During the earlier years of my life with the Zuñi Indians of western-central New Mexico, from the autumn of 1879 to the winter of 1881--before access to their country had been rendered easy by the completion of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad,--they remained, as regards their social and religious institutions and customs and their modes of thought, if not of daily life, the most archaic of the Pueblo or Aridian peoples. They still continue to be, as they have for centuries been, the most highly developed, yet characteristic and representative of all these people. In fact, it is principally due to this higher development by the Zuñi, than by any of the other Pueblos, of the mytho-sociologic system distinctive in some measure of them all at the time of the Spanish conquest of the southwest, that they have maintained so long and so much more completely than any of the others the primitive characteristics of the Aridian phase of culture; this despite the fact that, being the descendants of the original dwellers in the famous "Seven Cities of Cibola," they were the earliest known of all the tribes within the territory of the United States. Like the other Pueblos, the Zuñians, when discovered, were found living in segregated towns; but unlike the other groups (each separate community of any one of which was autonomous except on rare occasions) they were permanently and closely confederated in both a political and hierarchical sense. In other words, all their subtribes and lesser towns were distinctively related to and ruled from a central tribe and town through priest-chiefs, representative of each of them, sitting under the supreme council or septuarchy of the "master priests of the house" in the central town itself, much as were the divisions and cities of the great Inca dominion in South America represented at and ruled from Cuzco, the central city and province of them all. It thus happened that, although one or another of the Zuñi subtribes was at different times partially and temporarily conquered by the Spaniards, they were never as a whole people subdued; and, although missions and chapels were ultimately established at one and another of their towns by the Franciscan friars, they were never all of them immediately under mission influence and surveillance at any one time until a comparatively recent date. The evidences and tragic consequences of this may be traced throughout the history of Spanish intercourse, and as the measure of its effect in minimizing the influence of Spanish thought and example on Zuñi culture and habits is of great importance in determining to what extent the following sacred myths may be regarded as purely aboriginal, a brief outline of this history is regarded as desirable. OUTLINE OF SPANISH-ZUÑI HISTORY.