As the space originally apportioned to this merely preliminary essay
on the Myths of Creation has already been greatly exceeded, the
consideration even in outline of the cultural characteristics of the
Zuñis, which would do much to further illumine the meaning of the
myths, must be left to the second paper of the series. This will
constitute a key or appendix to the present paper, and will contain
such glossaries and detailed explanations as will render, it is hoped,
all obscure passages clear, and will at the same time give my authority
for framing and translating the myths as I have.
Chiefly, however, it will in turn introduce a third paper on the sacred
dances or creation dramas of the Kâ´kâ, which originally the myths
themselves (as the source of the songs, rituals, and forms of these
dramas) were designed to introduce. Lastly, the whole series are but
preliminary to a very extensive work on the subject which I contemplate
producing so soon as health and opportunity for further researches
among the Zuñis will permit.
As inclusive of the dramaturgies or dances, and nearly all other
ceremonials of the Zuñis, this subject of their creation myths is
almost inexhaustible. I, at least, can not hope to complete it, and I
have therefore chosen to treat it in its relation especially to their
so-called dances, particularly to those of the Kâ´kâ.
With other primitive peoples as with the Zuñis, there seems to be no
bent of their minds so strong or pervasive of and influential upon
their lives as the dramaturgic tendency. That tendency to suppose that
even the phenomena of nature can be controlled and made to act more or
less by men, if symbolically they do first what they wish the elements
to do, according to the ways in which, as taught by their mystic lore,
they suppose these things were done or made to be done by the ancestral
gods of creation time. And this may be seen in a searching analysis not
only of the incidents and symbolisms in folk-tales as well as myths
of such primitive peoples, but also in a study of the moods in which
they do the ordinary things of life; as in believing that because a
stone often struck wears away faster than when first struck it is
therefore helpful in overcoming its obduracy to strike it--work it--by
a preliminary dramatic and ritualistic striking, whereupon it will work
as though already actually worked over, and will be less liable to
breakage, etc.
All this and much more to the same effect will be illustrated in the
papers which I have mentioned as designed to follow the present one.
There remain still a few points in this preliminary paper which must be
commented upon--points regarding my own hand in the work chiefly. I use
very freely such terms as "religious," "sacred," "priest," and "god,"
not because they always express exactly the native meaning, but for the
reason that they do so more approximately than any other terms I could
select. The fearful and mysterious, the magical and occult, all these
and many other elements are usually included in the primitive man's
religion, and hence terms like "sacred" must be given a less restricted
value than they have in our speech or culture.
Again, while the Zuñi word _shíwani_, "priest," literally signifies
guardian and possessor, as well as maker or keeper of the flesh, or
seed of life of the Zuñis, it must not be supposed to represent a
medicine-man, shaman, or sorcerer--for all of which there are specific
differentiated terms in the Zuñi tongue. Those who bear that title are
also divided into four classes, but among all these the functions of
possessing a shrine, being ritualists, performing before the altars,
and leading as well as ordering all organized sacerdotal ceremonials,
is common. Therefore the simple term "priest," in the Pagan rather than
in the Christian sense, is the best and truest that can be found.
Frequently I have occasion to reproduce portions of songs or rituals,
or, again, words of the Uánami or "Beloved Gods." In the originals
these are almost always in faultless blank verse meter, and are often
even grandly poetic. I do not hesitate either to reproduce as nearly as
possible their form, or to tax to the uttermost my power of expression
in rendering the meanings of them where I quote, clear and effective
and in intelligible English. Yet in doing this I do not have to depart
very far from "scientific" accuracy, even in the linguistic sense.
Finally, I have entitled the originative division of this paper
"Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths," because, in the first place, this
is but a preliminary rendering of these, and, properly speaking, they
are a series of explanation-myths. Now, while such myths are generally
disconnected, often, indeed, somewhat contradictory episode-legends
with primitive peoples, they are, with the Zuñis, already become
serial, and it is in their serial or epic form (but merely in outline)
that I here give them. Although each is called a talk, and is held
specifically by a particular organization or social division, yet all
are called "the speech." This comes about in Zuñi by the presence in
the tribal organization, as already explained, of a class of men and
priests there called the "Midmost," or the "All," because hereditary in
a single clan (the Macaw), yet representative sacerdotally of all the
clans and all the priesthoods, which they out-rank as "Masters of the
House of Houses."
