STEVENSON] RELIGION AND MARRIAGE. 15 



and the man still lived, and the scales dropped from liis eyes. From 

 that time his religious duties were neglected in his eagerness for the 

 accumulation of wealth. 



Thus the railroad, the merchant, and the cowboy, without this pur- 

 pose in view, are effecting a change wliich is slowly closing, leaf by 

 leaf, the record of the religious beliefs and practices of the pueblo 

 Indian. With the Sia this record book is being more rapidly closed, 

 but from a different cause. It is not due to the Christianizing of these 

 Indians, for they have nothing of Protestantism among them, and 

 though professedly Catholic, they await only the departure of the priest 

 to return to their secret ceremonials. The Catholic priest baptizes tlie 

 infant, but the child has previously received the baptismal rite of its 

 ancestors. The Catholic jiriest marries the betrothed, but they have 

 been previously united according to their ancestral rites. The Romish 

 priest holds mass that the dead may enter heaven, but prayers have 

 already been oflered that the soul may be received by Sus-sis-tin na-ko 

 (their creator) into the lower world whence it came. As an entirety 

 these people are devotees to their religion and its observances, and yet 

 with but few exceptions, they go through their rituals, having but 

 vague understanding of their origin or meaning. Each shadow on the 

 dial brings nearer to a close the lives of those upon whose minds are 

 graven the traditions, mythology, and folklore as indelibly as are the 

 pictographs and monochromes upon the rocky walls. 



An aged theurgist whose lore was unquestioned, in fact he was re- 

 garded as their oracle (PI. v), passed away during the summer of 1S90. 

 Great were the lamentations that the keeper of their traditions slept, 

 and with him slept nuich that they would never hear again. There are, 

 now, but live men from whom any connected account of their cosmogony 

 and mythology may be gleaned, and they are no longer joung. Two of 

 these men are not natives of Sia, but were adopted into the tribe when 

 young children. One is a Tusayan; the other a San Felipe Indian. 

 The former is the present governor, amiable, brave, and determined, 

 and while deploring that his people have no understanding of American 

 civilization, he stands second only to the oracle in his knowledge of 

 lore of the Sia. The San Felipe Indian is a like character, and if Sia 

 possessed a few more such men there might yet be a future for that 

 pueblo. 



While the mythology and cult practices differ in each pueblo there 

 is still a striking analogy between them, the Zuni and Tusayan furnish- 

 ing the richer tield for the ethnographer, their religion and sociology 

 being virtually free from Catholic influence. 



The Indian official is possessed of a character so penetrating, so dip- 

 lomatic, cunning, and reticent that it is only through the most friendly 

 relations and by a protracted stay that anything can be learned of the 

 myths, legends, and rites with which the lives of these people are so 

 thoroughly imbued and which they so zealously guard. 



