Canyons of the Colorado
by
J. W. Powell
Part 4 out of 4
But she demurred, saying she did not wish to kill one whom she loved so
dearly.
"Cut me in two!" demanded the boy; and he gave her a stone ax, which he
had brought from a distant country, and with a manner of great authority
he again commanded her to cut him in two. So she stood before him and
severed him in twain and fled in terror. And lo! each part took the
form of an entire man, and the one beautiful boy appeared as two, and
they were so much alike no one could tell them apart.
When the people or natives whom the boy had enlisted came pouring into
the camp, Shinau'av and Togo'av were engaged in telling them of the
wonderful thing that had happened to the boy, and that now there were
two; and they all held it to be an augury of a successful expedition to
the land of Stone Shirt. And they started on their journey.
Now the boy had been told in the dream of his three days' slumber, of a
magical cup, and he had brought it home with him from his journey among
the nations, and the So'kus Wai'unats carried it between them, filled
with water. Shinau'av walked on their right and Togo'av on their left,
and the nations followed in the order in which they had been enlisted.
There was a vast number of them, so that when they were stretched out in
line it was one day's journey from the front to the rear of the column.
When they had journeyed two days and were far out on the desert, all the
people thirsted, for they found no water, and they fell down upon the
sand groaning and murmuring that they had been deceived, and they cursed
the One-Two.
But the So'kus Wai'unats had been told in the wonderful dream of the
suffering which would be endured, and that the water which they carried
in the cup was to be used only in dire necessity; and the brothers said
to each other:
"Now the time has come for us to drink the water."
And when one had quaffed of the magical bowl, he found it still full;
and he gave it to the other to drink, and still it was full; and the
One-Two gave it to the people, and one after another did they all drink,
and still the cup was full to the brim.
But Shinau'av was dead, and all the people mourned, for he was a great
man. The brothers held the cup over him and sprinkled him with water,
when he arose and said:
"Why do you disturb me? I did have a vision of mountain brooks and
meadows, of cane where honey dew was plenty."
They gave him the cup and he drank also; but when he had finished there
was none left. Refreshed and rejoicing, they proceeded on their journey.
The next day, being without food, they were hungry, and all were about
to perish; and again they murmured at the brothers and cursed them. But
the So'kus Wai'unats saw in the distance an antelope, standing on an
eminence in the plain, in bold relief against the sky; and Shinau'av
knew it was the wonderful antelope with many eyes which Stone Shirt kept
for his watchman; and he proposed to go and kill it, but Togo'av
demurred and said:
"It were better that I should go, for he will see you and run away."
But the So'kus Wai'unats told Shinau'av to go; and he started in a
direction away to the left of where the antelope was standing, that he
might make a long detour about some hills and come upon him from the
other side.
Togo'av went a little way from camp and called to the brothers:
"Do you see me!"
They answered they did not.
"Hunt for me."
While they were hunting for him, the Rattlesnake said:
"I can see you; you are doing so and so," telling them what they were
doing; but they could not find him.
Then the Rattlesnake came forth declaring:
"Now you know that when I so desire I can see others and I cannot be
seen. Shinau'av cannot kill that antelope, for he has many eyes, and is
the wonderful watchman of Stone Shirt; but I can kill him, for I can go
where he is and he cannot see me."
So the brothers were convinced and permitted him to go; and Togo'av went
and killed the antelope. When Shinau'av saw it fall, he was very angry,
for he was extremely proud of his fame as a hunter and anxious to have
the honor of killing this famous antelope, and he ran up with the
intention of killing Togo'av; but when he drew near and saw the antelope
was fat and would make a rich feast for the people, his anger was
appeased.
"What matters it," said he, "who kills the game, when we can all eat
it?"
So all the people were fed in abundance and they proceeded on their
journey.
The next day the people again suffered for water, and the magical cup
was empty; but the So'kus Wai'unats, having been told in their dream
what to do, transformed themselves into doves and flew away to a lake,
on the margin of which was the home of Stone Shirt.
Coming near to the shore, they saw two maidens bathing in the water; and
the birds stood and looked, for the maidens were very beautiful. Then
they flew into some bushes near by, to have a nearer view, and were
caught in a snare which the girls had placed for intrusive birds.
The beautiful maidens came up and, taking the birds out of the snare,
admired them very much, for they had never seen such birds before. They
carried them to their father, Stone Shirt, who said:
"My daughters, I very much fear these are spies from my enemies, for
such birds do not live in our land."
He was about to throw them into the fire, when the maidens besought him,
with tears, that he would not destroy their beautiful birds; but he
yielded to their entreaties with much misgiving. Then they took the
birds to the shore of the lake and set them free.
When the birds were at liberty once more they flew around among the
bushes until they found the magical cup which they had lost, and taking
it up they carried it out into the middle of the lake and settled down
upon the water, and the maidens supposed they were drowned.
The birds, when they had filled their cup, rose again and went back to
the people in the desert, where they arrived just at the right time to
save them with the cup of water, from which each drank; and yet it was
full until the last was satisfied, and then not a drop remained.
The brothers reported that they had seen Stone Shirt and his daughters.
The next day they came near to the home of the enemy, and the brothers,
in proper person, went out to reconnoiter. Seeing a woman
gleaning seeds, they drew near, and knew it was their mother, whom Stone
Shirt had stolen from Sikor', the Crane. They told her they were her
sons, but she denied it and said she had never had but one son; but the
boys related to her their history, with the origin of the two from one,
and she was convinced. She tried to dissuade them from making war upon
Stone Shirt, and told them that no arrow could possibly penetrate his
armor, and that he was a great warrior and had no other delight than in
killing his enemies, and that his daughters also were furnished with
magical bows and arrows, which they could shoot so fast that the arrows
would fill the air like a cloud, and that it was not necessary for them
to take aim, for their missiles went where they willed; they _thought_
the arrows to the hearts of their enemies; and thus the maidens could
kill the whole of the people before a common arrow could be shot by a
common person. But the boys told her what the spirit had said in the
long dream and that it had promised that Stone Shirt should be killed.
They told her to go down to the lake at dawn, so as not to be endangered
by the battle.
During the night the So'kus Wai'unats transformed themselves into mice
and proceeded to the home of Stone Shirt and found the magical bows and
arrows that belonged to the maidens, and with their sharp teeth they cut
the sinew on the backs of the bows and nibbled the bow strings, so that
they were worthless. Togo'av hid himself under a rock near by.
When dawn came into the sky, Tumpwinai'ro-gwinump, the Stone Shirt man,
arose and walked out of his tent, exulting in his strength and security,
and sat down upon the rock under which Togo'av was hiding; and he,
seeing his opportunity, sank his fangs into the flesh of the hero. Stone
Shirt sprang high into the air and called to his daughters that they
were betrayed and that the enemy was near; and they seized their magical
bows and their quivers filled with magical arrows and hurried to his
defense. At the same time, all the nations who were surrounding the camp
rushed down to battle. But the beautiful maidens, finding their weapons
were destroyed, waved back their enemies, as if they would parley; and
standing for a few moments over the body of their slain father, sang the
death song and danced the death dance, whirling in giddy circles about
the dead hero and wailing with despair, until they sank down and
expired.
The conquerors buried the maidens by the shores of the lake; but
Tumpwinai'rogwinump was left to rot and his bones to bleach on the
sands, as he had left Sikor'.
There is this proverb among the Utes: "Do not murmur when you suffer in
doing what the spirits have commanded, for a cup of water is provided";
and another: "What matters it who kills the game, when we can all eat of
it?"
It is long after midnight when the performance is ended. The story
itself is interesting, though I had heard it many times before; but
never, perhaps, under circumstances more effective. Stretched beneath
tall, somber pines; a great camp fire; by the fire, men, old, wrinkled,
and ugly; deformed, blear-eyed, wry-faced women; lithe, stately young
men; pretty but simpering maidens, naked children, all intently
listening, or laughing and talking by turns, their strange faces and
dusky forms lit up with the glare of the pine-knot fire. All the
circumstances conspired to make it a scene strange and weird. One old
man, the sorcerer or medicine man of the tribe, peculiarly impressed me.
Now and then he would interrupt the play for the purpose of correcting
the speakers or impressing the moral of the story with a strange dignity
and impressiveness that seemed to pass to the very border of the
ludicrous; yet at no time did it make me smile.
The story is finished, but there is yet time for an hour or two of
sleep. I take Chuar'ruumpeak to one side for a talk. The three men who
left us in the canyon last year found their way up the lateral gorge, by
which they went into the Shi'wits Mountains, lying west of us, where
they met with the Indians and camped with them one or two nights and
were finally killed. I am anxious to learn the circumstances, and as the
people of the tribe who committed the deed live but a little way from
these people and are intimate with them, I ask Chuar'ruumpeak to make
inquiry for me. Then we go to bed.
_September 17.--_Early this morning the Indians come up to our camp.
They have concluded to send out a young man after the Shi'vwits. The
runner fixes his moccasins, puts some food in a sack and water in a
little wickerwork jug, straps them on his back, and starts at a good
round pace.
We have concluded to go down the canyon, hoping to meet the Shi'vwits on
our return. Soon we are ready to start, leaving the camp and pack
animals in charge of the two Indians who came with us. As we move out
our new guide comes up, a blear-eyed, weazen-faced, quiet old man, with
his bow and arrows in one hand and a small cane in the other. These
Indians all carry canes with a crooked handle, they say to kill
rattlesnakes and to pull rabbits from their holes. The valley is high up
in the mountain and we descend from it by a rocky, precipitous trail,
down, down, down for two long, weary hours, leading our ponies and
stumbling over the rocks. At last we are at the foot of the mountain,
standing on a little knoll, from which we can look into a canyon below.
Into this we descend, and then we follow it for miles, clambering down
and still down. Often we cross beds of lava, that have been poured into
the canyon by lateral channels, and these angular fragments of basalt
make the way very rough for the animals.
About two o'clock the guide halts us with his wand, and, springing over
the rocks, he is lost in a gulch. In a few minutes he returns, and tells
us there is a little water below in a pocket. It is vile and our ponies
refuse to drink it. We pass on, still descending. A mile or two from the
water basin we come to a precipice more than 1,000 feet to the bottom.
There is a canyon running at a greater .depth and at right angles to
this, into which this enters by the precipice; and this second canyon is
a lateral one to the greater one, in the bottom of which we are to find
the river. Searching about, we find a way by which we can descend along
the shelves and steps and piles of broken rocks.
