September 4

[Letterhead]

[Graphic of Hotel La Fonda]

LA FONDA
THE HARVEY COMPANY
SANTA FE NEW MEXICO

Dearest Frieda,
I’ve started four letters to
you which all got very long before futility over-
came me and I threw them away. You couldn’t have
read them, I guess, and I hope type will solve the
trouble. This is a bad little portable machine, like
a Ford, and it stalls every time I get going. But I
have to use it because my hands are much lamed from
driving days and days over the Arizona roads which
might have been designed to provide evry obstacle
known to cars.

I’ve got every available bit of news con-
cerning you since you left New York, but its not
much satisfaction, and I long to know everything.

Its too long since I’ve seen you, and I want very
much to stop in Detroit on my way home, if you are
still there, which seems likely. I hope so! I even
had my railroad ticket routed that way. I expect to
be here a few weeks more. Please write me here as
soon as you can, and tell me a few things, and par-
ticularly how much longer you think you’ll be there
and what you are likely to do next. I think it
would be very good for you to go to Mexico and
refresh your soul, I suppose Diego could get along
all right even there. In my mind it is a precipitous
waste of dead concrete beside a lake so dull it
might have been the creation of the city itself, and
surrounded by an unkempt underbrush of suburbs which
already look like toys of which a child has become tired.

And that the paralysis of its one acitivity, too
feverish and too monotonous to be called life, has
made it even more sterile, bloodless, and chilling to
the heart. Of course not even Detroit could be
that bad.

You will ultimately see this, almost every-

one does, but how I wish you were here now. Its my
first visit, and I’d be glad to stay forever. There
can’t be any other place in the least like it. It has
a feeling of age, and the sense of solidity that goes
with it, which only a handful of cities in this country
have. But it is actually in a wilderness which will
probably always be one, because the soil is unfriendly
to man and can hardly be persuaded to grow anything.

There is no railroad, and the roads in every direction
vary from uncomfortable to dangerous to impassable –
except for a few weeks in the year. The near landscape
is good and contenting, but quiet. Further out, it is
mountainous desert of mystery and fascination which
if they once get you, keep you. There are occaisionial
haphazard towns, hasty mining and oil towns, mostly
thrown together on a single street with the post office
the store, and the gas station, perhaps a blistering
hot auto campor a half-hearted hotel. Then of course
there are the Pueblos, staunch and changeless on their
hills. As to this place; it is mostly an adaptation of
pueblo architecture, to be seen nowhere else. The
adobe is thick and rounded, it looks somewhat like clay
before it is fired, and as if it might melt. There are
almost no straight lines, but somehow it is substantial
the nicest thing about it I think are the unpainted
wooden beams, which pierce the walls and turn silvery
with age. There is of course a large Mexican element,
old as the city, which adds gaiety and casualness and
much color to the atmosphere. Then there is Western
still direct and independent, hard, cordial, keen
and shrewd, the human type I have always preferred to
all others; and then there are the Indians, always
in town, hanging around the stores and the hotel, per-
fectly amiable but so remote, impenetrable, and insolu-
ble that they are almost like the strange fish one
sees in tropic water through a glass-bottomed boat.

The seem to have just as much connection as that with
ourselves. Your Indians do not give me this feeling,
I at least feel I know why they laugh or fight or sing.

These seem to live in an element other than ours. Then
there are the people who came here for their health,
and sometimes because of lost reputations, and a good
many of the Bohemian sort painters and writers, mostly
quite bad, who stay because they like it, and also
because they are fascinated by the Indians to the point
of idiocy and believe either that they already have
or soon will plumb the secret, if any, of those simple
but incommunicative minds, though this cult is by no
means confined to the artists. Most people wear pecu-
liar clothes. I held out for a while, but this is the
Fiesta, and I have taken to overalls and a green velvet

