In nothing is the primitiveness or the absence from contamination of the Hopi better revealed than in the children, for here, as elsewhere, is it shown that they are the best conservators of the habits and customs of ancestral life. What utter savages the little fellows are! Stark naked generally, whether it be summer or winter, dirty from head to foot, their long black hair disheveled and tangled and standing out in every direction, their head often resembling a thick matted bunch of sagebrush. They are never idle; now back of the village behind tiny stone ramparts eagerly watching their horsehair bird snares, or engaged in a sham battle with slings and corncobs, or grouped in threes or fours about a watermelon, eagerly and with much noise gorging themselves to absolute fullness, or down on the side of the mesa playing in the clay pits. A not uncommon sight is that of two or three little fellows trudging off in pursuit of imaginary game, armed with miniature bows and arrows or with boomerangs and digging-sticks. In their disposition toward white visitors they are extremely shy and reticent, but they are also very inquisitive and curious, and, furthermore, they have a sweet tooth, and one only need display a stick of candy to have half the infantile population of the pueblo at his heels for an hour at a time. If perchance one of the little fellows should die, he is not buried in the common cemetery at the foot of the mesa, but he is laid away among the rocks in some one of the innumerable crevices which are to be found on all sides near the top of the mesa, for the Hopis, in common with many other native tribes of America, believe that the souls of departed children do not journey to the spirit land, but are born again. [Illustration: GRAVE OF CHILD IN ROCK CREVICE.]