Zuñi Folk Tales

by Frank Hamilton Cushing

Hasten, hasten, ye our children, in the morning!”

So the people gathered in the kiwetsiwe and sacred houses next morning and began to make prayer-plumes, while the sister of the young man and her relatives made sweet parched corn-meal and gathered pollen. Toward evening all was completed. The young man summoned his relatives, and chose his four uncles to accompany him. Then he spread enough cotton-wool out to cover the floor, and, gathering it up, made it into a small bundle. The sweet meal filled a large sack of buckskin, and he took also a little sack of sacred red paint and the black warrior paint with little shining particles in it. Then he bade farewell to his lamenting people and rested for the evening journey.

Next morning, escorted by priests, the young man, arrayed in garments of embroidered white cotton and carrying his plumes in his arms, started out of the town, and, accompanied only by his four uncles, set out over the mountains. On the third day they reached the forest on the bank of the great river and encamped.

Then the young man left the camp of his uncles and went alone into the forest, and, choosing the greatest tree he could find, hacked midway through it with his great flint knife. The next day he cut the other half and felled it, when he found it partly hollow. So with his little knife he began to cut it as he had been directed, and made the round door for it and the hole through the top. With his bundle of cotton he padded it everywhere inside until it was thickly coated and soft, and he made a bed on the bottom as thick as himself.

When all was ready and he had placed his food and plumes inside, he called his uncles and showed them the hollow log. “In this,” said he, “I am to journey to the western home of our Sun-father. When I have entered and closed the round door tightly and put the plug into the upper hole securely, do ye, never thinking of me, roll the log over and over to the high brink of the river, and, never regarding consequences, push it into the water.”

Then it was that the uncles all lamented and tried to dissuade him; but he persisted, and they bade him “Go,” as forever, “for,” said they, “could one think of journeying even to the end of the earth and across the waters that embrace the world without perishing?”

Then, hastily embracing each of them, the young man entered his log, and, securely fastening the door from the inside, and the plug, called out (they heard but faintly), “Kesi!” which means “All is ready.”

Sorrowfully and gently they rolled the log over and over to the high river bank, and, hesitating a moment, pushed it off with anxious eyes and closed mouths into the river. Eagerly they watched it as it tumbled end-over-end and down into the water with a great splash, and disappeared under the waves, which rolled one after another across to the opposite banks of the river. But for a long time they saw nothing of it. After a while, far off, speeding on toward the Western Waters of the World, they saw the log rocking along on the rushing waters until it passed out of sight, and they sadly turned toward their homes under the Mountains of the South.

When the log had ceased rocking and plunging, the young man cautiously drew out the plug, and, finding that no water flowed in, peered out. A ray of sunlight slanted in, and by that he knew it was not yet midday, and he could see a round piece of sky and clouds through the hole. By-and-by the ray of sunlight came straight down, and then after a while slanted the other way, and finally toward evening it ceased to shine in, and then the youth took out some of his meal and ate his supper. When after a while he could see the stars, and later the Hanging Lines [the sword-belt of Orion], he knew it was time to rest, so he lay down to sleep.

Thus, day after day, he travelled until he knew he was out on the Great Waters of the World, for no longer did his log strike against anything or whirl around, nor could he see, through the chink, leaves of overhanging trees, nor rocks and banks of earth. On the tenth morning, when he looked up through the hole, he saw that the clouds did not move, and wondering at this, kicked at his log, but it would not move. Then he peered out as far as he could and saw rocks and trees. When he tried to rock his log, it remained firm, so he determined to open the door at the end.