PAPAGUER1A 367 



dough into nutritious and wholesome tortillas — the staff of life 

 of Mexican and Indian alike. Within the shelter stands a three- 

 branched post of mesquite supporting a large olla of porous ware 

 filled with water, deliciously cooled by tbe slow exudation and 

 evaporation in the dry air. This family olla is kept filled by the 

 women, generally the younger of the household, though some- 

 times by crones, who, at eventide or at other times if need be, 

 go forth in trains to the spring or water hole, returning with huge 

 jars balanced, not on the shoulder, as in Babylon of old and in 

 eastern Mexico today, but on" the head. In this way the water 

 required for all domestic purposes, save the laundry, is trans- 

 ported to the houses. When garments require washing — and the 

 Papago are a cleanly folk — they are taken to the waterside and 

 rubbed with the hands and beaten with cobbles on a large stone, 

 while the saponaceous lather of the soap agave is applied, and 

 water is sprinkled or poured over them. 



The temporale is much like the permanent domicile of the 

 more primitive type, save that it is usually smaller in size, lighter 

 in framework, and even more ephemeral in character; while 

 around it or near by the narrow fields whose few acres are all 

 but lost in the vast extent of the intermontane valleys. Some- 

 times the fields are open, when the watchers rely on their own 

 vigilance for the protection of the growing crops ; usually they 

 are enclosed by flimsy fences of mesquite and cactus. There 

 may be but a single field in a temporale, and that may be cropped 

 but a single season, though usually there are half a dozen or more 

 fields in a locality, and these may be used during several succes- 

 sive seasons ; but the Papago husbandman is constrained by an 

 intuitive geometry, and usually saves fencing by making his 

 field elliptical or circular rather than rectangular ; and in most vil- 

 lages line fences are unknown. Thelocation of the temporale, like 

 that of all other things human in the desert, is determined pri- 

 marily by the occurrence of water, secondarily by character of 

 soil. A favorite situation is the seaward terminus of the arroya 

 on whose middle reach the rancheria is located ; thither flows the 

 unevaporated residue of the winter storm floods, soaking the soil 

 and fertilizing it with a veneer of fine mud, just as the valley of 

 the Nile is fertilized by the Nilotic flood : and even if the storm 

 freshet fails on the surface its waters permeate the subsurface 

 sands within reach of the roots. Sometimes the temporale is 

 located where a single great deluge, the product of a single storm, 

 soaks the soil and vivifies the plants into a short-lived oasis ; 



