ON THE ROAD

ON THE ROAD Profile of My People

In a far-off Arizona desert lived a little Navajo Indian boy. He was born March 14, 1924, in a hogan no better than the log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born. Let me tell you what it means to be a little Navajo Indian boy, born in a hogan on the Navajo reservation. What it means to be a child of the yellow sand country. What it means to be a son of the Diné (the People). I know, for I am that Navajo boy. This is what being a Navajo Indian means to me. My home: A hogan at the foot of high red cliffs cut out against the sky; friends who come to help with the building of the hogan with the six sides, mud-plastered, notched logs, and the smoke hole in the roof. It means the finished hogan being blessed with the sacred corn meal as a soft voice chants. All this with a blanket-covered doorway facing the rising sun. It means the summer home shelter of cedar trees, with dark-faced Indian women watching boiling mutton, stirring corn mush, and making black coffee. It means feeling your sheepskin bed change to a blanket of happiness, while you sleep outside with the moon hanging low. It means flocks of sheep wandering over the sagebrush country searching for grass; the sad and faint bleat of the lost lamb, and the fear of the coyote. It means running toward the sound only to find the baby lamb caught between rocks, and to think happily, “Lambs are little fools!” as you rub its soft wool against your chin, then to drive the sheep homeward with a tin can filled with stones. It means to be lost in the jungle of a dream under the hard blue flatness of the sky; to have this beauty put beauty whispers into your heart, and to paint the beauty whispers on the rocks and the sand of the desert. With thought laughing and heart laughing to paint beauty whispers in the sand. To know and feel that you are an Indian and to be glad. To know that time cannot change the Indian. It means my people. The mother in the shade of the home hogan weaving, making the rug grow with swift fingers. To look at the thick coils of black hair tied with strands of white wool, and to feel a longing to touch the thin brown cheeks. It means to watch the father hammer his dreams into silver rings; to believe in the Good Medicine of the People to keep your feet straight on the beautiful trail. It means old men with bent down shoulders and wrinkled copper faces. Old men with thin gray hair and watery eyes, who sit in the shadow of gone-away days, in the long hours when the past becomes the future. Old men whose feet followed the trails of yesterday and know not the paths of new ways. Old men together talking, talking of the Other Days, painting pictures with words, while their cold blood runs warm with the tales they tell. It means this thinking of the young who hear: “The old days were good, but they can never come back again. We must not look the backward way with the old men. To live in the past is a tired thing.” It means being surrounded by a White World of White Men, and trying to see the good in the White World. It means the shock of learning that Today is not an Indian World. It means the Indian tearing himself from the past of today, to enter the tomorrow of many days of new things. It means to leave through the door opened by the White Men for a government school of red brick houses and strange people. To see that from these schools new thinking ways and new acting ways reach out to the People, to make a nest in the hearts of the young. To see the old and the new meet to bring a change in the old ways. It means to find, in this world of red brick houses, an understanding face, and to learn that deeper there beats an understanding heart. It means to paint the stored treasure thoughts with oil, crayons and water colors, not on the rocks and sands of the desert. This is what it means to be a Navajo Indian, son of the Diné. I am a part of the picture of my people. This picture has given me a dream that will live. A dream that causes me to shake inside with a burning to paint the beauty whispers and hope whispers of my people. To paint for the world to see.

Excerpted from the July 1949 issue Tombstone's Quong Kee A Friend in Turbulent Times

BY OPIE RUNDLE BURGESS WHEN THE SILVER strike in Tombstone became known, adobe houses, stores, and saloons sprung up like magic. In its youth this wild, rich camp, true to the form of the early 1880s, played the game of life fast and furious. Some of her people found the rich ore, others drank, gambled, and shot up the town for amusement.

Money was spent freely and carelessly, but wise Quong Kee worked through the long hours of each day and far into the night in his restaurant that he operated with his cousin, Ah Lum. It was the famous Can Can restaurant, which today still shows marks of bullet scars of Tombstone's heyday.

