Navajo Land

Navajo Land Mesas

IN THE MAP of Arizona, Navajoland appears as a great empty place, decorated with a scattering of curious names: Jeditoh Springs, Skeleton Mesa, Cañon del Muerto, Aga-thla Needle, Nach-tee Canyon, Monument Valley, the Mittens, Pei-ki-ha-tsoh Wash-all hinting a far strangeness. A vast and lonely land it is, saturated with inexhaustible sunlight and astounding color, visible with unbelievable distinctness, and overspread with intense and infinite blue. Its long drawn levels are a setting for the awesome pageant of gigantic storms advancing under sky-built domes of clouds, trailing curtains of rain and the thin color-essence of rainbows.

This is the land of mesas, laid down in layers of colored sandstone, red, yellow, pink and creamy white; carved and hollowed by the recession of forgotten seas; their sides often sheer, or broken into strange isolated slabs, turrets, buttes, the blind blunt architecture of a pre-human world. Afar they dwindle away, small and sharp, into clear blue distance and stop short; or in the long yellow slant of late sun their intricate forms are revealed in bewildering patterns of shadow; or seen only as low-lying bands of purple or sombre blue, remote in the shadow of rain clouds.

The People

TINADZINI IN THE east; Tsótsil in the south; Dhokoslid in the west; Dhepéntsa in the north. In all the vast region between these four sacred mountains, you will not find a single village of the Navajo. Their hogáns, those odd igloo-like huts of logs and earth, stand far and lonely, singly between tall rocks, or three together at most, perched high on a ledge, or hidden among the junipers. The herds of goats and sheep and the bands of slender long-tailed ponies must be moved from grass to water, from water-hole to brush-browse; clans and families are scattered; so to visit his kin or care for his herds the Navajo must ride. Twenty-five miles to the trading post is for him a jaunt before breakfast, and forty miles home for a supper of sheep's head is a mere paseár. Riding they are always riding. high in their curious native saddles, padded with bright-dyed goatskins, wiry, free-bodied, swaying, these hawk-faced Mongol nomads. Those close-fitting red moccasins with turned-up sole and pointed toe, the dark velvet shirt of the women with its row of silver buttons down the breast, the black hair looped low on the neck, the wide pleated skirt with its band of bright color below; silver bracelets and folds of sun-faded blankets the color, the form and the manner, the cheekbone, the sharp lip and slant of the eye surely all these are descended here from old Asia.

jaunt before breakfast, and forty miles home for a supper of sheep's head is a mere paseár. Riding they are always riding. high in their curious native saddles, padded with bright-dyed goatskins, wiry, free-bodied, swaying, these hawk-faced Mongol nomads. Those close-fitting red moccasins with turned-up sole and pointed toe, the dark velvet shirt of the women with its row of silver buttons down the breast, the black hair looped low on the neck, the wide pleated skirt with its band of bright color below; silver bracelets and folds of sun-faded blankets the color, the form and the manner, the cheekbone, the sharp lip and slant of the eye surely all these are descended here from old Asia.

Shepherd Boy

SHEEP AND GOATS-these are the Navajo's wealth. During the summer they drift across the wide lands where grazing is best, the keen-witted goats leading their foolish woolly friends. The herd spreads out, a long line of brown, white and black spots among the yellow rabbit brush; coyote-like dogs. alert and diligent, prowl beside them. Slowly they trail along beneath a rim of red standstone in and out among the rabbit brush, ceaselessly nibbling. The far lonely landscape is silent. empty of human figure or movement. The shadow of a great cloud, cast from a measureless height, glides slowly over the hill, when magically against the white distance a small wild figure appears, a slim, tousled boy, poised to vanish, yet seeming he had been there always. Lightly he stands, looking away into the sky where a hawk rides on a flowing unseen ribbon of air. With small bow and arrows he goes, stealthily gliding, down the flat ground, scouting a prairie-dog town. The sudden rain comes, and he crouches under a rim-rock, letting the weather go by. The sun shines too hot, and he perches bird-like and free in the twisted fork of a juniper. From the last golden hour of afternoon the dusty herd drifts to the wide empty valley, waiting in dove-gray twilight, The small shepherd comes with the dogs and the blue trail of smoke from the lonely hogán leads him home. So his summer days pass, free and uncounted.

The Rain

HERE'S HOT DRY weather in May and June; wind and dust and sandstorms, and pale buff whirlwinds, slender ghosts, mile-high, that twist and twirl and dissolve into an emptiness of blue. But in July the white clouds come. Wherever you may stand they approach always from the horizon, small domes of gleaming vapor appearing over ridge or mesa,drifting in silent rhythmical ranks, ascending, building, trailing their ultra-marine shadows over the open lands. Then spreads a far vague darkness beyond the mesas and on the first cool stirrings of air comes the low rumbling voice of the thunder, and the pale shuddering glint of the lightnings flicker in ominous widening caverns of shadow. The mesas are blue, receding inmystery under sheer-descending veils of rain, drifting from measureless heights. The white crooked lightning stabs the dark mesas and the shock of the purple thunder makes the earth tremble. The vast reverberations roll to the edge of the world where the waiting silence engulfs them. The Navajo ponies turn their backs to the storm, their long manes and tails whipping out wet in the wind. The downpour is brief and terrific, and as it passes away across the long slant of the valley the young corn of the Navajo fields is left glittering green in the sunlight. Over against the blue twilight of shadow, dazzling, celestial and pure, gleams an enormous arch of miraculous rainbow.

