310 



ISLETA, NEW MEXICO 



[ETH. ANN. 47 



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the food is, to exorcise with ashes. One goes to "clean " the ceremonial 

 house of the tovvai chief, the Black Eyes' roundhouse and kiva; the 

 other goes to "clean" the shure' roundhouse and Idva and the house 

 of the shure' chief. While they are absent the chief works at the 

 altar; on theii" return he performs the ritual of bringing down the sim 

 (see pp. 292, 298). The chief sends two assistants in each direction, 

 bidding the war chief to send a war captain with each couple to clean 

 out in each direction. They say they go to the end of the world 



within an hour.^* The war cap- 



tains go only to the edges of the 



A./r^/^/)/n /^(^ y) cT^ t town to wait for them. Drop- 



Iff'^ff Ws g i/far £f 7 piiig their baskets, they say to 



the accompanying war captain, 

 ' ' Good-bye. Ask Wseide to help 

 me so I may return and see 

 you again." They run a little 

 way, then you see them flying 

 in the air. (Informant who once 

 served as war captain asserts 

 that he saw this flying in the air 

 in the daytime.) Like "call boys" 

 they go and notify the Chiefs 

 (kabere) of the Directions to 

 come at night and help. While 

 they are absent, the chief looks 

 into his crystal to see where 

 they have gone and where the 

 war captains are. He puts the 

 crystal back into place and says, 

 "Well, my sons, everything looks all right," or he may say, "Some- 

 body is near the war captain, perhaps a Mexican." If anything 

 goes WTong on their journey he wiU teU the people. At this time 

 the witch chief is around. 



Shoidd he meet a medicine man he would fight with him, as he does 

 not want him to achieve anything good. The witch chief may be 

 carrying with him worms, grasshoppers, all the pests of the fields. 

 Then the medicine men would pursue him to take from him his 

 bundle of pests. They may be delayed. The chief \\all describe to 

 the people the course of the pursuit and struggle, teUing which medi- 



2* Such was also the claim of the nun Maria de Jesus whose flights from Spain to New Mexico occurred 

 in 1620-1631. These "flights" w^ere known to Benavides and, inferably, to the padres at Sandiaand Isleta, 

 notably to Fray Juan de Salas, missionary to Isleta, to the Tigua to the south, and to the Jumano. These 

 last, a non-Pueblo people, asked for baptism because of the young woman who came down from the hills 

 to talk to them. Now the Jumano were neighbors to the southern Tigua who about 1675 migrated to 

 Isleta. (Benavides, 58-59, 275-277.) 



\V • 



Figure 16.— Altar of Town Fathers in ceremony of 

 general cleansing. The Mothers set in mud ridge; 

 medicine water bowl; meal design with fetishes 

 (kaenim); long line of shtmad (shunai); prayer- 

 feathers; stone point; meal basket 



