outlines of zuni Creation Myths 7

outlines of zuni Creation Myths 7

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.

 

 

GENERAL EXPLANATIONS RELATIVE TO THE TEXT.

 

As the space originally apportioned to this merely preliminary essay

on the Myths of Creation has already been greatly exceeded, the

consideration even in outline of the cultural characteristics of the

Zuñis, which would do much to further illumine the meaning of the

myths, must be left to the second paper of the series. This will

constitute a key or appendix to the present paper, and will contain

such glossaries and detailed explanations as will render, it is hoped,

all obscure passages clear, and will at the same time give my authority

for framing and translating the myths as I have.

 

Chiefly, however, it will in turn introduce a third paper on the sacred

dances or creation dramas of the Kâ´kâ, which originally the myths

themselves (as the source of the songs, rituals, and forms of these

dramas) were designed to introduce. Lastly, the whole series are but

preliminary to a very extensive work on the subject which I contemplate

producing so soon as health and opportunity for further researches

among the Zuñis will permit.

 

As inclusive of the dramaturgies or dances, and nearly all other

ceremonials of the Zuñis, this subject of their creation myths is

almost inexhaustible. I, at least, can not hope to complete it, and I

have therefore chosen to treat it in its relation especially to their

so-called dances, particularly to those of the Kâ´kâ.

 

With other primitive peoples as with the Zuñis, there seems to be no

bent of their minds so strong or pervasive of and influential upon

their lives as the dramaturgic tendency. That tendency to suppose that

even the phenomena of nature can be controlled and made to act more or

less by men, if symbolically they do first what they wish the elements

to do, according to the ways in which, as taught by their mystic lore,

they suppose these things were done or made to be done by the ancestral

gods of creation time. And this may be seen in a searching analysis not

only of the incidents and symbolisms in folk-tales as well as myths

of such primitive peoples, but also in a study of the moods in which

they do the ordinary things of life; as in believing that because a

stone often struck wears away faster than when first struck it is

therefore helpful in overcoming its obduracy to strike it--work it--by

a preliminary dramatic and ritualistic striking, whereupon it will work

as though already actually worked over, and will be less liable to

breakage, etc.

 

All this and much more to the same effect will be illustrated in the

papers which I have mentioned as designed to follow the present one.

 

There remain still a few points in this preliminary paper which must be

commented upon--points regarding my own hand in the work chiefly. I use

very freely such terms as "religious," "sacred," "priest," and "god,"

not because they always express exactly the native meaning, but for the

reason that they do so more approximately than any other terms I could

select. The fearful and mysterious, the magical and occult, all these

and many other elements are usually included in the primitive man's

religion, and hence terms like "sacred" must be given a less restricted

value than they have in our speech or culture.

 

Again, while the Zuñi word _shíwani_, "priest," literally signifies

guardian and possessor, as well as maker or keeper of the flesh, or

seed of life of the Zuñis, it must not be supposed to represent a

medicine-man, shaman, or sorcerer--for all of which there are specific

differentiated terms in the Zuñi tongue. Those who bear that title are

also divided into four classes, but among all these the functions of

possessing a shrine, being ritualists, performing before the altars,

and leading as well as ordering all organized sacerdotal ceremonials,

is common. Therefore the simple term "priest," in the Pagan rather than

in the Christian sense, is the best and truest that can be found.

 

Frequently I have occasion to reproduce portions of songs or rituals,

or, again, words of the Uánami or "Beloved Gods." In the originals

these are almost always in faultless blank verse meter, and are often

even grandly poetic. I do not hesitate either to reproduce as nearly as

possible their form, or to tax to the uttermost my power of __EXPRESSION__

in rendering the meanings of them where I quote, clear and effective

and in intelligible English. Yet in doing this I do not have to depart

very far from "scientific" accuracy, even in the linguistic sense.

 

Finally, I have entitled the originative division of this paper

"Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths," because, in the first place, this

is but a preliminary rendering of these, and, properly speaking, they

are a series of explanation-myths. Now, while such myths are generally

disconnected, often, indeed, somewhat contradictory episode-legends

with primitive peoples, they are, with the Zuñis, already become

serial, and it is in their serial or epic form (but merely in outline)

that I here give them. Although each is called a talk, and is held

specifically by a particular organization or social division, yet all

are called "the speech." This comes about in Zuñi by the presence in

the tribal organization, as already explained, of a class of men and

priests there called the "Midmost," or the "All," because hereditary in

a single clan (the Macaw), yet representative sacerdotally of all the

clans and all the priesthoods, which they out-rank as "Masters of the

House of Houses."

