El Tovar

“ At last the Colorado River is reached, and we are but two thousand four hundred and thirty-six feet above the sea. El Tovar, above, is six thousand eight hundred and sixty-six feet, and we have thus descended four thousand four hundred and thirty feet, nearly a mile, from rim to river. And what a river it is! No one can form any idea of it, unless he stands on the very brink, almost deafened by the sound of its sullen roar and turbulent rapids. It is hungry, insatiable, murderous, cruel. Many a foolish mortal has had the breath dashed from his body by these powerful waves. ”

“ After the conquest of Cibola, or Zuni, Tovar was dispatched by Coronado to locate the seven cities of the Mohoqui. Notwithstanding the fighting in the Zuni provinces, [103] the coming of pale men who rode strange animals and carried sticks that discharged lightning, it would appear that the Hopi knew nothing of these happenings. Tovar, leading a company of cavalry and footmen, crossed into their country without discovery, and encamped one night before a Hopi pueblo. It is recorded that they approached close enough to hear the people talking in their homes. Morning revealed the Spanish spears. ”

“ Good fellowship perhaps best expresses the motto of El Tovar.
The hotel contains more than a hundred bedrooms. Ample accommodations are provided for two hundred and fifty guests, and more can be comfortably housed in the annex, at Bright Angel Camp. Outside are porches and roof gardens, from which one has wide views in every direction. The inside finish is mainly of peeled slabs, wood in the rough, and tinted plaster, interspersed with huge wooden beams. ”

“ They got back to the town, leaving seventeen soldiers dead from the poison. They would die in agony from only a small wound, the bodies breaking out with an insupportable pestilential stench. When Don Pedro de Tovar saw the harm done, and as it seemed to them that they could not safely stay in that city, he moved forty leagues toward Cibola into the valley of Suya, [399] where we will leave them, in order to relate what happened to the general and his army after the siege of Tiguex. ”

“ Nowadays entrances are provided on the ground floor, and this house at El Tovar follows the modern custom, as well as the later innovation (which of course is essential in this building) of using glass for windows. For convenience and safety, another anachronism is tolerated in the electric light. In practically everything else, the building is a true model of a Hopi community house. With these people, the women are generally and mainly the builders of the houses, the men merely assisting in the heavier work. ”

“ Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last party of whites, to visit this profitless locality." Yet Ives enjoyed the Canyon, and wrote some truly eloquent descriptions of it. How surprised he would be could he come back now, approach it from the north, cross the river in a steel cage, and find at El Tovar such an hotel as even the city of Washington never surpassed in Ives's day. Then, taking the Grand Canyon Railway, he could speed to Williams, and in twenty-four hours reach the Pacific, or in four days the Atlantic. We march forward with great strides in these days. ”

“ He reaches the plateau, studies for a while the unique coloring of the Algonkian strata just above the Granite Gorge, and sees where the faulting has raised them above the Tonto sandstones. Then, steadily looking upward, he rides forward, climbing slowly but surely to the peaks above. Tired though he is, he feels a constant thrill of satisfaction as he rises higher and higher, and when, at last, his animal lifts him to the level of El Tovar, and he stands once more in his room at the hotel, he feels an exaltation vouchsafed only to those who have dared and done an unusual thing. ”

“ These do not exist on the rim, and, strange to say, the pines which abound there are never found on the trail. One will generally hear the sweet descending "pipe" of the canyon wren, and the harsh scolding of the blue-winged pinion jay. Hawks, owls, mocking-birds and robins are often seen. Butterflies, moths, and humming-birds wing their way to and fro and give a delicate touch of life to the stern rocky features. Time was when the visitor at El Tovar who went down the trail to the river might have seen mountain sheep, bear, deer, antelopes and coyotes. ”

“ English and German travelers come next in earnest study and observation. I am sorry to say that all foreigners seemed to show more intelligent interest in the Canyon than our own native Americans. Perhaps that is because only the more educated and intellectual foreigners are able to make the trip across the ocean. Lots of Americans never get farther than El Tovar, where they occupy easy chairs, leaving them several times a day to array themselves in still more gorgeous raiment. ”