Quong called everyone his friend. Some men were worthy of the honor; others were not. He knew Wyatt Earp, who was good to Quong, although others when they saw Wyatt coming their way detoured down another alley. Quong paid respect to young Billy Clanton who was killed by Virgil Earp at the O.K. Stables. "He good man, always paid his bills."

Quong was also a friend of Curley Bill, the rustler. Quong, in his quiet smiling way, would say, "Curley Bill, he pay quick, laugh a lot. Some say Curley Bill bad fellow. He rustler. He never bad to Quong." The eyes of the old Chinese man twinkled as he smiled and said, "Curley Bill know Quong has no cows."

Quong knew them all, good and bad. He had fed them, laughed with them, and grub-staked many. Some when they found their pot of gold remembered Quong; others forgot. In his restaurant, he served good meals and plenty of food. He had everything but fresh milk, "No catchum cow, just tin cow." The gambler, cowman, miner, rustler, officer, and gunman all ate at Quong's Can Can restaurant.

Quong in his aging years loved to live over the days of the past, and many an interesting story he has told, for his life had been the life of the West; it was the boom towns of the rough and roaring railroad camps, of the smoke-hazed rooms, and the clinking of poker chips. It contained a vivid picture of the high comedy and the deep tragic life of the colorful days of early Tombstone, where he spent most of his life.

One of the interesting stories showing the reputed wisdom of the Chinese man was of an incident when five cowboys rode into town after many long months on the range. They landed at Quong's restaurant after visiting all the saloons that lined both sides of the street. Their spirits at that time were at high tide, and the cowboys were looking for something to do, which they did. They turned Quong's restaurant upside down. The frightened waiter and cook fled out of the back door.

Quong, not very far up the street, heard the disturbance, hurried back to his place of business. He opened the door and looked about at the unsightly mess of sugar, canned milk, and catsup smeared on the broken dishes strewn on the floor, with every table and chair turned upside down. He quietly and smilingly said to the cowboys, "You sit down, and be quiet. If you want dinner, Quong serve you; if not, get out."

The cowboys, amused at his unspirited defense, made Quong the unwilling witness of further hilarity. When they left, his friends wanted Quong to have them arrested, but he refused. "No arrest them. When they sober up, they sorry. They come back and pay for everything. Arrest them, no. Quong lose five friends. They get mad and not pay."

Several days later, one of the cowboys did return and in a repentant, shamed manner said, "How much do we owe you?" The cowboy paid for all the damages, and Quong kept his five friends.

Excerpted from the January 1948 issue Red Tails

BY KARL H. MASLOWSKI I spent an average of five hours a day for five days making observations of red-tailed hawks, and during that time I saw the parents bringing food to their young 18 times. Their diet consisted of two species of ground squirrels and one kind of snake.

Both parents sometimes came to the nest at feeding time, but only one would be carrying food. One parent would glide away to a nearby saguaro top while the other fed the young. Holding the prey with its talons, the hawk would rip the victim apart with its heavy beak. As fast as bits of meat or entrail were torn loose, the babies would snap them from the parent.

Frequently a fore or hind leg of a ground squirrel would cause dissension between the babies. One would start to swallow the big glob of meat only to have its nestmate pluck it away.

I once watched the hind leg of a ground squirrel passed back and forth five times before one of the young managed to swallow it. The parent followed the action like a spectator at a tennis match who turns his head from court to court during a volley.

Excerpted from "Letters" in the October 1949 issue John Hance and His Brother Jim

