Part One

"Nine o'clock on the dot and all set to go!"

Art Metzger, postmaster at the Grand Canyon that April of 1943, grinned as he tossed the last mail pouch into the back of Foster Marshall's pickup, then added, "Climb aboard, girls. Make yourselves comfortable on the mail sacks and HANG ON TIGHT!"

So we bounced and slewed and hung on tight over 35 miles of ruts and bedrock and fish-tail curves until Topocoba Hilltop hove into view. There, beside a corrugated metal shed and a narrow turn-around, stood Lorenzo Sinyella who shared the mail contract with Foster. With his string of dozing pack horses waited two extra saddled horses for the gals I'd shared the mail sacks with. They had to wait for all the mail, groceries and supplies to be shifted from mechanical to hooved horsepower, so I hoisted m y back pack and "rimmed off" down the fourteen miles to Supai Village.

Steep, narrow switchbacks through the Kaibab Limestone and the Coconino Sandstone led directly into the rock-and-gravel bed of Cataract Canyon. This canyon, in turn, promptly dropped in easy grades between red and eroded walls of the Hermit Shale, deepe r and deeper eerily sculptured and layered until the more precipitous Supai Shales closed in around me, shutting off even the occasional views of the distant rimrock. Finally, seemingly after having trudged for miles through dusty, hot, sun-drenched san d, I rounded a corner to see --- Heaven? Light blue pools of water edged in willows and reeds twinkled up at me and overflowed in a green-edged path down the canyon. Havasu Creek: spectacular from its very birth!

After a few more meandering turns, the red-wall canyon widened out into the vivid verdancy of alfalfa fields, corn patches and spreading cottonwoods with serpentine blue creek wandering in their midst. This was Supai, complete with a straw-hatted horsem an and three giggling gamins on the trail ahead. The horseman nodded to me, so I asked, "Can you tell me, please, where the Government Agency building is?"

White teeth stretched across his brown face, "Sure, you can't miss it ma'am. You're on the main road. Just keep goin'. It's at the first flagpole on the right." So on I went, dusty boots dragging a bit, past a well-worn rodeo grounds with a chute; pa st a few low sod-roofed cabins; past tantalizing loops of the creek -- now deep and quiet, now surging over watercress-edged reefs; and finally past the ethereally soaring spires of the Wigleeva. There in the heart of the valley lay the "Main Drag." Ta ll old cottonwoods shaded the quarter mile straight lane, churned up by generations of Supai horses ridden and raced by generations of Supai men aged from two to ninety-two.

Along this road were the U.S. Government establishments. The school teacher, Mr. Cole, had a small home on the left. A "hospital," used principally for guests as the locals were reluctant to stay overnight in it, had nurse's quarters and was set back a cross a wide green lawn on the right. Just beyond was the largest building in Supai: the Agency. Lonnie and Beulah Hardin, ex-school teachers from Oklahoma, shared the Agent's work which included being postmaster, manager of a small store and mediator of all problems not under the Tribal Council's concern.

A wide porch with thick vines on one side of it ran around the rambling frame house. With Beulah's permission, I immediately appropriated that side for my quarters and got the best of the bargain! For free, I had the coolest "room" of all! A third sid e of the house had one important window near the front: official Supai Post Office window, and the most popular spot in town.

Just after I had taken a relaxing dip in the creek and been treated to a cool lemonade by Beulah, Sonia and Gladys arrived with the pack strings, hot and dusty. The horses were followed down Main Street by whooping and hollering hordes of little boys ga lloping bareback as fast as they could go. With a flourish of rearing hooves and heads they circled behind the strings, chattering excitedly as the dust rose in clouds around the whole yard. Who knew what good things mamma might have ordered this week! There was sure to be a case of evaporated milk, a sack of flour, coffee and fresh white bread. But she might have included some lollipops or store cookies, too!

