Excerpts from the Journals of an Artist R. Brownell McGrew in the Lands of the Navajos and thr Hopis

EXCERPTS FROM THE JOURNALS OF AN ARTIST IN THE LANDS OF THE NAVAJOS AND THE HopIs

Two legends met one night in a dingy eatery on the Navajo reservation, and because I was lucky enough to be there, the sparks from their conversation fired what eventually became in me a deeply burning urge to paint (not to record) the magnificent Indian of the West and his glorious homeland.

My legends were Shine Smith, fabled friend of the Indian, and Jimmy Swinnerton, the brilliant Hearst cartoonist, who added to this career a later eminence as the first and foremost painter of the desert. Jimmy and I had sketched together for some years on the California desert, and his tales of the Indian country had led naturally to expeditions there, on one of which this foregathering with his old friend Shine occurred. Subsequently I wrote Shine a 23-page letter containing roughly 760 questions regarding a project of painting Indians with his assistance. In answer I got a grubby sheet of paper on which was scrawled, "O.K. Shine."

So it began... ... it surely seems I was meant to do this work how else to explain setting out to find one particular Navajo out of 100,000, with no slightest idea whether he lived at Four Corners or Cañon Diablo, then lighting on him the first crack? The technique must remain a professional secret, but it worked time after time after time . . .

... we came to the camp of Haddas Chatlie, an old, nearly blind medicine man, who was prevailed upon to sit for a charcoal sketch. As I worked, Shine tilted back in his chair and wreathed the area with cigar smoke. He and the Indian exchanged news and views in a desultory fashion, and after one comparatively animated passage I asked Shine what they had been discussing.

"Oh," he returned, "I told him in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

"What did he say?"

"He thinks Coyote made it." . . .

Several times we had tried to find him at home, the legendary Salah-tso or John Daw, but without success until our persistence was rewarded one hot summer day and Shine gamely struggled up a long sand dune to the big hogan on top. The old Indian was seated cross-legged in a dark recess of the structure, where Shine flung himself on his back and commenced a conversation that gave me opportunity to observe one of the most superb specimens of manhood any race could produce. At one hundred and two his voice was deep and strong, emanating from a huge chest in keeping with his heroic proportions. Here before me sat the last living Indian to fight with Kit Carson, under whom he had served as scout. When only nineteen he had led a raid against Geronimo, and in his later life became a policeman and judge of the People. It is told of him that his jail door was never locked no culprit was foolish enough to risk the giant's displeasure by escape. He rode his horse until only a year previous, when he went out one night in a blizzard and was not found for several hours. Even then he was ready at any time for a jolting wagon ride to a sing. The last time I saw him, at one hundred six or seven, I could detect little change . . .we went one morning to a delightful oasis of cotton-woods, poplars, gardens and fruit trees, nestled in a curving wall of red rock... Hasti'in agreed to pose for me in the chaha-oh where I set up my sketch box and was soon at work, following his dash back into the hogan for his best bandeau. As usual, Shine lolled in his chair, a special lolling chair carried for the purpose, and gave himself wholeheartedly to the task of creating a Roi-Tan smog. When the work was well under way and Shine had been silent for a time, I judged my resources equal to the strain of offering him a penny for his thoughts. Without taking his eyes from the sculptured grandeur encircling us, he replied, "I was just sitting here remembering the gasp of astonishment that went up from 3,000 throats when the picture of these cliffs was flashed on the screen of the Prince Edward Theatre in Sidney, Australia."

Years before, a picture company sent him and ten Indians to Australia and New Zealand to publicize a western epic. The down-under people were wild about the Hopi and Navajo that comprised the group and showered them with gifts, all of which were duly passed through customs. Shine brought back two cocoanuts, which customs duly took from him . . .

Illustrations from the artists collection of working drawings, and field sketches

... we moved slowly along an abandoned road, crossing a bridge from beneath which a few sheep straggled into view. This had no immediate significance for me, but Shine said to stop the car. We walked back onto the bridge where he leaned on the rail and began shouting Navajo. Before long, two little girls led out a burro and climbed the cutbank to get the walnuts Shine had promised them. They were a dandy pair of models, jam-packed with childish character, and the burro was tricked out in a fetching way . . .

... some distance to the north we stopped at an old trading post and went in to reconnoitre. It was a stone building with small barred windows, a real oldie, the interior dark and redolent. In a corner of the room we entered was an aged Fairbanks platform scale, from his seat on which an old Indian jumped up and ran to greet Shine. His greeting was most strange, however, for despite its unmistakable warmth and sincerity, it was conducted in complete silence, for the old Navajo was a deaf-mute, and in consequence of his affliction was named Jeh Alkath, or Leather Ears, as the Navajo designate the deaf.

But Shine made plenty of racket for both as his stentorian accents loosened the mortar in unaffected pleasure at this chance meeting with a friend of many years. Shine was adept at sign language and the two carried on famously with their educated hands, Shine puffing and roaring with laughter, the two of them slapping each other on the shoulder and back, convulsed with mirth over their reminiscences of the old days. One story dealt with an episode early in their acquaintance when Shine made a deal with Jeh Alkath to kill him a rabbit for dinner, to be paid for with the sum of 25c. Soon the Navajo presented Shine with ten dead rabbits and a bill for $2.50, a week's salary for the young missionary, but he paid the debt of honor, and, I suppose, his bill of fare was his fill of hare as long as the meat stayed edible.

Leather Ears was a marvelous subject, a face full of character, humor, and strength. He wore constantly an old stocking cap, so that his baldish dome was as white and pink as a baby's, while the lower part of his head was dark as any saddle. Throughout the half day he spent with us, he appeared as happy, ebullient, relaxed, and adjusted as anyone I ever saw, a great and glowing paradigm for our affluent generation at the wailing wall.

There was a small cafe attached to the post, where the three of us repaired for a smackerel. They had made a scrumptious apricot pie that morning, and I sat open-mouthed in admiration as Leather Ears absorbed his wedge in championship fettle. A blur of hand and fork, then a shining plate that was all.

We were looking for a particular long-hair who Shine thought would be a fine subject for me, but had spent the best part of a day chasing rumors of his whereabouts with nothing to show for our efforts, so Jeh Alkath was pressed into service as a guide and we set off in about the only direction we hadn't tried. We climbed a nearby mesa and moved off across the rolling desert, asking at various camps for information on our quarry. One camp in particular always comes to mind when I hear of some new imbecile government program for a project to entertain the Indians. A group of Navajos sat in the shade of one or two junipers, around which branches of foliage had been stacked and woven to from a rude cha-ha-oh. At the open edge of this shelter the most contented-looking little fire you ever saw glowed softly under the coffee pot, sending perfumed tendrils of smoke into the quiet sky. The individuals seated beneath this shelter appeared to have left care and anxiety completely to the Beligano as they took their ease and invited their souls.

One of the men in this group was a very tall, very handsome Navajo who had been used a number of times in minor roles for western pictures made in the area. My camera was to him only one more in a long line.

The meagre information we were able to come by regarding the object of our search at last led us onto a road that appeared by some magic to have taken us well into the Sahara. After an hour of near breakdowns, we came to a tank where a young Navajo was watering his sheep. We stopped to ask if he knew where his elusive kinsman lived. He nodded and turned his head toward the vast billowing oceans of sand that lay before us. "Out there somewhere," he said, and continued his work, as we also continued - back ...

for several hours I made my way through some of the roughest, most desolate country I had ever seen, over a pair of ruts so faint that I was occasionally unsure whether or not I was in a jam. In all this time, and nearly a hundred miles, I had seen one wagon, one pickup, two riders, and almost no hogans.

