OUTLINE OF PRISTINE ZUÑI HISTORY.

If a historic sketch of Spanish intercourse with the Zuñi people

indicates that little change was wrought on their native mood by so

many years of alien contact, an outline of their pristine history, or

a sketch of their growth and formation as a people, will serve yet

further to show not only how, but also why, this was so, as well as to

explain much in the following outlines of their myths of creation and

migration, the meaning of which would otherwise remain obscure.

Linguistically the Zuñi Indians of today stand alone, unrelated,

so far as has heretofore been determined, to any other Indians

either sedentary, like themselves, or unsettled, like the less

advanced peoples of the plains. Nevertheless, although they as yet

thus constitute a single linguistic stock, there are present and

persistent among them two distinct types of physique and numerous

survivals--inherited, not borrowed--of the arts, customs, myths, and

institutions of at least two peoples, unrelated at first, or else

separate and very diversely conditioned for so long a period of their

preunited history that their development had progressed unequally and

along quite different lines, at the time of their final coalition. That

thus the Zuñis are actually descendants of two or more peoples, and

the heirs of two cultures at least, is well shown in their legends of

ruins and olden times, and especially in these myths of creation and

migration as interpreted by archeologic and ethnographic research.

According to all these tokens and evidences, one branch of their

ancestral people was, as compared with the other, aboriginal in the

region comprising the present Zuñi country and extending far toward

the north, whence at some remoter time they had descended. The other

branch was intrusive, from the west or southwest, the country of the

lower Rio Colorado, their earliest habitat not so clearly defined and

their remoter derivation enigmatical, for they were much more given

to wandering, less advanced in the peaceful arts, and their earliest

ruins are those of comparatively rude and simple structures, hence

scant and difficult to trace, at least beyond the western borders of

Arizona. Considering both of these primary or parental stocks of the

Zuñi as having been thus so widely asunder at first, the ancestral

relations of the aboriginal or northern branch probably ranged the

plains north of the arid mountain region of Utah and Colorado ere

they sought refuge in the desert and canyons of these territories.

Yet others of their descendants, if still surviving, may not unlikely

be traced among not only other Pueblos, but also and more distinctly

among wilder and remoter branches, probably of the Shoshonean stock.

The ancestral relations of the intrusive or western branch, however,

were a people resembling the semisettled Yumans and Pimans in mode of

life, their ruins combining types of structure characteristic of both

these stocks; and if their descendants, other than Zuñis themselves,

be yet identified among Yuman tribes, or some like people of the lower

Colorado region, they will be found (such of them as survive) not

greatly changed, probably, from the condition they were all in when,

at a very distant time, their eastward faring kinsfolk, who ultimately

became Zuñis, left them there.

It is quite certain that relatives, in a way--not ancestral--of the

Zuñis still exist. Not many years before Fray Marcos de Niza discovered

Cibola, the Zuñians conquered some small towns of the Keres to the

south-southeastward of the Zuñi-Cibola country, and adopted some of

the survivors and also some of their ritual-dramas--still performed,

and distinctively Keresan in kind--into their own tribe. Previously

to that--previously, indeed, to their last and greatest union with

the settled people mentioned as the aboriginal Zuñi--a large body of

the western branch and their earlier fellows (called in the myths of

creation "Our lost others") separated from them in the country south

and west of the Rio Puerco and the Colorado Chiquito, and went, not

wholly as related in the myths, yet quite, undoubtedly, far away to

the southward. I have identified and traced their remains in Arizona

toward and into Mexico as far as the coast, and if, as the Zuñis still

believe, any of them survive to this day, they are to be looked for

lower down in Mexico or in the still farther south, whither, it is

said, they disappeared so long ago. But, as before intimated, these

relatives (by adoption in the one case, by derivation in the other)

were not, strictly speaking, ancestral, and thus are barely alluded to

in the myths, and therefore concern us less than do the two main or

parental branches.

Of these, the one which contributed more largely in numbers, certain

culture characteristics, and the more peaceful arts of life to make

the Zuñis what they were at the time of the Spanish conquest, was the

aboriginal branch. The intrusive or western branch is, strange to say,

although least numerous, the one most told of in the myths, the one

which speaks throughout them in the first person; that is, which claims

to be the original Shíwi or Zuñi. Of this branch it is unnecessary

to say much more here than the myths themselves declare, save to add

that it was, if not the conquering, at least, and for a long time,

the dominant one; that to it the Zuñis owe their vigor and many, if

not most, of their distinguishing traits; and that, coming as they

did from the west, they located there, and not in the north, as did

all these other Pueblo Indians (including even those whom they found

and prevailed over, or were joined by, in the present land of Zuñi),

the place where the human family originated, where the ancestral gods

chiefly dwell, and whither after death souls of men are supposed to

return anon.

According to their own showing in the myths they were, while a

masterful people, neither so numerous at the time of their coming, nor

so advanced, nor so settled, as were the peoples whom they "overtook"

from time to time as they neared the land of Zuñi or the "Middle of the

world." They did not cultivate the soil, or, at least, apparently did

not cultivate corn to any considerable extent before they met the first

of these peoples, for, to use their own words, they were "ever seeking

seeds of the grasses like birds on the mesas."

There is abundant reason for supposing that the "elder nations"--these

peoples whom they "overtook," the "People of the Dew," the "Black

people," and the "Corn people" of the "towns builded round"--were

direct and comparatively unchanged descendants of the famous cliff

dwellers of the Mancos, San Juan, and other canyons of Utah, Colorado,

and northern New Mexico. The evidences of this are numerous and

detailed, but only the principal of them need here be examined.

The ruins of these rounded towns of the Corn tribes which Hernando de

Alvarado and Fray Juan de Padilla saw in 1540 while going southeastward

from Zuñi, are especially characteristic of the Zuñi region, and extend

quite generally both southward toward the Rito Quemado and the Salinas

in western central New Mexico, and, by way of the Chaco, northward

nearly to the Colorado boundary. They are as often half round as they

are wholly oblong or circular, and even when completely rounded or

oval in outline are usually divided into two semicircular parts by an

irregular court or series of courts extending lengthwise through the

middle, and thus making them really double villages of the half-round

type.

A comparison of the ground plans of these round or semicircular ruins

with those of the typical cliff ruins reveals the fact that they were

simply cliff towns transferred, as it were, to the level of the open

plains or mesa tops. Their outer or encircling walls were, save at

the extremities of the courts, generally unbroken and perpendicular,

as uninterrupted and sheer, almost, as were the natural canyon walls

surrounding to the rearward the older cliff towns to which they thus

corresponded and which they apparently were built to replace; and the

houses descended like steps from these outer walls in terraced stories,

facing, like the seats of an amphitheater, the open courts, precisely

as descended the terraced stories of the cliff dwellings from the

encircling rock walls of the sheltered ledges or shelves on which they

were reared, necessarily facing in the same manner the open canyons

below. Thus the courts may be supposed to have replaced the canyons,

as the outer walls replaced the cliffs or the back walls built nearest

them in the rear of at least the deeper village caves or shelters.

Other structural and kindred features of the cliff towns are found

to be equally characteristic of the round ruins, features which,

originating in the conditions of building and dwelling in the cliffs,

came to be perpetuated in the round towns afterward built on the plains.

So limited was the foothold afforded by the scant ledges or in the

sheltered but shallow hollows of the cliffs where the ancient cliff

dwellers were at first forced as a measure of safety to take refuge and

finally to build, that they had to economize space to the utmost. Hence

in part only the women and children, being smaller and more in need

of protection than the men, were accommodated with dwelling places as

such, the rooms of which were so diminutive that, to account for them,

theories of the dwarfish size of the cliff dwellers as a race have been

common. As a further measure of economy these rooms were built atop of

one another, sometimes to the height of several stories--up, in fact,

to the very roof at the rear of the cavern in most cases--and thence

they were terraced toward the front in order that light and air might

be admitted as directly as possible to each story.

For the double purpose of accommodating the men and of serving as

assembly rooms for councils and ceremonial functions, large circular

chambers were constructed almost always out in front of the terraced

dwelling cells of the women and children, and thus in the more exposed

mouths of the caverns or shelters the villages nestled in. These round

assembly rooms or kivas were often, indeed, built up from sloping

portions of the sheer outer edge of the village cave shelf, in order to

be as much as possible on a level with or even below the limited ground

space between them and the houses farther back, so that the front along

the lower and outermost row of these house cells might remain open and

unobstructed to passage.

