The first discovered of the Seven Cities of Cibola or Zuñiland, called
by the Zuñis themselves Shíwona, was by native account the most
easterly of their towns, the K‘yä´kime of tradition and the Caquima of
later Spanish record. According also to native tradition it was entered
by Estevanico, the negro spy of Fray Marcos de Niza, and the Black
Mexican of Zuñi story, in the spring of 1539. The negro was forthwith
killed by the inhabitants; but the friar, following him shortly after,
saw from the mesa heights to the southward one of the seven villages,
and, making good his escape, reported his discovery to the viceroy of
Mexico, Don Antonio de Mendoza.
Only a year later the largest of the westerly towns, Háwik’uh (Aquico)
was stormed and its inhabitants partly subdued, partly driven away to
the great tribal stronghold, Thunder mountain, by that valiant knight,
Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, and his vanguard of hardy mail-clad
soldiers. The little army occupied as headquarters, for several months,
the town they had captured, and later the more numerous rear of the
army were quartered at the more central and eastern town of Mátsaki
(Muzaque). During this time Coronado and his comrades in arms were
able to reassure and pacify the natives, insomuch that when, two years
afterward, they were returning through Zuñiland en route to Mexico from
the conquests of the farther Pueblos and their vain search for the
golden province of Quivira, they were entreated to remain and join the
tribes. But Fray Juan de Padilla, the heroic priest of the expedition,
had found more fertile fields to the eastward, and only three or four
Mexican Indian allies of the Spaniards were fain to stay.
When, in 1581-'82, Francisco Chamuscado and his 9 soldiers recklessly
penetrated those vast and lonely wilds of the southwest (in 1888 I
sketched his graven signature and those of many of his successors on
El Moro, or the Rock Mesa of Inscriptions, 35 miles east of Zuñi)
and passed through the country of Cibola, he was not hindered by its
people. And when Antonio de Espejo, in 1582, with scarcely more of a
company, was on his way toward Tusayan or the Hopi country, in the
northwest, he stopped at the central town of Alona (Hálona) and was
well received. To this day the marks, said by the Zuñis to have been
made by the "iron bonnets of his tall warriors," are shown on the
rafters of one of the low, still used prehistoric rooms facing the
great northern court (once the central and main one) of Zuñi, and
attest to the hospitality so long ago accorded them there.
Again, in the autumn of 1598, Juan de Oñate and his more considerable
force of soldiers and priests, after their general tour of formal
conquest in the other Pueblo provinces, were met as they approached
the Zuñi towns by delegations of singing priests and warriors, and
were received with such showers of white prayer-meal on entering that
they had to protect themselves from these offerings, as they supposed,
of peace. This incident, and that of the ceremonial hunt and feast
given them afterward, signifies conclusively the estimation in which,
up to that time, the Spaniards had been held by the priestly elders
of Zuñiland. Precisely as the returning Kâ´kâkwe, or mythic-dance
dramatists, personating gods and heroes of the olden time are received
twice yearly (before and after the harvest growth and time), so were
these soldiers and friars received, not as enemies nor as aliens, but
as veritable gods or god-men, coming forth at the close of autumn from
out the land of day, whence come the ripening breaths of the Frost gods!
As yet, the Franciscan friars, although sometimes baptizing scores of
the Zuñi--much to their gratification, doubtless, as quite appropriate
behavior on the part of such beings when friendly,--had not antagonized
their ancient observances or beliefs; and the warriors who accompanied
them had never, since the first of them had come, and after fighting
had laid down their dreadful arms and made peace and left hostages,
albeit mortals like themselves, with their forefathers--had never again
raised their fearful batons of thunder and fire or their long blades of
blue metal like lightning.
But all this was soon to change. When, nearly a quarter of a century
later still, Fray Alonzo de Benavides became father-custodian of New
Mexico, he undertook to establish missions throughout the country. More
than twenty missionaries were introduced into the Pueblo provinces by
him, and soon afterward Esteban de Perea brought thirty more from Spain
and old Mexico. Among the latter were Fray Martin de Arvide and Fray
Francisco de Letrado. Fray Letrado was assigned to Zuñi some time after
1628. By the end of the following year the Indians had built for him
at Hálona the little Church of the Purification or of the Immaculate
Virgin, and at Háwik’uh the church and conventual residence of the
Immaculate Conception.
Fray Francisco was an old man and very zealous. Unquestionably, he
antagonized the native priests. It is as certain that, at first
welcoming him, they gradually came to look upon his religion as no
less that of mortal men than their own, and to regard its magic and
power of appeal to the gods as of small account in the making of rain
or the quelling of war and sorcery. Wherefore, although baptized by
dozens as they had been, they brooked but ill the compulsory attendance
at mass and other observances and the constant interferences of the
father and his soldiers (for a small escort, unluckily, accompanied
him) with their own acts of worship. When in the winter of 1630 Fray
Martin de Arvide joined Fray Letrado at Háwik’uh, on the way to
establish missions among the Zipias, a pueblo people said by the Zuñis
to have lived considerably to the southwestward of them at that time,
and called by them Tsípiakwe ("People-of-the-coarse-hanging-hair"), he
foresaw for his brother and himself speedy martyrdom. He had but fairly
departed when, on the Sunday following, the people delayed attending
mass, and Fray Francisco, going forth to remonstrate with them, met
a party of the native religionists armed with bows and arrows and in
mood so menacing that in expectancy of death he knelt where he had
stood, clinging to his crucifix, and, continuing to entreat them, was
transfixed by many arrows.
