White] THE PUEBLO OF SIA, NEW MEXICO 207 
Nowadays children go to school from the age of 5or6. Some attend 
the Pueblo Day School on the edge of Sia; others attend the U.S. 
Indian School in Santa Fe. In the latter place, children undergo a 
broadening experience. They not only become acquainted with a non- 
Indian institution, but they get to know children from other pueblos 
and also from non-pueblo tribes, such as the Navaho and Apache. 
No adequate, or even superficial, study of the effect of boarding-school 
life upon a pueblo child has been made, so farasI know. But it would 
- certainly be important, and no doubt revealing. It is a fact that ac- 
quaintances made there sometimes persist as friendships, or culminate 
in marriages, after schooldays are over. 
In the old days, before children were obliged to go to school, they 
were initiated into the secrets of the katsina cult at about the age of 
puberty, or even earlier, at an age when they could comprehend such 
matters and appreciate the necessity for secrecy. Nowadays there is a 
reluctance to initiate children into the lore of the kachinas before they 
go off to boarding school lest they betray some of these secrets while 
away from home. Children learn to take part in dances, such as the 
“corn dance’”’ on August 15, at a very early age. They may also be 
“oiven’’ to a medicine society at an early age. There are no special 
ceremonies or rituals for either girls or boys today, as far as my 
knowledge goes. 
PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAITS OF CHILDREN 
In 1942-43 Havighurst and Neugarten (1955) made a comparative 
study of Hopi, Zufii, Sia, Navaho, Papago, Sioux, and “Midwest” 
children; the latter lived in a small, midwestern, White, American 
community. Sixty-seven Sia children, 37 boys and 30 girls, ranging 
in age from 5 to 18 years, were included in the study. The reader 
must, of course, consult their report for a complete account; I cite only 
a few of their interesting, and perhaps significant, findings here. 
These authors found the Sia ‘‘not unfriendly, but they are shy. 
They do not meet strangers as easily as do the Hopi” (ibid., p. 10). 
The principal source of happiness of Sia children was “receiving food, 
gifts, money”; only the Navaho among the eight groups studied rated 
this source higher than the Sia. The best thing that could happen to a 
Sia child was “receiving clothes, property’; but all groups rated this 
very high, or highest, of good things. Sia boys rated “illness or injury 
of self’”’ as the principal source of sadness; the girls felt that loss of prop- 
erty was the chief source. Death of someone rated high as a source of 
sadness among most of the groups. Danger from animals was 
rated as the principal source of fear by Sia children; they rated fear of 
the supernatural much lower than did Hopi children. All groups rated 
aggression by others as the principal source of anger, with the Sia near 
