They trudged through soft sand and used walking sticks for balance as they ascended a ridge crowned with black boulders and triangular-shaped piles of rust-colored rocks. Phillip Smith, a Chemehuevi who is an elder in the Colorado River Indian Tribe, and the Rev. Ron Van Fleet of the Fort Mohave Indian Tribe, call this a sacred place. Their ancestors have come to these “altars” for centuries to worship the divine and admire the Mojave Desert.