Thus speedily was slain the first resident priest of Zuñi; thus were
the Zuñis themselves disillusionized of their belief in the more than
mortal power of the Spaniard and the deific character of his religion;
for they broke up the ornaments of the altar, burned the church, and
then sallied forth to follow Fray Martin. They overtook him at night
five days later, attacked his party while in camp, overawed and killed
outright his two soldiers, and, joined by his traitorous "Christian
Indians," one of whom, a half-blood, cut off his hand and scalped him,
they killed also this venerable friar and hastened back to their town.
There the ceremonial of the scalp dances of initiation were performed
over the scalps of the two friars, an observance designed both as
a commemoration of victory and to lay the ghosts of the slain by
completing the count of their unfinished days and making them members
by adoption of the ghostly tribe of Zuñi. The scalp-dance is also
supposed to proclaim in song, unto the gods and men, that thenceforward
their people are of the enemy, and unto the gods of the enemy that the
gods of Zuñi are victors over them, whereof and wherefore it will be
well for them to beware. Thus the estimation in which the Spaniard, and
especially his religious representatives, were ever afterward to be
held was fixed on those fatal days at the close of February, 1630.
Now again, after this demonstration, the Zuñis, as in the days of the
great flood, when men had disobeyed the gods, as when Coronado advanced
on Háwik’uh, so soon as they had completed the rites of purifying and
baptizing the scalps, betook themselves to Thunder mountain and thereon
intrenched themselves.
It was not until after two years had passed that they were attacked
there, but not overcome, by Tomas de Albizu and his soldiery and
induced by the priests who accompanied him, and whom the Indians,
knowing them to be unarmed, allowed to approach, to hold parley. It
is probable that Don Tomas, finding it impossible to storm their rock
successfully, promised that if they would yield the wretched mestizo
who had cut off the hand and torn away the scalp of Fray Martin, he
and his people would leave them in peace. At any rate, the mutilator
of the friar was yielded, and in due course was hanged by the Spanish
authorities.
Then gradually the Zuñis descended from their stronghold and a few
years later were peacefully reoccupying the largest four of their
towns. More than thirty years elapsed before the missions of the
Purification at Hálona and the Immaculate Conception at Háwik’uh were
reestablished. In 1670 Fray Juan Galdo was the resident priest at the
one, and at the other Fray Pedro de Avila y Ayala. But in the autumn
of the year named a numerous band of Apache-Navajo attacked the town
of Háwik’uh, and, making for the lower courts where stood the church
and convent, they dragged Fray Avila from the altar, at which he had
sought refuge, clinging to the cross and an image of the Virgin, and,
stripping him, beat him to death with one of the church bells at the
foot of the cross in the courtyard hard by. They then plundered and
burned the church, threw the image of the Virgin into the flames, and,
transfixing the body of the priest with more than 200 arrows, cast upon
it stones and the carcasses of three dead lambs. The mutilated corpse
was thus found the following day by Fray Galdo and carried to Hálona
for sepulture in the Church of the Purification there.
After this tragic occurrence the pueblo of Háwik’uh was abandoned
by the missionaries and for a short time at least by its native
inhabitants as well. Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that other
Zuñis, if not indeed some of the townspeople themselves, had to do with
the tragic affair just related, for there is no evidence that, although
the people of Háwik’uh were numerous, any of them came to the rescue
of the father, or that their town was sacked, whereas the church was
plundered and burned.
They do not seem, however, to have done injury to the priest of Hálona,
for just previously to the summer of 1680 when they, in common with all
the other Pueblo Indians, joined in the revolt against Spanish rule and
religion, they were tolerating the presence of Fray Juan de Bal at this
town and of another priest, it seems, at Háwik’uh.
When the message strands of that great war magician, Popé of Taos,
who had planned the rebellion and sent forth the knotted strings of
invitation and warning, were received by the Zuñis, their leaders of
one accord consented to join the movement and sped the war strands
farther on to the Tusayan country, there insisting with the less
courageous Hopi that they join also, and ultimately gaining their at
first divided consent.
When all the knots had been numbered and untied, then, to a man, the
Zuñis arose to slay Spaniards wheresoever they might encounter them.
They forthwith killed Fray Juan de Bal, the priest of Hálona, burning
his church and destroying the chapels in the lesser towns round about.
Not content with this, they dispatched warriors to the Tusayan country
to see to it that the Hopi remain faithful to their promise and
vigorously to abet them in its fulfilment.