We start, leading our ponies; a wall upon our left; unknown depths on
our right. At places our way is along shelves so narrow or so sloping
that I ache with fear lest a pony should make a misstep and knock a man
over the cliffs with him. Now and then we start the loose rocks under
our feet, and over the cliffs they go, thundering down, down, the echoes
rolling through distant canyons. At last we pass along a level shelf for
some distance, then we turn to the right and zigzag down a steep slope
to the bottom. Now we pass along this lower canyon for two or three
miles, to where it terminates in the Grand Canyon, as the other ended in
this, only the river is 1,800 feet below us, and it seems at this
distance to be but a creek. Our withered guide, the human pickle, seats
himself on a rock and seems wonderfully amused at our discomfiture, for
we can see no way by which to descend to the river. After some minutes
he quietly rises and, beckoning us to follow, points out a narrow
sloping shelf on the right, and this is to be our way. It leads along
the cliff for half a mile to a wider bench beyond, which, he says, is
broken down on the other side in a great slide, and there we can get to
the river. So we start out on the shelf; it is so steep we can hardly
stand on it, and to fall or slip is to go--don't look to see!
It is soon manifest that we cannot get the ponies along the ledge. The
storms have washed it down since our guide was here last, years ago. One
of the ponies has gone so far that we cannot turn him back until we
find a wider place, but at last we get him off. With part of the men, I
take the horses back to the place where there are a few bushes growing
and turn them loose; in the meantime the other men are looking for some
way by which we can get down to the river. When I return, one, Captain
Bishop, has found a way and gone down. We pack bread, coffee, sugar, and
two or three blankets among us, and set out. It is now nearly dark, and
we cannot find the way by which the captain went, and an hour is spent
in fruitless search. Two of the men go away around an amphitheater, more
than a fourth of a mile, and start down a broken chasm that faces us who
are behind. These walls, that are vertical, or nearly so, are often cut
by chasms, where the showers run down, and the top of these chasms will
be back a distance from the face of the wall, and the bed of the chasm
will slope down, with here and there a fall. At other places huge rocks
have fallen and block the way. Down such a one the two men start. There
is a curious plant growing out from the crevices of the rock. A dozen
stems will start from one root and grow to the length of eight or ten
feet and not throw out a branch or twig, but these stems are thickly
covered with leaves. Now and then the two men come to a bunch of dead
stems and make a fire to mark for us their way and progress.
In the meantime we find such a gulch and start down, but soon come to
the "jumping-off place," where we can throw a stone and faintly hear it
strike, away below. We fear that we shall have to stay here, clinging to
the rocks until daylight. Our little Indian gathers a few dry stems,
ties them into a bundle, lights one end, and holds it up. The others do
the same, and with these torches we find a way out of trouble. Helping
each other, holding torches for each other, one clinging to another's
hand until we can get footing, then supporting the other on his
shoulders, thus we make our passage into the depths of the canyon.
And now Captain Bishop has kindled a huge fire of driftwood on the bank
of the river. This and the fires in the gulch opposite and our own
flaming torches light up little patches that make more manifest the
awful darkness below. Still, on we go for an hour or two, and at last we
see Captain Bishop coming up the gulch with a huge torchlight on his
shoulders. He looks like a fiend, waving brands and lighting the fires
of hell, and the men in the opposite gulch are imps, lighting delusive
fires in inaccessible crevices, over yawning chasms; our own little
Indian is surely the king of wizards, so I think, as I stop for a few
moments on a rock to rest. At last we meet Captain Bishop, with his
flaming torch, and as he has learned the way he soon pilots us to the
side of the great Colorado. We are athirst and hungry, almost to
starvation. Here we lie down on the rocks and drink, just a mouthful or
so, as we dare; then we make a cup of coffee, and spreading our blankets
on a sand beach the roaring Colorado lulls us to sleep.
_September 18._--We are in the Grand Canyon, by the side of the
Colorado, more than 6,000 feet below our camp on the mountain side,
which is 18 miles away; but the miles of horizontal distance represent
but a small part of the day's labor before us. It is the mile of
altitude we must gain that makes it a Herculean task. We are up early_;_
a little bread and coffee, and we look about us. Our conclusion is that
we can make this a depot of supplies, should it be necessary; that we
can pack our rations to the point where we left our animals last night,
and that we can employ Indians to bring them down to the water's edge.
On a broad shelf we find the ruins of an old stone house, the walls of
which are broken down, and we can see where the ancient people who lived
here--a race more highly civilized than the present--had made a garden
and used a great spring that comes out of the rocks for irrigation. On
some rocks near by we discover some curious etchings. Still searching
about, we find an obscure trail up the canyon wall, marked here and
there by steps which have been built in the loose rock, elsewhere hewn
stairways, and we find a much easier way to go up than that by which we
came down in the darkness last night. Coming to the top of the wall, we
catch our horses and start. Up the canyon our jaded ponies toil and we
reach the second cliff; up this we go, by easy stages, leading the
animals. Now we reach the offensive water pocket; our ponies have had no
water for thirty hours, and are eager even for this foul fluid. We
carefully strain a kettleful for ourselves, then divide what is left
between them--two or three gallons for each; but it does not satisfy
them, and they rage around, refusing to eat the scanty grass. We boil
our kettle of water, and skim it; straining, boiling, and skimming make
it a little better, for it was full of loathsome, wriggling larvae, with
huge black heads. But plenty of coffee takes away the bad smell, and so
modifies the taste that most of us can drink, though our little Indian
seems to prefer the original mixture. We reach camp about sunset, and
are glad to rest.
_September 19._--We are tired and sore, and must rest a day with our
Indian neighbors. During the inclement season they live in shelters made
of boughs or the bark of the cedar, which they strip off in long shreds.
In this climate, most of the year is dry and warm, and during such time
they do not care for shelter. Clearing a small, circular space of
ground, they bank it around with brush and sand, and wallow in it during
the day and huddle together in a heap at night--men, women, and
children; buckskin, rags, and sand. They wear very little clothing, not
needing much in this lovely climate.
Altogether, these Indians are more nearly in their primitive condition
than any others on the continent with whom I am acquainted. They have
never received anything from the government and are too poor to tempt
the trader, and their country is so nearly inaccessible that the white
man never visits them. The sunny mountain side is covered with: wild
fruits, nuts, and native grains, upon which they subsist. The _oose,_
the fruit of the yucca, or Spanish bayonet, is rich, and not unlike the
pawpaw of the valley of the Ohio. They eat it raw and also roast it in
the ashes. They gather the fruits of a cactus plant, which are rich and
luscious, and eat them as grapes or express the juice from them, making
the dry pulp into cakes and saving them for winter and drinking the wine
about their camp fires until the midnight is merry with their revelries.
They gather the seeds of many plants, as sunflowers, golden-rod, and
grasses. For this purpose they have large conical baskets, which hold
two or more bushels. The women carry them on their backs, suspended from
their foreheads by broad straps, and with a smaller one in the left hand
and a willow-woven fan in the right they walk among the grasses and
sweep the seed into the smaller basket, which is emptied now and then
into the larger, until it is full of seeds and chaff; then they winnow
out the chaff and roast the seeds. They roast these curiously; they put
seeds and a quantity of red-hot coals into a willow tray and, by rapidly
and dexterously shaking and tossing them, keep the coals aglow and the
seeds and tray from burning. So skilled are the crones in this work they
roll the seeds to one side of the tray as they are roasted and the coals
to the other as if by magic.
Then they grind the seeds into a fine flour and make it into cakes and
mush. It is a merry sight, sometimes, to see the women grinding at the
mill. For a mill, they use a large flat rock, lying on the ground, and
another small cylindrical one in their hands. They sit prone on the
ground, hold the large flat rock between the feet and legs, then fill
their laps with seeds, making a hopper to the mill with their dusky
legs, and grind by pushing the seeds across the larger rock, where they
drop into a tray. I have seen a group of women grinding together,
keeping time to a chant, or gossiping and chatting, while the younger
lassies would jest and chatter and make the pine woods merry with their
laughter.
Mothers carry their babes curiously in baskets. They make a wicker board
by plaiting willows and sew a buckskin cloth to either edge, and this is
fulled in the middle so as to form a sack closed at the bottom. At the
top they make a wicker shade, like "my grandmother's sunbonnet," and
wrapping the little one in a wild-cat robe, place it in the basket, and
this they carry on their backs, strapped over the forehead, and the
little brown midgets are ever peering over their mothers' shoulders. In
camp, they stand the basket against the trunk of a tree or hang it to a
limb.
There is little game in the country, yet they get a mountain sheep now
and then or a deer, with their arrows, for they are not yet supplied
with guns. They get many rabbits, sometimes with arrows, sometimes with
nets. They make a net of twine, made of the fibers of a native flax.
Sometimes this is made a hundred yards in length, and is placed in a
half-circular position, with wings of sage brush. Then they have a
circle hunt, and drive great numbers of rabbits into the snare, where
they are shot with arrows. Most of their bows are made of cedar, but the
best are made of the horns of mountain sheep. These are soaked in water
until quite soft, cut into long thin strips, and glued together; they
are then quite elastic. During the autumn, grasshoppers are very
abundant, can be gathered by the bushel. At such a time, they dig a
hole in the sand, heat stones in a fire near by, put some hot stones in
the bottom of the hole, put on a layer of grasshoppers, then a layer of
hot stones, and continue this, until they put bushels on to roast. There
they are.
When cold weather sets in, these insects are numbed and left until cool,
when they are taken out, thoroughly dried, and ground into meal.
Grasshopper gruel or grasshopper cake is a great treat.
Their lore consists of a mass of traditions, or mythology. It is very
difficult to induce them to tell it to white men; but the old Spanish
priests, in the days of the conquest of New Mexico, spread among the
Indians of this country many Bible stories, which the Indians are
usually willing to tell. It is not always easy to recognize them; the
Indian mind is a strange receptacle for such stories and they are apt to
sprout new limbs. Maybe much of their added quaint-ness is due to the
way in which they were told by the "fathers." But in a confidential way,
while alone, or when admitted to their camp fire on a winter night, one
may hear the stories of their mythology. I believe that the greatest
mark of friendship or confidence that an Indian can give is to tell you
his religion. After one has so talked with me I should ever trust him;
and I feel on very good terms with these Indians since our experience of
the other night.
A knowledge of the watering places and of the trails and passes is
considered of great importance and is necessary to give standing to a
chief.
This evening, the Shi'vwits, for whom we have sent, come in, and after
supper we hold a long council. A blazing fire is built, and around this
we sit--the Indians living here, the Shi'vwits, Jacob Hamblin, and
myself.
This man, Hamblin, speaks their language well and has a great influence
over all the Indians in the region round about. He is a silent, reserved
man, and when he speaks it is in a slow, quiet way that inspires great
awe. His talk is so low that they must listen attentively to hear, and
they sit around him in deathlike silence. When he finishes a measured
sentence the chief repeats it and they all give a solemn grunt. But,
first, I fill my pipe, light it, and take a few whiffs, then pass it to
Hamblin; he smokes, and gives it to the man next, and so it goes around.
When it has passed the chief, he takes out his own pipe, fills and
lights it, and passes it around after mine. I can smoke my own pipe in
turn, but when the Indian pipe comes around, I am nonplused. It has a
large stem, which has at some time been broken, and now there is a
buckskin rag wound around it and tied with sinew, so that the end of the
stem is a huge mouthful, exceedingly repulsive. To gain time, I refill
it, then engage in very earnest conversation, and, all unawares, I pass
it to my neighbor unlighted.
