outlines of zuni Creation Myths 2

outlines of zuni Creation Myths 2

The elder Priests of the Bow--three of whom were battle-scarred

warriors of nearly a hundred winters at the time of my initiation

into their order--told me that one of their gray-robed _tútatsikwe_

("fathers of drink," so named because they used cup-like vessels of

water in baptizing), whom their ancients had with them at Háwik’uh

in the time of the great evil, was much loved by them; "for, like

ourselves," they affirmed, "he had a Zuñi heart and cared for the

sick and women and children, nor contended with the fathers of the

people; therefore, in that time of evil they spared him on condition"

--precisely the rather sweeping condition these same veterans had in

1880 imposed on me ere they would permit of my adoption into one of

their clans--"that he eschew the vestment and usages of his people

and kind, and in everything, costume and ways of life alike, become

a Zuñi; for as such only could they spare him and nurture him." Not

so much, I imagine, from fear of death--for the dauntless Franciscan

friars of those days feared only God and the devil and met martyrdom as

bridegrooms of the Virgin herself--as from love of the Zuñis, if one

may judge by the regard they even still have for his memory, and a hope

that, living, he might perchance restrain them, alike to the good of

their people and his own people, the father gave way to their wishes;

or he may have been forced to accede to them by one of those compulsory

adoptions of the enemy not uncommonly practiced by the Indians in times

of hostility. Be this as it may, the Zuñis abandoned all their towns

in the valley, and taking the good priest with them, fled yet again to

the top of their high Mountain of Thunder. Around an ample amphitheater

near its southern rim, they rebuilt six or seven great clusters of

stone houses and renewed in the miniature vales of the mesa summit the

reservoirs for rain and snow, and on the crests above the trickling

spring under their towns, and along the upper reaches of the giddy

trail by which the heights were scaled they reared archers' booths and

heaps of slingstones and munitions of heavy rocks.

 

There, continually providing for the conflict which they knew would

sooner or later reach even their remote fastnesses (as speedily it

began to reach the Rio Grande country), they abode securely for

more than ten years, living strictly according to the ways of their

forefathers, worshiping only the beloved of war and the wind and rain,

nor paying aught of attention to the jealous gods of the Spaniard.

 

Then at last Diego de Vargas, the reconquistador of New Mexico,

approached Zuñiland with his force of foot soldiers and horsemen. The

Zuñis, learning this, poisoned the waters of their springs at Pescado

and near the entrance to the valley with yucca juice and cactus spines,

and, they say, "with the death-magic of corpse shells; so that the

horses and men, drinking there, were undone or died of bloating and

bowel sickness." In this latter statement the historians of Vargas

and the Zuñi traditions agree. But the captain-general could not have

stormed the Rock of Cibola. With the weakened force remaining at his

command his efforts were doubly futile. Therefore, where now the new

peach orchards of the Zuñis grow on the sunlit sand slopes, 800 feet

below the northern crest of the mesa their fathers so well defended in

those days, Vargas camped his army, with intent to besiege the heathen

renegades, and to harass and pick off such stragglers as came within

the range of his arquebuses.

 

Now, however, the good friar whom the Indians called Kwan Tátchui

Lók‘yana ("Juan Gray-robed-father-of-us"), was called to council by

the elders, and given a well-scraped piece of deerskin, whitened with

prayer meal, and some bits of cinder, wherewith to make markings of

meaning to his countrymen. And he was bidden to mark thereon that the

Zuñis were good to those who, like him, were good to them and meddled

not; nor would they harm any who did not harm their women and children

and their elders. And that if such these captains and their warriors

would but choose and promise to be, they would descend from their

mountain, nor stretch their bowstrings more. But when they told their

gray father that he could now join his people if that by so doing he

might stay their anger, and told him so to mark it, the priest, so the

legend runs, "dissembled and did not tell that he was there, only that

the fathers of the Áshiwi were good now;" for he willed, it would seem,

to abide with them all the rest of his days, which, alas, were but few.

Then the hide was tied to a slingstone and taken to the edge of the

mesa, and cast down into the midst of the watchful enemy by the arm of

a strong warrior. And when the bearded foemen below saw it fall, they

took it up and curiously questioned it with their eyes, and finding

its answers perfect and its import good, they instant bore it to their

war captain, and in token of his consent, they waved it aloft. So was

speech held and peace forthwith established between them.

