eight rooms for our quarters. We purchase corn of some of the people, and after feeding our animals they are intrusted to two Indian boys, who, under the direction of the cacique, take them to a distant mesa to herd. This is my first view of an inhabited pueblo, though I have seen many ruins from time to time. At first I am a little disappointed in the people. They seem scarcely superior to the Shoshones and Utes, tribes with whom I am so well acquainted. Their dress is less picturesque, and the men have an ugly fashion of banging their hair in front so that it comes down to their eyes and conceals their foreheads. But the women are more neatly dressed and arrange their hair in picturesque coils.
Oraibi is a town of several hundred inhabitants. It stands on a mesa or little plateau 200 or 300 feet above the surrounding plain. The mesa itself has a rather diversified surface. The streets of the town are quite irregular, and in a general way run from north to south. The houses are constructed to face the east. They are of stone laid in mortar, and are usually three or four stories high. The second story stands back upon the first, leaving a terrace over one tier of rooms. The third is set back of the second, and the fourth back of the third; so that their houses are terraced to face the east. These terraces on the top are all flat, and the people usually ascend to the first terrace by a ladder and then by another into the lower rooms. In like manner, ladders or rude stairways are used to reach the upper stories. The climate is very warm and the people live on the tops of their houses. It seems strange to see little naked children climbing the ladders and running over the house tops like herds of monkeys. After we have looked about the town and been gazed upon by the wondering eyes of the men, women, and children, we are at last called to supper. In a large central room we gather and the food is placed before us. A stew of goat's flesh is served in earthen bowls, and each one of us is furnished with a little earthen ladle. The bread is a great novelty to me. It is made of corn meal in sheets as thin and large as foolscap paper. In the corner of the house is a little oven, the top of which is a great flat stone, and the good housewife bakes her bread in this manner: The corn meal is mixed to the consistency of a rather thick gruel, and the woman dips her hand into the mixture and plasters the hot
OVER THE RIVER.
stone with a thin coating of the meal paste. In a minute or two it forms into a thin paperlike cake, and she takes it up by the edge, folds it once, and places it on a basket tray; then another and another sheet of paper-bread is made in like manner and piled on the tray. I notice that the paste stands in a number of different bowls and that she takes from, one bowl and then another in order, and I soon see the effect of this. The corn before being ground is assorted by colors, white, yellow, red, blue, and black, and the sheets of bread, when made, are of the same variety of colors, white, yellow, red, blue, and black. This bread, held on very beautiful trays, is itself a work of art. They call it
THE HOUSE OF TALTI, CHIEF OF THE COUNCIL IN THE TOWN OF OBAIBI.
piki. After we have partaken of goat stew and bread a course of dumplings, melons, and peaches is served, and this finishes the feast. What seem to be dumplings are composed of a kind of hash of bread and meat, tied up in little balls with cornhusks and served boiling hot. They are eaten with much gusto by the party and highly praised. Some days after we learned how they are made; they are prepared of goat's flesh, bread, and turnips, and kneaded by mastication. As we prefer to masticate our own food, this dainty dish is never again a favorite.
In the evening the people celebrate our advent by a dance, such it seemed to us, but probably it was one of their regular ceremonies.