The Sia are regarded with contempt by the Santa Ana and the Jemez Indians, who never omit an opportunity to give expression to their scorn, feeling assured that this handful of people must submit to insult without hope of redress. Limited intertribal relations exist, and these principally for the purpose of traffic.
Though the Sia have considerable irrigable lands, they have but a meager supply of water, this being due to the fact that after the Mexican towns above them and the pueblo of Jemez have drawn upon the waters of the Jemez river, little is left for the Sia, and in order to have any success with their crops they must curtail the area to be cultivated. Thus they never raise grain enough to supply their needs, even with the practice of the strictest economy according to Indian understanding, and therefore depend upon their more successful neighbors who labor under no such difficulties. The Jemez people have no lack of water supply, and the Santa Ana have their farming districts on the banks of the Rio Grande. Is it strange, then, that two pueblos are found progressing, however slowly, toward a European civilization, while the Sia, though slightly influenced by the Mexicans, have, through their environment, been led not only to cling to autochthonic culture but to lower their plane of social and mental condition?
The Sia women labor industriously at the ceramic art as soon as their grain supply becomes reduced, and the men carry the wares to their unfriendly neighbors for trade in exchange for wheat and corn. While the Santa Ana and Jemez make a little pottery, it is very coarse in texture and in form; in fact, they can not be classed as pottery-making Indians. ([Pl. iii.])
As long as the Sia can induce the traders through the country to take their pottery they refrain from barter with their Indian neighbors. ([Pl. iv.]) The women usually dispose of the articles to the traders (Figs. [1] and [2]), but they never venture on expeditions to the Santa Ana and the Jemez.
Fig. 1.—Sia women on their way to the trader’s to dispose of pottery.
Each year a period comes, just before the harvest time, when no more pottery is required by their Indian neighbors, and the Sia must deal out their food in such limited portions that the elders go hungry in order to satisfy the children. When starvation threatens there is no thought for the children of the clan, but the head of each household looks to the wants of its own, and there is apparent indifference to the sufferings of neighbors. When questioned, they reply: “We feel sad for our brothers and our sisters, but we have not enough for our own.” Thus when driven to extremes, nature asserts itself in the nearest ties of consanguinity and the “clan” becomes secondary. At these times there are no expressions of dissatisfaction and no attempt on the part of the stronger to take advantage of the weaker. The expression of the men changes to a stoical resignation, and the women’s faces grow a shade paler with the thought that in order to nourish their babes they themselves must be nourished. And yet, such is their code of hospitality that food is always offered to guests as long as a morsel remains.
Bureau of Ethnology.
Eleventh Annual Report. Plate. III
