BABOQUIVARI

Trail; and, after a brief passage through brush, the climb of the mountain begins.

At the start the trail bears east and south, and, for most of the way up the mountain, is on one's left. Until the cliffs are reached, the trail has for the most part an easy grade-15 to 25 degrees. It's a two or three foot path constructed by the CCC's and follows for the most part a telephone wire that years ago was strung on iron rods to a lookout on top of the mountain. In spite of neglect, the trail is still in fair condition. Indeed horses can be taken within a few hundred yards of the cliffs.

In the lower reaches the trail cuts across open slopes where only an occasional mesquite tree, saguaro cactus, or ocotillo rises higher than a man's hand. Here is the short and squatty barrel cactus, almost invariably leaning south. In the winter months its dome is decorated with yellow pods full of black seeds that squirrels and birds relish. Here also are occasional stands of staghorn cactus, low-bush cat's claw, and yuccas. There are scatterings of the century plant, the prickly pear cactus and the delicate rainbow cactus over the entire slope. And one comes across some desert willow, a shrub that cattle shun.

The flora of Baboquivari had hardly awakened, even at the lower reaches. But under the husks of last year's blooms were the stirrings of new. Here and there were occasional green shoots of the lupine which soon would splash blue and white across Baboquivari's bleak base. There were already on the dry slopes some patches of lavender, blue, and purple, where various species of the hardy verbena had suddenly rushed into bloom. In the trail itself were light green poppy plants. And soon I came across some of the poppies themselves. This was the Mexican goldpoppy, near kin to the California poppy which California adopted as its state flower. These Mexican goldpoppies were about 4 inches high, bright orange-as gay and as dainty as any wild flower I can recall. I stopped to pick some for pressing. Then I decided to wait until my return trip-a bad decision for by late afternoon when I returned the poppies had wilted and died. Like the dark purple iris I had found growing wild in the high mountains of Lebanon, these flowers gave life and color to a desert landscape for an afternoon and expired by nightfall.

In a half mile or so the trail swings around a dark nose of rock and enters a new ravine.

This happens again and again as the climb continues. On each turn the scene completely changes. New contours of the range come into view. What appears to be the great dome of Baboquivari soon towers over the trail. The cutbacks on the trail become shorter, the grade steeper. The path hugs the dark rock and at last with the steep pitch of a staircase against a wall mounts the top. On this steep pitch of trail I came across patch after patch of the Dryopetalon runcinatum whose generic name is oakpetal, a label which Dayton says would not be inappropriate as a common name. The petals are indeed lobed like miniature oak leaves. The plant stands a foot or so high. It has petals of bright white; and the flowers are in crowded clusters. These plants hugged the dark wall of rock that lined the trail or hid in rocky recesses. What seemed from below to be the peak of Baboquivari turns out to be only a dark and rugged shoulder on the range. For on a bend of the trail the truetop comes into view. It was startling to behold. The pillar of granite rose so straight and so high that I paused to take stock of my commitment.

Surely this cannot be climbed, I thought. This is the Empire State Building multiplied by four or five or six.

Man stands below it-tiny and insignificant. The central core of rock-raised to the sky in some tremendous upthrust from the bowels of the earth-is more staggering in its proportions than any structure man could ever dream of building. I could not see even a crack or a ledge on the face of the mighty wall where one could cling.

I turned from the scene above me to the canyons at my feet. They are harsh, steep de-files whose walls run to the top of the ridge at a 60 degree grade or better. Huge single rocks -broken from some precipice-are scattered along the sides of these treacherous ravines. The rough and broken terrain of the canyons would be no place for a horse. Even man could negotiate some of them only with the greatest difficulty. Twenty-five hundred feet below me in one canyon was a stand of the great saguaro.

This king of the cacti (Carnegia gigantea) stands thirty to fifty feet high. Until it is about 75 years old it is a single stalk twelve to eighteen inches in diameter. By that time it is perhaps 20 feet high. Then it grows branches-arms that are round and chunky like the main stem itself, arms that point gracefully to the sky. There may be dozen or more of these arms on a single plant. And they may multiply until the tree is 150 to 200 years old.