As the packs came off the sweaty backs and were carried inside the Post Office-Store, the excitement grew. The mammas, their Mother-Hubbard dresses sweeping the ground, gathered around. The smaller children, the sedate older men and the paps (on horseb ack, of course) all came struggling up or down the lane until it seemed that the whole village waited for the sorting to be done. Finally, Beulah leaned out of the Post Office window and began to call out names: "Manakaja..., Mascagome..., Hamadreek..., Paya..., Burro..., Ugualla..., Jones." Depending upon how many cartons were for each, one or several men would go into the store section to carry out the load and disappear down the road with a carton clutched on the saddle pommel. The old-time Pony E xpress and Stage Stops could have been no Bigger Event than the mail days each Tuesday and Friday in Supai.

Monday and Thursday of each week was "ordering day." The telephone line between the Supai Agency and Babbitt's store in Grand Canyon Village was kept busy all day long. Patient ladies with their babies and shopping lists sat out under the cottonwoods g ossiping, giggling and waiting their turn at the phone. And up at the store, orders were made up and crammed firmly into cartons; groceries; hardware, seeds, dry goods, all labeled and mailed to each family with an accompanying bill which included postag e and handling. Imagine having oranges, butter, bread and staples mailed to yourself via a weekly phone order.

Once the hubbub died down and supper odors mixed with woodsmoke drifted across the valley, we could all relax over Beulah's cornbread and beans. We three gals looked at each other with a smile. "We're really here!" The sun sets early behind the red cl iffs at Supai, and soon afterward the cool mists of Havasu Creek spread soothingly from wall to wall, holding the sweet scents and sleepy sounds of evening. As we ambled down past the schoolhouse on a star-lit path, we felt the pressures and tensions of city living drop completely away.

For the next week I angled out in every direction from the Agency and village; up old trails to the wide Esplanade bench; down canyons past the exquisite travertine-fanned waterfalls with their morning glory colored pools beneath; up side canyons with oc casional fern-filled seeps and petroglyphs. Seldom did I meet a soul, but evidence of the people was always at hand; a set of hoof prints in the silt; a lonely grave marked with a wooden cross upon which was burned "Cups of Coffee" and his broken rifle and bones of his dog at its base. Perhaps a quick view of the village 300 feet below showing the checkerboard of fields, and the distant sound of laughter wafted up on a breeze.

Sonia and Gladys rode. When Lorenzo was not on his mail run, they hired him as their guide and took many of the same trails I explored, thereby learning much more than I about the trails horses trod. One leisurely day just before they were to leave Sup ai for home, I joined them as their guest. Lorenzo, his pretty wife Harriet, and we three gals took a picnic lunch down below Havasu Falls for a quiet visit to the small mining camp along the creek. Our lunch followed a brisk swim in the cold waters be low the falls. All afternoon we lazed and talked, French-braiding each other's hair (Harriet's raven blue-black braids were twice the size of our Nordic blonde braids) while Lorenzo dozed or joined in our chatter.

Next morning early, he led the pack train with one of my two new friends off up the trail. Gladys, as she had mounted her steed, had looked wistfully down at us. "Lucky you," she said. "I'm a slave of the working world while you two can stay in Shangr i-la. But I'll be back.. I'll be back." As it turned out, I stayed in Supai four more months.

Part Two

Supai 1943

One warm May morning I sat with Beulah Hardin, the Supai Agent's wife, relaxing over a cup of tea as we gazed out beyond the sweeping shade of grand old cottonwoods to the green alfalfa fields beyond. Today was mail day. Shortly, Lorenzo Sinyella would bring his string of pack horses to load up the out-going mail sacks. Chickens cackled contentedly across the dusty road. Children dragged their bare feet, raising clouds of silt on their way to school. A sweet scent of orchard blooms and field flower s added to the peaceful pastoral scene, and I deliberated lazily whether it would be more fun to jump in the creek right now or wait until I had wandered down to Havasu Falls.

Suddenly excited childish trebles and the clipclop of hooves coming up the lane caught our attention. No tourists going out today; what's going on? Into view came a procession of one slow horse carrying a slouched figure, an agitated man leading the ho rse, and a dozen little dancing figures chanting: "San-dee, San-dee". Sonia and Gladys and I had ridden down to the Havasu Lead and Zinc Mine and met Mr. Sanderson a few days before. But what on earth was he doing up here at the village?

