RIO GRANDE OR EASTERN PUEBLOS (continued)
Personal Life
Conception Pregnancy, and Birth: Sometimes, as at Isleta,
efforts are made to prevent conception. These are usually magical in
character and are not in general use. After a woman becomes pregnant,
she is forbidden various activities because of beliefs that in same
magical way the child will be injured. For example, she must not go into
a house where a dead person is lying. She should be generous, especially
to children. She should not turn her back on the fire or the sun. For a
varying period before birth is expected, intercourse between husband and
wife is forbidden. The father also has prenatal prohibitions for the
welfare of the child. He must not go hunting, slaughter animals, or
engage in other proscribed activities.
Men are rarely present at birth: never the husband or close
relatives. A woman midwife usually officiates. In some towns, at Isleta
and perhaps Tewa, the medicine societies have a specialist who is sent,
but in most cases a member of a medicine society would be called in only
in case of emergency although frequently a medicine society member will
purify the expectant mother shorty before the birth is expected. In any
case the assistance of a medicine society member is purely magical;
whatever mechanical manipulation is used, generally massage or squeezing
the abdomen, is performed by the midwife. Birth is generally in a
kneeling position, the infant being received on a sheepskin placed on a
specially prepared sand bed. Twins are considered unlucky.
The umbilical cord is cut or burned with a coal. The after birth is
thrown in the river, buried on the river bank, or under the house ladder
or in one of the corn fields. The infant is bathed shortly after birth
by the midwife, medicine society member if one is present, or one of the
grandmothers. Generally the child is held up and offered to the cardinal
directions, and a prayer said. Confinement is four days, that is, during
this time the mother does not leave the house, although she may get up
sooner.
After four days the mother leaves the house for the first time. The
child is taken out by a member of a medicine society, in which case an
altar is set up in the room first and certain rituals performed, or some
female relative takes the child outside and offers it to the sun with a
prayer. Usually the child's first name is applied at this time, although
practise varies a little. In most towns it is the father's sister who
commonly give the name. Offerings are frequently made at this time of
prayer sticks, sacred meal, etc. Names usually refer to natural objects
or phenomena.
A fire poker or a perfect, fully kernelled ear of corn is usually
kept by the child to protect it from witches and ghosts, particularly if
the child must be left alone in the room. Ashes are frequently rubbed on
the child as a protection against witches. Lightning-struck wood is
preferred in making cradles for the same reasons.
The upbringing of children is rather strict. They are forced to rise
early and are taught to help their parents. Boys are often forced to
bathe in icy water in early morning and to go several hours without
drinking water. Nevertheless, parents are fond of children and rarely
abuse them. Lullabies are sung to infants.
Infants are nursed, usually well into the next pregnancy. If it is
desired to wean the child, bitter substances such as sheep gall are
rubbed on the nipples.
Children are often given presents by the masked dancers: dolls for
the girls, bows and arrows for the boys. These presents are secretly
made and given to the dancers by the parents.
There are practically no ceremonies directly connected with
adolescence. Both girls and boys are instructed as to the physiological
changes at this time, before they occur, and a girl may be told to keep
her feet dry, not wash her hair, etc., but there is no social or
ceremonial recognition of the first menses as is common among so many
primitive tribes. About the time of physiological maturity boys are
usually initiated into the secrets of the masked dancers. (Parsons,
1919b, 1923c, 1925a, 1929b, 1932; Goldfrank, 1927; White, 1932, 1932a;
Dumarest; Spencer.)
Marriage: On the Rio Grande, marriage practises are heavily
overlaid with Catholic influences. At several of the towns marriage in
the Catholic Church is almost obligatory. The general pattern is to
arrange marriages through a family council. The young man informs his
relatives of his choice (usually the matter has been arranged with the
girl secretly) and the family discusses his choice. If they approve,
which is usual, they approach the girl's relatives, who similarly
discuss the matter. If all appprove, the man gives presents to the
girla dress, belt, moccasins. After an early morning church
wedding (if this is required) there is a series of wedding breakfasts.
On the Rio Grande proper, the man stays with the girl's parents for a
few days, they then remove to the men's parents house or to a house of
their own; but in the westerly towns they live permanently with the
wife's family. All this is pretty close to Spanish custom and may well
not be native.
Bridal dress is elaborate and partly native. At Cochiti the bride
wears tanned deerskin leggings or moccasins and a dress of dark blue
Hopi cloth. A gaudy piece of colored silk trimmed with lace hangs over
the hips and, if wealthy, the bride is loaded with necklaces of
turqoise, little sliver crosses, and a necklace of silver balls. The
fingers are covered with rings of brass and silver. The groom wears a
new shirt, red kerchief, new trowners, new moccasins, dyed red and
yellow, and an immense blanket, often drawn in at the waist with a broad
leather belt ornamented with round silver placques of Navaho
workmanship. At his left side he wears a little bag, sometimes beaded,
containing cornmeal or pollen. On feast days leggings of red and yellow
buckskin fringed the same way at the seams.