The dwelling rooms or house cells themselves were made as nearly

rectangular as was practicable, for only partitions divided them;

but of necessity such as were placed far back toward or against the

encircling and naturally curved rock walls, or the rear masonry walls,

built in conformity to their curvature in all the deeper caves, had

small triangular or keystone-shape spaces between their partitions.

These, being too small for occupancy even by children, were used as

storerooms for grain and other household supplies. When the cave in

which a village was built happened to be very deep, the living rooms

could not be carried too far back, as neither light nor sufficient

air could reach them there; hence here, chiefly against the rear wall

or the cave back itself, were built other storerooms more or less

trapezoidal in shape, according to the degree of curvature in the rock

face against which they were built, or, as said before, of the rear

wall itself, which in the deeper caves often reached from floor to roof

and ran parallel to the natural semicircular back of the cavern.

Against the rearward face of such back walls when present (that is,

between them and the rear of the cave itself), behind the village

proper, if space further permitted, small rooms, ordinarily of one

story, or pens, sometimes roofless, were built for the housing of the

flocks of turkeys which the cliff dwellers kept. Beyond these poultry

houses was still kept, in the deeper village caves, a space, dark and

filled with loose soil and rubbish, in which certain of the dead,

mostly men, were buried; while other dead were interred beneath the

floors of the lowermost rooms, when the soil or sand filled in to level

up the sloping rock bottom of the shelter was sufficiently deep to

receive them.

A noteworthy peculiarity of the doorways in the upper stories leading

toward the rearward storerooms already described was that they were

often made T-shape; that is, very narrow at the bottom and abruptly

widened at the top. This was done in order to avoid the necessity of

making these openings for entrance and egress too large proportionally

to the small size of the rooms. Thus, neither were the walls weakened

nor were the inmates needlessly exposed to cold; for fuel, even of the

lightest kind, was gathered with risk and transported thither with

great difficulty, and the use of it was therefore limited to cookery,

and yet a person bearing a back load of corn, or other provender might,

by stepping first one foot, then the other, through the narrow lower

portion of such a doorway, then stooping with his blanket or basket

load, pass through without inconvenience or the necessity of unloading.

Nearly all of these features--so suited to, and some of them evidently

so unavoidable with, a people building eyrie-like abodes high up on

limited sloping ledges in pockets of the cliffs--were, although they

were totally unnecessary to the dwellers in the half-round or double

half-round towns of the plains, where space was practically unlimited

and topographic and other conditions wholly different, nevertheless

characteristic of these also.

Not only were the external walls of these old villages of the plains

semicircular, as though built in conformity with the curved rock walls

of the hollows in the cliffs, but they were continuous. That is, in

all the rounded town ruins, except those which seem to have been

reconstructed in more recent times, the outer walls were built first as

great semicircular inclosures, hollow artificial cliffs, so to say, and

afterward the house walls were built up against them inside, not into

them, as they would have been had these outer and the inner walls been

built up together. Moreover, not only were the ground plans of these

towns of the plains semicircular, as though built in conformity with

the curved rock walls of hollows in the cliffs in ancestral fashion,

but the storerooms were also still tucked away in the little flaring

spaces next to these now outer and surrounding walls, instead of being

placed near the more convenient entrances fronting the courts. The

huts or sheds for the turkeys, too, were placed not in the inclosures

of the courts, but against and outside of these external walls of the

villages; and while many of the dead were buried, as in the cliff

houses, under the floors of the lowermost rooms, others of them, almost

always men, and notably victims of war or accident, were still buried

out beyond even the turkey huts. So both the turkey huts and some of

the graves of these round villages retained the same positions relative

to one another and to the "rearward" of the dwellings that had very

naturally been given them in the cliff villages; for in these, being

behind the houses and in the rear of the caves, they occupied the most

protected areas; while in the round villages, being behind the houses,

they were thrown quite outside of the villages, hence occupied the most

exposed positions, which latter fact would appear inexplicable save by

considering it as a survival of cliff-town usage.

The kivas, or assembly rooms of the round villages, were placed

generally in front of the houses facing the courts, as of old they had

been built in the mouths of the caverns, also in front of the houses

facing the canyons. Moreover, they were, although no longer in the

way, wholly or in part subterranean, that is, sunk to the level of the

court or plaza, as in the cliff towns they had been built (except where

crowding rendered it necessary to make them two-storied, as in some

cases) up the front slopes only to the height of the general cave floor

or of the lowermost house foundations.

Finally, there were no doorways in the lower stories of the rounded

villages, the roofs of which were reached by ladders; but in the upper

stories there were passages, some of which, although here no longer so

needfully small, were still economically fashioned as of old--wide at

the top, narrow at the base, like the T-shape granary avenues of the

cliff ruins.

The closeness of correspondence of all these features in the round

ruins to those in the cliff ruins (features which in the round ruins

appear less in place than in at least the older cliff ruins) would seem

to justify my conclusion, earlier stated, that the round towns were

simply outgrowths of the cliff villages, transplanted, as it were, into

the plains; for all of these features, as they occur in the old cliff

ruins, can, with but a single exception (that of the circular form of

the kivas or assembly chambers, which, as will presently be shown, were

survivals of a yet older phase of building), be accounted for as having

originated from necessity, whereas in the round ruins they could not

have originated even as possible expedients, since they were unsuitable

save by having become customary through long usage.

I have reasserted this fact because the theory that all cliff dwellings

were but outlying places of refuge or the hunting and farming stations

of larger pueblos in their neighborhood, strongly fortified by position

in order that the small parties occupying them now and then for

longer or shorter seasons might find safe retreat in them, has been

advanced quite successfully. As this theory is not unlikely to gain a

considerable hearing, it is necessary to demonstrate even more fully

the fact that at least the round towns did not give their structural

characteristics to such of the northern cliff ruins as resembled them

in plan, and that therefore the latter are to be regarded as actual

cliff-dweller remains. In the southern portions of New Mexico and

Arizona, as on the upper Salado and in canyons of the Sierra Madre,

still farther south, all the cliff dwellings and villages were built

without reference to the curved forms of the caverns in which they

occurred.[2] That is, they rigidly retained the rectangular pueblo form

of arrangement characteristic of the larger ruins in the valleys and

plains around them. Hence for this and for other reasons they may be

regarded as pueblos transferred to the cliffs, such outposts of the

larger pueblos of the plains as it is claimed all cliff dwellings were.

So, also, as hitherto intimated, many of the later cliff dwellings,

even of the north, have rectangular pueblo additions below them in

the canyons or above them on the mesas, and some of the village

ruins in the cave shelters themselves are almost faithful miniature

reproductions in general plan of the large pueblos of the plains near

at hand; but in the one case the pueblo additions above and below were

comparatively modern, and indicate either that the cliff dwellings they

are adjacent to continued to be occupied down to the time of later

true pueblo building, or that they were reoccupied from comparatively

modern pueblos and that all additions made were constructed according

to customary later forms of building. In the other case, that of the

rectangular structures in semicircular cave shelters, either a return

to cliff dwelling from pueblo dwelling is indicated, or, as with the

southern cliff villages, these also were outposts of comparatively

modern kinds of pueblos occurring in the neighborhood. Such, for

example, was the case with many of the cliff dwellings of the Tsegi or

Canyon de Chelly, some of which continued to be occupied long after the

more easterly towns of the San Juan were abandoned, and others of which

were reoccupied, probably by Tusayan Indians, in comparatively recent

time.

[2] See Bandelier, Final Report of Investigations among the

Indians of the Southwestern United States, etc., Part II,

pp. 425-428.

The occurrence of sepulchers in or near almost all the San Juan cliff

ruins would alone indicate that they were central and permanent homes

of the people who built and occupied them. The surviving Pueblo

Indians, so far as I am aware, never bury in or near their outlying

towns. Invariably the dead are taken to the central pueblo home of the

tribe for sepulture, as there only may they become tribal fetiches in

the manner I have heretofore indicated, and be properly renounced by

the clans of kin at their place of birth and rearing. If, then, all

the cliff towns were merely outlying strongholds, no interments of the

original inhabitants would be found in them save those of children

perchance born and reared in them. In fact, this is precisely the case

with some of the towns in question, those above described as manifestly

settlements from later true pueblos.

