man.

The Navajos are the aristocrats of the Southwestern country. They are
dignified, cleanly in their personal habits, and orderly; and they are
wonderful artisans. In addition to being wonderful weavers and excellent
silversmiths, they shine at agriculture and at stock raising and sheep
raising. They are born horse-traders, too, and at driving a bargain it
is said a buck Navajo can spot a Scotchman five balls any time and beat
him out; but they have the name of being absolutely honest and
absolutely truthful.

This same Mr. Smith, who has lived several years on the Navajo
reservation and who is an adopted member of the tribe, took several of
us to pay a formal call upon a Navajo subchief, who spends the tourist
season at the Grand Canon. The old chap, long-haired and the color of a
prime smoke-cured ham, received us with perfect courtesy into his winter
residence, the same being a circular hut contrived by overlapping
timbers together in a kind of basket design and then coating the logs
inside and out with adobe clay.

The place was clean and free from all unpleasant odors. In the middle of
the floor a fire burned, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof.
At one side was the primitive forge, where the head of the house worked
in metals; and against the far wall his squaw was hunkered down,
weaving a blanket on her wooden loom. A couple of his young offspring
were playing about, dressed simply in their little negligee-strings. The
mud walls were hung with completed blankets. Long, stringy strips of
dried beef and mutton--the national dishes of the tribe--were dangling
from cross-pieces overhead; and on a rug upon the earthen floor lay a
glittering pile of bracelets and brooches that had been made by the old
man out of Mexican dollars. When we came away, after spending fifteen
minutes or so as their guests, the whole family came with us; but the
old man tarried a minute to fasten a small brass padlock through a hasp
upon his wattled wooden door.

"Up on the reservation, away from the railroads and the towns, there are
no locks upon the doors," Smith said.

"Why is that?" I asked.

Smith grinned. "I'll tell the old man what you said and let him answer."

He clucked in guttural monosyllables to the chief, and the chief clucked
back briefly, meanwhile eyeing me with a whimsical squint out of his
puckered old eyes. And then Smith translated:

"Why should we lock our doors in the place where we live? There ar