The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 28, 1903, Page 13

\ =7=HIS is the last in a series of five articles by Professor George © Wharton James under the gen- title of “From Needles to Yuma a Boat,” wherein the famous ex- and traveler, than whom no & wider knowledge of the hwest and the Indians that gerous Colorado esque ride, made ibe its grandeur ts expressly for al. The preced- were published in 1 of May 31 and June vely. Back num- on application. to glve nberg. so glad place as 1 was to lled with réer and The day lean vi ed there I caught up with a ree who we making the trip er, a sort of pros- d general ex- we reached ed to stay there a tumble-down dowless ought in every- then proceeded prospector I ves before we arrived & ¥ shot another, givi the abdomen. the few Mexicans of the town and was as lord when we ar- k as the proverbial rived. He sauntered up & the whole st “My wife she 4 looking gel. T blanked Delty- of & female dog he come ere. I tell him keep away. He keep coming. One dey I go catch him there and me and bring his d try to kill me. ne I catch him me eround the house with his hoot him in the bel. He catch I good Americano boy. I y. Hurrah for' United When I reached Yuma en officer st started to bring him in to jail ghief Mexican of the town, a man of former great wealth and prominence, >eniels., He himself informed se of bis impoverishment g of the neck of his brother € s noose. He married uaw—without the formalities or state—and when a wed his fatherly in- etinct by burying it alive For this he ed .and should have been his brother's money and in- and the next weas Jesus fluence saved him. ual Informed me of Je- own from the gallows. He wife he wished to be rid of, and he ¢ took her to the river, gouged eves and drowned her. ectable stories wers sift- d thence to my ner- went down, in the rain, on passing through a rchard the loud and unre- sobbings of & man In evident It is bad enough to to hear a man give n is (or was to me) that 1 was startled investigate. 1 soon saw exican of some 25 years of age, up and down, wildly to and fro, tears rolling fils cheeks and cry and sobbing ould break. Although it ssly he was without every mow and again scape ain ar of-a T8 » walk his heart W kept throwing himself down upom the . £ wet and muddy ground, falrly rolling .over and over in his distress. As 1 returned met me, and through his teare 1 could see from his inflamed face and eyes that he was horribly drunk. He seized me &nd urged me to §O UD to the saloon end drink with him, and it was eonly by firmly and rudely shaking him off trymen informed me in broken English: ‘““He one big fool. He's girl she shake him off, she no like "em, sabe? and way te make her love fooll” But I had more to learn to wait while m “cooked ® 1t, an in town ited her ma wo provide me a up somewhat as I preferred and then in a powerful voice that she had “quit keeping boarders, but T a1d not care lady v vited me to take a seat the cook stove while out to the store. Bareheaded and in the rain she went and soon returned with a can of she rax roast beef and some eggs. She ma a kind of hash of the beef and eggs and some flapjacks for bread a cup of Arbuckle’s coffee, and then bade me “sit up and eat.” While she was cookir L had taken stock of house. It w a on mot it to house a dog. It was ally an adobe, but now it was - erate. roof had blown off and & canv tretched over the roof tree. This was all right, perhaps, for summer, as the gables were open to the air, but now it allowed the rain to blow in. There were two rooms and upon a wretched bed in the next room I saw as I ssed the open door a small pool of water slowly accumulating or soaking in as the trickling from above continued. The good lady had married an old miner end prospsctor, perhaps double her ¥ yet she seemed to be devoted to him and from what she =aid he was cer- tainly head over heels in love with her “She’d rather be an old man's darling any day than a young man's plaything.” Then in & minor strain she told me of the loneliness of the place. There was no- body there now but Mexicans, herself and the storekeeper and his wife. His name was Wilson, but Mrs. Wilson haughtily refused to have any associa- tion with her because she was the wife of a poor prospector. “But she needn't hold her head up.so high. I'm as good as she is anyway. Ehe won't even say ‘How do you do?” to me when I go to the store, the proud, stuck-up creature.” Bo there we were. Murderous Mexi- cans, two jail birds and a man who the day before had shot another *“in de bel,” 2 blubbering love-lorn lout loudly la- menting his lost love, two ladies, the only white women in the city, refusing to as- sociate or speek as they passed by. Add to this the wretched desolation of the place and you have the picture. Disman- tled houses, looking as if a fire or a