Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-1892, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 321-448Cushing, Frank Hamilton
History
Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-1892, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 321-448
Cushing, Frank Hamilton
Zuni mythology
to cliff dwelling from pueblo dwelling is indicated, or, as with the
southern cliff villages, these also were outposts of comparatively
modern kinds of pueblos occurring in the neighborhood. Such, for
example, was the case with many of the cliff dwellings of the Tsegi or
Canyon de Chelly, some of which continued to be occupied long after the
more easterly towns of the San Juan were abandoned, and others of which
were reoccupied, probably by Tusayan Indians, in comparatively recent
time.
[2] See Bandelier, Final Report of Investigations among the
Indians of the Southwestern United States, etc., Part II,
pp. 425-428.
The occurrence of sepulchers in or near almost all the San Juan cliff
ruins would alone indicate that they were central and permanent homes
of the people who built and occupied them. The surviving Pueblo
Indians, so far as I am aware, never bury in or near their outlying
towns. Invariably the dead are taken to the central pueblo home of the
tribe for sepulture, as there only may they become tribal fetiches in
the manner I have heretofore indicated, and be properly renounced by
the clans of kin at their place of birth and rearing. If, then, all
the cliff towns were merely outlying strongholds, no interments of the
original inhabitants would be found in them save those of children
perchance born and reared in them. In fact, this is precisely the case
with some of the towns in question, those above described as manifestly
settlements from later true pueblos.
Another feature of the older cliff dwellings is still more significant
in this connection--the presence of the kiva; for the kiva or sacred
assembly room was never, for mythic and sociologic reasons, built
in temporary or outlying settlements. The mere council chamber was
sometimes present in these, but the true kiva never, so long as they
remained resorts of more central pueblo towns, for each kiva of such a
town located a division of the tribe as pertaining to one or another of
the quarters or mythic divisions. Hence, as might be expected, in the
more southerly cliff dwellings belonging to more recent pueblos no kiva
is ever found.
The evidence furnished by the kivas is significant in other ways,
for in connection with the above theory the claim has also been
advanced that the cliff villages were occupied for only brief periods
at best; that they do not, as assumed by me, represent a phase--so
much as an incident--in the development of a people. Aside from the
linguistic, sociologic, and other evidence I have to offer later on
that of not only these kivas, but also of certain other features
of the ruins themselves, is decidedly indicative of both long and
continuous occupancy; and an examination of this evidence helps to
an understanding of the culture growth of the early cliff dwellers
as being not that of Pueblos at first, but that of Pueblo ancestry,
Pueblos developing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account