WHITE] GOVERNMENT 43 



a personal whim of his wife, not a rule of the pueblo.^ In dress the 

 cacique resembles any other man, and he is treated by the people as 

 any other old man would be. 



I had a long talk with the cacique one afternoon at Acoma. There 

 had been some objection to my visits to old Acoma, so I requested 

 to be allowed to see the cacique and tell him what I wanted. I told 

 him that I wished to buy ver>' old pottery to deposit in the museum 

 at Santa Fe to keep tourists from carrying it off to Iowa and Los 

 Angeles where it would be lost to the Acoma people forever. The 

 cacique is an old man and almost blind. He was very- kind to me. 

 (It was necessary to use an interpreter.) I did not enter his house; 

 he came outside and we sat in the shade on a ledge of a house. I 

 told him my eri'and and he approved whole-heartedly and offered to 

 assist me in any way that he could. He said that he would call his 

 officers together and have me tell them, too, but I carefully evaded 

 this, as I did not wish to be questioned and examined too closely. 

 While we were talking the old man sat playing with a lower incisor 

 tooth which was loose; he would run the tip of his right index finger 

 over the end of the tooth, moving it from side to side. Occasionally 

 he would spit — usually on his unbuttoned vest. The translations of 

 his replies reminded me of speeches of courtiers or diplomats in novels 

 of eighteenth centuiy Europe. He was kind, polite, and frequently 

 used appropriate and pleasing figures of speech. To help "his 

 children" seemed to be his chief aim, and since 1 professed the same 

 desire, he offered to assist me. When I left he shook hands warmly. 

 Wlien I was about 70 feet from his house he called me back; I had 

 not told his wife good-by. (She was plastering the house when I 

 arrived. She wanted to shake hands with me; but as her hands were 

 covered with plaster, she offered me her wrist which I shook.) When 

 the cacique called me I turned to see his wdfe hastily climbing down 

 the ladder. She washed her hands in a bucket of water and dried 

 them on her apron. She smiled as she shook hands and talked to 

 me in Keresan. 



Succession and installation. — When a new cacique is installed a 

 man (always a member of the Antelope clan) is named as his successor. 

 This means, of course, that at any time everyone knows who the 

 next cacique vn\l he. But upon the death of a cacique, his successor 

 is not installed at once. The members of the Antelope clan meet 

 informally, as many times as may be necessary, to select a successor 

 to the cacique who is about to be installed. Usually a year elapses 

 before a new cacique is installed. During this time the duties of 

 cacique are discharged by the man who was successor to the last 

 cacique, assisted by the wife of the deceased and her brothers, if 



" This is what I was told, but we note that the Antelope clan men paint themselves pink during the 

 ceremonial fight with the K'atsina (q. v.). 