tor- nado had swept over them, end on the hiliside, half a mile away, a graveyard, unfenced, uncared for, and looking more like a stone quarry than a ‘“‘God’s half- acre.” Ten or a dozen miles away in the foot- hills in the deserted town of La Pas. Forty, fifty years ago it was a great city. Gol s found in paying quantities in the foothills and soon a perfect stampede set in for the La Paz placers. Hundreds nay thousands of hardy adventurers and miners reached the place on the wings of expectation and desire. The foothills were scraped over and turned upside down. With such a population business was sure to be good and whisky vend- , gamblers, dancehouse keepers, Jews with boxes of merchandise, flocked to the place. Elegant saloons, stores and houses were erected and business flourished for awhile as a green bay tree. Then all at once the bottom dropped out of the whole affalr and to-day not even the Mohaves visit La Paz. It is as absolutely deserted as if the sound of pick and shovel, rattle of sand and gravel in the pan, and the chatter and hum of tireless activity spurred on by hope had never been heard In the spot. The exodus was as complete as it had been sudden the other way, and o-day the solitary and forlorn coyote, the jackrabbit, the rattlesnake and lizard are the sole inhabitants of this once pop- ulous and prosperous camp. With sorrow the men who had forsaken everything to rush to La Paz learned that “Es nihilo, nihil fit"—out of nothing, nothing comes. What with Ehrenberg and La Paz and the rain end the murders and the people who wouldn't speak to each other, I would have left Ehrenberg the next morning if it had been raining black cats and Gila monsters. I was never so thank- ful in my life to get away safe and sound. The whole atmosphere was full of dread to me, o I rowed away with an energy that did not wane all day. I made fully forty miles that day. There was snow on the mountains north, east and south, so the air was crisp, cold and clear. It was glorious. Yet my feeling as I pulled blisters on my fingers and hands and lameness into my back and arms was that this was no rowing- machine in a Y. M. C. A. gymnasium, nor “athletic” training in a steam-heated Knickerbocker Athletic Club, where one exercises and breathes in other people’s worn air. This was the stern, actual < (I THE SUNDAY CALL. FOW Wow WITH YUMA INCIANS actually lost its way, so far did it go out of the way to reach the town. There was no landing-place, so I tied up near a plile of cordwood on the California side and got permission to store my trunk and camera outfit in the warehouse of the Indian trader, whose establishment is not & hundred yards away. An Indlan helped me wheel and carry.my things, and while we were engaged at it who should drive up in a wagon for some hay which shad been unloaded near to where I disem- barked but Sam Temple, the Jim Farron of Helen Hunt Jackson's “Ramona,” and the slayer of the hero of that much praised and much abused novel. Poor Sam! His has been a varied career, and reality, the thing ftself, Te &rift to Tuma end get off the sand bars would have taken months, possibly years. I hadn’t that time, s0 I was compelled te row. What a grandmaster, nay, a past grand- master, in the art of dsvelopment is com- puision. Spell him with a capital C, cer- tainly. He deserves it. He's made more muscular, athletie, nrou'_."I bodies and minds and souls than all the fortunes in the world have ever bought. Indeed it would be a grand good thing if some of the young men and maidens born silver spoons lined with gold in their mouths could suddenly be jerked out of their automobiles and drawing rooms and set down under compulsion’s guidance to foot it over the weary miles of life, or to wash dishes, scrub floors or pound a typewriter. They wouldn't like it; of course not. Who does? But it would be a blessing in disguise if they had th sense and courage to ‘‘face the music,” obey the master, and *pitch in.”" Misfor- tune and distress are only really so when they paralyze instead of stimulating. But 1 must quit. I'm not pald to preach now, s0, to return to our muttons, which in this cage are the Yumas. ls to the Mo- They look & clmnuzao haves. Men stout an -ron’. athletic, rone to too much fat, heavy- a littie faced, t! l:}:"}"”dti: mltrofi:-flnwaa. with hair work: Into rolls and hangin down to the waist. o The town of Yuma, the penitentlary, the old Fort Yuma, now used as the In- dian Agency, the junction of the Color- ado and Gila rivers, the Yuma Indian Reservation, are all jumbled together at one spot not far from the Southern Pa- cific Railroad bridge. I could see Yuma a long time before I approached it—about three miles, in my impatience—I thought that winding, sprawling, lazy river had he is now atoning for all his sins driving the mail stage between and Ehrenberg. Fort Yumsa