“ Under this incentive it fell to Juan de Tobar, a Jesuit, and to Diego Duran, a Dominican, to be early associated with the resuscitation of the ancient history of the country.
To Father Tobar (or Tovar) we owe what is known as the Codex Ramirez, which in the edition of the Crónica Mexicana [868] by Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc, issued in Mexico (1878) , with annotations by Orozco y Berra, is called a Relacion del origen de los Indios que habitan esta nueva España segun sus historias (José M. Vigil, editor) . ”

“ To see the Navaho in the Hopi House making silverware, or watch his wife weaving blankets, is one thing. To see him on his native heath in the heart of the Painted Desert—is another. With the conveniences of travel now made possible by the excellent equipments of the El Tovar transportation department, any visitor who is not afraid of a strenuous trip may now visit these people with the minimum of discomfort. Indeed, the Navahos and Hopis may be seen together, on the one excursion described in an earlier chapter. The Navahos are the warlike nomads of the desert. ”

“ An Indian brave of the Supai tribe can have as many wives as he can buy according to the tribal law. But since there is only about one squaw to every three braves, a man is lucky to have any wife, and divorce is rare. When two or more braves center their affections on one fair damsel, things are likely to happen. But three Indian judges solemnly sit in council and settle the question. Their solution is usually final, although two or three disgruntled braves have journeyed to our home at El Tovar sixty miles away to appeal to White Mountain for aid. ”

“ It is said that ants excavating far beneath the surface bring these semi-precious stones to the top. Others contend that they are not found underneath the ground but are brought by the ants from somewhere near the nest because their glitter attracts the ant. True or false, the story results in every anthill being carefully searched.
Virginia's visit was drawing to a close, and White Mountain and I decided to announce our engagement while she was still with us. We gave a dinner at El Tovar, with the rangers and our closest friends present. ”

“ Else I walk far in the rear—alone.”
“As you like,” answered Alcantara. “There will be two other women along—Maria, who goes with one of my coroneles, and La Negrita, the woman of the black general, Pedro Tovar. You may march with them.” ”

“ The General had sent Don Pedro de Tovar to these villages with seventeen horsemen, and three or four foot soldiers..Juan de Padilla, a Franciscan friar, who had been a fighting man in his youth, went with them. When they reached the region, they entered the country so quietly that nobody observed them, because there were no settlements or farms between one village and another and the people do not leave the villages except to go to their farms, especially at this time, when they had heard that Cibola had been captured by very fierce people, who traveled on animals who ate people. ”

“ Of how Don Pedro de Tovar discovered Tusayan or Tutahaco [368] and Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas saw the Firebrand River, and the other things that had happened.
While the things already described were taking place, Cibola being at peace, the general, Francisco Vazquez, found out from the people of the province about the provinces that lay around it, and got them to tell their friends and neighbors that Christians had come into the country, whose only desire was to be their friends, and to find out about good lands to live in, and for them to come to see the strangers and talk with them. ”

“ Out of them tumbled some sixty soldiers, the heavy-set Pablo Montilla commanding. Alcantara saluted silently and made off with two-thirds of his own men straight along the track toward a railroad bridge in the town. As quietly, Tovar took the remaining third, joined Montilla, and started toward a second bridge, which crossed the Rio Curiepe at the main street. The train backed. The ammunition-mules [340] and -burros were held close to the track, where stayed Maria and the other woman. But Manuelita, marking which way the men of Rio Chico had gone, ran after, and fell in behind them. ”

“ The Grand Cañon of the Colorado was once, in the minds of white men, an Indian fable. It exists to-day. It is now familiar ground. Getting there is an easy, quite luxurious journey, if one has the money. The Santa Fe Railway system has removed all the one-time misery and terror of the desert route to it. The hostile tribes, the sun and thirst that plagued Don Pedro de Tovar and Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas in 1540, when given leave to discover what truth was in the Cibola stories, have been subdued by engineers and steam. ”

