OUTLINES OF ZUNI CREATION MYTHS 



By Frank Hamilton Gushing 

 INTRODUCTORY 



THE SURVIVAL OF EARLY ZUNI TRAITS. 



During the earlier years of my life with, the Zuui Indians of western- 

 central New Mexico, from the autumn of 1879 to the winter of 1881 — 

 before access to their country had been rendered easy by the comple- 

 tion of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad, — they remained, as regards 

 their social and religious institutions and customs and their modes of 

 thought, if not of daily life, the most archaic of the Pueljlo or Aridian 

 peoples. They still continue to be, as they have for centuries been, the 

 most highly developed, yet characteristic and representative of all these 

 people. 



In fact, it is principally due to this higher development by the Zuni, 

 than by any of the other Pueblos, of the mytho-sociologic system dis- 

 tinctive in some measure of them all at the time of the Spanish con- 

 quest of the southwest, that they have maintained so long and so much 

 more completely than any of the others the primitive characteristics of 

 the Aridian phase of culture; this despite the fact that, being the 

 descendants of the original dwellers in the famous "Seven Cities of 

 Cibola," they were the earliest known of all the tribes within the ter- 

 ritory of the United States. Like the other Pueblos, the Zunians, 

 when discovered, were found living in segregated towns; but unlike 

 the other groups (each separate conimiinity of any one of which was 

 autonomous except on rare occasions) they were permanently and 

 closely confederated in both a political and hierarchical sense. In other 

 words, all their subtribes and lesser towns were distinctively related 

 to and ruled from a central tribe and town through priest-chiefs, repre- 

 sentative of each of them, sitting under the supreme council or septu- 

 archy of the "master jmests of the house" in the central town itself, 

 much as were the divisions and cities of the great Inca dominion in 

 South America represented at and ruled from Cuzco, the central city 



and province of them all. 



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