It fared far otherwise with the priest of Háwik’uh. Although his name
is unknown, and although it has been doubted that any other missionary
than Fray Juan of Hálona was with the Zuñis at the time, or that the
mission of Háwik’uh was ever occupied after the death of Fray Pedro de
Avila, yet Vetancurt's chronicles are explicit in stating the contrary,
and that, although the Church of the Conception was again burned, the
priest escaped. This latter statement is substantially true if we
may trust Zuñi tradition, which is very detailed on this point, and
which is trustworthy on many another and better recorded point of even
remoter date.
The elder Priests of the Bow--three of whom were battle-scarred
warriors of nearly a hundred winters at the time of my initiation
into their order--told me that one of their gray-robed _tútatsikwe_
("fathers of drink," so named because they used cup-like vessels of
water in baptizing), whom their ancients had with them at Háwik’uh
in the time of the great evil, was much loved by them; "for, like
ourselves," they affirmed, "he had a Zuñi heart and cared for the
sick and women and children, nor contended with the fathers of the
people; therefore, in that time of evil they spared him on condition"
--precisely the rather sweeping condition these same veterans had in
1880 imposed on me ere they would permit of my adoption into one of
their clans--"that he eschew the vestment and usages of his people
and kind, and in everything, costume and ways of life alike, become
a Zuñi; for as such only could they spare him and nurture him." Not
so much, I imagine, from fear of death--for the dauntless Franciscan
friars of those days feared only God and the devil and met martyrdom as
bridegrooms of the Virgin herself--as from love of the Zuñis, if one
may judge by the regard they even still have for his memory, and a hope
that, living, he might perchance restrain them, alike to the good of
their people and his own people, the father gave way to their wishes;
or he may have been forced to accede to them by one of those compulsory
adoptions of the enemy not uncommonly practiced by the Indians in times
of hostility. Be this as it may, the Zuñis abandoned all their towns
in the valley, and taking the good priest with them, fled yet again to
the top of their high Mountain of Thunder. Around an ample amphitheater
near its southern rim, they rebuilt six or seven great clusters of
stone houses and renewed in the miniature vales of the mesa summit the
reservoirs for rain and snow, and on the crests above the trickling
spring under their towns, and along the upper reaches of the giddy
trail by which the heights were scaled they reared archers' booths and
heaps of slingstones and munitions of heavy rocks.
There, continually providing for the conflict which they knew would
sooner or later reach even their remote fastnesses (as speedily it
began to reach the Rio Grande country), they abode securely for
more than ten years, living strictly according to the ways of their
forefathers, worshiping only the beloved of war and the wind and rain,
nor paying aught of attention to the jealous gods of the Spaniard.
Then at last Diego de Vargas, the reconquistador of New Mexico,
approached Zuñiland with his force of foot soldiers and horsemen. The
Zuñis, learning this, poisoned the waters of their springs at Pescado
and near the entrance to the valley with yucca juice and cactus spines,
and, they say, "with the death-magic of corpse shells; so that the
horses and men, drinking there, were undone or died of bloating and
bowel sickness." In this latter statement the historians of Vargas
and the Zuñi traditions agree. But the captain-general could not have
stormed the Rock of Cibola. With the weakened force remaining at his
command his efforts were doubly futile. Therefore, where now the new
peach orchards of the Zuñis grow on the sunlit sand slopes, 800 feet
below the northern crest of the mesa their fathers so well defended in
those days, Vargas camped his army, with intent to besiege the heathen
renegades, and to harass and pick off such stragglers as came within
the range of his arquebuses.
Now, however, the good friar whom the Indians called Kwan Tátchui
Lók‘yana ("Juan Gray-robed-father-of-us"), was called to council by
the elders, and given a well-scraped piece of deerskin, whitened with
prayer meal, and some bits of cinder, wherewith to make markings of
meaning to his countrymen. And he was bidden to mark thereon that the
Zuñis were good to those who, like him, were good to them and meddled
not; nor would they harm any who did not harm their women and children
and their elders. And that if such these captains and their warriors
would but choose and promise to be, they would descend from their
mountain, nor stretch their bowstrings more. But when they told their
gray father that he could now join his people if that by so doing he
might stay their anger, and told him so to mark it, the priest, so the
legend runs, "dissembled and did not tell that he was there, only that
the fathers of the Áshiwi were good now;" for he willed, it would seem,
to abide with them all the rest of his days, which, alas, were but few.
Then the hide was tied to a slingstone and taken to the edge of the
mesa, and cast down into the midst of the watchful enemy by the arm of
a strong warrior. And when the bearded foemen below saw it fall, they
took it up and curiously questioned it with their eyes, and finding
its answers perfect and its import good, they instant bore it to their
war captain, and in token of his consent, they waved it aloft. So was
speech held and peace forthwith established between them.
