OCR Text |
Show WESTERN WILDS. about half and half; but the aristocracy have more Spanish, tlie- peons more Indian. The pure Indians of all the South- west are divided in two general classes Pueblos and Nomads. The first are all friendly, including the Zunis, Moquis, Teguas, Oraybes, Papagoes, Pimos and Coco- Maricopas. Of the Nomads, the Navajoes are now friendly, the Apaches and Comanches fiercely hostile, and the Utes a little doubtful, but nominally peaceful. In the southern sections, the San Francisco, White and Magollon Mountains and their spurs break up the country into a thousand hidden valleys, in which the murderous Apaches hide and graze their stock ; the few trails go twist-ing through narrow canons, in which, at most unexpected places, the savages let fly upon the unwary traveler a shower of poisoned arrows,- and dreary intervals of desert separate the scant water- holes on which the way- worn explorer must depend. On the map Arizona appears to have abundance of water, but it is an optical illusion. Nine- tenths of the so- called " rivers" are dry; in the four hundred miles between Agua Azu and Lee's Ferry, on the Colorado, I crossed eleven considerable river- beds, and saw running water in but one place. The Colorado is barely navigable for part of the year, and not far up, as Brigbam Young found to his cost when he' built the Callville warehouses. The channel is crooked and changea-ble below the canon, rocky and full of cataracts in the canon, shallow and impassable above it. Practically it is useless above Fort Yuma. For fifteen hundred miles it will float no boats ; there is no timber on its banks that can be got at or is worth getting, no gold deposits in its bars, no fish in it worth catching, no quarries along it that can be utilized, and no land that can be cultivated. It is purely an orna-mental stream. Along the Gila ( HeelaJi) live the semi- civilized Pimos, Maricopas and Papagoes. They cultivate the earth with some skill, and produce abundance of wheat, corn, pumpkins and melons. Like all the Pu-eblos the men are scrupulously holiest the women virtuous to a most un- Indian degree. They are well supplied with horses, cattle, sheep and goats, are exposed to Apache raids, and freely join with the whites in fighting the latter. The Papagoes took a very prominent part in the notorious Camp Grant massacre. At first these Indians were delighted at the coming of the whites ; now they are sullen and uncommunicative, saying tha t t the agents have defrauded them and tried to debauch their women. Probably correct. The nomadic tribes, except the Navajoes, are dying off at a very satisfactory rate. The Yavapais have four natural deaths to one |