Their first contact with white men was made in the dark of an autumn night in 1540, but it was in the next dawn that they realized invasion by a new and strange enemy. Most of Hopi history has the dawn atmosphere. Their footprints lead back to the caves of the Dawn Men. Their homes face the rising sun from the highest point of the landscape; their ceremonies and hunts begin at sunrise. They are a dawn-loving people. Contact with the Spaniards was broken by the revolt of 1680, and completely ceased with 1700; but the gifts of the enemy remained in fruits, and wool, and beasts of burden, and perhaps some loot of swords and Church vessels hidden to this day. The obstinate Hopi were not worth the effort at reconquest, and later the Mexican Government did not bother them. For more than one hundred and fifty years the Hopi knew only the Navajo and Apache and Ute as his enemies. With the close of the Mexican War and the treaty of 1848, this nearly forgotten tribe came under the nominal guardianship of the United States. I say nominal, for their first Agent was located in far-distant Santa Fe, and unlike the Spanish, he had no missioners to risk martyrdom for the spreading of his doctrine. In 1849 he accompanied an expedition against the Navajo, and reached Cañon de Chelly, about sixty miles from the First Mesa. One year later a delegation of Hopi visited this chief to petition for protection against the Navajo. I fancy them plodding afoot, behind their burros, timidly crossing the Navajo country to pass through the provinces of their kinsmen, the Pueblos, and on to the City of the Holy Faith. In that same year, 1850, their Agent was prevented from visiting them, as he wished, because he lacked an escort of troops. Many estimates of the Hopi population were made in the early years. The Spaniard was an expert at overestimating for the benefit of distant kings. His thousands were always given as tens of thousands, and when he wanted money and help toward new colonies he stressed the saving of souls and could easily imagine millions of baptisms. But it is recorded in 1780 that smallpox had reduced the Hopi to less than 800. In 1899 their first resident Agent stopped guessing and made a count. He found and listed 1832 Hopi. In one hundred and nineteen years the population had little more than doubled. In 1912 there were 2068 on the Reserve, and in the next seven years they gained 217, or 31 per year—15 per thousand annually. They lost nearly sixty per cent of this seven-years’ gain in 1918, the year of Spanish influenza. In 1919 there were 2158 Hopi on the Reserve, and adding the absent, who had increased and multiplied in the west, at Moencopi, there were less than 2500 of these Indians alive. But this handful has interested more distinguished men and women than have many greater nations.