The place was clean and free from all unpleasant odors. In the middle of the floor a fire burned, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof. At one side was the primitive forge, where the head of the house worked in metals; and against the far wall his squaw was hunkered down, weaving a blanket on her wooden loom. A couple of his young offspring were playing about, dressed simply in their little negligee-strings. The mud walls were hung with completed blankets. Long, stringy strips of dried beef and mutton--the national dishes of the tribe--were dangling from cross-pieces overhead; and on a rug upon the earthen floor lay a glittering pile of bracelets and brooches that had been made by the old man out of Mexican dollars. When we came away, after spending fifteen minutes or so as their guests, the whole family came with us; but the old man tarried a minute to fasten a small brass padlock through a hasp upon his wattled wooden door. "Up on the reservation, away from the railroads and the towns, there are no locks upon the doors," Smith said. "Why is that?" I asked. Smith grinned. "I'll tell the old man what you said and let him answer." He clucked in guttural monosyllables to the chief, and the chief clucked back briefly, meanwhile eyeing me with a whimsical squint out of his puckered old eyes. And then Smith translated: "Why should we lock our doors in the place where we live? There are no white men there!" I will confess that as a representative of the dominant Caucasian stock I had, for the moment, no apt reply ready. Later I thought of a very fitting retort, which undoubtedly would have flattened that impertinent Indian as flat as a flounder; unfortunately, though, it only came to me after several days of study, and by that time I was upward of a thousand miles away from him. But I am saving it to use on him the next time I go back to the Grand Canon. No mere Indian can slander our race, even if he is telling the truth--not while I'm around! Down in Southern California I rather figured on finding a large swarm of Mission Indians clustering about every Mission; but, alas! they weren't there, either. We saw a few worshipers and plenty of tourists, but no Indians--at least, I didn't see any personally. There is something wonderfully impressive about a first trip to any one of those old gray churches; everything about it is eloquent with memories of that older civilization which this Western country knew long before the Celt and the Anglo-Saxon breeds came over the Divide and down the Pacific Slope, filled with their lust for gold and lands, craving ever more power and more territory over which to float the Stars and Stripes.