een Navajo blouse in which I must as pseudo and
arty as everyone else, but in which I feel happy, and
I have fallen for a silver belt too. There is also an
element, composed of so many units that it is as so-
phisticated and cosmopolitan as Paris, not a thin
crust over this really primitive place at all, and not
in conflict with it. So you see, almost everything
can be found. I had, a few friends here to start with,
and as the city has retained the friendliness and open-
handedness of the west I know almost everybody although
I’ve scarcely been in town a week altogether and am
having fun in every direction. Especially last night,
when there was the Gran Raile de los Conquistadores,
here in the hotel, every one in costume. It had the
faults of any party full of strangers and no general
liquor, but I got taken upstairs to some rooms on the
fifth floor where they had a little private orchestra
and it was simply perfect and broke up reluctantly
at four. Such delightful people, at the pitch of social
enthusiasm.

I took a very hard trip, over two weeks, mostly
in the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, where the
country is so incredibly marvellous that I feel almost
as if I’d had a religious experience and will not be
able to arrange and recount my impressions for a very
long time. I included the Hopi Snake Dance, and the
Inter-tribal Ceremonial at Gallup, both wrth going
any distance to see. I had thunder and lightning, rain,
mud, and flooded arroyos full of quicksand. Some of it
was amusing, some of it pretty desperate, once I nearly
lost the car, of course I was exhausted time and again,
but I like it better than anything I’ve ever done or
seen, and am already panting to get on the road again.

I’ve been back two days. I want to tell you all about it.
Some of the time I was alone, which is not considered
safe, and I’ve scandalized most of the people here.

I carried food and cooking things, no tent or bedding,
but could always roll up in coats and my sarape; canvas
water bags, extra gas and oil, a shovel, a hatchet, a
tow-rope, and of course tools. I went to the Canyon de
Chelly, which I have wanted to see all my life, we
have a picture of it, and rode horseback seventy miles
in two days, I’ve done a hundred, but that’s enough
for a horse. This one was very low in this mind when
we got back. I slept out in the canyon, of course. It
is one of the finest in the country, but it can’t be
seen unless you ride (or walk) and the Navajos are
always coming through with their sheep and goats, very
pastoral.

I’ve been going round to dances at the pueblos,
and picking up nottery. But yesterday I got the only
piece of sculpture ever made by a Pueblo Indian. A
woman did it of her daughter, its black clay fired,
with the hair glazed. I won’t say much about it, you
always laugh at me when I get enthusiastic, but I’ll
bring it to show you. When the deal was concluded and
it was mine, she suddenly kissed it and said Goodbye!
in such a voice that I almost gave it back to her. But
she has put it out for sale. Several collectors have
been trying to buy it all summer. What a break. This
was a San Juan. They’ve never had a dance at this
time before. They spent six months getting it ready,
and made a lot of pottery, as fine as any, and quite
different, new to them. But they forgot to tell any-
body so very few people came and less bought, because
the dealers hadn’t heard about this pottery yet; and
the corrals caught on fire in the morning and the
Americans put it out, with the loss of one pig, and
all the people who had gone to see the dance were
busy with the fire, and things got disorganized gener-
ally, so it was all rather pathetic, and they may not
try it again. They have a good painter, a boy of 18,
from whom I got some very nice little pictures. Your
Indian all have natural grace and lovely manners. Ours
are so utterly, you might say, virginally, mannerless
that I think we must have got our rudeness from them.

A terrible thing happened while I was at Chin Lee, after
being caught in a flood. Two girls were struck by
lightning in a field very near town. The doctor
at once started to go out, but was not allowed. He
said he would only find out if they were alive, but
still he was not allowed. They lay alone for a day and a
night. Then a sing was held. At an indefinite period
after that the medicine man went. I don’t know what
happened. But I’m told that lightning is almost always
fatal for this reason, and some of its victims are
thought to have died of starvation. This is a pretty

[Number “3” written in the right upper corner of the page]

[Graphic of Hotel La Fonda]

