PARSONS] CEREMONIAL OEGANIZATION 265 



pueblos that their exercise should perhaps also be considered a naajor 

 function. Going a far distance and returning within a short time is 

 another of their distinctive powers.*' Sometimes they are requested 

 to fetch spruce from the mountains. Within a quarter of an hour 

 their representative will arrive with the spruce, and on it and on his 

 head there is snow. In witch catching a doctor will also travel a 

 distance in short time. 



The societies or their members individually have to be ritually 

 invited to perform. In the case of an individual cure, the doctor 

 (toyide, medicine man; pi. toynin) goes to the house of the patient, 

 unless a full or big ceremony has been asked for by the patient or 

 his family in the society's house. For this full ceremony as well as 

 for ritual at childbirth the doctor is invited through the chief of the 

 Com group the patient belongs to. 



A convalescent does not necessarily join the society. The doctor 

 is paid otherwise. On the other hand the sick man may take a vow 

 to join the society. He need not choose the member curing him for 

 his ceremonial father. Also a man may join the society without any 

 e.xperience of sickness. 



Besides their ceremonies of curing and of initiation, the medicine 

 societies perform ceremonies in the series of solstice ceremonies, like- 

 ^vise a ceremony of general exorcism, the ceremony of bringing down 

 the moon and stars and ceremonies to quiet the wind, to bring rain, 

 to expel grasshoppers. 



Moreover, either the town chief or the war chief may ask the 

 societies to perform special ceremonial. A case in point occurred in 

 November, 1925. A delegation '* from Zuni arrived in Isleta to ask 

 for medicine men to come to Zuni to cure their "coughing sickness." 

 There was a meeting in the house of the town chief who asked the 

 Town Fathers to consider the matter. The same night the chief of the 

 Town Fathers performed his ritual to discover what was happening at 

 Zuni. He learned that the sickness was a "punishment" to the Zuni 

 for letting whites and Mexicans see their ceremonial.*' So the Fathers 

 refused to go to Zuni, and the Zuni delegates had to go on to Jemez 



s' The power to make long distance flights is possessed by Keresan shamans also, as it was also possessed, 

 it may be of interest to note, by the nun Maria de Jesiis who told Benavides of her flights from Spain to 

 the Indians of New Me.\ico, beginning in 1620. (Benavides, 276-277.) Benavides relates that the Xu- 

 raanas, a Caddoan tribe neighboring the southern Pueblos, reported that they were visited from the hills 

 by a young woman who preached to them and for this reason they wanted to be converted. The padre 

 who went to them was Father Salas who was to go later to Quarai (Benavides, 5S-59), whence there were 

 immigrants to Isieta. 



s* Pitasio and Leopold were mentioned as delegates. 



*» The ceremonial in mind was undoubtedly the shalako in which the kachina masks appear. During 

 the past few years there have been visitors to Zufii during the shalako from the eastern pueblos, San 

 Domingo, San Felipe, Isleta, among them Pablo Abeita of Isleta. And these visitors are critical of the 

 admission of whites (Mexicans are excluded) at Zuni to the equivalent of what in their own towns whites 

 are rigorously excluded from. And so the Zuni sickness is interpreted as the band of God. 



6066°— 31 18 