Marriage restrictions cannot be discussed fully here except to say
that where there is no other bar than blood kinship, the extent to which
blood relationship forbids marriage is more extensive than the
restrictions of the Catholic Church. (Parsons, 1919b, 1925a, 1929b,
1932; White, 1932, 1932a: Gold frank, 1927; Dumerest.)
Death: Buried of the dead occurs the same day, unless it
cannot be completed before nightfall. In the latter case burial is
postponed until the following day. Various rites are performed with the
corpse either by relatives, by members of the ceremonial corn group to
which the deceased belongs (Isleta), or by the head of a medicine
society (San Felipe). The rites vary from town to town, but consist
essentially of sprinkling the corpse with sacred meal or pollen, making
a meal road from the corpse to the door, washing the corpse or washing
the head of the corpse. Not all these occur in every village. Food and
sometimes belongings are usually buried with the dead. Generally the
door of the room must be kept open until the corpse is buried or,
sometimes, until four days after death.
The soul of the dead is generally supposed to remain about the house
for four days. At that time a ceremonialist, usually the head of one of
the medicine societies, sets up an altar and performs rites to purify
the house and exorcise the inmates. Food offerings are made to the dead
and either miniature garments and other articles, or the clothing and
other property of the dead, slightly mutilated to show they are for the
dead, are offered at shrines along with food and prayer sticks (of which
a special variety is made for the dead). The shrines are usually to the
north, which is where the dead are supposed to go. The dead are almost
universally conceived of as becoming cloud or rain spirits, the
well-known kachina, which are represented in the masked dances. Not all
the kachina (Keresan k'atsana, Tewa Oxuhwa) are supposed to be the dead
but the dead with few exceptions become rain-bringing spirits. When a
really prominent ceremonialist dies, it is expected often that there
will be a thunderstorm, which is an indication that the rain spirits
have come for the soul of the dead. There is no formalized ancestors
worship as such, however.
Most of the Pueblos under Catholic influence observe All Soul's Day,
November 2. All sorts of food are taken to shrines at the north or to
the church. The people fast and all the property of the household is
displayed. It is believed that the spirits of the dead return this night
and partake of the essence of the food offered and admire the property
of the household they have left. It some cases the men assemble in the
ceremonial houses and kivas and some of the societies dance, often at
each house in the village. (Parsons, 1920, 1925a, 1917; 1929b, 1932;
Goldfrank, 1927; White, 1932, 1932a; M. C. Stevenson, 188.)
Sickness and Curing: Aside from certain diseases of recognized
natural origin, all sickness is believed to be sent by witches. Any
longstanding illness or epidemic is caused by them. There is nothing a
Pueblo Indian mortally hates and fears a much as a witch. In former
times a person suspected of being a witch would be killed; at least this
is known to have occurred in some villages and probably once was
universal, as it was among other tribes. The American government is
probably the only deterrent today in many towns. Witches are the more
dangerous in that anyone, even a close relative, may be a witch and
working against one's health and welfare. There are a few exceptions to
the witch-theory of disease causation. Certain diseases may be
supernaturally sent by animals, particularly ants, which may cause skin
disease.
Witches cause sickness by sending foreign objects into the body of
the victim or by stealing the soul, or heart. The two are usually
equated. The methods used by witches are not usually known. Witches
generally have places of assemblage, frequently in caves, and are
believed able to turn themselves into various animals, dogs, cats, owls,
coyote, crew, wolf, bear, and into one type of clown. Owl and crow
feathers and cactus spines are part of a witch's paraphernalia. The
particular clowns known as koshare (or equivalents) are believed to have
close contacts with black magic and so are the members of the medicine
societies. Anyone seen around graveyards, peering into doors and
windows, etc., may be suspected as a witch. There is no doubt that many
of these concepts have been reinforced by Spanish witchcraft beliefs,
but on the other hand the whole pattern is undoubtedly basically similar
to widespread and unquestionably native practises and beliefs in respect
to the power of evilly disposed medicine men.
Ashes, bear paws, and flints of all sorts, particularly knives and
arrow points, are considered potent prophylactics against witches.
If witchcraft is suspected, a member of a medicine society is called
to effect a cure. Should the illness be serious, the whole society may
be summoned. The curing involves the setting up of an altar, the use of
various items of paraphernalia such as fetish stones figuring the prey
animals, mountain lion, wolf, bear, etc., which are patrons of the
medicine societies; the use of bear paws, flints, medicine water, and
sacred meal, prayers and exorcism, and divination by gazing into the
medicine bowl or a crystal. If the disease is caused by intrusion of
foreign objects, the medicine men either suck the objects out of the
patients body or brush them out with feathers.
