Havasupai

We have stolen from them nearly all they had of lands and worldly possessions.

Only two or three years ago, I was present when a Havasupai Indian was arrested for having shot a deer out of season, taken before the courts, and heavily fined, when his own father had roamed over the region hunting, as his ancestors had done for centuries before, ere there were any white men's laws or courts forbidding them to do what was as natural for them to do as it was to drink of the water they found, eat of the fruits and berries they passed, or breathe the air as they rode along.

The law of the white man in reference to deer and antelope hunting is based upon the selfishness of the white man, who in a few generations has slain every buffalo, most of the mountain sheep, elk, moose, and left but a comparative remnant of deer and antelope.

The Indian has never needed such laws.

I have a funny story about that.

And Havasupai Falls, have you done Havasupai yet?

No, it is on my bucket list.

I can never get my...

And then, um, and that was like a three-part series wh- where we finished off with the amputees.

And then this was season, technically Season 2, and it's called the Havasupai, and it's a hike in, uh, northern Arizona.

Um, it's like the oldest tribe, I believe, in the United States.

They own, they own the land there.

Terms at sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos.

Today on Drop a Pin we have Biz on the pod to recap our most recent Peekin' episode in Havasupai, and then we have the first ever mobile podcast, which we filmed on the trail during that trip.

[beeping] Hey, how are you? Welcome back to Drop a Pin, a very special Peekin' recap edition.

We got my guy Biz Nasty on, and our episode, filmed on the Havasupai Indian Reservation, just came out.

Um, this is actually being recorded before the video is released to the public, so Chaps hasn't seen it yet.

Mm-mm.

But in the same breath it's like it's nice to have that little infrastructure where, let's say you're like, "Oh man, we...

You know, I, I just need a...

The relationship between oral tradition and the archaeological record here is one of the more interesting ongoing collaborations in American archaeology tribal knowledge, held for a thousand years, guiding where scientists look and how they interpret what they find.

Eleven tribes today maintain formal, federally recognized connections to the Grand Canyon: the Havasupai, the Hualapai, the Hopi, the Navajo Nation, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, the Pueblo of Zuni, and the Southern Paiute peoples, including the Kaibab, Las Vegas, and Moapa bands, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

That is not a historical footnote.

Those are living nations with living relationships to this specific canyon consulted by law on how the park is managed today.

The Havasupai, the name means people of the blue-green water, have perhaps the most intimate relationship of all with this landscape.

Before European-American settlement, they moved seasonally across roughly one point six million acres of the Colorado Plateau and the canyon itself, farming the fertile side canyon around Havasu Creek in the warmer months and moving up to the plateau rim in winter to hunt.

They have lived in and around this canyon for more than eight hundred years, and they still do the village of Supai, deep in a side canyon accessible only by an eight-mile trail, mule, or helicopter, remains home to the tribe today, and the famous blue-green waterfalls that draw hikers from around the world sit on their land.

I want to tell you one specific story because it captures something important about how this park's history actually gets written and rewritten.

We have stolen from them nearly all they had of lands and worldly possessions.

Only two or three years ago, I was present when a Havasupai Indian was arrested for having shot a deer out of season, taken before the courts, and heavily fined, when his own father had roamed over the region hunting, as his ancestors had done for centuries before, ere there were any white men's laws or courts forbidding them to do what was as natural for them to do as it was to drink of the water they found, eat of the fruits and berries they passed, or breathe the air as they rode along.

The law of the white man in reference to deer and antelope hunting is based upon the selfishness of the white man, who in a few generations has slain every buffalo, most of the mountain sheep, elk, moose, and left but a comparative remnant of deer and antelope.

The Indian has never needed such laws.

And upon human beings the effect is the same, provided they value health and vigor more than they mind a little discomfort in the bedragglement of their clothes.

Years ago I learned this lesson.

I was riding from the line of the railway over the Painted Desert with several Havasupai Indians.

It was the rainy season.

Long before geology became its own field of study, indigenous peoples gathered a wealth of knowledge about the Earth.

Havasupai oral tradition describes a river carving the Grand Canyon.

Which it did! And there's a site in Arizona with fossilized Dilophosaurus tracks that the Diné, or Navajo, traditionally called Place with Bird Tracks, way before we knew birds were descended from dinos.

For many native cultures, then and now, the Earth and its elements are part of an interconnected system that we humans are a part of.

And I was a Boy Scout, which I think allowed me to be able to see a lot of the beautiful areas within Arizona.

Grand Canyon, I did an amazing trip as I was older down to the Havasupai, like the falls down in the Grand Canyon and like Mooney Falls.

And so a lot of really cool experiences.

But yeah, ultimately decided that the Marine Corps was going to be the path for me, which was kind of a funny journey in itself.

We have stolen from them nearly all they had of lands and worldly possessions.

Only two or three years ago, I was present when a Havasupai Indian was arrested for having shot a deer out of season, taken before the courts, and heavily fined, when his own father had roamed over the region hunting, as his ancestors had done for centuries before, ere there were any white men's laws or courts forbidding them to do what was as natural for them to do as it was to drink of the water they found, eat of the fruits and berries they passed, or breathe the air as they rode along.

The law of the white man in reference to deer and antelope hunting is based upon the selfishness of the white man, who in a few generations has slain every buffalo, most of the mountain sheep, elk, moose, and left but a comparative remnant of deer and antelope.

The Indian has never needed such laws.

Officials and courts alike have often been supine and indifferent to the Indians' welfare and have generally shown far more desire to protect the white man in his vested interests than to protect the young men of the Indian tribes against the evil influences of liquor.

Again and again, I have been in Indian councils and heard the old men declaim against the white man's firewater.

The Havasupais declare it to be Hanatuwapagi, very bad.

The Navajos, Dashondi, of the evil one, while one and all insist that their young men shall be kept from its demoralizing influence.

And it's one more reason that the current gutting of the National Weather Service and the crippling of its ability to forecast is absolutely criminal.

The Havasupai tribe manages Havasu Canyon.

That's where they live.

They control entry to the canyon.