The New England States, all of them, could be gently eased into
Arizona, and there would remain room for Pennsylvania and little
Delaware without crowding. The one reservation that I had charge of
from 1911 to 1919 embraced 3863 square miles, a trifle smaller than
Connecticut, and it was a postage stamp on the broad yellow face of
Arizona, which is in area one twenty-seventh of the entire United
States. One hundred thousand persons, or one fourth of the state’s
estimated population, live in eight of its towns, leaving much less
than three persons per square mile, including Indians and Mexicans, to
inhabit the remaining emptiness. One tenth of the population is Indian,
and one fourth of Arizona’s land area is “Indian country.” The
reservations have 1.5 persons per square mile. The fastest train of the
Santa Fe system requires ten hours to cross Arizona from its eastern
boundary to the Colorado River, a distance of 386 miles. Arizona has
mountains that lift their crests more than 12,000 feet above the sea;
and to present a perfect contrast, it has Yuma and Parker, towns of the
Mohave Desert, cozy places in summer, close to sea level, with
temperatures of 116° to 120° in the shade. Yes, you can eat oranges
from the Phœnix trees while listening to the story of the Yuma man who
found Hell chilly; and you can find snow in June on the upper levels of
the Apache Indian Reserve without scaling a mountain peak. In the
northern Navajo country I have twice experienced thirty degrees below
zero in February, while there is no doubt the American Beauty roses
were blooming in Phœnix gardens. Once I nearly froze to death on the
nineteenth of May in Arizona, the place of palms, and figs, and
pomegranates!
I had expected to be sadly bored, but the steady routine of each
reservation working-day ate up the hours. Time does not hang on one’s
hands; a strange thing too, considering the silence and solitude and
lack of action in the Desert. Some writer has sought to picture this
bustling, speaking emptiness:—“It is a land where one always expects to
find something just around the corner; and there is never anything
around the corner.” Quite so. Therefore, it is a magic place, an
Enchanted Empire, filled ever with a wistful anticipation that lures
without the bitterness of disappointment. There is always another
corner, and another beautiful possibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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