The Land Wisdom of the Indians

Here are, today, a few wilderness reaches on the North American continent-in Alaska, in Canada, and in the high places of the Rocky Mountains where the early-morning mantle of primeval America can be seen in its pristine glory, where one can gaze with wonder on the land as it was when the Indians first came. Geologically and geographically this continent was, and is, a masterpiece. With its ideal latitude and rich resources, the two-billion-acre expanse that became the United States was the promised land for active men.The American continent was in a state of climax at the time of the first Indian intrusions ten millenia or more ago. Superlatives alone could describe the bewildering abundance of flora and fauna that enlivened its landscapes: the towering Redwoods, the giant Saguaro cacti, the teeming herds of buffalo, the beaver, and the grass were, of their kind, unsurpassed.

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the native American shared this elemental ethic: the land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures. His feelings were made visible in medicine bundles and dance rhythms for rain, and all of his religious rites and land attitudes savored the inseparable world of nature and God, the Master of Life. During the long Indian tenure the land remained undefiled save for scars no deeper than the scratches of cornfield clearings or the farming canals of the Hohokams on the Arizona desert.

STEWART L. UDALL AND HIS BOOK “THE QUIET CRISIS”

STEWART L. UDALL, of Tucson, Arizona, is the 37th Secretary of the Interior. Nominated by President Kennedy shortly after reelection to a fourth term as Congressman from Arizona's Second District, he was sworn in January 20, 1961.

Secretary Udall's Department has conservation responsibilities for programs dealing with fisheries and wildlife, as well as supervision over national parks, the public lands, irrigation and reclamation activities. Interior markets all power produced at federal hydroelectric dams, and supervises the ongoing programs for the American Indian tribes, the territorial peoples of Guam, the Virgin Islands, Samoa, and the Trust Territory Islands of the Pacific. He has represented his country on a tour of Russian hydro-power installations, during which he and his friend, the late Robert Frost, had conversations with Chairman Khrushchev. He took part in a Cabinet economic mission to Japan, where he delighted the Japanese by a winter ascent of Mt. Fujiyama. He participated in a World Conservation Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, followed by visits to several other African nations, and a climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

A graduate of Arizona University in 1948, Udall is a lawyer by profession and the son of a Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, the late Levi S. Udall. He was born on January 31, 1920, in St. Johns, Arizona, a town founded by his grandfather. He and his wife, the former Ermalee Webb, have six children, and maintain homes in McLean, Virginia, and Tucson.

Secretary Udall's book, The Quiet Crisis, published in late 1963 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 209 pp.; $5.00, traces the land and people story of the American continent. The author portrays the gradual evolvement of attitudes toward the land from the Indians through the "land raiders" of the 19th century, to the crusades of such conservationists as Henry Thoreau, John Wesley Powell, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the two Roosevelt presidents. Secretary Udall confines the quiet conservation crisis of the 1960's in these terms: "America today stands poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, and of an over-all environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight."

The book is an eloquent plea for America to conserve and protect the land for future generations. It is "dedicated to the proposition that men must grasp completely the relationship between human stewardship and the fullness of the American earth."

NOTES FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS

"CANYON VISTA - CANYON DE CHELLY" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. Photograph was taken along the rim of Canyon de Chelly, several hundred yards north of White House Ruins overlook in Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "day-chay") National Monument on the Navajo Indian Reservation in northeast Arizona. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.32 at 1/25th sec.; 150mm Symmar lens; September; afternoon, bright sunlight; Weston Meter 400; ASA rating 64.

"GOING TO MARKET" BY LOUIS AND VIRGINIA KAY. This photograph taken on the Navajo Reservation approximately twenty-five miles east of Page, Arizona. While the Navajo Reservation is served by miles of hard-surfaced highways, in the remoter sections many roads are no more than tracks in the sand. 4x5 Super D Graflex camera; Ektachrome; f.11 at 1/125th sec.; Kodak Ektar 190mm lens; July; late afternoon, backlighting; Weston 200; ASA rating 50.

"THE BIG AND EMPTY LAND" BY LOUIS AND VIRGINIA KAY. The land of the Navajo is a big and empty land but to the Indians themselves it is home and they would trade it for no other place. 4x5 Super D Graflex camera; Ektachrome; f.5.6 at 1/60th sec.; Kodak Ektar 190mm lens; July; last rays of sun, approximately 7 p.m.; Weston 2.5; ASA rating 50.

"STORM CLOUDS IN NAVAJOLAND" BY JOSEF MUENCH. A storm forming over the Navajo Reservation in late summer can be a most spectacular and dramatic sight. Here are shown thunderheads forming over Monument Valley, adding even more color to a colorful scene. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.14 at 1/100th sec.; 6" Xenar lens; September.

"GRAZING SHEEP IN NAVAJOLAND" BY LOUIS AND VIRGINIA KAY. Photograph was taken on the Navajo Indian Reservation, approximately thirty-five miles east of Page, Arizona. Sheep are the Navajo's prize possessions. Here sheep are being driven to a Navajo encampment where they will be put in a corral for the night to protect them from coyotes. 4x5 Super D Graflex camera; Ektachrome; f.11 at 1/125th sec.; Kodak Ektar 190mm lens; July; late afternoon; Weston 200; ASA rating 50.

