Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/79

74 Kanʼyo, Sorghum vulgare Pers. Sorghum is cultivated when the water supply permits. It has been obtained recently from the whites, who raise it extensively in the Southwest.

Kiʼak. The heads of this annual are gathered and the seeds beaten out with the kiâhâ stick used as a flail. The seeds are moistened, parched, which makes it resemble pop corn, ground on the metate, and eaten by taking alternately pinches of meal and sips of water.

Koĭ, Prosopis velutina. Mesquite beans formed nearly if not quite the most important article of diet of the Pimas in primitive times (pl., a). They are still extensively used, though the supply is somewhat curtailed by the live stock which feed avidly upon them. As already stated, the crop sometimes fails, "especially in hard times," as one of our informants naively remarked. The mesquite harvest takes place somewhat later than that of the saguaro. The beans are gathered and stored in the pod in cylindrical bins on the roofs of the houses or sheds (fig. 4). While yet on the trees, the bean pods are bored by larve of the family Bruchidæ.