Amerindian Arts Native American News & Information: Zuni Worldview, Part IV, The Center of the World

Saturday, April 14, 2007 -- 2007 Wildcat Pow Wow
Venue: UA's Bear Down Field
Address: 4th St and Cherry Ave
Time: 11:00am
City: Tucson, AZ -- Community and guests can experience Native American dancing, singing, and drumming at the 2007 Wildcat Pow Wow on Friday, April 13 and Saturday, April 14 at the University of Arizona’s Bear Down Field. The Wildcat Pow Wow Society, a UA student organization, will host this event on Friday, April 13 from 5:00pm to 10:00pm and on Saturday, April 14 from 11:00am to 10:00pm.

Saturday, April 14, 2007 -- Heard Museum Shop Annual Katsina Doll Marketplace Venue: Heard Museum
Address: 2301 N. Central Ave
Time: 10:00am
City: Phoenix, AZ -- Heard Museum Shop Sixth Annual Katsina Doll Marketplace. Come support the Native American Arts and Crafts community. More than 100 Hopi katsina doll carvers will show and sell their unique creations at the Heard Musuem Shop. The Marketplace will offer a wide range of styles, designs, techniques and prices. FREE (museum admission additional). 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. call for info...more info: 602.252.8848

Native American Artists

Zuni Worldview, Part Iv, The Center of the World

In a unique language such as Zuni where multireferential names and metaphoric symbolism are prevalent it is certain that much would be lost in translation to a universal syntax. Modal language is ineffective as well, for there are no possible worlds for the Zuni. Epistemic fulfillment is found and absorbed in the aesthetic. As Ruth Bunzel noted in her study of Zuni ceremonialism, a final statement of the Zuni worldview would be “The world then is as it is and man’s plan in it is what it is” . Necessity has absorbed the possible in the logic of ritual where the failure of prayer is attributed to a deviant utterance or a ‘bad heart’. Potential is everywhere in animate matter, but its manifestation is the actualization of form and function in cognition . Potential is what it is when it is not thought about, and when thought about it is for the most part restricted to the non-verbal. In the Zuni language the word for “I think” is the same word for “maybe”, or “perhaps” (hinik) .

This may seem paradoxical if actualization is cognition and the “I think” is simply the possible or potential, but actualization of form and function is to know the use of the thing, which presupposes knowledge of its context. Knowledge of context and the things use is sufficient for naming. Indeterminacy of context and perhaps one’s belief is the vagary of cross identification making quantification uncertain and ontology relative, leaving potential to the non-verbal and subsequently giving the appearance of a lack of a naming process as well. Individualism is discouraged and is distinct from personal accomplishment. Deviant utterance and a bad heart are qualities of individualism. As Cushing remarked, while learning the language during his tenure as a participant-observer residing in the Governor’s household at the Zuni Pueblo, his improper usage of the language never went uncorrected .

Thus, Zuni truth is determination according to the beliefs of the individual and subsequently to the reciprocal public intentions of a distinct culture where the individual as a “perspective-taker” performs rationalization in the ontological sense or the “primitive” and intersubjectivity is validated as objectivity in “personal accomplishment” . Personal accomplishment is never identical to individualism and the beliefs of the individual are expressed objectively if their interpretation of an image invokes a proper narrative.

Young states “rock art is of special import because it demonstrates the involvement of the ancestors in present day life, the fluid boundary between events of the myth times and those of today. Because certain rock art images evoke recitations of traditional narrative, I regard them as a means by which to investigate the relationships between verbal and visual communication codes. This interrelationship is revealed in the way that the Zuni use these codes to recreate and structure the world of the myth time, making it a part of their contemporary existence” . What is important here is that verbal and ostensive definition presupposes myth and that proper interpretation of the image in context requires that it be related in the now, as a present tense, and where what is uttered or shown is always true and the belief of the producer. Existence is the accumulation of the past that naturally conflates to the present. While it is always an eternal possibility, existence shows itself only as a necessary present.