"CHINLE WASH FROM PONCHO HOUSE" BY JOSEF MUENCH. This is a view of Chinle Wash from Poncho House Ruins on the east rim of Monument Valley, reached over a thirty mile jeep road. This area is inhabited by a few Navajo Indian families, but is seldom visited by tourists, yet it is a most colorful valley with its pink sand dunes and red cliffs. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.20 at 1/50th sec.; 6" Schneider Xenar lens; September; sunny day.

"MORNING IN NAVAJOLAND" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. Photograph was taken at the Baby Rocks area along Arizona 64, northeast of Kayenta, Arizona. A visitor with proper automotive equipment (preferably 4-wheel drive), who has the time and the stamina to go exploring, can find many hidden places of great scenic beauty in the vast Navajo Reservation. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.27 at 1/25th sec.; 127mm Ektar lens; September; early morning, bright sunlight; Weston Meter 300; ASA rating 64.

"NORTHERN ARIZONA SKYSCAPE" BY HUBERT A. LOWMAN. Photograph was taken near the junction of U.S. 89 and Arizona 64, leading north to Tuba City and Kayenta on the Navajo Reservation. Nowhere can summer clouds build up more spectacular forms than in Northern Arizona during the rainy season in July and August. Branc 17, 4x5 view camera; Ektachrome E-1; f.16 at 1/10th sec.; 5" Ektar lens; afternoon bright sunlight; ASA rating 25.

There was skill in gardening along with this respect for the earth, and when Sir Walter Raleigh's colonists came warily ashore on the Atlantic coast, Indians brought them gifts of melons and grapes. In Massachusetts, too, Indians not only schooled the Pilgrims in the culture of maize and squashes, but taught them how to fertilize the hills with alewives from the tidal creeks. The Five Nations and the Algonquians of the Northeast, the Creeks, Choc taws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Seminoles of the South, the village-dwelling Mandans of the Missouri River, and the Pueblos of Hopi, Zuni and the Rio Grande, and the Pima of the Southwest, all put the earth to use and made it bring forth fruit. Their implements were stone age, but most tribes were acquiring the rudiments of a better civil ization, they were learning how to secure a surplus from the earth, and were beginning to invest it in goods, tools, and buildings, and to devote their leisure hours to craft and art work and to the creation of religious rites and political systems.

The idea has long been implanted in our thinking that all American Indians belonged to nomadic bands that developed neither title to, nor ties with, the land. This is misconceived history, for even the tribes that were not village dwellers tending garden plots of corn, beans, or cotton, had stretches of land they regarded as their own, But there was a subtle qualification. The land and the Indians were bound together by the ties of kinship and nature, rather than by an understanding of property ownership. The land is our Mother, said Iroquois tradition, said the midwest Sauk and Foxes, said the Northwest Nes Perces of Chief Joseph. The corn, fruits, roots, fish, and game to all tribes were the gifts which the earth Mother gave freely to her children. And with that conception, the Indian's emotional feelings for his woods, valleys, and prairies were the very essence of his letters of living, The depth of their feeling is reflected in the Navajos, who scorned the rich Oklahoma prairie country offered them by the government, and chose to live in their own arid and rugged deserts. Or it is reflected in the Chero kees who, in the space of one generation, changed their whole way of life, established schools and libraries, pro duced an alphabet, planned a constitution and a legisla ture and went to work in their own mills and blacksmith shops, all with the purpose of becoming so civilized that the whites would allow them to stay on their lands and not ship them west to the Territories.

To the Indian, the homeland was the center of the universe. No member of a civilized people ever spoke of his native land with more pride than is apparent in the speech of the Crow Chief, Arspoolsh: "The Crow country," he said, "is exactly in the right place. It has snowy mountains and sunny plains; all kinds of climates and good things for every season. When the summer heat scorches the prairies, you can draw up under the mountains, where the air is sweet and cool, the grass fresh, and the bright streams come tumbling out of the snowbanks. There you can hunt the elk, the deer, and the antelope, when their skins are fit for dressing; there you will find plenty of white beasts and mountain sheep."

In the autumn, when your horses are fat and strong from the mountain pastures, you can go down into the plains and hunt the buffalo, or trap beaver in the streams. And when winter comes on, you can take shelter in the woody bottoms along the rivers, there you will find buffalo meat for yourselves, and cottonwood bark for your horses, or you may winter in the Wind River Valley where there is salt weed in abundance.

"The Crow country is exactly in in the right place. Everything good is to be found there. There is no country like the Crow country."

Here is affection for the land but no notion of private ownership. The idea that land could be bought and sold was an alien concept to the Indians of America. They clung possessively to certain chattels, but lands were nearly always held in common. An individual might have the use of a farm plot but at his death it reverted back to the community.

