CHAPTER XIII. OVER THE RIVER.

It is our intention to explore a route from Kanab to the Colorado River at the mouth of the Paria, and, if successful in this undertaking, to cross the river and proceed to Tusayan, and ultimately to Santa Fe, New Mexico. We propose to build a flatboat for the purpose of ferrying over the river, and have had the lumber necessary for that purpose hauled from St. George to Kanab. From here to the mouth of the Paria it must be packed on the backs of mules; Captain Bishop and Mr. Graves are to take charge of this work, while with Mr. Hamblin I explore the Kaibab Plateau.

September 24 - -To-day we are ready for the start. The mules are packed and away goes our train of lumber, rations, and camping equipage. The Indian trail is at the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs. Pushing on to the east with Mr. Hamblin for a couple of hours in the early morning, we reach the mouth of a dry canyon, which comes down through the cliffs. Instead of a narrow canyon we find an open valley from one fourth to one half a mile in width. On rare occasions a stream flows down this valley, but now sand dunes stretch across it. On either side there is a wall of vertical rock of orange sandstone, and here and there at the foot of the wall are found springs that afford sweet water.

We push our way far up the valley to the foot of the Gray Cliffs, and by a long detour find our way to the summit. Here again we find that wonderful scenery of naked white rocks carved into great round bosses and domes. Looking off to the north we can see vermilion and pink cliffs, crowned with forests, while below us to the south stretch the dunes and red-lands of the Vermilion Cliff region, and far away we can see the opposite wall of the Grand Canyon. In the middle of the afternoon we descend into the canyon valley and hurriedly ride, down to the mouth of the canyon, then follow the trail of the pack train, for we are to camp with the party to-night. We find it at the Navajo Well. As we approach in the darkness the camp fire is a cheerful sight. The Navajo Well is a pool in the sand, the sands themselves lying in a basin, with naked, smooth rocks all about on which the rains are caught and by which the sand in the basin is filled with water, and by digging into the sand this sweet water is found.

September 25. - At sunrise Mr. Hamblin and I part from the train once more, taking with us Chuar, a chief of the Kaibabits, for a trip to the south, for one more view of the Grand Canyon from the summit of the Kaibab Plateau. All day long our way is over red hills, with a bold line of cliffs on our left. A little after noon we reach a great spring, and here we are to camp for the night, for the region beyond us is unknown and we wish to enter it with a good day before us. The Indian goes out to hunt a rabbit for supper, and Hamblin and I climb the cliffs. From an elevation of 1,800 feet above the spring we watch the sun go down and see the sheen on the Vermilion Cliffs and red-lands slowly fade into the gloaming; then we descend to supper.

September 26. - Early in the morning we pass up a beautiful valley to the south and turn westward onto a great promontory, from the summit of which the Grand Canyon is in view. Its deep gorge can be seen to the westward for 50 or 60 miles, and to the southeastward we look off into the stupendous chasm, with its marvelous forms and colors.

Twenty-one years later I read over the notes of that day's experience and the picture of the Grand Canyon from this point is once more before me. I did not know when writing the notes that this was the grandest view that can be obtained of the region from Fremont's Peak to the Gulf of California, but I did realize that the scene before me was awful, sublime, and glorious - awful in profound depths, sublime in massive and strange forms, and glorious in colors. Years later I visited the same spot with my friend Thomas Moran. From this world of wonder he selected a section which was the most interesting to him and painted it. That painting, known as "The Chasm of the Colorado," is in a hall in the Senate wing of the Capitol of the United States. If any one will look upon that picture, and then realize that it was but a small part of the landscape before us on this memorable 26th day of September, he will understand why I suppress my notes descriptive of the scene. The landscape is too vast, too complex, too grand for verbal description.

We sleep another night by the spring on the summit of the Kaibab, and next day we go around to Point Sublime and then push on to the very verge of the Kaibab, where we can overlook the canyon at the mouth of the Little Colorado. The day is a repetition of the glorious day before, and at night we sleep again at the same spring. In the morning we turn to the northeast and descend from Kaibab to the back of Marble Canyon and cross it at the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs, and find our packers camped at Jacob's Pool, where a spring bursts from the cliff at the summit of a great hill of talus. In the camp we find a score or more of Indians, who have joined us here by previous appointment, as we need their services in crossing the river.

