It was through the courtesy of Mr. John Lorenzo Hubbell, that early pioneer and baronial trader of the Navajo Desert, that I chanced to view the most secret of the Snake Dance rites, the baptism or washing of the snakes in the kiva. This occurs in the morning of the day of the public ceremony. Perhaps one might call it the consecration of the messengers; for, as I have understood it, the snakes are the tribe’s envoys to the gods, bearing its petition for rain and its thanks for harvests. Perhaps, as Moungwi, I might have achieved this success earlier, but it was my method in dealing with the Hopi, an always suspicious people, not to display an interest in their secrecies. Of necessity—or perhaps I should say in good judgment—I had to police their dances, to prevent possible clashes between the non-understanding Indian and the nearly always unreasonable and overcurious tourist; but I have never asked an Indian, anywhere, to give me an “inside” concerning his primitive beliefs. Having to guide and often to judge that same Indian, it would have been an unfair advantage to take of my position, and would at once have classed me, the appointed mentor, as a piece of curiosity no different from the white men he so often wrangled with. Moreover, I had other means of acquiring information. The traders told me all they had garnered through the many years of trafficking with Indians, and each newcomer—tourist, artist, or itinerant official,—presented me with the varying chaff of his very swift and gullible gleaning. The always helpful Mr. Hubbell bridged this dilemma by inviting me as his guest, and I could accept without losing caste. Hubbell had been admitted to the kiva many years before. Then Dr. Fewkes in 1899, as he relates, and since then the Indians have received Mr. Roosevelt, General Hugh L. Scott, and a few others. Perhaps not more than a score of white men have witnessed this ceremony. In our little party were a visiting superintendent, an engineer of the Desert Service, and Mr. Ford Harvey, son of the immortal Fred who rescued so many hungry travelers along the Santa Fe in early times, and to whom should be erected a monument of bronze. From the poles of the kiva ladder flew the feather-plumes that signify the progress of secret rites. An Indian met us at the top, and we filed after him down the ladder, into the cool, dim atmosphere of that underground rock-walled vault. It had a peculiar odor—perhaps an earthy, perhaps a snaky smell.