When you spend a lot of time in a foreign country, there are certain things you come to recognize – not just about that country, but also about your own. Of course, the parallels between the U.S. and Germany are far from superficial. From hot dogs [Frankfurters] and Hamburgers to California’s former Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, some of America’s most enduring cultural icons originate from the German-speaking world.
But it came as a surprise to me, child of the American West, to realize the level of fervor with which Germans self-identify with the checkered history of my particular piece of the American Heimatland [homeland]. As a historian, perhaps, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The period of European mass migration and the bloody (re)settlement of the American West correspond almost exactly with the violent decades following those failed revolution and civil wars which precipitated Germany’s first unification as a modern nation-state in 1871.
And who better to face the challenges of colonizing an enormous continent than desperate refugees? German-language periodicals of the mid-19th century are filled with glowing recommendations of the American West, promising mountains of gold, Congressional land grants, and bootstrap fortune and glory to the starving and war-ravaged citizens of Central Europe [If my exactitude here with “German-speaking” and “German-language” annoys you, my apologies: I’m just trying to give credit where credit is due. And stay true to the decade of German cultural history lessons I’ve crammed into my brain. Lest we forget, ‘Germany’ as we know it did not exist until the 20th century, and the legacy of the hundreds of tiny kingdoms and principalities which comprised the Germanic world for most of its history continues to flavor the cultural landscapes of modern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, (as well as more than a few neighboring lands)… but I digress].
For better or for worse, many of those blue-eyed pioneers adorning the monuments of America’s one-time 'frontier' spoke some dialect of German. My college German textbook informed me that 1 in 7 (U.S.) Americans today claim German ancestry (myself excluded, of course). Most of those German-speaking immigrants left behind family in the old country. And so the myth and mystery of the American West persisted in the German consciousness long after the proverbial West was 'won.' Late-19th century dime store novels extolled the wonders of the landscape, the glory of its conquest, the noble savagery of its embattled original occupants. Indeed, Winnetou, the fictitious Apache blood brother of Germany's most prolific, phony travel writer, Karl May, is widely considered a German national hero. In the 19th century, his stories offered the glimmer of a different world against the backdrop of an urbanizing, industrializing Central Europe; in the 20th, his culturally savvy, injustice-fighting German counterpart, 'Old Shatterhand,' provided a reminder of a different vision for German influence in the wider world (despite Hitler's own alleged obsession with these stories).
[For an illuminating and entertaining exposé on German infatuation with Native American culture, read Michael Kimmelman's 2007 article for the New York Times]
Throughout the 19th century, 'travel' narratives of pioneers, real or imagined, proliferated across the war-torn countryside of the Old World, offering much-needed respite from the hardships of daily life. This deluge of American mythopoeia prompted Berthold Auerbach, one of the best-selling German-language authors of the time (better known for his realistic -- if stylized -- depictions of German rural life), to write the following observation in a short story published in 1853:
When today someone in our village -- through whatever obstacle -- fails to emigrate to America, he can comfort himself with the joke: "I don't believe in America [...]"
And yet up and down the country, not a house remains which can't offer living proof of the contrary. Here a sibling, there a relative or simply an acquaintance living in America. We know the states by name in which they've settled. We've read or heard their letters.
[...] Those who back home never managed to turn a single handful of dirt speak now of Congressional land and the thousand mornings won so easily there. -- America once sent us the potato, something now so essential to and domestic in our lives. It is prepared (and enjoyed) in hundreds of different forms; and one could even say that talk of America has become a kind of potato for us here. It is boiled and fried, prepared, itself, in hundreds of different forms, and even transformed into an intoxicating drink.
Intoxicating and long-lasting, as well. Which brings me, with many detours, to the real topic of my post. If you're bored now, skip ahead and enjoy the photography.
Growing up in coastal California, I was used to believing that nothing built by human hands could survive more than a century of fog. So when I started living in Deutschland, I was often puzzled by the questions I'd receive about my encounters with the monuments of American Indian culture. Had I ever seen a pueblo? It's even the name of a popular brand of rolling tobacco in Germany (my hyperlink here is for evidence, not endorsement of cultural appropriation). Of course, it didn't help that my American accent coupled with my almond eyes and vaguely Mediterranean features convinced many in my friends' parents' generation to simply assume that I was a living descendant of Winnetou. Many of my German friends in my own age group were far too sensitive to questions of ethnicity and race to be so direct, but at some point, in some form, the intrigue always materialized. And this constant flood of #FirstNation-related questions piqued my own interest, as well.
