Though in appearance these long blocks of apartments are community houses, they are in no sense communal if that term be used to define a socialistic form of life. Each family or clan is a unit completely separated from every other by very solid division walls. Independence of all but the immediate family or clan can hardly be carried to a greater extreme than with the Indian. Injury or insult, even if sometimes imaginary, may provoke tragic results. Silent and wary by nature, and made suspicious by experience, the Indian is indifferent to the well-being of his neighbor across streets as narrow as those that separate the house-blocks of Ácoma, and he asks an equal privacy for himself. May this not explain, at least in part, certain contradictory information gathered from different sources in the same pueblo, of which all investigators complain? [Illustration: ÁCOMA NORTH ROW _Bolton_] [Illustration: ÁCOMA MIDDLE ROW _Bolton_] The old town shows signs of decay. The western end of Middle Row is now broken down, displaying the construction of the three storeys and the method by which wooden _vigas_ (beams) are mortised into the adobe walls. One of the _vigas_ was quite beautifully carved with the same design we afterwards saw in another house, where it was partly hidden by white-wash. We were told that these two decorated beams were taken from the first church when it was destroyed, and that in earlier days the half-ruined house had been the residence of the priest. Since at present a priest comes from Laguna but twice in a year, it is evident that he needs no permanent abode. Apartment-like as they look from without, they are never connected inside. Within the houses you will find an open hearth for warmth and cooking. In most houses there will be at one end three corn-grinding troughs (_metates_) sloping like a washboard in a tub. Kneeling behind them, a woman will use a small bevelled slab of stone or lava, of the same material as the trough, with which she crushes the grain, which then falls over the edge between the slabs, each trough making the meal finer than the one before. It has been noted ever since Castañeda’s day, that, if not observed by strangers, the women always sing at their grinding. For several tribes the music for the Corn-Grinding Songs has been written down.[10] Outside the house, at fairly frequent intervals, are beehive-shaped ovens where all the baking is done, except that of the “paper bread” (_guayave_)[11] made from blue corn, which must be baked on very highly polished flat stones. These stones, which receive an extraordinary degree of care from the women, are placed upon a projecting part of the fireplace directly over the blaze. The _guayave_ we saw was about the color and texture of a hornet’s nest and tasted rather like popped corn.