Page:The Moki snake dance.djvu/52

 A shrill whistle denotes that some Moki is the fortunate possessor of an eagle to supply him with the prized feathers for ceremonials. The man who is opulent enough to keep a turkey also has feathers for the gathering. Women go about on various errands or pay visits in which gossip bears a large share. Many a pair of dark eyes peep out from the light-hole in the walls of the houses, or a maiden with hair done up in whorls takes a modest glance at the strangers. The weird, high-pitched songs of the corn grinders, and the rumble of the mealing-stones, are familiar sounds in a Moki village. If you see a woman or maiden with face powdered with corn flour, it means that she has been busy grinding in the hopper-like mills sunken in the floor of every house,—and very hard labor it is. Most of the able-bodied men are in the fields if the time is summer, that is if no ceremony is going on—a rare contingency. Moki men are not afraid of work. From youth until the time when they are enrolled in the class of the lame, halt and blind, they do their share for the support of the clan. Not averse to soothing the baby as his white brother sometimes may be, his domestic habits will not take him so far as to do women's work. Since the time when his sweetheart combed his raven locks in sign of betrothal, and he