was established in 1854, and since its abandonment as s military sta- tion has been used as the Indian Agency. It is perched on the river bank, on the California side. The banks here are s0 high that they form almost a small canyon, and across this the lway bridge has been constructed. Twice or three times the wooden bridge was burned down, so at the last building a fine steel structure was erected. And yet the only ‘way for & team and wagon to cross is on an old-fashioned cable ferry at $3 the round trip. The penitentiary occupies the high bank on the Arizona side, about op- posite to the agency buildings. The town itself is in Arizona and is & typical Ari- zona ploneer town, a little more quijet and seemly than in early days and yet ‘whose chiefest life even now seems cen- tered around the many saloons and gam- bling hells that flourish. ‘From the rear of the agency hill a fine view could be obtained of the reservation and the homes of the Yumas nestling in between thickets of cottonwood, willows and mesquite. The houses are all of the types before described, there being little difference, if any, between their archi- tecture and that of the Mohaves and Chemehuevis. From the obliging super- intendent and agent, J. 8. Spear, I learned of the usual two factions existing among the Indians under his charge. The hos- (THE FrRIENDLY ELEMENT ) BHIIEE ANVY Town TR oLO Forer Yornz arF. Yrs —~ you go to who do not know you, it {s a thousand to one before have proceeded far that you do not h you had gone to work the other way. Bo, of course, I made a bungle of it. Hiring a buggy I plunged into the difficulties. I made a few photo- graphs of houses and one or two old people, and then a young man hastily rode up on horseback and asked me why I photographed. He sald he was sent by ual, the chief. When I told him my object he returned to the chief and soon came back with a message that Pas- qual and the leading men would like to meet me st & powwow the next day. I agreed to the meeting. Not far from where 1 had been operating the camera lived Maggle Scott, a full-blooded Yuma, here photographed, who had a very checkered existence. ‘When quite a little girl she was stolen from her home and taken into captivity by one of the Indian tribes that live in Southern California, in the desert east of San Diego. Perhaps she was seized dur- ing a war, for tribal wars in those early :?yl were frequent. She was treated indly by her captors and would doubt- less have lived with and married into the “tribe, but that somehow her story became known to a San Jeweler and watch- maker, who happened to be visiting the 13 / Hot 8prings, near where Maggie's captors were temporarily located. This gentle- man, Mr. Germain, entered into negotia- tions for the purchase of the child and finally bought her. He took her to San Diego, where she was brought up as one of the family and lived with her kind benefactor for many years. At last the desire came upon her to return to her own people, and for many years past she had resided with them. That she is an able ‘woman there can be no doubt, but she is crafty and deep, too crafty and too deep for her own good. The whites declars she 1s not to be relied upon, and that while she professes to be friendly to them she is constantly inciting the hostiles to greater hostility, while the Indians themselves fear her and on one or two occasions have arrested her and threatened her with dire punishment. Still, as she was the best material I then found at hand I engaged her to act as my interpreter for the pow- wow the next day. It was a singular gathering and I can not begin to do it justice. I had Maggle in & buggy. Ehe is old4, fat and asthmatle, and consequently did not get out. A cou- ple of chairs were provided for Pasqual and myself, and standing, sitting, squat- ting, lolling and lying all around were the men, women and children of this faction. I stated my object in desiring to get pic- tures and then Pasqual arose and mads his little speech. It was to the effect that he was offended that I had begun to make photographs before I had first called to see and consult with him. “You white peo- ple,” said he, “have your leaders, and if anything is to be done among the whites the man who wishes to do It goes and talks with the leader. I am the leader of these Yumas. They have chosen me as their chief. You ought to have come and told me what you wanted.” Here was dignity, indeed, and a forceful ‘way of presenting it. ‘Then he continued and opened up his heart about other grisvances which evi- dently felt sore within. “Some time ago, without consulting us, you allowed the long gowns (the priests) to take some of the land of our reservation and build a church there. Now the Commissioner in ‘Washington issues an order that we are no longer to paint our faces or wear our hair Jong. I write