Suddenly from the heavy chaparral at the side of the track rose a group of women and children, beside whom I came to a stop no trick at all in the knee-deep blow sand. One of the younger women had some English and informed me they wanted a ride to the trading post. Always the Yankee trader in these matters, I said it was a deal if I could take their pictures.

This evoked the usual gigglement and consent was given. Of course it fell out my camera was empty after a snap or two and I turned back to the car to reload. The women maintained the flow of laughing chatter which so endears the Navajo to those who get to know them, and at one point one of them said something that produced a real gale of merriment. I turned to the young woman and asked what had caused the outburst. She looked out over the lunar landscape, a jillion miles of loneliness where the next coyote would not be along for another month or so, and responded, "She say to tell you we in hurry."

Midway of the morning, with preparations for the cake moving at a leisurely pace and all about me in a relaxed but festive mood, young Tsosie came to me with the disturbing information that Shima-tsa-nih wanted to question me. "Yoicks," thought I, "now I've done it," sure that I'd committed some faux pas that was to get me dismissed, with little ceremony, from the camp. I knew that the dignified old lady was ranking matriarch at this observance, and though not the patron or matron of honor, her will in a matriarchal group would be pretty close to law, and her displeasure a sure ticket to elsewhere. Also I knew she had been widowed but a short time before, when her husband rode his horse over a cliff in a snowstorm; what other troubles might be weighing on her I could not guess, but the conviction grew in me that I'd had it, especially since I'd never heard of this sort of interrogation, and as the only white man present I was hardly to be considered indispensable. So I stalled for a little time and tried to discover what was up.

"She wants to what?" I asked.

"She wants to question you."

I considered for a bit. "What does she want to question me about?"

"She wants to ask you some questions."

One to him.

More silence while I considered various ploys, none of which offered much.

"When does she want to do this?" - hoping vaguely for some pretext of postponement.

"Right now."

Check, I thought.

"O.K. Let's go."

Mate, I silently added.

We walked together up to the cha-ha-oh where most of the thirty or forty Navajos were now gathered, and where two seats had been placed together, made of up-ended billets with planks laid across them and padded with folded squaw robes. On one of these I was somewhat ceremoniously seated, and Shima-tsa-nih beside me on the other.

"Yah'a'teh," I said, and proffered my hand in a brief gentle clasp.

"Yah'a'teh," she returned, meeting my gaze with calm good humor. Still I was not reassured, especially when the entire crowd gathered round us in a half circle behind Tsosie, who squatted cross-legged before us on the ground.

Shima-tsa-nih began to speak and Tsosie dropped his head to listen more attentively. In a short time he raised it and turned to me.

"She wants to know where you come from."

I told him, and tried to give some general description in relation to places she or they might have some idea of. Tsosie relayed this, with a murmured assist from the audience, and as well as I could make out, the general idea was developed that I'd come a fur piece. Again the old lady took up her part in a quiet voice, and again Tsosie turned to me."

She says she appreciates that you came so far to be with her family and she wants to thank you for your personal interest and for helping them this way."

Some of the butterflies in my tummy found a place to light, and a few others began to glide more. I wanted to explain that it wasn't all that far, but it would obviously be too complicated for our channels, and on the sound principle of quitting while you're ahead, I desisted and replied simply that I was very happy to be there and pleased to be considered a friend of her family.

More questions followed, how had I met her family, what kind of work did I do (I can't even explain that to my wife), all confused in the performance and more so in memory. At length Tsosie said, "She wants to tell you a story about some of the times when she was a little girl."

Storytelling is of course a big art with the Navajos as with all people not possessing a written language, so I was prepared for the long detailed narrative that followed. It came to me considerably truncated in Tsosie's version, I'm sure, but the gist was that long ago when she was a little girl she used to herd goats, all day long she took care of the goats, and it often happened that times were very bad for the People, and when times were hard and there was no food she had nothing to live on but milk from the goats she cared for. In those days no white man would help an Indian, no matter how bad things were, and so she often had nothing at all to eat except what milk she got from the goats. So now she appreciated all the more that a white man would come so far to help her family and she wanted to thank me for all I had done for her family. I was thankful in my turn that she hadn't seen me stomp and snarl out of the family hogan a year before when her granddaughter refused to pose for a sketch after promising she would. But I thanked her most warmly and sincerely for her kind words, assuring her that it was all the greatest pleasure to me, that I was happy and proud to be a friend of her family, the handsomest brood I'd ever seen of any race, and that was the bare-bones truth.

So we had a genuine love feast for a bit, after which I made her a present and asked if it was all right now for all the kids to have some candy, a sure laugh-getter. On my way up I had shoveled a load of candy bags into the market basket without bothering to count, and in a big group I usually break the bags and bestow a fistful on each urchin. But I felt my luck was in and I would take a chance on giving a bag to each youngster, which I did and came out exactly even . . .

often enough you can't win for losing, but there are those other times.

As I strolled into a post one day I passed a group of men squatted near the doorway, one of whom gave me that familiar slam in the solar plexus and tingling of the spine that signals the advent of a tremendous subject. An old man with long white hair and beautifully modelled head, he had additionally a smiling placidity of mien that is not very common among the old ones whose rugged past is more apt to produce expressions ranging from sternness to ferocity. A glance was sufficient to tell me any expenditure of time, stress, and money was justifiable in the effort to get this one, but it was some time before circumstances arranged themselves propitiously.

When they did, I set off after Hosti'in Stutterer in the company of a middle-aged Navajo whom I hadn't met before and who had as little English as I have Navajo. We will call him John, since everyone else does.

It was a silent ride.

We headed north over a relatively good pair of ruts which deteriorated appreciably as the miles wore away, though we encountered little sand and it was a comparatively easy trek. But we were moving into a storm which dampened (no pun) my ardor somewhat, as I have lived too long in the sun to be at ease in quieter light, and such weather does not conduce to portraiture as I pursue it. Still we plugged on hoping for a break, though I doubt John was much distressed over the likelihood that there would be no good light in which to pose Hosti'in when we found him, if we found him.

We didn't. Instead we found two boys, grandsons of the old man, who told us he was conducting a sing in another area, for he was a noted medicine man whose services were much sought after. We invited the boys to have lunch with us, it being about that time, then we commenced our return under a black threatening sky.

When we got back to John's place we found the family in a crisis of some sort it seemed his wife had taken their vintage station wagon into the boondocks where it had gone pocketa-queep, leaving her to foot it many a weary mile. They wanted me to take them where it had been left, so off we went through a maze of canyons, gullies and slick rock that scared me to death with the thought of having to find my way back alone. Miles of this brought us up onto rolling mesa top which we traversed for a half hour before coming to the sick auto. John's wife had left the car all locked up against marauders, but committed the slight indiscretion of locking the key inside where we could see it leering at us from the ignition switch. John, however, was equal to the occasion he abruptly lifted the tailgate window and slithered inside.

Wish I had a finished portrait for every mile I've pushed or towed Indian cars. This was a short one, however, and John, instead of pointing home, cut out across country and came shortly to the camp of some friends. How he knew the old car would make it to this camp and no farther, I've no idea, but so it was. Nothing would bring it to life again, and after a time we were on our way back.

