On August 28, St. Augustine’s Day, occurs the annual public fiesta, with the usual open air Indian dances after mass in the church. The large circular _estufa_, or native ceremonial chamber, entered by a ladder let down through an opening in the roof, is a conspicuous feature of the pueblo. You will find such places, in one form or another, in all the Pueblo villages, and in the Cliff Dwellers’ towns. They were originally used as the sleeping apartments of the men. Nowadays the men sleep at home, but the _estufas_ are still resorted to by them as a sort of club-room or lounge when religious ceremonies are not going on inside. Despite membership in the Roman Catholic Church the average Pueblo’s main hold on the unseen that is eternal is through his primitive pagan faith, whose rites he still practices. Entrance to the _estufas_ is not, as a rule, readily granted to white people, and should never be undertaken without permission first obtained. As a matter of fact, there is on ordinary occasions nothing to see but a dimly lighted chamber with bare floor and walls, and a small, boxed-in fire-pit near the base of the ladder. To the big old adobe church of Saint Augustine in the center of the pueblo, there attaches a queer legend sure to delight the traveler whose interest is less in historical verities than in the fanciful flights of the human mind. I refer to the tradition of the Rising of Padre Padilla’s Coffin. Among the Franciscan friars who accompanied Coronado on his famous march to what he called Quivira—the country of the Wichita Indians in Kansas—was Padre Juan de Padilla. This intrepid servant of God (when Coronado turned homeward), remained with two lay brothers on the Kansas plains with the view of Christianizing those Indians. The outcome of the matter was that he was killed by them on November 30, 1544. Now tradition has it that somehow in the heavenly ordering, the body of the martyred padre got miraculously transferred from Kansas to a place under the church altar at Isleta; and it is firmly believed (and the belief is backed up by the circumstantial testimony of solid citizens) that periodically the coffin, which is a section of a hollowed cottonwood trunk, rises plainly to view in the church, disclosing to whomsoever may then be present, the padre rather mummified but still in his black whiskers. To prove it there are people who will show you bits of his gown nipped off surreptitiously by eye-witnesses and preserved as precious amulets.[20]