The Vulture property has produced millions in gold-but its founder, Henry Wickenburg died poor.

The Vulture

(Continued from Page Seventeen) In 1866 traveled by water from San Francisco to Fort Mohave on the Colorado river and was then hauled by way of Prescott to Wicken-burg, the only route then open.

Between 1867 and 1872 the New York company took out $1,850,000 in bullion. Freight-ers and teamsters charged $8 to $10 a ton to haul the ore from mine to mill. The thunder of that 40-stamp mill was heard for miles, jarred the crockery in hash houses and lulled to sleep those heavy with liquor.

By 1879 the Arizona Central Mining company took over the Vulture and that company lasted nine years, earning an estimated $2,000,000 in that period. Then the gold vein was lost in a fault at the 300-foot level. The peculiar faulting in the Vulture Mountains baf-fled engineers. Geologists today describe it as an: "East-pitching ore shoot in a quartz vein striking East-West and cutting pre-Cambrian granite."

The passing years brought changes at the Vulture where even the old concentrates and tailings, under new processing, paid $500,000 in 1883. Faulting again and again pinched off the riches men sought.

Henry Wickenburg had not been idle after he sold the mine. He had taken up a ranch of 160 acres even before he sold and this he now improved. The town of Wickenburg today covers the northern half of the farm. He began an adobe house and hired several German friends to help build it. He planted his fields to grains and vegetables.

One day in 1870 there tramped through those fields of young wheat a Texas renegade from the Civil War. He had been hunting ducks. His boots smashed down the tender wheat. Wickenburg saw him and rushed outside the house. Years later he related the incident: "When I told him to stop and get out he shouted back: 'Shut up, you Dutch so and so or I'll blow your head off.' And I says: 'Joust you blow away.' And by God, he did blow."

The shot took off a part of Henry's right cheek. A great scar kept the incident alive. But as Wickenburg mopped the blood from his round, ruddy face, the renegade left the wheat fields. He went to Peralta's store in Wickenburg to buy a pair of boots for $16, remarking: "I'll pay for them when I come back. I am going over to clean up on the rest of those damn Dutchmen."

He meant the men building Wickenburg's home. As he neared the adobe house, Charlie Chase stepped out with a rifle and dropped the Texan with a single shot. There was no need for a court trial in those days over so clear-cut a case of self-defense. None was held.

Friends stood by Wickenburg and among these was Charles Genung, who built the arras-tras. He loved the gruff German. When romance came to Charles he sought out Wickenburg for a loan. He was to marry the daughter of the Doctors Smith who had befriended Weaver. Charles wanted "a couple of hundred dollars" so he might buy a team of horses and a wagon while in California getting his bride. Their son, Dan B. Genung, recalls what his father told him years later about that incident: "So Henry got a little step ladder and placed it in the southeast corner of the living room. Then mounting and pushing up a little secret trap door in the ceiling, he got in the attic. Soon he came down with $1100 which he handed to father with the remark: 'Here, take this. I have no use for it.' "Henry, in the early days, always had money and he was very generous with his friends, and he had lots of friends, too. There were usually two or three old Germans around the place.."

Even after the house was built, Henry Wickenburg continued to sleep on the bluff 300 feet straight above the house. The mangers for his stock were below the bluff and a small grain house. Above, there was a tunnel and a dump. It was on the dump at the tunnel's entrance that Henry placed his bed. It was made of boards. He said he slept there because he could see over his house and lands and could keep away from Indians and bad men.

The Genung children grew up knowing the always patient Uncle Henry Wickenburg. He towered six feet three inches above them. He spoke gruffly and with a heavy German accent, but he was kind.

Henry Wickenburg, as many another of his and later eras, was a Spiritualist. One evening he returned from Black Canyon, where he had been working a placer digging. Charles Genung had gone to New York to visit relatives and Mrs. Genung and the children were at his home. They sat about the hearth fire talking of Spiritualism. Just at 11 o'clock the front door opened. No one was there, so Frank Genung closed it. It reopened and a second time he shut it, locking it this time, but again it opened.

"We must be going to have some bad news," Mrs. Genung said quietly.

Henry, through his well-trimmed beard, answered "Yes." There was no doubt in his eyes but that this was an omen.

The next morning Mrs. Genung, by telegram, learned of a death in her family which had occurred exactly at 11 o'clock the night before.

The years went swiftly by for Wickenburg, who watched his crops, tended his fine horses to which he talked in his usual gruff manner, and continued his generosity to friends. At one time Mrs. Genung and her brothers, by force of circumstances, had to leave for some time their cattle. They were driving them from the Salt River to the Peeples Valley. "Henry," Mrs. Genung said one day, "I don't think it is right to have all of my brother's cattle in here so long without paying you something."

Henry looked up at her and then roared: "Ida, do you vant to be slopped?"

Year upon year the town of Wickenburg grew up around the aging man's farm. New companies and workers made unfamiliar the mining region he had discovered. He withdrew ever more within himself. His money dwindled among his friends and their needs. In 1890, when Walnut Grove dam broke, most of his crop, stock and farm lands were washed away. He was less concerned about his own losses than those of his neighbors to whom he gave help and his own home.

