156 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



The native custom has all to do with the supply and demand for but- 

 ter, which can not be compared with American butter; in fact, it is not 

 real butter, but merely sweet clabber that has the milk strained out 

 through a piece of muslin, and the mass left in the cloth is called but- 

 ter. The native does not have bread like we do. He likes best a substi- 

 tute made from corn, which he calls "tortea." It is made by rubbing 

 soaked corn which has stood over night in lye water, between two stones 

 until it become a paste, and then fashions it with the hands into a corn- 

 meal pancake. This is laid on a piece of sheet iron over a "dobe" (clay) 

 stove, and when cooked is a cornmeal pancake without salt. This is the 

 native bread from one end of the country to the other. They are not 

 eaten with butter on them, and they never have nor know anything about 

 syrup, although sugar cane grows the year around without any attention 

 in the way of cultivation, but is used to make rum or sugar. Butter, be- 

 ing used only as a delicacy or relish with hot fried beans, does not call 

 for a large amount of the article, and the result is that there are few 

 places where it can be had. The average native very naturally learns to 

 get along without it. 



There is but one kind of cheese made in the country. That is a native 

 article which resembles very much what we call "cottage cheese" — pressed 

 into cakes that drain and dry after a sufficient time on coarse stick mats, 

 where it i's exposed to the atmosphere. Cheese-makers are always near a 

 large place, where the consumption warrants them in locating, but there 

 is but one establishment at a town, for there is never any competition. 

 Under the system of milking in the country, which is but once a day, 

 cheese making necessitates a large number of cows. At one place I vis- 

 ited, the man had 125 cows, from which he received 250 bottles of milk 

 holding fifteen ounces each, from which he made forty pounds of cheese 

 daily. During April, May and June, he received $5.50 an arroba, or twen- 

 ty-five pounds of cheese. The best milch cows give at most five bottles 

 of fifteen ounces each. A good milch cow is valued at $13 gold, and the 

 milk sells at five cents for bottles that hold fifteen ounces. A dairy or 

 cheese factory is always located near a large town, and if there is a surplus 

 of cheese made, it i's packed on mule-back to another large town. This 

 was practiced at the place mentioned, the surplus being sent to the capi- 

 tal, a distance of seventy-five miles, on mule-back over the mountains. 



The trough in which the cheese is worked is generally of fine red cedar. 

 All of the work is done in an open shed, with merely a roof over it. The 

 natives seldom have more garments on than are absolutely necessary, 

 and sanitation and cleanliness are matters that do not give them much 

 concern. A curiosity found at cheese-making ranches is a native strainer. 

 It is made by cutting out the center of a gourd and fastening a woven 

 mat made of horsehair over the opening. This is the only strainer in 

 use at any of the places where milk products are handled. 



Cowboys on the ranches where cheese or butter is made are paid on an 

 average of $30 a year, silver, two suits of clothes, their food and lodging. 

 This is a very low wage for the hours they put in, and I was informed 

 that the reason they could be secured at this low wage was due to the 



