crsHiNQ) ZUNI EARLY CUSTOMS. 359 



Yumau name) for, although changed in the Zufii of today, still strik- 

 ingly survives in familiar speech as the expression ifehk'ya or itehlc^yiiti, 

 to knockdown finally or fatally, and in ceremonial allusion (rather than 

 name) to the old-fashioned and sacred war clubs (which are of identical 

 form) as itehk^yatdwe, or knocking-down billets, otherwise called face- 

 smashers or pulpers. 



They sometimes buried the dead — chiefly their medicine men and 

 ■women, or shamans; but all others were burned (with them i^ersonal 

 eflccts and gifts of kin) aud their ashes deposited in pots, etc., at 

 the heads of arroyas, or thrown into streams. They held as fetiches 

 of regenerative as well as protective power certain concretionary stones, 

 some of the larger of which were family heirlooms aud kept as house- 

 hold gods, others as tribal relics and amulets, like the canopas and 

 huacas of ancient Peru. These nodules were so knobbed, corrugated, 

 and contorted that they were described when seen elsewhere by the 

 early Spanish writers as bezoars, but they were really derived fi'om 

 the sources of arroyas, or mountain torrents, in the beds of which they 

 are sometimes found, and being thus always water-worn were regarded 

 as the seed of the waters, the source of life itself. Hence they were 

 ceremoniously worshiped and associated with all or nearly all the 

 native dances or dramaturgies, of which dances they were doubtless 

 called by their old time possessors "the ancients," or "stone ancients," 

 a name and in some measure a connection still surviving and extended 

 to other meanings with reference to similar fetich stones among the 

 Zunis of today. 



From a study of the remains of these primitive Arizonian ancestors 

 of the Zunis in the light of present-day Zuiii archaisms, and esijecially of 

 the creation myths themselves, it would be possible to ])reseut a much 

 fuller sketch of them. But that which has already been outlined is suffi- 

 ciently full, I trust, to prove evidential that the following Zuiii expres- 

 sions and characteristics were as often derived from this southwest- 

 ern branch as from the cliff dweller or aboriginal branch of the Zufii 

 ancestry : 



The Zuni name of an outer village wall is Mk^yapane, which signi- 

 fies, it would seem, "cliff-face wall;" for it is derived, apparently, from 

 Mane, an extended wall; and dk'yapane, the face of a wide clifF. Thus 

 it is probably developed from the name which at first was descriptive 

 of the encircling rear wall of a cave village, afterward naturally contin- 

 ued to be applied to the rear but encircling or outside wall of a round 

 town, and hence now designates even a straight outer wall of a village, 

 whether of the front or the rear of the houses. 



The name for the outer wall of a house, hojvever, is hcine, or Jieline, 

 which signifies a mud or adobe inclosure; from heliice, mud (or mud- 

 and-ash) mortar, and 4line, an inclosure. Since in usage this refers 

 to the outer wall of a house or other simjile structure, but not to that 

 of a town or assemblage of houses, its origin may with equal propriety 



