United States or Cocos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It seemed that the sinister desert mothered cruel breeds. We had reached the "Indian Pasture" now, where the Indians kept their ponies. A score of Supai bucks were digging a shallow ditch. Upon being questioned they said the ditch was a mile long and would carry water to the big dam in their pasture when the rains fell.
The steamboat was floated back to Yuma, but Ives started eastward with a pack train, guided by the Mohave chief, Iritaba, taking the same route that had been pursued many years before by Friar Garces through the Hava Supai and Hopi country. It is to be regretted that Hamblin did not go on board the "Explorer," where no doubt he would have received cordial welcome.
Not many more morrows for that doomed tribe. A few days after our visit to Supai, Ranger Fisk dropped in. "Going to the Snake Dance?" he asked me. "What's a Snake Dance, and where is it?" "Oh, it's over in the Hopi Reservation, and the crazy redskins hop around with rattlesnakes in their mouths so it'll rain." "I don't believe that.
That knowledge has not penetrated into pack-ratdom. A few Hopi and Supai Indians were darting around on show ponies, spotted and striped "Paints," as they call them. A Navajo lad came tearing down upon us, riding a most beautiful sorrel mare. It seemed that he would ride us down; but I never did run from an Indian, so I stood my ground.
Divorce is just as simple; he merely sends her back to her father. An Indian brave of the Supai tribe can have as many wives as he can buy according to the tribal law. But since there is only about one squaw to every three braves, a man is lucky to have any wife, and divorce is rare. When two or more braves center their affections on one fair damsel, things are likely to happen.
For some reason, even though it was a very severe winter, the Supai Indians had come up from their home in Havasu Canyon, "Land of the Sky-Blue Water," made famous by Cadman, and were camped among the trees on a hillside. The barefoot women and dirty children were quite friendly, but the lazy, filthy bucks would have been insolent had I been alone.
Long before dawn the next morning I was up and dressed in breeches, wool shirt, laced boots, and a wide felt hat, and felt like a full-fledged "dude." The Chief had insisted that I should ride a mule, but I had my own notions about that and "Supai Bob" was my mount.
We had been to the mouth of this canyon on foot, so there would be no danger of missing it. The Ha Va Supai Indians, about two hundred in number, lived in this lateral canyon about seven or eight miles from the river. An agent and a farmer lived with them, and might be able to sell us some provisions; if not, it would be fifty miles back to our home. The trail was much more direct than the river.
He went right into the first pie, and from that to the middle one; of course he couldn't slight the third and last one, so he wallowed across it. Then the horrid beast climbed a tree in front of my window. He cleaned, and polished, and lapped meringue off his gray squirrel coat, while I wiped tears and thought up a suitable epitaph for him. A dirty Supai squaw enjoyed the pies.
Then she'd likely recline in a cactus bed and gaze at a medley of hoofs and horns of deceased cows bogged down in a mud hole. Such are the surroundings of our real Indians. Indian women are the home-makers and the home-keepers. They build the house, whether it be the brush hewa of the Supai or the stone pueblo of the Hopi. They gather the piñon nuts and grind them into meal.
Word Of The Day