Saguaro means friend; and friend it was to the Indians. Its beautiful white flowers (that are nocturnal and have the fragrance of a ripe melon) produce a figlike fruit good to eat. Its seeds make up into a butter. Its wood furnished shelter and fuel.

In the desert; and there the mesquite grows in dark green streaks. Patches of creosote or greasewood form streamers of light green that flow across the plain.

It was near the arroyos or washes that the Papagos-known in history as the Desert People -lived. Here they found enough moisture to grow their crops of corn, beans, and squash, They did this by containing and spreading the water that came off the mountain in flash floods, This was indeed flash-flood farming. But here they had only their Village of the Field. It was their summer home. Like the tribes of Iran they had a winter home too, called the Village of the Well. It was built near a mountain by a spring that furnished water during the long droughts of fall, winter and spring.

I could not yet see the San Juan Mts. of Sonora, Mexico, where I had hunted, for the southern ridges of Baboquivari hid that range from view. But other mountains of Mexico lay against the southern and western horizonsAlvarez Mts., Mesquite Mts., Sauceda Mts., the Ajo Range. From a distance these look like mere pieces of ancient ranges. They are short -ten, twenty, fifty miles long. They reminded me of remnants of mountains I had seen west of Isfahan, Iran, on the trek I made with my son Bill into the Bakhtiari country in the summer of 1949. Sugar loaves, camel backs, cones, and spires-these were the shapes of the pieces of mountains that rise from the barren plains of southwest Iran. The peaks and ridges that dot the Mexican desert below have shapes almost as odd.This March day they were deep purple in the haze that hung on the horizon. As this haze lifted along the skyline a new peak or range would suddenly come into view and then as quickly disappear. It was indeed a scene of fantasy as if mirages of imaginary mountains came and went. The Gulf of California lay less than 100 air miles away. But I could not get even a glimpse of its sparkling, blue water.

After finishing my lunch I lay full length in the bunch grass for fifteen minutes or so. The breast of Baboquivari was warm. Her rocks heated by the desert sun never cooled. A sharp, brisk wind came up; but the heat of the mountain under my back kept the chill from me. I lay still. It was so quiet I could almost hear my own heart beat. I put my ear to the mountain. Here was the solitude of a peak, high above the din and roar of life. This was quiet beyond the understanding of those who know only the seashore or the plains. Then the wind picked up; and when I put my ear to the ground I could hear the bunch grass softly singing.

Trees and brush are thickly matted at the base of the cliffs. I was on my hands and knees part of the way as I worked my way through it. There I found the tiny Arizona spurge and several small ferns-bristletip cliffbrake, dwarf cliffbrake, and Lindheimer lipfern. As I cleared the brush, stood erect, and looked up I caught my breath. There rising 1200 feet above me were the cliffs of Baboquivari painted yellow, brown, and green by the millions of lichens (mainly Parmelia and Umbilicaria) that grow scale-like on them. They seemed twice as high now that I was directly under them. They rise as straight as an office building to the sky. There are no ledges by which one could hope to criss-cross them and work his way up. There was no sign or marker showing the way to the top. And I had no directions from one who had negotiated the ascent. So I set about to scoutthe cliffs to find a possible upward passage. Below the sheer cliffs on the west is a great table of rock perhaps 100 feet wide and a hundred yards or more long. It seems from below to lean against the cliffs. It lies at a gentle grade of 30 to 40 degrees and ends in a blunt rampart a hundred feet or more up the cliffs. In other words, it lies at an angle against the cliffs like a huge slab. This slab seemed to me the only logical route to the top. When I had mounted it, perhaps I would then be at the vantage point to see the rest of the course. I had composition soles on my shoes-good for rock work. So I started up the slab, walking on my hands and feet. The footing is more treacherous than it at first seems to be. There are stretches of three feet or more where no acceptable toe or finger hold exists. There are humps on the surface of the slab that are difficult to traverse.

I was almost to the top when I slipped. My balance was knife-edge for a few seconds. A fall meant a drop of about 100 feet. I had been foolish to climb alone, I thought. Broken limbs, a cracked skull or spine were easy dividends from the precarious perch where I found myself. So I slowly and painfully turned myself around and with my back to the slab gingerly eased myself down, using my heels to find tiny footholds in the rock.

