Prescott, Pearl of the Pines

July, 1935 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS 3 Prescott, Pearl of the Pines Work of Emergency Relief Administration Glorifies Tradition of Famous Smoki Tribe, Gives City Unique Museum

COWBOY dinners, moonlight rides over winding mountain trails, deep blue lakes gleaming like precious gems in pine clad settings and gurgling mountain streams combine to make northern Arizona one of the most delightful vacation spots in the west.

Prescott, the summer capitol of Arizona, and the hub of the tall timber country is offering true western hospitality to summer vacationists.

Eastern brook, natives, rainbows and Verde trout abound in well stocked streams and lakes that are easily accessible from lodges which combine rustic beauty with good accommodations, or from towns within short motoring distance.

Resorts and guest ranches with accommodations to suit the plainest or most fastidious tastes offer a variety of entertainment. Lazy days, on cool porches breathing the invigorating air of the mountain country, polo, short horseback rides, pack trips into virgin country, rodeos, barbecues and chuck wagon feeds combine to make a northern Arizona sojourn an occasion never to be surpassed and seldom equaled. Mint green booklets as cool looking as the mountains whose lure is described within their covers can be secured from the Yavapai County Chamber of Commerce at Prescott, This organization or other civic groups will be glad to help the prospective vaca tionist who is making an initial visit to this delightful section of Arizona, to plan his time for maximum delight and comfort.

Prescott offers much of interest. The first territorial capitol was established here in 1863. The granddaddy of rodeos bucked into action in this little cow town in 1888. In 1821, The Smoki, one of the most unusual organizations in America, came into being. In 1933, Prescott citizens sought and secured approval of the excavation of Tuzigoot as the first archaeological re search project in the United States to be done by relief workers.

Now, Prescott has officially opened the doors of the Smoki museum, an an thropological institution without paral lel as to plan of construction. Here are combined and faithfully reproduced the best of Zuni and Hopi tradition. Here are housed many of the priceless ceramics and other artifacts from the Tuzigoot, King and Fitzmaurice ruins. And here the Smoki clan works for the perpetuation of a fast-dying culture.

Yavapai county is rich in colorful history which was preceded by name less yesterdays from which archaeolo gists are seeking to tear the veils of mystery.

The life-giving Sun once smiled upon an ancient civilization, which found rise and fall between 900 and 1300 A. D., in the vicinity of the Little Colo rado. After this, sand devils played hide-and-seek in their crumbling homes. Decaying walls listened in vain for the return of their builders and passed into disappointed ruin.

Pueblo structures, once towering two and three stories high upon windswept hills, have been lashed unmercifully by the fury of the centuries. Bits of pre historic masonry and Indian artifacts, mostly mortuary pieces, are all that remain for the elucidation and pleasure of the modern white man.

Life in many of the pueblos had longbeen stilled when the Spaniards braved the terrors of the little known seas to search for fabled wealth, traveling as far inland on the newly discovered North American continent as the present Hopi and Zuni villages.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

The English, once happy with the country on the Atlantic sea coast, felt the call of adventure. The original thirteen colonies which formed the United States of America spread and grew as their frontiersmen pushed ever deeper into the wilderness. That far western boundary, the Mississippi river, was gradually replaced by El Rio Bravo Del Norte which is now known as the Rio Grande. The ore-encrusted hills of Arizona and California gave promise of great wealth. The Gold Rush of '49! The Rio Grande bowed in defeat to the Pacific.

Trappers gradually worked west into the Rocky mountains and the Sangre de Cristo range. Old Bill Williams, Kit Carson, La Bonta, St. Vrain, Killbuck, and their followers were ever in the pioneering van.

Cattlemen were driving their herds into unchartered territory. The Chisholm trail was replacing the old army route. The sanguine affairs of Dodge City were being topped by the shooting affrays at Wichita. Wyatt Earp was moving west! Trinidad, Santa Fe, Prescott!

Huge ranches, whose unfenced boundaries were based upon stream or mountain rather than surveyed sections and corner stones poured no small wealth into the little cattle town of Prescott, which served as the first capital of the Territory of Arizona.