A week or so later I tried again, but John was unavailable and I went somewhat disconsolately to the post to see if something extraordinary might turn up, and sure enough it did. A great many Indians were there for Commodity Day, and I ambled about looking things over. As I passed a small knot of them, a young man inquired in a surly, belligerent fashion what I was doing there. I walked over to him and explained. "I'll help you," he said.

During this brief passage, my eye was caught by a tall, strongly built man who eclipsed anything I'd seen in years, a subject non-pareil virtually, rough, rugged, and strictly magnificent. I nodded toward him and said to the volunteer, "Let's see what you can do with him for a starter." So began a series of studies of Cha-t'clui whose interest for me continues to grow the more I work on him.

Sammy, my new helper, explained to Cha-t'clui that we were about to embark on an expedition after Stutterer, and received the information that they were cousins and he wanted to go along and have his picture taken with the old man. The three of us set out over the road I'd taken previously with John.

When we got to the general area where the medicine man lived, my two companions fell into a discussion of the best way

To get where we wanted to be and at length they directed me away from the route I knew was right, but I thought to humor them on the off chance our quarry had two homes or was visit-ing someone. We straggled about for some while, then disregarding their remonstrances, I put the wheel over and took off on a course that brought us to Stutterer's home, Stutterer, and a fine bright light.

Stutterer's home was not a hogan but a trim, tight little log cabin, the timbers nicely faced and joined, of course with the door to the east. Again lunch time was upon us, and we at length went inside to eat, from a table, but a table with no legs, which our host put upon the floor for us to squat around while he himself dragged up a chair, since his old legs were giving him too much trouble for sitting the traditional way.

Sammy was a lower echelon medicine man himself and had brought along a fetish to show Stutterer. Some novice had borrowed the object to try his hand and had returned it disarranged and therefore impotent, so Sammy brought it to the expert for instruction and help, which was duly given.

So back over the long rough road, richer by two of the finest subjects ever to come my way . . .

The three girls guided me out to a canyon where their small flock was grazing up against a rocky hillside. It had taken four years to bring this particular posing session to pass, but it was more than worth the time and effort as Alice Rose clambered onto a rock and smiled up into a brilliant sky, which responded in kind by smiling down on the most stupefyingly perfect face either of us had seen. Of course it required little Bessie's teasing and tickling to bring this flashing series of grins and smiles into play, but what matter the work was under way in glorious weather while far across the valley another flock moved lazily through the chaparral and the sound of a Navajo chanting floated to us soft and strong and clear. later there was the usual trip to the trading post for shoes and ships and sealing wax well, shoes to begin with... Bessie can herd the ships... skip the sealing wax and substitute a case of pop . . .

The wagon had made some 15 or 20 miles that day, and we found ourselves moving across a high tableland under kaleidoscopic cloud patterns that sent shadows weaving and rippling across the land. The Indians must have interpreted these to indicate an approaching squall, for midway of the afternoon we moved somewhat eastward of our line of travel to take advantage of a sheltered slope where they elected to set up camp. A low but steep sandbank on the slope provided what Eshinneh was looking for. He left the outfit and scouted an area some distance away where he knew the rock was pitted with holes that should contain enough water for the horses. Having satisfied himself on this score, he unhitched the team and began to dig out a concavity in the little sand bank. At either side of his dig he set stout cedar logs into fairly deep holes, and with these to anchor his work, completed a semi-circular shelter of smaller branches and brush. Over this we stretched what tarpaulins we had and fastened everything as well as we could with ropes, completing the bivouac. Just in time. We nearly lost the tarps as the storm burst upon us, mostly a savage wind, with a modicum of rain and hail. Happily, it was of short duration, and before it was over Asthon had supper well along.

All my life I've camped out in innumerable places and manners, and I wish I could flatter myself I can do it with one-tenth the skill of Asthon. Anyone with experience of camp life and cookery will perhaps best appreciate her expertise if I put it that she sat down before the fire and never moved once as she prepared a complicated meal for six of us. The principal dishes were pork chops and fry bread in deep fat, everything was piping hot and ready when it should be, including coffee before and all during the meal.

The wind had blown itself out and the sun fell gently behind the western mesas, leaving us to enjoy a calm and glorious evening. In the middle distance and against the pale golden sky we could watch that loveliest of sights, horses grazing. Before leaving the home area, Hazshogo and I had scouted everywhere for a few bales of hay, but could only succeed in rounding up a sack or two of horse pellets. Eshinneh looked on these with dour suspicion and it was several days before he would consent to let the team try them. He never would give any to his saddle horse, a pretty sorrel filly and clearly his heart's darling. She got what grass she could root out.Night brought with it a numbing cold but the Navajos had lined their shelter with foliage covered with sheep pelts, and with piles of robes over heavy clothing and the fire reflecting generously into the wickiup, they were snug as clams. My dear old sleeping bag had left its strength all over the Sierra Nevada, from Wyoming to Bahia de los Angeles and throughout the Colorado desert, yet I had confidently expected its ancient elements would be equal to a May night on the desert. I shook, shivered, chattered and moaned through a 58-hour night, and a week later bought a Himalayan bag that will sweat a naked jaybird to death on top of Kanchanjunga . . .

We caught up with the old one just as he reached his hogan and was unsaddling his shaggy pony. Shine commenced a conversation with him, but it soon became apparent the little old fellow was deaf as a post (trading, of course). So they carried on in great style by sign language. It was agreed that more snapshots were O.K., so I soon made them, then asked the old fellow to saddle up and get back on his pony for a couple, which he seemed glad to do, but which bothered my conscience when I saw how much effort it cost him in his failing condition of course standing on the latigo didn't make his chore any easier.

Not long prior to this I had sold that is, Bill O'Brien had sold a painting of the old boy and our 100,000 to one chance meeting gave me an opportunity to share the profits with him over and above the usual posing emolument. His pleasure became excessive as the greenery multiplied in his fist, and he waxed voluble in an effort to express his satisfaction, employing both speech and signs to acquaint us with various matters of presumably mutual concern. He pulled back his upper lip to show the few old snags remaining in his mouth, then told us he was going to the government house to have these drawn and a new set of choppers installed.

After a time, Shine and I went to the car for lunch and Duggai followed us and participated. Between courses he kept up a happy bubbling flow of communication in sign language abetted and amplified by broken speech or it sounded rather so to me. He tickled me most by making the sign for mounting two fingers of one hand forked over the forefinger of the other, then passing one hand around and above his head in numerous circles, then several more signs followed by a resounding slap on the pocket of his jeans where he had stowed the money. Shine explained that he said he was going to go riding around and around to visit all his friends and relatives and that our contribution had made this possible.

In later years I visited the old man when I could, discovering that he was a real solitaire addict. Once I came to his place just at dusk, and found some of his family there, the only time this ever happened. They led me in to see him where he was huddled in a dark recess, seated on one corner of a blanket which he had drawn over his head to form a sort of cocoon in which he crouched happily playing his cards with one hand while the other held a flashlight...

… nil nisi bonum, but Shine was moody and could be unaccountably rude at times.

We entered a large group of Indians and Shine began his "performance," as he invariably and frankly described his contacts with others.

"Hoday yahdahn," he bellowed and got an answering ripple of laughter from the old ones who knew his greeting: "In the beginning . . ." He continued in this vein for a time, culminating his jesting with vigorous coyote howls and yaps, his derisive reference to a Navajo diety. The whole thing, as always in such situations, took place amid continuous laughter, hand-shaking and shoulder slapping, for the older people seemed clearly to remember the hard times that Shine lived to help them through. After a bit, we sat down to eat some mutton stew and frybread. Near us were three good-looking, well-mannered young Hopis whose knowledge of Navajo enabled them to enjoy the tableau. When things quieted down, one of the smiling boys inquired, "Where are you from, sir?" No answer. He waited a moment, then repeated his query. No answer but chomp chomp on the frybread. At last I intervened and told Shine he was being addressed.

