Because of their pastoral life the Navaho are not villagers. Their dome-shaped, earth-covered hogáns are usually grouped two or three in the same locality. The summer house is a rude brush shelter, usually made with four corner posts, a flat top of brush, and a windbreak of the same material as a protection against the hot desert siroccos. The hogán proper, used for storage during the summer, affords a warm and comfortable shelter to its occupants through the cold winters of their high altitude. When a hogán is built it is ceremonially consecrated, and if an occupant should die in it, it is forever deserted and is called _tsí̆ndi hogán_, "evil house." No Navaho will go near such a house or touch anything taken from it. If a meal were cooked with decayed wood from a hogán a hundred years deserted, a Navaho, even if starving, could not be induced to partake of it. Thus strong are the religious beliefs of this primitive people. [Illustration: The Blanket Maker - Navaho] The Blanket Maker - Navaho _From Copyright Photograph 1904 by E.S. Curtis_ The domestic equipment of the Navaho is simplicity itself and reflects the simple life of the tribe. Of household furniture there is none. The bedding consists usually of a few sheepskins; cooking utensils are earthen pots of their own making, and cups, knives, and spoons of civilization. Plates they do not need, as the family eat directly from the pot in which the food is cooked. The principal food is mutton, boiled, and corn prepared in many ways. Considerable flour obtained from traders is consumed; this is leavened slightly and made into small cakes, which are cooked over the embers like Mexican tortillas. The women are an important factor in the Navaho tribe. The sheep usually, and the house, with all that pertains to it, always are the property of the wife. The independent spirit of the women, instilled by this incontestable property right, manifests itself throughout the tribe, and by reason of it the Navaho husband is not apt to seek an opportunity to criticise his wife so long as she is in a position to say, "If I and the hogán do not suit you, go elsewhere!" Polygamy is common, but as a rule the wives of one man are sisters, an arrangement conducive to domestic harmony.