18. Sand painting used in ceremonial for sick by Ant society 103 19. Sia doctress 133 20. Mother with her infant four days old 142 [Illustration: Bureau of Ethnology. Eleventh Annual Report PLate I A VIEW OF SIA, SHOWING A PORTION OF VILLAGE IN RUINS.] THE SIA. BY MATILDA COXE STEVENSON.[1] INTRODUCTION. All that remains of the once populous pueblo of Sia is a small group of houses and a mere handful of people in the midst of one of the most extensive ruins of the Southwest (Pl. I) the living relic of an almost extinct people and a pathetic tale of the ravages of warfare and pestilence. This picture is even more touching than the infant’s cradle or the tiny sandal found buried in the cliff in the canyon walls. The Sia of to-day is in much the same condition as that of the ancient cave and cliff dweller as we restore their villages in imagination. The cosmogony and myths of the Sia point to the present site as their home before resorting to the mesa, which was not, however, their first mesa home; their legends refer to numerous villages on mountain tops in their journeying from the north to the center of the earth. The population of this village was originally very large, but from its situation it became a target during intertribal feuds. A time came, however, when intertribal strife ceased, and the pueblo tribes united their strength to oppose a common foe, an adversary who struck terror to the heart of the Indian, inasmuch as he not only took possession of their villages and homes, but was bent upon uprooting the ancestral religion to plant in its stead the Roman Catholic faith. To avoid this result the Sia fled to the mesa and built a village, but the foe was not to be thus easily baffled and the mesa village was brought under subjection. That these people again struggled for their freedom is evident from the report of Vargas of his visit there in 1692: