1908 



DOMINION OF THE LONE CONE 



31 



their masters, no one knows. There 

 are no records to tell ; only a few mute 

 relics speak of their homes, hearth- 

 stones, art, and weapons. 



From a few scattering tepee poles, 

 still lying across patches of unclaimed 

 land, the imagination may reconstruct 

 their wigwams, picturing them draped 

 in blankets or skins. By digging a lit- 

 tle beneath the surface, one may see 

 the flat stones regularly placed, black- 

 ened and ready to crumble, which 

 served them for fireplaces. A few 



but most of them carried guns. 



There are no traces of basketry or 

 pottery to be found; there are no 

 monuments, and almost no sign of any 

 burials; so that the questioner is puz- 

 zled as to the disposal of their dead. 



The early white settlers found a 

 race-track near the spring, and it is 

 known that they met here annually for 

 their races and games. 



These are the relics left to link us 

 to that long ago. There are a thousand 

 thousand days of deeds on which the 



First Home on Wright's Mesa 



beads woven into armlets or necklaces 

 tell of their love of adornment. A 

 knife of petrified wood, perfectly 

 formed and highly polished, a single 

 specimen of its kind, was found here. 

 But this particular spot is richest in 

 arrow- and spear-head of flint, 

 quartz, or smoky topaz, which are 

 wonders of beauty and symmetry. 

 How were they made? Some say, by 

 heating the stone and pouring water 

 on it ; others, by chipping with another 

 stone. At any rate, they are very old, 

 for the later Indians tipped their ar- 

 rows with iron when they used them ; 



sun set in gorgeous or delicate gran- 

 deur as it sets nowhere else in the 

 world ; there are as many nights of re- 

 pose on which the moon shed her 

 weird radiance ; sunk in the darkness 

 of oblivion, with no known history on 

 which to ponder, until the advent of 

 the white man, as late as the 70's. 



Then the intrepid cowboy began 

 driving his herds in this direction. 

 One named Wright settled at the 

 mouth of a draw, close by a spring. 

 His was not the pioneer soul, and he 

 soon returned to more settled lands, 

 not, however, without leaving his 



