Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 9

Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 9

There is some doubt as to the earliest inscription on the Rock. One

questionable writing, unsigned, appears to be 1580. Next in point of

antiquity is the undoubted record of Oñate, cut across an earlier Indian

petrograph, and reads _literatim_: “Paso por aqi el adelantado don jua

de oñate del descubrimiento de la mar del sur a 16 del abril del 1606.”

(That is: Passed by here the provincial chief Don Juan de Oñate from the

discovery of the South Sea on 16th of April, 1606.) The discovery he

records as of the South Sea (i.e., Pacific Ocean) was really of the Gulf

of California, for Oñate doubtless believed as most of the world did in

his day that California was an island. Oddly enough, though, he made a

mistake in the date, which documentary evidence proves to have been 1605

not 1606.

 

The inscription of De Vargas, the reconqueror, following the Pueblo

rebellion of 1680, reads: “Aqui estaba el Genl Dn. Do de Vargas quien

conquisto a nuestra santa fe y la real corona todo el nuevo Mexico a su

costa año de 1692.” (Here was the General Don Diego de Vargas who

conquered to our holy faith and the royal crown all New Mexico, at his

own expense, year of 1692.)

 

Records of especial interest, too, are two of 1629, telling of the

passing by of Governor Silva Nieto. One is in rhymed verse[43] and

refers to Nieto as the “bearer of the Faith to Zuñi;” that is, he had

acted as escort of the first Christian missionaries to pagan Zuñi. A

tragic sequel to that inscription is a short one that is so abbreviated

that scholars have had a hard tussle with it. The puzzle has been

solved, however. You will know this petroglyph by the signature Lujan, a

soldier, and the date 1632; and it reads, Englished: “They passed on 23

March 1632 to the avenging of Padre Letrado’s death.” Zuñi did not take

kindly to its missionaries and killed them periodically. This Padre

Letrado was one of the martyrs—shot to death as he preached, holding out

his crucifix to his murderers.[44]

 

In delicate, almost feminine, characters is a modest inscription that

reads, translated: “I am from the hand of Felipe de Avellano, 16

September, soldier.” There is something touching, I think, about that

personified periphrase, and I am glad that, in spite of the omission of

the year, historians have identified the writer. He was a common soldier

of the garrison at Zuñi after the reconquest, and met death there in

1700.

 

It is unfortunate that this noble and unique monument should be left

exposed as it is to vandals. Almost every white visitor thinks it is his

duty to scratch his name up alongside the historic ones and there is no

guardian to forbid—only an unregarded sign of the Department of the

Interior tacked on a nearby tree. A year ago the Department, in response

to private representation, promised to put up a fence of protection, and

perhaps this has been done; but a fence is a perfectly inadequate

measure. If the East possessed one such autograph in stone (of Joliet,

or La Salle, or Cartier), as El Morro bears by the half dozen, I wonder

if the few hundred a year necessary to support a local guardian would

not be forthcoming? When will our nation take seriously the colonial

history of the Southwest as just as much its own as that of the Atlantic

side of the Continental Divide?

 

At the shortest, it is a matter of two days to achieve a visit to El

Morro from the railway. Gallup is the best stop-off. There an automobile

may be hired, and the night spent at Ramah, where accommodations may be

had at the trader’s unless you prefer to camp at the Rock itself, which,

if you like such adventure and are prepared, is a joyous thing to do.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII

THE STORIED LAND OF THE NAVAJO

 

 

The Navajos are the Bedouins of our Southwest, and there are about

22,000 of them—a fine, independent tribe of Indians occupying a

semi-desert, mountainous reservation in northwestern New Mexico,

northeastern Arizona and a small corner of Utah. Indeed they occupy

somewhat more, for they are confirmed rovers and are frequently found

setting up their _hogans_, shepherding their sheep, and weaving their

blankets, well across their government-fixed borders. One is sure to see

some of them in Gallup, where they come to trade—the men generally in

dark velveteen shirts worn loose outside the trousers, their long,

black, uncut hair filleted about with red _bandas_ and caught up behind

in a club or knot. Both men and women are expert riders, sitting their

ponies as firmly as centaurs; and both are extravagantly fond of silver

jewelry, of which they often wear small fortunes in necklaces, belts,

bracelets, rings and buttons hammered by their own silversmiths from

coin of Mexico. If you see them wearing blankets, as you will when the

weather requires it, these will be the gaudy products of Yankee looms,

which they buy for less than the price they receive for their own famous

weave. So, thrifty traders that they are, they let the white folk have

the latter and content themselves with the cheaper machine-made article

bought from an American merchant.

 

