Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States—Little Known and Unappreciated—The Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo,—The Lure of the Painted Desert — John Shaqi
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States—Little Known and Unappreciated—The Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo,—The Lure of the Painted DesertLaut, Agnes C.
History
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States—Little Known and Unappreciated—The Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo,—The Lure of the Painted Desert
Laut, Agnes C.
Hopi Indians; Navajo Indians; Southwest, New -- Description and travel
The Pueblo of Walpi 122
The Grand Canyon 140
The Governor's Palace at Santa Fe 154
A pool in the Painted Desert 160
Street in Santa Fe 166
Ancient adobe gateway 172
San Ildefonso 180
Taos 188
Over the roofs of Taos 198
A metal worker of Taos 208
A mud house of the Southwest 220
The enchanted Mesa of Acoma 230
Navajo crossing mesa 246
At the Mission of San Xavier 254
A Moki City on a mesa 262
THROUGH OUR UNKNOWN SOUTHWEST
INTRODUCTION
I am sitting in the doorway of a house of the Stone Age--neolithic,
paleolithic, troglodytic man--with a roofless city of the dead lying in
the valley below and the eagles circling with lonely cries along the
yawning caverns of the cliff face above.
My feet rest on the topmost step of a stone stairway worn hip-deep in
the rocks of eternity by the moccasined tread of foot-prints that run
back, not to A. D. or B. C., but to those post-glacial aeons when the
advances and recessions of an ice invasion from the Poles left seas
where now are deserts; when giant sequoia forests were swept under the
sands by the flood waters, and the mammoth and the dinosaur and the
brontosaur wallowed where now nestle farm hamlets.
Such a tiny doorway it is that Stone Man must have been obliged to
welcome a friend by hauling him shoulders foremost through the entrance,
or able to speed the parting foe down the steep stairway with a rock on
his head. Inside, behind me, is a little dome-roofed room, with
calcimined walls, and squared stone meal bins, and a little, high
fireplace, and stone pillows, and a homemade flour mill in the form of a
flat _metate_ stone with a round grinding stone on top. From the shape
and from the remnants of pottery shards lying about, I suspect one of
these hewn alcoves in the inner wall was the place for the family water
jar.
On each side the room are tiny doorways leading by stone steps to
apartments below and to rooms above; so that you may begin with a valley
floor room which you enter by ladder and go halfway to the top of a
500-foot cliff by a series of interior ladders and stone stairs. Flush
with the floor at the sides of these doors are the most curious little
round "cat holes" through the walls--"cat holes" for a people who are
not supposed to have had any cats; yet the little round holes run from
room to room through all the walls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account