and some cheap prints, which were
evidently regarded with great veneration. The floors, which were not
of wood, but of smooth adobe nearly as hard as asphalt, were in every
instance remarkably clean.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A PUEBLO APARTMENT.]

It is an interesting fact, in the domestic economy of the Indian life
led in these aerial villages, that the woman is always the complete
owner of her apartment and its contents; for it is the women of the
tribe who build the dwellings. Accordingly, the position of a Pueblo
woman is extraordinary; and should her husband ill-treat her, she has
the right and power to evict him, and to send him back to his
original home. On the other hand, the man is sole possessor of the
live stock of the family and of the property in the field; but when
the crops are housed, the wife is at once invested with an equal
share in their ownership. Pueblo children, too, always trace their
descent through the mother and take her clan name instead of the
father's. I noticed that at Acoma the children seemed to be obedient
to their parents and respectful to age, as I have invariably found
them to be in all partially civilized countries of the world; for,
paradoxical as it may seem, it is only in highly civilized
communities, where individualism is cultivated at the expense of
strict discipline and parental control, that children become
indifferent to their fathers and mothers, and insolent to their
superiors in age and wisdom.

[Illustration: PUEBLO WATER-CARRIERS.]

We lingered for some time upon this citadel of Acoma, profoundly
interested in the life and customs of a people that asks no aid of
the United States, but is, to-day, as self-supporting as it has
always been. The number of Pueblo Indians was never very large. It is
probable that there were in all about thirty thousand of them at the
time of the Spanish conquest, in 1540, and there are now about
one-third that number scattered through more than twenty settlements.
In an arid land where the greatest need is water, it is not strange
that the dwellers on these rocky eyries should be called in the
Indian dialect "Drinkers of the dew," for it would seem as if the dew
must be their only beverage. But there are springs upon the
neighboring plains whose precious liquid is brought up the steep
trail daily on the heads of women, in three or five gallon jars, the
carrying of which gives to the poise of the head and neck a native
grace and elega