A black and white bowl (pl. 1, fig. 1) is twelve and one-half inches
in diameter and six inches deep. Upon this bowl is drawn a figure of a
human being, probably a woman or a girl, seen from the front. Although
portions of the figure are not very legible, such details as can be
made out show a person wearing a blanket that extends almost to the
knees leaving arms and legs bare, the lower limbs being covered. The
head is square, as if masked, with hair tied at each lower corner.
Although these appendages may be meant to represent ear-pendants, it
is more likely that they are whorls of hair, as is still customary
in Pueblo ceremonies in personations of certain maidens. Across the
forehead are alternating black and white square figures arranged in
two series, recalling corn or rain-cloud symbols. The neck is adorned
by several strands of necklaces, the outermost of which, almost
effaced, suggests rectangular ornaments. The garment worn by the
figure is evidently the ceremonial[27] blanket of a Pueblo woman, for
no man wears this kind of garment. It has a white border and from
its middle there hangs a number of parallel lines representing cords
or a fringe, evidently the ends of a sash by which the blanket was
formerly tied about the waist. It is instructive to notice that we
find similar parallel lines represented in a picture of a girl from
Sikyatki[28] where the blanket has the same rectangular form as in the
prehistoric Mimbres picture. There can be no question that in this
case it represents a garment bound with a girdle, or that the picture
was intended for that of a girl or a woman. We have in this picture
evidence that the same method of arranging the hair was used in the
Mimbres Valley as in northern New Mexico. The leg wrappings suggest
those used by Pueblo women, especially the Hopi, whose leggings are
made of long strips of buckskin attached to the moccasins and wound
around the lower limbs.