The Delight Makers by Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
page 6 of 545 (01%)
page 6 of 545 (01%)
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ADOLF F. BANDELIER. Thanks are due also to Hon. Frederick C. Hicks, M.C., for six very interesting photographs of the Zuñis and their country. * * * * * IN MEMORY One day of August, 1888, in the teeth of a particular New Mexico sand-storm that whipped pebbles the size of a bean straight to your face, a ruddy, bronzed, middle-aged man, dusty but unweary with his sixty-mile tramp from Zuñi, walked into my solitary camp at Los Alamitos. Within the afternoon I knew that here was the most extraordinary mind I had met. There and then began the uncommon friendship which lasted till his death, a quarter of a century later; and a love and admiration which will be of my dearest memories so long as I shall live. I was at first suspicious of the "pigeon-hole memory" which could not only tell me some Queres word I was searching for, but add: "Policárpio explained that to me in Cochití, November 23, 1881." But I discovered that this classified memory was an integral part of this extraordinary genius. The acid tests of life-long collaboration proved not only this but the judicial poise, the marvelous insight and the intellectual chastity of Bandelier's mind. I cannot conceive of anything in the world which would have made him trim his sails as a historian or a student for any advantage here or hereafter. Aside from keen mutual interests of documentary and ethnologic study, we |
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