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
The first discovered of the Seven Cities of Cibola or Zuñiland, called
by the Zuñis themselves Shíwona, was by native account the most
easterly of their towns, the K‘yä´kime of tradition and the Caquima of
later Spanish record. According also to native tradition it was entered
by Estevanico, the negro spy of Fray Marcos de Niza, and the Black
Mexican of Zuñi story, in the spring of 1539. The negro was forthwith
killed by the inhabitants; but the friar, following him shortly after,
saw from the mesa heights to the southward one of the seven villages,
and, making good his escape, reported his discovery to the viceroy of
Mexico, Don Antonio de Mendoza.
Only a year later the largest of the westerly towns, Háwik’uh (Aquico)
was stormed and its inhabitants partly subdued, partly driven away to
the great tribal stronghold, Thunder mountain, by that valiant knight,
Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, and his vanguard of hardy mail-clad
soldiers. The little army occupied as headquarters, for several months,
the town they had captured, and later the more numerous rear of the
army were quartered at the more central and eastern town of Mátsaki
(Muzaque). During this time Coronado and his comrades in arms were
able to reassure and pacify the natives, insomuch that when, two years
afterward, they were returning through Zuñiland en route to Mexico from
the conquests of the farther Pueblos and their vain search for the
golden province of Quivira, they were entreated to remain and join the
tribes. But Fray Juan de Padilla, the heroic priest of the expedition,
had found more fertile fields to the eastward, and only three or four
Mexican Indian allies of the Spaniards were fain to stay.
When, in 1581-'82, Francisco Chamuscado and his 9 soldiers recklessly
penetrated those vast and lonely wilds of the southwest (in 1888 I
sketched his graven signature and those of many of his successors on
El Moro, or the Rock Mesa of Inscriptions, 35 miles east of Zuñi)
and passed through the country of Cibola, he was not hindered by its
people. And when Antonio de Espejo, in 1582, with scarcely more of a
company, was on his way toward Tusayan or the Hopi country, in the
northwest, he stopped at the central town of Alona (Hálona) and was
well received. To this day the marks, said by the Zuñis to have been
made by the "iron bonnets of his tall warriors," are shown on the
rafters of one of the low, still used prehistoric rooms facing the
great northern court (once the central and main one) of Zuñi, and
attest to the hospitality so long ago accorded them there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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