For the grateful recognition paid to dead Chipeta, belated though it was, melted the reserve of a brother, the last on earth of Ouray's funeral train. The old chief led the way to his grave and reverent white men brought his bones to rest beside his wife.
There was splendor in Ignacio that day. Several thousand white men and women were present and Utes, Navajos, and Apaches, in the regalia of glory that had passed, performed colorful rites. Their chants mingled with Christian prayers. They danced, as in the old years, to the old, old red gods, to honor the father of the Utes and his beloved, who, at last, in death as in life, were again side by side.
Mesa Verde National Park
By Virginia Donaghe McClurg
(Regent General of the Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association)
The movement which made Mesa Verde a National Park, containing "the most spectacular and representative area of cliff-dwellings known" (according to Dr. J. Walter Fewkes of the Bureau of Ethnology), had its inception in the visit of a young woman correspondent of the New York Daily Graphic to the ruins of Mancos Cañon, Mesa Verde, in 1882.
With the accounts of the Government Expeditions (Holmes) published in '75-'76, and Frank Cushing at Zuni, establishing the links which bound the vanished people to the race of Pueblo Indians, the world was beginning to realize that in and on mesas of the southwest United States, the phase of life which scientists call "middle barbarism" could be studied in its entirety, especially on the green tableland, honeycombed with side cañons, where were clustered cliff-homes, like swallows' nests over the precipices. For here, the Age of Polished Stone lingered long.
As there was an Indian uprising, the trip of the correspondent was undertaken under special escort of United States soldiers. Sandal House on the Mancos river, the watchtower of Navajo Cañon and some minor ruins were explored. "From that day to this, Mrs. Gilbert McClurg's interest in Mesa Verde has never flagged, and that Colorado, today, is in proud possession of this National Park is due in largest measure to her patient, continued and self-changing work, covering a quarter of a century."—(Denver Times.)
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