A Family Group of Havasupais.
By this it must not be inferred that the Indians built the trails as white men build. In the main their trails were rude paths such as the mountain sheep might make, but in every case they had one of these rude pathways down into the canyon somewhere near to where the modern trails are now located. At the Bright Angel this path was changed when white engineers took hold of it, and at Mystic Spring Mr. Bass had built an entirely new trail, down a different slope, long before he discovered the Indian trail. Both unite near two great natural rock-cisterns, and then deviate below, the Indian trail zigzagging to the left, while Mr. Bass engineered a new trail of easy grade on the talus to the right.
Some of the Havasupais are returning to the cliff-dwelling style of homes. My friend Wa-lu-tha-ma is forsaking his wood and brush "hawas," and constructing a house under the cliffs, where, as he quaintly puts it, he can "keep dry when much rain comes."
It seems to me a reasonable supposition that it was from the frequency of the occurrence of these corn-houses in the walls of Havasu (Cataract) Canyon, with the occasional appearance of a few of the larger houses used as dwellings by the Havasupais, that the absurd and romantic yarns had their origin that fifteen, or less, years ago, were current in Arizona and elsewhere about this interesting people. The cowboys, miners, prospectors, and others, who accidentally stumbled upon the upper entrance to the Havasu Canyon, and wandered down its meandering course for ten or forty miles, even to the village of the simple Havasupais, returned to civilization and propagated and circulated stories that out-Munchausened Munchausen. They said these people were cliff-dwellers, living at the present day in the walls of the canyon; they were of powerful physical presence, and possessed great endurance. Their fields and gardens were wonderful, and their peach orchards surpassed those of most civilized cultivation, and they held in slavery a lesser people, dwarfs or pigmies, doubtless, who were cliff-dwellers like themselves, and whom they compelled by great cruelty to perform the most arduous labors.
Others, having heard these stories, but whose spirit of adventure took them no farther than the "rim" of the canyon, claimed to have looked into the village and side canyons, and there seen the truth of these stories demonstrated. They had seen the pigmies and the gigantic Havasupais, had heard the harsh yells of the latter at the former, and had seen the frantic endeavors of the little people to obey the stern behests of their masters.
All these yarns are explained by the fact that the distance of view dimmed the vision; the pigmies were boys driving the burros or horses, yelling and shouting as Havasupai boys delight to do, the voices magnified fifty-fold by the echoing walls of the canyon, while the parents moved around attending to their own business, or looked on and occasionally helped by a shout of encouragement or suggestion.