PICURIS CHILDREN'S STORIES, WITH TEXTS 



AND SONGS 



By John P. Harrington 



INTRODUCTION 



Among the Indians of the little Tiwa village of Pieuris,' which lies 

 hidden among the mountains of northern New Mexico, the Earth is 

 believed to sleep for about a month at the time of the winter solstice; 

 that is the period for telling ancient myths. Some of the prettiest 

 of these myths constitute the bulk of the present volume of texts. 

 They are dictated by Rosendo Vargas ^ just as he heard them told 

 by his grandfather and others within the adobe walls of the home 

 village when a boy "while the Earth was sleeping." They have 

 all the savor of the New Mexican mountains and well illustrate the 

 versatility of the language, which is capable of expressing the most 

 intricate and poetic thought. 



Characters which figure largely in the myths are the members of 

 the family of cannibalistic Giants, the Elf (a youthful dwarf who has 

 the strength of a man and goes about clad only in a breechclout), 

 Fish Maiden, Sc^qgerepove'eng (the Tewa hunter-adventurer), Shell 

 Hat, the Sun, the Moon, the Morning Star, the Corn Maidens of 

 the cardinal colors, the Butterflies of the cardinal colors, Magpietail 

 Boy, Old Beaver, Old Wolf, Old Coyote, Old Coyote Woman, the 

 brother and sister Fawns, the Dove Maidens, Big Nostril, the Snakes, 

 and several others. Most of the stories end with a good moral 

 teaching or some explanation of nature, and then "You have a 

 tail" ^ — which means that it is your turn to tell a story. The songs 

 which accompany the myths, charmingly rendered by Mr. Vargas, 

 constitute one of the most pleasing features of the collection and. 

 have been transcribed by Miss Helen H. Roberts. 



The dialect of Pieuris and the markedly divergent Taos dialect 

 make up the Northern Tiwa as contrasted with the Southern Tiwa 

 or Isleteno. For further information on the classification of the 

 Tanoan languages see my "Introductory Paper on the Tiwa 

 Language, Dialect of Taos, New Mexico," in American Anthropol- 

 ogist, n. s., vol. 12, pp. 11-48, 1910. 



' Native form Piwweltha; for a view of the pueblo see Plate 43. 



^ Indian name Phlthoxomt^n^ (shortened familiarly to Thaxon), 



Feather-bunch Fh'ing (phi- from phl'iuQ, feather-bunch, Spanish 



plumero; thoxomQU?, that which flies or floats along in the air, from 



thaxoniQ-, to fly along, -nq, agentive). 



^ See footnote, p. 312. 



293 



