330 ZUNI CREATION MYTHS. [eth.ann.13 



When all the knots had beeu numbered and untied, then, to a man, 

 the Zuiiis arose to slay Spaniards wheresoever they might encounter 

 them. They forthwith killed Fray Juan de Bal, the i)riest of Hdlona, 

 burning his church and destroying the chapels in the lesser towns 

 round about. jSTot content with this, they dispatched warriors to the 

 Tusayan country to see to it that the Hopi remain faithful to their 

 promise and vigorously to abet them in its fulfilment. 



It fared far otherwise with the priest of Hawik'uh. Although his 

 name is unknown, and although it has been doubted that any other 

 missionary than Fray Juan of H41ona was with the Zufiis at the time, 

 or that the mission of HSiwik'uh was ever occupied after the death of 

 Fray Pedro de Avila, yet Vetancurt's chronicles are explicit in stating 

 the coutrary, and that, although the Church of the Conception was again 

 burned, the priest escaped. This latter statement is substantially true 

 if we may trust Zufii tradition, which is very detailed on this point, and 

 which is trustworthy on many another and better recorded point of even 

 remoter date. 



The elder Priests of the Bow — three of whom were battle-scarred 

 warriors of nearly a hundred winters at the time of my initiation 

 into their order — told me that one of their gray-robed tiitutsiliwe 

 (" fathers of drink," so named because they used cup-like vessels of 

 water in baptizing), whom their ancients had with them at Hawik'uh 

 in the time of the great evil, was much loved by them; " for, like our- 

 selves," they affirmed, " he had a Zuni heart and cared for the sick 

 and women and children, nor contended with the fathers of the people; 

 therefore, in that time of evil they spared him on condition" — pre- 

 cisely the rather sweeping ccmdition these same veterans had in 1880 

 imposed on me ere they would permit of my adoption into one of their 

 clans — " that he eschew the vestment and usages of his people and kind, 

 and in everything, costume and ways of life alike, become a Zufii; for 

 as such only could they spare him and nurture him." Not so much, I 

 imagine, from fear of death — for the dauntless Franciscan friars of those 

 days feared only God and the devil and met martyrdom as bridegrooms 

 of the Virgin herself — as from love of the Zuuis, if one may judge by the 

 regard they even still have for his memory, and a hope that, living, he 

 might perchance i-estrain them, alike to the good of their people and his 

 own people, the father gave way to their wishes ; or he may have been 

 forced to accede to them by one of those compulsory adoptions of the 

 enemy not uncommonly practiced by the Indians in times of hostility. 

 Be this as it may, the Zufiis abandoned all their towns in the valley, and 

 taking the good priest with them, fled yet again to the top of their 

 high Mountain of Thunder. Around an ample amphitheater near its 

 southern rim, they rebuilt six or seven great clusters of stone houses 

 and I'enewed in the miniature vales of the mesa summit the reservoirs 

 for rain and snow, and on the crests above the trickling spring under 

 their towns, and along the upper reaches of the giddy trail by which 