to the Commissioner and tell him our complaints and he pays no attention to us. I wish you would tell him to answer my letters. We do not ask for any help; all we want 0 be left alone to take care of ourselvs ‘Then Miguel, the real leader of the hos- tiles, stepped forward and sald ke would like to say a few words. The gist of his speech was that they objected to being photographed, they objected to the school, they objected to the Government, they objected to the white man and to all his suggestions. Miguel is evidently the power behind the throne. He is a man of fine figure, strong face and firm determi- nation and will. The Government refuses to confirm his el ise he is such a disturbing eleme: 1s merely a puppet set fort Two or three years ago ! cused of setting fire to one of the ries at the school and he narrowly escaped being sent to the ary f fense. But as it could not be gally dgainst him he was sent c of the more Eastern schools. ¥ young men did not hesitate to t2ll me that he openly boasted that it was he who fired the building. He was determined to show power to the whites and do something also that would make him & kind of hero among his fellows. The upshot of the hostile powwow was that I was forbidden to make any photo- graphs there. The next day, however, Mr. Spear suggested that I call a pow- wow of the friendiles and he kindly of- fered to go down and speak to them onm my behalf. This was somewhat after the same style as the other, but the evident fon was toward doing whatever loaves and fishes, Mr. Spear, suggested. Accordingly I secured quite & number of good pictures, not the least Interesting of which is the powwow itself, hereby presented, though naturally devoid of the presence of the photogra- pher. Some of the young men were playing the game o-tu-ra, & game of a small roll- ing hoop and two players with a long pole each. The poles are fully ten feet in length, and with the Yumas and Mohaves are unadorned. The Navahoes of New Mexico play the same game and call 1t nah-zozh, and their poles are decorated ‘with strips of buckskin, beads and feath- ers. One player takes'the little hoop and trundles it along the course. Both play- ers then follow and as the hoop slackens up its speed they throw their poles along- side of it. The skill in the game consists in throwing the pole so that when the hoop falls it will rest upon a certain part of the pole Cgqunts are made according to position, and thus the gamg Is won or lost. The one who gets the highest num- ber at a throw rolls the hoop for the next throw. The Yumas are very fond of o-tu-ra and play it by the -hour, and many a dollar of hard-earned money at rallroading, loading wood, woodchopping, portering over In the town is lost in gambling on this or that expert at the game. The religion of the Yumas is somewhat similar to that of the Mohaves. They cre- mate their dead and it is one of the sights to witness the ceremony. The dis- embodled spirits are gulded by other spirits to the Yuma paradise, which is a beautiful valley in some vaguely de- scribed place south and west. Here thers is luxuriant grass, mesquite trees galore, melons, grapes and all the good things of this life. Everything is the same thers 2s here, except that thers are no dissen- slons. A great spirit over all controls and guides, even as the chiefs do on earth, but far more effectively. Until recently the Yumas, living in so hot a region, wore few clothes. The gz- string was the main costume of the men, and a short skirt, made from the bark of the mesquite or cottonwood, was the chief costume of the women. It was pre- pared by cutting the bark Into narrow strips of the required length, which were then shredded by being pounded with stones. This was then sewn together so as to form a girdle and fastened around the waist. Generally a large bunch of bark was attached to it In the case of mothers as & kind of bustle, upon which the youngster of the family was taught to ride astride. Now the bustle is dis- carded and the child straddles the moth- er's left or right hip—first one and then the other. It is great fun to watch the Yumas float down the river in hot weather. They each stride a log and allow themselves to sink up to the neck and thus submerged they look like nothing more than black hair- balls. But they laugh and shout and whistle and sing as they float, occasion- ally filling the mouth with water and squirting it in the eyes of a comrade. Thus with fun and frolic they float more than swim down the river from one set- tlement to another. Below Yuma are the Cocopalis, but as I bad not time to journey farther I gave away my boat, packed up my various be- longings, boarded the train of the South- ern Pacific Railway and was soon at home with a bunch of Apaches on the north side of the Gila River not far from the desert station of Aztec.