I wasted an hour in this diversion before I was once more in the thick brush at the base of the cliffs. Then I clambered upward, planning to circle them as far as I could. Perhaps the trail to the top lay somewhere else.

It does. There is passage-way between the edge of the slab which I had climbed and the cliff. The cliff at this point has an overhang, perhaps eight feet wide. The effect is that of a tunnel about 50 yards long. At times one stoops as he passes through; and at all times he climbs at a stiff grade. He emerges on a ledge stuck on Baboquivari's side. Above this ledge some twenty or thirty feet is another one. The rock wall that leads to it has a 40 degree pitch. One can negotiate it without ropes. But it was here that the CCC put wooden stairs which were in dangerous disrepair in March 1950. The ledge above widens out onto a rough shoulder of Baboquivari. Just below the base of the cliffs I had come across dwarf specimens of the shrub live oak. Here on this shoulder of the mountain I found trees of it with leaves as thick, shiny, and healthy as any I ever saw.

The path to the top follows the shoulder of Baboquivari around to the northwest side of the cliffs, climbing all the while. The shoulder ends at the base of a rock that rises 50 or 60 feet at a dizzy angle of 60 degrees. With care this passage can be negotiated without assistance. But ropes are greatly to be desired. Hence the CCC at this point erected another wooden staircase. It is anchored by means of a few iron rods cemented in the rock. But it too is in great disrepair. Whole sections of its steps are out. The underpinning of the stairs is mostly gone. And the structure sways at every touch. But I partly employed this evil structure, using it to steady myself as I managed to throw mv weight to the iron posts.

At the top of the stairs is another ledge which a third and last pair of short and useless stairs connects with a steep slope of pine and shrub live oak. Here I found the boughs of the pine thick with a greyish green lichen-Usnea australis. Usnea is a food that deer will stand on their hind legs to pick from the boughs of trees in Maine as well as in Arizona. The Usnea on the trees of Baboquivari gave them a semitropical appearance. Just under the top of Baboquivari were drifts of hard-crusted snow a few feet deep. There I also ran into the first water I had seen since I left Baboquivari's base. It was hardly enough to wet the tongue. It froze as it dripped from a rock. A sheet of ice three feet or more square had formed. I could see the water dripping under the ice. It came in globules, one after the other in fast sequence. These drops were dark forms weaving and wiggling their way down. They looked in fact like tad poles swimming in a pond that had been thinly coated with crystal clear ice.

The rest of the climb up Baboquivari is uneventful. It's a steep but short rise. The course bears around the mountain so that the last hundred yards or so are up the north side. When one reaches the top he is on a dome not much over 50 yards square. Shrub live oak and Mexican pinyon pine decorate this area. And it is reported that later in the season the dome is splashed with colors-syringas, wild onions, columbine, sorrel and buttercups. An 8 x 8 frame building-once used as a lookout-perches precariously on the west side of the dome. On top there is a bottle in a rock cairn-a register for those who climb, supplied with paper and pencil. The last preceding party had been a group of students from the University of Arizona who climbed the peak on April 10, 1949. Baboquivari had had no visitors in almost a year. I roamed the edges of the top looking for familiar land marks. Tucson was blotted out by haze and clouds. Forest Perkins' cattle ranch was directly below me on the northeast. His stone farmhouse, set in a beautiful canyon of leatherleaf ash, western walnut, and Arizona sycamore, now looked like a tiny glob of rocks. The Santa Rita range that overlooks Lewis Douglas' ranch at Sonoita, Arizona, was dimly visible to the east. There were the familiar hills that mark Sasabe, Arizona. La Osa Ranch was a mat of dark hair in a ravine. The hills around La Osa that I had walked and ridden as part of the prescription for my injured back and lung were merely wavy bits of a vast desert basin. The San Juan Mts. now stood clear and sharp. The V-shaped saddle of the San Juans, through which I had pushed the buck deer to our ambush, was now so distinct it looked like the sight on a gun barrel. A great desert basin extended on all sides-dark green with mesquite, lighter green with greasewood, ocotillo, palo verde, and many species of cactus. I sat down to drink in the scene.

