It was maybe 1926, when we were all down in the Southwest for summer vacation. The family had headquarters at San Geronimo Lodge in Taos, which was about four miles from Taos Pueblo. Mom and Pop managed voyages from there to various parts of the area. The people were Mom and Pop and the four kids, Charlie, Ruth, Ben and Bob, and Hazel Dreis. Hazel was a very good friend of the family, very direct, very brilliant and with a good sense of humor. She later became a Master Bookbinder and was, until she quit, the Bookbinder for the Library of Congress. When we traveled, we traveled with Tony Lujan and his nephew John Lujan, and, or course, we took two cars.
One night at Taos Tony Lujan put us all in his car and drove to the Pueblo. Then he parked in shadow and got out, telling us to be quiet. Then, with his drum, he walked out on the Plaza and sat down on a log near the stream and began singing the old songs. It was a beautiful, clear, moonlit night. After a little while, high up on the other side, we saw a man in a white sheet come out, come down the ladders, cross the Plaza and the little bridge, and sit down beside Tony and join him in singing. Then another and another, until there were five or six old men sitting on that log, singing. It was wonderful, it was wild, the voices were marvelous and it went on for more than two hours.
I mentioned the white sheet. In those
days the Taos men wore a white sheet as the other groups wore
blankets. It was the trademark of Taos and I do not know the origin
of the custom. I never saw Tony wear anything but a blanket.
During that summer, we went to Mesa
Verde. The party consisted of Mom, Pop, Charlie, Ruth, Ben, Bob,
Hazel Dreis, Tony Lujan and John Lujan. We took our car and Tony's
car. All went well till we got to the Chama Grade, a piece of road
which led north to Mesa Verde. As its name implied it went up. It was
approximately a one-and-a-half lane dirt road, graded so that the
water from a rain storm would run off the side of the road down the
cliff. It was a clever idea, of course, but the people who did it did
not comprehend that not only rain would drain off down the cliff, but
also automobiles.
When we arrived at the beginning of the grade, it was raining. We phoned ahead to see if anyone was coming our way. The word came back that the road was clear. So we started. I recall fixing a flat tire on our car, and then the long, long drive up the Grade in the rain. At about 10:00 P.M., during one of our stops, Pop asked Tony how far to Pagosa Springs. Tony said it was just a little way. Tony had told us that they had a fine hotel at Pagosa Springs and the world would be beautiful. After another little while, the same thing happened -- "just a little way." And again. And again. Finally, still in the rain, we arrived. It was twelve midnight.
We woke up the hotel man and asked him for food. We were all hungry. After considerable urging, he consented to feed us. One thing he had on the menu was fried egg sandwiches. That was all he would cook for us. Our father was agreeable, but he would prefer to just have two fried eggs. The man was sorry, but he couldn't do that -- all he had was fried egg sandwiches. Pop tried a few more times but finally had to give up. He had two fried egg sandwiches.
The housing for the night was interesting. Mom and Pop found a place to sleep in a convalescent hospital. The people stretched a sheet across one end of a barn-like room and Mom and Pop slept on the other side of the sheet. Ruth and Bob and Hazel went to the motor court.
Charlie and Ben and Tony and John went to the hotel. Charlie spoke to the lady of the hotel, who, it turned out, did not want us. She asked Charlie if the Indians had knives. Charlie assured her they did not. She then asked if they had killed anyone recently. Charlie said no. After a long argument, she finally consented to take this enormous risk with these very dangerous redskins. Charlie and I went to our room and Tony and John to theirs. I had just removed one boot, when, without saying a word, these two dangerous redskins came into our room. One went to one wall and one to another. Then they began pointing. We got up and looked at the walls. Bedbugs! So I put my boot on again and we left. During this entire episode, not one word had been spoken. Charlie, Ben and Tony went to the motor court and John went to Tony's car.
Charlie and Ben went to bed in the motel, and it must have been 2:00 A.M. We slept soundly and well until about 4:15 A.M., at which time the man and lady who had the next unit arose to get an early start someplace. Apparently, the early hour was not to their liking. A rather boisterous argument commenced and continued until, perhaps about 5:00 A.M., they left.
