Zuñi Folk Tales

by Frank Hamilton Cushing

The old man raised his eyebrows and upper lids, looked at his old wife, spat in the fireplace, and smoked hard at his cigarette, joining the girl in her invitation by saying, “Yes, have to eat well.”

Soon the young man said, “Thanks,” and the maiden quickly responded, “Eat more,” and “Have eaten.”

After brushing the crumbs away the girl sat down by her mother, and the father rolled a cigarette for the young man and talked longer with him than he had with the others.

After the old ones had stretched out in the corner and begun to “scrape their nostrils with their breath,” the maiden turned to the young man and said: “I have a corn-field in the lands of the priest-chief, down by the river, and if you truly love me, I would that you should hoe the whole in a single morning. Thus may you prove yourself a man, and to love me truly; and if you will do this, happily, as day follows day, will we live each with the other.”

“Hai-í!” replied the young man, who smiled as he listened; and as the young maiden looked at him, sitting in the fading fire-light with the smile on his face, she thought: “Only possibly. But oh! how I wish his heart might be strong, even though his bundle be not heavy nor large.

“Come with me, young man, and I will show you where you are to await the morning. Early take my father’s hoe, which stands by the doorway, and go down to the corn-field long before the night shadows have run away from Thunder Mountain”—with which she bade him pass a night of contentment and sought her own place.

When all was still, the young man climbed to the sky-hole and in the starlight asked the gods of the woodlands and waters to give strength to his hands and power to his prayer-medicine, and to meet and bless him with the light of their favor; and he threw to the night-wind meal of the seeds of earth and the waters of the world with which those who are wise fail not to make smooth their trails of life. Then he slept till the sky of the day-land grew yellow and the shadows of the night-land grew gray, and then shouldered his hoe and went down to the corn-field. His task was not great, for the others had hoed much. Where they left off, there he fell to digging right and left with all his strength and haste, till the hard soil mellowed and the earth flew before his strokes as out of the burrows of the strongest-willed gophers and other digging creatures.

When the sun rose the maiden looked forth and saw that his task was already half done. But still she waited. As the sun warmed the day and the youth worked on, the dewdrops of flesh stood all over his body and he cast away, one after the other, his blanket and sash and even his leggings and moccasins. Then he stopped to look around. By the side of the field grew tall yellow-tops. He ran into the thicket and rubbed every part of his body, yea, even the hair of his head and his ear-tips and nostrils, with the bark of the finger-root. Again he fell to work as though he had only been resting, and wondered why the may-flies and gnats and mosquitoes came not to cause him thoughts as they had the others. Yet still the girl lingered; but at last she went slowly to the room where the jar stood.

“It is absurd,” thought she, “that I should hope it or even care for it; it would indeed be great if it were well true that a young man should love me so verily as to hold his face to the front through such a testing.” Nevertheless, she drew the lid off and bade her strange children to spare him no more than they had the others.

All hasty to feast themselves on the “waters of life,” as our old grandfathers would say for blood, again they rushed out and hummed along over the corn-fields in such numbers that they looked more like a wind-driven sandstorm than ever, and “tsi-ni-ni-i, tso-no-o,” they hummed and buzzed about the ears of the young man when they came to him, so noisily that the poor fellow, who kept at work all the while, thought they were already biting him. But it was only fancy, for the first may-fly that did bite him danced in the air with disgust and exclaimed to his companions, “Sho-o-o-m-m!” and “Us-á!” which meant that he had eaten something nasty, that tasted as badly as vile odors smell. So not another may-fly in the throng would bite, although they all kept singing their song about his ears. And to this day may-flies are careful whom they bite, and dance a long time in the air before they do it.