her home, later building the new home adjacent to that of her
mother. Therefore many daughters born to a clan mean increase in
population.

[Illustration: Figure 1.--Hopi Family at Shungopovi.

--Photo by Lockett.]

Some clans have indeed become nearly extinct because of the lack of
daughters, the sons having naturally gone to live with neighboring
clans, or in some cases with neighboring tribes. As a result, some large
houses are pointed out that have many unoccupied and even abandoned
rooms--the clan is dying out. Possibly there may be a good many men of
that clan living but they are not with or near their parents and
grandparents. They are now a part of the clan into which they have
married, and must live there, be it near or far. Why should they keep up
such a practice when possibly the young man could do better,
economically and otherwise, in his ancestral home and community? The
answer is, "It has always been that way," and that seems to be reason
enough for a Hopi.

=Property, Lands, Houses, Divorce=

Land is really communal, apportioned to the several clans and by them
apportioned to the various families, who enjoy its use and hand down
such use to the daughters, while the son must look to his wife's share
of her clan allotment for his future estate. In fact, it is a little
doubtful whether he has any estate save his boots and saddle and
whatever personal plunder he may accumulate, for the house is the
property of the wife, as well as the crop after its harvest, and divorce
at the pleasure of the wife is effective and absolute by the mere means
of placing said boots and saddle, etc., outside the door and closing it.
The husband may return to his mother's house, and if he insists upon
staying, the village council will insist upon his departure.

Again, why do they keep doing it this way? Again, "Because it has always
been done this way." And it works very well. There is little divorce and
little dissension in domestic life among the Hopi, in spite of
Crane's[9] half comical sympathy for men in this "woman-run"
commonwealth. Bachelors are rare since only heads of families count in
the body politic. An unmarried woman of marriageable age is unheard of.

[Footnote 9: Crane, Leo, Indians of the Enchanted Mesa: Little, Brown &
Co., Boston, 1925.]

=Woman's Work=

The Hopi woman's life is a busy one, the never finished grinding of corn
by the use of the primitive metate and mano taking much time, and the