a. Coronado and the conquistadores ••....•..••.•.. 2Winship's account of the marchConrard's poem of the entradaDodge's poem expressing effect on the
IndiansLa Farge's reference to their horses
b. Missionaries .•....•....•.••.•••.....•••••••••• 9Dodge's influence of TumacacoriConrard's religious fervor of San XavierForbes's influence on tourists today
c. Spanish-Indian-American Mixture •.........••..• 11Robinson's The Witchery of Rita -
customs, religion, and superstitionsGarces' reference to the acequiasCoudert's washing in the irrigatiori ditchesBushby's Spanish dance:McClintock's description of TucsonConrard's In Old TucsonHall's In Old TucsonDovre's roll of Mexican school children
2. The Indians •••...••.....•..•.....•...•.•....••.. 20a. Kino's writings of the Indians ....••..•...••• 20
Affability of those at San XavierAmusements of the IndiansHis teaching them horse-racingHis comments on their religious beliefs
b. Others' beliefs and customs •...........••...• 22Opa nation's story of creationMoqui or Hopi nationKino's religious interest in themGarces' description of life at Oraibi
Hair of the IndianKino. found hair used in religious ceremonyGarces wrote of the squash-blossom coiffureConrard's poem - A Hopi Pastoral - uses thecoiffure
c. Sending the Indian to school •••....••••.••.••• 25Kino sent them as punishmentRyan gives the attitude of the Hopitoward school and religion
La Farge gives the attitude of the Navajod. Hughston's expression of the influence of San
Xavie� in the Papago nation today ••••.•••••• 28
12.19 n A
!/. 80�
Page
e. Indian \11arfare. . . • • • . . • • . . . • . • . . . . • • • • • • • • • •• 28Kino's findingsRobinson lays the vengeance of Cochiseat the door of the United States
Pumpelly's adventures with the ApachesOther publications with warfare as basis
Clark's the riding of the cowboyCoburn's novel and other writings
b. The sheepherder •••.•.•.••••••••.•••.•.••••••• 36Barnes's Dummy - sheep saved in a snowstorm
c. The homesteader •.•••.•.••••••...•••.•..•••••• 37Carr's meager homeBarnes's Stutterin' Andy - hardships ofthe life of the homesteader
d. The uurie.r ••••••••..•••••••..••••••••••••••••• 38Kino's mine sHoffman's The ProspectorLowdermilk's freighterIndustry of miningBooks on mining centers
e • Military life •.•••••••••••"
•.••••.•••••••••••• 42O'Neill's story of the passing of the
drum corpsBooks from the woman's point of view
f. The lvfo rmons • . . . • . • • • . • • • • • • • • . . • . . • • . • . . • • • •• 45Immortal road of the Mo�mon BattalionDellenbaugh's praise of the clean
communi ties of the l�!ormonsg • .Adventurers •.••.•••••••.••••••....••• 4! • • • • • •• 46
Mention of Patties as trappersOatman girls' experience as captivesThe Red Baron claims Arizona as heir ·tothe Peralta grant
h. Politicians •••..••••••••••••••••••••.•••.•••• 46Robinson's The Man from YesterdayFennell's The lImn the People Chose
i. The bad men... . . . . . • • . • . . • • • . . • • • • . • . . . • . • • •• 47Nieve's Early Days in Arizona - bad men
Rose's Billy Brazelton - Arizona'shighwayman
Hall's The Mercy of Na-chis - the gambler'Hall's The Sguaw Man
j. Pioneers..................................... 50Vfuite's The Old FrontiersmanO'Hara's The Pioneer
k. People of today ••••••••••• � ••••••••.••••••••• 52Richardson's airpilot
ii
Page
Gilchrist's the sick
Lloyd's the out-of-door sleeper
I I I • Nature ••••••..•.•••••••..•.••...•..•• '. . . . • • . . . •• 561. The c I i rnat e • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• 5 6
Kino's commentsBrown's History of Arizona - gives thedevil as the maker
Stabler's It Is Unusual2. The Rains........................................ 58
Clark's The Rains - joy at coming of rainsBisby's The Torrent - destructive force oftorrent
3. The SnoV'/ ·.••.••.......•..••••• 60Lloyd's San Francisco Mountain - beauty
and purityBarnes's Lost in the Petrified Forest -
frozen in the cold4. The Sand and the Sand Storms •...•••••••••••••••• 63
Bolton tells of Kino's Camino del DiabloKino tells of stretches of sandKino tells of a sand stormDowning's Song of the Sand StormVan Dyke's sand whirlsWriters' use of sand storms in story and novel
5. The Desert ••••••.••••••••••••..••••••••••••••••• 65Van Dyke's account of survival on the desertEverett's poem on the desert's calmnessRocKwood's feeling of the desert motherDick Wick Hall's The Salome Sun - satire on
Robinson's Desert Plant Pioneers - Trees andShrubs
Pattie's description of the giant cactiRaIl's The Desert Queen - the saguaraStabler's Origin of the Giant CactiStabler's How the Flowers get their Color
7. The :pines •••••••••.• 01.: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• 70Conrard's The Songfthe PinesConrard's lullaby from the mother pine
8. Animal Life..................................... 72Young's The Desert Mourner - the coyoteLast's The l�iourning DoveMcCluskey's The Red Winged BlackbirdPattie's description of the wild hogDouglas's The Gila MonsterWallace'S use of the rattlesnalce in. hernovel The Lure of the West
Donovan's The Burrow
iii
Page
Barnes's Camel Buntin' and other booksdealing with animal and plant life
9� Natural Wonders ••••••••••••.•••••.•.••• � .••••••• 80Garces' account of the Colorado andCataract Canyon
Garces' account of the Little ColoradoGarces' account of the floods of the riverHall's The Song of the Colorado - the sweep
and power of the riverLloyd's The-urand CanyonConrard's The Grand CanyonThompson's The Legend of Shi� RockJohnston's In the Desert of laiting - legendof Camelback l.lountain
Other interpretations of CamelbackHoom-a-thy-a's The Legend of SuperstitionMountain
Windes finds God in all natureConrard's love for his garden of wild flowersStabler expresses the spirit of Arizona
The purpose of this thesis is to give an inSight into
'the literature written about Arizona - her peoples - the
Spaniards, the Indians, the Americans - and her nature.
The Spanish occupancy gave an insight into the vast
deserts and rivers and mountains. With the natives found_,
here, the Spaniards lived and mixed, and from them developed
a group of people whose influences still are the under-"
stratum of society.
Of the Indians m�ch has been written. Even though their
prehistoric dewllings and civilization were eliminated, much
has been given of the various tribes, their habits, customs,
beliefs, hatreds, and superstitions.
Coming soon after the- Spaniards were the Americans.
They entered all fields of work; and, a.lthough many were not
a credit to the civilities and niceties of society, they
were, nevertheless, the pioneer-breakers and the forerunners
of the present civilization.
Along with the interest in the peoples of the state comes
a deep, significant interest in nature. Nature, in all her
climatic and temperamental attitudes, in her peculiar growths
of the soil, in her animal kingdom, and in her geographic
wonders, has been the inspiration and theme of many, many
literary productions.
CHAPTER II
THE PEOPLES
The Spaniards
Coronado and the Conquistadores
The first people from whom an insight into Arizona is
gained, are the Spaniards. Coronado and his conquistadores
made the first entrada. George P. Winship, after translating
Casteneda's account of the journey, tells, in his ovm Storyof Coronado, of the splendor and brilliancy of the beginning
of the march.
"A month before (April 28, 1540) the armypassed in review before the Viceroy Mendoza, ledby his chosen commander, Francisco Vasquez Coronado.Escorting their chief, rode the young cavaliers justover from Spain, curbing the picked horses from thewell-stocked ranches of the viceroy, each resplendentin long blankets flowing to the ground. More thantwo hundred horsemen held each his. lance erect, whilesword and other weapons hung at his side. Some were
arrayed in coats of mail, polished to shine like thoseof their general, whose gilded armor was to bring himmany hard knocks a few months later. Others, more
practiced in the arts of frontier service, were con
tent with iron helmets or vizored head-pieces madefrom the tough bull-hide for which the country has
. ever been famous. Behind these came the footmen,bearing crossbows and harquebuses, while some of themwere armed with sword and shield. Following thesewhite men with their weapons of European warfare,was the crowd of native allies in their paint andholiday attire, armed with the bow and the clubof an Indian warrior. Occasionally the gay crowdparted, with a moment's reverential hush, as thesombre cloak of a gray Friar passed slowly through,adding a touch of peace and holy thoughts to thepicture of militant preparation. Next morning theystarted off, in duly ordered companies, to the con
quest of the Seven Cities. With them went upwardsof a thousand servants and followers, black men andbrown men, leading the spare horses, driving packanimals, bearing the extra luggage of their masters,or herding the droves of oxen and cows, sheep andswine, which were to provide fresh food for the armyon the march. There were more than a thousand horsesin the train of the force, besides the mules, loaded
3
with camp supplies and provlsl0ns, with half a
dozen pieces of light artillery, the pedrerosor swivel guns of the period." I
No one has handled this first Spanish occupancy of
Arizona better and more completely than has Arizona's late
poet Harrison Conrard in Quivira. The introductory Italian
sonnet on "greed" is technically well done and powerful, not
only by reason of the theme treated, but by reason of the
imperialism of modern nations. The blank verse tells the
story and the closing sonnet leaves one with a more reverent
spirit of Christian brotherhood.
"Greed is; and full of blame the red desireThat prompts its murderous passion. Kings are slavesNo less than beggars to it; world-strewn gravesMark its wide waste; ne'er flames the jealous fireOf war where perjured power doth not aspireTo some unholy profit; never craves
A soul for its foul meed but finds it knavesThrough sin and death to urge its aims for hire.In quest, a god; pursued, a phanto�; found,A thing of hell with all the stench of hellAbout it, choking into fevered swoundThe noble virtues with the fumes that swellFrom its foul essence: yet its luring soundAll men enticeth, knowing this fUll well.
"Seductive whispers of a land of gold,Far to the north, had touched the empire whereCastilian greed, usurping Aztec crown,O'er pagan dust had reared its capital.So was anew the lust for treasure firedWithin the breasts of Spain's adventurous crew,And newer conquest for n�w gain proposed.
"With faint report of far-off Cibola,Walled in with gold, another whisper came
Of myriad souls in pagan shadow darked,Waiting the touch of Christ's redemption-lightThemselves to glorify. So was anew,
l� Winship, George P. The Story of Coronado. 1'1'. 56-7.
4
In the wide fields of His transcendent love,The sweet desire for newer conquest firedWithin the bosoms of Christ's hallowed few,Vfuo for His sake so loved their fellow-menDanger and death no dull repugnance foundIn them that love pursuing.
"Cavaliers,Gay in the plumage of Castilian pride,Eager as love love's eager casement seeking,Lured by a dream of Ophir, treasure-bound,Rode out in quest thereof; but not for goldDid he who led them forth the venture try:Fray Marcos he, his inspiration bornOf that pure love for fellow, in pursuitOf which if death be found its recompense,Most sweet were death.
"They went, returned, and boreTo Sinaloa's capital reportOf the vast land far to the north and west,In treasure rich, and rich in restless soulsThat yearned to cast the old tradition down,Beating to dust its monstrous gods of stone,And in the New Tradition joyous hailThe benediction-sign of EI Senor.
"Born were new hopes of these entrada tales,And of new hopes were new ambitions born,��ich, taking form, into the fabled landAnother journey urged. Proud knights were they,And when forth from the gates of CuliacanRode Coronado and his cavaliers,High were their hopes of conquest and of goldIn the enchanted lands of Cibola:But in the hearts of those of high desire -
Fray Marcos, he whose foot the land had trod,And Fray Padilla - in the fore advancing,Hopes were of conquest in the treasure-fieldsOf Christ's sweet glory.
"Through the wilderness,Gay, guerdon-buoyed, they urged, o'er burning sands,Crying with gaunt despair to cloudless skies(Drouth-calloused skies, bronzed by a savage orb)For the glad rain-cloud's gentle benison.Death lay in wait for each succeeding stepIn ever-changing form, but foiled, o'ercome,They journeyed on through tedious weeks of tOil,Till o'er the waste the walls of Zuni roseBefore their anxious gaze.
5
"Then CibolaNo more was dream, but the awaking hungA blight, deep-brooding, o'er the souls of thoseWhose golden hopes were blackened 'neath the frownOf walls o� meanly earth, where gilded domes,Studded with jewels, and rich palacesIn their dream-city in wild riot stood.Then in derision hot rebuke they hurledOn gentle Marcos, who, gibe-stung, turned backThe patient leagues to far-off Culiacan.
"Before the Spanish arms the humble CibolaQuick fell in conquest. To the north and westThen journey made a band of dauntless'men,And, finding there a group of villages,Possession took in Spain's imperial name.
Soon were vast fields accrued to Spain's broad power,And here and there pushed troops of ardent knights,Thirsting for conquest and for treasure mad,Till to the lip of the Bewild'r1ng Gorge,Bathed in a flood of half-translucent mists,In whose far depth a mighty river flowed,Came Cardenas and his intrepid band.
"In Coronado's camp a savage was,EI Turco, from the eastern plains, who firedAnew the Spanish hopes with earnest talesOf treasure-lands far to the east, where stoodMajestic cities, gloried with the goldSo blindly coveted. In plenty rich,Before the fancy of the dauntless knightsThe far Quivira rose, a wonderlandWhere palaces with courts of fretted gold,Azured with turquoise, lifted up their domes,Bright in the glory of a golden sun,High o'er its mural girdle of rare metals.
BLed by EI Turco, toward the sun new-risenThe knights of Spain their course impatient turned,In that untraversed empire, as they went,Building in thought broad cities, gorgeous burningIn the gay glint of riches infinite,Before whose wondrous majesty e'en swoonedRebellious fancy. Light of heart were they,In sweet anticipation groaning bentWith heavy spoil of gold and amethyst.
"Counting the tedious miles, complainingless,On foot toiled Fray Padilla in the van,His the sweet zeal dark souls to sanctify,His quest the glory of the Common King.
"Across broad tracts of death-inviting wastes,O�er mountains tipped with sun-disdaining snowsInto the boundless plains where maddened herdsOf shaggy bison, like tumultuous cloudsThat slipped their anchors in their skyey seasAnd fell to earth, toward far Quivira movedThe tireless train, ,though ever patient, stillImpatient for the sense-appalling glowOf the long search.
"Then from the cunning guide,When e'en impatient patient toil had gro��,Like after days of silent watchfulnessFrom oracle long dumb, the promise came
That ere another sun its zenith passed-Quivira's domes would blaze upon their sightIn overmastering glory. Passed the sun,Still stretched the plains in distance infinite,And 'gainst the faint horizon outlined was
Nor dome nor tower. '
"Then but another dayQuivira would reveal; but, journeyed on,The plains grew vaster in their searching gaze.Another day, and day on weary day,And still Quivira ever was beyondThe journey of a brief day's gradual passing.
"The plains grew dull and long the toilsome miles,But still allured by the gay city's largess,In riotous extravagance strewn forth,Each dawn they journeyed toward the rising sun,Until, far-traveled, to the humble hutsOf a mean village eame - and this Quivira.Then, sick of heart, in deep dejection turnedThey to the west, and the long miles retracedBack to the empire of the setting sun.
"Gold found they none; but, struggling in the dark,A plentitude of souls the plains revealedTo whom Padilla longed to bring the joyOf El Senor. Then to Quivira turnedHe once again, and through the same dread wasteHe journeyed, o'er the same snow-smiling peaks,Across the same wide tracts that erst had feltThe tread of feet lured by a golden myth.
"He went - but came not thence, save that his clayHis loved brown children from Quivira boreBack to their sweet Isleta, there to rest:But, restless e'er, in death even as in, life,In hallowed quest dark souls to steep with joy,
7
Though passed have many ge-nerations, stillHis body incorruptible upliftsIn punctual time its weight of earthen shield,And from his sepulture his blessing smilesOn those he loved with an i��ortal love.
UIn journey long, in hunger and in thirst,In heat and cold, in peril and in pain,And in long watchings, he Quivira found,Quivira brighter than the fairest dreamBorn of the fancy of Spain's cavaliers,But found it not o'er waste or peak or plain,But through the shadow of the martyr-tomb.
"Kinsmen of God are they who hold it sweetTo love their fellows for their Master's sake;Scorned the soft unctions whose allurements makeLife's common worm a worldly paraclete,Through hunger, thirst, contagion, cold, and heatThat love pursuing, even as He, partakeThey of Christ's life and love who strive to wake'The fuller man in man but half complete.And even as He ��o, uncomplaining, gaveHis life for those He loved, a sacrificeAt their own hands, so do His kinsmen crave,For love of Him and them, the blessed prize -
Through the dark journey of the martyr-grave -
Of Martyr-crown in God's eternal skies." 1
Ida Flood Dodge in When the White Man Came to Tusayan
handles the Coronado theme in quite a different way_ The
conquistadores, in gay "ar-z-ay ", looked toward "mesa heights n
for "power and Victory." From the same mesa heights, where
he had been driven by enemies of centuries past, looked
daVin the Indian. Would the "mailed white man" bring peace
to him? The village at .the foot of the mesa has brought
the "needs" of modern times, and the Hopi tills the soil,
herds the flocks, and smokes, in peace.
I . CO,nrard, Harrison Quivira. pp. 13-19.
8
"They rode in fine array, that cavalcade,Conquistadores, searching wealth and fame.Each lance and crossbow with their armor madeA flashing gem in desert sun aflame.Thru sands piled high in rainbow hues they came.
The Painted Desert called in ecstacy,But, heeding not its voice, they rode, the name
Of Tusayan meant power, victory.Toward mesa heights they gazed and read their destiny.
"They rode, Conquistadores from old Spain,The white man in his search for precious gold.MeanwhfI e , the Hopi watched their glinting train.From heights he saw their gleaming mass unfold.He watched with dread. The desert winds grew cold.His heart was gripped with pain of tribes unborn.He sensed his hopeless climb of years untold,From foe-swept plain to roc�J heights now worn
With weary trail from tops to fields of corn.
"He watched the desert glow with prism rays,Mirage and phantom mesa, mystic, veiled.He saw his prOVince, Tusayan ablazeWith glory. Now its seven heights had paledTo somber gloom. His mesa tops must cease
To serve as tribal homes. The white man mailedFor war had come. Thru centuries' increaseThis foe must sweep the Hopi from his heights to peace.
"The sands of Tusayan still scintillateAnd yield themselves to ardent shifting gleams.Its cliffs and mesa tops are roseate,With glory from the sun's reflected beamsThe village now below the mesa teemsWith life. Each year its modern needs increaseThe Hopi plows his fields and smokes and dreams,His mesa tops, his desert and his fleeceOf drifting clouds forgotten in the murky haze of peace."l
So much has the theme of the conquistadores grown into
the life and literature of Arizona that in the very recent
novel by La Farge, the author has Laughing Boy find his run
away horse just north of Winslow, and says of the horse:
1. Dodge, Ida Flood When the White Man Came to Tusayan.Tucson Daily Citizen, May 8, 1928.
9
"It was one of those ponies, occasionallyto be found, in which one reads a page of thehistory of that country; a throwback to SpanishConquistadores and dainty-hooved, bony-facedhorses from Arabia." 1
Missionaries
Following Coronado and the conquistadores came the
missionaries sent by Spain. Father Kino, in establishing
San Xavier del Bac and Tumacacori, has left indelibly his
influence upon southern Arizona. The literature of that
part of the state is vibrant with the emotions end con
sequences of the work of the missions.
