270 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 184 
outskirts, for days. Indians and Mexicans from nearby communities 
attend in large numbers. Anglo-Americans, both tourists and resi- 
dents of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, come. Sia holds open house to 
all; anyone is welcome to eat in any house. Many concessionaires set 
up their stands and sell food, soft drinks and knickknacks. Indians 
of Sia and other pueblos offer pottery for sale, and Navahos barter 
blankets and turquoise jewelry. Many households kill a beef or a 
sheep and all lay in a large supply of groceries for the occasion. 
Everyone wears his or her best costume for the day. And, in spite of 
great effort to prevent it, there is considerable drinking and drunken- 
ness among hosts and guests alike. 
Rehearsals for the dance begin weeks beforehand. New songs 
are made every year. I do not know how participation in the cere- 
mony is determined. No doubt much of it is voluntary, but a person 
may be requested—ordered—to take part. A young man who was 
employed in Albuquerque and who returned to the pueblo only on 
weekends told me in 1957 that he would take me to the irrigation dam 
when I came to Sia the day before the dance. But when I got there 
he told me that he had to go to dance practice. “I thought you 
weren’t going to dance,’ I reminded him. ‘That’s what J thought, 
too,” he replied. Obviously he had been ordered to take part. 
IT shall now give a résumé of the feast as I observed it in 1957; it was 
essentially like the fiestas I had seen at Sia many times before. 
The image of the Blessed Virgin will be brought into the south 
plaza after Mass on August 15, and a house is prepared for her the day 
before. It consists of a roof and three walls; it is open at the north 
end. The roof consists of cottonwood boughs; the walls are hung with 
Navaho blankets; bunches of green corn—the entire stalks—are on 
each side of the doorway. ‘There is a table in the rear of the house to 
receive the image of the saint. On the wall behind the table hangs 
that mysterious decorated blanket, the gaotiye (see p. 314). It is 
hung there in the morning before Mass and is removed after the saint 
has been returned to the church after the dance. 
On August 15, at 8:30 a.m., candles were burning in the church and 
the image of the Blessed Virgin was ready for her procession through 
the pueblo. She was dressed in a blue robe (of window-curtainlike 
material), and placed on a small platform with a bar on each side, ex- 
tending beyond the platform so that four persons could carry it. Two 
priests with a number of nuns had come from the mission at Jemez to 
perform the Mass between 9 and 10 a.m. The church service was 
attended by many Spanish Americans, especially women, Indians 
from Sia and other pueblos—but no Navaho—and a relatively small 
number of Anglo-Americans. Since a large percentage of the Sia had 
to get ready for the dance which follows, and others were busy with 
