In the morning, when the sun was still new, the ti´ämoni had the feast spread—bowls of mush, bread, and meat; and he said to Po´shaiyänne, who was present: “Father, if you have food bring it to my house and we will have our feast together.” Po´shaiyänne replied: “It is well, father;” and, to the astonishment of all, Po´shaiyänne’s food immediately appeared. It was spread on tables;[9] the bowls holding the food being very beautiful, such as had never before been seen. The ti´ämoni told Ma´asewe to bid the people come to the feast; and all, including the most aged men and women and youngest children, were present. Upon entering the house they were surprised with the things
they saw on Po´shaiyänne’s table, and all who could went to his table in preference to sitting before the ti´ämoni’s. Even the water upon Po´shaiyänne’s table was far better than that furnished by the ti´ämoni; and those who drank of this water and ate Po´shaiyänne’s food immediately became changed, their skins becoming whiter than before; but all could not eat from Po´shaiyänne’s board and many had to take the food of the ti´ämoni, and they remained in appearance as before.
After this feast, Po´shaiyänne visited all the pueblos and then passed on to Chihuahua in Mexico. Before Po´shaiyänne left the Sia, he said to them: “I leave you, but another day I will return to you, for this village is mine for all time, and I will return first to this village.” To the ti´ämoni he said: “Father, you are a ti´ämoni, and I also am one; we are as brothers. All the people, the men, the women, and the children are mine, and they are yours; and I will return to them again. Watch for me. I will return;” and he added, “In a short time another people will come; but before that time, such time as you may choose, I wish you to leave this village, for my heart is here and it is not well for another people to come here; therefore depart from this village before they come near.”
Upon entering the plaza in Chihuahua Po´shaiyänne met the great chief, who invited him to his home, where he became acquainted with his daughter. She was very beautiful, and Po´shaiyänne told the chief that he was much pleased with his daughter and wished to make her his wife. The chief replied: “If you desire to marry my daughter and she wishes to marry you, it is well.” Upon the father questioning the daughter the girl replied in the affirmative. Then the father and mother talked much to the daughter and said: “To-morrow you will be married.” The chief sent one of his officials to let it be known to all the people that Po´shaiyänne and his daughter were to be united in marriage in the morning, and many assembled, and there was a great feast in the house of the chief. Many men were pleased with the chief’s daughter, and looked with envy upon Po´shaiyänne; and they talked together of killing him, and finally warriors came to the house of Po´shaiyänne and carried him off to their camp and pierced his heart with a spear, and his enemies were contented, but the wife and her father were sad. The day after Po´shaiyänne’s death he returned to his wife’s home, and when he was seen alive those who had tried to destroy him were not only angry but much alarmed; and again he was captured, and they bound gold and silver to his feet, that after casting him into the lake his body should not rise; but a white fluffy feather of the eagle fell to him, and as he touched the feather the feather rose, and Po´shaiyänne with it, and he lived again, and he still lives, and some time he will come to us. So say the Sia. Po´shaiyänne’s name is held in the greatest reverence; in fact, he is regarded as their culture hero[10], and he is appealed to in daily prayers, and the people have no doubt of his return. They say: “He may come to-day, to-morrow, or perhaps not in our lifetime.”
Soon after Po´shaiyänne’s departure from Sia the ti´ämoni decided to leave his present village, though it pained him much to give up his beautiful house. And they moved and built the present pueblo of Sia, which village was very extensive. The ti´ämoni had first a square of stone laid, which is to be seen at the present day, emblematic of the heart of the village (for a heart must be, before a thing can exist). After the building of this village the aged ti´ämoni continued to live many years, and at his death he was buried in the ground, in a reclining position. His head was covered with raw cotton, with an eagle plume attached; his face was painted with corn pollen, and cotton was placed at the soles of his feet and laid over the heart. A bowl of food was deposited in the grave, and many hä´chamoni were planted over the road to the north, the one which is traveled after death. A bowl of food was also placed on the road. All night they sang and prayed in the house of the departed ti´ämoni, and early in the morning all those who sung were bathed in suds of yucca made of cold water.
There are two rudely carved stone animals at the ruined village supposed to have been visited by Po´shaiyänne. These the Sia always speak of as the cougar, but they say, “In reality they are not the cougar, but the lynx, for the cougar remained at the white-house in the north.”
This cosmogony exhibits a chapter of the Sia philosophy, and though this philosophy is fraught with absurdities and contradictions, as is the case with all aboriginal reasoning, it scintillates with poetic conceptions. They continue:
“The hour is too solemn for spoken words; a new life is to be given to us.”
Theirs is not a religion mainly of propitiation, but rather of supplication for favors and payment for the same, and to do the will of and thereby please the beings to whom they pray. It is the paramount occupation of their life; all other desirable things come through its practice. It is the foundation of their moral and social laws. Children are taught from infancy that in order to please the pantheon of their mythical beings they must speak with one tongue as straight as the line of prayer over which these beings pass to enter the images of themselves.
It will be understood from the cosmogony that the Sia did not derive their clan names from animal ancestors, nor do they believe that their people evolved from animals, other than the Sia themselves. The Zuñi hold a similar belief. The Zuñi’s reference to the tortoise and other animals as ancestors is explained in the “Religious Life of the Zuñi Child.”[11]