ON THE ROAD

ON THE ROAD The Tall Tales of John Hance of the Grand Canyon

John Hance had a number of jobs in the middle 1800s Grand Canyon guide, trail-builder, miner, humorist but he is most famous as Arizona's greatest teller of tall tales.

Hance's humor was strictly of the windy, Western variety, leading the listener along the paths of plausibility until suddenly he found that imperceptibly he had been introduced to conclusions and facts that were obviously impossible or were they?

His stories were usually spontaneous, designed to fit the particular situation confronting him at the moment. One minute, to thrill a timid, fluttering schoolmarm from the East, the Grand Canyon would be full of snakes thousands of snakes at every turn in the trail, forming daisy chains to bridge themselves across chasms or down steep cliffs, and hunting in packs like wolves.

The next minute, for a new and different audience, he would state, "Snakes? No. There's no snakes in the Grand Canyon anymore. Used to be, though millions of 'em.

"One day, down at Indian Gardens, I must've seen four hundred snakes at once. They were all in a big ring, single file, just going around in a circle. I watched for about 20 minutes and they just kept right on playing follow theleader. But at noon, when I looked again, the ring was smaller just about half size. I couldn't see where any snakes had left, so I looked closer; and do you know, every snake'd swallered the tail of the snake ahead of him and they were all crawling and swallering just as steady as a 21-jewel Swiss movement. "By evening they were all gone they'd eaten each other all up."

And he would walk away looking for a new group to confound.

His stories were his main interest. Most of them would change day by day almost hour by hour. His old white horse, Darby, was in many of them.

"I was riding Darby down around Red Butte one day," said John Hance, "and Darby could smell an Indian for forty miles. From the way he acted, I knew there were Indians ahead, so I started to go around to the east. But there were more Indians there more on the west. I was surrounded on three sides! So I turned Darby back towards the canyon rim, and started at a dead run, with Indians in close pursuit. There must've been fifty of them. Darby was fast we kept ahead, but we couldn't get far enough ahead to get around them or to stop and make a fight of it. "Soon we were at the canyon rim coming at a dead run no time to stop no time to hide no time to get over to the trail. I saw there was only one thing to do to jump the Grand Canyon!

"Old Darby took off in good shape up and over, in a truly magnificent jump. But about halfway across I saw I couldn't make it, so I turned around and went back.

"Meantime, the Indians had started down the trail to get me when I got to the bottom of the canyon, and when I got back to the South Rim they were all so far down the trail that I got clean to Flagstaff before they could get back out."

There are dozens of alternate endings to this. In one of them, Bob Fix reports that Darby miscalculated the higher elevations on the North Rim and landed in a big cave across the river. This cave is clearly inaccessible to everything but a bird.

"How'd you get back out?" asked an interested listener.

"Why, I reckon I starved to death right there," replied Hance.

Another ending of this, furnished by Charles J. ("White Mountain") Smith, has Hance holding enough of a lead on the Indians that he made the head of his trail and started down it. Part way down, Darby tried to shortcut between two huge rocks, and it was too tight. He got stuck. The Indians were coming closer and closer.

"Yup, they scalped me," Hance concluded.

Another time, Homer Wood says, Hance was approached by a stranger to the canyon rim who asked about deer hunting in that vicinity. "Why, it's fine," Hance replied. "I went out this morning and killed three all by myself."

"That's wonderful," exclaimed the stranger.

"Do you know who I am?"

"No, I don't," admitted Hance.

"Why, I'm the game warden, and looks to me like you've broke a few of the game laws!"

"Do you know who I am?" asked John Hance.

"No, I don't," replied the game warden.

"Well, I'm the biggest so-and-so liar in Arizona!"

