One of the most interesting portions of the Zuñi narrative is one which elucidates the motive which led to the migration of peoples in ancient America. We are told how generations of the forefathers of the Zuñis wandered about in search of the stable middle [pg 202] of the earth, on which they wished to found their sacred city. The tribe divided; the winter-clan journeyed to the northeast and the summer-clan to the southwest, a reunion of the people took place, and a council was held for the determination of the true Middle.... According to a myth the Sun-father requested the water-skate to determine the Middle. This mythical monster lifted himself up, stretched out and then settled downward, calling out: “Where my heart and navel rest beneath them mark ye the spot and then build ye a town of the midmost, for there shall be the midmost of the Earth-mother, even the navel.... And when he descended squatting, his belly rested over the plain and valley of Zuñi and when he drew in his finger-legs, lo! there were the trail roads leading out and in like the stays of a spider's net, into and forth from the place he had covered.”
Pausing to point out that fig. [28], reproduced from Mexican Codices, shows curious topographical drawings resembling a spider's net, I will not recount the many disappointments of the wanderers, who were evidently driven away from several places of settlement by earthquakes, but will refer to the Zuñi custom of “annually testing the stability of the Middle in middle time ... when the sun reached the middle between winter and summer ... a shell was laid by the sacred fire of the north.... When during solemn chanting no trembling of the earth ensued, the priests cast new fire and ... dwelt happily feeling sure that their sacred things were resting in the stable middle of the world.”
At the beginning of this paper I referred to the powerful hold that the realization of the fixity of the pole star would naturally have exerted upon the mind of primitive man, and I can produce no more striking illustration of this and of my view that the idea of central government and organization had been suggested by Polaris, than this account of the earnest and prolonged search of these ancient people for the stable centre of the earth, on which to found a permanent centre of terrestrial rule or the plan of the celestial government. At the same time it seems to me that the longing for a stable and fixed residence would naturally have been most intense amongst people who had experienced terrible earthquakes and been driven out of their original abodes by their repeated destruction. It is unnecessary to mention the well-known fact that whilst earthquakes prevail throughout North and Central America, the most impressive trace of catastrophes of the kind [pg 203] are connected with the gigantic volcanoes of Central Mexico and Guatemala.
With a sympathetic insight into the disasters which seem to have driven the wandering tribes from one region to another and filled them with a passionate yearning for a centre of rest, let us now learn from Mr. Cushing how they planned their metropolis and organized themselves, when they had found the long-looked-for goal, in the Zuñi valley and “settling there, built seven great cities therein.
“All their subtribes and lesser tribes were distinctively related to and ruled from a central tribe and town through priest chiefs representatives of each of these, sitting under supreme council or septuarchy of the ‘Master priests of the house’ in the central town itself, much as were the divisions and cities of the great Inca dominion in South America represented at and ruled from Cuzco, the central city and power of them all.
“Zuñi is divided, not always clearly to the eye, but very clearly in the estimation of the people themselves, into seven parts, corresponding not perhaps in arrangement topographically, but in scheme to their subdivisions of the worlds or world-quarters of this world. Thus one division of the town is supposed to be related to the north and to be centred in its kiva or estufa which may or may not be at its centre; another division represents the west, another the south, another the east; yet another the upper world and another the lower world; while a final division represents the middle or mother and synthetic combination of the all in the world.
“By reference to the early Spanish history of the pueblos, it may be seen that when discovered the Ashiwis or Zuñis were living in seven quite widely separated towns the celebrated seven cities of Cibola and that this theoretic subdivision of the only one of these towns now remaining is in some manner a survival of the original subdivision of the tribes into seven into as many towns. It is evident that in both cases, however, the arrangement was and is, if we may call it such, a mythic organization; hence my use of the term of mytho-sociologic organization of the tribe. At all events this is the key to their sociology as well as to their mythic conception of space and universe.
“... There were nineteen clans, grouped in threes, to correspond to the mythic subdivision. Three to north, west, south, [pg 204] east, Upper, Lower. The single clan of Macaw is midmost or of middle and also as the all containing and mother clan of the entire tribe, for in it is ‘the seed of the priesthood of houses’ supposed to be preserved.[52]
“Finally, as produced from all the clans and as representative alike of all the clans and through a tribal septuarchy of all the regions and divisions of the midmost and, finally, as representative of all the cult societies above mentioned, is the Kaka or A'kâkâ-kwe or Mythic Dance drama people or organization.
“It may be seen of these mytho-sociologic organizations that they are a system within a system and that it contains systems within systems all founded on the classification according to the six-fold division of things and in turn the six-fold division of each of these divisions of things ... The tribal division made up of the clans of the north take precedence ceremonially, occupying the position of elder brother or the oldest ancestor. The west is the younger brother to this and the south of the west, the east of south, etc.... while the middle is supposed to be a representative being, the heart and name of all of the brothers of the regions, the first and last, as well as elder and younger.