86 BUEEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 55 



The pueblo is tinally swept of the litter of husks late in October, 

 generally in preparation for a dance. 



Property in Corn 



Standing crops are the property of men, usually the heads of house- 

 holds. Boj'S often have fields assigned to them by their fathers or 

 bequeathed by their mothers' relations, which they plant and call their 

 own, although they put the corn into the family stock. Crops once 

 housed belong to the mistress of the house, who has to store and care 

 for them, so as to feed the family during the year. She uses, gives, 

 and sells the corn at her discretion, making a daily allowance for her 

 husband's horses and, at his request, for those of guests. A man 

 always speaks of the stored corn and other food as "my wife's" and 

 does not dispose of it without her leave. Sometimes he speaks of it 

 as hers while it is still in the fields. 



The seed corn belongs to the man. 



Hay and corn-shocks, which are stacked on platforms over the cor- 

 rals, fenced with boughs and tall cornstalks, belong to the man. 



Grinding Corn 



The Pueblo method of grinding maize on the metates, 'o, has often 

 been described. ^ In the Tewa villages of New Mexico the younger 

 women do not learn to grind, and few new houses are furnished with 

 metates; when the occupants need corn meal they grind at an older 

 house, or put a small quantity through the coffee mill. This means 

 the practical abandonment of maize as human food in favor of wheat. 

 Older women contrast their own hands, in which certain muscles are 

 largely developed, while the finger-nails are worn down obliquely by 

 rubbing on the metate, with the slight hands of the girls. In the 

 youth of the former — perhaps thirty years ago — women used to rise 

 before dawn to grind. When the men were going to the plains to 

 trade with the Comanche, the women used to grind whole loads of 

 meal for them to carry. Several women would grind together at 

 night; they ground the corn successively on four metates ranging from 

 rough to smooth. On the first they broke up the corn, and reduced it 

 to fine flour on the fourth, toasting it after each grinding. Meanwhile 

 the men sang the grinding song (a tune without words, still known), 

 or beat a drum, and the women kept time to the music with slow regu- 

 lar strokes. There is a story that in ancient times women did not have 

 to grind; they merely laid themano and the corn on the metate and it 

 ground itself. 



At Hano grinding is still the daily occupation of women. Where 

 there are several women in a house, the unmarried girls are set to 

 grind, while the married women fetch water. Girls grind for their 



iCf. Mindeleff, EigMh Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., p. 211; Gushing, Zuni Bread-stuff. 



