White] THE PUEBLO OF SIA, NEW MEXICO 155 
ceremonies are in progress; he is called cocgaina (see White, 1942 a, 
p. 129, for discussion of this functionary at Santa Ana). My in- 
formant said that Kapina had a doorkeeper but that he was not called 
cocgaina, but matc4nyi. Then he went on to say that he was not 
really a doorkeeper, but had other functions. He then caught him- 
self up short and said that this was a “‘very strong subject,” that the 
matcanyi was a “very mysterious person,” and that this is one of 
the matters that he had ‘‘kept back,” i.e., refrained from telling me. 
Having inadvertently disclosed the fact that there was a ‘‘cat in the 
bag’”’ he refused to go further and let the cat out and allow me to see 
it. He did, however, talk about the matc4nyi in a guarded way: 
there is a man in Sia who is called matcfnyi; very few in Sia know 
who he is; he is identified with the Kapina society and undoubtedly 
assists them in their ceremonies. In alluding to the mystery which 
surrounds the matcanyi, the informant went on to refer to the mirac- 
ulous things that Kapina tcaiyanyi do in the dowahi ceremonies in 
the kiva, such as making corn to sprout, grow, and ripen before your 
eyes. The informant politely but firmly declined to be specific, but 
his veiled allusions and guarded remarks made me think that the 
matcfnyi may be a confederate of the medicinemen, who makes it 
possible for them to perform their feats of magic and thus deceive 
the common people into believing they possess supernatural powers. 
No doubt my informant felt that it was unwise, if not dangerous, 
for him to expose this deception. 
In this connection the following incident is interesting and perhaps 
significant: JI once took a Sia informant who was a member of a 
medicine society to the restored pueblo at the Coronado National 
Monument near Bernalillo, among other things, where we inspected 
underground kivas. One of them had a shaft running vertically 
from the surface of the ground to a point level with the floor of the 
kiva and close to, but quite apart from, the kiva wall. Shafts of 
this sort are not uncommon in archeological sites and they have 
generally been called ventilator shafts by archeologists. My Sia 
informant said that they were not for ventilation at all but were 
devices used by the medicinemen to conceal the various things— 
such as fruit, corn, or a live bear—that the tcaiyanyi produce magi- 
cally during ceremonies.” But the aboveground kivas of the modern 
pueblos do not have such shafts—unless it is possible to conceal them 
within the wall of the kiva, which I do not believe is the case (see 
Ellis’ (1952) article on devices employed in magical performances 
at Jemez. 
22 Hoehbel (1953) once took two ‘thigh ranking society officers’ from a Keresan pueblo near Jemez to Mesa 
Verde where the Indians told him that “‘open spaces between the round kiva walls and the rectangular 
walls enclosing them . . . [and] tunnels leading into some of the . . . kivas’’ were used in the performance 
of magical ceremonies and that ‘‘these things go on in our pueblo right now.” 
