File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (18133695826).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo13amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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When the snakes have all been carried in the dance, a large circle is marked on the ground with the sacred cornmeal, six radii are drawn representing the sacred dimensions, north, west, south, east, up and down. The snakes are then thrown into the circle and sprinkled with cornmeal Sagebrush which may cover practically all the ground is a beautiful foil for the luminous sand and delicate sky. Mesas rise out of the plains like great eroded monuments, turrets and towers. Imagination is lame in picturing shapes as varied and weird as Nature puts into her rock formations. Pin- nacles rise before a flat smooth mass of rock streaked with delicate hori- zontal lines. Erosion turns a spur of rock into a beautiful spindle or leaves a tracery of lace across the hills. It etches, slashes and undermines, tumbling boulders down to lie exposed for centuries and finally to be swallowed up by the sand. The shadow of the first mesa glides across the plain changing the gray green sagebrush to olive and rests at the foot of the nearer purple mesa, orange-tipped by the setting sun. The day dies while yonder square- topped mesa glows like molten iron, deeper red and deeper until strain- ing eyes question whether its color is entirely gone. The stars come out brilliantly in a moonlit sky. The artist spreads his blanket on the ground and lies for hours enjoying an Arizona night as wonderful as an Arizona day. All is quiet except for the baying of a mongrel dog; or perhaps a belated worker in the fields sings a weird song off on the distant plain, draws nearer, passes, the voice stilled as he refreshes himself at the spring, then continues the song as he goes up the mesa to his home, a pueblo in the clouds. These people, adjusted so perfectly to their surroundings, furnish for the 124

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