In reference to J. Walter Fewkes' account of the "Tusayan Snake Ceremonies," it is pointed out that "the Pueblo Indians adore a plurality of deities, to which various potencies are ascribed. These zoic deities, or beast gods, are worshipped by means of ceremonies which are sometimes highly elaborate; and, so far as practicable, the mystic zoic potency is represented in the ceremony by a living animal of similar species or by an artificial symbol. Prominent among the animate representatives of the zoic pantheon throughout the arid region is the serpent, especially the venomous and hence mysteriously potent rattlesnake. To the primitive mind there is intimate association, too, between the swift-striking and deadly viper and the lightning, with its attendant rain and thunder; there is intimate association, too, between the moisture-loving reptile of the subdeserts and the life-giving storms and freshets; and so the native rattlesnake plays an important rôle in the ceremonies, especially in the invocations for rain, which characterize the entire arid region[865]."
Fewkes pursues the same fruitful line of thought in his monograph on The Feather Symbol in Ancient Hopi Designs[866], showing how amongst the Tusayan Pueblos, although they have left no written records, there survives an elaborate paleography, the feather motif in the pottery found in the old ruins, which is in fact "a picture writing often highly symbolic and complicated," revealing certain phases of Hopi thought in remote times. "Thus we come back to a belief, taught by other reasoning, that ornamentation of ancient pottery was something higher than simple effort to beautify ceramic wares. The ruling motive was a religious one, for in their system everything was under the same sway. Esthetic and religious feelings were not differentiated, the one implied the other, and to elaborately decorate a vessel without introducing a religious symbol was to the ancient potter an impossibility[867]."
Physical Type.
Social Life.
Physically the Pueblo Indians are of short stature, with long, low head, delicate face and dark skin. They are muscular and of great endurance, able to carry heavy burdens up steep and difficult trails, and to walk or even run great distances. It is said to be no uncommon thing for a Hopi to run 40 miles over a burning desert to his cornfield, hoe his corn, and return home within 24 hours. Distances of 140 miles are frequently made within 36 hours[868]. In disposition they are mild and peaceable, industrious, and extraordinarily conservative, a trait shown in the fidelity with which they retain and perpetuate their ancient customs[869]. Labour is more evenly divided than among most Indian tribes. The men help the women with the heavier work of house-building, they collect the fuel, weave blankets and make moccasins, occupations usually regarded as women's work. The women carry the water, and make the pottery for which the region is famous[870].
A. L. Kroeber has made a careful study of Zuñi sociology[871] and come to the conclusion that the family is fundamental and the clan secondary, though kinship terms are applied to clan mates in a random fashion, and even the true kinship terms are applied loosely. In view of the obvious preëminence of the woman, who receives the husband into her and her mother's house, it is worthy of note that she and her children recognise her husband's relatives as their kin as fully as he adopts hers. The Zuñi are not a woman-ruled people. As regards government, women neither claim nor have any voice whatever, nor are there women priests, nor fraternity officers. Even within the house, so long as a man is a legitimate inmate thereof, he is master of it and of its affairs. They are a monogamous people. Divorce is more easy than marriage, and most men and women of middle age have been married to several partners. Marriage in the mother's clan is forbidden; in the father's clan, disapproved. The phratries have no social significance, there is no central clan house, no recognised head, no meeting, council or any organisation, nor does the clan as such ever act as a body. The clans have little connection with the religious societies or fraternities. There are no totemic tabus nor is there worship of the clan totem. People are reckoned as belonging to the father's clan almost as much as to that of the mother. If one of the family of a person who belongs to a fraternity falls sick the fraternity is called in to cure the patient, who is subsequently received into its ranks. The Zuñi fraternity is largely a body of religious physicians, membership is voluntary and not limited by sex. At Hopi we hear of rain-making more than of doctoring, more of "priests" than of "theurgists." The religious functions of the Zuñi are most marked in the ceremonies of the Ko-tikkyanne, the "god-society" or "masked-dancer society," and it is with these that the kivas are associated. They are almost wholly concerned with rain. Only men can become members and entrance is compulsory. Kroeber believes that "the truest understanding of Zuñi life, other than its purely practical manifestation, can be had by setting the ettowe ['fetish'] as a centre. Around these, priesthoods, fraternities, clan organisation, as well as most esoteric thinking and sacred tradition, group themselves; while, in turn, kivas, dances, and acts of public worship can be construed as but the outward means of expression of the inner activities that radiate around the nucleus of the physical fetishes and the ideas attached to them[872]."
FOOTNOTES:
[737] A. C. Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, 1911, p. 72.
[738] R. F. Scharff, The History of the European Fauna, 1899, pp. 155, 186.
[739] D. G. Brinton, The American Race, 1891.