"The Hopi has lived for many centuries among the harsh conditions of the desert land. Everything is wrested from nature. Nothing is given freely, as in such a land as southern California for instance. Water is scarce and has to be caught in the valley and carried with heavy labor to the mesa summit. The soil is sandy and not very productive unless every particle of seed corn is watered by irrigation. Firewood is far away and must be cut and brought to their mesa homes with labor. Wild grass seeds must be sought where grass abounds, perhaps scores of miles away, and carried home. Pinion nuts can only be gathered in the pinion forests afar off, and to gain mescal the pits must be dug and the fibres cooked deep down in the mysterious recesses of the Grand Canyon. The deer and antelope are swift, and can only be caught for food by those who are stout of limb, powerful of lung, and crafty of mind. Hence in the very necessities of their lives they have found the use for physical development. And this imperative physical need soon graduated into a spiritual one. And the steps or processes of reasoning by which the chief motive is transferred from the physical to the spiritual are readily traceable. Of course, they are a 'chosen people.' 'Those Above' have given especial favors to them. They must be a credit to those Powers who have thus favored them. This implies a steady cultivation of their muscular powers. Not to be strong is to be a bad Hopi, and to be a bad Hopi is to court the disfavor of the gods. Hence the shamans or priests urge the religious necessity of being swift and strong." [Illustration: HOPI WOMAN WEAVING BASKET, HER HUSBAND KNITTING STOCKINGS.] [Illustration: HOPI WOMAN PREPARING CORN MEAL FOR MAKING DOUGHNUTS.] Nor is this all. In days gone by they were surrounded by predatory foes. Physical endurance was an essential condition of national preservation. Without it they would long ago have been starved or hunted out of existence. The gods called upon them to preserve their national life, to live by cultivation of endurance, hence the imposition of physical tasks as a religious exercise. And these morning runs of the young men were of ten, twenty, and even more miles, taken without any other food than a few grains of parched corn. It is no uncommon thing for an Oraibi or Mashonganavi to run from his home to Moenkopi, a distance of forty miles, over the hot blazing sands of a real American Sahara, there hoe his corn-field, and return to his home, within twenty-four hours. The accompanying photograph of an old man who had made this eighty-mile run was made the morning after his return, and he showed not the slightest trace of fatigue. For a dollar I have several times engaged a young man to take a message from Oraibi to Keam's Canyon, a distance of seventy-two miles, and he has run on foot the whole distance, delivered his message, and brought me an answer within thirty-six hours.