--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Unknown collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 30 number: 2 published: 1926-12 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Unknown, “Escalante from a Different Angle,” *Improvement Era* 30, no. 2 (December 1926): 167–169." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3002unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera3002unse start_page: 167 end_page: 169 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1926-12) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3002unse publication_year: 1926 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1926, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Escalante from a Different Angle ESCALANTE FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE 167 It is a most remarkable scene! One's thoughts fly onward in a wild race to account for this scene of a "Sacrificial Rite," combined with a group of very close resemblance to "near-writing," — and both found so strangely in a group of Indian hieroglyphics. Were this found on the battle fields of Troy, in the debris on the Acropolis of Athens, in the Forum of Capitoline Rome, or in Palestine, it would be readily understandable. But can you conceive such a scene, — a "Sacrificial Rite" — en- graved by an American aboriginee in a group of mere Indian hiero- glyphics? Whence came the red man with this rite? What contact had he? What culture from a higher plane? What immigrants carried to this uncultured primitive this rite so common to the Old World? * * * This stone is found in a lonely spot, on an uninhabited waste, near the shores of Utah Lake, — a spot possibly but seldom visited by whites; and certainly, until my own discovery, never a word was published that such a wonderful .rock was there to be seen. There is something in (or on) the rock of great magic potency; for listen: One evening just at dusk, after a meager supper eaten there on the spot, I stood with my foot on that rock gazing across Utah Lake; in my hands I had an ordinary binocular, it aided me to see, yes! — but the .magic of touching that stone gave me an extended vision, greater in range than the aid rendered by mere glass. For in my mind's eye I saw Father Escalante come down Spanish Fork canyon in the fall of 1776 (a year otherwise far more momentous), and with him a small band of Spaniards; I saw a rude, swarthy, copper-colored chieftain, and several sub-chiefs receive him. I saw braves in silent dignity stand on either side, unarmed, for this stranger comes on a peaceful mission — a man of God, unarmed. I saw the Franciscan tell his beads; I saw him kneel and pray with and for those silent, untutored, grave people. I saw him give them a message of Christ, and I saw their ready acceptance of that message. This I saw by the magic of that stone. There must be great potency in a stone to bring into vision a scene faded these hundred and fifty years. I looked down at the one my foot was resting upon. "Oh, stone," said I, addressing it as superior, "thou wert old when Father Escalante came to the shores of Utah Lake; thy message had been cut, aye, these many centuries before. Unfold to me more, I pray thee!" Putting the glass back to my eyes, the stone did '^s it was bidden. For again I saw with greatly increased vision in the fast increasing dark. A luminous haze was seen faintly shining, mayhap at the very spot whereon Escalante stood; that haze was from innumerable elec- tric lights in Spanish Fork; another haze farther north told me I was looking at Springville; and the rock said in tones scarcely audible, but 168 IMPROVEMENT ERA more than vaguely felt by impress of foot, "Look once again, for I feel young in strength, — and much can the strong do, though youth I lack." I looked again, shifting the glass still farther north. Tiny, little pin-point pricks of light caught the straining gaze — arc lights on the street intersections of Provo, directly opposite me on the lake! A something luminous, a something shifting, ebbing up and down, now high, now low, a bright, red glare, wafting in the breeze, held me spellbound. What was I now seeing? "Magic stone, tell me." For reply the magic stone said through impress of foot, "Look better into the past, that you may appreciate more fully the present." I felt my. gaze drawn back to the spot where the canyon de- bouches on the foothills leading to the water line; there I saw a red man without metals; a red man without glass; a red man without writing; — a primitive man living in skin tepees. But a man in a long sacredotal dress, of somber color, was bring- ing to this red man — What, hold! Can I believe my eyes! This man pale of face was in a soft effulgence, more faint than the luminosity I saw as the haze of electric lights, holding in hisi hands a wondrous, unformed thing gradually assuming shape. Then I saw it was destiny — the destiny of the white man — his hands were laden with the future. To those shores he (or his like) were carrying steamboats, railroads, cameras, the telegraph, the 'phone that talks from afar, the magic thing that picks out song, music and speech from the empty air — indeed I was in a spot of much magic! Nor was the stone underfoot impotent yet. On the shores of that lake, where a hundred and fifty years ago talk was Spanish on the one hand and deep gutturals on the other, I saw a college, teaching a language not then talked in Yewtah, teaching those arts developed which I had just seen be- ginning to form in the hands of that white man, laden with what was to be. The stone underfoot impressed the message, "Shift back your glass to the present — thou hast seen the past. Look!" Again the shifting, vibrant, leaping, luminous, red flare caught my eye. The magic stone told me I was looking at the highest achieve- ment of man's culture — his mastery over metallurgy. For I was look- ing at the gases burning at the end of a tall waste pipe a't the site of the great steel mills near Provo — by-products blazing in the night. Take steel from us — take from us the knowledge of all metals, — de- prive us of all machines and the product of all machines — and we are thrown back as far as were the copper-colored natives when Father Escalante visited Utah a hundred and fifty years ago. That saw I in the night by the aid of the magic stone. And yet, that stone, so potent as to bring past and present into the same field of view — to bring to my vision a sight my unaided eyes ESCALANTE FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE 169 could not discern, restored a sight faded now one hundred and fifty years Who says my stone was not a wonderful discovery? Yet, its message as to itself was a locked, silent, baffling mystery. Impenetrable was it to the aboriginee found across the lake when the first Iwhite trod that shore. And why to them? Because sons, descendants, generations of them, forsook the walks and ways of those who had carved that stone — gave up their heritage in a culture that knew the rite — -deliberately sought another walk of life, and traded writing, peaceful arts, and advance, to roam; left stone temples for habitations of skin stretched on a few poles — they became skilled in the ways of the chase, but forgot how to conjugate a verb! Oh, magic stone, thou tellest much. "Now wondrous rock, I with foot upon thee, imbibing thy message, — tell it me direct; speak of thyself! Impart why this Sac- rificial Scene. Speak on, or give me vision!" The stone refused. Nor got I anything further. I had asked for the opposite side of the lake and had gotten it; anything there the stone would and did unfold — everything. But ask it of itself, and my stone was more taciturn than the red man who carved it. * * * Reader of the Era, run with me in the open here untrammelled by words; let us expand our lungs on flights of fancy, deep inhaling. On! Is this stone marking a spot where a people in the long ago suddenly came upon the shores of the fresh, inland sea, after many days on the salt, parching wilderness we now call the "Great Salt Lake Desert?" Could they have dropped to their knees in thanksgiving, and followed that by the rite we know so well as having been practiced in Greece, in Rome, in Judah? Had they carved a message on that stone in commemoration of that deliverance — a message in the lines we see but cannot understand? And thereupon sacrificed an animal, with all the rites which a term of living under those very customs gave them knowledge of? — nay, even more, a people themselves from that land knowing the act. Can we race, O those who read, in that fancy flight, or must we slow down, prosaic reader, to a dull walk, mumbling incoherently our misgivings that our limited vision lets us see nothing more than "just another meaningless hieroglyphic?" For myself I like that bracing air in high flights, and no altitude dizzies — the greater the height the greater the zest. I think just as calmly in those great heights as the merest earth walker who ne'er didst soar. * * * "Magic stone, if thou wilt not talk of thyself, I thank thee for thy vision of Father Escalante and his handful of the future. I thank thee for what I have seen this night on the shores of Utah Lake, aided by thy power. As far as thou hast talked have I received." Delta, Utah