Arizona's yesterday : $b Being the narrative of John H. Cady, pioneerCady, John H. (John Henry)
History
Arizona's yesterday : $b Being the narrative of John H. Cady, pioneer
Cady, John H. (John Henry)
Cady, John H. (John Henry), 1846-1927; Frontier and pioneer life -- Arizona; Pioneers -- Arizona -- Biography
There is no doubt that to the tourist the West is now a source of
constant disappointment. The "movies" and certain literature have
educated the Easterner to the belief that even now Indians go on the
war-path occasionally, that even now cowboys sometimes find an outlet
for their exuberant spirits in the hair-raising sport of "shooting up
the town," and that even now battles between the law-abiding cattlemen
and the "rustlers" are more or less frequent. When these people come
west in their comfortable Pullmans and discover nothing more interesting
in the shape of Indians than a few old squaws selling trinkets and
blankets on station platforms, as at Yuma; when they visit one of the
famous old towns where in days gone by white men were wont to sleep with
one eye and an ear open for marauding Indians, and find electric cars,
modern office buildings, paved streets crowded with luxurious motors,
and the inhabitants nonchalantly pursuing the even tenor of their ways
garbed in habiliments strongly suggestive of Forty-fourth street and
Broadway; when they come West and note these signs of an advancing and
all-conquering civilization, I say, they invariably are disappointed.
One lady I met even thought "how delightful" it would be "if the Apaches
would only hold up the train!" It failed altogether to occur to her
that, in the days when wagon-trains _were_ held up by Apaches, few of
those in them escaped to tell the gruesome tale. And yet this estimable
lady, fresh from the drawing-rooms of Upper-Radcliffe-on-the-Hudson and
the ballroom of Rector's, thought how "delightful" this would be! Ah,
fortunate indeed is it that the pluck and persistence of the pioneers
carved a way of peace for the pilgrims of today!
Considering the foregoing, such a book as this, presenting as it does in
readable form the Arizona West as it _really was_, is, in my opinion,
most opportune and fills a real need. The people have had fiction
stories from the capable pens of Stewart Edward White and his companions
in the realm of western literature, and have doubtless enjoyed their
refreshing atmosphere and daring originality, but, despite this, fiction
localized in the West and founded however-much on fact, does _not_
supply all the needs of the Eastern reader, who demands the truth about
those old days, presented in a compact and _intimate_ form. I cannot too
greatly emphasize that word "intimate," for it signifies to me the
quality that has been most lacking in authoritative works on the Western
country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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