Till-: IIAYASUPAl OF CATAn.XCT CANON 



641 



province alono. ami I'roiii tlicf^o ^kiii.< 

 the Havasupai still make moccasins, 

 altliough the leather leggin>i-s and shirts 

 and the man-made woman's dress are 

 no longer in vogue. 



The life of the ITavasnj-ini is 

 epitomized by their baskets: sim])]e 

 and practical, yet witli an in Unite 

 \arietyof uses. There is the conical 

 burden basket in which the house- 

 wife carries home on her back the 

 corn from the field; there is the heart- 

 shaped pitch-covered Jug for fetching 

 water from the creek; shallow trays of 

 coarse weave are for dry seeds and 

 fruit, and similar baskets made 

 water-tight hold liquid foods — 

 and formerly were used as re- 

 ceptacles in which to boil food 

 with heated stones; still other 

 baskets are fire-proofed inside 

 and seeds are roasted in them ^ 



by being tumbled about witli 

 live coals. Metal vessels now 

 stand all day on the fire where 

 formerly it was native pottery 

 that offered the continuous feast 

 to visitors. Without her bas- 

 kets and her grinding stones 

 the Havasupai woman would 

 feel lost. 



Such simple worldly goods 

 have offered little temptation to 

 raiding enemies, but the diffi- 

 culties of ingress into the caiion 

 probably have proved the most 

 effective barrier to the aggres- 

 sive Apache and Paiute. The 

 caiion Indians for their own 

 part claim an unmatchable lack 

 of military spirit, maintaining 

 that their numerical inferiority 

 — the tribe probably never num- 

 bered many more than the 1?5 

 of today — would not permit re- 

 ciprocal raids, while abundant 

 harvests at home aroused a feel- 

 ing akin to contempt for seed- 

 gathering plateau dwellers. 



Harvest time brings the 

 year's chief social diversions : 



ihf oiu' great (oiiiiiniiial dance, and 

 visits of the ti'adci-s Troni foreign 

 tribes. Food is abundant then; to 

 (|Uote their words, "Every day we 

 lin\c ciuuigli to cat. hut at harvest 

 lime we eat all (h-iy." Tlie village 

 is a halfway station in the aboriginal 

 trade route still flourishing in northern 

 Arizona. The Havasupai first journey 

 to tlie Jlopi villages, where Navaho and 

 even Zuiii from still farther east are 

 met. Here buckskin and horns of 

 mountain sheep are traded for woven 

 products, and then comes the return 

 journey, cautious because of fear of 



l| 



Bows have their tempers, and no unseasoned haste 

 produces a perfect weapon. Therefore, certain living trees 

 are trimmed and trained to grow straight-grained, then 

 are cut and scraped to size, and carefully fitted with 

 string and arrows. The effective distance of the arrows 

 is about tliirty yards, although tlieir range is much greater 



