The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais — John Shaqi
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
Elsewhere I have spoken of the mystery brooding over the peoples of
this land. It is also existent in the very colors of it, whether
noted in early morning, in the glare of the pitiless Arizona noon, or
at sunset; in the storm, with the air full of sand, or in the calm
and quiet of a cloudless sky; when the sky is cerulean or black with
lowering clouds; ever, always, the color is weird, strange, mysterious.
One night at Walpi several of us sat and watched the colorings in the
west. No unacquainted soul would have believed such could exist. To
describe it is as impossible as to analyze the feelings of love. It was
raining everywhere in the west; and "everywhere" means so much where
one's horizon is not limited. The eye there roams over what seem to be
boundless distances. In all this space rain was falling. The sun had
but half an hour more to live, and it flooded the sky with an orange
crimson. The rain came down in hairy streaks brilliantly illuminated.
The sun could be discerned only as a dimly veiled face, with the light
shed below it--none above--in graceful curves. Then the orange and
crimson changed to purple, deepening and deepening into blackness until
day was done.
Sometimes the lighting up of the desert in the early morning gives it
the effect of a sea-green ocean, and then the illusion is indescribably
wonderful. At such times, if there are clouds in the sky, the
reflections of color are as delicate and beautiful as the tintings of
the sea-shells.
One night standing on the mesa at Mashonganavi looking east and south,
the vast ocean-like expanse of tawny sand and desert was converted by
the hues of dying day into a gorgeous and resplendent sea of exquisite
and delicate color. On the further side were the Mogollon Buttes,--the
Giant's Chair, Pyramid Butte, and others,--with long walls, which,
in the early morning black and forbidding, were now illumined and
etherealized by the magic wand of sunset.
If, however, one would know another of the marvellous charms of this
Painted Desert Region let him see it in the early summer, after the
first rains. This may be the latter part of June or in July and August.
Then what a change! One seeing it for the first time would naturally
exclaim in protest: "Desert? Why, this is a garden!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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