Subsequently Pedro went on to describe in detail a phallic dance and ceremony, in which there was a sort of divination. The young maiden who made the lucky guess was richly rewarded, while her less fortunate companions were presented with a handful of kunque, which they kept during the ensuing year. This dance is called "ky'áklu," and is independent of the great phallic dance occurring in the month of December. Pedro also stated that until very recently the Zuñi were in the habit of celebrating a fire dance at Noche Buena (Christmas). There were four piles of wood gathered for the occasion, and upon each the medicine-men threw kunque in profusion. This dance, as Pedro described it, closely resembled one mentioned by Landa in his Cosas de Yucatan. High up on the vertical face of the precipice of Tâaiyalana there is a phallic shrine of the Zuñi to which I climbed with Mr. Frank Cushing. We found that the place had been visited by young brides who were desirous of becoming mothers. The offerings in every case included kunque.
In the account given in the National Tribune, Washington, District of Columbia, May 20, 1886, of the mode of life of the Zuñi woman Wehwa while in the national capital, and while engaged in the kirmes, we read:
She also strewed sacred corn meal along on her way to the theater to bring good luck to her and the other dancers. * * * She has gone from her comfortable room to pray in the street at daylight every morning, whatever the weather has been. * * * At such times she strews corn meal all around her until the front-door steps and the sidewalk are much daubed with dough. But this is not the corn meal in common use in the United States, but is sacred meal ground in Zuñi with sacred stones.[273]
So long a time has elapsed since any of the Pueblos have been on the warpath that no man can describe their actual war customs except from the dramatic ceremonial of their dances or from the stories told him by the "old men." The following from an eyewitness will therefore be of interest: "Before the Pueblos reached the heights they were ordered to scale they halted on the way to receive from their chiefs some medicine from the medicine bags which each of them carried about his person. This they rubbed upon their heart, as they said, to make it big and brave, and they also rubbed it upon other parts of their bodies and upon their rifles for the same purpose."[274]
The constant use of kunque by the different Pueblo tribes has been noticed from the first days of European contact. In the relation of Don Antonio de Espejo (1583) we are told that upon the approach of the Spaniards to the town of Zaguato, lying 28 leagues west of Zuñi, "a great multitude of Indians came forth to meete them, and among the rest their Caçiques, with so great demonstration of joy and gladnes, that they cast much meale of Maiz upon the ground for the horses to tread upon."[275]
I am under the impression that the ruins of this village are those near the ranch of Mr. Thomas V. Keam, at Keam's Canyon, Arizona, called by the Navajo "Talla-hogandi," meaning "singing house," in reference to the Spanish mission which formerly existed there. This village is, as I have hitherto shown, the ruin of the early pueblo of Awátubi.
In his poem descriptive of the conquest of New Mexico, entitled "Nueva Mejico," Alcala de Henares, 1610, Villagrá uses the following language:[276]
Passando à Mohoçe, Zibola, y Zuni,
Por cuias nobles tierras descubrimos,
Una gran tropa de Indios que venia,
Con cantidad harina que esparcian,
Sobre la gente toda muy apriessa,
Y entrando assi en los pueblos las mugeres
Dieron en arrojarnos tantá della,
Que dimos en tomarles los costales,
De donde resultò tener con ellas,
Unas carnestolendas bien reñidas.
It is gratifying to observe that the Spanish writer in the remote wilds of America struck upon an important fact in ethnology: that the throwing of "harina" or flour by the people of Tusayan (Mohoçe or Moqui), Cibola, and Zuñi (observe the odd separation of "Zibola" from either Moqui or Zuñi) was identical with the "carnestolendas" of Spain, in which, on Shrove Tuesday, the women and girls cover all the men they meet with flour. The men are not at all backward in returning the compliment, and the streets are at times filled with the farinaceous dust.