Arizona republican., 1909-03-11
MISS SHARL0T HALLS TALK .ON SOUTHWESTERN INDIANS
An Interesting Address Before the Woman's Club Tuesday.

cessful meetings, many of which will
 never be forgotten by those who had | the good fortune to be In attendance, | it tis unlikely that they have ever had a more interesting meeting than the
 one of last Tuesday. Many winter vis- | itors were in attendance at the meet ing anxious to hear Miss Sharlot Halls discussion Of Indian arts and the h.
 dian people. She spoke without manu- script or notes and a full report of
 her talk could not be obtained. but the
 whole range of Arizona Indian life, pre- | historic and of the present day, was
 more or less covered.
 | Miss Sharlot Hall is a western wo-
 man who began her study of Indian life and western history in her child
 hood and has carried it forward with painstaking accuracy to the present
 time. Probably no other one person in Arizona knows the entire territory so
 well, and 1t is certain that no one else has gathered together such a valuable | and interesting collection of books,
 manuscripts, pictures and objects of
 historical and ethnological value.
 Miss Halls magazine work, her
 poems and stories of western life, historical sketches and illustrated
 articles, usually with pictures of her
 own taking, together with her lectures and informal talks on frontier life and
 history. have made her known through
 out the southwest She has taken many long trips on horseback and in wagon, over all sorts 0f trails and into
 all sorts of places, in pursuit of his
 torical data, literary material and rel ics. As she told her audience, the en-
 thusiastic collector must be ready to face all sorts of adventures and must carry neither fears nor nerves in her
 camp kit.
 While picturing the prehistoric cliff
 and cave dwellings of Northern Ari-
 zona. and telling of the relics to be
 found therein, Miss Hall spoke of
 crawling some hundreds of feet along
 a narrow ledge that climbed like a
 stairway up the face of a cliff to the
 walled opening of a cave. just beyond
 the opening. his eyes gleaming in the
 dusk, big mountain lion waited ready to spring. Other trips yielded, besides
 relics of a vanished race, face to face meetings with rattlesnakes hidden in the dark caves and lodges. encounters with a mother fox ready to defend her
 nest of kittens, and the daily chance of
 bats, bumblebees and all the later
 tribes of cave dwellers.
 Forty or fifty years ago Arizona was
 one of the richest spots in the United
 States in relics of the departed races;
 for many years the whole region was systematically footed to furnish collec- tions for museums in our own country and in the old world. and worse yet. to fill the shelves of the curio dealer Some of the most interesting ruins were destroyed entirely, but there is still much left and Miss Hall urged that Arizona should take immediate steps to secure a public museum and preserve to her own people a represeT- tative collection of the prehistoric rel ics and of the typical handicraft of our present-day Indians.
 Arizona has at the present time the Navajos, who are the only silversmiths among American Indians; the Moqui or Hopi people, whose baskets and pottery are unique; the Pimas. Papa goes and Maricopas, each trike, makers of pottery, baskets and beadwork of interest; the Apaches, whose bead work and basketry are of the finest; the Mohaves, who do rarely fine bead work and make small quantities of a very original pottery; the Havasupias and Hualapais, who make fine baskets and yet there is nowhere in Arizona a truly representative collection of the handicraft of these tribes.
 Quite as interesting as her study of Indian life, and more valuable to Ari- zona, is the historical work which Miss Hall has carried on systematically for many years. She has visited and in- terviewed a large number of our pio- neers and recorded their stories almost literally. and in many cases her notes are the only available data on :he lives of men and women row passed on. This work will presently be embodied in history of Arizona and some of it is already available in magazine | articles.
 One feature of her work which has | more of pathos than adventure has l been to find and record the graves of as many of our pioneers as possible, | with the hope of obtaining permanent | marking for the ones now nameless.
 Speaking with the swift, easy die 1 tion of an enthusiast who knows her | subject well and loves its drudgery | and adventure alike. the trend of Miss | Halls talk was no easy trail for the | reporter to follow. With fine set | of Indian baskets and pottery repre- | senting nearly all the tribes, she told | of basket materials and methods, pat | terms and weaves. Illustrating by bas- kets in the collection; she told of pot | tery clays and paints, and of the bar ter which Indian women carry on be- ! tween tribes in these raw materials; spoke of the simple stones and wood | en paddles by which clever hands the | Indian womnn shapes jars of classic | grace. and told of the preparation of | vegetable fibers for weaving. One of | the most interesting pieces of pottery | was large jar in the shape of a crude | human figure. found many years ago | in a cliff dwelling. The PapagO and | Pima women still occasionally make jars in the same shape.
 Miss Hall told her audience that the | talk was not a lecture, but just a visit together with our Indian peoples. and | a little relic hunting expedition among | the prehistoric remains. She gave few of the Indian traditions on which tribal customs are based, told some thing of the migrations of the different |