Squalor Amid Splendor

It is a canyon of incomparable beauty. Red sandstone walls climb 5,300 ft. above 518 verdant acres. Waters cas cade down arching falls and sparkle in terraced pools coated with deposits of travertine. From this flow came the settlers' name. The Havasupai Indians-- "people who live by the blue-green water" -- occupy, as they have for ten centuries, the floor of Cataract Canyon in Grand Canyon National Park.

Against such natural splendor, the 370 members of the Havasupai tribe live, or exist, as one of the most impoverished groups in the U.S. The soaring cliffs of the canyon, once a shield against Apache warriors, have become walls of a prison. There are only three ways out: by helicopter (at $120 per hour), on foot or by horseback. The eight-mile pack trip to the lip of the can yon takes three hours, but this is just the first leg. Havasupai in need of sup plies must travel 120 miles to Kingman, Ariz. From there merchants will ship goods back to the canyon at a 40% to 60% premium.

Housing Airlift. The tribe has become almost totally dependent on the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. The bureau's heavy-handed paternalism has produced bitterness and lassitude. Recently, for example, a Government-financed airlift of five prefabricated houses into Supai stirred more dust than excitement.

As 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.

Five of the reservation's neediest families were chosen at random for the hous es. Once selected, however, the families had to be talked into accepting the new homes. One reason for their reluctance was that the relatively luxurious housing is bound to cause jealousy and antagonism on the part of the other 45 families. Besides, without electricity and with a constant firewood shortage, the dwellings will be impossible to heat.

The 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.

The 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.

Of the 142 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 reliable source of income will be destroyed.

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."

Sequential Marriage. The Havasupai family structure is almost nonexistent. In a society without privacy, children imitate their elders and begin sexual activity early. Illegitimacy is rampant, birth control ignored. Havasupai men, notes

Social Anthropologist John Martin, practice "sequential marriages," taking one wife after another. Matches between first cousins are routine; mental retardation is common. Disease, poor diet and high infant mortality combine to give the Havasupai a life expectancy of only 44 years (U.S. average: 70). They also have a suicide rate 15% above the national average.

Until now, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has invested only limited funds and manpower to ease the tribe's plight. Little in the way of imaginative social work has been attempted. Putting shingled rooftops over each Havasupai's head is a questionable response to his needs, and even this will be done only gradually. According to Government plans, five houses will be lowered into the canyon each year, which means that the project will not be completed until 1979.

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