* Gila River
†
* Bryce Canyon, present-day southern Utah.
* More properly, the Sanpet, distant members of the Ute family.
* Today’s Virgin River in far northwestern Arizona, named for fur trapper Thomas Virgin, who served on Jedediah Smith’s ill-fated second “Southwest Expedition” to the Pacific coast in 1827.
† The mountain man’s distinctive and phonetic name for the Mojave Indians.
* Black Canyon of the Colorado.
* Near the pinnacles now called “The Needles.”
8
Their hosts actually lived on both sides of the Colorado. Three other villages stood across the muddy river. No sooner had the pale-skinned visitors shown up than the inhabitants of the other towns began to noisily cross the roiling current on flimsy rafts constructed of reeds lashed together with a fibrous rope. These white strangers were nothing less than a curious spectacle. Never before had the Mojave seen many outsiders pass through their country.
These were a strong, athletic people. Part of the Yuman family, they had a reputation for being fierce and aggressive warriors. For generations beyond count, the Mojave men had practiced extensive body tattooing using strong plant dyes—red, blue, and even white, to adorn their swarthy skins with potent symbols. Most of the men wore only a short, reed breechclout, and all went barefoot, using no moccasins of any description. When off on a rare hunt that would keep them away from their village for several days, most men wore nothing at all.
It was the custom of the women to wear nothing more than a short reed skirt around their hips. All that exposed flesh of breast and leg only served to entice the Americans into offering a handful of buttons or a yard of simple cotton ribbon in exchange for a few minutes of heated coupling behind one of the squat huts.
From the way the headmen instructed their most alluring young women to post themselves around the periphery of the trappers’ camp that afternoon, Titus figured the Mojave were not only eager to trade for some of the strangers’ goods but also exceedingly anxious to have white bloodlines mingle with theirs for generations to come.
These simple people lived in small, four-sided log-and-mud shelters, a crude roof of thatched brush over which the Mojave tossed sand for added insulation from the heat. For a tribe not prone to do much hunting that would have to take them far from this canyon of the Colorado, it was an uncomplicated life. Instead, the staple of their diet was the salmon they speared or caught in fibrous nets. Too, the Mojave cultivated extensive gardens of beans and corn, water- and muskmelon, and even some cotton. A mainstay was their wheat, which they stored in tall, upright, cylindrical granaries with flat tops, until they were ready to grind their wheat into flour.
While the men did not often hunt, the Mojave did nonetheless relish horsemeat. Rather than using equine animals for transport from place to place, these Colorado River Indians instead caught, raised, and even stole horses simply to eat. Much easier, Bass thought, than walking out of this valley to search the surrounding desert for a few scrawny rabbits or tortoises.
Here after their long, torturous ride through a barren, desolate canyon country devoid of game or good water, a trackless desert waste fit only for the likes of lizards, cactus, and spiny toads … why, to Titus Bass this fertile, green valley where these dark-skinned people raised their horses and cultivated a variety of crops seemed like a veritable Eden.
Late in the afternoon while the trappers were stoking their supper fires, eight of the Mojave men left their village, heading for the white man’s camp. But just short of the trappers, those eight stopped and dropped armloads of wood onto the grass. While a half dozen of the men turned on their heels and made for the village once again, two of them began to sort through the wood, selecting a few lengths of timber. For the next few hours Bass watched the men erect a small scaffold from the wood those six others continued to deposit near the white man’s camp, lashing the timber together with a fibrous rope the Mojave women braided from rushes and reeds. Beneath the low, upright braces, the men piled smaller brush and limbs. But it wasn’t until long after supper that he learned the purpose of that empty scaffold.
As soon as the sun had passed behind the far western wall of the canyon, the entire valley was thrown into shadow. With supper finished and the air cooling, most of the trappers sallied off from the fires, headed for the village and those young women who waited just close enough to the white men to make their willingness known. Everyone from their mess had departed for the village and a long-overdue coupling except for Bass and Roscoe Coltrane. They sat smoking their clay pipes, staring at the flames or the newly emerging stars. Twilight was already smearing the shadows into night when they heard the approach of many feet.
Both trappers turned to find more than fifty of the Mojave headed their way. At the van of their march, four men carried a long form on their shoulders. Behind the quartet walked two women holding torches that sputtered, licking at the evening breeze. Stopping beside the scaffold, the four hoisted the body atop the low platform. As they stepped back, the two women came forward, accompanied by a lone man who now recited a long, mournful dissertation.
“I s’pose they’re praying,” Bass whispered to Coltrane.
Roscoe nodded, but uttered not a word.
With a wave of his hand, the Mojave shaman inched back, gestured, and gave the order to the two women. They leaned forward on either side of the scaffold and jammed their torches into the thick nest of driftwood and dried grass stuffed beneath the body. A quiet, eerie chant began as the flames caught hold, an off-key dirge that grew in volume as the fire grew hotter, leaped higher, licking all around the deceased, beginning to consume him.
“Ever you know any folks what burn their dead?” Bass asked of Coltrane.
Captivated, Roscoe never took his eyes off the ceremony, his face illuminated with the dancing light from those flickering flames as he shook his head.
“Me neither,” Bass replied.
He watched as one Mojave after another stepped from the crowd, carrying a few meager items in their hands. A woman carried a bow. Another female had some crude fibrous clothing draped over her arm. A young man raised aloft a club for all to see, while a young girl moved forward carrying a short spear in both hands.
Titus said, “I figger they’re gonna burn ever’thing that man had to his name. Like some of the Injuns in the mountains give away all a man has after he’s dead.”
The shaman continued to reel off more of his foreign and mystical words, then paused before he gave the order. The individuals who held those few meager belongings now tossed them atop the body being consumed by flame, then every one of them quickly shrank back from the great heat the funeral pyre generated. Its growing light reflected off the striated orange and reddish-brown canyon walls as exploding fireflies of sparks spiraled skyward from the river valley.
As the scaffold collapsed and the flames began to recede, members of the dead man’s family retrieved a few burning limbs from the fire and set off behind the shaman when he started the crowd back for the village. The group stopped at one of the huts, where the family came forward together, setting the dry walls aflame with those faggots carried from the funeral pyre.
“Almost like he never lived,” Bass whispered morosely. He saw Coltrane wag his head sadly, then turned again to watch the flames greedily lick away at the brush and log shelter. “Rubbing out ever’ sign he ever was. Ever’thing he ever had is gone in less’n a goddamned night. Not a single trace that fella was ever around … ’cept for his kin still breathin’.”
As the bonfire died and many of the village finished obliterating almost every clue of a man’s existence among them, night deepened in the valley of the Colorado while most of the white men cavorted with the willing young women of the Mojave.
After brooding on it there in the fire-lit darkness beside that silent man, Scratch finally admitted, “I s’pose that’s just about all there’ll be for any of us, Roscoe. Things come an’ things go, and when we die we don’t need ’em no more. Maybe burning all his plunder’s a fair notion of things. Older a man gets, he finds out such foofaraw