Well, things would have been quiet. However, there was a Rocky Mountain canary (jackass) somewhere on the premises. He began singing shortly before the man and his lady left. Then we had an astonishing thing happen. There was also a parrot nearby. The parrot began imitating the jackass. It was not five minutes before they were indistinguishable. After that went on for about fifteen minutes, we decided to get up.
And so, on to Mesa Verde.
The journey from Pagosa Springs to Mesa Verde must have been relatively free of memorable episodes. I have no recollection of it. However, there are some things to recount about our visit to Mesa Verde.
My mother graduated from Berkeley with a degree in English, and had a large vocabulary. She was very aware of beautiful things, and was enthusiastic about everything. When she saw a beautiful sunset, she would say so -- "Wonderful, gorgeous, marvelous, magnificent."
Tony was impressed by all this. We arrived, we all got out of the cars -- ours and Tony's, -- and walked to the edge of the cliff. There we saw the valley spread out before us, in a very elegant panorama. Tony was careful to be at Mom's shoulder. Before she could say a word, he exclaimed, "Beautiful! Marvelous! Wonderful! Magnificent! Gorgeous!" She could have killed him.
Tony was a large and handsome man,
and in his position of respected leader in Taos Pueblo and as the
husband of Mabel Dodge, he was accustomed to the limelight. Now we
were going down the trail to the cliff dwellings. Tony would take a
back seat to the cliff dwellings. He did not go with us, but sat on
the edge of the cliff with his drum and sang. I remember that
although his purpose was to draw attention to himself, his singing
made our trip through the dwellings much more memorable. It was a
lonely, somehow spiritual feeling, this wild and primitive voice
calling out across the valley, mixing naturally with these
prehistoric living quarters.
From Taos to Santa Fe, in 1926, the road went through the canyon. Of course, it was dirt, and in some places it was very up on one side and very down on the other. It was occasionally wide enough for two cars to pass each other and occasionally it was not. This was the main connection between Taos and Santa Fe. Once in a while it would rain, and quite often when that happened, the road would be washed out in spots.
The second road from Taos to Santa Fe went up on the plain. This one was a wagon road with rather deep ruts. It was a longer and more difficult voyage and in one case, at least, its characteristics led to a rather hazardous situation.
We were to travel to Santa Fe and quite naturally, it rained that day. Also, it washed out the main road. We took two cars, ours and Tony Lujan's. Tony prepared for the trip and one of the things he took was a revolver. We started out with Tony leading the way. The road led us through some beautiful, wild country and in some places, the lay of the land was such that two cars would find it difficult to pass. All went well for a long stretch and we made good progress. That was not to last.
We were going along a portion of the road which ran close to a row of thick bushes. The ruts were deep so that it would be extremely difficult to get out of them and on the prairie. Also, it was, as is always the case in difficult times, raining. An additional hazard existed in that the ruts were of different altitudes and the cars were leaning quite sharply into the brush.
During this part of our journey, the postman coming from Santa Fe to Taos met us. Everybody stopped. The postman got out, Tony got out and Pop got out. Then began a peaceful, sensible discussion of the manner in which we could pass each other. As it went along, the discussion became less and less peaceful and sensible. In a short time, Pop was out of it. Tony was speaking with an intensity which was frightening, although he had not raised his voice. The postman was shouting. Mom was scared to death Tony would pull his revolver and shoot the man.
Finally, the postman got into his car, and after a great deal of backing and filling, managed to get his car out of the ruts and out on the prairie. We drove on and never looked back. As far as I know, the postman may still be there.
[Obviously, the man who adopted for our postal service those famous ancient lines asserting that our couriers would not be stayed by rain, sleet or dead of night never considered Indians!]
This day was the day of the Santo Domingo Corn Dance, a very large affair. We arrived about 10:00 A.M. and there were a great number of people there -- tourists and Indians. The tourists came from all over and so did the Indians. There were two views of this event -- the visiting Indians and the tourists, most of them, viewed it as a sort of fiesta. The Santo Domingo Indians viewed it strictly as a religious ceremony. The visiting Indians wore a great deal of jewelry and they tried to sell most of it.