The confrontation of Indians and whites had in it the seeds of hopeless misunderstanding from the start. Their two cultures had produced irreconcilable concepts of land ownership, and once the first white men set foot on American soil the drama unfolded with all the certain sweep of a Greek tragedy, Englishmen, especially, coveted land. It was something to be owned outright. Had not the English king, who held the title, given the charter deeds? The 16th Century Spaniard, by contrast, was not primarily interested in seizing land; the soldier wanted personal plunder, the priest came with his seeds and livestock to save Indian souls.

To the joint-stock companies of Virginia, intent on commercial profits, and to the colonizing Pilgrims, exclusive possession was the be-all and end all of land ownership. But the Indian's title, based on the idea that he belonged to the land and was his son, was a charter to use in common with his clan or fellow-tribes-men, and not to use it. Neither white nor Indian fully grasped the concept of the other. The Indian wanted to live not just in the world, but with it; the white men, who thought in terms of estates and baronies, wanted land he alone could cultivate and use.

In the beginning friendship and cooperation with the Indian were essential if the colonists were to gain a foothold in America, for the white man was badly out-numbered. To be anneighborly was to risk violence, and respect for Indian rights was the better part of wisdom. The upright conduct of the first colonists in Massachusetts and Virginia drew generous response from powerful chiefs who helped the settlements survive.

Live and let live was the inevitable opening keynote, for muskets could neither cut trees nor keep the peace. In the meeting of alien worlds both Indians and whites had something to learn from each other, and if the newcomers borrowed the idea of a feast of thanksgiving from a harvest celebration of neighboring Indians, so much the better But the first phase ended quickly, and as stockades were completed and new colonists swelled the ranks of the invaders, conciliation was superfluous: as one historian put it, "The Indians were pressed remorselessly when their friendship became of less value than their land." In Virginia the Indians watched with consternation and alarm as the white men planted tobacco, used up the soil, and every few years moved on to clear new fields. The planters took the Indians land, first by cajolery and trade, then by force. So swiftly did events move that within forty years of the founding of Jamestown, the mighty Powhatans were landless and in beggary at the edge of their former homes. Elsewhere the details were different, but white expansion followed the same general pattern.

The barrier of misunderstanding that arose when advancing visitors encountered Indians was too high for either people to scale. Some weak and venal chiefs bargained away the rights of their people but for most tribes the sale of large tracts to the settlers was not a solution, for they had nothing to sell. The warrior chief, Tecumseh, stated the Indian philosophy of nearly all tribes with his reply to the demands of white buyers: "Sell the country... why not sell the air, the clouds, the great sea?"

the Five Civilized Tribes were sent, with scant civility (and, in the end, scant humanity) on a thousand-mile "trail of tears" to Oklahoma.

In its latter stages the land war moved into its cruelest phase in California, the Southwest and the Upper Great Plains. Most of the California Indians were neither as warlike nor as land conscious as the eastern tribes. But even this did not spare them, and the most pitiless chapters of the struggle were written by frustrated goldseekers who organized vigilante raids and subsequently collected from the government for their deeds of slaughter.

After the Civil War the "clear the redskins out" policy approached its dramatic climax. The mounted Indians of the Upper Great Plains and the Apaches of the Southwest were fierce bands who would not be cornered. It took regiments of trained cavalrymen over twenty years to drive them from their sacred hills and hunting grounds. Outarmed and outmanned, these warriors struck fierce counterblows, and our American pride was dealt a grim blow when the rooth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was celebrated amidst the news of the Custer massacre. The undeclared racial war did not end until the final tragic chapters were written in the pyrrhic victory of Sitting Bull at the Little Bighorn, and in the last stands of Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph, and Geronimo.

With the final triumphs of the cavalry, and the uneasy settlement of tribes on reservations the old slogans gradually disappeared, and the new conscience expressed itself in the saying: "It's cheaper to feed 'em than to fight 'em."

The 1887 Allotment Act, which broke up parts of some reservations and gave individual title to some Indians, further stripped away Indian rights by forcing unprepared tribesmen to deal with unscrupulous land swindlers.

With the passage of time and the steady attrition of old ideas and beliefs, we are at last, hopefully, entering a final phase. The present generation of Indians accept the system their fathers could not comprehend. The national government strives to provide the Indian people with adequate health and education programs and with aid to develop the potential of their human and natural resources. As a singular gesture of atonement which no civilized country has ever matched, the Congress has established a tribunal, the Indians Claims Commission, through which tribes may be compensated for losses suffered when their lands were forcibly taken from them.

After long years of peace, we now have an opportunity to measure the influence of the Indians and their culture on the American way of life. They have left much more with us than the magic of place names that identify our rivers and forests and cities and mountains. They have made a contribution to our agriculture and to a better understanding of how to live in harmony with the land.

It is ironical that today the conservation movement finds itself turning back to ancient Indian land ideas, to the Indian understanding that we are not outside of nature, but of it. From this wisdom we can learn how to conserve the best parts of our continent.

