PAPAGUERIA 365 



of rawhide and bone, far stronger than wood ; and no carcass is 

 allowed to go to waste when the corral needs repair. 



No council-houses or other public, ceremonial, or dominant 

 structures are found in any of the villages, though there are 

 sacred places near most of them, and sites of the events in their 

 Book of Genesis in several places. The devotional instinct finds 

 relief chiefly in pilgrimages to the sea and in a curious sea-cult 

 half concealed under common-place phrases. 



At the center of the typical grass house there is a fireplace, 

 consisting of nothing save the ash-covered spot reserved for the 

 purpose, with the three loose cobble-stones required to support 

 the olla when placed on the fire ; sometimes consisting of an 

 annul us or circular wall of adobe mixed with ashes, 15 to 18 

 inches in diameter, and 6 to 10 inches high, open to the ground 

 on one side. The metate — a. slab of granular or vesicular stone 

 commonly a little over a foot in width and perhaps two feet in 

 length, bolstered up on cobble-stones or blocks of wood — and a 

 grinding stone or two belong hard by the fireplace. About the 

 walls of the house lie two or three beds consisting of agave-stipe 

 mats, while between the beds are piled grain-filled or empty 

 ollas, squashes, melons, and corn, with saddles, riatas, stray arti- 

 cles of apparel, and other domestic impedimenta, in such pro- 

 fusion as the season and family thrift permit. The cooking circle 

 is like the enclosed house in respect to fireplace and culinary 

 appurtenances, but the stores and other valuable property are 

 kept in the house proper. When there is no cooking circle — and 

 many, indeed most, houses in the large villages are without this 

 feature — there is frequently a fireplace in the vah'-toh, and there 

 the metate, the essential family nucleus, is set up. Hour by hour 

 the housewife, kneeling at the upper end of this primitive nether 

 millstone, drives the grinder back and forth with a persistent 

 energy that the athlete might envy, producing meal or pinole at 

 a hardly perceptible rate ; the children cluster about within easy 

 reach of admonition ; unless otherwise occupied, the men recline 

 near by, rolling and smoking cigarettes, and, between smokes, 

 taking pinches of the toothsome pinole ; the dogs lie near as occa- 

 sional cuffs and objurgations allow, in enjoyment of the aroma 

 and in the hope of a furtive taste now and then ; and at irregular 

 intervals, determined by the state of appetite or the quantity of 

 meal, the daughter or daughter-in-law mixes a batch of dough, 

 places a plate of tin or thin iron over the fireplace or olla stone, 

 and with marvelous deftness molds, stretches, and bakes the 



