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Learning How to Hope
Learning How to Hope
Reviving Democracy through Our Schools
and Civil Society

SARAH M. STITZLEIN

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2020

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This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under

the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​006265–​1

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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
 Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1. Hope in America? 1
2. Looking Back to Move Forward 19
3. Hope as Habits 38
4. Hope and Democracy 60
5. Teaching Hope, Not Grit 81
6. Learning How to Hope 103

Notes 139
Index 163
 Acknowledgments

A few years ago, shortly after my only child was born and I had just moved
across the country, leaving behind a place and job I loved, I experienced a
terrible event in my personal life. I went to see a therapist. He asked me to
explain what had happened. As I laid out the details and described the dif-
ficulties I was experiencing as a result, I also spoke of the future and what
I could do to make things better. When I stopped, the therapist said, “In my
25 years in this line of work, I’ve never met someone more hopeful than you
are.” I was a bit taken aback by this comment, unsure of whether it was ac-
tually a jab at me for being naïve in the face of an awful situation or whether
it was a compliment about the outlook I maintained even in that predica-
ment. I responded with a line that I shared with many concerned friends at
the time, “I cannot change that this happened to me, but I can determine how
I respond to it.” I left, wondering, “what makes me so hopeful and how might
I nurture hope in others?” I realized that my hopefulness extended well be-
yond my personal life and into my civic and political life also. This book is
the result of those reflections, questions that were magnified as I looked at
the hopelessness many people have experienced recently within American
democracy. Certainly, there have been many friends and family along the
way, more than I can name here, who have supported my hopeful demeanor.
This includes my mother, who passed suddenly during the final stages of
completing this book and whose death has once again brought me back to
the more difficult moments of sustaining personal hope and yet also helped
me see her as an important influence on my inclination to hope. And there
have been teachers who have identified and cultivated my habits of hope. I’m
grateful to each of you. May you continue to do so for others.
I thank my graduate assistants, Melissa Knueven, Carrie Nolan, and, es-
pecially, Lori Foote, for their assistance in preparing this book. I also thank
Lisa Sibbett and Karen Zaino for reading the manuscript and providing
the insights of a social studies teacher and English teacher. I have benefited
from helpful feedback from fellow philosophers of education Kathy Hytten,
Winston Thompson, and Carrie Nolan. I also appreciated the discussions of
my work when I spoke about political hope in the Life of the Mind lecture at
viii Acknowledgments

the University of Cincinnati; the Boyd Bode Memorial Lecture at the Ohio
State University; the Templeton Foundation’s Glass Half Full Collaboratory
in Estes Park, Colorado; and the New Directions in the Philosophy of Hope
Conference at Goethe University in Germany. I am grateful for financial
support from the Templeton Foundation, Society for the Advancement of
American Philosophy, and the Center for Ethics & Education. Support
for an open access publishing grant came from the Toward an Open
Monograph Ecosystem, funded by the Association of American Universities,
the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of American
University Presses. Finally, thanks to the following journals, who granted
permission to print significantly revised and expanded versions of earlier
articles.

Stitzlein, Sarah M. “Hoping and Democracy,” Contemporary Pragmatism,

15, no. 2 (2018): 1–​24.
Stitzlein, Sarah M. “Teaching for Hope in the Era of Grit,” Teachers College
Record, 120, no. 3 (2018).
Foote, Lori, and Sarah M. Stitzlein. “Teaching Hope: Cultivating
Pragmatist Habits,” The Journal of School & Society, 3, no. 2
(2016): 32–​40.
Nolan, Carrie, and Sarah M. Stitzlein. “Meaningful Hope for Teachers in
Times of High Anxiety and Low Morale,” Democracy & Education, 19,
no. 1 (2011): 1–​10.
Learning How to Hope
 1
Hope in America?

The very idea of democracy, the meaning of democracy, must be

continually explored afresh; it has to be constantly discovered and
rediscovered, remade and reorganized; while the political and eco-
nomic and social institutions in which it is embodied have to be re-
made and reorganized to meet the changes that are going on in the
development of new needs on the part of human beings and new
resources for satisfying these needs.
—​John Dewey1

Hope is at the heart of democracy. Hope animates life in a democracy, moving

citizens forward through new challenges, new ideas, and new experiments.
When we are hopeless, and especially when we are in despair, not only are
our individual lives more difficult but also our social and political lives suffer.
We find ourselves disempowered, unable to solve shared problems and create
improved ways of living and working together. The American presidential
elections of 2008 and 2016 marked significant shifts in how our polarized
citizenry experiences both hope and despair. Some citizens excitedly antic-
ipated considerable improvement in their lives as a result of their preferred
candidate’s victory, while some backers of losing candidates feared the worst.
As each presidential term played out, many citizens on both sides of the aisle
found themselves increasingly disappointed with the leader representing
their political party, and their positive outlook for the well-​being of the
country waned.
As presidential eras move on and new election seasons arrive, we are left
asking, “Are there reasons to hope?,” “How can I hope?,” and “What should
I hope for?” The answers are often shaped by our political environment and
educational experiences. In this book, I will examine how addressing these
questions in today’s social and political context suggests not only reasons for
why we can hope and particular content of what we ought to hope for but

Learning How to Hope. Sarah M. Stitzlein, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190062651.001.0001
2 Learning How to Hope

also, more importantly, an enriched understanding of how we hope together.