On the last day of September we follow the Vermilion Cliffs around to the mouth of the Paria. Here the cliffs present a wall of about 2,000 feet in height, - above, orange and vermilion, but below, chocolate, purple, and gray in alternating bands of rainbow brightness. The cliffs are cut with deep side canyons, and the rainbow hills below are destitute of vegetation. At night we camp on the bank of the Colorado River, on the same spot where our boat-party had camped the year before. Leaving the party in charge of Mr. Graves and Mr. Bishop, while they are building a ferryboat, I take some Indians to explore the canyon of the Paria. We find steep walls on either side, but a rather broad, flat plain below, through which the muddy river winds its way over quicksands. This stream we have to cross from time to time, and we find the quicksands treacherous and our horses floundering in the trembling masses.

These broad canyons, or canyon valleys, are carved by the streams in obedience to an interesting law of corrasion. Where the declivity of the stream is great the river corrades, or cuts its bottom deeper and still deeper, ever forming narrow clefts, but when the stream has cut its channel down until the declivity is greatly reduced, it can no longer carry the load of sand with which it is fed, but drops a part of it on the way. Wherever it drops it in this manner a sand bank is formed. Now the effect of this sand bar is to turn the course of the river against the wall or bank, and as it unloads in one place it cuts in another below and loads itself again; so it unloads itself and forms bars, and loads itself with more material to form bars, and the process of vertical cutting is transformed into a process of lateral cutting. The rate of cutting is greatly increased thereby, but the wear is on the sides and not on the bottom. So long as the declivity of the stream is great, the greater the load of sand carried the greater the rate of vertical cutting; but when the declivity is reduced, so that part of the load is thrown down, vertical cutting is changed to lateral and the rate of cor-rasion multiplied thereby. Now this broad valley canyon, or "box canyon," as such channels are usually called in the country, has been formed by the stream itself, cutting its channel at first vertically and afterwards laterally, and so a great flood-plain is formed.

For a day we ride up the Paria, and next day return. The party in camp have made good progress. The boat is finished and a part of the camp freight has been transported across the river. The next day the remainder is ferried over and the animals are led across, swimming behind the ferryboat in pairs. Here a bold bluff more than 1,200 feet in height has to be climbed, and the day is spent in getting to its summit. We make a dry camp, that is, without water, except that which has been carried in canteens by the Indians.

October 4- - All day long we pass by the foot of the Echo Cliffs, which are in fact the continuation of the Vermilion Cliffs. It is still a landscape of rocks, with cliffs and pinnacles and towers and buttes on the left, and deep chasms running down into the Marble Canyon on the right. At night we camp at a water pocket, a pool in a great limestone rock. We still go south for another half day to a cedar ridge; here we turn westward, climbing the cliffs, which we find to be not the edge of an escarpment with a plateau above, but a long narrow ridge which descends on the eastern side to a level only 500 or 600 feet above the trail left below. On the eastern side of the cliff a great homogeneous sandstone stretches, declining rapidly, and on its sides are carved innumerable basins, which are now filled with pure water, and we call this the Thousand Wells. We have a long afternoon's ride over sand dunes, slowly toiling from mile to mile. We can see a ledge of rocks in the distance, and the Indian with us assures us that we shall find water there. At night we come to the cliff, and under it, in a great cave, we find a lakelet. Sweeter, cooler water never blessed the desert.

While at Jacob's Pool, several days before, I sent a runner forward into this region with instructions to hunt us up some of the natives and bring them to this pool. When we arrive we are disappointed in not finding them on hand, but a little later half a dozen men come in with the Indian messenger. They are surly fellows and seem to be displeased at our coming. Before midnight they leave. Under the circumstances I do not feel that it is safe to linger long at this spot; so I do not lie down to rest, but walk the camp among the guards and see that everything is in readiness to move. About two o'clock I set a couple of men to prepare a hasty lunch, call up all hands, and we saddle, pack, eat our lunch, and start off to the southwest to reach the Moenkopi, where there is a little rancheria of Indians, a farming settlement belonging to the Oraibis, so we are told. We set out at a rapid rate, and when daylight comes we are in sight of the canyon of the Moenkopi, into which we soon descend; but the rancheria has been abandoned. Up the Moenkopi we pass several miles, in a beautiful canyon valley, until we find a pool in a nook of a cliff, where we feel that we can defend ourselves with certainty, and here we camp for the night. The next day we go on to Oraibi, one of the pueblos of the Province of Tusayan.

At Tusayan we stop for two weeks and visit the seven pueblos on the cliffs. Oraibi is first reached, then Shumopavi, Shupaulovi, and Mashongnavi, and finally Walpi, Sichumovi, and Hano.

