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
In the Kâ´kâ, or the mythic drama dance organization of the Zuñis,
there is equal evidence of dual origin, for while in the main the
_kâ´kâ_ of the Zuñis corresponds to the _katzina_ of the Rio Grande
Pueblo tribes and to the _kachina_ of the Tusayan Indians, yet it
possesses certain distinct and apparently extraneous features. The
most notable of these is found in that curious organization of
priest-clowns, the Kâ´yimäshi, the myth of the origin of which is
so fully given in the following outlines (see page 401). It will be
seen that in this myth these Kâ´yimäshi are described as having heads
covered with welts or knobs, that they are referred to not only as
"husbands of the sacred dance" or the "_kâ´kâ_" (from _kâ´kâ_ and
_yémäshi_, as in _óyemäshi_, husband or married to) and as the Old
Ones or _Á‘hläshiwe_.
Throughout the Rio Colorado region, and associated with all the
remaining ruins of the rancheria builders in central and even eastern
Arizona as well, are found certain concretions or other nodular and
usually very rough stones, which today, among some of the Yuman
tribes, are used as fetiches connected both with water worship and
household worship. Among the sacred objects said to have been brought
by the Zuñi ancestry from the places of creation are a number of such
fetich-stones, and in all the ruins of the later Zuñi towns such
fetich-stones are also found, especially before rude altars in the
plazas and around ancient, lonely shrines on the mesas and in the
mountains. These fetich-stones are today referred to as _á‘hläshiwe_,
or stone ancients, from _a_, a stone, _‘hlä´shi_, aged one, and _we_,
a plural suffix. The resemblance of this name to the _Á‘hläshiwe_ as
a name of the Kâ´yemäshi strongly suggests that the nodular shape
and knobbed mask-heads of these priest-clowns are but dramatic
personifications of these "stone ancients," and if one examine such
stones, especially when used in connection with the worship and
invocation of torrents, freshets, and swift-running streams (when, like
the masks in question, they are covered with clay), the resemblance
between the fetich-stones and the masks is so striking that one is
inclined to believe that both the characters and their names were
derived from this single source. From the fact that this peculiar
institution of the clown-priest organization, associated with or, as
the Zuñis say, literally married to the Cachina, or Kâ´kâ proper, was
at one time peculiarly Zuñi, as is averred by themselves and avowed
by all the other Pueblos, it would seem that it was distinctively an
institution of the western branch of their ancestry, since also, as the
myths declare, these Old Ones were born on the sacred mountains of the
Kâ´kâ, on the banks of the Colorado Chiquito in Arizona. Finally, this
is typical of many, if not all, features which distinguish the Zuñi
Kâ´kâ from the corresponding organizations of other Pueblo tribes.
OUTLINE OF ZUÑI MYTHO-SOCIOLOGIC ORGANIZATION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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