The view was immense. There was at all points of the compass a vast and empty land. This is a region where ranches are 300,000 acres or more and where a pasture-such as one on the Gill ranch to the east embraces 15,000 acres. The earth runs to the horizon with hardly a mark of civilization on it-an occasional trace of a road, no railroad line, no barns or warehouses. As I climbed to the top I kept looking for the represos which cattlemen on both side of the international boundary have built for their stock. These are ponds dammed up or dug out in drainage areas to catch the runoffs of water. But the sun was high and I could see none. Now in the lowering sun I began to spot them-dozens of tiny blue hazes, looking like sapphires set in a vast, green fabric. Only once before had I seen such an endless desert domain at my feet. That was when I climbed Hart Mt. in southern Oregon that rises 8020 feet above a vast semi-desert plateau. The environment-the fauna and flora-is different from Baboquivari. But the view and the sensation it brings are similar. I came to know both on top of Hart Mt. and on top of Baboquivari how the early settlers felt when they viewed these great expanses of land. On these high lookouts one gets a feeling of greater depth and distance than anywhere else. A valley may be as flat as a table top for seventy-five miles. The land runs to the horizon in every direction. This is land to possess and embrace. It is land to command as far as the eye can see. Here is the ultimate in the possessive instinct. The land at the feet of Baboquivari is called a desert but it teems with life-deer, javelina, wolves, cougar, coyotes, fox ducks, quail, dove. It is also rich in food though it looks dry and barren. Here in the spring is a veritable rash of wildflowers, painting the desert all colors of the rainbow and furnishing succulent feed for cattle, sheep, and horses. Here are the rich grama grasses-Rothrock, sideoats, six-weeks, and needle; the sacaton bunch grasses; muhlys; tobosa, curly-mesquite, and big galleta of the Hilaria genus. Here also are important browse plants-lippias, Indian wheat, jojoba or coffee berry, and the leaves and twigs of the false cat's claw. And most important browse of all is the honey mesquite, shaped like an unpruned peach tree and about as tall. Stock eat its leaves and twigs. But its most valuable forage features are the sweet and pulpy pods, rich in protein and highly palatable.