Another feature of the older cliff dwellings is still more significant

in this connection--the presence of the kiva; for the kiva or sacred

assembly room was never, for mythic and sociologic reasons, built

in temporary or outlying settlements. The mere council chamber was

sometimes present in these, but the true kiva never, so long as they

remained resorts of more central pueblo towns, for each kiva of such a

town located a division of the tribe as pertaining to one or another of

the quarters or mythic divisions. Hence, as might be expected, in the

more southerly cliff dwellings belonging to more recent pueblos no kiva

is ever found.

The evidence furnished by the kivas is significant in other ways,

for in connection with the above theory the claim has also been

advanced that the cliff villages were occupied for only brief periods

at best; that they do not, as assumed by me, represent a phase--so

much as an incident--in the development of a people. Aside from the

linguistic, sociologic, and other evidence I have to offer later on

that of not only these kivas, but also of certain other features

of the ruins themselves, is decidedly indicative of both long and

continuous occupancy; and an examination of this evidence helps to

an understanding of the culture growth of the early cliff dwellers

as being not that of Pueblos at first, but that of Pueblo ancestry,

Pueblos developing.

Occurring in the midst of the greater groups of northern cliff

dwellings, no less than somewhat more scatteringly and widely

distributed to at least as far south as the middle of Arizona, are

remains of cave dwellings of an older type. They are usually lower down

in the cliffs, although they once occurred also in the larger and more

accessible of the caverns now occupied by later cliff-house remains,

underneath or amid which remains they may still in places be traced.

These rude and very ancient cave dwellings mark the beginnings of the

cliff occupancy. In all essentials they correspond to the modern cave

dwellings of the Sierra Madre in Sonora, Mexico, so admirably described

by my friend, Dr. Carl Lumholtz, as built and still lived in by the

Tarahumári and Tepehuani Indians, who survive either in the state of

these first cliff dwellers of the north, or, as is more probable, have

naturally and independently resorted to a similar mode of life through

stress of similar circumstances.

Like the Tarahumári, these ancient people of the north at first

resorted to the caves during only portions of the year--during the

inclement season after each harvest, as well as in times of great

danger. At other times, and during the hunting, planting, and

seed-gathering seasons particularly, they dwelt, as do the Tarahumári,

in rancherias, the distinctive remains of which lie scattered near and

far on the plateaus and plains or in the wide valleys. But the caves

were their central abodes, and the rancherias, frequently shifted, were

simply outlying stations such as are the farming hamlets of the modern

pueblos.

The earliest of these dwellings in the caves were at first simple huts

disposed separately along the rear walls of these recesses in the

cliffs. They usually had foundation walls, approximately circular in

plan, of dry-laid stones, upon which rested upper converging courses of

cross-laid logs and sticks, hexagonal and pen-like covers surmounted,

as were the rancherias of the open plains, by more or less high-pitched

roofs of thatch--here in the shelters added rather for protection from

cold than from storms of rain and snow.

But in course of time, as the people dwelling, when needful, in

these secure retreats increased in numbers, and available caves

became filled, the huts, especially in the more suitable shelters,

were crowded together in each, until no longer built separately, but

in irregularly continuous rows or groups at the rear, each divided

from others by simple, generally straight, partitions, as are the

dwelling divisions of the Tarahumári today. But unlike the latter,

these hut-like rooms of the northern cave-dwellers were still rounded

outwardly, that is, each hut (where not contiguous to or set in the

midst of others, as was the case with those along the front), retained

its circular form. The partitions and foundation walls were still

built low, and still surmounted by converging cross-laid upper courses

of logs or saplings and roofs of thatch. As with the Tarahumári, so

with these earliest cliff dwellers of the north; their granaries

were far more perfectly constructed than their own abiding places.

To adequately protect their store or provision from seed-devouring

animals, no less than from the elements, it became necessary to place

it in dry crannies or pockets of the cliffs near at hand, preferably in

recesses as far back in their caves as possible, and also to seal it up

in these natural receptacles. At first (as may be seen in connection

with the caves of Las Tusas, Arizona, containing some of the oldest and

rudest separate hut remains I have yet examined) the mouths of these

receptacles were walled up with dry-laid stones, carefully chinked,

and plastered inside with mud, precisely as were the granary pockets

of the Havasupai Indians seen by me in 1881. Later, while still the

houses continued to be mere low-walled and partitioned sheds or huts

of dry masonry, these granaries came to be quite well constructed, of

mud-laid walls, and were enlarged, as stores increased with increase

of settlement and tillage, until they had to be built outward from the

niches like good sized, slightly tapering bins, protruding somewhat

from the cave walls, and finally forming, as do the granaries of the

Tarahumári today, miniature prototypes of the perfected single cliff

house of a far later day.

In times of great danger small children were not infrequently bestowed

for safe-keeping in the larger of these little granary rooms in the

deepest recesses at the rear of the earliest cave villages, as the

finding of their remains without burial token in such situation has

attested; and thus the folk tales which modern Pueblos tell of children

left in the granary rooms and surviving the destruction or flight

of their elders by subsisting on the scant store remaining therein

(later to emerge--so the stories run--as great warrior-magicians and

deliver their captive elders), are not wholly without foundation in

the actual past of their ancestry. It was thus that these first cliff

dwellers learned to build walls of stone with mud mortar, and thus, as

their numbers increased (through immunity from destruction which, ever

better, these cliff holds afforded), the women, who from the beginning

had built and owned the granaries, learned also to build contiguously

to them, in the depths of the caverns, other granary-like cells

somewhat larger, not as places of abode, at first, but as retreats for

themselves and their children.

It is not needful to trace farther the development of the cliff village

proper into a home for the women and children, which first led to the

tucking of storerooms far back in the midst of the houses; nor is it

necessary to seek outside of such simple beginnings the causes which

first led to the construction of the kivas, always by the men for

themselves, and nearly always out in front of the house cells, which

led to the retention for ages of the circular form in these kivas and

to the survival in them for a long time (as chambers of council and

mystery, where the souls of the ancients of men communed in these

houses of old with the souls of their children's grandchildren) of

the cross-laid upper courses of logs and even the roofings of thatch.

Indeed, it is only in some way like this, as survival through slow

evolution of archaic structures for worship, that the persistence

of all these strange features--the retention for use of the men,

the position in front of the houses, the converging hexagonal log

wall caps, the unplastered roofing of thatch--until long after the

building of houses for everyday use by the women, with walls continuous

from floor to ceiling, with flat and mud-plastered roofs and smooth

finishing inside and out, manifest themselves.

Of equal significance with this persistency of survival in the kiva,

as to both structural type and function, of the earliest cave-dwelling

hut-rooms through successively higher stages in the development of

cliff architecture, is the trace of its growth ever outward; for in

nearly or quite all of the largest cliff ruins, while as a rule the

kivas occur, as stated, along the fronts of the houses--that is,

farthest out toward the mouths of the caverns--some are found quite far

back in the midst of the houses. But in every instance of this kind

which I have examined these kivas farthest back within the cell cluster

proper are not only the oldest, but in other ways plainly mark the

line of the original boundary or frontage of the entire village. And

in some of the largest of these ruins this frontage line has thus been

extended; that is, the houses have grown outward around and past the

kivas first built in front of them, and then, to accommodate increased

assemblies, successively built in front of them and in greater numbers,

not once or twice, but in some cases as many as three, four, and in one

instance five times.

All this makes it plain, I think, that the cave and cliff dweller mode

of life was a phase, not an incident merely, in the development of a

people, and that this same people in general occupied these same caves

continuously or successively for generations--how long it is needless

here to ask, but long enough to work up adaptively, and hence by very

slow degrees, each one of the little natural hints they received from

the circumstances and necessities of their situation in the caves

and cliffs into structural and other contrivances, so ingenious and

suitable and so far-fetched, apparently, so long used, too, as to give

rise to permanent usages, customs, and sociologic institutions, that

it has been well-nigh impossible to trace them to such original simple

beginnings as have been pointed out in the case of a few of them.

