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.
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]
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]
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]
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.
A complete outline of the mytho-sociologic organization of the Zuñi tribe can not in this connection be undertaken. A sufficient characterization of this probably not unique combination of the sociologic and mythologic institutions of a tribe should, however, be given to make plain certain allusions in the following outlines which it is feared would otherwise be incomprehensible.
The Zuñi of today number scarcely 1,700 and, as is well known, they inhabit only a single large pueblo—single in more senses than one, for it is not a village of separate houses, but a village of six or seven separate parts in which the houses are mere apartments or divisions, so to say. This pueblo, however, is divided, not always clearly to the eye, but very clearly in the estimation of the people themselves, into seven parts, corresponding, not perhaps in arrangement topographically, but in sequence, to their subdivisions of the "worlds" or world-quarters of this world. Thus, one division of the town is supposed to be related to the north and to be centered in its kiva or estufa, which may or may not be, however, in its center; another division represents the west, another the south, another the east, yet another the upper world and another the lower world, while a final division represents the middle or mother and synthetic combination of them all in this world.
By reference to the early Spanish history of the pueblo it may be seen that when discovered, the Áshiwi or Zuñis were living in seven quite widely separated towns, the celebrated Seven Cities of Cibola, and that this theoretic subdivision of the only one of these towns now remaining is in some measure a survival of the original subdivision of the tribe into seven subtribes inhabiting as many separate towns. It is evident that in both cases, however, the arrangement was, and is, if we may call it such, a mythic organization; hence my use of the term the mytho-sociologic organization of the tribe. At any rate, this is the key to their sociology as well as to their mythic conceptions of space and the universe. In common with all other Indian tribes of North America thus far studied, the Zuñis are divided into clans, or artificial kinship groups, with inheritance in the female line. Of these clans there are, or until recently there were, nineteen, and these in turn, with the exception of one, are grouped in threes to correspond to the mythic subdivision I have above alluded to. These clans are also, as are those of all other Indians, totemic; that is, they bear the names and are supposed to have intimate relationship with various animals, plants, and objects or elements. Named by their totems they are as follows:
Kâ´lokta-kwe, Crane or Pelican people; Póyi-kwe (nearly extinct), Grouse or Sagecock people; Tá‘hluptsi-kwe (nearly extinct), Yellow-wood or Evergreen-oak people; Ain̄´shi-kwe, Bear people; Súski-kwe, Coyote people; Aíyaho-kwe, Red-top plant or Spring-herb people; Ána-kwe, Tobacco people; Tâ´a-kwe, Maize-plant people; Tónashi-kwe, Badger people; Shóhoita-kwe, Deer people; Máawi-kwe (extinct), Antelope people; Tóna-kwe, Turkey people; Yä´tok‘ya-kwe, Sun people; Ápoya-kwe (extinct), Sky people; K‘yä´k‘yäli-kwe, Eagle people; Ták‘ya-kwe, Toad or Frog people; K‘yána-kwe (extinct), Water people; Chítola-kwe (nearly extinct), Rattlesnake people; Píchi-kwe, Parrot-Macaw people.
Of these clans the first group of three appertains to the north, the second to the west, the third to the south, the fourth to the east, the fifth to the upper or zenith, and the sixth to the lower or nadir region; while the single clan of the Macaw is characterized as "midmost," or of the middle, and also as the all-containing or mother clan of the entire tribe, for in it the seed of the priesthood of the houses is supposed to be preserved. The Zuñi explanation of this very remarkable, yet when understood and comprehended, very simple and natural grouping of the clans or totems is exceedingly interesting, and also significant whether it throw light on the origin, or at least native meaning, of totemic systems in general, as would at first seem to be the case, or whether, as is more probably the case in this instance, it indicates a native classification, so to say, or reclassification of clans which existed before the culture had been elaborated to its present point. Briefly, the clans of the north—that is, those of the Crane, the Grouse, and Evergreen-oak—are grouped together and are held to be related to the north because of their peculiar fitness for the region whence comes the cold and wherein the season of winter itself is supposed to be created, for the crane each autumn appears in the van of winter, the grouse does not flee from the approach of winter but puts on his coat of white and traverses the forests of the snow-clad mountains as freely as other birds traverse summer fields and woodlands, caring not for the cold, and the evergreen oak grows as green and is as sturdy in winter as other trees are in spring or summer; hence these are totems and in a sense god-beings of the north and of winter, and the clanspeople named after them and considered as, mythically at least, their breath-children, are therefore grouped together and related to the north and winter as are their totems. And as the bear, whose coat is grizzly like the evening twilight or black like the darkness of night, and the gray coyote, who prowls amidst the sagebrush at evening and goes forth and cries in the night-time, and the spring herb or the red-top plant, which blooms earliest of all flowers in spring when first the moisture-laden winds from the west begin to blow—these and the people named after them are as appropriately grouped in the west. The badger, who digs his hole on the sunny sides of hills and in winter appears only when the sun shines warm above them, who excavates among the roots of the juniper and the cedar from which fire is kindled with the fire drill; the wild tobacco, which grows only where fires have burned, and the corn which anciently came from the south and is still supposed to get its birth from the southland, and its warmth—these are grouped in the south. The turkey, which wakes with the dawn and helps to awaken the dawn by his cries; the antelope and the deer, who traverse far mesas and valleys in the twilight of the dawn—these and their children are therefore grouped in the east. And it is not difficult to understand why the sun, the sky (or turkis), and the eagle appertain to the upper world; nor why the toad, the water, and the rattlesnake appertain to the lower world.
