MINDELEFF.] MEALING TROUGHS. BI 
Perhaps the most important article of furniture in the home of the 
pueblo Indian is the mealing trough, containing the household milling 
apparatus. This trough usually contains a series of three metates of 
varying degrees of coarseness firmly fixed in a slanting position most 
convenient for the workers. It consists of thin slabs of sandstone set 
into the floor on edge, similar slabs forming the separating partitions 
between the compartments. This arrangement is shown in Fig. 105, 
illustrating a Tusayan mealing trough. Those of Zuni are of the same 
form, as may be seen in the illustration of a Zuni interior, Fig. 105, 
Fia. 105. A Tusayan mealing trough. 
Occasionally in recently constructed specimens the thin inclosing walls 
of the trough are made of planks. In the example illustrated one end 
of the series is bounded by a board, all the other walls and divisions 
being made of the usual stone slabs. The metates themselves are not 
usually more than 3 inches in thickness. They are so adjusted in their 
Setting of stones and mortar as to slope away from the operator at the 
proper angle. This arrangement of 
the mealing stones is characteristic of 
the more densely clustered communal 
houses of late date. In the more primi- 
tive house the mealing stone was usually 
a single large piece of cellular basalt, 
or similar rock, in which a broad, slop- 
ing depression was carved, and which 
could be transported from place to place. 
Fig. 106 illustrates an example of this type from the vicinity of Globe, in 
southern Arizona. The stationary mealing trough of the present day 
is undoubtedly the successor of the earlier moveable form, yet it was in 
use among the pueblos at the time of the first Spanish expedition, as 
the following extract from Castaneda’s account! of Cibola will show. 
He says a special room is designed to grind the grain: “This last is 
apart, and contains a furnace and three stones made fast in masonry. 
aks 
Fia. 106. An ancient pueblo form of metate. 
1Given by W. W. H. Dayis in El Gringo, p. 119. 
