doubtful whether he has any estate save his boots and saddle and
whatever personal plunder he may accumulate, for the house is the
property of the wife, as well as the crop after its harvest, and divorce
at the pleasure of the wife is effective and absolute by the mere means
of placing said boots and saddle, etc., outside the door and closing it.
The husband may return to his mother's house, and if he insists upon
staying, the village council will insist upon his departure.

Again, why do they keep doing it this way? Again, "Because it has always
been done this way." And it works very well. There is little divorce and
little dissension in domestic life among the Hopi, in spite of
Crane's[9] half comical sympathy for men in this "woman-run"
commonwealth. Bachelors are rare since only heads of families count in
the body politic. An unmarried woman of marriageable age is unheard of.

[Footnote 9: Crane, Leo, Indians of the Enchanted Mesa: Little, Brown &
Co., Boston, 1925.]


=Woman's Work=

The Hopi woman's life is a busy one, the never finished grinding of corn
by the use of the primitive metate and mano taking much time, and the
universal woman's task of bearing and rearing children and providing
meals and home comforts accounting for most of her day.

She is the carrier of water, and since it must be borne on her back from
the spring below the village mesa this is a burden indeed. She is, too,
the builder of the house, though men willingly assist in any heavy
labor when wanted. But why on earth should so kindly a people make woman