Meanwhile, I picked up this little book because of the title "Roping Lions in Grand Canyon". Later I notice it is by Zane Grey, and was copyrighted in 1924. I'd like to share the introduction, and please excuse the obviously mysogyny given the sex of the writer, the Western society he lived in at the time, and the date but otherwise, well - true in 1925, true now:
To the Boy Scouts of American and Readers of This Book:
In bringing out this volume, Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon, I wish to make clear the fact that this is a story of my actual experiences with Buffalo Jones, the last of the plainsmen. My boy readers will doubtless find some of the material familiar, for in my book, The Young Lion Hunter, I incorporated many of the incidents in the adventures of Ken Ward. That was fiction; this is the true story.
I am hoping that it may influence boys to a keener love and appreciate of all the wonderful outdoors of their native land.
Every boy has a heritage. It is outdoor America. Our open country, that is to say, our uncultivated field, forest, preserves, feeding and nesting swamps, are threatened by the march of so-called progress and commercialism. What is needed is two million Boy Scouts to save some of our green, fragrant, untrammeled land for the boys to come.
The Scout movement is one of the most splendid developments of young America. Through it the future generations will learn how to fare in the outdoors, and will study the great lessons that nature teaches. To love hikes and camps and horses and dogs, to seek the wild creatures with more desire to study them than to kill, to learn to accomplish with the hands, to meet difficult situations that arise, to endure pain and privation, to cultivate strength of body and simplicity of mind -- these are the things that make a good Scout.
So, in putting out this volume of Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon, it is with the hope that its readers will find more than merely entertainment between its covers; that the stories of lions and wild horses and deer, the descriptions of wonderful forest-land and rugged granduer of canyons, and particularly the memor of that strange and remarkable man, Buffalo Jones, preserve of the American bison, and a grain plainsman, will generate the impulse which may help to preserve our great outdoors for future generation.
Zane Grey
Spring 1924
In the end, I think the Boy Scouts might have let Mr. Grey down. But the spirit lives on in all of us who love the outdoors, and these natural wonders of which he speaks in the book. Now I never did find out why that were ROPING lions, or what they did with their captures. I suppose they were for a zoo? But the love of the outdoors, the inspiring descriptions of the beauty of the wild canyon, and the mens clear and obvious love for both the wild and domesticated animals shines through. And although several of his companions had some distain for the Navajo who accompanied them to care for the horses and camp, Mr. Grey clearly does not share this sentiment - and by the end of the book, I think some of the other men had changed their opinion somewhat,also. I wanted to share this bit, too:
"I was dropping off (to sleep) again, when a strange low sound caused my eyes to open wide. The black night had faded to the gray of dawn. The sound I recognized at once to be the Navajo's morning chant. I lay there and listened. Soft and monotonous, wild and swelling, but always low and strange, the savabe song to the break of day was exquisitely beautiful and harmonious. I wondered what the literal meaning of his words could have been. The significance needed no translation. To the black shadows fading away, to the brightening of the gray light, to the glow of the east, to the morning sun, to the Giver of Life -- to these the Indian chanted his prayer.
Could there have been a better prayer? Pagan or not, the Navajo with his forefathers felt the spiritual power of the trees, the rocks, the light and sun, and he prayed to that which was divinely helpful to him in all the mystery of his unintelligible life."
Coming from a white man of the times...pretty insightful. If you should happen to run on to this little book - and love the outdoors - I think you will find it well worth the reading.