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 — John Shaqi
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
Thus the outer wall was intended in part as a slight protection from
the wind, and probably also to guard from flooding during the sudden
showers which sometimes descend in torrents over Arizona plains. They
may also have been designed to some extent for protection from the
enemy; for these people were far more valiant fighters than their
ultimate brethren of the north, and depended for protection less on
security of position than on their own prowess. Only during times
of unusual danger did they retire to fortified lava buttes (or,
when near them, to deep but more or less open crevices in some of
the more extensive lava fields), where their hut foundations may be
found huddled together within huge inclosures of natural lava blocks,
dry laid and irregular, but some of them skillfully planned and
astonishingly vast; but in these strongholds they never tarried long
enough to be influenced in their building habits sufficiently to change
the styles of their hamlets in the plains, for until we reach the point
in eastern Arizona where they joined the "elder nations" no change in
ground plan of these houses is to be traced in their remains.
* * * * *
It is necessary to add a few details as to costume, usages, and the
institutions of these semisettled yet ever shifting people.
They wore but scant clothing besides their robes and
blankets--breech-clouts and kilts, short for the men, long for the
women, and made of shredded bark and rushes or fiber; sandals, also
of fiber; necklaces of shell beads, and pendent carved shell gorgets.
The hair was bobbed to the level of the eyebrows in front, but left
long and hanging at the back, gathered into a bunch or switch with a
colored cord by the men, into which cord, or into a fillet of plaited
fiber, gorgeous long tail feathers of the macaw, roadrunner, or
eagle were thrust and worn upright. To the crown of the head of the
warriors was fastened a huge bunch of stripped or slitted feathers of
the owl or eagle, called, no doubt, then as now by its Yuman name,
_musema_; for it is still known, though used in different fashion, as
the _múmtsemak‘ya_ or _múmpalok‘ye_ by the Zuñi Priests of the Bow.
The warriors also carried targets or shields of yucca or cotton cord,
closely netted across a strong, round hoop-frame and covered with a
coarser and larger net, which was only a modification of the carrying
net (like those still in use by the Papago, Pima, and other Indians
of southern Arizona), and was turned to account as such, indeed, on
hunting and war expeditions.
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