ci'sHiNo] ABORIGINAL SALT TRADE. 853 



the early Spauish chrouicles meiitiou as the possession and source of 

 supply of the "salt in kernels" of the Zui3i-Cibolans. 



Not only did a trail (used for such long ages that I have found it 

 brokeuly traceable for hundreds of miles) lead dowu from the cliff-town 

 country to this broad valley of the Lake of Salt, but also tliere have 

 been found in nearly all the cliff dwellings of the Mancos and San Juan 

 section, whence this trail descends, salt in the charactei'istic keruels 

 and colors found in this same source of the Zuni supply. 



This salt, as occurring in the cliff ruins, is commonly discovered 

 wrapped iu receptacles of corn husk, ueiitly tied into a trough like 

 form or pouch by bauds of corn-leaf or yucca fiber. These iiouches 

 are precisely like the " wraps of the ancients," or packs of corn husk 

 iu which the sacred salt is ceremoniously brought home in advance of 

 the cargoes of common salt by the Zuni priests on each occasion of their 

 annual, and especially of their greater quadrennial, pilgrimages (in 

 June, after the planting) to the Lake of Salt. And it is not difficult 

 to believe that both the packs and the i)ilgrimages — which latter ofler 

 many suggestive features not to be considered here — are survivals of 

 the time when the remoter clift'-dwe ling ancestry of the Zuni Corn tribes 

 ventured once in a period of years to go forth, iu parties large enough 

 for mutual protection, to the far-ofl' source of their supply of salt. 



Except this view be taken it is ditticult to conceive why the ''time 

 after planting" should have become so established by the Zufiis (wlio 

 are but two days' foot-journey Irom the lake, and visit its neighborhood 

 at other periods of the year on hunting and other excursions) as the 

 only period for the taking of the salt — to take which, indeed, by them 

 or others at any other season, is held to be dire sacrilege. 



But to the cliff dwellers and their tirst descendants of the farther 

 north this period " after the planting" was the only available one of 

 the year; for the journey along their trail of salt must have consumed 

 many days, and been so fraught with danger as to have drawn away a 

 goodly portion of the warrior population who could ill be spared at a 

 later time in the season when the ripening and garnering of the harvest 

 drew back upon the clitt-towns people the bands of predatory savages 

 who annually pillaged their outlying tlelds, and in terror of whom they 

 for so long a time clung to their refuge in the cliffs. 



Additional considerations lead further to the inference not only that 

 the Zunis inherit their pilgrimages for the salt and the commemorative 

 and other ceremonials which have developed around them directly from 

 the clift-dweller branch of their ancestry, but also that these latter were 

 led down from the cliffs to build and dwell in their round towns along 

 the trail of salt chiefly, if not wholly, by the desire to at once shorten 

 and render less dangerous their communal expeditions to tlie Lake of 

 Salt and to secure more exclusive possession thereof. 



These two objects were rendered equally and the more desirable by 

 the circumstance, strongly indicated by both the salt remains them- 

 13 ETH 1!3 



