THE MO QUI S INDIANS OF ARIZONA. 355 



tlieir food is prepared from corn that has been germinated, whereby, as 

 is well known, a saccharine matter is developed and a species of malt 

 produced; this food they call panoche. Still a third kind is derived 

 by mixing flour and dried meat in a powdered state : this they call 

 tomaXes. 



The Moqiiis have one school, which is provided them by the 

 " great father," and which is attended by children from three to five 

 years old. On being examined, these little ones counted correctly to 

 100. They are quite proficient in spelling, while their ready recital, 

 without the book, of numerous English verses, showed them possessed 

 of very retentive memories. 



As previously mentioned, the Tehuas occupy one of the Moquis 

 villages. The languages of the two tribes, however, are quite diifer- 

 ent, that of the latter being unintelligible to the former. On collect- 

 ing a vocabulary of the language of the Tehuas, it was found to be 

 identical with that of the. Indians of Ildefonso, wdio inhabit some 

 twenty-five miles west of Santa Fe, and from three to four hundred 

 miles distant from the Moquis towns. Inquiry as to the date of set- 

 tlement of the Tehuas w^ith the Moquis proved fruitless of the desired 

 result; the Indians either did not know, or were unwilling to tell 

 One intelligent Moquis, named Mesayamtiba, who answered many 

 questions readily and very intelligibly, estimated the period of inter- 

 mingling of the two tribes at upward of one hundred years. 



As a refutation of the rather prevalent notion that Indian lan- 

 guages are subject to rapid change, it may be said that, although the 

 Tehuas and Ildefonsos have been separated at least a century, and 

 that, too, at a distance from each other of several hundred miles, the 

 language of the branch tribe is still identical with that of the parent 

 stem. Furthermore, although the Tehuas and Moquis live but fifty 

 yards apart, their dialects are entirely different, that of the former 

 not embracing a single word used by the latter. By this, however, it 

 is not to be understood that some of the Moquis do not understand 

 the Tehuas language, and vice versa. Besides their own language, a 

 few of both tribes speak broken Spanish. 



With regard to the religion of the Moquis, diligent investigation 

 failed to develop any thing definite. To the inquiry whether they wor- 

 ship IMontezuma, the reply was, in broken Spanish, "A^o sahe'''' ("I 

 don't know"). By Mesayamtiba, we were informed that he believed 

 the "sun to be the true God," but that the so-called "happy hunting- 

 ground" was, in his opinion, but a creation of the imagination — the 

 " baseless fabric of a dream." They have neither church nor other 

 place of w^orship to be found, which is evidence that the Sj^anish 

 Jesuits have been unable to gain a foothold among them, although 

 these priests have succeeded in establishing themselves wdth almost 

 all the other Pueblo tribes, as is plainly show^n by the ruins of Jesuit 

 churches in Acoma, Gemez, and other towns. The Moquis sometimes 