 

With them all these various myths are held in brief and repeated in

set form and one sequence as are placed the beads of a rosary or on a

string, each entire, yet all making a connected strand. Here, then, we

see the rudiment or embryo of a sacred epic such as that of the K‘yäk´lu

or "Speaker of all times whensoever."

 

As finally published, this paper will contain the most ample

explanation of all these points and many others, and will not ask, as

it does today, catholic judgment and charitable interpretation.

 

The so-called dances of the Zuñis, and presumably those of all similar

primitive peoples, are essentially religio-sociologic in character and

always at least dramatic, or, more properly speaking, dramaturgic. It

follows that to endeavor to describe and treat at all adequately of any

one such ceremonial becomes a matter of exceeding difficulty, for it

should involve a far more perfect scheme of the sociologic organization

as well as at least a general survey of the mythology and religious

institutions of the tribe to which it relates, such as I here present,

as well as an absolutely searching description of all details in both

the preparation for and the performance of such ceremonial.

 

For example, the celebrated Kâ´kâ or mythic drama-dance organization

of the Zuñis, and for that matter all other of their ceremonials,

are, any one of them, made up in personnel from specific clans. Thus

formed, they are organized, and the actors and their parts divided

in accordance with the groupings of these clans in relation to the

symbolic regions of the world, or in this case literally septs.

Finally, the paraphernalia and costumings, no less than the actions,

songs, and rituals, are as distinctly founded on and related to the

legend or legends dramatized.

 

At this point it seems desirable that the sense in which the terms

"drama," "dramatic," and "dramaturgic" are employed in relation to

these ceremonials be explained. This may best be done, perhaps, by

contrasting the drama of primitive peoples, as I conceive it, with that

of civilized peoples. While the latter is essentially spectacular, the

former has for its chief motive the absolute and faithful reproduction

of creative episodes--one may almost say, indeed, the revivification of

the ancient.

 

That this is attempted and is regarded as possible by primitive man

is not to be wondered at when we consider his peculiar modes of

conception. I have said of the Zuñis that theirs is a science of

appearances and a philosophy of analogies. The primitive man, no less

than the child, is the most comprehensive of observers, because his

looking at and into things is not self-conscious, but instinctive and

undirected, therefore comprehensive and searching. Unacquainted as he

is with rational explanations of the things he sees, he is given, as

has been the race throughout all time, to symbolic interpretation and

mystic __EXPRESSION__ thereof, as even today are those who deal with the

domain of the purely speculative. It follows that his organizations

are symbolic; that his actions within these organizations are also

symbolic. Consequently, as a child at play on the floor finds sticks

all-sufficient for the personages of his play-drama, chairs for his

houses, and lines of the floor for the rivers that none but his

eyes can see, so does the primitive man regard the mute, but to him

personified, appliances of his dance and the actions thereof, other

than they seem to us.

 

I can perhaps make my meaning more clear by analyzing such a conception

common to the Zuñi mind. The Zuñi has observed that the corn plant

is jointed; that its leaves spring from these joints not regularly,

but spirally; that stripped of the leaves the stalk is found to be

indented, not regularly at opposite sides, but also spirally; that

the matured plant is characterized, as no other plant is, by two

sets of seeds, the ears of corn springing out from it two-thirds

down and the tassels of seeds, sometimes earlets, at the top; also

that these tassels resemble the seed-spikes of the spring-grass or

pigeon-grass; that the leaves themselves while like broad blades of

grass are fluted like plumes, and that amongst the ears of corn ever

and anon are found bunches of soot; and, finally, that the colors of

the corn are as the colors of the world--seven in number. Later on it

may be seen to what extent he has legendized these characteristics,

thus accounting for them, and to what extent, also, he has dramatized

this, his natural philosophy of the corn and its origin. Nothing in

this world or universe having occurred by accident--so it seems to the

Zuñi mind,--but everything having been started by a personal agency or

supernal, he immediately begins to see in these characteristics of the

corn plant the traces of the actions of the peoples in his myths of

the olden time. Lo! men lived on grass seeds at first, but, as related

in the course of the legends which follow, there came a time when, by

the potencies of the gods and the magic of his own priests or shamans,

man modified the food of first men into the food of men's children.

