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 Sia are regarded with contempt by the Santa Ana and the Jemez
Indians, who never omit an opportunity to give expression to their
scorn, feeling assured that this handful of people must submit to
insult without hope of redress. Limited intertribal relations exist,
and these principally for the purpose of traffic.
Though the Sia have considerable irrigable lands, they have but a
meager supply of water, this being due to the fact that after the
Mexican towns above them and the pueblo of Jemez have drawn upon the
waters of the Jemez river, little is left for the Sia, and in order
to have any success with their crops they must curtail the area to
be cultivated. Thus they never raise grain enough to supply their
needs, even with the practice of the strictest economy according to
Indian understanding, and therefore depend upon their more successful
neighbors who labor under no such difficulties. The Jemez people have
no lack of water supply, and the Santa Ana have their farming districts
on the banks of the Rio Grande. Is it strange, then, that two pueblos
are found progressing, however slowly, toward a European civilization,
while the Sia, though slightly influenced by the Mexicans, have,
through their environment, been led not only to cling to autochthonic
culture but to lower their plane of social and mental condition?
The Sia women labor industriously at the ceramic art as soon as their
grain supply becomes reduced, and the men carry the wares to their
unfriendly neighbors for trade in exchange for wheat and corn. While
the Santa Ana and Jemez make a little pottery, it is very coarse in
texture and in form; in fact, they can not be classed as pottery-making
Indians. (Pl. III.)
As long as the Sia can induce the traders through the country to take
their pottery they refrain from barter with their Indian neighbors.
(Pl. IV.) The women usually dispose of the articles to the traders
(Figs. 1 and 2), but they never venture on expeditions to the Santa Ana
and the Jemez.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.—Sia women on their way to the trader’s to
dispose of pottery.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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