30 



BUREAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[bull. 64 



is used to roll up the completed material (yoch). The loom for 

 cotton cloth is usually 2J to 3 feet broad, but much smaller looms 

 are frequently used for narrower strips of material 



MINOR INDUSTRIES 



Tobacco Curing 



The tobacco leaves are hung in bunches, often under the roof of 

 the corn house, in the milpa, in a free current of air, till they are 

 thoroughly dry; they are then powdered in a shallow basin, or 

 the bottom cut from a large calabash, and mixed with the leaves of 

 the chiohle, a species of vanilla, which gives a distinctive flavor and 

 fragrance to the tobacco; finally the mixture is rolled into cigarettes 

 (chiople) in a covering of corn husk (coloch). 



Fig. 10.— Calabash with Uana base used in spimung. 

 Basket and Mat Weaving 



Baskets are woven from a special thin tough liana and from split 

 cane; those of liana (ok), which are large and coarse, are commonly 

 used for carrying corn from the milpa, slung over the shoulders like 

 a macapal. The split-cane baskets, which are smaller and more 

 neatly woven, are used in the house for all sorts of domestic purposes. 



Henequen fiber is used by the Indians for a great variety of pur- 

 poses. The fiber is obtamed from the leaf, which is cleaned upon a 

 smooth board {folcche) about 4 feet long by 6 mches broad, in the 

 following way: The top of the board is held against the lower part 

 of the operator's chest while the lower end rests on the floor. The 

 leaf is placed on the board and the pulp scraped from the fiber with 

 a bar of hardwood, triangular in section. At the upper end of the 

 board is a deep notch in its side, m which the cleaned part of the 

 leaf is clamped, thus fixing the part which is being scraped. The 



