SEE YOUR WEST

Jee your West

We Preview Standard's Fine Travel Campaign Standard Oil of California will inaugurate early this spring its 1946 See Your West campaign. Because it is travel promotion with good taste and discrimination-because it presents our west beautifully and with dignity Arizona Highways considers it a pleasure to show our readers this preview of the See Your West. In doing this we are thinking especially of our eastern readers, in whose localities See Your West pictures will not be distributed and who might be interested in a glimpse of several of the subjects offered. The pictures are carefully chosen, beautifully reproduced. With the pictures are appreciative essays written by various authors, together with comprehensive travel information. We have selected three See Your West pictures that are devoted to southwestern subjects. "Navajo Country," by Esther Henderson; "Walpi'the Place of the Notch',"Please continue on eighth page over.

WALPI - "THE PLACE OF THE NOTCH"

From the summit of First Mesa's south tip, Walpi has looked out upon the northeast Arizona desert through the generations and the centuries, its walls standing gaunt against the sky, against the blaze of the summer sun, against the sudden winds-to remind the onlooker of man's deepest hope, which is survival. The missionary Spanish say that the present village, one of six in the area, was built around 1680, but far earlier the Hopi people had their dwelling places at various points on this mesa. Before the time of Columbus-perhaps long before there was a village on the northwest footslope of the mesa, still marked by ruins which the Hopi call Kuchaptuvela, or Ash-Hill Terrace. About 1629, according to the Spanish historians, increasing attacks made by Ute, Navajo and Apache-these last the dread and the scourge of the southwest country-forced the Hopi to a higher level on the west point of the mesa to a place known as Kisakobi, "the place of the ladder houses." Spanish priests reached this remote point of a wild, inhospitable land and setup their mis-sion chapel at Kisakobi, spreading their gos-pels upon a barren soil, living out lives of incredible loneliness. In 1680 the Pueblos rebelled throughout this section, the missionary at Kisakobi was killed and the chapel destroyed. Fearing Spanish retaliation and sorely pressed by the continued raids of their old tribal enemies, the Hopi people moved to the present site and there have remained. Once a village containing a thousand people or more, Walpi's population is now around 80. The Hopi system is one of clans. In the beginning the village was founded by the Bear clan, supposedly from Jemez. To Walpi, throughout the years, came other clans: the Bear, the Snake, the Reed-these by women captured-the Flute, the Asa, the Tewa and more. The houses on Walpi are largely ten-anted on a clan basis, the ceremonials in the kivas are governed by clan rules. In those cere-monials is imbedded much of the old and fun-damental religious faith of the people; as with all dwellers of an arid land, sun and water have been the cardinal facts of Hopi life, reflected in their art, in their labors and in their prayers. Below them on the desert floor are their fields and their sheep; and being a progressive people they have built their modern homes of late years near the springs at the foot of the mesa. But Walpi remains, both as a dwelling place and as a monument to human persistence; and here in summer of the odd years the Hopi people connect the present with the far past by means of their snake ceremonial. Every stick and every drop of water-except-ing the occasional rainfall trapped-must come up the steep slopes of the mesa; and every bit of food and every necessary implement of liv-ing. Over the ceaseless roll of the years the people of Walpi have climbed toward the sky with a burden in their hands or on their shoul-ders, so that Walpi today is a testimonial to the stoic patience and the fortitude of generations running back through time. The Hopi people made Walpi; but the stern necessities of Walpi fashioned the characters of the Hopi. Standing against the skyline, permanent, unyielding and devoid of softness, Walpi is a reminder of those disciplines which a race must possess if it wishes to endure.

By Ansel Adams, and "Acoma Water Hole," by Ferenz Fedor. Esther Henderson has been one of Arizona Highways most cherished photographers, while the work of Ansel Adams, one of America's truly distinguished photographers, will appear in these pages regularly from now on. Standard's 1946 campaign covers twenty-five subjects from Texas to Alaska, from Wyoming to Hawaii. Eight thousand prints each of the twenty-five pictures will be distributed free at Standard Stations throughout the west, one set a week beginning May 6th. The late Ernie Pyle, who deeply loved the Navajo country, wrote on that subject for See Your West. Ernest Haycox, the western novelist, wrote the essay on "Walpi," and the editor of Arizona Highways described "Acoma Water Hole" in New Mexico. Millions of American motorists will travel westward this season. See Your West will guide them to many interesting places.

"Phantom Ranch"

Phantom Ranch is a green oasis in the bottom of Grand Canyon. On all sides are the rich, steep walls of the canyon. Always can be heard the low rumble of the Colorado not so very far away. To get to Phantom Ranch you can walk or go by mule back seven miles down.

"The Dean of the Southwest"

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY

JOYCE and JOSEPH MUENCH

"I still think that the people who lived here 900 years ago must have been dwarfs if they lived in these tiny rooms," the woman was saying as she struggled through the small door way into the spacious patio of the Kinishba Ruin. The elderly man with her eased him self out into the hot Arizona sunshine before he replied in a gentle, scholarly voice. "They were no more dwarfs than we are, but they lived in the open except in inclement weather. They didn't need large rooms." "Just the same, I'm going to ask some one who really knows," she said as she turned away. Aghast, I expected the very walls of the ruin to tumble down upon her and I waited for a sharp rebuke from her guide. But he only smiled and laid a restraining hand on my arm as I was about to tell her that this was Dr. Byron Cummings, the greatest living authority on the Archaeology of the Southwest, and that she could look the world over without finding anyone who knew better than he what these people had been and how they had lived.

I looked again at Dr. Cummings, trying to see him with her uncomprehending eyes. I saw a small man, whom I knew to be 85 years old. He had taken off his battered hat, that was frankly meant only for protection from the fierce sun, and his hair lay thin and smooth above a high forehead. Behind glasses, were pale blue eyes that always held a hint of twinkle, and there was something kindly about the expression that a small moustache helped to give his face. His figure was alert and his bearing that of vigorous old age. It was a working day and he wore working clothes. His visitor could not know, and would probably not have cared anyway, that he washed his own clothes and then ironed them. But his khaki shirt and trousers did give him an unpretentious air. She evidently saw him only as a quiet spoken old man who was in charge of a musty ruin and was willing to poke about in its corners with such casual visitors as herself. I, fortunately, knew of him as a scholar and profound student of life, and was continually surprised and grateful that so learned a man was so kindly and so cordial to anyone whose interest in Kinishba rendered him no stranger. The woman went off, perhaps in search of "some one who really knew" and my husband asked Dr. Cummings to pose for a picture. I can still see him as he stood near the ancient outdoor altar around which the religious life of a community had centered sometime between 1050 and 1350 A. D., pointing out to me its interesting structure. Above us, the warm brown walls of the restored ruin towered in terraces to the third floor. As the camera clicked, I heard him say softly: "See that banshee peeking around the doorway? He comes here every day at 4 o'clock."

Apache Indians from the White River Indian Reservation, upon which is located Kinishba, have been more than interested witnesses of the excavation of the ruin. Artifacts from Kinishba have created in them an interest in Indian work. They do many excellent things.

It is not well to stay too long in this hot sun and Dr. Cummings invited us to come into the museum and see the treasures of an ancient world. Here the scholar was in his real element. He showed us the beautifully made hammers and axes of diorite and granite, shaped with endless care. Each water olla on its shelf, and polychrome bowl, had its history and he knew from which room it had been taken, how