cusHiNo] ORIGIN OF THE CORN DRAMA. 377 



or dancing aronud tbeiu, holding them firmly to draw them upward 

 until they had rapidly grown to the tallness of themselves, then to 

 embrace them together. Behold! the grasses were jointed where 

 grasped four times or six according to their tallness; yea, and marked 

 with the thumb-marks of those who grasped them; twisted by their 

 grasp while circling around them and leaved with plume-like blades 

 and tasseled with grass-like spikes at the tops. More wonderful than 

 all, where their persons had touched the plants at their middles, behold ! 

 new seed of human origin and productive of continued life had sprung 

 forth in semblance of their parentage and draped with the very pile of 

 their generation. For lo ! that when the world was new all things iu 

 it were k'yamua, or formative, as now is the child in the mother's womb 

 or the clay by the thoughts of the potter. That the seed of seeds thus 

 made be not lost it needed that Paiyatuma, the God of Dew and the 

 Dawn, freshen these new-made plants with his breath; that Tenatsali, 

 the God of Time and the Seasons, mature them instantly with his touch 

 and breath; that Kwelele, the God of Heat, ripen them with the touch 

 of his Fire-brother's torch and confirm to them the warmth of a life of 

 their own. Nevertheless, with the coming of each season, the creation 

 is ever repeated, for the philosophy of ecclesiasticism is far older than 

 ecclesiastics or their writings, and since man aided in the creation of 

 the corn, so must he now ever aid in each new creation of the seed of 

 seeds. Whence the drama of the origin of corn is not merely reenacted, 

 but is revived and reproduced in all its many details with scrupulous 

 fidelity each summer as the new seed is ripening. And now I may 

 add intelligibly that the drama of primitive man is performed in an 

 equally dramaturgic spirit, whether seen, as in its merely culminating 

 or final enactment, or unseen and often secret, as in its long-continued 

 preparations. In this a given piece of it may be likened to a piece of 

 Oriental carving or of Japanese joinery, in which the parts not to be 

 seen are as scrupulously finished as are the parts seen, the which is like- 

 wise characteristic of our theme, for it is due to the like dramaturgic 

 spirit which dominates even the works, no less than the ceremonials, 

 of all primitive and seniiprimitive peoples. 



So also it seems to the Zuni that no less essential is it that all the 

 long periods of creation up to the time when corn itself was created 

 from the grasses must be reproduced, even though hastily and by mere 

 signs, as are the forms through which a given species in animal life has 

 been evolved, rapidly repeated iu each embryo. 



The significance of such studies as these of a little tribe like the 

 Zufiis, and especially of such fuller studies as will, it is hoped, follow iu 

 due course, is not restricted to their bearing on the tribe itself. They 

 bear on the histoiy of man the world over. I have become convinced 

 that they thus bear on human history, especially on that of human cul- 

 ture growth, very directlj', too, for the Zunis, say, with all their strange, 

 apparently local customs and institutions and the lore thereof, are 