The doleful man hanging over the saddle horn was dejectedly silent until Lorenzo came along and added him to his string of horses. "San-dee" was not so silent; he had plenty to say! "That's my camp cook. He's sick and he's gotta go out and I don't kno w what I'm gonna do. There are nine miners down at camp and they won't work if there's not three square meals a day on the table, and I can't cook . . . Can you cook?" And he jabbed a finger in my direction.

"Well . . sure . . but . . "

"You're hired! How soon can you pack up and get down there? It'll only be for a week or so, and then I'll have another cook. Can you be there tonight? I'd sure appreciate it".

Not a chance of saying no. So in the cool of that same evening I wandered down past watercress-edged travertine reefs, past Navajo Falls giddy with the fragrance of newly-opened Datura lilies, across a shaky footbridge, past the little cemetery, and on down the steep trail past Havasu Falls to camp. All my belongings (of the moment) were in my backpack and I had a new world to conquer!

The "only a week or so" turned out to be three months. The hard-rock miners that Sandy had garnered from Chloride, Arizona, were most understanding of my novice cooking ability and reasonable in their demands. This was fortunate as my facilities were not so reasonable. The one-room wooden shack contained a tiny wood stove, a heavy old unit of soapstone set-tubs (who carried that down?) and numerous shelves, rickety cupboards and a long work counter ... none of which were mouse proof. A long dining table with benches and a cot for me completed the furnishing. Cabbages, carrots, onions and wild celery from beneath the spray of Havasu Falls were all put in the tubs to keep fresh. Anything more perishable had to be prepared and eaten within a few day s of its arrival in camp and was stored briefly down by the stream in a screened box on legs with wet hemp sacking draped over the sides.

The only area not infested with mice was an adjoining semi-dugout built 50 years before by a prospector; it was guarded for me by a 5-foot gopher shake. Here I could put a case of eggs, sacks of potatoes, tubs of sugar and flour as well as the cases of canned goods we depended on. I became fond of "Van Goph" and rewarded him occasionally with an egg when the mouse supply ran low.

The miners bunked in a World War I circular Army tent and Sandy had his own bedroom-office shack. For myself, I soon moved the cot outdoors and let the mice reign supreme. The cacophony of squeaks, scamperings, scuttles and gnawings I endured inside ea ch night were replaced by gurgling creek music, cicadas whining their delight at summer heat, and a mockingbird who never seemed to sleep. His repertoire of songs and chuckings put me to sleep by starlight and woke me each dawn. After dinner and an eve ning walk up or down canyon the miners and I would settle down around my cot to swap stories, sing old songs, and enjoy the sounds and smells of night. When the moon was coming up full we stayed up late . . perhaps until 10 o'clock . . to watch the shad ows descend toward us, changing the cliffs from red and black to vivid gold, until finally it shown into camp and the dappled leaf shadows danced at our feet.

Since the miners worked down in a shaft where the 130 degree heat didn't penetrate, there was no need of a "crack of dawn" start for them. By 7 a.m. I'd fire up the old stove and put the coffee pot on. By 8 a.m. they would be on their way up the alread y hot trail and across the swinging "trapeze" bridge over the creek to the mine up in Carbonate Canyon. The ore was principally galena, 92% pure lead with a coating of rich hydrozincite; both of which were well worth the work and expense of mining, pack ing up to Hualapai Hilltop, and then trucking it 60 miles by rough road to Peach Springs, the nearest railhead. Those were war years and lead, unfortunately, was highly strategic metal.

The mornings were mine to prepare the main meal served at noon. A light supper to fix meant that I was free all afternoon to soak in the creek and keep cool. Perhaps I had simmered beans all morning with sow-belly or salt pork. Or perhaps we'd had pac kers the day before so I could go out with a rich beef and vegetable stew. And when I was inspired to make pies or cookies, I was treated like a queen! Hot biscuits were a must, and even more important to the men were the onions that I must serve at ev ery meal; fried, pickled, raw, french-fried in batter, sautéed any way I could think of.