In a street of Oraibi our little party is gathered. Soon a council is called by the cacique, or chief, and we are assigned to a suite of six or eight rooms for our quarters. We purchase corn of some of the people, and after feeding our animals they are intrusted to two Indian boys, who, under the direction of the cacique, take them to a distant mesa to herd. This is my first view of an inhabited pueblo, though I have seen many ruins from time to time. At first I am a little disappointed in the people. They seem scarcely superior to the Shoshones and Utes, tribes with whom I am so well acquainted. Their dress is less picturesque, and the men have an ugly fashion of banging their hair in front so that it comes down to their eyes and conceals their foreheads. But the women are more neatly dressed and arrange their hair in picturesque coils.

Oraibi is a town of several hundred inhabitants. It stands on a mesa or little plateau 200 or 300 feet above the surrounding plain. The mesa itself has a rather diversified surface. The streets of the town are quite irregular, and in a general way run from north to south. The houses are constructed to face the east. They are of stone laid in mortar, and are usually three or four stories high. The second story stands back upon the first, leaving a terrace over one tier of rooms. The third is set back of the second, and the fourth back of the third; so that their houses are terraced to face the east. These terraces on the top are all flat, and the people usually ascend to the first terrace by a ladder and then by another into the lower rooms. In like manner, ladders or rude stairways are used to reach the upper stories. The climate is very warm and the people live on the tops of their houses. It seems strange to see little naked children climbing the ladders and running over the house tops like herds of monkeys. After we have looked about the town and been gazed upon by the wondering eyes of the men, women, and children, we are at last called to supper. In a large central room we gather and the food is placed before us. A stew of goat's flesh is served in earthen bowls, and each one of us is furnished with a little earthen ladle. The bread is a great novelty to me. It is made of corn meal in sheets as thin and large as foolscap paper. In the corner of the house is a little oven, the top of which is a great flat stone, and the good housewife bakes her bread in this manner: The corn meal is mixed to the consistency of a rather thick gruel, and the woman dips her hand into the mixture and plasters the hot stone with a thin coating of the meal paste. In a minute or two it forms into a thin paperlike cake, and she takes it up by the edge, folds it once, and places it on a basket tray; then another and another sheet of paper-bread is made in like manner and piled on the tray. I notice that the paste stands in a number of different bowls and that she takes from, one bowl and then another in order, and I soon see the effect of this. The corn before being ground is assorted by colors, white, yellow, red, blue, and black, and the sheets of bread, when made, are of the same variety of colors, white, yellow, red, blue, and black. This bread, held on very beautiful trays, is itself a work of art. They call it piki. After we have partaken of goat stew and bread a course of dumplings, melons, and peaches is served, and this finishes the feast. What seem to be dumplings are composed of a kind of hash of bread and meat, tied up in little balls with cornhusks and served boiling hot. They are eaten with much gusto by the party and highly praised. Some days after we learned how they are made; they are prepared of goat's flesh, bread, and turnips, and kneaded by mastication. As we prefer to masticate our own food, this dainty dish is never again a favorite.

In the evening the people celebrate our advent by a dance, such it seemed to us, but probably it was one of their regular ceremonies.

After dark a pretty little fire is built in the chimney corner and I spend the evening in rehearsing to a group of the leading men the story of my travels in the canyon country. Of our journey down the canyon in boats they have already heard, and they listen with great interest to what I say. My talk with them is in the Mexican patois, which several of them understand, and all that I say is interpreted.

The next morning we are up at daybreak. Soon we hear loud shouts coming from the top of the house. The cacique is calling his people. Then all the people, men, women, and children, come out on the tops of their houses. Just before sunrise they sprinkle water and meal from beautiful grails; then they all stand with bare heads to watch the rising of the sun. When his full orb is seen, once more they sprinkle the sacred water and the sacred meal over the tops of the houses. Then the cacique in a loud voice directs the labor of the day. So his talk is explained to us. Some must gather corn, others must go for wood, water must be brought from the distant wells, and the animals of the strangers must be cared for. Now the house tops present a lively scene. Bowls of water are brought; from them the men fill their mouths and with dexterity blow water over their hands in spray and wash their faces and lave their long shining heads of hair; and the women dress one another's locks. With bowls of water they make suds of the yucca plant, and wash and comb and deftly roll their hair, the elder women in great coils at the back of the head, the younger women in flat coils on their cheeks. And so the days are passed and the weeks go by, and we study the language of the people and record many hundreds of their words and observe their habits and customs and gain some knowledge of their mythology, but above all do we become interested in their religious ceremonies.

