This was apparently in contravention of a Hopi taboo forbidding Hopis from crossing the Colorado River until three prophets which had led the Hopi to their current home returned. Upon reaching the Colorado, Hamblin recorded: Tuba spent nearly a year in the company of the Mormons. He was able to meet LDS Church president, Brigham Young, in St. George, Utah. Tuba was particularly impressed by a factory where yarn was being mechanically spun. In Hopi culture, it is the men who spin the yarn for blankets, and it is spun by hand. According to Hamblin, after seeing this factory, Tuba "could never think of spinning yarn again with his fingers, to make blankets". His wife was most impressed by the Mormon grist mills, a major improvement over grinding corn by stone. Although Tuba seems to have had various disagreements with village leaders in Oraibi, he apparently retained access to one of the Hopi's sacred stones. On one occasion, several Mormons were visiting Tuba in Oraibi and he took his visitors inside the village kiva. There, he produced what appeared to be a marble slab about 15×18 inches covered in "hieroglyphic" markings including clouds and stars. The later Ethnological Report No. 4 produced by the U.S. government seems to uphold the existence of such a stone based on the testimony of John W. Young and Andrew S. Gibbons. This describes the stone as made of "red-clouded marble, entirely different from anything found in the region". In 1873, Tuba again invited the Mormons to come and live by his village of Moencopi. This time, the offer was accepted, although a permanent Latter-day Saint presence did not become a reality until 1875. But the resultant community became the first Mormon settlement in Arizona. Hopi tradition has it that Tuba invited the Mormons to settle near his village in order to gain protection from marauding Paiutes and Navajos. Tuba was baptized into the LDS Church in 1876. In April 1877, Tuba and his wife attended the dedication of the Mormon temple in St. George, Utah, in company with missionary Andrew S. Gibbons and his wife. It was sometime during this period that Tuba shared his new faith with Tom Polacca, a headman at Hano on First Mesa, who was also eventually baptized. In September 1878, Tuba helped lay out the site for a new Mormon town near Moencopi which would be called Tuba City.