I tell the Indians that I wish to spend some months in their country
during the coming year and that I would like them to treat me as a
friend. I do not wish to trade; do not want their lands. Heretofore I
have found it very difficult to make the natives understand my object,
but the gravity of the Mormon missionary helps me much. I tell them that
all the great and good white men are anxious to know very many things,
that they spend much time in learning, and that the greatest man is he
who knows the most; that the white men want to know all about the
mountains and the valleys, the rivers and the canyons, the beasts and
birds and snakes. Then I tell them of many Indian tribes, and where they
live; of the European nations; of the Chinese, of Africans, and all the
strange things about them that come to my mind. I tell them of the
ocean, of great rivers and high mountains, of strange beasts and birds.
At last I tell them I wish to learn about their canyons and mountains,
and about themselves, to tell other men at home; and that I want to take
pictures of everything and show them to my friends. All this occupies
much time, and the matter and manner make a deep impression.
Then their chief replies: "Your talk is good, and we believe what you
say. We believe in Jacob, and look upon you as a father. When you are
hungry, you may have our game. You may gather our sweet fruits. We will
give you food when you come to our land. We will show you the springs
and you may drink; the water is good. We will be friends and when you
come we will be glad. We will tell the Indians who live on the other
side of the great river that we have seen Ka'purats, and that he is the
Indians' friend. We will tell them he is Jacob's friend. We are very
poor. Look at our women and children; they are naked. We have no horses;
we climb the rocks and our feet are sore. We live among rocks and they
yield little food and many thorns. When the cold moons come, our
children are hungry. We have not much to give; you must not think us
mean. You are wise; we have heard you tell strange things. We are
ignorant. Last year we killed three white men. Bad men said they were
our enemies. They told great lies. We thought them true. Wo were mad;
it made us big fools. We are very sorry. Do not think of them; it is
done; let us be friends. We are ignorant--like little children in
understanding compared with you. When we do wrong, do not you get mad
and be like children too.
"When white men kill our people, we kill them. Then they kill more of
us. It is not good. We hear that the white men are a great number. When
they stop killing us, there will be no Indian left to bury the dead. We
love our country; we know not other lands. We hear that other lands are
better; we do not know. The pines sing and we are glad. Our children
play in the warm sand; we hear them sing and are glad. The seeds ripen
and we have to eat and we are glad. We do not want their good lands; we
want our rocks and the great mountains where our fathers lived. We are
very poor; we are very ignorant; but we are very honest. You have horses
and many things. You are very wise; you have a good heart. We will be
friends. Nothing more have I to say."
Ka'purats is the name by which I am known among the Utes and Shoshones,
meaning "arm off." There was much more repetition than I have given, and
much emphasis. After this a few presents were given, we shook hands, and
the council broke up.
Mr. Hamblin fell into conversation with one of the men and held him
until the others had left, and then learned more of the particulars of
the death of the three men. They came upon the Indian village almost
starved and exhausted with fatigue. They were supplied with food and put
on their way to the settlements. Shortly after they had left, an Indian
from the east side of the Colorado arrived at their village and told
them about a number of miners having killed a squaw in drunken brawl,
and no doubt these were the men; no person had ever come down the
canyon; that was impossible; they were trying to hide their guilt. In
this way he worked them into a great rage. They followed, surrounded the
men in ambush, and filled them full of arrows.
That night I slept in peace, although these murderers of my men, and
their friends, the Uinkarets, were sleeping not 500 yards away. While we
were gone to the canyon, the pack train and supplies, enough to make an
Indian rich beyond his wildest dreams, were all left in their charge,
and were all safe; not even a lump of sugar was pilfered by the
children.
_September 20._--For several days we have been discussing the relative
merits of several names for these mountains. The Indians call them
Uinkarets, the region of pines, and we adopt the name. The great
mountain we call Mount Trumbull, in honor of the senator. To-day the
train starts back to the canyon water pocket, while Captain Bishop and
I climb Mount Trumbull. On our way we pass the point that was the last
opening to the volcano.
It seems but a few years since the last flood of fire swept the valley.
Between two rough, conical hills it poured, and ran down the valley to
the foot of a mountain standing almost at the lower end, then parted,
and ran on either side of the mountain. This last overflow is very
plainly marked; there is soil, with trees and grass, to the very edge
of it, on a more ancient bed. The flood was, everywhere on its border,
from 10 to 20 feet in height, terminating abruptly and looking like a
wall from below. On cooling, it shattered into fragments, but these are
still in place and the outlines of streams and waves can be seen. So
little time has elapsed since it ran down that the elements have not
weathered a soil, and there is scarcely any vegetation on it, but here
and there a lichen is found. And yet, so long ago was it poured from the
depths, that where ashes and cinders have collected in a few places,
some huge cedars have grown. Xear the crater the frozen waves of black
basalt are rent with deep fissures, transverse to the direction, of the
flow. Then we ride through a cedar forest up a long ascent, until we
come to cliffs of columnar basalt. Here we tie our horses and prepare
for a climb among the columns. Through crevices we work, till at last we
are on the mountain, a thousand acres of pine laud spread out before us,
gently rising to the other edge. There are two peaks on the mountain. We
walk two miles to the foot of the one looking to be the highest, then a
long, hard climb to its summit. What a view is before us! A vision of
glory! Peaks of lava all around below us. The Vermilion Cliffs to the
north, with their splendor of colors; the Pine Valley Mountains to the
northwest, clothed in mellow, perspective haze; unnamed mountains to the
southwest, towering over canyons bottomless to my peering gaze, like
chasms to nadir hell; and away beyond, the San Francisco Mountains,
lifting their black heads into the heavens. We find our way down the
mountain, reaching the trail made by the pack train just at dusk, and
follow it through the dark until we see the camp fire--a welcome sight.
Two days more, and we are at Pipe Spring; one day, and we are at Kanab.
Eight miles above the town is a canyon, on either side of which is a
group of lakes. Four of these are in caves where the sun never shines.
By the side of one of these I sit, at my feet the crystal waters, of
which I may drink at will.
CHAPTER XIII.
OVER THE RIVER.
It is our intention to explore a route from Kanab to the Colorado River
at the mouth of the Paria, and, if successful in this undertaking, to
cross the river and proceed to Tusayan, and ultimately to Santa Fe, New
Mexico. We propose to build a flatboat for the purpose of ferrying over
the river, and have had the lumber necessary for that purpose hauled
from St. George to Kanab. From here to the mouth of the Paria it must be
packed on the backs of mules; Captain Bishop and Mr. Graves are to take
charge of this work, while with Mr. Hamblin I explore the Kaibab
Plateau.
_September 24_-_--To-day we are ready for the start. The mules are
packed and away goes our train of lumber, rations, and camping equipage.
The Indian trail is at the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs. Pushing on to
the east with Mr. Hamblin for a couple of hours in the early morning, we
reach the mouth of a dry canyon, which comes down through the cliffs.
Instead of a narrow canyon we find an open valley from one fourth to one
half a mile in width. On rare occasions a stream flows down this valley,
but now sand dunes stretch across it. On either side there is a wall of
vertical rock of orange sandstone, and here and there at the foot of the
wall are found springs that afford sweet water.
We push our way far up the valley to the foot of the Gray Cliffs, and by
a long detour find our way to the summit. Here again we find that
wonderful scenery of naked white rocks carved into great round bosses
and domes. Looking off to the north we can see vermilion and pink
cliffs, crowned with forests, while below us to the south stretch the
dunes and red-lands of the Vermilion Cliff region, and far away we can
see the opposite wall of the Grand Canyon. In the middle of the
afternoon we descend into the canyon valley and hurriedly ride, down to
the mouth of the canyon, then follow the trail of the pack train, for
we are to camp with the party to-night. We find it at the Navajo Well.
As we approach in the darkness the camp fire is a cheerful sight. The
Navajo Well is a pool in the sand, the sands themselves lying in a
basin, with naked, smooth rocks all about on which the rains are caught
and by which the sand in the basin is filled with water, and by digging
into the sand this sweet water is found.
_September 25._--At sunrise Mr. Hamblin and I part from the train once
more, taking with us Chuar, a chief of the Kaibabits, for a trip to the
south, for one more view of the Grand Canyon from the summit of the
Kaibab Plateau. All day long our way is over red hills, with a bold line
of cliffs on our left. A little after noon we reach a great spring, and
here we are to camp for the night, for the region beyond us is unknown
and we wish to enter it with a good day before us. The Indian goes out
to hunt a rabbit for supper, and Hamblin and I climb the cliffs. From an
elevation of 1,800 feet above the spring we watch the sun go down and
see the sheen on the Vermilion Cliffs and red-lands slowly fade into the
gloaming; then we descend to supper.
_September 26.--_Early in the morning we pass up a beautiful valley to
the south and turn westward onto a great promontory, from the summit of
which the Grand Canyon is in view. Its deep gorge can be seen to the
westward for 50 or 60 miles, and to the southeastward we look off into
the stupendous chasm, with its marvelous forms and colors.
Twenty-one years later I read over the notes of that day's experience
and the picture of the Grand Canyon from this point is once more before
me. I did not know when writing the notes that this was the grandest
view that can be obtained of the region from Fremont's Peak to the Gulf
of California, but I did realize that the scene before me was awful,
sublime, and glorious--awful in profound depths, sublime in massive and
strange forms, and glorious in colors. Years later I visited the same
spot with my friend Thomas Moran. From this world of wonder he selected
a section which was the most interesting to him and painted it. That
painting, known as "The Chasm of the Colorado," is in a hall in the
Senate wing of the Capitol of the United States. If any one will look
upon that picture, and then realize that it was but a small part of the
landscape before us on this memorable 26th day of September, he will
understand why I suppress my notes descriptive of the scene. The
landscape is too vast, too complex, too grand for verbal description.
We sleep another night by the spring on the summit of the Kaibab, and
next day we go around to Point Sublime and then push on to the very
verge of the Kaibab, where we can overlook the canyon at the mouth of
the Little Colorado. The day is a repetition of the glorious day before,
and at night we sleep again at the same spring. In the morning we turn
to the northeast and descend from Kaibab to the back of Marble Canyon
and cross it at the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs, and find our packers
camped at Jacob's Pool, where a spring bursts from the cliff at the
summit of a great hill of talus. In the camp we find a score or more of
Indians, who have joined us here by previous appointment, as we need
their services in crossing the river.
On the last day of September we follow the Vermilion Cliffs around to
the mouth of the Paria. Here the cliffs present a wall of about 2,000
feet in height,--above, orange and vermilion, but below, chocolate,
purple, and gray in alternating bands of rainbow brightness. The cliffs
are cut with deep side canyons, and the rainbow hills below are
destitute of vegetation. At night we camp on the bank of the Colorado
River, on the same spot where our boat-party had camped the year before.