One afternoon they take me from Oraibi to Shupaulovi to witness a great religious ceremony. It is the invocation to the gods for rain. We arrive about sundown, and are taken into a large subterranean chamber, into which we descend by a ladder. Soon about a dozen Shamans are gathered with us, and the ceremony continues from sunset to sunrise. It is a series of formal invocations, incantations, and sacrifices, especially of holy meal and holy water. The leader of the Shamans is a great burly bald-headed Indian, which is a remarkable sight, for I have never seen one before. Whatever he says or does is repeated by three others in turn. The paraphernalia of their worship is very interesting. At one end of the chamber is a series of tablets of wood covered with quaint pictures of animals and of corn, and overhead are conventional black clouds from which yellow lightnings are projected, while drops of rain fall on the corn below. Wooden birds, set on pedestals and decorated with plumes, are arranged in various ways. Ears of corn, vases of holy water, and trays of meal make up a part of the paraphernalia of worship. I try to record some of the prayers, but am not very successful, as it is difficult to hold my interpreter to the work. But one of these prayers is something like this:

"Muingwa pash lolomai, Master of the Clouds, we eat no stolen bread; our young men ride not the stolen ass; our food is not stolen from the gardens of our neighbors. Muingwa pash lolomai, we beseech of thee to dip your great sprinkler, made of the feathers of the birds of the heavens, into the lakes of the skies and sprinkle us with sweet rains, that the ground may be prepared in the winter for the corn that grows in the summer."

At one time in the night three women were brought into the kiva. These women had a cincture of cotton about their loins, but were otherwise nude. One was very old, another of middle age, and the third quite young, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old. As they stood in a corner of the kiva their faces and bodies were painted by the bald-headed priest. For this purpose he filled his mouth with water and pigment and dexterously blew a fine spray over the faces, necks, shoulders, and breasts of the women. Then with his finger as a brush he decorated them over this groundwork, which was of yellow, with many figures in various colors. From that time to daylight the three women remained in the kiva and took part in the ceremony as choristers and dancing performers.

At sunrise we are filed out of the kiva, and a curious sight is presented to our view. Shupaulovi is built in terraces about a central court, or plaza, and in the plaza about fifty men are drawn up in a line facing us. These men are naked except that they wear masks, strange and grotesque, and great flaring headdresses in many colors.

Our party from the kiva stand before this line of men, and the bald-headed priest harangues them in words I cannot understand. Then across the other end of the plaza a line of women is formed, facing the line of men, and at a signal from the old Shaman the drums and the whistles on the terraces, with a great chorus of singers, set up a tumultuous noise, and with slow shuffling steps the line of men and the line of women move toward each other in a curious waving dance. When the lines approach so as to be not more than 10 or 12 feet apart, our party still being between them, they all change so as to dance backward to their original positions. This is repeated until the dancers have passed over the plaza four times. Then there is a wild confusion of dances, the order of which I cannot understand, - if indeed there is any system, except that the men and women dance apart. Soon this is over, and the women all file down the ladder into the kiva and the men strip off their masks and arrange themselves about the plaza, every one according to his own wish, but as if in sharp expectancy; then the women return up the ladder from the kiva and climb to the tops of the houses and stand on the brink of the nearer terrace. Now the music commences once more, and the old woman who was painted in the kiva during the night throws something, I cannot tell what, into the midst of the plaza. With a shout and a scream, every man jumps for it; one seizes it, another takes it away from him, and then another secures it; and with shouts and screams they wrestle and tussle for the charm which the old woman has thrown to them. After a while some one gets permanent possession of the charm and the music ceases. Then another is thrown into the midst. So these contests continue at intervals until high noon.

In the evening we return to Oraibi. And now for two days we employ our time in making a collection of the arts of the people of this town. First, we display to them our stock of goods, composed of knives, needles, awls, scissors, paints, dyestuffs, leather, and various fabrics in gay colors. Then we go around among the people and select the articles of pottery, stone implements, instruments and utensils made of bone, horn, shell, articles of clothing and ornament, baskets, trays, and many other things, and tell the people to bring them the next day to our rooms. A little after sunrise they come in, and we have a busy day of barter. When articles are brought in such as I want, I lay them aside. Then if possible I discover the fancy of the one who brings them, and I put by the articles the goods which I am willing to give in exchange for them. Having thus made an offer, I never deviate from it, but leave it to the option of the other party to take either his own articles or mine lying beside them. The barter is carried on with a hearty good will; the people jest and laugh with us and with one another; all are pleased, and there is nothing to mar this day of pleasure. In the afternoon and evening I make an inventory of our purchases, and the next day is spent in packing them for shipment. Some of the things are heavy, and I engage some Indians to help transport the cargo to Fort Wingate, where we can get army transportation.

