195109-DesertMagazin.. - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

French toast for breakfast. Kelly Cameron learned his cooking in a freight caboose
on the Southern Pacific—and learned it well.
We Camped on Kaiparowits..
A thousand years ago a tribe of little brown men lived in crude
stone and mud cliff houses on the top of the 7000-foot Kaiparowits
Plateau in southern Utah. No one knows when they left, or why. But
in an effort to find out more about these prehistoric people and their
way of life, a little party of explorers camped on the plateau in May
this year. Here is the story of what they found up there.
N MAY this year, eight of us
climbed the steep trail which zigzags
up the northeast escarpment
of the 7000-foot Kaiparowits plateau
in southwestern Utah to learn what we
could about the prehistoric Moqui
people who dwelt on this isolated sky
island a thousand years ago.
As nearly as the archeologists can
determine, the Moquis occupied this
juniper and pinyon covered tableland
between 900 and 1200 A.D. Then
they left—for reasons which remain
a mystery even to the scientists.
There is no road to the top of Kaiparowits.
There are only a few places
SEPTEMBER, 195 1
By RANDALL HENDERSON
Map by Norton Allen
where even a horseman can make the
ascent. In winter the plateau often is
covered by snow, and in summer the
water supply is limited to an occasional
small spring. And that is probably the
reason why no white man has ever
established a permanent home up
there. Each summer the Mormon cattlemen
of the Escalante country drive
their herds up the steep trail for summer
range, but for the rest of the year
Kaiparowits remains unoccupied except
by deer and other wildlife.
Perhaps it was because so little is
known about this remote region, and
the aborigines who once lived there,
that Wayne and Lucile Hiser of Toledo,
Ohio, chose this place for their
Indian country expedition of 1951.
The Hisers have a manufacturing
business in Toledo. They make electric
motors for shipment all over the
world. They like to travel and take
pictures, and having once, several years
ago, gotten a glimpse of the fascinating
Indian country of northern Arizona
and southern Utah, they now make two
trips annually to this region. When
they return home they show their Kodachrome
movies to the service clubs
and civic groups in Toledo—and contribute
the proceeds to charitable purposes,
mainly to the Navajo Indians.
It is a bit of philanthropy which brings
pleasure to many people, and much
needed clothing and schooling for some
of the Navajo children.
This year the Hisers invited me to
become a member of their exploring
party. They also invited Dr. Jesse Jennings,
professor of anthropology at the
University of Utah, whose department