Age enfeebled his last years. Friends had moved far away, had families of their own to tend. A couple moved into his home and cared for him, but some said their motives were ulterior since they received all his property. Others thought the couple duped the old man for they built a small stage in the living room, put lace curtains across it, and from behind called in spirits to speak to Henry Wickenburg. The old man believed the voices he heard.

The loneliness of those last years can be imagined. Once independent and energetic, he could no longer even manage his small farm. The sap of life was running low. Then one morning in May, 1905, his body was found in the brush between his house and the town of Wickenburg, a bullet hole in his head and a revolver beside him.

"Some people tried to make out that he had been murdered," says Dan B. Genung. "He had no enemies and no money. He was a harmless old man. I firmly believe he purposely ended it all by shooting himself."

The riches which his location of the Vulture mine might have brought him had not come. Ease he had never known, nor luxuries. Courage he had, but never violence such as he saw let loose upon the valley after his strike brought a gold rush motley crowd. If there was regret that he missed getting the millions others took from the mines, he never spoke of it. Money seemed to have served him best when he could give it to friends.

What might interest him today, if he could return, might be the strange, new methods being used by the East Vulture Mining company. The 500-ton sand-leaching plant which supplements the cyanide plant, the surface min ing with steam shovels gobbling up tons of earth near the Glory Hole and the low grade ores paying good values a ton would probably be curiosities to him.

Two familiar landmarks only would Henry Wickenburg find in the region he knew So well but which has changed so much since he left. One is his own old, adobe home at the edge of Wickenburg. The other is the old rock house built while he still operated the Vulture mine and today used as an assay room. Perhaps these would not be worth a return from peace and rest.

Mi Amigo Saguaro

A hobby with some people, while others make a diversion on Sunday afternoon drives of photographing saguaros which resemble figures of men, animals, punctuation marks, and other common items of human use. Especially massive or unusually tall specimens are sometimes adopted by nearby towns resulting in occasional inter-community rivalries as to which can boast the tallest or heaviest saguaro. Several Arizona municipalities advertise the distinction of possessing the "world's largest saguaro," but the debated point is never definitely settled by actual measurement. This is probably due to the fact that neither side would be willing to accept estimates of the weight of the competing specimen, and the satisfaction to be derived by the winner in case the plants were cut down and weighed would be insufficient to offset the loss of prestige suffered through the destruction of the prized specimen.

Although some newcomers to southern Arizona may bewail the fact that saguaro have no commercial uses, and may seem to itch to chop them down in order to cut them up and sell the pieces, native Arizonans realize that the enormous plants have an on-the-hoof value far in excess of any sale price of the carcass. This realization has been intensified by the appearance of a bacterial disease, or necrosis, which has become epidemic in some parts of the saguaro range causing the monsters to die and literally melt away in a period of a few months.

University of Arizona scientists recently discovered the causitive organism, and experimental research work in the Saguaro National Monument east of Tucson has revealed the gravity of the situation there. Federal funds have been appropriated to destroy diseased plants in an effort to control the epidemic on the monument. Because breaks in the protective rind permit bacteria to enter the plant and establish the infection in the spongy tissues, the unhappy habit of some visitors, and occassional natives, of throwing stones at saguaros as an idle pastime very likely may be aggravating the spread of the dangerous disease which already has been found in some parts of the saguaro range.

The saguaro is the "trademark" of Arizona. Its distinctive form has become the emblem of the deep Southwest. It is part and parcel of native art and of modern architecture and design. Southern Arizona without its saguaros would be as disappointing as Alaska minus its totem poles, Yellowstone National Park sans bears, or California without Hollywood. Climate, and the wild, free, unspoiled desert is making southern Arizona the winter playground of the nation. Much of the power of the desert's appeal; that compelling urge to return to the land of the coyote, the flaming sunsets, and the musty, tangy odor of creosote bush after rain lies in the presence of those huge, ungainly, silent figures that bulk black against the evening skyline or rise like silversheeted ghosts along the moonlit trail. No, the saguaro has no measurable value; neither may friendship be bought and sold, true love made the basis of barter, nor the smell of the ocean bottled and exchanged for gold. But as barren as this world would be without friendship, as hopeless as a home without love, as drab as a beach without the sea breeze; so the desert would be lonely, cold, and colorless without His Majesty, the Saguaro.

Arizona's Newest Natural Wonder

(Continued from Page Twenty-five) The hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in this exploratory work would probably have been well invested if mining could have begun. Most meteorites are found to be composed of 5 to 15 percent of nickel 80 to 90 percent of pure iron, and a balance including such precious minerals as platinum, iridium, gold and even occasional diamonds.

One last problem would remain, however, if later-day mining methods make it ultimately possible to sink a shaft right to the meteorite, far under the ground.

This problem is the physical hardness of meteoritic metal, nature's equivalent of battleship or tank armor plate. Its metallic combination is nearly the same as man's hardest alloys of approximately 93 percent iron and 7 percent nickel. It cannot be chipped, blasted or drilled into fragments in mining's approved methods. It must be cut with an electric arc torch-an expensive and difficult procedure.