Cushing referred implicitly to this phenomenon in equivocating the Zuni term “I-shothl-ti-mon” , meaning “always”, with “ahâi” (ahoi) , meaning “beings” . The prefix I in Zuni is either reflexive or inchoative and the prefix a is either a verbal pronominative for the plural absolute or a derivational prefix pluralizing particles referring to persons . Miner notes that either of these uses of a is homophonous with the other and as a linguist one must assume that he intended that while pronunciation is the same they have different derivations, whereas Cushing, who knew the Zuni language and was familiar with the musicality of Zuni narrative, translated a as a unison, conflating their usage in, for example, his translation of Apoyan (sky or cover) Tatcu (father) as “all covering Father Sky” (*) . Cushing implies this function of individuation several times throughout his essays, referring to the “Seven Cities of Cibola” while Frederick Hodge complained of finding the physical remnants of only six cities (pueblos), the seventh kiva or direction (there are six), and the nineteenth clan (eighteen clans divided into the dichotomy of Summer and Winter people) (**) .

Frederick Eggan seems to agree with Cushing’s observations and Young notes Eggan’s agreement when citing Cushing’s Outline of Zuni Creation Myths . Young comments a number of times in her essay that the principle theme of the Zuni cosmology is the notion of the “center” where its multireferential aspects are integrated as a motion through time directed inward , “collapsing the boundaries of space and time into the base metaphor, giving it the ability or power to refer to many disparate concepts simultaneously” . The center is represented as a class that is itself a member of its class where the multireferential images of the center refer to themselves and to the class as a whole in a seemingly paradoxical as well as tautological sense of logical extension, and is probably responsible for Cushing’s observation that the Zuni seemed to confuse the subjective with the objective . The extended and the non-extended are tautologically present in every image, where, for example, the seventh city is manifest in the collectivity of the six pueblos known to exist, or the summer-winter dichotomy which is one representative of the idea of the center as indicative of the nineteenth clan.

(*) Cushing, Frank Hamilton. “Outlines of Zuni Creation Myths”. Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1891-1892. Pp. 321-447. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1896. Reprint.Bunzel criticizes Cushing’s interpretations as containing “endless poetic and metaphysical glossing of the basic elements” (1932b: 547). Bunzel translates apoyanne as “stone cover” where a is denoted by its root use as a term for “stone” (1932a: 487). The distinction is viewed here as relative to the distinction between folklore and mythology, where, as Benedict notes, a Zuni narrator is free to incorporate his knowledge into folklore and tales (1969: xiii, Benedict, Ruth. Zuni Mythology. 2 vols. Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, no. 21. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935. AMS Press reprint, 1969.. Bunzel’s received her version from a man who was not a priest and was a story that belonged to all the priests for the purpose of storytelling during the winter retreats. Her source had learned the story from an uncle who had refused to give the origin myth of his society since that was his “very own prayer” (1932b: 548).

In a letter to the to the Peabody Museum, Cushing distinguished between the “abundant folklore and more serious mythology” (Green, Jesse. 1990: 304, Cushing at Zuni: The Correspondence and Journals of Frank Hamilton Cushing, 1879-1884. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990.). It is apparent from information in several correspondences (including Lt. John Bourke’s journal; Ibid, 188, 394 n. 67), that Cushing learned his version of the origin myth from Keasi, who was second in command in the Order of the Priests of the Bow (Apila Shiwani) and who’s duty it was, according to Keasi, to preserve the “Sacred Genesis” of the Zuni, handed down by word of mouth from the “Old Days…given to me by…day and night pouring it into my ears” (Ibid: 187). In Cushing’s day the Society was the most powerful of all the kivas and its strength depended upon its secrecy, even to the exclusion of the collective, for this was the source of its motive as an enforcement agency of the secular, and was also was the unification of the collective (Harvey, Byron III. p.204. “An Overview of Pueblo Religion”. New Perspectives on the Pueblos. Ed. by Alfonso Ortiz. Pp. 197-217. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972.).

