki_ (the thin wafer-like corn-bread of many colors that is the Hopi
staff of life), or molding or burning pottery; see the men marching off,
huge hoes on shoulder, to cultivate their corn and beans, sometimes
miles away, in damp spots of the desert, or coming inward-bound driving
burros laden with firewood or products of the field. All this, in an
architectural setting that is as picturesque as Syria, replete with
entrancing “bits” that are a harvest to the artist or the kodaker. After
a day or two you will have had your measure pretty well taken by the
population, and granting your manners have been decent, you will be
making friends, and every day will show you something new in the life of
this most interesting race. Of course there is a difference in the
different towns—the customs of some have been more modified than others
by contact with the whites and the influence of the Government
educational system. The Walpians and their neighbors are perhaps the
most Americanized; the people of Hótavila and Shimópovi, the least so.
The Hopis possess arts of great interest. Pottery of beautiful form and
design is made at Hano[60] of the First Mesa. This tiny village has the
honor of being the home of the most famous of Indian potters, Nampéyo,
whose work is so exquisite that it looks distinctive in any company. Her
daughter Kwatsoa seems nearly as gifted. Then there is basketry.
Curiously enough the East Mesa makes no baskets whatever, and the
baskets of the Middle Mesa are quite of another sort from those of the
Third Mesa, and both so different from all other Indian baskets
whatsoever, as to be recognized at a glance. The Third Mesa baskets are
woven wicker work usually in the form of a tray or plaque, the design
symbolizing birds, clouds, butterflies, etc., in glaring aniline dyes.
Those of the Second Mesa are in heavy coils sewed together with a thread
of the yucca wrapping, and in various shapes from flat to globular, the
latter sometimes provided with handles. Weaving is an ancient Hopi art
that is now unfortunately decadent. In pre-Spanish days and for some
time afterwards, the Hopi cultivated a native cotton,[61] and cotton is
still woven by them into ceremonial kilts and cord. Formerly they were
famous weavers of rabbit-skin blankets. The visitor may still run across
an occasional one in the pueblos, but the blanket of wool has long since
displaced them. The Hopis make of weaving a man’s business, which is
usually carried on in the _kivas_ when these are not being used for
religious purposes. They specialize in women’s _mantas_, or one-piece
dresses, of a dark color with little or no ornamentation.
CHAPTER X
THE PETRIFIED FOREST OF ARIZONA
Everybody enjoys his stop off at the Petrified Forest. For one thing,
this sight is as easy of achievement as falling off a log, and that
counts heavily with your average American tourist. Even if your train
drops you at Adamana[62] in the middle of the night, as some trains do,
there will be somebody there to carry your bag and pilot you the couple
of hundred yards to the lone hotel which, with the railroad station and
the water tank, is practically all there is of Adamana. Then you are put
comfortably to bed in a room that awaits you. In the morning you are
given a leisurely breakfast at your own hour, and packed in an
automobile to see one part of the Forest; brought home to luncheon; and
in the afternoon motored off to another part. If you are an invalid or
just naturally lazy, you need not even leave your seat in the
conveyance. After that it is your choice to proceed on your travels, or
stay over another day and visit more distant parts of the Forest. In
seeing the Forest, you incidentally have several miles of reasonably
easy driving over the vast northern Arizona plateau with its wide views
to the edge of a world hemmed in with many a dreamy mountain range and
long, colorful, flat-topped mesas breaking away in terraces and steps to
the plains. You will quite possibly see coyotes and jackrabbits and
prairie dogs, cattle grazing the wild grasses, a Navajo Indian or two,
cowboys on their loping ponies, perhaps a round-up with its trailing
chuckwagon. You will steep yourself in the delicious Arizona sunshine,
and be humbled before the majesty of the glorious Arizona sky, blue as
sapphire and piled high at times with colossal masses of cumulus clouds
that forevermore will mean Arizona to you.
The Forest is unfortunately mis-named, for it is not a forest. There is
not a single standing trunk, such as you may see occasionally in Utah or
the Yellowstone. In the midst of a treeless plain the broken logs litter
the ground in sections rarely over 25 feet long, oftenest in short
chunks as if sawn apart, and in chips and splinters innumerable. Trunk
diameters of 2 or 3 feet are common, and as high as 6 feet has been
reported. It seems likely that the trees did not grow where they now lie
but have been washed hither in some prehistoric swirl of waters, (as
logs are carried down stream in our latter-day puny freshets,) becoming
stranded in certain depressions of the land where we now find them,
often having had their woody tissue gradually replaced by silica and
agatized. Whence they came nobody knows, nor when. The guess of the
unlettered guide who shows you about, may be as near right as the
trained geologist’s, who locates the time of their fall as the Triassic
Age, and their old home as perhaps beside some inland sea; but whether
that was one million years ago or twenty, who can say, further than that
they surely antedate the appearance of man upon this planet. The trees
are evidently of different sorts, but mostly conifers apparently related
to our present day araucarias, of which the Norfolk Island pine is a
familiar example. Mr. F. H. Knowlton, botanist of the Smithsonian
Institution, identifies then as _Araucarioxylon Arizonicum_, an extinct
tree once existing also in the east-central United States.[63] Limbs and
branches in anything approaching entirety are not found—only the trunks
and infinite fragments are here. The coloration due to the presence of
iron oxides in the soil at the time of silicification is often
exquisite, in shades of pink, yellow, blue, brown, crimson—a never
failing source of delight to visitors. Dr. L. F. Ward, of the United
States Geological Survey, has said that “there is no other petrified
forest in which the wood assumes so many varied and interesting forms
and colors.... The state of mineralization in which much of this wood
exists almost places it among the gems or precious stones. Not only are
chalcedony, opals and agates found among them, but many approach the
condition of jasper and onyx.”[64]
The parts of the Forest that tourists usually visit are the so-called
First Forest, about 6 miles south of Adamana (which contains the huge
trunk that spans a picturesque chasm 45 feet wide, and is known as the
Natural Bridge[65]); the Second Forest, 2½ miles further south; and the
North Forest. The last is 9 miles due north from Adamana, at the edge of
such a chaotic, burned-out bit of volcanic waste, as is in itself worth
seeing, breaking away gradually into the Painted Desert. If for any
reason, your time is too limited to admit of your visiting more than one
section of the Forest, by all means, let that section be this North
Forest. The trees are less numerous and the fragments are less
strikingly colored than in the parts to the south, but that background
of color and mystery given by the desert, lends a fascination and gives
to the picture a composition that is unique and unforgettable.
There is, moreover, the so-called Third or Rainbow Forest,[66] 13 miles
southwest of Adamana. This region contains the most numerous and the
largest trunks, some of them (partially underground) measuring upwards
of 200 feet in length. The especially rich coloring of the wood here has
given rise to the local name “Rainbow.”
In several parts of the Petrified Forest (a large portion of which is
now, by the way, a National Monument), are the ruins of many small
prehistoric Indian villages. The relics found indicate that four
different stocks of Indians have lived among these shattered trees, one
clearly Hopi, another probably Zuñian, the others undetermined (one
apparently of cannibalistic habits). Dr. Walter Hough has written very
entertainingly of this human interest of the Petrified Forest in
Harpers’ Magazine for November, 1902. The houses of the Rainbow Forest
were unique in aboriginal architecture in that they were constructed of
petrified logs. To quote Dr. Hough: “It is probable that prehistoric
builders never chose more beautiful stones for the construction of their
habitations than the trunks of the trees which flourished ages before
man appeared on the earth. This wood agate also furnished material for
stone hammers, arrowheads and knives, which are often found in ruins
hundreds of miles from the Forest.”[67]
[Illustration]
IN THE NORTH PETRIFIED FOREST
Near Adamana, Arizona. A glimpse of the famous Painted Desert in the
background.
[Illustration]
A CORNER IN SANTA FE, N. M.
The New Mexican capital retains to this day many picturesque
features of the Spanish and Mexican dominance.
CHAPTER XI
FLAGSTAFF AS A BASE
A score of years ago Flagstaff[68] was chiefly known to the traveler as
the gateway to the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, 70 miles to the
northwest. One may still reach that marvelous chasm by automobile from
Flagstaff, arriving at Grand View after 5 or 6 hours’ driving, now
through a park-like forest of yellow pine, now across an open plateau
region with alluring views of far-off mountain ranges and of the Painted
Desert. The completion of the railroad spur from Williams to the Grand
Cañon, however, put a quietus upon the operation of the horse stages
from Flagstaff; and since the passing of the Grand Cañon business the
town has cut small figure in tourist itineraries, its energies since
being concentrated on the less precarious profits from lumber, cattle
and wool. Nevertheless, its situation in a clearing of the beautiful
Coconino National Forest, 7000 feet above the sea makes it a convenient
base for visiting certain attractions of a remarkable nature thereabout,
as lava beds, ice caves, extinct volcanoes, prehistoric cliff[69] and
cinder-cone dwellings, the Painted Desert, and the famous San Francisco
Peaks, fabled home of the Hopi Katchinas and the scene of many an Indian
legend. The town has several hotels of a modest sort, and is on the line
of the National Old Trails transcontinental motor highway; and if you
have your own car or the wherewithal to rent one in Flagstaff, you can
be very happy in this neighborhood for a week or two. The town itself,
with a population of a couple of thousand, has a certain picturesqueness
of an up-to-date frontier fashion, in which automobiles and soda-pop
largely take the place of ponies, pistols and “forty-rod,” for at this
writing the hand of “bone dry” Prohibition rests paternally upon
Arizona. Especially interesting are Saturday nights, when the streets
are likely to be thronged with lumberjacks, cowpunchers and
ranchers—American and Mexican—come to town to swap news and trade, to
see the “shows,” play pool and listen to the “rag” of blatant
gramophones. A Navajo or two, standing in the glare of the electric
lights, may add a touch of aboriginal color to the scene—teamsters for
some desert trading post.
Dominating Flagstaff, as Mont Blanc dominates Chamonix, is the isolated
mountain mass, the highest in Arizona, called the San Francisco Peaks,
snow-crowned seven or eight months in the year and familiar to every
traveler by the Santa Fe’s transcontinental trains. Their clustered
half-dozen summits in the form of graceful cones attain a maximum
elevation of 12,611 feet above the sea (5600 feet above Flagstaff) and
have been a famous landmark from the time of the Spanish conquistadores,
who named them, to the present day. The Navajos, as has been told in a
previous chapter, assign to the great mountain a divine construction
from earth brought up in the Emergence from the underworld, the gods who
built it pinning it down poetically with a sunbeam. Matter-of-fact
geologists, however, consider the mass as merely an extinct volcano with
its top blown off, and find its flanks covered with the congealed lava
streams of successive eruptions. The disintegrated surfaces of lava make
a fertile bed for the abundant forests, gardens of wild flowers, and
natural fields of indigenous grasses that clothe the base and sides up
to within a few hundred feet of the craggy top. If you have a taste for
mountain climbing and fine outlooks, by all means give a day or two to
the San Francisco Mountain. It is of easiest ascent, and the views, full
of delight from the moment you leave Flagstaff, attain at the summit a
climax that is nothing short of dramatic. The whole of the northern and
central Arizona plateau is spread below and about you in such glory of
color (if the atmospheric conditions be right) as you have never dreamt
of. You can pick out the farther wall of the Grand Cañon and the
Buckskin Mountains beyond; the companion volcanic cones of Kendrick,
Bill Williams,[70] and Sitgreaves to the westward; the Mogollon Mesa
stretching south towards Phoenix; the Verde Valley; the Red Rock Country
and Oak Creek Cañon; Sunset Peak;[71] and most striking of all, the
glory of the Painted Desert stretching illimitably to the northeast,
with the Little Colorado River winding across it to join the Big
Colorado 60 miles due north of you. The opportunity to enjoy that
unobscured outlook upon the desert from a point over a mile above it, is
alone a sufficient reward for the trip. It is like looking on another
world, so unearthly are the tones in which that marvelous waste is
dyed—indefinite shades of yellow, pink, crimson, brown, cream, green; so
striking the sculpturing of its mesas and promontories. Then, too, if
you have a spark of romance in your make-up, will it not be an event to
tread the very pathways of the gods with whom the Indian fancy has
peopled the glades and gorges of this hoary old volcano, as the Greeks
peopled Ida—to know that somewhere in these sunny, piny slopes is the
fabled house of the Sun God, who, when he would travel, summons a
rainbow, as you or I would ring for a taxicab, and to whom, it is said,
the Hopis still send prayer plumes by a messenger who trots the 70 miles
from the pueblos hither between sunrise and sunset of a summer day?
Would it not give you a thrill to feel when passing through the aspen
groves that dot the upper heights, that in such a rustling wood here
upon this very mountain, when the world was young, the Hero-Children of
the Spider Woman slew the wicked Giant Elk who ravaged the land of the
Hopi—those Hero-Children of whom one was Youth, begotten of the Light,
and the other Echo, begotten of the Raindrop?[72]
From Flagstaff to the tip of Humphrey’s Peak, the highest of all, is 10
miles in a bee-line, or about 15 as pedestrians and horses go. Of this
distance about 5 miles are by a good road practicable for automobiles,
now winding through open forest, now skirting some ranch—a pleasant,
old-fashioned highway bordered with worm fences and thickets of wild
rose and goldenrod. From a certain point on the road to the Peaks, which
are always in view, an easy trail leads through a charming forest to
which the absence of underbrush gives a park-like character, open and
sunny and carpeted in places with wild flowers. The prevailing trees for
a couple of thousand feet of the ascent are yellow pines, rising at
their best to a height of over 100 feet and probably of an age of 300 to
500 years. Above this yellow pine belt the trail steepens and zigzags
sharply bringing you out at last amid broken stone and volcanic scoriae
where no trees are, only shy sub-alpine plants clinging by their toes to
the crevices of the rocks. Here a hog-back joins Humphrey’s Peak (12,611
feet) and Agassiz (12,330 feet), and you have the choice of mounting to
either or both. Under the eastern slopes of these peaks a glacier 2
miles long once headed, whose bed is now a large valley within the
mountain’s folds dropping downward to the northeast. To the geological,
this valley with its moraine and glaciated rocks is a source of especial
interest, since it constitutes one of the southernmost instances of ice
action within the United States.[73]
A good walker used to high altitudes can do the round trip from
Flagstaff to the summit and back in a day of 12 hours, but he should be
sure to carry water. For the average tourist, however, horseback is
recommended with a guide (procurable at Flagstaff). Added interest will
be secured by arranging to camp over night upon the mountain, for in
this way the superb light effects of early morning and evening may be
enjoyed at leisure. Owing to snow on the peaks most of the year, the
ascent must usually be made between mid-June and mid-October. June is
probably the best month, if snow is absent, as the atmosphere is then
apt to be at its clearest; after that, September or early October is the
choice. July and August are months of frequent, almost daily,
thunderstorms, which, of course, are disturbing factors in more ways
than one. Flagstaff, by the way, is credited by the United States’
Geological Survey with a greater rainfall than any other station in
Arizona, and this is attributed to its nearness to the San Francisco
Mountain.
