The people’s clothes took their prevailing color from the natural hues of cotton and yucca fibre. Designs were added in colors taken from the earth and plants. There was a rich red, from clay. Mustard yellow came from rabbit brush, and a soft golden yellow came from ochreous earth. Larkspur and blue beans yielded a delicate blue stain, and copper sulphate gave again the brilliant blue-green dye which prevailed in the kachina masks.
A man dressed himself in a breechclout of cloth when he wore no other clothing. Otherwise, he wore a broad kilt wrapped about his waist. It was held in place by a richly decorated sash whose ends hung down. His shirt was a square of cloth with a hole cut for the head. Around his head he wore a cloth bandeau. His legs were sometimes covered by the superb buckskin leggings which he imitated from those of the hunting Plains Indians. The leggings were not joined, but hung separately from the sash or breechclout by leather thongs, from the crotch to the ankle. They were often gathered at the knee with ties of rawhide. On his feet he wore soft skin mocassins. Over all he wore a robe or cloak, now of turkey feathers, again of rabbit fur cut in strips and laced together with yucca thread. Tied to interesting points of his costume he wore, if he was fortunate, a number of the little copper bells and beads made far away in Mexico, and very rare in his river country. But some of the bells came northward in trade, and possibly some were made by wandering metalworkers from far to the south who came to the river and used local metals; but without leaving their skill behind them, for the pueblo people had no metal crafts in that time. Such an ornamental bell was about an inch long, open at the bottom, with a pebble strung on a thread for its clapper. The beads were an inch long and shaped in tight little cylinders. The bells seemed to be cast by some lost method and the beads were hammered. The man wore jewels, too, as many as he could contrive out of strings of turquoise, bone inlaid with bright stones, black, red, or blue; and bits of shined rock in any beautiful color. He wore strings of precious color about his neck, and hung them from his ears, and wrapped them about his arms. Finally, on many occasions, he used paint on his skin as decoration, whether in the dance, in ceremonies for the sick, in rites of the hunt, or in war.
A woman wore a mantle four or five feet long, and about three feet wide, which she wrapped about herself under the left arm and over the right shoulder and held together with a long decorated belt that went several times around her waist. She wore nothing on her head and, except in bad weather when she used mocassins, nothing on her feet. Like her husband she wore as much jewelry as she could get, and in her uses of the dance and other ceremonies, she wore paint, but only on her face.
As among people anywhere, the children wore miniature imitations of adult costumes, except in hot weather, when they wore nothing at all.
The skins of the people were the color of moist river-earth. Their eyes were black and so was the thick hair of their heads. In general they were not tall. The men, from the exercises of their rituals, the ordeals of work, were lean and muscular. The women early lost the figures of maidenhood and grew heavy, moving modestly and calmly about their duties, fixed in their pivotal positions as the bearers of life, the holders of all that brought stability to the family.
vi. man, woman and child
For in the analogy of woman as the repository of continuing life, it was the wife and mother who was custodian of the family dwelling, and all communal property. Growing up among her relatives, she was courted by her suitor, who sometimes played to her upon the flageolet in the evening on the hills at a little distance from the town, when the fading light was still clear, and the day’s sounds were dying away. If she heard him with favor, and took him as her husband, he joined her in the circle of her blood relations, who helped her with materials to build new rooms for her own life. She herself made the walls out of earth long ago laid down by the passage of the river. She received her husband in the shelter of her own life, with her person, her house and her years. It was hers to create all the enfolding and conserving gestures of life, whether as maker of shelter, of children, or of pottery. She took her husband for life and he understood that he was to have no other woman. A daughter born meant that the mother’s family was increased, for the child would in her time bring a suitor to the same family premises; while a son born meant that one day he would leave and find his mate in another settled family bound together by its matron. From mother to daughter the home was passed on; not from father to son.
The father and mother rarely separated from one another; but if it came to pass that the marriage must end, it was the man who was removed, leaving the dominion of the family secure with the mother and her relations. He would one day find his few personal possessions set out upon the doorstep of his home by his wife, whereupon he would weep, take up his things, and return to the house of his mother. For it was there that he went at important times; and if his mother was dead, he would find his sister there, to whom he gave his ancestral allegiance.
A woman in her house produced the clothes worn by her husband and children. She prepared the food and cooked it. The staple of the diet was corn, and she ground the meal, often before sunrise. While her husband sang to her a song which celebrated the act of grinding corn, or beat upon a drum, she worked the kernels in time with his rhythm. She put the corn upon a large flat stone and ground it with a smaller bar of stone, and in time the first was hollowed out like a dish and the second was rounded off at the edges by the work. Her hands grew hard and big and her fingernails wore down as she labored. For each batch of meal she used several different stones, going from coarse to smooth, always refining the flour and roasting it after each grinding. Sometimes several women ground corn together at night. If a woman wanted to make a gift to a man, she would give corn bread or any cooked food.
She kept her house immaculate and the roof above it and the space before it. Her broom was made of slender branches of Apache plume (or poñil) bound to a willow stick. When she swept her floor she first sprinkled it with water or blew a spray of water from her mouth. Her soap was made from yucca roots. To make cord or rope she boiled the succulent leaves of the yucca and when they cooled she chewed them until they were soft, and then drew out the stringy fibers which she worked together.
Her day was busy and her duties were serious. Much depended upon her, not only what needed to be done, but also how. From her mother she had learned the proper ways of life, and it was her own obligation to transmit these to her own daughters. Even hopes and desires had their proper gestures, to be made in the image of what she wanted. If she wanted a son and had none, she went to find a stone that had the shape of a man’s generative member. From this she scraped a little stone dust and put it into water and drank. She prayed. She deeply knew her animal womanhood and enacted its appointed nature in harmony with what she saw of life all about her.
A man’s purposes and duties were all plain, too.
If he owned no house, anyhow he governed the town. He explained life through religion and ordered, preserved and executed the ceremonies which he said kept the year and its seasons in their proper passage. He provided raw food by farming and hunting. Like the seed for children, the seed corn belonged to him. All the powers latent in the fields were his, and so was the rubble after harvest. Harvested food and stored corn was, he said, “my wife’s.” If he wanted to make a gift to a woman, he gave the products of his work—game, firewood, embroidered or woven cloth, which it was his to produce. He ruled the river and brought its water to the fields for irrigation. And in times of danger from other peoples, he made war.
The Pueblo people were peaceful. They said they never carried war to others, but gave battle only in defense of their own lands, towns and families. One Pueblo tribe