Shortly before noon, just when I'd be listening for a shout from the miners so dinner would be hot on the table, I'd often hear the sound of horses and creaking leather and looking out the doorway (there was no door!) I'd see dust rising. Automatically I'd set another few places at the table. Sure enough, moments later the round smiling faces of some of the Supai ore packers would be framed in the doorway . . just in time for dinner. One of them confided to me once that I sure was a good cook and wou ld I please stay at the camp for a long time.

After dinner, banter and a cigarette the miners would help load the 75-pound ore sacks on the horses; one on each side. Then up the trail they'd go, the long rangy horses staggered along under their two sacks, each the size of a man's head. Back in the village they would be unpacked again at each man's home and he would go in, sleep until mid-night when it was cool enough to pack up once more and start toward West Hilltop. Once there at perhaps 7 a.m., they would be met by Juan Sinyella, Lorenzo's br other, who drove the mine pickup to Peach Springs with the ore. When he returned, he carried a load of mine supplies and food that Sandy had ordered. Much of this was a stock of goods especially for the Supais to purchase. Had it not been for this ser vice, he would never have been able to get them to pack!

Since the mine was below the village, a Government Reservation, no "spirits" of any sort could be brought into camp. Since the miners were hard-bitten old reprobates, used to a goodly quota of wine, women and song, it was always just a matter of time, u sually three weeks, before signs of strain would show; short tempers, flare-ups, restlessness, or wistful tales of good times in the "big cities" of Prescott, Flagstaff or Needles. Nothing would do but Sandy must close the mine and we would all go out v ia horse and pickup truck for a weekend on the town. Monday morning would find us all headed back, the men subdued, broke, happy with new stories to share and ready to get back to drill, blast and muck the ore again.

Occasionally one or the other would join me on the trail for a day. Once, we took the rim route above the Redwall from the village on the west side which gave us glorious views of all the major falls from Havasu to Beaver. It was hot, so hot that we ra n out of water and had to resort to a tiny seep, sucking up clay silt with the slow drip rather than waiting for it to settle. With all the hundreds of canyon miles I've hiked since then, I've never had that happen again. We would look down 800 feet to the blue green sparkling creek, but it just intensified our thirst. Rather than go the last mile to the village in the sun, we risked descending a rotten old mossy ladder and a bushy scree-sloped gully near camp. The creek never felt so good!

Another time, three of us descended the log-edged cave route in the travertine beside Mooney Falls and bushwhacked our way to the Colorado River. Norman Nevills ran river trips only once a month or so in the early 1940's and was the only commercial runn er. Few hikers attempted the lower canyon, so there was really very little indication of a trail. We had to cut and beat swathes through thick grapevines, prickly pear clumps, willow brush and deep grass (thank goodness there are no rattlers in Supai!) on the benches between numerous creek crossings. A big sandbar filled the downstream opening of the mouth of the creek, so we swan through the quite inlet and watched the river slide past at the bar.

Every Friday was washday. Soon after breakfast, I'd hear a "Halloo" from up-trail and would set out a cup of coffee for Effie Hanna who'd breathlessly fill the doorway with beaming bulk soon after. She'd bustle about, making a big fire near the creek, setting a huge galvanized tub of water to heat, and gathering the linens from all the beds. The men paid her to do their overalls and the dirtier they were, the more she scrubbed and the livelier she got. We spread the sheets all over the bushes, barbe d-wire fence of the horse corral, and the hitching posts. As one batch was washing, the preceding one was drying! I never could get Effie to go in the creek with me after dinner though. She'd stand on the shore, on one brown foot and then the other, tw isting her hand giggling behind the other. We'd talk women talk and enjoy the companionship but she wouldn't come and sit by me in the water or swim in the deep blue reef-edged pools above camp.

A few years later, following much mismanagement in various ways, Sandy relinquished his mine properties and rights to the Government, who in turn, gave the land, buildings and all equipment to the Supais. Nowadays there is no sign of the campsite other than the spring of good drinking water. The mine tailings are seen from the trail beside Havasu Falls.

