Cabot's Pueblo

 I visited the eclectic, made by hand, Cabot’s Pueblo recently, situated in the town of Desert Hot Springs, CA in the Coachella Valley.  Cabot was the consummate recycler, using materials he found throughout the desert to construct the multi story structure. After Cabot’s death the pueblo was abandoned and a family friend, Cole Eyraud, saved the pueblo, reportedly at shotgun, from would be developers.  Later, Eyraud would donate the pueblo and surrounding property to the City of Desert Hot Springs with the understanding that a museum and art gallery would be its intended purpose.  Lucky for the general public.  It is now a Riverside County Point of Interest site and a fascinating place to visit. 
 
So, who was this fascinating character Cabot Yerxa, and how did he come to live in the Coachella Valley?  These questions are best answered by Cabot’s longtime friend, Cole Eyraud, and told to the reporter Sandra Hale Schulman in a “News from Indian Country” featured article. Some elements seem a bit embellished but it is worth the read.  Per Eyraud:
 
Cabot was born June 11, 1883, in Hamilton, Dakota Territories, and spent his first five years growing up on the Sioux Reservation where his parents, Mary and Fred Yerxa, operated a prosperous Indian trading post. Said to be a maternal descendant of John Henry Cabot, who discovered Newfoundland, Cabot thrilled to the sense of adventure and exploration at an early age, in spite of his father’s hopes to have him follow in his merchant footsteps. The Dakota Trading Post was a gathering place for many bearers of tales and legends, such as Cabot’s friend, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, famous Indian fighter and plainsman. While the family lived in Boston for a brief period before moving to Minneapolis, Buffalo Bill frequently stayed in their home during the performance of his famous Wild West shows. 
  
At age fifteen, Cabot aspired to join the ranks of the prospectors heading toward the Klondike in search of gold, but it was not until one year later, and the amazing sum of two thousand dollars saved, that the elder Yerxa consented to his son’s adventuresome wishes.
 
Cabot remained in Nome where he successfully sold cigars to the miners during the summer months. His affinity for languages became apparent, and his ever-questioning mind probed the culture of the Inuit where he enjoyed the rare hospitality of their homes during the winter season. Cabot collected curios and artifacts while developing a 320-word vocabulary of the Inuit language. Later Cabot said the Smithsonian Institute offered him 50 cents for each word. 
   
During Cabot’s second summer in Alaska, he utilized the business skill his father had taught him, and opened a small grocery store. However, an illness in the family forced him to delay his venture for another year. When he returned, he quickly established a profitable grocery business, taking grocery orders from all over, with the minimum order being $300, to be filled and shipped from his father’s store in Seattle.
 
He was enroute to a reunion of pioneers at Dawson City with his largest order of $3,000 when he met Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt. This meeting grew into a friendship which later brought Cabot an appointment as Postmaster of Sierra Madre, California, a position he served from 1906 to 1913.
 
Cabot’s family had moved to California and invested their fortunes in orange groves near Riverside, but a disastrous freeze in 1913 ended the citrus venture. Cabot then made his way inland to the present site of Desert Hot Springs.
 
After purchasing a burro, which he named Merry Christmas, Cabot spent his time exploring the desert land and establishing his homestead on 160 acres.    
 
For Cabot and nine other families in the area, the biggest single difficulty during the first year was obtaining sufficient water, then available only at the railway station at Garnet, a round-trip of fourteen miles, three times a week.
 
As the building project required it, Merry Christmas and Cabot each carried a large bag of cement on their backs all the way from Garnet. The burro, his constant companion, was quickly becoming legend as she duplicated Cabot’s diet, learned to chew tobacco and drink water from a bottle. During a severe windstorm in the wash at Whitewater, 16 miles away, Merry Christmas saved Cabot’s life when he lost his sense of direction and, laying his head down on her neck to protect his eyes from blowing sand, said “Take me home.”
 
Cabot, Weary from the inconvenience of the water treks to Garnet, near present day Palm Springs, was determined to find his own water supply. He invested his meager savings to purchase well-digging material.
 
After sharing his dilemma with a neighbor, they gauged the temperature of the hole and found it to be 110 degrees. The imminent natural hot water supply gave Cabot the impetus to continue digging, in spite of enormous difficulties. He secured ropes between him and a nearby greasewood bush and dug though a strata of hard rock to a depth of 27 feet in nearly unbearable heat. By standing in five-gallon cans half filled with sand and water he’d hauled from the railroad, he was able to withstand the heat and dig for fifteen minutes at a time before climbing to the surface to change the water. When he reached a depth of 36 feet, the water temperature registered 132 degrees. Not knowing what minerals were in the natural hot water, and fearful there might be arsenic, Cabot used it for bathing only.
 