Leaving the party in charge of Mr. Graves and Mr. Bishop, while they are
building a ferryboat, I take some Indians to explore the canyon of the
Paria. We find steep walls on either side, but a rather broad, flat
plain below, through which the muddy river winds its way over
quicksands. This stream we have to cross from time to time, and we find
the quicksands treacherous and our horses floundering in the trembling
masses.
These broad canyons, or canyon valleys, are carved by the streams in
obedience to an interesting law of corrasion. Where the declivity of the
stream is great the river corrades, or cuts its bottom deeper and still
deeper, ever forming narrow clefts, but when the stream has cut its
channel down until the declivity is greatly reduced, it can no longer
carry the load of sand with which it is fed, but drops a part of it on
the way. Wherever it drops it in this manner a sand bank is formed. Now
the effect of this sand bar is to turn the course of the river against
the wall or bank, and as it unloads in one place it cuts in another
below and loads itself again; so it unloads itself and forms bars, and
loads itself with more material to form bars, and the process of
vertical cutting is transformed into a process of lateral cutting. The
rate of cutting is greatly increased thereby, but the wear is on the
sides and not on the bottom. So long as the declivity of the stream is
great, the greater the load of sand carried the greater the rate of
vertical cutting; but when the declivity is reduced, so that part of the
load is thrown down, vertical cutting is changed to lateral and the rate
of cor-rasion multiplied thereby. Now this broad valley canyon, or "box
canyon," as such channels are usually called in the country, has been
formed by the stream itself, cutting its channel at first vertically and
afterwards laterally, and so a great flood-plain is formed.
For a day we ride up the Paria, and next day return. The party in camp
have made good progress. The boat is finished and a part of the camp
freight has been transported across the river. The next day the
remainder is ferried over and the animals are led across, swimming
behind the ferryboat in pairs. Here a bold bluff more than 1,200 feet in
height has to be climbed, and the day is spent in getting to its summit.
We make a dry camp, that is, without water, except that which has been
carried in canteens by the Indians.
_October 4-_--All day long we pass by the foot of the Echo Cliffs, which
are in fact the continuation of the Vermilion Cliffs. It is still a
landscape of rocks, with cliffs and pinnacles and towers and buttes on
the left, and deep chasms running down into the Marble Canyon on the
right. At night we camp at a water pocket, a pool in a great limestone
rock. We still go south for another half day to a cedar ridge; here we
turn westward, climbing the cliffs, which we find to be not the edge of
an escarpment with a plateau above, but a long narrow ridge which
descends on the eastern side to a level only 500 or 600 feet above the
trail left below. On the eastern side of the cliff a great homogeneous
sandstone stretches, declining rapidly, and on its sides are carved
innumerable basins, which are now filled with pure water, and we call
this the Thousand Wells. We have a long afternoon's ride over sand
dunes, slowly toiling from mile to mile. We can see a ledge of rocks in
the distance, and the Indian with us assures us that we shall find water
there. At night we come to the cliff, and under it, in a great cave, we
find a lakelet. Sweeter, cooler water never blessed the desert.
While at Jacob's Pool, several days before, I sent a runner forward into
this region with instructions to hunt us up some of the natives and
bring them to this pool. When we arrive we are disappointed in not
finding them on hand, but a little later half a dozen men come in with
the Indian messenger. They are surly fellows and seem to be displeased
at our coming. Before midnight they leave. Under the circumstances I do
not feel that it is safe to linger long at this spot; so I do not lie
down to rest, but walk the camp among the guards and see that everything
is in readiness to move. About two o'clock I set a couple of men to
prepare a hasty lunch, call up all hands, and we saddle, pack, eat our
lunch, and start off to the southwest to reach the Moenkopi, where there
is a little rancheria of Indians, a farming settlement belonging to the
Oraibis, so we are told. We set out at a rapid rate, and when daylight
comes we are in sight of the canyon of the Moenkopi, into which we soon
descend; but the rancheria has been abandoned. Up the Moenkopi we pass
several miles, in a beautiful canyon valley, until we find a pool in a
nook of a cliff, where we feel that we can defend ourselves with
certainty, and here we camp for the night. The next day we go on to
Oraibi, one of the pueblos of the Province of Tusayan.
At Tusayan we stop for two weeks and visit the seven pueblos on the
cliffs. Oraibi is first reached, then Shumopavi, Shupaulovi, and
Mashongnavi, and finally Walpi, Sichumovi, and Hano.
In a street of Oraibi our little party is gathered. Soon a council is
called by the _cacique,_ or chief, and we are assigned to a suite of six
or eight rooms for our quarters. We purchase corn of some of the people,
and after feeding our animals they are intrusted to two Indian boys,
who, under the direction of the _cacique,_ take them to a distant mesa
to herd. This is my first view of an inhabited pueblo, though I have
seen many ruins from time to time. At first I am a little disappointed
in the people. They seem scarcely superior to the Shoshones and Utes,
tribes with whom I am so well acquainted. Their dress is less
picturesque, and the men have an ugly fashion of banging their hair in
front so that it comes down to their eyes and conceals their foreheads.
But the women are more neatly dressed and arrange their hair in
picturesque coils.
Oraibi is a town of several hundred inhabitants. It stands on a mesa or
little plateau 200 or 300 feet above the surrounding plain. The mesa
itself has a rather diversified surface. The streets of the town are
quite irregular, and in a general way run from north to south. The
houses are constructed to face the east. They are of stone laid in
mortar, and are usually three or four stories high. The second story
stands back upon the first, leaving a terrace over one tier of rooms.
The third is set back of the second, and the fourth back of the third;
so that their houses are terraced to face the east. These terraces on
the top are all flat, and the people usually ascend to the first terrace
by a ladder and then by another into the lower rooms. In like manner,
ladders or rude stairways are used to reach the upper stories. The
climate is very warm and the people live on the tops of their houses. It
seems strange to see little naked children climbing the ladders and
running over the house tops like herds of monkeys. After we have looked
about the town and been gazed upon by the wondering eyes of the men,
women, and children, we are at last called to supper. In a large central
room we gather and the food is placed before us. A stew of goat's flesh
is served in earthen bowls, and each one of us is furnished with a
little earthen ladle. The bread is a great novelty to me. It is made of
corn meal in sheets as thin and large as foolscap paper. In the corner
of the house is a little oven, the top of which is a great flat stone,
and the good housewife bakes her bread in this manner: The corn meal is
mixed to the consistency of a rather thick gruel, and the woman dips her
hand into the mixture and plasters the hot stone with a thin coating of
the meal paste. In a minute or two it forms into a thin paperlike cake,
and she takes it up by the edge, folds it once, and places it on a
basket tray; then another and another sheet of paper-bread is made in
like manner and piled on the tray. I notice that the paste stands in a
number of different bowls and that she takes from, one bowl and then
another in order, and I soon see the effect of this. The corn before
being ground is assorted by colors, white, yellow, red, blue, and black,
and the sheets of bread, when made, are of the same variety of colors,
white, yellow, red, blue, and black. This bread, held on very beautiful
trays, is itself a work of art. They call it _piki._ After we have
partaken of goat stew and bread a course of dumplings, melons, and
peaches is served, and this finishes the feast. What seem to be
dumplings are composed of a kind of hash of bread and meat, tied up in
little balls with cornhusks and served boiling hot. They are eaten with
much gusto by the party and highly praised. Some days after we learned
how they are made; they are prepared of goat's flesh, bread, and
turnips, and kneaded by mastication. As we prefer to masticate our own
food, this dainty dish is never again a favorite.
In the evening the people celebrate our advent by a dance, such it
seemed to us, but probably it was one of their regular ceremonies.
After dark a pretty little fire is built in the chimney corner and I
spend the evening in rehearsing to a group of the leading men the story
of my travels in the canyon country. Of our journey down the canyon in
boats they have already heard, and they listen with great interest to
what I say. My talk with them is in the Mexican patois, which several of
them understand, and all that I say is interpreted.
The next morning we are up at daybreak. Soon we hear loud shouts coming
from the top of the house. The _cacique_ is calling his people. Then all
the people, men, women, and children, come out on the tops of their
houses. Just before sunrise they sprinkle water and meal from beautiful
grails; then they all stand with bare heads to watch the rising of the
sun. When his full orb is seen, once more they sprinkle the sacred water
and the sacred meal over the tops of the houses. Then the _cacique_ in a
loud voice directs the labor of the day. So his talk is explained to us.
Some must gather corn, others must go for wood, water must be brought
from the distant wells, and the animals of the strangers must be cared
for. Now the house tops present a lively scene. Bowls of water are
brought; from them the men fill their mouths and with dexterity blow
water over their hands in spray and wash their faces and lave their long
shining heads of hair; and the women dress one another's locks. With
bowls of water they make suds of the yucca plant, and wash and comb and
deftly roll their hair, the elder women in great coils at the back of
the head, the younger women in flat coils on their cheeks. And so the
days are passed and the weeks go by, and we study the language of the
people and record many hundreds of their words and observe their habits
and customs and gain some knowledge of their mythology, but above all do
we become interested in their religious ceremonies.
One afternoon they take me from Oraibi to Shupaulovi to witness a great
religious ceremony. It is the invocation to the gods for rain. We arrive
about sundown, and are taken into a large subterranean chamber, into
which we descend by a ladder. Soon about a dozen Shamans are gathered
with us, and the ceremony continues from sunset to sunrise. It is a
series of formal invocations, incantations, and sacrifices, especially
of holy meal and holy water. The leader of the Shamans is a great burly
bald-headed Indian, which is a remarkable sight, for I have never seen
one before. Whatever he says or does is repeated by three others in
turn. The paraphernalia of their worship is very interesting. At one end
of the chamber is a series of tablets of wood covered with quaint
pictures of animals and of corn, and overhead are conventional black
clouds from which yellow lightnings are projected, while drops of rain
fall on the corn below. Wooden birds, set on pedestals and decorated
with plumes, are arranged in various ways. Ears of corn, vases of holy
water, and trays of meal make up a part of the paraphernalia of worship.
I try to record some of the prayers, but am not very successful, as it
is difficult to hold my interpreter to the work. But one of these
prayers is something like this:
"Muingwa pash lolomai, Master of the Clouds, we eat no stolen bread; our
young men ride not the stolen ass; our food is not stolen from the
gardens of our neighbors. Muingwa pash lolomai, we beseech of thee to
dip your great sprinkler, made of the feathers of the birds of the
heavens, into the lakes of the skies and sprinkle us with sweet rains,
that the ground may be prepared in the winter for the corn that grows in
the summer."
At one time in the night three women were brought into the _kiva._ These
women had a cincture of cotton about their loins, but were otherwise
nude. One was very old, another of middle age, and the third quite
young, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old. As they stood in a corner
of the _kiva_ their faces and bodies were painted by the bald-headed
priest. For this purpose he filled his mouth with water and pigment and
dexterously blew a fine spray over the faces, necks, shoulders, and
breasts of the women. Then with his finger as a brush he decorated them
over this groundwork, which was of yellow, with many figures in various
colors. From that time to daylight the three women remained in the
_kiva_ and took part in the ceremony as choristers and dancing
performers.