"They're just kids," he said. "It doesn't mean nothin'."

That tore it. The happy smiles vanished as black brows drew together and the three youths began a growling mutter that grew louder as their anger mounted and threats of retaliation for all the white man's insults and injuries became the clear burden of their exchanges. Shine paid no attention, but as the boys showed no inclination to cool off, rather the contrary, and we were two whites among a thousand Indians, it seemed to me a pleasant situation could easily turn into something decidedly unpleasant, so I addressed myself to the problem, and began to placate the young warriors.

"He didn't mean anything probably didn't even hear you. Let me buy you fellows a Coke and let's forget it."

"No. I just had one," growled their leader, then we were back again to the promises of revenge.

A short period of this and I repeated my effort, ending up with the offer of a Coke: "You can drink two."

"Well, maybe if I drink it slow."

Face saved all around.

At this same shindy we ran into an old friend of Shine's, a relative of the great Hopi runner Lewis Tewanema, one of the finest athletes America has produced. But it was to be another five years before I met Lewis and got him to pose for me . . .

... I shall always bless Maurice Knee, of Goulding's Monument Valley, who changed my mind . . .

... the trip had been going a bit sour for several days and I was about ready to write this one off and high-tail it south, not only write it off but had already written Maurice a check, when he remonstrated.

"You better stay and take in this dance," he warned. "If you miss this you'll kick yourself black and blue."

I wavered a tiny bit but was still far from persuaded. Not even when he said, after several more minutes of this tug of war, "If Joe Muench was here he'd be down at that dance shoot-ing tons of the finest stuff you ever saw."

At last I yielded, and Maurice led me by the nose, as it were, into one of the most delightful days of my life. The cook-shade presented a spectacle of color and character that put me into orbit as perhaps nothing else I've seen. It was two years before I could get my courage built up to tackling the Entahl theme, but once started I found it a painter's heaven. This painter's, anyway. Eh-keh-heh, Dihchin . . .

... only one week remained for Tahlahvensee to acquire a new piki stone, which must be done before the planting season, since removal of the stones from the earth may cause hard winds with consequent crop damage. I had promised her I would bring out my new 4-wheel rig to take her to the remote area where good ones may be found, and I was barely in time.

When I arrived at the village it was too late in the day for this jaunt, but Tawayama wanted to start his planting, so we took off for a remote cornfield where he worked till sundown, chanting intermittently as he followed the ancient methods of procuring next year's food. His hand in the soil was tenderly deft, seeming to caress Mother Earth for her fruition.

For supper that night we had a Hopi bread new to me, pya-kaʼviki, very good.

Next morning we loaded the pickup with tools, lunch, and the baby Jih poyeh, and off we went some thirty miles to an area where the proper type of stone presumably abounded. Most of the time we had some rough wagon roads to follow, but at the last we made our way over desolate, unbroken terrain.

A low mesa to the east appeared to offer the best possibilities, so Tawayama climbed it and traveled south while we drove parallel to him down on the plain, waiting for him to signal a discovery. At last we pointed up into the mesa and met him in a little arroyo that cut its way into the rock ledges. For an hour the area was examined before it was decided to commence work.

Paho feathers were placed under a rock in prayer for the venture, and Tawayama broke into a prayer chant occasionally throughout the day.

A long morning's work netted us three good stones, a fact rather at variance with my uninitiated notions about ambling through acres of suitable stones and tossing into the truck an occasional superior specimen much as one would pick up chunks of flagstone.

Midday was pretty well past when we sat down to a pahana lunch of Spam sandwiches, eggs, rolls, and pop. Before we started Tahlahvensee prepared a small plate of food containing portions of everything we were to eat, which Tawayama took some little way off and placed under another rock for the wind so that he would not retaliate upon us for removal of the rocks. As we ate, morsels of each kind of food were thrown out to feed the sun.

To all of this side of our endeavor I suppose most whites will respond with varying degrees of the amusement or super-ciliousness which have made us so justly resented throughout much of the world, and I cannot but feel the attitude of my Indian friends is vastly superior to that of us modern whites who come to our food like pigs to the trough with no gratitude to the Giver and little more for those whose love and labor provides our food. Surely the impulse to thankfulness is one of the truest, most reliable indices of our Creator's actuality and our

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relationship to Him, and in this light I view with unalloyed pleasure the solemnities of my kind and gentle Hopi friends . . .

... we first saw Duggai Kleh, or Night Whiskers, in town, of all things, and I nearly squealed with delight when my eyes fell on his fine head with its great platinum mane of hair. But it was only a glimpse I got, and though I scouted the area and kept my eye peeled for his reappearance, I was doomed to dis appointment for the time being.Later on, however, we were back on the reservation and stopped at a post where the old fellow and his family were trad ing. Shine met with his customary success in lining up the model, and that evening he recounted a tale of the early days, which concerned a run-in he had had with Duggai, though I could not have guessed from their manner to each other that this was not their first meeting.

In the old days Shine's assistance was often sought by traders who needed to absent themselves for a time while still keeping the post open to serve families who might otherwise make a long hard journey to no purpose, and of course, relatively unrestricted people with fluent Navajo are not easy to come by.

So Shine was left in charge while his friend the trader made a lengthy trip to help one of his distressed Indian families, and this occurred at that time of year when the trader was buying wool, which meant that Shine had to leave the main room fre quently to check the transactions under way in a back area where the wool was being sacked and weighed. Returning from one such diversion, he noticed by accident that an exceptionally fine and costly bracelet had disappeared from the pawn case. He locked the doors of the post and confronted the remaining Indians with the ultimatum that no one would get out until he knew who had taken the jewelry, so he was soon apprised that Duggai Kleh was the culprit.

Again he locked the post, this time empty, and set off after his man, who lived a good distance from the post.

At length he found Duggai at his camp and demanded return of the bracelet, only to be told that it was now in possession of another Navajo living still farther off. They had some words about the question of Duggai's accompanying Shine until the bracelet was recovered, and Shine, upholding the affirma tive, won out. After a trip of 30 or 40 miles in all, the bracelet was returned to its niche . . . for years knowledgeable oldtimers had been extolling to me the beauties and delights of Bokó Doclizshi, and after several abortive starts we were at last ready to give it a real try, having located a Navajo who claimed to know the way and was willing to act as our guide. The previous night had been a miserable one for me, but I hoped it was the 24-hour variety and determined to give it a whirl anyway.

We were away at a good hour the next morning, which was bright and hot as befitted a desert day in July. Half an hour out, the track we were following soared into the blazing sky as it climbed a 500-foot sand dune. I wouldn't have believed we could get half way up it, but we did, and there we sat, sand drifting in at the open windows. But on that grade we could have come down sideways, so the shovels stayed put for a time and our guide opined we'd have to try another way. This seemed unanswerable, and some while later we were bucking through the drifts on an altered course. We made pretty fair progress for the best part of an hour, then we hit a dune several hundred feet long of powdered blow-sand which swelled to a hump right in the middle, where we stuck but good.

A tarp, a Hudson Bay blanket, several armloads of brush, jacking up one wheel several times, and putting the shovels into play for a half hour finally got us down the far side of the dune, by which time I discovered that my malaise had no built-in time limit, and the July sun appeared to be having a proliferating and invigorating effect on the bugs at war within me.

