How simple and really beautiful are the conditions of life among these people may be seen from the idyllic record of the Zuñi Indians given by Mr. Cushing.[62] He describes how the Zuñi girl, when taking a fancy to a young man, conveys a present of thin _hewe_-bread to him as a token, and becomes his affianced, or as they say “his-to-be.” He then sews clothes and moccasins for her, makes her a necklace of gay beads, and combs her hair out on the terrace in the sun. After his term of service is over, and all is settled, he takes up his residence with her; then the married life begins. “With the woman rests the security of the marriage tie, and, it must be said, in her high honour, that she rarely abuses the privilege; that is, never sends her husband ‘to the home of his fathers’ unless he richly deserves it.” Divorce is by mutual consent, and a husband and wife would “rather separate than live together unharmoniously.” This testimony is confirmed by Mrs. Stevenson, who visited the Zuñis, and writes with enthusiasm of the people. “Their domestic life might well serve as an example for the civilised world. They do not have large families. The husband and wife are deeply attached to one another and to their children.” “The keynote of this harmony is the supremacy of the wife in the home. The house with all that is in it is hers, descending to her through her mother from a long line of ancestresses; and the husband is merely her permanent guest. The children--at least the female children--have their share in the common home; the father has none.” “Outside the house the husband has some property in the fields, although in earlier times he had no possessory rights and the land was held in common. Modern influences have reached the Zuñi, and mother-right seems to have begun its inevitable decay.”[63] [62] Cushing, “My Visit to the Zuñi Indians,” _Century Magazine_, 1883. Prof. Tylor gives these passages in his account of the Zuñi Indians, “The Patriarchal Family System,” _Nineteenth Century_, 1896. I have quoted from him. [63] Mrs. Stevenson, in the _Report Bureau Ethnological_, XXIII, pp. 290-293.