364 PAPAGUERIA 



fair in Papagueria — culinary operations are performed in this 

 airy structure ; it is onty during stormy weather that fires are 

 built in the houses. Toward midday men, women, and children 

 take refuge from the burning desert sun, whose rays are intense 

 beyond imagining in humid lands, under the vah'-toh or in the 

 house. At night the men usually sleep either out in the open 

 or under the shelter, the women and children more commonly 

 in the houses. It is to be remembered that the Papago house 

 is primarily a place for storing properties and taking refuge 

 from the sun, and only subordinately a protection from storm 

 and cloud. 



The corral is an accultural feature introduced with horses and 

 cattle from Spain. Usually it is a double stockade of gnarled 

 mesquite logs, filled in between with trunks and branches of mes- 

 quite and paloverde, sahuaro ribs, and okatilla stems, the whole 

 lashed firmly with rawhide. Sometimes the wall is partly or 

 wholly of stone, in the form of rubble laid loose. The corral is 

 communal; it is the property of the village, though sometimes 

 it is controlled by the chief or two or three head men, who permit 

 their less energetic neighbors to make use of it. It is usually 

 open, when horses and cattle are merely headed into it in order 

 that they may be lassoed more readily than outside. When 

 closed it is with a barrier of great logs, usually of pine brought 

 down from the mountains, for nothing lighter will withstand a 

 stampede of the half-wild stock. 



The spring is usually protected by a corral, with a partition 

 of stockade which prevents the cattle from miring in the deeper 

 part of the pool. As the waters dwindle in the dry season or 

 with a succession of dry years, the spring is gradually deepened 

 and sometimes converted into a well from which the water is 

 drawn, after the Mexican fashion, in bags, which may be made 

 of the skins of oxen, with the aid of horses. A heavy rawhide 

 riata attached to the bag passes over a cross-beam (rarely sup- 

 plied with a pulley), and is given a twist or two about the pom- 

 mel of the saddle by a horseman ; or, if he rides the typical straw 

 saddle of the Papago, the riata is passed about the breast of the 

 animal and brought up over the withers, to be firmly grasped 

 in the right hand. The spring corral is usually kept up. It is 

 repaired and protected by cacti, poles, stones, and any other 

 material ; perhaps the most effective of all being the carcasses of 

 bulls slain in the terrific battles at the water side, which become 

 desiccated and mummified in the dry air into tenacious masses 