Should you desire a closer acquaintance with that harlequin of wastes,
the Painted Desert, there are from Flagstaff two trips you can take
across an end of it with reasonable success in a motor car. One is to
the Hopi village of Oraibi by way of Tolcheco, and the other to Tuba.
The distance in each case is about 70 miles. To Tuba there is a
semi-weekly automobile stage (with shovel and water bags strapped to
it), making the round trip usually inside of one day. It is an
interesting excursion, taking you close to Sunset Peak, with its
remarkable rosy crest, and over the Little Colorado River by a bridge
that makes the traveler independent of the sudden rises of that erratic
stream. You will pass here and there mounds that are the crumbled
remains of prehistoric pueblos, and again stone chips and bits of trunks
of petrified trees, the scattered fragments of vanished forests of which
the Petrified Forest of Adamana is our most perfect remnant. Sometimes
we pass beneath ruddy cliffs eroded and weathered into such
grotesqueness of face and figure as would make Alice out of Wonderland
feel at home, squat toads and humped camels and ogres with thick
grinning lips. Farther away, mesas jutting into the desert present the
semblance of cities with towers and ramparts in ghostly tones of pink
and yellow and cream.[74] Occasionally an auto-truck, hauling goods to
or from some desert trade-post, passes you, and sometimes a wagon train
of wool, horse-drawn, in charge of Navajo teamsters. Approaching Tuba,
you cross the Moenkopi Wash, and are refreshed with the greenery of the
farms of the Hopis, who from time immemorial have occupied this haunt of
moisture. If you have time to visit the little pueblo of Moenkopi, 2
miles from Tuba and perched on the mesa edge overlooking the farms, it
will interest you. It is the westernmost of all the Hopi villages, its
population of a couple of hundred enjoying life in Indian fashion with
abounding dances and thanksgiving. At Tuba itself, there is not much for
the casual visitor, except a couple of Indian trading establishments and
a Government Boarding School with its concomitant buildings connected
with the Agency of the Western Navajo Reservation. The region
roundabout, however, includes enough points of local interest to occupy
a two or three weeks’ vacation very pleasantly. Accommodations are
obtainable at a trader’s or one of the Government houses, and saddle
horses may be hired from the Indians. Some 65 miles to the north are
certain remarkably fine pueblo- or Cliff dwelling-ruins, known as Betata
Kin and Keet Seel, in Marsh Pass.[75]
Twenty or thirty miles south of Flagstaff is a region of unique
interest, known as the Oak Creek Valley, whither Flagstaffians motor in
season to fish for trout and enjoy a bit of Arcady. There are a public
resort or two and a number of ranches in the valley, tributary to which
is some of the wildest scenery in the Southwest. In adjacent cañons,
whose sides often rise an almost sheer 800 to 1000 feet, are the ruined
habitations of a prehistoric people (probably ancestors of certain
existing Hopi clans)—cliff houses, cavate dwellings and fortified
eminences, the last advantageously adopted by the Apaches in the wars of
half a century ago. The dominant color of the rock is bright red,
frequently in horizontal bands, and has gained the region the popular
appellation of “The Red Rock Country.” The cañon walls and outstanding
rock masses have been worn by the elements into columns, minarets,
steeples, temples and other architectural semblances such as are shown
surpassingly in the Grand Cañon. Indian pictographs abound—some
prehistoric, some evidently of modern Apache doing. Dr. J. W. Fewkes,
the scientific discoverer of the region a quarter of a century ago,
thought himself justified in comparing it to the Garden of the Gods,
than which it is much more extended.[76]
CHAPTER XII
THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO RIVER IN ARIZONA
From Williams, on the Santa Fe’s transcontinental line, a branch runs
due north across 65 miles of the great Colorado Plateau and lands the
traveler at the very rim of the Grand Cañon—one of the most enjoyable,
most novel, most awakening sights among the Southwest’s marvels. Even if
your arrival be at darkest midnight, you will _feel_ the nearness of
that awful void in the unseen—a strange and humbling experience. For
accommodations you have the choice of American plan and what passes in
the wilderness for luxury at the big El Továr Hotel,[77] or of lodging
yourself more economically but comfortably enough in cabin or tent at
the nearby Bright Angel Camp with meals _á la carte_ at the Harvey Café.
Then you will want to know what to see.
The Grand Cañon is among those stupendous natural wonders that the
traveler needs time to adjust himself to; and I am inclined to believe
that his first act in wisdom is to sit down at the rim with a
comprehensive map before him and spend a leisurely hour studying
geography. Fortunately a very good practical map is included in the
Santa Fe’s folder that describes the Cañon, and this may be had of any
agent for the asking. The names, taken from all sorts of mythologies and
philosophies—Hindu, Chinese, Norse, British, Greek, Egyptian, with a
dash of Aztec and latter day American—and given to the various prominent
shapes simulating temples, pagodas, castles, towers, colonnades and what
not, are rather bewildering and indeed seem out of place in mid-Arizona.
In better taste, I think, are the more simply named spots that
commemorate adjacent native tribes as Hopi, Walapai, Zuñi; old white
dwellers by the rim like Bass, Rowe and Hance; and explorers associated
with the Cañon, such as Powell, Escalante and Cárdenas. Cárdenas, it may
not be amiss to state, was the officer dispatched by Coronado from Zuñi
to learn the truth about the great gorge and river, the report of which
Tovar had brought him from the Hopis. It was Cárdenas and his little
company of a dozen soldiers, who, one autumn day of 1540, were the first
white men to look into the mighty chasm. At the bottom they could detect
the great river flowing, seemingly a mere thread of a rivulet; but their
attempts to reach it were fruitless, so precipitous they found the Cañon
walls.[78] The stream that first received the name of Colorado, is the
one we now call Little Colorado. Oñate dubbed it so—Spanish for
red—because of the color of its turbid waters. The greater river in
Cárdenas’s day was known as _el Rio del Tizón_, the river of the
Fire-brand—a name given it by explorers of its lower waters because of
certain Indians on its bank whom the Spaniards saw warming themselves
with brands taken from the fire. The Colorado River as we now know it,
and including its tributaries the Grand and the Green, drains a region
only secondary to the basin of the Mississippi. Its length from the
headwaters of the Green in Wyoming to the outlet into the Gulf of
California is about 2000 miles. The Grand Cañon (including 65 miles
above the junction with the Little Colorado and known as Marble Cañon)
is 283 miles in length, the walls varying from 3000 to nearly 6000 feet
high and rising from the river in a series of huge steps or terraces, so
that the width, which at the river is from about 100 to 600 feet,
increases to several miles at the rim. The deepest part of the chasm is
near the hotels, and the river there flows over a mile below them.[79]
The Cañon walls are the delight of geologists, who find there in orderly
arrangement (stratum upon stratum in banded colors) the deposits of the
successive ages of the earth from the archaean granite to the lava flows
of recent geologic time. A succinct and readable account of the
geological features of the Cañon will be found in the United States
Geological Survey’s admirable Guide Book of the Western United States,
Part C—a book of especial value to the car-window observer on the Santa
Fe route.
Trains to the Cañon are arranged so that travelers may reach it in the
early morning and leave the same evening. In a way this is unfortunate,
for it offers a temptation, almost irresistible to an American tourist,
to “do” the place in a day and go on to some other sight. Of course no
one _can_ do it in a day, but he can do certain things, and he can get a
notion of the general scheme. Three days at least would best be planned
for, and of course more still would be better. The principal features
that should not be missed, may be summed up as follows: A horseback trip
down into the Cañon by either Bright Angel Trail or the Hermit Trail;
the drive (15 miles the round) over the Hermit Rim road; the auto trip
(26 miles the round) to Grand View Point. There are, moreover, several
short drives of four or five miles by public coach to vantage points
along the rim, costing a dollar or two per passenger; and of course
walks innumerable, among which that to Hopi Point, about 2 miles
northwest from the railway terminus, is particularly to be recommended
for its sunset view of the Cañon. Another pleasant short rim walk is to
Yavapai Point, 1½ miles to the eastward. From both these points the view
is superb.
The trip down the Bright Angel[80] trail to the river and back is an all
day jaunt. To the tenderfoot it is a somewhat harrowing experience to be
borne downward at an angle of 45 degrees more or less on the back of a
wobbling animal, whose head at times hangs over eternity, and whose only
footing is on a narrow shelf scratched out of a precipitous wall of the
Cañon. However, as nothing tragical happens, and as there is no escape
once you are started on the _descensus Averni_, you soon find enjoyment
in the novel trip, zigzagging ever downward through successive geologic
ages marked by rock strata in white, red, brown and blue.
Something over half way down there is a grateful let-up, when the trail
runs out upon a plateau watered by a musical little brook. This place is
known as “The Indian Garden.” It is enclosed on three sides by lofty
reddish walls, and here some Havasupai Indians are said to have had in
comparatively recent times a village, and to have cultivated the land.
Long before them, however, _en el tiempo de cuanto ha_, as the Pueblo
story tellers say in poetic Spanish (“in the time of how long ago”),
another race must have tilled the same soil, as the near-by cliffs
maintain numerous remains of rock dwellings and other evidences of human
occupancy. It is a pleasant, flowery, romantic spot, this Indian Garden,
in the Cañon’s crimson heart, with its fascinating environment of rock
sculpturings that seem the towers, palaces and temples of an enchanted
city awaiting the lifting of a spell. At the plateau’s outer edge you
have a stupendous view of the colossal gorge and the muddy torrent of
the river, leaping and roaring 1300 feet below. You may make the Indian
Garden the limit of your descent, or you may continue to the river
itself, corkscrewing down among the crevices and rockbound ways and
echoes of the inexorable wall until you come out upon a little beach,
past which, more terrible than beautiful, the savage torrent thunders
and cascades and tears its course to freedom. You will be glad to get
into the blessed upper world again, but you would not have missed the
experience for a greater cost of clambering.
The Hermit Rim road is a first-class modern highway (so far barred,
thank heaven, to automobiles), extending about 7½ miles westward from El
Tovar by way of Hopi Point to the Hermit Basin. Part of it passes
through beautiful stretches of park-like forest, emerging upon the dizzy
brink of the Cañon with magnificent outlooks over chasm and river to
distant mountains and cloud-piled sky. If you enjoy walking, it is
pleasant to do this trip one way in the public coach and the other afoot
by way of Rowe’s Well. The Hermit Rim Road ends at the head of a
comparatively new trail to the river, a sort of trail _de luxe_, 4 feet
wide and protected by a stone wall very reassuring to the apprehensive.
As on the Bright Angel trail, there is a plateau midway. Here a public
camp is maintained, where accommodations for an over-night stay may be
had. From this camp to the river must be done afoot—an easy grade, it is
said, but I cannot speak from personal knowledge. There is a trail
connecting the lower portions of Hermit and Bright Angel trails, so that
one may go to the river by one route and return by the other. This
consumes 3 days ordinarily, and must be taken as a camping trip with its
concomitant ups and downs. It is hardly to be recommended to any but the
reasonably robust—and good natured!
Grand View Point, 13 miles east of El Tovar—a beautiful drive that may
be done by motor car through the Coconino Forest—is the terminus of the
old-time stage route from Flagstaff. The view at the point is perhaps
the finest of all—quite different from that at El Tovar and more
extended: owing to the greater width between the main walls of the
Cañon; to the fact that the river here makes a sharp turn to the north;
and the further fact that the relative lowness of the eastern wall of
the bend opens up a vista towards the desert, which at El Tovar is
hidden. The Grand View round trip with a look-around at Grand View Point
may be done in half a day from El Tovar, but if one can afford to give a
day or two to it, the material is here to be worth the extra time. Here
is a hotel to care for you. Particularly of interest is the trail to
Moran Point, some half dozen miles to the east, an exquisite outlook and
the view point of Thomas Moran’s famous picture of the Cañon which
occupies a place in the Capitol at Washington. There is a trail down to
the river from Grand View Point, and another by way of Red Cañon,
heading a little to the west of Moran Point. A connecting trail at the
bottom of the Cañon makes it possible to descend by one trail and return
by the other, if one goes prepared to camp by the river. There are, by
the way, several varieties of fish in the Colorado, one, the so-called
Colorado salmon,[81] being a good table fish, though the catching
involves no sport, as it is not gamey.
The Grand Cañon may be visited at any season, though in winter there is
often snow upon the rim and upper levels. Usually there is not enough to
interfere seriously with reaching the various points of interest; and as
one descends into the gorge, one soon passes out of wintry into warmer
and still warmer conditions. Even in December some flowers will be
blooming in the bottom of the Cañon. July and August constitute the
usual summer rainy season, when frequent thunderstorms are to be
expected, particularly in the afternoons. They are usually of short
duration. The atmospheric effects accompanying and succeeding them are
often magnificent.[82]
CHAPTER XIII
MONTEZUMA’S CASTLE AND WELL, WHICH MONTEZUMA NEVER SAW
If you happen never to have speculated in copper or archaeology and are
not a Southwesterner, it is quite likely that you have not heard of the
Verde Valley. It is a somewhat sinuous cleft up and down the very center
of Arizona, holding in its heart the Verde River (_el Rio Verde_, or
Green River, of the Spaniards) which has its source under the San
Francisco Peaks, and after 150 miles or so through cramped cañons and
sunny bottomlands of more or less fertility, joins the Salt River about
50 miles east of the latter’s junction with the Gila. On the western
edge of its upper reaches are the smelter towns of Clarkdale and
Jerome,[83] and the famous copper mines of the United Verde Company.
Across the valley from these, to the eastward and bordering the great
Mogollon Mesa that divides the basin of the Little Colorado and the
Gila, is that Red Rock country referred to in a previous chapter,
together with the Verde’s beautiful tributary, Oak Creek; while some 30
miles to the south there enters the Verde another stream called Beaver
Creek. It is upon the latter the scene of this present chapter is laid.
[Illustration]
OLD GOVERNOR’S PALACE, SANTA FE, N. M.
The center for three centuries of the political life of New Mexico,
under the successive regimes of Spaniard, Indian, Mexican and
American.
[Illustration]
MONTEZUMA’S CASTLE
Near Camp Verde, Arizona. A beautiful specimen of prehistoric Cliff
architecture, with which, however, Montezuma had nothing to do.