While the fortunes of mining luck may await engineers some day at Meteor Crater, another kind of fortune lies at hand for those who explore in detail the new crater field southeast of Winslow a broadly significant kind. The upshot will not be a new mine, but rather a new addition to the wonders of this continent, ranking in importance within Arizona to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and the Painted Desert, and perhaps over-shadowing all other cavern discoveries ever made in the past.

Coyote Traits and Trails (Continued from Page Seven)

I think coyotes were stealing the chickens. Nor did they suspect their former pet, for he had been thoroughly broken from even looking at a chicken.

Then one moonlight night the man of the house saw a coyote playing with the dogs, which, without barking, treated him as a friend. While he was watching the play, the coyote casually left the dogs, trotted to one side, and stole a low-roosting chicken. The man shot him dead with a shotgun. It was his pet coyote.

Several times I have been assured by men experienced in head-lighting that a coyote will, when his eyes are shined, keep only one open at a time, opening and closing the two alternately, so that the hunter cannot get a center shot at his head. I do not believe this, but quien sabe?

The coyote is smarter than a steel trap. He and his mates in running down a jack rabbit and antelope relay each other and take "stands." He can run away from an ordinary dog even while he seems to be loafing along.

He is called a coward. He can't shoot like a man. He can't fight like a tiger. He can't go against a pack of hounds. He knows his own limitations. The only way he can survive is to slip around. He's no more of a coward than any other animal, including man, is a coward for evading what is recognized as certain death. I don't know anything more unreasonable than a man who, upon trying to trap or shoot a coyote and finding himself outsmarted, curses the coyote for being a coward in not walking into the trap or the bullet.

In the timbered lands of the Sierra Madres of Northern Mexico I heard how the Pima Indians, who have few guns and almost no ammunition and who have lost the bow-and-arrow craft, catch wild turkeys. A roost having been located, a number of Pima men will go to it after dark with a plentiful supply of pitch pine to be used for torches. The turkeys will be high up in a pine tree. One of the Indians will light a torch and, holding it up in one hand and waving it, while rattling a gourd containing rocks in the other hand, circle around under the roosting turkeys, all the while yelling and chanting. The turkeys will begin to put, put, put, looking down this way and looking down that way, too fascinated by what is under them to fly away, and getting more and more uneasy on their roosts. By the time the pine torch is about to be burned out, a second Indian will relay the first, running around and around, waving his light, rattling his gourd, splitting the air with his yells. Maybe two of three Indians will run at the same time. They keep up their business until some of the turkeys lose their balance and fall out of the tree, como borachos like drunken ones-hypnotized, somehow made victims to the magic.

I am not giving this method as historical fact. I am merely telling what I have heard. I was discussing the matter with a kind and honest old Mexican in a village of Sonora, west of Pima Indian land.

"You need not doubt the facts," said he. "Coyotes catch turkeys in the same way. They run around under a turkey roost at night, barking and shooting fire out of their eyes up towards the watching birds. After a while the turkeys get dizzy and sick and just fall out."

Many times I have heard from Mexicans how coyotes draw chickens out of trees. The means employed by Don Coyote vary according to the tellers. The most remarkable account I ever heard came from Don Marcelo, gardener for the San Luis Mining Company's grounds at Tayoltita, in the state of Durango. Wonderfully pleasant grounds they were. Attending to Don Marcelo's words, I would forget their meaning while I became lost in the sounds of his soft voice and the vividness of his gestures. What an actor he would have made! Not content with acting out all his own characters, if I tried to tell something about a horse or a burro or any other animal, he would throw his fiery sympathy for the subject into mimicry of every sound and motion made by it. He would crane his neck like a turkey. He would run up two fingers alongside his head to represent the sharp ears of the armadillo and then rustle a hand through leaves on the ground to imitate the motion of the armadillo. He would contort his face into the jaguar's snarl before leaping on a dog.

We came to talking about the way the coyote catches chickens. Don Marcelo has seen this with his own eyes. Every morning at a certain place where he stayed, a chicken often more than one was being missed from one of several low-branching trees in which the chickens roosted. There were dogs at this house, but the dogs never said anything against any thief of the darkness. Then one night Don Marcelo and another man sat up to keep watch. The moon was shining. They could plainly see the chickens in the trees and also many other details. Perhaps an hour before midnight, they heard the chickens make disturbed noises. Neither of the watchers had seen the coyote come, but there he was. He had just appeared out of nowhere. He knew how to awaken the chickens without making any noise himself and without causing them to give alarming noises. There he was under them, looking up, and there they were, all awake, looking down. Then came an extraordinary exhibition.

We came to talking about the way the coyote catches chickens. Don Marcelo has seen this with his own eyes. Every morning at a certain place where he stayed, a chicken often more than one was being missed from one of several low-branching trees in which the chickens roosted. There were dogs at this house, but the dogs never said anything against any thief of the darkness. Then one night Don Marcelo and another man sat up to keep watch. The moon was shining. They could plainly see the chickens in the trees and also many other details. The coyote caught his own tail in his mouth and began a mad whirl around and around under the chickens. They became so intent on watching him, trying to keep up with his dashing circles, that within a short time one of them lost its perch and fell to the ground. At this some of the other chickens began squawking and cackling, but the coyote had already picked up his victim and was trotting away with it.