I will argue that such shared work is more fruitful than mere independent
wishes, optimism, or—​increasingly popular in education circles—​grit. I’m
speaking here of substantial hopes for our future together as citizens and for
our lives in America today, such as hoping for equal treatment of all citizens
under the law or an economy that provides opportunities and economic mo-
bility for everyone. These differ from insignificant hopes, which are often
fleeting or relatively inconsequential, like hoping I’ll get to shake hands with
my favorite candidate on a campaign stop in my town.
Hope is seemingly well known and widely experienced, yet its source, cul-
tivation, and relationship to democracy are all worthy of more careful in-
vestigation. This is especially the case in politically contentious times, when
citizens tend to hitch their hope on particular politicians and find themselves
increasingly divided from those endorsing the other party’s leaders. America
has historically tended to think of itself as a beacon of hope. Indeed, many
countries and immigrants have long looked to us in that spirit and many
of our political leaders have aimed to inspire us by referencing that image
in their speeches. We celebrate America as a place where people set out to
forge a new and better way of life, buoyed by promises of liberty, equality,
and opportunity for all—​though too many of us ignore that those ideals
have not been fairly extended to everyone. But, an array of anecdotes and
data suggest that many Americans, including the youngest generations, are
now struggling to hope. Examples ranging from rampant opioid addiction
to rising suicide rates suggest that aspects of hope and despair stretch far be-
yond our elections or our frustrations with political leaders and deep into our
personal lives.2 If hope is waning in America, our very identity as a country,
our sense of ourselves within it, and our role in the world may be at risk.
Moreover, our well-​being as individuals and as a citizenry may be in danger.
This book does not make a call to return to American roots, as though
there was a time when the American Ideal was pure and the American Dream
was possible for all. It does, however, highlight some of the best of what our
past has to offer as a source for moving forward. It is a present-​and future-​
directed endeavor that grapples with past and current struggles. Those in-
clude recognition that the American Ideals, represented in our key principles
of democracy, have long been tied up with white supremacy, economic dis-
parity, and other problematic power relations that have made life and hope
in America much more difficult for some citizens than others. My intent in
this book is to help resuscitate hope within America by offering a notion of
 Hope in America? 3

hope that is grounded in real struggles. It is an account that grows out of phil-
osophical pragmatism, a tradition deeply tied to both our country’s history
and democratic ways of life. Despite the religious history of our nation, it is
not a hope that transcends this world through appeals to God. But, believing
in God may help some Americans pursue a better future by buttressing their
resolve, providing visions of how we might live more justly, and uniting them
with fellow believers in communities not only of worship but also of civic
involvement. Instead, it is a hope that is related to our experiences and our
agency (our ability to participate in and impact democratic life). It is a hope
that can be cultivated among our citizenry.
As we move into the 2020 election, I aim to focus less on political leaders
and more on our own actions to improve our lives and country. Along the
way, I intend to offer insight into how we might identify leaders who may
better support our efforts as citizens, so that hoping becomes something that
we do together, and that is sustainable from one election to the next—​re-
gardless of the winning party or candidate. Importantly, I aim to shift our
focus to future generations and how we might cultivate hope within them so
that they take an active role in leading America through times of despair and
struggle by using hope as a unifying force. For that reason, I will turn later in
this book to looking at citizenship education in particular, a key venue for
teaching hope and learning habits of democratic living. I argue that schools
and civil society should nurture hope as a set of habits that disposes citizens to-
ward possibility and motivates citizens to act to improve their lives and, often,
those of others.3 These habits are flexible, adapting to our changing world so
that long after our current struggles in American democracy have faded and
new ones have developed, habits of hope will likely have lasting relevance
and usefulness. As such, this project of teaching hope, while grounded in
present struggles, is aimed at sustaining and improving democracy well into
the future.

More than a Campaign Slogan

Democracy, as Walt Whitman said, is “a great word whose history remains

unwritten.”4 Hope helps us write the story of democracy because it shapes the
future we envision and pursue. As we chart that course, America unfolds as
a venture that often requires bold vision, action, and collaboration. Early in
our history, we recognized the precarious nature of our experiment, and we
4 Learning How to Hope

worked hard to bolster it by proclaiming the benefits of democracy through

political speeches, documents, and monuments. We foregrounded the devel-
opment of good citizens within our schools based on our hope of preserving
and expanding democracy among our ranks.5 This was most pronounced
in the bills justifying the expansion of public schooling written by Thomas
Jefferson, who hoped to bring education to a wider demographic and to better
prepare citizens for the responsibilities of self-​government. These aims were
furthered during the common school movement of the 1800s propelled by
Horace Mann, who sought to develop a shared American identity in growing
citizens by enrolling an even larger population. While those celebrations of
and missions to improve democracy have dissipated in recent decades, hope
has lingered as we craft the story of democracy. Most notably, we see hope
used as a campaign slogan and within our political rhetoric—​perhaps a sign
of its appeal to citizens and of its need within democracy.
Hope took center stage in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, as
supporters donned now iconic t-​shirts adorned with Obama’s face and the
simple word: “HOPE.” But on the campaign trail, hope traces a longer his-
tory. I offer here only a brief glimpse of candidates in recent decades who
have emphasized hope during their campaigns, and I reveal some of the
ways in which they have employed hope. Let’s begin with John F. Kennedy,
whose zest and youthful looks complemented his message of hope borne
out through public action. Riding to victory on a Frank Sinatra campaign
tune titled “High Hopes,” JFK directed our attention not toward the glory
of America’s past but rather to a vision of what America “someday can, and
through the efforts of us all, someday will be.”6 And to achieve that future, his
inaugural address famously implored, “Ask not what your country will do for
you—​ask what you can do for your country.”
During Bill Clinton’s nomination speech, he recalled listening to JFK’s
“summons to citizenship” as a teenager. Trying to breathe fresh life into that
sentiment, he spoke of the work ahead as citizens aimed to improve life in
America, chanting five times: “We can do it.”7 That proclamation was later
revived by Obama, who routinely exhorted crowds to join him in a chorus
of “Yes, we can!” Like Clinton before him, Obama found hope for the fu-
ture by looking at what Americans had achieved in the past, bolstering his
confidence that America can continue to be improved. As he accepted the
presidential nomination, Obama claimed, “Our union can be perfected.
What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve
tomorrow.”8
 Hope in America? 5

While many candidates offered a vague and indeterminate sense of hope

through their speeches and slogans, Obama attempted to articulate some of
the common hopes of Americans. A tour of America led him to conclude: “at
the core of the American experience are a set of ideals that continue to stir
our collective conscience; a common set of values that bind us together de-
spite our differences; a running thread of hope that makes our improbable
experiment in democracy work.”9 During his victory speech, he laid out
what some of those specific hopes are, including things, such as good schools
for our children, and particular ways of life, such as showing compassion
for others. He argued that identifying our common hopes is a useful way
to move America forward through political divisiveness, racism, and other
struggles.10 Like JFK, Obama insisted that hope requires courageous action
on behalf of citizens.