With them all these various myths are held in brief and repeated in
set form and one sequence as are placed the beads of a rosary or on a
string, each entire, yet all making a connected strand. Here, then, we
see the rudiment or embryo of a sacred epic such as that of the K‘yäk´lu
or "Speaker of all times whensoever."
As finally published, this paper will contain the most ample
explanation of all these points and many others, and will not ask, as
it does today, catholic judgment and charitable interpretation.
The so-called dances of the Zuñis, and presumably those of all similar
primitive peoples, are essentially religio-sociologic in character and
always at least dramatic, or, more properly speaking, dramaturgic. It
follows that to endeavor to describe and treat at all adequately of any
one such ceremonial becomes a matter of exceeding difficulty, for it
should involve a far more perfect scheme of the sociologic organization
as well as at least a general survey of the mythology and religious
institutions of the tribe to which it relates, such as I here present,
as well as an absolutely searching description of all details in both
the preparation for and the performance of such ceremonial.
For example, the celebrated Kâ´kâ or mythic drama-dance organization
of the Zuñis, and for that matter all other of their ceremonials,
are, any one of them, made up in personnel from specific clans. Thus
formed, they are organized, and the actors and their parts divided
in accordance with the groupings of these clans in relation to the
symbolic regions of the world, or in this case literally septs.
Finally, the paraphernalia and costumings, no less than the actions,
songs, and rituals, are as distinctly founded on and related to the
legend or legends dramatized.
At this point it seems desirable that the sense in which the terms
"drama," "dramatic," and "dramaturgic" are employed in relation to
these ceremonials be explained. This may best be done, perhaps, by
contrasting the drama of primitive peoples, as I conceive it, with that
of civilized peoples. While the latter is essentially spectacular, the
former has for its chief motive the absolute and faithful reproduction
of creative episodes--one may almost say, indeed, the revivification of
the ancient.
That this is attempted and is regarded as possible by primitive man
is not to be wondered at when we consider his peculiar modes of
conception. I have said of the Zuñis that theirs is a science of
appearances and a philosophy of analogies. The primitive man, no less
than the child, is the most comprehensive of observers, because his
looking at and into things is not self-conscious, but instinctive and
undirected, therefore comprehensive and searching. Unacquainted as he
is with rational explanations of the things he sees, he is given, as
has been the race throughout all time, to symbolic interpretation and
mystic expression thereof, as even today are those who deal with the
domain of the purely speculative. It follows that his organizations
are symbolic; that his actions within these organizations are also
symbolic. Consequently, as a child at play on the floor finds sticks
all-sufficient for the personages of his play-drama, chairs for his
houses, and lines of the floor for the rivers that none but his
eyes can see, so does the primitive man regard the mute, but to him
personified, appliances of his dance and the actions thereof, other
than they seem to us.
I can perhaps make my meaning more clear by analyzing such a conception
common to the Zuñi mind. The Zuñi has observed that the corn plant
is jointed; that its leaves spring from these joints not regularly,
but spirally; that stripped of the leaves the stalk is found to be
indented, not regularly at opposite sides, but also spirally; that
the matured plant is characterized, as no other plant is, by two
sets of seeds, the ears of corn springing out from it two-thirds
down and the tassels of seeds, sometimes earlets, at the top; also
that these tassels resemble the seed-spikes of the spring-grass or
pigeon-grass; that the leaves themselves while like broad blades of
grass are fluted like plumes, and that amongst the ears of corn ever
and anon are found bunches of soot; and, finally, that the colors of
the corn are as the colors of the world--seven in number. Later on it
may be seen to what extent he has legendized these characteristics,
thus accounting for them, and to what extent, also, he has dramatized
this, his natural philosophy of the corn and its origin. Nothing in
this world or universe having occurred by accident--so it seems to the
Zuñi mind,--but everything having been started by a personal agency or
supernal, he immediately begins to see in these characteristics of the
corn plant the traces of the actions of the peoples in his myths of
the olden time. Lo! men lived on grass seeds at first, but, as related
in the course of the legends which follow, there came a time when, by
the potencies of the gods and the magic of his own priests or shamans,
man modified the food of first men into the food of men's children.