Miracle Hill was named by Cabot in 1914 because of the two original wells he had dug about 600 yards apart. One produced hot water, the other cold water. Later geologists informed him that because the wells were on either side of an earthquake fault, both hot and cold water became available, and thus was named Miracle Fault.
 
The news of Cabot’s natural hot water discovery was met with scorn and ridicule in 1914. It was not until 1937 that the first scientific analysis of the water took place and people began to realize the therapeutic value of the natural resource. By 1940, Los Angeles businessman L. W. Coffee had formed a profitable trust for the development of subdivisions, which became the city of Desert Hot Springs.
 
Although Cabot made many lasting friendships during his lifetime, his friendship with desert artist Carl Eytel was special. Together they explored the land, painting and becoming more fully aware of the Indian way of life as they went. Eytel was much loved by the Cahuilla Indians and when he died in 1934 was honored by being buried in their tribal cemetery.
 
In 1918, Cabot enlisted in the Army, which necessitated his bidding good-bye to his beloved friend, Merry Christmas. Although burros sold for ten dollars at the time, he was offered ten times as much because of her ability and loyalty.  Cabot decided to allow her to roam the desert free, hoping they would meet when he returned from the war. He never saw her again. 
 
Upon his return to the desert, Cabot became very active in civic activities. He was involved in the founding of Desert Hot Springs as well as being instrumental in establishing the American Legion Chapter there. He was a founding member and first president of the Improvement Association.
 
He was well known locally as an artist and writer, often disappearing for weeks at a time to return with canvasses of the Cahuilla Indian lifestyle.  In 1939 Cabot began the construction of a dream. It was his intention to build a monument to the Indian people he so admired. Without modern equipment he began the construction of what he came to call Cabot’s Old Indian Pueblo. With only a pick and a shovel he carved the first room out of the hillside. It was little more than a cave to protect him as he continued with the rambling structure, sans blueprints.
 
Every portion of the overwhelming building incorporated the Indian’s philosophy of life. It is believed by some Native Americans that symmetry retains evil spirits, so nothing is symmetrical in the Pueblo. Doorways and floors slant, walls are slightly uneven, and the windows form a puzzle of multi-shaped glass. The walls, measuring nine to ten feet in some places were designed to ensure warmth in winter and maintain cool temperatures during the summer months. 
  
Cabot combined cement and granite, fortifying the foundation with timbers salvaged from various construction sites throughout the desert. He learned to fashion adobe bricks as the Indians did, forming them in boxes and allowed to dry in the sun, but he added one cup of cement to each adobe block. 
 
 On August 8, 1945, Cabot married Portia Graham, renowned lecturer and teacher of metaphysics at the school which she founded in Morongo Valley. Portia was a member of a well-to-do Texas family, but had spent most of her adult life in California studying culture, religion, and philosophy. In a letter to his son he added a postscript: “By the way, have married a friend.” Though the tone sounded casual, the marriage had strong bonds. 
  
The two were closely bound in their love of mysticism, art, culture, and the development of their intellect. Each was eccentric in their own way; Cabot developed a consuming interest in Indian life and a personal commitment to painting as Portia centered her avid intellectuality on Eastern Thought and Theosophical Society metaphysics.
  
Cabot was known to raze abandoned homesteader’s buildings in order to make use of the nails, lumber, masonry and glass. He went as far away as the Salton Sea and brought back wood used in the construction of the aqueduct. Rarely were new materials purchased. The result of his labor is a 35-room Hopi style Pueblo containing 150 windows, 5,000 square feet and is four stories high. During Cabot’s lifetime it incorporated his home, workshop, gallery, museum and trading post. Small narrow indoor staircases join the rooms, although Cabot used the customary Hopi Ladders on the façade of the Pueblo for effect. 
  
The first floor of the pueblo was originally Cabot’s trading post and personal living quarters. Although the living room floor is packed earth, he constructed a massive stone fireplace, the only source of heat. A small bedroom cubicle houses a single cot. Adjoining the living room was his “Kiva” room, which contains a table, benches and Indian artifacts. This was an important room because it symbolized the Indian concept of the ritualistic prayer room. A large comfortable kitchen, Cabot’s personal office, a foyer and several storage areas comprise the remaining rooms of the first floor.  Rattlesnakes provided a level of security in the room.
 
It is estimated that the basic construction of the Pueblo took Cabot seven years and a total of 23 years continuous building before he died, leaving it yet unfinished. For twenty years, Cabot and his wife Portia worked and created pictorial, verbal and mental images of their lives at the Pueblo. Cabot died in 1965 at the age of 83.
 
The museum grounds also house a Pueblo Art Gallery, a bookstore, and the famed sculpture “Waokiye,” a 43-foot-tall Indian monument carved from a 750-year-old Sequoia Redwood, actually one of many across the country. For information about Cabot’s Pueblo link to this site: http://www.cabotsmuseum.org/ 
 
Happy Exploring!
Sherry