Some of them sought me out courteously to explain their missions, some of them just happened to see me en passant, and a few earnestly avoided me. The permit system was very irksome to those who did not have a good excuse. And I listened to many theories concerning the Hopi and their curious customs, and I made a brave effort to answer in some pleasant manner ten thousand questions. Finally, I prepared a plea in avoidance:— “Don’t ask me. I have lived here only six years. Ask the chap camped now at the trader’s post—he came last week.” I plagiarized this method from a brother superintendent who knew much of the Navajo and their rare designs in weaving. “Now, my dear Mr. Shelton,” the tourist would ask hopefully, “Doesn’t that sign indicate the rabbit-foot following the lightning?” “Make up your own story,” he would gravely reply, “and then you won’t forget it.” So with Hopi secrets. The little of their history that is known I have already related. The rest is speculation. The believed facts of their ethnology may be had in Smithsonian Reports, moisture proof, dessicated. The bones of their ceremonies have been diagrammed and painted, their chants recorded in scaled notebooks, their odd ceremonial objects looted and catalogued. Sentimental word-pictures one can procure from those journalists who flitted rapidly in and out seeking impressions, and who never failed to get them. But I am not one whit more ignorant than any other white man. Despite reams of theories, no one has learned anything of Hopi lore that the Hopi did not want him to know. “Make up your own story, and you won’t forget it.” When certain Christianized worthies of the tribe have pretended to expose their knowledge, I have paid little attention, since I knew the mental calibre of such fellows before conversion, and the depth of their gray matter was never impressive. The last who gave evidence proceeded well in his story until, with a foreign fervor, he began to lie about the Oraibi happenings within my own time, and as I had taken his testimony under oath in Hopi trials, I knew just how many Bibles to trust him on.