Old Tumacacori, by Ida Flood Dodge, speaks of the faith
that was kept, of the time when the mission of Tumacacori
was a center of life, and of the time when the Apache arrows
ended its earthly material progress. One has only to visit
the neighborhood of Tumacacori to realize the strength of
the line - "Thy deeds still live."
"Oh crumbling walls of sun-dried brickof Tumacacori,
We see thee slumbering in the sun,Thy youth is past, thy work is done,Thy rest deserved. Still slumber on,
Old Tumacacori.
"Time was, when these old crumbling wallsOh Tumacacori,
Reared high their heads: a fortress strong,A haven safe. Thy people's songOf praise, to thee, was chanted long,
Old Tumacacori.
"Thy watch-tower stood and kept its guard,Oh Tumacacori,
From all the valley nestled round,Thy people rushed to thee, and found
1. La Farge, Oliver Laughing Boy. p. 245.
10
A refuge sure at danger's sound,Old Tumacacori.
TfFor years how well thy faith was kept,Old Tumacacori,
Then ceme thy death. From vale and hillThe Apache horde, with war-cry shrill,Their arrows, flame tipped, left thee still,
Old Tumacacori.
nAh crumbling walls of sun-dried brick,Of Tumacacori,
Sleep on, nor think thy dey is spent.Thy deeds still live. Thy walls, tho rent,Still stand, a living monument,
Old Tumacacori." I
A most deeply religious tone - a tone of the Jesuits
and It'ranciscans - is that expressed in a sonnet , San Xavier
del Bac, by Harrison Conrard.
"I look upon thee, and, as in a glass,I see reflected in thy walls antiqueThe age that was; and gentle Kino, meekIn saintly fervor, sings his holy MassUpon thy desert sands. Then gradual passThy swart, bronz'd artisans, slow shaping thee,Till lifts thy miracle of majestyOut of the toil of their broad hands of brass.Now in thy vaulted nave, where subtile skillOf sainted hands hath left inheritance,I kneel with thy dark children, and a thrillOf holy awe hangs o'er, like the hushed tranceThat bows the pilgrim when alone he stands'Mid the vast piles that strew the Theban sands." 2
With San Xavier situated near the center of winter
tourists, comes an appeal that the aesthetic might still in
fluence the ethical in Mary E. Forbes' San Xavier.
"Oh Ban xaVier, it may be there are some,Who, when they - idly seeking pleasure, comeTo look upon your simple stately grace,And sign, because Time dares to scar a face
1. Dodge, Ida Flood2. Gonrard, Harrison
Old Tumacacori. (Manuscript)Quivira. p. 46.
11
So nobly beautiful; and feel the spellThat hovers round you, lonely sentinelOf Calvary's faith: then maybe, it shall beThat as they look, and go their careless way,Their hearts shall hold you for a day,And sweeter be." I
Spanish-Indian-American Mixture
No writer has been more clever in bringing in the
results of all the Spanish-Indian mixture than has Arizona's
own short-story writer, novelist, and historian - Will H.
Robinson of Chandler - in The Witchery of Rita, a delight
ful piece of fiction.
"It was in the old Spanish Mission days inthe Santa Cruz Valley, when the quail still called'Cuidado!' instead of 'Quit!' and the domain of theking extended as far through what is now known as
Arizona as the viceroy's imagination - restrainedonly by Apache lances - could carry; a time whenPapago neophytes said their prayers regularly andworked fairly faithfully, and whenamong the 'gentedecente' there was always leisure for the graciousword or a copa de vino.
"Outside the mission of San XaVier, then butbarely completed, a brilliant winter sun bathed thebeautiful facade and towers in a flood of goldenlight, while Indian laborers, directed by browncoated friars, were busily clearing away the lastof the building litter in preparation for the comingChristmas fiesta.
"InSide, high up on the scaffolding under thedome, sat young Rafael Valdez, brought fromGuadalajara to do the more important of the interiordecorations, and with him Rita Avila, who since babyhood had danced on the hard, brown earth of San Xavierwith the lightest foot in the valley.
"Speaking socially - but .no t otherwise - theywere as far apart as the poles, for the youth had an
ancestral tree that was rooted among the dons ofCastile, while the girl's father was besotted oldSanchez, ex-sergeant in the king's army, the possessorof a thirst for the fruit of the vine that was guar-
1. Forbes, Mary E. San Xavier.
12,I
anteed to be absolutely unquenchable. Butwhat difference did that make? He was gallantand she was fair, and - well, that is, in partat least, what this story is about." 1
How delightfully the story moves on with all the
early social distinctions, until the alcalde of Tucson
must be appealed to. The favorite bruja (witch) super
stition becomes the entanglement in the love story, Rita
being accused of witchcraft. Rita has as her constant
companion Nicolas, her goat, who had once eaten raven
feathers. The deplorable accusations against Rita had been
made by Senora Montoya, who also had a marriageable daughter.
On Christmas eve when little Josito, who had once owned the
goat, was missing, his mother Maria had aroused the village.
The men filed in with white, fear-lined faces,where they saw poor Maria kneeling before the emptymanger.
Rafael swept the room with frantic eyes."Padre!" he said, clutching at the priest's sleeve."In the name of God, tell me where to look!"
There was another thunder of hoofs outside,and Don Manuel with Pablo the Papago and the otherriders burst through the door. "More witchcraft,"cried a Mexican wildly. "We caught the Apaches,but by sorcery the boy was turned into a sack ofcorn! "
At this Rafael walked up to Don Manuel withhands that opened and shut dangerously. "If thereis a witch in this town, it is your wife. She triedto have Rita Avila stoned. If the girl is not deadnow it is not her fault. :Make her tell us what shehad done with her, or, before GOd, I'll choke itout of her."
He had scarcely finished speaking when a franticscream came from the Senora Montoyo, and as they alllooked they saw her pointing wildly overhead. "Sheis flying through the air with Jositol See, thereis the goat, tool"
1. Robinson, Will H. The Witchery of Rita. 1'1>. 7 -8.
13
All the people turned their eyes to whereshe pointed, and with whitened faces stared andcrossed themselves. High in the air, almost over
their heads now, they saw Rita, not flying, butwalking in her sleep along the beam that led tothe place in the dome where she had watchedRafael at his work. As the Senora had said, inher arms she carried the little Josito, and infront of her trotted the goat, swaggering as
devil-may-care as you please. Scarcely widerthan Rita's little feet was the beam, and in thechurch's dim shadows it was no wonder that thepeople thought she trod on air.
Never hesitating, and with her eyes gentlystaring into vacancy, she walked until she reachedthe dome.
Many started to cry out, but Padre Narciscoheld up his hand. "Quiett" he said, "and downon your knees to God, who by this miracle is
returning the baby in the arms of the girl youpersecuted, even as the people persecuted theChrist at Jerusalem."
One long minute went by and then another.Rita looked vacantly about her, and then as thoughunable to find the object of her search, turnedand again passed over the people's heads whilethey stared trembling.
The beam ended at the gallery, over theentrance, and from there she passed to the tower,stairs and down them into the body of the church,where the villagers with fearful downcast eyesmade a path for her.
Here she paused for a moment irresolute,and then walked slowly, not to Rafael, who stoodlooking at her with his heart in his face, andnot to the kindly old padre, but to the altar ofthe Mother of Sorrows, where she sank slowly downand rested her head against the wall as though shewere very tired.
For a while, with closed eyes, she seemed indreamless sleep. �ben she opened them again shewas looking into the fa'ce of her lover, who was
bending over her. She gazed at him still in thatborderland that lies between waking and sleeping."I am sure I dreamed I heard the beats of yourhorse's hoofs," she said. Then waking realitiescame back to her, and she caught his hands. "Tellme that the other terrible things were dreams, too,and that you only, Rafaelito, are real."
A half hour later, perhaps it was, after allthese things had happened, with little Josito now
in the manger, and the people gathered around
14
looking at the tableau of_the Holy Night,'abell sounded. Rafael and Rita, who had wanderedinto the moon-lit patio, heard it and lookedcomprehendingly into each other's 'eyes.
"It's midnight! Christmas eve!" said thegirl, "It's the hour when all the beasts kneeldown. Oh, Rafael, if Nicola would only kneelwith the others, maybe his witchcraft would leavehim."
The lover quickly accepted the comfortingthought. "I saw him in the robing room as we
came through," he said, "and if he won't kneelotherwise I'd best hold him down. lW brother con
verted a heathen Yaqui once that way."They hurried back through the open door, and
truly as the stars shine over us, the goat was
there and down on his knees, and what was more,his head was bowed to, the floor under the padre'scase of papers.
"Madre de Dios!" cried Rafael, suddenlyhorrified, "he's eating a prayerbookt"
He started to take it from him,but Rita,having a comprehending heart, restrained him.
"As you value your salvation, don't stop him,Rafael. Learned men like you and the padre can
read their prayers, I can be told them, but how can
poor Nicolas get them save he eats them? He gotwitchcraft through his stomach, why should he notin the same way secure salvation?" 1
other things, which were found and commented upon by
the ·early explorers, although their forms may have changed,
are still of interest to writers. On November 2, 1775,
Garces records the following of Sacaton:
"There came forth to receive us the Indiansof the pueblo with demonstrations of much joy,and methought that they might be five hundredsouls. In all these pueblos they raise largecrops of wheat, some of corn, cotton, calabashes,etc., to which end they have constructed goodacequias, surrounding the fields in one circuitcommon (to all), and divided those of differentowners by particular circuits." 2
1. Ibid. pp. 34-37.2. Garces' Diary - Coues. On the Trail of a Spanish
Pioneer. VOl. 1, p. 107.
15
Under the Alamo by Clarissa P. Goudert lilts with
real Spanish flavor.
"Down beside the cool acequia,'Neath the spreading alamos -
'Midst the play of light and shadow,Carmelita washes clothes.
"From the sun's alembic dripping,Through the leaf-lace liquid gold-;
"Light it plays o'er slim brown fingers,Dances o'er the platted hair;
Turns with alchemistic magic,Faded gown to fabric rare.
"At the sound of passing hoof-beats,On the highway's dusty floor -
Dark eyes glance and red lips murmur
Soft: 'Como Ie va senor? t
"In the current dipping, dipping,Supple arms appear and hide -
,
And a smile, an instant mirrored,Vanishes upon the tide.
"List! ,How �ently the palomaWith the irridescent breast,
Flutes unto his mate a love-song,��ile she broodeth o'er her nest.
"There a dragon-fly darts glancing,Homeward toils a laden bee�
And an echo, soft Castillian,On the breeze, floats out to me.
"Down beside the cool aeequia,filiere the water idly flows,
'Midst the shifting lights and shadowsCarmelita washes clothes." 1
Poets today write of the charms of the senorita. Her
grace and beauty in her native dance is the background of
The Fandango by D. Maitland Bushby.
1. Voudert, Clarissa P. Under the Alamos. Phoenix:The Arizona Magazine, April and Ma.y, 1914.
16
Ha, ChiquitatSwing high your castanetstLet us start the dance.Have you given the sign?There - the music,l�owtAht You are wonderful tonight,Chiquita mia.Tut, look not so at me,Else I lose my stepSolving the mysteryOf your black eyes.Your hand now,Ready?There, it is done!We have given themSuch a danceAs they have never seen;The fandango, they say.But no, it was theDance of the heart;For mine, it is goneWhen I hold you - so. I
Of the Spanish and Mexican influences in Tucson,
James R. McClintock writes most attractively in his
Arizona, The Youngest State.
"Practically all history of European or
American occupation of the present land of Arizonastarts in its southeastern section, wherein Tucson,an enduring outpost of civilization, still attachesthe romance of the past to the fringe of her activities as a modern metropolis. The speech of Spainmost noticeably lingers within her gates and prideloyally is felt in the perpetuation of Moorish andSpanish types of architecture. The comparativenewness of white settlement can be appreciated whenit is considered that Tucson is the only Arizonatown that dates back of the Civil War. She hasknown government under three nations and Vias thewesternmost post garrisoned by the Confederates.She stood firm as the guard post between theApaches of the hills and peaceful Indians of thevalleys and sheltered the friars of old in theirefforts �o establish the faith of the Cross. Almost modern she seems today, when superficially
1. Bushby, Maitland D. Mesqui'te Smoke. p. 18.
17
viewed, but below the bustle of business thestudent finds a most attractive sub-stratum ofsentiment, that has served to perpetuatememories of the romantic past, to the times whenSpanish cavaliers drew sword for the glory oftheir king and for the extension of their faith." 1
With this Spanish atmosphere of Tucson, two poems with
the same title and the same meter have been written.
Harrison Conrard's In Old Tucson was written first, and it
is a medallion of Tucson in poetry.
"In old Tucson, in old Tucson,What cared I how the days ran on?A brown hand trailing the viol-string,Hair as black as the raven's wing,Lips that laughed and a voice that clungTo the sweet old airs of the Spanish tongueHad drenched my soul with a mellow rimeTill all life shone, in that golden clime,With the tender glow of the morning-time.In old Tucson, in old Tucson,Row swift the merry days ran on!
"In old Tucson, in old Tucson,How soon the parting day came onlBut loft turn back in my hallowed dreams,And the low adobe a palace seems,Where her sad heart sighs and her sweet voice singsTo the notes that throb from her viol-strings.Oh, those tear-dimmed eyes and that soft brown hand!And a soul that glows like the desert sand -
The folden fruit of a golden land!In old Tucson, in old Tucson,The long, lone days, 0 Time, speed on!" 2
In Old Tucson by Sharlot Hall is a picture-poem of
old Tucson.
"In old Tucson, in old Tucson,How swift the happy days ran on!How warm the yellow sunshine beatAlong the white caliche street!
1. McClintock, James H.2. Conrard, Harrison
Arizona, The Youngest State. p. 131.Quivira. pp. 89-90.
18
The flat roofs caught a brighter sheenFrom fringing house leeks thick and green,And chiles drying in the sun;Splashes of crimson 'gainst the dunOf clay-spread roof and earthen floor;The squash vine climbing past the doorHeld in its yellow blossoms deepThe drowsy desert bees asleep.
"By one low wall, at one shut gate,The dusty roadway turned to wait;The pack mules loitered, passing whereThe muleteers had sudden care
Of cinch and pack and harness bell.The oleander blossoms fell,Wind-drifted flecks of flame and snow;The fruited pomegranate swung low,And in the patio dim and coolThe gray doves flitted round the poolThat caught her image lightly as
The face that fades across a glass.
"In old Tucson, in old Tucson,The pool is dry, the face is gone.No dark eyes through the lattice shine,No slim brown hand steals through to mine;There where her oleander stoodThe twilight shadows bend and brood,And through the glossed pomegranate leavesThe wind remembering waits and grieves;Waits with me, knowing as I know,She may not choose as come or go -
She who with life no more has partSave in the dim pool of my heart.
"And yet I wait - and yet I see
The dream that was come back to me;The green leek springs above the roof,The dove that mourned alone, aloof,Flutes softly to her mate amongThe fig leaves where the fruit has hungSlow-purpling through the sunny days;And do,m the golden desert hazeThe mule bells tinkle faint and far; -
But ,where her candle shone, a star;And where I watched her shadow fall -
The gray street and a crumbling wall." 1
Today the Mexican names of the pupils in her school
1. Hall, SherIot Cactus and Pine. PI>. 28-29.
19
room have appealed to Kari Dovre in Roll Call.
�ntonia, Lupe, and Rosana,Guillerno and Feliciana,Guade1upe, Maria, Joe,Dominga and Ricardo,Ramon, Enrique and Angel,Concepcion and Ysobel,Alberto and Victoria,Norberto and Gregoria,Raul, Socorro, Valentino,Jose, Edwardo, Augustino,Pedro, Nieves, and Manuel,Regina and Gabriel,Adelia and Josejina,Juan, Jesus and Adalina.
Francisco and Lucia,Alejandro and Sofia,Arturo, Gook and Petricina,Amalia and Cotina,Pablo, Luz and Juanito,Rojelio and Benito,Trinadad, Fulgencio,Rosario and CandidO,Gerado, Berta and Delfine,Teresa, Rita, Marcelino,Esperanza, Tiodoro,Ysaura and Lenora.So it goes from day to day,Don't you think I earn my pay?" 1
1. Dovre, Karl Roll Call. The Tucson Daily Citizen,Je:.nuary 5, 1930.
20
The Indians
Kino's Writings of the Indians
When Kino reached San Xavier del bac, he wrote of the
Indians, on August 23, 1692, in the ardent tone of a spirit
ual helper:
"I found the natives very affable andfriendly, and particularly so in the rancheriaof San Xavier del Bac, which contains more thaneight hundred souls." 1
The amusements of the Indians also appealed to Kino.
He wrote, on November 22, 1701, of the villages through
which he passed on his way to and up the Colorado:
"In all these pleasant and continuous .
raneherias there were all this morning manyparties and dances, and songs and feasts, witha representation, or dialogue, and, as it were,a little comedy, by the very friendly natives,to the great joy of all." 2
On November 19, 1701, Kino wrote of an amusement that
he taught the Quiquimas. He found the Quiquimas were much
astonished
"to see our pack-mules and mounts, forthey had never seen horses or mules or heard ofthem. And when the Yumas and Pimas who came withus said to them that our horses eould run fasterthan the most fleet-footed natives, they did notbelieve it, and it was necessary to put it to thetest. Thereupon a cowboy from Nuestra Senora delos Dolores saddled a horse and seven or eight ofthe most fleet-footed Quiquima runners set out,and although the cowboy at first purposely let themget a little ahead, and they were very gleefulthereat, he afterwards left them far behind andvery much astonished and amazed." 3
1. Kino, EUsibio Historical Memoirs. Vol. 1, p. 122.2. Ibid. p. 319.3. Ibid. pp. 314-5.
21
Of the Indian's religious_ beliefs Kino wrote after
his journey of 1699:
"Thanks to the infinite goodness of theLord, so completely did we effect the desiredproof the natives of the Rio G'rande, or de losApostoles, and their environs, did not roastand eat people, that the Senor Lieutenant JU8.nMathea Manje, in his careful and well writtenrelation that he wrote of this entry, sa.id that,because there was so much affability, love, andaffection on the part of these new peoples, hewas of the opinion that years before the venerableMother Maria de Jesus de Agreda had come todomesticate and instruct them, as there is a
tradition that she came from Spain miraculouslyto instruct some other nations, of New Mexico, forthe Reverend Fathers of San Francisco found themalready somewhat instructed. Others have been ofthe opinion that the blessed blood of the venerablefather Francisco Xavier Saeta is fertilizing andripening these very ext�nsive fields." 1
"In all these new conquests and new peoplewhere we have traveled they have no particularidolatry or doctrine Which it will be especiallydifficult to eradicate, nor polygamy, nor bonzesas in Japan and in Great China, and although theygreatly venerate the sun as a remarkable thing,with ease one preaches to them, and they comprehend the teaching that God most High is the AllPowerful and He who created the sun, the moon,and the stars, and all men, and all the world,and all its creatures." 2
"The Indians of these new American con
versions of this North America, because of nothaving other ministers, are like a blank tablet,or white paper, on which with ease one may writeor paint any good thing whatsoever, or imprintthe good teaching of our Holy Catholic Faith,whereas the people of Great China and Japan are
like a paper already written upon with the evilteaching of their priests, and which, before itis cleansed of blots, usually costs centuries ofimpossibilities, as we have experienced." 3
1.KIno, Eusibio Historical Uemoirs. Vol. 1, p. 198.2.Ibid. Vol. 2, p. 270.3.Ibid. Vol. 2, p. 145.
