plaster floors.

Now the owner prepares four more eagle feathers and ties them to a
little willow stick whose end is inserted in one of the central roof
beams. No home is complete without this, for it is the soul of the house
and the sign of its dedication. These feathers are renewed every year at
the feast of Soyaluna.

The writer remembers once seeing a tourist reach up and pull off the
little tuft of breath feathers from the mid-rafter of the little house
he had rented for the night. Naturally he replaced it when the enormity
of his act was explained to him.

Not until the breath feathers have been put up, together with particles
of food placed in the rafters as an offering to Masauwu, with due
prayers for the peace and prosperity of the new habitation, may the
women proceed to plaster the interior, to which, when it is dry, a coat
of white gypsum is applied (all with strokes of the bare hands), giving
the room a clean, fresh appearance. In one corner of the room is built a
fireplace and chimney, the latter often extended above the roof by
piling bottomless jars one upon the other, a quaint touch, reminding one
of the picturesque chimney pots of England.

[Illustration: Figure 3.--Typical Hopi Home.

--Courtesy Arizona State Museum.]

The roofs are finished flat and lived upon as in Mediterranean
countries, particularly in the case of one-story structures built
against two-story buildings, the roof of the low building making the
porch or roof-garden for the second-story room lying immediately
adjacent. Here, on the roof many household occupations go on, including
often summer sleeping and cooking.

When the new house is completely finished and dedicated, the owner gives
a feast for all members of her clan who have helped in the
house-raising, and the guests come bearing small gifts for the home.

Formerly, the house was practically bare of furniture save for the
fireplace and an occasional stool, but the majority of the Hopi have
taken kindly to small iron cook stoves, simple tables and chairs, and
some of them have iron bedsteads. Even now, however, there are many
homes, perhaps they are still in the majority, where the family sits in
the middle of the floor and eats from a common bowl and pile of piki
(their native wafer corn bread), and sleeps on a pile of comfortable
sheep skins with the addition of a few pieces of store bedding, all of
which is rolled up against the wall to be out of the way when not in