Though baseball, football, and many other athletic games of civilization have no place among the Hopi sports, of foot racing they are as passionately fond as even the ancient Greeks. Almost every one of the many ceremonies has its foot race in which the whole pueblo takes the greatest interest, for all the Hopi honor the swift runners. This brings to mind the story of how Sikyabotoma lost his hair. Sikyabotoma, who bears the school name of John, is the finest specimen of physical manhood at the East Mesa. John is not unaware of this gift of nature, as he poses on all occasions out of sheer pride. One cannot observe that John got anything out of his American schooling; he seemingly does not speak a word of English, and he is beyond all reason taciturn for a Hopi. It may be that John is a backslider, having forgotten or thrown over his early education and relapsed to his present state under the influence of Hopi paganism. As runner for the Walpi Flute Society, his duty is to carry the offerings to the various shrines and springs, skirting on the first day the entire circuit of the cultivated fields of the pueblo, and coming nearer and nearer each day till he tolls the gods to the very doors of Walpi. It is no small task to include all the fields in the blessings asked by the Flute priests, since the circuit must exceed twenty miles. Each day Sikyabotoma, wearing an embroidered kilt around his loins, his long, glossy hair hanging free, stands before the Flute priests, a brave sight to behold. They fasten a small pouch of sacred meal at his side and anoint him with honey on the tip of the tongue, the forehead, breast, arms, and legs, perhaps to make him swift as the bee. Then he receives the prayer-sticks, and away he goes down the mesa as though he had leaped down the five hundred feet, his long, black hair streaming. He stops at a spring, then at a shrine, and in a very short time can scarcely be distinguished running far out by the arroyo bounding the fields. John in this role is a sight not soon to be forgotten. This brings us to the story of John's Waterloo. At sunrise on the last day of the _Wawash_ ceremony there are foot races in honor of the gods, and a curious condition of these races is that the loser forfeits his hair. Now the Hopi are like the Chinese in having an aversion to losing this adornment. A bald Hopi is a great rarity, and the generality of the men have long, beautiful locks, black as a raven's wing, washed with soaproot and made wavy by being tied tightly in a knot at the back of the head. Sikyabotoma entered the _Wawash_ race with confidence, but when the runners came back on the tortuous trail up the rocks Sikyabotoma was second. A pair of sheep shears in the hands of his adversary soon made havoc with his locks. At the time this sketch was written John's hair had grown again to a respectable length.