Page:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu/282

 at a distance from the village. They keep the separate houses where they prepare the food for eating and where they grind the meal, very clean. This is a separate room or closet, where they have a trough with three stones fixed in stiff clay. Three women go in here, each one having a stone, with which one of them breaks the corn, the next grinds it, and the third grinds it again Mr Owens, in the Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology. vol. ii, p. 163 n., describes these mealing troughs: "In every house will be found a trough about 6 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 8 inches deep, divided into three or more compartments. In the older houses the sides and partitions are made of stone slabs, but in some of the newer ones they are made of boards. Within each compartment is a stone (trap rock preferred) about 18 inches long and a foot wide, set in a bed of adobe and inclined at an angle of about 35°. This is not quite in the center of the compartment, but is set about 3 inches nearer the right side than the left, and its higher edge is against the edge of the trough. This constitutes the nether stone of the mill. The upper stone is about 14 inches long, 3 inches wide, and varies in thickness according to the fineness of the meal desired. The larger stone is called a máta and the smaller one 8 matáki. The woman places the corn in the trough, then kneels behind it and grasps the matáki in both hands. This she slides, by a motion from the back, back and forth over the máta. At intervals she releases her hold with her left hand and with it places the material to be ground upon the upper end of the máta. She usually sings in time to her grinding motion."

There is a more extended account of these troughs in Mindeleff's Pueblo Architecture, in the Eighth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 208. This excellent monograph, with its wealth of illustrations, is an invaluable introduction to any study of the southwestern village Indians.

Mota Padilla, cap. xxxii,3, p. 159; "tienen las indias sus cocinas con mucho aseo, y en el moler el maiz se diferencian de las demas poblaciones (á Tigües), porque en una piedra mas áspera martajan el maiz, y pasa á la segunda y tercera, de donde le sacan en polvo como harina; no usan tortillas que son el pan de las indias y lo fabrican con primor, porque en unas ollas ponen á darle al maiz un cocimiento con una poca de cal, de donde lo sacan ya con el nombre de mixtamal." They take off their shoes, do up their hair, shake their clothes, and cover their heads before they enter the door. A man sits at the door playing on a fife while they grind, moving the stones to the music and singing together. They grind a large quantity at one time, because they make all their bread of meal soaked in warm water, like wafers. They gather a great quantity of brushwood and dry it to use for cooking all through the year. There are no fruits good to eat in the country, except the pine nuts. They have their preachers, Sodomy is not found among them. They do not eat human flesh nor make sacrifices of it. The people are not cruel, for they had Francisco de Ovando in Tiguex about forty days, after he was dead, and when the village was captured, he was found among their dead, whole and without any other wound except the one which killed him, white as snow, without any bad smell. I found out several things about them from one of our Indians, who had been a captive among them for a whole year. I asked him especially for the reason why the young women in that province went entirely naked, however cold it might be, and he told me that the virgins had to go around this way until they took a husband, and that they covered themselves after they had known man. The men here wear little shirts of tanned deerskin and their long robes over this. In all these provinces they have earthenware glazed with antimony and jars of extraordinary labor and workmanship, which were worth seeing.