PARSONS] HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY RELATIONS 205 



a Ute; the other married into the town, leaving descendants, one of 

 whom has visited his kindred at Isleta and learned to speak Isletan. 

 So great are the dialectical differences in the Tanoan speech of the 

 two towTis that when the Isletan cousin of this Taos man in his turn 

 visited Taos he had to speak either Spanish or English with his 

 hosts.'' 



Isletans have not learned to speak Keresan, although, as we shall 

 see later in detail, they have had special opportunities. About 1880 

 they welcomed some immigrants from Laguna, to whom they gave 

 lands and with whom they intermarried. Of this interesting Laguna 

 colony we shall give a fiJler account, and particular intermarriages 

 with Keresan townspeople and others we shall also note later on. 



As to witchcraft suspicions of the foreigner, we hear in general that 

 strange lights at night are likely to be e.xplained as witches flying 

 from abroad to harm some townsman and that if you are anxious to 

 harm a fellow townsman you will resort to the witches of another 

 town. Significant in this connection is the tradition that at Shimtua, 

 where the witch cave of assembly is placed, there was once a Sandia 

 settlement.'* A keen trader among my Isletan acquaintances said 

 that because of the witches at Sandia she would not go there to trade. 

 She expressed an extraordinary aversion to the Napihun, the dusty 

 people. ("The faces of the Sandians look dusty.") 



As elsewhere, Navaho witchcraft has been feared. Navaho were 

 also an overt enemy. The scalps preserved in the round houses are 

 all accounted Navaho, although it is said that "once" there was a 

 fight with the Comanche. Every Satm-day night the Captive dance, 

 nakurfur® (kuride, captive), is danced,'^ also Hanch or Comanche. 



Contacts with Mexicans (lapahde, ? haiiy) have been compara- 

 tively close. At the southern end of the reservation lands, about 5 

 miles from Isleta, is Los Lentils or, in Isletan, Berkwintoi, Rainbow 

 village. There live still "a few old Indians," but the place is so 

 largely Mexicanized that, because the father of the White Corn chief 

 came from there,'* the chief has been refeiTed to, by those who do 

 not like him, as half Mexican. Although only a few Mexicans are 

 married into town, there are many Mexican neighbors on the road 

 to Albuquerque and in settlements around the reservation. Every- 

 body in Isleta speaks Spanish, and I get the impression that a good 

 many Spanish words are used in speaking Tanoan. Assimilation of 

 Catholic ritual and ideology is unusually striking. A candle may 

 be offered in the hills '^ instead of a prayer feather; during irrigation 

 ceremonial a cross blessed by the padre is placed at the river at the 



» But see Bsndelier, 218, n. 1. 



'• See p. 430. 



" Danced also by the Tewa. 



i» The parents of the woman in house 23 also come from Berkwintoi. 



'• See p. 456. 