In recent decades men have slowly come back to some of the truths that the Indians knew from the beginning: the idea that unborn generations have a claim on the land equal to our own; the knowledge that men need to learn from nature, to keep an ear to the earth, and to replenish their spirits in frequent contacts with animals and wild land; and most important of all, a sense of reverence for the land.

But the settlers found the Indians' continent too natural and too wild. Though within a generation that wilderness would begin to convert some of their sons, and though reverence for the natural world and its forces would eventually sound in much of our literature, and find its prophets in Thoreau and Muir, those first Euro peans, even while looking upon the New World with wonder and hope, were determined to subjugate it.

ROCK-WRITINGS

Twenty miles south. I knew of one site only on that stream, so I put my discovery to the test by choosing a location which conformed to the pattern of the Gila, and the inscriptions were there! I drove downstream to a second potential site, and there they were again.

The discovery, of course, removed every vestige of the "doodling Indian" from my mind. I rested on an incised boulder late that afternoon, wondering what ancient traveler in distant time may have come there, read and been benefited for his reading. I wondered who those noble people could have been, who challenged the deserts - some of them must have contributed their lives to obtain the information inscribed here on stones, all for the safety and preservation of others whom they knew would follow.

On all this earth there can be no greater manifestation of the Brotherhood of Man than that of which our rockinscriptions tell. Only one work can possibly exceed their beautiful magnitudes of "Love thy Neighbor," and that is the Bible itself.It is inscribed on stone, that thousands of years before the birth of Jesus Christ, a mighty and mysterious civilization challenged, and for most part conquered, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to come to the Western Hemisphere and colonize it.It is a matter of incised record too, that these unknown people circumnavigated the world, and meticulously explored it, but I shall for the time being, limit consideration to their contributions to American prehistory.

Preceding the orderly diffusions athwart the oceanic approaches to the New World, the intrepid exploring vanguards of this civilization, searched the seas for islands, intermediate of, yet on course, or nearly so, with points of embarkation and destination. This time-consuming and dangerous task was performed to break long and tiring transoceanic voyages for rest of migrants and seamen, and repairs to craft before they continued their wanderings.

Webster-wise, the word "petroglyph" is defined as "A carving upon a rock, especially a prehistoric one.' Due to her mild semi-arid climate, and the patinated surfaces of most rocks in the state, there are preserved in Arizona what is probably the most numerous concentration of "petroglyphs of any area of like size in the Western Hemisphere. Few if any of them could be adequately described as carvings, for they are for most part, writings which were pecked into rocks.

My reader will have noticed that the use of the word "petroglyph" is being avoided. It is a term of generalization a carving on a rock it applies equally to rock art as it does to rock-writing, and anything carved on stone. The rock-writings of Arizona are of a dignified origin, and a very important one, even if it is presently unknown. No one can say from whence came the Egyp tians, and all of their writings were meaningless too, until the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone a little over a century ago. The mere fact that our rock-writings are inscribed on rough and irregular surfaces of native stones in no reflection upon them. They may appear crude to the modern eye, but soiled parchment does not impair the value of manuscripts. It is what is written upon them which counts.

Incised upon our rugged rocks, are the world's oldest known symbols geometric symbols, the most venerated of all ages. Many of them are still being used by our ancient faiths and fraternal organizations. They date back six thousand years at the very least, and have served mankind in every century of those millenniums.

It would seem logical to conclude that the most complete and extensive repertoire of those ancient symbols would be the property of the antiquities of the Old World the Near East, Egypt, or the Eastern Mediterranean. Yet, astounding as the fact is, it is not there. It is inscribed among the rock archives of Arizona and her neighboring states in a most eloquent manner.

All symbols and designs found in the antiquities of the East are inscribed in the Western Hemisphere.

All geometric symbols are members of progressive sequences which stem from the elementary signs of geometry. Arizona and adjoining states record two hundred and one of those sequences, while the ancient civilizations elsewhere have but one hundred and seventy-one. There are one hundred and thirty-one mutual to the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. There are, of course, several thousands of variant symbols represented in such sequences, and Arizona has more of them than any area of its size on earth. Our rock-writings are therefore entitled to a name adequate to classifying them. My discovery that the sites were selected in keeping with a uniform rule, which assured their detection by anyone familiar with that rule, is evidence that such sites and the writings they record, were the result of organized and centralized sources. Emanating from such a common source, they enjoy kinship regardless of how scattered the sites may be. Next, the symbols appearing among these rockwritings are constructed from the elementary formations of geometry, and the application of the term “geometric” in defining them is mandatory.

When a relationship is established as just explained, the term “cognate” may be used with good grace — and is, of course, in defining certain inscriptions of Europe, so it is no innovation of mine. Or do I have any claim of originally for the term of “geometric” for it has long designated the Geometric Period of Greece, an era when geometric designs dominated the ceramic decoratives of that ancient land. The name “rock-writings” is also used with reason, as is that of “stone-writers.” Not all of their messages were incised, some were painted, and others were performed by aligning rocks on the ground. These three methods tell again of the ingenuity with which these ancient immigrants to Arizona met with challenging problems and were equal to mastering them in a commanding way.

