The American Museum Journal 



V^OLUME XVI 



FEBRUARY, 1916 



Number 2 



Symbol of the rainbow god worn on the head by a masked dancer impersonating the god 



The Oldest Town in America and its People 



By A. L. KROEBER 



Professor of Anthropology in the University of California 



THREE hundred and sixty-six years 

 ago the intrepid Spaniard Coro- 

 nado marched a little army north- 

 ward from ^lexieo across the deserts of 

 Sonora and Arizona until in what is now 

 the western part of the state of New 

 Mexico, he found and conquered and 

 occupied a group of Pueblo Indian towns 

 whose fame had reached him under the 

 designation of the "Seven Cities of 

 Cibola," or Zuni. As the years went on 

 one or another of the seven allied towns 

 was abandoned and its inhabitants 

 moved to the central f)ne of the group, 



Halona, "Place of the Ants." For over 

 two hundred years now, the whole Zuni 

 tribe has concentrated itself in this 

 settlement which is known to Americans 

 as the Pue})lo Zuiii, and to its inhabitants 

 as Ittiwawa, "The Middle Place," for 

 in nati\e belief its site marks the exact 

 center of the earth. 



With the possible exception of two or 

 three other Pueblo settlements, Zuni 

 is thus the oldest inhabited town in the 

 United States, far surpassing in anti- 

 quity Jamestown, Plymouth, and other 

 early English settlements, as well as 



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