We were so interested in the story of John Hance. As a child I had the privilege of sitting around campfires with him and listening to his yarns on several occasions. One of his stories is that when one of our party asked him how he thought the Grand Canyon came into being, he said that was an easy one. He told us he started to dig out a prairie dog in his hole one day and just kept Digging and digging because he couldn't get the rascal until he had finally dug the Canyon. Then asked someone, "What did you do with the dirt?" "Oh, that made the Peaks," said John. Also, he had a brother, Jim, who lived in Flagstaff about 1900 to 1909. Jim went to the Verde River each fall and brought back watermelons. Then he would go around town and invite several of the "leading ladies," as he said, to a "water million" dinner. My mother and I went to several of these, and they were real events. One year Jim's sister from Missouri came to visit him and unbeknownst to her, Jim invited about a dozen ladies to dinner one afternoon. When we arrived the sister was taken completely by surprise and was not prettied up at all. But we had lots of fun. She was a good sport. Said she couldn't imagine what Jim was thinking of to be fixing so much food. Another thing about Jim that fascinated me as a child was his cow. The cow was accustomed to being milked by a woman and Jim had to put on a long apron when he milked her, or she wouldn't produce.

Mrs. Alice Taylor Vis East Grand Rapids, Michigan The legend of John Hance goes on and on. It is a pleasure to hear from Mrs. Vis. Apparently Jim Hance was also an interesting person.

"Shine” Smith – Friend of the Navajos

For more than two days and nights Shine Smith had been without water. He was lost in the hottest and driest part of the Navajo Reservation. After the first 24 hours he wandered in circles, beset with feverish hallucinations. Now in the light of the stars on the third night after what should have been a quick horseback ride from Navajo Mountain on the Utah border to Kayenta, only death remained.

In that wild maze of intermingled canyons and unknown mesas of extreme northern Arizona, the end of the trail was at hand. Shine, in his condition, could not go on.

Suddenly on the trail within a few feet loomed a Navajo horseman.

Amazed, Shine collected what wits he had left and called through broken, swollen lips the Navajo word for water, “Toh! Toh!” The Navajo, John Chief, moved up beside the white man to stare at him pityingly in the starlight. Chief said leadenly that the nearest water was ten miles away.

“I can never reach it,” Shine whispered hopelessly.

“My friend, we can try.” Chief turned about, riding beside Shine. At times he steadied him on that nightmarish ride. Finally he was forced to tie him in the saddle. Shine afterwards could recall little of that impossible ride to cheat death. Chief did get him to a spring. That water saved his life. For five days after reaching the spring, Shine hovered between life and death in the hogan of Tom Holliday. It was months before he fully recovered.

It was at this turning point in Shine's career he made the vow to devote the rest of his life to helping the Navajo Indians.

The Navajos have never had a better friend, or a more important one. The saga of Shine Smith, who came to the Southwest as a missionary 30 years ago, is also one of romance and adventure, as well as of service to humanity. His church is the grandest and most encompassing in all the world - 25,000 square miles of northern Arizona, a vast region in which each man, woman and, especially, child, knows him. He has helped bring them into the world, fed and clothed them, and buried them finally in some lonely campo santo on a wind-swept mesa. Or beside silent trails where long-ago tired feet have gone to rest forever.

Six-foot-tall, wide-shouldered, gray-headed, Hugh Dickson Smith was born August 24, 1882, at Rome, Georgia. After high school, Shine attended Presbyterian University at Clarksville, Tennessee, and then the Theological Seminary at Austin, Texas. He was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian church at Coleman, Texas, and preached for six years in west Texas.

Early in 1917, Shine received a call to northern Arizona as a missionary to the Navajo Indians. He was stationed at a mission at Ganado until late in 1920, was then assigned to Chinle, and in 1921 to Kayenta, then Tuba City.

During the hard winter of 1921 people on the reservation were dying from influenza. Shine was in the saddle day and night taking food and medicine to remote areas far from Tuba City. At the same time he was battling to keep the school children there from dying by both influenza and malnutrition.

The Navajos began to say of him: “He brings hope and life like the sun shining upon the Earth.” Within a short time he became “Sunshine” Smith, and finally “Shine” Smith.

Cold, frozen and without any sleep for many long hours at a stretch, he would appear at a remote hogan with food and medicine. Most of the cases were children. Their situation caused him untold grief, though he managed somehow to keep a smile and a laugh to encourage the stricken people. Often he has been heard to say, “To see them made well and happy again is my reward.” In 1941, a delegation of western Navajos wanted to get to Washington to plead their cause in the matter of enforced stock-reduction and to seek money for farms. They asked Shine to accompany them as their spokesman. Despite the cold reception received in the nation's capital from the officials who should have welcomed them, the delegation received so many requests for personal appearances they could not all be filled.

