The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais

by George Wharton James

Of no people of the Southwest, perhaps, has so much utter nonsense been written as of this interesting People of the Blue Water, the pai (people) of the vasu (blue) haha (water)—the Havasupais. As far as we know, Padre Garcés was the first white man to visit them in their Cataract Canyon home, and he speaks of his visit in his interesting Diary translated and annotated by the lamented Elliott Coues shortly before his death.

Captain Sitgreaves, Lieutenant Ives, Captain Palfrey, Major J. W. Powell, Lieut. F. H. Cushing, and others in turn visited them, but very little was either known or written about them when, over a dozen years ago, I was conducted to their marvellously picturesque home by Mr. W. W. Bass, the well-known guide of the Grand Canyon.

The journey on that occasion was a remarkable one for me, as, though I was fairly well versed in the trails of the Grand Canyon (having then descended four of them), I had never seen such a trail as was the Topocobya Trail down which we descended late in the evening. Leaving our wagon, after sixteen miles' drive through the Kohonino Forest from Bass Camp, we packed food, blankets, and cameras on horses and burros, and, after two miles of travel in what in Western parlance is called a "draw," the real head of the trail was reached. We walked in the closing dusk of day to the edge of the precipice and looked off to where our guide told us we must shortly be travelling. Far below, almost a thousand feet, without the sign of a trail, it seemed as if he must be hoaxing us. Soon, however, as we followed him, we found ourselves on a rocky shelf, and then began the most stupendous series of zigzags I had ever been on. Back and forth we wended, our trail a mere scratch on the rocky slope, here descending rugged steps, where a misstep meant sure and awful death. Higher and higher the walls rose around us; darker and darker grew the night; more weird and awesome the wind and weather carved figures sculptured on the sides and summits of the walls, and still down we went. At last we reached a vast cavernous-like place where Topocobya Spring is located. A small flow of water comes from the solid rock, and there we watered our horses and filled up our canteens prior to advancing on our seemingly never-ending descent. At last we reached the level, and there, lighting a fire, made camp and rested before penetrating farther into the deep and mystic recesses of the Havasupais. Early in the morning we began the farther descent. Mile after mile we traversed, first riding on the dry bed of the winter stream, then entering the narrower walls formed by the erosion of centuries through first one stratum of rock, then another. Now we were riding on a narrow shelf, on one side of which was a high wall, and on the other a deep, narrow ravine, in the bottom of which the erosive forces have cut a number of holes,—small troughs or bath tubs in the sandstone, where during the rainy season pools of delicious water may be found. In a short time we were riding up or down literal stairways cut in the rock, or rounding "Cape Horns," where we held our breath at the dreadful consequences that would ensue were horse or man to slip. Entering Rattlesnake Canyon our whole course was on a shelving slope of rock, over which even experienced horses tread gingerly. At last we came to the bed of the main canyon, and then for five or six miles we journeyed on, in the sand or the gravelly wash, for the stream that flows through this narrow canyon in storm times has no other law than its own wilful force. To-day we ride in one place, to-morrow's storm changes everything. After numberless twinings and twistings, all of which, however, gave a persistent northwesterly direction to our travelling, we came in sight of a score or so of large and fine cottonwood trees, whose height far surpassed the smaller mesquite, cottonwood, and other trees that line much of the canyon's bed. These large trees told us our journey was practically at an end, for here begins the outpouring of the numberless springs that make the stream we can already hear rushing in its pebbly bed lower down. Without any premonition they spring out in large and small volume at the foot of some of these trees, and the Havasu—the Blue Water—is made. Every few yards adds to the water's volume, for more springs empty their flow into it. The first and only real buildings are the schoolhouse and the homes of the farmer and teachers, and then, at once, begin the small farms of the Havasupais.

Stand on the slope here, where a mass of talus rises from the trail side, so that we can survey the whole of the picturesque scene. Note its setting! Towering walls of regularly laminated red sandstone, though the layers are of differing thicknesses, wind in and out, as if following the meandering course of the stream, and over this the perfect blue of the Arizona sky. These make the most marvellously picturesque dwelling-place of America. Even Acoma's mesa heights and Walpi's precipice-surrounded walls are not more picturesque, and when you add the charm of the verdure nourished by the sweet waters of the Havasu, the picture is complete in its unique attractiveness.

Not even in the Green Emerald Isle, or the county of Devonshire, or the vineyards of France, is richer verdure to be found than fills up the open space between these great walls. Willows reveal the winding path of the Havasu, and everywhere else are the fields of the Indians. Patches of corn, watermelons, squash, canteloupes, beans, sunflowers, chili, onions, and alfalfa, with here and there peach, mesquite, and cottonwood trees, abound. As a rule these patches are protected and set off one from another by hedges of wattled willows or fences of rudely placed cottonwood poles. Through the fields trails meander in every direction, and they are also "cut up" by irrigating ditches. Some of the better irrigated fields are divided into small sections—like the squares of a checker-board—in order that the water may be more systematically distributed.

The peaceful hawas of the Havasupais nestle here and there among these verdant growths. Themselves covered with willows, it is often hard to distinguish them from the trees, were it not that at our approach small groups of men, women, and children, some clad in flaming red, others in all the colors of the rainbow, and some in even less than Mark Twain's descriptive smile, stand forth and reveal the dwelling-places. Now and again the curling line of bluish smoke of the camp-fire reveals the hawa, and we gladly avail ourselves of one or the other of these marks of identification to make ourselves more familiar with the real home of the Havasupais. After investigation we find there are several distinct types of houses, all simple and primitive, and yet each different from the other.

Chickapanagie's summer home is a type of the simplest character. Two upright poles with forks at the top, standing about six feet high, are placed in line with each other fifteen feet apart. A cross-beam is placed on these uprights. Then a row of poles, about eight to nine feet in length, is sloped against the cross-beam. These are covered with willows, and there is the completed hawa.

What queer dwelling-places men have, and ever have had, and possibly ever will have. At the Paris Exposition of 1889 one whole street was devoted to a history of inhabited dwellings. At one end were the earliest "homes" of the paleolithic age, caves and huts, followed by the Lake Dwellings and the wickiups, tepees, or tents of the present-day Indian, the latter being the same primitive structures the aborigines have ever used. The other end of the street was devoted to the domestic architecture of our own day, and there, in a few hours, one could study almost every known form of home structure. But who could ever reproduce some of the homes these Havasupais live in? Wicker huts in the open, and caves in the faces of solid sandstone walls two thousand feet and more in height, these in turn surmounted by domes and obelisks and towers and cupolas that no modern architect dare attempt to rival.

These massive walls absorb the heat of the sun in summer time and thus keep the canyon intensely hot both night and day. The large flow of water and the dense growth of willows and other verdure keep the soil constantly moist, so there is a humidity in the atmosphere which, in hot weather, makes it very oppressive.

This moisture renders the canyon cold in winter, although the thermometer never ranges very low. Snow falls but seldom, and then disappears almost as soon as it lights. In 1898 there was snow that stayed on the ground for several hours, but this was one of the severest winters they have had for many years.