Word: canyoneering
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...helicopters shuttled wallboard and lumber from the chasm's edge down to the canyon floor, a group of 50 Havasupai near by never once looked toward the landing field. Most were too busy picking through a two-ton load of used clothing dropped into the reservation semiannually...
...houses also represent a dramatic break with the past. After years of treating the Indians as a tarnished remnant of American antiquity, the BIA suddenly wants them to live suburban-style in three-bedroom ranch houses. But the canyon dwellers, accustomed to huts made of rock, sheet metal or scrap wood, neither understand nor trust the offering...
...Havasupai have been in decline since the white man (haigu) discovered them during explorations two centuries ago. The tribe lost its hunting and grazing lands on the Coconmo Plain above the canyon, and now has use of only six square miles. Traditions are forgotten, and the only important tie with the past is the Supai language Yuman, now adulterated with American idiom. Young Havasupai who attend Government boarding schools return to the reservation confused about their place in the world. They feel inferior both to the white man and to fellow Indians from larger, more advanced tribes...
...Havasupai men able to work, only eight hold permanent jobs. While the tourist season lasts, the tribe's 300 horses are used to pack visitors to the canyon (at $16 a round trip). Some 6,000 came by foot or horseback last year, but the tribe has almost nothing in the way of handcrafted goods, restaurants or inns that might encourage visitors to leave their money behind. Moreover, the horses help to keep the tribe isolated. Efforts to put a cable car line or Jeep trail into Supai have been resisted by the Indians, who fear that their only...
Havasupai are forbidden to bring alcohol onto the reservation, but it is bootlegged into the canyon and sold at exorbitant prices. Increasingly, the younger tribe members have been the best customers. "I suppose it's because there's so little to do here," says John Greenfield, a fundamentalist missionary and one of seven whites in Supai. "It's a terrible problem-that, and sexual immorality...