| Fig. 103. A Zuñi plume box. |
Some of the Indians of the present time have chests or boxes in which their ceremonial blankets and paraphernalia are kept. These of course have been introduced since the days of American boards and boxes. In Zuñi, however, the Indians still use a small wooden receptacle for the precious ceremonial articles, such as feathers and beads. This is an oblong box, provided with a countersunk lid, and usually carved from a single piece of wood. Typical specimens are illustrated in Figs. 103 and 104. The workmanship displayed in these objects is not beyond the aboriginal skill of the native workman, and their use is undoubtedly ancient.
Perhaps the most important article of furniture in the home of the pueblo Indian is the mealing trough, containing the household milling apparatus. This trough usually contains a series of three metates of varying degrees of coarseness firmly fixed in a slanting position most convenient for the workers. It consists of thin slabs of sandstone set into the floor on edge, similar slabs forming the separating partitions between the compartments. This arrangement is shown in Fig. 105, illustrating a Tusayan mealing trough. Those of Zuñi are of the same form, as maybe seen in the illustration of a Zuñi interior, Fig. 105. Occasionally in recently constructed specimens the thin inclosing walls of the trough are made of planks. In the example illustrated one end of the series is bounded by a board, all the other walls and divisions being made of the usual stone slabs. The metates themselves are not usually more than 3 inches in thickness. They are so adjusted in their setting of stones and mortar as to slope away from the operator at the proper angle. This arrangement of the mealing stones is characteristic of the more densely clustered communal houses of late date. In the more primitive house the mealing stone was usually a single large piece of cellular basalt, or similar rock, in which a broad, sloping depression was carved, and which could be transported from place to place. Fig. 106 illustrates an example of this type from the vicinity of Globe, in southern Arizona. The stationary mealing trough of the present day is undoubtedly the successor of the earner moveable form, yet it was in use among the pueblos at the time of the first Spanish expedition, as the following extract from Castañeda’s account[9] of Cibola will show. He says a special room is designed to grind the grain: “This last is apart, and contains a furnace and three stones made fast in {no para} masonry. Three women sit down before these stones; the first crushes the grain, the second brays it, and the third reduces it entirely to powder.” It will be seen how exactly this description fits both the arrangement and the use of this mill at the present time. The perfection of mechanical devices and the refinement of methods here exhibited would seem to be in advance of the achievement of this people in other directions.
Fig. 105. A Tusayan mealing trough.