PORTRAIT OF NAVAJO LAND

"Dine Yazhi" BARRY GOLDWATER Portraits of The Enduring Land and Its People circa 1970

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS is proud to present a very special portfolio of unusual interest and character. These are no longer times for single viewpoint attitudes and conclusions. The true quality of a land can no longer be evaluated and described from a roadside viewpoint. Included in the following sixteenpage color section are four photographs taken from a special U-2 air camera using 70 mm color film. Shot from an altitude of approximately 12 miles, each photograph represents an area of about 200 square miles. These photographs, credited in accompanying captions to N.A.S.A., were used by special permission of The United States National Air Space Administration under a special arrangement with the State of Arizona Transportation and Resources Development Agencies. Other color photographs represent the works of David Muench, Josef Muench, Esther Henderson and Laura Gilpin, who is one of America's most respected documentarians of American Southwestern Indians, their land and their life. She has lived with the people long enough to have photographed many of them from cradleboard to parenthood. Her book titled "The Enduring Navajo," University of Texas Press, is considered to be one of the most important and best illustrated books ever done about Navajos. Laura Gilpin lives in Santa Fe where she is presently working on the book she considers will be her tour de force.

Masterpiece black and white photographs by Barry Goldwater and J.H. McGibbney complete the presentation.

Airview of Havasu Creek's blue-green waters plummeting over Mooney Falls on their way to the Colorado River.

Ancient timber in the photo, right, is at Blue Mesa. DAVID MUENCH

Giant rock outcroppings in Monument Valley provide shelter from the noon-time sun for a young Navajo lad and his flock.

The quality of the enduring Navajo beautifully portrayed, left, is equalled only by the ruggedness of the land. - LAURA GILPIN Comb Ridge runs from lower left to upper right of the NASA photo below. Above it is Monument Valley. Church Rock is in the lower left corner. Immediately below it is Four Corners Highway 160. The road passes above Baby Rocks at the point of the first valley. The tip of the second valley is known as Red Point.

Here in a land where volcanoes once roared, the Navajos live quietly in their hogans. - LAURA GILPIN Church Rock, foreground, and Agathla, right background, are just two of the volcanic remnants to be found in Monument Valley. Although they are nine miles apart, the telephoto lens brings them together in the dramatic photo at the right. - DAVID MUENCH

