he do with
it as he pleased.

Not many centuries ago the members of each clan, or rather the women,
their offspring, and aged people who were taken care of by their
children, lived together. They occupied a certain section of the great
hive which the communal dwelling represented, and such a section was not
unappropriately called in Spanish a _quartel_ or quarter. The husband
also stayed with his wife and the younger children, but he had no rights
as owner, or proprietor, to his abode. Since it was the custom for women
to raise the walls of buildings, and to finish the house inside and
outside, they owned it also. The man was only tolerated. His home was
properly with his clan, whither he must return in case his spouse
departed this life before him.

It was different in regard to the fields. Each clan had its particular
holding, and since the field-work devolved upon the men, the cultivated
plots belonged to them alone. Within each allotment every member who was
of age, or so situated as to have to support himself or a family, owned
and tilled a certain plot which was his by common consent, although in
no manner determined by metes or bounds. The condition of ownership was
regular improvement of the plot, and if that condition was not complied
with, any other member of the same clan could step in and work it for
his own benefit. In case of death the field reverted to the maternal
relative of its owner, whereas the widow and children fell back for
support upon the resources of their own clan. Hence the singular feature
that each household got its livelihood from two distinct groups of
blood-relatives. The home which we have entered belonged to the quarters
of the Gourd people, or clan Tanyi hanutsh, from which the mother
descended; and Okoya had slept at night in the estufa of that cluster
ever since his thirteenth year. But the cultivated patch which the
father tilled pertained to the fields of his clan, that of Water, Tzitz
hanutsh. Though the Water people were his relatives, the crop raised by
him found its way into the storeroom of Tanyi for the support of the
family which he claimed as his own.

Okoya's mother scanned her boys with a sober glance, and turned back
into the kitchen without uttering a word.

Soon a grating sound issued from that apartment, indicating that toasted
corn was being ground on the flat slab called in Queres, _yakkat_, and
now usually termed _metate_ in New Mexico. The boys meanwhile had