children were taken by force, but no blood was shed, and now government
schooling is universally accepted and generally appreciated.

A forbidding expanse of desert waste lands surrounds the Hopi mesas,
furnishing forage for Hopi sheep and goats during the wet season and
browse enough to sustain them during the balance of the year. These
animals are of a hardy type adapted to their desert environment. Our
pure blood stock would fare badly under such conditions. However, the
type of wool obtained from these native sheep lends itself far more
happily to the weaving of the fine soft blankets so long made by the
Hopi than does the wool of our high grade Merino sheep or a mixture of
the two breeds. This is so because our Merino wool requires the
commercial scouring given it by modern machine methods, whereas the Hopi
wool can be reduced to perfect working condition by the primitive hand
washing of the Hopi women.

As one approaches the dun-colored mesas from a distance he follows their
picturesque outlines against the sky line, rising so abruptly from the
plain below, but not until one is within a couple of miles can he
discern the villages that crown their heights. And no wonder these
dun-colored villages seem so perfectly a part of the mesas themselves,
for they are literally so--their rock walls and dirt roofs having been
merely picked up from the floor and sides of the mesa itself and made
into human habitations.

The Hopi number about 2,500 and are a Shoshonean stock. They speak a
language allied to that of the Utes and more remotely to the language of
the Aztecs in Mexico.[4]

[Footnote 4: Colton, H.S., Days in the Painted Desert: Museum Press,