GOVERNMENT AND SOCIAL LIFE 
Sia, like other Keresan pueblos, is a compact, well-integrated com- 
munity. Correlation, regulation, and control are effected by a num- 
ber of institutional devices: a hierarchy of officers, a council, the rights 
and duties of kinship, and custom in general. 
We may distinguish two spheres, or levels, of sociopolitical activi- 
ties: public and private. The former has to do with the pueblo as a 
community, such as ceremonies of the medicine socities, masked 
dances, communal hunts, administration of the irrigation system, 
upkeep of the kivas and the Catholic church; providing the hotcanitsa 
with corn, meat, and firewood. By private affairs I mean relation- 
ships between individuals as members of families, households, clans, 
and of the community. Quarrels, petty theft, adultery, and the like 
are instances of private matters. An event which begins as a private 
matter may become a matter of official pueblo concern, however: if 
a personal quarrel assumes such a magnitude that it poses a threat to 
community solidarity, the pueblo—most likely in the office of gov- 
ernor—will step in and put astop toit. In our discussion of adultery 
(p. 211) we have an example of this. In another case, the widow and 
other relatives of a man who had been murdered were brought before 
the Council and obliged to forgive the murderer, who had just returned 
to Sia from serving a term in the penitentiary for the offense. The 
pueblo, like all healthy sociopolitical organizations, cannot tolerate 
threats to its integrity. 
“Public and communal” and “private and personal’ are logically 
distinct and valid categories, but there is a kind of situation in which an 
event belongs equally to both. When a person decides to request ad- 
mission to a medicine society, or makes a vow, or pledges himself, to 
impersonate Santiago, or asks to be adopted, or to have a child adopted 
by a clan other than the one into which he was born, this is a personal 
and private matter in one respect: it is his doing and he is not obliged 
to divulge his reasons for his actions. But, adoption into a clan, 
joining a society, or impersonating Santiago is a pueblo function as 
well, and one must obtain permission from the proper official, or 
officials—in the last analysis, the War chief—in order to have the 
desired action taken. 
Government is a religious function as well as a secular one. The 
cacique and the War chiefs, especially the former, are priests as well 
as governmental officials. The governor and fiscale mayor do not 
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