Wild West Land Blog

‘The Long Walk’ is etched into the memory of the Navajo Nation as a time of death and defeat when many died during the forced migration from their ancestral home of the Canyon De Chelly area of northern Arizona, 300 miles south to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

Stanley Stewart, writing a travel piece in The Times about this most magnificent part of the American south west, gives a great summary of this period in American history - the 1860s - now looked back on with a sense of shame.

To the Indians of the American Southwest - the Navajo, the Apache, the Hopi and numerous others - the great ellipse of red-rock country between the Rio Grande and the Colorado River is the sacred land of their own beginnings. It was here that the first of their ancestors climbed through the sipapu, the hole in the earth, to emerge in this world.

At the heart of the region is an area known today as the Four Corners, for the four states that meet here - Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. It is one of the emptiest and most dramatic parts of the continent. To the west, it abuts the Grand Canyon.

To the north, it fades towards the surreal rock for­mations of Monument Valley, which have played a starring role in countless films, from John Ford’s Stagecoach to Back to the Future III. And occupying the largest part of it is the Navajo Nation, a swathe of country almost the size of Scotland.

Read the comments written by readers and you understand the mixed feelings today about the ‘genocide’ of the native American tribes during the period of westward expansion. The strongly held views are wildly divergent.

Cowboy Country sits at the heart of this region and I’d highly recommend a first hand visit to many of the sites mentioned. For now though take in this set of Flickr photos by Sublime Dharma of the Canyon De Chelly and Hopi Reservation:

Two good wild west related stories on the Beeb site this week worth reporting. First off is the matter of the theft of Geronimo’s skull.

This is a case that at first glance would seem to be nothing more than a hoax but due to the involvement of a secret society, the story has grown wings over the last century.

There is some history of deception associated with the famed Indian chief, the most notable being the recovery by the FBI of the leader’s ceremonial headdress when the article decorated with eagle feathers was put up for sale.

Prospecting for brown gold

The second story is concerned with the race to develop alternative fuels, in this case turning manure into ethanol.

“Over the last 20, 30 years, there’ve been lots of people with new ideas - pie in the sky ideas - about how we were going to use manure but, at the end of the day, the best thing we use it for is fertiliser.”

Let’s hope Hereford - ‘Beef Capital of the World’ - does one day get to be the renewable energy capital of Texas.

If you’ve strolled south across the Millennium Bridge in London recently heading for Tate Modern you can’t have missed the enormous street art decorating the outside of the iconic former power station.

My favourite of the 6 pictures has to be the large pop art-style (in my limited art-world view) red indian chief looking out onto all those visitors heading to the Globe theatre. Gives a very nice feeling to the stroll into work!

It was created by the New York-based ‘artist collective’ Faile and for those with some spare cash looking to purchase an original work of art to hang on the wall, check out their shop. Only 5 copies of ‘In Trembling Whispers’ - to give the chief his proper title - are available to buy for the tidy sum of $2800.

Given the money made off the back of Banksy stencil graffiti I’d think seriously about tucking a couple away for the grandkids.