I used to think all of these tales of the drawing down of fowls from their roosts by coyotes belonged to pure folklore. I am now very far from that belief. Mrs. W. A. Roberts of Frio Town, Texas, is the daughter of W. J. Slaughter, one of the strong characters in Southwest Texas during Reconstruction days. He ranched on the Frio River. He was renowned for his honesty. A long lifetime ago he used to tell - his children including the little girl who is now Mrs. Roberts of his experience.

He was spending a night at some ranch down the Frio River. The moon was full. Out in the yard a number of chickens roosted in a mesquite tree. Slaughter's bed was a pallet on the floor of the gallery looking out on the mesquite. He was a light sleeper, and had not been asleep long before he was awakened by uneasy sounds coming from the chickens. Looking, he saw three coyotes under the mesquite tree. They were not making any noise but were running around under the tree. Every so often a coyote would rear up on his hind legs with a spring towards the roost. Slaughter was too much interested in the procedure to draw the six-shooter from under the pillow and shoot. He was seeing something that he had often heard his vaqueros tell about and had set down in his own mind as being just another piece of childish fancy. Before long he saw a chicken flop downward. One of the coyotes caught it before it struck the ground. He made off, the other two coyotes right with him. They got out of sight and no doubt ate the chicken up. In about three shakes of a dead lamb's tail, here they were back again under the mesquite. By now, however, the owner of the chickens was up, and a shot from his gun put a stop not only to the coyote magic but to any further natural history observations on the part of Mr. Slaughter.

In 1933, I was on the Hacienda de los Cedros in the State of Zacatecas, Mexico. What are now empty mule stalls there used to be the portales of a convent. The owner that succeeded the convent built a wonderful bath that made me think of Roman emperors. The hacienda has the amplest wine cellar I have even seen, but wine drew revolutionary bands as molasses draws flies, and to protect themselves from molestation the owners extirpated every grapevine in the irrigated orchard. In a vast rock corral enclosing the conventish mule stalls there is a trough hewn out of a pine log thirty feet long and three feet through. The log was dragged by oxen from a mountain fifty miles away. In the old days when the million and a half acres of Cedros land were stocked with goats, this trough was often filled with melted tallow.Juan stood by the empty trough now. I had been enticing the old woman cook to elucidate on the way coyotes draw chickens down by means of "electricidad saliendo de sus ojos"electricity coming out of their eyes. And this talk had led to my discovery that the coyote could also draw down fruit too far up for him to reach.

On the great Mesa Central of Mexico dagger plants and a species of yucca called the "royal palm" afford fruit called dates datiles. People eat the datiles. Of course, coyotes eat them too. But it would be impossible for any coyote to climb the trunk of one of those massive "royal palms" and pull a bunch of the dates off. I had supposed that the coyote would have to wait for the fruit to fall from sheer ripeness before he could have his share of it. After I heard how he could actually draw fruit down to the ground, I had not expected tofind an eye witness to the operation until Juan released his word-horde.

When I was at the Hacienda de los Cedros, no movement of any kind around its ancient portales and bath and church and wine cellar and streets of peon houses and a pool where burros drank and swallows dipped and maidens drew up jars of water was more violent than the lengthening or shortening of a shadow. Beside the great old tallow trough Juan and I had plenty of time. He was not reticent.

He told me many things that had happened to him during his fifty-six years on the Cedros. He told me how he had seen a panther wave its tail in the grass and entice a curious filly within leaping distance. He said, though, that he had never seen a coyote magnetize a chicken or a turkey out of a tree.

"But, Don Panchito," he went on, "the coyote is most astute, most cunning, most sagacious. Listen! One time I was lying in the shade of a great royal palm just resting. There were many other palmas about. It was the time for them to fruit, and many of them were loaded with the divinely delicious dates. I was thinking how good God is, and I was silent, making no noise at all. I was hardly alert, all the world was so peaceful with me.

"And then something very curious. I saw a coyote come and lay himself down under another palma loaded with dates. They were beautifully ripe, and there they hung at least ten feet, maybe twelve feet, maybe fifteen feet, above the coyote. He did not see me. Like me, he seemed very peaceful with himself and with God. He looked up at the dates. 'Now I will see,' I thought, 'if it is true that a coyote can draw dates down to his jaws.' "Well, there the coyote was lying on his stomach and looking at one big cluster of the ripe dates. He began to wave his long tail back and forth, back and forth, from left to right and from right to left. He was waving that tail in front of the fruit just as a serpent will run its red tongue out and keep dazzling it in front of the eyes of a bird. Slowly the tail waved. At the same time the coyote pointed his ears towards the dates and looked at them intently.

"There may be people who doubt this, but I tell what I saw with my own eyes. I saw a heap, a whole bunch, of the datiles turn them selves loose from the stem on which they grew and fall right at the coyote's mouth. He ate them until he was full and then he seemed very contented and went away. You ask me how long it took this wise coyote to draw the fruit out of the palm. Perhaps a half hour, perhaps an hour. I cannot say. I was not thinking of time but of the coyote."

It does not take a high degree of intelligence to play dead. The tumble bug, which has as little sense as any creature that moves, will upon being touched surrender the marble he is so industriously rolling somewhere and appear to be no more alive than a pebble. Even the inanimate sensitive plant "plays dead."

