[Illustration: IN THE PUEBLO.]

Most of the cells which we examined in the many-chambered honeycomb
of Ácoma had very little furniture except a primitive table and a few
stools, made out of blocks of wood or trunks of trees. Across one
corner of each room was, usually, stretched a cord on which the
articles of the family wardrobe had been thrown promiscuously. The
ornaments visible were usually bows and arrows, rifles, Navajo
blankets, and leather pouches, hung on wooden pegs. Of beds I could
find none; for Indians sleep by preference on blankets, skins, or
coarse-wool mattresses spread every night upon the floor. When we
consider that the forty millions of Japan, even in their
comparatively high degree of civilization, still sleep in much the
same way, we realize how unnecessary bedsteads are to the majority
of the human race. In a few rooms I discovered wooden statuettes of
saints, one or two crucifixes, 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 aërial 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