Thoughts on Zuni Religion 



By A. L. Kroeber 



FUNDAMENTAL line of cleavage divides the elaborate 

 mass of Zuni ritual into two parts: one communal, the 

 other fraternal in the manner of our secret lodges. The 

 communal organization substantially excludes women, but 

 embraces every male in the tribe from the age of ten 

 up. To it alone belong the kiwwitsiwe, as the Zufii call their kivas; 

 and to it also belong all the ashiwwanni, or priests, who have the care 

 of fetishes — ettowe — and pray at outdoor shrines. The public cere- 

 monies are dances performed by disguised impersonators of gods with 

 the purpose of bringing rains. 



The fraternal organizations, which number thirteen, are joined 

 voluntarily by women as well as by men. They comprise directors 

 and other officials, but no priests. They maintain their headquarters, 

 and meet, in the living rooms of dwellings, and have no connections 

 whatever with the six kivas. They rarely frequent shrines, but erect 

 indoor altars. They heal the sick, they juggle, they enter as recognized 

 adjuncts into certain of the communal ceremonies. They do not have 

 as their primary object the production of rain. The hold of this pur- 

 pose on the Zuni mind is so strong that it has to some measure invaded 

 the fraternity rites; but it is obvious from the cast and scope of these 

 that rain-production is foreign to their general tendencies. Finally, 

 with very few exceptions, masked representatives of deities do not 

 appear in the fraternal rites. 



Not all of these traits appear among the Apitlashiwwanni, the 

 'bow-priests', whose society is one of warriors, and in many ways in 

 definite ancillary relation to the communal organization; nor among 

 the K'oshikwe, or 'cholla-cactus people', whose body is largely but a 

 reflected repetition of the bow-priests. But the eleven other societies 

 stand apart from the communal scheme. 



Of course there are endless mannerisms of national religious style 

 that appear in both of these two currents. But the few fundamentals 

 that have been enumerated would suffice to demonstrate the diversity, 

 even if this were not clear to the consciousness of the Zuni. Mrs Ste- 

 venson has not summed up in any single formal statement the breadth 

 of the gap. But she has given it significant substantial expression by 

 entirely dividing, in her great book, her account of the tribal rites 



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