We must have been pretty close to our goal when we came to a dune there was no beating without 4-wheel drive and I was too sick by now to care, so back we turned with no demur-rers, our guide promising us a better way home. A little way on found us traveling a new set of ruts, which soon turned into a path, which in turn petered out into a small gulley that the car straddled, downhill and no way back. But somehow the noble vehicle was wrenched through this crevasse and onto a wide sand plain where low gear kept us just barely moving.

Eventually we found the trace our guide was seeking, only to have it lead us down a steep rock cascade into a sandy stream bed, up which we plowed for a quarter mile or so before climbing up a ridge on one side. Down the opposite side of this we bumped and skidded into yet another dry stream bed. Roads were a thing of the past now the only object was to find some surface where the car could move at all, and we ground on up the old watercourse with nothing to bank on but hope and German engineering, plus a strenuous assist from our guardian angels. These last, however, seemed to be momentarily off duty as the canyon walls converged on us till turning around became impossible. A way out offered itself when the bank declined to a height of two or three feet of sand and clay, where it seemed feasible to dig a roadway out of our trench. We fell to work in the broiling sun, and when it appeared barely possible we might get up the incline we had made, I gunned the buggy and got it really stuck, one rear wheel out of sight in the sand, one front wheel perched jauntily on top of the bank, the other spinning happily free in the summer air. There must have been another wheel somewhere but I don't recall its condition possibly it had gone inside to get out of the heat. More shovel, sweat, retch and swear, to no avail. Still in nightmares I see the levitation act of that front wheel which

GLOSSARY OF HOPI and NAVAJO WORDS

Hasti 'in Hosti 'in... Mister or Sir

Cha-ha-oh Summer shade

Beligano Spanish corruption for Americano white man Yah'at'eh... Good, used as greeting for "hello"

Eh-keh-heh... Thank You

Dihchin... Navajo name for Maurice Knee

Pahana... Hopi for white man

Hataali singer, medicine man

Powacca Hopi, for one involved in witchcraft, literally two-hearted

Piki... Hopi bread

Hoyoysee... Hopi tea

Quock-quai... Hopi, thank you

would not be persuaded to join its confreres on the ground, no matter what combination of wheels we dug under.

It was agreed we should knock off for luncheon al fresco - a charming meal of crackers, sardines, and warm water, seated in the dense cool shade of a scrubby clump of salt cedar, 120° heat, Hong Kong flu or its equivalent, stuck, and lost. At times like this, the strains of Strauss's "Artist's Life Waltz" keep running through my head, and I realize there's nothing there to obstruct them. The angels must have finished lunch about the same time we did, for after another bout with the spades we made it up the bank onto a flat bed of crumbly clay. We made a little progress over this, but again the canyon trapped us with a row of salt cedars and converging gravel bank which frustrated our hopes that it would open out into a broader passage. No turning here either, so into reverse and back ten feet to become firmly stuck again.

All the blankets, tarps, brush and shoveling we could muster would not budge our chariot, but at last I bethought me to let air out of the tires, noticing as I did so that one of the casings was broken. We were able then to back a hundred feet or so to an area just wide enough to turn and head back to a high, steep bank which offered our only escape. I had no very high hopes of making it, but somehow we did, and not far off came to the rudimentary road our guide had been seeking for two or three hours. Now it was just a matter of easing our sand buggy tires back to the post, where we found that some kind soul had smashed up the air and water installations on the previous night. So we had to limp another 25 miles to town, then back to Shine's trailer where he kept the Indian kids off me while I slept like Rip himself.

my models were getting themselves ready and I sat watching, enthralled as always to see a glossy mantle of dark hair gathered into deft and graceful hands for wrapping with the bis-cloth. As we were thus engaged a small girl entered, stood for a moment uncertainly, then advanced toward me with slow, shy steps. She was perhaps seven years old, dressed in her best finery, and decked out in all the family jewelry they could find space for on her small frame. Her fetching little face was of an oriental cast, the large brown eyes were soft and grave as they held mine when she came to a stop before me. How long we remained gazing at each other in this fashion I've no idea I cannot recall any experience similar but after what seemed a delightful hour, her hand came up as slowly as the hand on a clock, and much more sedately, to rest softly in mine. I saluted her, "Yah'ah'teh, sitasie," and she responded, "Yah'ah'teh," her eyes never wavering, then asked me to take her picture too, a request I tend to bracket with my wife's "Will you finish my T-bone?" You can't win 'em all, but there are some forfeits, too. Over the corner of my clipboard as I write gleams a chunk of prime turquoise, a huge ring that evokes a strange concatenation of memories someone had told me of a young trader who possessed an article I wanted, so one day I ambled into his post, one of the oldest and most colorful on the reservation, to see what might transpire. What transpired was, he knew of my work and asked if I ever swapped sketches or drawings for jewelry and suchlike. Being cool toward this type of thing, except where old Navajo bridles are concerned, I discouraged this idea, but he said he had something he'd like me to see anyway, so we went over to a counter where the rings were kept and he pulled out a tray in the center of which was a ring that had turned clear over of its own weight. He handed it to me and that was that a perfect fit of course on my hamlike, unartistic hand. I told him to put it away for me and I would send him a sketch when I got home, which would be several weeks because I was then on my way to Flag and Chicago.

"No, he said, "take it with you and send me something when you can."

This I couldn't resist, so I slipped it on and headed south, nearly driving off the road forty times because I couldn't desist from staring at my gorgeous new acquisition.

I left my Land Rover with the wonderful Dr. Ned at the Museum in Flag and hopped the rattler for Chi. Three weeks later I was back to clean up some projects before going home, and my travels took me by the young trader's post. It had burned to the ground not a jot or tittle had been saved, except the ring the trader's generosity and trust had preserved...

Some years later, I met by accident the Navajo who had fashioned the ring, when he brought his wife to be treated by a medicine man who is a friend of mine. By great luck I got to witness a thing I'd heard marvelous tales about, but never supposed I'd get to watch. This is healing by use of a crystal so potent that it enables the initiate to see through anything, or as one friend told me, to see objects miles away.

The woman was seated and a fetish was put into her hand, to be held in a very precise manner which the medicine man adjusted when it did not suit him. Her ailing foot and leg were uncovered and bathed with some herb tea or juice, then the hatahlie began to hold the stone in front of the affected areas and to move it slowly over them. As he did so, the woman evinced severe pain, nearly crying out, yet I am sure the crystal was not used with any pressure, indeed, so far as I could see, it did not even touch her So the ring reminds me of the morning I was awakened by my Hopi host, whose smaller ancestral home I was using while painting the portrait of an older patriarch of the village. My friend sat down and told me that on the very spot where my bed stood, he had been brought as a boy of six, when his burro threw him and broke his back. The lad was in a coma from which he never emerged until his father had made a horseback journey of eighty miles or so to fetch a relative who was the tribe's most powerful medicine man, and who also used one of the crystals I was later to see in operation. When the seer arrived, he stood in the doorway and told a milling group of hysterical women to be quiet, that the boy would recover. He examined the still unconscious youngster through the crystal and had the people place him in traction by pulling on the boy's hands and feet while he manipulated the fractured spine. Soon the lad recovered consciousness and was to all appearances quite well. He was told to play more quietly for a few days, that was all.

At that same period, the father of the man I was now painting was also a very powerful and respected medicine man, but it happened later that the two seers fell out and a most serious feud developed between them. One cast a spell on the other, who, when recovered, repaid in kind. Both were several times near death, but eventually my model's father succumbed.

