358 ZUNI CREATION MYTHS. Ieth. ann.13 



be found in the long-houses of the Mohave and other Yiimans of the 

 valley of Colorado river. Both these hut-row houses and the single-room 

 houses were generally surrounded by low walls of loose stone, stone 

 and mud, stockade and mud, or of mud alone; and as often as not one 

 side or the front of a hut within sucli a wall iuclosure was left entirely 

 open. 



Thus the outer wall was intended in part as a slight protection from 

 the wind, and probably also to guard from flooding during the sudden 

 showers which sometimes descend in torrents over Arizona plains. 

 They may also have been designed to some extent for protection from 

 the enemy; for these people were far more valiant fighters than their 

 ultimate brethren of the north, and depended for protection less on 

 security of position than on their own prowess. Only during times of 

 unusual danger did they retire to fortified lava buttes (or, when near 

 them, to deep but more or less open crevices in some of the more exten- 

 sive lava fields), where their hut foundations may be found huddled 

 together within huge inclosures of natural lava blocks, dry laid and 

 irregular, but some of them skillfully planned and astonishingly vast; 

 but in these strongholds they nev'er tarried long enough to be influ- 

 enced in their building habits sufficiently to change the styles of their 

 hamlets in the plains, for until we i-each the point in eastern Arizona 

 where they joined the " elder nations " no change iu ground plan of these 

 houses is to be traced in their remains. 



It is necessary to add a few details as to costume, usages, and the 

 institutions of these semisettled yet ever shifting people. 



They wore but scant clothing besides their robes and blankets — 

 breech-clouts and kilts, short for the men, long for the women, and 

 made of shredded bark and rushes or fiber; sandals, also of fiber; neck- 

 laces of shell beads, and pendent carved shell gorgets. The hair was 

 bobbed to the level of the eyebrows in front, but left long and hanging 

 at the back, gathered into a bunch or switch with a colored cord by 

 the men, into which cord, or into a fillet of jdaited fiber, gorgeous long 

 tail feathers of the macaw, roadrunner, or eagle were thrust and worn 

 upright. To the crown of the head of the warriors was fastened a huge 

 bunch of stripped or slitted feathers of the owl or eagle, called, no doubt, 

 then as now by its Yuman name, musema; for it is still known, though 

 used in different fashion, as the miimtsemak^ya or mihit2)aIok^ye by 

 the Zufii Priests of the Bow. The warriors also carried targets or 

 shields of yucca or cotton cord, closely netted across a strong, round 

 hooi)-frame and covered with a coarser and larger net, which was only 

 a modification of the carrying net (like those stiU in use by thePapago, 

 Pima, and other Indians of southern Arizona), and was turned to 

 account as such, indeed, on hunting and war expeditions. 



Their hand weapons were huge stone knives and war clubs shaped 

 like potato-mashers, which were called, it would seem, iitekati (their 