Today the valley of the Verde maintains but a sparse population. Here
and there is a white man’s hamlet; here and there are wickiups of the
now peaceable Apaches; and where, between the cliffs that wall in much
of the valley, there is level land enough to make farming operations
possible, there are scattering ranches strung along. Time was, however,
when the valley was the home of an abounding aboriginal population. How
long ago that was no one knows, further than that it was before—and
probably long before—the 16th century Spaniards discovered the Upper
Verde and reported silver outcroppings there. The bordering cliffs and
hilltops are dotted and honeycombed with the ruins of pueblos, stone
fortresses and cave dwellings to an extent that has made the region
unusually attractive to the archaeologists. Two of these prehistoric
remains on Beaver Creek hold especial interest also for the lay
traveler. They are the so-called Casa Montezuma, or Montezuma’s Castle,
and Montezuma’s Well. The former, a strikingly fine example of a cliff
ruin as imposing in its way as a castle on the Rhine, has been made a
National Monument and is under such protection of the United States
government as goes with a printed notice tacked upon a tree nearby, for
there is no resident guardian. The Well is upon a private ranch 8 miles
north of the Castle. It need hardly be said that Montezuma, whose name
is popularly joined to both, had nothing whatever to do with either; nor
indeed had any Aztec, though people who get their ancient history from
newspapers, will tell you that the ruins are of Aztec construction. Both
Castle and Well are close to the Arizona State Highway, and may be
reached by a 50 or 60 mile drive from Flagstaff, or half that from
Jerome. Another way to reach them is from Prescott by automobile livery.
Yet another is by rail from Prescott to Cherry Creek (Dewey Postoffice)
on the Crown King branch of the Santa Fe, and then by auto-stage through
the picturesque Cherry Creek Cañon 32 miles to Campe Verde on the Verde
River. Campe Verde was formerly an army post of importance during the
Apache wars, but is now peaceful enough for the most pacific,
maintaining a hotel, a garage, a barber shop, an ice-cream and soda-pop
saloon, a store or two, and similar amenities of 20th century living as
delightful as unexpected in this out-of-the-way corner of our country.
And I think here is as good a place as any to say a word about the
modern Southwestern mail stage. It is, of course, motor-driven in this
mechanical age, and lacks the peculiar dash and picturesqueness of the
4- and 6-horse vehicles of other days. Nevertheless, much of the charm
that enveloped western stage travel then clings to the modern
auto-stage. There is the same immersion in glorious, wild scenery; the
same thrill of excitement as you spin down mountain grades and around
curves with a cañon yawning hungrily beside you; the same exhilaration
of association with fellow passengers of types foreign to Broadway or La
Salle Street; many times there is the same driver, who, surrendering the
ribbon for a steering wheel, has not at all changed his nature. The seat
beside him is still the premium place, and if he takes a fancy to you,
he will exude information, anecdote and picturesque fiction as freely as
a spring its refreshing waters. To travel a bit by stage, when occasion
offers, gives a flavor to your Southwestern outing that you will be
sorry to have missed. Besides, it sometimes saves you money and time.
From Camp Verde to Montezuma’s Castle is a pleasant 3 mile jaunt. Of
course you may miss the trail, as I did, and walk six, but if you keep
close to Beaver Creek, with a sharp eye ahead, you can detect the ruin
from nearly a mile away, snugly ensconced high up in a niche of a pale
cliff, overlooking the valley. It is a comparatively small ruin, but
there is a charm in its very compactness. And there is the charm, too,
of color, the general tone of the buildings being pink set in a framing
of white. The base is about 75 feet above the level of the creek that
flows at the foot of the cliff—flows, that is, when water happens to be
in it, which is not always. The structure itself is perhaps 30 feet
high, with substantial squared walls of masonry, and is in 5 stories,
access from one to another being either by openings in the ceilings or
by modern ladders fastened against the outside walls. How the ancients
managed the ascent from the ground, there is none to tell us. An
interesting feature is a bowed parapet or battlement (the height of
one’s shoulder), which surmounts the fourth story, and from below hides
the fifth story rooms which are placed well back against the innermost
part of the cliff recess and roofed by its overhang. Be sure you climb
to that battlemented upper story (it will be no easy job, for you have
to swing yourself up to it through the ceiling of the fourth), and
leaning upon the parapet, enjoy the solitude that stretches before
you—from the sycamores lining Beaver Creek at the cliff’s foot, across
the mesquite-dotted mesa, and the green bottomlands of the Verde to the
long purple range of the Black Hills in the dim southwest. If any sound
there be, it is the whisper of the wind in the trees far below, or the
cooing of the wild doves, which haunt the place. So do bats, and a
certain queer acidulous smell that pervades the rooms is attributable to
them. As you walk about, your feet stir up the dust of ages. Here and
there on the mud-plastered walls are human finger prints dried in the
material when it was laid on by prehistoric hands. In some of the rooms,
particularly in certain cave dwellings (which, following the natural
ledges, you will find scooped out of the tufa cliff beside the Castle),
the ceiling and walls are blackened still with soot from the smoke of
pre-Columbian fires. You may pick up bits of pottery, as you stroll,
corn-cobs wizened of the ages, broken metates, or malpais rubbing
stones, mute reminders of the human drama once enacted here. The airy
battlement is pierced with downward-pointing loopholes through which
arrows were doubtless shot at foes below. It is this abounding and
evident human touch, this mystery of a long vanished human life, that
lends to Southwestern travel a unique fascination, reaching to something
in us that is not awakened by purely natural aspects more sublime but
disassociated from man. In spite of the fact that men will kill one
another, mistreat, enslave and exploit one another, men never lose a
supreme interest in men; stronger than all is the yearning of the human
heart for other human hearts. Is it love outwearing love’s antithesis?
Montezuma’s Well is 8 miles further up Beaver Creek, and is reached by a
public highway quite practicable for automobiles when the fords of the
creek are not running high water. You pass a ranch every mile or so, and
the Well itself is found to be situated inside the wire fences of one.
After the hospitable and unexacting solitude of Montezuma’s Castle, you
will experience a bit of a shock, perhaps, at the fences and in finding
that a fee of half a dollar is imposed for entrance to the Well.
Nevertheless the sight is worth the money. Proceeding from the ranch
house across an eighth of a mile of open, treeless mesa, you come quite
without warning, to a crater-like[84] opening 500 feet across, yawning
at your feet. Its walls drop almost perpendicularly some 60 feet or more
to a round pool of clear water steel blue, except around the margins,
where accumulations of pondweed give it a brown tinge. There is a
precipitous, stony trail down which you may pick your way to the water’s
edge; and there, as in the bottom of a colossal mush-bowl, you are hid
from the world and the world from you. Catclaw and wild grape, hackberry
and wild walnut and salt-bush make a scrubby cover roundabout, with
datura and cleome and blooming wild tobacco adding a flower-touch. There
is here as at Montezuma’s Castle a peculiar sense of loneliness and
silence—broken only by an occasional bird note, or the hum of vagabond
bees. In the clear, still waters of the pool are reflections of the
cliffs, and raising your eyes to them you recognize in the southern side
a few squat little stone houses wedged in between the strata of the rock
walls. You can, if you choose, easily climb to some of them, and
stooping through the small doorways get a taste of what it was like to
be a cliff dweller. At the north end of the pond there is a thicket of
willows and cottonwoods, and there the waters find their exit by an
underground passage that would lead them into Beaver Creek (which flows
beyond the hill) were it not that they are diverted to irrigate the
ranch lands. Near this place of disappearance, is a very interesting
feature of the Well—a series of natural caverns reaching far back under
the hill, forming an irregular dwelling of many rooms, with occasional
bits of built-in wall of mud-plastered stone. Upon such a wall at the
very entrance of the cavern is the tiny imprint of a child’s hand, left
we must suppose, by some prehistoric toddler steadying itself—how many,
many centuries ago, who can tell?—against the freshly plastered surface,
just as a baby, uncertain of its feet, would do to-day. At the time Mr.
Chas. F. Lummis wrote his fascinating volume, “Some Strange Corners of
our Country,” and described Montezuma’s Castle and Well, the precious
imprint was perfect; but some witless latter-day visitor has pecked out
the palm with his vandal jack-knife, destroying in a moment what Time,
the arch-destroyer, had respected for centuries. Still the marks of the
baby fingers were left when I visited the place a year ago and I hope
still are, to link the fancy tenderly with that ancient people, our
elder brethren.
The proprietor of the Well, Mr. W. B. Back, will guide you about and
light you into the cavern’s recesses, piloting you with a lantern
through passages so low and narrow at times that you must go almost on
hands and knees until he brings you, far within, into a spacious and
utterly dark rock-chamber with a stream of living water coursing
musically through it, where further investigation is barred. He will
also transport you in an anachronous row-boat across the bosom of the
Well. It seems the soundings deepen suddenly from 80 feet at the outer
part to 500 feet and no bottom at the center. There the water rises as
in a funnel from its unknown source. At the outlet beyond the hill the
waters gush from beneath a high, darkling cliff in an impetuous stream
that varies little in volume throughout the year, the measurement being
about 112 miner’s inches. Your guide takes you there, too (passing on
the way the ruins of an ancient pueblo that once occupied the mesa near
the Well’s edge), and you will enjoy the sight of that brisk little
torrent fringed with a riot of maiden-hair fern and columbine, and
darkened by the shadows from huge sycamores that foregather about it.
The ancient Well-dweller, knew perfectly the value of that water and led
it by ditches, the remains of which you may yet see, to irrigate their
corn- and bean-fields a mile away. Apaches, who within recent years have
been the only Indians dwelling in the region, profess no knowledge of
the people who built the houses here. Mr. Back (who, by the way, in 1889
filed as a homesteader on the land about the Well including the Well
itself as a water right) informed me that the Apaches regard the place
with disfavor. “_Aqua no ’ueno_,” one old man told him, “water no good.
Long time ago, you _sabe_, three Indian _mujeres_ all same women, you
_sabe_, she swim out in water, and go round and round, you _sabe_, in
the middle, and by ’em by, she go down, all three. Never come back. No,
no—_no ’ueno_.” The water is warmish, but quite drinkable—if you can
forget about those Apache ladies who are still in it.
It would seem reasonable that so remarkable a natural phenomenon as is
the Well, situated in a region as populous with aborigines as the Verde
Valley once was, would have a place in Indian folk lore; and as a matter
of fact Dr. J. W. Fewkes[85] has learned that the Hopis know of its
existence, and claim it as the home of some of their ancestors.
Moreover, the tales of some of their old men indicate that they regard
the place as the house of the Plumed Serpent, a divinity peculiarly dear
to the desert dwelling Hopis of today, as the guardian of the waters and
springs. Indeed, it is, perhaps, as a shrine of the divine that the Well
is most truly to be considered; and in view of the extensive pueblo that
once flourished on the rim, it may be that the houses of the Well walls
were used in connection with religious observances rather than as a
habitation of the common people.
CHAPTER XIV
SAN ANTONIO
If you are a Southwesterner, born or naturalized, returning from a visit
“back East,” your spirits rise with a jump when the trainmen call out
“San Antone!” For this is the frontier of your own dear country, and you
feel the thrill that goes with getting home again and being among your
own people. Dusty and a bit down at the heel in spots is San Antonio,
you think? Yes, son, but it is picturesque; and there are adobes and
Mexicans, Stetson hats and cart-wheel dollars once more, and it is where
the Southwest begins, if you are westbound on the S. P.
San Antonio more than anywhere else in Texas has an Old World
atmosphere. The former Spanish capital of the province, there are parts
of it that impart to the visitor much the same feeling that Monterey,
that other Spanish capital, gives him in California—the feeling that
_may be_ this is the United States, but it needs to be demonstrated. Of
course, being a city of 100,000 people and commercially important, it
has its well-groomed, American side, but unless you are in San Antonio
merely in quest of health and comfort,[86] it is not that spick-and-span
side that appeals to your traveler’s taste. You will prefer those
streets, irregular and even unpaved (often their Spanish names still
clinging to them), of the older quarters, where cracked one-storied
adobes in open sunshine, elbow stately old tree-embowered mansions,
whose tangled gardens seem to hide in their unkempt corners untold
romances. You will like the Mexican quarter with its queer little shops,
and the market square with its picturesque crowds of swarthy _peones_,
donkeys and country teams of odd sorts, its squatting street venders of
_tortillas_, cakes, _dulces_, songbooks, religious pictures and
shoe-strings. You will like, too, the bridges over the little river that
winds cosily about through the midst of the town, and the waterside
lawns where trees cast a comfortable shade and summer houses invite to
tea _al fresco_. There are literally dozens of those bridges, with
railings at a convenient height to lean your elbows on and dream away an
idle half-hour. Moreover, you will like the many charming parks and
plazas, where you may sit under a palm tree and enjoy the passing tide
of open-air life and make more acquaintances in half an hour than you
would in New York in a year.
The Main Plaza is dominated by the cathedral of San Fernando, which
dates from 1738, though little of the original structure remains—most of
the present building having been constructed about half a century ago.
What is left of the original church is in the rear, backing on another
and larger square, the old _Plaza de Armas_, or Military Plaza as it is
now called.
Modern San Antonio has risen out of the consolidation of the presidio of
San Antonio de Béjar, the Mission of Antonio de Valero (both mission and
presidio founded in 1718) and the _villa_—a form of Spanish
municipality—of San Fernando, founded in 1730. The Mission, after
abandonment as a religious institution, was turned into a fortress and
barracks, and acquired the name of Alamo.[87] The Church of the Mission
and what is left of the main building of the Fort are the most famous
historical buildings in the city. They face on the Alamo Plaza, and are
of such unique interest as to draw, in themselves, many visitors to San
Antonio; for they are in a sense to Texas what Faneuil Hall is to New
England, the cradle of its liberty. Late in 1835, when Texas was still a
part of Mexico, San Antonio was stormed and captured by a band of
insurgent American-Texans under the leadership of “Old Ben” Milam, who
was killed in the fight. (You will see his statue in Milam Square, if
you are interested enough to look it up). The Alamo, which was well
outside the San Antonio of those days, was surrendered with the city.
Here the Texans later entrenched themselves, and in February and March
of the following year were besieged for 12 days by 4000 Mexicans under
General Santa Ana. Of the Texans, there were less than 200, including
some women and children. Refusing to surrender, every man of them was
killed in the final assault upon the place, the only survivors
(according to H. H. Bancroft) being 3 women, 2 children and one negro
boy servant. “Remember the Alamo” became the war-cry of the Texans in
the subsequent struggle that ended in the independence of the province.
