Photo by A. C. Vroman
ZUÑI WOMEN CARRYING WATER
THE MAIDEN THE SUN MADE LOVE TO, AND HER BOYS
OR, THE ORIGIN OF ANGER
LET it be about a person who lived in the Home of the Eagles (K’iákime), under the Mountain of Thunder, that I tell you today. So let it be. It was in the ancient, long-forgotten times. It was in the very ancient times beyond one’s guessing. There lived then, in this town, the daughter of a great priest-chief, but she had never, never, never since she was a little child, come forth from the doorway of the house in which she dwelt. No one there in that town had ever seen her; even her own townspeople had never seen her.
Now, day after day at noon-time, when the Sun stood in the mid-heavens, he would look down from the sky through a little window in the roof of her house. And he it was who instant was her lover, and who, descending upon the luminously yellow trail his own rays created, would talk to her. And he was her only companion, for she knew not her own townspeople, neither had she seen them since she was a child. None save only her parents ever saw her.
“Wonder what the cacique’s child looks like,” the people would say to one another. “She never comes out; no one has seen her since she was a little child.” And so at last they schemed to get a look at her. One said: “I have it! Let us have a dance for her. Then it may be she will deign to come forth.”
The young man who spoke was chief of the dances, and why should he not suggest such a thing? So, his friends and followers agreeing, they began to make plumes of macaw feathers—beautiful plumes they were—for the Plume dance. They set a day, and on that day, in the morning, they danced, with music and song, in the plaza before the house of the great priest-chief where the girl lived. They looked along the top of the house in vain; the girl was not there; only her old parents sat on the roof.
“Oh! I’m so thirsty!” cried the chief of the dance, for he it was who wanted to see the girl.