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.