I’ve never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more
hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I’m not talking
about blind optimism—​the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of
the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I’m not talking
about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk
from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside
us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better
awaits us, so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working,
to keep fighting.11

While the idea of hope was more pronounced within the campaigns of
Democrats in recent decades, it has also played a role in those of Republicans.
They invoked moving imagery to symbolize hope while also showing, like
their Democratic counterparts, that hope required effort to support and im-
prove America. Ronald Reagan spoke often of America as the shining “city
on the hill” that was a symbol of hope and freedom for immigrants and coun-
tries around the world. He chose to conclude his farewell speech with that
image and reflections on how Americans had made our country a better
place during his presidency.12 George H. W. Bush later followed, describing
citizens and volunteer organizations hard at work to improve America as “a
thousand points of light.”13 Then, his son George W. Bush ran on the slogan,
“A safer world and a more hopeful America.”
Tapping in to the idea that hope requires an initial sense of security
before one can explore and build a better America, some Republican
6 Learning How to Hope

candidates, including John McCain and Donald Trump, focused on pro-

tection. In 2016, Trump sought to assure economic security as well as the
physical safety of Americans from the threats he perceived from terrorists
and some immigrants. In light of increased poverty and a standard of living
that had remained relatively flat for the last three decades, many econom-
ically struggling Americans found hope in Trump. While Trump’s cam-
paign may have been setting a stage for hope, many of his speeches sought
to engage and rally voters by focusing on the severity of our country’s
problems.14 Unlike his Democratic and Republican forerunners who drew
on both the promises and the shortcomings of the past as justification for
inventing a better future together, Trump claimed he would bring about a
better life on behalf of Americans. He positioned himself as a strongman
who both knew what was best for Americans and who would do the will of
the people.
A reporter interviewed visitors to Washington, DC, during the weekend
of the inauguration and Women’s March in 2017, asking what each citizen
was hopeful for and what they were going to do as a result of that hope.15
Citizens on the right shared stories of excitement about reclaiming an
American past that they believed to be better than the present, especially
in terms of economics and military power. They expressed confidence that
President Trump would make things better and vowed to back him. On
the left, some citizens were emotionally reeling in the aftermath of the sur-
prising election outcome. They worried that Trump might bring harm to
particular identity groups that he disparaged during the election, including
women and immigrants. They called for interest groups to come together
in resistance and urged others to volunteer on behalf of people at risk, to
donate to groups championing those identity groups, and to become active
in politics, especially at the local level. In the center were people who were
troubled by the divides in American politics and who chose to engage in
civic action and dialogue in hopes of working across differences. Each inter-
viewee across the political spectrum was trying to articulate a reason and a
way to hope, and many had defined content of what they hoped for already
in mind. Perhaps some interviewees sensed that hope is too often a polit-
ical slogan used in passive recitation, but that doesn’t require one to actually
do more than cast a vote and perhaps donate to a campaign. Perhaps some
recognized, as I argue in these pages, that democracy requires a deeper and
more sustainable form of hope that is enacted and endures long after the
polls close and inaugural balls end.
 Hope in America? 7

Changes in Democracy and Our Citizenry

Before looking at what hope means and how we can cultivate it, let’s first
briefly take stock of current conditions that relate to hopelessness in political
life. While recognizing the interplay between personal hopelessness and po-
litical outlook, I will focus on hopelessness as it relates to democracy, as my
primary aim is to revive democracy as a whole, though of course this depends
on bolstering the hope of individual citizens also. This is especially the case
when democracy is understood in a participatory sense, relying on the
contributions, efforts, and deliberations of the individuals who compose it.
Given my focus on political life, I speak of citizens. But in an era when
defining a citizen is increasingly contentious and avenues for becoming a cit-
izen are increasingly limited, I want to be sure that I am not misunderstood.
I am not drawing the boundaries of citizenship as a legal status of where one
lives, is born, or what rights and services one is entitled to. Rather, I talk more
broadly about citizenship as a social and political identity and practices that
may not reflect one’s legal or documented status. I want to be inclusive here
because I recognize that hope is relevant for everyone and may be especially
important for those who are struggling to even be recognized or valued in
America. The task of restoring hope and reviving democracy requires an all-​
hands-​on-​deck approach, and I know that even those who may not qualify
as legal citizens can significantly shape and improve American social and
political life.
In pragmatist spirit, the account I offer in this book must attend to real
conditions—​recognizing their constraints, complexities, and possibilities.
Unfortunately, these are conditions where hope is struggling, where elem-
ents of democracy may be in jeopardy, and where the hope that is present
is largely privatized—​confined to just our personal pursuits, often for ec-
onomic or material well-​being. While I do not want to overstate current
problems in the way that citizens as a whole view democracy and its stability,
I highlight here some of the more worrisome patterns emerging among cer-
tain populations in order to uncover problematic potential trends and to
head them off with the ideas I put forward in this book.
To begin, two prominent interpreters of a recent study using the World
Values Survey and other polling sources found that democratic citizens have
“become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system,
less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more
willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives.”16 Those citizens
8 Learning How to Hope

have increasingly withdrawn from participating in formal processes of de-

mocracy, such as citizen ballot initiatives or even voting, and from activities
in the public or civil spheres, such as joining in organizations or protests.17
There has been a dramatic shift in how the wealthy view democracy, in par-
ticular, with 16% of them now believing that military rule is a better way of
living and an astounding 35% of rich young Americans holding such a view.18
Globally, after widespread growth of both liberal and electoral democra-
cies and their values in the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the
beginning of the twenty-​first, the tide has turned. “The year 2016 was the elev-
enth straight year in which countries suffering net declines in political and
civil liberties outnumbered the gainers. In nearly all these years, the losses
substantially exceeded the gains.”19 Support for democracy has receded and
support for authoritarianism has increased. Yet, roughly a quarter of people
across thirty-​eight major countries polled in 2017, including the United
States, remain committed to democracy.20 Within those countries, those
with the highest levels of education are more likely to endorse a representa-
tive democracy, while those with the least education are more likely to sup-
port a military government, including 24% of Americans with a secondary
education or less.21 Additionally, those who see the past as better than the
present are less satisfied with how democracy is working.22 When looking at
American Millennials born between 1980 and the mid-​1990s in particular,
35% say they are losing faith in democracy, with percentages even higher for
black and Hispanic Millennials.23
Critics of some interpretations of the World Values Survey and other
polling data point out that these trends may reflect mere lifecycle issues
that we’ve seen before, where younger people tend to show stronger signs
of disaffection across decades, rather than a trend toward decreasing sup-
port for democracy as a whole.24 Indeed, many of the strongest supporters of
populist-​authoritarian parties are actually older, and often, poorer, citizens.25
Many of them increasingly feel “left behind,” with unmet needs and concerns
unrecognized by mainstream political leaders.26 Some social commentators
argue that a significant portion of the American population increasingly feels
economically trapped and jealous of others (often perceived to be immigrant
or minorities) who seem to be getting some advantages that are moving them
ahead, such as lax immigration laws or affirmative action. As a result, they feel
fear, resentment, and distrust toward others, focus on looking out for them-
selves, group with those who feel similarly slighted, and seek leaders who
will reassert their position of power within society.27 While some people may
 Hope in America? 9