The little Alamo Church and part of the main building that we see
to-day, form only a small portion of the establishment that existed in
1836 and was occupied by the Texan defenders. Besides this church part
(now maintained as a public monument) there was the large two-story
_convento_-fortress divided into rooms and used as armory and barracks,
part of which now exists and is cared for by the State of Texas; also a
prison building and courtyard; the whole covering between 2 and 3 acres.
Prominent among the Alamo defenders was that picturesque character and
popular Southwestern hero, Davy Crockett. Another was James Bowie, to
whom many authorities attribute the invention of the famous knife that
bears the Bowie name, but Bancroft says it was Rezin Bowie, a brother of
James, who originated it. These and others of the participants in the
Texan war of independence are commemorated in the names of streets,
parks and public houses throughout the city. As for the Alamo, it is
bait in all sorts of business ventures—giving name to saloons,
suspenders, grocery stores, restaurants, lodging houses and what not.
Next to the Alamo, the sightseer (unless an enthusiasm for matters
military takes him straight to San Antonio’s famous army post, Sam
Houston), will find worth while a visit to the old Franciscan Missions,
now in ruins, that are strung along the San Antonio River to the south
of the city. There are four of these, the first about 2 miles from the
Alamo, the rest at similar intervals of a couple of miles. Americans
have got in the way of calling them, in numerical fashion, First,
Second, Third and Fourth Missions, respectively, to the neglect of their
fine old Spanish names. The First, which is on the southern outskirts of
the city, and may be reached by a moderate walk from a street car line,
is the Mission _Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepcion de Acuña_ (Our
Lady of the Immaculate Conception, of Acuña). From quite a distance one
catches sight of its twin square towers with pyramidal tops and its high
dome peeping above a tangle of mesquite, chinnaberry and pecan trees,
and sprawling juisache bushes. A Mexican family lives in an end of the
ruined _convento_ part, and a small fee is charged for showing the
inside of the church and permitting you to climb the belfry for a fine
view over the country. The façade is interesting with much curious
sculpturing. The knotted cord of St. Francis winds above the austere
polygonal “arch” of the doorway, upon which is this Spanish inscription:
_A su patrono y princessa con estas armas atiende esta mission y
defiende el_ _punto de su pureza_. (With these arms this Mission attends
her Patroness and Princess and defends the state of her immaculateness.)
This is an obvious allusion to the controversy long maintained among
old-time theologians concerning the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s
immaculate conception—a doctrine defended and preached by the
Franciscans from the first. In the corners immediately above the arch
are two medallions, the one bearing an unusual form of the Franciscan
Order’s coat-of-arms—the Saviour’s naked arm and the sleeved arm of St.
Francis nailed together to the Cross; the other carved in the semblance
of five blood-drops, to symbolize perhaps the stigmata of St. Francis.
Upon the keystone is another elaborate embellishment now much worn by
the elements. The central figure of this is plainly representative of
the consecrated elements in the Lord’s Supper—a slender Spanish chalice
surmounted by the Sacred Host. Worn figures at the sides of the chalice
may have represented clouds or adoring angels. The whole carving of the
keystone obviously typifies the Church’s missionary purpose. The front
was once gaily frescoed in red, yellow, blue and orange; but Time’s
remorseless hand has fallen heavily on that. Begun in 1731, the building
was not completed until 1752. After Mexican independence from Spain was
accomplished, this Mission as well as the others, was abandoned and was
not infrequently used by both Mexican and United States troops for
barracks and stables. Some 30 years ago Bishop Neraz of San Antonio had
La Purísima Concepcion cleared of rubbish and re-dedicated to Our Lady
of Lourdes.[88]
[Illustration]
SAN JOSÉ DE AGUAYO
The sculptured window of this old Franciscan Mission near San
Antonio, Texas, is widely famed for its refined beauty.
[Illustration]
SAN XAVIER DEL BAC, ARIZONA.
Though largely restored, this survival of early 17th-century
missionary effort, is one of the most interesting antiquities of its
class in the United States.
The Second Mission, properly called San José de Aguayo, was the first
founded of the four, dating from 1720. It was 11 years a-building, and
the date of its completion, March 5, 1731, seems to have determined the
beginning of the remaining three Missions in the chain, all of which
were founded on their present sites in that same year.[89] It was in its
day the most flourishing of the Texas Missions, as, in its ruins, it is
the most beautiful. The builder indulged to the uttermost his love of
florid carving, and the broken façade of the roofless church is a marvel
of ornate sculpturing—of saints, life size or in bust, cherubs’ heads
and flaming hearts, volutes and arabesques and conchoids innumerable.
But it is good sculpture and an amazing thing that it should have been
wrought to the glory of God in that wilderness of what was Northern
Mexico, near two centuries ago. Doubtless it was the work of some
artisan (I have read that his name was Juan Huisar) brought up from Old
Mexico where such ecclesiastical art was encouraged from the beginning
of the Spanish occupation; and for assistants Indians were employed.
Around the corner from this front is a window in the baptistry that
makes you exclaim for the beauty of it, so exquisite is it in its
sculptured setting, so delicate and of so simple loveliness is its
_reja_, or grating of wrought iron. And about it in the broken chinks of
crumbling masonry is a fern garden of Nature’s own sowing, of a sort
that thrives in the sunshine and aridity of the Southwest and nowhere
else, a species that botanists call _Notholaena sinuata_. The Mission is
quite abandoned now save for an occasional service at a modest little
altar in one room. A neighboring Mexican family has the key and supplies
a guide.
These two Missions are usually all the hurrying tourist sees; but an
hour more, if you are in an automobile, is enough to afford a glance at
the other two, which, if less interesting, are still a pleasant
adventure. The Third (6 miles from San Antonio) is Mission _San Juan
Capistrano_ (Saint John of Capistrano, in Italy), and the Fourth is _San
Francisco de la Espada_ (Saint Francis of the Sword). The last has
undergone some restoration to fit it for the resident priest, who
ministers to a Mexican flock quartered roundabout. The entire round of
the Missions can be easily done by motor car in half a day; but take a
day to it, if you can spare the time, picnic somewhere by the river, and
do the beautiful old places with leisure and reverence. Surely one can
do worse things, to quote Sidney Lanier, “than to steal out here from
town ... and dream back the century and a half of strange, lonesome,
devout, hymn-haunted and Indian-haunted years that have trailed past
these walls.”
Annually during the last week of April, there is held in San Antonio an
open air carnival called the Fiesta San Jacinto. The name commemorates
the decisive battle of San Jacinto, fought April 21, 1836, between
Mexicans and Texans, and ending the War of Texan Independence. Elaborate
celebrations mark the festival, which is almost as well known in the
Southwest as the New Orleans Mardi Gras.
NOTE: Readers interested in particulars of the history of the San
Antonio Missions will be repaid by consulting the valuable work of
Miss Adina DeZavala, entitled: “History and Legends of The Alamo and
Other Missions in and Around San Antonio.”
CHAPTER XV
IN THE COUNTRY OF THE GIANT CACTUS
There are two Arizonas. There is that wide, breezy plateau region of the
north, a mile and more above sea level, where our travels so far have
been; and there is the much lower desert region of the south slanting
downward from the Gila River to Sonoran Mexico, from which country there
is little to distinguish it physically. This desert region, known to the
Spaniards as Pimería Alta (that is, the upper country of the Pima
Indians), was the only portion of what was afterwards called Arizona to
possess a white population until several years after our Mexican War.
The tourist to-day penetrates it in two general ways. Near the Mexican
frontier the Southern Pacific transcontinental line traverses it,
passing through Yuma and Tucson and reaching up to Phoenix by a branch
from Maricopa. From the north a branch of the Santa Fe system runs
southward from Ash Fork through Prescott directly to Phoenix.
Phoenix is the State capital, a very modern little city dating from
1817, with a population of perhaps 20,000. There is a touch of poetry in
the name, which was given to symbolize the rising of a new civilization
from the ashes of that prehistoric culture the evidences of whose
existence cover so much of Southern Arizona. Here, where 50 years ago
was pure desert lorded over by the giant Sahuaro—that huge tree-cactus
which is Arizona’s State emblem—we find today surrounding Phoenix a
pleasant land of ranches watered by full irrigation canals flowing in
the shade of palms and cottonwoods, where besides the common staples of
potatoes, corn and alfalfa, there is the exotic grace of the orange and
the fig, the olive, the date and the apricot. This is the valley of the
Salt River, whose waters are impounded by the huge Roosevelt Dam, some
80 miles east of Phoenix. Travelers desirous of studying desert
reclamation will find Phoenix a good center for their observations.
If you value your personal comfort, the time to visit Phoenix is between
November and May. During the rest of the year the weather normally is
remorselessly hot to the unacclimated. My own acquaintance with the city
began in August. In a hazy way I had noticed something unaccustomed
about the look of the population, the men particularly, but failed to
analyze it until a sociable street car conductor remarked to me,
“Stranger here?” “Yes,” said I, “my first day.” “We always know
strangers right away,” he continued. “You see, they wear their coats.”
Then I took a fresh look around and though it was a fairly crowded
street, I failed to see a man who was not in his shirt sleeves. The
winter and early spring, however, are delicious with the peculiar purity
and dryness of the desert air to which a touch of frost at night may
give added vitality.
That interesting 120 mile automobile highway called the Apache Trail
finds at Phoenix its western terminus. Its eastern end is at Globe, a
mining town on modern lines in the center of a rich copper district.[90]
This point is connected by rail with Bowie, 124 miles distant, on the
Southern Pacific Railway. Transcontinental travelers by this route,
either east- or west-bound, are now given the opportunity of varying
their trip by taking this motor drive over the Apache Trail, linking up
with the train again at the point of ending. The feature of the motor
trip, which consumed 9 to 12 hours, is the chance it yields the traveler
to get a more intimate acquaintance with the Arizona countryside than is
possible from a car window. Mines and cattle ranges, stupendous cañons,
strange rock-sculpturings in glowing colors, the desert with its
entrancing vistas, its grotesque and often beautiful plant-life, even a
glimpse of prehistoric ruins—all this the drive affords; and to it is
added the impressive sight of the Roosevelt Dam with its beautiful,
winding driveway upon the breast and its exhibition of man-made
waterfalls and 30-mile lake, an unoffended Nature looking indulgently
down from surrounding precipices and mountain crests and seeming to say,
“Son, not so bad.” There is a hotel at the Dam, on a promontory
overlooking the water—and in the water bass and “salmon” are said to be.
A stop-over here is necessary if you wish to visit the Cliff Dwellings,
5 miles to the eastward, officially known as the Tonto National
Monument.
The Apache Trail detour cuts the traveler out of stopping off at one of
the most interesting little cities of the Southwest—Tucson.[91] It may
be that not all will find this oasis town, lapped in the desert and girt
about with low mountains, as much to their liking as I do, but I believe
it possesses features worth going back on one’s tracks to see; for it
has a decided character of its own. With an out-and-out modern American
side, there is the grace of an historic past, whose outward and visible
sign is a picturesque Spanish quarter in adobe, pink, blue and glaring
white, clustering about a sleepy old plaza and trailing off through a
fringe of Indian _ranchería_ to the blazing desert. The region
roundabout is associated with pretty much all the history that Arizona
had until it became part of the United States. The Santa Cruz Valley, in
which Tucson lies, was a highway of travel during three centuries
between Old Mexico and the Spanish settlements and Missions of Pimería
Alta. Through this valley or the neighboring one of San Pedro (there is
a difference of opinion on this point), Brother Marcos de Niza, the
first white man to put foot in Arizona, must have passed in 1539 on his
way to Zuñi’s Seven Cities; and this way, the following year, came
Coronado upon the expedition that made of New Mexico a province of
Spain. A century later the region was the scene of the spiritual labors
of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, a devoted Jesuit missionary to the
Indians—a man of mark in his time, to whom is credited the founding of
the Spanish Mission San Francisco Xavier del Bac, about 9 miles south of
Tucson. The present beautiful structure, however (Tucson’s crack sight
for tourists), was not erected until long after Padre Kino’s day.
San Xavier is, in itself, worth a stop-over at Tucson. You may make the
round trip from the railway station in a couple of hours by automobile,
getting en route a taste of genuine desert scenery, with its scattered
covering of creosote bush, mesquite, cat’s claw, ocotillo and sahuaro.
The Mission building is one of the most beautiful examples of Spanish
ecclesiastical architecture in our country; and the pure white
structure, lonely in the desert, its glistening walls and stately towers
and dome silhouetted against a sapphire sky, makes a striking sight,
oriental in its suggestion. The church part is still used for religious
services, and other portions form the residence of Sisters of a Catholic
order who conduct a school for the children of the Papago Indians. The
primitive habitations of the latter, scattered about within easy access
of the Mission, are the Mission’s only near neighbors. A small fee
admits one to the church. A feature of interest at the front is the
coat-of-arms in relief of the Order of Saint Francis of Assisi.[92] This
is evidence enough that the present structure, which was begun in 1783
and finished in 1797, was erected by Franciscans, although, as already
stated, the Mission itself was founded about a century previously by
Jesuits. In 1768 and for ten succeeding years, the resident missionary
at San Xavier was Padre Francisco Garcés, one of the most remarkable
characters in the Southwest’s history. An enthusiastic young priest in
his early thirties when he came to San Xavier, and possessed of a
powerful physique, he journeyed on foot up and down the valleys of the
Gila and the Colorado (even penetrating into California and to the Hopi
village of Oraibi), tirelessly searching out Indians, and preaching to
them Christ and the gospel of reconciliation. He was indeed the original
Christian Pacifist of the Southwest, urging upon the Indian tribes
everywhere that they should settle their differences peaceably and live
together as brothers. To prove his faith he would never suffer a
military escort to accompany him in his wilderness pioneering, but took
only an Indian companion or two as interpreter, and a mule to carry his
ecclesiastical impedimenta. Neither would he bear any weapon for
defense, but went “equipped only with charity and apostolic zeal.”[93]
His kindly, joyous character, so endeared him to the aborigines, that,
as he himself records, a village would often refuse to supply him a
guide to the next tribe, wanting to keep him for themselves. Under such
circumstances, he would set out alone. He was a rare puzzle to those
barbarians, both because they found it difficult to decide whether in
his long gown and clean-shaven face he was man or woman, and because he
strangely wanted nothing of them but the chance to give them a free
passport to Heaven—an inexplicable sort of white man, indeed!