Rock-surfaces exposed to the attack of the elements were incised, and these rock-writings are most common, because they had to be out in the open where people could see, and read them readily. In caves, or recessed cliffs, however, the walls of which were protected from the elements, the “stone-writers” saved time and labor by using paint to write with. The third, and final method was resorted to only when no rock surfaces were available to write upon, and/or when the rocks about, resisted the incising tool due to their hardness. When either of those circumstances presented themselves, the “stone-writers” met the emergency by collecting small stones, and aligned them on the ground in the forms of the signs or symbols required. Thus the name of “Cognate Geometric Rock-writings” clearly defines and classifies the inscriptions being considered.

By the time 1940 rolled around, I had determined that the incised sites flanked the Gila River from its confluence with the Colorado River, north of Yuma, Arizona, to its headwaters over 600 miles distant in New Mexico. Don Manuel had long before informed me of others in Sinaloa, one of which was near the Pacific Coast of that Mexican state. I had acquired some photographs of the rock-writings in the state of Sonora, and I found a site myself in that state on the Gulf of California near Puerto Peñasco.

Then Baja or Lower California answered roll call, and immediately after it, in January 1941, the top surprise of my petroglyphical career came.

It was a cold evening, one of those which makes the family divan an object for competition in the home. With my head pillowed, I was reading an article by my friend Dr. Thor Heyerdahl. He entitled it “Turning Back Time in the South Seas.” The setting was Fatu-Hiva — one of the Marquesas Islands, and Thor and his wife were there honeymooning.

Midway through the article I read: “—close by, another large rock was covered with carvings, and all was surrounded by a wall with several boulders marked with concentric circles (p. 131).” Turning the pages rapidly, I came to the illustration of the inscriptions. I looked at them in utter amazement, then left the divan to place the picture under a stronger light, but that did not change things they were the same kind of rock-writings that I had come to know so well in Arizona!

The impact of the suddenly gained knowledge of rock-writings on the island of Fatu-Hiva, some 4,350 miles west of the Panama Canal, was not altogether welcome to me. Up to that time I had believed that the inscriptions were unique to the western portion of North America, and confined to an area which I knew well. From time to time I could ultimately cover such a region, but if these inscriptions were to go wandering off across the Pacific Ocean, that was quite another matter.

In the absence of inspiration, curiosity frequently needles one into action. My mind demanded more information about the Pacific, but how could I get it? I know not a soul west of California. I allowed the matter to rest, and then one day I received a letter from a friend in San Francisco. She was a subscriber of a Honolulu newspaper, and it had published an illustrated article about Hawaiian rock-inscriptions, and after that, I was in the Pacific for sure.

My experiences in obtaining documentary material from the Pacific would require much space. My late wife once declared: “The things are all over the place.” That is more nearly correct than most people would imagine, for I have not as yet contacted a location in the Pacific, where rocks were available, which is not branded with these Cognate Geometric Rock-writings.

The inscriptions along the Darling River in Australia, like those of New Zealand, and Hawaii, could be distributed and mixed with others at sites along the Gila River, and a specialist would never know the difference. They are incised in precisely the same manner, many of the symbols are repeated and counterparted, and they otherwise conform in detail with ours.

The scriptures have been challenged so many times by those who thought they knew better, yet the Holy Word has endured, while those who doubted them have been forgotten. There is a passage which reads: “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” Genesis 11, 1. The rock-writings are in every quarter of the earth, they testify that a written language was understood over the whole world. As to speech? Not knowing, I cannot say.

The present generation is one which is only convinced by practical and material evidence. Theory is merely someone else's idea. I might say these ancient “stone-writers” crossed the Pacific in boats, and while I personally believe such to be true, no one will or should accept my belief, unless I can produce the boats. I cannot do that, nor can I say who the people were, I believe, crossed the Pacific, or when they crossed it.

I do know, and can produce the material proof, for the inscribed sites still exist, that the civilization responsible for Arizona's cognate geometric rock-writings penetrated the interior of the continent by way of the Gulf of California, the Colorado River and its tributaries. The sites and the inscriptions flank the Gila River and its tributaries, and reaching the headwaters of the Gila in New Mexico, pass over the Continental Divide and out to the Gulf of Mexico by the Rio Grande River. Beyond there, they appear in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz, in the Loltun Cave of Yucatan, and certain islands, like the Virgins, in the Caribbean Sea.

Then athwart the Atlantic Ocean they make appearances in the Canary Islands off the coast of North Africa, then Portugal and Spain. The west and south coast, and several of the rivers of Ireland, are littered with them, and they flank the River Nile from the Cataracts south. The Orange River of South Africa is liberally sprinkled with these sites also.

There is one thing I am

Ring from ancient India Ancient coin-Crete Hawaiian inscription - Gila River, Arizona Shipalauvi, Arizona

sure of that doodling old Indian they told me about in Tucson put as many signs on rocks as the stork has delivered babes in chimneys.

