202 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



sandstone, or stone grooved by water action ; an occasional mortar in 

 use today was plowed up — "it probably belonged to people who lived 

 here before we came." The general shape of mortars varies, but the 

 bowls of all are approximately 3 inches in depth. The one shown in 

 plate 43, 2, was made of lingue and had four nails driven into the bot- 

 tom of its bowl to facilitate grinding mixtures. Pestles were smooth, 

 elongated stones. 'T picked up the one we use on the shores of the 

 Pacific while walking there one day." 



In Alepue area, metates and mullers are shaped out of rock taken 

 from ledges on the Pacific shore and are also given the required 

 surface finish "by a family, the only one in all this area, who makes 

 and sells them ; this family has stone of the required texture on land 

 near its ruka. It takes skill to make a metate and muller ; each re- 

 quires a different kind of roughness." Metates are trapezoidal in 

 shape. A muller is an elongated stone, long enough to extend beyond 

 the metate so the ends may be grasped when the muller is being used. 

 The muller must have a rough, flat lower side and a slightly convex 

 upper side. All edges of metate and muller are rounded. Metates 

 generally approximate 15 to 20 inches in length, 11 to 13 inches in 

 width, and 2 inches in thickness. 



One of my informants prepared to grind wheat in a metate (pi. 

 44, j) by placing a dressed sheep pelt, reserved for this purpose, on 

 the ground outside of her ruka, and on it the metate with widest end 

 toward her. This end she raised by putting a small piece of wood 

 under it. "It all depends on the worker, how high she wants it raised ; 

 I like mine raised this high," she commented. The narrow end rested 

 on the pelt. She knelt down, took a handful of wheat from a winnow- 

 ing tray nearby (she had just winnowed the grain to remove the last 

 remnants of chaff), dropped the kernels on the metate, grasped the 

 ends of the muller, put her weight on the muller and worked it up 

 and down over the kernels, occasionally pushing the grain toward the 

 middle of the metate. When a portion of the wheat was ground to 

 the desired fineness, she allowed it to fall off the sides onto the pelt. 

 The muller was never lifted from the metate. "Why should it be? 

 I am grinding the wheat under it !" Toasted wheat was ground in the 

 same manner. 



The olla (challa), a potlike piece of pottery, is used in cooking; 

 the cantaro (meiikuwe), a pitcherlike type (pi. 45), not sufficiently 

 fired for cooking purposes, is used for holding water and other liquids. 

 More cantaros than ollas were in use in households at the time of the 

 present study. Ollas have been largely replaced by iron kettles, but 

 several women were using ollas for storing food. Iron kettles (in- 