While on your Mission pilgrimage, it will be worth while to continue
southward some 50 miles more to Mission San José de Tumacácori. The road
is fairly good and about 7 hours will suffice for the round from Tucson
by automobile; or the train may be taken on the Nogales branch of the
Southern Pacific to Tubac station, whence a walk southward a couple of
miles brings you to the Mission.[94] The buildings, mostly of adobe, are
in ruins and very picturesque with a domed sanctuary and a huge square
belfry, now broken and dismantled. They and a few acres surrounding them
now form the Tumacácori National Monument, under the care of the United
States Government. This Mission in the wilderness was once, next to San
Xavier, the most important in what is now Arizona. It was established by
Jesuits in 1754, though the present church building is of Franciscan
structure of much later date, having been completed in 1822, replacing
one destroyed by the ceaselessly raiding Apaches.[95] Of interest, too,
in this vicinity, is the ancient village of Tubac, 2 miles north of
Tumacácori. Here in the 18th century was a Spanish presidio thought
needful for supplementing the preaching of the friars by the argument of
the sword. To Californians and those interested in the history of the
Golden State, the place has an appeal because here during several years
Don Juan Bautista Anza was commandant—the sturdy soldier who conceived
the idea of a practicable overland route from Mexico across the deserts
to the Spanish settlements on the California coast, and in 1775-6
convoyed over this route the colonists who founded San Francisco. Today
Tubac is an unpretentious little adobe hamlet sprawling about a
gravelly, sunny knoll, and looking across the Santa Cruz River with its
fringe of billowy cottonwoods to the blue line of the Santa Rita and San
Gaetano ranges. At Rosy’s Café I got a modest but comforting luncheon,
and on your way to Tumacácori you, too, might do worse.
West of Tucson 65 miles is the little town of Casa Grande, which takes
its name from one of the most famous prehistoric ruins in the United
States, standing about 18 miles to the northeast, near the Gila River.
If you have a taste for prehistoric architecture, you will enjoy Casa
Grande, for it is _sui generis_ among our country’s antiquities. If, on
the other hand, you are just an ordinary tourist, you must decide for
yourself whether a half day’s motor trip across the desert to see a
ruinous, cubical mud house topped with a corrugated iron roof, in the
midst of a sunburnt wilderness, will or will not be worth your while.
What touches the fancy is that here, centuries doubtless before Columbus
(perhaps before the time of the Cliff Dwellers) dwelt and toiled an
unknown people whose remains are of a type that possesses important
points of difference from those found elsewhere within the limits of the
United States, though similar ruins exist in Mexico. Casa Grande is
Spanish for Great House, and is given to this ruin because its
outstanding feature is a huge block of a building of three or four
stories in height, and thick walls of _caliche_—a mixture of mud, lime
and pebbles molded into form and dried, somewhat as modern concrete
walls are built up. The unique character of the Casa Grande caused it to
be set aside 25 years ago as a National Monument, and important work has
since been done there by Government ethnologists, in the way of
strengthening and repairing the crumbling walls and cleaning up the
rooms. Extensive excavations have also been made close by, resulting in
uncovering the foundations of a numerous aggregation of houses plazas,
enclosing walls, etc. These reveal the fact that in some age the place
was a walled city of importance, even if it was of mud—a sort of
American Lutetia, to which Fate denied the glory of becoming a Paris.
The huge building in the center—the Casa Grande—probably served partly
as a religious temple, but principally as a citadel where in time of
attack by enemies the people took refuge. Access to the upper stories
was doubtless by ladders outside, as in modern pueblos. Indeed, this is
but one of several walled-in compounds of buildings that formerly
existed in the Gila Valley, and are now but shapeless heaps of earth.
Some of these close to the main Casa Grande ruin have been excavated and
their plan laid bare. The remains of an extensive irrigation system are
still in evidence, water having been drawn from the Gila.
The first white man of unimpeachable record to see Casa Grande was that
Padre Eusebio Kino, of whom we heard at San Xavier and who gave the ruin
its Spanish name. He learned of it from his Indians, and in 1694 visited
the place, saying mass in one of its rooms. There is some reason to
identify the spot with Chichiticale, or Red House, a ruin noted in the
reports of Fray Marcos de Niza and of Coronado, both of whom probably
passed not far from Casa Grande on their way to Zuñi, but most scholars
now reject this theory of identity. After Kino the ruin was frequently
examined by explorers and written about up to the American occupation.
Anza and his San Francisco colonists camped a few miles distant, and the
commandant with his two friars, Padres Garcés and Font, inspected the
place with great interest on October 31, 1775. Font in his diary gives a
circumstantial account of it, calling it _La Casa de Moctezuma_
(Montezuma’s House), and narrates a tradition of the neighboring Pima
Indians as to its origin. It seems[96] that long ago, nobody knows how
long, there came to that neighborhood an old man of so harsh and crabbed
a disposition that he was called Bitter Man (_el Hombre ’Amargo_, in
Padre Font’s version). With him were his daughter and son-in-law, and
for servants he had the Storm Cloud and the Wind. Until then the land
had been barren, but Bitter Man had with him seeds which he sowed, and
with the help of the two servants abundant crops grew year after year,
and were harvested. It was these people who built the Great House, and
they dwelt there, though not without quarrels because of Bitter Man’s
character, so that even Storm Cloud and Wind left him at times, but they
came back. After many years, however, all went away—whither, who
knows—and were heard of no more forever.
Casa Grande may also be reached by conveyance from Florence on the
Arizona Eastern Railway, from which point it is distant a dozen miles or
so. Owing to the extreme summer heat of this desert country, the trip to
the ruin is most comfortably made in the late autumn, winter or early
spring. There is a resident care-taker who acts as guide.
CHAPTER XVI
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
“Shall they say of you, you have been to Rome and not seen the Pope?”
Yet that is what will be said if you turn back at the Colorado River and
leave Southern California out of your Southwestern travels. However, few
people do that. The fear is that in their haste to reach that tourist
playground, they may neglect too much of what the preceding chapters
have dwelt upon. Intent upon seeing the Pope, they may do scant justice
to Rome.
By Southern California is meant California south of the Teháchapi
Mountains and their western prolongation ending in Santa Barbara County
at the sea. It is not a political division, but Nature’s—in its physical
aspect differing quite markedly from Central and Northern California.
Long regarded with a sort of mild contempt by the Americans who settled
Central California and who habitually spoke of the South as “the cow
counties,” Southern California has in the last quarter century attained
a reputation not short of gilt-edged. Lonely, treeless plains and
valleys and brush-clad mesas that a comparatively few years ago were
counted desert and good for nothing except for cattle ranges and sheep
runs, have become, with the development of water, pleasant lands of
fruitfulness supporting a numerous and progressive population. The
extensive cultivation of the orange, the lemon, the fig, the grape, the
English walnut, the apricot, the olive; the planting of the eucalyptus,
the palm and a hundred kinds of exotic shade and ornamental trees; the
dotting of the landscape with villas of a distinguished sort of
architecture patterned on Italian and Spanish models—all this has
wrought a transformation that makes even more appropriate today than 25
years ago the sobriquet of “Our Italy” given the region by Charles
Dudley Warner.
Here wealthy Easterners maintain winter homes as they keep summer
estates on the Atlantic Coast, and less well-to-do folk—retired farmers,
tradesmen or professional people—buy a bungalow and settle down to the
enjoyment of a good climate and the luxury of having roses and green
peas in their winter gardens. Not only Americans but those of other
nationalities have discovered that Southern California totals a
remarkable number of points in the problem of comfortable living—a
healthful and delightful climate (notably in winter), a fruitful soil
capable of raising everything natural to the temperate zone besides a
large number of things sub-tropical, a beautiful and varied terrain
embracing seaside, valley and mountain, and an admirable system of
capital roads. For the tourist there is not only the attraction of this
beauty and comfort, but there is the drawing of historic interest,
touched with that indefinable sense of romance that attaches wherever
Spain has had a foothold. In Southern California as elsewhere in the
Southwest, that Spanish flavor is very evident, manifested in the
presence of a considerable Spanish-speaking population, in the remains
of Spanish-built Missions and ranch houses, and in the persistence of
Spanish geographic nomenclature.
The hub of Southern California is Los Angeles, which in a generation has
expanded from a sleepy little half-Spanish pueblo of a few thousand to a
metropolis of half a million, with a taste for the latest in everything
and the money to indulge it. It is the natural center from which to do
one’s sightseeing, though Pasadena, adjoining it on the north, is almost
as convenient and, indeed, preferred by many who are not in a hurry and
prefer surroundings more rural. Pasadena is a little city of 40,000,
beautifully situated on a shelving mesa at the base of the Sierra Madre
and overlooking the fertile San Gabriel Valley. It is nationally famous
for its numerous fine estates and the winter residences of wealthy
Easterners; but outside of that it possesses mile upon mile of
tree-lined streets where modest homes of the bungalow type look out from
a setting of vine and shrub and flower. Each New Year’s Day the city
becomes the objective of tens of thousands of visitors to view the
Tournament of Roses, an outdoor fiesta whose distinctive feature is a
street floral pageant.
From Los Angeles lines of transportation radiate to all points of
interest. You have your pick of steam railways, electric lines,
auto-stages and ocean steamers. Hundreds of miles of first class,
hard-surfaced roads make Southern California a motorist’s paradise, and
automobiling is here so notable a feature of tourist life that, if
possible, the traveler should make provision for it when packing his
pocket book. Public automobiles are abundant and the prices reasonable
enough, from $1.50 per hour upward, with special rates for trips. If you
are able to club with others for a car, you may find this the cheapest
form of travel. Maps and specific information as to drives may be had at
offices of the Automobile Club of Southern California.[97]
For those who do not care for motoring or find it too expensive, most of
the desirable points are reached by electric and steam lines, or by
auto-stages. There are several daily excursions scheduled by the Pacific
Electric Railway, which afford at a minimum of expense a satisfactory
means of getting a comprehensive idea of Southern California. One of
these, to Mount Lowe (a prominent peak of the Sierra Madre), may be
substituted for the automobile drive up Mount Wilson. The visit to San
Juan Capistrano Mission may be made by train, the railway station being
close by. There is a resident priest and religious services are
regularly held in one of the restored rooms. The Mission was founded in
1775, and the church part—now a ruin, the result of an earthquake in
1812—marked in its prime the high-tide of Mission architecture in
California.
The Franciscan Mission establishments in California are among the most
interesting historical monuments of our country; and those of the
southern end of the State remain to-day especially noteworthy. Ten miles
from Los Angeles is Mission San Gabriel (founded in 1771 on the bank of
the Rio Hondo a few miles east of the present site, to which it was
removed in 1775). It was for many years a principal center of
civilization in the province, the settlement antedating the founding of
Los Angeles by several years. Of the original establishment little
remains but the church part, which is in a state of good preservation
and serves as a place of worship for a considerable congregation,
largely of Spanish descent. Mission San Fernando (about 25 miles west of
the heart of Los Angeles) is deserted, save by a caretaker. The fine
corridored _convento_, flush with the highway, is its most conspicuous
feature today, but the Mission was once of notable extent. A cloistered
walk formerly connected the _convento_ with the ruined church in the
rear. If you stroll on past the church to the ancient olive orchard
beyond and look back, having the two date palms there in your
foreground, you will get a charming picture of the noble old temple
where Padre “Napoleon” strove, during a third of the Mission’s
existence, to steer his dusky children heavenward. Apropos of these
California Missions (whose plan was quite different from those of New
Mexico and Arizona) it should be borne in mind that originally each
consisted of a huge hollow square of buildings, facing within on an open
courtyard. The church occupied part or all of one side, the other sides
consisting of living rooms for the one or two padres (the _convento_
part), kitchens, store rooms, shops where the neophytes were taught and
labored, and the _monjerio_ or sleeping apartment of the Indian widows
and unmarried girls of the Mission. Outside this compound were the huts
of the Indian converts, arranged in streets and forming an orderly
village of sometimes a couple of thousand souls.[98]
South of Los Angeles, 125 miles, is San Diego, reached either by rail,
steamer, or automobile. If the last way is chosen, going and returning
may be done over different highways, one following the coast, the other
running further inland via Riverside. Both roads are excellent. Forty
miles before reaching San Diego, you pass within calling distance of
Mission San Luis Rey (St. Louis, the King)—4 miles east of Oceanside, a
railroad stop where conveyance may be had for the Mission. San Luis Rey
was founded in 1798 and in its proportions rivaled San Juan Capistrano.
It is still an imposing establishment, though restored with rather too
heavy a hand to suit the artistic sense. The situation is charming, on a
knoll in the midst of a noble valley, emerald green in winter and
spring, the San Luis Rey River flowing close by the Mission. A community
of hospitable Franciscan brothers occupies the premises, and religious
services are regularly held in the church. Twenty miles further up the
river (eastward), a pleasant drive, is San Luis Rey’s sub-mission or
_asistencia_, San Antonio de Pala, which no lover of the picturesque
should miss visiting. White-walled and red-tiled, the quaint little
church with a remarkable, white bell-tower set not on it but beside it,
is one’s beau ideal of an old mission. The setting, too, is satisfying.
On every hand are the mountains; a stone’s throw away ripples the little
river; and clustered close by is a picturesque village of about 300
Indians, to whom a resident priest, with rooms in the Mission, is
_cura_. Both Mission San Luis Rey and this outpost of Pala were
constructed by Indians under the supervision of the famous Padre Peyri,
one of the most forceful and devoted of the early Franciscans in
California. He gave the best of his life to his wilderness flock, and
years after his departure, the Indians, in reverence of his memory,
would still offer up their prayers before his picture as before a
saint’s.
San Diego, a city claiming a population of 100,000, is spread over
seaward-looking hills affording a delightful view of the land-locked Bay
of San Diego and the Pacific Ocean going down to China. The mountains of
Old Mexico, too, only 20 miles away, make a feature in the prospect. If
you are in any doubt what to do in San Diego, you need only stroll
around to the neighborhood of the Plaza, and you will be shown. Street
cars, automobiles, “rubberneck” busses and tourist agency windows are
hung with notices of places to see and trips to take, and the streets
are sprinkled with uniformed officials emblazoned with gold lace, to
give you details. You may have a good time on any of these jaunts, if
you are good-natured and like a bit of roughing it (for San Diego’s
vicinity has not as yet reached Los Angeles County’s excellence in
roads); but to give you a start I would itemize the following as not to
be overlooked:
The exquisite gardens at Balboa Park (where the Panama-California
Exposition of 1915-16 was held), affording in epitome a charming object
lesson in what California gardens offer both in exotic and native
plants; the drive to and along the headland of Point Loma for the fine
views; by ferry across the bay to Coronado’s famous hotel and beach; the
ride by railway or automobile to La Jolla (pronounced _lah ho´ yah_), a
pleasant little seaside resort with interesting cliffs and surf-drenched
rocks; by street car to Old Town (where San Diego had its beginning), to
visit the Estudillo house—a former Spanish home intelligently restored
and interesting as a bit of old-time architecture with its tiled inner
corridors about a flowery patio. It is locally known as “Ramona’s
Marriage Place,” because it was here, according to the novel, that the
priest lived who married Ramona and Alessandro. On the hill back of Old
Town once stood Padre Junípero Serra’s first Mission in California,
founded in 1769; but it is all gone now, the site being marked by a
large cross made of the original red tiles that once littered the
ground. It is but a short walk worth taking both for the view and for
the sentiment of standing on the spot where white civilization in
California had its beginning. Five miles up the valley that stretches
eastward at your feet is what is left of the second Mission (established
in 1774). This historic building has been sadly neglected and is but a
ruined shell, which only reverence for its past makes interesting.