The art remains of both the earliest cave dwellers and of the cliff

dwellers exhibit a like continuity of adaptive development; for even

where uses of implements, etc., changed with changing conditions, they

still show survivals of their original, diverse uses, thus revealing

the antecedent condition to which they were adapted.

Moreover, this line of development was, as with the structural features

already reviewed, unbroken from first to last--from cave to cliff, and

from cliff to round-town conditions of life; for the art remains of

the round ruins, of which I recovered large numbers when conducting

the excavations of the Hemenway expedition in ruins east of Zuñi, are

with scarcely an exception identical, in type at least, with those of

the cliff ruins, although they are more highly developed, especially

the potteries, as naturally they came to be under the less restricted,

more favorable conditions of life in the open plains. Everything, in

fact, to be learned of the round-ruin people points quite unmistakably

to their descent in a twofold sense from the cliff-dwelling people;

and it remains necessary, therefore, only to account for their change

of habitat and to set forth their supposed relationship finally to the

modern Zuñi pueblos.

In earlier writings, especially in a "Study of Pueblo Pottery,"[3]

where the linguistic evidence of the derivation of the Zuñis from

cliff-dwelling peoples is to some extent discussed, I have suggested

that the prime cause of the abandonment of the cliffs by their ancestry

was most probably increase of population to beyond the limits of

available building area, and consequent overcrowding in the cliffs; but

later researches have convinced me that, although this was no doubt

a potent factor in the case and ultimately, in connection with the

obvious advantages of life in more accessible dwelling places, led by

slow degrees, as the numbers and strength of the cliff villages made it

possible, to the building of contiguous pueblos both above their cliffs

on the mesas and below them in the valleys, still it was by no means

the only or the first cause of removal from these secure strongholds.

Nor is it to be inferred from the evidence at hand that the cliff

dwellers were ever driven forth from their almost inaccessible towns,

either by stress of warfare or by lack of the means of subsistence, as

has been so often supposed. On the contrary, it is certain that long

after the earliest descents into the plains had been ventured, the

cliffs continued to be occupied, at first and for a very long period as

the permanent homes of remnant tribes, and later as winter resorts and

places of refuge in times of danger for these latter tribes, as well

as, perhaps, for their kinsfolk of the plains.

[3] Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1882-83.

It is by this supposition only that the comparatively modern form

of the square and terraced pueblos built contiguously to the latest

abandoned of the cliff towns may be explained. For when the cliff

dwellers had become numerous enough to be able to maintain themselves

to some extent out on the open plains, it has been seen that they did

not consider their villages safe and convenient or quite right unless

builded strictly, in both general form and the relative arrangement of

parts, as had been for many generations their towns in the cliffs--did

not, it is reasonable to suppose, know at once how to build villages of

any other form. Thus we may confidently regard these round towns as the

earliest built by the cliff dwellers after they first left the cliffs.

The direction in which these cavoid or cliff-form or rounded village

ruins may be farthest and most abundantly traced, is, as has been said

before, to the southward into and through the land of Zuñi as far as

the cliffless valleys bordering the Rito Quemado region in southerly

central New Mexico, wherein lies the inexhaustible Lake of Salt, which

the early Spanish chronicles mention as the possession and source of

supply of the "salt in kernels" of the Zuñi-Cibolans.

Not only did a trail (used for such long ages that I have found it

brokenly traceable for hundreds of miles) lead down from the cliff-town

country to this broad valley of the Lake of Salt, but also there have

been found in nearly all the cliff dwellings of the Mancos and San Juan

section, whence this trail descends, salt in the characteristic kernels

and colors found in this same source of the Zuñi supply.

This salt, as occurring in the cliff ruins, is commonly discovered

wrapped in receptacles of corn husk, neatly tied into a trough-like

form or pouch by bands of corn-leaf or yucca fiber. These pouches are

precisely like the "wraps of the ancients," or packs of corn husk in

which the sacred salt is ceremoniously brought home in advance of the

cargoes of common salt by the Zuñi priests on each occasion of their

annual, and especially of their greater quadrennial, pilgrimages (in

June, after the planting) to the Lake of Salt. And it is not difficult

to believe that both the packs and the pilgrimages--which latter offer

many suggestive features not to be considered here--are survivals of

the time when the remoter cliff-dwelling ancestry of the Zuñi Corn

tribes ventured once in a period of years to go forth, in parties large

enough for mutual protection, to the far-off source of their supply of

salt.

Except this view be taken it is difficult to conceive why the "time

after planting" should have become so established by the Zuñis (who are

but two days' foot-journey from the lake, and visit its neighborhood at

other periods of the year on hunting and other excursions) as the only

period for the taking of the salt--to take which, indeed, by them or

others at any other season, is held to be dire sacrilege.

But to the cliff dwellers and their first descendants of the farther

north this period "after the planting" was the only available one of

the year; for the journey along their trail of salt must have consumed

many days, and been so fraught with danger as to have drawn away a

goodly portion of the warrior population who could ill be spared at a

later time in the season when the ripening and garnering of the harvest

drew back upon the cliff-towns people the bands of predatory savages

who annually pillaged their outlying fields, and in terror of whom they

for so long a time clung to their refuge in the cliffs.

Additional considerations lead further to the inference not only that

the Zuñis inherit their pilgrimages for the salt and the commemorative

and other ceremonials which have developed around them directly from

the cliff-dweller branch of their ancestry, but also that these latter

were led down from the cliffs to build and dwell in their round towns

along the trail of salt chiefly, if not wholly, by the desire to at

once shorten and render less dangerous their communal expeditions to

the Lake of Salt and to secure more exclusive possession thereof.

These two objects were rendered equally and the more desirable by the

circumstance, strongly indicated by both the salt remains themselves

and by usages surviving among the present Zuñis, that in course of time

an extensive trade in salt of this particular variety grew up between

the cliff dwellers and more northern and western tribes. When found by

the Spaniards the Zuñi-Cibolans were still carrying on an extensive

trade in this salt, which for practical as well as assumed mythic

reasons they permitted no others to gather, and which they guarded so

jealously that their wars with the Keresan and other tribes to the

south-southeastward of their country were caused--as many of their

later wars with the Navajo have been caused--by slight encroachments on

the exclusive right to the products of the lake to which the Zuñis laid

claim.

The salt of this lake is superior to any other found in the southwest,

not excepting that of the Manzano salinas, east of the Rio Grande,

which nevertheless was as strenuously fought for and guarded by the

Tanoan tribes settled around these salinas, and had in like manner,

indeed, drawn their ancestry down from earlier cavate homes in the

northern mountains. Hence it was preferred (as it still is by both

Indian and white population of New Mexico and Arizona) to all other

kinds, and commanded such price that in the earlier cliff-packs I have

found it adulterated with other kinds from the nearer salt marshes

which occur in southern Utah and southwestern Colorado. That the

adulteration of the lake salt with the slightly alkaline and bitter

salt of the neighboring marshes was thus practiced with a view to

eking out the trade supply is conclusively shown, I think, by the

presence in the same cliff homes from which the adulterated specimens

were obtained, of abundant specimens of the unadulterated salt, and

this as conclusively shows not only that the cliff dwellers traded in

this salt, as do their modern Zuñi representatives, but also that it

was then, as now, more highly valued than other kinds of salt in the

southwest.

The influence on the movements of whole tribes of people which it is

here assumed such a source of favorite salt supply as this exerted

over the early cliff dwellers, does not stand alone in the history of

American tribes. It already has been intimated that the Tanoans so

far prized their comparatively inferior source of salt supply in the

salinas of the Manzano as to have been induced to settle there and

surround them with a veritable cordon of their pueblos.