That without casualty to the Zuñis an understanding was in some
way soon reached between them and Vargas, the chroniclers of the
expedition agree with this Zuñi legend; and before the end of the
century the Indians had all descended to the plain again and were
gathered, except in seasons of planting and harvest, chiefly at three
of their easternmost towns, and the central one of Hálona Ítiwana,
the Zuñi of today. After the reconquest at least some of the missions
were rehabilitated, and missionaries dwelt with the Zuñis now and
again. But other chiefs than those chosen by the priestly elders of
the people were thenceforward chosen by the Spaniards to watch the
people--gobernador, alcalde, and tenientes,--and these in turn were
watched by Spanish soldiers whose conduct favored little the fostering
of good will and happy relations; for in 1703, goaded to desperation
by the excesses of these resident police, the Zuñis drove at least
three of them into the church and there massacred them. Then, according
to their wont, they fled, for the last time, to the top of Thunder
mountain.
When they finally descended they planted numerous peach orchards among
the cliffs and terraces of Grand mountain and Twin mountains to the
northward of Zuñi, and there also laid out great gardens and many
little cornfields. And with the pretext of wishing to be near their
crops there, they built the seven Sónoli ‘Hlúëlawe (the "Towns of
Sonora"), so named because the peach stones they had planted there had
been brought from Sonora, Mexico. But their real object was to escape
from the irksome and oft-repeated spyings upon and interdictions of
their sacred observances and mythic drama-dances, which, as time went
on, the Spanish frailes, supported by the increasing power of the
authorities at Santa Fé in the first half of the eighteenth century,
were wont to make. So, in hidden and lone nooks on the mountains,
where their fine foundations may be seen even now, the Indian priests
had massive kivas built, and there from year to year they conducted
in secret the rites which but for this had never been preserved so
perfectly for telling, albeit only in outline, in the following pages.
But even thus far from the mission and its warders the plume-wands of
worship, which in earlier times had been made long (each one according
to its kind as long as from the elbow to the tip of one finger or
another of him who made and sacrificed it), now had to be cut short and
made only as long as the hands and the various fingers of those who
made them; for the large plumed messages to the winds and spaces often
betrayed the people, and they must now needs be made of size convenient
for burial or hiding away in crannies or under bushes as near as might
be to the shrines of the sacred precincts where once the fathers had
worshiped so freely.
Toward the end of the century, between 1775 and 1780, the old Church
of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which now harbors only burros and shivering
dogs of cold winter nights and is toppling to ruin in the middle of
the grand plaza of Zuñi, was built and beautifully decorated with
carved altar pieces and paintings, gifts from the King of Spain to the
Indies and work of resident monks as well. Its walls were painted--as
the more recent plasterings scaling off here and there reveal--by Zuñi
artists, who scrupled not to mingle many a pagan symbol of the gods of
wind, rain, and lightning, sunlight, storm-dark and tempest, war-bale
and magic, and, more than all, emblems of their beloved goddess-virgins
of corn-growing with the bright-colored Christian decorations. And
doubtless their sedulous teachers or masters, as the case may have
been, understanding little, if aught, of the meanings of these things,
were well pleased that these reluctant proselytes should manifest so
much of zeal and bestow such loving care on this temple of the holy and
only true faith.
In a measure the padres were right. The Indians thenceforward did
manifest not only more care for the mission, but more readiness to
attend mass and observe the various holy days of the church. To be
baptized and receive baptismal names they had ever been willing, nay,
eager, for they were permitted, if only as a means of identification,
to retain their own _tik‘ya shíiwe_ ("names totemic of the sacred
assemblies"), which names the priests of the mission innocently
adopted for them as surnames and scrupulously recorded in the quaint
old leather-covered folios of their mission and church. Thus it
chances that in these faded but beautifully and piously indicted
pages of a century ago I find names so familiar, so like those I
heard given only a few years since to aged Zuñi friends now passed
away, that, standing out clearly from the midst of the formal Spanish
phrases of these old-time books, they seem like the voices of the
dead of other generations, and they tell even more clearly than such
voices could tell of the causes which worked to render the Zuñis
of those times apparently so reconciled to Spanish teaching and
domination.
For it is manifest that when, as the meaning of his name informs
us, the chief priest of the Kâ´kâkwe, or mythic drama-dancers of a
hundred years ago, entered the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and was
registered as "Feliciano Pautiatzanilunquia" (Páutia Tsani Lúnk’ya), or
"Felix Of-the-sacred-dancers-glorious-sun-god-youth," neither he nor
any of his attendant clan relatives, whose names are also recorded,
thought of renouncing their allegiance to the gods of Zuñi or the
ever sacred Kâ´kâ; but that they thought only of gaining the magic of
purification and the name-potency of the gods of another people, as
well as of securing the sanctification if not recognition of their own
gods and priests by these other gods and priests.
