LITMIR.BIZ

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      From their point of view this reasoning of the Indians was perfectly consistent, based as it was on their belief that the souls of their ancestors were mediators and that their mortal remains and the places and things thereof were means of invoking them, quite as sacrifices are supposed to be, for the time being, the mortal and mediate parts of the gods and spirits to which they have been offered, hence a potent means of invoking them. This is shown much more clearly in the only other instance of seeming reverence for the church that I can pause to give.

      The Zuñis are careful to remove all traces of Catholicism, or rather all symbols of the Mexican religion, from their persons or vicinity during the performance of their sacred dances or rites, seeing to it that no Mexican word, even, is ever spoken in the presence of the Kâ´kâ. If a Mexican or anyone suspected of being a Mexican happens to approach their town during a ceremonial, he is met by watchful sentinels and led, no matter what his rank, condition, or haste, to some sequestered room, where, although courteously treated and hospitably entertained without charge, he is securely locked up and rigorously guarded until after the dance or other observance is over. "The fathers of these Mexicans did violence to our fathers," say the Indians in explanation, "when that our fathers of old called the sacred Kâ´kâ. Therefore, in those days our fathers sought to hide the dancers from their eyes. Our fathers come nigh in breath, when now we call the Kâ´kâ, and they aid our songs and prayers to the beloved Gods of Rain and Wind. How, if they see we have departed from their customs, and reveal these things? Then will they be sad at our forgetfulness of their ways, and filled with fear lest these evil people, beholding, do sacrilege to their precious Kâ´kâ, and will flee away, nor aid our songs and prayers for rain, nor our calls for their beloved presence!"

      Nevertheless, in autumn, when the harvest is over, one may see the dilapidated little figure of Saint Francis borne about the pueblo on the eve of the "Feast of the Dead;" and one may see here and there candles burning, or such poor substitutes for them as the Indians can get; and here and there also old rosaries and a few brass crucifixes revealed. Before they fell, one heard, as the night wore on, the ancient church bells hammered; and half forgotten, wholly unintelligible phrases of church Latin chanted. But all this is not in memory of a "saint's day," as would seem, or as one would be told were he injudiciously to inquire. It is the feast and drama of the beloved dead of all days past. And whilst the dead of long, very long ago, must first be summoned by means of their ancient relics which best they knew—the tribal medicines and fetiches, and the songs to them belonging—yet the "old ones of the míssa times knew also these things of the míssa; and so, that they be lured near and come not as strangers, but find means of recognition and movement (manifestation) to us, and happily receive our offerings of food to the fire, they must (in place of the summoning songs and drums and rattles) hear the church bells and chants of the Spaniards and see the things which they, perforce, held to most familiarly and with least fear and secrecy in times of festival while yet they lived in daylight."

      I need not add that this fully accounts for the contradictory behavior of the Indians in reference to the old church, the burial ground, and other things pertaining to it. The church could not be rebuilt. It had been dead so long that, rehabilitated, it would be no longer familiar to the "fathers" who in spirit had witnessed its decay. Nor could it be taken suddenly away. It had stood so long that, missing it, they would be sad, or might perhaps even abandon it.

      The Zuñi faith, as revealed in this sketch of more than three hundred and fifty years of Spanish intercourse, is as a drop of oil in water, surrounded and touched at every point, yet in no place penetrated or changed inwardly by the flood of alien belief that descended upon it. Herein is exemplified anew the tendency of primitive-minded man to interpret unfamiliar things more directly than simply, according to their appearances merely, not by analysis in our sense of the term; and to make his interpretations, no less than as we ourselves do, always in the light of what he already familiarly believes or habitually thinks he knows. Hence, of necessity he adjusts other beliefs and opinions to his own, but never his own beliefs and opinions to others; and even his usages are almost never changed in spirit, however much so in externals, until all else in his life is changed. Thus, he is slow to adopt from alien peoples any but material suggestions, these even, strictly according as they suit his ways of life; and whatever he does adopt, or rather absorb and assimilate, from the culture and lore of another people, neither distorts nor obscures his native culture, neither discolors nor displaces his original lore.

