The home which we have entered belonged to the quarters of the Gourd people, or clan Tanyi hanutsh, from which the mother descended; and Okoya had slept at night in the estufa of that cluster ever since his thirteenth year.

But the cultivated patch which the father tilled pertained to the fields of his clan, that of Water, Tzitz hanutsh.

Though the Water people were his relatives, the crop raised by him found its way into the storeroom of Tanyi for the support of the family which he claimed as his own.
Okoya's mother scanned her boys with a sober glance, and turned back into the kitchen without uttering a word.
Soon a grating sound issued from that apartment, indicating that toasted corn was being ground on the flat slab called in Queres, _yakkat_, and now usually termed _metate_ in New Mexico.

The boys meanwhile had approached a niche in the wall.

Each one took a pinch of yellow cornmeal from the painted bowl, and scattered it successively to the north, west, south, east; then threw a little of it up in the air and to the ground before him.