480 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In the intervals of the meals and prayers the Indians are of course 

 variously employed according to their trade or occupation — that is 

 to say, either in agricultural labors, according to the season, or in 

 the store-rooms, magazines, and laboratories of the mission. The 

 women are much occupied in spinning and other little household 

 labors, the men in combing wool, weaving, melting tallow, etc. 

 One of the principal occupations of the missions is the manufact- 

 uring a coarse sort of cloth from the wool of their own sheep for 

 the purpose of clothing the Indians. The grinding the corn is left 

 almost entirely to the women, and is still performed by a hand- 

 mill." 



It was a shrewd stroke of policy on the part of the fathers to 

 allot the laborious work of grinding meal to the women, in whose 

 hands it had been from time immemorial, since the men would 

 have stooped to such labor only by dint of the strongest coercion. 



civ."/ 



_ £? •- 







Jspi 







Fig. 9.— Modern Mission Indian on his Travels. 



With reference to the grinding of corn, Langsdorff (1806), 

 learning that the hand-mill which Perouse, out of the kindness 

 of his heart, left at the San Carlos Mission (178G), with the view 

 to lighten the heavy labor of the mealing-stones, was not in exist- 

 ence, and that no use had been made of it as a model to manufact- 

 ure others, records the curious fact that in perpetuating the use 

 of the stone grinding process the fathers were actuated by mo- 

 tives of policy. To use his own words, "As they have more men 



