Popular conceptions of the Navaho are very crude and inaccurate. They are largely the result of two "floods of information" which deluged the country at two epochs in their history, and neither of them had much truth in the flood. The first of these epochs was at the discovery of the important cliff dwellings located on their reservation,--those of the Tsegi Canyon (the so-called Canyon de Chelly), Monument Canyon, Chaco Canyon, etc. Writers who visited the region wrote the most wild and outrageously conceived nonsense about this people and the dwellings they were supposed to look upon with superstitious veneration. Then later, a lot of unscrupulous whites, fired with similar zeal to that which led the old conquistadors across the deserts of northern Mexico and through the inhospitable wilds of Arizona and New Mexico,--the zeal for gold or silver,--which was doubtless fed by the fact that the Navahoes did possess thousands of dollars' worth of silver ornaments, started out to prospect the interior recesses of the Navaho reservation. Knowing by painful experience what this meant,--for their "white brothers" had stolen their springs and arable land from them on the Moenkopi, on the Little Colorado, at Willow Spring, and a score of other places,--the warlike and courageous Navahoes resented the presence of these men. They begged them to retire, and when the white men refused, fought and whipped them. This naturally excited the cupidity of the silver hunters more than ever. "Why should the blanked Indians fight if not to protect their silver mines?"--this was the kind of question asked, and the natural and legitimate resentment of the Navahoes was described all over the country as "another Indian uprising," and led to the second "flood of knowledge," which the newspapers always have forthcoming when public interest and curiosity are aroused. [Illustration: NAVAHO SILVER NECKLACE AND BELT. _In the collection of George Wharton James._] [Illustration: HOPI PRAYER STICKS OR PAHOS. _In the collection of George Wharton James._] Hence the truth often comes as a wet blanket to the preconceived notions of those who have drank deep from these earlier streams of information! Science and legend both agree in giving to the Navaho a mixed origin. His is not a pure-blooded race. Their myths or legends refer to many assimilations of other people, strangers from the North, South, East, West, and everywhere, all of whom were welcomed and made an integral part of the nation. Hence there is no such thing as a distinctly Navaho type, or, as Hrdlicka puts it, "they show considerable difference in color and measurement, and cannot be considered a radically homogeneous people, but their mixture is not recent." This latter statement is doubtless true, as they would probably become more clannish as their nation grew in numbers and power.