During the dance the fat and impudent _koshari_ honored me with a command,--“You take me and my chum for a ride?” Fat and very naked, covered with melting grease paint, and ferocious in horns and tail, he was not the sort of companion I would have chosen for a motor drive, but a refusal might have prompted him to expel us from the village. On a fête day, the lightest word of a _koshari_ is law. He clambered in, and moved over to make room for his chum, a loathsome and mangy old fellow, with rheumy, sightless eyes, whose proximity filled me with disgust. Tottering with age and excitement, his first move was to clutch the steering wheel, and when I had disengaged his claws, he grasped the lever with an iron grip. Meanwhile, thirteen brown babies, some of whom had been bathed as recently as last year, climbed into the tonneau. We whirled around and around the plaza, the children shouting, dogs barking, the fat _koshari_ bowing like visiting royalty to the cheering spectators, uttering shrieks in my ear to take me off guard, kicking his heels in the air, or sliding to the floor as a too-daring visitor tried to snap his picture, while _koshari_ senior occasionally seized the levers and threw us into reverse, nearly stripping the gears. A curious people! Childishly admiring of the white man’s automobiles, radium watches and canned foods, and gravely contemptuous of his civilized codes, morals and spiritual insight; unsanitary in daily life, yet with rituals of hospital cleanliness; believing in charms and “medicine,” yet with a knowledge of herbs, and mental therapy beyond our own; introducing buffoonery into their religious services, yet with a reverence for religion uncomprehended by the white man; unable to persuade the government to give him citizen rights,--but easily able to persuade the Lord to send him rain! For, two days after the dance, rain came in abundance in sheets, torrents and cataracts, after a drought which had lasted months. The Hopi snake dance they say never fails to bring rain. Other rain dances about Santa Fé have the same result. Is it coincidence,--or has the Indian a weather sense beyond ours;--or does he look the Deity more squarely and unflinchingly in the eye when he makes his demands? Jacob wrestled with his angel. The Indian _knows_ his prayers will bring rain. And however obtained, his percentage of correct answers seems higher than the white man’s.