Life in Arizona Excerpted from the May 1957 issue A Sight for Blind Eyes BY CHARLES FRANKLIN PARKER

With the coming of the rains, the meadows on northern Arizona's Kaibab Plateau will change in color weekly, from blue to purple to yellow, as the various summer flowers come to full bloom. In September the aspen add their glorious golden glow to the landscape. Thus from May until the coming of the snows in November this paradise of color and wildlife calls to the lover of nature to come and bide awhile.

I can readily understand and sense the poignancy of the incident told me by Carl Cox, as we sat and watched the birds and looked out upon the peaceful meadow. Some years ago he had a letter from a woman living in California requesting him to advise by wire of the time the aspen would be at the very height of their glorious fall display. As that time came, he sent her word. Soon she arrived by car.

She told this story. She had earlier visited the area with her family at a time when she was blind. She had heard the description of the idyllic setting, and their futile attempts to picture the beauty and glory of the fall in the Kaibab. She recently had regained her sight. The one thing she wanted to see most and behold with her own eyes was this scene. She came and was thrilled as she had anticipated.

As she was leaving she said, “I am certain to lose my sight again, but I have seen the aspen of Arizona in glorious fall array. I am going now to see some other places before it is too late, but having seen this I can carry it with me to lighten my way when the darkness again overtakes me.”

Life in Arizona Excerpted from the July 1943 issue Yesterday in Arizona: Transportation BY RAYMOND CARLSON

River steamers came splashing up the Colorado, groaning with the weight of mining machinery and supplies for America's frontier outpost. There were mines to dig, towns to be built, a wilderness to be conquered. And men with courage hauled the machines and the supplies from the river to places all over the territory, the seemingly impossible task accomplished by mule trains and cursing. And before that, even when they were digging the mines at Clifton and Morenci, machinery was hauled overland from St. Joe, Missouri, and the ore was hauled back. The journey was not measured in days or weeks but in months and the housewives in those Greenlee County towns had to do their Christmas shopping months and months in advance. An Easter bonnet for my lady would come joggling half way across America, escape Indian raids and bad weather before appearing new and shiny on some storekeeper's dusty shelf. And when you wore it, with its feathers and frills, you weren't wearing a hat - you were wearing an epic.

Passengers and mail came by overland stages, clouds of dust through the hills and desert marking their path. Traveling in those days was a matter of patience, a sense of adventure, a belief in Providence, and a firm and healthy liver.

When the railroads came pushing their way across the territory, distances diminished, but there were many points and places dependent on the wagon and the stagecoach to keep in contact with the outside world. The railroads hurrying across America had time to pause only at the more important places and where they left off the teamster took over.

The whips cracked, the clean, clear but still unpublicized Arizona air was filled with curses, and the wheels creaked and complained as another haul was begun. These amazing people, truckers they were called, feared no load or distance as long as their horses and mules were well-shod and as long as there was enough whiskey at the end of the haul to wash the dust down with. To them weather was a whimsy, floods a foolishness of Nature, and the hot sun a ball of fire that made the back of your neck burn. The only thing important was to get the cargo through to its destination, not because of any heroic attitude, but simply because if you didn't get the cargo through you didn't get paid.

THINGS ARE WHAT THEY SEEM

I have discovered that the truth is about as funny as exaggeration. When I wrote, “The wildflowers at Fort Oliver were so thick this spring you could hardly see the beer cans,” it was true.

And when Mary Paige writes in the Wickenburg Sun, “The gnats are driving us gnuts,” one knows it's true.

Excerpted from the May 1943 issue More Arizona Birds

We are often asked what is the most unusual bird in Arizona. Many things must be considered, but probably the Mexican Crossbill will have to be nominated. His uncommon point is his crossed mandibles. This crossed bill is a development by nature to facilitate the opening of pine cones to get the small seeds. They seem to be found in greater or lesser numbers in proportion to the crop of evergreen cones.

A friend of ours tells the legend that at Calvary when Jesus was nailed to the cross a red bird appeared and tried to pull the nails from His hands. The bird's efforts were so great and the nails so secure that the bird bent its bill out of alignment and its descendents to this day have the same crossed bill. — Harry L. and Ruth Crockett Wandering nomads, flocks of red crossbills follow seasonal seed crops through their conifer forest habitat.

