The Professor’s House
fluential these people might be—they talked as if
they had great authority. I had brought along in
my telescope bag some good pieces of pottery—not
the best, I was afraid of accident, but some that
were representative—and all the photographs Blake
and I had taken. We had only a small kodak, and
these pictures didn’t make much show,—looked, in¬
deed, like grubby little ’dobe ruins such as one can find almost anywhere. They gave no idea of the
beauty and vastness of the setting. The clerks at
the Indian Commission seemed very curious about
everything and made me talk a lot. I was green
and didn’t know any better. But when one of the
fellows there tried to get me to give him my best
bowl for his cigarette ashes, I began to suspect the nature of their interest.
At last the Commissioner returned, but he had pressing engagements, and I hung around several days more before he would see me. After questioning me for about half an hour, he told me that his business was with living Indians, not dead ones, and that his office should have informed me of that in the beginning. He advised me to go back to our Congressman and get a letter to the Smithsonian Institution. I packed up my pottery and got out of the place, feeling pretty sore. The head clerk followed me down the corridor and asked me what I’d take for that little bowl he’d taken a fancy to. He said it had no market value, I’d find Washington
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