Canyons of the Colorado
these people, though Zuñi itself appears to be hundreds of years old. The people speak a language radically different from that of Tusayan, and no other tribe in the United States has a tongue related to it.
In the midst of the town there is an old Spanish church, partly in ruins, but it is still graced with the wooden image of a saint, gayly colored; and the old tongueless bell remains, for it was sounded with a stone hammer held in the hand of the bellman; the marks of his blows are deeply indented in the metal. Alvar Nuñez Caveza de Vaca was the first white man to see Zuñi, when he wandered in that long journey from Florida around by the headwaters of the Arkansas, through what is now New Mexico and Arizona, southward to the City of Mexico. He had with him a Barbary negro, who was killed by the Zuñi, and his burial place is still pointed out.
Among the Zuñi, as among the tribes of Tusayan, the form of government which prevails throughout the North American tribes is well illustrated. Kinship is the tie by which the members of the tribe are bound together as a common body of people. Each tribe is divided into a series of clans, and a clan is a group of people that reckon kinship through the family line. The children therefore belong to the clan of the
TOYALONE, FROM THE TOP OF A HOUSE IN ZUÑÍ.
TYPICAL TERRACED COMMUNAL PUEBLO.
mother. Marriage is always without the clan; the husband and father must belong to a different clan from the mother and children, and the children belong to their mother and are governed by her brothers, or by her mother’s brothers if they be still living. The husband is but the guest of the wife and the clan, and has no other authority in the family than that acquired by personal character. If he is an able and wise man his advice may be taken, but each clan is very jealous of its rights, and the members do not submit to dictation from the guest husband. The woman is1 not the ruler of the clan; the ruler is the patriarch or elder man, or if he is not a man of ability a younger and more able man is chosen, who by legal fiction is recognized as the elder. Over the officers of the clan are the officers of the tribe,—a chief with assistant chiefs. The organization by tribal governors varies from tribe to tribe. Sometimes the chieftaincy is hereditary in a particular clan, but more often the chieftaincy is elective. There is very little personal property among the tribal people, such property being confined to clothing, ornaments, and a few inconsiderable articles. The ownership of the great bulk of the property inheres in the clan, such as their
houses, their patches of land, the food raised from the soil, and the game caught in the chase. Sometimes the clans are grouped, two or more constituting a phratry, and then there are other officers or chiefs standing between the clan and tribal authority. Again, tribes are sometimes organized into confederacies, and a grand confederate chief recognized. In addition to the chieftaincy of confederate tribes, phratries, and clans, there are councils; but these are not councils of legislation in the ordinary sense. The councils are clans whose decisions become a precedent. Tribal law is therefore court-made law, and such customary law grows out of the exigencies which daily life presents to the people. The problems as they arise are solved as best they may be, and the deliberations of the councils look not to the future but only to the present, and are invoked to settle controversy, that peace may be maintained. Of course there is no written constitution or body of laws, but there are traditional regulations which are well preserved in the idioms of oral speech, every rule of procedure or of justice being sooner or later coined into an aphorism.
It has been seen that a clan is a body of kinship in the female line; but the members of the different clans are related to one another by intermarriage. Thus the first tie is by affinity; but, as fathers belong to other clans than the children, the tie is also by consanguinity. Thus the entire tribe is a body of kindred, and the tribal organization is a fabric with warp of streams of blood and
DANCER HOLDING UP THE GREAT PLUMED ARROW.
TO ZUÑI.
woof of marriage ties. When different tribes unite to form a confederacy for offensive or defensive purposes, artificial kinship is established. One tribe perhaps is recognized as the grandfather tribe, another is the father tribe, a third is the elder-brother tribe, a fourth is the younger-brother tribe, etc. In these artificial kinships the members of one tribe address the members of another tribe by kinship terms established in the treaty. Strangers are sometimes adopted into a clan, and this gives them a status in the tribe. The adoption is usually accomplished by the woman claiming the individual as her youngest son or daughter, and such adopted person has thereupon the status belonging to such a natural child; and, though he be an adult, he calls the child born into the clan before his advent, though it be but a year old, his elder brother or his elder sister. Then often young men are advanced in the clan because of superior ability, and this is done by giving them a kinship rank higher than that belonging to their real age; so that it is not infrequently found that old men address young men as their elder brothers and yield to their authority. The ties of the tribe are kinship, and authority inheres in superior age; but in order to adjust these rules so that the abler men may be given control, artificial kinship and artificial age are established. The civil chiefs direct the daily life of the people in their labors.