That this was so is shown also by the sacred character almost
invariably of even the less exalted tribal names they gave. Thus,
those belonging not to the priesthood, yet to the "midmost" or
septuarchial clans, as "Francisco Kautzitihua" (Káutsitiwa), or
"Francis Giver of-the-midmost-dance," and "Angela Kahuitietza" (Káwiti
Etsa), or "Angelina Of-the-midmost-dance Little maiden;" and those
belonging to yet other clan divisions and the Kâ´kâ, like "Manuel
Layatzilunquia" (Laíyatsi Lúnk‘ya), or "Emanuel Of-the-flowing plume
Glorious-tall-bearer," and "María Laytzitilutza" (Laítsitilutsa), or
"Mary Of-the-soft-flowing-plume Little-bearer;" and, finally, even
the least sacred but mythically alegoric clan names, such as "Manuel
Layujtigua" (Lá-yúhtiwa) or "Emanuel Plume-of-lightness," a name of the
Eagle clan and upper division of the tribe; and "Lucia Jayatzemietza"
(Haíya Tsemi Étsa), or "Lucy Of-green-growing-things-ever-thinking
Little-maiden," which, alluding to the leaves of growing corn and
vines when watched by the young unmarried girls, is one of the Corn or
Seed clan names belonging to the southern division. Only very rarely
were the colloquial names one hears most often in Zuñi (the sacred and
totemic names are considered too precious for common use) given for
baptismal registration. I have found but two or three. One of these is
written "Estévan Nato Jasti" (Náto Hastiŋ) or "Stephen Old-tobacco,"
a Navajo sobriquet which, in common with the few others like it, was
undoubtedly offered reluctantly in place of the "true and sacred name,"
because some relative who had recently borne it was dead and therefore
his name could not be pronounced aloud lest his spirit and the hearts
of those who mourned him be disturbed.
But the presence of these ordinary names evidences no less than that of
the more "idolatrous" ones, the uncompromisingly paganistic spirit of
these supposedly converted Indians, and the unmodified fashion of their
thoughts at the period of their truest apparent allegiance, or at least
submission, to the church. Hence I have not hesitated to pause somewhat
in the course of this introductory sketch to give these examples in
detail, particularly as they evidence not merely the exceeding vitality
of the native Zuñi cult, but at the same time present an explanation of
the strange spectacle of earnest propagandists everywhere vigilantly
seeking out and ruthlessly repressing the native priesthood and their
dances and other ceremonials, yet, unconsciously to themselves,
solemnizing these very things by their rites of baptism, officially
recognizing, in the eyes of the Indians, the very names and titles of
the officiators and offices they otherwise persecuted and denounced.
It was quite of a piece with all this that during the acts of worship
performed in the old church at that time by the Zuñis, whilst they
knelt at mass or responded as taught to the mysterious and to them
magic, but otherwise meaningless, credo, they scattered in secret their
sacred white prayer-meal, and invoked not only the souls of their dead
priests--who as caciques or rulers of the pueblo were accorded the
distinction of burial in the church, under their very feet--but also,
the tribal medicine-plumes and fetiches hidden away under the very
altar where stood the archenemy of their religion!
So, in following farther the Spanish history of Zuñi, we need not
be surprised that all went well for a while after the completion of
the church, and that more than twenty priests were at one time and
another resident missionaries of Zuñi. Nor, on the other hand, need we
be surprised that when in the early part of the present century these
missionaries began to leave the pagan surnames out of their registers
giving Spanish names instead--began to suspect, perhaps, the nature
of the wall paintings, or for some other reason had them whitewashed
away--and sought more assiduously than ever, in the deepest hiding
places of the many-storied pueblo, to surprise the native priests at
their unholy pagan practices, that the records of baptisms in the old
books grew fewer and fewer, and that as the secular power withdrew
more and more its support of the clergy, the latter could no longer
control their disaffected flock, and that finally the old mission had
to be abandoned, never again to be reoccupied save on occasions of the
parochial visits of priests resident in far-away Mexican towns or in
other Indian pueblos.
Nevertheless, although the old church was thus abandoned and is now
utterly neglected, there lingers still with the Indians a singular
sentiment for it, and this has been supposed to indicate that they
retain some conscious remnant of the faith and teachings for which it
once stood.
It is true that the Zuñis of today are as eager as were their
forefathers for baptism and for baptismal names additional to their
own. But it must be remembered that baptism--the purification of the
head by sprinkling or of the face by washing with medicine-water, was
a very old institution with this people even before the Spaniards
found them. With them anyone being named anew or assuming a new
personality or office is invariably sprinkled or washed "that he be
the more cleanly revealed and the better recommended in his new guise
and character to the gods and spirits" invoked for the occasion,
"and thus be constantly recognized by them as their child, named of
themselves, and so be made a special recipient of their favor." This
custom is observed, indeed, on many occasions, as on reaching puberty
or before any great change in life, or before initiation into the
sacred societies, as well as both before and after war, and especially
before and after performance in the sacred dances. The head and face of
every participant in these mythic dramas is washed or sprinkled when
he is being painted and masked to represent or to assume the presence
and personality of the god for whom he is to act or by whom he is to be
possessed.
