Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1904-08-18
The Unknown West at the Worlds
Fair.

The greatest distinction that
has yet come to the Worlds Fair
at st. Louis is that it is rapidly
proving to be the best popular ed
ucator of the twentieth century.
Famous educationists like DR..
William Torrey Harris, United
States Commissioner of Education,
President Harper of the Chicago
University, President Eliot of
Harvard and DR.. F. Louis Soldan
of st. Louis have, each according
to his free way of thought, ex-
pressed themselves as having been,
as being, in fact, uplifted at the
prospect of general enlightenment
which repeated visits to the Fair
afford to those who 60 with their
hearts attuned to it's wonders. |
None of the latter stands out in
greater relief than what might be
called the human, or more partic-
ularly, the clinical side of the
great undertaking. 1t is in the
assembly of the worlds strange
people that the Louisiana Purchase
Exposition offers the thinking
man and woman the best opportun-
ity for that widening of the mental
horizon which is at once the need
and the joy of the rational human
being. In a word the poets fine
dictum: The proper study of
mankind is man again receives
new lustre by even a casual visit
to st. Louis at this, the best season
of the year for travel and recrea-
ton.
Perhaps no department in ali the
varied anthropology of the Fair is
better equipped than that in which
the native races of America are to
be seen. OF Indian shows, So
called, which place before his
Caucasian observer the evidences
of the Indians degeneracy, there
are the usual number. But there
is only one part of this human di-
version allotted to the real Indians,
the descendants of the Cliff DWELL
ers, otherwise known as the Mokis,
Zunis and Pueblos of the Painted
Desert of the Colorado River in
Arizona and New Mexico and the
erosion-scarred domains of the
great Southwest. These Zunis,
Mokis and Pueblos are only to be
found at the Cliff Dwellers exhibit
at the great Fair, and this exhibit
by the way, is the only one in
which these remarkable redskins
can be found living in the heart of
the great metropolis of the Missis-
sippi Valley precisely as is the
case, as has been the case, for
thousands upon thousands of
years in the Unknown West above
referred to. They have built for
themselves at the Cliff Dwellers
Concession home in a huge arti-
fetal rock that towers hundreds of
feet above the surrounding terri
tory and in the clefts of that stony
mass they live their daily lives
precisely as at home in the Painted
Desert.
Here, too, they show their past
times, which are many and curious.
Here they reveal themselves as
human beings, humble and cir
cumscribed, perhaps, but unmis-
takably showing the wondrous eff
fects of thousands of years of peace.
For the Zunis, Mokis and Pueblos
of the Painted Desert have never
been at war with the white man.
There was, there is nothing in
their visible possession to tempt
the cupidity of the superior race.
The barren rocks they occupy in
the Unknown West would never
satisfy the land-hunger of the pale
faces and thereby the Mokis, Zunis
and and Pueblos have been saved |
to posteriiy with all their tribal
perfections to their credit. Won
der seizes the man and woman of
good will in witnessing their
strange rites; their sun, moon and
season dances; their incantations
for rain, their ceremonials COM
plete and fascinating as these have
been presented during the count
less ages, long before the white
man came. One dance, the wierd-
est in North American ethnology,
the Snake Dance, has not been
known to white men longer than
few years. 1t was first seen by
hardy explorers in 1897. 1t is a
marvel and thousands now see it
every day at the Cliff Dwellers'
Concession at the great Worlds
Fair in st. Louis.