I stop to photograph it; but who can photograph pure light? Only one man has ever existed who could paint pure light; and Turner is dead. Did a race once live on this high, flat, isolated, inaccessible slab of huge rock? Lummis says "yes;" Hodge says "no." Are there pottery remnants of a dead city? Lummis says "yes;" Hodge says "no." Both men climbed the rock, though Hill Ki tells me confidentially they "were very scare," when it came to throwing a rope up over the end of the rock, to pull the climber up as if by pulley. Marmon and Pratt have both been up; and Hill Ki tells me so have two venturesome white women climbers, whose names he does not know, but "they weren't scare." As we pass from the end to the side of the Enchanted Mesa, it is seen to be an oblong slab utterly cut off from all contact but so indented halfway up at one end as to be ascended by a good climber to within distance of throwing a rope over the top. The quarrel between Lummis and Hodge has waxed hotter and hotter as to the Enchanted Mesa without any finale to the dispute; and far be it from an outsider like myself to umpire warfare amid the gods of the antiquarian; but isn't it possible that a custom among the Acoma Indians may explain the whole matter; and that both men may be partly right? Miss McLain, who was in the Indian Service at Laguna, reports that once an Indian family told her of this Acoma ceremony. Before a youth reaches manhood, while he is still being instructed in the mysteries of Hopi faith in the underground council room or kiva, it is customary for the Acomas to blindfold him and send him to the top of the Enchanted Mesa for a night's lonely vigil with a jar of water as oblation to the spirits. These jars explain the presence of pottery, which Lummis describes. They would also give credence to at least periodic inhabiting of the Mesa. The absence of house ruins, on the other hand, would explain why Hodge scouted Lummis' theory. The Indians explained to Miss McLain that a boy could climb blindfolded where he could not go open-eyed, a fact that all mountain engineers will substantiate.
A shy little Indian maid in a Hopi village of Arizona
But what matters the quarrel? Is not the whole region an Enchanted Mesa, one of the weirdest bits of the New World? You have barely rounded the Enchanted Mesa, when another oblong colossus looms to the fore, sheer precipice, but accessible by tiers of sand and stone at the far end; that is, accessible by handhold and foothold. Look again! Along the top of the walled precipice, a crest to the towering slab, is a human wall, the walls of an adobe streetful of houses, little windows looking out flush with the precipice line like the portholes of a ship. Then you see something red flutter and move at the very edge of the rock top—Hopi urchins, who have spied us like young eagles in their eyrie, and shout and wave down at us, though we can barely hear their voices. It looks for all the world like the top story of a castle above a moat.
At the foot of the sand-hill, I ask Hill Ki, why, now that there is no danger from Spaniard and Navajo, the Hopi continue to live so high up where they must carry all their supplies sheer, vertical hundreds of feet, at least 1,500 if you count all the wiggling in and out and around the stone steps and stone ladders, and niched handholds. Hill Ki grins as he unhitches his horses, and answers: "You understan' when you go up an' see!" But he does not offer to escort me up.
As I am looking round for the beginning of a visible trail up, a little Hopi girl comes out from the sheep kraal at the foot of the Acoma Mesa. Though she cannot speak one word of English and I cannot speak one word of Hopi we keep up a most voluble conversation by gesture. Don't ask how we did it! It is wonderful what you can do when you have to. She is dressed in white, home-woven skirt with a white rag for a head shawl—badge of the good girl; and her stockings come only to the ankles, leaving the feet bare. The feet of all the Hopi are abnormally small, almost monkey-shaped; and when you think of it, it is purely cause and effect. The foot is not flat and broad, because it is constantly clutching foothold up and down these rocks. I saw all the Hopi women look at my broad-soled, box-toed outing boots in amazement. At hard spots in the climb, they would turn and point to my boots and offer me help till I showed them that the sole, though thick, was pliable as a moccasin.
The little girl signaled; did I want to go up?
I nodded.
She signaled; would I go up the hard, steep, quick way; or the long, easy path by the sand? As the stone steps seemed to give handhold well as foothold, and the sand promised to roll you back fast as you climbed up, I signaled the hard way; and off we set. I asked her how old she was; and she seemed puzzled how to answer by signs till she thought of her fingers—then up went eight with a tap to her chest signifying self. I asked her what had caused such sore inflammation in her eyes. She thought a minute; then pointed to the sand, and winnowed one hand as of wind—the sand storm; and so we kept an active conversation up for three hours without a word being spoken; but by this, a little hand sought mine in various affectionate squeezes, and a pair of very sore eyes looked up with confidence, and what was lacking in words, she made up in shy smiles. Poor little Hopi kiddie! Will your man "be bad boy," too, by and by? Will you acquire the best, or the worst, of the white civilization that is encroaching on your tenacious, conservative race? After all, you are better off, little kiddie, a thousand fold, than if you were a street gamin in the vicious gutters of New York.