Every time I drive through Indian Country of the Southwest, I am struck by how desperately poor most of the Indians appear to be. Their culture seems to have imploded ever since their first contact with European civilization back in the 16th century. BHM has done articles about how the diseases of Western Civilization killed as many as 95 percent of the indigenous populations of the Americas, but we’ve never explored the cultural and psychological shock that seems to have devastated the remaining Indian populations even to this day.

Maybe I’m not even stating the phenomenon properly, but it is evident that most Indian populations of the Southwest do not fare well
financially compared to Americans descended from either European, Asian, or African stock. Rates of alcoholism and drug use are also much higher in the Indian communities than in the other communities. We’re entering Navajo country now, and their overall poverty is evident. Maybe that would be a good topic for Silveira to explore with O.E. MacDougal, perhaps getting Jackie Clay’s input as well, as she is part Indian.

We made it to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest of Arizona, both of which are stark but magnificent. The trees that have turned to stone are 225 million years old, which is the very beginning of the rise of dinosaurs. It would be another 40 million years before dinosaurs would come to dominate earth and then reign supreme for 120 million years until a meteor the size of Mount Everest would hit on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and wipe them out and lead to the rise of mammals and finally humans. How’s that for a quick history lesson.

We’ve got another week of travel to go, then we’ll be back in Oregon and go right into two weeks of deadline for the next issue. Thanks to my laptop and the fact every motel you stop in has free highspeed internet, I’ve been coordinating things with various writers and my staff back in Gold Beach. While in Rush, Colorado, Don Childers and I even worked up a tentative cover he will paint for the new issue. It will be of the totally self sufficient house of one of Don’s neighbors. I toured it and took a lot of photos, so I’ll have to write up the text for it when I get back along with my other jobs.