The Stone-writers were interesting people, there was a constructive reason for their every act, and their inscribing deeds were strictly performed for the guidance, safety, and succor of their fellow citizens.

Their penetration of what is now the American South-west reveals clearly that organized parties of geographical observers and scribes began their investigations at the sea-coasts, and moved inland along the rivers and their tributaries until they reached the mountain crests. Along the way, at systematically chosen sites, they recorded their findings, and this is not a matter of conjecture, for in Arizona alone such stone documents are to be seen by the thousands.

Mostly, they are incised on volcanic boulders and cliffs, but they are to be plentifully observed on granite, sandstone, and other rocks also. In Arizona, the majority of stones are covered with a thin coating of patina. This substance, commonly known as "desert varnish," is dark brown to ebony black in color, and is almost totally impervious to the wear and tear of the elements. It is one of Nature's wonders of endurance.

When removed from a rock surface, the true color of the stone beneath is exposed to view, and is emphasized the more due to the surrounding brown or black patina. The contrast compares well with chalk upon a blackboard.

In pursuit of their exploring tasks, the Stone-writers used thousands of patinated rocks to write upon. They executed the lines of their symbols, illustrations, and drawings, by pecking off the patina with a sharply pointed instrument, and the fact that they did peck their incised writings into stone, rather than attempting to rub or scratch them into the rocks is of far-reaching significance.

First, any attempt to scratch or rub a figure into the irregular surface of a rock, especially one coated with hard and slick patina, results in a confusion of uncontrolled marks, which do not occur if the character to be incised is first sketched in with chalk for example, and then pecked into the stone.

The Stone-writers, in the case of patinated surfaces, merely pecked off the "desert varnish" to make their writings, but when they came upon a rock which was not protected by this substance, they pecked their inscriptions to a depth corresponding to the particular stone's ability to resist erosion. Generally, for example, rocks in the Atlantic watershed are of softer textures than those of the Pacific slope, and mostly not favored with patination. The Stone-writers wanted their scribings to endure a long time, seemingly, so they cut the grooves of their rockwritings into soft rocks sometimes an inch or deeper, and then went to the additional trouble of rubbing the grooves smooth.

I have stated previously that the symbols among these rock-writings were constructed from the elementary signs of geometry, and this brings up a very touchy subject that of an alphabet, for it has been declared that none existed in prehistoric America. I am not endeavoring to woo Webster, but he had a habit of writing pertinent things and being seldom disputed. An alphabet, says he, is: "The letters of a language arranged in the customary order; a series or set of letters or signs which form the elements of a written language . . ."

Among the approximately four hundred characters used in the Egyptian hieroglyphics are twenty elementary signs of geometry. The same signs also present themselves in the Cognate Geometric rock-writings, and if the signs make alphabetical sauce for the Egyptian goose, then they do likewise for the American gander.

The highly significant testimony which the hieroglyphs themselves record rests in the fact that the Egyptian scholars in the art of writing, like the Stone-writers, used combinations of the elementary signs of geometry to construct symbols. True, they only employed those in the hieroglyphical repertoire which afforded maximum simplicity and speed of execution and the minimum of size, but these fifty or more signs and symbols firmly and indelibly establish knowledge to the Egyptians of geometric symbolism.

After exhausting this limited requirement of geometric formations, the scribes of the Nile leaned mightily, for the

Utah rock-writings

remainder of the approximately four hundred figures mak-ing up the hieroglyphical treasury, upon pictorial charac-terizations. The Stone-writers were more consistent, for they continued from where the Egyptians vacated geometrics, developed sequences of symbols from each elementary sign, and qualified those basic forms for alpha-betical recognition by the creation of orderly, progressively and consecutively evolved symbolical variants thou-sands in number.

It was only after such a brilliant and masterful achieve-ment that the Stone-writers drew on objective illustration. The incised likeness of a snake at a site, for example, was a sign of warning to the observer that such reptiles fre-quented the vicinity, and to look out for them. The foot-print of a bear with claws extended, or the drawing of a ferocious beast, or that of a poisonous insect implied such dangers to the strangers. A fish told of the availability of such food in the stream nearby, and pictures of birds and edible game told them what to hunt for food.

The illustrations possess no hidden or mysterious meanings, and are completely devoid of any suggestion of pure art being a motive for their presences.

The geometric indicators of direction are quite generally believed to be crude pictures of human beings. The arrow was unknown to the Stone-writers as a pointer, and they devised a group of lineal figures influenced by the human form, but nevertheless entirely geometric in construction, to guide one's course. Some of these indicators are illustrated here.

Another error is frequent when a spiral is seen with its outer end extended in a waving line. It is not a snake. The direction up or downstream of the waving line indicates that the succeeding site cannot be seen from the point where you are standing, and that if you will proceed along the river, counting off the corresponding number of turns of its course with those of the spiral's extension, you will, when both tally, have arrived at the source of more infor-mation that you have been searching for.

