PARSONS] TOWN AND POPULATION 209 



in English as "our mountain," Shyubato, White Eagle, the home of 

 the hwa or kachina. 



On the southwest bordei' of the town, in a place called Orai'bi, were 

 placed the colonists from Lagima (Birnin). At the time of settlement 

 there was a larger gap between Orai'bi and the towTi than there is now, 

 more houses having been built in recent years in this neighborhood. 



Enumerated in the town properwere 220 houses, and in Orai'bi, 43, of 

 which only 16 are hved in by the Laguna immigrants or their descend- 

 ants. Across the river, in the ranch suburbs, there are about fifty 

 houses. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs reports the population of 

 Isleta as 1,036 in 1930. In 1890 the population was accounted 1 ,059.'^ 



There are a few 2-story houses, but for the most part the houses are 

 1-story and with their porches and walled yards have somewhat the 

 appearance of a Mexican town. (PL 18, b.) There are a number of 

 outside Mexican ovens. In some of the older houses the big hooded 

 hearth for baking wafer bread is still to be found. House 23 (see map) 

 contained one of these fireplaces until the house was bought by the 

 leading man of the town who had the fireplace removed. Conserva- 

 tive though he be, ceremonially, wafer-bread making was not for his 

 household! 



Five buildings are referred to as kivas (tula) — the two detached 

 "roundhouses" (houses 3, 22), associated with the moiety organiza- 

 tion, the two undetached rectangular houses also used by the moieties 

 (houses 13, 14, pi. 18, a, c), and a building which is used for general 

 asemblage, the pubhc tula (house 15). The two houses of the two 

 medicine societies which are also used ceremonially are not referred 

 to as tula, but as nap'ainato.'^ (Houses 5, 20.) The roundhouse 

 of the Black Eyes moiety is called paki'mu (fog or mist) tula (pi. 18, d)', 

 that of the shure' moiety, keyu (protecting wall)" tula. The terms 

 "turquoise" and "squash," used by the Keres, for the roundhouses 

 of their ceremonial moieties, are not used in Isleta. 



In the roundhouses four posts are referred to, also the kijkauu 

 which is the hole in the middle of the floor corresponding, inferably, 

 to the sipapu of the Hopi-Keresan kiva. Within the kokauu the 

 town chief "keeps the wahtainin" (all, people), meanmg the super- 

 natural aniraals and other spirits. (I question if the stone fetishes of 

 these spirits are actually kept here.) The kqkauu is plastered over. 

 It is opened on the installation of the town cliief and of the moiety 

 chiefs. It is because of the kijkauu that grave conduct is always 

 exacted in the kiva. In the undetached kivas of the moieties as well 



" Census, 92. 



w Nap'ai, *'soraetbing like a dream of somethine happening long before, as when the people came up,'* 

 i. e., vision; nato, hou.se. In one ct>nnection I hejird the term for the medicine society bouse as p'aiboa, 

 suggesting the derivation p'ai, old, (na)loa, witch bundle (see p. 3U). 



J' Whether this term refers to a si>eciiil wall or to the hou.se walls around the kiva I do not know. It is 

 impossible for the stranger in Isleta to place the kiva, built around as it is. 