dismiss mere feelings, the experiences of perceiving oneself as left behind has
real consequences, including harmful actions, in our country. Regardless of
the debate around how the World Values Survey should be interpreted and
the level of alarm it raises, there are clearly issues of concern when it comes
to the hopelessness of some of our citizens and the outlook for democracy.

Leaders Fall Short and Citizens Become Passive

There are likely many factors impacting this current state of affairs, and I will
touch on just a few here. First, some recent American presidential candidates
ran on messages of hope and yet the visions evoked have often failed to be ful-
filled in reality, crushing the heightened expectations of citizens.28 Federal and
local politicians often use the rhetoric of hope, but they tend to distort what
hope really is and what it requires of citizens. Instead, they may make refer-
ence to the supposed destiny of the nation with God as its backer. Sometimes
those politicians put forward goals that aren’t sufficiently based in evidence
or reality to be feasibly achieved, don’t arise from the citizens themselves, are
not well understood by the citizens, or are not held open to revision or criti-
cism.29 Or, as in the cases of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, some citizens
place their hope in the leader himself, invoking a messianic figure who will
save the country. The promises of democracy are also coming up short. While
some people see liberal democracy as a good in itself, most celebrate it for the
freedom and prosperity it typically brings.30 When those promises are unful-
filled, some citizens begin to doubt not only the leaders but also the system.31
I will argue that, rather than passively relying on the hope promised by
politicians and being disappointed by shortcomings, citizens must participate
in shaping and fulfilling hope. Rather than hitching hope and overall support
for democracy to a leader’s fulfillment of campaign promises, this approach
makes hope more genuine and robust. It changes the nature of the game, from
spectator sport, where armchair quarterbacks bemoan the failed attempts of
others, to active participation in a team working toward goals together.

Hope for Some, But Not for Others

A second factor influencing the current state of hope and democracy is

structural violence and inequality, which is exacerbated by interpersonal
10 Learning How to Hope

and community-​based violence. Common among poor and racial mi-

nority communities in America, such injustice has wreaked havoc on
hope.32 In some cases, it has rendered hope exhausting.33 Many marginal-
ized citizens are told that they must never give up hope and that they must
keep trying to earn a better life for themselves, in part through improving
their own character regardless of the stagnant harmful practices of others.
As a result, many of those citizens are left either hopeless or perpetually
chasing a vision of justice that is out of reach, while some turn inward
to their racial, ethnic, or other local communities to engage in alterna-
tive practices that bring hope and forms of civil engagement that may not
always be recognized by dominant groups.34 Poor citizens, in particular,
sometimes get so entrenched in attending to every little economic crisis
along the way (How will I pay to fix my flat tire so I can get to work to-
morrow? How will I afford back-​to-​school supplies?) that they have nei-
ther the time, energy, or resources to plan for a better long-​term future or
for the future of our country as a whole, thereby making it hard to engage
in hope or in democracy.
These struggles take a toll on both physical and mental health. Indeed,
medical science has revealed that prolonged experiences of pain and hard-
ship amplify hopelessness by causing the body to release neurochemicals that
disable us from feeling positive.35 Within children in particular, structural
violence has been shown to cause rage, aggression, depression, and fatalism.
Those mental and physical struggles spill over into the classroom, negatively
impacting academic achievement and civic engagement.36 And children of
color commit suicide at higher rates than their white peers. Yet, black and
Hispanic adults are likely to retain a generally more optimistic outlook than
their poor white counterparts, many of whom lack cultural supports, see
few opportunities for economic advancement, and seek avenues for escape,
leading to what some have dubbed “despair deaths” through suicide and
overdose.37
While white despair deaths have become increasingly visible and ac-
knowledged across the country, especially in the midst of a rash of opioid ad-
diction, the struggles of black and Latino people are largely unacknowledged
by mainstream America. Sometimes this is because dominant people are
unaware of the struggles of those living in what African American Studies
scholar Eddie Glaude calls “opportunity deserts.” But many times, those
more powerful people insidiously ignore what is happening in those black
communities, in particular, a reflection of a long history of placing less value
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manner of ill-at-ease, I know now, was a mighty urge to get away
from that which distressed them, and to return whence they came—
into the broader, franker places.

I knew that they were “out of the West,” and this meant—of course it
did—beyond—well, beyond the Mississippi. “The West” is a general
term, and brings to mind the buffalo days, an unpolished period of a
dim past. Therefore I did not know that this one’s bailiwick contained
five troublesome barriers across a coveted valley, where men of
three different races met and snarled at each other, as they had for
nearly four hundred years; that another’s domain included six
thousand square miles of God’s most wonderful creation, having the
Marble Cañon of the Colorado for its western fence; that four States
met in a third’s territory, while a treacherous river gave it a name
and, at times, breaking the harness he had constructed, rolled its
hissing flood through his very dooryard; that grizzlies and wild turkey
tracked the solitudes of mountain parks within sight of this one’s
home; that still another had explored a dozen dead cities, lost,
forgotten, in the silence of uncharted cañons.

No. I did not meet these men in the Smithsonian offices at

Washington; nor were they lecturers before the National Geographic
Society. They were Indian Agents.

