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 _conditions_ of color and barrenness that first suggested the name
exist over a large area; you find them in the plateaus of southern
Utah and the wild wastes of southern Nevada; they exist in much of New
Mexico and southwestern Colorado. In Arizona if you sweep around north,
west, south, and east, they are there. Northward--in the cliffs and
ravines of the Grand Canyon country, in Blue Canyon, in the red mesas,
the coal deposits, and in the lava flows around the San Francisco
Mountains; westward--in the wild mountains and wilder deserts that
lead to the crossings of the Colorado River, past the craters, lava
flows, Calico Mountains, and Mohave Desert of the country adjoining the
Santa Fé Route, and the Salton Sea, mud volcanoes, purple cliffs, and
tawny sands of the Colorado Desert of the Sunset Route of the Southern
Pacific; southward--in the Red Rock country, Sunset Pass, the meteorite
beds of Canyon Diablo, the great cliffs of the Mogollon Plateau, the
Tonto Basin, the Verdi Valley, and away down, over the Hassayampa,
through the Salt River Valley, past the Superstition and other purple
and variegated mountains, into the heart of northern Mexico itself;
eastward--to the Petrified Forest, across into New Mexico to Mount
San Mateo, by the cliffs, craters, lava flows, alkali flats, gorges
and ravines of the Zuni Mountain country and as far as the Rio Grande
at Albuquerque, where the basalt is scattered about in an irregular
way, as if the molten stuff had been washed over the country from
some titanic bucket, and left to lie in great inky blots over the
bright-colored soils and clays.
To me, _all this_ is Painted Desert region, for much of it is painted
and much is desert. Indeed, if one Painted Desert were to be staked off
in any one of the above named States, ten others, equally large, could
be found in the remaining ones.
It is a wonderful region viewed from any standpoint. Scenic! It is
unrivalled for uniqueness, contrasts, variety, grandeur, desolateness,
and majesty. Geologic! The student may here find in a few months what a
lifetime elsewhere cannot reveal. Artistic! The artist will find it his
rapture and his despair. Archæologic! Ruins everywhere, cavate, cliff,
and pueblo dwellings, waiting for investigation, and, doubtless, scores
as yet undiscovered. Ethnologic! Hopi, Wallapai, Havasupai, Navaho,
Apache, and the rest; with mythologies as fascinating and complex
as those of old Greece; with histories that lose themselves in dim
legend and tradition, and that tell of feuds and wars, massacres and
conflicts, that extend over centuries.
In the first chapter I have briefly named some of the wonders and
marvels of this fascinating land, and though in barest outline, "the
half has not been told."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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