White’s study, begun late in 1928 with four months in the field followed by later intermittent visits and concluded by a check with former informants in 1957, covers the span in which Pueblo acculturation made greater strides than in the previous two hundred years. Until after World War II poverty and poor transportation facilities kept this pueblo, about forty-five miles northwest of Albuquerque, relatively isolated. Returning soldiers brought money and new concepts, especially those of material comfort and modern conveniences. White gives an excellent summary of early historical events affecting the Pueblo area and for the modern period synthesized data concerning land, stockraising, farming, income per family, population data, implements and appliances adopted, medicine, etc. He is much less concerned with the old native material culture. For instance he states that weaving of baskets may have been practiced (p. 57), quite missing the fact that one of the last three Pueblo weavers of coiled baskets was alive and weaving in Sia during the period of his study, and he does not mention belt weaving, still extant.
White is much more interested in social organization and religion, which the old leaders of the tribe have so protected with intense emphasis on conservatism and secrecy that obtaining data has been a major problem to anthropologists working in the area. Even here, however, some native men appreciate the fact that even secret aspects of their culture are disappearing as old men die and the young have not been interested enough to learn. Having carefully discovered such persons, White took them out of the village so that cooperation in compiling data would not be known by those opposed.
Some anthropologists—and certainly the Sia themselves—would take exception to White’s contention that although these people have been members of the Catholic Church for some 250 years, they are not Christians. Certainly their version of Christianity does not duplicate even modern urban Catholicism, but this, in turn, does not duplicate that of the early eighteenth century. The Pueblos also find themselves confused in the apparent differences between Protestant and Catholic Christianity, and they have sometimes equated certain Christian supernaturals and beliefs with their own.
White has reviewed the scanty early reports on Sia. His present paper covers much not even mentioned in those records and also presents the pueblo as a modern entity. For these reasons it stands as the best of his several reports on Keresan Pueblos.
