SISTERS; CLEVEREST ARTISTS IN CERAMICS IN SIA.
So like children are these same stoical and patient people that the tears of sorrow are quickly dispelled by the sunshine of success. When their crops are gathered they hold their saints’ day feast, when the Indians from near and far (even a few of the unfriendly Indians lending their unwelcome presence) surfeit at their board. These public dances and feasts of thanksgiving in honor of their patron saint, upon the gathering of their crops, which occur in all the Rio Grande pueblos, present a queer mixture of pagan and Christian religion. The priest owes his success in maintaining a certain influence with these people since the accession of New Mexico to the United States, by non-interference with the introduction of their forms and dances into the worship taught by the church. Hence the Rio Grande Indians are professedly Catholics; but the fact that these Indians and the Mission Indians of California have preserved their religions, admitting them to have been more or less influenced by Catholicism, and hold their ceremonials in secret, practicing their occult powers to the present time, under the very eye of the church, is evidence not only of the tenacity with which they cling to their ancient customs, but of their cunning in maintaining perfect seclusion.
Fig. 2.—Sia women returning from trader’s with flour and corn in exchange for pottery.
When Maj. Powell visited Tusayan, in 1870, he was received with marked kindness by the Indians and permitted to attend the secret ceremonials of their cult. The writer is of the opinion that he was the first and only white man granted this privilege by any of the pueblo Indians previous to the expedition to Zuñi, in 1879, by Mr. Stevenson, of the Bureau of Ethnology.
The writer accompanied Mr. Stevenson on this occasion and during his succeeding investigations among the Zuñi, Tusayan, and the Rio Grande Pueblos. And whenever the stay was long enough to become acquainted with the people the confidence of the priestly rulers and theurgists was gained, and after this conciliation all efforts to be present at the most secret and sacred performances observed and practiced by these Indians were successful. Their sociology and religion are so intricately woven together that the study of the one can not be pursued without the other, the ritual beginning at birth and closing with death.
While the religion of the Rio Grande Indians bears evidence of contact with Catholicism, they are in fact as non-Catholic as before the Spanish conquest. Their environment by the European civilization of the southwest is, however, slowly but surely effecting a change in the observances of their cabalistic practices. For example, the pueblo of Laguna was so disturbed by the Atlantic and Pacific railroad passing by its village that first one and then another of its families lingered at the ranch houses, reluctant to return to their communal home, where they must come in contact with the hateful innovations of their land; and so additions were made to render the summer house more comfortable for the winter, and after a time a more substantial structure supplanted the temporary abode, and the communal dwelling was rarely visited except to comply with the religious observances. Some of these homes were quite remote from the village, and the men having gradually increased their stock of cattle found constant vigilance necessary to protect them from destruction by the railroad and the hands of the cowboy; and so first one and then another of the younger men ventured to be absent from a ceremonial in order to look up some stray head of cattle, until the aged men cried out in horror that their children were forgetting the religion of their forefathers.
The writer knew of but one like delinquent among the Zuñi when she was there in 1886. A son of one of the most bigoted priests in the village had become so eager to possess an American wagon, and his attention was so absorbed in looking after his cattle with a view to the accumulation of means whereby to purchase a wagon, that he dared to absent himself from a most important and sacred ceremonial, notwithstanding the current belief that for such impiety the offender must die within four days. The father denounced him in the strongest terms, declaring he was no longer his son. And the man told the writer, on his return to the village, “that he was afraid because he staid away, and he guessed he would die within four days, but some of his cattle had strayed off and he feared the cowboy.” The fourth day passed and the man still lived, and the scales dropped from his eyes. From that time his religious duties were neglected in his eagerness for the accumulation of wealth.
Bureau of Ethnology.
Eleventh Annual Report. Plate. IV