White] THE PUEBLO OF SIA, NEW MEXICO 27 
The independence of Mexico from Spain, won in 1821, appears to 
have affected the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico little if at all. The 
war between Mexico and the United States, 1846-48, had, however, 
the most profound consequences for the region, because it initiated 
the ascendancy of Anglo-American influence over that of Hispano- 
American culture. The consequences of this transition are being 
worked out to this day. 
Prior to the war with Mexico a number of American Army officers 
visited the pueblo country. Lt. Col. Emory visited Santo Domingo 
in September 1846, but did not go to Sia (Emory, 1847-48). Lt. 
J. W. Abert stopped briefly at Santo Domingo and Santa Ana in Oc- 
tober 1846, but apparently did not reach Sia (Abert, 1848, pp. 46-47). 
Lt. J. H. Simpson passed through Santo Domingo and Jemez on his 
way to the Navaho country to chastise the people there for their 
depredations (Simpson, 1850, pp. 61-64). He did not go through 
Sia, apparently, but, according to Keleher (1952, p. 46), some Sia were 
among the 55 Indians from various pueblos who joined Simpson’s forces. 
We know nothing of the effect the conduct of the war between 
Mexico and the United States may have had on the pueblos in general 
or on Sia in particular. After the American occupation, the Pueblo 
Indians were administered by a Commissioner of Indian Affairs 
within the War Department until March 1849, when the Department 
of the Interior was created. At that time the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs was transferred to the Department of the Interior, and the ad- 
ministration of Indians passed to civil control. 
During the American Civil War a Confederate force invaded New 
Mexico, marched up the Rio Grande valley in 1861 and occupied the 
capital, but in 1862 was defeated by a Union force in Apache 
Canyon. We have found no documentary account of the effect of 
this engagement, if any, on the Pueblo Indians, and have never heard 
any legends or folktales about it from informants. During the early 
decades of the American occupation there was much turmoil in New 
Mexico. The Pueblo Indians suffered much from raids by the Apache 
and Navaho. The American administration forbade the Pueblos to 
retaliate but were incapable of providing them with adequate pro- 
tection from the marauders (Keleher, 1952; Dale, 1949, chs. 4, 8). 
There is little mention of Sia in the reports of the early Indian 
agents. In 1864, John Ward reported that Sia was in “a ruinous con- 
dition”’; he repeated this statement 3 years later, adding that its pop- 
ulation was “fast decreasing’ (Rep. Com. Ind. Aff., 1867, p. 194; 1868, 
p. 212). Anthropological science invaded Sia for the first time, in 
1879-80, in the person of Col. James Stevenson, as I have previously 
noted (p. 1). 