Across the road from it is the old olive orchard, believed to be the
original planting of the olive in the State.
San Diego’s back country offers many interesting trips by auto-stage or
private car, the roads being as a rule good but with the ups and downs
of a hilly region. There are several good hotels in the mountains at a
distance of 60 miles or so from San Diego, so that the night may be
spent here if desired. Pine Hills, Mesa Grande, and Warner’s Hot Springs
may be mentioned as desirable objectives. The trip by auto-stage or your
own car via Campo to El Centro or Calexico (at the Mexican border) in
the Imperial Valley will prove an unforgettable experience. The Imperial
Valley is a depression below sea-level in the Colorado Desert of
California, which after lying desolate for ages has of late been made
exceedingly productive by diverting irrigation water to it from the
Colorado River. This trip had best be made between November and May, as
the desert heat in summer and early autumn is intense. If you have your
own car and desire the experience of more desert, return may be made
around the Salton Sea through the Coachella Valley (where dates are now
extensively grown), to Palm Springs and Riverside.
While we have rambled along the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego,
our eyes will often have been caught by the sight of a long, low island
well out to sea. It is Santa Catalina, whose reputation as a
sea-angler’s paradise is world wide. It has also a most delightful
climate—its and San Diego’s being perhaps the most equable of any on the
Coast. The marine gardens that line the shores are also of wide fame,
and are made visible by boats with glass bottoms, through which one
looks down into the transparent waters of another world where waving
kelps and sea mosses are the forests and bright colored fish, sea
anemones, jelly fish, sea cucumbers and other queer creatures are the
inhabitants. The trip thither and return may be accomplished from Los
Angeles, between breakfast and evening dinner, if you do not care to
stay longer.
A hundred miles northwest of Los Angeles lies Santa Barbara (a little
city of 15,000), rich in beautiful homes and flowery gardens. It is
delightfully situated with the ocean at its feet and the Santa Inés
Mountains at its back, and may be reached from Los Angeles either by
train or by a picturesque motor drive through valleys, over mountains
and beside the sea. Here is the best preserved of all the existing
Franciscan Missions in California—never abandoned since its founding in
1786, though now for many a year there have been no Indians in its care.
It is the residence of a Franciscan community, and the members in their
long brown gowns and white cord girdles may be seen any day at their
various tasks about the grounds—one of which is the piloting of visitors
through the church.
Driving, horseback-riding, playing golf, or simply sitting still and
enjoying being alive in the midst of fine scenery, are the principal
occupations of Santa Barbara’s visitors. Among the longer drives should
be mentioned the 40 miles to the Ojai Valley by way of the lovely
Casitas Passes, and the 45 miles across the Santa Inés Mountains to the
Mission Santa Inés in the valley of the same name. The latter trip is
made more enjoyable if two days are taken to it, the mountains being
crossed by the San Marcos Pass[99] into the Valley of Santa Inés, famous
for its majestic oaks, and the night passed at Los Olivos, 6 miles north
of the Mission Mattei’s Tavern at Los Olivos, is one of the most
comfortable country inns in California. The return should be made by the
Gaviota Pass and the seaside road back to Santa Barbara. The Mission of
Santa Inés (which is Spanish for Saint Agnes, whose eve gives title to
Keat’s immortal poem), is sight enough to make the trip worth while—with
white walls, red-tiled roofs and flowery, corridored front, in a valley
rimmed about with mountains. The Mission was long abandoned and in
ruins, but when the present hospitable rector took charge some 15 years
ago, he began a careful restoration and with his own hands did much of
the necessary labor to put it as we see it today.[100]
A POSTSCRIPT ON CLIMATE, WAYS AND MEANS.
While the climate of the Southwest is characterized by abundant sunshine
and a low degree of relative humidity, it has periods of considerable
moisture precipitation. In winter this takes the form of snow in the
northern and central portions of New Mexico and Arizona (which lie at an
elevation of 5000 feet and more above sea level). The snow, however,
except upon the mountains, disappears rather rapidly under the hot
sunshine of midday, so that the traveler has a fair chance to sandwich
his trips between the storms. The mid-year precipitation of rain is
generally during July and August, and throughout all parts of both those
States it descends usually in severe electrical storms. These occur as a
rule in the afternoon and pass quickly, but while they last they are apt
to be very, very wet. They are the occasion of sky effects of cloud and
rainbow wonderful enough to compensate for whatever discomfort the rain
may cause. In most sections the summer temperatures are on the whole
agreeable, but in the much lower altitudes of parts of southern Arizona
and New Mexico, desert conditions largely prevail, with a degree of heat
in summer that is trying to sight-seers.
In Southern California climatic conditions differ greatly from those
east of the Colorado River. The coast year is divided naturally into a
dry season and a wet—the latter normally extending from October or
November to April or May. From about mid-spring to about mid-autumn no
rainfall whatever is to be expected, except in the high mountains where
there are occasional thundershowers during summer. The winter
precipitation comes usually in intermittent rain-storms of perhaps two
or three days’ duration (on the higher mountains these come as snow),
the intervening periods generally characterized by pleasant, sunshiny
days and by nights with temperatures (particularly during December and
January), not infrequently as low as 30 degrees Fahr. These minimums,
however, rarely hold over an hour or so; and curiously enough, though
they result in early morning frosts, only the tenderest vegetation is
killed, the mercury rising rapidly after sunrise; so that a great
variety of garden flowers bloom, and many vegetables mature, in the open
throughout the winter. A marked feature of the California 24 hours is
the wide difference between the temperature at midday and that at night,
amounting to 35 or 40 degrees F. This condition is fairly constant and
to be counted on daily. Similarly there is a very marked difference
between shade and sun. A respectful regard for this fact will save the
traveler many a bad cold. In summer, though the mercury may run well up
into the 90’s and sometimes even to over 100 degrees, the accompanying
relative humidity is low, so that it may be said that as a rule one
suffers less from heat on the Pacific Coast than on the Atlantic at a
dozen degrees lower.
As regards clothing, a simple and safe rule for travelers in the
Southwest is to bring with them the same sort that they would wear in
New York, season for season. No part of the Southwest is tropical, or
even Floridian.
In the matter of expenses, Southern California has had a wider
experience in catering to tourists than Arizona and New Mexico and its
facilities are now thoroughly systematized, so that the average man may,
if he chooses, live there about as cheaply as at home, or he may have
the most luxurious accommodations at the larger resorts on a basis that
only the very wealthy are familiar with. European plan is that most in
vogue in California hotels, and the one most satisfactory for the
traveler, who, in his rambles, often finds himself at meal-time far from
his hostelry. Unless you want to pay more, you may calculate on $1.00 to
$1.50 a night for a comfortable room. In Arizona and New Mexico the
sparser settlement of the country results in plainer accommodations, but
the rates are reasonable—room $1.00 a day and up; American plan rate
under normal conditions about $3.00 a day. At many points in these two
States the railways conduct hotels for the accommodation of their
patrons, and they are, in my experience, uniformly good.
The charge for saddle-horses varies greatly. In out-of-the-way places
where the horses range for their feed, ponies may be had for a dollar a
day; but at the popular resorts, the rent of a good mount is generally
in the neighborhood of $3.00 a day; it may be even more. There is a
similar irregularity as to automobile rates. The latter are largely
influenced by the character of the trip, as 50 miles on some roads would
involve greater expense to the owner than 100 miles on others. A return
of $15 or $20 a day for a car is not infrequently considered
satisfactory, but harder trips naturally necessitate a much higher
charge. In bargaining for transportation in the Southwest, where it may
be a day’s journey between stopping places, it is well to remember that
the lowest priced is not always the cheapest. It pays to pay for
responsibility.
FOOTNOTES
[1]In 1883 New Mexico enterprisingly celebrated a so-called 300th
anniversary of the founding of Santa Fe, basing that function on the
assumption that Antonio de Espejo, who made an extended exploration
of the province in 1582-3, had planted a colony there. But there is
no evidence whatever that he did.
[2]The name commemorates the first Catholic Archbishop of Santa Fe, John
B. Lamy (1850-1885), an apostolic man much beloved by the New
Mexicans, to whom he appears to have been a true spiritual father.
[3]General Lew Wallace, while governor of New Mexico, wrote the last
three books of “Ben Hur” in the old Palace. “When in the city,” he
informed a correspondent, as quoted in Twitchell’s “Leading Facts of
New Mexico History,” “my habit was to shut myself night after night
in the bedroom back of the executive office proper, and write there
till after twelve o’clock.... The retirement, impenetrable to
incoming sound, was as profound as a cavern’s.”
[4]An establishment of the Archaeological Institute of America, which
maintains schools also at Athens, Rome and Jerusalem. The Santa Fe
school has for years conducted research work among the ancient
remains in the Southwest, Guatemala, and other parts of the American
continent. In connection with this, it holds annually a field summer
school open to visitors.
[5]The climate is part of Santa Fe’s cherished assets, the atmosphere
being characterized by great dryness. In summer the heat is rarely
oppressive, and the nights are normally cool and refreshing. During
July and August frequent thunder showers, usually occurring in the
afternoon, are to be expected. In winter the mercury occasionally
touches zero, and there is more or less of wind and snow interfering
temporarily with the tourist’s outings; but the sunshine is warm and
the snow melts quickly. Autumn is ideal with snappy nights and
mornings and warm, brilliantly sunny mid-days.
[6]The traveler should be warned that Indians as a rule object to being
photographed. Originally they had an idea that ill fortune attended
the operation, but the objection nowadays is usually grounded on a
natural distaste to being made a show of, or the desire to make a
little money. In the latter case, they may succumb to the offer of a
dime if they cannot get 25 cents. It is only just and courteous to
ask permission of the subject (putting yourself in his place). This
is particularly needful at dances. Sometimes photographing these is
not tolerated; in other cases, a fee paid to the governor secures a
license for the day.
[7]About 10 miles beyond Tesuque is the pueblo of Nambé, prettily
situated under the shoulder of the fine, snowy peak, Santa Fe Baldy,
with the lovely Nambé Falls not far away. The Indian population is
barely 100 and the village is becoming Mexicanized. Its saint’s day
is October 4, when the annual fiesta occurs.
[8]Population about 275. Its public fiesta is held August 12.
[9]James Mooney, “The Ghost-Dance Religion.”
[10]You may, if you choose, do Taos from Santa Fe in your own or a hired
automobile via Tesuque and San Juan pueblos, giving a day each way to
the journey. Nambé, San Ildefonso and Santa Clara may be included by
slight detours, but the time in that case must be stretched.
[11]Col. R. E. Twitchell quotes a tradition of the Taos people to the
effect that they came to their present home under divine guidance,
the site being indicated to them by the drop of an eagle’s feather
from the sky.
[12]The skulls of the Cliff Dwellers indicate them to have been a
“long-headed” race, while the modern Pueblos are so only in part. It
is likely, therefore, that the latter Indians are of mixed stocks.
There is, however, abundant traditionary evidence that certain clans
of the present-day Pueblos are of Cliff descent.
[13]Pronounced _Pah´ha-ree-to_, and meaning _little bird_.
[14]_Recto day loce Free-ho´les_, i. e., _brook of the beans_.
[15]From Santa Fe to the Tyuonyi and return may be made by automobile in
one strenuous day, including 2 or 3 hours at the ruins. It is better,
if possible, to board at the ranch in the cañon for a few days, both
for the purpose of examining the ruins at leisure and making some of
the interesting side trips from that point; notably to the Stone
Lions of Cochití, unique examples of aboriginal carving on stone, and
to _La Cueva Pintada_ (the Painted Cave) where are some remarkable
symbolic pictographs. Arrangements should be made with the ranch in
advance by telephone.
[16]An ecclesiastical order existent in rural New Mexico, probably
deriving from the Third Order of Saint Francis, and distinguished by
practices of self-flagellation for the remission of sins. They are
particularly active during Lent, when they form processions, beat
themselves with knotted whips, strap bundles of cactus to their
backs, and walk barefoot or on their knees over flint-strewn ground,
bearing heavy crosses. Some of their exercises are held at the
crosses on these hill-top _calvarios_ (calvaries). The Catholic
Church discourages their practices; but they possess considerable
political power in New Mexico and of recent years the order has
become regularly incorporated as a secret fraternity under the State
law.
[17]L. Bradford Prince, “Spanish Mission Churches of New Mexico.”
[18]The original form of the name is Alburquerque, given in honor of a
Duke of Alburquerque, who was viceroy of New Spain at the time the
place was founded as a _villa_ in 1706.
[19]The name Isleta means “islet,” given, according to Dr. F. W. Hodge,
because formerly the Rio Grande and an arroyo from the mountains
islanded the pueblo between them.
[20]The church authorities, it should be said, do not endorse this
tradition. Father Zepherin Engelhardt, the historian of the
Franciscans in the Southwest, tells me that there were other
missionaries named Padilla besides Padre Juan, and the burial of one
of these in the church at Isleta, may have given color to the story.
[21]Pronounced _bair-na-lee´yo_. It is a diminutive of Bernal, and the
place was so named because settled by descendants of Bernal Diaz, a
soldier of Cortés and contemporary chronicler of the conquest of
Mexico. It was at Bernalillo that De Vargas died, in 1704.
[22]Including a score or so descended from the Pecos tribe who moved to
Jemes in 1838 from Pecos Pueblo. This now deserted pueblo (whose
ruins have lately been systematically excavated and whose fine old
Mission church, visible from the Santa Fe transcontinental trains,
has undergone some careful restoration) may be reached by conveyance
from the Valley Ranch near Glorieta station on the Santa Fe. In
Coronado’s time Pecos was the most populous town in the country. It
is called Cicuyé by the old chroniclers.
[23]The nearest railway station to these lakes is Estancia on the New
Mexican Central.
[24]Harrington, “The Ethno-geography of the Tewa Indians.”
[25]Papers of the School of American Archaeology, No. 35.
