| Ris NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
THE CLIFF DWELLERS OF THE PUYE. 
Wonderful Homes of a People and Civilization i in Our Country Be- 
a fore Our History Commenced. 
iat (By M. J. Brown, Eprror Lirttn Vauuey, N. Y., Hus) 
Ws 
> 
Roe ED the evening of this golden Nov- 
ember day I sit at the foot of the 
cliffs and watch the sun bid good 
night to a deserted city—sit here 
and see its last rays fall athwart the 
city of the dead, the Home of Great 
Silence, and in speechless awe I 
wonder what I can write that will 
‘eonvey to you what I feel. 
Here is where time forgets and 
7 nods, and where the milk bottles are 
not put out. Here in the unknown 
centuries before the landing of Col- 
umbus a great city thrived; here 
thousands of people lived and wore 
out antiquity before a white man’s 
foot ever touched America. 
And I sit here and look up at the 
erumbling walls, look up at the 
deserted bee hives, and _ ask, 
“Whence came you, and whither 
went you?’’ But no answer comes 
back from this city unpeopled and 
still. 
And like a pygmy I look up, won- 
der, and try to catch the time of 
_whatIsee. I try to get back to days 
when civilization wore swadling 
clothes in these cliff cities of the 
Santa Clara, and I try to see these 
men as they were before they turned 
back to dust—to see these men who 
lived here countless generations ago 
and then disappeared from the face 
of the earth, without having seen 
a white man’s face. 
And while I look and wonder, the 
sunset changes from red and gold 
to darkness, and this mysterious old 
eountry is hid for the night, and I 
think and think, of the steps of these 
far dim days of the past to the pre- 
sent time—think of the stone, the 
spear, the bow, the sword and the 
gun. 
And there comes 
these lines— 
‘A fire mist and a planet, 
A erystal and a cell; 
A jelly fish and a saurain 
And caves where the cave men dwell; 
' Then a sense of law and duty, 
And a face turned from the clod 
Some call it Evolution 
And others cal! it—God. 
into memory 
I met a maginze man in Santa Fe 
who was just back from the grand 
canyon. He went there to describe 
it, but he told me, there was no such 
thing. And I feel as this man did— 
that these Cliff Dwellers of the San- 
ta Clara are not of this world—not 
for an Hagle lead pencil No. 2. 
But to get back to it all. 1 will 
try to start you at the beginning, 
lead you to it—and then you guess. 
I went to Espanola Monday—a lit- 
tle mountain town up the Rio 
Grande from Santa Fe—a town 
which now has two stores and two 
near-hotels, and which lives in the 
reputation of former greatness, of 
once having had thirteen saloons, a 
company of forest rangers and a lot 
of historic trouble. 
The town was full of people and 
excitement and I couldn’t make it 
out. As a part of the treatment | 
had cut out the morning newspapers 
since leaving Las Vegas, and the last 
I knew of current events was that 
the house was Democratic and Roo- 
sevelt a Jim Jefferies. 
I went to the livery barn and told 
them I wanted a team, a guide and a 
camp outfit for the Clitt Dwellers. 
But there was nothing doing along 
these lines, and no outfits to be had. 
There was an Indian uprising—a 
genuine old rebellion against the 
white man’s way of justice. 
You who read the press dispatches 
on and after November 15 saw the 
meagre details of the troubles here; 
you who did not may eall this an- 
other of Brown’s bromides and for- 
get it. 
Just what the issues are it is dif- 
ficult to get the straight of, but as 
I grasp it the government at Wash- 
ington leases range to the Mexicans, 
and the few white men who have 
reasons of their own for living here. 
But water is as scarce as society and 
cattle must drink. So the eattle 
were driven onto the reservation for 
water and the Pueblos had it figured 
out that they wouldn’t longer make 
a Coney Island of the Santa Clara 
river, and as fast as the cattle were 
driven on, they rounded them up. 
The consequence was the cowboy 
and the gun. The Indians were 
armed with Winchesters and eivili- 
zation and this with possession. made 
a bad game to go up against. Well, 
there. was a few days of nervousness 
and dispatches to Washington and 
then the driver and I thought we 
would take a chance. 
Wednesday morning we started. 
One of the men in the mercantile 
company in Espanola, who I had 
7 
struck up a talk friendship with, 
stopped our rig, and warned us not 
to tote a gun or carry booze. There 
were three of us in the rig—myself, 
the driver, and an old man, who 
claimed to be manager of a grant, 
which Pennsylvania politicians had 
claim to. We assured him there was 
nothing in our outfit but what a 
mothers’ meeting would sanction, 
and we ‘‘dragged it’’. 
A half dozen miles out we were 
held up—held up by a lone moun- 
tain Indian police—but he had a 
Winchester, and he looked game. 
He went through our baggage and 
searched our clothes. I don’t know 
where he got his authority to do cus- 
tom duty, but I didn’t question, and 
I have been unable to learn since. | 
had a suit case. He took it out of the 
rig, opened it, shook out the trousers 
and the underwearand went through 
the corners of the grip. Then he 
turned up the buggy seats and shook 
our robes. After which he evidently 
thought we were elibible to visit an 
Indian reservation that has 30,000 
acres and about thirty people. 
But Lo lost out in the discard—as 
he always loses when he goes up 
against the white man’s game. 
When we stopped for lunch at 
noon, the ranchman untied the bag 
of oats and brought out a quart bot- 
tle of ‘‘Cedar Brook bourbon, brew- 
ed in Kentucky, by gosh’’—at least 
I took his word for it. 
I learned afterward that the 
smuggle was dangerous, and that 
had a bottle or gun been found we 
would have been waiters until a next 
federal court—and they come about 
once a year. 
There’s as much tape connected 
with getting through to the Puye 
Cliff Ruins as there is seeing your 
home congressman at Washington 
during the session. Next came the 
station of the Indian farmer, the 
man who passes something that 
sounds like a civil service, and who 
lives out in this disolation and a 
tent . He gets $60 per, a horse and 
a tent and is supposed to teach the 
untutored red man to make bricks 
without straw—teach him to farm a 
messa where frijole beans whither 
up and die like geraniums would in 
the Sahara desert. 
And there are no Indians to teach. 
Hundreds of years ago the Indians 
learned what the powers at Wash- 
ington have not yet learned, that 
erops can’t be raised without moist- 
ure, and these thousands of acres of 
reservation are no more to them 
Continued to page 23, 
