El Dorado's Children

There I stood in the heart of the Wonderland of Rocks, five miles by trail from any human habitation, the mellow light of midafternoon at its finest for photography and the lousy film pulled loose inside my camera. What to do! The annoying exposed film contained all the results of a perfect morning's take of picturesque Bonita Canyon, at spectacular Massai Point, and along the Upper Rhyolite Canyon Trail. My one remaining unexposed roll was to record the weird forms and fantastic stone figures of Heart-of-Rocks carved by Nature's tools....What a dilemma! Opening the camera would ruin in a flash the product of an entire morning's strenuous hike, but unless I removed the offending film, the camera was useless....

If I were writing fiction, some creature of the wild would appear at this crucial moment to lead me to a deep and awe-inspiring cave in whose Stygian darkness I could open the camera and repack the offending film in perfect safety. Unfortunately, the volcanic outbursts that sired Chiricahua's spectacular rhyolitic remnants begot no caves. Crevices, cracks, fissures, and overhanging ledges stared at me from all sides in stony silence, casting deep shadows, but none of sufficient gloom to pinch-hit as a darkroom. Perhaps my film-and-filter box would help. Searching about I selected a cavity beneath a massive boulder, pushed the box into the opening, placed the offending camera inside, and then, glancing about to be sure that I was unobserved, removed my trousers and tucked them around the opening. By careful manipulation, I was able to insert my arms through the trouser legs into the makeshift changing bag and in this cramped and doubly exposed position rewound the film and tucked it into its cylindrical container. Believe it or not, later processing indicated that the operation was successful and only two of the eighteen frames were lightstruck.

In the morning, which looks like one of the first mornings ever made, you go down to Rainbow Bridge, about a mile away.... It is a true arch, almost symmetrical, and though large enough to span the Capitol at Washington, it seems to have a noble grace and delicacy. Try if possible to do what I did, and have at least some hours alone with the bridge. I lost myself in a kind of enchantment, and have never been quite the same man since. The day was perfect. Effortless sunlight and the blue air of Eden. The sky, seen below the shining stone of the arch, was several shades darker than the stone but an indescribably brilliant turquoise.... You felt that you had only to walk through there, beyond that magical frame, and everything would be different forever.

But what drowns you in delight and sleepy enchantment there is the sense of remoteness, friendly solitude, and deep peace. The Indians regarded this great rainbow of stone as something sacred, a sign set there by the gods. They had a prayer to it, invoking the four colored winds, and ending with the cry: "All is peace, all is peace." The geologists can tell us about erosion and how the bridge came to be shaped; but when we are there, if we have any sense, we shall not bother about the geologists but will take the Indian point of view, will stare and wonder and worship and perhaps pray for peace. It is years now since on that perfect morning I stared and wondered and worshipped, alone beneath that shining arch; and much has happened since, some of it terrible and heart-breaking; but I have only to be quiet and still and wait and then I am at Rainbow Bridge again, deep in its silent magic. If I live to be a thousand, I would not forget it.

Out of the night came Tommy DeJolie, Navajo, to tell me that he was going to die. The doors of the post had long been closed against the storm and the night.... Silently he crept to my lighted window, placed his face against the pane so that I could see him plainly, and then called softly, "My friend!" When I opened the door he was standing there beside it, tall and slender, and apparently in the prime of life. But I knew that he had been living on "borrowed" time.... He extended his hand, and I accepted it in my own. Navajo custom decrees that you do not "shake hands," you hold another's hand in your own.... "If you are alone," he said in soft-voiced Navajo, "I would like to come in and talk to you...." He came in then and took the chair that I offered him. "You must not feel sorry for me," he went on, "for I am not afraid to die. I have come to talk to you in the way that I have talked to you before."

"I went to the white man's school and tried to learn the white man's ways. I learned to read and to talk your language very well, but I never learned very much about white people. And now, after all this time, I have come to the conclusion that I do not know my own people very well either! My friend, I am feeling very badly tonight. I thought it was only the white man who did not understand the Navajo, and now I, too, am confused. You must help me. You write about people and you draw pictures. Other white men do this, too, but they just come and stare at us, then go away, and write what was in their heads all the time. Why do they come to see us if they are going to do this...?

"We are not Indians we are not Navajos. Those are white peoples' names. We are Dineh-the People. We are just like all people in so many ways; we laugh, tell jokes, lie, steal, kill, get angry, cry and weep, smile, and are happy. Some of us are good; some of us are bad. I ... I don't understand why it should be otherwise, do you?"