DANCER “SWALLOWING” THE GREAT PLUMED ARROW.
NAVAJO WOMAN WEAVING A BELT.
To the civil organization of the tribe, as thus indicated, there is added a military organization, and war chiefs are selected. But usually these war chiefs are something more than war chiefs, for they also constitute a constabulary to preserve peace and mete out punishment; and young men from the various clans are designated as warriors
and advanced in military rank according to merit. There is thus a brotherhood of warriors, and every man in this brotherhood recognizes all others of the group as being elder or younger, and so assumes or
NAVAJO WOMAN SPINNING.
yields authority in all matters pertaining to war and the enforcement of criminal law.
In addition to the secular government there is always a cult government. In every tribe there are Shamans, designated variously by white men as “medicine men,” “priests,” “priest doctors,” “theurgists,” etc. In many tribes, perhaps in all, the people are organized into Shamanistic societies; but that these societies are invariably recognized is not certain. The Shamans are always found. Among the Zuñi there are thirteen of these cult societies. The purpose of Shamanistic institutions is to control the conduct of the members of the tribe in relation to mythic personages, the mysterious beings in which the savage men believe. In the mind of the savage the world is peopled by a host of mythic beings, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic. The difference between man and brute recognized in civilization, is unrecognized in savagery. All animal life is wonderful and magical co sylvan man. Wisdom, cunning, skill, and prowess are attributed to the real animals to a degree often greater than to man; and there are mythic animals as well as mythic men—monsters dwelling in the mountains and caves or hiding in the waters, who make themselves invisible as they pass over the land. Not only are there great monsters, beasts, and reptiles in their mythology, but there are wonderful insects and worms. All life is miraculous and is worshiped as divine. The heavenly bodies, the sun and moon and stars, are mythic animals, and all of the phenomena of nature are attributed to these zoic beings. For example, the Indian knows nothing of the ambient air. The wind is the breath of some beast, or it is a fanning which rises from under the wings of a mythic bird. All the phenomena of nature, the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moon, the shining of the stars, the coming of comets, the flash of meteors, the change of seasons, the gathering and vanishing of the clouds, the blowing of the winds, the falling of the rain, the spreading of the snow, and all other phenomena of physical nature, are held to be the acts of these wonderful zoic deities. It is deemed of prime importance that such deities should be induced to act in the interest of men. Thus it is that Shamanistic government is held to be of as great importance as tribal government, and the Shamans are the peers of the chiefs. With some tribes the cult socie-
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
ties have greater powers than the clan; with other tribes clan government is the more important; but always there is a conflict of authority, and there is a perpetual war between Shamanistic and civil government.
These Shamans and cult societies have a great variety of functions to perform. All disease and all injuries are attributed to mythic beings or to witchcraft, and on these pathologic ideas the medicine practices of the people are based. The medicine men are sorcerers, who work wonders in discovering witchcraft and averting its effects or in discovering the disease-making animals and overcoming their power. So the Shamans and the cult societies are the possessors of medicine and ceremonies designed to prevent and cure human ailments. They also have charge of the ceremonies necessary to avert disaster and to secure success in all the affairs of life in peace and war; and they prescribe methods and observances and furnish charms and amulets, and in every way possible control human conduct in its relation to the unknown. No small part of savage life is devoted to cult ceremonies and observances. The hunter cannot penetrate the forest without his charm; the woman cannot plant corn until a ceremony is performed for securing the blessings of some divine being. Religious festivals and ceremonies are carried on for days and weeks. A war must be submitted to the gods, and a sneeze demands a prayer.
Our arrival at Fort Wingate practically ended the exploration of the great valley of the Colorado. This was in 1870. In 1891 we can look back upon the completion of the survey of all of that region, for it has now been carefully mapped. The geology of the country has been studied, and the tribes which inhabit it have been subjects of careful research. This work has been carried on by a large corps of men, and interesting results have accrued.
NAVAJO MEDICINE LODGE, VIEWED FROM THE SOUTH.
NAVAJO MEDICINE LODGE, VIEWED FROM THE EAST.
WORKSHOP OF NAVAJO SILVERSMITH.
WEAVING OF DIAMOND-SHAPED DIAGONALS.