It has been thought that sun-symbols occur among the geometric rock-writings. It is not so. Single circles, or concentric circles in whatever degree, with radiations or short lines extended from the outside of them, are geo-metric numerals, and in some instances, apparently, dating or calendar symbols. The Aztec Calendar Stone, now exhibited in the National Museum of Mexico, might at the time of its completion have been a modern elaboration inspired by the geometric numerals.

Digression here will permit recounting a discovery of mine some years ago, in the Santan Mountains of Pinal County, of a massive rock which, most fortunately, has since been removed to the Mormon Temple grounds in Mesa, where it is preserved from the vandalism which has so depleted its original site upon the surface of which is inscribed the most magnificent specimen of geometric enumeration or dating I have yet to see in the world. The symbol is constructed by placing four circles one within the other, then a sphere or disc is placed in the center of the innermost circle. Now we connect the outer circle with the next beside it, by drawing and spacing equally apart twenty-six lines, and we then join the second and third circles with the same number of lines. Twice twenty-six totals fifty-two the number of weeks in the year.

Mysteriously enough, a stone metal-mould was unearthed at Ashur, Assyria, with a symbol incised in it, differing only from the one discovered in the Santan Mountains in that it is constructed from three circles instead of four the number of divisions in the space between the first and second, and the second and third circles are exactly the same. The sphere is also centralized in the center of the symbol. Scientists dated this object 2400 B.C. It is illustrated in Olmstead's "History of Assyria."

I have demonstrated the presence of an alphabet, symbols constructed from it, enumeration, and illustration, among the geometric rock-writings thus four essential factors to convey meaning, other than through the mediumof speech, have been accounted for. The fifth is cartography.

To visit and carefully inspect the inscriptions nearest to the confluences of rivers frequently results in the observation of lineal drawings. Some are quite small, while others cover broad surfaces. The Stone-writers, when reaching a tributary of a river they were exploring, examined the area drained by that tributary, and, after having ascertained what they needed to know, returned to its confluence with the mother stream and incised the information for the benefit of others expected to follow.

Human memory in those times seems to have enjoyed equal shortcomings with the modern, at least for detail. We give a road map an examining glance, fold it up, put it in the glove compartment, and five minutes later need to look at it again. Of course, if the map had weighed ten or twenty tons, we would have left it standing where it was, and would be five miles distant by the time we decided we needed to see it again. Well, these ancient American immigrants were quite ingenious. They could not take the massive maps along, so they picked up a small rock and etched a miniature copy upon it. The pocket Most intriguing are the land charts along the Gila River, particularly when compared with like drawings left by the ancients of the Nile. They, too, came out of “no-where” relocated, reclaimed, and recorded land allotments in squares.

Inadvertently in the course of this article, I have suggested the broad fields of study which my research has compelled, not in the field along the rivers and coasts of this and other countries only, but in the museums, libraries, and universities as well. Few authors, domestic or foreign on this subject since writing began, have escaped my reading.

I have come to respect the labors and sacrifices of those tireless men and women who dedicate, and so frequently imperil their lives to recover from the abyss of antiquity the treasures of knowledge which it yields so grudgingly. They differ with me on occasion, and I with them, but they are honest and wholesome differences, which arise in separate divisions of research.

Each day, almost, brings to them something from past ages which is new to them. No study can present so many thrills so frequently as that of archaeology, and certainly none compels more reconstructions and revisions.

A map of the present is not a new idea.

Immigrants go to a new country to relocate, and, more often than not, pursue occupations learned in former homelands. A large part of the civilization which came to Arizona in those ancient times were farmers, who knew how to divert river waters by canals to irrigate their crops. They were schooled in reclamation. Methodically and wisely, when the topography permitted, the land was divided among the population in squares, and in their thorough way these land allotments were recorded on the rocks. And where did that idea originate?

Comes now Herodotus, “The Father of History,” and like the old Indian, he got around. On one occasion, when talking to Egyptian scholars he was told: “Sesostris, (Rameses II, 1234 1300 B.C.) made a division of the soil of Egypt among the inhabitants, assigning spot plots of ground of equal size to all, and obtained his chief revenue from the rent which the holders were required to pay him year by year.” The inscribed faces of thousands of Arizona's rocks, and their kindred over the earth, have endured and survived the tortures of millenniums, silent in forebearance, and steadfast in seeming faith that in some future time man would return, partake of their wisdom, and in gratitude tread onward to his destiny.

And what cause for gratitude! He may have learned from his readings of a past in American prehistory so great as that unveiled by the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone. Or, he may have gained a revelation with the import of an Illiad, leading to the treasures of an American Troy Troy. He may, too, have been told of the reason of how and when these inscriptions came to be distributed all “over the earth,” by a seemingly sudden dislodged and destitute people “of one language” seeking refuge, anywhere above the waters over which they had been dispersed.

Such knits well with Holy Writ. (Gen. 11, 1-9.) And in the presence of such truth, in my humble insignificance, I can only testify: “It is written on Stone.

ARIZONA SUNSET

Blue sky above blue water where the light Faints in the arms of pine-edged, waiting night. One lone bird calls . . . unanswered, calls no more And night holds all-sky, lake . and shadowy shore.

