For the cañon has all seasons for its own. It is almost as much of an object of winter as of summer pilgrimage. One season is found, on the whole, to be almost as enjoyable here as another. It is cool in summer, and it is warm and sunny in winter. Sometimes there is a fairy snowfall, but hardly more lasting than a spring frost, and when it comes it only adds another flitting variety to the stupendous scene.
With untold tons of the water of the Colorado River pouring itself in torrents through the bottom of the cañon, all the water used for the table, for toilet, and for laundry purposes has to be brought from a distance of a hundred and twenty miles, and twenty thousand gallons are in daily use. An electric-light plant furnishes brilliant illumination.
The Hopi House, built in imitation of an Indian pueblo, with a group of quaintly garbed Hopi Indians within in attendance, is a curiosity; and besides the Hopis there are Navajos and Supais coming to sell their handiwork,--that of pottery, silver ornaments, blankets, and baskets. Cataract Cañon, forty miles from El Tovar, is the home of the Supais, and it is a place that well repays visiting for an entirely new point of view of the vast cañon that it affords. There are peaceful Indians to be seen daily riding their horses through the pine woods, journeying from El Tovar to Grand View, to "Hance's Trail," to "Moran's Point," and other localities, to sell or barter their wares. One old Indian who seems to roam about alone has developed an ingenious manner of procuring food when he is hungry. He enters the hotel office and seeks the proprietor himself, recognizing with unerring instinct that this gentleman's liberal endowment of sympathy and unfailing generosity never permits him to "turn down" a request for aid. The wily old savage seeks him out and makes conspicuous overtures of his affection.
"You is heap my son; pale face heap my son!" the dusky visitor declares, and when this assurance is emphasized to the proprietor he realizes that it means he is "heap my son" because his visitor is hungry. These outbursts of devotion occur only when the old Indian is at his wits' end to know where to procure something to eat. Once fed he is off, and thinks no more of the man whom he assured that he was "heap my son" until hunger again assails him and stimulates his parental affection.