The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, HavasupaisJames, George Wharton
Religion
The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais
James, George Wharton
Indians of North America -- Southwest, New
The next day we drove on to Oraibi, in the scorching sun, over the
sandy hillocks, where no road would last an hour in a wind-storm
unless it were thoroughly blanketed and pegged down. We were all hot,
weary, and ill-tempered. Thinking to help out, I volunteered to walk
up the steep western trail to the mesa top and secure some corn at
Oraibi for our horses, so that they could be fed at once on reaching
our stopping place on the east side. When we started I had suggested
the hope that we might be able to stop in the schoolhouse below the
Oraibi mesa, as I had several times done in times before; but when
the wagon arrived there, and I came down from the mesa, it was found
to be already occupied by persons to whom it had been promised by the
Indian agent. Camping, then, was the only thing left open to us, until
I could see the Hopis and rent one of their houses. Down we drove to
the camp, where alone a sufficiency of water was to be found. This
explains our close proximity to the camp of the earlier year. We were
just preparing our meal when a fierce sand-storm blew up. Cooking was
out of the question; the fire blew every which way, and the sand filled
meat, beans, corn, tomatoes with too much grit for comfort. This was
the last straw that broke the back of Mr. Britisher's complacency. He
had bemoaned again and again the leaving of his comfortable home to
come into this "God-forsaken region," in a quest of what our crazy
westernism called pleasure, and now his fury burst upon me in a manner
that dwarfed the passion of the heavens and the earth. While there
was a refinement in his vituperation, there was an edge upon it as
keen as fury, passion, and culture could give it. I was scorched by
his scarifying lightnings, struck again and again by his vindictive
thunderbolts, tossed hither and thither by his stormy winds, and
lifted heavenwards and then dashed downwards by the tornadoes and
whirlwinds of his passion. It was dazzling, bewildering, intensely
interesting, and then fiercely irritating. I stood it all until he
denounced my selfishness. There's no doubt I am selfish, but there is a
limit to a fellow's endurance when another fellow claims the discovery
and rubs it in upon you until he abrades the skin. So I raised my hand
and also my voice: "Stop, that's enough. Dare to repeat that and I'll
tie you on a horse and send you back to the railway in charge of an
Indian so quickly that you'll wonder how you got there. Selfish, am I?
I permitted you to come on this trip as a favor to my photographer. The
paltry sum you paid me has not found one-fourth share of the corn for
one horse, let alone your own food, the hire of the horses, wagon, and
driver. To oblige you I have allowed you the whole way to ride inside
my conveyance that you might talk together, while I have sat out in the
hot sun. If any help has been needed by Mr. Bass in driving, I have
willingly given it instead of calling upon you. I have done all the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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