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 time there were born to these twain, twelve children. Nay, neither
man-children nor woman-children they! For look now! The first, was a
woman in fulness of contour, but a man in stature and brawn. From the
mingling of too much seed in one kind, comes the two-fold one kind,
_‘hláhmon_, being man and woman combined--even as from a kernel of
corn with two hearts, ripens an ear that is neither one kind nor the
other, but both! Yet not all ill was this first child, because she was
born of love--what though crazed!--ere her parents were changed; thus
she partook not of their distortions. Not so with her brothers; in
semblance of males, yet like boys, the fruit of sex was not in them!
For the fruit of mere lust comes to naught, even as corn, self-sown out
of season, ripens not. For their parents, being changed to hideousness,
abode together witlessly and consorted idly or in passion not quickened
of favor to the eye or the heart. And lo! like to their father were
his later children, but varied as his moods; for then, as now, what
the mother looked most on while withholding them, thus wise were they
formed as clay by the thought of the potter; wherefore we cherish our
matrons and reveal not to them the evil dramas neither the slaughtered
nor hamstrung game lest their children be weakly or go maimed. Thus
they were strapping louts, but dun-colored and marked with the welts of
their father. Silly were they, yet wise as the gods and high priests;
for as simpletons and the crazed speak from the things seen of the
instant, uttering belike wise words and prophecy, so spake they, and
became the attendants and fosterers, yet the sages and interpreters, of
the ancient of dance-dramas or the Kâ´kâ.
Named are they, not with the names of men, but with names of
mis-meaning, for there is Pékwina, Priest-speaker of the Sun.
Meditative is he, even in the quick of day, after the fashion of his
father when shamed, saying little save rarely, and then as irrelevantly
as the veriest child or dotard.
Then there is Pí‘hlan Shíwani (Bow Priest-warrior). So cowardly he that
he dodges behind ladders, thinking them trees no doubt, and lags after
all the others, whenever frightened, even at a fluttering leaf or a
crippled spider, and looks in every direction but the straight one,
whenever danger threatens!
There is Éshotsi (the Bat) who can see better in the sunlight than any
of them, but would maim himself in a shadow, and will avoid a hole in
the ground as a woman would a dark place, even were it no bigger than a
beetle burrow.
Also there is Muíyapona (Wearer of the Eyelets of Invisibility). He
has horns like the catfish, and is knobbed like a bludgeon-squash. But
he never by any chance disappears, even when he hides his head behind
a ladder rung or turkey quill, yet thinks himself quite out of sight.
And he sports with his countenance as though it were as smooth as a
damsel's.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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