While this work is in progress a great number of smaller and less shapely timbers are procured for the sides and roof.  To determine a pitch for the sloping sides all the workers arrange themselves so as to encompass the square frame, and a few of the longest of the irregular timbers are placed here and there around it, leaning against the beams.  They are roughly aligned, and some attempt is made to have the sides of the same slope.  The floor area thus determined, the outer edge of which would fall 4 to 6 feet outside the posts, is then lightly dug over to remove all irregularities, and is made as level as possible.

As in the ordinary hogan, the upright posts of the door-frame are set near the lower ends of the doorway timbers, and the roof and sides of the doorway are covered in when the sides of the hut are inclosed, which is the next step in the construction.  Small tree trunks and timbers are placed closely around the excavated floor area, with their upper ends leaning against the roof beams.  They are not set very regularly and boughs are often used to fill the larger crevices, while the corners are turned in a clumsy manner, with the tops of the timbers overlapping each other, while the butts diverge in a haphazard curve.

The roof is laid with smaller timbers, the longest resting on the smoke-hole timber and the western beam, while the shorter pieces span the smaller interval from the former timber to the eastern beam.  The arrangement of the smoke exit differs from that of the ordinary hogan.  In the latter an open space is left between the doorway timbers at their upper ends; in the iyacaskuni the doorway roof is continued up to the eastern beam, which forms the eastern side of the smoke hole.  This hole is in the main roof, in line with the doorway but just beyond the ends of its timbers, and it is usually about 3 feet square.  Figure 242 is an interior view of the frame, looking outward.  The structure is finished like the hogans; the frame is covered by heavy layers of cedar or juniper bark over the sides and roof, and finally with a deep covering of earth packed firmly over the whole exterior.  The door frame is usually about 4 feet high and 2-1/2 feet wide; the roof is about 7 feet high in the interior, and the floor area measures roughly 20 feet square, with the four posts standing about 5 feet from the base of the sides.  Figure 243 shows some actual measurements.

  [Illustration:  Fig. 242—­Framework of Yeb[)i]tcai house]

While the Yeb[)i]tcai ceremony is in progress the hut is occupied by the qacal’i and his assistants and by the young men who assume the sacred masks and personate the various deities in the nightly dances.  In the mornings the qacal’i sits under the western side of the hut and directs the young men in the process of sand painting, the making of curious sand mosaics delineating mythologic subjects.  The materials used are dry sand, charcoal,