Travellers’ Blog Entry No. 41

In a few days, we will leave Las Vegas to drive into the great wide open of the Wild West of America. We are going to discover Utah's famous Monument Valley.

Where is the Wild West? One thing is certain: When the natives and the immigrants came together, many deaths took place during the war of the moving frontier.
Even Hollywood's most popular Western backdrop, Monument Valley, had been the scene of bloody conflicts. Many western movies had been directed in the Valley: "Stagecoach" (1939) and "The Searchers" (1956) are just two famous examples.

But the Monument Valley is not just a cliche petrified, almost filmed to death by Western directors and the PR people of Marlboro. It is also one of the places in the U.S., where the story long before the arrival of the bleaching faces is documented. At some rocks in Monument Valley you still can detect traces of the natives: their pictures. Artists from the root of the "Anasazis" cut pictures on antelopes, deers and birds in the stone - thousands of years ago.
Whether it is a kind of menu or a religoius worship of their saints, is unknown. In the 13th Century the Anasazis left the valley.

Later - nobody knows exactly when - the Indian tribe of the Navajos settled in Monument Valley - and stayed. They bred sheep and goats and grow cereals, even if the ground was very, very dry. The large rocks in the valley were of religious significance for the Navajos; medicine men prayed at the holy places for rain. But even if they prayed: It had been years of a hard life for the Navajos.

The big disaster for the Navajos - and many other Indian tribes - came later.
The misery began on 12 October 1492, when Christopher Columbus reached the coast of the Bahamas and put his foot on the American continent. Columbus was on its journey to west India, but now he believed that he had found Paradise.
That someone already lived in this Garden of Eden, was no obstacle from Columbus' vision.
That these Indians from the tribe of the Tainos welcomed him and the others on the beach friendly and because Columbus believed that the Whites were like gods for the Natives, increased his contempt even more.

The residents could be made slaves, Columbus noted. They have "no weapons, are peaceful, harmless, naked. They are ready to obey, to work and everything necessary to perform. They have to get used to cities and towns and how to build them and to wear our clothes and behave to our manners."

In America "frontier" is a word loaded with myths. No wonder: Along this border, many bloody battles were fought, and with the immigrants come from all over through the centuries and moved towards the west, the unknown continent turned into a state with world standards. In North and South America millions of Indians, however, which were involved in the clash of cultures were killed, enslaved and robbed of their culture and identity.

But unlikely to the stereotype of the Wild West, the Indians suffered from their biggest losses not in the fights man-against-man, but through biological warfare. An infectious disease, probably introduced by the newcomers, killed in the beginning of the 17th century, tens of thousands of Indians in New England. This enabled the English immigrants to conqued much ground without own losses. Later the English handed presents to the Indians: blankets from their hospitals, contaminated with deadly smallpox pathogens.

In Monument Valley, many deaths took place. Once there was the murder of two White men. Ernest Mitchell and James Merrick, searching for silver in the valley, were slained by Indians. Unlikely to the countless Native American victims, they got beautiful memorial stones: Two of the most impressive rocks in the valley, are still named after the two men Mitchell and Merrick.

Since 20th Century, murders in Monument Valleyhappens only for the cameras for Hollywood. The idea came from Harry Goulding, a merchant whose shop in Monument Valley was just before to be closed, because ha was broke. In 1938 Goulding traveled, therefore as a PR man in his own case, with a few photos from the valley to Los Angeles. Somehow he managed it on the studio grounds of United Artists and into the office of director John Ford. He was impressed by the pictures. "Can you make a film crew over several weeks and bring a cook?", asked the director. Yes, Goulding claimed and a little later the next Ford western, named "Stagecoach" was shot in Monument Valley.

The film brought modest prosperity to the valley's bitterly poor, not only for Goulding. Ford hired Navajos to play in the movie. "My happy obligation", he claimed.
Altogether, Ford directed seven wetsern movies in Monument Valley, and the Navajos - drawn from malnutrition, diseases, alcoholism and unemployment - had at one time a comparatively well-paid job: They played Apaches, Cheyenne and Komantschen. Ford got a self-Indian name from them: "Natani Nez" - Great leader.

"I had been all over the world," said Ford on the Monument Valley, "But I think this place is the most perfect, most beautiful and most peaceful place on earth."

We will see, if this is true. But however, Monument Valley in Utah is full of history and impressive viewpoints. I am sure we will enjoy the beauty of this place.