Prescott is poignantly aware of the ancient cultures which preceded its in ception and the brave pioneering days, contemporary with its own growth. Its appreciation has found expression and its dreams realization in the erection Of the Smoki and Sharlot Hall museums. The former is housing the artifacts of the King, Fitzmaurice and Tuzigoot ruins; the latter is displaying the mementos and priceless treasures of early Arizona. These two museums were constructed by the Emergency Relief Administration of Arizona. The Relief Administration also erected the steel and concrete grandstand which replaced the old frame structure at the rodeo park. Much work has also been done by the transient division of the Emergency Relief Administration of Arizona in building bridle trails and foot paths and otherwise landscaping the fortyacre wooded tract which is owned by the Northern Arizona State Fair Association and adjoins their rodeo park.

The Smoki museum is made of native stone, conforming in interior and exterior appearance to the original Smoki building which in turn was patterned from early pueblo structures. The large museum room is sixty feet square. At the rear of this room is a laboratory and living quarters for the curator. Entering the museum visitors are asked to register at the most unique registration desk in America. Apparently of solid stone this table is hollow, permitting leg and foot space and two cupboards for storage. The top of the desk is composed of two large flat stones.

Occupying the central position in the museum is an outcropping of a sunken kiva, corresponding in each detail to those of the Hopis. But this kiva will never witness the secret ceremonies of the Smoki fraternity nor other rites, for it serves a purpose of which no ancient ever dreamed. Here, in the underground precincts, is an up to date oil burning heating plant. Stone and earth cover the kiva except for small ladder openings through which the heat rises to keep the large museum at a comfortable temperature despite the coldest of weather. However, a large double-mouthed fireplace has been built at one side of the room lending a truly aboriginal atmosphere. On the semi-circular chimney Miss Kate T. Cory has painted three figures, the central one being that of the Sun God. This figure in each minute detail of costume with bonnet symbolic of the Sun and decorated with feathers from that king of birds, the great eagle, brings to the visitor the Indian's conception of this deity. The Fire God, friend of growth, is depicted at his side to add blessings upon the white visitors who enter the precincts of the Smoki.The fireplace itself is built in the Zuni way with a small chimney and large mantle, for in this ancient city of Cibola the family sleep on the mantle absorbing its warmth through the cold winter nights.Miss Cory has further contributed to the rich lore contained in the new museum by the loan of her fascinating oil which depicts the snake legend of the Hopi and Navajo Indians. It concerns a journey down the Colorado river by an Indian youth eons ago, his ultimate entrance into the underworld, his contacts with a "spider woman," the test he was put to by the underworld to determine his worth, and finally the awarding to him of a particularly ugly snake for a wife, which suddenly turned into a beautiful maiden.As the legend goes, the youth returned to the upperworld with his wife and a bag of turquoise and abalone shell beads. His serpent offspring later returned to the underworld and the human offsprings became the progenitors of the present Hopi and Navajo race.

Again the museum visitor is privileged to enjoy a rare experience for the altar on which the drama of the Plumed Serpent is enacted has been faithfully reproduced with the plumed serpent projecting from the walls and winding their length among the fields of the corn. Here it is that the mud heads fight with the serpents and in so doing destroy the Hopi fields.

The museum is illuminated through indirect wall pockets near the ceiling lights for which soft candle glow globes are used. The ceiling itself thus brought into attractive relief is constructed of 30,000 pieces of timber representing the thatched ceilings used in the pueblos. The seats are varied and wholly com-fortable while adding materially to the appearance of the room. One wooden-pegged and hand hewn chair is an exact replica of a seat from early Zuni show-ing the influence of the Spanish. Hand hewn logs are shaped to curves that fit the human body and permit com-plete relaxation; stone seats will serve additional guests.

Encircling the room at intervals are shelves on which will rest many of the large artifacts from the Yavapai coun-ty ruins. The smaller pieces such as the frog mosaics, pottery spindle whirls and small flint weapons are displayed in cases of hand chiseled wood. The shelves are hand hewn, averaging four tiers in height and totaling at present 175 feet of space. The display cases number eight and more will soon be added.

Interesting among the contents of the cases is a display showing the timbers used in the early pueblos and the rings, which according to the Douglass theory helped archaeologists in correctly dating the time of the first erection and additions to the pueblos. Pinon, Douglas fir, juniper and western yellow pine each have a place in this display.