Miners since the mid-1800's have had high hopes and found rich ores, even high on the cliffs below Mooney Falls where vanadium was mined, but the inaccessibility and corresponding high costs in money and effort have ultimately ended them all.

And the waters of the Havasu run as beautiful free and blue as though the prospectors had never been there at all.

Part Three

When I went to Havasupai in the spring of 1943 for vacation, I had no idea I would wind up with a job as cook for the Havasu Lead and Zinc Mine. But when the camp cook became ill and had to leave the canyon, that is the way it turned out.

During the three months I spent in Havasupai I had come to know many of the village people and liked and was accepted by them. As the time for me to leave grew near, I wanted to have more time to be among them and let their quiet ways be a part of my ow n life for a brief space.

I walked up the trail from the mine to the village and stayed at the Agency with Beulah and Lonnie Hardin. Effie Hanna, our camp washerwoman, had asked me to partake in a sweat bath on "ladies' day" while I was there. I had watched the men build the fi res to heat rocks for it and seen how they wrapped stiff green hides over a framework of curved willow branches. I'd waited, amazed, at the length of time men sat crouched inside and had been startled when they burst from the opening whooping and yellin g and jumped into the cold creek nearby. I had no idea of the actual experience. I accepted.

We filed on hands and knees into the low lodge after the hot rocks had been placed in a center cavity. The women were shy; friendly but nervous as we squatted in a fetal position around the perimeter. Someone sealed the doorway skin and immediately a p rickly heat of panic engulfed me, as did the odors of ripe cowhides, perspiring large women and steam. Within minutes I was sure I'd faint and fall face-first on the hot rocks, so I frantically scrambled outside and dashed for the creek, followed by titters of laughter from the ladies inside. I stayed in the creek until they joined me a little later!

Playing in the water was more my thing, anyway; so I swam with the children whenever I could. Such splashing and excitement: kids of all ages, sleek and brown and as supple as otters, all jumping in together with their dogs and ponies, cavorting on and underwater. It wasn't hard to drop all inhibitions and join them, screeching and splashing as vigorously as any!

Effie's husband Mark was a neat, quiet, beaming man who was the acknowledged best deerhide tanner in the tribe. At Effie's' suggestion I asked him to cure a hide for me and make a pull-over laced shirt from it. No fringes, please Mark, but a deep rich mahogany color would be fine. "It takes six weeks for the work. You just can't hurry the process, you know. When it is all scraped and soft, I'll finish it up fast." But the skin was still soaking in wood ashes, buried in the camp sand beside the cree k bank when I left the village and I never got to wear it.

Jim Crook was the Episcopal minister. He had attended Indian College in Phoenix and took his calling very seriously. General George Crook, of the Apache Wars fame, had ridden horseback down the Klalapa Trail in 1884 to visit Chief Navajo, a former scou t of his. Jim's father was so impressed by the General that he took his name. Jim was tall, deep voiced and gentle. He delivered a fine sermon. Services were held in the little white school. Built in 1912, as were most of the government buildings th ere, the school had a bell cupola on top. Twice each Sunday morning Jim gave sermons; one in English, with the collection plate conspicuously passed midway then one for the Indian children or any repenting adults. During the English version (a simple b iblical theme with a moral), they had sat quietly at the back of the room, seriously reading funny books. Once Jim got going in Supai, however, gales of laughter and giggles swept the room. Finally, after a ponderous pronouncement by Jim (with more lau ghter from the audience), he would say in English, "We will now sing 'Jesus Loves Me' if the piano will please play..." which was my cue to do a four-fingered accompaniment.

Before I had gone down to cook at the mining camp in mid-May, the school bell had called the children each morning, echoing off the brilliant red cliffs far into the recesses of the serpentine valley. If it promised to be an extra hot day, several littl e boys might decide that it was more educational to go look for pollywogs. On the other hand, if it was cooler and cloudy, father often needed help with spring plowing and cultivating so the corn, tomatoes, squash and melons could be planted. The schoo l teacher had an up-hill job competing with Mother Nature for the children's time.

