The salt of this lake is superior to any other found in the southwest, not excepting that of the Manzano salinas, east of the Rio Grande, which nevertheless was as strenuously fought for and guarded by the Tanoan tribes settled around these salinas, and had in like manner, indeed, drawn their ancestry down from earlier cavate homes in the northern mountains. Hence it was preferred (as it still is by both Indian and white population of New Mexico and Arizona) to all other kinds, and commanded such price that in the earlier cliff-packs I have found it adulterated with other kinds from the nearer salt marshes which occur in southern Utah and southwestern Colorado. That the adulteration of the lake salt with the slightly alkaline and bitter salt of the neighboring marshes was thus practiced with a view to eking out the trade supply is conclusively shown, I think, by the presence in the same cliff homes from which the adulterated specimens were obtained, of abundant specimens of the unadulterated salt, and this as conclusively shows not only that the cliff dwellers traded in this salt, as do their modern Zuñi representatives, but also that it was then, as now, more highly valued than other kinds of salt in the southwest.
The influence on the movements of whole tribes of people which it is here assumed such a source of favorite salt supply as this exerted over the early cliff dwellers, does not stand alone in the history of American tribes. It already has been intimated that the Tanoans so far prized their comparatively inferior source of salt supply in the salinas of the Manzano as to have been induced to settle there and surround them with a veritable cordon of their pueblos.
Another and far more significant instance, that of the Cerro de Sal in Peru may be mentioned, for in that country not only was salt of various kinds to be found in many valleys and throughout nearly all the deserts of the Medano region extending from northern Ecuador to southern Chili, but the sea also lay near at hand along the entire western border of this vast stretch of country; yet from remote parts of South America trails lead, some from the Amazon and from Argentina, more than a thousand miles away, some from nearer points and from all local directions to this famous "Cerro de Sal." The salt from this locality was, like that of the Lake of Salt, so highly prized that it drew aboriginal populations about it in even pre-Incan days, and was a source of supply, as well as, it is affirmed, of abundant tribute to those dominant Pueblos of South America, the Incas of later days.[4]
That the Lake of Salt, as a coveted source, actually did influence the earlier descents of the cliff dwellers, and did lead to the building and occupancy by them of the long line of ruins I have described, rests, finally, on linguistic no less than on such comparative evidence as has already been indicated. In turn, this leads to consideration of the larger and at present more pertinent evidence that these dwellers in the round towns were in part ancestors of the Zuñis, and that thus, as assumed at the outset, the Zuñis are of composite, at least dual, origin, and that their last, still existing, phase of culture is of dual derivation.
The archaic and sacred name for the south in Zuñi is Álahoïnkwin táhna, but the name more commonly employed—always in familiar or descriptive discourse—is Mák‘yaiakwin táhna (that is, the "direction of the salt-containing water or lake," from ma, salt; k‘yaía, water, or lake-containing or bearing; kwin, place of, and táhna, point or direction of). That this name should have displaced the older form in familiar usage is significant of the great importance attached to their source of salt by the early Zuñis; yet but natural, for the older form, Álahoïnkwin táhna, signifies "in the direction of the home (or source) of the coral shells," from álaho, glowing red shell-stuff; ïnkwïn, abiding place of, or containing place of, and táhna. This source of the álahowe or coral red shells (which are derived from several species of subtropical mollusks, and were so highly prized by the southwestern tribes that the Indians of the lower Colorado traded in them as assiduously as did those of the cliffs and round towns in salt) has been for generations the Gulf of California and the lower coast to beyond Guaymas.
It is not improbable, then, that this archaic and now exclusively ritualistic expression for the southward or the south is a surviving paraphrase of the name for south (or of the source in the south of the red shells), formerly known to the western branch of the Zuñi ancestry, and once familiarly used by them to designate also, perhaps, the direction of the source of their chief treasure (these coral red shells of aboriginal commerce), as in the Gulf of California, which was then south of them, but is now due west-southwestward from them.
What renders this supposition still more probable, and also strengthens the theory of the dual origin of many parallelisms in Zuñi culture, observances, and phraseology, is not so much the fact that this name for red shells and the archaic Zuñi name for red paint, áhona, resemble in sound and meaning the Yuman ahowata, ahauti, etc., for red paint, nor yet the fact that such resemblance extends to many archaic and other terms, for example of relationship in the Zuñi as compared especially with corresponding terms in the Yavapai Tulkepaiya and other dialects of the Yuman. In fact, all the terms in Zuñi for the four quarters are twofold and different, according as used familiarly or ritualistically. That for west, for instance, is in the archaic and ritualistic form, K’yálishiïnkwïn táhna, and signifies "direction of the home, or source of mists and waters, or the sea;" which, when the Zuñi abode in the farther southwest near the Pacific, was the appropriate name for west. But the familiar name for west in modern Zuñi is Súnhakwïn táhna, the "direction of the place of evening," which is today equally appropriate for their plateau-encircled home of the far inland.
"North," in the archaic form, is now nearly lost; yet in some of the more mystic rituals it occurs as both Wímaiyawan táhna (Wíkutaiya is "north" in the Yuma), "direction of the oak mountains," and Yä´lawaunankwin táhna, literally "direction of the place of the mountain ranges," which from the lower Colorado and southern Arizona are toward the north, but from northern Zuñi are not so conspicuous as in the other direction, as, for instance, toward the southwest. On the other hand, if we consider the familiar phrase for north, Pïsh´lankwïn táhna, "direction of the wind-swept plains," or of the "plains of the mightiest winds," to have been inherited from the aboriginal round-town Zuñis, then it was natural enough for them to have named the north as they did; for to the north of their earlier homes in the cliffs and beyond lay the measureless plains where roamed the strong Bison God of Winds, whence came his fierce northern breath and bellowings in the roar of storms in winter.
The east, in common language, signifies "direction of the coming of day;" but in the ritual speech signifies "direction of the plains of daylight"—a literal description of the great Yuma desert as seen at day-break from the Colorado region, but scarcely applicable to the country eastward from Zuñi, which is rugged and broken until the Llanos Estacados of Texas are reached.
The diverse meaning of terms in Zuñi architecture is no less significant of the diverse conditions and opposite directions of derivation of the Zuñi ancestry. If the aboriginal branch of the Zuñi were derived from the dwellers in the northern cliff towns, as has been assumed, then we would expect to find surviving in the names of such structural features of their pueblos as resulted from life in the cliffs linguistic evidence, as in the structures themselves material evidence, of the fact. Of this, as will presently be shown, there is an abundance.