Zuni Folktales

ever since then, my children, the world has been filled with anger, and even brothers agree, then disagree, strike one another, and spill their own blood in foolish anger.

Perhaps had men been more grateful and wiser, the Sun-father had smiled and dropped everywhere the treasures we long for, and not hidden them deep in the earth and buried them in the shores of the sea. And perhaps, moreover, all men would have smiled upon one another and never enlarged their voices nor strengthened their arms in anger toward one another.

Thus short is my story; and may the cornstalks grow as long as my stretches, and may the will of the Holder of the Roads of Life shelter me from dangers as he sheltered his children in the days of the ancients with the shield of his sunlight.

It is all finished. (Tenkʻia.)

Endnotes

1. The ancient pueblo of Zuni itself was called Hálonawan, or the Ant Hill, the ruins of which, now buried beneath the sands, lie opposite the modern town within the cast of a stone. Long before Hálonawan was abandoned, the nucleus of the present structure was begun around one of the now central plazas. It was then, and still is, in the ancient songs and rituals of the Zunis, Hálona-ítiwana, or the “Middle Ant Hill of the World,” and was often spoken of in connection with the older town as simply the “Ant Hill.” ↩

2. This curious conception of the food of the storks and cranes and pelicans, for of such birds the folktale tells, is interesting. It is doubtless an attempt to explain what has been observed with relation to the pelicans and the storks especially: that they consume their food raw, and, as the Indian believes, cook it, as it were, in their own bodies, and then withdraw it, either for their young or for their final consumption. As this semi-digested food of such birds resembles very nearly the thick bean stews of the Zunis, they have evidently taken from it the suggestion for the special kinds of food which were offered to the youth. ↩

3. This, like all the folk-songs, is difficult of translation; and that which is given is only approximate. ↩

4. That is, people in the dark⁠—having no knowledge. ↩

5. Situated about seven miles east of Zuni. ↩

6. Mátsaki, now a ruin about three miles east of Zuni. ↩

7. Pínawa, an ancient ruin about a mile and a half west of Zuni. ↩

8. This, it may be explained, is all that the marriage ceremony consists of. ↩

9. The native name of the Zuni town of Las Nutrias. ↩

10. Aínshikʻyanakwin, or Bear Spring, where Fort Wingate now stands. ↩

11. Probably Green River, or some important tributary of the Colorado Grande. ↩

12. Fruit of the yucca, or soap-weed plant. ↩

13. The Kâkâ, or Sacred Drama Dance, is represented by a great variety of masks and costumes worn by Zuni dancers during the performance of this remarkable dramatic ceremony. Undoubtedly many of the traditional characters of the Sacred Drama thus represented are conventionalizations of the mythic conceptions or personifications of animal attributes. Therefore many of these characters partake at once of the characteristics, in appearance as well as in other ways, of animals and men. The example in point is a good illustration of this. The Kʻyámakwe are supposed to have been a most wonderful and powerful tribe of demigods, inhabiting a great valley and range of mesas some forty miles south of Zuni. Their powers over the atmospheric phenomena of nature and over all the herbivorous animals are supposed to have been absolute. Their attitude toward man was at times inimical, at times friendly or beneficent. Such a relationship, controlled simply by either laudatory or propitiatory worship, was supposed to hold spiritually, still, between these and other beings represented in the Sacred Drama and men. It is believed that through the power of breath communicated by these ancient gods to men, from one man to another man, and thus from generation to generation, an actual connection has been kept up between initiated members of the Kâkâ drama and these original demigod characters which it represents; so that when a member is properly dressed in the costume of any one of these characters, a ceremony (the description of which is too long for insertion here) accompanying the putting on of the mask is supposed not only to place him en rapport spiritually with the character he represents, but even to possess him with the spirit of that character or demigod. He is, therefore, so long as he remains disguised as one of these demigods, treated as if he were actually that being which he personates. One of the Kʻyámakwe is represented by means of a mask, round and smooth-headed, with little black eyes turned up at the corners so as to represent a segment of a diminishing spiral; the color of the face is green, and it is separated from the rest of the head by a line composed of alternate blocks of black and yellow; the crown and back of the head are snow-white; and the ears are pendent and conical in shape, being composed of husks or other paper-like material; the mouth is round, and furnished with a four-pointed beak of husks, which extends two or three inches outward and spreads at the end like the petals of a half-closed lily; round the neck is a collar of fox fur, and covering the body are flowing robes of sacred embroidered mantles, which (notwithstanding the gay ornaments and other appurtenances of the costume) have, in connection with the expression of the mask, a spectral effect; the feet are encased in brilliantly painted moccasins, of archaic