Pipe Springs National Monument

Etched on a glass panel are the words: “Within the lives of Southern Paiutes, there is an inherent understanding that all things are placed on this land with the breath of life, just as humans.
“This land is considered to be their home, just as it is for man, and it is taught that one must consider that the rocks, trees, animals, mountains and all other things are on the same level as man” (Kaibab Paiute tribal member).
The words took my breath away, and I wondered what the world would be like if all of us lived that way.
The glass panel stood inside the museum, part of the Pipe Spring National Monument, 14 miles southwest of Fredonia, AZ.
The Kaibab Paiute tribe and the National Park Service jointly funded, constructed, and now manage the museum and the monument. We stopped often to fill up at the Pipe Spring gas station, but this is the first time we visited the monument.
Like many places in the Southwest, it is layered with history, primarily because of the abundant water percolating up through the sandstone, a life-saving commodity in the high desert landscape wedged between the Grand Canyon and the Vermillion Cliffs.
Hunters and Gatherers first accessed the area but left little trace. Then, from 300 B.C. to between 1,000 and 1250 A.D., the Ancestral Puebloans lived in the area, leaving their unmistakable writing and art on the cliffs until drought probably forced them to move farther south.
The Southern Paiutes, because they were semi-nomadic, survived more successfully. The Kaibab band migrated when they needed to hunt and gather plants, but they also grew squash, maize, and beans, irrigated by the artesian springs along the Vermillion Cliffs and water in Kanab Creek.
They first lived in conical homes called kahns, constructed out of juniper branches and brush, easily built and taken down, allowing them to move seasonally. Later, they used teepees. The museum showcased their history, including their basketry, plaited from willow and yucca fibers. The women had woven and sealed some of the baskets so tightly they could cook in them.
They first saw Europeans in 1776 when the Franciscan priests, Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, traveled through the area in an effort to find a route from Santa Fe to California. Though their attempt later failed, the Southern Paiute people fed them and directed them around the Grand Canyon.
Many years later, in 1858, Jacob Hamblin and his companions stopped at the spring on their way to Hopi Land. Their stories about abundant water and grass paved the way in 1863 for James M. Whitmore to apply for a land grant that encompassed 160 acres around Pipe Spring.
A Texan and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he brought in about 400 long horn cattle and 1,000 sheep to graze the grasslands.
In 1866, Navajos stole some of Whitmore’s livestock. It’s unclear who killed him and his ranch hand, but after their bodies were found, it catalyzed a series of violent skirmishes between local ranchers, supported by the LDS militia, and Native peoples with the Kaibab tribe taking the brunt of the conflict.
After Ted and I left the museum, we explored the beautiful sandstone “fort” with two buildings, each two-stories tall, facing each other across a spacious courtyard.
Brigham Young, who purchased the ranch from Whitmore’s widow in 1870, told members to construct a fort around the spring. It was nicknamed the Winsor Castle after the first ranch manager, Anson Perry Winsor.
Brigham Young designated the ranch as a “tithing ranch” where LDS members would donate ten percent of their cattle herd as part of their yearly profit. Over 2,000 cattle grazed the grassland in 1879.
Because of its isolation, Brigham Young established a telegraph station there as part of the Deseret Telegraph which connected it and other settlements to Salt Lake City. It also became a hideout for plural wives after polygamy was outlawed.
Because the ranch property could have been confiscated under anti-polygamy laws, the church sold it in 1895, but it continued to be a way station for people traveling across the Arizona Strip.
I was fascinated by the fort and the carefully preserved history, but my heart broke at the plight of the Kaibab people.
Displaced from their traditional lands and water, many starved to death. In 1907, the federal government formed the Kaibab Reservation, allotting them about 188 square miles and later dividing the waters equally among the tribe, ranchers, and Park Service.
In 1923, Steven Mather, first director of the National Park Service, proposed making Pipe Spring a national monument with President Warren G. Harding signing the papers.
Forty-eight years later, in 1971, after complicated negotiations which included shares in a well drilled at Pipe Spring, the Kaibab tribe asked the Park Service to design a joint-use Kaibab Tribal Cultural Building/Visitor Center.
They began construction in 1972, using rock and other local materials to create the building. With great fanfare, including Kaibab traditional dances, it was dedicated on May 26, 1973.
The program stated that Pipe Spring was “symbolic of the union of many cultures and their need to maintain harmonious relationships with the world about them.”
Fifty-three years later, almost to the day, Ted and I finished exploring the fort and the grounds. We hiked along the ridge trail, and on our way down, we could see buses and cars pulling into the monument’s parking lot.
Because of the unprecedented cooperation between the Park Service and the Kaibab tribe, visitors from around the globe were learning not only Pipe Spring’s layered history, but also about the Kaibab belief to live in harmony with all things, a belief that could change the world.