I remember a conversation with a clergyman from Canada, as we stood at the inner edge of the crowd on the Walpi Snake Dance ledge, passing that bit of ominous wait just before the entrance of the Antelope priests for the annual ceremony. That is the time when the Hopi Indian Agent meets most celebrities and makes most of his enemies. Some words passed concerning the picturesqueness of old Walpi, and the magnificent view from our position. The plain below was bathed in a lemon light. “Yes,” I said, casually, “the people would be better off in the valley, if we could get them to remove.” “What!” he cried out in pain and direst astonishment. “Would you have them leave this beautiful place—this beautiful life!” I had uttered sacrilege. No Hopi of the old school could have bettered the clergyman’s utter horror at the thought. But the gentleman, I am sure, gave little attention to many things an Agent sees that are not beautiful, things of distinct menace, hideous things. Walpi is a scenic place, a ruined castle in outline, and always steeped in color effects; but there is the dangerous ledge-road up which all supplies and wood and water must be packed, a road that has accounted for more than one Hopi when the brake would not hold. And did he not forget that women did much of the packing on their backs? And the old and blind, who had plunged over the sheer face of the cliff? And above all, the constant danger of the filth-infested houses, where trachoma and tuberculosis abide? These are things that a tourist does not notice, and when he is away from the color effects and the sound of drumming chants, they do not impinge on his vacant—his vacation mind. Destroy Walpi as a picture? No. But as a human habitation, Yes! I recall a visit to the Indian Office at Washington shortly after one of my characteristic reports on this very subject. “What!” said a Bureau chief who, because he signed a great many letters daily without reading them, believed himself intelligent. “You recommended dynamiting the First Mesa—the destruction of that oasis of beauty, and peace, and—and—” “And trachoma, and tuberculosis, and child prostitution,” I finished for him, as he gasped and his words failed, as I knew they would. Words always fail a Bureau chief. Like the long-range gun of the Germans, he is accustomed to firing things across the continent, secure in that the other fellow cannot immediately crash his words back into his teeth. I had not recommended that. I had simply advocated the destruction of the road leading to Walpi, since the Government and its Bureau Chief would not advance sufficient moneys to make the road safe for travel. That is the viewpoint of tourist and bureaucrat,—the artist has one of pure sentimentality,—of all those who have viewed the Hopi, who have been charmed by the color of his life, but who have been utterly blind to his miseries, and who have contributed nothing to his well-being.