formed he would not even speak to the medicine-men.
The self-sacrifice he thus imposed was to be light, and not a formal
fast. It limited itself to a much less substantial nourishment, and to a
shorter rest during the hours of night.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: In the symbolical paintings of the Pueblos, the rainbow is
represented usually as a tri-coloured arch with a head and arms at one
end and with feet at the other. It is a female deity.]

CHAPTER X.

At the time of which we are speaking, the chief civil officer of the
tribe at the Rito,--its tapop, or as he is now called, governor,--was an
Indian whose name was Hoshkanyi Tihua.

Hoshkanyi Tihua was a man of small stature; his head was nearly round,
or rather pear-shaped, for the lower jaw appeared to be broader than the
forehead. The lips were thin and the mouth firmly set, the nose small
and aquiline. The eyes had usually a pleasant expression, but when the
little man got excited they sparkled in a manner that denoted not merely
an irascible temper, but a disposition to become extremely venomous in
speech and utterance. Hoshkanyi Tihua was nimble, and a good hunter. He
seldom returned from a hunt without a supply of game. On such occasions
he was always suitably welcomed by his wife, who suffered him to skin
the animal and cut up the body. When that was performed she allowed her
husband to go to rest, but not before; for Koay, Hoshkanyi's wife, was
not so much his companion in life as his home-tyrant; and however
valiant the little fellow might try to appear outside of his home, once
under the immediate influence of that home's particular mistress he
became as meek as a lamb. Koay was an unusually tall woman for an
Indian,--she overtopped her husband by nearly a head; and the result of
this anomalous difference in size was that Hoshkanyi felt very much
afraid of her. Koay had a temper of her own, besides, which temper she
occasionally displayed at the expense of the little tapop's bodily
comfort. Among the Pueblo Indians the wife is by no means the slave only
of the lord of creation.

Koshkanyi had somehow or other acquired the reputation of being an
experienced warrior. Whether he really deserved that reputation or not
was never accurately ascertained. At all events, he was the lucky
possessor of one scalp, and that gave him prestige. There is no doubt
that he acquired the trophy in a legitimate way; that is, he had not
stolen it. Once upon a time a