LA FONDA
THE HARVEY COMPANY
SANTA FE NEW MEXICO

bit of barbarism. Of they consider lightning
a special and terrible punishment, not only to the
person it strikes but to the whole community. We have
schools and missions and agencies and hospitals, bleak
buildings that look sterilized, with diet kitchens
and machine shops, just what a Navajo would make use
of, and lots of Government employes, men and women,
who are an unappetizing blend of social worker, mis-
sionary and YMCA, over and Iowa base – and when
something really happens, what can we do ? The traders
of whom I saw a great many, are another story, very
interesting men who know the country and are of it,
who know the Indians and really serve them. They
are also picturesque, especially Don Lorenzo Hubbel
of Oraibi, who in himself was worth the trip, and
whom I hated to leave. He is in the Hopi country, I
want to go back. I want also to go back to a beauti-
ful place in the San Juan mountains in Colorado,
where I fished in one of the finest trout streams in
the Southwest. I found it by accident, and really
because I saw those mountains, in the distance and
quite off my route, and decided to go to them if it
could be done. One thing about this vast and lonely
territory is that people are so glad to see you, and
do anything for you, and beg you to stay. When nature
is so difficult, men draw together and help each other.

Such funny things have happened since my return. I am
considered an authority on the roads, people are sent
to me for information, because of course people who
live here don’t get around much. They don’t even seem
to know that information is no use, because the whole
situation changes from day to day, and the roads are
often wiped out or moved somewhere else, as the sand
or the water decides. Today a strange lady called me
up to ask if I had seen her daughters and two young
men who were in my general vicinity and hadn’t been
heard from for some time! I did see four young people

of that kind, who were undoubtedly they. I don’t know
their names yet.

Among other acquisitions I have some moving
picture films of dances, among them the famous Navajo
Fire Dance. It was made when Famous Players-Lasky was
doing Redskin, and paid the Indians 3000.00 to dance it.

They never used it. I have the duplicate, the only
picture ever made except theirs. I can’t sell it, but
I can show it privately. I have the projector and
screen too. I’d like to bring them along and show them
to you, if you’d like it. I saw the dance at Gallup, or
a version of it. It was perfectly thrilling. There are
no drums or other music. The men are painted white,
and utter queer, twittering, bird-like cries.

I’m having some ear-rings made for you by one
of the best-known Navajo silversmiths, its just a trifle
I didn’t like any of the designs, no did he, so I told
him to turn out something as his fancy dictated. I hope
they’ll be nice.

Stokowski is out there, I haven’t seen him yet,
he’s gone off with Mabel Lujan to make records of
Navajo music. Mabel Lujan would do anything, but I
expected better of Stokowski. The Navajos sound like
coyotes. If it is art, and has its own form and subtlety
we are so far estranged from it that there is absolutely
no sense in our fooling wiht it at all. The Pueblos do
have music, and marvellous rhythms. I read Mabel Lujan’s
book, it is interesting and has the merit of perfect
frankness, and she relates a very singular and somewhat
perverse episode. She has given a real picture of
D.H. Lawrence, if that was worth doing. A lot of it is
trash, she seems to have no discrimination. She seems
to be a definite type of woman, I know of several;
full of vitality, with great power over others, utterly
ruthless and sentred in herself, whose one real occupa-
tion is collecting sensations; whose desire for power
could not be appeased if she were made empress of the
universe; who attributes all sorts of symbolic and
even mystic significance to her love-affairs, of which
she has all kinds with an indiscrimination not to be
found among animals – and who has no brains, no brains
at all, not one. She also feel that every moment of
her existence is of such importance that she has written
several volumes about it, not to be published until after
her death, by which time an anxious world will be
wringing its hands for them.

Its time for me to stop. Please write me,
here. I want awfully to know how you are, I know you
won’t think I’ve forgotten you. I’m crazy to see the
fresco. I’ve only heard that Diego wanted more
and more space. That’s splendid. I’m enclosing a piece of sage-
brush. Do you remember when Georgia O’Keefe and I went

[Handwritten along bottom]

[illegible] ecstasy over it, and you laughed at us?

[Written vertically and sideways along left margin]

My best love to you both, I hope I shall see you soon -Maorica