22
Others' Beliefs and Customs
Coming upon the Opa nation, Garces on �ovember 14,
1775 wrote:
"Having been asked what information theypossessed of their ancestors, they told me aboutthe same things as the (Pimas) Gilenos said tothe senor commandante, and Padre �ont put in hisdiary, concerning the deluge and creation; andadded, that their origin was from near the sea
in which an old woman is still somewhere, andthat she it is who sends the corals that comeout of the sea; that when they die their ghostgoes to live toward the western sea; that some,after they die, live like owls; and finally theysaid that they themselves do not understand suchthings well, and that those who know it all are
those who live in the sierra over there beyond.the Rio Colorado." 1
The Moquis were of unusual interest to the mission
aries. Kino wrote in 1699:
"At San Andres l found. the letter and thecross which many months before I had despatchedto the Moquis, inviting them to our friendshipand their reduction, and urging that they reconcilethemselves with our Holy Mother Church, returningto our holy faith. Even some years .before I hadurged the same thing; but then as now we found theobstacle or the very difficult passage through theApaches. Therefore, with new messages and new
gifts, and with promise to the bearers that theyshould be escorted by armed men wherever therewas fear of any danger from the Apaches, I againdespatched the letter and the cross to the Moquisand to their principal justices, for some knewhow to read and write. And, as I shall later setforth, in part the purpose was accomplished." 2
Oraibi, the center of Moqui or Hopi civilization and
trade, has been written about and made always the home of
Hopi traditions. Garces wrote on July 1, 1776:
1. Coues, Elliott On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer -
Garces' Diary. Vol. 1, p. 122.2. Kino, Eusibio Historical Memoirs. Vol. 1, pp. 197-8.
23
"I went one league and half eastsoutheast, and found a river that seemed to me tobe the Rio de San Pedro Jaquesila, and on a
mesa contiguous thereto a half ruined pueblo.I asked what that was, and they answered me
that it had been a pueblo of the Moqui, andthat some crops which were near to the springof water were theirs, they coming to cultivatethem from the same Moqui pueblo (Oraibi)." I
"Deacend.fng and turning about I suddenlyfound myself in sight of the pueblo. Thereare two or three tumble-down houses in frontof the entrance thereof, and there is seenneither any door nor window. The street whichis entered is quite wide, and runs straight fromeast to west, or from west to east, to the exitfrom the pueblo, and I believe it to be the onlyone there is. On one side and the other of thisare other cross-streets of the same width, forming perfect squares. I saw also two small openplaces. The surface is not level, but firm.The pueblo is situated with the lower part towardthe east, so that only the streets which run fromnorth to south are level. The houses are ofheights some greater, others lesser; accordingto what I found they have this arrangement:From the ground of the street there rises a wallas it were of a vara and a half, at which heightis the court-yard, which is mounted by means ofa wooden ladder that may be taken away when theywish. The ladder has no more rungs than are
necessary to ascend to the patio; but both theup-rights are very tall. On this patio there are
two, or three, or four - all of which I saw -
dwelling-places, each with its own door, closedwith bolts and keys of wood. Of the house wherethere is poultry, the coop stands in the patio •.
Against the wall on the right or-left - for thereare each of these - is plac�d a ladder for as
cending to the large hall that there is in themiddle, and a room at the sides •. At the same
collateral walls there is another ladder.to ascendto the roof, which for all the houses is one withthose adjoining in the same square; which latteris commonly not very large, owing to the numberof streets which intersect. I found, to be more
particular, that the houses all present theirrear wallS, in such manner that no one can see
1. Coues, Elliott On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer -
Garces' Diary. Vol. 2, pp. 357-8.
24
what his neighbor is doing without going upon the roof. The shape of the pueblo isneither perfectly square nor perfectly round." I
The hair of certain Indian tribes is still of interest
to many writers. Kino wrote:
"These nations are by nature very fickleand previously have lived much under authorityof their priests, whom they feed, and clothefor their superstitious ceremonies with theirhair, which they cut off for this purpose." 2
Garces wrote of the Moqui women:
"The hair they wear done up in two braids;the old women in a former Spanish style, theyoung ones with a puff over each ear, or alltied up on one side; it would appear from thisthat they take great care of the hair." 3
The squash-blossom coiffure is always mentioned in
fiction concerning the Hopi women. A Hopi Pastoral, a
sweet love pastoral, shows when the mode is abandoned.
nI in the melons and you on the steepOf the half-barren mesa-slope, trailing your sheep,Why tarry so long,And what is your songWhose sweets to my ear from the bro�� mesa creep?'Lo-Iomai!Lo-Iomai!Maid in the melons,Your dark glossy hair,Of its arches grown weary,On your brown shoulders bareIs yearning to fall, like the sweet summer rainOn the warm glowing sands of the desolate plain!'I in the melons and you. on the steep,While your love-hallowed notes from the brown
mesa leap,Hark to my song,As you loiter alongFar in the wake of your faint-lowing sheep:
1. Ibid. 1'1'. 362-3.2. Kino, Eusibio Historical Memoirs. Vol·. 2, p , tn.3. Coues, Elliott On the Trail of a Suanish Pioneer -
Garces' Diary. Vol. 2, p. 385.
25
I in the melons and you on the steep,Vfuile your love-hallowed notes from the brown
mesa. leap,Hark to my song,As you loiter alongFar in the wake of your faint-lowing sheep:'Lo-lomai!Lo-lomai!Youth on the mesa,Allured by your prayer,Unwound from its arches,y� dark, flowing hairO'er my shoulders has dropped, like the slant
summer rainThat drenches the sands of the broad desert plains!'" 1
Sending the Indian to School
Just when the sending of Indians to school as a
punishment for deeds considered wrong was instituted, is
not known; yet Kino wrote:
"These Pimas Sobaipuris of San Xavierdel Bac, having returned in l':ay (1703) to theirrancherias, found that some Indians from fartherinland had eaten some of the mares of the drovebelonging to the church which they had in charge.They went in at once to punish the malefactors,beating many and taking seven children prisoners,which, to compensate for the damage which thesemalevolent Indians had done to our drove ofmares, they sent to Cocospera and Nuestra Senorade los Dolores." 2
The feeling of rebellion at school and of its authority
has also become the background of many incidents in literary
work. Marah Ellis Ryan, in her charming, soulful Indian
Love Letters, has used it.
"It is quite true."Your friends who came into the Province of
Tusayan for the masked dances of the Hopi Springtime
1. Conrard, Harrison �uivira. pp. 23-42. Kino, Eusibio Historical Memoirs. Vol. 2, pp. 34-5.
26
have taken back to you the truth, colored, maybe so, by the prejudices of their friends, themissionaries of your faith. But the main statement is a fact.
"I can see the beautiful eyes of turquoisewiden at the reading of this. I can hear thelittle sharp breath drawn, and can feel the littleshock at the confession I send.
"Yes! I am again the Indian! From the mocassinof brown deer skin to the headband of scarlet,there is not anything of the white man's garb totell your friends that I was a player of the University team, who for a little while was called bya white man's meaningless name, and who sat besideyou on the sand of the Eastern Sea a year ago! I
"Yes, I will try to tell you how I learnedthat the Indian's life is best for the Indian.The white man's life is a life unfulfilled for him.It promises everything but l'eaves him wi th emptyhands. 2
"Not anything of conventional religion calledChristian has real appeal to the Hopitu. It istoo cold -- too far away. The mythology of theChristian does not bring the gods so close as themythology of the Indian, and all have the same
foundation -- created by the minds of men; in
fluenced.by the Divine universal Spirit of theGrowing Things! 3 .
"In the last Flute Ceremony, one of the girls,who led the invocation to the God of the Rain,was a graduate of the nearest government school.She looked very beautiful in her draperies ofpurest white, jewels only of silver and coral,and the one white feather in her jetty hair -- a
Virgin Priestess of the Dark People -- leadingthe long line of men to the shrine of the desertwell as her foremothers had led the devotees fromtime immemorial.
"And the rain comes, -- it has always come
because of the prayers to the God there. Italways will come, the old people feel assured, so
long as the God of the Indian is not forgotten.And rain is the very God of Life to the desert! 4
"The missionary can not make the sick wellby the words from a true heart, but the Navajosinger can! I, with my eyes, have seen that!
1. Ryan, Marah Ellis2. Ibid. p , 2.3. Ib id. p , 7.4. Ibid. p , 8.
Indian Love Letters. pp. 1-2
27
Why, then, should the.Navajo listen to themissionary? The missionary does not believein his own God, or he would do the work ofthat God as the God said he could do it if hehad faith." 1
In Laughing Boy, LaFarge has expressed the Navajos'
feeling toward American customs that are being imposed
upon them.
"And now, for all their care and training andpreaching, she was going back to the blanket,because under the blanket were the things worthwhile, and all the rest was hideous. With herknowledge and experience, with what the Americanshad taught her, she would lead this man, and makefor them both the most perfect life that could bemade -- with an Indian, a longhaired, heathenIndian, a blanket Indian, a Navajo, the names
thrown out like an insult in the faces of thosewho bore them, of her own people, Denne, ThePeople, proud as she was proud, and clear ofheart as she could ever be." 2
The intense determination of the Indian woman is
expressed in the following conversation:
"Do you speak American then?" LaughingBoy asked. "Is it hard to learn?"
"It is not hard; we had to learn it.They put me in a room with a Ute girl and a
Moqui and a Comanche; all we could do was learnEnglish. Sometimes some Navajo girls sneakedout and talked together, but not often. Theydid not want us to be Indians." She rested on
her elbow, staring into the fire. "They wantedus to be ashamed of being Indians. They wantedus to forget our mothers and fathers."
"That is a bad thing. Why did they do that?""Do not talk about it. I do not want to
think 'about those things."When she had put away the d.ishes, as they
lit their cigarettes she said, "If ever they cometo take a child of ours to school, kill her."
"Is it like that?"
1. Ibid. pp. 10-11.2. La Farge, Oliver Laughing Boy. p , 56.
28
"Yes.""I hear you." 1
Hughston's Expressions of the Influence ofSan Xavier in the Pa�ago Nation Today
Caroline M. Hughston, in In the Shrine in the Desert,
writes of the influence of the mission of San Xavier del
Bac in the lives of the Papago Indians.
"Away to the south of Tucson, in thepeaceful valley of the Santa Cruz, snuggledin between the jagged mountains, rests theMission San Xavier del Bac - dreaming, tender,quaint and old. Peaceful as the green valleythat enfolds it, majestic as the mountains thattower around it. Overhead e sky of turquoise,and below - and stretching far away - the desert -
mysterious, silent, and radiant in its ever changing color.
"To the Papago Indians, the Mission -
towering so sublimely, wondrously beautiful,above their simple dwellings - is their verylife and guide. To its dim, old chapel aretaken children for baptism; from beneath itslofty arches their brides come forth, just as
radiant as any :'pale-face' bride j and beforethe altar their dead are placed, while thesorrowing hearts of the living offer up theirprayers. The good Bishop is a friend to allthe dwellers in the village, and the Sistersof St. Joseph labor among them, teaching themin school, comforting them in sorrow andentering into all their joys and hopes." 2
Indian Warfare
Indian warfare also has been the source of many
literary productions. On June 9, 1695, Kino, after a
devastating Apache and Jocomo raid, wrote that
"our Lord must desire this Pimeria forsome great thing, since He permits it to be
1. Ibid. pp. 78-9.2. Hughston, Caroline M. In the Shrine in the Desert. pp. 5·
29
attacked and impeded with such opposition." 1
On November 9, .1697, Kindo found
"the Pima natives of Quiburi (on theSan Pedro) very jovial and very friendly.They were dancing over scalps and the spoilsof fifteen enemies, Rocomes and Janos, whomthey had killed a. few da.ys before." 2
In July and August, 1695, Kino wrote of three garrisons,
"comprising one hundred and fifty men,with two hundred loads of su'pp1ies, and withmany Indian friends
that entered southeastern Arizona into the Chiguicagui
(Chiricahua) Mountains where
"they found almost all the spoils ofmany robberies which, during all these yearshad been committed in this province of Sonoraand on its frontiers, including many arquebuses,swords, daggers, spurs, saddle-bags, saddles,boots, etc., whose theft many had so falselyimputed to the Pimas Sobaipuris." :3
In 1697, Kino called the Apaches the "avowed enemies"
f h""4
o 1S prov1nce. In January, 1703, he said:
"I notified Captain Coro and the Pimaand Sovaipuris braves that they should make an
expedition to the country through which thehostile Apaches travel and come, the resultbeing that through'some good victories by ourPimas the hostile Apaches were greatly restrained,and now molest us somewhat less frequently.tT 5
A letter from Leal on March 16 reads in very realistic
manner:
"Near here they (Apaches) killed Manuel
1. Kino, Eusibio Historical Memoirs. Vol. 1, p. 153.2. Ibid. p. 169.3. Ibid. pp. 145-6.4. Ibid. p • 175.5. Ibid. . Vol. 2, p. 27.
30
de Urquiso; I am just about to bury him.They left him stark naked, scalped him shothim four times with arrows, wounded him severaltimes with a lance, and killed his horse. Theyleft the tre� and bows, but carried off theskins and the iron portions of the saddle. Godprotect us and keep your Reverence for us." 1
On March 28, the alcalde 1:anje wrote:
"On the highways we have experiencedmisfortunes and many disasters and grievousmurders at the hand of the enemies." 2
Of the Apache warfare, Will H. Robinson writes
The Vengeance of Cochise and lays the cause of the Apache
trouble to the injudicious decision of an egotistical
army officer of the United States.3Raphael Pumpelly tells very graphically his experiences
with the Apaches in the Travels and Adventure of Raphael
Pumpelly. He and Poston intended to visit all the mines
and finally reach the city of Mexico. This is only one
episode in their journey.
"In three days we were ready to return tothe Heintzelman mine, and the morning of thefourth day was fixed for our final departure fromTubac. But something occurred in the eveningwhich interfered-with our plans. Just beforedark a Mexican herdsman galloped into the plaza,and soon threw the whole community into a stateof intense excitement. He had gone that morningwith William Rhodes, an American ranchero, toRhodes's farm, to bring in some horses which hadbeen left on the abandoned place. The farm layabout eighteen miles from Tubac, on the road to1ucson, and to reach it they passed first throughthe Revention, a fortified ranch ten miles distant,and then through the Canoa, an abandoned stockade
1. Kino, Eusibio Historical Memoirs. Vol. 2, p. 29.2. Ibid. p . 31.3. Robinson, Will H. The Story of Arizona. pp. 133-8.
31
station of the. Overland Mail, fourteen milesfrom Tubac. At this place they found twoAmericans cooking dinner; and telling them theywould return in an hour to dine, they rode on.
Having found the horses, they returned, and.before riding up to the house, secured the looseanimals in the corral, and then turned toward thestockade. Their attention was at once drawn to a
garment drenched in blood hanging on the gate, andas they approached this a scene of destruction con
fronted them. The Apaches had evidently been atwork during the short hour that had passed. Justas the white men were on the point of dismounting,they discovered a large party of Indians lying lowon their animals among the bushes a few hundredyards off the road. Instantly Rhodes and the�exican put spurs to their horses, to escape towardthe Revention, the Apaches broke cover, and reachedthe road about one hundred yards behind thefugitives.
"There ·were not less than a hundred mountedwarriors, and a large number on foot. About a
mile from the stockade Rhodes's horse seemed tobe giving out, and he struck off from the roadtoward the mountains, followed by all the mountedIndians. The Mexican had escaped to the Revention,and thence to lubec, but he said that Rhodes musthave been killed soon after they parted company.
"It being too late to do anything by going outthat night, we determined to look up the bodiesand bury them the following day. Early the nextmorning I rode out with Colonel Poston and threeothers to visit the Canoa.
"Vfuen we came to the Revent ion a Mexican was
opening the gate. As I rode in for information a
door opened, and Rhodes, smoking a long cigar,sauntered leisurely toward me, with his left arm
in a sling."'Hello, Rhodes?' I said, 'we've come to bury
you. '
"'Well, you've come too soon,' he answered,�aughing.
"He corroborated the story of the Mexican,and told how he managed his remarkable escape.Finding his horse failing, and having an arrow
through his left arm, he left the road, hoping toreach a thicket he remembered having seen. He hadabout two hundred yards' advantage over the nearestIndians, and as he passed the thicket he threw himself from the horse, which ran on while he enteredthe bush. The thicket was dense, with a verynarrow entrance leading to a small charco or dry
32
mudhole in the center. Lying down in this hespread his revolver, cartridges and caps beforehim, broke off and drew out the arrow, andfeeling the loss of blood, buried his woundedelbow in the earth. All this was the work ofa minute, and before he had finished it theIndians had formed a cordon around his hidingplace, and found the entrance. The steady aimof the old frontiersman brought down the firstApache who rushed into the narrow opening. Eachsucceeding brave as he tried the entrance metthe same fate, till six shots had been firedfrom Rhodes's revolver, and then the Indians,believing the weapon empty, charged bodily witha loud yell. But the cool ranger had loadedafter each shot, and a seventh ball brought downthe foremost of the attacking party. Rhodesdropped thirteen Indians. During all this timethe enemy fired volley after volley of ballsand arrows into the thicket. Then the Indians,who knew Rhodes well by name, and from manyformer fights, called out in Spanish: 'DonGUigelmot Don GUigelmo! Corne out and join us.
You're a brave man, and we'll make you a chief.''Oh, you -- you! I know what you'll do with me
if you get me,r" he answered. After this Rhodes
heard a loud shout; 'Sopori t Sopori!' -- thename of the ranch of a neighboring mine -- andthe whole attacking party galloped away.fr 1
ing Geronimo, Thomason's On the Heels of Geronimo, and
Sparks's The Apache Kid are only a few of the publications
that have Indian,warfare as their background.
1. Ri ce, 0., s . =R!,-a_;P"'l:""h_a_e",=,1-=PU�m....;p._.e-=1�1�y__•__1_ir_a_v....,e::-l'!."'"s�a.�n_d_A_dv_e_n_t_u_r_e_sof Raphael Pumpelly. pp. 164-6
33
The Americans
The Cowboy
Mixing with the vaquero in the stock-raising in
dustry, introduced by Father Kipo, came the American.
The cowboy, therefore, has become a nation builder and a
romantic character in western literature. No one has
portrayed the cowboy in poetry better than has Badger
Clark, who wrote his first verses at Tombstone.
"In the cow country near the Mexicanborder, Badger Clark stumbled unexpectedlyinto paradise. He was given charge of a smallranch and the responsibility for a bunch ofcattle just large enough to amuse him but toosmall to demand a full day's work once a month.The sky was persistently blue, the sunlight was
richly golden, the folds of the barren mountainsand the wide reaches of the range were full ofmany colors, and the nearest neighbor was eightmiles away.