Another and far more significant instance, that of the Cerro de Sal

in Peru may be mentioned, for in that country not only was salt of

various kinds to be found in many valleys and throughout nearly all

the deserts of the Medano region extending from northern Ecuador to

southern Chili, but the sea also lay near at hand along the entire

western border of this vast stretch of country; yet from remote parts

of South America trails lead, some from the Amazon and from Argentina,

more than a thousand miles away, some from nearer points and from all

local directions to this famous "Cerro de Sal." The salt from this

locality was, like that of the Lake of Salt, so highly prized that it

drew aboriginal populations about it in even pre-Incan days, and was a

source of supply, as well as, it is affirmed, of abundant tribute to

those dominant Pueblos of South America, the Incas of later days.[4]

[4] A parallel world example of the influence of salt

sources on the movements of primitive peoples may be found

in the fact that all the great historic trade routes

across Asia were first established along salt trails of

prehistoric times.

That the Lake of Salt, as a coveted source, actually did influence the

earlier descents of the cliff dwellers, and did lead to the building

and occupancy by them of the long line of ruins I have described,

rests, finally, on linguistic no less than on such comparative evidence

as has already been indicated. In turn, this leads to consideration of

the larger and at present more pertinent evidence that these dwellers

in the round towns were in part ancestors of the Zuñis, and that thus,

as assumed at the outset, the Zuñis are of composite, at least dual,

origin, and that their last, still existing, phase of culture is of

dual derivation.

The archaic and sacred name for the south in Zuñi is _Álahoïnkwin

táhna_, but the name more commonly employed--always in familiar or

descriptive discourse--is _Mák‘yaiakwin táhna_ (that is, the "direction

of the salt-containing water or lake," from _ma_, salt; _k‘yaía_,

water, or lake-containing or bearing; _kwin_, place of, and _táhna_,

point or direction of). That this name should have displaced the

older form in familiar usage is significant of the great importance

attached to their source of salt by the early Zuñis; yet but natural,

for the older form, _Álahoïnkwin táhna_, signifies "in the direction

of the home (or source) of the coral shells," from _álaho_, glowing

red shell-stuff; _ïnkwïn_, abiding place of, or containing place of,

and _táhna_. This source of the _álahowe_ or coral red shells (which

are derived from several species of subtropical mollusks, and were so

highly prized by the southwestern tribes that the Indians of the lower

Colorado traded in them as assiduously as did those of the cliffs and

round towns in salt) has been for generations the Gulf of California

and the lower coast to beyond Guaymas.

It is not improbable, then, that this archaic and now exclusively

ritualistic expression for the southward or the south is a surviving

paraphrase of the name for south (or of the source in the south of the

red shells), formerly known to the western branch of the Zuñi ancestry,

and once familiarly used by them to designate also, perhaps, the

direction of the source of their chief treasure (these coral red shells

of aboriginal commerce), as in the Gulf of California, which was then

south of them, but is now due west-southwestward from them.

What renders this supposition still more probable, and also strengthens

the theory of the dual origin of many parallelisms in Zuñi culture,

observances, and phraseology, is not so much the fact that this name

for red shells and the archaic Zuñi name for red paint, _áhona_,

resemble in sound and meaning the Yuman _ahowata_, _ahauti_, etc., for

red paint, nor yet the fact that such resemblance extends to many

archaic and other terms, for example of relationship in the Zuñi as

compared especially with corresponding terms in the Yavapai Tulkepaiya

and other dialects of the Yuman. In fact, all the terms in Zuñi for the

four quarters are twofold and different, according as used familiarly

or ritualistically. That for west, for instance, is in the archaic and

ritualistic form, _K’yálishiïnkwïn táhna_, and signifies "direction

of the home, or source of mists and waters, or the sea;" which, when

the Zuñi abode in the farther southwest near the Pacific, was the

appropriate name for west. But the familiar name for west in modern

Zuñi is _Súnhakwïn táhna_, the "direction of the place of evening,"

which is today equally appropriate for their plateau-encircled home of

the far inland.

"North," in the archaic form, is now nearly lost; yet in some of the

more mystic rituals it occurs as both _Wímaiyawan táhna_ (_Wíkutaiya_

is "north" in the Yuma), "direction of the oak mountains," and

_Yä´lawaunankwin táhna_, literally "direction of the place of the

mountain ranges," which from the lower Colorado and southern Arizona

are toward the north, but from northern Zuñi are not so conspicuous as

in the other direction, as, for instance, toward the southwest. On the

other hand, if we consider the familiar phrase for north, _Pïsh´lankwïn

táhna_, "direction of the wind-swept plains," or of the "plains of the

mightiest winds," to have been inherited from the aboriginal round-town

Zuñis, then it was natural enough for them to have named the north as

they did; for to the north of their earlier homes in the cliffs and

beyond lay the measureless plains where roamed the strong Bison God of

Winds, whence came his fierce northern breath and bellowings in the

roar of storms in winter.

The east, in common language, signifies "direction of the coming of

day;" but in the ritual speech signifies "direction of the plains of

daylight"--a literal description of the great Yuma desert as seen at

day-break from the Colorado region, but scarcely applicable to the

country eastward from Zuñi, which is rugged and broken until the Llanos

Estacados of Texas are reached.

The diverse meaning of terms in Zuñi architecture is no less

significant of the diverse conditions and opposite directions of

derivation of the Zuñi ancestry. If the aboriginal branch of the Zuñi

were derived from the dwellers in the northern cliff towns, as has

been assumed, then we would expect to find surviving in the names of

such structural features of their pueblos as resulted from life in the

cliffs linguistic evidence, as in the structures themselves material

evidence, of the fact. Of this, as will presently be shown, there is an

abundance.

If the intrusive branch of the Zuñi ancestry were, as has also been

assumed, of extreme southwestern origin, then we should expect to find

linguistic evidence of a similar nature, say, as to the structural

modifications of the cliff-dweller and round-town architecture which

their arrival at and ultimate position in these towns might lead us to

expect to find, and which in fact is to be abundantly traced in later

Zuñi ruins, like those of the historic Seven Cities of Cibola.

The conditions of life and peculiarities of building, etc., in the

caves and cliffs, then in the round towns, have been commented on at

some length in previous pages, and sufficiently described to render

intelligible a presentation of this linguistic and additional evidence

in regard to derivation from that direction; but it remains for me

to sketch, as well as I can in brief, the more significant of such

characteristics of the primitive Yuman house and village life as seem

to bear on the additional linguistic and other evidence of derivation

also from the opposite or Rio Colorado direction, for both clews should

be presented side by side, if only for the sake of contrast.

These ancient people of the Colorado region, Yuman or other, had, as

their remains show (not in their earliest period, nor yet in a later

stage of their development, when a diverging branch of them--"Our

lost others"[5]--had attained to a high state of culture in southern

Arizona and northern Mexico, but at the time of their migration in

part Zuñiward), houses of quite a different type from those of the

north. They were mainly rancherias, that is, more or less scattered

over the mesas and plains. They were but rarely round, commonly

parallelogrammic, and either single or connected in straight L-shape

or double L-shape rows. The foundations were of rough stones, designed

probably to hold more firmly in place the cane-wattled, mud-plastered

stockades which formed the sides and ends as well as (in the house

rows) the partitions. They owed their rectangular shapes not to

crowding, but to development from an original log-built house type--in

the open (like the rancheria house type of the Tarahumári), to which

may also be traced their generally greater length than width. They

were single storied, with rather flat or slightly sloping roofs,

although the high pitched roof of thatch was not wholly unknown, for

it was still employed on elevated granaries; but sometimes (this was

especially the case with single houses) the stockade posts were carried

up above this roof on three sides, and overlaid with saplings on which,

in turn, a bower of brush or cane or grass was constructed to protect

from the sun rather than from rain. Thus a sort of rude and partial

second story was formed, which was reached from below by means of a

notched step-log made of a forked or branching tree-trunk, the forks

being placed against the edge of the roof proper to keep the log (the

butt of which rested on the ground) from turning when being ascended.[6]

[5] See pages 403, 405-406.

[6] See Mindeleff, Architecture of Tusayan and Cibola,

Eighth Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnology, p. 157.

Of these single houses the "bowers" described in the following myth of

the creation of corn (see page 391), and typically surviving still to

a great extent in the cornfield or farm huts of modern Zuñi, may be

taken as fair examples; and of the villages or hut-row structures of

these ancient plains and valley people, an excellent example may be

found in the long-houses of the Mohave and other Yumans of the valley

of Colorado river. Both these hut-row houses and the single-room houses

were generally surrounded by low walls of loose stone, stone and mud,

stockade and mud, or of mud alone; and as often as not one side or the

front of a hut within such a wall inclosure was left entirely open.

