“The men, of course,” he replied, emphatically; “but do you think it possible to get that stuff through a Hopi woman’s head? Epten. The men will try to carry out your wishes; but they are in for a very unpleasant time of it with their women. A Hopi woman! She is like a piece of sandrock. The winds wear it away, but it will take many years.” The younger women, who have had schooling, wear the gingham and calico dresses they have learned to make and launder, and the field matrons assist them in renewing these garments. But the old ones, and the students of middle-age, are most likely to be found wearing the ancient Hopi weaves. A dress may be of thick cloth caught at one shoulder, leaving the opposite arm bare, belted at the waist with a woven sash, the wearer’s legs and feet bare most of the time, unless for some special journey she dons the woman’s wrapping and shoe of buckskin. She grows thick and fat, her countenance rounding into a broad, complacent face that can smile pleasantly or become stolidly impervious as the mood strikes her. Once married, her hair is parted and hangs down her back in thick plaits. Her hands are thick and coarsened from hard labor, the making of pottery, and especially from the baking of piki bread. This baking is done on a red-hot stone over the fire. The Hopi woman sits before it, at her side a pan of batter, sometimes colored red or blue. She dips her hand into the batter and smears it deftly over the hot stone. Before it has burned and curled, she wipes over it a second layer. This last cooks perfectly in a thin wafer, quite like tissue-paper, crinkled and brittle. This she peels off and places in a pile of such sheets. All day she does this, often until her palm is perfectly cooked with the bread. The sheets are then rolled, again resembling a packet of tissue, quite like those we used to buy at Christmas time for decorations. A dozen of these rolls, and the Hopi man will take the trail, fully provided with provender. Some rather reject the thought of eating piki bread, but I have sampled Indian foods more than once, and with different results. An old Navajo shemah can broil mutton ribs and prepare a pot of coffee over a hogan fire in such a way that one who has had a hard trip,—and more of it to come,—thinks them delicious. And piki bread is not half bad, although rather flat in taste, and gritty, for the sand will intrude; and I suppose if one accepted it as a steady diet his teeth would be worn down in time, like those of the older Hopi. As for the cooked hand, one should gratefully accept and eat piki without being too curious as to its making. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.