the expedition approaches, all the clans-women with the _kurena-cheani_ come out to meet it, and they all sing together for the Salt Woman. Later these same women distribute the salt. “If an individual wants to go salt-collecting on his own account he will go to the Parrot clansman to ask him to make prayer-sticks. If your salt gives out you may ask the Parrot clan-mother to give you some.”—ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS, Laguna Genealogies. IV. TOWERS AND GREAT HOUSES Were they observation points or granaries or ceremonial places? Or, did they combine all these with defence? No satisfactory answer yet found, nor the epoch in which they were constructed. Some have great trees growing in them, but none has a roof; their walls are so good that they do not suggest very great age; yet the builders of cliff-dwellings, and by inference their kindred, the Tower Builders, were far superior in their art to modern pueblos. V. KERES (QUERES) Concerning the origin of the word _Keres_ (Castañeda’s _Quirix_) nothing can be learned from any of these people, who pronounce it in every conceivable way. But they all agree that “they have no ethnic name in Keresan language which sounds anything like it.” We have, therefore, a confusion of designations for Ácoma. _Sía_ (_Tsía_) is linguistically a part of the western branch of the Keres nation. According to fragments of Keres tradition this is the place on the Jémez River where the Ácomas separated from the other Keres. The name _Temá_ is applied to the Cochití and to all who talk like them. Among these are Sía, Ácoma, and Laguna. The two latter are so isolated from the rest of the Keres nation that frequently they are not listed with the other pueblos of their stock; when they are, they invariably are made a separate group by themselves. The culture of the Keresan tribes is fundamentally similar to that of the others in the Southwestern area; namely, a dependence upon maize and other cultivated foods; the use of the _metate_ instead of a mortar for grinding the maize; terraced houses of stone and adobe; tailored textile clothing, which involves cultivation of cotton and weaving on a loom; a pottery decorated in color; much less use of basketry than in non-Pueblo tribes; the domestication of the turkey; matrilinear descent; a mythology characterized by migration traditions; each pueblo a “republic” with governor and war chief elected annually, but the religious head, cacique, must give his sanction; very complex ritualism; numerous shrines before which sacred meal and pollen are constantly offered; purification rites by emetics and head washing; Kachina, or K’at’sina, ceremonies by masked impersonators; different priests for summer and for winter. In most pueblos there are made extensive sand paintings for religious festivals. No writer mentions them at Ácoma. Is this because no strangers have seen their most sacred celebrations?[265]