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Performing Archive

List of Large Plates Supplementing Volume Sixteen

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On account of the comparative inaccessibility of its site on Rio Jemez, a westerly affluent of the Rio Grande, Jemez is annoyed by fewer white visitors than almost any other pueblo. The reticence and the mental sluggishness of its inhabitants do not encourage the ethnologist. The Jemez played a leading part in the rebellion of 1680 and were so severely punished by Vargas that their preference for isolation is comprehensible. They have long been intimate with the Navaho and considerable racial mixture has resulted.
The office of fiscal, like that of governor and alguacil, is of Spanish origin, and its incumbents are charged with the supervision of activities connected with the church, such as burial of the dead and physical care of the church building. In general the church is an institution superimposed on pueblo life: it has nowhere become an integral part of it. At Jemez several centuries of effort at Christianization have been without tangible result, except that the presence of missionaries has been a more or less beneficial object lesson in a better mode of life
Photographing a native of Santo Domingo is comparable to hunting big game with a camera. This pueblo measures its contentment inversely to the extent of unavoidable contact with the hated white race. A guard is detailed to watch the Catholic priest when he visits the village, and the Government has pursued the wise policy of detailing Indian teachers to the local school. The Santo Domingans long resisted the gratuitous digging of wells to be equipped with windmills, continue to deny their sick children the services of the Government physician, and resist the activities of census enumerators. There is no doubt that the death sentence would be past on any individual found guilty of revealing native practices, and if the priestly authorities learned that Lucero sold his likeness to a white man he doubtless had an unpleasant half hour.
The Buffalo dance of the Keres is almost exactly the same as that of the Tewa. The performers are two young men with head-dresses of buffalo-hair and horns, and a girl wearing the usual female costume and a pair of small horns. The head of the hunters' society plays the part of guard. The dance is very strenuous, and the simulated actions of t he buffalo are quite realistic and readily comprehended by the spectator.
Sia is situated on the north bank of Rio Jemez, a few miles below Jemez pueblo. Ancient Sia, having participated in the revolt of 1680, was completely destroyed and a large number of its inhabitants were killed by Governor Domingo de Cruzate in 1689. The pueblo was rebuilt, probably on nearly the same site, and during the remaining years of this troubled period Sia remained actively friendly with the Spaniards. Once a populous centre, it housed only one hundred and fifty-four persons in 1924.
Paguate is the oldest and largest of ten villages subsidiary to Laguna, the patent pueblo of this group. It appears to have been founded about the middle of the eighteenth century. Laguna itself dates from 1699. The two-story structure at the right, one of the two oldest buildings at Paguate, was a watchtower erected for the defense of the farming population from the roving Navaho, who disputed possession of this locality.