It needed only a youth and a maiden, continent and pure, to grasp at

opposite sides and successively the blades of grass planted with plumes

of supplication, and walking or dancing around them, holding them

firmly to draw them upward until they had rapidly grown to the tallness

of themselves, then to embrace them together. Behold! the grasses were

jointed where grasped four times or six according to their tallness;

yea, and marked with the thumb-marks of those who grasped them; twisted

by their grasp while circling around them and leaved with plume-like

blades and tasseled with grass-like spikes at the tops. More wonderful

than all, where their persons had touched the plants at their middles,

behold! new seed of human origin and productive of continued life had

sprung forth in semblance of their parentage and draped with the very

pile of their generation. For lo! that when the world was new all

things in it were _k‘yaíuna_, or formative, as now is the child in the

mother's womb or the clay by the thoughts of the potter. That the seed

of seeds thus made be not lost it needed that Paíyatuma, the God of

Dew and the Dawn, freshen these new-made plants with his breath; that

Ténatsali, the God of Time and the Seasons, mature them instantly with

his touch and breath; that Kwélele, the God of Heat, ripen them with

the touch of his Fire-brother's torch and confirm to them the warmth

of a life of their own. Nevertheless, with the coming of each season,

the creation is ever repeated, for the philosophy of ecclesiasticism is

far older than ecclesiastics or their writings, and since man aided in

the creation of the corn, so must he now ever aid in each new creation

of the seed of seeds. Whence the drama of the origin of corn is not

merely reenacted, but is revived and reproduced in all its many details

with scrupulous fidelity each summer as the new seed is ripening.

And now I may add intelligibly that the drama of primitive man is

performed in an equally dramaturgic spirit, whether seen, as in its

merely culminating or final enactment, or unseen and often secret, as

in its long-continued preparations. In this a given piece of it may be

likened to a piece of Oriental carving or of Japanese joinery, in which

the parts not to be seen are as scrupulously finished as are the parts

seen, the which is likewise characteristic of our theme, for it is due

to the like dramaturgic spirit which dominates even the works, no less

than the ceremonials, of all primitive and semiprimitive peoples.

 

So also it seems to the Zuñi that no less essential is it that all the

long periods of creation up to the time when corn itself was created

from the grasses must be reproduced, even though hastily and by mere

signs, as are the forms through which a given species in animal life

has been evolved, rapidly repeated in each embryo.

 

The significance of such studies as these of a little tribe like the

Zuñis, and especially of such fuller studies as will, it is hoped,

follow in due course, is not restricted to their bearing on the tribe

itself. They bear on the history of man the world over. I have become

convinced that they thus bear on human history, especially on that of

human culture growth, very directly, too, for the Zuñis, say, with all

their strange, apparently local customs and institutions and the lore

thereof, are representative in a more than merely general way of a

phase of culture through which all desert peoples, in the Old World

as well as in the New, must sometime have passed. Thus my researches

among these Zuñis and my experimental researches upon myself, with my

own hands, under strictly primitive conditions, have together given

me insight and power to interpret their myths and old arts, as I

could never otherwise have hoped to do; and it has also enlarged my

understanding of the earliest conditions of man everywhere as nothing

else could have done.

 

The leisure for this long continued research has been due to the

generosity, scientific disinterestedness, and personal kindness of my

former chief, Professor Spencer F. Baird, and of my present revered

director, Major J. W. Powell, whose patience and helpfulness through

years of struggle, ill-health, and delay could not adequately be

repaid by even the complete carrying out of the series of works herein

projected and prefaced. To them and to Professor W. J. McGee, who has

aided and fostered this work in every possible way, I owe continual

gratitude.

 

 

 

 

MYTHS[8]

 

[8] As stated more fully in the introductory paragraphs,

notes giving the etymologies of native terms and explaining

and amplifying obscure or brief allusions and presenting

the special sense in which certain __EXPRESSION__s and passages

are used will be given in the second part of this paper, to

appear in the future.

 

 

THE GENESIS OF THE WORLDS, OR THE BEGINNING OF NEWNESS.

 

Before the beginning of the new-making, Áwonawílona (the Maker and

Container of All, the All-father Father), solely had being. There was

nothing else whatsoever throughout the great space of the ages save

everywhere black darkness in it, and everywhere void desolation.

 

In the beginning of the new-made, Áwonawílona conceived within himself

and thought outward in space, whereby mists of increase, steams potent

of growth, were evolved and uplifted. Thus, by means of his innate

knowledge, the All-container made himself in person and form of the Sun

whom we hold to be our father and who thus came to exist and appear.

With his appearance came the brightening of the spaces with light, and

with the brightening of the spaces the great mist-clouds were thickened

together and fell, whereby was evolved water in water; yea, and the

world-holding sea.

 

With his substance of flesh (_yépnane_) outdrawn from the surface

of his person, the Sun-father formed the seed-stuff of twain

worlds, impregnating therewith the great waters, and lo! in the

heat of his light these waters of the sea grew green and scums

(_k’yanashótsiyallawe_) rose upon them, waxing wide and weighty

until, behold! they became Áwitelin Tsíta, the "Four-fold Containing

Mother-earth," and Ápoyan Tä´chu, the "All-covering Father-sky."