The healer of my informant, a great-uncle if memory serves, died also in due course of more pedestrian causes, but just before he died he swallowed the great crystal and was buried with it, so that it should never come into the possession of someone who might use it for evil purposes.

Other people have Triple-A, Blue Cross, American Express, and admission cards to the Huntington Library, but I have Ned Danson, who is better than all. You wouldn't believe the mess I was in, so no need to detail it, but Ned bailed me out with wonderful kindness and ingenuity this on first becoming acquainted, too.

One of the brightest memories I have is of juggling sheep dung with the distinguished Dr. Danson in Hopiland on a summer evening there are no adjectives to describe. It was so perfect out of doors you could scarcely be conscious of climate or weather simply an ambience that surrounded and penetrated you with bliss. Ned and I were assisting the great Hopi potter Polingaysi, who was firing a batch of her work that evening, which was done with slabs of the aforementioned dung we handed her to build the requisite mound for an all-night job.

Beside Polingaysi's house was a fine old cottonwood, beneath which sat the renowned Kachina maker Jimmie Kewanwytewa, singing the old Hopi chants hour after hour as we worked. I seem to remember there was a moon that cast a silver glow over the scene which earlier had been lit by the ruddy glow from Polingaysi's fire. The sounds of village life all about us were muted and happy as Jimmy's voice was wafted on the warm air to children playing, oldsters visiting, matrons finishing up the day's concerns with a pervasive sense of gemütlichkeit.

A few days later Ned arranged a tow for my kaput VW 150 miles into Flag behind one of his Hopi warriors in a powacca pickup loaded with umpteen thousand dollars' worth of Hopi crafts for the museum shop. Shortly before the summit my brakes went out and I came down the long grades into Flag on 10 feet of tow chain and fervent prayer. Ben Hur's race with Messala offers some comparison, and after all these years when I think of that wild careening ride I shudder and raise the price on two or three paintings.

It was through Ned, also, that I became acquainted with the writer Earle Forrest, who punched cattle for the Babbitts in 1902 and roamed the wild reservations of that era in company with the artist Louis Akin. He took the first photos of many parts of that country, under conditions of hardship that are hard to conceive, the results of which he bestowed on me with marveous generosity...

Shine idolized Barry Goldwater and told numerous tales of the Senator's generosity and support. His favorite reminiscence concerned the time he called on Goldwater at his office to ask him to serve as Santa Claus at Shine's big annual bash, the Christmas party for the Navajo. He was ushered into the inner sanctum past a large number of people waiting their turn, toward whom he felt very apologetic and explained that his errand would take only a minute. He got an instant affirmative to his request.

Every now and again, Cloud Nine would end up in tatters because Shine had stomped about on it all day long with a sheet of paper in his hand which he would display to all and sundry with his explanation in the customary fortissimo: "Lookee heah! Ah gotta lettuh from Barry Barry Goldwatuh. He sent me a hundred dollahs. Ain't that tuh-riffic?"

Shine also had carte blanche with Reuben Heflin whenever he was in the neighborhood of that generous and helpful trader, who seemed to make a career of bailing out both whites and Indians in difficulty. I know an Indian who got into trouble, it boots not how, and wired a friend of mine (utterly unconnected with the whole affair,) "Joe, we're in trouble. I need four hundred dollars to stay out of jail." Reuben kept Joe solvent and the Indian out of jail.

Reuben told me once of some involuntary help he gave to the storied Navajo of an earlier era, Tom Holliday, who came in one day and pawned his wagon. A short while later, he reappeared with the news that he had a job hauling wood, suggesting that if Reuben would lend him his wagon for the purpose he would be able to pay it out much faster than originally planned. It appeared to the trusting young trader that this was preferable to having a useless wagon sitting around his post, so he acquiesced, whereupon Tom took the wagon to six other traders and repeated the caper...

Shine's dramatic career and flamboyant personality brought him into contact with many distinguished people throughout his half century on the reservations. In company with a man he described as a world-renowned chemist from San Francisco, he experienced the most remarkable occurrence of his life, about which he told me several times.

They arranged with a Navajo to meet them at Betatakin with horses and accompany them on a trip to Keet Seel where they would camp overnight, and the trip proceeded according to plan. When camping with Indians, Shine always preferred to do his own cooking, though I can bear queasy testimony to the folly of his inclination. At any rate, he prepared their evening meal and following the campfire period the party rolled up in their blankets under the sequined sky.

Some time before dawn, Shine was awakened with a strong feeling that he was "passing out," as he put it, then he was caught up into a vision which, like all mystical experiences, was virtually impossible to describe. It could only be indicated haltingly as an ecstasy, supremely beautiful and happy, with a sense that all earthly cares and concerns had been utterly abolished. The duration of the experience was impossible to fix.

When it was over and dawn was breaking, Shine found himself unable to move a muscle, lying in his blankets as though paralyzed. He was able to speak to his companions, and instructed the Indian to cook breakfast for himself and the chemist, but was at length able to roll onto his side and eat some of the food they placed where he could manage it. He directed that the two of them should saddle up and ride out to send back help, so preparations for this were put in motion.

Ponies were caught up and saddled, camp was broken and the others were about ready to depart, when gradually returning strength led him to attempt mounting his own horse with the others' aid. At last the entire party was able to set out on the return journey, and Shine's only recollection of the ride was that of keen regret at being recalled from the bliss he had so recently known. He loved his life and his work, but they were as nothing to his vision. A chill winter night had overtaken us in the village of Kiacochomovi as we moved slowly and aimlessly among the darkened homes where occasional lights were beginning to send warm inviting beams into the deserted streets. We had been careless of the time, the place we had thought to take refuge in was closed and dark, we were hungry, cold, and tired.

Shine espied a short sturdy figure at some distance in the gathering dusk and opened a window to shout, "Is there anyplace around here to stay?" "You can stay with me," came the reply.

So began one of the most cherished friendships of my life, for the hospitable stranger was Kacha Honawah, an illustrious Hopi who these many years has been guide, mentor, friend, and "Papa Bear" to the shivering painter he took in that wintry eve so long ago Years later Kacha Honawah, Tawayemtewa and I were traveling over a long stretch of back country road that brought us at last to an even smaller side trail which led, a sign informed us, to a notable viewpoint on a little river. I had never seen the place, and a thirty mile detour is nothing to an Indian, so off we went. We arrived at the spot about the same time several wagons did, and upstream a quarter mile we could see the canvas covers of several wagons camped under the cottonwoods which grew along this stretch of the usually dry stream.

After an hour or so of prowling along the stream, I headed up towards the wagons to see what might offer, and found several Navajo families enjoying a bountiful watermelon orgy. They were making their way home from a festival, and after driving all day had turned their horses out to graze while they refreshed themselves on the juicy red fruit before resuming their journey into the approaching night.

It was an idyllic scene in the rich warm light of a setting sun, with huge cottonwoods dappling everything with shifting lacy shadow. I discovered that one of the men bore the wonderful name Jasper Manygoats.

Soon they were harnessing up again, the utensils and blankets were stowed in the wagons, kids clambered aboard and they were lurching on the long path home.

I've always wished Jasper could know what a charge I got out of meeting him there in that green and golden arbor . . .

... from time to time something would remind Shine of an old one he thought I should see, and away we would go in search. We were thus engaged one day, and as generally happened, doing an inordinate amount of rambling hither and yon, when we descried a sheep camp a mile or so off our road and cut across country to make inquiries and see what might turn up.