By this arrangement of the world into great quarters, or rather as the Zuñis conceive it, into several worlds corresponding to the four quarters and the zenith and the nadir, and by this grouping of the towns, or later of the wards (so to call them) in the town, according to such mythical division of the world, and finally the grouping of the totems in turn within the divisions thus made, not only the ceremonial life of the people, but all their governmental arrangements as well, are completely systemized. Something akin to written statutes results from this and similar related arrangements, for each region is given its appropriate color and number, according to its relation to one of the regions I have named or to others of those regions. Thus the north is designated as yellow with the Zuñis, because the light at morning and evening in winter time is yellow, as also is the auroral light. The west is known as the blue world, not only because of the blue or gray twilight at evening, but also because westward from Zuñiland lies the blue Pacific. The south is designated as red, it being the region of summer and of fire, which is red; and for an obvious reason the east is designated white (like dawn light); while the upper region is many-colored, like the sunlight on the clouds, and the lower region black, like the caves and deep springs of the world. Finally, the midmost, so often mentioned in the following outline, is colored of all these colors, because, being representative of this (which is the central world and of which in turn Zuñi is the very middle or navel), it contains all the other quarters or regions, or is at least divisible into them. Again, each region—at least each of the four cardinal regions, namely, north, west, south, and east—is the home or center of a special element, as well as of one of the four seasons each element produces. Thus the north is the place of wind, breath, or air, the west of water, the south of fire, and the east of earth or the seeds of earth; correspondingly, the north is of course the place of winter or its origin, the west of spring, the south of summer, and the east of autumn. This is all because from the north and in winter blow the fiercest, the greatest winds or breaths, as these people esteem them; from the west early in spring come the moistened breaths of the waters in early rains; from the south comes the greatest heat that with dryness is followed by summer, and from the east blow the winds that bring the frosts that in turn mature the seeds and perfect the year in autumn. By means of this arrangement no ceremonial is ever performed and no council ever held in which there is the least doubt as to the position which a member of a given clan shall occupy in it, for according to the season in which the ceremonial is held, or according to the reason for which a council is convened, one or another of the clan groups of one or another of the regions will take precedence for the time; the natural sequence being, however, first the north, second the west, third the south, fourth the east, fifth the upper, and sixth the lower; but first, as well as last, the middle. But this, to the Zuñi, normal sequence of the regions and clan groups, etc., has been determined by the apparent sequence of the phenomena of the seasons, and of their relations to one another; for the masterful, all conquering element, the first necessity of life itself, and to all activity, is the wind, the breath, and its cold, the latter overmastering, in winter all the other elements as well as all other existences save those especially adapted to it or potent in it, like those of the totems and gods and their children of the north. But in spring, when with the first appearance of the bear and the first supposed growls of his spirit masters in the thunders and winds of that time their breaths begin to bring water from the ocean world, then the strength of the winter is broken, and the snows thereby melted away, and the earth is revivified with drink, in order that with the warmth of summer from the south things may grow and be cherished toward their old age or maturity and perfection, and finally toward their death or sleeping in winter by the frost-laden breaths of autumn and the east.
Believing, as the Zuñis do, in this arrangement of the universe and this distribution of the elements and beings chiefly concerned in them, and finally in the relationship of their clans and the members thereof to these elementary beings, it is but natural that they should have societies or secret orders or cult institutions composed of the elders or leading members of each group of their clans as above classified. The seriation of these secret and occult medicine societies, or, better, perhaps, societies of magic, is one of the greatest consequence and interest. Yet it can but be touched upon here. In strict accordance with succession of the four seasons and their elements, and with their supposed relationship to these, are classified the four fundamental activities of primitive life, namely, as relating to the north and its masterfulness and destructiveness in cold, is war and destruction; relating to the west is war cure and hunting; to the south, husbandry and medicine; to the east, magic and religion; while the above, the below, and the middle relate in one way or another to all these divisions. As a consequence the societies of cold or winter are found to be grouped, not rigidly, but at least theoretically, in the northern clans, and they are, respectively: ’Hléwe-kwe, Ice-wand people or band; Áchia-kwe, Knife people or band; Kâ´shi-kwe, Cactus people or band; for the west: Pí‘hla-kwe, Priesthood of the Bow or Bow people or band (Ápi‘hlan Shiwani, Priests of the Bow); Sániyak‘ya-kwe, Priesthood of the Hunt or Coyote people or band; for the south: Máke‘hlána-kwe, Great fire (ember) people or band; Máketsána-kwe, Little fire (ember) people or band; of the east: Shíwana-kwe, Priests of the Priesthood people or band; Úhuhu-kwe, Cottonwood-down people or band; Shúme-kwe, or Kâ´kâ‘hlána-kwe, Bird-monster people or band, otherwise known as the Great Dance-drama people or band; for the upper region: Néwe-kwe, Galaxy people or band or the All-consumer or Scavenger people or band (or life preservers); and for the lower regions: Chítola-kwe, Rattlesnake people or band, generators (or life makers). Finally, as produced from all the clans and as representative alike of all the clans and