Thus the outer wall was intended in part as a slight protection from

the wind, and probably also to guard from flooding during the sudden

showers which sometimes descend in torrents over Arizona plains. They

may also have been designed to some extent for protection from the

enemy; for these people were far more valiant fighters than their

ultimate brethren of the north, and depended for protection less on

security of position than on their own prowess. Only during times

of unusual danger did they retire to fortified lava buttes (or,

when near them, to deep but more or less open crevices in some of

the more extensive lava fields), where their hut foundations may be

found huddled together within huge inclosures of natural lava blocks,

dry laid and irregular, but some of them skillfully planned and

astonishingly vast; but in these strongholds they never tarried long

enough to be influenced in their building habits sufficiently to change

the styles of their hamlets in the plains, for until we reach the point

in eastern Arizona where they joined the "elder nations" no change in

ground plan of these houses is to be traced in their remains.

* * * * *

It is necessary to add a few details as to costume, usages, and the

institutions of these semisettled yet ever shifting people.

They wore but scant clothing besides their robes and

blankets--breech-clouts and kilts, short for the men, long for the

women, and made of shredded bark and rushes or fiber; sandals, also

of fiber; necklaces of shell beads, and pendent carved shell gorgets.

The hair was bobbed to the level of the eyebrows in front, but left

long and hanging at the back, gathered into a bunch or switch with a

colored cord by the men, into which cord, or into a fillet of plaited

fiber, gorgeous long tail feathers of the macaw, roadrunner, or

eagle were thrust and worn upright. To the crown of the head of the

warriors was fastened a huge bunch of stripped or slitted feathers of

the owl or eagle, called, no doubt, then as now by its Yuman name,

_musema_; for it is still known, though used in different fashion, as

the _múmtsemak‘ya_ or _múmpalok‘ye_ by the Zuñi Priests of the Bow.

The warriors also carried targets or shields of yucca or cotton cord,

closely netted across a strong, round hoop-frame and covered with a

coarser and larger net, which was only a modification of the carrying

net (like those still in use by the Papago, Pima, and other Indians

of southern Arizona), and was turned to account as such, indeed, on

hunting and war expeditions.

Their hand weapons were huge stone knives and war clubs shaped

like potato-mashers, which were called, it would seem, _iítekati_

(their Yuman name) for, although changed in the Zuñi of today, still

strikingly survives in familiar speech as the expression _ítehk‘ya_

or _ítehk‘yäti_, to knock down finally or fatally, and in ceremonial

allusion (rather than name) to the old-fashioned and sacred war clubs

(which are of identical form) as _ítehk‘yatáwe_, or knocking-down

billets, otherwise called face-smashers or pulpers.

They sometimes buried the dead--chiefly their medicine men and women,

or shamans; but all others were burned (with them personal effects and

gifts of kin) and their ashes deposited in pots, etc., at the heads of

arroyas, or thrown into streams. They held as fetiches of regenerative

as well as protective power certain concretionary stones, some of the

larger of which were family heirlooms and kept as household gods,

others as tribal relics and amulets, like the canopas and huacas of

ancient Peru. These nodules were so knobbed, corrugated, and contorted

that they were described when seen elsewhere by the early Spanish

writers as bezoars, but they were really derived from the sources of

arroyas, or mountain torrents, in the beds of which they are sometimes

found, and being thus always water-worn were regarded as the seed of

the waters, the source of life itself. Hence they were ceremoniously

worshiped and associated with all or nearly all the native dances or

dramaturgies, of which dances they were doubtless called by their old

time possessors "the ancients," or "stone ancients," a name and in some

measure a connection still surviving and extended to other meanings

with reference to similar fetich stones among the Zuñis of today.

From a study of the remains of these primitive Arizonian ancestors of

the Zuñis in the light of present-day Zuñi archaisms, and especially

of the creation myths themselves, it would be possible to present a

much fuller sketch of them. But that which has already been outlined

is sufficiently full, I trust, to prove evidential that the following

Zuñi expressions and characteristics were as often derived from this

southwestern branch as from the cliff dweller or aboriginal branch of

the Zuñi ancestry:

The Zuñi name of an outer village wall is _hék‘yapane_, which

signifies, it would seem, "cliff-face wall;" for it is derived,

apparently, from _héăne_, an extended wall; and _ák‘yapane_, the face

of a wide cliff. Thus it is probably developed from the name which at

first was descriptive of the encircling rear wall of a cave village,

afterward naturally continued to be applied to the rear but encircling

or outside wall of a round town, and hence now designates even a

straight outer wall of a village, whether of the front or the rear of

the houses.

The name for the outer wall of a house, however, is _héine_, or

_héline_, which signifies a mud or adobe inclosure; from _héliwe_, mud

(or mud-and-ash) mortar, and _úline_, an inclosure. Since in usage this

refers to the outer wall of a house or other simple structure, but not

to that of a town or assemblage of houses, its origin may with equal

propriety be attributed to the mud-plastered corral or adobe sides or

inclosures of such rancherias as I have already described.[7]

[7] In my "Study of Pueblo Pottery," etc. (Fourth Annual

Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1882-83), I have said

that "The archaic name for a building or walled structure

is _héshota_, a contraction of the now obsolete term

_héshotapone_; from _hésho_, gum, or resin-like; _shótaie_,

leaned or placed together convergingly; _tápoane_, a roof

(covering) of wood, or a roof (covering) supported by wood."

I regret to say that the etymology of this word as thus

rendered was not quite correct, and therefore its meaning

as interpreted in the passage which immediately followed

was also mistaken. It is quite true that _hésho_ signifies

gum or resin, etc. (referring, as I then supposed, to

_áhesho_, or gum rock, a name for lava; used constructively

in the oldest round huts of the basaltic regions); but the

root _he_ enters into many other compounds, such as not

only wax, gum, pitch, metal (as being rock-pitch, that

is, melted from rocks), etc., but also mud, clay-paste,

mud-mortar, and finally adobe, as being dried mud mortar;

hence walls made either with or of adobe, etc. Had I been,

at the time of this first writing, as familiar with the

language as I now am I should not have connected as a

single root _he_ and _sho_, making _hésho_ (gum or pitch)

of it. For, as elsewhere stated in the same essay, _shówe_

signifies canes, (_shóole_, a cane or reed), and it now

appears that the syllable thus derived formed a root by

itself. But I had not then learned that the greater number

of the ruins of southern Arizona, especially of the plains,

consisted of gabion-like walls, that is, of walls made by

packing stiff earth or rubble mortar or cement between

double or parallel cane-wattled stockades, and then heavily

plastering this exterior or casing (as was the case in the

main walls of the celebrated Casa Grande and the temple

mound of Los Muertos); or else, in less massive ruins of

lesser walls the cores or supports of which consisted of

close-set posts lathed with reeds or canes, the mud or

cement being built up either side of these cores, or, in

case of the thinnest walls, such as partitions, merely

plastered to either face.

I can not doubt that even the grandest and most highly

developed of these ruins--the Casas Grandes themselves,

which look today as if constructed wholly of massive

masonry--no less than the simplest plastered stockade

walls, were developed from such beginnings as the mere

mud-plastered cane and stockade screens of the ancient

rancheria builders. Thus, I am constrained to render

the primary meaning of _héshotapoane_ as approximately

"mud-plastered cane and stick structure;" from _heliwe_,

mud mortar; _shówe_, canes or reeds; _táwe_, wood, or

_tátawe_, wood-posts; _póa_, to place (leaningly or

closely) over against; and _ne_, (any) thing made. From

this, the generic term _héshota_, for walled structure

(especially ruined wall-structures), would very naturally

have been derived, and this might or might not have given

rise to the use of the prefix _he_, as occurring in all

names for _mortar-laid_ walls.

Again, the names in Zuñi, first, for a room of a single-story

structure, and, second, for an inner room on the ground floor of

such or of a terraced structure, are (1) _télitona_, "room or space

equally inclosed," that is, by four equal or nearly equal walls;

and (2) _téluline_, "room or space within (other rooms or) an

inclosure." Both of these terms, although descriptive, may, from

their specific use, be attributed to single-story rancheria origin,

I think, for in the cliff villages there was no ground-floor room.

