Each year a period comes, just before the harvest time, when no more pottery is required by their Indian neighbors, and the Sia must deal out their food in such limited portions that the elders go hungry in order to satisfy the children. When starvation threatens there is no thought for the children of the clan, but the head of each household looks to the wants of its own, and there is apparent indifference to the sufferings of neighbors. When questioned, they reply: “We feel sad for our brothers and our sisters, but we have not enough for our own.” Thus when driven to extremes, nature asserts itself in the nearest ties of consanguinity and the “clan” becomes secondary. At these times there are no expressions of dissatisfaction and no attempt on the part of the stronger to take advantage of the weaker. The expression of the men changes to a stoical resignation, and the women’s faces grow a shade paler with the thought that in order to nourish their babes they themselves must be nourished. And yet, such is their code of hospitality that food is always offered to guests as long as a morsel remains. [Illustration: Bureau of Ethnology. Eleventh Annual Report PLate III SISTERS; CLEVEREST ARTISTS IN CERAMICS IN SIA.] So like children are these same stoical and patient people that the tears of sorrow are quickly dispelled by the sunshine of success. When their crops are gathered they hold their saints’ day feast, when the Indians from near and far (even a few of the unfriendly Indians lending their unwelcome presence) surfeit at their board. These public dances and feasts of thanksgiving in honor of their patron saint, upon the gathering of their crops, which occur in all the Rio Grande pueblos, present a queer mixture of pagan and Christian religion. The priest owes his success in maintaining a certain influence with these people since the accession of New Mexico to the United States, by non-interference with the introduction of their forms and dances into the worship taught by the church. Hence the Rio Grande Indians are professedly Catholics; but the fact that these Indians and the Mission Indians of California have preserved their religions, admitting them to have been more or less influenced by Catholicism, and hold their ceremonials in secret, practicing their occult powers to the present time, under the very eye of the church, is evidence not only of the tenacity with which they cling to their ancient customs, but of their cunning in maintaining perfect seclusion. [Illustration: FIG. 2.—Sia women returning from trader’s with flour and corn in exchange for pottery.]