They came to Washington, hoping for additional allotments of funds

with which to construct roads and bridges, to harness torrents, build
mills and housing, equip and maintain schools, and, what is more
important, establish [5]hospitals. Their general talk was of cement
and queer machinery, when it did not turn on gasoline and blasting-
powder. They wanted things necessary to fix civilization on the last of
the frontiers.

Indian Agents! a much-maligned class of officials, although

recognized as part of the National Government since 1796, clouded
somewhat in their efforts by the memory—fact and fiction—of the
“ration” days. They might have spoken proudly of the traditions of
their Service, a Service that has had little recognition and possesses
no chronicle other than a dry-as-dust Annual Report compiled by
unknowing clerks. The reason for these officials’ existence has
produced much sound and fury. The very title seems to have
infuriated the ablest writers of the past, and still causes some of the
present to see red. When sentimentalists—and God knows the
ignorance of them is astounding—take pen in hand to picture the
fabled glories and the believed miseries of the savage, they usually
begin by attacking those very men I met and have in mind. They
forget, if indeed they have ever known, that they are privileged to
view the savage because of these men; that the miserable actualities
of the “glorious past” would long since have engulfed the idealized
protégé but for them. Indian Agents may not vie with painters and
poets; but tubes of color, Strathmore board, dreams, and rhyming
dictionaries produce small knowledge of tuberculosis, trachoma,
smallpox, measles, syphilis—scourges of the Indian people, whose
long train of evils reach grimly down through the generations of an
ignorant and devitalized race. No one feels this so keenly as the
official who daily faces the unromantic task, charged with the duty of
alleviating the miseries of the present. Unlike the Spanish explorers,
these men have no [6]historian, and but for prejudice and libel would
probably be unknown.

Yet this one had succeeded to the task Custer left unfinished among
the unrelenting, sullen Sioux; had checked a second rebellion; had
faced and quelled and buried Sitting Bull, the last of the great savage
charlatans. That one had built a city in the pines to shelter the
children of murderer Geronimo; a third had tracked and mapped a
region few civilized men had known. Now came one who had
chained a river without an appropriation; now came another who had
fought pestilence in winter, among a superstitious people, crippled by
distances and lack of transport, without sufficient health-officers, to
learn in the end that his mortality records were lower than those of
enlightened civilization. Occasionally a fancied uprising brought one
to unpleasant notice; occasionally, too, one was killed.

These unromantic facts, having no camouflage of feathers and war

paint, nothing in them of the beating of tom-toms or the chanting of
legends, do not invite a sentimental record; and, it is true, few such
things occur in the “dude season,” when sentimentality,
accompanied by its handmaiden ignorance, takes its neurasthenic
outing in the wild.

One of them, a man whose dress spoke rather of the club and office,
invited me thus:—

“Come out with me for a leave. There are deer, and trout streams,
and a hunting-lodge up in the hills.” He was the chap who claimed to
have a census of the grizzlies. “It’ll do you good, and you look as if
you needed a bit of the outside.”

I thanked him casually, and turned aside his invitation with—

“What’s this I hear about the Chief offering you an [7]inspectorship?

That would give you some travel too, and—”

“An inspectorship! Travel!” he snorted. “Why, good God, man! I am

the boss of the Switzerland of America. I wouldn’t trade my post for a
seat in the Cabinet.”

That is the way they talked, and a few of them undoubtedly meant it.

A large bulky man, with a face like a piece of granite, twisted a crude
silver ring on his finger as he extended a similar invitation in an
entirely different way. He was a slow-speaking fellow, of few words
and those of a definite, precise character.
“You’d like it,” he finished, sighing. “The Navajo country is a great
place—a great place—”

He seemed at loss for words to picture his meaning, and I know now
why language failed him.

Said a third, for whom I had unraveled the genealogy of a much

intermarried Indian family, and who was grateful:—

“Why, you’re just the lad for me. All you’ll have to do is ride fences,
armed with a hammer and a pocketful of staples” (I think he really
said “steeples,”) “—and there’s quarters for you; twelve hundred a
year too. You’ll get a lot of dope for stories. That place fairly drips
’em. What say? I can fix it with the Chief?”

After having had the courtesy to thank them one and all, I leaned
back in the swivel-chair and laughed. While they were present I
good-humoredly laughed with them, and later, at them. You see, in
the Office I was known as the Scribe, ever since that time when the
boss of Indian Territory had rushed in, mad as a hornet, waving a
copy of Harper’s Weekly, and declaring that the essential guts of an
article therein had been stolen from his confidential [8]files. And while
I had purloined them with the Chief’s permission, I realized it was a
fine thing for me not to have lived in the Indian Territory.

While I might spend odd time writing stories of heroic unwashed

cowpunchers battling Dante-nosed cayuses across the vasty early-
morning range, with the frost nipping down the alkali dust, and a
pale-rose tone on the distant range of hills, I knew also that they did
it for forty dollars the month and grub off the wheel. I was then and
am to this day aware that cowmen give little thought to either the
vasty sweep of the broad spaces or to the rose tones. And I was
perfectly able to fake the western landscape, where a man’s a man
an’ a’ that, without removing myself more than five blocks from a
café and a steak à la Bordelaise. I had placed one hundred stories in
New York, and a hundred more on the stocks, without smelling an
Indian camp or subjecting myself to the grave and anxious possibility
of getting—well, inhabited, to say the least of it. I assumed that the
dapper fellow was more of a clerk than a ranger; that the slow-
moving granite-faced individual truly reflected the somber aridity of
his monotonous desert; and the fact that the third had said “steeples”
proved to me that I could never respect him as chief.

“No!” I decided, with a grin. “The Borax mule-team couldn’t drag me

into that life.” And I too meant it.

But—I was brutally launched out of this effete complacency and

pitched into the great Navajo Desert country without disturbing a
single mule. I scrapped for money to purchase the once-despised
“critters” to enable my existence therein. And I have been proud of
my mules since.

Without seeming to be missed by those to whom I had [9]thought my

going would be tragedy, without causing a ripple among those few
with whom I found myself, the Wheel turned over, and the vast
immutable Desert received me with as much inscrutable kindness as
it offers anyone. I had prepared the chute myself, and having
greased it thoroughly, slipped and plunged down it, as has many a
better man without sliding any further than his grave.