"The cowmen who dropped in for a meal now andthen in the course of their interminable ridingappeared to have ridden directly out of booksot adventure, with old young faces full of sun
wrinkles, careless mouths full of bad grammar,strange oaths and stranger yarns, and heartsfor the most part as open and shadowless as thecountry they daily ranged." 1
The true cowboy as he was, is portrayed in Badger
Clark's first poem Ridin'.
"There is some that like the city -
Grass that's curried smooth and green,Theaytres and stranglin' collars,
Wagons run by gasoline -
But for me it's hawse and saddleEvery day without a change,
And a desert sun a-blazin'On a hundred miles of range.
1. Clark, Badger Sun and Saddle Leather. Preface,pp. XIII-XIV.
34
Just a-ridin', a-ridin' -
Desert ripplin' in the sun,Mountains blue along the skyline -
I don't envy anyoneWhen I'm ridin'.
"When my feet is in the stirrupsAnd my hawse is on the bust,
With his hoofs a·flashin' lightnin'From a cloud of golden dus�,
And the bawl in' of the cattleIs a-comin' down the wind
Then a finer life than ridin'Would be mighty hard to find.Just a-ridin', a-ridin' -
Splittin' long cracks through the air,Stirrin' up a baby cyclone,Rippin' up the prickly pear
As I'm ridin'
"I don't need no art exhibitsWhen the sunset does her best,
Paintin' everlastin' gloryOn the mountains to the west
And your opery looks foolishWhen the night-bird starts his tune
And the desert's silver mountedBy the touches of the moon.
Just a-ridin', a-ridin',Who kin envy kings and czars
When the coyotes down the valleyAre a-singin' to the stars,If he's ridin'?
"When my earthly trail is endedAnd my final bacon curled
And the last great roundup's finishedAt the Home Ranch of the world
I don't want no harps nor haloes,Robes nor other dressed up things -
Let me ride the starry rangesOn a pinto hawse with wings!Just a�ridinl, a-ridin' -
�othin' I'd like half so wellAs a-roundin' up the sinners
That have wandered out of Hell,And a-ridin'.n 1
Badger Clark's one novel Spike is a realistic portrayal
1. Clark, Badger Sun and Saddle Leather. pp. 39-41.
35
of the cowboy as he was. Walt Coburn of Prescott and
Nogales, a cowboy himself, in his novel, The Ringtailed
Rannyhans, has made live the seasoned old cowpunchers who
worked when cattle were moved over great areas for summer
and winter grazing. Calamity and Hurricane are "pardners"
for life. In the chapter entitled "Regarding Mares" is
given the �eeling existing between the old cowman of the
open range and the nester with fences. As Calamity's
horse has been shot from under him by rustlers, he takes
a mare from a nester and rides toward camp. The fUn comes
when Hurricane begins to twit Calamity about riding the
mare. Riding a. mare is the most 1ll1gallant thing a cowboy
can do. After the fight is over, and all are in bed,
Calamity said,
"Yeah. About that dang mare. I bet Iwas a kinda comical sight, pardner." AndCalamity chuckled softly.
"I kin lick the man, or the bunch uh men,that says so,
n came Hurricane's quick reply."Don't grit yore teeth to-night er I'll killyuh." And they crawled under the same tarp,at peace with each other and their world. 1
Of the many books written with the cowboy as the back
ground, these are probably of the greatest interest. Owen
Wister fs said, by Arizona writers and people who know him,
to have got much of his material for The Virginian from
around Camp Verde, Arizona. Charles A. Siringo himself
took many trips into northern Arizona for rustlers and
culprits, and his experiences are given in his two books,
1. Coburn, Walt The Ringtailed Rannyhans. p. 271.
36
The Cowboy Detective and�Riata and Spur. Stewart Edward
White in Arizona Nights has, in a realistic yet half
humorous way, eiven every phase of the cowboy's experiences.
He deals with him out in the open, with the rustler, with
the attempt of the cowboy or cowman to settle down through
marriage, and with the utter loneliness experienced by the
bride. Harold Bell Wright h�s used Prescott as the scene
of his When a Man's a ::Man. Zane Grey has made the cowboy
the moving-picture-show glamour of today in To the Last Man
and The Call of the Canyon.
The Sheepherder
The sheepherder also has found a place in the lit
erature of the state. Woven into one of his delightful
tales, Will C. Barnes has told the story of a real Basque
sheepherder twelve years of age, in Dum�y. Left in charge
of twelve hundred ewes, Dummy passed an uneventful life
until the morning of the .fifth day. A heavy snow storm was
raging.
nStumbling and falling over snow-hiddenrocks and bushes, he found himself almoststepping off into empty space over a cliff,where the snow had built out from its edge insuch a manner as to conceal its presence, and,even as he threw himself back from the step hewas about to take, he saw several sheep walkblindly out into the semi-darkness and disappearinto the depth beyond." 1
Dummy, a true Basque, saves the sheep by guiding them
1. Barnes, Will c. Tales from the X-Bar Horse Camp. �. 131.
37
carefully under the cliffs to a ranoh barn. When the
owners arrive, the boy is rewarded by an impromptu
Christmas tree.
The Homesteader
Following close upon the heels of the cowman came
the homesteader anxious to get his start in life. This
life has also left its impress in the literature of the
state. Home, under a group of poems called The Homesteader
by Richard V. Carr, portrayed in all its meagerness, is
nevertheless home.
"Little old shack,All tar-papered black,Your chimney leans backFrom the north wind.Your windows are few,Your rooms only two,But yet to my viewYou're a mansion.
"Little old shack,There's lots that you lack,Yet still you've the knackTo look home-like.My hands builded you,The wife helped me, too;I guess you will doFor our mansion." 1
Will C. Barnes in Stutterin' Andy gives the exceeding
ly hard times of the homesteader and also the pluck and
endurance of the women in the homestead. Andy is on trial
for butchering a calf, and his wife is put on the witness
stand. She tells of the disappearance of their calf in the
fall when a herd of cattle happened to be driven through
1. Carr, Richard V. Cowboy Lyrios. p. 173.
38
their land. In the spring-the herd returned and a calf
seemed at home in the old corral. The children had both
been iil1 during the winter and one had passed away from
•
lack of nourishing food. The other was failing. She her-
self hit the calf on the head and killed it. So intense
was the interest of the cattleman who was prosecuting her
husband, that he said:
"The, the - gal," he gasped, never takinghis eyes from the woman's face, "the little· gal,wh - what come of her?" he demanded hos.rsely, a
great something in his throat almost choking him,"did-did-sh-he," and his voice failed him completely.
The woman smiled scornfully. "She did not,tlshe said, realizing the drift of his unspokenquestion, "we done made a pot of soup out of some
of that there yearlin' an' fed her some of themeat, an' she perked up an' come through allright." Then - daughter of Eve that she was -
she broke down and burst into tears.Five minutes later Stutterin' Andy walked
out of the courtroom a free man. 1
Various angles of homesteading and pioneering have
appealed to F. R. Bechdolt in When the West was Young, to
J. H. Cady in Arizona's Yesterday, to George Hartmann in
Wooed by a Sphinx of Aztlan, and to Edmund Wells in
Argonaut Tales.
The Miner
As early as Kino's time he writes that
"Many good veins and mineral lands bearinggold and silver were within sight of the new
missions and many new mining camps had begunoperations." 2
1. Barnes, Will c. Tales from the X-Bar Horse Camp. p. 103.2. Bolton, Herbert Eugene Spanish Borderlands. p. 199.
39
The result has been from earliest times a distinct
population interested in mining. Every phase of mining
has furnished themes for writers. The prospector in
Elwyn Hoffman's The Prospector is called "an empire
builder."
"How many nights his campfire gleamedAmidst the desert, dark and wide;How many nights he sat and dreamedThe dream of the Unsatisfied!
"The years were long, and grim, and hard,And Fortune's favors small and few;The trails were rough and evil-starredYet always dawn came warm and new.
"And in his heart hope leaped egainWith faith to ward 'gainst all that fateMight send of hunger, thirst and painBetween the dawn and Night's black gate.
"And so he hoped, and toiled, and gave,And lost at last? Nay! Write it clear:Though all forgot his lonely graveHe won an empire for us here!" 1
Around freighting for the mines Romaine H. Lowdermilk
of Rimrock and Phoenix has woven an interesting plot with
excellent characterization in The Passing of Pete Davila.
Pete Davila is called into the office and questioned 8S to
his ability to drive a freight team.
"vVhat 's your name, man? n
npete Davila.""Did ye ever drive freight team?""Ho, ho, hol" Pete Davila's eyes danced
merrily. "Ho, sure I'm drive freight team. I'mdrive any 01' kind -- oxen, hosses, burros, mulesany kin' freight team what can be hook oop. Ho,one tam oop in Canada I'm freightin' wheat and she
1. Hoffman, Elwyn The Prospector. Phoenix: The ArizonaMagazine, J'anuary, 1913.
40
cam beeg rain and I'm got six mule. Well, I'mgo get six hosses an' hook 'em on in front, butstill was stuck; then I'm go get six axes --"
"Just a moment,ft interrupted Jimmie. ffDoye think ye could tackle this road of ours, withbut a swamper to help ye?"
Pete Davila's eyes took on a serious ex
pression, his short arms dropped to his sideand hung inert as he wrestled with the question.
"We-e-el," he began slowly. "Mebby so,and mebby no. You know it's depend on what kindstuff I'm haulin'. Mebby sometam I'm got on ironor lumber, or mebby these team ron 'way or some
thin' - I'm mak 'em all right, if Pm don't havesome hard luck."
"And your teams sometimes run away?""Ho, hot Sure. Lots of tam I'm do that.
Why, I'm work for the Saginaw Lumber Company -wan beeg lumber company -- an' my load logs shefalloff and hit my wheelers in the behin' and,by golly, I'm falloff 'way back at the firstbend. The boss he say --
Jimmie's upraised hand stopped the floodof words.
"Ye say yer load fell off. Now do ye some
times have a load go slippin' and falloff unbeknownst to ye?"
"Sure. Ho, ho, hot Pete .Davila's eyessparkled as he laughed. "Lots of tam. I'mloose a load off my trailer wan tam an' am goneon tYree, four mile before I'm fin' heem out •
.Nother tam -"
"And do you sometimes break the tongue out?Or run off the grade and tip over?(1
"Ho, ho, hot" Pete Davila threw back hishead and fairly roared with merriment. He nearlyChoked. He turned clear around in his tracks,his whole body shaking with laughter.
"S-sure," he sputtered. "Broke out tongue;tip over; broke the wheel all to smash -- Ho,I'm bust brake off an' pile oQP in the road. Bygolly, one tam down in Mexico I'm stuck in queeksand. The river he's rise oop, queek, an' I'mjoost tam for cut my team loose and get out. Thewhole load, wagons an' all, she's gone to --.
She's roll down the river in the queek-sand an'nobody ever seen wan lettle board of her again."
"My, my, what a terrible loss." Jimmie'ssmile belied the doleful words. "And now mebbyye can tell me how ye'd catch yer mules, if theywas wild and in an open corral?"
"Uh--uh--what?" Pete Davila'S face contracted
41
in strained attention and the furrow betweenhis eyes deepened. "What? We don't drivebroncho mules on these road, do we?"
"Well, no, of course not. But there'ssome that's hard to catch."
"Ho." Pete's serious countenance brokeinto a smile of understanding. "Some oldfreight mules that's been spoiled, eh? Or gotsore neck and shoulders, hey?"
"Yes, that sort.""Ho, ho, hot" Pete was on familiar
ground now. "I'm feex heem. Them 01' spoiledmule. I'm tak a neck-yoke in wan hand and mytie rope in the other; if he don't stan' stillI'm give rim the neck-yoke. By golly, 'boutthe tam I'm swat heem two, t'ree tam with wan
neck-yoke he's stan' lak a sheep while I put on
the rope..
"Some tam I'm use the black snake, but I'mlak the neck-yoke better, he's mak those mulemind, all right. Wan tsm down in Georgia I'mhaul out railroad ties. I'm drive three mulean' wan beeg aI' hoss. One them mule fight me
every tam I go put the bridle on. He's gotafraid for his ears, you know. Well, I'm takthat neck-yoke an' pretty soon he's stan' laka burro --"
"Yes, yes, I know," broke in old Jimmie,"ye're hired. Go down to the barn an' take theteam, there's plenty wagons there. Ye'll loadand unload yerself.ff I
In the end, Pete Davila, to save the lives of two
little children, upsets his load and injures himself.
Authorities have come into the community looking for him.
Old Jimmie leaves the sick room and announces that Pete
Davila is no more. The employer has in the meantime
rechristened him Patrick O'Shea.
"Thy ringing metal let the dull earth feel;Cleave thou the rock, streaked like the golden morn:
Forth from a touch of thy toil-tempered steelThe busy din of industry is born." 2
1. Lowdermilk, Romaine H. The Passing of Pete Davila.Adventure, June, 1924.
2. Conrard, Harrison Quivira.�. 28
42
This same spirit of industry and of busy life in
the mining camps speaks in Charles D. Poston's Sketches
of the Early History of Arizona. Thus grew also the late
stories o� Tombstone - Walter Noble Burns' Tombstone, and
William M. Breakenridge's Helldorado. Of Bisbee and
Douglas is the Desert Odyssey and Other Poems by Joseph
Thurman Ashurst and Richard Howard Whiteside. Of the
Wolfville series by Alfred Henry Lewis, The Man from Red
Dog in Wolfville portrays the dare-devil type of the
population of the mining cities. The man from Red Dog
challenged everyone in his attempt to straighten out his
neighboring camp. Vfuen he is fatally wounded, he says:
"I wants you-aIls to ta.ke off my moccasinsan' pack me into the stree\" says the Red Dogman. "1 ain't allowin' for my old mother inMissiury to be told as how I dies in no gin-mill,which she shorely 'bominates of 'em. An' Idon't die with no boots on, neither."
We-aIls packs him back into the streetag'in, an' pulls away at his boots. About thetime we gets 'em ofr he sags back convulsive,an' thar he is as dead as Santa Anna. 1
:Military Life
Of one phase of the military life in Arizona Buckey
O'Neill has given an insight in Abandoned, or The Requiem
of the Drums.
"There is that about the sounding of thedrum that is unlike any other music in the world.How it sets the heart to throbbing and the bloodto coursing through the veins as it falls uponthe earl ��at scenes has its beating been the
1. Lewis, Alfred Henry Wolfville. p. 100.
43
prelude to, and what sights have men seen within the sound of its raIlings!
"In its music there is something that sweepsaway the sluggishness of life and gives instead a
feeling that is akin to the drunkenness of wine.No. matter whether it be the long roll, beatingalarm, as it is beaten by startled drummers inthe night, or the softer beats, when the snores
are muffled and men march with arms reversed,thinking of the comrade who has left the ranksforever, it is the same. Everyone at some timein life has felt something within him start insympathy with its beating. If one has ever
heard it in the fury of the rally, when ranksare broken and regiments are fading away underfire, it is something to remember forever.
"VJhat matters it if; as musicians say, itsmusic is barbarous - so barbarous that it hasbut one note? After all, it is the music ofthe soldier, whether it comes from the metalkettledrums, glittering as they swing in the sun
at the head ·of close columns of helmeted men, or
if it comes from tom-toms beaten in tepees amidthe cold snows and darkened days of northernwinters, or amid cacti-covered sands of desertsglowing with the fierce heat of summer suns?Soldiers and warriors all, and be they red or
white, not one vlill die the less bravely for thedreams that his drummers and their drums haveconjured up. The glory of the drum is passingaway. Of all our regiments to-day, but the FirstInfantry retains a drun corps.
"After a thousand years' service as the mostwarlike instrument in the armies of Europe andAmerica, it must now take a secondary place, andwith it will soon go the bayonet and the sword,those heroic relics of the days when soldierslooked into one another's eyes before firing,and men reeched out from the ranks to catch theirfoemen by the beards, to drag them closer, themore easily to cut their throats.
nIt was not so, though, with the drum in1861, when the sounds of reveille broke throughthe stillness of an Arizona midsummer morning atFort Buchanan. The first glimmer of the longJune day" could hardly be noticed. in the morningair, so cool end fresh after the night spent inthe hot, close barracks. Already, though, theofficers, of the post gathered in groups on theparade-ground, preparing as if for a march, whilethe adjutant and officer of the day darted hereand there, as if to see that all was in readiness.
44
"The drums ceased to beat, and the drummers,save the one on duty as the drummer of the guard,disappeared among the men. One crossed the paradeground to the line of adobe buildings. He was
hardly twenty, young and handsome, his eyes sparkling with excitement and animation. As he approached one ot the buildings a woman came to the door witha child in her arms - an Indian woman, and as youngas he w�s, she was still younger, hardly more thana girl, as the drummer was hardly more than a boy.He placed an arm around her and drew her, with thechild, into the room, and pointed out the differentarticles that were in it, as if he were trying totell her that they were hers. He gathered in hisarms the blankets from the bed and passed out ofthe room, leading the girl by the hand. He thenplaced them under a near mesquite-tree and seatedher upon them. As he did so he spoke to her, half,in Spanish, half in English, telling her that hemust leave, that he could not help it, for the"nantan" - the colonel - had ordered it. He would'come back to her some time. Till then she couldhave all he had taken from the house to live on.
He almost grew angry when she asked him to let hergo with him. Again and again she asked, in her soft,broken Spanish and English, as if fearful that shecould not make him understand what she wanted.1t 1
Her pleading was in vain. As she sat watching the
departing soldiers, her own tribe appeared among the
burning buildings. True to the Papago tradition - a woman
caught in adultery must be stoned to death - they left her
lying under a mound of stones from under which trickled
streams of blood through the sand.
"Out of the clouds of dust on the mountainsides, as if bidding farewell forever to the plainsbelow, came the rolling of the drums." 2
From the woman's point of view of the military life
1. O'Neill, Buckey The Requiem of the Drums. Cosmopoli-tan, February, 1901, pp. 401-3. The originalmanuscript was loaned to me by Mrs. O'Neill.
2. Ibid. p , 405.
45
has come Josephine Clifford McCrackin's The Woman Who
Lost Him, and Forrestine C. Hooker's Vfuen Geronimo Rode.
The Mormons
The Mormons and their work in Arizona have also become
the subject of many tales, stories, and books. The march
of the Mormon Battalion is very well commended by Lieutenant
Colonel P. St. George Cook in McClintock's Arizona, The
Youngest State.
"History may be searched in vain for an
equal march of infantry. Half of it has beenthrough a wilderness where nothing but savagesand wild beasts are found, or deserts where,for want of water, there is no living creature.Without a guide who had traversed them, we haveventured into trackless tablelands where waterwas not found for several marches. With crowbarand :pick and axe in hand we have worked our wayover mountains, which seemed to defy aught save
the wild goat, and hewed a passage through a
chasm of living rock more narrow than our wagons.-- Thus, marching half naked and half fed, andliving upon wild animals, we have discovered andmade a road of great value to our country. Thus,volunteers, you have exhibited some high andessential qualities of veterans.tf I
Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh is attr�cted by their
qualities as homemakers. He says in his Breaking of the
Wilderness:
"It must be acknow.Le dged that the lJ.lormonswere wilderness breakers of high quality. Theynot only broke it, but they kept it broken; andinstead of the gin mill and the gambling hall,as cornerstones of their progress and as examplesto the natives of the white man's superiority,
1. McClintock, James H. Arizona, The Youngest State.Vol. 1, p . 99.
46
they planted orchards, gardens, farms, schoolhouses, and peaceful homes." 1
In the two novels - The Heritage of the Desert and
Rainbow Trail - Zane urey has used Mormon people and their
practices as his themes. Rimrock, by T. C. Hoyt, a Mormon
nester, has as its theme the realistic experiences of a
Mormon cowman, Probably the severest scathing that the
Mormons have received is that found in Red Men and White
by Owen Wister.