 

That without casualty to the Zuñis an understanding was in some

way soon reached between them and Vargas, the chroniclers of the

expedition agree with this Zuñi legend; and before the end of the

century the Indians had all descended to the plain again and were

gathered, except in seasons of planting and harvest, chiefly at three

of their easternmost towns, and the central one of Hálona Ítiwana,

the Zuñi of today. After the reconquest at least some of the missions

were rehabilitated, and missionaries dwelt with the Zuñis now and

again. But other chiefs than those chosen by the priestly elders of

the people were thenceforward chosen by the Spaniards to watch the

people--gobernador, alcalde, and tenientes,--and these in turn were

watched by Spanish soldiers whose conduct favored little the fostering

of good will and happy relations; for in 1703, goaded to desperation

by the excesses of these resident police, the Zuñis drove at least

three of them into the church and there massacred them. Then, according

to their wont, they fled, for the last time, to the top of Thunder

mountain.

 

When they finally descended they planted numerous peach orchards among

the cliffs and terraces of Grand mountain and Twin mountains to the

northward of Zuñi, and there also laid out great gardens and many

little cornfields. And with the pretext of wishing to be near their

crops there, they built the seven Sónoli ‘Hlúëlawe (the "Towns of

Sonora"), so named because the peach stones they had planted there had

been brought from Sonora, Mexico. But their real object was to escape

from the irksome and oft-repeated spyings upon and interdictions of

their sacred observances and mythic drama-dances, which, as time went

on, the Spanish frailes, supported by the increasing power of the

authorities at Santa Fé in the first half of the eighteenth century,

were wont to make. So, in hidden and lone nooks on the mountains,

where their fine foundations may be seen even now, the Indian priests

had massive kivas built, and there from year to year they conducted

in secret the rites which but for this had never been preserved so

perfectly for telling, albeit only in outline, in the following pages.

But even thus far from the mission and its warders the plume-wands of

worship, which in earlier times had been made long (each one according

to its kind as long as from the elbow to the tip of one finger or

another of him who made and sacrificed it), now had to be cut short and

made only as long as the hands and the various fingers of those who

made them; for the large plumed messages to the winds and spaces often

betrayed the people, and they must now needs be made of size convenient

for burial or hiding away in crannies or under bushes as near as might

be to the shrines of the sacred precincts where once the fathers had

worshiped so freely.

 

Toward the end of the century, between 1775 and 1780, the old Church

of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which now harbors only burros and shivering

dogs of cold winter nights and is toppling to ruin in the middle of

the grand plaza of Zuñi, was built and beautifully decorated with

carved altar pieces and paintings, gifts from the King of Spain to the

Indies and work of resident monks as well. Its walls were painted--as

the more recent plasterings scaling off here and there reveal--by Zuñi

artists, who scrupled not to mingle many a pagan symbol of the gods of

wind, rain, and lightning, sunlight, storm-dark and tempest, war-bale

and magic, and, more than all, emblems of their beloved goddess-virgins

of corn-growing with the bright-colored Christian decorations. And

doubtless their sedulous teachers or masters, as the case may have

been, understanding little, if aught, of the meanings of these things,

were well pleased that these reluctant proselytes should manifest so

much of zeal and bestow such loving care on this temple of the holy and

only true faith.

 

In a measure the padres were right. The Indians thenceforward did

manifest not only more care for the mission, but more readiness to

attend mass and observe the various holy days of the church. To be

baptized and receive baptismal names they had ever been willing, nay,

eager, for they were permitted, if only as a means of identification,

to retain their own _tik‘ya shíiwe_ ("names totemic of the sacred

assemblies"), which names the priests of the mission innocently

adopted for them as surnames and scrupulously recorded in the quaint

old leather-covered folios of their mission and church. Thus it

chances that in these faded but beautifully and piously indicted

pages of a century ago I find names so familiar, so like those I

heard given only a few years since to aged Zuñi friends now passed

away, that, standing out clearly from the midst of the formal Spanish

phrases of these old-time books, they seem like the voices of the

dead of other generations, and they tell even more clearly than such

voices could tell of the causes which worked to render the Zuñis

of those times apparently so reconciled to Spanish teaching and

domination.

