186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE ZLTNI SOCIAL, MYTHIC, AND KELIGIOUS 



SYSTEMS.* 



By F. H. CUSHING 



GENTLEMEN of the National Academy of Sciences Ladies 

 and Gentlemen : Let me at once present my Indian friends. 

 And now let me introduce some remarks on the mythology and re- 

 ligion of the people whom they represent, the Zuni Indians of Western 

 New Mexico, the largest of the Pueblo nations, the lingering remnants 

 of a vast culture which gave rise to the cliff and mesa ruins of the far 

 Southwest, by a few words designed rather to define my own position 

 than to illustrate my subject. 



The student of the natural history of mankind finds his most diffi- 

 cult subject in the mythology of the lower peoples. Even our own 

 mythology, including our theisms and superstitions, is hard to under- 

 stand, yet ours is, thanks to just such bodies as the one which I have 

 the honor to address to-day, the simplest of all mythologies, because 

 its range of superstition is circumscribed by that of definite knowl- 

 edge, its theism simplified in proportion to the extent of material phi- 

 losophy. 



Perhaps first among the causes of our difficulty is the fact that all 

 mythology deals with those forces and things in nature which are be- 

 yond our comprehension; that it ends not here, but attempts to explain 

 the origin of things in themselves incomprehensible. In proportion, 

 then, to the lack of definite knowledge in any people, its mythology 

 becomes more complicated and less readily understood. To the same 

 intellectual germ in humanity which quickens the philosophy of the 

 nineteenth century may we look for the cause of the origin and growth 

 of mythology. And thus it happens that we find the scientist of our 

 own places and times and the Zuni Indian laboring hand in hand in 

 the same field, both trying to explain the phenomena of nature and 

 their existence, the one by metaphysical the other by physical re- 

 search ; the one by building up, the other by tearing down, mythology. 

 In order, then, to comprehend the mythology of a people, we must learn 

 their language, acquire their confidence, assimilating ourselves to them 

 by joining in their every-day life, their religious life, even as far as 

 possible in their intellectual life, by remembering with intense ear- 

 nestness the reasonings of our own childhood, by constantly striking 

 every possible chord of human sympathy in our intercourse with those 

 whose inner life we would study. 



I think I have now sufficiently explained why I have entered into 

 relation with the Zuni Indians, and become a participator in their 



* Lecture before the National Academy of Sciences, delivered in Washington, April 

 22, 1882. 



