Some were seen with twelve pillars and with four in the center as large as two men could stretch around. They usually had three or four pillars. The floor was made of large, smooth stones, like the baths which they have in Europe. They have a hearth made like the binnacle or compass box of a ship,[1] in which they burn a handful of thyme at a time to keep up the heat, and they can stay in there just as in a bath. The top was on a level with the ground. Some that were seen were large enough for a game of ball. When any man wishes to marry, it has to be arranged by those who govern. The man has to spin and weave a blanket and place it before the woman, who covers herself with it and becomes his wife.[2] The houses belong to the women, the estufas to the men. If a man repudiates his woman, he has to go to the estufa.[3] It is forbidden for women to sleep in the estufas, or to enter these for any purpose except to give their husbands or sons something to eat. The men spin and weave. The women bring up the children and prepare the food. The country is so fertile that they do not have to break up the ground the year round, but only have to sow the seed, which is presently covered by the fall of snow, and the ears come up under the snow. In one year they gather enough for seven. A very large number of cranes and wild geese and crows and starlings live on what is sown, and for all this, when they come to sow for another year, the fields are covered with corn which they have not been able to finish gathering.
There are a great many native fowl in these provinces, and cocks with great hanging chins.[4] When dead, these keep for sixty days, and longer in winter, without losing their feathers or opening, and without any bad smell, and the same is true of dead men.
The villages are free from nuisances, because they go outside to excrete, and they pass their water into clay vessels, which they empty
- ↑ The Spanish is almost illegible. Ternaux (pp. 169-170) merely says: "Au milieu est un foyer allumé."
- ↑ Mota Padilla, cap. xxxii, p. 160: "En los casamientos (á Tigües}] hay costumbre, que cuando un mozo da en servir á una doncella, la espera en la parte donde va á acarrear agua, y coge el cántaro, con cuya demostracion manifiesta á los deudos de ella, la voluutad de casarse: no tienen estos indios mas que una muger."
Villagra, Historia de la Nueva Mexico, canto xv, fol. 135:
Y tienen una cosa aquestas gentes,
Que en saliendo las mozas de donzellas,
Son á todos comunes, sin escusa,
Con tal que se lo paguen, y sin paga,
Es una vil bageza, tal delito,
Mas luego que se casan vinen castas,
Conteuta cada qual con su marido,
Cuia costumbre, con la grande fuerça,
Que por naturaleza ya tenian,
Teniendo por certissimo nosotros,
Seguiamos tambien aquel camino,
Iuntaron muchas mantas bien pintadas,
Para alcanar las damas Castellanas,
Que mucho apetecieron y quisieron.It is hoped that a translation of this poem, valuable to the historian and to the ethnologist, if not to the student of literature, may be published in the not distant future.
- ↑ This appears to be the sense of a sentence which Ternaux omits.
- ↑ The American turkey cocks.