I grew up in close vicinity to several Pomo Nation reservations, and already as a child I'd been interested in learning about the first (and still present) inhabitants of my community. I learned to identify Pomo elements in place names, making lists of words and alleged meanings (this might have been the beginning of my fascination with languages, as well). Under the tutelage of a local park ranger, I learned about local edible and medicinal plants (this was pre-medical marijuana). I even took up basket weaving for a couple weeks, and produced some less-than-spectacular results -- especially when you consider that Pomo artisans can weave (beautiful) baskets so tightly that they hold water. Childhood friends, many of whom were of at least partial Pomo or Wailaki heritage themselves, seemed to have little interest in looking back.
And barring a few re-created Pomo redwood bark houses we visited on a childhood field trip (if anyone remembers where this was, please let me know!), I hadn't seen much in the way of an archaeological record of Pre-Columbian coastal life. The now-abandoned fort in Fort Bragg, an incompatible lifestyle built around seasonal migrations, and the relentless moisture of the #Mendocino Coast had taken their toll.
As a general fan of #archaeology -- facilitated by a childhood of watching Indiana Jones and an all-but-minor in college (one class and several thousand dollars for the additional quarter tuition short), I've spent a considerable portion of my time abroad pursuing the mysteries and wonders of the ancient world. From summer solstices at Stonehenge and misty mornings on the Orkney Isles to #backcountry exploration in the Valle Sagrado and jungle treks on Sumatra, I've seen more than my fare share of ancient monuments: particularly considering the tight, shoestring budget on which I've always traveled. But although I'd been to literally dozens of Mesoamerican ruins South of the Mexican border, a serendipitous visit to Cahokia on a Greyhound trip across #America aside, I'd seen nothing of the incredible remaining heritage of the (now) United States.
With age comes wisdom. #Travel smarts. Perhaps a slightly larger budget, too. Tired of an inexplicably absent knowledge of the cultural history of my own country, in the winter of 2016/17, I abandoned my usual habit of fleeing South for the winter, and headed out instead for six weeks of empty roads in the Great American #Southwest. We loaded my '91 Honda Accord with an ice chest, a case of Guayakí Yerba Mate (still hoping for a sponsorship deal at some point), blankets, an MP3 player, and the finest assortment of my winter mountaineering gear; and with my trusted German copilot and life partner (wife), I set out to break the 300,000 mile [482,803 kilometers] mark on my (our) odometer.
The trip was unlike any we'd undertaken before, and firmly cemented a newfound love for a portion of my country I'd long written off as barren waste. Crisscrossing the deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada, #Utah, and #NewMexico, we discovered a place where indigenous North America has never gone away, and where the legacy of its once unsullied empires lives on -- the likes of which middle-aged Germans dream about. Guided by the sepia-tone memories of Edward S. Curtis, we consulted old maps, outdated travel guides, stopping in at roadside stops and desolate cafes where few coastal Californians (but probably a couple Germans) had gone before. At times miserable, at times enlightening, and at other times simply breathtaking, we spent weeks off of the radar among the nations of the Navajo, Apache, Zuni, Hopi, Taos, Hualapai, and Havasupai. Following sunrises and sunsets alike, from villages whose mail is still delivered by Pony Express, to desolate box canyons opening after more than 30 miles [50 km] of snow-covered dirt track, we chased away the myths of an empty wilderness, revealing a continent of unfathomably complex living #history.
We boiled water for our dinners on my MSR WindBurner stove, the same ingenious invention I'd literally sustained my (and my climbing partner's) life with during two weeks of blizzard on Aconcagua the winter before (never leave home without one if you #adventuretravel like I do). We fell asleep to the cackling of coyotes. Wandering the pueblos, exchanging gifts and stories with the incredibly hospitable desert dwellers we met there, I think I learned more about myself, my country, and my understanding of #civilization in a matter of weeks than I'd learned in thirty years before.
