When Maj. Powell visited Tusayan, in 1870, he was received with marked kindness by the Indians and permitted to attend the secret ceremonials of their cult. The writer is of the opinion that he was the first and only white man granted this privilege by any of the pueblo Indians previous to the expedition to Zuñi, in 1879, by Mr. Stevenson, of the Bureau of Ethnology. The writer accompanied Mr. Stevenson on this occasion and during his succeeding investigations among the Zuñi, Tusayan, and the Rio Grande Pueblos. And whenever the stay was long enough to become acquainted with the people the confidence of the priestly rulers and theurgists was gained, and after this conciliation all efforts to be present at the most secret and sacred performances observed and practiced by these Indians were successful. Their sociology and religion are so intricately woven together that the study of the one can not be pursued without the other, the ritual beginning at birth and closing with death. While the religion of the Rio Grande Indians bears evidence of contact with Catholicism, they are in fact as non-Catholic as before the Spanish conquest. Their environment by the European civilization of the southwest is, however, slowly but surely effecting a change in the observances of their cabalistic practices. For example, the pueblo of Laguna was so disturbed by the Atlantic and Pacific railroad passing by its village that first one and then another of its families lingered at the ranch houses, reluctant to return to their communal home, where they must come in contact with the hateful innovations of their land; and so additions were made to render the summer house more comfortable for the winter, and after a time a more substantial structure supplanted the temporary abode, and the communal dwelling was rarely visited except to comply with the religious observances. Some of these homes were quite remote from the village, and the men having gradually increased their stock of cattle found constant vigilance necessary to protect them from destruction by the railroad and the hands of the cowboy; and so first one and then another of the younger men ventured to be absent from a ceremonial in order to look up some stray head of cattle, until the aged men cried out in horror that their children were forgetting the religion of their forefathers.