Life in Arizona Excerpted from the January 1957 issue Nicky Goes to the Ball Game

March it was. Not a baseball month for most boys; a sneezing, stay-indoors Vicks Vaporub kind of month for most. Not so, Nicky Bozovitch. Went to his first ball game in March, Nicky did, wearing a T-shirt, Levi's, low slung six-gun, sneakers and curiosity as big as Willie Mays' bat. The sun over Scottsdale Stadium as big and hot as that bat can be, and no lion roaring March wind either only a citrus-scented sigh to favor right-hand batters slamming for the left field wall. The locker room of Nicky's inquisitiveness opened a month before. February that was, because while the rest of the newspaper sports sections in the country were holding 7-cent football post-mortems (these dissections often lasting until June) the Phoenix papers were christening a baseball season. Putting spikes on baby's feet, black numerals on baby's back: Giants in Phoenix, Cubs in Mesa, Orioles in Scottsdale, Indians in Tucson. Nicky saw the photographs in the papers, studied the headlines, asked: "What's spring training, Dad?"

"Well," Mr. Bozovitch said and stopped. Because baseball is something you do and see, not explain. And that's what Nicky did three weeks of wishing later. March it was, climbed into the car in Tempe, Arizona, heading for his first game at Scottsdale Stadium, the new winter nest for the old birds to thaw graciously, for young ones to try their wings. Sat in the stands, in the right field line, Nicky did, and before an inning passed, instinct struck out awe. Scrambled yelling for a last of the third foul and won, and clutched the trophy like any seasoned six-year-old city-bred veteran. Chicago, New York, St. Louie or Baltimore kid he could've been, Nicky, scrambling professionally for that ball.

Moscow Bans Arizona Highways

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union blacklisted Arizona Highways, finding the pictures too beautiful to be believable, its descriptions of Arizona canyons, deserts and mountains too fantastic to be true.

The story broke in newspapers around the country on Sunday, February 7, 1965, after American news agencies picked up an article that appeared in the Soviet trade publication Trud. In that article, Soviet officials labeled Arizona Highways as "ideologically subversive" material, and charged that it "propagandized the American way of life." The Arizona Republic, quoting the New York Times wire service, reported: "Trud said alert customs officers had confiscated 'provocative literature clearly intended to conduct hostile propaganda among the Soviet people.'"

A frenzied response to the initial story spread through America, aided by the editorial comments of newspaper columnist Inez Robb, who claimed we shouldn't be too angry at the Soviets for thinking the pictures were too good to be true because half of Americans generally couldn't believe them either. A flood of letters, always sympathetic, generally dismayed and often outraged, poured into the magazine from readers housewives, teachers, businessmen and congressmen alike. Editor Raymond Carlson was flattered by the magazine's brief time in the international spotlight. "It just goes to show that our little magazine gets around," he said. "Frankly, I'm delighted that the Communists have placed us in the same league with Robin Hood and Disneyland."

Soviets called the magazine “subversive propaganda” BEN LILLY OF THE MOUNTAIN

Excerpted from the September/October 1943 issues In 1912, with five hounds and five burros, Ben Lilly moved north to Clifton (in eastern Arizona) and surrounding territory. He killed six bears and four lions in one week, and had the idea of making money by collecting bounties.

