I haven't read Lawrence's story, but the sickness (I have to say it) of Lawrence's misconstrual of Native American culture gives me the creeps. I suspect he's actually projecting onto them the creepiness and violence he's repressing from his own upper class English upbringing.

These are the same generals who sacrificed millions in the trenches in World War I for nothing.

Also, it seems that Lawrence had twisted some bizarre sense of "uniting with the All" into some sick violent ritual which he sneakily foists off onto the Indians rather than perhaps looking into himself to see what a creep towards women he is.

That all being said, I'm reminded of 3 things:

1) Lawrence was friends with Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos. Mabel, whom I love so dearly, is the the person who told Georgia O'Keefe about New Mexico. The Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos is a B&B & conference center today. One of the rooms you can stay in, the Atrium, has windows which were painted by D.H. Lawrence.

I have to mention one other odd thing: The House was owned by Dennis Hopper years later. He wrote the script for Easy Rider there.

2) Lawrence's evil projection of smelly savages really pisses me off. I've been to a Basket Dance at Zuni. I'm glad he wasn't there.

3) One of my favorite movies is The Sheltering Sky. If you see or have seen it, you'll see the similarity in themes about mysterious other cultures and a woman's journey into deep places that the white culture knows nothing about. But much better IMO. The old fellow sitting in a corner of the French colonial hotel, who also has the most powerful scene with Debra Winger at the end, is actually Paul Bowles himself, who wrote the story the movie is taken from.