In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

We rode up to the stone giants, a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet high standing at the entrance to the Cañon de los Gigantos, and they looked down at us with their snow-crowned heads. We rode to ranch houses only to find them empty of human beings as their byres were devoid of cattle. Epiphany saw a dark figure in the snow and spurred hard after it and I followed, and we came up with a fleeing Indian squaw and a dog, and she would say nothing but plunged abruptly into the bush. When we found her again it was in a hogan, a shelter only one third covered from the snow. There was a fire burning, and the squaw sat herself down in front of it and would answer naught, either to Spanish or to English questions. Her little children stared at us, and her dogs sat on their haunches about the fire.

We got nothing from her. But, to cut a story short, we went after that by compass and map and got to Voigt's ranch, and being Thanksgiving Day there was a grand spread of turkey and cranberry sauce and many preserves, and very pretty girls to look at and intelligent people to talk to. The storm and the wilderness had been suddenly changed for civilization. I went that night to a Mormon wedding dance at Ramah.

Mr. Voigt is the official curator of Inscription Rock and has done a great deal to preserve the remarkable surface which is scrawled not only with the names of famous Spaniards but with the pictographs and hieroglyphics of the Cave dwellers. It has certainly been a great cave-dwelling region at one time. Voigt took me behind his ranch house to a well-preserved village of cave dwellings. He found when he bought the property he had bought this prehistoric village also. Natural caves had been added to by the hollowing out of the rock, and the houses partitioned off and the wind walled off with piled rocks and mud. The theory is that the people of Cibola, to defend themselves from the Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos, took to caves at one time. But of course theories innumerable could be brought forward. No one has learned to read the hieroglyphics.

One especially good service Mr. Voigt has performed as curator of the Rock, and that is, to have erased the names of a score or so of modern visitors who with a nonchalance which is almost sublime had written their names down with those of the Conquistadores; the Winkelsteins of Chicago, the Jones's of Jonesville.

This Mesa Escrita is, however, little visited. For it is thirty or forty miles from Cibola or Zunyi, and those who go to the Indian pueblo seldom go further. It is in part of the most remote country of America—as the Zunyis themselves think, it is the place furthest from the edge. Hence, I suppose, the Mormon settlement of Ramah. For the Mormons, being a persecuted sect, have ever sought out places where they were not likely to be disturbed.

Ramah is an American village, not Mexican or Indian in type, but a bit of North America, all little wooden houses and neatly fenced yards. We drove to the wedding dance and I talked to the Bishop and the elders and found a rather sad lot of Mormons where, after all, far from polygamy being practiced, there were not enough girls to go round. The eligible brides seemed mostly pale and thin. With what devotion the Mormon young men clasped Betty and Katharine who, unlike the Mormon girls, were well-formed, open-air girls full of life and desire.

Another day passed and we drove to Zunyi. It was the last stage. There was deep snow and mist over it with vague sunset lights wandering in the mist. Up on the mesas I saw the first two of the cities of Cibola—in the ruins in which Coronado left them. And there in the mist I saw a third of the cities, but greater and grander, with towers and domes, and unlike anything Indians ever built. Golden and rose lights of sunset tinted the shadowy outline. I said to Voigt and his nieces—"Look! Cibola!" but even as I did so it had gone—melted into the general configuration of the Mesas of Zunyi. It was Coronado's mirage seen again—and his disillusionment.

It was dark when we arrived at the real Cibola, the strange and unwonted city which the Spaniards found, the home far from the haunts of other men, of the wonderful Zunyi tribe with their coal-black hair, bright-colored little turbans, turquoise earrings, bead necklaces and silver rings and bracelets and brooches and ceintures, with their elaborate dances and religious rituals, and a Nature worship against which Catholicism has never been able to make way.

When we entered the first large house we saw that the Shaleco Birds had already come down from the mountains, and in each of the Shaleco houses prayers were being chanted by the Indians. Zunyi's halls were all alight with large lamps and hung with every kind of glittering wampum. There were great white beams and white walls decorated with dados of printed cotton, there were ropes along the wall and there hung silver belts and serapes—waist swathes—deerskins, shawls, beautiful blankets, necklaces. There were bowls of the sacred meal upon the floor, and a long line of sprinkled meal led up to what seemed to be an altar—the Shaleco altar. In front of that stood motionless the framework and vest of the Shaleco Bird, as it was being consecrated, and Indians chanted unendingly prayers and incantations. Along the walls stood visiting Indians, chiefly Navajos, wrapped in their resplendent blankets, waiting and silent.

Up till midnight, however, the chief activity seemed to be in the kitchens where a great feast was being prepared. The kitchens were large enough for stacks of joints of meat to be piled up—and along the whole length of the walls flamed log-fires with a dozen high old earthenware pots simmering upon them. The odor of the joints was almost overpowering, but it was pleasantly blended with the smoke which went up the vast vent of the hollow wall. Old squaws with bent backs tended pots and flames and they wore long bright kerchiefs on their heads and down their backs. Certainly they never knew how cold it was outside.