By the time of Bunzel’s field work however, the war cult was “greatly in abeyance” and had been “stripped” of its power: the pattern of assignment of the priestly hierarchy had been drastically altered and the dissemination of information and the handing down of the society’s ritual history had been drastically curtailed (Bunzel 1932b: 525-526). Thus, it is likely that information that had been available to Cushing as a member of the Bow was, for the most part, unavailable to Bunzel, at least in its original form. The most interesting aspect of this is that Bunzel’s informant was in all likelihood Nick Tamaka, who was persecuted for witchcraft by the Bow in or around 1895. Tamaka immediately informed the U.S. authorities and later become Governor of Zuni. Throughout these years it was he who stripped the Bow of its power.

(**) Cushing gives an account of the division of the summer and winter people in a myth telling “how soon after the emergence from the under world Yanauluha carried a staff among the plumes of which appeared four round things, seeds or eggs, two blue like the sky or turquoise, two dun-red like the earth. Yanauluha told the people to choose. From one pair would issue beings of beautiful plumage, and where they flew would be everlasting summer; from the other would come evil beings, ‘uncolored, black, piebald with white’, and where these flew, and the people should follow, winter would strive with summer, and food would be obtainable only by labor. The people choose blue eggs, and the strongest seized them. Worms issued from this pair of eggs, which grew into ravens. But the other eggs held by Yanauluha and by the fewer and weaker but wiser people who waited with him, grew into macaws, who flew to the summer land of the south”. Yanauluha became the “speaker to and of the Sun-father”. In this myth there seems to be an implied moral prescribing aesthetics should be informed by qualities of a more immanent nature for there is an inherent danger in the aesthetic (quote cited from Kroeber , 1919: 94-95. Kroeber, Alfred L. “Zuni Kin and Clan”. Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Natural History, 18. 1919: 39-204. Reprint, AMS Press.). Read the Full Article

Faithful Lovers – Lakota

There once lived a chief's daughter who had many relations. All the young men in the village wanted to have her for wife, and were all eager to fill her skin bucket when she went to the brook for water.

There was a young man in the village who was industrious and a good hunter; but he was poor and of a mean family. He loved the maiden and when she went for water, he threw his robe over her head while he whispered in her ear, "Be my wife. I have little but I am young and strong. I will treat you well, for I love you."

For a long time the maiden did not answer, but one day she whispered back. "Yes, you may ask my father's leave to marry me. But first you must do something noble. I belong to a great family and have many relations. You must go on a war party and bring back the scalp of an enemy."

The young man answered modestly, "I will try to do as you bid me. I am only a hunter, not a warrior. Whether I shall be brave or not I do not know. But I will try to take a scalp for your sake."

So he made a war party of seven, himself and six other young men. They wandered through the enemy's country, hoping to get a chance to strike a blow. But none came, for they found no one of the enemy.

"Our medicine is unfavorable," said their leader at last. "We shall have to return home."

Before they started they sat down to smoke and rest beside a beautiful lake at the foot of a green knoll that rose from its shore. The knoll was covered with green grass and somehow, as they looked at it, they had a feeling that there was something about it that was mysterious or uncanny.

But there was a young man in the party named the jester, for he was venturesome and full of fun. Gazing at the knoll he said, "Let's and jump on its top."

"No," said the young lover, "it looks mysterious. Sit still and finish your smoke.

"Oh, come on, who's afraid," said the jester, laughing. "Come on you-- come on!" and springing to his feet he ran up the side of the knoll. Four of the young men followed. Having reached the top of the knoll all five began to jump and stamp about in sport, calling, "Come on, come on," to the others.

Suddenly they stopped--the knoll had begun to move toward the water. It was a gigantic turtle. The five men cried out in alarm and tried to run--too late! Their feet by some power were held fast to the monster's back.

"Help us--drag us away," they cried; but the others could do nothing. In a few moments the waves had closed over them. The other two men, the lover and his friend, went on, but with heavy hearts, for they had forebodings of evil. After some days, they came to a river. Worn with fatigue the lover threw himself down on the bank.

