STEVENSON] INTRODUCTION 37 



In all the poetic conceptions of the Ziini one great object is para- 

 mount — food to support the phj-sical man. 



Thus — May the rain-makers water the Earth Mother that she may be made beautiful 

 to look upon. May the rain-makers water the Earth Mother that she may become 

 fruitful and give to her children and to all the world the fruits of her being, that we 

 may have food in abundance. May the Sun Father embrace our Earth Mother that 

 she may become fruitful, that food may be bountiful, and that our children may live 

 the span of life, not die, but sleep to awake with their gods. 



While it was generally observed by early tiavelers among the 

 Indians that they employed plants for medicinal purposes, it was 

 long believed, even by scientific students, that the practices of 

 Indian doctors were purely shamanistic. The late Dr. Washuigton 

 Matthews, however, declared from the beginninj^ of his ethnological 

 investigations that the Indians emplo^'cd many plants of real value 

 in medicine. !Mr. Stevenson made the same assertion, and the 

 writer discovered in the begimimg of her researches among the Zuni 

 Indians iti 1879 that they had many legitimate plant medicines, 

 among which was a narcotic, of which more will be said later. 



In addition to their use in medicine and for food, plants pre em- 

 ployed by the Zuni in weaving and dyeing, in making basketry, mats, 

 brushes, rope and cords of various kinds, and also in pottoiy decora- 

 tion, in the toilet, and in ceremonies. Clans, individuals, .-ind locali- 

 ties are named for plants. 



In this memoir medicinal plants will be first considered. Where a 

 common name is known, it is given; where the native name or its 

 derivation is omitted, it is because the writer did not succeed in 

 recording the data. 



The specimens of plants dealt with in the following pages were 

 collected largely b)' the writer and Me'she, the late yoimger-brother 

 Bow-Priest of Zuni, who gave his heart not only to the collecting of 

 the plants, but to their classification according to the Zuni system and 

 to their use by his people. After careful study of the plants with 

 Me'she, the writer at various times verified the mformation through 

 others, both men and women, especially versed in plant lore. 



Usually the Zuiii have a name for each species of a genus of plants, 

 but in some cases they employ the same name for different genera. 

 This is not due to theu- lack of appreciation of the botanical difference, 

 but to the fact that two or more plants may serve the same purpose 

 or have similar characteristics. Some plants are curiously associated 

 in name with animals, others are named from the medicinal qualities 

 attributed to them, while others receive theu- names from those of 

 animals to which they are believed to belong. Of the last-mentioned 

 class there are, for example, the cougar, the bear, the badger, the 

 wolf, the eagle, and the shrew medicine, these animals being assigned 