Scientists say that the o'possum does not consciously play dead; that his appearance of having kicked the bucket, given up the ghost and become as dead as a door nail is the result of muscular reflex action over which his consciousness has no control. They say that he "plays possum" with no more volition than a person exercises when he shuts his eye in front of a flying stick. A person, however, can be very cunning and realistic in playing possum, in acting as if he were dead. I believe that a coyote can too. Without being able to prove what is going on inside a coyote's head while he is acting as if he were dead, I do know that he often so acts. Julius Real, of Kerrville, Texas, told me that one time his brother turned some young dogs that he was training loose on a trapped coyote. The dogs bit it and pulled on it until it appeared to have lost all life. Then the dogs worried with the limp body. After their lesson was completed, Real removed the trap from the coyote's foot and left the limp body lying on the ground. A few hours later he had occasion to pass the spot and noticed that the coyote was gone. Two weeks later he caught this same coyote, which he recognized by certain marks, in a trap that had been cleverly arrang ed at another place. There is an old saying that a coyote "must be killed till he kicks," else, no matter how apparently dead, he is apt to get up and run off as soon as left to himself.

There are as many stories about the coyote's playing dead as there are about how Br'r Rabbit fooled Br'r Fox. One that a learned doctor in an ancient mining camp in the moun tains of Chihuahua told me goes like this: One day while a Mexican priest was out in the country he noticed a coyote that was trotting down an open draw suddenly stop, fall to earth, and stretch out like a dead animal. The priest supposed that the coyote had eaten Some strychnined meat and had been suddenly overtaken by the poison. He was some dis tance away from the creature, and as he stood there rather wondering, he saw a buzzard wheeling earthward over the coyote. A buz zard goes by eye and not by smell; I know, for I have had one circle down over me while I was lying still in the open grass. Presently the buzzard lighted on the ground near the body of the coyote and began hopping toward it. Just as the buzzard reached the carcass, the carcass sprang to life, seized the buzzard and killed it. Then and there Señor Coyote ate what he had so adroitly trapped.

When I die I hope I'll find in the other world some rough mountains where no tour ist angel will want to go a vastness of moun tains and canyons with only mule trails across them and a Mexican mozo (servant) who wears sandals, but not shoes, and has never heard that he is a "Latin American." Without once getting bored, I could spend a big stretch of eternity out in these mountain with a pack mule and a good mozo for company. Among other qualities that a good mozo must have is the ability to tell tales. One of the best of various good mozos I have had was Pedro Rodriguez, as long and lank as Don Quixote and as genial as Sancho Panza. We were crossing the vast Sierra Madre between Durango and the Pa cific ocean when he told me his experience of his father's.

Pedro's father and his neighbors were losing chickens to a coyote that came so slyly and cun ningly in the night that he never aroused a dog. However, one night Pedro's father sat up to catch the thief. He saw him, roused the dogs, and all took after him. They caught him and -so they thought-killed him. Pedro's father wanted to show his triumph to the neighbors and, so, brought the mangled body of the coyote back with him. He threw it into a storeroom and locked the door, intending to make his display the next morning. He locked the door not because he was afraid the coyote would get out, but because it was his habit to lock it every night. The next morning he unlocked the door and opened it to get the carcass. As he stepped inside, the coyote dashed out between his legs and ran away to safety.

Again, one time there was a baker in a vil lage who kept missing bread, taken from his bakery at night. The thief never left any sign. The baker decided to poison some loaves, leave them in a conspicuous place and watch for the thief. He chose a clear night and hid himself outside the bakery so that he had a good view of the entrance. After a while he saw a coyote come and work his way inside. Well knowing that the animal would eat one of the strychnined loaves and in the morning be dead, he barred up the entrance the coyote had used and went home to sleep that delicious sleep that comes when a man's worries and troubles have ended.

The next morning when he opened his shop, there the coyote was, extended, bloated, just a carcass. Around him were pieces of bread, showing that the thief had feasted. He slung the carcass out into the street and then began to straighten up his shop. Then he noticed that not one of the poisoned loaves had been touched. The only bread eaten by the coyote had been pure and fresh. The baker rushed out to take another look at the coyote. All he saw was his tail as he galloped into a brush lined ditch.

One time there was a ranchero who had back of his house a corral of solid adobe bricks where in his chickens slept. The corral had a solid gate that was always kept shut. The only en trance and exit for the chickens was a shallow, narrow ditch that drained water out of the corral when it rained. After a coyote had raided the corral through this ditch, the ran chero gave a servant strict orders to stop it up every night with a heavy rock.

For a long time the chickens went unmo lested. Then one morning when the ranchero looked out into the corral to enjoy the sight of his favorite fighting cock as well as of his domestic fowls, he saw a sight that made him sick. The patio, or floor of the corral, was lit tered with feathers and chickens without any heads and heads without any chickens. Over in a corner of the corral was a coyote swelled up like a bladder of warmed air, his legs stretched out sitff and straight, apparently as dead as Hector's pup. The servant had for gotten to stop up the ditch. The ranchero fig ured that the coyote had gorged himself so full that he could not squeeze out through the hole, which was barely large enough to admit him when empty. Then, the ranchero concluded, the coyote had died from acute indigestion or something else.

