342 ZUSi CREATION MYTHS. fETn.AUN.lS 



Liiiguisticiilly the Ziini Indians of today stand alone, unrelated, so 

 far as lias beretoforc been deteruiiued, to any other Indians either seden- 

 tary, like theuiselves, or unsettled, like the less advanced peoples of the 

 plains. Nevertheless, although tliey as yet thus constitute a single 

 linguistic stock, there are present and persistent among them two 

 distinct types of i^hysique and numerous survivals — inherited, not 

 borrowed — of the arts, customs, myths, and institutions of at least two 

 peoples, unrelated at first, or else separate and very diversely condi- 

 tioned for so long a period of their preunited history that their develop- 

 ment had progressed unequally and along quite different lines, at the 

 time of their final coalition. That thus the Zunis are actually descend- 

 ants of two or more peoples, and the heirs of two cultui-es at least, is 

 well shown in their legends of ruins and olden times, and especially in 

 these myths of creation and migration as interpreted by archeologic 

 and ethnographic research. 



According to all these tokens and evidences, one branch of tlieir 

 ancestral jieople was, as compared with the other, aboriginal in tlie 

 region comprising the present Zuni country and extending far toward 

 the north, whence at some remoter time they had descended. The other 

 branch was intrusive, from the west or southwest, the country of the 

 lower Eio Colorado, their earliest habitat not so clearly defined and 

 their remoter derivation enigmatical, for they were much more given to 

 wandering, less advanced in the peaceful arts, and their earliest ruins 

 are those of comparatively rude and simple structures, hence scant and 

 difficult to trace, at least l)i'yond the western borders of Arizona. Con- 

 sidering both of these primary or ijareutal stocks of the ZuDi as having 

 been thus so widely asunder at first, the ancestral relations of the aborig- 

 inal or northern branch probably ranged the plains north of tlie arid 

 mountain region of Utah and Colorado ere they sought refuge in the 

 desert and canyons of these territories. Yet others of their descend- 

 ants, if still surviving, may not unlikely be traced among not only 

 other Pueblos, but also and more distinctly among wilder and remoter 

 branches, probably of the Shoshonean stock. The ancestral relations 

 of the intrusive or western branch, however, were a people resembling 

 the semisettled Yumans and Pimiins in mode of life, their ruins com- 

 bining types of structure characteristic of both these stocks; and if 

 their descendants, other tlian Zuhis themselves' be yet identified among 

 Yuman tribes, or some like people of the lower Colorado region, they 

 will be found (such of them as survive) not greatly changed, probably, 

 from the condition they were all in when, at a very distant time, tlieir 

 eastward faring kinsfolk, who ultimately became Zunis, left them there. 



It is quite certain that relatives, in a way — not ancestral— of the 

 Zufiis still exist. Not many years before Fray Marcos de Niza discov- 

 ered Cibola, the Zunians conquered some small towns of the Keres 

 to the south southeastward of the Zuni-Cibola country, and adopted 

 some of the survivors and also some of their ritual-dramas — still per- 