President Roosevelt was ill, but Mrs. Roosevelt graciously gave them an interview. Her secretary informed the delegation the First Lady could spare only five minutes as she must be on her way out of Washington. That five minutes turned into 40 as Mrs. Roosevelt was very much impressed by their cause. The second wife of John Chief, who saved Shine's life years before, presented her with a Navajo blanket. The delegation's mission was mentioned three times in Mrs. Roosevelt's syndicated column. She was instrumental in getting the Navajos $200,000 for farms, and she planned to visit the reservation that winter, but the outbreak of war intervened.

In his territory, which he knows so thoroughly, Shine has been a guide to the great and near-great: artists and writers, scientists, congressmen, governors of states, industrialists, moving picture people, hiking clubs, parties of explorers and dozens of nationally prominent people. One of these recently was Joe Iuhlein, Milwaukee industrialist, former president of Schlitz

Dick Dietrich His Landscape Photos 'Put the Elements Together'

Longtime Arizona Highways contributor Dick Dietrich began taking photographs seriously when he was 11 years old, doing his own processing and enlarging in the attic of his family's home. He put himself through college with his work and continued in the commercial photography business for more than 50 years. He enjoyed travel and scenic photography best, and most of his time was spent journeying across America to capture shots for national and international advertisers and publishers.

Dietrich loved his work and took pleasure in capturing nature's infinite moods and the ever-changing beauty of seasons, light and shadow. Like many imagemakers, he counted the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley among his favorite areas of Arizona. But a view of Grand Falls on the Little Colorado River is special among his many contributions to Arizona Highways.

"I was there in the late afternoon, waiting around to get that golden light on it just as the sun was setting," Dietrich recalled in Timeless Images, another Arizona Highways publication. "Then, with that warm light, the scene just kind of came alive."

Dietrich believed the scene "has to come together" to be successful. "Often it may look great to the eye, but it isn't going to photograph well. You may have to wait for a different time of day, or a different season, to put the elements together; or just the lighting can make a difference. I try to lay my mind open to what I find. A lot of times I go back to a place and ask myself, "Can I take a different approach? I look at it again."

A native of Bridgton, Maine, Dietrich came to Arizona in the late 1940s. Shortly after his arrival, he married Phoenix native Eleanor Bassford and they had two daughters, one of whom also works as a scenic photographer. Dietrich made his first contribution to Arizona Highways in 1961.

Breweries. Another was Mrs. Will Rogers, Jr., seeking to adopt two Navajo children.

Shine Smith was rumored to be unfrocked as a minister. The charge is said to have been one of dancing with the Hopi at Moencopi in a village kiva and that he assisted at pagan Navajo tribal wedding ceremonies. (Tribal weddings are recognized as valid in law.) The record does show that during the 1920s Shine was accused of misconduct by brothers of the cloth and one Indian agent. These accusations seem not to have been taken seriously by his church authorities. The best Shine's detractors appear to have been able to produce was this one, actually made: "... that he was about to depart from his station for the purpose of making a trip to Navajo Mountain without proper authorization."

Lack of the freedom of movement and action he deemed necessary to effectively carry on his work culminated in Shine's decision to withdraw from organized missionary service. He explained all this to his church officials, who disliking his severance, did grant his wish. The harvest of the years since has proven his step to have been of the greatest value to the Navajo people.

That the Indians, even the old men and women clinging to their tribal religion, call him "brother" is sufficient proof of their complete acceptance of him. His delight is to give food and toys and candy to Navajo children in December to demonstrate the white man's "Kismus" to them.

He is their friend; their big brother. The tragedies of the Navajos are his tragedies. Their happiness is his happiness.

A SIGN OF FRUSTRATION

At a desert crossroad in Patagonia, Arizona, there is a sign which reads, “Take care which rut you use. You'll be in it for the next 20 miles.”