“See the Chief, and get a berth in the West. Live out o’ doors, rough
it, live on milk and eggs, and don’t come home until I agree to it. You
are two leaps ahead of the lion, and you’ll beat him yet.”

It was the cruel frankness of friendship. I had romped the city streets
with the doctor, attended the same schools, appeared on the same
stage as promoter of histrionic wares; in short, he had been the
leader of my gang. I could recall the local excitement aroused by his
first cane, and had carried his messages to his first girl. He knew
how many times I had been thrashed, and had once turned the trick
himself. There was no need for professional bluff between us.

Next day, perhaps a trifle groggy, I got to my feet in a more

determined spirit, to prepare for the six-months’ battle. The Chief
was very kind.

“Why not take a superintendency?” he suggested. “There’s one

vacant, down in Rainbow Cañon. That’s the Grand Cañon country,
you know. Wonderful place, one of the rarest spots on earth.”

I thanked him for the confidence, knowing that Rainbow Cañon was
no place for an invalid. That Agency is nearly always vacant. New
superintendents negotiate the trail but twice—ignorantly, going in,
and wisely, [10]coming out for ever. Even sure-footed mules have
been known to miscalculate at Suicide Corner, and it is claimed that
the bones of one such beast, entangled in the wires of his last
burden,—a cottage piano,—still furnish a mystic Æolian effect when
the wind sweeps below the place where he faltered. The last
superintendent had spent forty-eight hours in a tree, evading flood-
waters that threatened to carry him on a personally conducted tour
through the Grand Cañon itself. I had arranged his relief by
telegraphing the nearest offices adjacent to his tree, a mere matter
of miles, up and down; and I had no great confidence that anyone
would so rapidly arrange mine in similar circumstances. No! Rainbow
Cañon sounded good, quite poetical, indeed; but none of it for one
who required rest and as little exercise as possible.

So, in accord with my request and at my own valuation, based on my

inexperience, I was formally transferred as a clerk to an Indian
Agency that sits astride the Santa Fe trail—the modern trail
connecting the ancient city of Santa Fe with the Pacific, along which
pioneers wended in the forties.

One week later I had left Washington to make the trek of two
thousand five hundred miles to the Painted Desert and—to me—a
most desolate siding on the banks of the Little Colorado River in
Arizona. [11]
[Contents]
II
 ACROSS THE PLAINS

Yet one could not but reflect upon the weariness of those who passed by there in old
days at the foot’s pace of oxen, painfully urging their teams, and with no landmark but
that unattainable evening sun for which they steered, and which daily fled them by an
equal stride. They had nothing, it would seem, to overtake; nothing by which to reckon
their advance; no sight for repose or encouragement; but, stage after stage, only the
dead green waste under foot and the mocking, fugitive horizon.—Stevenson: Across
the Plains

In the early days, those adventurous times when men pulled out of St. Louis of
an early morning, and the dust of a long train of wagons and outriders arose;
when they followed the Arkansas across to the Cimarron and Wagon Mound;
when they warily entered the Indian country and somehow existed through the
long dusty days and the longer nervous nights before sighting Santa Fe and
safety in a foreign land, I suppose most of them felt the extraordinary vastness
of the West. Certainly they knew its sterile immensity after a few weeks on that
perilous road. Later, when they began seeking the Coast and the Pacific, leaving
Santa Fe to plunge down La Bajada trail to follow the valley of the Rio Grande,
to skirt the fields of the mysterious Pueblos, to risk thirst and ambush in the arid
lands of the Navajo and Apache, to dare the flooded rivers and that brazen
furnace, the Mohave Desert, all to reach the painted paradise of golden
California, they surely became alive to the wonderful expanse of [12]that
southwestern empire first called New Spain—the Land of the Conquistadores!

A magic stage having magic scenes, bathed in glorious sunshine; a place of

enchantment, where the rainbow colors linger on the cliffs and never leave the
skies; an ancient garden of the gods, dreamily expecting that the gods will yet
return; presenting ever its sphinx-like riddle; promising everything and yielding
nothing but its lure. Once you have felt its sorcery, the spell is never broken.

Speaks the old-timer, “The Desert’ll get yeh”; and he doesn’t add anything about
watching-out. The pioneers eluded or fought off wandering war-parties, but the
Desert got them nevertheless.
 WALPI, THE PUEBLO OF THE CLOUDS

THE VALLEY AND ITS HEADLANDS

There is one point in Arizona where, between the Santa Fe Railway and central
Utah, three hundred miles as the crow flies and a weary five hundred by the
trails, there is nothing of civilization other than a few isolated trading-posts and a
solitary Indian Agency, set in a terraced cañon, eighty miles from a telegraph
key. As my train passed this point in 1910, I did not dream that for more than
eight years I should direct that Indian Agency and its chain of scattered desert
stations, supplying all of progress that the country had, maintaining all of law
and order that its half-wild people knew, isolated, lonely, well-nigh forgotten.

Only one who has lived thus removed from the turmoil and petty vanity of cities,
apart from careless crowds, unreached by artificiality, can fully realize the
brooding mystery, the savage beauty, the power and cruelty of the Desert. One
must penetrate its solitudes, stand atop the world to view dead or enchanted
cities, pause on the naked brink of chasms leaning over faery valleys, to know
[13]the grandeur of this silent country. One must grow weary on its heavy trails,
feel its hunger, shrink in its bitter cold, and thirst for the water of the precious
hidden springs. Fairly to hear its ominous hush at blazing noon-time, to view the
scarlet glory of its sunsets, to stand under its velvet dome at night, lighted by the
burning stars, is to have caught a secret from the universe. To have watched
Orion’s flaming signal through that crystal atmosphere, to have loved the placid
jewels of the Pleiades, is to have received the Desert’s blessing, which is
contentment—if not peace. One must spend whole days crossing its sun-baked
emptiness, carry-on through the chill of twilight, feel the menace of its dark, and
see its wondrous moon burst from black cedars on a mesa edge. One must
have known the sigh of the night wind in the brush, heard the chatter of jackals
in the snow, felt the sandstorm’s acid lash, and stopped, spellbound, at the
sibilant warning of its gliding Indian god. Then to have seen the drifting red-
bellied rain-clouds that the Snake priests pray for, the crisp rending lightning at
their pouches, the wild strength of arroyos after cloud-bursts, and the deluge of
the swift midsummer rains, ending in the soft radiance of double rainbows! One
must live as a hermit in the Desert to find its heart.