Anyway, the coyote was dead. It was sum mer and the pelt was valueless. So the ranch ero called a boy and told him to drag the coyote off. The boy kicked the animal and tied a rope to one of its hind legs and began dragging it over rocks and thorns and gullies. About a hundred yards from the house he start ed to leave the carcass, but the master, who was watching, called to him to drag it farther off, so that it would not stink. The boy dragged it another hundred yards or so, then took the rope off, kicked the lifeless body again, and started back to the house. When he had got ten several steps away, the master, who was still looking, saw the coyote raise his head ever so warily, note that the way was clear, and then bound to his feet and run off.

But playing possum will not always work with Mister Coyote. One time there was a coon who lived up in a hollow tree overlooking a kind of open air distillery. Here every day he saw men making mezcal, which is a drink made out of the maguey juice, with a kick in it as hard as any "white mule" ever delivered, a knockout equal to that of any tarantula juice ever brewed, and a fierceness not even excel led by the "Taos lightning" of Kit Carson's day.

Often the coon in his tree would hear the sounds of laughter coming up from the distil lery. If he looked out from the hole that form ed his doorway, he could see the laughers drinking from bottles, and he often noticed how another sip from the bottle produced another laugh. He could not understand how a drink of something out of a bottle could make men appear to be so gay. He never saw them after the spell had worn off or had become too deep. And he was very curious.

One day all the people left the distillery to go to a fiesta. Then the coon went down to investigate. He was a solemn kind of being, but in his heart he loved laughter and wanted to laugh himself. He took up a bottle of mezcal, as he had seen the men do, pulled out the stopper with his teeth, and took a drink. Something like fire blazed through his insides, but the effect was exhilarating. He took an other drink, and then laughed. He laughed be cause his spirits were light and all the world around was growing brighter. He took another drink, and he not only laughed but shouted.

He wanted company to laugh with, and so, carrying the bottle, he went walking down the road, every once in a while pausing to take a sip and to laugh a little more gladly. His shoulders were thrown back and he was look-ing at rainbows beyond the horizon.

Now it happened that a hungry coyote pass-ing through the country heard Mr. Coon laugh-ing. He knew from the experience of his race that he could not catch the coon and kill him for meat, but he thought he might trap him. "This coon," he said low to himself, "is evident-ly drunk. I'll trick him right here."

So Señor Coyote fell down across the trail, apparently as dead as a chunk of mud.

Just before he got to the carcass, Mr. Coon stopped, took another drink, laughed out loud and said even louder, "Why this coyote looks dead. Hum, I've always heard that the way to see if a person is dead is to punch him. If he is sure enough dead, he will, upon being punched, open his mouth and stick out his tongue."

Then Mr. Coon put down his bottle, put on his specks, approached very, very cautiously, and finally, very, very gingerly, stuck out a foot, punched the coyote in the belly and then jumped back. The coyote had heard the coon talking of course, and now he immediately opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue.

At that the coon ran up a tree, and there he laughed more than he had laughed in all the preceding part of his life put together, while Señor Coyote slunk out of sight.

It's no fun to make a fool of a fool. The fun comes in making a fool out of a smarty, some fellow that just knows he's smart. Half the enjoyment of the Uncle Remus stories comes from the way the little, inoffensive, defenseless, harmless, cottontail rabbit outdoes the cunning fox and other such animals. So, in the stories that the Indians and Mexicans tell about Don Coyote this fellow so astute, so sagacious, so wise and wily - he generally comes out the little end of the horn and is duped by the most innocuous of the creatures of the land. Remember that these tales come from the humblest of human beings, the underdogs. Their sympathies are with their own kind, with the poor and the weak and the defenseless. The rich powerful dons, the great owners and generals, the supermen like Hitler, who consider it their destiny to override the rest of the world, don't make up stories only lies. The storytellers and the ballad-makers of the world have never been "important" people.

Anyhow, one evening about sundown a smart coyote was trotting across the grass when he put his foot down over a cricket singing his song. He was lightsomely singing "Sereno en Aquellos Campos" peacefully in those fields when the coyote's paw cut his song short.

"Brother Coyote," the cricket cried, "you are ruining my palace. Why thus do you insult me?"

"Insult you," the coyote taunted. "Why, you dwarf, I am merely looking for a living, and now that I have you, I am going to eat you up. I had rather have a watermelon or a goat, but I eat crickets and frogs and such vermin when they are handy. Maybe you will fill the hollow of one of my teeth."

"But, Brother Coyote," the cricket went on, "it isn't fair."

"Brother Cricket," the coyote mocked, "why isn't it fair?"

"Because you haven't given me a chance."

"Why, Brother Cricket, what sort of chance do you want?"

"I want to fight a duel."

"Fight a duel with me?"

"Yes, a duel with you."

"Why, General Cricket, excuse me. I'll take my foot up so that I can admire your ar-mor and weapons, but if you try to hop away, you'll never chirp again."

The coyote removed his foot, sniffed, and continued: "You insolent midget, you idiotic insect, I don't know why I am humoring you, but name your terms and I'll fight any kind of duel you wish."

"That's only fair, Brother Coyote," the crick-et chirruped, more cheerful now.

"At your service, General Cricket," the Coyote mocked on, "but hurry up. Name your terms."