It needed only a youth and a maiden, continent and pure, to grasp at
opposite sides and successively the blades of grass planted with plumes
of supplication, and walking or dancing around them, holding them
firmly to draw them upward until they had rapidly grown to the tallness
of themselves, then to embrace them together. Behold! the grasses were
jointed where grasped four times or six according to their tallness;
yea, and marked with the thumb-marks of those who grasped them; twisted
by their grasp while circling around them and leaved with plume-like
blades and tasseled with grass-like spikes at the tops. More wonderful
than all, where their persons had touched the plants at their middles,
behold! new seed of human origin and productive of continued life had
sprung forth in semblance of their parentage and draped with the very
pile of their generation. For lo! that when the world was new all
things in it were _k‘yaíuna_, or formative, as now is the child in the
mother's womb or the clay by the thoughts of the potter. That the seed
of seeds thus made be not lost it needed that Paíyatuma, the God of
Dew and the Dawn, freshen these new-made plants with his breath; that
Ténatsali, the God of Time and the Seasons, mature them instantly with
his touch and breath; that Kwélele, the God of Heat, ripen them with
the touch of his Fire-brother's torch and confirm to them the warmth
of a life of their own. Nevertheless, with the coming of each season,
the creation is ever repeated, for the philosophy of ecclesiasticism is
far older than ecclesiastics or their writings, and since man aided in
the creation of the corn, so must he now ever aid in each new creation
of the seed of seeds. Whence the drama of the origin of corn is not
merely reenacted, but is revived and reproduced in all its many details
with scrupulous fidelity each summer as the new seed is ripening.
And now I may add intelligibly that the drama of primitive man is
performed in an equally dramaturgic spirit, whether seen, as in its
merely culminating or final enactment, or unseen and often secret, as
in its long-continued preparations. In this a given piece of it may be
likened to a piece of Oriental carving or of Japanese joinery, in which
the parts not to be seen are as scrupulously finished as are the parts
seen, the which is likewise characteristic of our theme, for it is due
to the like dramaturgic spirit which dominates even the works, no less
than the ceremonials, of all primitive and semiprimitive peoples.
So also it seems to the Zuñi that no less essential is it that all the
long periods of creation up to the time when corn itself was created
from the grasses must be reproduced, even though hastily and by mere
signs, as are the forms through which a given species in animal life
has been evolved, rapidly repeated in each embryo.
The significance of such studies as these of a little tribe like the
Zuñis, and especially of such fuller studies as will, it is hoped,
follow in due course, is not restricted to their bearing on the tribe
itself. They bear on the history of man the world over. I have become
convinced that they thus bear on human history, especially on that of
human culture growth, very directly, too, for the Zuñis, say, with all
their strange, apparently local customs and institutions and the lore
thereof, are representative in a more than merely general way of a
phase of culture through which all desert peoples, in the Old World
as well as in the New, must sometime have passed. Thus my researches
among these Zuñis and my experimental researches upon myself, with my
own hands, under strictly primitive conditions, have together given
me insight and power to interpret their myths and old arts, as I
could never otherwise have hoped to do; and it has also enlarged my
understanding of the earliest conditions of man everywhere as nothing
else could have done.
The leisure for this long continued research has been due to the
generosity, scientific disinterestedness, and personal kindness of my
former chief, Professor Spencer F. Baird, and of my present revered
director, Major J. W. Powell, whose patience and helpfulness through
years of struggle, ill-health, and delay could not adequately be
repaid by even the complete carrying out of the series of works herein
projected and prefaced. To them and to Professor W. J. McGee, who has
aided and fostered this work in every possible way, I owe continual
gratitude.