7 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
- Gallup, in a remote and practically 
unknown corner of 
close to the Arizona line, is Zuni— 
- that pyramid of gray mud houses, 
- forming 
- munial dwelling on the 
- continent. 
Indian pueblo whose 
New Mexico, 
the most wonderful com- 
western 
It is wonderful, weird, gruesome, 
s fascinating and revolting. It is a 
community and a people of the far 
past ages living in the present—an 
inhabitants 
- lived where they now live ages be- 
~ ealled Americans 
about Zuni and its strange people, 
fore a white man’s foot ever touched 
America. And yet but few of we so- 
know anything 
_ living in our midst. 
- Neither history nor tradition tells 
us when Zuni was founded. Some 
of us know that it is the oldest con- 
_ tinually inhabited Indian village in 
our country, and that is about all 
we do know. 
Once it was one ot the famous 
“Seven Cities of Cibola,’’ now it is 
a community of sun-worshippers, 
dog eaters and degenerates. Once 
its inhabitants were famous as re- 
lentless, blood thirsty savages, mis- 
sionary butchers, weavers, pottery 
makers; now they are spiritless, de- 
praved, filthy and live as __ beasts 
would not live. 
“It was the fabled hidden gold of 
Zuni that hundreds of years ago 
blazed a path across the desert plains 
from Mexico to the Rio Grande— 
and Zuni was an ancient pueblo then. 
Coronado found this village 370 
years ago, and how many hundreds 
of years it had been occupied before 
his coming, none know and few can 
make a reasonable guess. 
And there it stands in the desert 
sunshine today, and there its 1800 
inhabitants live, just as they lived 
long before Columbus ever tried to 
pound into the thick-headed Span- 
iards that there was another piece of 
the world over here. 
Let me tell you something of this 
unknown odd spot of our country— 
tell you of some of the sights I saw 
there in the closing days of 1910—of 
a people and conditions that you 
gould hardly believe existed in this 
great country of ninety-three mil- 
lions population. 
Unlike the community dwellings 
of Laguna and Acomo, Zuni is not 
cliff-built. It is built on a rise of 
ground on the bank of that little 
sluggish stream, called the Zuni 
river, It is built entirely of dobie— 
sun-dried mud _ brick—each house 
joining the other and reminding one 
of the plans of our modern stock 
yards. Years ago, when the fighting 
Navajos made life on these plains a 
survival of the fittest, the outside 
walls of this Indian city were forts 
without doors or windows, but now 
doors have been cut through most of 
the outside walls. There is no com- 
‘mon entrance, wide enough for a 
team to pass through, and once in- 
side, there are several acres of ad- 
joining houses and cut up with nar- 
row, irregular alleys. The whole 
city is one great communial house, 
and the inhabitants one great family. 
The streets, or alleys, are filled 
with Indians, dogs, pigs, turkeys, 
ducks, burros, water jars, mud ovens 
and ponies. The filth is something 
awful, and the first wonder to me 
was why a pestilence ov fever had 
not long ago wiped Zuni and its peo- 
ple off the United States map. But 
they are immune to everything but 
smallpox—they seem to fatten on 
filth and famine. 
I walked in at the main entrance 
and started to ‘‘do Zuni,’’ and the 
first horror that met my eyes started 
me back to the trading post to get a 
white man to accompany me. It was 
but a common sight of depravity and 
cruelty, but I will long remember it. 
A little puppy had both hind legs 
‘broken at the hips by these fiends 
and it was dragging its hind quar- 
ters as it crawled about the streets, 
while the Indians laughed. That the 
animal had been in this condition 
many days was shown by the flesh 
being worn through to the bone, 
where its legs dragged on the 
eround. 
The post trader told me that 1 
need not have any fear of the In- 
dians, for he said there was nothing 
left in them but cruelty, and that I 
could tie one hand behind me and 
drive the whole village out. 
And now let me explain some- 
thing that will give you a reason for 
this and many other instances of 
horrible cruelty and depravity that 
I saw in this village—or at least the 
reasons given by the few white men 
who live in this country. 
2° 
ZUNI, WONDERFUL AND WEIRD. 
~ Strange, Unknown Communial Dwelling, where the Zuni Indians 
__ Have Lived Since Long Before the Landing of Columbus. 
(By M. J. Brown, Epiror Lirr.e Vauey, N. Y., Hus) 
’ Forty-eight miles by wagon road 
south from the little desert town of 
For hundreds of years the Zunis - 
have lived in this one village, lived 
and intermarried in this one family, 
until they are all, or nearly all, 
blood relatives. ‘They have degen- 
erated until nearly all the old in- 
stincts and arts, excepting possibly 
cunning and cruelty, have been brea 
out of them, and they now are de- 
based, cowardly, and filthy descen- 
dants of a once famous tribe of the 
southwest. 
1 saw an Indian ride into the vil- 
lage and dismount from a burro, and 
i noted a stream of blood running 
down the donkey’s shoulder. ‘The 
trader showed me the cause. On the 
animal’s shoulder was an old sore, a 
sore kept constantly irritated by the 
master, and when he wanted the 
donkey to go faster he would prod 
tiis Wound with a sharp stick. It 
was so much easier than swing the 
quirt on the tough hide, and the In- 
cian enjoyed it so much more. A 
og was running the streets with a 
great sore on its lower jaw, a part 
of which an Indian had cut off be- 
cause it crowded the pigs away from 
the street refuse and got more than 
huis Share. 
There are Indians over six feet 
tall, splendid figures of manhooa 
irom a distance, but om close inspec- 
tion their wrists. are not half the 
size of a woman’s. There are 
squaws, broad shouldered, fat-faced 
and tull-busted whose legs below the 
knees are not as large as their arms. 
But one of the strangest marks of 
inter-marriage that I saw in this vil- 
lage was two albino Indians—pure- 
biooded Zunis. There are four in 
the pueblo, it is said. They are as 
light as any white man, with 
straight, white coarse hair, pink 
cheeks, white eyebrows and almost 
pink eyes. I could not believe that 
these men were Indians until close 
inspection showed the unmistakable 
features the high cheek bones and 
the Indian hair. 
The Zunis dress and live in the 
same manner as they did before they 
ever saw a white man’s face. They 
all wear the bright-colored band 
about the forehead, the hair about a 
foot long, braided and looped up 
with red yarn; all wear the Indian 
blankets, bought from the Navajos; 
the turquoise is worn in earrings, 
bracelets, beads, finger-rings and 
belts. The turquoise is to the In- 
dians what a diamond is to the Amer- 
ican and silver of equal value with 
our gold. I doubt if an Indian 
would pick up a gold ring if he 
found one. The squaws wear bangs 
low down on the forehead, many 
wear them below the eyes, they all 
