Therefore it happens that the use of these fetiches is chiefly connected
with the chase. To this, however, there are some exceptions. One of
these may be partly explained by the following myth concerning
Po-shai-a[n,]-k'ia, the God (Father) of the Medicine societies or sacred
esoteric orders, of which there are twelve in Zuni, and others among the
different pueblo tribes. He is supposed to have appeared in human form,
poorly clad, and therefore reviled by men; to have taught the ancestors
of the Zuni, Taos, Oraibi, and Coconino Indians their agricultural and
other arts, their systems of worship by means of plumed and painted
prayer-sticks; to have organized their medicine societies; and then to
have disappeared toward his home in Shi-pae-pu-li-ma (from
_shi-pi-a_=mist, vapor; _u-lin_=surrounding; and _i-mo-na_=sitting place
of--"The mist-enveloped city"), and to have vanished beneath the world,
whence he is said to have departed for the home of the Sun. He is still
the conscious auditor of the prayers of his children, the invisible
ruler of the spiritual Shi-pae-pu-li-ma, and of the lesser gods of the
medicine orders, the principal "Finisher of the Paths of our Lives." He
is, so far as any identity can be established, the "Montezuma" of
popular and usually erroneous Mexican tradition.