temples, what? And what reduced the nation that once
peopled them to a remnant of nine or ten thousand Hopi all told? Do you
not see how the past of this whole Enchanted Mesa, this Painted Desert,
this Dream Land, is more romantic than fiction could create, or than
picayune historic disputes as to dates and broken crockery?

[Illustration: A Hopi wooing, which has an added interest in that among
the Hopi Indians, women are the rulers of the household]

There are prehistoric cliff dwellings in this region of as great marvel
as up north of Santa Fe; north of Ganado at Chin Lee, for instance. But
if you wish to see the modern descendants of these prehistoric Cliff
Dwellers, you can see them along the line of the National Forests from
the Manzanos east of Albuquerque to the Coconino and Kaibab at Grand
Canyon in Arizona. Let me explain here also that the Hopi are variously
known as Moki, Zuni, Pueblos; but that Hopi, meaning peaceful and
life-giving, is their generic name; and as such, I shall refer to them,
though the western part of their reserve is known as Moki Land. You can
visit a pueblo at Isleta, a short run by railroad from Albuquerque; but
Isleta has been so frequently "toured" by sightseers, I preferred to go
to the less frequented pueblos at Laguna and Acoma, just south of the
western Manzano National Forests, and on up to the three mesas of the
Moki Reserve in Arizona. Also, when you drive across Moki Land, you can
cross the Navajo Reserve, and so kill two birds with one stone.

Up to the present, the inconvenience of reaching Acoma will effectually
prevent it ever being "toured." When you have to take a local train that
lands you in an Indian town where there is no hotel at two o'clock in
the morning, or else take a freight, which you reach by driving a mile
out of town, fording an irrigation ditch and crawling under a barb wire
fence--there is no immediate danger of the objective point being rushed
by tourist traffic. This is a mistake both for the tourist and for the
traffic. If anything as unique and wonderful as Acoma existed in Egypt
or Japan, it would be featured and visited by thousands of Americans
yearly. As it is, I venture to say, not a hundred travelers see Acoma's
Enchanted Mesa in a year, and half the number going out fail to see it
properly owing to inexperience in Western ways of meeting and managing
Indians. For instance, the day before I went out, a traveler all the way
from Germany had drop