And only one who has done this may somehow feebly understand those
bronzed people of whom the desert genii have made fatalists—the solemn,
dreaming Indian of the waste lands, whether the Hopi of the mesa heights and
kivas, the Pueblo in his mediæval towns, or the Navajo, chanting in his lonely,
hidden camp. These know all the splendors, feel all the menace and the
mystery, and call the Desert home. Timid, yet uncaring, ever bent on placating
some unseen demon, trusting in songs [14]and sorceries, they go their Oriental
ways on a vast Occidental stage. The desert spell has touched them, every one.

That which is normal elsewhere cannot find its kindred in the Desert. Here the
scale was made by giants. Nothing is small save those who enter it without
respect. Left to it, crumbling, dust-covered, ancient, are the massive properties
of splendid prehistoric plays. Its geology, a mosaic of the mesas, an open book
in the shattered cañons, speaks of the twilight before Babylon. The shepherds
on Chaldean hills were like its people of to-day. In this land, so strangely similar
to His, one thinks of Christ in Judæa, at a time when cliff-dwellers, curious half-
human pygmies, fought over this unknown continent and honeycombed its
enormous cañon walls, as unmindful of their Divine contemporary as their
descendants are. Here one may view the remnants of a civilization still in
decadent being, clinging to the pueblos that have little changed since the
thirteenth century, when Genghis Khan dominated their Mongol brothers, and
rude gentlemen of England gathered at Runnymede to sign the Charter, the
spirit of which now rules them too.

One comes, like Crusoe, upon historic footprints, younger signs,—not quite four
hundred years old,—the first white man’s record in the valley of the Rio Grande,
and may trace them across the Desert and through the cañons to the Crossing
of the Fathers. The dramatic entry of the Spanish marks a page as colorful and
as stirring as any in history. Seeking new lands and treasure, they came from
the South. One can picture their departure from Compostela in February 1540, a
long train of adventurers making a new crusade. Romancists and friars,
mercenaries, captains, Spanish braves. At their [15]head, the great Conquistador.
Swords and crosses beat against the savage desert shields; litanies sounded
above the savage desert chants. Their gestures were of bravado, yet upon their
lips were the Ave and the Sanctus. They struggled for a legend, found Cibola but
a fable, yet were not discouraged. Supermen these, not to have feared the
desert gods, not to have quailed before the sinister welcome of the empty desert
spaces. From the Sangre de Christos to that awesome Cañon of the West they
marched and countermarched, they prayed and fought, leaving their record
deep in great El Morro, on the King’s Road to Acoma.

Then the days of the Mission Fathers; the revolt of 1680; the massacre of the
padres; the red calendar of the now drowsy pueblos along the Rio Grande. After
that, a long silence in the Desert, broken only by sound of tom-toms and wild
exultant chants, until the coming of De Vargas to reclaim this empire for his king.
Then the Mission bells were hung, those very bells that sound at Acoma and
San Felipe to this day.

But De Vargas waived the kingdom of the Farther West. Until the treaty with the
Navajo in 1868, little more than solitude or bitter foray touched the heart of the
Enchanted Empire of which I write. Three hundred years of Spanish steel and
ritual were drifted down into sand and silence. One marks this chapter but a
desert dream. Later civilization and progress moved north and south around it.
The building of the frontier posts assured a pathway to the Coast and nothing
more. “Fort Defiance” explains this desert challenge. And while the great Civil
War was crashing in the East, Kit Carson made his desert raids, carried ruthless
war into the cañon strongholds, to break the nomads who, desert-trained, keep
their secrets still. [16]

To have been thrust, a sickly tenderfoot, into this environment, to have observed
the aftermath of these periods, to have known the desert people intimately, to
have followed Coronado’s trails, and to have had in charge quite nearly all that
Spain controlled in 1600, perhaps will serve as a reason for this notebook.

Just as the early Spanish found it necessary to dominate and rule this kingdom
of the Desert clans, so do the Indian Agents who govern it to-day. A Government
post here, another one hundred miles away, mark all of civilization that one can
find, held against the obliterating fingers of the hungry, unchanging Desert. Here
is the last frontier, an area of fifty thousand square miles, having fifty thousand
Indian inhabitants and few indeed of other men.

For the most part the native people are pagan barbarians, having savage
customs, jealously guarding their secret mysteries, slow to obey, but quick to
resent interference, feeling all the power of their isolation.
 A NAVAJO FLOCK AND ITS SHEPHERDS

CAÑON DE CHELLY, SEEN FROM THE RIM

Where the Navajo retreated before Kit Carson in 1863. The earliest records mention it as a
Navajo stronghold. The cliff-dwellers held it before them. There are places where its rock walls
tower 1000 feet.

As late as 1911 a troop of United States cavalry was breaking camp at a point in
Keams Cañon, of the Moqui Reservation, not a mile from where Kit Carson, with
his New Mexican volunteers, made his camp in August 1863, during that famous
march to Cañon de Chelly. Ostensibly this modern troop had acted as an escort
to another famous Colonel of the older frontier Army—that gentleman who has
out-talked so many Indian tribes, with his sign-weaving fingers if his words
sound strange to them, with men of the plainest diction when all else fails.
Actually it had served as a show of force, trooping in frontier fashion against a
band of unreconstructed rebels of the hills. A bloodless campaign of thirty days
was ending. Washington orders, irrevocable, called to other troubles on the
[17]Border. The support lent to the Indian Agent, still a pallid tenderfoot, was
about to be withdrawn. He ventured to remark that the serenity of the moment
might be followed by untoward proceedings, once the uncombed native learned
that the soldiers had departed. He asked for military advice, knowing full well
that he would get no civil consolation.

Until then there had been a great show of tactful diplomacy between the two
Governmental representatives; the one of war counseling peace, and the
supposed civilian who had ventured close to war. The Colonel spoke, for the first
time without regard to the gentle traditions of the Interior Department:—

“Young man! you have an empire to control. Either rule it, or pack your trunk!”