At sunrise we are filed out of the _kiva,_ and a curious sight is
presented to our view. Shupaulovi is built in terraces about a central
court, or plaza, and in the plaza about fifty men are drawn up in a line
facing us. These men are naked except that they wear masks, strange and
grotesque, and great flaring headdresses in many colors.
Our party from the _kiva_ stand before this line of men, and the
bald-headed priest harangues them in words I cannot understand. Then
across the other end of the plaza a line of women is formed, facing the
line of men, and at a signal from the old Shaman the drums and the
whistles on the terraces, with a great chorus of singers, set up a
tumultuous noise, and with slow shuffling steps the line of men and the
line of women move toward each other in a curious waving dance. When the
lines approach so as to be not more than 10 or 12 feet apart, our party
still being between them, they all change so as to dance backward to
their original positions. This is repeated until the dancers have passed
over the plaza four times. Then there is a wild confusion of dances, the
order of which I cannot understand,--if indeed there is any system,
except that the men and women dance apart. Soon this is over, and the
women all file down the ladder into the _kiva_ and the men strip off
their masks and arrange themselves about the plaza, every one according
to his own wish, but as if in sharp expectancy; then the women return up
the ladder from the _kiva_ and climb to the tops of the houses and stand
on the brink of the nearer terrace. Now the music commences once more,
and the old woman who was painted in the _kiva_ during the night throws
something, I cannot tell what, into the midst of the plaza. With a shout
and a scream, every man jumps for it; one seizes it, another takes it
away from him, and then another secures it; and with shouts and screams
they wrestle and tussle for the charm which the old woman has thrown to
them. After a while some one gets permanent possession of the charm and
the music ceases. Then another is thrown into the midst. So these
contests continue at intervals until high noon.
In the evening we return to Oraibi. And now for two days we employ our
time in making a collection of the arts of the people of this town.
First, we display to them our stock of goods, composed of knives,
needles, awls, scissors, paints, dyestuffs, leather, and various fabrics
in gay colors. Then we go around among the people and select the
articles of pottery, stone implements, instruments and utensils made of
bone, horn, shell, articles of clothing and ornament, baskets, trays,
and many other things, and tell the people to bring them the next day to
our rooms. A little after sunrise they come in, and we have a busy day
of barter. When articles are brought in such as I want, I lay them
aside. Then if possible I discover the fancy of the one who brings
them, and I put by the articles the goods which I am willing to give in
exchange for them. Having thus made an offer, I never deviate from it,
but leave it to the option of the other party to take either his own
articles or mine lying beside them. The barter is carried on with a
hearty good will; the people jest and laugh with us and with one
another; all are pleased, and there is nothing to mar this day of
pleasure. In the afternoon and evening I make an inventory of our
purchases, and the next day is spent in packing them for shipment. Some
of the things are heavy, and I engage some Indians to help transport the
cargo to Fort Wingate, where we can get army transportation.
_October 24-.--_To-day we leave Oraibi. We are ready to start in the
early morning. The whole town comes to bid us good-by. Before we start
they perform some strange ceremony which I cannot understand, but, with
invocations to some deity, they sprinkle us, our animals, and our goods
with water and with meal. Then there is a time of handshaking and
hugging. "Good-by; good-by; good-by!" At last we start. Our way is to
Walpi, by a heavy trail over a sand plain, among the dunes. We arrive a
little after noon. Walpi, Sichumovi, and Hano are three little towns on
one butte, with but little space between them; the stretch from town to
town is hardly large enough for a game of ball. The top of the butte is
of naked rock, and it rises from 300 to 400 feet above the sand plains
below by a precipitous cliff on every side. To reach it from below, it
must be climbed by niches and stairways in the rock. It is a good site
for defense. At the foot of the cliff and on some terraces the people
have built corrals of stone for their asses. All the water used in
these three towns is derived from a well nearly a mile away--a deep pit
sunk in the sand, over the site of a dune-buried brook.
When we arrive the men of Walpi carry our goods, camp equipage, and
saddles up the stairway and deposit them in a little court. Then they
assign us eight or ten rooms for our quarters. Our animals are once more
consigned to the care of Indian herders, and after they are fed they are
sent away to a distance of some miles. There is no tree or shrub growing
near the Walpi mesa. It is miles away to where the stunted cedars are
found, and the people bring curious little loads of wood on the backs of
their donkeys, it being a day's work to bring such a cargo. The people
have anticipated our coming, and the wood for our use is piled in the
chimney corners. After supper the hours till midnight are passed in
rather formal talk.
Walpi seems to be a town of about 150 inhabitants, Sichumovi of less
than 100, and Hano of not more than 75. Hano, or "Tewa" as it is
sometimes called, has been built lately; that is, it cannot be more than
100 or 200 years old. The other towns are very old; their foundation
dates back many centuries--so we gather from this talk. The people of
Hano also speak a radically distinct language, belonging to another
stock of tribes. They formerly lived on the Rio Grande, but during some
war they were driven away and were permitted to build their home here.
Two days are spent in trading with the people, and we pride ourselves on
having made a good ethnologic collection. We are especially interested
in seeing the men and women spin and weave. In their courtyards they
have deep chambers excavated in the rocks. These chambers, which are
called _kivas,_ are entered by descending ladders. They are about 18 by
24 feet in size. The _kiva_ is the place of worship, where all their
ceremonies are performed, where their cult societies meet to pray for
rain and to prepare medicines and charms against fancied and real
ailments and to protect themselves by sorcery from the dangers of
witchcraft. The _kivas_ are also places for general rendezvous, and at
night the men and women bring their work and chat and laugh, and in
their rude way make the time merry. Many of the tribes of North America
have their cult societies, or "medicine orders," as they are sometimes
called, but this institution has been nowhere developed more thoroughly
than among the pueblo Indians of this region. I am informed that there
are a great number in Tusayan, that a part of their ceremonies are
secret and another part public, and that the times of ceremony are also
times for feasting and athletic sports.
Here at Walpi the great snake dance is performed. For several days
before this festival is held the people with great diligence gather
snakes from the rocks and sands of the region round about and bring them
to the _kiva_ of one of their clans in great numbers, by scores and
hundreds. Most of these snakes are quite harmless, but rattlesnakes
abound, and they are also caught, for they play the most important role
in the great snake dance. The medicine men, or priest doctors, are very
deft in the management of rattlesnakes. When they bring them to the
_kiva_ they herd all the snakes in a great mass of writhing, hissing,
rattling serpents. For this purpose they have little wands, to the end
of each one of which a bunch of feathers is affixed. If a snake attempts
to leave its allotted place in the _kiva_ the medicine man brushes it or
tickles it with the feather-armed wand, and the snake turns again to
commingle with its fellows. After many strange and rather wearisome
ceremonies, with dancing and invocations and ululations, the men of the
order prepare for the great performance with the snakes. Clothed only in
loincloth, each one seizes a snake, and a rattlesnake is preferred if
there are enough of them for all. It is managed in this way: The snake
is teased with the feather wand and his attention occupied by one man,
while another, standing near, at a favorable moment seizes the snake
just, back of the head. Then he puts the snake in his mouth, holding it
across, so that the head protrudes on one side and the body on the
other, which coils about his hand and arm. A few inches of the head and
neck are free, and with this free portion the snake struggles, squirming
in the air; but the attention of the snake is constantly occupied by the
attendant who carries the wand. Then the men of the priest order
carrying the snakes in their mouths arrange themselves in a line in the
court and move in a procession several times about the court, and then
engage in a dance. After the ceremony all of the snakes are carried to
the plain and given their freedom.
This snake dance was not witnessed at the time of the first visit, but
an account of it was then obtained, such as given above. It has since
been witnessed by myself and by others, and carefully prepared accounts
of the ceremonies have been published by different persons.
At last our work at Walpi is done, on October 27, and we arrange to
leave on the morrow.
CHAPTER XIV.
TO ZUNI.
_October 28_.--To-day we leave the Province of Tusayan for a journey
through the Navajo country. There is quite an addition to the party now,
for we have a number of Indians employed as freighters. Their asses are
loaded with heavy packs of the collections we have made in the various
towns of Tusayan. After a while we enter a beautiful canyon coming down
from the east, and by noon reach a spring, where we halt for
refreshment. The poor little donkeys are thoroughly wearied, but our own
animals have had a long rest and have been well fed and are all fresh
and active. On the rocks of this canyon picture-writings are etched, and
I try to get some account of them from the Indians, but fail.
After lunch we start once more. It is a halcyon day, and with a
companion I leave the train and push on for a view of the country. Away
we gallop, my Indian companion and I, over the country toward a great
plateau which we can see in the distance. The Salahkai is covered with a
beautiful forest. We have an exhilarating ride. When the way becomes
stony and rough we must walk our horses. My Indian, who is well mounted
on a beautiful bay, is a famous rider. About his brow a kerchief is
tied, and his long hair rests on his back. He has keen black eyes and a
beaked nose; about his neck he wears several dozen strings of beads,
made of nacre shining shells, and little tablets of turkis are
perforated and strung on sinew cord; in his ears he has silver rings,
and his wrists are covered with silver bracelets. His leggings are black
velvet, the material for which he has bought from some trader; his
moccasins are tan-colored and decorated with silver ornaments, and the
trappings of his horse are decorated in like manner. He carries his
rifle with as much ease as if it were a cane, and rides with wonderful
dexterity. We get on with jargon and sign language pretty well. At
night, after a long ride, I descend to the foot of the mesa, and near a
little lake I find the camp. The donkey train has not arrived, but soon
one after another the Indians come in with their packs, and with white
men, Oraibi Indians, Walpi Indians, and Navajos, a good party is
assembled.
_October 29.--_We have a long ride before us to-day, for we must reach
old Fort Defiance. I stay with the train in order to keep everything
moving, for we expect to travel late in the night. On the way no water
is found, but in mid-afternoon the trail leads to the brink of a canyon,
and the Indians tell me there is water below; so the animals are
unpacked and taken down the cliff in a winding way among the rocks,
where they are supplied with water. Again we start; night comes on and
we are still in the forest; the trail is good, yet we make slow
progress, for some of the animals are weary and we have to wait from
time to time for the stragglers. About ten o'clock we descend from the
plateau to the canyon beneath and are at old Port Defiance, and the
officers at the agency give us a hearty greeting.
We spend the 30th of October at the agency and see thousands of Indians,
for they are gathered to receive rations and annuities. It is a wild
spectacle; groups of Indians are gambling, there are several horse
races, and everywhere there is feasting. At night the revelry is
increased; great fires are lighted, and groups of Indians are seen
scattered about the plains.