[26]Popular tradition persistently associates gold-hoarding with the
Franciscan Missionaries throughout the Southwest, ignoring the fact
that the members of the Seraphic Order were pledged to poverty, and
had small interest in any wealth except the unsearchable riches of
Christ, to share which with their humble Indian charges was their
sole mission in the wilderness. As for the New Mexico Indians, they
knew nothing of any mineral more precious than turquoise.
[27]Paul A. F. Walter, “The Cities That Died of Fear.”
[28]Apropos of these ruined Missions, it is interesting to know that the
construction was undoubtedly the work of women—house-building being
one of the immemorial duties and cherished privileges of Pueblo
womankind.
[29]Paul A. P. Walter, “The Cities That Died of Fear.”
[30]The Manzano range reaches an elevation of 10,600 feet here.
[31]The formation is that known throughout New Mexico as a _mesa_
(Spanish for _table_). Such flat-topped hills—high or low—have been
brought into being by the washing away in ancient times of the
surrounding earth.
[32]New Mexico rural roads are in a certain Mark Tapleyian sense ideal
for motorists. Traversing unfenced plains, as they often do, if they
develop bad spots the motorist turns aside and has little difficulty
in scouting out a detour. After a rain, however, they are gummy and
slippery in adobe country until the sun hardens the clay, which it
does rather quickly.
[33]Some of the Acomas in despair, threw themselves from the cliffs and
so died rather than surrender. A stirring account of the storming of
Acoma will be found in “The Spanish Pioneers,” by Chas. F. Lummis.
[34]Remarkable for its light weight and ornamentation with
conventionalized leaf forms, birds, etc. Unfortunately the education
of the young Indians in Government schools is causing a decline at
all the pueblos in this purely American art.
[35]The reader, curious to know what is on top of Katzimo, is referred
to an article, “Ascent of the Enchanted Mesa,” by F. W. Hodge, in the
Century Magazine, May, 1898.
[36]Strictly speaking Laguna is the mother pueblo in a family of seven,
the other half dozen being summer or farming villages scattered about
within a radius of a few miles, so established to be near certain
fertile lands. Some of these, as Pojuate, are picturesque enough to
warrant a visit, if there is time. The population of all 7 is
estimated at about 1500.
[37]For a lively account of this authentic bit of history, the reader is
referred to the chapter “A Saint in Court” in Mr. C. F. Lummis’s
“Some Strange Corners of our Country.”
[38]Gallup is also a principal shipping point for Navajo blankets.
Travelers interested in this aboriginal handiwork will here find
large stocks to select from at the traders’ stores.
[39]In the southwestern corner of Colorado. Here are hundreds of
prehistoric dwellings built in the cañon walls representing probably
the finest and best preserved architecture of the unknown vanished
races that once peopled our Southwest. Government archaeologists, who
have a particularly warm regard for the Mesa Verde, have been making
careful excavations and restorations here for years, and have mapped
out a program that will consume many more. The so-called Sun Temple,
excavated in 1915, apparently a communal edifice for the performance
of religious dramas, is the only one of its kind so far brought to
light in the United States. (See “Sun Temple of Mesa Verde National
Park,” by J. W. Fewkes. 1916, Gov’t Printing office.) A public camp
for tourists is maintained near the ruins during the summer months,
the high elevation (8500 feet) rendering snow likely at other
seasons. The nearest railway station is Mancos, Col., on the D. & R.
G., whence an auto-stage runs to the Park camp.
[40]The most famous is the Shálako which occurs annually about December
1, largely a night ceremony of great impressiveness. The central
figures are giant effigies representing divinities, whose motive
power is a Zuñi man hidden within each. They enter from the plain at
dusk, and to the plain return the next morning, after a night of
dancing and feasting by the people.
[41]For some of the adventures of this famous couple, see F. H.
Cushing’s, “Zuñi Folk Tales.”
[42]Reports of the Secretary of War, Senate Ex. Doc. 64, First Session
31st Congress, 1850. A more illuminating account of the Rock is given
by Mr. Chas. F. Lummis in “Some Strange Corners of Our Country.” An
able supplement to this is a paper by H. L. Broomall and H. E. Hoopes
in Proceedings of Delaware County Institute of Science, Vol. I, No.
1, Media, Pa.
[43]There were poets among the Conquistadores. A printed source relied
upon by historians for authentic particulars of Oñate’s tour of
conquest is a rhymed chronicle by one of his lieutenants, Don Gaspar
de Villagrán. I believe New Mexico is the only one of our States that
can seriously quote an epic poem in confirmation of its history. This
New Mexican Homer, as H. H. Bancroft calls him, printed his book in
1610 at Alcalá. A reprint, published in Mexico a few years ago, may
be consulted in public libraries. The original is one of the rarest
of Americana.
[44]The Spaniards, whose avenging expedition Lujan’s cutting upon El
Morro records, never found Letrado’s body, the Zuñis having made way
with it. Earnestly desiring some relic of the martyred friar, the
soldiers were rewarded by seeing in the air a cord which descended
into their hands, and this was divided among them. So says Vetancurt,
old chronicler of Franciscan martyrdom in New Mexico.
[45]Pronounced not as though it rhymed with _jelly_, but _chay_ (or less
correctly _shay_) rhyming with _hay_. The word is a Spanish way of
recording the cañon’s Navajo name Tse-yi, meaning “among the cliffs.”
[46]To him, more than to any other man, is ascribed the credit of saving
the Navajo blanket industry from being hopelessly vulgarized by
ignorant and unscrupulous dealers.
[47]“Navaho Legends,” by Dr. Washington Matthews.
[48]Automobiles must be left at Chin Lee, where horses for exploring the
cañon may be had, if arranged for in advance.
[49]Botanically, _Phragmites communis_, common throughout the United
States in damp places. It was through the hollow stem of one of this
species divinely enlarged, that the Navajos and Pueblos came up in
company from the underworld into this present world of light. So at
least runs the Navajo Origin legend.
[50]The origin of the Navajo blanket is picturesque. At the time of the
Spanish conquest, the tribe was too insignificant to be mentioned. It
grew, however, rather rapidly, and in raids upon the Pueblos took
many of the latter prisoners. From these (the Pueblos had long been
weavers of native cotton) they picked up the textile art; and then
stealing sheep from the Spaniards, they inaugurated the weaving of
the woolen blanket. Only the women of the tribe are weavers, and
Doctor Matthews states that in his time, some 30 years ago, they did
it largely as an artistic recreation, just as the ladies of
civilization do embroidery or tatting.
[51]The place of emergence is fancied to have been in an island in a
small lake in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado.
[52]Dr. W. Matthews, “Navaho Legends.”
[53]The nearest railway station is McCarty’s, from which it lies 12
miles to the northeast.
[54]The classic work on Navajo customs and myths is “Navaho Legends,” by
Dr. Washington Matthews—a U. S. army surgeon who resided on their
Reservation for years. To a sympathetic attitude towards the race, he
added the practical qualification of a thorough knowledge of the
language.
[55]Other routes from railroad points are from Winslow, Ariz., 80 miles
to the First Mesa or 75 miles to the Second Mesa; from Cañon Diablo,
Ariz., 75 miles to the Third Mesa; from Holbrook, Ariz., 90 miles to
the First Mesa. The routes from Gallup and Holbrook possess the
advantage of avoiding the crossing of the Little Colorado River,
which becomes at times impassable from high water.
[56]A variant of this pueblo’s name is Shongópovi.
[57]The population of the Hopi pueblos is approximately: Walpi, 250;
Sichúmovi, 100; Hano, 150; Mishong-novi, 250; Shipaulovi, 200;
Shimapovi, 200; Oraibi, 300; Hótavila, 400; Pacavi, 100. Another Hopi
village (until recently considered a summer or farming outpost of
Oraibi) is Moenkopi, 40 miles further west, with a population of
about 200.
[58]Hopi, or Hopi-tuh, the name these Indians call themselves, means
“the peaceful,” a truthful enough appellation, for they suffer much
before resorting to force. By outsiders they have often been called
Moki, a term never satisfactorily explained, except that it is
considered uncomplimentary.
[59]The myth has to do with the arrival of the Flute clan at Walpi
bringing with them effective paraphernalia for compelling rain to
fall. The Walpians opposed the entrance of the stranger, and this is
symbolized in the ceremony by lines of white corn meal successively
sprinkled by priests across the trail, as the procession advances
towards the village.
[60]The inhabitants of Hano are not pure Hopi, but descended from Tewa
Pueblos of the Rio Grande region, who took up their residence here
after 1680, invited by the Hopis as a help against Apache
depredation. Though these Tewas have intermarried with their Hopi
neighbors, they are proud of their distinct ancestry, have preserved
their own language, and still practise some of their ancient
religious rites.
[61]Mr. F. L. Lewton investigated and described this species as
_Gossypium Hopi_. Smithsonian Institution, Misc. Coll. Vol. 60, No.
6.
[62]This name is not Spanish or Indian for anything but just a playful
transmogrification of Adam Hanna, an old time Arizonian who once
lived there.
[63]U. S. Geological Survey’s Guide Book of the Western United States,
Part C.
[64]Report on the Petrified Forests of Arizona, Dept. of Interior, 1900.
[65]The cracking of the wood in recent years has lately required the
bolstering up of this interesting petrified bridge by artificial
support, so that venturesome visitors may still enjoy walking across
it.
[66]This is also readily reached from Holbrook station on the Santa Fe
railway, where conveyance may be obtained. The distance from Holbrook
is 18 miles.
[67]Automobile service may be had at Adamana for a number of points of
interest within reach. Among these are the fine pueblo ruins of
Kin-tyel (Wide House) 48 miles to the northeast—a village believed to
have been built by certain clans of the Zuñis in their prehistoric
migrations.
[68]The name is said to date from a certain Fourth of July, some 60
years ago, when a party of emigrants camped on the site of the future
town and flew the Stars and Stripes from a pole erected in honor of
the National holiday.
[69]Those of Walnut Cañon, about 10 miles southeast of Flagstaff, are
especially easy of access. For particulars concerning the cinder-cone
ruins (9 miles northeast of Flagstaff and also 12 miles east) the
student is referred to Dr. J. W. Fewkes’s descriptions in the 22nd
Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 35-39.
[70]The name commemorates “Old” Bill Williams, a noted frontiersman of
the 1830’s and ’40’s, identified with Fremont’s fourth and ill-fated
expedition, which Williams undertook to guide across the Rockies and
failed because of the snow and cold. A tributary of the Colorado
River also bears his name.
[71]About 10 miles eastwardly; a remarkable little volcanic mountain
with a cratered summit, the glowing red rock of which it is made up
giving the upper part of the mountain the appearance at any time of
day of being illumined by the setting sun. It may be made the
objective of a pleasant half day’s trip from Flagstaff.
[72]“The Hopi,” Walter Hough.
[73]H. H. Robinson, “The San Francisco Volcanic Field,” Washington,
1913.
[74]The varied tints of the Painted Desert are due to the coloration of
the rocks and clays which form its surface. Some additional tone is
given at times by the vegetation that springs up after rainfall.
[75]These two together with a third called Inscription House Ruin (20
miles west of Betata Kin and so named because of certain Spanish
inscriptions upon it dated 1661) form what is called the Navajo
National Monument. At Kayenta, a post office and trading post of
Messrs. Wetherill and Colville some 20 miles southeast of Betata Kin,
pack outfits and guide may be secured to visit these ruins. Dr. J. W.
Fewkes’s description, Bulletin 50, Bureau of American Ethnology,
should be consulted for details.
[76]The Red Rock country is also reached via Cornville and Sedona by
conveyance from Clarkdale on the Verde Valley branch of the Santa Fe
Railway, or from Jerome on the United Verde railroad.
[77]The name commemorates that lieutenant of Coronado’s, Don Pedro de
Tovar, who in 1540 visited the Hopi villages, where he learned of the
existence of the Grand Cañon, and carried the news of it back to
Coronado at Zuñi.
[78]The exact spot of this first view is not known—the point that today
bears the name of Cárdenas being a random guess.
[79]The first complete exploration of the river cañons was made in 1869,
by an expedition in charge of Major J. W. Powell, the noted
ethnologist and geologist. He had boats especially built for the
trip. It was an undertaking of supreme danger, forming, as Mr. F. S.
Dellenbaugh says in his interesting “Romance of the Colorado River,”
“one of the distinguished feats of history;” for not one of the
pioneering party could have any conception of what physical obstacles
were before them when the boats set out at the Cañon’s head into the
unknown. Powell was a Civil War veteran and had but one hand. He made
a second and more leisurely trip in 1871-72.
[80]Bright Angel is the name given by the first Powell expedition to a
creek entering the river here from the north; its bright, clear
waters being in striking contrast to a turbid little tributary
discovered not long before, which the men had dubbed “Dirty Devil
Creek.”
[81]It is not a true salmon. Dr. David Starr Jordan identifies it as
_Ptychocheilus lucius_, and it is really a huge chub or minnow. There
is a record of one caught weighing 80 pounds; more usual are
specimens of 10 and 12 pounds.
[82]An interesting trip with the Grand Cañon as a base is to Cataract
Cañon, a side gorge of the Grand Cañon about 40 miles west of El
Tovar. The trip may be made by wagon to the head of the trail leading
down into an arm of Cataract Cañon, but the final lap—about 15
miles—must be on horseback or afoot. At the bottom is the reservation
of a small tribe of Indians—the Havasupais—occupying a fertile,
narrow valley hedged in by high cliffs of red limestone. There are
numerous springs and the water is used to irrigate the fields and
peach orchards of the tribe. These Indians are much Americanized, and
live under the paternal care of a local Government agency. A feature
of the Cañon is the number of fine water falls. To one exquisite one,
called Bridal Veil, it would be hard to find anywhere a mate. A
camping trip eastward from Grand View along the rim to the Little
Colorado Junction may also be made a pleasant experience, rendered
particularly glorious by the desert views.
[83]Jerome is reached by a little railway from Jerome Junction on the
Ash Fork and Phoenix division of the Santa Fe; Clarkdale, by a branch
from Cedar Glade on the same division. The Clarkdale branch threads
for much of the way the picturesque cañon of the upper Verde River.
[84]There is, however, no evidence of volcanic action in the vicinity;
so the depression—deep as it is—is doubtless the result of solvent or
erosive action of the waters of the Well. (J. W. Fewkes, 17th Ann.
Rep. Bureau of American Ethnology.)
[85]17th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology.
[86]The climate is noted for its mildness and salubrity. There is a
local saying, “If a man wants to die in San Antonio, he must go
somewhere else!”
[87]Pronounced _ah´la-mo_, Spanish for cottonwood. The name was probably
given from cottonwoods growing near by. The Church of the Alamo was
erected in 1744.