Thus it may be seen that this custom probably had its rise in the
simple and necessary act of washing the face for painting before the
performance of any ceremony calling for the assumption of a new rôle,
and in the washing away of the paint, when the ordinary condition of
life was to be resumed after such performance. Thus, too, it may be
seen that baptism as practiced by the early Franciscan missionaries
must have seemed not only familiar to the Zuñis, but also eminently
proper and desirable on occasion of their accepting the benefits of
initiation into what they supposed was the Kâ´kâ, or one of the
general sacred societies of these other people. No wonder, then, that
when about to be baptized they insisted on giving their own sacred
names of the Kâ´kâ, if only as a surety of their full recognition under
them in this new Kâ´kâ, no less than under the new names they were
about to receive.
It is also true that the Zuñis do not again burn the dead and cast
their ashes into the river, nor bury the bodies of the clan elders, or
the priests of the tribal septuarchy, in their own houses, as they did
ere the time of Coronado, or "under the ladders," as their funereal
rituals continue nevertheless to say they do. They bury all, now, in
the little strip of consecrated ground out in front of the church;
ground already so overfilled with the bones of past generations that
never a new grave is made that does not encroach on other graves. Bones
lie scattered all about there, rubbish accumulates, the wooden cross
in the center of the place is frequently broken, and the mud walls
inclosing it are sometimes allowed to fall to the ground. Yet in vain I
urged them if only for sanitary reasons to abandon burying their dead
there, and inter them in the sand hills to the south of the pueblo.
"Alas! we could not," they said. "This was the ground of the church
which was the house of our fathers wherein they were buried, they
and their children, 'under the descending ladders.' How, if we bury
our dead in lone places, may they be numbered with our 'fathers and
children of the descending ladders?'"
But far from indicating any lingering desire for "Christian burial,"
this is a striking example of the real, though not apparent,
persistence of their original mortuary customs. For they still
ceremonially and ritualistically "burn" their ordinary dead, as did
their forefathers when first compelled to bury in the churchyard, by
burning some of their hair and personal effects with the customary clan
offerings of food and property, and casting the ashes of all into the
river; and it matters not where these, who virtually exist no more, but
are, in their eyes, consumed and given to the waters, are buried, save
that they be placed with the priestly dead of today, as the "children"
or ordinary dead were placed with the priestly dead in the days of
the "Mísa k‘yakwe" or "Mission-house people." So, too, the priests
of today, or the tribal fathers, are still painted with the black of
silence over their mouths and the yellow and green of light and life
over their eyes and nostrils, as are the gods, and are ritualistically
buried "under the ladders," that is, in their own houses, when actually
buried in the churchyard. Thus, when the gods are invoked, these, as
being demigods, still priests of the beloved, are also invoked, first,
as "Fathers and children of the descending ladder," then as souls in
the clouds and winds and waters, "Makers of the ways of life." So the
whole burial ground of the church is, in the estimation of the Zuñi,
a fetich whereby to invoke the souls of the ancestors, the potency of
which would be destroyed if disturbed; hence the place is neither cared
for nor abandoned, though recognized even by themselves as a "direful
place in daylight."
It is much the same with the old church. A few years since a party of
Americans who accompanied me to Zuñi desecrated the beautiful antique
shrine of the church, carrying away "Our Lady of Guadalupe of the
Sacred Heart," the guardian angels, and some of the painted bas-reliefs
attached to the frame of the altar. When this was discovered by the
Indians, consternation seized the whole tribe; council after council
was held, at which I was alternately berated (because people who had
come there with me had thus "plundered their fathers' house"), and
entreated to plead with "Wasintona" to have these "precious saints and
sacred masks of their fathers" returned to them.
Believing at the time that the Indians really reverenced these things
as Christian emblems, and myself reverencing sincerely the memory of
the noble missionaries who had braved death and labored so many years
in the cause of their faith and for the good of these Indians, I
promised either to have the original relics returned or to bring them
new saints; and I also urged them to join me in cleaning out the old
church, repairing the rents in its walls and roof, and plastering once
more its rain-streaked interior. But at this point their mood seemed to
change. The chiefs and old men puffed their cigarettes, unmoved by the
most eloquent appeals I could make, save to say, quite irrelevantly,
that I "talked well," and that all my thoughts were good, very good,
but they could not heed them.
I asked them if they did not care for their _míssa k‘yakwi_ or
mission-house. "Yea, verily," they replied, with fervor. "It was the
sacred place of our fathers, even more sacred than were the things
taken away therefrom."
I asked if they would not, then, in memory of those fathers, restore
its beauty.
"Nay," they replied, "we could not, alas! for it was the míssa-house of
our fathers who are dead, and dead is the míssa-house! May the fathers
be made to live again by the adding of meat to their bones? How, then,
may the míssa-house be made alive again by the adding of mud to its
walls?"
Not long afterward there was a furious night storm of wind and rain.
On the following morning, great seams appeared in the northern walls
of the old building. I called a council of the Indians and urged that
since they would not repair the míssa-house, it be torn down; for it
might fall over some day and kill the women and children as they passed
through the narrow alley it overshadowed, on their way to and from the
spring. Again I was told that my words were good, but alas! they could
not heed them; that it was the míssa-house of their fathers! How, if
they took it away, would the fathers know their own? It was well that
the wind and rain wore it away, as time wasted away their fathers'
bones. That mattered not, for it was the work of the beloved, whereof
they, the fathers, were aware, but for themselves to move it suddenly
away, that were worse than the despoiling of the shrine; for it was the
house of the fathers, the shrine only a thing thereof, not a thing of
the fathers as verily as was the house itself.
