Castañeda speaks of the people beyond Chichilticale making a bread of the mesquite which kept good for a whole year. He seems to have been well informed regarding the vegetable foods of the tribes passed through by Coronado's expedition.[352] That the "blettes" or "bledos" did not mean the same as grass is a certainty after we have examined the old writers, who each and all show that the bledos meant a definite kind of plant, although exactly what this plant was they fail to inform us. It can not be intended for the sunflower, which is mentioned distinctly by a number of writers as an article of diet among the Indians of the Southwest.[353] TZOALLI. An examination of the Spanish writers who most carefully transmitted their observations upon the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs and other nations in Mexico and South America brings out two most interesting features in this connection. The first is that there were commemorative feasts of prehistoric foods, and the second that one or more of these foods has played an important part in the religion of tribes farther north. The first of these foods is the "tzoalli," which was the same as "bledos," which latter would seem beyond question to have been hoddentin or yiauhtli. Brasseur de Bourbourg's definition simply states that the tzoalli was a compound of leguminous grains peculiar to Mexico and eaten in different ways: "Le Tzohualli était un composé de graines légumineuses particulières au Mexique, qu'on mangeait de diverses manières."[354] In the month called Tepeilhuitl the Aztecs made snakes of twigs and covered them with dough of bledos (a kind of grain or hay seed). Upon these they placed figures, representing mountains, but shaped like young children.[355] This month was the thirteenth on the Mexican calendar, which began on our February 1. This would put it October 1, or thereabout. Squier cites Torquemada's description of the sacrifices called Ecatotontin, offered to the mountains by the Mexicans. In these they made figures of serpents and children and covered them with "dough," named by them tzoalli, composed of the seeds of bledos.[356] A dramatic representation strongly resembling those described in the two preceding paragraphs was noted among the Tusayan of Arizona by Mr. Taylor, a missionary, in 1881, and has been mentioned at length in The Snake Dance of the Moquis. Clavigero relates that the Mexican priests "all eat a certain kind of gruel which they call _Etzalli_."[357]