To start, there was the whole myth of an empty continent. Already as an angry teenager, I'd read enough alternative history in books like Guns, Germs, and Steel, 1491, and 1421 to treat most of my high school history education as suspect, but somehow, this impression of the emptiness, the loneliness, of the American West prevailed. It took seeing things with my own eyes, and hearing explanations with my own ears, to fully come to terms with what may have happened here.
It started with a fundamental way of life not intrinsically different in its philosophy from my own postmodern permutation: recognizing the advantages and disadvantages of life in any given place and migrating with the seasons. But it ran much deeper than that. The cultures we have so long referred to in feigned awe and collective mystery as the Anasazi [Navajo for "enemy ancestors" -- perhaps a little etymology could have helped solve the riddle] are really not so mysterious, though their archaeological record certainly does inspire awe. But to understand their legacy requires a willingness to accept a crucial difference in the way Euro-American society has come to comprehend basic social norms and the fundamentals of civilization. And wading through more than a few flash floods of racist historiography.
The ancient Puebloan peoples never disappeared. Their way of life adjusted to the impermanence of #nature (and #climatechange) the same way that it always had, confounded with the influx of new settlers who were unwilling to accept that the sedentary European way of life just couldn't cut it in the desert landscapes of the Southwest. Spanish conquistadores who struck out across this inhospitable region in search of fabled cities of gold refused to believe that the 'empty' stone cities they found had anything to do with the semi-nomadic, subsistence-farming peoples they encountered in their conquests. Alternative facts proliferated -- from Roman outposts to the lost tribes of Israel -- and yet the indigenous people who continued to store their harvests in the ruins, to meet for ceremonial or entertainment purposes in the squares and ball courts, or to navigate by ancient roadways knew very well that their ancestors had built these places. They continued to utilize them, as they always had.
As the seasons changed and successive droughts set in, new generations wandered further afield: alternating between the verdant canyon floors and the open rangeland in an eternal balancing act between those basic economic factors: supply and demand. As the peoples dispersed, their meetings in the pueblos became less frequent.
Let's take a comparative perspective to facilitate a broader understanding: It may still defy modern logic, but a relatively small cluster of theories on the origin and use of Stonehenge and other neolithic (European) remnants has long been accepted in the archaeological community (no, I'm not talking about ancient aliens). Many early civilizations lived in small, often nomadic communities, at times living tremendous distances -- given the transport methods of the time -- from the earthworks they left behind. The exact forces which succeeded in uniting these dispersed bands of peoples for a common cause continue to elude our explanation. But the great monuments they erected for ceremonial and communal purposes remain. Unlike the modern cities we will leave for future generations to ponder over, they were never intended for large scale human settlement.
So, too, with the great pueblos of the Southwest. The buildings were never permanent dwelling places, but rather shelters from the periodic storms, collective dry storage space for harvests of squash and maize, trading posts for an exchange of goods which spanned the North American continent -- from copper and turquoise to abalone shells to parrot feathers to conch. Forced into sedentism, the descendants of the first Puebloan peoples built new homes like palimpsests over their ancestors' ruins. Eternal cities, different, but perhaps not so different from the Roman ruins in modern Italy with which early European explorers so desperately sought to bind Puebloan memories.
And indeed, these places and these legacies are still contested. The public lands of the Southwest remain one of the final battlegrounds between indigenous rights, #conservation movements, corporate greed, and an unwillingness to accept that European-style life -- from industrial cattle ranging to uranium mines -- is incompatible with the desolate beauty of a landscape which was never intended for megacities or strip mines. We have tipped, instead, in a single century, that delicate balance of humans and the environment which had endured millennia of cohabitation. Thanks to the current administration's rollback on the banning of new uranium prospecting, the eternal blue-green waters of Havasu Falls are threatened with the recent approval of Canyon Mine upstream. Bear Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks are but a few of the many National Monuments currently under threat as the Department of the Interior recommends the continuation of "traditional use" (ie: free from indigenous or environmental regulation) and for-profit management of these regions of irreplaceable cultural and natural value.
Winter is cold on the Colorado Plateau. Some nights our breath snowed down inside our tent. Coyotes called. The snap, crackle, pop of boot prints on frosty sand. Some mornings we awoke to brilliant sunrise, other mornings we awoke to falling snow. And somewhere between tradition and modernity, between faith, resilience, hope, and despair, we encountered that indomitable spirit of America the pioneers had only rediscovered in a living vitality as old as red rock canyonlands.
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