"Here they are, General Coyote," the cricket expanded his voice. "You get your army together and I'll get my army together. Tomorrow at high noon we'll engage in mortal combat. You have your forces on the prairie just above the Tank of the Buzzards, and I'll have my forces in the thicket down in the draw just below the tank. If I win, you'll never eat me. If I lose, then, as you say, I will fill a hollow of one of your respectable teeth."

"Our citizens need a comedy," Brother Coyote grinned. "Until noon tomorrow, adios."

As General Coyote made his rounds that night, he summoned his forces to assemble at the Tank of the Buzzards. He summoned the lobo, the fox, the bear, the coon, the possum, the badger, the wildcat, the panther all the animals of tooth and claw.

And singing his song, General Cricket summoned the forces he could rely on the horse-flies, the honeybees, the bumblebees, the yel low jackets, the black hornets, the mosquitoes, even the swarms of gnats, and down at the edge of the thicket below the tank a colony of red ants. General Cricket called to all his fellow insects that had stingers.

Long before high noon they were buzzing in the bushes. Meanwhile the beasts of fang and claw, even though many of them did not like General Coyote, were assembling on the prairie above the tank.

About 12 o'clock General Coyote decided to send a fox to scout out the activities of the enemy. Trotting briskly, his nose pointed, his ears open and his eyes peeled, the foxy chief of scouts came to the edge of the brush. He poked his long nose into a bush for closer observation, and just at that instant General Cricket ordered a battalion of yellow jackets to assault him.

They did. They stuck their stingers into his ears and behind his ears, into his nose, into the corners of his eyes, into his flanks, into every part of his body where the hair was short and the skin tender. He snapped and pitched for only a minute. Then he streaked for the tank. It was full of water. He dived in, the insects leaving him at the touch of water.

Directly he had to come to the surface for air. He stuck his long mouth and nose out of the water and in his shrill voice yelped "Gen-eral Coyote, retreat. The enemy are upon us."

The bees and the wasps had already darted upon the prairie and were pitching into the army of the giants. General Coyote needed no second warning. He and all his forces tucked their tails and scooted. That is how Brother Cricket got the best of Brother Coyote.

One time there was an old dog wandering out in the country half-starved. He met with a coyote.

"Listen, good old dog," said the coyote," what are you doing?"

"I am looking for something to eat," said the dog. "When I was a boy my master gave me plenty to eat, but now that I am old and cannot fight the beasts off the chickens and goats, I get nothing, and so I have to go starved, looking for some morsel in the desert."

"Listen, good old dog," said the coyote. "Describe to me the fattest and plumpest chicken in the barnyard of your master, and I'll do you a favor."

"The chicken that is fattest and plumpest," answered the old dog, "is a young paint rooster -well marked with red and white."

"Very well, I'll see you in the morning," said the coyote, and he made his farewell.

The next morning early the mistress of the farm where the dog lived was feeding some corn to the chickens. "Oh, look, she cried, "at the beautiful paint rooster! Did anybody ever see a rooster so plump and fat and delightful!"

The old dog was creeping along behind the housewife, and just then the coyote jumped out from behind a prickly pear and seized the paint rooster in his teeth and made off toward the brush. The woman yelled and the master came out yelling, and the old dog barked and began running after the coyote when both disappeared in the brush.

"Ah, look at our old dog!" said the master. "Maybe he is still of some worth."

Hidden in the brush, the coyote gave the rooster to the old dog and told him to carry it back to the house. It had not been injured. So the old dog came back carrying the rooster in his teeth.

"Look! Look!" cried the mistress. "Here is my paint rooster restored. Not a bone in his leg is broken and not even his beautiful tail feathers have been pulled out."

"The old dog is still worthy," said the master. "It is a shame that we have not fed him."

"Here," he called to a servant. "Take this money and go to town and buy some meat to give to the poor old fellow,"

So the old dog had meat again as he had it when he was "a boy," and now he was living very content.

Not long after that he was out in the country when he met the coyote again.

"How, how, good old dog?" asked the coyote.

"Fine, fine," answered the old dog. "When I restored the chicken, my master and mistress were so pleased that they bought me meat and I have been living ever since as well and contented as I lived when I was a boy. Many thanks to you."

"That is good," said the coyote. "And how will you pay your thanks?"

"Listen, Brother Coyote," said the old dog. "There is to be a wedding at my house. There will be many good things to eat, red wine and such. You come, and while the people are having the ceremony, I'll conduct you to the kitchen."

The wedding night came and with it the coyote. The old dog led him into the kitchen. The coyote ate a little, but what he was hungry for was red wine. He drank of it a plenty.

"Oh-lah, friend of mine," he said to the old dog, "I'm going to sing."

"For God's sake, no," warned the old dog. "Ss-s-ss. Be silent. They will hear you and kill you."

"No," the coyote persisted. "I am not afraid and I am going to sing."

With that he began his song, and the people rushed in alarmed, stuck a knife into him, and killed him.

These stories, my children of whatever age -belong to a long time ago. I know many more in which Brother Coyote acts. It does not seem to me, though, that anybody much will be listening for coyote stories for a long time now. Yet, let us keep them. They belong to the land we belong to. They say something of the soil that is ours. They are dear to us.