Zuñi Folk Tales

by Frank Hamilton Cushing

Photo by A. C. Vroman

ZUÑI FROM THE SOUTH

HOW THE SUMMER BIRDS CAME

IN the days of the ancients, in the town under Thunder Mountain called K’iákime, there lived a most beautiful maiden. But one thing which struck the people who knew her was that she seldom came forth from her room, or went out of her house; never seemed to care for the people around her, never seemed to care to see the young men when they were dancing.

Now, this was the way of it. Through the roof of her room was a little skylight, open, and when it rained, one of the Gods of the Rain descended in the rain-drops and wooed this maiden, and married her all unknown to her people; so that she was in his company every time it rained, and when the dew fell at night, on his ladder of water descending he came, and she was very happy, and cared not for the society of men. By-and-by, behold! to the utter surprise of the people, whose eyes could not see this god, her husband, there was a little boy born to her.

Now, he was the child of the gods, and, therefore, before he was many days old, he had begun to run about and speak, and had wonderful intelligence and wonderful strength and vivacity. He was only a month or two old when he was like a child of five or six or eight years of age, and he would climb to the house-top and run down into the plaza and out around the village hunting birds or other small animals. With only his fingers and little stones for weapons, he never failed to slay and bring home these little creatures, and his mother’s house was supplied more than any other house in the town with plumes for sacrifice, from the birds which he captured in this way.

Finally he observed that the older men of the tribe carried bows and arrows, and that the arrows went more swiftly and straighter than the stones he threw; and though he never failed to kill small animals, he found he could not kill the larger ones in that way. So he said to his mother one night: “Oh, mother, where does the wood grow that they make bows of, and where do they get sticks for their arrows? I wish you would tell me.”

But the mother was quite silent; she didn’t like to tell him, for she thought it would lead him away from the town and something would happen to him. But he kept questioning her until at last, weary with his importunities, she said: “Well, my little boy, if you go round the cliff here to the eastern side, there is a great hollow in the rocks, and down at the bottom of that hollow is a great cave. Now, around that shelter in the rocks are growing the trees out of which bows are made, and there also grow the bushes from which arrows are cut; they are so plentiful that they could supply the whole town, and furnish all the hunters here with bows and arrows; but they cannot get them, because in the cave lives a great Bear, a very savage being, and no one dares go near there to get timber for the bows or sticks for the arrows, because the Bear would surely devour whoever ventured there. He has devoured many of our people; therefore you must not go there to get these arrows.”

“No, indeed,” said the boy. But at night he lay down with much in his mind, and was so thoughtful that he hardly slept the whole night. He was planning what he would do in the morning.