Adventurers
Of the trappers who came to Arizona, the most vivid
account is that given by James O. Pattie in The Personal
Narrative of James O. Pattie of Kentucky. Most realistic
also is R. B. Stratton's account of the murder of the
Oatman Family and the captivity of the two girls in his
Captivity of the Oatman Girls. Colonel William Stover's
Story of the Red Baron has as its foundation a most daring
adventurer's claim to the Peralta grant given to an early
governor by the Spanish crown.
Politicians
The politician has not been forgotten. Will H.
Robinson, in The Man from Yesterday, shows up the political
fight for an early street railway franchise. The fight in
Congress over statehood ratification is the theme of The
Man the People Chose by Grace Reeve Fennell. This chosen
1. Dellenbaugh, Frederick Samuelpp. 307-8.
Breaking of the Wilderness.
47
man was John Doe, delegate from Arizona. Wearing a broad
western hat, he felt conspicuous as he rode in the palatial
limited toward Washington. Just as he was leaving his
seat for the diner, a lovely little woman left stranded
through the absent-mindedness of her husband appealed to
the man from Arizona for her dinner. Later she won over
the one vote needed for statehood ratification - that of
her husband.
The Bad Men
The bad men of Arizona have also awakened the fancy
of some. Rose del Nieve, in Early Days in Arizona, gives
the bad man, placed in a serious life situation that calls
for brotherly help. The two bad men do all they can to
aid an infant and mother who have been deserted by the
father and husband.
Billy Brazelton by Dan Rose tells of Arizona's own
highwayman. He was brave and daring, yet always gentle.
Always choosing to rob those who he knew were well provided
with means, he continued his depredations without the loss
of a single life. In the end he foolishly confided in a
partner who turned him over to the 1av1.
The gambler will always live in Shar10t Hall's The
Mercy of Nachis.
"Knox the gambler - Felix Knox:
Trickster, short-card man, if you will;Rustler, brand-wrangler - all of that -
But Knox the man and the hero stilllFor life at best is a hard-set game;
The cards come stacked from the Dealer's hand;
48
And a man plays king of his luck just once -
When he faces Death in the last grim stand.
"Knox had been drummer in Crook's command;A devil of daring lived in his drum;
With his heart in the call and his hand on the sticksThe dead from their sand-filled graves might come.
Crippled for life, he drummed his last;Shot through the knees in the Delshay fight -
But he crawled to a rock and drummed "Advance f.,Till the tonto renegades broke in flight.
"That was the man who shamed Na-chistTwo miles out on the Clifton Road
Beyond York's Ranch the ambush lay, -
Till a near, swift-moving dust-whirl showedWhere the buckboard came. Na-chis crouched low
And gripped his rifle and grimly smiledAs he counted his prey with hawk-like eyes;
, The men, the woman, the little child.
"They halted - full in the teeth of the trap.Knox saw - too late. He weighed the chance
And thrUst the whip in the driver's handAnd wheeled the mules: tBack l Back to the ranch!
"
He cried as he jumped; 'I'll hold them off.Whip for your lifel' The bullets sung
Like S:warming bees through the narrow pass,And whirred and hu�med and struck and stung.
"But he turned just once - to wave his handTo'wife and children; then straight ahead,
With yell for yell and shot for shot,Till the rocks of the pass were spattered red;
And seven bodies bepainted and grimSprawled in the cactus and sand below;
And seven souls of the Devil's kinWent with him the road that dead men know.
"Ay! That was Knox! When the cowboys came
On that day-old trail of the renegade,Na-chis the butcher, the merciless,
This was the tribute the chief had paidTo the fearless dead. No scarring fire -
No mangling knife - but across the faceHis ovm rich blanket d�awn smooth and straight,
Stoned and weighted to keep its place." 1
Again and again the squaw man has been used es a theme.
1. Hall, Sharlot Cactus and Pine. pp. 38-40.
49
Sharlot Hall's -The Squaw Man is her strongest poem.
"The night wind whines in the chaparral and grievesin the mesquite gloom;
It talks of a land it never knew; it smells ofwhite plum bloom;
It is full of voices I used to hear - voicesI've tried to target;
Strange, with the things that lie between, howthey haunt and hold me yet!
"I �mother and choke in these cabin walls - thelogs seem bars of steel;
And the flame of the fire-place sears my eyes tillthe things that are not seem real;
On the bare dirt floor by the leaping fire shecrouches, my brown-skinned wife:
The thing that I sinned and lusted for - andbought with the price of my life.
"Bought with the price of my life paid down,boy dreams and manhood's hope;
(My soul is caught in a hangman's noose and myown hands knotted the rope!)
I saw her crouched in the campfire's glow - Iforgot that my skin wes white -
.
'Twas the greed of man for a woman - and God was
off-guard that night.
"And now wherever my feet may walk there's a shadekeeps step with me;
The soul of my race which I did not see - and nowI m�st always see.
She rocks on her knees by the leaping fire withcroonings low and wild,
And close on her breast as she sways and singsis sleeping a half-breed child.
"But I'm seeing far to another fire and a littlelow-walled room;
And I hear the voices that haunt the night andI smell the white plum bloom. -
God! and I'm barred by eternal bars - exiled bya changeless law!
.
And my white-haired mother is waiting there - andhere is my dark-faced squaw!
"And here is a life like a chance-struck sparkfrom flint on careless steel -
Yet bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh - theShape' of my sin made real!
50
Bone of my bone - yet alien all - behind himruns a line
Of long-haired, painted, blanketed bucks -
he is theirs as much as mine.
"His cheek is dark with their savage blood anddeep in his hard black eyes
I see the light of their ancient hates, the fireof their war trails rise;
If the shade of my sweet white mother came towatch an hour by his bed,
She'd meet a black, bark-skirted squaw squattingat foot or head.
"0 God! the things that we know too late - thathad given us wit to live!
The things we do in the evil hour no price can
remit or forgive!From dawn to dusk, from prime to wane, my years
may whirl or lag,But my heart is sunk in a sea of tears where a
hundred mill stones drag.
"I'm sick to the soul! I want my own; I'mstarved for a white man's life!
I want the girl of my boyhood's love that Imeant to make my wife;
I want a child of my color - I want a son of
my race -
To wear my name in pride, not shame, and lookmy kind in the face." I
Pioneers
A tribute to the frontiersmen is paid by Ned White
of Bisbee in The Old Frontiersman.
"They are gone, the old frontiersmenThey have crossed the big diVide,They have crossed the silent river,Gone to rest on the other Side,�ow we hear the tales repeated,Tales of danger, hate and fears,More like legends of traditions,From the shores of yester years.
1. Hall, Sharlot Cactus 'and Pine. pp. 228-230.
51
fTTales o:f dauntless western gun men
In the days that knew no law�t the trusty old six-shooterAnd who was quickest on the draw.Many stories, some pathetic,And some in comedy are told,Shattered hopes and wasted riches,In the days of blood and gold.
"Broken hearts and lost ambitions,Tales of friendship, love and hate,Tales of blood shed, lust and dangerOf the past, they now relate,Gone indeed the old frontiersmen.With the cowboys of the west,They are sleeping on the Mesas,On the twilight shores of rest.
"Oh how well, do I remember,The restless eager, roving bands,Seeking homes in vast waste places,In the sun kissed western lands,I can see the tired procession,And the crafty Indian braves,Hear the war cry, see the struggle,See the lonely wayside graves.
"Oh, what thoughts, what boyhood memories,Do the scenes to me recall,Of weary men, and haggard women,Seemingly about to fall,Fearless men, and patient women,They who fought to win the west,Are sleeping now in silent placesOn the sunset shores of rest." I
Theodore O'Hara, in The Pioneer, has written the
epitaph for the pioneer.
"A dirge for the brave old pioneerlThe patriarch of his tribet
He sleeps -- no pompous pile marks where,No lines his deeds describe.
1. White, ned The Old Frontiersman.Magazine, July, 1919.
r1:he Arizona
52
"They raised no stone above him here,Nor carved his deathless name;
An empire is his sepulchre,His epitaph is fame." 1
People of Today
The air pilots of today become characters for some of
Arizona's poets and short-story writers. Glarwell Richardson
uses Koch Field, the municipal'eirport at Flagstaff, as tbe
background for his Above the Rainbow.
"Jims found Coke Airport nestling among thetall pines, with the towering, white-capped SanFrancisco peaks above. The field was rather largeand in much better condition than he expected tofind in such a small place as Flagstaff. On thewest side were a number of small hangars and twoplanes, on the east were long hangars and otherbuildings above which hung a Sign announcing thatthis was The Rainbow Bridge Transportation Company.Beneath this in small lettering was the name ofDick Richards, Prop. To Jims' further surprise,in front of the hangars at the proper distance, a
long white line ran the length of the fields.That one thing brought back with a jolt the war
days. Three huge planes were on this dead-line,mechanics working on them busily.
"After a few minutes of conversation with a
man who stood by looking on, Jims learned that thiswas a live wire company. They owned seven planesnow and contemplated adding five more, if thetourist business continued picking up. Sightseerswho wished to visit the Bridge were not at alllacking. The Rainbow Bridge Transportation Companyhad m�de a landing field close to the Natural Bridgein Utah at considerable expense; and the trip couldnow be made comfortably by air. It cost a figureless than when the natural wonder could be visitedby pack train, and in far less time, as the tripby air required but a few hours. If they so desired,tourists could go and return in the same day. Mostof them, however, stayed several days." 2
1. O'Hara, Theodore The Pioneer. The Arizona Graphic�ovember 25, 1899.
2. Richardson, Gladwell Above the Rainbow. Flying Stories,May and June, 1929.
53
Hired at this airport as manager is Kruger, a
German, who is :planning to avenge the death of his brother.
During the World War, this brother had met death in a very
unsportsmanlike manner at the hands of the American airmen.
After some weeks Kruger has one American :pilot killed by
having his ship disabled by a German confederate. Jims
takes the air and downs the Germen's plane near the canyon
of the Little Colorado.
Arizona has become the haven of the sick. The Sick-
a-Bed Girl was written by Christianna Glass Gilchrist in
an attempt to quiet, mentally, a little girl who was too
ill to go on a picnic.
"The Breeze told about her,For someway he knew,"
Told the tree and the CloudAnd the Rose Garden, too.
"So the leaves hurried downIn the jolliest swirl,
And they fluttered and dancedFor the Sick-e.-Bed Girl.
"The rain pattered downEach drop a great pearl,
How it chattered and laughedFor the Sick-a-Bed Girl.
"Then a pink rosebud. madeIts petals uncurl,
And said 'I just grewFor the Sick-a-Bed Girl.'
"But the sunbeams rushed outWith a twinkle and twirl
And made her quite well,The Sick-a-Bed Girl.ff 1
1. Gilchrist, Uhristianna Glass The Sick-a-Bed Girl.The St. Nicholas Magazine, September, 1927.
54
J. William Lloyd, who came to Arizona to live with
the Pimas in order to study their traditions, proved to
be an out-of-doors sleeper. Sleeping out of doors is the
theme of My Arizona Bedroom.
"My Arizona bedroomIs beneath the Milky Way,
And the moon is in its ceiling,And the star that tells ot day,And the mountains lift the corners,And the desert lays the floor
Of my Arizona bedroom,Which is large as all outdoor.
no my Arizona bedroomIs ventilated right,
Every wind that's under heavenComes to me with blithe good-night,Comes to me with touch of blessingAnd of ozone one drink more,
In my Arizona bedroom,Which is large as all outdoor.
"0 my Arizona bedrooI!lHas the lightning on its wall,
And the thunders rap the panelsAnd their heavy voices call;And the night birds wing above me
And the owl hoots galoreThrough my Arizona bedroom,
��ich is large as all outdoor.
no my Arizona bedstead,It sometimes seems to me,
Is afloat in middle heavenWith each star an argosy:And the tide that tUrns at midnightDrifts us down to morning's shore,
Floats us, stars and bed and bedstead,On the ocean of outdoor.
"0 my Arizona bedroomIs beneath the splendid stars,
And the clouds roll up the curtainsAnd the windows have no bars,And I see my God in heaven
As the ancients did of yore,In my Arizona. bedroom
.
Which is large as all outdoor." 1
These are only a few of the interesting types of
Americans that are written about in the literature of
Arizona.
1. Lloyd, J. William Songs of the Desert. pp. 18-19
CHAPTER III
�ATURE IN THE LITERATURE OF ARIZONA
Nature
The Climate
How nature has become an influence in the writings of
Arizona is evident from the first. Kino wrote in 1699:
"For most of these lands are very rich andfertile, most of the Indians industrious, manyof the lands mineral bearing, and most of themof a climate so good that it is very similar tothe best of Europe, to that of Castilla, to thatof Andalucia, to that of Italy, to that of France,to that of Germany; because most of this NorthAmerica is in the same degrees of altitude of thenorth pole or geographical latitude as Europeitself, that is 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42,43,44, 45, 46, 47,48, 49, 50 degrees and upward;also because this North America is so extensivethat it exceeds all kingdoms and empires andprovinces of all Europe." 1
When Charles O. Erown, at one time owner of the most
famous gambling hall in Tucson, wrote The History of Arizona,
it must have been the heat that brought forth the doggerel.
Yet, his having been one of the very few who escaped, on
his way to Arizona, from a massacring party prepared for
them by the Yumas might have colored his outlook.
"The devil was given_permission one dayTo select him a land for his special sway,So he hunted around for a month or more
And fUssed and fUmed and terribly swore;But at last was delighted a country to view,Where the prickly pear and the mesquite grew.With a survey brief, without further excuse,He took his stand near the Santa Cruz.
"He saw there was some improvement to make,For he felt his ovm reputation at stake.An idea struck him and he swore by his hornsTo make a complete vegetation of thorns.He studded the land with the prickly pear,
1. Kino, Eusiblo Historical Memoirs. Vol. 1, p. 212.
57
And scattered the cactus everywhere;The Spanish dagger, sharp-pointed and tall,And last the cholla - the worst of all.
"He imported. the Apaches direct from hell,And, the ranks of the sweet-scented train to swell,A legion of skunks, whose loud, loud smellPerfumed the country he loved so well.And then for his life he could not see whyThe river should any more water supply;And he swore if he gave it another dropYou might take his head and horns for a mop.
"He filled the river with sand till 'twas almost dry,And poisoned the land with alkali;And. promised himself on its slimy brinkThe control of all who from it should drink.He saw there was one more improvement to make -
He imported the tarantula and rattlesnake,That all who might come to this country to dwellWould be sure to think it was almost hell.
"He fixed the heat at one hundred and seven,And banished forever the dew from heaven;But remarked as he heard his furnace .roar,That the heat might reach five hundred or more,And after he had fixed things so thorny and well,He said, 'I'll be·d----d if this don't beat hell!'Then he flopped his wings and away he flew,And vanished from earth in a blaze of blue.
"And now, no doubt, in some corner of hellHe gloats o'er the work he has done so well,And vows that Arizona cannot be beatFor scorpions, tarantulas, snakes and heat;For with his own realm it compares so wellHe feels assured it surpasses hell." 1
Also from a humorous point of view Arizona's trite
expression is immortalized by Alvin K. Stabler in It Is
Unusual.
"If it rains or if it snows,It's unusual.
If it's calm or if it blows,It's unusual.
1. Brown, Charles o. The History of Arizona. The ArizonaMagazine, September, 1916. p. 6.
58
�If the frost makes short a crop,It's unusual.
If the prices take a drop,It's unusual.
"If mosquitoes do you pester,It's unusual.
If there sweeps a sharp nor'wester,It's unusual.
nIf a man dies nature's way,It's unusual.
If diseases any slay,It's unusual.
"If, in fact, there's anythingThat opposes or molests you,
It's unusual;If you have a pain, by jing!
It's unusual." 1
The Rains
The rain in Arizona has also inspired poetry. When
"the whole hot land seems dyin' in a dream", badger Clark
says:
"But across the sky-line comes a thing that'sstrange and new,
A little cloud of saddle blanket size.It blackens 'long the mountains and bulges up the blueAnd shuts the weary sun-glare from our eyes.Then the lightnin's gash the heavens and the
thunder jars the worldAnd the gray of fallin' water wraps the plains,And 'cross the burnin' ranges, down the wind, the
word is whirled:'Here's another year of livin', and the Rainsl'
"You've seen your fat fields ripplin' with thetreasure that they hoard;
Have you seen a mountain stretch and rub its eyes?Or bare hills lift their streamin' faces up and
thank the Lord,Farily tremblin' with their gladness and surprise?
1. Stabler, Alvin K. Arizona Sunshine. p. 9.
59
Have you heard the 'royos singin' and the newbreeze hummin' gay,
As the greenin' ranges shed their dusty stains -
Just a whole dead world sprung back to lifeand laughin' in a day!
Did you ever see the comin' of the Rains?" 1
The force of the rain in the washes is well told by
:Minnie K. Bisby in The Torrent.
"A wash - a bed of thirsty sand and siltAnd walls of brown above it, upright, loom;
Mesquite and cats claw on precarious verge -
Their roots exposed - but wait a certain doom,'If torrent comes.
"On leaf and ground the rain comes pattering:A murmur, then a boom, a thunderous roar;
The clouds are grim; a cloudburst in the hills;.The ear foretells what eye will soon explore,
Vfuen torrent comes.
"It comes, a mighty wall of liquid wrath,A brown and beastly thing of virile power,
It rears, it tosses, flings its ruthless arms,And reaches for the things that cling and cower -
The torrent wildl
"It plows the soil and holds it in its arms;It beats the wall; it tears its victims dOVID;
It lifts and drives before it bulky stones,While on its breast is helpless flotage strown,
As torrent pours.
"It plunges at the bank, it rounds a curve,Great, muddy waves heave up - a shuddering sight -
Its frantic speed a race from heights to sea,It yells a challenge to defy its might,
As torrent boils.
"What's that? A hand upraised? A cry for help?There is no help! That liquid grip is death�
Thank heaven! No. 'Tis but a twisted branch,The· moaning of a reed in gasping breath,
While torrent heaves.
"They say that once a man - defiant - sure -
But why repeat the piteous refrain?
1. Clark, Badger Sun and Saddle Leather. pp. 146-7.
60
The dragon knows no mercy while it lives,But short and rapid its tempestuous reign,
The torrent fierce!
"'Tis spent, 'tis past, its hour of triumph gone.And where the tumult heaved and hissed in hate,
Amazing emptiness and tortured walls:And gnarled and wounded shapes their woe relate,
When torrent's gone." 1
The Snow
The beauty of snow-capped peaks in all their majesty
is sung by J. William Lloyd in San Francisco Mountain.
"0 unspeakable sublime!Stainless and terrible,Purity in heaven;Above all, above all gleaming;Whiteness, whiteness,Silence -
What teach you?" 2
The cruelty of the snow is given by Will C. Barnes
in his haunting tale, the basis of which is an actual ex
perience, Lost in the Petrified Forest. Peg Leg tells the
story as all are seated around the fire in the winter camp.