Bill Ahrendt's Illustrations Provide Historical Perspective

Bill Ahrendt, artist, historian and Arizona Highways contributor, first visited Arizona in 1947 at the age of 14. The following year, his family moved to the state from Cleveland.

"We were hooked," said the Pine resident, "I have always considered Arizona to be home."

After attending Phoenix Union High School, Ahrendt went on to study art history, receiving his master's degree from Arizona State University.

Although "at home" in Arizona, Ahrendt lived in Europe for 11 years, studying the

A Cowboy's Colorful Language

I used to wonder why the cowboy could never seem to resist using some figure of speech when a plain statement would serve his purpose. But during the years I learned that he takes delight in painting these word pictures because it gives his speech that strength he is always seeking.

I made a return visit to a ranch and missed one of the boys for whom I had developed a liking. When I inquired about him, one of the other hands, instead of merely telling me he had taken a job as a deputy sheriff, said, "Oh, he's packin' a six-gun for the county, an' sportin' a tin badge on his brisket that shows up like a patent medicine sign."

On a New Mexico ranch one of the hands was a newcomer, having been there only about a week. The old hands were a little suspicious of him because he "kept his eyes on the horizon like he was expectin' a sheriff to bulge up on 'im." One of the old hands offered to bet the others that this new man "come whippin' a mighty tired pony out o' Texas," a common expression for "on the dodge."

The new hand overheard the remark.

"No, boys," he said, "I didn't have to leave Texas. The sheriff come to the state line an' jes' begged me to come back."

In speaking of an outlaw making his getaway I heard a cowhand in Arizona say, "Him an' the sheriff swaps lead an' then has a hoss race." Another spoke of a "high-line rider" with "when he got a hankerin' to sniff Gulf breeze he didn't stop for no kissin'."

The cowman is often very indirect in some of his statements. To the uninitiated it would sound like a riddle, but it is no "boggy crossin'" for another cowman. For instance, one was telling me about his bunkie coming home drunk. "An,' y'u know," he said, "that son-of-a-gun piled into bed jes' like a rooster."

Not being sure if he meant merely "cock-eyed" and full of "Old Crow," I asked "How's that?"

"With his spurs on," he said as if astonished I did not comprehend his meaning.

More than a decade later, Ahrendt returned to Arizona with a German wife and the skills needed to teach his craft. For 12 years, he taught art at Glendale Community College and chaired its art department, but in 1979 he decided "to practice what I preached." He left the classroom to paint full time at his studio in his 1976 "Bicentennial" house in Pine.

Artist Larry Toschik, Ahrendt's neighbor and one of the most famous Highways contributors, introduced him to the magazine. Ahrendt's first works published in the magazine, in the August 1981 issue, were pencil drawings that captured the village life of Pine.

Ahrendt said former Editor Don Dedera and former Managing Editor Richard Stahl, whom Ahrendt called "Chainsaw" because of his unyielding insistence on brevity, taught him the importance of writing and how it enhanced his paintings.

"Historical subjects need to be fleshed out with historical backgrounds," Ahrendt explained. "My first experience in doing so was with Arizona Highways."

Ahrendt demonstrated this gift with his 16-part "Cavalcade" series of historical paintings that began in the May 1987 issue and ended in February 1990. In this series, Ahrendt, along with his written art, used both pencil and oils to breathe life into the state's past.

In the April 1984 "Coronado" issue, then-Editor Dedera wrote, "A research perfectionist and life enthusiast, Ahrendt quickly became caught up in the tragic, valorous, and ironic episodes that elevated the Coronado quest to high drama."

Ahrendt said, "The real task is to recapture that time - the paradigm of the time, like a motion-picture director setting up the scene, so that it smells like the past."

Ahrendt has detailed on canvas the rich colors, rough texture and raw action of Arizona's history. His paintings are exhibited at the Legacy Galleries in Scottsdale and in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Also, Ahrendt's work will soon be shown at the Ottinger Gallery on Wells Street in Chicago.