Introduction
The year was 1956; I had wandered or the first time from the mountains of my youth into the desert of our great Southwest, awed by the immensity of time and space surrounding me in this alien land. My footprints led me one lonely day to a cluster of tumble down shacks on Highway 66, fifty miles east of Kingman, Arizona, to the Walapai reservation settlement of ceach Springs.
An old man whose life had spanned more than a century sat in silence inside a dark door. More than a memory, he was a legend, having known in his span of years the passing of many worlds, many ways of life. Voiced in the shadow of his cluttered shack, his recollections carried me back through time-making the journey from the creation of his people, to his infancy, and youth; his wandering among the hills, a happy nomad.
He had witnessed the invasion by the whites, the subjugation of his people, and had been pressed into service as a scout with General Crook in the Geronimo campaign. He had known the pain of change: the coming of the railroad, the automobile, the airplane, and had watched in darkness as the culture that had conquered his people pressed on to the heavens expanding their power into space. His life had been a race with time, his torn frame tired, and his face as furrowed as the road that led me to his crude and unlatched door. His Christian name, given by a people who knew not what he called himself -nor cared -Kate Crozier.
To his memory in later years were added the recollections of other giants among his people after they had passed away. “Grandma” McGee; “Sugar Daddy” Fielding; Jane Honga, whose countenance I still carry deep inside myself as “Dark Anima” an enigma of wisdom, blessed by her years of change; and old Grant Beecher, who now wanders his beloved land with his ancestors. Still I see him smiling to control his raucous raven laugh, his wry sense of humor hanging on every breath. Haka-Kate Crozier was born in Hualapai County about 1843 and died August 10, 1961, five years after I had met him.