This seemingly empty land which in its southern part is called the Sonora Desert has none of the sand and dunes that we associate with deserts. This is a land to embrace. All of it-so far as the eye can see-is friendly and inviting. Man should take unto himself dozens of sections of it so he can ride all week and never come to the edge of his land. This is the thought that some deep instinct stirred in me. I thought of the men who had gone bankrupt, building huge empires out of this great expanse. I remembered rich and spacious haciendas standing in ruin as monuments of their errors. And I also thought of the Gadsen Purchase in 1853 which brought over 45,000 square miles (including Baboquivari, Tucson, and Douglas) into the United States. Some ranchers wanted to stay in Mexico and bribed the surveyors to fix the line so they would. That is difficult for us to imagine today. For the higher standard of living for all who ended on the American side of the line is apparent to even the casual rider of the border. I thought of the early explorers and settlers who came through this dry and empty land by pack train, stage coach, and long covered wagons. I remembered the tale by Gene Rhodes in Paso Por Aqui of the cowboy fleeing before the law across this desert. These travelers had to plan carefully and mark their courses well. Water was scarce; grass was not always available. Man and beast could easily perish as they followed the mirage of springs and water courses in a land that had only dry washes. I recalled how the Overland Stage Route that a hundred years ago ran from Los Angeles east listed in its schedules water, grass, and wood and distances between stations. Thus “to Pima Villages, 11 miles, water, grass; to Oneida Station, 13 miles, water (in a well), grass scarce.” The sun beat down in fiery intensity, dust rose in powder finer than flour. Man travelled this domain on the edge of danger. He had to plan well or death was his lot. But my thoughts were largely of one who came north from Mexico in 1687 with the aim not of profit but of the salvation of men's souls. He was the famous Jesuit-Father Kino of the Austrian Tyrol. He preached of God to the Indians, converted them to the Catholic faith, baptized children, built churches, and established missions. He also brought to the Indians the seeds of wheat, melons, onions, and peas. He introduced horses, sheep and cattle to this vast area. Father Kino knew Baboquivari. He had camped at Topawa, the Indian village through which I had passed this morning and presently Franciscan headquarters among the Papagos. He had also slept at Fresnal Creek at the base of Baboquivari on the west. In his long and arduous travels in this hot and dry land he had looked up and seen Baboquivari in sun and storm. To him and his party it looked "like a tall castle, situated on the top of a high peak." And so they called it Noah's Ark. The world of affairs seems far removed when one stands on Baboquivari. The noise and din of man's quarrels and disputes are remote and alien. One sits on a dais with his head bumping the sky. He feels removed from the earthly scene. In this remote spot one is also carried far back in the chronicles of time. Baboquivari's creation was perhaps 50 million years ago. Once a great volcano probably stood here. Then molten rock welled up in the core of the volcano and hardened into a solid plug. The sides of the volcano weathered and wore off, leaving a pillar of rock. This was millions of years before man appeared on the scene with his plots and his schemes. Baboquivari has eternal qualities about it. Man is only temporary and transit. In the days of Father Kino men were plotting each other's destruction as they are today. The Apaches were streaking through the mesquite, looking for victims among the peaceful desert people the Papagos. The victims today are entire races or whole nations and continents. The weapons of the Papagos were arrows, tipped with stone; and leather shields and clubs that were made of hard wood and that looked ex actly like our modern wooden potato mashers. The weapons of today are bombs that have the power to wipe out all life itself and to make even Baboquivari and the rich land which it commands dead and sterile. We need today, even more than the Papagos and Apaches did 300 years ago, emissaries of love and brotherhood among all the peoples of the earth. Hate has always been the spokes man and dictator of destruction. Today hate is armed with lethal weapons than can kill all life. It becomes a monster too terrible for any people to tolerate. We must emulate the example of Father Kino and cultivate not hate but patience, understanding, and tenderness. If peace is to be realized we must be as selfless, as devoted, as steadfast as he. We must put our trust in the God who created the heavens and the earth. We must make brotherhood our practice as well as our ideal. A cool wind came up and aroused me from my day-dreaming. This was a wind from the East-a land of special significance to the Papagos. It was in the East that the spirits of the dead resided. It was there that the rain storms made up. The east was a land of water and plentiful food. It was to the East that the Papagos turned in their rainmaking ceremony. This was a ceremony in which the wine of the fruit of the saguaro was used-the wine that had the magic to produce clouds, rain, and the thick stalk, broad leaves, and fair tassel of the Corn. In the Pacific Northwest a wind of this char acter would have made the forests of pine and fir bow in a great symphony of the wind in struments. On the top of Baboquivari the music was more subdued. It had the pitch and volume of the strings. The wind only hummed through the shrub live oak and Mexican pinyon that decorate the top of the peak. It sang softly as it brushed this high point and passed off into the void. But sometimes there is a music on top of Baboquivari that few peaks know. It is said to sound like the roar of rock avalanches, com ing in series on end until the noise rolls away like thunder expending itself in distant clouds. When the wind and sun conditions are right, the cliffs of Baboquivari are alternately warmed and chilled. The sudden temperature changes set up stresses in the outer rock face. The roar is thought to come from the expansion and con traction of these vast rock surfaces. At least that is the theory advanced some years ago by Glenton G. Sykes. I waited for the chill wind which came up to produce the roar for me. But weather conditions were not right; and the cold which the wind carried drove me from the top in a short while.

I dropped off the cliffs and reached the trail at their base in an hour. It was now 5 p.m. - two hours from dark. Black clouds were rising from the Gulf of California. The sun sent streamers of color through them. First there was gold; then the gold would fade and in quick succession would come red, grey, and purple. The clouds changed so fast in color, and so subtly, that one could imagine giant spot lights being played on the heavens. This was a sunset that only Ari zona can produce. I caught myself stopping on the trail to watch it, letting precious moments of the remaining daylight pass as darkness fell.