MOONLIGHT

Drops of moonlight fell Upon my lonely garden, Caught on leaf and petal; And the wind sobbed In sweet compassion For loveliness Unseen. Such a soft and fragile thing Is moonlight, Morning came And found its pieces scattered Here and there Like melted snow in springtime.

ARIZONA DESERT

Throne of storm-cut mesa bronze sand whirled dunes in copper sun crumbling tusks of mastodons beads of sand heaped one on one - blue lake sponged bone dry - where humps of shrubs like giant mushrooms cloak a stage for adagios by thorned bouquets of cactus blooms danced on desert spider toes beneath an icy sky. The wind dies, its notes unwritten like the dust blown before it to the other end of the desert. The lost companion that keeps away the ringing in the ears of silence and solitude.

BACKGROUND MUSIC COYOTES

To me, the coyotes are the memories Of many an early morn When their yip, yip, yapping notes On the frost-sharp air were borne. Each new tone in their symphony Was thrilling for I could feel The blending of joy from stalwart hearts Into a western song that was "real."

TOMB OF A FALLEN MONARCH

Sunbeams pierce the picoted pines to dapple the fern-clad floors of the hiding forest cathedral and moss upholsters a tumbled rock tombstone to a fallen monarch. Toadstools spread gay parasols in gnarly shrub and lichen tomb to feast like waxy hobgoblings on the monarch's spending fiber peaky saplings standing guard.

CHEVELON CREEK:

The Wilderness Odyssey of Chevelon Creek by Robert B. Whitaker, carried in the June issue is superb. Pictures and text walk gracefully together throughout. However, there is one sentence that mounts up in beauty, melody and suggestiveness that particularly caught my attention: "Off to the east an old stage station crumbles away in a hopeless wait for the stage that never comes." (page 17) Where, with a more telling economy of language, will one find such a gem of literary construction and rich meaningfulness?

WALLS OF WRINKLED PINK:

I have been a subscriber to ARIZONA HIGHWAYS for a long time and have always enjoyed the color photography and the interesting articles you have offered your readers. I was particularly impressed with the photographs and articles on The Wrinkled Pink Walls of Kanab Canyon in your July issue. I don't think I have ever seen finer color shots, nor have I read a more interesting article. I am sure it will have such appeal to your readers that there could be a stampede to the Grand Canyon this summer. If you continue to present articles of such beauty and superior quality, you will have me as a lifetime subscriber.

I have been an admirer of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS for a number of years, ever since my "desert rat" brother introduced me to it and the scenic wonders of Arizona. I have always thrilled to the beauty of your color photography, but never so much as I did to the photographs in the fascinating and interesting Goldman article in your July issue. This is a combined effort of which both Melvin and Rosalie Goldman can be justifiably proud.

Yours sincerely The photography is superb unbelievably beautiful, and the story interesting and beautifully portrayed. I take my hat off to a young and slender woman hiking 125 miles, carrying a 22-pound pack on her back, and holding her own with two strong men. I think The Wrinkled Pink Walls of Kanab Canyon is one of the finest things I have seen in your magazine, and you are to be congratulated.

FRIENDS IN SOUTH AFRICA:

Good pen-friends of ours in America hit on the brilliant idea of sending us (on subscription) regular copies of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS and I want to tell you how breathtaking we find your magnificent photographs, etc. We always look forward so much to receiv ing the next copy, the last one being dated, April, 1964, on Prescott's Centennial (this reminded us somewhat of the early settlers in our own country.) Not only have we derived great pleasure from this magazine but our appreciation of America has also been enlarged, and we cannot thank our friends enough for having subscribed for us. We particularly appreciate the full description of how the various pictures were taken and although the atmosphere in this part of the world differs somewhat, amateur photographic enthusiasts have gained many useful hints from the information you give. The light and shade effects which you achieve are surely unique. Our thanks again for a magnificent magazine which we hand round to all our friends and with best wishes for continued success.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"INDIAN JEWELRY NAVAJO, HOPI, ZUÑI, AND SANTA DOMINGO." Shown here are prize pieces of Indian jewelry loaned from the Read Mullan Gallery of Western Art and photographed for us by Arizona Photographic Associates. Hopi jewelry is in the cut-out overlaid method, and featuring ancient Hopi pottery designs, and is mostly in silver. The Zuñis are lapidary workers on whose jewelry the stones are prominent. The Navajos use stones as an embellishment of silver. The Santo Domingos in New Mexico are noted for their wampum and beads.

BACK COVER

"NAVAJO SILVERSMITH-AMBROSE ROANHORSE" BY GEORGE C. HIGHT. Ambrose Roanhorse, shown here, is a famous Navajo silversmith, who is a teacher of Navajo silvercraft at the Ft. Wingate (N.M.) High School. The photographer, George Hight, is a resident of Gallup, New Mexico, where he operates a photography studio. Mr. Hight, whose work has appeared in many periodicals, has made a hobby of photographing the Navajos at work and at play. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.11 at 1/100th sec.; 150mm lens; ASA rating 50.