RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 
We can form, I believe, a fair conception of the life and culture at 
Sia in 1540, the year in which Coronado entered the Rio Grande 
valley.* Climate, topography, flora, and fauna were then much as 
they are now. Sia had her pueblo neighbors, some speaking a lan- 
guage like hers; some, another tongue. There were the seminomadic 
Navaho, and perhaps Apache, who harassed the settled communities 
from time to time. The world of the Sia was a small one; not far 
beyond the horizons that one could see were the boundaries and the 
four corners of the earth. It was a cozy and intimate world. It was 
peopled with gods and spirits who had their homes at the cardinal 
points and at sacred spots not far from the pueblo itself. One knew 
everything; the mythology provided answers to all the important ques- 
tions of life and death; one knew how the clans originated and why 
Sia had a Tiamunyi and War chiefs, and Koshairi, Kwiraina, Caiyaik, 
and the Flint, Fire, Giant and other societies. And one knew how to 
behave on every occasion: toward one’s mother’s brother, when one 
killed a bear, in the presence of katsina, when one dreamed of snakes, 
and how to send a soul, at death, back to four-fold womb of mother 
earth. It was a complete, compact, substantial, and satisfying 
world when all was said and done; when the balance was struck 
between hardship, suffering, and death on the one hand, and the full- 
ness of life, of effort and achievement, on the other. 
We can do but little more than speculate about what went on in the 
Indians’ minds when the Spaniards invaded their land, first as adven- 
turers and later as settlers and conquerors. There are no legends 
which present these events within a supernaturalistic, mythological, 
context: that the Spaniards were gods or sent by gods, or anything of 
that sort. What we know of the Keres inclines me to believe that they 
regarded the invasion and conquest by the Spaniards realistically, and 
accepted the facts for just what they were. We know well how the 
Indians resisted the White men, and how they resorted to concealment 
when they could no longer oppose them successfully. We know, 
too, how Sia suffered death and destruction at the hands of Cruzate 
in 1688. And it must have been especially galling to the Sia to be 
obliged to side with the Spaniards against other pueblos, during the 
reconquest, in order to save their own skins (see p. 24). 
39 Bandelier attempted to do this for a generalized Keresan pueblo in his novel ‘‘The Delight Makers” 
(1890). In my opinion he succeeded quite well indeed. 
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