He was the same unwavering fanatic, “something nearly complete,” a gnome-like creature that would have better fitted dim times in the cavern cities of the Utah border, where his cliff-dwelling forbears built and defended Betatakin, and Scaffold House, and the Swallow’s Nest. In those wild days of the Dawn he would have been an evil power; but now he was simply a belated prophet without honor in his own country, one who had set his face against progress, and whose medicine had failed. Quite lonely too, for most of his followers had drifted from him. But miserable and impotent as he seemed, and perverted as he proved, we somehow admire steadfastness of purpose and the driving will that does not flinch under adversity. This Youkeoma of Hotevilla was not malicious. He was simply a deluded old savage, possessed by the witches and katchinas of his clan, living in a lost world of fable. A Ghost-and-Bird chief. The last of the Hopi caciques. A faint echo of the Desert Dawn-Men. XVI FIDDLES AND DRUMS For you and I are past our dancing days.—Romeo and Juliet. Having had charge of the Hopi for a longer period than any other official of the United States Government,—eight years and two months, to be exact,—I venture to picture them and their empire. To have visited and counseled with them, to have wrangled with them, to have traveled long distances in all sorts of weather because of their childish factional quarrels; to have arrested and judged and disciplined them; even married them,—if that may be separately classed,—to have cared for them in severe illnesses and advised in times of stress; to have ransomed them from enemies; to have espoused their uninteresting cause in the face of Departmental opposition; and when their meagre business of living was over to have buried them—well, this ought to embrace an angle of vision. Yet, I hesitate. Reflection cautions me that this may be presumption; for, after all, what do I know of the Hopi Indians? During those eight long years I met on the reservation thousands of visitors—students and their mentors; painters and etchers and sculptors of distinction, and those who thought they were; photographers and lens-artists; ethnologists, philologists, and sociologists; ballyhoo men from Eastern department-stores and half-wits taking an outing; journalists and authors and publishers; geologists and common “water-witches”; motion-picture men and others wearing puttees; actors and lecturers; composers, musicians, and vocalists; museum scouts and “scratchers”; clergymen and soldiers; Oxford men, Harvard men, men from Bonn; retired statesmen and unretiring politicians; representatives of foreign governments; persons from the far-famed city of New York; tourists, and caparisoned dudes, and simple guides; plain gentlemen and plainer roughnecks.