Page 74 - TheHopiIndians

66 MESA FOLK OF HOPILAND

of the Hopi housewife and has acted as a spur to her
invention of palatable dishes.
The vocabulary of corn in the Hopi language is
extensive and contains words descriptive even of the
parts of the plant that are lacking to most civilized
people. The importance of corn is also reflected in
the numerous words describing the kinds of meal, the
dishes made from corn or in which corn enters, and of
the various ways in which it is prepared by fire for
the consumption of the ever-hungry HopL To give
an incomplete census of corn foods, there are fifteen
kinds of piki or paper bread, three kinds of mush;
five of short-cake; eleven of boiled corn; four kinds
baked or roasted in the coals ; two cooked by frying ;
four stewed and eight of cooked shelled corn, making
fifty-two varieties.
After the paper-bread, perhaps the most popular
food is pigame, or sweet corn mush, wrapped in corn-
husk and baked in an underground oven. Another
standby is shelled corn soaked and boiled till each
grain swells to several times the normal size. The
Hopi like their food well-cooked and know the art of
making each starch grain expand to the limit. A
book of Hopi cookery would be bulky, but how inter
esting to the housewife who would know how to make
plain food appetizing without milk or eggs, and who
would learn new and strange combinations! There
are cakes made from dried fruits, chopped meat, and
straw, put on the roof to dry; dumplings formed