66 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 184 
curiosity. They have, apparently, come to the conclusion that if 
they wish to have contact with the Indians they must do so on the 
latters’ terms. 
When the Catholic priest comes to Sia, he is treated with courtesy 
and respect. On the saint’s day, August 15, he is invited by one of 
the Indian officers—the sacristan, fiscale mayor, or perhaps the gov- 
ernor—to his, the officer’s, house for the noon meal. There is a booth 
in the church for confessions, but I am reasonably sure that no Sia 
ever confesses to the priest. The rite of communion is not performed 
so far as my data go (see White, 1942 a, p. 60, for Santa Ana). Accord- 
ing to Curtis (1926, p. 65), the Catholic priest is guarded by Indians 
when he goes to Santo Domingo to prevent not only confession but 
any exchange of confidences. 
Offices of the Catholic church in Sia apart from the priest, namely, 
those of the fiscales, the sacristan and their helpers, are filled by 
Indians, chosen by Indians. Several religious ceremonies are asso- 
ciated or identified with Spanish Catholic ceremonies, such as Christ- 
mas, Easter, All Souls’ Day, and the celebration of the day of the 
pueblo’s patron saint; these will be described later, in the section on 
Ceremonialism. And, as we have just seen, the Sia pay the priest 
for his services. But, again, this does not mean that the Indians 
are Catholics; rather, they have assimilated or adapted portions of 
the Catholic religion to their own (see White, 1942 a, pp. 58-67, 
where the relationship of Catholicism to the Indian religion is ana- 
lyzed more fully; virtually everything said about Santa Ana would 
apply to Sia as well). 
I do not wish to assert flatly that the Christian religion has made 
no headway whatever in Sia. My impression is that people have 
been somewhat more inclined toward it in recent years than formerly. 
And I believe this is due to the fact that the Sia are in much closer 
contact with American culture, that they are obliged to reckon with 
it, and that they profit from it in many ways, especially economically 
and medically. It is not so much that the Sia are being converted 
to a new set of beliefs as that they are moving toward greater toler- 
ance and acceptance of American culture, which carries with it the 
Christian religion. But Anglo-American culture, as distinguished 
from Spanish-American, tends to be Protestant rather than Roman 
Catholic. And the attitude of the Sia (as well as their pueblo neigh- 
bors) is distinctly hostile toward Protestantism. 
Writing in 1890, Matilda Stevenson observed: ‘“Though Protestant 
[Presbyterian] missionaries have been stationed at the pueblo of 
Jemez since 1878, no attempt has been made to bring the Sia within 
the pale of Protestantism. ... [The Sia] have nothing of Protes- 
tantism among them” (1894, pp. 11, 15). But during the late 1920’s 