      All of the foregoing suggests what might be more fully shown by further examples, the aboriginal and uncontaminated character—so far as a modern like myself can represent it—of the myths delineated in the following series of outlines. Yet a casual visitor to Zuñi, seeing but unable to analyze the signs above noted, would be led to infer quite the contrary by other and more patent signs. He would see horses, cattle and donkeys, sheep and goats, to say nothing of swine and a few scrawny chickens. He would see peach orchards and wheat fields, carts (and wagons now), and tools of metal; would find, too, in queer out-of-the-way little rooms native silversmiths plying their primitive bellows and deftly using a few crude tools of iron and stone to turn their scant silver coins into bright buttons, bosses, beads, and bracelets, which every well-conditioned Zuñi wears; and he would see worn also, especially by the men, clothing of gaudy calico and other thin products of the looms of civilization. Indeed, if one did not see these things and rate them as at first the gifts to this people of those noble old Franciscan friars and their harder-handed less noble Spanish companions, infinitely more pathetic than it is would be the history of the otherwise vain effort I have above outlined; for it is not to be forgotten that the principal of these gifts have been of incalculable value to the Zuñi. They have helped to preserve him, through an era of new external conditions, from the fate that met more than thirty other and less favored Pueblo tribes—annihilation by the better-armed, ceaselessly prowling Navajo and Apache. And for this alone, their almost sole accomplishment of lasting good to the Zuñi, not in vain were spent and given the lives of the early mission fathers.

      It is intimated that aside from adding such resources to the tribe as enabled it to survive a time of fearful stress and danger, even the introduction of Spanish plants, animals, and products did not greatly change the Zuñis. This is truer than would at first seem possible. The Zuñi was already a tiller of the soil when wheat and peaches were given him. To this day he plants and irrigates his peach trees and wheat crops much as he anciently planted and watered his corn—in hills, hoeing all with equal assiduity; and he does not reap his wheat, but gathers it as he gathers his corn in the ear. Thus, only the kind of grain is new. The art of rearing it and ways of husbanding and using it remain unchanged. The Zuñi was already a herder when sheep and goats were given him. He had not only extensive preserves of rabbits and deer, but also herds—rather than flocks—of turkeys, which by day were driven out over the plains and mesas for feeding, and at night housed near the towns or in distant shelters and corrals. It is probable that his ancestry had even other domesticated animals. And he used the flesh of these animals as food, their feathers and fur as the materials for his wonderfully knitted, woven, and twilled garments and robes, as he now uses the mutton and goat meat for food, and the wool of the sheep for his equally well-knitted, woven, and twilled, though less beautiful, garments and robes. Thus, only the kinds (and degree of productivity) of the animals are new, the arts of caring for them and modes of using their products, are unchanged. This is true even in detail. When I first went to live with the Zuñis their sheep were plucked, not sheared, with flat strips of band iron in place of the bone spatulæ originally used in plucking the turkeys; and the herders always scrupulously picked up stray flecks of wool—calling it "down," not hair, nor fur—and spinning it, knitting, too, at their long woolen leggings as they followed their sheep, all as their forefathers used ever to pick up and twirl the stray feathers and knit at their down kilts and tunics as they followed and herded their turkeys. Even the silversmiths of Zuñi today work coins over as their ancestors of the stone-using age worked up bits of copper, not only using tools of stone and bone for the purpose but using even the iron tools of the Spaniard mostly in stone-age fashion.1

      This applies equally to their handling of the hoes, hatchets, and knives of civilized man. They use their hoes—the heaviest they can get—as if weighted, like the wooden and bone hoes of antiquity, vertically, not horizontally. They use their hatchets or axes and knives more for hacking and scraping and chipping than for chopping,

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