And there is another reason for the telling. Probably no other section of Indian
country is more visited than is the Painted Desert, where the Snake gods have
such influence. From June to October comes a host, packing cameras and
notebooks and sketching-blocks, attired in weird garments, big with questions,
and expecting to find hotels. Most of them wish to rough it smoothly, and are
easily annoyed. They seek the natural wonders of the Empire, and especially
the religious “dances” of the Indian people, chief of which is the annual Hopi
Snake Dance. A strange crowd, having more of enthusiasm than sense,
staggering under theories, swelled with importance and criticism, generously
stuffed by guides.

A library has been written and vocabularies have been exhausted in their efforts
to explain the beauties and the thrills. Canvas sufficient to tent a city has been
spoiled by those who would capture the delicate and elusive Desert charm.
Historians and ethnologists have recorded [18]and traced; antiquaries have
uncovered and restored. The museums of the East are filled with looted
treasure, while the files at Washington drip complaints. (“Oblige me by referring
to the files.”) And the Indian as a savage—and a little-understood savage at that
—has been idealized. And those who do not observe this view—berated.

But not a word has been printed, and few spoken without a sneer, regarding
those of the United States Indian Service who keep watch and ward in the
remote places: those who govern and protect, educate and guide; those who
have kept the Indian living, that he may be sketched and analyzed and gaped at.
This work extends beyond the dude season, through the lonely, bitter winters,
embracing at times contagion-camps among an unreasoning, often
unappreciative, and occasionally defiant population.

To further education among those who do not want it, to advance medication
among fatalists, to attain some show of morals among an insensible and
unmoral people, to demand respect and win affection from suspicious aliens, to
rule absolutely without an army, and, above all, to keep sane and just without
society, call for all of any man’s ingenuity and resourcefulness, and should
arouse something other than blatant criticism from those who boast intelligence.
Having accomplished these things, every one, I am proud of the record; and I
shall not fail to acknowledge my full indebtedness to those faithful men and
women of the Service who made my efforts possible of success—employees,
traders, missioners, not forgetting those few from among the heathen who gave
their loyalty and confidence. They too have felt the sneers and insults of the
multitude; and the grudging appreciation of an equally [19]insensible Bureau
nearly three thousand miles away is small reward. Many valued employees have
grown old in this Service without a syllable of commendation from Washington.
And I have prompted at least one Commissioner of Indian Affairs to
acknowledge his feeble debt to a dying physician—dying on his feet, still nobly
making the rounds.

When I left Washington, in 1910, I had no idea that such a future work would
extend my little vacation into the years. Six months out o’ doors, and either I
should be reëstablished at the old stand, pounding the old typewriter, or I should
have attended a ceremony that is final but not interesting to the subject thereof.
A simple calendar; not the first, however, to stand revision.

Morning brought Chicago, to me a grim and sinister city, and a day spent in its
galleries and clubs; then the train again, and its long crawl across level, heated
Kansas. Excellent living on a diner, and came the thought that wherever this
railroad wended would follow good food, which I required, and service of the
best. Vain and soon-to-be-exploded vision! The railroad carries food and service;
the West sees it go by. In the Desert one has desert fare.

The contrast was outside the windows; on the third morning this contrast
became acute. Instead of hamlets, farms, and country lanes, there was now the
grayish-green of the sage, broken by stunted cedars on the slopes, with an
overtone of brown as the soil reflected light. There was no indication of complete
aridity, so one could not think of this as a desert. Scant vegetation lived from the
brush of the foreground to the timbered blue of the distant ranges. They did not
appear as lofty mountains, although [20]many peaks lifted against a calm blue
sky. Beyond the little telegraph points, the occasional adobes of section crews,
and water tanks, the landscape held not a sign of habitation. In the middle
distance were strange formations of crumbling shale, banded with the spectral
white of gypsum: queer piles such as might have been designed by some
sardonic humorist. Now straying cattle, gaunt as the hills, blanket Indians idling
at a station, or a ranger on a shabby mount, were the only things of life. Over all
the golden haze of New Mexico, moistened by the mists of the Rio Grande.

But later in the day this blue-toned view began to change. The sky grew clearer,
the distance more intimate and revealing. Everything snapped into the brilliancy
of sharp relief. Where had been isolated buttes, now ran barricades of rock,
wind-worn, pinnacled, and domed, while the cold tones—blue and silver—of the
river country warmed to the dry saffrons and parched reds of sun-baked Arizona,
the Land of Little Rain. One could, as the old-timer sings, “see farther and see
less” than on any other stage of the world.

Just at sunset the train slowed into a weather-browned, dust-covered town, its
main street along the tracks and little else in sight. It was Sunday and the
season of the wind. A swirling fog screened everything as the cars stopped.
There is nothing more forlorn than a Southwest town of a Sunday in the windy
season. A long rank of stores and saloons displayed false fronts, innocent of
paint. A few starved trees waved crippled branches, and were most piteous.
Flapping awnings, flying leaves, waste paper, sand, and cinders filled the air.
When the wind ceased howling for a moment, there fell a deadly silence. It
seemed to me as if that place must have been as it was [21]for a thousand years,
drowsing in the red-gold sunset, abandoned, overlaid by the itinerant dust of all
the ages. A clatter of hoofs, a shot, a crash of glass, and a man or two by
Remington would have completed the picture.

A little to the north of it was Poverty Flat. To the east was the drying bed of the
Little Colorado, a mile in width, lined by withered cottonwoods, and possessing
scarcely enough liquid to demand a foot-bridge. In the west, a thing of splendor,
reared the beautiful San Francisco range, snow-crowned, radiant, the sun
searing down into its ancient craters. Elsewhere, everywhere, stretched the
Desert, sterile, barren, robing now in the purplish-brown shades of early dusk. Its
unlimited expanse, silent, desolate, suggested something of foreboding,
something of waiting menace.

Thank God! there was one of those splendid railroad hotels at hand. I hurried
into it, a little of civilization such as I knew, glad to shut out the night that
advanced across that empty plain, swallowing as it came the masses of the
Moqui Buttes and all the strange upland country that a year later I was to call
home. [22]
[Contents]
III