The women at the back are grinding corn, while those at the right are baking bread on a hot slab, in paper like sheets. Above is the chimney-hood.
U. S. Bu. Eth.
In the villages where the walls were no more than the thickness of the buffalo-hide covering the tipi poles, the hilarity rang out and made the locality extremely gay. The popular notion that these people were gloomy and fierce in daily life is a delusion. They were as happy and full of larks as children, and probably no people ever more appreciated a joke. A little thing would sometimes cause great merriment. I remember on one occasion, a good many years ago, when encamped near Fort Defiance, I was standing one evening in front of my tent when an old Navajo was seen approaching who was particularly afraid of a camera. I had in my hand a small hand camera, and as a joke I ran toward him pointing it as if to photograph him, although the light had nearly vanished and a negative could not have been made except by very long exposure. The Navajo did not know this and much to the amusement of his compatriots who were standing around to the number of perhaps a score, he began to dodge about in the wildest fashion, trying to avoid my advance. For some moments I kept up the play, because they were all having such a jolly time except the victim; and he did not seem seriously to mind the chase. Apropos of this subject, Fowler,[29] when crossing the plains met with an incident, also illustrative of their appreciation of fun. He wore spectacles and had broken one of the glasses. One day while at a native settlement, he felt some one steal the spectacles from his eyes and run away with them. He thought they were lost for good, but presently he heard a great uproar of shouts and laughter, and then saw the man who had taken them advancing and leading another with the "specs" on his face. On closer approach Fowler saw that the led person was blind in the eye corresponding to the broken glass; and the joker signified that the "specs" suited his friend much better than they did Fowler. Then amidst great good humour they were returned to him.
Sitting Bull.
From Wonderland, 1901—Northern Pacific Railway.
In some portions of the South-west, cotton was cultivated and woven into blankets and garments long before the white man came. The Pueblo men did the weaving in that division; among some tribes the women did it. The loom was a simple affair, made of a couple of slender logs, or thick boughs, and several sticks with an arrangement of cords. It is still in use by the Navajo and the Moki people. Among the Moki the men set up the loom in the kiva, a sort of club room entirely devoted to the men, whereas among the Navajo, women usually weave under a flimsy shelter of boughs. The Navajo builds no substantial house, because he will never live in a structure in which any one has died. Probably some such idea retarded many tribes from building more permanently.
