Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths / Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-1892, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 321-448

by Frank Hamilton Cushing

THE CHERISHING OF THE CORN MAIDENS AND THEIR CUSTOM AS OF OLD.

Now when thus, after long ages of wandering, the tabernacles of the precious seed-things were resting over the Middle at Zuñi (they, the fathers of the people and also the Corn tribes and their other children), then, as in the olden time, men turned their hearts rather to the cherishing of their corn and Corn maidens than to the wasting of lives in war with strange men and the Ákâkâ. Again they loved, cheerfully too, the custom of the beautiful Corn maidens, and this, year after year, they practiced that the seed of seeds might ever be renewed and its abundance be maintained.