_November 1.--_After a short day's ride we camp at Rock Spring. A
fountain gushes from the foot of the mesa. Then another day's ride
through a land of beauty. On the left there is a line of cliffs, like
the Vermilion Cliffs of Utah. In the same red sandstones and on the top
of the cliff the Kaibab scenery is duplicated. A great tower on the
cliff is known as "Navajo Church." Early in the afternoon we are at Fort
Wingate and in civilization once more. The fort is on a beautiful site
at the foot of the Zuni Plateau. And now our journey with the pack train
is ended, and I bid good-by to my Indian friends. My own pack train is
to go back to Utah, while from Fort Wingate I expect to go to Santa Fe
in an ambulance. But the region about is of interest for its wonderful
geologic structure and for the many ruins of ancient pueblos found in
the neighborhood. On the 2d of November Captain Johnson, an artillery
officer, takes me for a ride among the ruins. Many of these ancient
structures are found, but those which are of the most interest are the
round towers. Nothing remains of these but the bare walls. They average
from 18 to 20 feet in diameter, and are usually two or three stories
high. Probably they were built as places of worship.
Above Fort Wingate there is a great plateau; below, there stretches a
vast desert plain with mesas and buttes. The ruins are at the foot of
the plateau where the streams come down from the pine-clad heights.
On the 3d of November with a party of officers I visit Zuni in an
ambulance. The journey is 40 miles, along the foot of the plateau half
the way, and then we turn into the desert valley, in the midst of which
runs the Zuni River, sometimes in canyons cut in black lava. Zuni is a
town much like those already visited, except that it is a little larger.
Nothing can be more repulsive than the appearance of the streets;
irregular, crowded, and filthy, in which dogs, asses, and Indians are
mingled in confusion. In the distance Toyalone is seen, a great butte on
which an extensive ruin is found, the more ancient home of these people,
though Zuni itself appears to be hundreds of years old. The people
speak a language radically different from that of Tusayan, and no other
tribe in the United States has a tongue related to it.
In the midst of the town there is an old Spanish church, partly in
ruins, but it is still graced with the wooden image of a saint, gayly
colored; and the old tongueless bell remains, for it was sounded with a
stone hammer held in the hand of the bellman; the marks of his blows are
deeply indented in the metal. Alvar Nunez Caveza de Vaca was the first
white man to see Zuni, when he wandered in that long journey from
Florida around by the headwaters of the Arkansas, through what is now
New Mexico and Arizona, southward to the City of Mexico. He had with him
a Barbary negro, who was killed by the Zuni, and his burial place is
still pointed out.
Among the Zuni, as among the tribes of Tusayan, the form of government
which prevails throughout the North American tribes is well illustrated.
Kinship is the tie by which the members of the tribe are bound together
as a common body of people. Each tribe is divided into a series of
clans, and a clan is a group of people that reckon kinship through the
family line. The children therefore belong to the clan of the mother.
Marriage is always without the clan; the husband and father must belong
to a different clan from the mother and children, and the children
belong to their mother and are governed by her brothers, or by her
mother's brothers if they be still living. The husband is but the guest
of the wife .and the clan, and has no other authority in the family than
that acquired by personal character. If he is an able and wise man his
advice may be taken, but each clan is very jealous of its rights, and
the members do not submit to dictation from the guest husband. The woman
is^1 not the ruler of the clan; the ruler is the patriarch or elder man,
or if he is not a man of ability a younger and more able man is chosen,
who by legal fiction is recognized as the elder. Over the officers of
the clan are the officers of the tribe,--a chief with assistant chiefs.
The organization by tribal governors varies from tribe to tribe.
Sometimes the chieftaincy is hereditary in a particular clan, but more
often the chieftaincy is elective. There is very little personal
property among the tribal people, such property being confined to
clothing, ornaments, and a few inconsiderable articles. The ownership of
the great bulk of the property inheres in the clan, such as their
houses, their patches of land, the food raised from the soil, and the
game caught in the chase. Sometimes the clans are grouped, two or more
constituting a phratry, and then there are other officers or chiefs
standing between the clan and tribal authority. Again, tribes are
sometimes organized into confederacies, and a grand confederate chief
recognized. In addition to the chieftaincy of confederate tribes,
phratries, and clans, there are councils; but these are not councils of
legislation in the ordinary sense. The councils are clans whose
decisions become a precedent. Tribal law is therefore court-made law,
and such customary law grows out of the exigencies which daily life
presents to the people. The problems as they arise are solved as best
they may be, and the deliberations of the councils look not to the
future but only to the present, and are invoked to settle controversy,
that peace may be maintained. Of course there is no written constitution
or body of laws, but there are traditional regulations which are well
preserved in the idioms of oral speech, every rule of procedure or of
justice being sooner or later coined into an aphorism.
It has been seen that a clan is a body of kinship in the female line;
but the members of the different clans are related to one another by
intermarriage. Thus the first tie is by affinity; but, as fathers belong
to other clans than the children, the tie is also by consanguinity. Thus
the entire tribe is a body of kindred, and the tribal organization is a
fabric with warp of streams of blood and woof of marriage ties. When
different tribes unite to form a confederacy for offensive or defensive
purposes, artificial kinship is established. One tribe perhaps is
recognized as the grandfather tribe, another is the father tribe, a
third is the elder-brother tribe, a fourth is the younger-brother tribe,
etc. In these artificial kinships the members of one tribe address the
members of another tribe by kinship terms established in the treaty.
Strangers are sometimes adopted into a clan, and this gives them a
status in the tribe. The adoption is usually accomplished by the woman
claiming the individual as her youngest son or daughter, and such
adopted person has thereupon the status belonging to such a natural
child; and, though he be an adult, he calls the child born into the clan
before his advent, though it be but a year old, his elder brother or his
elder sister. Then often young men are advanced in the clan because of
superior ability, and this is done by giving them a kinship rank higher
than that belonging to their real age; so that it is not infrequently
found that old men address young men as their elder brothers and yield
to their authority. The ties of the tribe are kinship, and authority
inheres in superior age; but in order to adjust these rules so that the
abler men may be given control, artificial kinship and artificial age
are established. The civil chiefs direct the daily life of the people in
their labors.
To the civil organization of the tribe, as thus indicated, there is
added a military organization, and war chiefs are selected. But usually
these war chiefs are something more than war chiefs, for they also
constitute a constabulary to preserve peace and mete out punishment; and
young men from the various clans are designated as warriors and advanced
in military rank according to merit. There is thus a brotherhood of
warriors, and every man in this brotherhood recognizes all others of the
group as being elder or younger, and so assumes or yields authority in
all matters pertaining to war and the enforcement of criminal law.
In addition to the secular government there is always a cult
government. In every tribe there are Shamans, designated variously by
white men as "medicine men," "priests," "priest doctors," "theurgists,"
etc. In many tribes, perhaps in all, the people are organized into
Shamanistic societies; but that these societies are invariably
recognized is not certain. The Shamans are always found. Among the Zuni
there are thirteen of these cult societies. The purpose of Shamanistic
institutions is to control the conduct of the members of the tribe in
relation to mythic personages, the mysterious beings in which the savage
men believe. In the mind of the savage the world is peopled by a host of
mythic beings, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic. The difference between
man and brute recognized in civilization, is unrecognized in savagery.
All animal life is wonderful and magical co sylvan man. Wisdom, cunning,
skill, and prowess are attributed to the real animals to a degree often
greater than to man; and there are mythic animals as well as mythic
men--monsters dwelling in the mountains and caves or hiding in the
waters, who make themselves invisible as they pass over the land. Not
only are there great monsters, beasts, and reptiles in their mythology,
but there are wonderful insects and worms. All life is miraculous and
is worshiped as divine. The heavenly bodies, the sun and moon and stars,
are mythic animals, and all of the phenomena of nature are attributed to
these zoic beings. For example, the Indian knows nothing of the ambient
air. The wind is the breath of some beast, or it is a fanning which
rises from under the wings of a mythic bird. All the phenomena of
nature, the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the
moon, the shining of the stars, the coming of comets, the flash of
meteors, the change of seasons, the gathering and vanishing of the
clouds, the blowing of the winds, the falling of the rain, the spreading
of the snow, and all other phenomena of physical nature, are held to be
the acts of these wonderful zoic deities. It is deemed of prime
importance that such deities should be induced to act in the interest of
men. Thus it is that Shamanistic government is held to be of as great
importance as tribal government, and the Shamans are the peers of the
chiefs. With some tribes the cult societies have greater powers than the
clan; with other tribes clan government is the more important; but
always there is a conflict of authority, and there is a perpetual war
between Shamanistic and civil government.
These Shamans and cult societies have a great variety of functions to
perform. All disease and all injuries are attributed to mythic beings or
to witchcraft, and on these pathologic ideas the medicine practices of
the people are based. The medicine men are sorcerers, who vork wonders
in discovering witchcraft and averting its effects or in discovering the
disease-making animals and overcoming their power. So the Shamans and
the cult societies are the possessors of medicine and ceremonies
designed to prevent and cure human ailments. They also have charge of
the ceremonies necessary to avert disaster and to secure success in all
the affairs of life in peace and war; and they prescribe methods and
observances and furnish charms and amulets, and in every way possible
control human conduct in its relation to the unknown. No small part of
savage life is devoted to cult ceremonies and observances. The hunter
cannot penetrate the forest without his charm; the woman cannot plant
corn until a ceremony is performed for securing the blessings of some
divine being. Religious festivals and ceremonies are carried on for days
and weeks. A war must be submitted to the gods, and a sneeze demands a
prayer.
Our arrival at Fort Wingate practically ended the exploration of the
great valley of the Colorado. This was in 1870. In 1891 we can look back
upon the completion of the survey of all of that region, for it has now
been carefully mapped. The geology of the country has been studied, and
the tribes which inhabit it have been subjects of careful research. This
work has been carried on by a large corps of men, and interesting
results have accrued.
CHAPTER XV.
THE GRAND CANYON.
The Grand Canyon is a gorge 217 miles in length, through which flows a
great river with many storm-born tributaries. It has a winding way, as
rivers are wont to have. Its banks are vast structures of adamant, piled
up in forms rarely seen in the mountains.
Down by the river the walls are composed of black gneiss, slates, and
schists, all greatly implicated and traversed by dikes of granite. Let
this formation be called the black gneiss. It is usually about 800 feet
in thickness.
Then over the black gneiss are found 800 feet of quartzites, usually in
very thin beds of many colors, but exceedingly hard, and ringing under
the hammer like phonolite. These beds are dipping and unconformable with
the rocks above; while they make but 800 feet of the wall or less, they
have a geological thickness of 12,000 feet. Set up a row of books
aslant; it is 10 inches from the shelf to the top of the line of books,
but there may be 3 feet of the books measured directly through the
leaves. So these quartzites are aslant, and though of great geologic
thickness, they make but 800 feet of the wall. Your books may have
many-colored bindings and differ greatly in their contents; so these
quartzites vary greatly from place to place along the wall, and in many
places they entirely disappear. Let us call this formation the
variegated quartzite.