[88]The reader, curious for details of the San Antonio Missions, as well
as items of local secular history, is referred to Wm. Corner’s “San
Antonio de Béxar.” He will also be interested in a picturesque sketch
of San Antonio as it was nearly half a century ago, by the Southern
poet Sidney Lanier, who in quest of health passed the winter of
1872-3 here, and here made his resolve, faithfully carried out, to
devote the remainder of his life to music and poetry. The sketch is
printed in a collection of Lanier’s essays entitled “Retrospects and
Prospects.”
[89]These three Missions were originally located about 15 years earlier
on sites some distance from San Antonio. Scarcity of irrigation water
is given as one important cause of their removal in 1731 to the banks
of the San Antonio River.
[90]Silver and gold gave it its start. Its name is believed to be due to
a huge bowlder or globe of silver weighing 300 pounds, found there in
1876.
[91]Pronounced _Too-son´_. It is the name applied by the neighboring
Papago Indians to a mountain at the west of the present town, and
according to Dr. W. J. McGee, means “black base.” Tucson’s first
appearance in history seems to have been in 1763, as an Indian
village whose spiritual needs were served by the missionaries of San
Xavier del Bac. In 1776 a Spanish presídio was established here, and
the little pueblo became San Agustin de Tucson. An edifice,
originally a church dedicated to St. Augustine but now a lodging
house, still faces the old Spanish plaza of the town.
[92]“An escutcheon with a white ground filed in with a twisted cord ...
and a cross on which are nailed one arm of Our Saviour and one of St.
Francis, representing the union of the disciple and the divine Master
in charity and love. The arm of our Lord is bare while that of St.
Francis is covered.” (Salpointe, “Soldiers of the Cross.”)
[93]Engelhardt, “The Franciscans in Arizona.” The diaries of Garcés are
marked by naïve charm and simplicity. One, translated and elaborately
annotated by the late Dr. Elliott Coues, has been published under the
title “On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer.”
[94]It stands on the west (opposite) side of the river from the railway,
a fact that may be fraught with trouble; for the river, which is
ordinarily insignificant enough to be crossed on a plank, is capable
of becoming after storms a raging flood 200 feet wide and 20 deep.
Under such circumstances, it is the part of wisdom to motor from
Tucson.
[95]In the sanctuary were interred, and I suppose still repose, the
bones of the Franciscan Padres Baltasar Carillo and Narciso
Gutierres, whom Archbishop Salpointe in his “Soldiers of the Cross,”
credits with being the supervising builders both of the present
church of Tumacácori and that of San Xavier.
[96]Dr. F. W. Fewkes gives this and several other folk tales concerning
the Casa Grande in the 28th Report of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, which should be consulted for an exhaustive account of the
ruin and the Government excavation work.
[97]The following all-day trips are especially recommended:
1. To Redlands, in the San Bernardino foothills, one of the most
beautiful of California towns, and Riverside with its famous Mission
Inn (about 145 miles the round, including the ascent of Mt.
Roubidoux), traversing a beautiful orange and lemon district and
paralleling the stately Sierra Madre, whose highest peaks are
snow-capped in winter. (If there is time for another day this trip
may be extended in winter or spring to include the run to Palm
Springs in the desert, 50 miles beyond Redlands. This is
particularly enjoyable in March and April when the wild flowers of
the desert are in bloom—a surprising and lovely sight. There is a
good hotel at Palm Springs, but it is safest to arrange ahead for
accommodations).
2. To Mission San Juan Capistrano (about 120 miles the round), one
of the most interesting and poetic in its half ruin of the old
Franciscan California establishments. The road traverses the rich
agricultural districts tributary to Whittier and Santa Ana, and a
portion of the extensive Irvine, or San Joaquin Ranch (about 100,000
acres). A detour may be made to include Laguna and Arch Beaches and
a run (over an inferior road) of ten miles overlooking a picturesque
rock-bound bit of Pacific surf.
3. To Mount Wilson Peak (50 miles the round, but includes 9 miles of
tortuous mountain road with a grade as high as 23% in one or two
spots). On this peak (6000 feet above the sea) are situated the
buildings of the Carnegie Solar Observatory, which, however, are not
open to the public. The views from the peak are very beautiful. The
trip can also be made by public auto-stage. There is a hotel at the
summit.
4. To Camulos Rancho (95 miles the round), a good example of the old
style Spanish-California ranch, utilized by Mrs. Jackson as the
scene of part of her novel “Ramona.” It is situated in the Santa
Clara Valley of the South. A stop may be made en route at Mission
San Fernando. The return trip may be made by way of Topanga Cañon
and the seaside town of Santa Monica, if an extra hour can be given
to it.
Half-day drives in the vicinity of Los Angeles are too numerous to
be itemized here, but the following may be mentioned:
1. To the Mission San Fernando by way of Hollywood (famous for its
beautiful homes, and latterly as the capital of “Movie-land”) and
through the Cahuenga Pass, returning via the Topanga Cañon, the
beach and Santa Monica.
2. To Sunland via Alhambra and Santa Anita Avenue to the Foothill
Boulevard, Altadena, and La Cañada, returning via Roscoe and
Tropico.
3. To Mission San Gabriel, returning by way of Pasadena’s famous
residential districts of Oak Knoll and Orange Grove Boulevard,
thence over the Arroyo Seco Bridge and past the Annandale Country
Club, back to the city.
4. To Whittier and the citrus-fruit belt of the San Gabriel Valley
via either Turnbull or Brea Cañons (the latter picturesque with oil
derricks) returning by the Valley Boulevard.
[98]“The California Padres and their Missions,” by C. F. Saunders and J.
S. Chase.
[99]The San Marcos road has some stiff grades and should only be
traveled by experienced drivers.
[100]For a more detailed account of the tourist attractions in Southern
California, reference is made to the author’s “Finding the Worth
While in California.”
INDEX
A
Abó, 60, 62.
Acevedo, Fr. Francisco, de, 60, 63.
Acoma Pueblo, 68.
Adamana, 130.
Alamo, The, 179.
Albuquerque, 43.
Anza, Juan Bautista, 198, 202.
Apache Trail, 190.
Arch Beach, 209.
Awátobi, 121.
B
Bácavi Pueblo, 119.
Bandelier, A. F., 34, 54, 59.
Beaver Creek, 164.
Bernalillo, 49.
Betata Kin Ruins, 148.
Bill Williams, 141.
Bitter Man, Legend of, 202.
Bowie, James, 181.
Buckman, 33, 41.
C
Camp Verde, 165.
Camulos Rancho, 210.
Cañon de Chelly, 103, 107.
Cañon Diablo, 116.
Carson, Kit, 29, 111.
Casa Grande Ruins, 200.
Chaco Cañon, 83.
Chímayo, 38.
Chin Lee, 103, 106.
Clarkdale, 149, 162.
Cliff Dwellings, 108, 148, 192.
Coachella Valley, 218.
Cochití Pueblo, 54.
Colorado Desert, 217.
Crockett, Davy, 181.
Cueva Pintada, La, 33.
E
El Cabezon, 113.
Española, 24, 41.
Estancia Valley, 56, 67.
F
Flagstaff, 137.
Fort Defiance, 105.
Frijoles Cañon, 33.
G
Gallup, 82, 102.
Ganado, 105.
Garcés, Fr. Francisco, 121, 195, 202.
228
Globe, 191.
Gran Quivira, 58, 60, 62, 63.
Grand Cañon, 150.
H
Hano Pueblo, 118, 128.
Háwikuh, 92.
Holbrook, 135.
Hollywood, 210.
Hosta Butte, 112.
Hopi Mesas, 118.
Hótavila Pueblo, 119.
I
Imperial Valley, 217.
Inscription House Ruin, 148.
Inscription Rock, 83, 93.
Isleta Pueblo, 44.
J
Jemes Pueblo, 50.
Jemes Springs, 51.
Jerome, 149, 162.
K
Kayenta, 148.
Keam’s Cañon, 116.
Kearney, Stephen, 8.
Keet-Seel Ruins, 148.
Kino, Fr. Eusebio, 193, 201.
Kin-tyel Ruins, 136.
L
Laguna Beach, 209.
Laguna Pueblo, 68, 78.
La Jolla, 216.
Lake, The Accursed, 57.
Lamy, Bishop, 5.
Lanier, Sidney, 184, 187.
Letrado, Padre, 90, 99.
Lions of Cochití, Stone, 33.
Llana, Fr. Gerónimo de la, 11, 65.
Los Angeles, 207.
Los Olivos, 220.
M
Manzano, 66.
McCarty’s, 112.
Mesa Encantada, 74.
Mesa Grande, 217.
Mesa Verde National Park, 83.
Mishóngnovi Pueblo, 118.
Mission Churches:
Arizona.
San José de Tumacácori, 197.
San Xavier del Bac, 195.
California.
San Antonio de Pala, 214.
San Diego, 213.
San Fernando, 210, 211.
229
San Gabriel, 211.
San Juan Capistrano, 210.
San Luis Rey, 213.
San Miguel, 14.
Santa Barbara, 219.
Santa Inés, 220.
New Mexico.
Pecos, 50.
San Augustin, Isleta, 47.
San Estéban, Acoma, 75.
San Felipe, 52.
San José, Laguna, 81.
Santa Cruz, 38.
Texas.
Purísima Concepcion, 182.
San Fernando, 178.
San Francisco de la Espada, 190.
San José de Aguayo, 184.
San Juan Capistrano, 190.
Moenkopi Pueblo, 147.
Montezuma’s Castle, 162, 166.
Montezuma’s Well, 162, 170.
Morro, El, 93.
Mount Lowe, 209.
Mount Taylor, 112.
Mount Wilson, 209.
Mountainair, 58.
N
Nambé Pueblo, 24.
National Monuments:
Bandelier, 33.
Casa Grande, 200.
El Morro, 93.
Gran Quivira, 62.
Grand Cañon, 150.
Montezuma Castle, 164.
Navajo, 148.
Petrified Forests of Arizona, 135.
Tonto, 192.
Tumacácori, 198.
Navajo blanket, origin of, 110.
Navajo Indian Reservation, 102.
Navajo Sacred Mountains, 111.
O
Oak Creek Cañon, 141.
Ojai Valley, 220.
Ojo Caliente, 92.
Ojo del Gigante, 67.
Oñate, Juan de, 4, 7, 26, 95, 97.
Oraibi Pueblo, 118.
Otowi, 32.
P
Padre Padilla’s Coffin, 47.
Painted Desert, 117, 134, 141, 145.
Painted Rocks of Abó, 64.
Pajarito Park, 32.
230
Pala, 214.
Palm Springs, 218.
Pasadena, 207.
Pecos National Forest, 41.
Pecos Pueblo, 50.
Pelado Peak, 111.
Penitentes, Order of, 36.
Petrified Forest of Arizona, 130.
Phoenix, 189.
Photographing Indians, 23.
Pimería Alta, 188.
Popé, 26, 28.
Pueblo Bonito, 83.
Pueblo Indians, characteristics, 23.
Puyé, 31.
Q
Quaraí, 11, 64.
R
Rainbow Forest, 135.
Ramah, 93, 100.
Ramirez, Fr. Juan, 72.
Redlands, 208.
Red Rock Country, 149, 163.
Rito de los Frijoles, 33, 54, 63.
Riverside, 208, 218.
Roosevelt Dam, 189, 191.
S
San Antonio, 176.
San Diego, 213.
San Felipe Pueblo, 52.
San Francisco Mountain, 112, 140.
San Francisco Peaks, 125, 138, 139.
San Gabriel Mission, 211.
San Ildefonso Pueblo, 25.
San Juan Pueblo, 25.
San Matéo Mountain, 111.
San Xavier del Bac Mission, 192, 194.
Sandía Pueblo, 49.
Santa Ana Pueblo, 50.
Santa Barbara, 219.
Santa Catalina Island, 218.
Santa Clara Pueblo, 25.
Santa Cruz Valley, N. M., 35.
Santa Cruz Valley, Ariz., 193.
Santa Cruz de la Canada, N. M., 37.
Santa Fe, 1.
Santa Inés Mission, 220.
Santa Mónica, 210.
Santo Domingo Pueblo, 52.
Santo Niño, 37.
Santuario, 34, 39.
Shálako Dance, Zuñi, 88.
Shimópovi Pueblo, 118.
Shípapu, 27.
Shipaúlovi Pueblo, 118.
Shongópovi Pueblo, 118.
Sia Pueblo, 51.
Sichúmovi Pueblo, 118.
231
Simpson, Lieut., J. H., 94.
Stages, Modern Auto-, 165.
Steamboat Rock, 117.
St. Michael’s Mission, 105, 116.
T
Tabirá, 59.
Tajique, 11.
Taos, 27.
Tchrega, 32.
Tesuque Pueblo, 20.
Tewa Pueblo, 118, 128.
Topanga Cañon, 210.
Towa-yálleni, 85, 90.
Truchas Peaks, 42.
Tsankawi, 32.
Tuba, 147.
Tubac, 197, 199.
Tucson, 192.
Tumacácori, 198.
Tyuonyi, 33, 65.
V
Vargas, Diego de, 7, 12, 25, 49, 90, 95, 98.
Verde Valley, 162.
W
Wallace, Lew, 11.
Walnut Cañon, 138.
Walpi Pueblo, 118, 123.
Warner’s Hot Springs, 217.
Whittier, 209, 210.
Wide House Ruins, 136.
Winslow, 116.
Z
Zárate, Fr. Ascencio de, 12.
Zuñi, 82.
Glacier National Park
Every day brings a new experience—crowded with scenic delight—at Glacier
National Park—Uncle Sam’s playground in the Montana Rockies.
Maybe you are going over the “Notch”—sky-high Gunsight Pass—on a
surefooted horse—a real mountaineer experience. Perhaps you’re gliding
amid tremendous scenes over a modern motor trail through the thick of
the wilds. Another day, you pow-wow with the picturesque Blackfeet
Indians.
Send for descriptive literature with maps and photographic views of the
Park’s beauty spots and definite information as to cost. Write
C. E. STONE
Passenger Traffic Manager
ST. PAUL, MINN.
[Illustration]
Outwest Outings
“Off the beaten path”
New Mexico and Arizona
Rainbow Bridge
Grand Canyon of Arizona
Petrified Forest
Painted Desert
Ancient Indian Pueblos
Prehistoric Cliff Ruins
New Mexico Rockies
Santa Fe
Ask for new booklet
“Off the beaten Path”
of Maps and Pictures
W. J. Black, Pass. Traf. Mgr.
AT&SF Ry—1118 Ry. Exch. Chi·
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes
--Some palpable typographical errors were corrected.
--Copyright and publisher’s information was included from the printed
copy: this eBook is public domain in the country of publication.
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