"I will sleep awhile," he said, "for I am wearied and worn out." "And I will go down to the water and see if I can chance upon a dead fish. At this time of the year the high water may have left one stranded on the seashore," said his friend And as he had said, he found a fish which he cleaned, and then called to the lover.

"Come and eat the fish with me. I have cleaned it and made a fire and it is now cooking." "No, you eat it; let me rest," said the lover. "Oh, come on," said the friend. "No, let me rest," the lover answered. "But you are my friend. I will not eat unless you share it with me," the friend said.

"Very well," said the lover, "I will eat the fish with you, but you must first make me a promise. If I eat the fish, you must promise, pledge yourself, to fetch me all the water that I can drink."

"I promise," said the other, and the two ate the fish out of their war-kettle. For there had been but one kettle for the party. When they had eaten, the kettle was rinsed out and the lover's friend brought it back full of water. This the lover drank at a draught. "Bring me more," he said. Again his friend filled the kettle at the river and again the lover drank it dry. "More!" he cried. "Oh, I am tired. Can't you go to the river and drink your fill from the stream?" asked his friend.

"Remember your promise." he said. "Yes, but I am weary. Go now and drink," said the friend. "Ek-hey, I feared it would be so. Now trouble is coming upon us," said the lover sadly. He walked to the river, sprang in, and lying down in the water with his head toward land, drank greedily. By and by he called to his friend. "Come hither, you who have been my sworn friend. See what comes of your broken promise."

The friend came and was amazed to see that the lover was now a fish from his feet to his middle. Sick at heart he ran off a little way and threw himself upon the ground in grief. By and by he returned. The lover was now a fish to his neck. "Cannot I cut off the part and restore you by a sweat bath?" the friend asked.

"No, it is too late. But tell the chief's daughter that I loved her to the last and that I die for her sake. Take this belt and give it to her. She gave it to me as a pledge of her love for me," and he being then turned to a great fish, swam to the middle of the river and there remained, only his great fin remaining above the water.

The friend went home and told his story. There was great mourning over the death of the five young men, and for the lost lover. In the river the great fish remained, its fin just above the surface, and was called by the Indians "Fish that Bars," because it barred navigation.

Canoes had to be portaged at great labor around the obstruction. The chief's daughter mourned for her lover as for a husband, nor would she be comforted. "He was lost for love of me, and I shall remain as his widow," she wailed. In her mother's tepee she sat, with her head covered with her robe, silent, working, working.

"What is my daughter doing," her mother asked. But the maiden did not reply. The days lengthened into moons until a year had passed. And then the maiden arose. In her hands were beautiful articles of clothing, enough for three men. There were three pairs of moccasins, three pairs of leggings, three belts, three shirts, three head dresses with beautiful feathers, and sweet smelling tobacco.

"Make a new canoe of bark," she said, which was made for her. Into the canoe she stepped and floated slowly down the river toward the great fish. "Come back my daughter," her mother cried in agony. "The great fish will eat you." She answered nothing. Her canoe came to the place where the great fin arose and stopped, its prow grating on the monster's back. The maiden stepped out boldly. One by one she laid her presents on the fish's back, scattering the feathers and tobacco over his broad spine.

"Oh, fish," she cried, "Oh, fish, you who were my lover, I shall not forget you. Because you were lost for love of me, I shall never marry. All my life I shall remain a widow. Take these presents. And now leave the river, and let the waters run free, so my people may once more descend in their canoes."