Family ties were strong in Supai. I seldom heard a cross work and never saw a child physically punished. Patience and laughter, with joint participation in activities by all ages gave dignity to the child and peace to all concerned. If mother was weav ing a lovely willow basket of willow and devilsclaw, her daughter had her own small tray close by to struggle with. If dad was hoeing weeds, junior wasn't far behind in the next row, bare toes digging hard into the soft warm earth, trying to keep up. R unny noses and tousled hair, dirty little faces and hand-me-down clothes all counted for naught. They were happy tots, born to clear water and horses; to brilliant blue sky, sharply red cliffs, and their lush, green valley. Long before a child could wa lk upright he sat solemnly within the protective curve of his father's arm in the saddle, little fat legs straight out sideways, bouncing along with the aplomb of a centaur.

By the age of ten, he could ride bareback with the best and competed in the "Peewee" class of the bimonthly village rodeo. The rodeo ground, with a chute for broncs and pens for bull-dogging stock, was a wide, packed-earth, dusty field at the upper end of the village. There was a quarter-mile straight stretch running parallel to the main trail that was used for races. Cottonwood trees shaded two sides of the grounds and this was were the women and children enjoyed the action. They would spread out o ld blankets adjoining each other and sit down . . . not to gossip or even to eat. No, they sat, legs out before them, gambling by the hour. They played an old Chinese card game of Fan-Tan or their own creation of Coon-can while their babies played or s lept around their ample skirts.

These people once ranged far and wide across the plateaus with their Hualapai cousins, from the San Francisco peaks to Grand Wash Cliffs. They lived in their fertile canyon mainly in the warm growing months when corn, beans and squash could be raised an d dried for the rest of the year. They were hunters, roaming the forested uplands south from the Grand Canyon to find the elk, deer and antelope on which their shelters, clothing, tools and food depended. They were farming in Supai when Padre Graces ca me to visit and convert in June, 1776. His white face and odd clothing amused them and they feasted him royally. But he wasn't able to convince or convert them, so he left. They were still tilling their fields down there in 1881 when Lt. Col Price rod e his cavalry unit down the Klalapa Trail to determine their government reservation boundaries. Since that was where they were, that was what . . . and all . . . they got: just the valley. In 1975 the Great Thumb Mesa and other lands were returned for traditional use.

Many of the old foot-trails into the fifty-mile long canyon were converted to horse-trails once the Spanish introduced stock to the area. Others, such as the old Apache Trail could still be scaled only with the use of a notched pole or climbing rope, ju st as they had been for centuries.

A few days before I left Supai, I turned up the hill by the remains of an old rock defense wall and climbed the side of the canyon to a traverse trail above the Supai sandstone cliffs, I looked down on the white speck which was the schoolhouse, and on be yond to the Agency buildings, almost submerged in spreading cottonwoods. Farms, peach orchards and fig trees dotted the rectangular fields and willow-edged creek wound lazily through the length of the valley. Spirals of dust pin-pointed horseback rider s or dust-devils. Across the valley on their butte-base, the Wigleeva spires looked benignly down on their peaceful domain. Directly below me, a chattering group of men, stripped to their loin cloths, were preparing for their sweat bath. A dog barked and a dozen more took up the chorus, while off in a distant unseen pool children whooped with joy. How hard it was going to be to leave this serenity for the city pace!

On my last morning, Jim Crook showed up with a wide smile on his kindly face. He led his prize black stallion which I could ride in style up to Topocoba Hilltop. Lorenzo looked the other way as he packed up the mail sacks and I said tearful last words with my friends and hosts, the Hardings. Along the lane through the upper village several children stood with their mamas, dogs, horses and chickens. "Good-bye good-bye. Come back to see us soon."

Gale Burak came to the canyon in May of 1942, and has been here off-and-on ever since (1982). She has worked since 1972 for the Park Service as a volunteer or as a seasonal ranger.

Used by permission of the Grand Canyon Pioneers Society.

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