Artist of "Isleta Paintings" in Pueblo Society

Abstract

Pueblo society places a very considerable emphasis on knowledge, but it also dictates how this knowledge is to be acquired and used. Joe Lente was a rebel. In a society where, as one anthropologist put it, "disobedience is a sacrilege and heresy as well as treason" (White, 1932, p. 11), he obviously was not attracted by the Pueblo road to recognition and power-a priestly vocation-and this despite his early involvement with "ceremonial members" (especially his father and grandfather) and ceremonial activities. Indeed he used his abilities in the very way that from his earliest years he had learned would surely bring dire punishment-even death: he disclosed the most sacred and secret teachings of his society to an outsider. The wonder is that while he breached a basic principle of his society, that while his anxiety over this action never abated, he nevertheless chose to remain in Isleta, outwardly conforming, except when he was drunk, to its authoritarian mode of life.