No name in the history of the New World is entitled to a greater measure of distinction and greatness than that of Alvar Nunez de Vara Cabeza de Vaca. It is strangely paradoxical that no name is as little known to Americans as that of Cabeza de Vaca. To many Americans who believe American History began with the Pilgrims, John Smith or George Washington the name Cabeza de Vaca is a curious name. It means “Head of a Cow,” a prominent but undistinguished Spanish family name. Our decision to turn over several pages of this magazine to Cabeza de Vaca is to awaken an awareness to a part of history which, for many reasons, has not only been taken too lightly but has often been presented with unwarranted prejudice. Many old text books and reference sources have not given justice to the Spanish pioneers and explorers who gave humanity the greatest discovery in the annals of mankind. The exploration of America has achieved some of the greatest results for civilization at the price of some of the highest measures of human heroism. No story of human heroism in the New World can match that of Cabeza de Vaca and three companions represented in the account of the most astounding journey ever made in the New World, most of it in what is now the United States of America. They are heroes whose names should inspire Americans with respect and admiration. And because their names are as ancient Greek to most Americans we are proud to bring their names and the nature of their deeds to a point where the reader will want to learn more about one of the greatest epics involving the simple miracle called man. The story of Cabeza de Vaca portrays one of the most marvelous feats of manhood in all history. The physical achievements of these little-known heroes can safely be stated without parallel, and a most striking fact of this first inland exploration of the Americas was that the men, three caucasians and one black man, were cast into their roles without intent, without plan, preparation or invention. During nine years of wandering on foot, unarmed, unclothed, starved, tortured and sometimes enslaved, the three Spaniards and the Moor named Estevanico saw, recorded and gave the world its first notice of the United States inland. Cabeza de Vaca was the first European who saw the great American bison. He ate the buffalo meat and left us a description of the “hunch-back cows.” He was often called upon to perform as a doctor by the Indians, and so he must qualify as the first surgeon. De Vaca trudged from tribe to tribe trading goods for goods thus becoming the first trader among the Indians. The important thing to remember about Cabeza de Vaca in American history is that he first became part of it on Good Friday, 1528 A.D. The year 1528 A.D. was almost a century before the Pilgrim Fathers waded ashore on the Massachusetts Coast. The year 1528 A.D. was almost 75 years before Captain John Smith's first New World Settlement in Virginia. The year 1528 A.D. was almost a third of a century before there was a single white settler of any blood within the area of the present United States. It was 60 years before a newspaper was born so it's no wonder that even the most knowledgeable people knew less about our continental wilderness than what an eight year old knows of Mars and Jupiter today. In 1528 A.D. there had not been a white man North of the Rio Grande. By the margin of centuries, the de Vaca party was the first to cross the continent thus qualifying Cabeza de Vaca as the first American traveler. The name of Cabeza de Vaca has already taken its place in historical literature. His story has in many respects evolved in the manner of the story of Jesus and the New Testament; namely, from accounts, letters, narratives and gospels according to Synod accepted sources. We are concerned with the story of the trek of de Vaca and three companions “according to De Grazia” who has spent 30 years researching one of the most remarkable, astounding and unbelievable journeys in the history of mankind. Noted historians Hollenbach, Sauer, Bancroft, in particular, were prime biographical sources. Distinguished translaters such as Buckingham Smith and Fanny Bandelier also take the de Vaca party through parts of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to the Gulf of California. The basic and authoritative foundation for De Grazia's book came from de Vaca's original account initially entitled “La Relacion” first published at Zamora, Spain in 1542. In 1851 Buckingham Smith, American antiquarian, specialist in the study of early Spanish exploration of the Americas, translated the Relacion into English. Another translation was made in 1905 by Fanny Bandelier, eminent authority on the history of Southwestern United States. The Smith and Bandelier translations differed in some small respects. The finest and most authoritative publication of the de Vaca journey was compiled by historian and ethnologist, Frank W. Hodge of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology. First published in 1907, it stands above all as a reference and source book about Cabeza de Vaca. For the non-academic layman, John Upton Terrell's book “Journey Into Darkness” published by William Morrow and Company, 1962, is a notable contribution to America's historical archives. An example of the vivid beauty of the Terrell classic follows:

Chapter 1, Part III “Journey into Darkness”

“The little shipyard established on an arm of St. Marks Bay in August of 1528 was not only the first in the continental United States, but it was one of the strangest ever known in all the world. There were workers, but no craftsmen. Only one man, Alonso Fernandez, a Portuguese, had received some training as a carpenter. When this was discovered, he became the recipient of great respect and was placed in charge of operations. To begin with, there were no tools, no iron plates or bars, no forge, no tow, no resin, no rigging, and no one who knew how to make such things. Neither was there sufficient food. Each day sick men died. There was no cure for the mysterious maladies which had felled half the company. The task of acquiring supplies was given priority. Men were assigned to catch fish. Others were sent out to hunt game. Others were dispatched to gather oysters and crustaceans in the surrounding creeks and inlets. The most able-bodied men were organized into a raiding party. Within a few days they made four incursions into the corn and bean and pumpkin fields of Aute. Each was more or less a running fight with the Indians, who quite naturally objected to having their entire harvest stolen, but the raiders obtained more than six hundred bushels of maize and quantities of other vegetables. Ingenuity combined with desperation created a formidable strength and an insuperable determination. The celebrated carpenter devised a means of making bellows out of wooden pipes and deer skins. Armor, lances, guns, stirrups, conchos, belt buckles, crossbows any piece of equipment and metal that could be spared without jeopardizing the company's safety were melted and shaped into crude nails, hammers, chisels and axes. Even two or three saws somehow were manufactured. Out of palmetto wood, a covering was woven for the boats. Seams were calked with the fiber of the same plant. Trees were split into planks with wedges and stone mallets.

The Greatest Story Ever Documented Glorifying The Miracle Of Man And His Immeasurable Capacity Of Heroic Qualities

The Greek soldier, Don Dorotheo Teodoro, became something of a hero when he discovered that pitch could be made from the resin of pine trees.

Ropes were made from the tails and manes of horses. Shirts, blankets, ponchos, coverlets, skins, expendable clothing of the living and all the garments of the dead were sewn together for sails. Oars were carved from savins. After long searching through the swamplands and forests flat stones were found that were suitable for anchors.

