So it happened that Wupa's mother with her hungry babe took the well-known trail to Zuñi 100 miles away, and nerved with the strength of desperation at last reached the pueblo under "Corn Mountain." Indian philanthropy rarely extends outside the circle of relatives, and the Zuñi had no mind to give corn to the poor Hopi woman beyond enough to keep her from starving. But little Wupa was worth a bushel of the precious ears, and for that amount he was exchanged, becoming, without being consulted, a Zuñi, while his mother trudged back to Hopiland with food for her starving kinsfolk, feeling, no doubt, little sorrow at the loss of her babe, so great is the levelling power of famine and misfortune. There are usually strays at all Indian villages, and thus the presence of the little Hopi stranger passed without notice. When the crops were assured in the fields of the famine-stricken Hopi, they ceased coming to Zuñi, and Wupa seems to have been unclaimed and forgotten. When he was five or six, the Zuñi in turn sold him to some Mexicans, and the next account there is of him he was living at Albuquerque, a stout young _peon_, with cropped hair, a devout Catholic, speaking Castilian after the fashion of the "Greasers." Wupa thus became, to all intents and purposes, a Mexican, and perhaps had lost sight of his origin. Neither is the transition from Indian to Mexican at all difficult or incongruous. Few Americans realize the new problem of the population that came to us through the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the clannish, unprogressive foreigners who were made American citizens without being consulted. It must be said, however, that the Anglo-Saxon prejudice of the Latin leaves quite out of sight the good qualities of the Mexican; it rarely considers that his ignorance is due largely to lack of advantages during several centuries, and that the strain of Indian blood has not helped matters. According to the white man's way of looking at it, this listless race, seemingly satisfied to be _peons_ in the land of the free, is inferior and doubtfully classed with the Indians, with the doubt in the latter's favor. Wupa quickly picked up the language and associations of his accidental compatriots, and soon the Padre rejoiced in another brand plucked from the burning. His next step was to find a señorita and to marry her, and after the semi-barbarous wedding his woes really begin. In explanation of the description given of Wupa as he appears at present, it may be fair to say that twenty years off his age would leave him a passably young man, but even with this gloss, one cannot form a very high estimate of the señorita's taste.