The Gila passes through a barren sandy country, with but little game, and sparsely inhabited by several different tribes of the great nation of the Apache. Unlike the rivers of this western region, this stream is, in most parts of its course, particularly towards its upper waters, entirely bare of timber, and the bottom, through which it runs, affords but little of the coarsest grass.
Whilst on this stream, the trapping party lost several animals for want of pasture, and many more from the predatory attacks of the cunning Indians. These losses, however, they invariably made good whenever they encountered a native village—taking care, moreover, to repay themselves with interest whenever occasion offered.
Notwithstanding the sterile nature of the country, the trappers, during their passage up the Gila, saw with astonishment that the arid and barren valley had once been peopled by a race of men far superior to the present nomad tribes who roam over it. With no little awe they gazed upon the ruined walls of large cities, and the remains of houses, with their ponderous beams and joists, still testifying to the skill and industry with which they were constructed: huge ditches and irrigating canals, now filled with rank vegetation, furrowed the plains in the vicinity, marking the spot where once green waving maize and smiling gardens covered what now is a bare and sandy desert. Pieces of broken pottery, of domestic utensils, stained with bright colors, everywhere strewed the ground; and spear and arrow heads of stone, and quaintly-carved idols, and women's ornaments of agate and obsidian, were picked up often by the wondering trappers, examined with childlike curiosity, and thrown carelessly aside. *
* The Aztecs are supposed to have built this city during
their migration to the south: there is little doubt,
however, but that the region extending from the Gila to the
Great Salt Lake, and embracing the province of New Mexico,
was the locality from which they emigrated.
A Taos Indian, who was amongst the band, was evidently impressed with a melancholy awe as he regarded these ancient monuments of his fallen people. At midnight he rose from his blanket and left the camp, which was in the vicinity of the ruined city, stealthily picking his way through the line of slumbering forms which lay around; and the watchful sentinel observed him approach the ruins with a slow and reverential gait. Entering the moldering walls, he gazed silently around, where in ages past his ancestors trod proudly, a civilized race, the tradition of which, well known to his people, served but to make their present degraded position more galling and apparent. Cowering under the shadow of a crumbling wall, the Indian drew his blanket over his head, and conjured to his mind's eye the former power and grandeur of his race—that warlike people who, forsaking their own country for causes of which no tradition, however dim, now exists, sought in the fruitful and teeming valleys of the south a soil and climate which their own lands did not afford, and, displacing the wild and barbarous hordes inhabiting the land, raised there a mighty empire, great in riches and civilization.
The Indian bowed his head, and mourned the fallen greatness of his tribe. Rising, he slowly drew his tattered blanket round his body, and prepared to leave the spot, when the shadow of a moving figure, creeping past a gap in the ruined wall through which the moonbeams played, suddenly arrested his attention. Rigid as a statue, he stood transfixed to the spot, thinking a former inhabitant of the city was visiting, in a ghostly form, the scenes his body once knew so well. The bow in his right hand shook with fear as he saw the shadow approach, but was as tightly and steadily grasped when, on the figure emerging from the shade of the wall, he distinguished the form of a naked Apache, armed with bow and arrow, crawling stealthily through the gloomy ruins.
Standing undiscovered within the shadow of the wall, the Taos raised his bow, and drew an arrow to the head, until the other, who was bending low to keep under cover of the wall, and thus approach the sentinel standing at a short distance, seeing suddenly the well-defined shadow on the ground, rose upright on his legs, and, knowing escape was impossible, threw his arms down his sides, and, drawing himself erect, exclaimed in a suppressed tone, "Wa-g-h!"
"Wagh!" exclaimed the Taos likewise, but quickly dropped his arrow point, and eased the bow.
"What does my brother want," he asked, "that he lopes like a wolf round the fires of the white hunters?"
"Is my brother's skin not red?" returned the Apache, "and yet he asks question that needs no answer. Why does the medicine-wolf follow the buffalo and deer? For blood—and for blood the Indian follows the treacherous white from camp to camp, to strike blow for blow, until the deaths of those so basely killed are fully avenged."