168 Customs of the C oyotero Apaches. [ZOE 
nor touch anything on which fish has rested, nor eat off a plate which 
has held fish. Rabbits and wood-rats are especially esteemed; 
the latter are hunted with hooked sticks by the boys, who in 
their summer costume, popularly known as the “ gee string,’’ often 
return to camp fringed around their loins with the rats, the heads 
having been thrust under the waist-band. Eggs of all kinds are 
eaten. Milk was not used formerly, but is now to some extent, es- 
pecially by the children. Salt is much used. Oil they will not 
touch on any account, 
Their vegetable food is quite varied. They raise and use corn, 
wheat (the government runs a mill for them), pumpkins, beans, po- 
tatoes, turnips, onions, cabbages, etc. Corn is one of their most 
important articles of food. It was formerly ground in a metate, the 
hulls winnowed out, water and salt added, thoroughly mixed, made 
into thin cakes, “tortillas,” and baked on hot rocks. To preserve 
it for winter use in the green state, they line a pit with rocks, fill 
with wood and fire it. After the wood has burned the ashes are 
cleared out, the pit is lined with corn leaves, the ears of corn, twen- 
ty-five to fifty bushels at a time, piled in, covered with shucks and 
leaves, and over all earth is placed so as to render the pile air-tight. 
After eighteen to twenty-four hours’ slow cooking the ears are taken 
out and the grains cut from the cob and dried. In this condition it 
may be kept for a long time. Wild potatoes which abound in their 
small native species), stripped of their black hulls, are ground up 
fine with dried roasted agave. The meat of these walnuts js small 
but sweet, and the shells being ground up very finely with them, act 
as an assistance to digestion. The mixture forms a grayish mass 
not unpleasant to the taste, and is one of the choice dishes of the 
Apaches. — 
leaves of the agave, the cores placed in the center and covered over 
first with the tender inner leaves, then with coarse ones, finally with 
earth, and left to cook twenty-four to thirty hours. — When the pit 
is opened the young leaves, which have become pale brown, are 
