The Sia: (1894 N 11 / 1889-1890 (pages 3-158)) — John Shaqi
The Sia: (1894 N 11 / 1889-1890 (pages 3-158))Stevenson, Matilda Coxe
History
The Sia: (1894 N 11 / 1889-1890 (pages 3-158))
Stevenson, Matilda Coxe
Zia Indians
The tíämoni, who presided over the council, said: “I think if you
and the women live apart you will each be contented.” And on the
following morning he had all the men and male children who were not
being nourished by their mothers cross the great river which ran by
the village, the women remaining in the village. The men departed at
sunrise, and the women were delighted. They said: “We can do all the
work; we understand the men’s work and we can work like them.” The men
said to each, other: “We can do the things the women did for us.” As
they left the village the men called to the women: “We leave you to
yourselves, perhaps for one year, perhaps for two, and perhaps longer.
For one year you may be happy to be apart from us. Perhaps we will be
happy to be separated from you; perhaps not; we can not tell. We men
are more amorous than you.”
Some time was required for the men to cross the river, as it was very
wide. The tíämoni led the men and remained with them. The women were
compelled by the tíämoni to send their male infants over the river as
soon as they ceased nourishing them. For ten moons the men and women
were very happy. The men hunted a great deal and had much game for
food, but the women had no animal food. At the expiration of the ten
moons some of the women were sad away from the men. The men grew stout
and the women very thin. As the second year passed more of the women
wanted the men, but the men were perfectly satisfied away from the
women. After three years the women more and more wished for the men,
but the men were but slightly desirous of the women. When the fourth
year was half gone the women called to the tíämoni, saying: “We want
the men to come to us.” The female children had grown up like reeds;
they had no flesh on them. The morning after the women begged the
tíämoni for the return of the men they recrossed the river to live
again with the women, and in four days after their return the women had
recovered their flesh.
Children were born to the women while they were separated from the men,
and when born they were entirely unlike the Sia, and were a different
people. The mothers, seeing their children were not like themselves,
did not care for them and drove them from their homes. These unnatural
children matured in a short time, becoming the skóyo (giant cannibals).
As soon as they were grown they began eating the Sia. They caught the
children just as the coyote catches his prey. They made large fires
between great rocks, and throwing the children in, roasted them alive,
and afterward ate them. When parents went to the woods to look for
their lost children, they too were caught by the giants and roasted.
No one ever returned to the village to tell the tale. The Sia were not
only devoured by the skóyo, but by those animals who quarreled with
their people at the time of the rupture between the Sia men and women,
the angry animals joining the skóyo in their attacks upon the Sia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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