From their point of view this reasoning of the Indians was perfectly
consistent, based as it was on their belief that the souls of their
ancestors were mediators and that their mortal remains and the places
and things thereof were means of invoking them, quite as sacrifices are
supposed to be, for the time being, the mortal and mediate parts of the
gods and spirits to which they have been offered, hence a potent means
of invoking them. This is shown much more clearly in the only other
instance of seeming reverence for the church that I can pause to give.
The Zuñis are careful to remove all traces of Catholicism, or rather
all symbols of the Mexican religion, from their persons or vicinity
during the performance of their sacred dances or rites, seeing to it
that no Mexican word, even, is ever spoken in the presence of the
Kâ´kâ. If a Mexican or anyone suspected of being a Mexican happens
to approach their town during a ceremonial, he is met by watchful
sentinels and led, no matter what his rank, condition, or haste,
to some sequestered room, where, although courteously treated and
hospitably entertained without charge, he is securely locked up and
rigorously guarded until after the dance or other observance is over.
"The fathers of these Mexicans did violence to our fathers," say the
Indians in explanation, "when that our fathers of old called the sacred
Kâ´kâ. Therefore, in those days our fathers sought to hide the dancers
from their eyes. Our fathers come nigh in breath, when now we call
the Kâ´kâ, and they aid our songs and prayers to the beloved Gods of
Rain and Wind. How, if they see we have departed from their customs,
and reveal these things? Then will they be sad at our forgetfulness of
their ways, and filled with fear lest these evil people, beholding,
do sacrilege to their precious Kâ´kâ, and will flee away, nor aid our
songs and prayers for rain, nor our calls for their beloved presence!"
Nevertheless, in autumn, when the harvest is over, one may see the
dilapidated little figure of Saint Francis borne about the pueblo
on the eve of the "Feast of the Dead;" and one may see here and
there candles burning, or such poor substitutes for them as the
Indians can get; and here and there also old rosaries and a few brass
crucifixes revealed. Before they fell, one heard, as the night wore
on, the ancient church bells hammered; and half forgotten, wholly
unintelligible phrases of church Latin chanted. But all this is not
in memory of a "saint's day," as would seem, or as one would be told
were he injudiciously to inquire. It is the feast and drama of the
beloved dead of all days past. And whilst the dead of long, very long
ago, must first be summoned by means of their ancient relics which
best they knew--the tribal medicines and fetiches, and the songs to
them belonging--yet the "old ones of the míssa times knew also these
things of the míssa; and so, that they be lured near and come not as
strangers, but find means of recognition and movement (manifestation)
to us, and happily receive our offerings of food to the fire, they
must (in place of the summoning songs and drums and rattles) hear the
church bells and chants of the Spaniards and see the things which they,
perforce, held to most familiarly and with least fear and secrecy in
times of festival while yet they lived in daylight."
I need not add that this fully accounts for the contradictory behavior
of the Indians in reference to the old church, the burial ground, and
other things pertaining to it. The church could not be rebuilt. It had
been dead so long that, rehabilitated, it would be no longer familiar
to the "fathers" who in spirit had witnessed its decay. Nor could it be
taken suddenly away. It had stood so long that, missing it, they would
be sad, or might perhaps even abandon it.
The Zuñi faith, as revealed in this sketch of more than three hundred
and fifty years of Spanish intercourse, is as a drop of oil in water,
surrounded and touched at every point, yet in no place penetrated or
changed inwardly by the flood of alien belief that descended upon it.
Herein is exemplified anew the tendency of primitive-minded man to
interpret unfamiliar things more directly than simply, according to
their appearances merely, not by analysis in our sense of the term; and
to make his interpretations, no less than as we ourselves do, always in
the light of what he already familiarly believes or habitually thinks
he knows. Hence, of necessity he adjusts other beliefs and opinions
to his own, but never his own beliefs and opinions to others; and
even his usages are almost never changed in spirit, however much so
in externals, until all else in his life is changed. Thus, he is slow
to adopt from alien peoples any but material suggestions, these even,
strictly according as they suit his ways of life; and whatever he does
adopt, or rather absorb and assimilate, from the culture and lore of
another people, neither distorts nor obscures his native culture,
neither discolors nor displaces his original lore.