It was her love of horse-and-buggy days which led her to consent to sit in the saddle once more and lead the parade when the city of Douglas staged its first big rodeo in 1939.Viola wanted Steele Slaughter Woods, a relative, to ride beside her.... Once committed to taking part in the rodeo, she began to enjoy the prospect, since it was to be a fiesta entirely devoted to horses. The floats were to be horsedrawn, and in the saddle would be many cowboys in their usual garb, cowgirls in bright silk shirts, and Mexican vaqueros in the gay colors of their country.Viola borrowed from a museum the sidesaddle, which she had placed there with many other Slaughter Ranch relics, and resurrected a riding costume that had lain in a trunk for years. On the day of the parade, she mounted the horse that Steele led to her door with a gaiety she had never expected to feel again. [Later] they went out to the park and through its paths. Then they turned their horses homeward, but it soon proved to be quite a different ride. Hitherto they had ambled along at a walk, choosing the unpaved back streets. On the way home, Viola suddenly spurred her horse into a gallop, and Steele, taken by surprise, could only follow at the mad pace she set. By a miracle, the shod horses kept their footing on pavement slick with oil and polished to a glaze by rubber tires, and the man's heart had climbed almost up to his mouth when the race ended before her own door.

Viola knew this was her last ride.

fun in the Sun

Highways' fun in the sun "resort" issues captured readers' imagination in the late 1940s. (BELOW) A Ray Manley study from "down Tucson way," made the cover of the September, 1948, issue. Manley has been a consistent Highways contributor since 1945.

The early West was a man's country. Until it became more settled, range calico was as scarce as sunflowers on a Christmas tree. This scarcity of woman made her kinda awesome to the cowboy an' he looked upon her as bein' somethin' holy an' plumb precious.No other breed of men on Earth respects women more'n the range man.... He feels that a man's pretty low that'll bring a woman into contact with dirt, or allow her to touch it of her own accord. He places her on a high fence because he wants to look up to her. He wants her feminine an' fluffs all over.

Because he's shy as a pup with his first porcupine, she-stuff shore makes him git his spurs tangled up. In her presence, he's as polite as a tinhorn gambler on payday....

Long time ago I used to say to Jim ('Fore any children come to call him Paw,) "Oh, Jim, oh Jim, let's leave this sorry place An' go where trees is, an' green grass, An' water springs. This desert here Burns up my heart an' makes me so afraid. Let's go where folks is Jim, oh Jim, let's go." An' Jim he'd chaw an' spit an' chaw, An' say: "Aw, Lizy, this place it's all right; The cattle's company better'n too much folks."

I set here on this hill right smart that year A-sewin' an' a-waitin' plumb scared wild To hold some woman's hand an' hear her talk. I made Jim put the baby 'way up here An' sometimes yit I see her scared dead face....

When the rest come I didn't think so much The cattle, like Jim said, was company. The cows with little calves cute little tricks I turned 'em in to water at the trough An' talked to 'em. When Piedy's calf it died An' she went wild a-moonin', I jes' took The little thing an' buried it up here Right by my baby an' she seemed to know An' her an' me was frien's fer many year Like human folks.

I took a heap o' comfort in them cows It never done no good to talk to Jim He'd jes' sit dumb an' chaw an' spit an' chaw.

That's Julie she was so afraid o' storms, The lightnin' got her bringin' up the cows. Me, goin' to meet her, saw the big flash hit. I ain't never let no rain fall On Julie there. I put that roofin' iron All over her an' always kep' it close Storms scared her so.

Paw says sometimes: "Le's sell the ranch an' go Where folks is." What's the use? He couldn't chaw No more tobacco there than he does here An' me I don't want livin' folks no more I only want this hilltop, an' my graves.

Once I had been hunting... [on the] Sonora Desert some miles southeast of Baboquivari. I had climbed a rough and treacherous ravine filled with a mass of tumbled granitic rock, pushing a buck deer over the saddle above me to the ambush which we had planned for him. As I reached the saddle I sat down to rest. A storm had been gathering over Baboquivari far to the north. Dark clouds completely concealed the range. It had been erased from the scene and existed only in memory. Then suddenly in some swift movement of clouds the cliffs of Baboquivari stood clear though the ridges were still concealed. The sun shone through a slit in the sky and played along the cliffs like a spotlight. Baboquivari rose high above th above the storm, ruling the universe. It sparkled in the dampness with which the storm had just sprayed it. It was a mountain wholly detached from the Earth a magic pillar of granite riding high above dark and angry clouds. Lightning briefly played around its base, and then it vanished as quickly as it appeared - engulfed by black clouds that welled upward in some wind.... It is indeed a place for the gods.... Man stands below it tiny and insignificant. April, 1951 William O. Douglas, United States Supreme Court

To the white man, the only good Indian was a dead Indian, and to the Apache, it was a case of shoot anybody who wears a hat. This state of affairs continued from 1835 up to 1856, when the United States took formal military possession of the Gadsden Purchase and established such garrisons as Fort Buchanan in 1856 (first called Fort Crittendon) and Fort Grant in 1859, at two strategic points in the Gila basin.... About all the two garrisons could really guarantee as protection was the security of the posts themselves.

