Finding the Worth While in the Southwest

by Charles Francis Saunders

TO
M. H. R.
Kinswoman most dear
This little volume is affectionately inscribed.

PREFACE

No part of the United States is so foreign of aspect as our great Southwest. The broad, lonely plains, the deserts with their mystery and color, the dry water courses, the long, low mountain chains seemingly bare of vegetation, the oases of cultivation where the fruits of the Orient flourish, the brilliant sunshine, the deliciousness of the pure, dry air—all this suggests Syria or northern Africa or Spain. Added to this are the remains everywhere of an old, old civilization that once lived out its life here—it may have been when Nineveh was building or when Thebes was young. Moreover, there is the contemporary interest of Indian and Mexican life such as no other part of the country affords.

In this little volume the author has attempted, in addition to outlining practical information for the traveler, to hint at this wealth of human association that gives the crowning touch to the Southwest’s charm of scenery. The records of Spanish explorers and missionaries, the legends of the aborigines (whose myths and folklore have been studied and recorded by scholars like Bandelier, Matthews, Hough, Cushing, Stevenson, Hodge, Lummis, and others) furnish the raw material of a great native literature. Painters long since discovered the fascination of our Southwest; writers, as yet, have scarcely awakened to it.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I Santa Fe, the Royal City of St. Francis’s Holy Faith] 1 [II The Upper Rio Grande, its Pueblos and Cliff Dwellings] 20 [III Roundabout Albuquerque] 43 [IV The Dead Cities of the Salines] 56 [V Of Acoma, City of the Marvellous Rock; and Laguna] 68 [VI To Zuñi, the Center of the Earth, via Gallup] 82 [VII El Morro, the Autograph Rock of the Conquistadores] 93 [VIII The Storied Land of the Navajo] 102 [IX The Homes of the Hopis, Little People of Peace] 116 [X The Petrified Forest of Arizona] 130 [XI Flagstaff as a Base] 137 [XII The Grand Cañon of the Colorado River in Arizona] 150 [XIII Montezuma’s Castle and Well, Which Montezuma Never Saw] 162 [XIV San Antonio] 176 [XV In the Country of the Giant Cactus] 188 [XVI Southern California] 204 [ A Postscript on Climate, Ways and Means] 222 [ Index] 227

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE [An Acoma Indian Dance] 72 [Laguna, the Mother Pueblo of Seven] 73 [Bead Maker, Zuñi Pueblo] 82 [A Street in Acoma Pueblo] 83 [Old Church, Acoma Pueblo] 88 [A Sunny Wall in Zuñi] 89 [Casa Blanca or White House] 116 [El Morro or Inscription Rock, N. M.] 117 [In the North Petrified Forest] 135 [A Corner in Santa Fe, N. M.] 136 [Old Governor’s Palace, Santa Fe, N. M.] 162 [Montezuma’s Castle] 163 [San José de Aguayo] 184 [San Xavier del Bac, Arizona] 185

CHAPTER I
SANTA FE—THE ROYAL CITY OF SAINT FRANCIS’S HOLY FAITH

Someone—I think it was that picturesque historian of our Southwest, Mr. Charles F. Lummis—has summed up New Mexico as “sun, silence and adobe;” and of these three components the one that is apt to strike the Eastern newcomer most forcibly is adobe. This homely gift of nature—hard as brick in dry weather, plastic as putty and sticky as glue in wet—is the bulwark of the New Mexican’s well-being. His crops are raised in it; he fences in his cattle with it; he himself lives in it; for of it are built those colorless, square, box-like houses, flat-roofed and eaveless which, on our first arrival in New Mexico, we declared an architectural abomination, and within a week fell eternally in love with. An adobe house wall is anywhere from two to five feet thick, a fact that conduces to coolness in summer, warmth in winter, and economy at all seasons. Given possession of a bit of ground, you grub up a few square yards of the earth, mix it with water and wheat chaff, and shovel the mixture into a wooden mold. You then lift the mold and lo! certain big, brown bricks upon the ground. These the fiery New Mexican sun bakes hard for you in a couple of days—bricks that are essentially the same as those of ancient Babylon and Egypt, and the recipe for which (received by the Spanish probably from their Moorish conquerors) is one of Spain’s most valued contributions to America. Old Santa Fe was built entirely of this material, and most of latter day Santa Fe still is, though there is a growing disposition on the part of the well-to-do to substitute burned brick and concrete.