The name for a lowermost room in the cliff villages still seemingly

survives in the Zuñi name for a cellar, which is _ápaline_, from

_a_, rock, and _páloiye_, buried in or excavated within; while the

cliff name for an upper room or top-story room, _óshtenu‘hlane_, from

_óshten_, a cave-shelter or cave roof, and _ú‘hlane_, inclosed by,

or built within the hollow or embrace of, also still survives. Yet

other examples of diversely derived house-names in this composite

phraseology might be added, but one more must suffice. The Zuñi

name for a ladder is _‘hlétsilone_, apparently from _‘hléwe_, slats

(_‘hléma_, slat), and _tsilulona_, hair, fiber, or osier, entwined

or twisted in. This primary meaning of the name would indicate that

before the ladder of poles and slats was used, rope ladders were

commonly in vogue, and if so, would point unmistakably to the cliffs

as the place of its origin; for many of the cliff dwellings can not

now be reached save by means of ropes or rope ladders. Yet, although

the name for a stairway (or steps even of stone or adobe) might

naturally, one would suppose, have been derived from that of a ladder

(if ladders were used before stairs, or vice versa if the reverse was

the case), nevertheless it has a totally independent etymology, for

it is _íyechiwe_, from _íkŏiyächi_, forked log or crotch-log, and

_yéhchiwe_, walking or footing-notched; that is, notched step-log or

crotch. And this it would seem points as unmistakably to such use of

forked and notched step logs or crotch-logs as I have attributed to

the rancheria builders, as does the "rope-and-slat" ladder-name to

the use of the very different climbing device I have attributed to

the cliff dwellers.

It is probable that when the round-town builders had peopled the

trail of salt as far from the northward as to the region of Zuñi and

beyond, the absence of very deep canyons, containing rock-sheltered

nooks sufficiently large and numerous to enable them to find adequate

accommodation for cliff villages, gradually led them to abandon all

resort to the cliffs for protection--made them at last no longer cliff

dwellers, even temporarily, but true Pueblos, or town dwellers of the

valleys and plains.

But other influences than those of merely natural or physical

environment were required to change their mode of building, and

correspondingly, to some extent, their institutions and modes of

life from those of round-town builders to those of square-town

builders, such as in greater part they were at the time of the

Spanish discoveries. In the myths themselves may be found a

clew as to what these influences were in that which is told of

the coming together of the "People of the Midmost" and these

"Dwellers-in-the-towns-builded-round." For there is evidence in

abundance also of other kind, and not a little of it of striking force

and interest, that this coming together was itself the chief cause

of the changes referred to. It has been seen that the western branch

of the Zuñi ancestry (who were these "People of the Midmost") were

almost from the beginning dwellers in square structures; that their

village clusters, even when several of their dwelling places happened

to be built together, were, as shown by their remains wherever found,

built precisely on the plans of single-house structures--that is, they

were simple extensions, mostly rectilinear, of these single houses

themselves.

Now peoples like those of the round towns, no less than primitive

peoples generally, conceive of everything made, whether structure,

utensil, or weapon, as animistic, as living. They conceive of this life

of things as they do of the lives of plants, of hibernating animals, or

of sleeping men, as a still sort of life generally, but as potent and

aware, nevertheless, and as capable of functioning, not only obdurately

and resistingly but also actively and powerfully in occult ways, either

for good or for evil. As every living thing they observe, every animal,

has form, and acts or functions according to its form--the feathered

and winged bird flying, because of its feathered form; the furry and

four-footed animal running and leaping, because of its four-footed

form, and the scaly and finny fish swimming, because also of its fins

and scales and form appropriate thereto--so these things made or born

into special forms of the hands of man also have life and function

variously, according to their various forms.

As this idea of animals, and of things as in other sort animals, is

carried out to the minutest particular, so that even the differences in

the claws of beasts, for example, are supposed to make the difference

between their powers of foot (as between the hugging of the bear and

the clutching of the panther), it follows that form in all its details

is considered of the utmost importance to special kinds of articles

made and used, even of structures of any much used or permanent type.

Another phase of this curious but perfectly natural attributive of

life and form-personality to material things, is the belief that the

forms of these things not only give them power, but also restrict their

power, so that if properly made, that is, made and shaped strictly as

other things of their kind have been made and shaped, they will perform

only such safe uses as their prototypes have been found to serve in

performing before them. As the fish, with scales and fins only, can

not fly as the duck does, and as the duck can not swim under the water

except so far as his feathers, somewhat resembling scales, and his

scaly, webbed feet, somewhat resembling fins enable him to do so, thus

also is it with things. In this way may be explained better than in

any other way, I think, the excessive persistency of form-survival,

including the survival of details in conventional ornamentation in the

art products of primitive peoples--the repetitions, for instance, in

pottery, of the forms and even the ornaments of the vessels, basketry,

or what not, which preceded it in development and use and on which it

was first modeled. This tendency to persist in the making of well-tried

forms, whether of utensil or domicile, is so great that some other

than the reason usually assigned, namely, that of mere accustomedness,

is necessary to account for it, and the reason I have given is fully

warranted by what I know of the mood in which the Zuñis still regard

the things they make and use, and which is so clearly manifest in their

names of such things. It is a tendency so great, indeed, that neither

change of environment and other conditions, nor yet substitution of

unused materials for those in customary use for the making of things,

will effect change in their forms at once, even though in preserving

older forms in this newer sort of material the greatest amount of

inconvenience be encountered. There is, indeed, but one influence

potent enough to effect change from one established form to another,

and that is acculturation; and even this works but slowly and only

after long and familiar intercourse or after actual commingling of one

people with a diversely developed people has taught them the safety and

efficiency of unfamiliar forms in uses familiarly associated with their

own accustomed but different forms. Sooner or later such acculturation

invariably effects radical change in the forms of things used by one

or the other of the peoples thus commingling, or by both; though in

the latter case the change is usually unequal. In the case here under

consideration there is to be found throughout the nearer Zuñi country

ruins of the actual transitional type of pueblo thus formed by the

union of the two ancestral branches of the Zuñis, the round town with

its cliff-like outer wall merging into the square, terraced town with

its broken and angular or straight outer walls; and in these composite

towns earliest appears, too, the house wall built into (not merely

against) the outer walls of the curved portions no less than into the

outer walls of the squared or straight portions.

The composite round and square pueblo ruin is not, however, confined to

this transitional type or to its comparatively restricted area wherever

occurring, but is found here and there as far northward, for instance,

as the neighborhood of older cliff ruins. But in such cases it seems

to have been developed, as heretofore hinted, in the comparatively

recent rebuilding of old rounded towns by square-house builders. Quite

in correspondence with all this is the history of the development,

from the round form into the square, of the kivas of the later Zuñi

towns; that is, like the towns themselves, the round kivas of the

earlier round towns became, first in part and then nearly squared in

the composite round and square towns, and finally altogether squared in

the square towns. This was brought about by a twofold cause. When the

cliff dwellers became inhabitants of the plains, not only their towns,

but also the kivas were enlarged. To such an extent, indeed, were the

latter enlarged that it became difficult to roof them over in the old

fashion of completing the upper courses of the walls with cross-laid

logs, and of roofing the narrowed apex of this coping with combined

rafter and stick structures; hence in many cases, although the round

kiva was rigidly adhered to, it was not unfrequently inclosed within a

square wall in order that, as had come to be the case in the ordinary

living rooms, rafters parallel to one another and of equal length might

be thrown across the top, thus making a flat roof essentially like the

flat terrace roofs of the ordinary house structure.

It is not improbable that the first suggestion of inclosing the round

kiva in a square-walled structure and of covering the latter with

a flat roof arose quite naturally long before the cliff dwellers

descended into the plains. It has been seen that frequently, in the

larger and longest occupied cliff-towns, the straight-walled houses

grew outward wholly around the kivas; and when this occurred the round

kiva was thus not only surrounded by a square inclosure--formed by the

walls of the nearest houses,--but also it became necessary to cover

this inclosing space with a flat roof, in order to render continuous

the house terrace in which it was constructed. Still, the practice

never became general or intentional in the earlier cliff-towns;

probably, indeed, it became so in the now ruined round towns only

by slow degrees. Yet it needed after this (in a measure) makeshift

beginning only such influence of continued intercourse between the

square-house building people and these round-town building people to

lead finally to the practical abandonment by the latter of the inner

round structure surviving from their old-fashioned kivas, and to make

them, like the modern Zuñi kiva, square rather than round.