Then, with the outbreak of the Civil War, Washington recalled all federal troops from Arizona in 1861, and the Apaches ruled the Gila Country uncontested. Only Tucson and Tubac survived because of their safety in numbers. Individual ranchers, miners, or prospectors were either killed or forced to give up and get out of the Gila basin. That is, all but one. As always, there is the standout, and Arizona had her example. Try as they did, there was one white man one lone rancher that the Apaches simply couldn't lick. His name was Pete Kitchen, and in his heart and soul were the indomitable courage and persistency of the white race. If the Apaches would shoot anybody who wears a hat, Pete Kitchen's motto was "Shoot anybody who don't."

Many of the Spanish-Barb mustangs that Kino raised on the mission ranches of his beloved Pimería Alta... soon found their way far northward on the east or west side of the Rockies. Time and again native revolts would burst into flame, and Indians would loot the missions and drive off the horses. The animals, along with the art of how to train and handle them, were traded to warlike tribes, who spread this horse culture ever northward.

Within a generation after the death of Father Kino, many of the Indian tribes of the High Plains acquired the horses that, in a few short years, turned them from inefficient earthbound primitives into wandering tribes of buffalo hunters, mobile and dangerous to the growing white pressures.

Meanwhile, some two thousand miles to the east of Kino's land, other herds of Spanish-Barb horses were stolen from other missions and eventually found themselves in the hands of the native Indians of Georgia and the Carolinas. Shortly these mustangs met another kind of horse that had been brought by white men in ships to the English settlements.

And thus it was that the first great crossing of horse breeds and types took place in America: the native-born Indian-Spanish-Barb and the English horse. The result was a type of pure American horse that lives on to this day.

Here is a tree that might have been created as the friend of mankind. Out of all the Western sylva, the forests vast and somber, the ranked species in their cohorts, each with its boast of economic value, this one stands apart. For it grows singly or in little groves in the interior valley, along the sandy washes, the upside-down rivers of the desert, in the cool of the canyon walls, more needed where you find it than valuable if felled, sawed, dressed, and exported. With its intimately leaning trunks it seems, even in the wild, to be pre-formed for bending above the rooftree that will come to it. The quality of its shade-broad but filmy-leaved (more like some Eastern hardwoods) is never so dense as to be stuffy; ever the breeze moves under the boughs, and any stir of air, in the warm habitats it chooses, even the rangeland's or the wheat field's is better than none. So the white-faced Herefords stand or lie for hours in the long burning summers beneath the sycamores.

You come to Bac with the centuries telescoping around you. You come as the Spanish came, priest and soldier and muleteer, riding up from Mexico through the centuries; you come as the Indians came through unknown millenniums, dim tribes wandering and coalescing at last into peaceful Pima, Papago, and Sobaipuri, and as they still come, through the same vast plain ringed with mountains, under the same enormous sky. You come, probably, no longer with the ears of horse, or mule, or burro bobbing before you, nor unless on pilgrimage, with your feet in the burning dust. But the dust is still deep; it whirls up from your tracks in clouds. You pass sharp mountains and conical hills, their slopes stippled by the giant spiked columns of saguaros. This is, as it has been always, Indian land - a country at once soft and harsh, rich and poor, where the sun from morning to evening is still more important than anything except shade and water....

Horses wander before you, impervious to cry or horn, cropping the green, with the wind in their uncombed manes and tails. Rabbits scamper; roadrunners, grey and gaunt, finish their spurt across the road by volplaning on their short wings into the brush.... Then suddenly you sight the white towers, the dome, the little black hill topped by a white cross. Here the Span-ish must have spurred, and the Apaches kicked their horses, and foot travellers discovered they could still hasten. White and magical, Mission San Xavier del Bac rises out of the perspective of the desert. What is it about those towers and that dome? That the towers, one capped and the other open, stand braced like men watching the marvelous skies, with the dome floating like a bubble behind them? That the little chapel with its bells and the little black hill form with the Mission such exquisite counterpoint?

The works of Ted De Grazia first appeared in Highways in February, 1941. Editor Carlson predicted: “The young man from Bisbee ... is a very sincere person from whom you may someday hear a great deal about.” (LEFT) De Grazia illustration for “San Xavier del Bac” by Nancy Newhall, with accompanying photography by Ansel Adams. April, 1954. (BELOW, LEFT) Padre Kino Enters Altar Valley, by De Grazia, oil, 26 by 20-inches. From “The World of De Grazia,” by Harry Redl, Chrysalis Publishing, Ltd., Phoenix, Arizona. (BELOW) De Grazia’s portrait appeared with a biography of the artist and a special portfolio of his paintings and ceramics in the March, 1949, Highways.