For a week I had been on my toes, so to speak. Two thousand tourists, threescore official guests, including a dozen observing Indian Agents and the Colonel and everything, had caused me to become a trifle peevish. The Dance was over; the tumult and the shouting had died, the captains and the kings were departing. And so was an insolent crank-operator with a valuable film. Too much is enough. We got him. He will never forget it. Because of this untoward happening, and the wild cries of wounded vanity heard in Washington, the Commissioner became annoyed. He issued a crushing order that no photographs, still, animated, or out of focus, should be permitted thereafter. Thus all innocents are restricted to this day, and the official in charge reaps the criticism. He must locate and check the cameras on the day of the Snake Dance, a terrible procedure, bringing him into argument with almost everyone. This must be done because a few tourists may not be trusted to obey the order. A very foolish order. Nearly everyone was happy when he could bang away a roll of films for the family album and for a fee of one dollar. The tourist loses his chance to vie with Edward Curtis, and the Indians lose their feast money. The reason for such an order against the movies? Well, it would never do to puff, through an entire administration, that all our Indians are domesticated, tamed, and engaged regularly in singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and then to have a spine-thrilling vision flashed up in every movie-theatre each September. Some of the mildest of the Hopi are members of the Snake clan, and go their peaceful ways at Walpi; but they zealously enact their parts in the pageant every second year; and to see those fellows painted ferociously, garbed in savage dress, with snakes held in their mouths—yes, in their mouths; and two or three active snakes can weave a revolting mask for a painted face— I can conceive of no more terrible close-up than that of a Snake Priest, coming toward one with eyes glaring, cheeks and chin painted black, his mouth a huge white daub, and snakes, some of them with rattles, feeling around his ears, through his hair, and about his face and neck. This would never do for general consumption. The public would accept such a pictorial news-item as proof that these continental United States contain savages very like those who beat the awesome drums in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.