In the camp we found three or four women and an indeterminate number of children, but no information about our quest. After we had been there a while I made the usual offer of candy for the children and went to the car for a bag of it. The weather was rather unpropitious, grey and overcast with a cold wind whipping guests of sand across the barren landscape in a very uncomfortable fashion, but a fistful of candy seemed to brighten things up sufficiently for the small fry. When they had all been ministered to, I was closing the bag and turning back to the car, but was brought up short by a tall stately woman who reproved me gently in halting English, "Weawliecan dee . . ."

... just where the road rims out we paused to gaze into the little valley where the trading post and its components were tucked under the poplars and cottonwoods. For years the name of the place had haunted my mind, connoting somehow all I love in the back country and Indian milieu, remoteness, wildness, simplicity, freedom, leisureliness, everything that makes me an alien in our homogenized, plasticized, die-stamped, cliché ridden uncivilization. Now at last the closing hour of a bright winter day brought us over the old dirt road to pause for a moment and contemplate the object of my reveries.

Opposite us, the wall of the valley was mantled royally by the setting sun in gold and purple. Wagons, teams, and saddle horses were standing or tethered among the bare trees, and a rider or two moved off toward distant hogans. "Sha-at-toh-nih," the valley's beautiful Indian name flowed in my mind like honey on the tongue. I knew at once that this was the land of heart'sease, an image that would never tarnish.

Shine let a fresh cigar and we started sliding the car down a long sand dune. It occurred to me that perhaps at this very moment of rapture, in some distant school of engineering, they were removing electrodes from the brain, formerly a mind, of some gifted student who would one day design an interchange to rip this serene loveliness to shreds . . .

... my friend had arranged for me to paint all day in the camp of a Navajo who lived nearby, and I was all packed and ready to go when Clitso drove in to the post to fill his water barrel. His son Jimmy was one of the dandiest subjects of my early experience on the reservation, a shock-haired handsome boy of 8 or 10, and I fell to talking, or trying to, with Clitso, whose English is on a par with my Navajo. But I did find out that Jimmy was home from an out-of-state school and it occurred to me the camp could wait while I followed Clitso home to see what Jimmy looked like now and what might eventuate.

We took a somewhat devious route to his camp, making a stop or two for reasons that eluded me, but eventually we arrived, and there was Jimmy, his wonderful mane sadly barbered and tamed, tall and gawky, but still handsome. The family fell into conversation punctuated with considerable laughter and I asked Jimmy what it was all about. He replied they were making plans, having got the white man alone, for putting him in jail. I laughed heartily along with them over this hilarious scheme. Yeah.

Theirs was a dandy camp and I spent some time getting snaps, including some of Jimmy, in his latter-day aspect, then arranged with him to sit for a sketch. My paint box and paraphernalia were hauled from the car, put into working order, and we sat down to the job, when everything fell apart. The place was overrun with goats, who suddenly became avid art lovers, converging on my outfit at the same moment a sandstorm came screaming across the plain to hit the camp with devastating effect on everything, especially my project. Over went everything, almost including Jimmy and me, while the helpful goats scurried about gathering up everything for us. I saw an expensive light meter in the mouth of one artful dodger, while paint rags, brushes, jackets and lunch were joyously transported to the four corners of the compass by willing helpers. One animal did a cute but costly jig among the exposed paint tubes, so if ever you're passing through the reservation and see a cobalt violet goat, don't wail that your mind is giving way it's a very permanent color.

So no sketch. Should be nearly time to look into the possibilities of Jimmy's kids..

But my day was made when a letter came from the lovely and gracious Dorothy Hubbell, whom her friends so aptly call "Lady." She had seen a group of my Indian paintings and wrote to tell me how strongly and pleasantly they recalled to her the life she led for so many years at Ganado as wife of the romantic and colorful "Don Roman," son of the famous "Don Lorenzo." It was just like her, I thought, and recalled our initial meeting, years before . . .

it was my first trip to the Indian country with the seriously avowed intention of getting to work on these great themes, and I was having a mighty rough time of it. It seemed as though doors were slammed in my face wherever I turned, and my hopes of cherished projects received a sustained battering. Friends had told me that Ganado was one place that must be seen, and it was all of a piece with my present luck, I reflected, that I came there on a Sunday afternoon when everything was closed and somnolent.

Nothing ventured, as they say, so I knocked anyway and Mrs. Hubbell appeared at the door to explain that the post and all activities were closed down for the weekend, but when I described my calling and my desire to see the wonderful collection of paintings gathered by her father-in-law, her sweet kindness took over, she asked me in and spent a couple of hours showing me everything and answering my innumerable questions. The walls of the main hall of the home were covered with the work of men I'd admired for years, Dixon, Borg, Betts, Aiken, Mora, Leigh, Payne, both Wachtels, Borein, acres of Burbanks, and a touch from home in a cartoon of Jimmy Swinnerton's. Throughout the house and the post were countless mementos of their long years among the Navajo and I revelled in it all, till at last my guilty feelings over such an imposition constrained me to take my leave.

In after years I visited Ganado as often as I could, doing some work there, staying in the little hogan guest house, and always one of the chief attractions of the place was the charm of this gentle lady who could never have known how much her kindness meant to a young painter struggling through the Slough of Despond . . .

Approaching us down the dusty road came a family in a wagon drawn by a mule and a horse drawn by the mule, actually. The biggest, rankest looking jack I ever saw, beside which the little scruffy Indian pony seemed to be a mere sidecar or adjunct, put there to keep the harness even.

We stopped to talk and do the usuals, and when Hazshogo told me the man's name, another series of memories was set in motion . . .

memories of a stupendously beautiful autumn day when Shine and I fell in with a man on his way to a Navajo roundup in a nearby canyon. We got there early and saw groups and families of Indians, together with their herds, springing from the earth as if by magic. We could see a thousand miles of desert with nothing in sight then suddenly a group of Navajos were hazing their stock into the corral area.

This was about my first experience of the jovial holiday atmosphere that is natural for any gathering of the People. There was plenty of hard work to be done, but it was accomplished in a relaxed, happy manner, to the accompaniment of laughter and friendly banter. Women and children gathered on a knoll overlooking the corral, and above us the fall clouds floated in lazy contentment. A day to remember . . . . . . half a mile beyond the knoll on which the women were seated, stood a small deserted stone house, not a hogan but a rectangular structure in the white style, a very unusual thing in this part of the reservation, especially so in the days when it was built, decades before I saw it. To this house Shine was brought nearly dead by a Navajo who found him in that condition after days of wandering, the last hours in a state of delirium. On a journey in distant parts, his horse had played out or wandered off, leaving him to extricate himself on foot with little or no food and water, and for four days he struggled until the Indian found him nearly done in and brought him to the family then living in the stone house, where he stayed recuperating for several weeks. The Indian who played Good Samaritan was a brother of the driver of the big mule.

Shine more than paid his debt to his rescuer, however, when the latter went on trial for the murder of a white man. Hoshki, we will call him, and a companion, came upon the white one day shoeing his horse.

"Go over and kill that beligano and let's get his horse," Hoshki instructed his companion, who took the one gun they had and set out to follow orders. He engaged the white in conversation for a time, then walked back to Hoshki, who upbraided him and asked why he hadn't followed the program. "I don't know," returned the other, "I just kind of like him, and don't want to do it."

