isfied, the former
may go back to the house and fetch some pinole and meat for the
traveller. The object of the visit not infrequently is an invitation
to take part in some game or foot-race; and as the men are sure to
remain undisturbed, they generally reach some understanding. A friend
of the family is, of course, finally invited to enter the house, and
the customary salutation is "Assaga!" ("Sit down!") In this connection
it may be noted that the Tarahumares in conversation look sidewise,
or even turn their backs toward the person they speak to.

After having eaten, the guest will carefully return every vessel in
which food was given to him, and when he rises he hands back the skin
on which he was seated. Should occasion require, the host will say:
"It is getting late, and you cannot return to your home to-night. Where
are you going to sleep? There is a good cave over yonder." With this
he may indicate where the visitor may remain over night. He will also
tell him where he may find wood for the fire, and he will bring him
food; but not unless the weather is very tempestuous will he invite
an outsider to sleep in the house.

When at home the Tarahumare keeps regular hours, rising and retiring
with the sun. Having slept on a skin on the floor, rolled up in his
blanket, without anything for a pillow except perhaps a stone or a
chunk of wood, he sits for a while near the fire, which is kept up
most of the year at night in the house or cave. His wife brings him
his breakfast of pinole. While combing out his long black hair with a
pine cone, he may ask the boys and girls whether they have attended
to the traps he told them to set on the night before. They run out
and soon they come in with some mice. "Here they are," they say,
"but they are very poor!" The father, however, may consider them fat
and nice, and the mother affably adds: "Of course, they are fat,
since they have eaten so much corn." They go about to roast them,
while the husband looks on. Generally the Tarahumares have a number
of traps set to catch mice. They are so fond of this "game" that,
when civilised, they have been known to ask permission from Mexican
acquaintances to go through their houses to hunt for them. The mice
are skinned and threaded on a thin stick, which is stuck through
their necks and serves as a spit.

Having enjoyed the dainty morsel thus set before him, the husband
now tells his wife what he is going to do to-day. He will run deer or