In conjunction with our theme week, let's use Tuesday Trivia to talk about Native America and Native Americans (broadly defined) in the 20th century: people, politics, culture, interactions with American continental governments and a globalizing world.
Abundant thanks for the Navajo articles & other cuttings. This material is really tremendously interesting, & contained much that was new to me. The Desert of the Black Blood is one of the most strikingly weird things I have ever seen described outside fiction, & would make an ideal setting for a fantastic story. The suggestion of primal ruins is especially appealing. The Navajos themselves form a highly interest study. I read La Farge's work about them—"Laughing Boy"—some years ago.
Then there have been newspaper accounts of an incredible place in New Mexico—in Navajo's country—called 'The Desert of the Black Blood.' This is a ghoulish & desolate area of broken lava which is rifted by great chasms & which has probably never been penetrated beyond a few miles by any white man—or any living Indian for that matter. Aeroplanes, flying over it, have spied what look like ruins at its very heart; & local legends tell of an ancient & mysterious city whose crumbling walls now harbour carnivorous dragons. Yes—the southwest is surely a place for the connoisseur in strange horror to visit—though one would need a guide to help one find the genuine high spots with a minimum of wasteful wandering.
I may yet call you for colour and detail in connexion with some yarn based on these regions—and I thank you in advance for the idea. The southwest is probably richer in sinister possibilities than the southeast which I know and love so well. I recall many awed references to its moonlit sands and half-amorphous ruins, its spectral colour-effects and its subtle suggestions of unholy antiquity—and only the other day someone was urging me to get in touch with an archaeologist who has monkeyed around a weird pueblo popularly called 'The City of the Worm.' Then there have been newspaper accounts of an incredible place in New Mexico—in the Navajo country—called 'The Desert of the Black Blood'. This is a ghoulish and desolate area of broken lava which is rifted by great chasms and which has probably never been penetrated beyond a few miles by any white man—or any living Indian for that matter. Aeroplanes, flying over it, have spied what look like ruins at its very hear; and local legends tell of an ancient and mysterious city whose crumbling walls now harbour carnivorous dragons. Yes—the southwest is surely a place for the connoisseur in strange horror to visit—though one would need a guide to help one find the genuine high spots with a minimum of wasteful wandering.
Lovecraft and many of his correspondents would send magazine and newspaper clippings to each other, and talk about the contents - usually very briefly - and Native Americans formed one of the occasional topics of discussion. Lovecraft encountered very few Native Americans himself - most notably when he toured a Seminole village on one of his trips to Florida - but this didn't stop him or his correspondents from developing strict opinions on them, often shaped by the anthropological, ethnological, and archaeological speculation of the time; in particular, HPL seemed to have at least a slight interest in discussion of the "Mound Builders" and any hints of a more developed (to his sensibilities) civilization that had predated European contact.
I still haven't found the origin of this particular clipping, but it's probably talking about stocks with radiating dikes in the Mojave desert, which could potentially be mistaken for a ruined tower by an early airplane.