So Hoshki took the gun, walked over to the white and ended his labors. To the last, Shine stoutly averred that Hoshki was the greatest Indian he ever knew, and that his act in no way violated his own code . . . . . . the dusty roads all the good things seem to happen on dusty roads, naturally, for that is what we are, and the pavement is our implacable enemy, did we but know it . . . it was on a dusty road one day that Shine and I beheld coming toward us a sight, or an apparition, that is as vivid in memory as it was in reality. An old, old Navajo, dressed in a vast, cumbersome array of coats, vests, jackets, scarves, everything he could lay his hands on, I suppose, came down the road in the midst of a great motley pack of dogs who frolicked around him and filled the width of the road with their multi-colored gambolings. We both stopped on meeting and Shine fell into conversation with the old man, who bore the splendid name of Sleep in Jesus. A trader told me that the old one was wont to spend virtually his entire welfare check on the best meat for his dogs. It took the trader a long while to persuade him to buy canned dog food for his pets since it was a great deal cheaper than the sirloin he was treating them to. Finally he did buy as the trader recommended, but not for long. He tried the dog food himself and didn't like the flavor . . . . . . the wheel turns . . . comes now an invitation from Elsie to spend Thanksgiving with her, so the shoe (or the moccasin) is on the other foot and the white man goes to the Indian's feast. It was a fun day with the jolly and hospitable Hopi family, but dinner was strictly Pahana turkey, dressing, pumpkin pie the works. I kidded Elsie about this and told her that I'd come with my mouth set for piki and hohoysee. She laughed and promised for next time . . . . . . dusty roads and pavement . . . can't think of any fun I ever had on pavement . . . rolling across the mesas one summer morning I came upon a ruined car beside which lay two ruined humans, a boy and girl in their twenties, out on a lark which ended when the boy fell asleep at the wheel. Several Indians had come to help, and beside the boy sat a young white man who was the hero of the event. He had been nearly killed when the kids' sports car caromed across the pavement out of control, narrowly missing the rescuer's oncoming VW. The boy's arm was smashed almost in two, may I never see such another sight, but his near-victim promptly applied a tourniquet on the correct pressure point and sat down to regulate the inter-vals and maintain the regimen necessary to save the boy's life. I blush to admit one of my first feelings was gratitude that I had not been first on the scene and required to handle the situation with what scraps of first aid I might have been able to recall to an agitated mind.

The girl lay with her unseeing eyes staring up into one of Arizona's light-filled skies, honest Hopi earth smeared over her pretty face in a nightmare contrast to the modish cosmetics it obscured. She died in ten or fifteen minutes without regaining consciousness.

It developed I had the only water at the scene, so I held my canteen to the boy's lips from time to time, a process in which he showed astonishing self-control despite his agony, for he knew the necessity of not swallowing, and only washed out his mouth. He could barely endure the pain of the tourniquet and pleaded to have it released, but his savior was adamant. As we were getting him onto a stretcher when the ambulance finally arrived, the doctor applied bandages, took the stick from the tourniquet and tossed it aside, whereat the boy cursed it with surprising bitterness. "That stick saved your life, buddy," said the doctor. "I know it," replied the other, quietly.

But of course we all knew it was the man who held the stick there should be a medal for people like him, yet I suppose he faded into the mists of anonymity. To give Hamlet's phrase a slightly altered application, "The readiness is all." He was ready . . .

... at sunset I sauntered through the quiet village, meeting a rider or two, a pickup and a wagon, and passed the little white church that was Shine's for a short period long ago. He was no longer living on the reservation, so the sight of the old building in the gloaming gave me a real twinge, for it reminded me of the only time I ever heard wistfulness in Shine's voice, as he pointed it out to me and told me it had been his church for two years. In his softened tones I seemed to hear echoes of the numberless stories he told me over the years of people and events that formed the history of Kayenta. Stories of the Wetherills above all, of their son whose life Shine saved, their daughter whom he almost married, of John's endless flow of renowned visitors, of the great T. R., and Zane Grey who nicknamed Shine "The Hard-Ridin' Parson" in the days when he kept ten saddle ponies worn to a nub.

He seldom alluded to the troubles that estranged him from his church, but I feel sure this was the great sorrow of his life, and the shadows deepening on his beloved sanctuary intensified the feeling I somehow shared with him of nostalgia for the old days and old friends and the things the old church stood for . . .

In a trading post one day I was bowled over by Hatahlie Nez, who did it by just standing where I could see him, tall, slender, black hair and moustache, black beard stubbling his dark strongly fashioned countenance. Everything about him spoke of the Navajo, endurance, individuality, pride, selfsufficiency and the-hell-with-you-white-man. Only Big Brother's gravy train will ever wreck him.

Then I found traders at another post who said he was one of their people and agreed to help me find him and get him to pose. So with Siyah and Nalnishi as guides and interpreters we set out one morning to accomplish this. We began by getting stuck in the sand. This indicated the advisability of a more circuitous route, the first part of which was a usable road that we left soon to try our luck on one of the worst, but we came in the course of time to an abandoned camp where Siyah and Nalnishi had lived when they were first married.

Here we paused for a time to wander among thoughts of bygone times and let the poor car cool down and lick its wounds. Some distance on we came to a big hill where we stuck again, only the aerial showing, in sand that resembled nothing so much as powdered sugar.

Nalnishi ran off in the direction he thought our man lived, while I began heating up the shovel and gathering brush to put under the wheels. The grade of the hill made our extrication not too difficult and we rolled back down and began an hour's wait for Nalnishi, who at last appeared with the news he'd found the camp deserted except for two sons of Hatahlie, who was out herding sheep. One of the sons had gone after the old man with a request for him to come to us, since it seemed unlikely we could get to him over the sand hill.

After a time we climbed the hill to watch for him, then Nalnishi and I struck off across country to the camp, which proved to be one of the most desolate rudimentary ones I've ever seen, yet one of the first things I noticed in it was a football. There was still no word or sign of Hatahlie, but as we stood there scanning the horizon, our hopes rose at the sudden appearance of a horseman galloping over the brow of a distant hill. He We all sat down to enjoy the trader's bounteous repast under a searing sky, and were perhaps half way through when the tall gaunt figure of Hatahlie loomed over the big hill and he came toward us in a cloud of dust. Though the day was very hot, he was dressed in a long, blue-black topcoat, which he had improved considerably by spangling it with bright half-dollars where prosaic buttons had once been. He was not unwilling to join us in our meal, which we completed in a relaxed and happy manner, then got to work. So the mission was accomplished-one of the quick ones . . .

It was quite late when I bid adieu and quock-quai to my friends and stepped from their home into the village street, closing the door behind me. For a time I stood there in the palpable dark, letting my eyes adjust themselves to the obliteration of all light except what dim rays the stars cast into the tiny passage encircled by the clustering walls of other homes. Not a pin point of light shone from any home my eye could reach all was velvet blackness, except for a soft ruddy glow to the east. As my eyes slowly became accustomed to the surroundings, I could see there the skeletal arms of the kiva ladder flung beseechingly against the sky and just where the ladder plunged into the sacred room below, there was that faint reddish halation which signalled activity in the kiva, as men warmed themselves against the biting winter night.

Then from the kiva came a thrilling sound, the deep muttering chant of priests singing in preparation for an approaching ritual. I stood looking at the faint glow that pricked out a few edges on the top of the structure, which the rumbling bass tones rose and fell, sending ancient song into the village night. There was something ineffably moving and primordial in the sound, carrying the mind back through untold centuries, into the mists of time when the same deep, stirring tones called the ancestors of these and all men to look beyond and above themselves . . .