This silence and serenity in the face of annoyances is a very pleasing feature of Indian life to me. What is the use of fault-finding and complaining over disagreeable things that cannot be helped? I have just had an example (and he is but one of scores that occur to my mind) of the opposite spirit shown by a very proud and haughty member of the white race. We were on the car together, coming from the East. The first time he had a meal in the dining-car he came back furious: the chicken was cooked two or three days ago, and was weeks old to begin with; all the provisions were equally bad, the service was abominable, and the charges infamous. Then the speed of the train came in for censure. They did things differently on the New York Central or the Pennsylvania, (forgetful of the fact that those roads run through thickly populated centers, and have a passenger patronage ten times as large as is possible to the western railways that pass through unsettled and barren regions). Then, though it was perfectly delicious weather, he had to kick against its being warm and disagreeable, and so on _ad libitum_ until I was sick of him, as was everybody else in the car. In twenty-six years of association with the Indians, I never met with one such disagreeable grumbler. The white race retains that characteristic practically to itself. If things are disagreeable and can be changed, the Indian calmly and deliberately goes to work to change them. If they are unchangeable he serenely and silently bears them. It is more manly, more agreeable, more philosophical. Time and again I have had white men with me on various trips who needed to learn this simple and useful lesson. They made of themselves intolerable nuisances by their whining, whimpering, and complaining. Those of my readers who care to read Chapter XV in my “In and Around the Grand Canyon,” and the story of the Britisher on page 18 and onward in “The Indians of the Painted Desert Region,” will see that I know that of which I speak. And these are but two experiences out of many similar ones. Yet I have been with Indians again and again in places of distress, deprivation, and danger, and in all my experiences have not heard a half hour’s unpleasant words. Once I started to explore a series of side canyons of the great Grand Canyon. My guide was Sin-ye-la, an intelligent Havasupai. We had a most arduous trip; ran out of water and food; our horses gave out and we had to catch, saddle, and ride unbroken steeds, and finally he caught a wild mule upon which we placed the pack. The horrors and anguish of that trip I have never written, yet there was not a suggestion of complaining from Sin-ye-la, until I decided to leave the canyons and go across the desert to a certain spot where he did not wish to accompany me. Even then he merely stated his case with little or no argument and when I proved obdurate, refused to accompany me, and in fifteen minutes we parted, good friends, he to go his way and I mine.