For The
Distance Of About Two Miles, The Bed Of The Canyon, Which Is Here Filled
With Sandy Earth, Is Irrigated From This Rapidly Flowing Stream.
The result
is that with comparatively little labor the Havasupais are able to produce
excellent crops of corn, beans, chillis, onions, melons, squash and other
vegetables.
After the advent of the Spaniards, they obtained peach trees,
and they now grow far more peaches than they can eat, drying large
quantities, some of which they sell to ranchers, miners and other
outsiders. They also have fine figs.
* Since this chapter was put into type, the Havasupai village has been
swept nearly out of existence by a flood. The winter of agog-igto saw a
large fall of snow on the plateau, which, melting suddenly during a hot
spell in January, rushed down the Canyon in a body, destroyed the school,
agent's house, and took away nearly all the hawas, fields, and orchards of
the Indians. This catastrophe has several times occurred to them (according
to their traditions), so there is little doubt but that they will ere long
replant their cornfields and reestablish their homes in the spot they love
so well.
The Havasupai "Hawa." The house of a Havasupai is called a "hawa." It is a
primitive structure, generally built of cottonwood poles, willows and
earth. Occasionally one of the leading men will put up a more pretentious
home, whose sides will be of matted willows, plastered inside and out with
mud, and with a mud-covered roof which will turn the rain.
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