We all gave a yell, and in a few minutes a
man named Hart rode into camp. We all knowed him.He was a sheep man with a ranch over on the 'totherside of the Petrified Ebrest. He was nearly frozean' half crazy with excitement, an' 'twas some minutesafore we could git him to tell what was a hurtin' him.
"Boys,fJ he says, "for God's sake git up an'help me, find my wife an' chillun."
An' then he told us he had been away from hisranch all the day before, at one of his sheep campsover on the Milky Holler. Vfuen he left in the mornin'his wife tole him she'd hitch up the hosses to thebuckboard after dinner an' take the kids an'drivedown to the railroad station 'an' git the mail, an'
1. Blsby, Minnie K. The Torrent. Written in my class atFlagstaff, 1926.
2. Lloyd, J. William Songs of the Desert. p. 21.
61
git back in time for supper. You know it's'bout eight miles down to the station atCarrizo.
Comin' horne at night in the wust of thestorm, Hart had found the shack empty, hiswife not home yit an' the hosses gone. Thinkin'that the storm had kept 'em, he waited an houror two, when he got so blamed oneasy he couldn'twait no longer, but saddled up his hoss ant drugit for the station. When he got there they toldhim his wife had left 'bout an hour by sun, an'they hadn't seen nothin' of her sence, althoughthey had begged her not to start back, an' thewind a-blowin' like it was. 'Twas then aboutas dark as the inside of a cow, and leavin' themen at the station to faller him, Hart struck outacross the prairie, ridin' in big Circles, andtryin', but without no luck, to cut some "signlfof the buckboard and hosses. You know, fellers,liow them sandy mesas are about there, and,between the driftin' sand and the snow, everymark had been wiped out slick and, clean. Thenhe pulled his freight for the ranch, thinkin'mebbeso she'd got back while he were away; but
nary a sign of them was there about the place.He struck out again� makin' big circles, andfirin' his six�shooter and hollerin' like an
Apache Injin, all the time a-listenin' an' a
prayin' fer some answer. Then he heerd our
shots and thought sure he'd found her, fer shealways carried a gun when she went out alone,and he jist hit the high places till he ran ontoour camp and he war sure disappointed when heseen us an' not her.
'Tain't no use for to tell you that we gota move onto ourselves. You've all seen theCimarron Kid git a move on an' tear round andjust bust hisself to get out to the herd in themarnin' to relieve the last guard, along in thefall when the boss was pickin"out men for thewinter work. Well, that was the way we all toreround, an' as everybody kept up a night hoss(you know what a crank that feller Wilson was
'bout night hosses; he'd make every man keep one
up if he had the whole cavyyard in a ten-acrefield), we soon had a cup of coffee into us an'was ready to ride slantin'. Pore Hart was so
nigh crazy that he couldn't say nothin', an''twas hard to see a big, strong feller as he was
all broke up like.By this time 'twas gettin' daylight in the
east an' we struck out, scatterin' evry way, but
62
keepin' in sight an' hearin' of each other.'Bout two miles from camp I ran slap dab ontothe buckboard, with one of the hosses tied upto the wheel, an' 'tother gone. The harness ofthe other hoss laid on the ground, an' fro� thesign, she had evidently unharnessed the gentlesthoss of the two, an' got on him, with the kids,an' tried to ride him bareback. I fired a coupleof shots, which brought some of the other boys tome, an' we follered up the trail, step by step,'cause 'twas a hard trail to pick out, owin', as
I said, to the sand an' snow.
Pretty soon we come to where she had got offthe hoss an' led him for a ways; then we found thetracks of the kids; an' we judged they'd all gotso cold they had to walk to git warm; an' all thattime my fingers an' ears was tinglin' an achin' ,they was so cold, an' what was them pore kids an'that little woman goin' to do, when a big, stoutpuncher like me was shiverin' an' shakin' like a
old cow under a cedar in a norther?Bimeby we struck the hoss standin' there all
humped up with the cold, the reins hooked over a
little sage bush. I sent one of the boys back withthe hoss, an' tole him to hitch up to the buckboardan' foller on, fer I knowed shore we'd need it toput their pore frozen bodies on when we found 'em.
Here we saw signs where she'd tried to builda fire, Lord A'mighty, you know how hard it is tofind anything to burn ropnd that there PetrifiedForest country, an' she only had three or fourmatches, an' nothin' to make a fire catch with.Then she started on ag'in, an' I judged she'd gota star to eo by, 'cause she kep' almost straightnorth to'ds the railroad. By the trail, she was
a-carryin' the youngest kid, a boy 'bout two yearsold, an' leadin' the other, which was a little gal'bout five.
.
Right here, fellers, she showed she was fit tobe the wife of a man livin' in such a country. Sheknowed mighty well that she'd be follered, an' thather trail would be hard to find, so what does she dobut tear pieces of the gingham skirt she had on, an'hang 'em along on a sage brush here, an' a Spanishbayonet there, so's we could foller faster. Whenwe struck this sign an' seed what sh'd done, one ofthe boys says, says he, "Fellers, ain't she a trump,an' no mistake?" An' so she shore was. 1
1. Barnes, Will c. Tales from the X-Bar Horse Camp.pp. 166-9.
63
Me an' Little Bob, who was with me, was
so sure that she was all right that we quitfollerin' the trail an' jist got down the cliffanywhere we could. When we got to the bottom an'clear of the rocks, we set out to cut for hertrail ag'in, when Little Bob says, says he,"There she is, Jack." I
'Twas easy enuff to read the whole thingnow. She'd come to the edge of the mesa an' seen
the lights in the station house, for they get up'bout four O'clock every mornin' to get breakfastfor the section men. Climbin' down the cliff hadused her up, an' knowin' she was so clost to help,she had set down on a big flat rock at the bottomto rest a minute before starting to walk the milefrom the foot of the mesa to the station. To setdown, as cold and tired as she was, meant sleep,an' to sleep was shore death that night, an' shewent to sleep an' never woke up no more.
The little boy was cuddled up ag'in her underher shawl, with the peaceful1est look on his littleface you ever see, an' the little girl was a-Ieanin'on her lap an' a-Iookin' up into her face, with thebig tears frozen on her cheeks, an' so natural thatit was hard to believe she was dead. 2
The Sand and the Sand Storms
Many writers have been moved by the treachery of the
sand and sand storms. Of Kino, Bolton writes:
"One of his routes was over a forbiciding,waterless waste, which has since become the graveyard of scores of travelers who have died of thirst,because they lacked Father Kino's pioneering skill.I refer to the Camino del Diablo, or Devil's Highway,from Sonoita to the Gila. In the prosecution ofthese journeys Kino's energy and hardihood were almost beyond belief." 3
Kino was told of an inland route to California; but he
wrote on April 1, 1701,
1. Ibid. p. 170.2. Ibid. p • 171.3. Bolton, Herbert Eugene Kino's Historical Memoirs.
Vol. 1, p , 22.
64
"There still lay before us thirty leaguesor three days' journey of stretches of sand suchthat they had neither water nor pasturage." 1
In 1702, Kino returned from California by a new route
of which he wrote:
"Therefore, on March 12 we set out on thenew road, but having traveled about eighteenleagues over most difficult sand dunes and withcontinuous, violent, and most pestiferous wind,during the whole day we found·neither a drop ofwater nor the least bit of pasturage." 2
The most artistic poeti�al handling of the sand storm
is that of Andrew Downing in his Song of' the Sand Storm.
"I am the pitiless Sand Storm,The whelp of a tameless breed, -
ltr dam the desert, my sire the air;I stealthily come from my shadowy lair,
And away, and away I speed!
tTl lie in the sun on the mesa
Outstretching my yellow length;I drowse and I purr in a tigerish way,
Then suddenly leap on my terrified preyWith more than a tiger's strength!
"1 scar the cliffs in my fury,Effacing their ancient runes;
I polish the skeleton bones that lieUnnoted, unburied - and scurrying by,
Heap higher the gray sand dunes.I
"11he arrogant sentinel mountains ,
Make challenge, - yet little I reck;And vainly the obdurate cactus sets
In my pathway a million of bayonets, -
It never my course can check.
"The pace of the caravan �uickensAt the thought of my wild caprice;
And the thunder rouses and beats his drumsTo tell the world that the Sand Storm comes -
And the songs and the laughter ceasel�,
1
John C. Van Dyke in The Desert says this of the sand
whirls:
"There were tracts where nothing at allgrew - miles upon miles of absolute waste withthe pony's feet breaking through an alkalinecrust. And again, there were dry lakes coveredwith silt; and vast beds of sand and gypsum,white as snow and fine as dust. The pony's feetplunged in and came out leaving no trail. Thesurface smoothed over as though it were water.Fifty miles away one could see the desert sandwhirls moving slowly over the beds in tallcolumns' two thousand feet high and shining likeshafts of marble in the sunlight. How majesticallythey moved, their feet upon earth, their headstowering into the sky!" 2
Many recent writers have been prompted to put in a
sand storm in the course of their themes. Harrison Conrard
has done so in both Desert Madness and The Golden Howl,
Forrestine C. Hooker in When Geronimo Rode, Harold Bell
Wright in The Winning of Barbara Worth, and Mary Roberts
Rinehart in The Out Trail.
The Desert
Scars or marks left on the desert in ages past provoke
interesting thoughts from John C. Van Dyke:
"By a strange coincidence at this verymoment the sharp-toed print of a deer's hoofappears in the ground before me. But it looksa little odd. The impression is so clear cutthat I stoop to examine it. It is with no
little astonishment that I find it sunk in
1. Downing, Andrew2. Van Dyke, John C.
The Trumpeters. pp. 177-8.The Dese�t. p. 16.
66
stone instead of earth - petrified in rockand overrun with silica. The bare suggestiongives one pause. How many thousands of years'ago was that impression stamped upon the stone?By what strange chance has it survived destruction?And while it remains quite perfect to-day - thevagrant hoof-mark of a desert deer - what has become of the once carefully guarded footprints ofthe Sargons, the Pharaohs and the Caesars? Withwhat contempt Nature sometimes plans the survivalof the least fit, and breaks the conqueror on hisshield!" 1
The other side of the desert, its clean, calm, restful
side, has also made its appeal.
"Some long for the far-away city,With its laughter and music and joys,
For the hustle and bustle and hurry,For the bright lights and all that alloys.
"But to those of us on the desert,With the canyons and mountains so steep
With sunsets like paintings on canvas,And the rush of the wind as we sleep.
"'Tis enough for our simple pleasures,These communings and nature to share.
We need not the big, crowded City,But are content on the desert so bare.
"Under the blue sky so clOUdless,And a silence so vast and so deep,
With the light of the campfire around us,We roll down our blankets for sleep." 2
The desert has appealed to the mother in The Desert
l'1iother by Edith D. Rockwood of Yuma.
"Before my babe was born I planted treesTo shield from Desert Sun his little head;
I planted grass, that underneath his feetThe burning Desert Sand might not be spread.
1. Ibid. p. 7.2. Everett, E. W. A Desert Reverie. The Arizona Magazine,
January, 1917.
67
"I tended them with watchful, tireless care;'Gainst cruel Sun and his two allies strong,
The blighting Desert Wind and Barren Soil,I fought a royal battle, hard and long.
"Hut Desert Sun cannot so fiercely burnAs Mother Love, and so I won the day;
And now beneath my spreading, sheltering trees,On cooling grass I see my child at play.·
"Ah, would that I could shelter evermore
His onward way, and thus beneath his feetSpread clean and fragrant grasses where I know
More pitiless than Desert Sun will beat.1f 1
As Arizona is not without humorists, so also have
they found materials within her borders that they satirize.
Dick Wick Hall has found the far-away loneliness of Salome
with all its desert life and surroundings excellent
material in The Salome Sun.
"Salome always has kept up its AverageAnnual Growth of 100% a Year -- 19 People nowin 19 Years -- but after going through thePanic of 1907, the World War and 3 DemocraticState Asphyxiations without a Slump, it looksas if this here Greasewood Golf Course was
going to depopulate the Town. We felt allswelled up at 1st when Eastern Tourists goingthrough all said they never saw Nothing Like Itnowhere before -- a Golf Club where Everybodyin Town had their Own Hole, but we've eithergot to close up the Town or the Golf Course or
else get somebody in hereto work.
After the golf course had been built, Dick Wick Hall
continues:
nAIl our Bunkers and Hazards are Natural.Anything that don't move or is dead, like a SandWash or a Mesquite Thicket or a Dead Steer on theFar a Way, we call a Bunker. If it's Alive, likea rattlesnake or a Cow, we call it a Hazard
1. Rockvvood, Edith D. The Desert Mother. The ArizonaMagazine, November, 1915.
68
and if She is Young and Ras a Calf it's ExtraHazardous.
rtThat's why our Caddies all go horseback.Lizards don't count, unless they get above yourKne es •
fI 1
Desert Growth
The ordinary desert growth has attracted Will H.
Robinson. He writes of it, in a pleasing literary style,
in the chapter entitled "Desert Plant Pioneers - Trees and
Shrubs", in Under Turquoise Skies.
"This, then, is the land that the plantsof the Southwest have reached in their longjourney, through many ancestors, from the lagoon.And these children of the desert accept theiradverse conditions so gallantly, so bravely!Their skins may be wrinkled by inclement weather,and their wardrobe of leaves shabby enough, yetwhen the days of their spring fiesta come theysmilingly hide all suggestions of poverty in thebravery of their blossoms.
"It is interesting, too, to notice the ingenious methods used by the various plants inorder that their living may not only be possible,but, in spite of their difficult environment,fairly comfortable. With all the plants everyprecious drop of water obtained either by directrainfall or by drainage must be economically,even parsimoniously, used.
"As has been suggested, none of these valiantcolonists can afford the luxury of large leaves.Large leaves demand too much water; so not only dothe plants adopt the fashion of wearing them small,but sometimes, after a short spring season, discardthem altogether.
"A conspicuous example of this is found in thepalo verdes. Only in the favorable weather afterwinter rains will they indulge themselves with theirtiny leaves, even though they know that their povertywill demand that they be soon left off. During thedesert spring fiesta, in April and May, these treesfairly cover themselves with a flame of yellowblossoms. The ocatilla, too, is of the same brave,
1. Hall, Dick Wick The Salome Sun. The Saturday EveningPost, lll!arch 29, 1924.
69
gay school, only she wears her colors in March.First blossoms of the spring they are -- thesebrilliant red tips on long coachwhip stalks." I
An interesting description of the giant cacti is that
given by James O. Pattie of fur-trapping fame.
"A species of tree, which I had never seen
before, here arrested my attention. It grows tothe height of forty or fifty feet. The top iscone shaped, and almost without foliage. The barkresembles that of the prickly pear; and the bodyis covered with thorns. I have seen some threefeet in diameter at the root, and throwing uptwelve distinct shafts." 2
To Sharlot Hall, in The Desert Queen, the saguara is
a queen of ancient times.
"I was Zenobia in the olden timeAnd ruled the desert from Palmyra's Walls;
I flung my challenge to imperial RomeSo far that still across the years it calls
In proud defiance - but my halls are dust;The jackal suns him at the temple door;
The wind-blown sand hide street and corridorAnd heap the temple floor.
"Forgotten is Aurelian and his might;Above his grave the beggar children smile;
And I, who ruled the East in other days,Am mistress now of many a Western mile:
Crowned with a coronal of snowy flowers,And armed and guarded with a thousand spears,
I dream - while dim mirages recreateIn shimmering light the splendor of past years." 3
Of the origin of the giant cacti, Alvin K. Stabler has
written �he following legend:
"Then was a ruler of the people who was knownas Drinker Man. During his reign there came a great
1. Robinson, Will H. Under TUrquoise Skies. pp. 261-2.2. Pattie, James O. The Personal Narrative of James O.
Pattie of Kentucky, p. 104.3. Hall, Sharlot Cactus and Pine. p. 67.
70
tlood which destroyed most of the people, andin order to repopulate the earth, Drinker Mansent the Rosesucker and the Coyote to bring hima certain kind of mud.
"Of this mud Drinker Man made men whom hescattered over the land - some upstream and some
downstream. Later he sent servants to these men
for the purpose of learning whether they talked.The reports of the servants were that the men didtalk, but the upstream men spoke a language whichthey could not understand; the dovmstream men,although they spoke a language different from theservants; could be understood. These reportsmade Drinker Man very angry, because he had givenno permission for his creatures to develop a
language. As a punishment for their having gonecontrary to his wishes, Drinker 1:a.n struck manyof the upstream men with sudden death, and leftthem standing throughout the country just wherethey were when overtaken by the calamity. Thestroke was of such character that they were
transformed into giant cacti, with arms thrownup as if to shield themselves from Drinker Man'svengeance.f1 1
Another legend, How the Flowers get their Color,has
come from the same author. One of the Corn Maidens gathers
the spray from Bridal Veil Falls in Cataract Canyon, and
2wherever she lets fall a drop, flowers grow and blossom.
The Fines
The pines also have spoken in numerous ways to many,
many writers. The Song of the Pines is the song of peace
of a nation after strife.
"When the long array of shadowsHad van�uished the hosts of light,I saw the purple eveningSwoon into the arms of night;
1. Stabler , Alvin K. Origin of the Giant Cacti. Manu-script loaned by Mrs. Stabler, librarian atPhoenix Union High School.
2. Ibid.
71
"And a sob crept through the forest -
A low sob, choked with tears,Like the grief of a mother-nationO'er her war-slain children's biers.
"Then came a note of wailingThat echoed from pine to pineTill it rose in the measured choralOf a solemn dirge divine.
"It swelled to the mist-veiled mountain,It sank to the fallow plain,Till the great pines throbbed with sorrowFor the vanquished hosts and the slain.
"The soft winds came to soothe themAnd the sweet dews brought them balm,But far too deep was their anguishFor a tender kiss to calm.
"The notes of their lamentationsGrew deep and full and strong,Till it seemed that the far skies echoedThe strains of their mournful song.
"Then I heard a voice in the forestThat the whole world seemed to thrill,And full o'er the plaintive measuresIt cried out: 'Peace! Be still!
"'The vanquished shall give new battleAnd the dead shall live again;And over the hosts of darknessThe Prince of Light shall reign!'
TTl Twas God's own voice in the forest,And 10, even as he spake,In the east I saw the ArcherHis myriad troops awake;
nAnd, in his high car whirling,In his radiant robes of might,He hurled on the fleeing shadowsHis glorious hosts of light.
"Then the great pines calmed their sorrow;But a low sob, half a sigh,Crept out of the heart of the forestEre she saw the Day-god nigh.
72
"In a pine for a while it lingered,Then rose to a tender songThat swelled to majestic measure,Till an anthem, full and strong,
"From pine to· tall pine sweeping,To their sorrow brought surcease;Then it sank to a gentle murmur
Whose one note echoed, 1 Peace! ,It I
In A Forest Lullaby the soul seeks rest in the bosom
of the pines.
".Nestled close to my mother-pine,In an undertone that is half a sighShe sings to me in her soft, sweet tongue,The tender strains of a lullaby,I watch the stars as they journey on
Across the limitless breadth of skies,Till my mother-pine bends low her arms
And shuts them out from my drooping eyes.
"And then, as close to her feet I lie,Low bending over her pilgrim child,(�nile far in the wood the mountain windWaketh his long notes, weird and wild)My mother-pine, in her strange, sweet tongue,With half a wail in her cadence deep,Lulls me to rest as gently she sings,'Sleep! sleep! my pilgrim child, oh, sleep!'ft 2
Animal Life
The animal life of Arizona in all its pecularities has
appealed in various ways to writers. The Desert 1:ourner, a
fable by Etta Gifford Young of Phoenix at the time it was
written, is only one of the legends of the coyote.
