In 1898 the Hopi suffered from smallpox. It was not so bad as that epidemic told of by the Spanish, but it was severe enough. Superstition and fright, combined with fatalism, are hard things to conquer among a people who know nothing of vaccination, who trust no stranger, but prefer to die unassisted by aliens. Troops were necessary, to affect quarantine and to cremate bodies. In 1899, say the records, troops came again, and once more prisoners were sent to Fort Defiance. All this time internal dissension was at work among the Oraibans, and in 1905 differences as to the views of local oracles concerning the traditions reached a climax. This quarrel involved nearly everyone within reaching distance. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Francis E. Leupp, the best supporter of discipline the Service has had in three decades, was at odds with his Agent on this station and, to tell the truth, this Agent had met one Waterloo at the Chimopovi pueblo, where an outpost of the Oraibi dwelt. His effort to coerce the Hopi with an enlarged Navajo police force had nearly resulted in bloodshed and real war; and at the end of this fiasco the Navajo mercenaries threatened his life because the pay-chest was not promptly thrown open to them. So the Commissioner came to exert a strong personal influence. And he found speedily that his personal influence in the great Desert amounted to very little. The Indians had a keen sense of the fitness of things, and they resented his appearing to negotiate with them without an official sponsor. “Who are you?” asked the troubled Oraibi, when invited to a council with him. “I am the Commissioner from Washington,” he stated, a fact that was known to President Roosevelt, the Grid-iron Club, and the New York Evening Post, and that should have been patent everywhere. “Why do you come here without Moungwi, then?” they demanded. “He should introduce you to us. We do not know you. Moungwi is not here. Why do you come in the back way, from Winslow, and call a council without Moungwi?” Indians are often peculiarly consistent. They did not regret that recent fracas with Moungwi, when they had seized him by the beard and threatened to toss him bodily from the gigantic Chimopovi cliffs,—action prevented only by his Navajo police threatening to open fire,—but they did know something of official courtesy between and among all Moungwis or Chiefs, and there is such a thing as having the proper entrée, even with an Indian tribe in the far-removed hills. Very likely the Commissioner said something about the respect due his office; when arose a big Indian, who declaimed to this astonishing effect:— “This man comes here alone, and he has a crooked mouth. His words go two ways. He is no Commissioner of Indian Affairs, or the Moungwi would be here to tell us. I myself saw this man working with a shovel on the railroad section-gang not three weeks ago. Don’t listen to him. He will lead you the wrong trail.”