MORGAN.) USAGES AMONG PUEBLO INDIANS. 83 
t 
can do it for themselves; but the right of property isin the children. When 
a piece of land is sold it is done in the presence of witnesses, if it is so de- 
sired. Oftener the sale and transfer are made by and between the parties 
themselves No documents are used. This is so in all the pueblos. The 
rules and customs in the sale and delivery of rooms in a house and of per- 
sonal property, such as animals, are the same. There is no preference, as 
to males or females, in the descent of property rights and titles There is 
a corn-field at each pueblo, cultivated by all in common, and when grain is 
scarce the poor take from this store after it is housed. It is in the charge 
of, and at the disposal of, the cacique (called the governor). Land cannot 
be sold to an alien; but an Indian coming from another pueblo to live at 
this may acquire land to subsist upon, though such immigration is rare. ht 
is not allowed at any of the pueblos that a white person acquire prop- 
erty therein. An Indian woman is not allowed to marry a Mexican and 
live at the pueblo. A piece of land held and recognized as belonging to a 
person is his property, whether he utilizes it or not, and he may sell or 
donate it absolutely at his will to persons within the community. 
“At Jemes and Zia (other pueblos in New Mexico), when a woman dies 
her property goes into the control of her husband; if a widow, it descends 
to her children; if she has no children, it goes to her brothers and sisters 
equally; and if none survive her, then to her nearest relatives; if she has 
no relatives, then to such friends as attend her in her last illness. It never 
reverts to the pueblo, which as a corporate community owns no land.” 
What Mr. Miller refers to as property rights and titles, and ownership 
in fee of land, is sufficiently explained by the possessory right found 
among the Northern tribes. The limitations upon its alienation to an 
Indian from another pueblo or to a white man, not to lay any stress upon 
the absence of written conveyances of titles made possible by Spanish and 
American intercourse, show quite plainly that their ideas respecting the 
ownership of the ultimate title to land, with power to alienate in fee, were 
entirely below this conception of property in land. The more important 
ends of individual ownership were obtained through the possessory right, 
while the ultimate title remained in the tribe for the protection of all. 
That the pueblo now owns no land, as Mr. Miller states, must be under- 