 

For it is manifest that when, as the meaning of his name informs

us, the chief priest of the Kâ´kâkwe, or mythic drama-dancers of a

hundred years ago, entered the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and was

registered as "Feliciano Pautiatzanilunquia" (Páutia Tsani Lúnk’ya), or

"Felix Of-the-sacred-dancers-glorious-sun-god-youth," neither he nor

any of his attendant clan relatives, whose names are also recorded,

thought of renouncing their allegiance to the gods of Zuñi or the

ever sacred Kâ´kâ; but that they thought only of gaining the magic of

purification and the name-potency of the gods of another people, as

well as of securing the sanctification if not recognition of their own

gods and priests by these other gods and priests.

 

That this was so is shown also by the sacred character almost

invariably of even the less exalted tribal names they gave. Thus,

those belonging not to the priesthood, yet to the "midmost" or

septuarchial clans, as "Francisco Kautzitihua" (Káutsitiwa), or

"Francis Giver of-the-midmost-dance," and "Angela Kahuitietza" (Káwiti

Etsa), or "Angelina Of-the-midmost-dance Little maiden;" and those

belonging to yet other clan divisions and the Kâ´kâ, like "Manuel

Layatzilunquia" (Laíyatsi Lúnk‘ya), or "Emanuel Of-the-flowing plume

Glorious-tall-bearer," and "María Laytzitilutza" (Laítsitilutsa), or

"Mary Of-the-soft-flowing-plume Little-bearer;" and, finally, even

the least sacred but mythically alegoric clan names, such as "Manuel

Layujtigua" (Lá-yúhtiwa) or "Emanuel Plume-of-lightness," a name of the

Eagle clan and upper division of the tribe; and "Lucia Jayatzemietza"

(Haíya Tsemi Étsa), or "Lucy Of-green-growing-things-ever-thinking

Little-maiden," which, alluding to the leaves of growing corn and

vines when watched by the young unmarried girls, is one of the Corn or

Seed clan names belonging to the southern division. Only very rarely

were the colloquial names one hears most often in Zuñi (the sacred and

totemic names are considered too precious for common use) given for

baptismal registration. I have found but two or three. One of these is

written "Estévan Nato Jasti" (Náto Hastiŋ) or "Stephen Old-tobacco,"

a Navajo sobriquet which, in common with the few others like it, was

undoubtedly offered reluctantly in place of the "true and sacred name,"

because some relative who had recently borne it was dead and therefore

his name could not be pronounced aloud lest his spirit and the hearts

of those who mourned him be disturbed.

 

But the presence of these ordinary names evidences no less than that of

the more "idolatrous" ones, the uncompromisingly paganistic spirit of

these supposedly converted Indians, and the unmodified fashion of their

thoughts at the period of their truest apparent allegiance, or at least

submission, to the church. Hence I have not hesitated to pause somewhat

in the course of this introductory sketch to give these examples in

detail, particularly as they evidence not merely the exceeding vitality

of the native Zuñi cult, but at the same time present an explanation of

the strange spectacle of earnest propagandists everywhere vigilantly

seeking out and ruthlessly repressing the native priesthood and their

dances and other ceremonials, yet, unconsciously to themselves,

solemnizing these very things by their rites of baptism, officially

recognizing, in the eyes of the Indians, the very names and titles of

the officiators and offices they otherwise persecuted and denounced.

It was quite of a piece with all this that during the acts of worship

performed in the old church at that time by the Zuñis, whilst they

knelt at mass or responded as taught to the mysterious and to them

magic, but otherwise meaningless, credo, they scattered in secret their

sacred white prayer-meal, and invoked not only the souls of their dead

priests--who as caciques or rulers of the pueblo were accorded the

distinction of burial in the church, under their very feet--but also,

the tribal medicine-plumes and fetiches hidden away under the very

altar where stood the archenemy of their religion!

 

So, in following farther the Spanish history of Zuñi, we need not

be surprised that all went well for a while after the completion of

the church, and that more than twenty priests were at one time and

another resident missionaries of Zuñi. Nor, on the other hand, need we

be surprised that when in the early part of the present century these

missionaries began to leave the pagan surnames out of their registers

giving Spanish names instead--began to suspect, perhaps, the nature

of the wall paintings, or for some other reason had them whitewashed

away--and sought more assiduously than ever, in the deepest hiding

places of the many-storied pueblo, to surprise the native priests at

their unholy pagan practices, that the records of baptisms in the old

books grew fewer and fewer, and that as the secular power withdrew

more and more its support of the clergy, the latter could no longer

control their disaffected flock, and that finally the old mission had

to be abandoned, never again to be reoccupied save on occasions of the

parochial visits of priests resident in far-away Mexican towns or in

other Indian pueblos.