An evidence that this was virtually the history of the change from the

round kiva building to the square kiva building, and that this change

was wrought thus gradually as though by long-continued intercourse,

is found in the fact that to this day all the ceremonials performed

in the great square kivas of Zuñi would be more appropriate in round

structures. For example, processions of the performers in the midwinter

night ceremonials in these kivas, on descending the ladders, proceed

to their places around the sides of the kivas in circles, as though

following a circular wall. The ceremonials of concerted invocation in

the cult societies when they meet in these kivas are also performed in

circles, and the singers for dances or other dramaturgic performances,

although arranged in one end or in the corner of the kiva, continue to

form themselves in perfect circles; the drum in the middle, the singers

sitting around and facing it as though gathered within a smaller

circular room inclosed in the square room. Thus it may be inferred,

first, from the fact that in the structural details of the scuttles

or hatchways by which these modern kivas are entered the cross-logged

structure of the inner roof of the earliest cliff kivas survive, and

from the additional fact above stated that the ceremonials of these

kivas are circular in form, that the square kiva is a lineal descendant

of the round one; and second, that even after the round kiva was

inclosed in the square room, so to say, in order that its roof might be

made as were the roofs of the women's houses, or continuous therewith,

it long retained the round kiva within, and hence the ceremonials

necessarily performed circularly within this round inner structure

became so associated with the outer structure as well, that after the

abandonment entirely, through the influences I have above suggested, of

these round inner structures, they continued thus to be performed.

As further evidence of the continuity of this development from the

earliest to the latest forms, certain painted marks on the walls of

the cliff kivas tell not only of their derivation in turn from a yet

earlier form, but also and again of the derivation from them of the

latest forms. In the ancient ruins of the scattered round houses,

which, it is presumed, mark the sites of buildings belonging to the

earlier cliff ancestry folk on the northern desert borders, there are

discovered the remains of certain unusually large huts, the walls of

which appear to have been strengthened at four equidistant points

by firmly planted upright logs. It is probable that, alike in this

distribution and in the number of these logs, they corresponded almost

strictly to the poles of, first, the medicine tent, and, second, the

medicine earth lodge. When, in a later period of their development,

these builders of the round huts in the north came to be, as has

heretofore been described, dwellers in the kivas of the caves, their

larger, presumably ceremonial structures, while reared without the

strengthening posts referred to, nevertheless contained, as appropriate

parts, the marks of them on the walls corresponding thereto. At any

rate, in the still later kivas of the cliffs three parallel marks,

extending from the tops of the walls to the floors, are found painted

on the four sides of the kivas. Finally, in the modern square kiva of

Zuñi there are still placed, ceremonially, once every fourth year, on

the four sides of the lintels or hatchways, three parallel marks, and

these marks are called by the Zuñi in their rituals the holders-up of

the doorways and roofs. Many additional points in connection not only

with the structural details of, but also in the ceremonials performed

within, these modern kivas, may be found, survivals all pointing, as do

those above mentioned, to the unbroken development of the kiva, from

the earth medicine lodge to the finished square structure of the modern

Zuñi and Tusayan Indians.

It likewise has been seen that through very natural causes a strict

division between the dwellings of the women and children and of

the adult male population of the cliff villages grew up. From the

relatively great numbers of the kivas found in the courts of the round

towns, it may be inferred that this division was still kept up after

the cliff dwellers became inhabitants of the plains and builders of

such round towns; for when first the Spaniards encountered the Zuñi

dwellers in the Seven Cities of Cibola they found that, at least

ceremonially, this division of the men's quarters from those of the

women was still persisted in, but there is evidence that even thus

early it was not so strictly held to on other occasions. Then, as now,

the men became permanent guests, at least, in the houses of their

wives, and it is probable that the cause which broke down this previous

strict division of the sexes was the union of the western or rancheria

building branch of the Zuñi ancestry with the cliff and round-town

building branch.

In nothing is the dual origin of the Zuñis so strongly suggested as

in the twofold nature of their burial customs at the time when first

they were encountered by the Spaniards; for according to some of the

early writers they cremated the dead with all of their belongings, yet

according to others they buried them in the courts, houses, or near

the walls of their villages. It has already been stated that the cliff

dwellers buried their dead in the houses and to the rear of their

cavern villages, and that, following them in this, the dwellers in the

round towns buried their dead also in the houses and to the rear--that

is, just outside of their villages. It remains to be stated that nearly

all of the Yuman tribes, and some even of the Piman tribes, of the

lower Colorado region disposed of their dead chiefly by cremation.

Investigation of the square-house remains which lie scattered over the

southwestern and central portions of Arizona would seem to indicate

that the western branch of the Zuñi ancestry continued this practice of

cremating the greater number of their dead. If this be true, the custom

on the one hand of cremating the dead, which was observed by Castañeda

at Mátsaki, one of the principal of the Seven Cities of Cibola, and the

practice of burying the dead observed by others of the earliest Spanish

explorers, are easily accounted for as being survivals of the differing

customs of the two peoples composing the Zuñi tribe at that time. As

has been mentioned in the first part of this introductory, both of

these very different customs continued ceremonially to be performed,

even after disposal of the dead solely by burial under the influence of

the Franciscan fathers came to be an established custom.

In the Kâ´kâ, or the mythic drama dance organization of the Zuñis,

there is equal evidence of dual origin, for while in the main the

_kâ´kâ_ of the Zuñis corresponds to the _katzina_ of the Rio Grande

Pueblo tribes and to the _kachina_ of the Tusayan Indians, yet it

possesses certain distinct and apparently extraneous features. The

most notable of these is found in that curious organization of

priest-clowns, the Kâ´yimäshi, the myth of the origin of which is

so fully given in the following outlines (see page 401). It will be

seen that in this myth these Kâ´yimäshi are described as having heads

covered with welts or knobs, that they are referred to not only as

"husbands of the sacred dance" or the "_kâ´kâ_" (from _kâ´kâ_ and

_yémäshi_, as in _óyemäshi_, husband or married to) and as the Old

Ones or _Á‘hläshiwe_.

Throughout the Rio Colorado region, and associated with all the

remaining ruins of the rancheria builders in central and even eastern

Arizona as well, are found certain concretions or other nodular and

usually very rough stones, which today, among some of the Yuman

tribes, are used as fetiches connected both with water worship and

household worship. Among the sacred objects said to have been brought

by the Zuñi ancestry from the places of creation are a number of such

fetich-stones, and in all the ruins of the later Zuñi towns such

fetich-stones are also found, especially before rude altars in the

plazas and around ancient, lonely shrines on the mesas and in the

mountains. These fetich-stones are today referred to as _á‘hläshiwe_,

or stone ancients, from _a_, a stone, _‘hlä´shi_, aged one, and _we_,

a plural suffix. The resemblance of this name to the _Á‘hläshiwe_ as

a name of the Kâ´yemäshi strongly suggests that the nodular shape

and knobbed mask-heads of these priest-clowns are but dramatic

personifications of these "stone ancients," and if one examine such

stones, especially when used in connection with the worship and

invocation of torrents, freshets, and swift-running streams (when, like

the masks in question, they are covered with clay), the resemblance

between the fetich-stones and the masks is so striking that one is

inclined to believe that both the characters and their names were

derived from this single source. From the fact that this peculiar

institution of the clown-priest organization, associated with or, as

the Zuñis say, literally married to the Cachina, or Kâ´kâ proper, was

at one time peculiarly Zuñi, as is averred by themselves and avowed

by all the other Pueblos, it would seem that it was distinctively an

institution of the western branch of their ancestry, since also, as the

myths declare, these Old Ones were born on the sacred mountains of the

Kâ´kâ, on the banks of the Colorado Chiquito in Arizona. Finally, this

is typical of many, if not all, features which distinguish the Zuñi

Kâ´kâ from the corresponding organizations of other Pueblo tribes.