Chapter 13 Havasu Summary and Analysis

While traveling to Los Angeles with friends, Abbey learns about Havasu, a Native American settlement located in a branch of the Grand Canyon. He decides to abandon the trip in favor of visiting Havasu at the bottom of the canyon, accessible only by a difficult dirt road. There he rents a horse and buys provisions for about a week, his intention being to stay at an abandoned mining camp outside of town.

About a hundred Native Americans of the Supai tribe live in Havasu. He finds the people to be comfortable with their primitive, by modern standards, lifestyles. Abbey thinks about sociologists and how they study primitive cultures, the intrusions and unintended insults, the impacts of the observers on the subjects, and does not like the whole idea. The Supai do not invite him to stay. He takes this...