During the day, my father gave me $5 and said it was to buy something for myself. I said I would get a ring. Tony and John were standing near and Tony said he would help me. He said he would walk through the pueblo, with John following, and with me following John. If he saw something, he would give it to John, who would pass it to me. I would tell John if I liked it and John would tell Tony. That way, the seller would not know that a tourist was buying it. And so it came to pass. Tony saw a Navajo coming towards us. The man had a neckerchief on and it was held in place by a ring. Tony stopped the man and asked if he would sell the ring. After some reluctance, he took the ring from the neckerchief and handed it to Tony. Tony looked at it carefully and then handed it to John, saying something in Taos. John took it, looked at it and slipped it to me. All this while, Tony was talking to the Navajo, and the conversation with the Navajo was in Spanish, as that was the common language of the country. I handed the ring back to John, telling him that I wanted it. He then handed it to Tony, talking to him in Taos, and Tony began bargaining in ernest.
It took maybe a half hour or forty minutes. After it was over, Tony told me how it went. He told the Navajo there was a small nick in the silver and certainly it wasn't worth the nine dollar asking price. Then the Navajo pointed out how heavy the ring was, how much silver there was in it. Tony showed the man how the matrix was slightly separated from the turquoise, obviously an imperfect stone. As I said, it was half an hour or more, standing there in the sun, before Tony finally bought the ring for five dollars. You must understand, no one got hurt. Tony and the Navajo were having a wonderful time. No one would have been more surprised or disappointed if Tony had just given him the nine dollars he had originally asked than the Navajo. At least three quarters of the profit of the sale was the enjoyment of the bargaining.
It was the time the family spent the summer at Taos. We were at the San Geronimo Lodge and each of the four children had their own horse available. These horses were quite something. If you took off at a run across the desert, you soon discovered that these Indian ponies had their own way of going. As you approached a sage brush, the pony would decide how to get to the other side -- he would go around it to the left, he would go around it to the right, he would go over it or he would go through it. All of this was done at a full run. The only choice the rider had was whether to fall off or stay on. One day John Lujan came over and asked my brother Bob and I to ride over to the pueblo with him. So Bob and I saddled our ponies and we took off. The road to Taos was a wagon road -- two ruts with a high crown between them. Bob and I rode in the ruts and John rode on the crown. John asked us if we would like to play an Indian game and, of course, we said yes. So John explained it to us. We set the three horses to running and then we try to push the other guy off his horse. A very simple game. John was rather short and stocky. His arms were nearly as big around as our thighs and there was no fat on him. He was immensely powerful and he was always giggling. He was really a wonderful man. So we started out. The horses ran down the road together, we wrapped the reins around the horns of the saddles and began pushing and pulling. Bob would push John and on the other side I would pull. Then suddenly we would change. Once in a while, we would get John in a precarious position. At these times he would reach out and grab Bob by the upper arm and at the same time grab me the same way and then lift us off our horses until he felt safe again. This went on for a couple of miles.
Martin Vigil of
Tesuque and Tony Lujan of Taos were staying at our house one time,
about 1930. In those days we rode horseback in Golden Gate Park each
Sunday. So we went to the St. Francis Riding School at 7th and
Cabrillo. The groom was holding a horse for Tony. Tony looked
at the horse, then walked around the other side, then walked back to
the groom and said, "Which side you get on?"
So we went riding. We were out on the bridle path, riding quietly along, when something happened and Ruth, the Beautiful Daughter, fell off. Both Tony and Martin, who were some distance away, saw it happen. With bright-colored blankets and long braided hair flying, they raced down the path to Ruth. With a grand flourish they skidded to a sliding halt to rescue her, off their horses before they were completely stopped.
It was one of the great events of the day for those who were in the park nearby. The historic Indian charge in Golden Gate Park was an occasion none of us forgot. The Beautiful Daughter? She wasn't hurt. She was having the time of her life.
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