948 ZUNI KATCINAS 



[ETH. ANN. 47 



Gushing (Ziini Origin Myths), gives the following description of 

 the appearance and conduct of the 10 Koyemci: 



"In time there were born to these twain 12 children. Nay, neither 

 man children nor woman children, they! For look now! The first 

 was a woman in fullness of contour, but a man in stature and brawn. 

 From the mingling of too much seed in one kind, comes the twofold 

 one kind la'hmon, being man and woman combined. . . . Yet not 

 all ill was this first child, because she was born of love, ere her parents 

 were changed ; thus she partook not of their distortions. Not so with 

 her brothers; in semblance of males, yet like boys, the fruit of sex was 

 not in them ! For the fruit of mere lust ripens not. For their parents, 

 being changed to hideousness, abode together witlessly and consorted 

 idly or in passion not quickened of favor to the eye or the heart. And 

 lo! like to their father were his later children, but varied as his 

 moods. . . . Thus they were strapping louts, but dun colored and 

 marked with the welts of their father. Silly were they, yet wise as 

 the gods and high priests; for as simpletons and the crazed speak from 

 the things seen of the instant, uttering belike wise words and prophecy, 

 so spake they, and became the attendants and fosterers, yet the sages 

 and interpreters of the ancient dance dramas of the ka'ka. 



"Named are they not with the names of men, but with names of 

 mismeaning, for there is pekwina, priest speaker of the sun. Medi- 

 tative is he, even in the quick of day, after the fashion of his father 

 when shamed, saying little save rarely, and then as irrelevantly as 

 the veriest child or dotard. 



"Then there is pi'lan shiwani (bow priest warrior). So cowardly 

 he that he dodges behind ladders, thinking them trees no doubt, and 

 lags after all the others, whenever frightened, even at the fluttering 

 leaf or a crippled spider, and looks in every direction but the straight 

 one whenever danger threatens! 



"There is eshotsi (the bat) who can see better in the sunlight than 

 any of them, but would maim himself in a shadow, and will avoid a 

 hole in the groimd as a woman would a dark place even were it no 

 bigger than a beetle burrow. 



"Also there is muiyapona (wearer of the eyelets of invisibility). He 

 has horns like the catfish and is knobbed like a bludgeon squash. 

 But he never by any chance disappears, even when he hides his head 

 behind a ladder run or turkey cpiill, yet thinks himself quite out of 

 sight. And he sports with his countenance as though it were as 

 smooth as a damsel's. 



"There is potsoki (the pouter) who does little but laugh and look 

 bland, for grin he can not; and his younger brother Nalashi (aged 

 buck) who is the biggest of them all, and what with having grieved 

 and nearly rubbed his eyes out (when his j'ounger brother was cap- 

 tured and carried off by the Kyamakyakwe or snail ka'ka of the 



