White] THE PUEBLO OF SIA, NEW MEXICO 303 
“When you kill a deer you must sprinkle petana (prayer meal) on 
him. Take a flint (knife, which every hunter carries) and pretend to 
cut the skin along the lines where you would cut if you were really 
skinning a deer.” After that, the deer is skinned so that the head and 
backbone are left attached to the skin. The hunter takes the deer’s 
reproductive organs, sprinkles them with petana, beads, red ocher, and 
stcamun—“‘if you have it’’—and, best of all, with naiyabunyi (a min- 
eral found near San Felipe), wabunyi (a kind of shell), and sawate (a 
black, hard, shiny stuff “like coal’), and buries them. He puts his 
little mokaitec (mountain lion stone effigy) into the deer’s chest and 
lets him feed on his heart and lungs. Then he cuts the meat up and 
packs it to be carried to Sia. 
While in camps on the hunt, the hunters make up new songs and 
sing them at night. They sing these songs as they enter the pueblo 
upon their return. They go directly to the hotcanitsa where the 
Masewi and Oyoyewi pro tem, assisted by the tcraikatsi ‘if there 
are lots of deer,’’ carry the meat inside. A deer is divided into two 
parts, one for the cacique, the other for the hunter who killed it. 
The hunter gets the head, the skin and part of the backbone and the 
chest from the neck down to and including the fourth rib, and a part 
of the belly. The rest goes to the cacique. All the meat, however, 
is piled up in the hotcanitsa for the night. 
The next morning Masewi dispatches a gowatcanyi to escort Caiy- 
eik nawai to the hotcanitsa. He (or Masewi?) gives Caiyeik a 
wicsi and “tells him about the meat.’”’ Caiyeik formally gives the 
cacique his share of the meat and tells him that he may use it as he 
pleases. Then Masewi talks; he, too, presents the meat to Tia- 
munyi. Then the gowatcanyi and the gowatcanyi pro tem slice the 
meat and make jerky, and put it out to dry. The tcraikatsi keep 
watch over it to keep it from spoiling; they turn it from time to time 
and bring it in at night. When it has dried they bring it in and store 
it in the storeroom of the hotcanitsa. It will be used in a stew for the 
medicinemen at hanyiko. 
The hunters go to the hotcanitsa and each takes his head, skin, and 
meat home. He lays the deer on the floor, covers it with a white em- 
broidered manta (cotton textile), lays strings of beads on its neck, 
and sprinkles it with prayer meal (petana). Neighbors come in “‘to 
visit and to welcome the deer.” The mother of the hunter cooks 
the deer’s head, after it has been skinned; she boils it whole in a large 
kettle. She also cooks the lungs and heart. Then she makes paper 
bread (matsinyi), kabana (a corncake, like a tortilla), or wheat bread. 
The mother or sister of the hunter goes through the village inviting 
the people of each household to come to her house to eat. The bones 