through a tribal septuarchy of all the regions and divisions in the midmost, and finally as representative of all the cult societies above mentioned is the Kâ´kâ or Ákâkâ-kwe or Mythic Dance drama people or organization. It may be seen of these mytho-sociologic organizations that they are a system within a system, and that it contains also systems within systems, all founded on this classification according to the six-fold division of things, and in turn the six-fold division of each of these divisions of things. To such an extent, indeed, is carried this tendency to classify according to the number of the six regions with its seventh synthesis of them all (the latter sometimes apparent, sometimes nonappearing) that not only are the subdivisions of the societies also again subdivided according to this arrangement, but each clan is subdivided both according to such a six-fold arrangement and according to the subsidiary relations of the six parts of its totem. The tribal division made up of the clans of the north takes precedence ceremonially, occupying the position of elder brother or the oldest ancestor, as the case might be. The west is the younger brother of this; and in turn, the south of the west, the east of the south, the upper of the east, the under of them all, while the middle division is supposed to be a representative being, the heart or navel of all the brothers of the regions first and last, as well as elder and younger. In each clan is to be found a set of names called the names of childhood. These names are more of titles than of cognomens. They are determined upon by sociologic and divinistic modes, and are bestowed in childhood as the "verity names" or titles of the children to whom given. But this body of names relating to any one totem—for instance, to one of the beast totems—will not be the name of the totem beast itself, but will be names both of the totem in its various conditions and of various parts of the totem, or of its functions, or of its attributes, actual or mythical. Now these parts or functions, or attributes of the parts or functions, are subdivided also in a six-fold manner, so that the name relating to one member of the totem—for example, like the right arm or leg of the animal thereof—would correspond to the north, and would be the first in honor in a clan (not itself of the northern group); then the name relating to another member—say to the left leg or arm and its powers, etc.—would pertain to the west and would be second in honor; and another member—say the right foot—to the south and would be third in honor; and of another member—say the left foot—to the east and would be fourth in honor; to another—say the head—to the upper regions and would be fifth in honor; and another—say the tail—to the lower region and would be sixth in honor; while the heart or the navel and center of the being would be first as well as last in honor. The studies of Major Powell among the Maskoki and other tribes have made it very clear that kinship terms, so called, among other Indian tribes (and the rule will apply no less or perhaps even more strictly to the Zuñis) are rather devices for determining relative rank or authority as signified by relative age, as elder or younger of the person addressed or spoken of by the term of relationship. So that it is quite impossible for a Zuñi speaking to another to say simply brother; it is always necessary to say elder brother or younger brother, by which the speaker himself affirms his relative age or rank; also it is customary for one clansman to address another clansman by the same kinship name of brother-elder or brother-younger, uncle or nephew, etc.; but according as the clan of the one addressed ranks higher or lower than the clan of the one using the term of address, the word-symbol for elder or younger relationship must be used.
With such a system of arrangement as all this may be seen to be, with such a facile device for symbolizing the arrangement (not only according to number of the regions and their subdivisions in their relative succession and the succession of their elements and seasons, but also in colors attributed to them, etc.), and, finally, with such an arrangement of names correspondingly classified and of terms of relationship significant of rank rather than of consanguinal connection, mistake in the order of a ceremonial, a procession or a council is simply impossible, and the people employing such devices may be said to have written and to be writing their statutes and laws in all their daily relationships and utterances. Finally, with much to add, I must be content with simply stating that the high degree of systemization which has been attained by the Zuñis in thus grouping their clans severally and serially about a midmost group, we may see the influence of the coming together of two diverse peoples acting upon each other favorably to the development of both in the application of such conceptions to the conduct of tribal affairs. It would seem that the conception of the midmost, or that group within all these groups which seems to be made up of parts of them all, is inherent in such a system of world division and tribal subdivision corresponding thereto; but it may also well be that this conception of the middle was made more prominent with the Zuñis than with any other of our southwestern peoples through the influence of the earthquakes, which obviously caused their ancestors from the west again and again to change their places of abode, thus emphasizing the notion of getting nearer to or upon the lap or navel of the earth mother, where all these terrific and destructive movements, it was thought, would naturally cease.
Be this as it may, this notion of the "middle" and its relation to the rest has become the central fact indeed of Zuñi organization. It has given rise to the septuarchy I have so often alluded to; to the office of the mortally immortal K‘yäk´lu, keeper of the rituals of creation, from which so much sanction for these fathers of the people is drawn; to the consequent fixing in a series like a string of sacred epics, a sort of inchoate Bible, of these myths of creation and migration; and finally, through all this accumulated influence, it has served to give solidarity to the Zuñi tribe at the time of its division into separate tribes, making the outlying pueblos they inhabited subsidiary to the central one, and in the native acceptation of the matter, mere parts of it.