All of the foregoing suggests what might be more fully shown by further
examples, the aboriginal and uncontaminated character--so far as a
modern like myself can represent it--of the myths delineated in the
following series of outlines. Yet a casual visitor to Zuñi, seeing but
unable to analyze the signs above noted, would be led to infer quite
the contrary by other and more patent signs. He would see horses,
cattle and donkeys, sheep and goats, to say nothing of swine and a
few scrawny chickens. He would see peach orchards and wheat fields,
carts (and wagons now), and tools of metal; would find, too, in queer
out-of-the-way little rooms native silversmiths plying their primitive
bellows and deftly using a few crude tools of iron and stone to turn
their scant silver coins into bright buttons, bosses, beads, and
bracelets, which every well-conditioned Zuñi wears; and he would see
worn also, especially by the men, clothing of gaudy calico and other
thin products of the looms of civilization. Indeed, if one did not see
these things and rate them as at first the gifts to this people of
those noble old Franciscan friars and their harder-handed less noble
Spanish companions, infinitely more pathetic than it is would be the
history of the otherwise vain effort I have above outlined; for it
is not to be forgotten that the principal of these gifts have been
of incalculable value to the Zuñi. They have helped to preserve him,
through an era of new external conditions, from the fate that met more
than thirty other and less favored Pueblo tribes--annihilation by the
better-armed, ceaselessly prowling Navajo and Apache. And for this
alone, their almost sole accomplishment of lasting good to the Zuñi,
not in vain were spent and given the lives of the early mission fathers.
It is intimated that aside from adding such resources to the tribe as
enabled it to survive a time of fearful stress and danger, even the
introduction of Spanish plants, animals, and products did not greatly
change the Zuñis. This is truer than would at first seem possible. The
Zuñi was already a tiller of the soil when wheat and peaches were given
him. To this day he plants and irrigates his peach trees and wheat
crops much as he anciently planted and watered his corn--in hills,
hoeing all with equal assiduity; and he does not reap his wheat, but
gathers it as he gathers his corn in the ear. Thus, only the kind of
grain is new. The art of rearing it and ways of husbanding and using
it remain unchanged. The Zuñi was already a herder when sheep and
goats were given him. He had not only extensive preserves of rabbits
and deer, but also herds--rather than flocks--of turkeys, which by
day were driven out over the plains and mesas for feeding, and at
night housed near the towns or in distant shelters and corrals. It is
probable that his ancestry had even other domesticated animals. And he
used the flesh of these animals as food, their feathers and fur as the
materials for his wonderfully knitted, woven, and twilled garments and
robes, as he now uses the mutton and goat meat for food, and the wool
of the sheep for his equally well-knitted, woven, and twilled, though
less beautiful, garments and robes. Thus, only the kinds (and degree
of productivity) of the animals are new, the arts of caring for them
and modes of using their products, are unchanged. This is true even
in detail. When I first went to live with the Zuñis their sheep were
plucked, not sheared, with flat strips of band iron in place of the
bone spatulæ originally used in plucking the turkeys; and the herders
always scrupulously picked up stray flecks of wool--calling it "down,"
not hair, nor fur--and spinning it, knitting, too, at their long woolen
leggings as they followed their sheep, all as their forefathers used
ever to pick up and twirl the stray feathers and knit at their down
kilts and tunics as they followed and herded their turkeys. Even the
silversmiths of Zuñi today work coins over as their ancestors of the
stone-using age worked up bits of copper, not only using tools of
stone and bone for the purpose but using even the iron tools of the
Spaniard mostly in stone-age fashion.[1]
[1] Some of the primitive Zuñi methods of working metals
are incidentally described in my paper entitled "Primitive
Copper-working, an Experimental Study," in The American
Anthropologist, Washington, January, 1894, pp. 193-217.
This applies equally to their handling of the hoes, hatchets, and
knives of civilized man. They use their hoes--the heaviest they can
get--as if weighted, like the wooden and bone hoes of antiquity,
vertically, not horizontally. They use their hatchets or axes and
knives more for hacking and scraping and chipping than for chopping,
hewing, and whittling, and in such operations they prefer working
toward themselves to working from themselves, as we work. Finally,
their garments of calico and muslin are new only in material. They
are cut after the old fashion of the ancestral buckskin breeches and
shirts, poncho coats of feathers and fur or fiber, and down or cotton
breech clouts, while in the silver rings and bracelets of today, not
only the shapes but even the half-natural markings of the original
shell rings and bracelets survive, and the silver buttons and bosses
but perpetuate and multiply those once made of copper as well as of
shell and white bone.
Thus, only one absolutely new practical element and activity was
introduced by the Spaniards--beasts of burden and beast transportation
and labor. But until the present century cattle were not used natively
for drawing loads or plows, the latter of which, until recently being
made of a convenient fork, are only enlarged harrowing-sticks pointed
with a leaf of iron in place of the blade of flint; nor were carts
employed. Burdens were transported in panniers adapted to the backs of
burros instead of to the shoulders of men.
The Zuñi is a splendid rider, but even now his longest journeys are
made on foot in the old way. He has for centuries lived a settled
life, traveling but little, and the horse has therefore not played
a very conspicuous part in his later life as in the lives of less
sedentary peoples, and is consequently unheard of, as are all new
things--including the greatest of all, the white man himself--in his
tribal lore, or the folk tales, myths, and rituals of his sacred
cult-societies. All this strengthens materially the claim heretofore
made, that in mind, and especially in religious culture, the Zuñi is
almost as strictly archaic as in the days ere his land was discovered.