 

Nevertheless, although the old church was thus abandoned and is now

utterly neglected, there lingers still with the Indians a singular

sentiment for it, and this has been supposed to indicate that they

retain some conscious remnant of the faith and teachings for which it

once stood.

 

It is true that the Zuñis of today are as eager as were their

forefathers for baptism and for baptismal names additional to their

own. But it must be remembered that baptism--the purification of the

head by sprinkling or of the face by washing with medicine-water, was

a very old institution with this people even before the Spaniards

found them. With them anyone being named anew or assuming a new

personality or office is invariably sprinkled or washed "that he be

the more cleanly revealed and the better recommended in his new guise

and character to the gods and spirits" invoked for the occasion,

"and thus be constantly recognized by them as their child, named of

themselves, and so be made a special recipient of their favor." This

custom is observed, indeed, on many occasions, as on reaching puberty

or before any great change in life, or before initiation into the

sacred societies, as well as both before and after war, and especially

before and after performance in the sacred dances. The head and face of

every participant in these mythic dramas is washed or sprinkled when

he is being painted and masked to represent or to assume the presence

and personality of the god for whom he is to act or by whom he is to be

possessed.

 

Thus it may be seen that this custom probably had its rise in the

simple and necessary act of washing the face for painting before the

performance of any ceremony calling for the assumption of a new rôle,

and in the washing away of the paint, when the ordinary condition of

life was to be resumed after such performance. Thus, too, it may be

seen that baptism as practiced by the early Franciscan missionaries

must have seemed not only familiar to the Zuñis, but also eminently

proper and desirable on occasion of their accepting the benefits of

initiation into what they supposed was the Kâ´kâ, or one of the

general sacred societies of these other people. No wonder, then, that

when about to be baptized they insisted on giving their own sacred

names of the Kâ´kâ, if only as a surety of their full recognition under

them in this new Kâ´kâ, no less than under the new names they were

about to receive.

 

It is also true that the Zuñis do not again burn the dead and cast

their ashes into the river, nor bury the bodies of the clan elders, or

the priests of the tribal septuarchy, in their own houses, as they did

ere the time of Coronado, or "under the ladders," as their funereal

rituals continue nevertheless to say they do. They bury all, now, in

the little strip of consecrated ground out in front of the church;

ground already so overfilled with the bones of past generations that

never a new grave is made that does not encroach on other graves. Bones

lie scattered all about there, rubbish accumulates, the wooden cross

in the center of the place is frequently broken, and the mud walls

inclosing it are sometimes allowed to fall to the ground. Yet in vain I

urged them if only for sanitary reasons to abandon burying their dead

there, and inter them in the sand hills to the south of the pueblo.

"Alas! we could not," they said. "This was the ground of the church

which was the house of our fathers wherein they were buried, they

and their children, 'under the descending ladders.' How, if we bury

our dead in lone places, may they be numbered with our 'fathers and

children of the descending ladders?'"

 

But far from indicating any lingering desire for "Christian burial,"

this is a striking example of the real, though not apparent,

persistence of their original mortuary customs. For they still

ceremonially and ritualistically "burn" their ordinary dead, as did

their forefathers when first compelled to bury in the churchyard, by

burning some of their hair and personal effects with the customary clan

offerings of food and property, and casting the ashes of all into the

river; and it matters not where these, who virtually exist no more, but

are, in their eyes, consumed and given to the waters, are buried, save

that they be placed with the priestly dead of today, as the "children"

or ordinary dead were placed with the priestly dead in the days of

the "Mísa k‘yakwe" or "Mission-house people." So, too, the priests

of today, or the tribal fathers, are still painted with the black of

silence over their mouths and the yellow and green of light and life

over their eyes and nostrils, as are the gods, and are ritualistically

buried "under the ladders," that is, in their own houses, when actually

buried in the churchyard. Thus, when the gods are invoked, these, as

being demigods, still priests of the beloved, are also invoked, first,

as "Fathers and children of the descending ladder," then as souls in

the clouds and winds and waters, "Makers of the ways of life." So the

whole burial ground of the church is, in the estimation of the Zuñi,

a fetich whereby to invoke the souls of the ancestors, the potency of

which would be destroyed if disturbed; hence the place is neither cared

for nor abandoned, though recognized even by themselves as a "direful

place in daylight."

