206 ISLETA, NEW MEXICO 



same time that prayer feathers are thrown into it; the government 

 canes are aspersed by the town chief as well as by the padre; ritual 

 whipping is referred to as penance, and my informant compared the 

 power of the tachide ^^ or padre to change bread and wine into the 

 host to the powers of the medicme men.-' To show people his power: 

 Did not Father Andrew, who has been padre in Isleta for 34 years, 

 curse a piece of cheese and turn it black as ashes?^- He had been 

 scolding the people for not coming to Mass, meeting their excuse 

 that they were shoeless by pointing out that they went to their own 

 ceremonies without shoes. Father Andrew was also reported to 

 want people to observe "semana sancta" by not chopping wood or 

 moving wagons, "staying still as they do at Taos," in December- 

 January, and at Nambe during Holy Week when they do not hammer 

 lest they "pound on the Lord," or chop wood, or wear shoes, "lest 

 they step hard on the Lord." -' 



How much the rite of confession is observed in the church I do not 

 know, but curiously enough, it is observed in connection with the 

 Fathers who are medicine men. Some years ago an Isletan woman 

 told me that if she fell sick from giving me information she would 

 have to "confess it." And now after a discussion of kinship terms 

 Lucinda says, "What I am telling you I am going to confess it before 

 I die. I am not going to carry it away with me." At another time 

 Lucinda said she confessed once a month to the padi'e, and felt very 

 "lively" afterwards. 



The wenin or underlake people of the west from whom the maskless 

 kachina dancers get their power were said to be "like the saints." 



Mexicans wait to plant until the Isletans begin, saying that "the 

 cazique" has a good guess. Of the Isletan irrigation ditch proces- 

 sion Mexicans on meeting it will say, "Now we are going to have a 

 good year." 



Nevertheless, in spite of this reputed sympathetic attitude, from 

 the ceremonial life of the town the Mexican is quite strictly shut out 

 as elsewhere. Also the white. Guards are placed to keep away 

 Mexicans and whites from that part of town where the Laguna 

 kachina dance and, during the solstice ceremonials, from the town 

 at large. The use of Mexican words is taboo to those engaged in 

 ceremonial. Whites and Mexicans are excluded to-day from cere- 



20 Probably from the Zuiii term for father (tachu). 



21 He might well have cited in this comparison the rite of bringing down the sun as a rite of transub- 

 stantiation. 



''' At Jemez silver necklaces and shoes are not to be worn at the meetings of one of the societies. The 

 silver becomes black; footgear shrinks up. (Parsons, 16: 71, n. 1.) The Yayatu of the Hopi also make 

 magical transformations. Once they changed the black hat and the garters of a visiting Isletan into a 

 raven and a snake. (Stephen, MS.) 



" At Palma, in the Balearics, no wagons or automobiles may be used on Holy Thursday and Good 

 Friday, and no work is performed, practices observed also, I am told, in other parts of Spain. In the Holy 

 Thursday penitential procession men go barefoot. In Mexico no work is done from Holy Thursday to 

 Easter Monday; the animals are confined in the corrals. 