Long ago, ere the paleface ever saw this
land, when its desert floor resounded but to theheavy tread of the buffalo and the scamperinghoof beats of ponies, it was the home of our tribe.And then as now, in the chief's family, there was
1. Conrard, Harrison2. Ibid. p. 52.
�livira. pp. 50-1.
73
always one son to whom was given the power ofprophecy, miraculous healing and incantation,and that son became his father's successor. Asye know, I am the seventh son of my grandfather'sseventh son, and we who inherit the magic giftare always called "Macato" , which meaneth, "Heon whom resteth the blessing of God." .Back inthe mists which surround the dawn days ofcreat ion, came the first l�acato, fully formedfrom the hand of the Great Father, and so, ere
my Steed of Death is fitted with his trappingsand while the incense of my pipe still sweetensthe air about me, I will tell ye, my children,of the Macato who was my great grands ire , and hiseldest son. This son early showed signs of thewondrous gift, and the father watched the growthand development of the younger Macato with ex
ceeding great care, and, as is the habit of thefathers, early began planning his future.
One, day after the death of the ruler of a neighboring
tribe, the daughter Neahma was brought to the Macato's
house. Not being happy in this household, she would sit
in the mesquite trees near an arroya and sing the love
song of her tribe.
"0 my warrior lover, thou'rt away,Thy bow now speeds thy arrow in the fray,The golden sunlight seemeth turned to gray,As watching, waiting, lonely here I stay,o my warrior lover, thou'rt away.ll
And here Aguila found her.
Aguila was the son of the Royal Mourner. He loved
Neahma. As time went on, he "donned the black headdress
of crows' feathers and the mantle of white fox skins, and
sat in the seat of his fathers."
Now my grandsire, seeing the maiden fullgrown in stature and beauty, called her to himand told her that she was to be honored aboveall women of his tribe. He had chosen her as
the wife of his son and a mother of the line ofMacatos, and being old and full of his o�� thought,
74
pe saw not her pale lips and the dumb agonyof her eyes and knew not that her low acqulescencecame from gratitude for his meny years of tendercare, and not from love or ambition.
As ye know, my children, our people are notgiven to the sobs and cries of the white man, andthe Princess Neahma bade farewell to her lover,promising to be faithful to him in heart thoughshe must be false in life, telling him that shefelt they would soon be joined in the land ofbrave spirits; then, with the stolid endurance ofour race, she saw the preparations made for hermarriage with Macato. But the grief of the redman, like the earthworm, burrows deep, and some
times his heart aches and breaks as surely as
does the heart of his paleface brother.Through all the mazes of the marriage dance,
went Aguila, leading the young braves, who knewnot how fast their feet Vlere trampling down theearth upon the grave of his hopes. Bravely heate of the barbecued venison and drank the fieryjuice of the mescal; yet bitterer to him than a
brew of gourd root, was the meat and wine of thewedding feast.
A very short time after the wedding, in an outburst
with the Hassayampa tribe, the young Macato was killed.
��en they returned to the camp, the braveold warrior bowed above his son in almost hopelessgrief, believing that before him lay the last ofthe famous line of the Macatos. He saw the stillform laid in state upon a couch of skins in hiswigwam, then sending for the Royal Mourner, hetold him to prepare for the ceremony of burial.But Aguila, standing before him, replied:
"Y.y chief, ever have I done thy bidding, as
did my father before me; when thy youngest son
died five moons ago, three nights and days I satbeside the funeral fire on yon high mountain anddripped tar from the burning greasewood bush uponthe cere-cloth to bind about his body. And now,my chief, thou hast told me to perform the dutiesof my office and mourn thy son who was my rival.He knew, 0 chief, if thou didst not, that the bridethou gavest him, went with faltering step and slowlybeating heart; her love was mine. And so I will notmourn, 0 chief, but rather do I exult and call aloudin joy, that death'so soon hath set her free."
With fiercely flashing eyes, beneath hisbeetling brows, my great grandsire arose to his
75
full height, and pointing a quivering forefinger at the defiant Aguila, said: "Thouinsolent dog! How darest thou stand beforemy face and call my peerless son thy rival?Thinkest thou that because I am old, I havelost the power of enchantment, which is alwaysthe gift 'of the Macatos? Thou hast rebelledand refused to do thy duty, as becometh thepolder of thy office; so now I abolish forevermore the line of Royal Mourners in the tribe ofthe Uacatoways; henceforth thou Aguila and allwho are akin to thee shall be coyotes and knownto all men as the mourners of the desert, because of your desolate howling as ye skulk aboutthe camps of men." I
The Mourning Dove by Mrs. Frank Last is just one
interpretation of the call of the dove.
"I hear thy plaint, oh mourning dove;The crooning protest of they loveComes to me on the evening breezeFrom thy retreat among the trees.
"I know the ache that grips thy heart,The longing pain that is thy partIn this wide world of grief and woe,Where even birds must sorrow know.
"Hast thou, poor dove, grief of thine own
Vfuich thou must bear, as I, alone.That thou dost cry unceasinglyTo me, from shadow of the tree?
"Or, grieving heart, is it for me
Thou mournest thus so plaintively?Hast thou the sympathy to feelWhat I cannot to men reveal?
TfThat thou dost from thy trembling throatSound thus, in tune, the lonely noteWhich swells within my aching breastAnd will not cease, nor be at rest?
"Ah, dove, the world is full of woe
Each heart must its own burden know.
1. Young, Etta Gifford The Desert Mourner. The ArizonaMagazine, October, 1913.
76
But even birds our sorrows bear,And seek witn us the grief to share.
"When thou dost mourn and. utter plaint,Thou s�eakest another's sorrows faint;And as I find relief in tearsThou bindest up the shattered years." 1
The beautiful re-winged blackbird is a messenger from
France to the late Katherine Winsor McCluskey of Phoenix in
The Red Winged Blackbird.
"Troubadour, poet,Back from Provence,Lilting the tales that you told her,Is that a pomegranate flower from France,Fastened so CHIC at your shoulder?
"Troubadour, warrior,You sing as you dance,Whimsical fancies no older;Scarlet the burst of your song to enhanceThat impudent shrug of your shoulder?
"Troubadour, warrior,When with a lanceTilting, you thrust bold and bolder,Was it your red blood, spurting for France,Painted the splash on your shoulder?
"Troubadour, lover,Prince of gallants,Heart-of-flame, never grow colder!You wear your passion and fury for France,Like a live coal on your shoulder." 2
Even the wild hogs brought forth from James O. Pattie
this interesting description of them.
"The bottoms on each side (of Beaver Creek)afford a fine soil for cultivation. From thesebottoms the hills rise to an enormous height, and
1. Last, Mrs. Frank The Mourning Dove. The ArizonaMagazine, July, 1913.
2. McCluskey, Katherine Winsor The Red Winged Blackbird.The Arizona Magazine, March, 1922.
77
their summits are covered with perpetual snow.
In these bottoms are great numbers of wild hogs,of a species entirely different from our domesticswine. They are fox-colored, with their navel on
their back, towards the back part of their bodies.The hoof of their hind feet has but one dew-claw,and they yield an odor not less offensive than our
polecat. Their figure and head are not uhlike our
swine, except that their tail resembles that of a
bear. We measured one of their tusks, of a size so
enormous, that I am afraid to commit my credibility,by giving the dimensions. They remain undisturbedby man and other animals, whether through fear oron account of their offensive odor, I am unable tosay. That they have no fear of man, and that theyare exceedingly ferocious, I can bear testimony myself. I have many times been obliged to climb treesto escape their tusks. We killed a great many, butcould never bring ourselves to eat them. " I
Of the many uses made of the gila monster in story and
novel, the essay, The Gila Monster, A Convicted Suspect,
probably a psuedo-scientific treatment, is alive and
fascinating.
"Gila monsters have been found as far eastas Western Texas and as far south as NorthernSonora. They are found as far west as the PacificOcean and on the north do not get far from theGila and Salt rivers. Formerly they were more
numerous right along the Gila than anywhere elsebut have been killed off in large numbers byhunters and settlers and are nov; more often seen
back in the foothills."A large specimen is twenty inches in length,
nine and one-half inches in girth and forty-threeounces in weight. The record for length is twentythree inches and the average runs from twelve toeighteen inches. When well fed the body and tailseem stuffed to the point of discomfort. Externallythe body appears to be covered with round glassbeads of jet black and orange, in a Navajo pattern.The gila monster is the king of all lizards, so far
1. Pattie, James O. The Personal Narrative of James O.Pattie. Edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites.Early Western Travels - 1748-1846. Vol. 18,pp. 103-4.
78
as colors are concerned. He has a dIose secondin his cousin, the coltetepon.
"The internal organs consist of a completepair of lungs, a heart with two cavities, thesame as a bird's, a stomach, large and smallintestines, liver, pancreas, spleen, testes inthe male and ovaries in the female. The circulation of the blood is slow, the heart makingonly ten or fifteen pulsations per minute.Respiration is extremely slow, air being drawninto the lungs at intervals of about five minutes.
"The body consists of a skeleton, very littlemuscle and the hard, beady skin. The bones are
all small except for the backbone and tail, thespine being about three-fourths of an inch andthe tail bone an inch in circumference. The skullis not covered by skin, though this escapes theeye of the casual observer. The skin of the backmerges into the skull at the neck. The brain isabout the size of a pea, dirty gray in color,slightly flattened and without convolutions. Thetongue is lance shaped and split half an inch back.
"The teeth are very small, being about thesize of a needle and one-eighth of an inch inlength. They are set close together, deep in thejaws. There are from eighteen to twenty-four ineach jaw and they are perfectly solid, having no
grooves or ducts of any kind. Fangs are entirelyabsent from the gila monster's mouth.
"��en the body is opened up a strong anddisagreeable odor fills the room. This odor clingsfor days to objects coming in contact with any ofthe fluids from the body. One fair whiff of themonster's breath will turn an ordinary stomach.t1 1
The rattlesnake is responsible for a vivid chapter in
L. N. Wallace's The Lure of the West. The two Whitworth
brothers had taken refuge in an old cliff dwelling to guard
themselves against the Apaches. Poking into the den of the"
rattlesnakes, the Apaches released them upon the white men.
"From within the adjoining cell came thetumUltuous hissing of the rattlers. Doc whirledto face the crack in the wall. They were coming,that second enemy; eyes and fangs gleamed through
1. Douglas, Ernest The Gila II�onster, A Convicted Suspect.The Arizona Magazine, December, 1910.
79
the dark opening. Bang! - a snake head spunby a thread of skin - crackl - roar! - a bitof loosened wall tumbled! - hUm of rattlers! -
smoke of powder and of pitch pine! - M�tthew feltand heard it; yet, with that strange impassivenessof his nature, fought coolly on. Six times helooked down the short barrel at some red body hedescried mistily through the smoke; six times hepulled the iron finger, and six times he heard thehowl of death. A cold coil crossed his naked foot -
but the rattler struck with his fangs in the deadhorse. A red hand clawed at him from behind thebuckskin's flank. A face gleamed - a face in war
paint framing diabolical laughing eyes. Matthev{struck with the butt end of his pistol; but it was
jerked from him. The lean hands were everywhere.A wild hissing of rattlers! - cold passage of a
snake across his neck! - it was an Apache whostumbled backwards over the ledge with the rattlesnake hanging to his naked shoulder. The tenderfoot felt himself dragged out of the smoke amidunnumbered pounding heels and fists. His handswere wrenched out and back, and then bound to hisfeet; whereupon, throwing him face down over a
cactus, they left him." 1
The faithful burro has also found his place among
literary styles.
"Sad visaged, jaded, sleepy brute,Standing alone on hillside bare;Weary and worn, marked, roained, and mute,Vfuat says thy silly, stupid stare?
"Could'st thou but speak like Balaam's beast,vVhat tale would' st thou to us unfold;Wiser than man wast thou at least,Vfuen besor's son rode thee of old.
"The cross of Christ is on thy back,As on the robe of sainted priest;This heavy burden and thy pack;One crushes man, one crushes beast.
nOn thy prone cross the Savior rode,Upon the cross erect He died;
.
One bore Him on triumphal road,The other to the Father's side.
1. Wallace, L. N. 11he Lure of the West. pp. 56-64.
80
"Thy l�aster thou hast never mocked;Most faithful hast thou been to Him;The dog has never truer stalkedThe prey, than thou has served man's whim.
flJehovah open now thy mouth,That thou may'st tell thy saddening tale,Here is this land of West and South,Where pity doth too sca.rce avail.fI I
Will C. Barnes has found inspiration from the camel
in his interesting tale, "Camel Huntin'ff. The books that
tell most of the animal life and the desert and the
mountains and the canyons and the trails of Arizona are:
w. F. Hornaday's Campfires on Desert and Lava,
Will H. Robinson's Under Turquoise Skies, The
Story of Arizona, and The l��an from Yesterday,
Lynde's The City of Numbered Days,
R. A. Bennet's Bloom of Cactus,
E. T. Foster's Little Tales of the Desert,
Raphael Pumpelly's Across America and ASia,
Henry Inman'S Old Santa Fe Trail,
c. F. Lummis's Mesa, Canlon and Pueblo,
G. w. James's Arizona! the Wonderland,
J. A. l\�unk' s Southwest Sketches, and
Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain.
Natural Wonders
The natural wonders of Arizona appealed from earliest
days to people who came into the state. On June 20, 1776,
1. Donovan, Jr. J. L. The Burrow. The Arizona Magazine,June, 1913.
81
Garces wrote of the nrand Canyon and the Colorado and
the Little Colorado.
"I arrived at a rancheria which is on theRio Jabesua (Colorado), which I named Rio de SanAntonio; and in order to reach this place Itraversed a strait which I called the Nuebo Canfran. This extends about three quarters (of a
league); on one side a very lofty cliff, and on
the other a horrible abyss. This difficult roadpassed, there presented itself another and a
worse one, which obliged us to leave, I my muleand they their horses, in order that we mightclimb do�rn a ladder of wood. (Cataract Canyon)All the soil of these caxones is red; there isin them much mezcal." I
.
On June 28, 1776, he wrote:
"I traveled three and a half leagues on
courses south, southeast, and east, and Iarrived at the Rio Jaquesila, and I called itthe Rio' de San Pedro (Little Colorado). It was
running water enough, but very dirty and red, thatcould not be drunk; but in the pools of the borderof the river there was good water. This riverruns to the westnorthwest, and unites with theRio Colorado a little before this passes throughthe Puerto de Bucareli. The bed of this river, as
far as the confluence, is a trough of solid rock,very profound and wide about a stone's throw, andon that account impassable even on foot." 2
On AU�lst 27, 1776, Garces further wrote of rivers.
"The river which the Yumas call Javill andwe Colorado - not, as some think, because itswaters be always reddened, but it is be cauae , thewhole region being colored, they become tinged inthe month of April, that in which the snows melt,and there are the greatest freshets - is verypeculiar, inasmuch as in all the year it rises andfalls more or less, but in each case for a longspace (of time); it commences to rise from thelast days of February until the end of June, and
1. Coues, Elliott On the Trail of a Spanish �ioneer -
Garces' Diary. Vol. 2, pp. 336-7.2. Ibid. p. 354.
82
continues to subside until the last of December.Its source it draws from the septentrional parts,and even in its beginnings did they assure me itwas full of water. This much is certain, thatfrom the Yutas, who are on the north of the Moqui,unto its disemboguement in the Golfo de Californias,it gathers to itself no notable volume of water;wherefore is it very likely that the greater partof its abundance comes from far beyond. I have notbeen able to obtain more particular informationabout that, though I have solicited it; only thatamong the Yutas there unite with it two smallstreams, of which one comes from the north and theother from the northeast; and among the Yabipaisthe Rio de San Pedro Jaquesila which, though intimes of snow-waters it is of some volume, when Ipassed it was dry. Among the Jabesuas falls inthe Rio de San Antonio (Cataract Canyon) whichrather can be called an arroyo than a river.Among the Jalchedunes and Jamajabs falls in theRio de Santa Maria (Bill Williams River), whichalso is usually dry. Among the Yumas falls in theGila, which though it is so voluminous, yet is notso all the year. I inquired likewise if, on thepa-rt of the north or northwest, there ent.e red intothe Colorado any others and all answered me nay,reducing their information solely to those (rivers)mentioned." I
The power and sweep of the Colorado is well expressed
in The Song of the Colorado by Sharlot Hall.
"From the heart of the mighty mountai�s strongsouled for my fate I came,
NW far-drawn track to a nameless sea through a landVii thout a name;
And the earth rose up to hold me, to bid me lingerand stay;
And the brawn and bone of my mother's race were
set to bar my way."
"Yet 1 stayed not, I could not linger; my soulwas tense to the call
The wet winds Sing when the long waves leap andbeat on the far sea wall.
I stayed not, I could not linger; patient,resistless, alone,
1. Ipid. pp. 431-3.
83
I hewed the trail of my destiny deep in the hindering stone.
"How narrow that first dim pathway - yet deepeninghour by hour!
Years, ages, eons, spent and forgot, while I
gathered me might and powerTo answer the call that led me, to carve my road
to the sea,Till my flood swept out with that greater tide,
as tireless and ta�eless and free.
"]-;rom the far, wild land that bore me I drew myblood as wild -
I born of the glacier's glory, born of the uplands,
piledLike stairs to the door of Heaven, that the
Maker of All might goDown from His place with honor, to look on the
worId and knO'VIT.
"That the sun and the wind and the waters, andthe white ice cold and still,
Were moving arignt in the plan He had made,shaping His wish and will.
When the spirit of worship was on me, turningalone, apart,
I stayed and carved me temples deep in themountain's heart.
"Wide-domed and vast and silent, meet for theGod I knew,
With shrines that were shadowed and solemn andaltars of riches hue;
And out of my ceaseless striving I wrought a victor'shymn,
Flung up to the stars in greeting from my fartrack deep and dim.
"For the earth was put behind me; I reckoned no
more with themThat come or go at her bidding and cling to her
garment's hem.Apart in my rock-hewn pathway, where the great
cliffs shut me in,The storm-swept clouds were my brethren and the
stars were my kind and kin.
"Tireless, alone, unstaying, I went as one whogoes
On some high and strong adventure that only hisown heart knows.
84
Tireless, alone, unstaying, I went in mychosen road -
I trafficked with no man's burden - I bent me tono man's load.
"On my tawny;;. sinuous shoulders no sal t-grayships swung in;
I washed no feet of cities, like a slave whippedout and in;
N� will was the law on my moving in the land thatmy strife had made -
As a man in the house he has builded, masterand unafraid.
"0 ye that would hedge and bind. me - rememberingwhence I came -
I, that was, and was mighty, ere your race
had breadth or name!Play with your dreams in the sunshine - delve
and toil and plot -
Yet I keep the way of my will to the sea whenye and your race are not!" 1
In all its over-powering grandeur, the Grand Canyon
has been the subject of poems, as well as the subject of
the influence for stability of character in novels. The
Grand Canyon of Arizona, by J. William Lloyd, leaves one
with the eternal question one carries away from a visit
to it.
