Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/822

802, being much thicker than it is over the gabled portion. The floor is kept hard and clean inside, and most of the domestic arrangements are carried on in the open air. It will be observed that they have a lot of corn drying in a heap up on the roof, and their pottery utensils are in front outside.

Formerly it would appear that these Mojaves built a somewhat better home for themselves than this, and Lieutenant Whipple has said, in reference to the figure of one he published in his report, that "the large Cottonwood posts, and the substantial roof of the wide shed in front, are characteristic of the architecture of this people. This particular house appears to run into a sand-bank, and is peculiar. Others are formed in the valley, with all their walls supported by posts; and the longitudinal beams have their interstices filled up with straw or mud-mortar." .... The interior of a house consists of a single room with thatched roof, sandy floor, and walls so closely cemented by mud as to be nearly air-tight. It has no window, and receives no light except by the door which leads to the shed, and by a small hole at the top which gives egress to the smoke of fires. Structures similar to this are common throughout the lower portion of the Colorado Valley, and may be found also among the Coco-Maricopas and Pimas of the Rio Gila. With the latter, however, the circular hut, described by Mr. Bartlett, is much in vogue. In such gloomy abodes the Indians seek shelter from cold. Arranged around the walls are large earthen jars, in which they preserve their main supply of fruit and vegetables." Mojaves wear scarcely any clothing, especially the men, as may be seen from the individuals shown in my figure.

The more nomadic tribes of Indians, such as the Sioux of the North and others, when they come to build anything better than a tepee, erect a regular wigwam, a large, commodious structure of a conical form, supported by the cut trunks of saplings, and covered with ornamented or non-ornamented tanned buffalo-hides. Frequently I have been in one of those wigwams, and at almost any time of the year they are very comfortable, though rather warm in summer. All the buffaloes now being practically exterminated, those tribes which formerly built hide wigwams will now have to resort to the construction of other kinds of homes. Probably they will do as the Navajos have done, and come to erect houses more or less like the primitive one-room buildings of the early squatters. Navajos, however, place the timbers side by side in the vertical position, filling the interstices with mud-plaster, whereas, as we know, in the ordinary log-cabin they are laid one on top of another in the horizontal method, with