During the earlier years of my life with the Zuñi Indians of
western-central New Mexico, from the autumn of 1879 to the winter
of 1881--before access to their country had been rendered easy by
the completion of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad,--they remained,
as regards their social and religious institutions and customs and
their modes of thought, if not of daily life, the most archaic of the
Pueblo or Aridian peoples. They still continue to be, as they have
for centuries been, the most highly developed, yet characteristic and
representative of all these people.
In fact, it is principally due to this higher development by the
Zuñi, than by any of the other Pueblos, of the mytho-sociologic
system distinctive in some measure of them all at the time of the
Spanish conquest of the southwest, that they have maintained so long
and so much more completely than any of the others the primitive
characteristics of the Aridian phase of culture; this despite the
fact that, being the descendants of the original dwellers in the
famous "Seven Cities of Cibola," they were the earliest known
of all the tribes within the territory of the United States.
Like the other Pueblos, the Zuñians, when discovered, were found
living in segregated towns; but unlike the other groups (each
separate community of any one of which was autonomous except on
rare occasions) they were permanently and closely confederated in
both a political and hierarchical sense. In other words, all their
subtribes and lesser towns were distinctively related to and ruled
from a central tribe and town through priest-chiefs, representative
of each of them, sitting under the supreme council or septuarchy of
the "master priests of the house" in the central town itself, much
as were the divisions and cities of the great Inca dominion in South
America represented at and ruled from Cuzco, the central city and
province of them all.
It thus happened that, although one or another of the Zuñi subtribes
was at different times partially and temporarily conquered by the
Spaniards, they were never as a whole people subdued; and, although
missions and chapels were ultimately established at one and another
of their towns by the Franciscan friars, they were never all of them
immediately under mission influence and surveillance at any one
time until a comparatively recent date. The evidences and tragic
consequences of this may be traced throughout the history of Spanish
intercourse, and as the measure of its effect in minimizing the
influence of Spanish thought and example on Zuñi culture and habits is
of great importance in determining to what extent the following sacred
myths may be regarded as purely aboriginal, a brief outline of this
history is regarded as desirable.