508 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
Picuris, on the extreme east; from Taos, in the far north, to Isleta del 
Sur, in Texas—I came upon this kunque, and generally in such quan- 
tities and so openly exposed and so freely used that I was both aston- 
ished and gratified; astonished that after centuries of contact with the 
Caucasian the natives should still adhere with such tenacity to the 
ideas of a religion supposed to have been extirpated, and gratified to 
discover a lever which I could. employ in prying into the meaning of 
other usages and ceremonials. 
Behind the main door in the houses at Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, 
Picuris, Laguna, Acoma, San Felipe, Jemez, and other towns, there is a 
niche containing a bowl or saucer filled with this sacred meal, of which the 
good housewife is careful to throw a pinch to the sun at early dawn and 
to the twilight at eventide. In every ceremony among the Pueblos natu- 
rally enough, more particularly among those who have been living farthest 
from the Mexicans, the lavish scattering of sacred meal is the marked 
feature of the oceasion. At the snake dance of the Tusayan, in 1881, 
the altars were surrounded with baskets of pottery and with flat 
plaques of reeds, which were heaped high with kunque. When the 
procession moved out from under the arcade and began to make the 
round of the sacred stone the air was white with meal, and in my imag- 
ination I could see that if was a procession of Druids circling about a 
‘sacred stone” in Ireland previous to the coming of St. Patrick. When 
the priests threw the snakes down upon the ground it was within a 
circle traced with kunque, and soon the snakes were covered with the 
same meal flung upon them by the squaws. There was only one scalp 
left among the Tusayan in 1881, but there were several among the Zuni, 
and one or two each at Acoma and Laguna. In every one of these 
towns kunque was offered to the scalps. 
At the feast of the Little God of Fire among the Zuni, in 1881, my 
personal notes relate that “the moment the head of the procession 
touched the knoll upon whick the pueblo is built the mass of people 
began throwing kunque upon the Little God and those with him as well 
as on the ground in front of, beside, and behind them. This kunque 
was contained in sacred basket-shaped bowls of earthenware. The 
spectators kept the air fairly misty with clouds of the sacred kunque. 
This procession passed around the boundaries of the pueblo of Zuni, 
stopping at eight holes in the ground for the purpose of enacting a cer- 
emonial of consecration suggestive of the ‘terminalia’ of the Romans. 
They visited each of the holes, which were 18 inches deep and 12 inches 
square, with a sandstone slab to serve as a cover. Hach hole was filled 
with kunque and sacrificial plumes. * * * ‘Every morning of the year, 
when the sky is clear, at the rising of Lucero [the morning star], at the 
crowing of the cock, we throw corn flour |kunque]tothesun. I amnever 
without my bag of kunque; here itis [drawing it from his belt]. Every 
Zuni has one. We offer it to the sun for good rain and good crops.’”! 
‘Interview with Pedro Pino. 
