326 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 184 
Sia, would see my informant enter the hotel and go upstairs to my 
room. While we were working the telephone rang and I answered 
it. My informant was obviously uneasy, suspicious, and, no doubt, 
afraid. My part of the conversation consisted almost entirely of 
“Yess. .ayes ..t sit see... 2 yes, okay ..! 1.” neteiisaeamemn 
my informant could get no clue as to what the call was about. When 
I hung up, my informant demanded, ‘‘Who was that calling you?” 
“Oh,” I said casually, ‘it was Heruta.” MHeruta, it will be recalled, 
is one of the principal kachinas, a rain-making spirit who lives at 
mythological Wenima. My informant looked dumbfounded. ‘Who?” 
he repeated. “Heruta,” I said again, without smiling, as if it were 
an ordinary thing for me to receive telephone calls from kachinas. 
My informant studied the situation intently for a moment or two 
and then his face relaxed into a smile; he recognized it as a joke. 
We then chatted about it for a few minutes. J reminded him that 
he believed in some remarkable things—witches who could change 
themselves into dogs or burros, medicinemen who could restore stolen 
hearts, kachinas who could bring rain—why, then, could not a ka- 
china do something as simple as to make a telephone call—‘‘Why, 
a little Mexican boy could do that!’ My informant stuck to his 
guns with regard to native concepts and beliefs, but he made it clear 
and emphatic that he could think of nothing more ridiculous than 
the notion of a kachina entering the city of Albuquerque, finding 
his way to a telephone, listening for the dial tone, dropping in his 
coin, and dialing the desired number. The two worlds were not 
only different; they were mutually incompatible. 
The credulity of human beings has limits—although there are times 
when one may reasonably doubt it. These limits are culturally deter- 
mined, and they are reached, one by one, as culture evolves to higher 
and higher stages. At one point it becomes impossible to believe that 
the earth is flat and motionless; at another, that witches causes tra- 
choma. And there are many things that are making it increasingly 
difficult for the Pueblo Indians to believe in kachinas and medicinemen. 
No one has proved to them that kachinas do not exist or that the feats 
of medicinemen are not what they are supposed to be. It is simply 
that certain things are incompatible with certain contexts: a kachina 
in an urban setting availing himself of telephonic communication. 
My informant easily believed many things that required a great deal 
of credulity. But his credulity found its limits when I put Heruta in 
a telephone booth. 
And so it is in general. As the Indians acquire more and more of 
White man’s culture, and find themselves more and more within it 
and a part of it, they find it increasingly difficult to accommodate the 
traditional beliefs of their ancestors, and finally it becomes impossible. 