Above the quartzites there are 500 feet of sandstones. They are of a
greenish hue, but are mottled with spots of brown and black by iron
stains. They usually stand in a bold cliff, weathered in alcoves. Let
this formation be called the cliff sandstone.
Above the cliff sandstone there are 700 feet of bedded sandstones and
limestones, which are massive sometimes and sometimes broken into thin
strata. These rocks are often weathered in deep alcoves. Let this
formation be called the alcove sandstone.
Over the alcove sandstone there are 1,600 feet of limestone, in many
places a beautiful marble, as in Marble Canyon. As it appears along the
Grand Canyon it is always stained a brilliant red, for immediately over
it there are thin seams of iron, and the storms have painted these
limestones with pigments from above. Altogether this is the red-wall
group. It is chiefly limestone. Let it be called the red wall limestone.
Above the red wall there are 800 feet of gray and bright red sandstone,
alternating in beds that look like vast ribbons of landscape. Let it be
called the banded sandstone.
And over all, at the top of the wall, is the Aubrey limestone, 1,000
feet in thickness. This Aubrey has much gypsum in it, great beds of
alabaster that are pure white in comparison with the great body of
limestone below. In the same limestone there are enormous beds of chert,
agates, and carnelians. This limestone is especially remarkable for its
pinnacles and towers. Let it be called the tower limestone.
Now recapitulate: The black gneiss below, 800 feet in thickness; the
variegated quartzite, 800 feet in thickness; the cliff sandstone, 500
feet in thickness; the alcove sandstone, 700 feet in thickness; the red
wall limestone, 1,600 feet in thickness; the banded sandstone, 800 feet
in thickness; the tower limestone, 1,000 feet in thickness.
These are the elements with which the walls are constructed, from black
buttress below to alabaster tower above. All of these elements weather
in different forms and are painted in different colors, so that the wall
presents a highly complex facade. A wall of homogeneous granite, like
that in the Yosemite, is but a naked wall, whether it be 1,000 or 5,000
feet high. Hundreds and thousands of feet mean nothing to the eye when
they stand in a meaningless front. A mountain covered by pure snow
10,000 feet high has but little more effect on the imagination than a
mountain of snow 1,000 feet high--it is but more of the same thing; but
a facade of seven systems of rock has its sublimity multiplied
sevenfold.
Let the effect of this multiplied facade be more clearly realized. Stand
by the river side at some point where only the black gneiss is seen. A
precipitous wall of mountain rises over the river, with crag and
pinnacle and cliff in black and brown, and through it runs an angular
pattern of red and gray dikes of granite. It is but a mountain cliff
which may be repeated in many parts of the world, except that it is
singularly naked of vegetation, and the few plants that find footing are
of strange tropical varieties and are conspicuous because of their
infrequency.
Now climb 800 feet and a point of view is reached where the variegated
quartzites are seen. At the summit of the black gneiss a terrace is
found, and, set back of this terrace, walls of elaborate sculpture
appear, 800 feet in height. This is due to the fact that though the
rocks are exceedingly hard they are in very thin layers or strata, and
these strata are not horizontal, but stand sometimes on edge, sometimes
highly inclined, and sometimes gently inclined. In these variegated beds
there are many deep recesses and sharp salients, everywhere set with
crags, and the wall is buttressed by a steep talus in many places. In
the sheen of the midday sun, these rocks, which are besprinkled with
quartz crystals, gleam like walls of diamonds.
A climb of 800 feet over the variegated beds and the foot of the cliff
sandstone is reached. It is usually olive green, with spots of brown and
black, and presents 500 feet of vertical wall over the variegated
sandstone. The dark green is in fine contrast with the variegated beds
below and the red wall above.
Climb these 500 feet and you stand on the cliff sandstone. A terrace
appears, and sometimes a wall of terraces set with alcoves of marvelous
structure. Climb to the summit of this alcove sandstone--700 feet--and
you stand at the foot of the red wall limestone. Sometimes this stands
in two, three, or four Cyclopean steps--a mighty stairway. Oftener the
red wall stands in a vertical cliff 1,600 feet high. It is the most
conspicuous feature of the grand facade and imparts its chief
characteristic. All below is but a foundation for it; all above, but an
entablature and sky-line of gable, tower, pinnacle, and spire. It is not
a plain, unbroken wall, but is broken into vast amphitheaters, often
miles abound, between great angular salients. The amphitheaters also are
broken into great niches that are sometimes vast chambers and sometimes
royal arches 500 or 1,000 feet in height.
Over the red wall limestone, with its amphitheaters, chambers, niches,
and royal arches--a climb of 1,600 feet--is the banded sandstone, the
entablature over the niched and columned marble, an adamantine molding
800 feet in thickness, stretching along the walls of the canyon through
hundreds of miles. This banded sandstone has massive strata separated by
friable shales. The massive strata are the horizontal elements in the
entablature, but the intervening shales are carved with a beautiful
fretwork of vertical forms, the sculpture of the rills. The massive
sandstones are white, gray, blue, and purple, but the shales are a
brilliant red; thus variously colored bands of massive rock are
separated by bands of vertically carved shales of a brilliant hue.
On these highly colored beds the tower limestone is found, 1,000 feet in
height. Everywhere this is carved into towers, minarets, and domes, gray
and cold, golden and warm, alabaster and pure, in wonderful variety.
Such are the vertical elements of which the Grand Canyon facade is
composed. Its horizontal elements must next be considered. The river
meanders in great curves, which are themselves broken into curves of
smaller magnitude. The streams that head far back in the plateau on
either side come down in gorges and break the wall into sections. Each
lateral canyon has a secondary system of laterals, and the secondary
canyons are broken by tertiary canyons; so the crags are forever
branching, like the limbs of an oak. That which has been described as a
wall is such only in its grand effect. In detail it is a series of
structures separated by a ramification of canyons, each having its own
walls. Thus, in passing down the canyon it seems to be inclosed by
walls, but oftener by salients--towering structures that stand between
canyons that run back into the plateau. Sometimes gorges of the second
or third order have met before reaching the brink of the Grand Canyon,
and then great salients are cut off from the wall and stand out as
buttes--huge pavilions in the architecture of the canyon. The scenic
elements thus described are fused and combined in very different ways.
We measured the length of the Grand Canyon by the length of the river
running through it, but the running extent of wall cannot be measured in
this manner. In the black gneiss, which is at the bottom, the wall may
stand above the river for a few hundred yards or a mile or two; then, to
follow the foot of the wall, you must pass into a lateral canyon for a
long distance, perhaps miles, and then back again on the other side of
the lateral canyon; then along by the river until another lateral canyon
is reached, which must be headed in the black gneiss. So, for a dozen
miles of river through the gneiss, there may be a hundred miles of wall
on either side. Climbing to the summit of the black gneiss and following
the wall in the variegated quartzite, it is found to be stretched out to
a still greater length, for it is cut with more lateral gorges. In like
manner, there is yet greater length of the mottled, or alcove, sandstone
wall; and the red wall is still farther stretched out in ever branching
gorges. To make the distance for ten miles along the river by walking
along the top of the red wall, it would be necessary to travel several
hundred miles. The length of the wall reaches its maximum in the banded
sandstone, which is terraced more than any of the other formations. The
tower limestone wall is less tortuous. To start at the head of the
Grand Canyon on one of the terraces of the banded sandstone and follow
it to the foot of the Grand Canyon, which by river is a distance of 217
miles, it would be necessary to travel many thousand miles by the
winding Way; that is, the banded wall is many thousand miles in length.
Stand at some point on the brink of the Grand Canyon where you can
overlook the river, and the details of the structure, the vast labyrinth
of gorges of which it is composed, are scarcely noticed; the elements
are lost in the grand effect, and a broad, deep, flaring gorge of many
colors is seen. But stand down among these gorges and the landscape
seems to be composed of huge vertical elements of wonderful form. Above,
it is an open, sunny gorge; below, it is deep and gloomy. Above, it is a
chasm; below, it is a stairway from gloom to heaven.
The traveler in the region of mountains sees vast masses piled up in
gentle declivities to the clouds. To see mountains in this way is to
appreciate the masses of which they are composed. But the climber among
the glaciers sees the elements of which this mass is composed,--that it
is made of cliffs and towers and pinnacles, with intervening gorges, and
the smooth billows of granite seen from afar are transformed into cliffs
and caves and towers and minarets. These two aspects of mountain scenery
have been seized by painters, and in their art two classes of mountains
are represented: mountains with towering forms that seem ready to topple
in the first storm, and mountains in masses that seem to frown defiance
at the tempests. Both classes have told the truth. The two aspects are
sometimes caught by our painters severally; sometimes they are combined.
Church paints a mountain like a kingdom of glory. Bierstadt paints a
mountain cliff where an eagle is lost from sight ere he reaches the
summit. Thomas Moran marries these great characteristics, and in his
infinite masses cliffs of immeasurable height are seen.
Thus the elements of the facade of the Grand Canyon change vertically
and horizontally. The details of structure can be seen only at close
view, but grand effects of structure can be witnessed in great panoramic
scenes. Seen in detail, gorges and precipices appear; seen at a
distance, in comprehensive views, vast massive structures are presented.
The traveler on the brink looks from afar and is overwhelmed with the
sublimity of massive forms; the traveler among the gorges stands in the
presence of awful mysteries, profound, solemn, and gloomy.
For 8 or 10 miles below the mouth of the Little Colorado, the river is
in the variegated quartzites, and a wonderful fretwork of forms and
colors, peculiar to this rock, stretches back for miles to a labyrinth
of the red wall cliff; then below, the black gneiss is entered and soon
has reached an altitude of 800 feet and sometimes more than 1,000 feet;
and upon this black gneiss all the other structures in their wonderful
colors are lifted. These continue for about 70 miles, when the black
gneiss below is lost, for the walls are dropped down by the West Kaibab
Fault, and the river flows in the quartzites.
Then for 80 miles the mottled, or alcove, sandstones are found in the
river bed. The course of the canyon is a little south of west and is
comparatively straight. At the top of the red wall limestone there is a
broad terrace, two or three miles in width, composed of hills of
wonderful forms carved in the banded beds, and back of this is seen a
cliff in the tower limestone. Along the lower course of this stretch the
whole character of the canyon is changed by another set of complicating
conditions. We have now reached a region of volcanic activity. After the
canyons were cut nearly to their present depth, lavas poured out and
volcanoes were built on the walls of the canyon, but not in the canyon
itself, though at places rivers of molten rock rolled down the walls
into the Colorado.
