They make baskets and pottery, weave
cloth and dress skins for their own use and to barter in trade
with their neighbors. They like silver and have skilled workmen
who make the white metal into beads and buttons and various
trinkets for personal adornment. They care nothing for gold, and
silver is their only money. Chalchihuitl is their favorite gem
and to own a turquoise stone is regarded as an omen of good
fortune to the happy possessor.
Just how the Spaniards got the notion that the Moquis loved gold
and possessed vast stores of that precious metal is not apparent
unless it be, as Bandelier suggests, that it originated in the
myth of the El Dorado, or Gilded Man.[9] The story started at
Lake Guatanita in Bogota, and traveled north to Quivera, but the
wealth that the Spaniards sought they never found. Their journey
led them over deserts that gave them but little food and only a
meager supply of water, and ended in disaster.
[9] The Gilded Man, by A. F. Bandelier, 1893.
The mesas are all rock and utterly barren, and their supplies are
all brought from a distance over difficult trails. The water is
carried in ollas by the women from springs at the foot of the
mesa; wood is packed on burros from distant forests; and corn,
melons and peaches are brought home by the men when they return
from their work in the fields.