It is part of the fun of a visit to the Hopi towns that you must cross a

section of the Navajo Reservation and thus get a glimpse of life in the

latter; but there is a special trip which I would like to recommend from

Gallup as a starting point, that brings one more intimately into touch

with the tribe. That is to Chin Lee and the Cañon de Chelly,[45] about

100 miles northwest of Gallup. There is a choice of roads, so that the

going and returning may be by different routes. The trip may be done by

time economists in an automobile in two or three days, but a more

enjoyable plan for easy-going folk is to take eight or ten days to it by

horseback or wagon, camping by the way. And do it preferably in

September or early October, for then the mid-year rains are usually

over, the air clear and sparkling, and feed for horses sufficiently

abundant. The elements that enter into the landscape are primarily those

that go to the making of the grandeur of the Grand Cañon region, but

scattered and distant, not concentrated. There is a similar sculpturing

of the land into pinnacles and terraces, cones perfect or truncated,

battlemented castles and airy spires, appearing, when afar, mistily in

an atmosphere of amethyst and mauve and indefinite tones of yellow and

pink. Now the road threads open, sunny forests of pine and oak, the

latter in autumnal dress of crimson and gold and surprising you with

acorns as sweet as chinquapins. Again, it traverses broad, unwatered,

semi-desert plains dotted with fragrant sage-brush and riotous

sunflowers, the only animated things in sight being prairie dogs and

jackrabbits, or an occasional band of Navajo ponies. As the morning

advances, cumulus clouds rise in stately squadrons above the horizon and

move across the sky dropping drifting shadows; at noon over a fire of

sage stumps you heat up your beans and brew your coffee in the grateful

shade of your wagon; night finds you at some hospitable trader’s post,

or enjoying your blankets at the sign of _La belle étoile_. Only at long

intervals will you come upon sign of human life. At Fort Defiance, 30

miles north of Gallup, is a Government Reservation school for the

Navajos, and a mile from it an Episcopal medical mission—a living

monument to the loving interest of Miss Eliza Thackara in these Indians.

Eight miles south of Fort Defiance is the Franciscan Mission of St.

Michael’s to the Navajo, where, if you are interested, the hospitable

Brothers can show you what sort of a job it is to transform an ungroomed

savage into Christian semblance. At Ganado, Arizona, 45 miles from

Gallup, is the trading post of Mr. J. L. Hubbell, whose name for a

generation has in that part of the world been a synonym for

hospitality.[46]

 

Nevertheless, there is more life than you see, for the native _hogan_,

or one-roomed dwelling of logs covered with earth, is so inconspicuous

that you may pass within a few rods of one and never detect it. The

Navajos do not congregate in villages but each family wants a lot—miles,

indeed—of elbow room.

 

Chin Lee, mentioned above, is not Chinese as it sounds, but the Navajo

name of a spacious valley into which Cañon de Chelly debouches. If you

have a taste for mythology, it will interest you to know that here,

according to tradition, Estsán-atlehi (the chief goddess of the Navajo

pantheon and wife of the Sun-god), traveling from the east once camped

with her attendant divinities for a great ceremony and a footrace. She

was on her way to her home in the great water of the west, where in a

floating house she still lives, and receives her lord the Sun every

evening when his daily work is finished.[47] There is a trading post at

Chin Lee, and beyond the broad flat in front of it is the entrance to

Cañon de Chelly. This is a narrow, tortuous rift in the earth, some 20

miles long, whose perpendicular sides of red sandstone rise 800 to 1000

feet. Opening into it are two side gorges, Monument and Del Muerto

Cañons. A shallow stream of sweet water—sometimes, however, hidden

beneath the sands—creeps along the cañon floor, widens in the plain into

the Rio de Chelly, and flowing northward joins the San Juan in southern

Utah. So in time does it contribute its bit to the tawny flood that

pours through the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.[48]

 

The interests that hold the visitor in Cañon de Chelly are several.

There is, first, the stupendous scenery. Men and animals traversing this

level floor seem pygmies at the foot of the smooth, vertical walls,

carved and stained by the master-artist Time working through who knows

how many milleniums. The windings of the gorge keep one in perpetual

expectancy of something going to happen just around the corner, and

create an atmosphere of mystery that is little short of thrilling. In

places the cañon widens out in sunlit coves and wild-grass meadows,

where clustered reeds[49] rustle and wild flowers bloom. Quite as often,

though, the walls are so close together that the sunshine never reaches

the bottom and the grim surroundings suggest some overwhelming picture

of Doré’s.

 

Then there are the ancient dwellings in the cliffs—little, crumbling

cities of the dead. Perched high up in shallow cavities of the flat

wall, some are inaccessible except by ladders; others, may be reached by

scrambling up talus slopes. One famous one, known as Mummy Cave, in

Cañon del Muerto, should by all means be visited; but even more striking

is one in the main cañon called _La Casa Blanca_ or the White House. The

upper story of this majestic ruin, which strikingly resembles some

medieval castle, is colored white; and the whole line of the immense

edifice set high above the earth and projected against the dark

background of a natural cavity in the enormous cliff, makes a dramatic

picture. The effect is heightened when we learn that in Navajo folk-lore

it plays a part as the abode of certain genii or minor divinities who,

the faithful believe, still haunt the edifice.

 

In places the cliffs are prehistoric art galleries, adorned with

pictographs of unheard-of birds and animals, human hands outspread,

geometrical designs, and attenuated figures of men in various attitudes.

 

Lastly, there is the interest of a present-day Indian life, for the

cañon is the free, joyous home of numerous Navajo families, that come

and go as fancy dictates. Their _hogans_, often with a hand-loom for

blanket weaving[50] swung from a nearby tree are set inconspicuously

here and there at the base of the towering cliffs, wherever there is a

bit of land suitable for the raising of corn, beans and melons. Peach

orchards, too, are here, from seed of Spanish introduction centuries

ago. Flocks of sheep and goats are continually on the move up and down

the cañon, which is musical with their bleatings and the wild melody of

the shepherds’ songs. It is a picturesque sight at evening to see the

homing bands crowding into the primitive folds which sometimes are a

mere crevice in the rock walls with a rude fence thrown across the opening.