It is also true that the Zuñis do not again burn the dead and cast their ashes into the river, nor bury the bodies of the clan elders, or the priests of the tribal septuarchy, in their own houses, as they did ere the time of Coronado, or "under the ladders," as their funereal rituals continue nevertheless to say they do. They bury all, now, in the little strip of consecrated ground out in front of the church; ground already so overfilled with the bones of past generations that never a new grave is made that does not encroach on other graves. Bones lie scattered all about there, rubbish accumulates, the wooden cross in the center of the place is frequently broken, and the mud walls inclosing it are sometimes allowed to fall to the ground. Yet in vain I urged them if only for sanitary reasons to abandon burying their dead there, and inter them in the sand hills to the south of the pueblo. "Alas! we could not," they said. "This was the ground of the church which was the house of our fathers wherein they were buried, they and their children, 'under the descending ladders.' How, if we bury our dead in lone places, may they be numbered with our 'fathers and children of the descending ladders?'" But far from indicating any lingering desire for "Christian burial," this is a striking example of the real, though not apparent, persistence of their original mortuary customs. For they still ceremonially and ritualistically "burn" their ordinary dead, as did their forefathers when first compelled to bury in the churchyard, by burning some of their hair and personal effects with the customary clan offerings of food and property, and casting the ashes of all into the river; and it matters not where these, who virtually exist no more, but are, in their eyes, consumed and given to the waters, are buried, save that they be placed with the priestly dead of today, as the "children" or ordinary dead were placed with the priestly dead in the days of the "Mísa k‘yakwe" or "Mission-house people." So, too, the priests of today, or the tribal fathers, are still painted with the black of silence over their mouths and the yellow and green of light and life over their eyes and nostrils, as are the gods, and are ritualistically buried "under the ladders," that is, in their own houses, when actually buried in the churchyard. Thus, when the gods are invoked, these, as being demigods, still priests of the beloved, are also invoked, first, as "Fathers and children of the descending ladder," then as souls in the clouds and winds and waters, "Makers of the ways of life." So the whole burial ground of the church is, in the estimation of the Zuñi, a fetich whereby to invoke the souls of the ancestors, the potency of which would be destroyed if disturbed; hence the place is neither cared for nor abandoned, though recognized even by themselves as a "direful place in daylight."