324 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 184 
accelerated. What have been the principal causes of this change? 
How is this process to be made intelligible? I shall review a number 
of factors and evaluate them as best I can. 
CHRISTIANITY 
First, I would say that Christianity has done very little to under- 
mine or destroy aboriginal culture.*° To be sure, the Indians took 
over many elements of Christianity—concepts, rituals, and parapher- 
nalia. But these were merely integrated with the aboriginal religion, 
leaving the latter as secure as before. When this study was begun 
in 1928 the native religion was vital, integrated, and substantial, and 
this after some three hundred years of Christian influence. And Sia 
has vigorously rejected all non-Catholic forms of Christianity, as we 
have seen. The Church has failed to change the Sia way of life 
appreciably. 
SCHOOLING 
Most of the “book’’ learning the children have received in schools 
has been relatively insignificant as a force of culture change. For 
one thing, the pupils actually learned very little, and much of that 
was irrelevant to their life in the pueblo. Instruction in home eco- 
nomics in the boarding schools has had, I believe, a very considerable 
effect upon Sia culture at these points: food preparation and preser- 
vation, diets, sanitation and hygiene, child care, and matters pertain- 
ing to household furnishings and equipment. Also, the boarding 
schools have done much to break down the provincialism of pueblo 
children and to acquaint them with other cultures, both Indian and 
White. This has, without doubt, had a significant and softening 
effect upon the hard core of Sia culture. 
MARRIAGE WITH NON-SIAS 
Marriage of Sias with non-Sias has had, I believe, very little effect 
on the process of cultural change. Evidence indicates that outsiders 
have been marrying into Sia for generations, and the percentage of 
alien spouses in Sia in 1957 was very small and probably not appreci- 
ably greater than in Stevenson’s day. 
WAGE LABOR 
Wage labor has been one of the most powerful forces at work in 
bringing about cultural change in Sia. In the early 1920’s a few Sias 
« Stevenson, too, was convinced that Christianity has been ineffectual in changing the beliefs and prac- 
tices of the Sias. ‘It [the extinction of Sia culture) is not due to the Christianizing of these Indians, for 
they have nothing of Protestantism among them, and though professedly Oatholic, they await only the 
departure of the priest to return to their secret ceremonials’’ (1894, p. 15). 
