ACCOMPANYING PAPERS. 



SUBJECTS TREATED. 



Tlii-ee orig-inal contributions to ethnology accompany this 

 report. All treat of the habits and customs, beliefs and insti- 

 tutions of our native races, and thus traverse a large part of 

 the field of ethnology, and their geographic extent is equally 

 broad. One of the papers represents a portion of the re.sults 

 of long-continued researches among a distinctive people dwell- 

 ing- in pueblos amid the barren mesas and arid plains near the 

 Mexican border ; and the vivid description of the beliefs and 

 ceremonials of the people is introduced by a g-eneral account 

 of their history, habitat, customs, and ethnic relations. The 

 second contribution comprises a full account of the native 

 tribes of the northern portion of the continent in the great 

 Hudson Bay territory' ; it is a faithful record of painstaking 

 observations on the domestic life, manners, and ideas of a little, 

 known element in our aboriginal population. The third 

 memoir relates primarily to the beliefs and the institutions 

 connected therewith prevailing in early days over the fertile 

 plains of the interior. 



The several records, representing as they do a vast geo- 

 graphic area, and covering as they do severally a considerable 

 ethnic range, seem especially significant when brought into 

 juxtaposition and studied in the comparative way. Thus it 

 l)ecomes at once manifest that the diversity in domestic habits 

 and every-day life is largely due to environment, that the 

 mode of life of each people depends on local food supplies and 

 the means of obtainino- them, on climate and the means of 

 resisting it, on the local fauna and flora, and on various other 

 conditions residing in physical geography ; and fm-ther 

 research brings to light suggestive relations between these 

 modes of life and the institutions and beliefs by which the 

 respective peoples are characterized. 



THE SIA, BY MATILDA COXE STEVENSON. 



The surveys and researches relating to the pueblo of Sia 

 were commenced by the late Col. James Stevenson in 1879 

 and continued dunng 1887-88, his last year of field duty, until 



