No. 8 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, 1913 73 
STRANGE RITES OF THE TEWA INDIANS 
\rs. M. C. Stevenson continued her comparative study among the 
Tewa Indians of the Rio Grande valley, in behalf of the Bureau 
of American Ethnology. <A close relationship was found to exist 
among all the Pueblo Indians, especially in their essential beliefs, 
resulting in a great brotherhood between them. Living in an arid 
land the cry of their souls was and is—“ rains to water the earth.” 
Primitive man sought to define the mysteries of Nature, to account 
for its phenomena ; thus primitive philosophy was born, and then re- 
Fic. 70.—Plaza and kiva of the Sun people, San lidefonso. X denotes the en- 
trance to the kiva. Photograph by Mrs. Stevenson. 
ligion and ritualism crept in. The Pueblo Indian began at an early 
period to create a pantheon of gods of his worship, gods to be ap- 
pealed to for the good things of life, and angry gods to be propitiated., 
and thus, long ago, a most complicated system of religion and rituals 
developed among such peoples of the Southwest as had homes con- 
structed of stone, clay, and plaster. 
The more clever men of the past ages differentiated their gods into 
two classes, anthropic, principally ancestral, and zooic, and these men 
assumed to dominate the remainder of the people by asserting their 
direct communication with the gods. Through their power and influ- 
ence with these gods they were next in importance to the gods them- 
