84 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!" 



prized, not only by the natives but by the Dudes and Sagebrushers who 

 visit the reservation. The Navahoes are great gamblers, a habit which 

 often costs them their beloved jewelry, since the losers must often pawn 

 their trinkets at the traders' stores to pay their debts. 



The Havasupai village is far down in the Havasu Canyon, a beautiful 

 valley with trees and waterfalls, several thousand feet below the rim of 

 the Grand Canyon. Here are the homes of the last of the Havasupai 

 nation, a tribe of Indians that lived by cultivating corn, making baskets, 

 and hunting. The Havasupais still live exactly as they did before the 

 white man came, except that some of the men work for the government 

 on the roads, while to their usual crops they have added melons, figs, 

 and peaches. Once Uncle Sam built every family of Havasupais a 

 wooden cottage, but the natives used these buildings for the storage of 

 food and farm implements, preferring to live in their crude huts re 

 sembling Navaho hogans. 



The only way to reach Havasu Canyon is via the perilous Indian 

 trail, best described by an old Indian one day, when he said : 



"I ride 'em horse home. Go down, go down some more, go down, 

 go down some more, go down, down some more. Horse slip, I jump. 

 Horse go down, go down some more. He catch 'em plenty dead at 

 bottom." 



The famous Snake Dance of the Hopis is held each year in August, 

 usually at a different village on the reservation near Grand Canyon Park. 

 The dancers actually carry live rattlesnakes in their teeth during the 

 ceremony. The dance is held for the purpose of bringing rain to the 

 land. The snakes are supposed to carry the Hopi prayers for rain to the 

 gods, who are thought to live underground. Quite often it rains within 

 a short time after the dance, so the Hopis have grounds for continuing 

 their belief in the potency of the Snake Dance. 



In the mountains west of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and above the oc 

 cupied pueblos are several scenic valleys in which lie numerous ruins of 

 ancient Indian civilizations, among them the ruins of Puye, Otowi, 

 Tsankawi, and Frijoles Canyon. These valleys, 

 with their interesting ruins and unique scenery, 

 will be made into the new National Park of the 

 Cliff Cities. Many of the ruins lie in, against, 

 or on top of cliffs of tufa and other soft rock 

 into which the early peoples could dig with 

 \i\ their crude implements. Santa Fe, to be the 

 headquarters of the proposed new Cliff Cities 

 Park, will also be headquarters for all National 

 Park Service archaeological work in the South 

 west. It is, incidentally, the oldest city in the 