A party of ten men gathering shellfish became careless and walked into an Indian ambush. All were killed. Even though they wore armor, the arrows drove completely through their bodies.

Each third day a horse was slaughtered. The best of the meat went to the sick and to those who labored on the boats, but no part was wasted. Mixed with a little corn and some seafood, the entrails provided a thick, strength-giving broth. Skins from the legs were stripped off whole. After being scraped and dried they were sealed at the ends for use as water bottles.

The remaining hides were made into ship covering.

August passed, and forty men had died of fever, disease and wounds. Perhaps it should be said that their deaths prevented the occurrence of a dangerous and tragic situation. There would have been no room for them in the boats.

By the third week in September, only one horse and two hundred and forty-two men were still alive. The corn was almost gone, and they were being sustained mostly by opossum, raccoons, marsh rabbits, deer, ducks and seafood.

It was the general belief they were at least two hundred and eighty leagues from Bahia de la Cruz - a little more than seven hundred miles. Actually the distance overland would have been no more than that many miles! By sailing across Apalachee Bay and down the west coast of Florida on a fairly straight course, they could have reached their original landing place after traveling approximately one hundred and eighty miles!

The error is understandable. They were lost. They were sick and terrorized and hungry. They knew nothing whatever of the geographical outline of the immense Gulf of Mexico, nothing of the shape of the Florida coast.

False hopes were the fruit of their ignorance, and desperation blinded their senses and power of thought. Not one among them was a navigator. They knew nothing of the stars, nothing of the way of the sea, nothing of the habits of the winds. Natural signs told them nothing.

It can only be surmised, of course, what might have happened to them had they sailed toward the southeast. But it can be stated with certainty that if they had gone in that direction and had reached Bahia de la Cruz, less than two hundred miles away, they would have met one or more of their ships. For the ships were still waiting for them.

That was not in the cards of their fortune. Fate, or their lack of knowledge, caused them to reason that if they were two hundred and eighty leagues from Bahia de la Cruz, surely they must be closer to Pánuco.

Pánuco, the little Spanish slaving station on the central coast of Mexico, could not be that far away, not seven hundred and thirty-seven miles. Why not? Why, simply because they found hope and encouragement in the belief that it was nearer.

The truth was that Pánuco was at least six times farther away than Tampa Bay. (In 1539, as Hernando de Soto was pushing northwestward through Florida, he was told by captured Indians about the Province of Apalachen and of how, years before, other Spaniards had reached it, and had been forced to build vessels to escape. No one knew where they had gone, or what had been their fate. The information struck fear in the hearts of many of de Soto's men, and they implored him to turn back before they, too, became trapped. De Soto pushed on, and in October some of his soldiers reached St. Marks Bay.

They saw where a great tree had been felled and cut into stakes. Mangers had been built out of the tree's limbs. They also found the bleached skulls of horses.) On the morning of September 22, 1528, five of the strangest vessels ever seen afloat moved slowly under oar and pole through the shallow waters of the marshland into St. Marks Bay.

Each was about thirty-three feet in length. Each was a weird conglomeration of rough pine planks, crudely hewn stays and ribs, horse hides, palm leaves, masts of debarked trees, fittings of silver, gold and brass, horse hair rigging, sails made of odd pieces of clothing, and stone anchors. Overloaded beyond the most remote degree of safety, their gunwales were not a foot above the water. So crowded together were the men that movement of any kind was almost impossible.

In the first boat was Governor Narvaez and forty-eight men. In the second was Alonso Enrriquez, Father Xuarez and forty-seven men. In the third was Captain Castillo, Andrés Dorantes and forty-six men. In the fourth were Captains Tellez and Penalosa and forty-five men. And in the fifth rode Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso de Solis and forty-seven men.

Two hundred and forty-two men crushed together in an almost helpless condition in five frail and unseaworthy craft. An experienced seaman would not willingly have set out in any one of them to cross a calm inland lake.

On through the waist-deep shallows they went, now rowing, now catching a bit of breeze that helped them along. They caught glimpses of the great Gulf, and at last they could hear the surf thundering against the outer banks.

In wide but protected water they turned southwestward. They saw the point on which the white shaft of the St. Marks Lighthouse rises today.

Then St. Marks Bay fell away behind them. They had named it Bahia de Caballos - The Bay of Horses."