The cliffs and canyon walls that had been so gaily painted when I came up the trail had lost their color in the dusk. They were now dark and sombre. Some had turned almost black. They were beginning to lose their contours and detail. The farthest ones down looked like black hulks of rock slightly out of focus as if covered with a mist. The pits of the canyons, revealed as the trail swung back and forth along the mountainside, seemed forbidding. They were indeed ominous-black and bottomless. Trees and shrubs that had personalities in daytime were now becoming indistinct blurbs or splotches.

I kept on the lookout for deer that would be on the move now that dusk was here. But I saw no saucy flash of a tail. I saw or heard nothing all the way down. Once or twice I stopped to listen. There was no note of a bird in any of the canyons; no sound of animals going through brush. It was as if the whole mountain was asleep.

As I swung around the elbow in the trail where it starts its long, gentle drop to the basin, the lights of the Indian village of Topawa were blinking across the plain. The mesquite, grease wood, and cacti were merely dark coverings of the desert floor. A cool wind was stirring with a rustling sound the bear grass that lines the trail -the grass with which the Papagos made baskets and mats. The graceful ocotillos-which were in fresh green leaf and soon would have their long, whiplike stems topped with showy scarlet flowers-now looked like dead sticks.

As I reached the bottom and entered the region of thick brush, I walked warily. For there might be animals astir, headed for the spring at Baboquivari's base. But there was no sign of life there. I drank deep of the cool water, and turned to look at Baboquivari. Its outline was dim and indistinct against the starlight sky. It, too, had lost its personality. It was now a mountain of magic and mystery, seeming to ride twice as high by night as it did by day. Beyond it was the North Star, the one which the Papagos called the Unmoving Star. High over head was Orion's belt-the constellation which the Papagos named the Mountain Sheep, the Antelope, and the Deer. I thought how relatively unchanged this scene must be from the night Father Kino camped here 300 years ago or from that evening, time out of mind, when the Papagos first drank from the spring at Baboquivari's base.

I left the spring, headed for my car. I had gone only a few paces when I was startled by a great noise from a shrub I passed. Quail-the tufted Gambel quail-choose the wolfberry or desert thorn as their favorite retreat. A covey of them went out with the roar of an armada of planes from under this shrub that I passed. As they rose they stirred to life a covey of doves that had been nesting nearby. And for a few moments these graceful friends whirled over head, their wings making a whistling sound so plaintive as to be almost human.

of planes from under this shrub that I passed. As they rose they stirred to life a covey of doves that had been nesting nearby. And for a few moments these graceful friends whirled over head, their wings making a whistling sound so plaintive as to be almost human.

Far across the basin came the yapping of a coyote. Then from the mountain at my back came the most fearful sound of the woods-the screech of the mountain lion. I turned to look. He cried again. And his voice echoed and reechoed off the dark cliffs.

All that lives on the mountain-rabbits, jave linas, deer, and quail-must have then stood still. The hunters were abroad; their coming had been announced. Death began to stalk all life as darkness descended on Baboquivari.

TOM SEGUNDO-CHIEF OF THE PAPAGOS

the Papagos. Now, finally, he was able to quit his roads job and assume the chieftainship full time, on a modest salary.The knowledge soon spread among the Papagos that a change was taking place. Previously they had gone always to the white superintendent with their troubles. Now their own leaders were on hand to help them. In ever-mounting numbers, traveling great distances by wagon and horseback, they came to the tribal offices and posed their problems-family troubles, district squabbles, roads in disrepair, water wells going dry. And as they did so, a new sense of pride grew up with them, for already they had gained a small measure of independence from the white man.

Meanwhile, Tom and the council went to work to streamline and codify the Papago law. They called in a white attorney from the outside to help them, because their aim was to model their law after his law so as to accustom the Papagos to white man's procedure. This was another small step in the direction of integrating the Indians into the world about them.

To achieve this end, Segundo has seized upon every opportunity thrown his way. When the state supreme court finally gave the Indians the right to vote, he hastened out through the reservation and registered hundreds of them, and then, when election time came, urged them to the polls. Other Arizona Indian tribes, by contrast, took little advantage of their newly-gained franchise. There even were reports that the elders of some tribes, under the prodding of unscrupulous white politicians, advised their people not to vote on the spurious grounds that they would incur new taxes and jeopardize their rights to their land.

