White] THE PUEBLO OF SIA, NEW MEXICO 237 
superstitious dread of their masks being seen when off the person”’ 
(Powell, 1892, p. xxviii). He was unable to acquire any of them, 
apparently, since no mention is made of it, but “sketches were made 
of many of them.” Mrs. Stevenson (1894) discusses the katsina 
complex briefly and provides colored plates of some of the masks, 
describes the initiation of children into the secrets of the katsina, but 
does not specify whether she witnessed the ceremony or obtained 
an account of it from an informant. She says that masked dances 
-were held, but does not describe any of them. 
The katsina organization consists of (1) certain societies which own, 
or have custody of, certain masks and which put on the dances in 
which their own masks are worn, and (2) persons who have been 
initiated into the secrets of the katsina and are qualified thereby to 
impersonate them in dances. Masks are owned by, or are in the 
custody of, the following societies: Katsina-Gomaiyawic, Kwiraina, 
Fire, Giant, Snake, Kapina, and Sicti. Flint-Shima, Koshairi, and 
Caiyeik societies do not have any masks. The reason why some 
societies have masks while others do not was not ascertainable from 
my informants. It is interesting to note that the sicti, which is a 
secular group, composed of ordinary people (see p. 182), owns masks; 
they are, however, in the custody, for safekeeping, of the Katsina- 
Gomaiyawic group. 
The general pattern for masked dances is as follows: There will 
be a considerable number of dancers wearing the same kind of mask 
such as Acuwa, forexample. They dance together, with the same step 
and uniformly, in a single line, alternating between side by side posi- 
tions and “Indian file.’”’ I have called these ‘‘line dancers.’”? Then 
there are katsina who appear singly or in twos, possibly three or four, 
who dance about as they please around the linedancers. Ihave called 
these “side dancers’; the Sias call them crtiyaname. Finally, there 
are female katsina: kotcininako (yellow women) or merinako (blue- 
green women); they are the women of the North and West, respec- 
tively (see p. 111). They usually come in numbers of four to six. 
Sometimes the kotcininako accompany the songs of the line dancers 
by kneeling in a row, facing the male katsina, and rubbing a deer leg 
bone along a notched stick, one end of which rests upon a gourd, which 
serves as a resonance chamber, the other held in the left hand. The 
merinako always carry a small basket in the right hand; a sprig of 
spruce in the left. Female katsina are impersonated by women; wom- 
en wear no other kind of mask. 
There are two classes of masks: those which cover the head com- 
pletely, and those which cover the face only. In the case of the lat- 
ter, the hair of the dancer hangs down the sides of the head so as to 
conceal the edges of the mask. And this type of mask always has a 