She stepped into her canoe and waited. Slowly the great fish sank, his broad fin disappeared, and the waters of the St. Croix (Stillwater) were free.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/native_american_storytellers/message/10202

As retold by Marie L. McLaughlin in "Myths and Legends of the Sioux" in 1913

Keeper of Stories
Reprinted by permission

Zuni fetish updates from Amerindian Arts

Andres Quandelacy, 4-11-2007, to be posted 4-12-2007, rhodocrosite, white coral horses, horse pendants, horse necklaces
Todd Westika, 3-16-2007, lapis, stichtite, egyptian marble, turquoise bears and buffaloes
Andres Quandelacy, 3-1-2007, baltic amber fetishes, pink opal horse pendant
Ernie Mackel, 2-27-2007
Gibbs Othole, 2-12-2007
Lynn Quam, 2-5-2007, buffaloes, bears, and wolves
Jayne Quam, 2-5-2007, bears, coyotes, and a mountain lion
Claudia Peina, 2-5-2007, smiling bears
Kateri Quandelacy Sanchez, 2-4-2007, corn maidens
Stewart Quandelacy, 2-4-2007, Spiney Oyster, Lapis, honey onyx, jasper and turquoise medicine bears. Buffaloes and old-style eagles
Lena Boone, 2-4-2007, bears, badgers, frogs, and a fox
Gibbs Othole, 2-2-2007, Apple coral mt. lion, more to come
Dee Edaakie, 2-2-2007, bears
Jeff Tsalabutie, 2-2-2007, various carvings
Zuni fetish necklaces and pendants, 2-1-2007Sandra, Georgia, and Chad Quandelacy; Nancy Westika
Andres Quandelacy, 1-15-2007, opal pendant necklaces, variscite horse fetishes
Sandra Quandelacy, 12-22-2006, corn maidens

Books of Interest

Navajo Spaceships

Classic Hopi And Zuni Kachina Figures

MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK: THE FIRST 100 YEARS

Fine Indian Jewelry: The Millicent Rogers Museum Collection

AEQ Book Review of Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas .
Frawley, William, Kenneth C. Hill, and Pamela Munro, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 450 pp. ISBN 0520229967, $34.95.
© 2004 American Anthropological Association Book Review of Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas .
Reviewed for the Anthropology & Education Quarterly by Catherine S. Fowler
University of Nevada
csfowler@unr.nevada.edu
To Order this book

THE FOURTH WORLD
W. Tussinger has written his first novel which was released in December, 2004.
W. Tussinger is a member of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma and has lived on several reservations including the Yuroks of Northern California and the Yakamas of Washington State where he attended college.
To Order this book

THE WOMEN/Edward S. Curtis
by Christopher Cardozo; foreword by Louise Erdrich (Bulfinch Press, $35) — Cardozo, who lives in Minneapolis, is the world's foremost expert on, and collector of, photos of American Indians taken by turn-of-the-century photographer Edward S. Curtis. Cardozo went through 1,000 photos to find the 100 sepia-toned images in this book, which show the daily lives of American Indian women at a time when most were already on reservations. Minneapolis novelist and poet Erdrich discusses women's work in her foreword: " … although Edward Curtis believed that he was documenting a vanishing culture, it is in these humble arts that the strength of Native culture lives on."
To Order this book

Literature on Native America

An Overview of Pacific Northwest Native Indian Art
Free downloadable e-book

American Indian Women's Activism in the 1960s and 1970s
by Donna Hightower Langston
Complete article

Linguists Find the Words, and Pocahontas Speaks Again
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand, The Book
Early tribal artifacts put in spotlight at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

"Communing with Bears"
By Sara Wright
Communing with Bears is the story of a joyful encounter between one woman and a black bear.

Literacy in Indigenous Communities by L. David van Broekhuizen, Ph.D. (2000)
HTML Format (70K)
PDF Format(117K)
Literacy in first languages in indigenous communities is a complex topic that generates lively discussion. This research synthesis explores the notions of national, mother-tongue, multiple, and biliteracies. It presents important information pertaining to threatened languages, language shift, and language loss. Examples of culturally relevant uses of literacy in indigenous communities and issues related to first-language literacy instruction are also provided.

Web Sites:

Native American Links Page
Indigenous Peoples Literature
Native Voice
Wisdom of the Old People
By David Whitney

National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation
Inuit film to tell story of last great shaman
My Two Beads Worth: Indigenous News Online
Northern California Indian Development Council
Native Village
Smudge Ceremony

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