Another change has occurred in Papagoland. Previously the white superintendent sat with the Papago court in all its sessions, and most of its decisions actually were his. Now the superintendent stays away, by mutual consent. Nor does he attend the tribal council meetings except when he is invited. (The superintendent doesn't mind at all. He says with a smile that it has made his job a lot easier.) And there has been still another interesting development. Young people and women of the trible have begun to take a lively interest in tribal work for the first time. Tom wants eventually to see the Indian Service office at Sells staffed entirely with Papagos, and some day he hopes even the superintendent will be a Papago.

But, with all this, Tom Segundo's great effort has been The Plan. It took him nearly a year to hammer it into form. Nor did he do the job alone. For he is not the kind of leader who sits in aloof isolation from his people until he decides what is best for them. In Tom Segundo the instinct for dynamic,functioning democracy burns fiercely.Week In fine and voluminous detail it lays down the formula by which the emancipation of the Papago people is to be accomplished: Conservation measures to increase the carrying capacity of the range land. Increased irrigation development for farming. Construction of boarding schools to educate the children and prepare many of them for life in the out-which side world. (Less than 20 per cent of the Papagos can read and write, and less than one-third attend school regularly.) Expansion of public health facilities. (The average life expectancy of a Papago is 17 years, compared to 60 for a white person; only a birth rate double that of the country as a whole enables the Papagos to survive at all.) side world. (Less than 20 per cent of the Papagos can read and write, and less than one-third attend school regularly.) Expansion of public health facilities. (The average life expectancy of a Papago is 17 years, compared to 60 for a white person; only a birth rate double that of the country as a whole enables the Papagos to survive at all.) The Plan has been indorsed by the Indian Office, the Department of Interior and the Budget Bureau. And since emancipation inevitably costs money, a bill has been introduced in Congress asking an initial appropriation of $23,000,000.

This is indeed a modest sum in terms of need and by contrast with the vast quantities of money scattered broadside by the government in an aimless and futile effort to ameriorate the "Indian problem." Some of Tom Segundo's white advisers say he is asking too little-he should demand more in the hope of settling finally for what he needs. But that isn't his way of doing things. That would smack of dishonesty.

Like any white man lobbying for a piece of pet legislation, Tom takes periodic trips to Washington to nudge The Plan another step through the labyrinth of government. He appears before bureaus, commissions and committees with his charts and diagrams and delivers scholarly expositions of the Papago problem. This often sends an eyebrow or two lofting, since there are still those who cling lovingly to the movie stereotype of the Indian as an aboriginal rustic with an English vocabulary consisting of "ugh."

Tom Segundo knows there is a great distance to travel before his dream of freedom and independence for his people is realized. Even after The Plan is put into effect, only a beginning will have been made. For the Papagos are, to a very great extent, a primitive, backward and stand-offish people.

Many of them still prefer to take their maladies to their medicine men instead of the reservation doctor. And as recently as 1940 a small rebellion was organized in a corner of the reservation against the federal census. "This is white man's law, and Indian only obey Indian law," proclaimed the leader, an unreconstructed old gentleman name Pia Machita. Only after the tribal council had intervened, and the matter had gone all the way to the Indian Service in Washington, did the dissidents relent and allow themselves to be counted.

But the Papagos are also a people with prodigious patience, gained from generations of living on the desert. The story is told of the time when rabbits overran the reservation, menacing the crops. The Papagos killed thousands of them until suddenly a literal government official invoked a law against selling ammunition to the Indians. The Papagos didn't protest. They simply asked two questions: Would the white man kill their rabbits for them? And if not, would the white man supply them with food for a year until new crops could be grown? The flow of ammunition was resumed and the Papagos phlegmatically went back to peppering rabbits.

Tom Segundo has inherited this quality of patience in full measure. He is resigned to the fact that it will take years, maybe even generations, to complete the emancipation which he has started. He may not live to see it. Perhaps his children won't live to see it. But perhaps their children will. And if Tom Segundo isn't around to watch his people restored at last to dignity, self-reliance and equality with their fellow men, surely his spirit will rejoice.