On April 3, 1913, in the White Mountains of Arizona, he made what he considered the narrowest escape of his life. The narrative is in his own words: "I struck this grizzly on Blue River and followed him for three days in snow from knee-deep to waist-deep. In places the snow had frozen and glazed over so that the bear did not make a visible track. During the three days I did not have one mouthful to eat. I was wearing over my underclothes only a pair of blue cotton pants, a blue shirt, and a light cotton sweater. I kept from freezing at night by building fires and sit-ting up by them. "Three times at very long ranges I shot this bear in the same hip while he was running from me. I had a slow-track dog tied to my waist. Once we came to a cave where the bear had denned in the winter preceding. It was six or eight feet wide and about sixteen feet back. The mouth of the cave showed that during the winter he had dragged out earth during six stages of the snow. This is just one instance of evidence that hibernating bears will come out for short whiles during the winter. They will drink water but will not take a mouthful of food. Another grizzly I trailed in the Escalder [Escu-dilla) Mountains in Arizona had made twelve trips in and out of his cave dur-ing his lay-up.

"The wounded grizzly had left lots of fresh blood at his old den, but I knew it was not from any vital part. About

LIFE ON THE FRONTIER

three hundred yards east of the den I saw blood again, where the grizzly had scratched snow out of one of his summer beds and laid down. The trail worked on into thick spruce undergrowth. Then I heard a kind of squeak among dead pine saplings. I looked to one side, getting ready to fire. Then right in front of my body, fifteen feet away, the bear popped out, charging me. My first shot hit him center in the breast; that checked him. My second shot was under the eye, about three feet away. He fell against my side. I was bogged in snow about waistdeep. I couldn't see the bear's head. He seemed to be drawing deep breaths. I fired another shot for his heart. I was wearing a knife eighteen inches long. I drove it for the heart. That finished him. It had been a test of endurance as well as a narrow escape.

"After this bear died, I felt weak. My dogs and I both needed water. There was some under ice not far away, and we started to it. On the way we struck a lion track, very fresh. I felt like a new man and took out in a run. The lion was soon treed and killed. We got water and went back to the grizzly bear. After I skinned him, the dogs and I had a good meal the first in three days. I wrapped up in the skin by the carcass and slept warm as if I were in a stove."

WELL OF SACRIFICE

Excerpted from the February 1953 issue On the Papago [Tohono O'odham] Reservation, the desert rolls away endlessly and the greasewood bends as the wind whips across the flats. A buzzard rides high on a current and a dust devil spins his column of tan smoke skyward. There, granite slabs sparkle in the bright sun and dead ocotillo stalks harden and whiten like old bones at the Shrine of Alihihiani Cemetery of the Dead Child the site of the Well of Sacrifice. Legend has it that in prehistoric times a hunter, trailing a badger, watched it dig into the earth and attempted to follow it. Suddenly a torrent of water gushed from the badger hole, flooded the ground, and increased in volume until four nearby villages were inundated.

The terrified villagers called a council of their chiefs to debate an emergency measure. After a solemn all-night conference, the chiefs decreed that human sacrifices were necessary to appease the angry gods. Accordingly, from each village one child was taken: two boys and two girls. They were robed in their finest ceremonial garments and told they would go on to a more beautiful land where all their wishes would be fulfilled. The children were then thrown alive into the well, and earth and heavy stones were heaped upon them.

Today the eight stone seats remain where the chiefs sat during their night of council. Close by, a mound of heavy granite slabs three feet high, surround-ed by a fence of ocotillo stalks thrust into the ground, marks the site of the sacrificial well. Openings in each of the four sides of the fence allow the exit of the soul of each child when it wishes to escape.

The custom is to pull up the stalks, lay them aside, and form a new fence each year. The old branches are never destroyed and the stalks at the bottom of the pile are so withered they seem hun-dreds of years old. There are now two great piles of discarded branches, lying in a semi-circle, one on each side of the well, each pile being at least five feet high and twenty-five feet long.

Ocotillo branches are known either to rot or sprout in time if cut and stuck into the earth. Those at the Well of Sacrifice have neither rotted nor sprouted; they are windand sand-polished to a smooth, gray, spineless finish as hard as bone.

MILES TO GO

A tourist asked a desert rat: "How many miles is it to Quartzsite?" "Wal," calculated the rat, "it's 24,992 miles the direction you're headin' 'bout 27 miles you turn 'round."