“ S. Filippe de Benguella was founded in 1617 by Manuel Cerveira Pereira, and in 1661 its fortifications were rebuilt by Gaspar de Almeida Silva, whilst Manuel de Tovar Froes fought the neighbouring sobas. A further step in advance was taken in 1682, when the sergeant-major, Pedro da Silva, founded the presidio of Kakonda a velha, in the territory of the soba Bongo. Two years later, in 1684, this presidio was surprised by Bongo, and Manuel da Rocha Soares, its commandant, was killed. ”

“ Bernardin de Tobar is less known, but Peter Martyr d'Angleria mentions him among the learned men of the sixteenth century, and John Louis Vives, a learned man of that age, says, in writing to Erasmus: "We live in a difficult time; it is dangerous either to speak or be silent; Vergara, his brother Bernardin de Tobar, and several other learned men, have been arrested in Spain [7] ."
Among this number was one of whom Vives could not give a particular account. I speak of Alphonso Virues, a Benedictine, born at Olmedo, and one of the best theologians of his time. ”

“ Toluca is one of the more vigorous of the growing cities of the republic. It is a community of some twenty-five thousand people, the capital of the State of Mexico, and lies one thousand feet higher in the air than Mexico City. It is near the center of a fertile valley, forty or fifty miles in length, and ten to twenty broad, while ten miles to the southwest towers the snow-capped Volcano de Toluca, lifting its gleaming cone fifteen thousand feet into the heavens, its melting snows giving an abundant supply of pure water to the town. ”

“ Instead, their practice is the very opposite, as shown by their keeping numbers of slaves. Of these they have hundreds, most of them being Indians of other tribes, their enemies, whom they have made captive in battle. But to the Tovas master it signifies little what be the colour of his bondman’s skin, whether white or red; and many of the former, women as well as men, may be seen doing drudgery in this same Sacred town—its hewers of wood and drawers of water. These are also captives, the spoil of predatory incursions across the Salado into the settlements of Santiago, Salto, and Tucuman. ”

“ And for two reasons: one, because ever since taking up his abode in the Chaco, under the protection of Naraguana, he has enjoyed perfect security, as also the consciousness of it. Therefore, why should he be alarmed now? As a second reason for his not feeling so, an encounter with men, in the mood of those to whom he is listening, could hardly be deemed dangerous. It may be but the Tovas chief and his people, on return to the town they had abandoned; and, in all likelihood, it is they. ”

“ The story of the coming of the Arundells of Tolverne to their small manor of Truthual, in the parish of Sithney, is full of the flavour of ancient romance. It was at the time that the world was still dreaming of the land of El Dorado. The spoils of Mexico and Peru brought home by the Spaniards had profoundly moved the imaginations of all adventurous souls. Sir Thomas Arundell, of Tolverne, had listened to the tales of home-coming [54] adventurers of a [Pg 117] marvellous island on the coast of America, called Old Brazil, where untold wealth lay ready as spoil for the brave and stout-hearted. ”

“ With much joy we stepped into the diligence early yesterday morning, accompanied by the commandant of Toluca, and retraced our road to Mexico; for though Toluca is a fine city, with clean, airy houses, wide, well-paved streets, and picturesque in its situation, there is something sad and deserted in its appearance, an air of stagnation that weighs upon the spirits; and the specimens we have seen of its lower orders are not inviting. We had rather an agreeable journey, as the day was cool, and we had the diligence to ourselves. ”

“ Then go when night falls upon the city to some such vantage-point as the Puerta del Cambón, where beneath the dome of the evening sky you will see Toledo, heaped roof against roof, tower against tower. You will forget the strangeness of the picture’s statement, as you come to see that it is just this effect that El Greco has caught. Now you will recognise the reality of those bluish whites, those tones of green that surprised you, and, in gladness, you will yield to the truth, the beauty—are not the two the same?—of the painter’s vision, and avow how much he has taught you to see. ”