October 24-. - To-day we leave Oraibi. We are ready to start in the early morning. The whole town comes to bid us good-by. Before we start they perform some strange ceremony which I cannot understand, but, with invocations to some deity, they sprinkle us, our animals, and our goods with water and with meal. Then there is a time of handshaking and hugging. "Good-by; good-by; good-by!" At last we start. Our way is to Walpi, by a heavy trail over a sand plain, among the dunes. We arrive a little after noon. Walpi, Sichumovi, and Hano are three little towns on one butte, with but little space between them; the stretch from town to town is hardly large enough for a game of ball. The top of the butte is of naked rock, and it rises from 300 to 400 feet above the sand plains below by a precipitous cliff on every side. To reach it from below, it must be climbed by niches and stairways in the rock. It is a good site for defense. At the foot of the cliff and on some terraces the people have built corrals of stone for their asses. All the water used in these three towns is derived from a well nearly a mile away - a deep pit sunk in the sand, over the site of a dune-buried brook.

When we arrive the men of Walpi carry our goods, camp equipage, and saddles up the stairway and deposit them in a little court. Then they assign us eight or ten rooms for our quarters. Our animals are once more consigned to the care of Indian herders, and after they are fed they are sent away to a distance of some miles. There is no tree or shrub growing near the Walpi mesa. It is miles away to where the stunted cedars are found, and the people bring curious little loads of wood on the backs of their donkeys, it being a day's work to bring such a cargo. The people have anticipated our coming, and the wood for our use is piled in the chimney corners. After supper the hours till midnight are passed in rather formal talk.

Walpi seems to be a town of about 150 inhabitants, Sichumovi of less than 100, and Hano of not more than 75. Hano, or "Tewa" as it is sometimes called, has been built lately; that is, it cannot be more than 100 or 200 years old. The other towns are very old; their foundation dates back many centuries - so we gather from this talk. The people of Hano also speak a radically distinct language, belonging to another stock of tribes. They formerly lived on the Rio Grande, but during some war they were driven away and were permitted to build their home here.

Two days are spent in trading with the people, and we pride ourselves on having made a good ethnologic collection. We are especially interested in seeing the men and women spin and weave. In their courtyards they have deep chambers excavated in the rocks. These chambers, which are called kivas, are entered by descending ladders. They are about 18 by 24 feet in size. The kiva is the place of worship, where all their ceremonies are performed, where their cult societies meet to pray for rain and to prepare medicines and charms against fancied and real ailments and to protect themselves by sorcery from the dangers of witchcraft. The kivas are also places for general rendezvous, and at night the men and women bring their work and chat and laugh, and in their rude way make the time merry. Many of the tribes of North America have their cult societies, or "medicine orders," as they are sometimes called, but this institution has been nowhere developed more thoroughly than among the pueblo Indians of this region. I am informed that there are a great number in Tusayan, that a part of their ceremonies are secret and another part public, and that the times of ceremony are also times for feasting and athletic sports.

Here at Walpi the great snake dance is performed. For several days before this festival is held the people with great diligence gather snakes from the rocks and sands of the region round about and bring them to the kiva of one of their clans in great numbers, by scores and hundreds. Most of these snakes are quite harmless, but rattlesnakes abound, and they are also caught, for they play the most important role in the great snake dance. The medicine men, or priest doctors, are very deft in the management of rattlesnakes. When they bring them to the kiva they herd all the snakes in a great mass of writhing, hissing, rattling serpents. For this purpose they have little wands, to the end of each one of which a bunch of feathers is affixed. If a snake attempts to leave its allotted place in the kiva the medicine man brushes it or tickles it with the feather-armed wand, and the snake turns again to commingle with its fellows. After many strange and rather wearisome ceremonies, with dancing and invocations and ululations, the men of the order prepare for the great performance with the snakes. Clothed only in loincloth, each one seizes a snake, and a rattlesnake is preferred if there are enough of them for all. It is managed in this way: The snake is teased with the feather wand and his attention occupied by one man, while another, standing near, at a favorable moment seizes the snake just, back of the head. Then he puts the snake in his mouth, holding it across, so that the head protrudes on one side and the body on the other, which coils about his hand and arm. A few inches of the head and neck are free, and with this free portion the snake struggles, squirming in the air; but the attention of the snake is constantly occupied by the attendant who carries the wand. Then the men of the priest order carrying the snakes in their mouths arrange themselves in a line in the court and move in a procession several times about the court, and then engage in a dance. After the ceremony all of the snakes are carried to the plain and given their freedom.

This snake dance was not witnessed at the time of the first visit, but an account of it was then obtained, such as given above. It has since been witnessed by myself and by others, and carefully prepared accounts of the ceremonies have been published by different persons.

At last our work at Walpi is done, on October 27, and we arrange to leave on the morrow.