The next 80 miles of the canyon is a compound of that found where the
river is in the black gneiss and that found where the dead volcanoes
stand on the brink of the wall. In the first stretch, where the gneiss
is at the foundation, we have a great bend to the south, and in the last
stretch, where the gneiss is below and the dead volcanoes above, another
great southern detour is found. These two great beds are separated by 80
miles of comparatively straight river. Let us call this first great bend
the Kaibab reach of the canyon, and the straight part the Kanab reach,
for the Kanab Creek heads far off in the plateau to the north and joins
the Colorado at the beginning of the middle stretch. The third great
southern bend is the Shiwits stretch. Thus there are three distinct
portions of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado: the Kaibab section,
characterized more by its buttes and salients; the Kanab section,
characterized by its comparatively straight walls with volcanoes on the
brink; and the Shiwits section, which is broken into great terraces with
gneiss at the bottom and volcanoes at the top.
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a canyon composed of many canyons.
It is a composite of thousands, of tens of thousands, of gorges. In like
manner, each wall of the canyon is a composite structure, a wall
composed of many walls, but never a repetition. Every one of these
almost innumerable gorges is a world of beauty in itself. In the Grand
Canyon there are thousands of gorges like that below Niagara Palls, and
there are a thousand Yosemites. Yet all these canyons unite to form one
grand canyon, the most sublime spectacle on the earth. Pluck up Mt.
Washington by the roots to the level of the sea and drop it headfirst
into the Grand Canyon, and the dam will not force its waters over the
walls. Pluck up the Blue Eidge and hurl it into the Grand Canyon, and it
will not fill it.
The carving of the Grand Canyon is the work of rains and rivers. The
vast labyrinth of canyon by which the plateau region drained by the
Colorado is dissected is also the work of waters. Every river has
excavated its own gorge and every creek has excavated its gorge. When a
shower comes in this land, the rills carve canyons--but a little at each
storm; and though storms are far apart and the heavens above are
cloudless for most of the days of the year, still, years are plenty in
the ages, and an intermittent rill called to life by a shower can do
much work in centuries of centuries.
The erosion represented in the canyons, although vast, is but a small
part of the great erosion of the region, for between the cliffs blocks
have been carried away far superior in magnitude to those necessary to
fill the canyons. Probably there is no portion of the whole region from
which there have not been more than a thousand feet degraded, and there
are districts from which more than 30,000 feet of rock have been carried
away. Altogether, there is a district of country more than 200,000
square miles in extent from which on the average more than 6,000 feet
have been eroded. Consider a rock 200,000 square miles in extent and a
mile in thickness, against which the clouds have hurled their storms and
beat it into sands and the rills have carried the sands into the creeks
and the creeks have carried them into the rivers and the Colorado has
carried them into the sea. We think of the mountains as forming clouds
about their brows, but the clouds have formed the mountains. Great
continental blocks are upheaved from beneath the sea by internal
geologic forces that fashion the earth. Then the wandering clouds, the
tempest-bearing clouds, the rainbow-decked clouds, with mighty power and
with wonderful skill, carve out valleys and canyons and fashion hills
and cliffs and mountains. The clouds are the artists sublime.
In winter some of the characteristics of the Grand Canyon are
emphasized. The black gneiss below, the variegated quartzite, and the
green or alcove sandstone form the foundation for the mighty red wall.
The banded sandstone entablature is crowned by the tower limestone. In
winter this is covered with snow. Seen from below, these changing
elements seem to graduate into the heavens, and no plane of demarcation
between wall and blue firmament can be seen. The heavens constitute a
portion of the facade and mount into a vast dome from wall to wall,
spanning the Grand Canyon with empyrean blue. So the earth and the
heavens are blended in one vast structure.
When the clouds play in the canyon, as they often do in the rainy
season, another set of effects is produced. Clouds creep out of canyons
and wind into other canyons. The heavens seem to be alive, not moving as
move the heavens over a plain, in one direction with the wind, but
following the multiplied courses of these gorges. In this manner the
little clouds seem to be individualized, to have wills and souls of
their own, and to be going on diverse errands--a vast assemblage of
self-willed clouds, faring here and there, intent upon purposes hidden
in their own breasts. In the imagination the clouds belong to the sky,
and when they are in the canyon the skies come down into the gorges and
cling to the cliffs and lift them up to immeasurable heights, for the
sky must still be far away. Thus they lend infinity to the walls.
The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in
symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic
art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features.
Language and illustration combined must fail. The elements that unite to
make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are
multifarious and exceedingly diverse. The Cyclopean forms which result
from the sculpture of tempests through ages too long for man to compute,
are wrought into endless details, to describe which would be a task
equal in magnitude to that of describing the stars of the heavens or the
multitudinous beauties of the forest with its traceries of foliage
presented by oak and pine and poplar, by beech and linden and hawthorn,
by tulip and lily and rose, by fern and moss and lichen. Besides the
elements of form, there are elements of color, for here the colors of
the heavens are rivaled by the colors of the rocks. The rainbow is not
more replete with hues. But form and color do not exhaust all the divine
qualities of the Grand Canyon. It is the land of music. The river
thunders in perpetual roar, swelling in floods of music when the storm
gods play upon the rocks and fading away in soft and low murmurs when
the infinite blue of heaven is unveiled. With the melody of the great
tide rising and falling, swelling and vanishing forever, other melodies
are heard in the gorges of the lateral canyons, while the waters plunge
in the rapids among the rocks or leap in great cataracts. Thus the Grand
Canyon, is a land of song. Mountains of music swell in the rivers, hills
of music billow in the creeks, and meadows of music murmur in the rills
that ripple over the rocks. Altogether it is a symphony of multitudinous
melodies. All this is the music of waters. The adamant foundations of
the earth have been wrought into a sublime harp, upon which the clouds
of the heavens play with mighty tempests or with gentle showers.
The glories and the beauties of form, color, and sound unite in the
Grand Canyon--forms unrivaled even by the mountains, colors that vie
with sunsets, and sounds that span the diapason from tempest to tinkling
raindrop, from cataract to bubbling fountain. But more: it is a vast
district of country. Were it a valley plain it would make a state. It
can be seen only in parts from hour to hour and from day to day and from
week to week and from month to month. A year scarcely suffices to see it
all. It has infinite variety, and no part is ever duplicated. Its
colors, though many and complex at any instant, change with the
ascending and declining sun; lights and shadows appear and vanish with
the passing clouds, and the changing seasons mark their passage in
changing colors. You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it
were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to
see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths. It
is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas,
but if strength and courage are sufficient for the task, by a year's
toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained never again to be equaled on
the hither side of Paradise.
INDEX.
Apache Indians, home and character of the
Art, ancient, vestiges of, in the Gila and Colorado valleys
Bad lands, formation and characteristics of the
Bad lands of Green River
Baker, John, a famous mountaineer
Bierstadt, how he paints a mountain
Boats and cargoes, description of
Bosque Redondo, Navajos on a reservation at the
Bradley, G. T., a member of the expedition
Bradley rescues others from the water
Buttes, mesas, plateaus, distinction between
Canyon cutting in the upper Colorado basin
Cavate or cliff dwellings of the Tewan Indians
Caves in a volcanic crater used as habitations by Indians
Caves in cliffs used as habitations by Indians
Ceremony at Shupaulovi to bring rain
Chambers excavated in volcanic ashes by Indians for habitations
Chumehueva Indians, low condition and former home of the
Church, how he paints a mountain
Cinder-cone town formerly inhabited by Indians
Cliff dwellings of the Tewan Indians
Cliff village of Walnut Cany on
Collecting specimens of the art of Tusayan
Colorado Canyon broken by lateral canyons
Colorado Desert, singular characteristics of the
Crater town formerly inhabited by Indians
Cult societies among the Indiana
Death, supposed, of the author
Digger Indians, the original
Dunn, W. H., a member of the expedition
Dunn, W. H., abandons the party and is killed by Indians
Freebooters of the Plateau Province
Fremont's Peak, height of and view from
Garfield, J. A., insists on the publication of the history of the
expedition
Goodman, Frank, a member of the expedition
Goodman, Frank, leaves the party
Government, civil, military, and religious, among the tribes of Tusayan
Grand Canyon, how formed
Grand Canyon, the most sublime spectacle on earth
Grand Canyon walls, elements of and height of
Hall, Andrew, a member of the expedition
Hano, a visit to
Hano, location and language of
Hawkins, W. R., a member of the expedition
Rowland, O. G., a member of the expedition
Rowland, Seneca, a member of the expedition
Howland and Dunn abandon the party and are killed by Indians
Instruments, tools, rations, etc.
Irrigation and hydraulic works built by the Indians
Irrigation developed by the Navajo and other Indians
Killing by the Shivwits of the three men who left the party
Kinship ties among the tribes of North America
Kit Carson, leadership of, against the Navajos
Maricopa Indians, home and character of the
Marriage and kinship ties among the North American Indians
Mashongnavi, a visit to
Mashongnavi, location and language of
Medicine-man as historian, priest, and doctor
Men who composed the exploring party
Mesas, plateaus, buttes, distinction between
Mogollon Escarpment, description of the
Mojave Indians, former home and life of the
Moran, Thomas, how he paints a mountain
Moran, Thomas, painting of "The Chasm of the Colorado"
Myth, Indian, of the origin of the Colorado Canyon and River
Myth of the Sokus Waiunats, or One-Two Boys
Mythic stories of the Ute and other Indians
Navajo Indians, home, characteristics, language, art, etc., of the
Oraibi, a visit to
Oraibi, collecting the arts of the people of
Oraibi, life at
Oraibi, location and language of
Painted Desert region, description of the
Papago Indians, home and character of the
Pestilence and war causes of abandonment of pueblos and rancherias
Pima Indians, home and character of the
Plateaus, mesas, buttes, distinction between
Powell, W. H., a member of the expedition
Pueblo Indians, languages and culture of the
Rabbit snaring by the Utes
Rations, clothing, ammunition, tools, and scientific instruments
Rescued from a perilous position
Ruins in the Grand Canyon region
Ruins of ancient pueblo-building tribes in the yalley of the Little
Colorado and vicinity
Ruins of ancient pueblo-building tribes on San Francisco Plateau
Ruins of cavate or cliff dwellings of the Tewan Indians
Scenic features of the Canyon land
Shivwits chief talks
Shoshone Indians, home and life of the
Shumopavi, a visit to
Shumopavi, location and language of
Shupaulovi, a visit to
Shupaulovi, location and language of
Sichumovi, a visit to
Sichumovi, location and language of
Snake dance at Walpi
Sokus Waiunats, or One-Two Boys
Spanish expeditions and conquerors in the Southwest
Starting from Green River City for the Canyon
Stories, mythic, of the Ute and other Indians
Storm below the beholder
Sumner, J. C., a member of the expedition
Thousand Wells
Timber region of Arizona, description of the
Trumbull. Mount, ascent of
Tusayan, the seven pueblos of
Tusayan, tribes of, government among the
Tusayan, two weeks spent at
Uinta Indians, home of the
Ute Indians, home, life, dress, etc., of the
Volcanic dust, enormous amount of, on Tewan Plateau
Walpi, a visit to
Walpi, location and language of
War and pestilence causes of abandonment of pueblos and rancherias
Yellowstone Park, the land of geyser wonders
Yuma Indians, former home and life of the
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