ISLETA, NEW MEXICO 



By Elsie Clews Parsons 



INTRODUCTION 



Isleta has been a baffling place to the student of the Pueblos. 

 Isletans are particularity secretive, and what information was obtained 

 from them contained contradictions The only student who ever 

 lived in the pueblo was Charles F. Lummis, and his interest in the Ufe 

 of the town has expressed itself scientifically only in a collection of 

 follv tales rendered in a more or less hterary fonn. So that when 

 in 1924 Esther Schiff Goldfrank undertook a study of the pueblo, and 

 after much difScidty succeeded in securing an informant, there was 

 matter for congratulation. Mrs. Goldfranlv has published an analysis 

 of the folk tales she and I recorded, in the Journal of American 

 Follilore. 



In 1925, thanlvs to Mrs. Goldfranlv's introduction, I was able to 

 work with her infonnant where he and I were not subject to Pueblo 

 inquisitorial pursuit. It was soon apparent that our fluent informant 

 was of a type unusual among the Pueblos. Shrewd as he could be at 

 times, he was also exceedingly credulous. Had he not only heard, but 

 seen, the horned serpent on his mountain? Had he not seen a living 

 deer walk through the door of the hunt chief's house, and a medicine 

 man fly away as an eagle to a great distance, to return within an 

 hour to the ceremonial chamber? Thrice had he seen the padre with 

 gold teeth resurrect from under the altar of the church. Even of 

 Me.xican or white signs he was a ready believer; he beUeved in his own 

 dreams; he beUeved in anybody's "power" and in any gossip of magic. 

 One day he told me about a certain townswoman who was living with 

 "two husbands" since, thanks to the "power" she had got out of a 

 "black book," her husband actually wanted to have her lover in their 

 house. 



That a man of this mentality should not be accurate in description 



at large is not surprising. And Juan Abeita would be, in fact, quite as 



glib about ceremonial he had not seen as about what he had seen. So 



that his accounts of ceremonial must be taken with reservation and 



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