"Gulf, glorious, untellable;I see your world of temples;I see your depths, breath-stopping;Restful, restful, yet awful;Drawing me, drawing me, back-shrinking.I see your colors, colors, colors;Deep, soft, tender, pervading, blending,Your greens, Olives, browns, yellows, blue-grays,
red-purple-blacks;Above all, back of all, staining all, sustaining
all,Your rich, reaching, embracing, warming reds,�ymbol of the Soul of Love.
1. Hall, Sharlot Cactus and Pine. pp. 18-21.
85
"A symphony of form and color and silence,Dream-like in your deep of luminous ether,Your faint-blue, shimmering sea of haze, strata-
rippled -
-
Am I not indeed looking down into some lake enchanted,Seeing the-city that all men seek foreverReflected there from heaven?Surely this is not real, earth-born or earth
includedt
"Hark! from far, far below a murmur,A roar in a breath and a whisper,The Still, Small Voice audible,The sound of the sea in a shell.
"Save this, over all, holding all, the Arizonastillness,
no what wait you for, 0 Desert, soft and terrible,Motionless, beautiful and infinite?Why are you so calm and expectant?Vfuat god, what cycle is coming?Are you only the wise, 0 Desert?Is it you that hold the meaning?" 1
The Grand Canyon, by Harrison Conrard, leaves one with
the feeling of its divine origin. Its age, its immensity,
its grandeur, its influence - all are there.
God said:"Earth, child of If.y will,That spinnest the web of TimeAnd weavest thereof the warp and the woof of Life,A city I would have for thee,With a palace and throne of infinite splendor,�bither shall come, when ended thy long toil-
plodding,I and My hosts and :My legionsTo judge of thy fabric.
"Time I have made thy master -
Time who sheareth the flocks for the web whereofthou spinnest and weavest -
And him I commission My architect,
1. Lloy�, J. William Songs of the Desert. pp. 22-3.
86
�bo, with his servants, the artisan-elements,Out of thy noblest matter,Thy granite and onyx and bronze,Thy gold and thy silver,Shall build the city,The throne and the palace,For the ultimate comingOf thy King and thy Master Eternal."
Saying, He dreamed.
Time, stealing up to the gates of Eternity,Saw not within,But near,Of the Dream caught from beyondAn atom-breath,Saw an atom-gleam,Heard an atom-measure.
Then, from God's otherland turning,Straight unto earth he whirled,And, all about him the artisan-elements calling,Bade them to hew and to carve and to build.
Counting each punctual moment with patient preciSion,Through ages of eons they hewed and they carved and
they builded -
Time and his servants -
Slow workingOut of a chaos of matterThe design of the city,The throne and the palace,Caught in an atom-breath,An atom-ray,An atom-sound,From an Infinite Dream.
Vast temples of onyx and gold,Vast courts of bronze and of silver,Vast palaces manN,Embrasures, battlements, ramparts,Minarets, pinnacles, towers,And walls of enduring granite,In the midst the Throne of the King,They hewed and they carved and they builded,Till out of their toil came the Wonderful City,Vast as empire.
Then restedTime and his servants,The artisan-elements.
87
God saw and smiled;And over the City Y�sterious,The City of Glory,From His countenance fellA miracle �f light and of mists,Of color and glow,And He said:"It is well!" I
Mary E. Thompson has woven out of shiprock a legend of
its origin. Two missionaries journeying to the Indian
School near Ship Rock listen to the following story:
"Ages ago the Navajos lived in a land faracross the black waters. They were a prosperouspeople; but in time a war with a neighboring nationarose that proved to be long and almost exterminating.City and town, tower, palace and hovel fell, and thepeople were either slain or taken captive, until onlya handful were left. Then this remnant, with theirwives and children, fled to a ship anchored in theoffing, with a faint· hope they might escape on it.
nAnd now a wonderful thing happened, for theirgods, seeing their sorry case, extended pity, and
taking their ship in charge drove it on and on over
the black water. Sometimes friendly breezes blewhelpfully. Sometimes the breezes were so strongthey trembled with fear. Sometimes loneliness andhomesickness almost broke their hearts. Sometimesclouds arose, from whose depths came gales thatbellied out their matting sails and tugged at theircordage. Sometimes famine threatened, but shoalsof fish appeared in time to prevent it. Sometimesthey mourned their lost friends and land, andlooked forward to a strange one with shrinkinghearts. But ever on they carne, through the trackless deep, to the.music of the wind through theircordage and the rustle of the waves around theirprow, until distant, mountainous shores met theirland-hungry eyes.
"Coming safely to it, they disembarked and setup rude hogans. Once set.tIed, the men hunted andfished and the women planted seeds and in due timereaped the harvest. They also made grass mats, as
they had done in their old homes, and this arttheir descendants long after turned to use in blanketweaving. Increasing to a tribe, they sometimes lived
1. Conrard, Harrison Quivira. pp. 32-4.
88
in peace and prosperity, and sometimes in war
with neighboring tribes."Gradually they were driven inland, farther
and farther yet, until they reached these foothills, and thus, one bright morning, lifting uptheir eyes they saw, afar in the desert, whatlooked like the ship their forefathers had sailedin across the black waters. There it stood, withits big butterfly-shaped sails spread, its maststicking up between, � ship of stone!
"Surely their gods in their might had liftedit from the water, and turning it to stone hadplanted it there in the desert, a memorial oftheir wonderful voyage, and in some sort a NavajoEbenezer, even to the present time. Thus it becamea sacred thing." 1
Camelback Mountain has been the inspiration of one of
the most beautiful legends in modern literature. Annie
Fellows Johnston tells the story in The �ittle Colonel in
Arizona to one who has become impatient of being ill.
In the Desert Waiting has as its lesson the following:
Shapur worked diligently at this new task,until there came a day when Ornar said to him,"Well done, Shapur! Behold the gift of the desert,its reward for thy patient service in its solitude!"
He placed in Shapur's hands a crystal vase,sealed with a seal, and filled with the preciousattar.
n\AJherever thou goest this sweetness will openfor thee a way and win for thee a welcome. Thoucarnest into the desert a common vendor of salt,thou shalt go forth an Apostle of my Alchemy.wTherever thou seest a heart bowed in some Desertof Waiting, thou shalt whisper to it, 'PatiencelHere if thou wilt, in these arid sands, thou maystfind thy garden of Ornar, and even from the dailytasks that prick thee sorest, distil some preciousattar to sweeten all life.' So like the bee thatled thee to my teaching, thou shalt lead others tohope.fI
Then Shapur went forth with the crystal vase,and the camel, healed in its long time of waiting,
1. Thompson. ]I:ary E. The Legend of Ship Rock. The ArizonaGraphiC, December 16, 1899.
89
bore him swiftly across the sands to the City ofhis Desire. The Golden Gate, that would not haveopened to the vendor of sal t, swung wide for theApostle of Omar. Princes'brought their pearls toexchange for drops of his attar, and everywherehe went its sweetness opened for him a way and won
for him a welcome.Vllierever he saw a heart bowed do�m in some
Desert of Waiting he whispered Ornar's alchemy,that from the commonest experiences of life may bedistilled its greetest blessings. At hi$ death,in order that men might not forget, he willed thathis tomb should be made at a certain place whereall caravans passed. There at the crossing of thehighways he caused to be cut in stone that symbolof patience, the camel, kneeling on the sand. Andit bore this inscription, which no one could failto see as he toiled past the City of his Desire:
"Patience! Here, if thou'wilt, on these aridsands, thou mayst find thy Garden of Omar, andeven from the daily tasks which prick thee sorestdistil some precious atter to bless thee and thyfellow man." 1
Ruth Lawrence, in her poem Camelback's Message, has
also had the mountain give her its meaning of patience and
calm endurance in life's problems. The mountain has
appealed to Harold S. Goldberg in the tone of ancient
Egypt, in The Law of Allah. W. I. Lively's The Legend of
Camelback !\{ountain tells in poetry the Indian chief's
lack of reverence for the mountain.
Superstition Mountain has been the theme of many writers.
Hoom-a-thy-a (Wet Nose) of Mike Burns, a descendant of the
one remaining Apache Indian after an attack by the United
States soldiers, writes The Legend of Superstition Mountain
as his fathers told it.
1. Johnston, Annie Fellowspp. 25-9.
In the Desert of Waiting.
90
"All people, who look upon the Superstitionllountains, do so with more or less of supersti tiousawe. The l�aricopa and Pima Indians are of allpeople the most superstitious regarding thesemountains. They are so superstitious that it is a
fact that not for love nor money can you induce anymember of these tribes to ascend the slopes of thesemountains. They will tell you that it is because,long years ago, hundreds of their bravest warriorswere enticed into the deep recesses of canyons inthese mountains by Evil Spirits and there slain,leaving only a few of their number to tell the story.They also claim that the same sudden death will overtake any Pima or lSaricopa who attempts to scale thesemountains, and further, that the departed ghosts ofthe Braves, who fell at the hands of the Evil Oneon that day, still haunt these mountains and thatyou can still hear their sighs and groans as youclimb into the canyons that are interspersed amongthe peaks that make up the Superstition Range.
"The Pimas and Karicopas have sufficient reason
to be afraid of these �ountains, because, as I havebeen told by my ancestors, who were the people whomade their homes upon the slopes, and in the Superstition �ountains, a great disaster overtook some
two hundred of their Braves at one time in thesemountains." 1
When the Apache warriors were 2..way looking after their
horses, the women, children, and old men who went out
hunting for the fruit of the cacti were most cruelly clubbed
to death by the Pimas and �aricopas. Then, the fifteen
Apache warriors hid themselves on the mountain sides that
guarded the only gap leading out of the canyon. As the
robbers and murderers passed through, the warriors hurled
large stones upon them. As they could not see the Apaches
hidden above, the few that escaped believed that the Evil
Spirits had caused the stones to fall.
1. Hoom-a-thy-a The Legend of Superstition �ountain. pp. 7-8.
91
"The Pimas and Maricopas from that dayhave never gone into these mountains end theywill tell you that their o�� legends are true.That these two hundred brave men were killed byEvil Spirits. They say no Apache could havebeen brave enough for such a small bend of men
to destroy such a great number of their people;but I, Hoom-a-thy-a (Mike Burns) tell you herethe story that my grandfather told me. He livedall his life in the Superstition Mountains and hewas a wise man and hlew all the old true legendsof his people." 1
Krs. R. A. Windes, a dear old pioneer woman over
ninety and a resident of the dese�t, finds God in ali
nature. God in nature is the result of her surroundings.
"God must have made, the wood,The deep, dark wood,The cool, sweet wood -
The swaying boughs that lap and leanTo form a soothing, fairy screen.
God took the nand of nature in his own
J�d thus the seeds of the great wood were sown.
"God must have made the desert,The sun-clad desert,The age-old desert -
The rugged rimmed, and gray-green land,By solitude and silence spanned.God gave the brush to nature,'Paint,' said he,'This myst'ry-hidden, wondrous land for me.'
"Go d must have made the sky,The day�bright sky,The midnight sky -
Suns, moons, and planets in their race
Thro' aeons, and throW boundless space.God breathed in nature's heart the vital fireAnd 10, unnumbered worlds at his desire." 2
In very recent years Harrison Conrard's garden of wild
flowers was a real joy to him.'
1. Ibid. p , 13.2. Windes, Mrs. R. A. God in Nature. Christian Century,
June, 1927.
92
"God 'loves my gardenBetter far than I:He gives it dew, He gives it rainAnd then a sunlit sky;And day by day, my plants reach upHis Name to glorify.
"God loves my garden,But whd Le he gives it allTo make a garden beautiful,I let the weeds grow tall,And, careless of their keep, my plantsDroop faint and swoon and fall.
"How desolate my garden��en now I pass it by;But God still gives it dew and rainAnd then a sunlit sky.Ah, God must love my gardenBetter far than 1. n 1
Out of 'nature and the conquering of its forces has
come a toast from Alvin K. Stabler.
"Spirit of this great, new state!That broods o'er man and land,That's of the mountains, wild and wide,The desert, and the clear, blue dome above -
Spirit of this great, new state!Free and unhampered by the past,That looks the future in. the face'And grasps its possibilities -
Spirit of this great, new state!That bounds forth to its task,That conquers forces that opposeAnd makes them captive to its ends -
Spirit of this great, new state!That dreams an empire just beyond,That dares and does and never haltsAt difficulties howe'er great -
Spirit of this great, new state!Rev'ling in the strength of youthAnd dreaming dreams of wealth,With ne'er a thought of failure -
Spirit of this great, new state!Thy conquest ne'er will know defeat.The mountains, desert, and the streamsWill bow to thee, their conqueror,
1. Conrard, Harrison God Loves My Garden. Iv�anuscript.
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
Conclusion
Since this type of thesis on Arizona has never before
been attempted, it has been my purpose to show by definite
illustrations that the peoples - the Spaniards, the Indians,
the Americans - and nature have appealed to many writers.
The Spanish invasions have colored the literature from
the first entrada to the present day. Included in the
materials are George P. Winship's description of Coronado's
elaborate preparations for his march, and Harrison Conrard's
Quivira, dealing not only with the gay buoyancy of the march
but also with the spiritual outlook of the friars included
in the company. Ida Flood Dodge gives the Indians' ex
pression of the march, and Oliver La Farge today speaks of
the fine horses that accompanied the conquistadores.
The Spanish missionaries also form the basis of many
literary productions. Ida Flood Dodge speaks of the in
fluence of old Tumacacori on its surroundings; Harrison
Conrard of the religious fervor of Kino and his followers;
and Mary E. Forbes of the sweeter influence that San Xavier
has on idle tourists.
Of the Spanish-Indian-Mexican-American mixture much
is found in all types of writing. Will H. Robinson has given
all the early mingling of Papago, Mexican, and Spanish life
and superstitions in The Witchery of Rita. Garces found
the acequias, and around them Clarissa P. Coudert has
woven her poem Under the Alamo. D. Maitland Hushby has
pictured a Spanish dance. James H. McClintock has given
95
Tucson a real Spanish flavor, and Sharlot Hall and Harrison
Conrard have portrayed Spanish Tucson in In Old Tucson.
Kari Dovre's Roll Call is a roll of Mexican children in an
Arizona schoolroom.
Of the Indians living when they were found and of those
today much has been written. Kino was interested in their
friendliness and in their amusements. He also taught them
horse-racing. He was confident of, their religious conversion,
for he wrote of the simplicity of their beliefs. He found
that the Opa nation had a story of creation. He and later
Garces were interested in the life of the Moquis and in
their conversion. Both spoke of the squash-blossom coiffure
of the Moqui women. Harrison Conrard also uses it in
A Hopi Pastoral.
Kino also wrote of sending the Indian children to
school as a punishment to their parents or tribe. Marah
Ellis Ryan gives the Ropis' attitude toward the white man's
school and religion, and Oliver La Farge forcefully expresses
the Navajos' point of view. Soothingly comes Mary E.
Hughston's delightful expression of the quiet, happy, peace
ful influence of San Xavier in the life of the Papagoes.
Indian Warfare fills many volumes. Kino found thefts
and depredations committed by the Apaches. Will H. Robinson
lays the Apache trouble with the Americans at the hand of a
United States officer. Raphael Pumpelly graphically describes
his adventures dodging Apache vengeance.
96
Among the Americans is found the real cowboy
immortalized by Badger Clark and Walt Coburn. The sheep
herder and his trials are well pictured by Will C. Barnes.
The meagerness of a homestead is given by Richard V. Carr,
and the hardships endured by the women and children are
portrayed by Will C. Barnes.
The mineral wealth of Arizona was of interest from the
earliest Spanish days. Among the Americans Elwyn Hoffman
portrays the prospector as an empire bUilder, and Romaine
H. Lowdermilk finds interest in the character of the
freighters.
Buckey O'Neill has given an inSight into the life at
a military post. The Mormons are immortalized in theirI
great work of building a road, the builders and first users
being the Uormon Battalion. They are also praised for their
clean communities by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh.
Of the early ones who dared adventure are the Patties
as trappers. The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie
of Kentucky teems with interest. R. B. Stratton has given
most realistically the experiences of the Oatman girls as
captives of the Indians. Nothing is so daringly bold as
is Colonel William Stover's Red Earon who claimed as a
descendant of the Peralta family all of Arizona and parts
of New Mexico and California.
Among the daring politicians are Will H. Robinson's
The Man from Yesterday and Grace Reeve Fennell's The Man
97
the People Chose. The unusual characters that c�use thrills
are found also. The two bad men in Rose del Nieve's Early
Days in Arizona are well depicted. Dan Rose's Billy
Brazelton is Arizona's own highwayman. Sharlot Hall has
made the gambler live in The �ercy of Na-chis, and the squaw
man in The Squaw Man.
The frontiersmen and the pioneers are sung by Ned White
and Theodore O'Hara. Of the people today in Arizona,
Gladwell Richardson has given the airpilot, Christianna
Glass Gilchrist the sick, and J. William Lloyd the out-of
doors sleeper.
Nature fills pages and pages. Of her climate Kino
wrote; and humorously are included Charles O. Hrown's version
that the devil made Arizona and Alvin K. Stabler's satire
on the trite expression It Is Unusual. The rains are
pleasingly given by Badger Clark, and powerfully given by
Minnie K. Bisby. The snow, in its beauty and purity, is given
by J. William Lloyd, and in its .cruelty by Will C. Barnes.
The sand and the sand storms are also given again and again
in the writings on Arizona, even Kino picturing very vividly
a sand storm. Included are John C. Van Dyke's comments on
the survival of life on the desert, E. W. Everett's poem of
the desert's calmness, Edith D. Rockwood's the feeling of a
desert mother, and Dick Wick Hall's satire on desert living
and its hazards. Of the desert's growth, the trees, shrubs,
cacti, and the color of the flowers are included. The pines
are given in poetry. Of the animal life, the coyote, the
98
dove, the red winged blackbird, the wild hog, the gila
monster, the rattlesnake, the burro, and the camel are
included.
Of the natural wonders, Garces' accounts of the rivers
and c�nyons are given. Sharlot Hall writes of the Colorado,
and Harrison Conrard and J. William Lloyd of the Grand
Canyon. Legends of some of the natural wonders, of Camel
back Mountain, of Ship Rock, of Superstition Mountains, are
also included.
These illustrations, although only a few of the many
that have been collected, amply illustrate my thesis, that
the peoples and nature have an important place in the
literature of Arizona.
BIBLICGRAl'RY
Bibliography
Books
Poetry
Ashurst, Joseph Thurman and Whiteside, Richard'RowardDesert Odyssey and Other Poems.Phoenix, A.rizona: l;�anufacturing Stationers Inc., 1925.
Bushby, D. Kait1and
Kesqui te Smoke.Philadelphia: Dorrance and Company, 1926.
Carr, Richard V.Cowboy Lyrics.Boston: Small, Maynard & CompaL.Y, 1908.
Clark, BadgerSun and Saddle Leather.Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1922.
Conrard, HarrisonQuivira.Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1907.
Downing, AndrewThe Trumpeters.Boston: Sherman, French & Company, 1913.
Hall, SharlotCactus and Pine.Phoenix, Arizona: Arizona Republican Print Shop, 1924.
Lively, W. I.The Legend of Camelback l\:lount�dn.Phoenix, Arizona: A. Truman Helm, 1928.
Lloyd, J. WilliamSongs of the Desert.Phoenix, Arizona: The Berryhill Company, 1911.
Poston, Charles D.Apache Land.San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co'., 1878.
