PARSONS] HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY RELATIONS 203 



if anything favoring the patrilineal, in contact with groups with 

 matrilineal clans. Here is an interesting case of cultural conlUct to 

 which we should he alert. According to my interpretation the 

 Tanoan migrants took over the matrilineal theory of their hosts or 

 neighbors, Keresan, perhaps Hopi, applying it to their ceremonial 

 groups which continued to he primarily ceremonial, unconcerned with 

 marriage regulation and thought of but slightly if at all as kinship 

 groups. 



In the northern towns descent is bilateral, with a leaning, if any, 

 to the patrilineal. Contact with the matriUneal tribes resulted for 

 the migrating Isletans in a mixed system of descent. Ceremonial 

 and ritual show similarly mi.xed strands — indi\adualistic shamanistic 

 "powers" of the Plains type, society organization of the Pueblo type, 

 and the characteristic Pueblo hierarchy. To this composite the 

 Catholic Church has not failed to contribute. A candle may be 

 offered in the hills to the dead as well as a prayer stick ; the veterinary 

 medicine man may diagnose the sickness of the horse as a transfer 

 of sickness from its owner — scapehorse instead of scapegoat ; gallstones 

 removed by a white doctor are identified as witch-sent objects; the 

 saint is carried about fields parched by drought; the stillborn are 

 prayed to because, I surmise, they are in limbo ; confession is made to 

 medicine men as well as to the padre. No pueblo is without Catholic 

 acculturation, not even the Hopi pueblos, but among them all we 

 shall find Isleta contributing pecuharly interesting instances of this 

 cultural process. 



HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY RELATIONS 



It is probable that Isleta stands on or near a site that was occupied 

 in 1540, the year of the Spanish discovery.' There is a town tradi- 

 tion about an older site or sites below the mountains to the east, 

 where there are many ruins. The people there "got crazy talking 

 about how the yellow and red faced people wdth red hair were coming 

 (i. e., the whites); then they ran away and crossed the river and made 

 Isleta." 



About 1675 Isleta received accessions from the Tigua pueblos of 

 Quarai,*^ Tajique, and others east of the Rio Grande, when those 

 pueblos were abandoned because of Apache depredations.' Possibly 

 the Isleta settlements on the east bank date back to that period. 

 However, as early as 1581 settlements on the east bank were observed 

 by that remarkable party of 3 friars, 9 soldiers, and 19 Mexican 

 Indians, presumably from southern Chihuahua, known as the Rodri- 



' Handbook of the .American Indians, f>22, citing Lummis. See Bandelier, 234. 

 ' Here in 1643 Fray Juan de Salas was resident priest. (Bandelier, 233, n. 1.) 

 ' Handbook of the American Indians, 023; Uandelier, 234. 



