While the men garner snakes and perform in the kivas, the women are not
idle. Far from it! Pottery-makers are busy putting the last touches of
paint on their pottery, and basket makers add the last row of weaving to
the baskets. These wares are displayed in every doorway and window,
where they are most likely to catch the tourist eye. The best specimens
are not put out for sale. I believe the attitude is, "Why place pearls
before swine?"

Houses are swept, and new plaster is applied inside and out. The girls
chatter over their grinding stones, where they crush the meal for making
"piki." Others mix and bake this piki, and it is piled high on flat
baskets. It is made of cornmeal and water, and is baked on hot flat
stones. The stone is first greased with hot mutton tallow, then the cook
dips her fingers into the mixture and with one swift swipe spreads it
evenly over the scorching surface. How they escape blistered fingers is
always a marvel to me.

Squaws are wearily climbing the steep trail with heavy ollas of water on
their backs, held there by a shawl knotted around their foreheads.
Others pass them going to the spring, where they sit and gossip a while
before starting back with their burdens. It takes about the last of the
hoarded water to prepare for the dance, since religion demands that
every house and street be sprinkled and each and every Hopi must have
his yearly bath and shampoo.

I found a pretty girl having her hair put up in squash blossoms for the
first time. Her mother told me she was ready to choose her husband now,
and that the hairdress would notify the young braves to that effect. In
Hopi land the girl chooses her own husband, proposes, and then takes him
to live in her house. If she tires of him she throws his belongings out,
and _he_ "goes back to mother!" After the Snake Dance my little girl
would make her choice. I tried to get advance information, but she
blushed and giggled like any other flapper.

The old men were going to and from the planting grounds, many miles away
in the valley. They went at a sort of dog trot, unless one was rich
enough to own a burro; in that case it did the dog trotting. After the
fields are planted, brush shelters are built and the infirm members of
the tribe stay there to protect the fields from rabbits and burros. Who
could blame a hungry little burro for making away with a luscious hill
of green corn in the midst of a barren desert? And yet if he is caught
he ha