Zuñi Folk Tales

by Frank Hamilton Cushing

What do you suppose he did? He went to each hole, sheltered nook, and oven in the town and called on the Dogs to join him in council, not long before morning of that same night. Every Dog in the town answered the summons; and, below the mesa on which Walpi stands, on one of those sloping banks lighted by the moon, they gathered and made a tremendous clamor with their yelpings and barkings and other noises such as you are accustomed to hear from Dogs at night-time. The proposition which the youth made to this council of Dogs was as follows:

“My friends and brothers, I am about to go forth on the path of war to the cities of the Zuñis toward the sunrise. If I succeed, my reward will be great. Now, as I well know from having lived amongst you and been one of you so long, there are two things which are more prized in a Dog’s life than anything else. An occasional good feast is one of them; being let alone is another. I think I can bring about both of these rewards for you all if you will, four days hence, after I have prepared a sufficiency of food for the party, join me in my warlike expedition against the Zuñis.”

The Dogs greeted this proposition with vociferous acclamation, and the council dispersed.

On the following day, toward evening, the youth again presented himself at the home of the maiden. “My friends,” said he to the family; “I am, as you know, or can easily perceive, extremely poor. I have no home nor source of food; yet, as I anticipate that I shall be long on this journey, and as I neither possess nor know how to use a bow and arrow, I come to humbly beseech your assistance. I will undertake this thing which has been proposed to me; but, in order that I may be enabled the more easily to do so, I desire that you will present to me a sufficiency of food for my journey; or, if you will lend it to me, I shall be satisfied.”

Now, the maiden’s people were among the first in the nation, and well-to-do in all ways. They most willingly consented to give the young man not only a sufficiency of food for days, but for months; and when he went away that night he had all that he could carry of meal, coarse and fine, piki or Moki wafer-rolls, tortillas, and abundant grease-cakes, which he well knew would be most tempting to Dogs.

On the fourth day thereafter,—for he had been making his weapons: some flint knives and a good hard war-club,—at evening, he again called at each of the holes and places the Dogs of the town inhabited, and he said to all of them: “I shall leave forthwith on my journey, having provided myself with a sufficiency of food for much feasting on the way. Like yourselves, I have become inured to hardship and am swift of foot, and by midnight I shall be half-way to Zuñi. As soon as the people are asleep, that they may not pelt you with stones and drive you back, follow on the trail to Zuñi as fast as you can. I will await you by the side of the Black Mountains, near the Spring of the Night-hawks, and there I will cook the provisions, that we may have a jolly feast and the more strongly proceed on our journey the day following.”

The Dogs gave him repeated assurances of their willingness to follow; and, heavily laden with his provisions, the youth, just at dusk, climbed unobserved down the nether side of the mesa and set out through the plains of sagebrush, over the hills far east of Moki, and so on along the plateaus and valleys leading to this our town of Zuñi. At the place he had appointed as a rendezvous he arrived not long before midnight, lighted a fire, unstrapped his provisions, and began to cook mush in great quantities.

Now, after the lights in the windows of Moki began to go out—shutting up their red eyes, as it were, as the maidens of Moki shut up their bright eyes—there was tremendous activity observed among the Dogs. But they made not much noise about it until every last Dog in town—as motley a crowd of curs and mongrels as ever were seen, unless one might see all the Dogs of Moki today—descended the mesa, and one by one gathered in a great pack, and started, baying, barking, and howling louder and louder as they went along over the eastern hills on the trail which the youth had taken.

By-and-by he heard them coming; te-ne-e-e-e they sounded as they ran; wo-wo-o-o-o they came, baying and barking in all sorts of voices, nearer and nearer. So the youth prepared his provisions, and as the nearest of them came into the light of the fire, cried out: “Ho, my friends, ye come! I am glad to see ye come! Sit ye round my camp-fire. Let us feast and be merry and lighten the load of my provisions. Methinks we will all carry some of them when we start out tomorrow.”

Thereupon he liberally distributed mush, tortillas, and paper bread,—inviting the hot, tired Dogs to drink their fill from the spring and eat their fill from the feast. The Dogs, being very hungry, as Dogs always are—and the more so from the memory of many a long fast—fell to with avidity (and you know what that means with Dogs); and the Short-legs and Beagles would not have fared very well had the youth not considered them and held back a good supply of provisions against their tardy appearance.