once down in there it’s hard to get out

One summer I started off to visit for the first time the city of Los Angeles. I was riding with some friends from the University of New Mexico. On the way we stopped off briefly to roll an old tire into the Grand Canyon. While watching the tire bounce over tall pine trees, tear hell out of a mule train and disappear with a final grand leap into the inner gorge, I overheard the park ranger standing nearby say a few words about a place called Havasu, or Havasupai. A branch, it seemed, of the Grand Canyon.

What I heard made me think that I should see Havasu immediately, before something went wrong somewhere. My friends said they would wait. So I went down into Havasu – fourteen miles by trail – and looked things over. When I returned five weeks later I discovered that the others had gone on to Los Angeles without me.

That was fifteen years ago. And still I have not seen the fabulous city on the Pacific shore. Perhaps I never will….

But Havasu. Once down in there it’s hard to get out…. I bought a slab of bacon and six cans of beans at the village post office, rented a large comfortable horse, and proceeded farther down the canyon… to the ruins of an old mining camp five miles below the village. There I lived, mostly alone except for the ghosts, for the next thirty-five days.

There was nothing wrong with the Indians. The Supai are a charming cheerful completely relaxed and easygoing bunch, all one hundred or so of them. But I had no desire to live among them unless clearly invited to do so, and I wasn’t Even if invited I might not have accepted. I’m not sure that I care for the idea of strangers examining my daily habits and folkways, studying my language, inspecting my costume, questioning me about my religion, classifying my artifacts, investigating my sexual rites, and evaluating my chances for cultural survival.

So I lived alone.


Desert Solitaire (1968) by Edward Abbey, as quoted in Exploring Havasupai by Greg Witt, Menasha Ridge Press. 2010. p.2,3

we are neither birds nor fish

Brother, we give up to our white brothers all the land we could and how spare, and have but little left… and we hope you wont let any people take any more from us without our consent. We are neither Birds nor Fish; we can neither fly in the air nor live under water…. We are made by the same hand and in the same shape as yourselves.


Cherokee chief to George Washington as found in W.W. Abbot, Dorthy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 6 vols. (Charlottesville, 1987-). Quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington. Alfred A. Knopf. 2004. p.212

a place of residence

Tanacharison… made it clear that all Indian alliances with European powers and their colonial kinfolk were temporary expediencies: “Both you & the English are White. We live in a Country between, therefore the Land does not belong either to one or the other; but the GREAT BEING above allow’d it to be a Place of Residence for us.”


Tanacharison or Tanaghrisson (c. 1700? – 4 October 1754) was an American Indian leader who played a pivotal role in the beginning of the French and Indian War. He was known to European-Americans as the Half King. Personal correspondence to George Washington as found in W.W. Abbot, Dorthy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 6 vols. (Charlottesville, 1987-). Quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington. Alfred A. Knopf. 2004. p.6

God made you; go in peace

The common supposition is that the Apaches are by nature and desire a blood-thirsty people, and have always been so. This is a mistake, but it is a fact that we have to go back almost a century to find them a peaceable people.

Their own story is that they were once vegetarians. They were so opposed to killing that they would say to the bear, "God made you; go in peace, I will not kill you." And to the birds, "God made you with feathers to protect you in cold air, and wings to fly. How good God has been to you!" And even to the rattlesnake they would say, "You have rattles and tell us where you are so that we can get out of your way. We will not kill you."


Forty Years Among the Indians: A True Yet Thrilling Narrative of the Author's Experiences Among the Natives. By Daniel W. Jones. Juvenile Instructor, Salt Lake City, UT. 1890. Chapter LIV.