 

It is much the same with the old church. A few years since a party of

Americans who accompanied me to Zuñi desecrated the beautiful antique

shrine of the church, carrying away "Our Lady of Guadalupe of the

Sacred Heart," the guardian angels, and some of the painted bas-reliefs

attached to the frame of the altar. When this was discovered by the

Indians, consternation seized the whole tribe; council after council

was held, at which I was alternately berated (because people who had

come there with me had thus "plundered their fathers' house"), and

entreated to plead with "Wasintona" to have these "precious saints and

sacred masks of their fathers" returned to them.

 

Believing at the time that the Indians really reverenced these things

as Christian emblems, and myself reverencing sincerely the memory of

the noble missionaries who had braved death and labored so many years

in the cause of their faith and for the good of these Indians, I

promised either to have the original relics returned or to bring them

new saints; and I also urged them to join me in cleaning out the old

church, repairing the rents in its walls and roof, and plastering once

more its rain-streaked interior. But at this point their mood seemed to

change. The chiefs and old men puffed their cigarettes, unmoved by the

most eloquent appeals I could make, save to say, quite irrelevantly,

that I "talked well," and that all my thoughts were good, very good,

but they could not heed them.

 

I asked them if they did not care for their _míssa k‘yakwi_ or

mission-house. "Yea, verily," they replied, with fervor. "It was the

sacred place of our fathers, even more sacred than were the things

taken away therefrom."

 

I asked if they would not, then, in memory of those fathers, restore

its beauty.

 

"Nay," they replied, "we could not, alas! for it was the míssa-house of

our fathers who are dead, and dead is the míssa-house! May the fathers

be made to live again by the adding of meat to their bones? How, then,

may the míssa-house be made alive again by the adding of mud to its

walls?"

 

Not long afterward there was a furious night storm of wind and rain.

On the following morning, great seams appeared in the northern walls

of the old building. I called a council of the Indians and urged that

since they would not repair the míssa-house, it be torn down; for it

might fall over some day and kill the women and children as they passed

through the narrow alley it overshadowed, on their way to and from the

spring. Again I was told that my words were good, but alas! they could

not heed them; that it was the míssa-house of their fathers! How, if

they took it away, would the fathers know their own? It was well that

the wind and rain wore it away, as time wasted away their fathers'

bones. That mattered not, for it was the work of the beloved, whereof

they, the fathers, were aware, but for themselves to move it suddenly

away, that were worse than the despoiling of the shrine; for it was the

house of the fathers, the shrine only a thing thereof, not a thing of

the fathers as verily as was the house itself.

 

From their point of view this reasoning of the Indians was perfectly

consistent, based as it was on their belief that the souls of their

ancestors were mediators and that their mortal remains and the places

and things thereof were means of invoking them, quite as sacrifices are

supposed to be, for the time being, the mortal and mediate parts of the

gods and spirits to which they have been offered, hence a potent means

of invoking them. This is shown much more clearly in the only other

instance of seeming reverence for the church that I can pause to give.

 

The Zuñis are careful to remove all traces of Catholicism, or rather

all symbols of the Mexican religion, from their persons or vicinity

during the performance of their sacred dances or rites, seeing to it

that no Mexican word, even, is ever spoken in the presence of the

Kâ´kâ. If a Mexican or anyone suspected of being a Mexican happens

to approach their town during a ceremonial, he is met by watchful

sentinels and led, no matter what his rank, condition, or haste,

to some sequestered room, where, although courteously treated and

hospitably entertained without charge, he is securely locked up and

rigorously guarded until after the dance or other observance is over.

"The fathers of these Mexicans did violence to our fathers," say the

Indians in explanation, "when that our fathers of old called the sacred

Kâ´kâ. Therefore, in those days our fathers sought to hide the dancers

from their eyes. Our fathers come nigh in breath, when now we call

the Kâ´kâ, and they aid our songs and prayers