If the disease involves the stealing of the heart by the witch, the
doctors must find the heart. This involves going out from the room in
which the cure is being effected and fighting with the witches which
have the heart in custody. The doctor wears a bear paw on his left arm
and carries a flint knife. He is accompanied by the war captains. He has
struggles with the witches, invisible of course to anyone else, and
eventually brings back the heart, sometimes a doll within which is a
ball of rags containing grains of corn, or simply the ball itself with
the corn inside. Examination of the condition of the corn grains reveals
whether the heart has been damaged. If it has, the patient will not
recover, but if they are in good condition, they are swallowed by the
patient. Sometimes the doctor captures a witch which is brought in as a
small figure and killed by the war captain. The doctor frequently
returns in an exhausted condition and goes into a sort of trance or
frenzy. (See section on medicine societies.)
In most of the towns there is a communal curing and cleansing
ceremony each spring at which all the medicine societies perform in
their chambers. Everyone goes to one or another of the medicine society
meetings and is exorcised and perhaps has objects sucked or brushed from
him. The doctors often go out to fight witches and return with a
"communal heart" containing many grains of corn, one of which is given
to each person to swallow. (Parsons, 1920, 1925a; White, 1932, 1932a;
Goldfrank, 1927; M. C. Stevenson, 1884; Dumarest.)
Social Organization
Two types of social organization appear on the Rio Grande, the
bilateral patrilineal family similar to our own, and a clan
organization. In a clan organization, each person is born into the group
of one parent, the mothers in the case of the Pueblos, and all members
of the mother's group are regarded as relatives, so that marriage is
necessarily with someone not a member of the mother's group or clan.
Usually the member's of the father's clan are also all regarded as
relatives and hence un-marriageable, even though there be no actual
blood relationship.
In Isleta, Taos, Picuris, and probably Sandia, that is, in the Tigua
speaking Pueblos, there are no clans, not even a vestige. Descent is
reckoned patrilineally or, perhaps more accurately, bi-laterally. One
set of relatives is not more important than the other. Marriage with any
blood relative, including cousins, is forbidden. House and land
ownership and inheritance follow the same principles that they do among
ourselves; the surviving wife or husband may inherit, or property is
divided more or less equally among the children regardless of
sex-conditioned, of course, by the usual considerations of need, age,
and previous assistance rendered by the parents, as well as purely
personal questions of favoritism.
The Tewa towns have a vestige of clans, membership in which is
through the mother, as elsewhere among the Pueblos. The name applied to
these clans (sun, corn, turquoise, etc.) are the same or similar to
names occurring in towns with a full fledged clan organization. Tewa
clans, however, have no regulatory function. Marriage may be within the
clan or outside it, according to personal desires, and the entire social
fabric is organized as if the clans were not there, i. e., precisely as
in the clanless Tigua towns. Consequently it is evident that either the
clans are decadent or are relatively recent importations which do not
really function in Tewa society. The latter hypothesis seems the most
reasonable at present, for although Spanish influence might be suspected
in the patrilineal formation of Tewa and Tigua society, yet certain
aspects such as the forbidden degrees of relationship in marriage go
beyond Spanish custom and there is no a priori reason to assume
that the bilateral family is not native. It is well known to occur in
various primitive societies, including many of the neighbors of the
eastern Pueblos.
The Keres and Jemez have a full-fledged clan system with descent
reckoned through the mother. The more westerly towns have the most
complex system. This reckoning of descent through the mother has
important effects upon inheritance and property ownership. There is a
tendency towards female house ownership and inheritance of houses by
women rather than men, which in the most western Pueblos such as Acoma,
becomes more developed but far from universal. As we shall see, female
house ownership and inheritance become universal with the western
Pueblos, the Hopi and Zuni. In all the Keresan towns and at Jemez there
is a marked consciousness of the clan members, clan heads who settle
disputes within the clan and represent clan members in problems arising
with members of other clans, etc. Santo Domingo Jemez, Laguna, and Acoma
have ceremonial clan functions.
Despite the clan organization, the bilateral family does not
disappear among the Keres and Jemez. Both father's and mother's
relatives are recognized and accorded a place in family relations.
(Parsons, 1923c, 1923d, 1924b, 1925a, 1929b, 1932, 1932a; Goldfrank,
1927; White, 1932, 1932a).
Political Organization
The political organization of the eastern Pueblos is known to be a
modified Spanish form, in large measure. Usually the Pueblos are
referred to as intensely democratic on the basis of their town
government which is assumed to be elected. Only in one town, Isleta,
does there seem to be actually the form of election, and here all the
candidates are nominated by the religious organization. Elsewhere the
meetings which are assumed to be elections are actually held to notify
people of the choices which have been made by the town chief or head of
the ceremonial organization, usually with the advice or approval of the
heads of the medicine societies. Consequently it is clear that the
government of the Pueblos is actually a theocracy.
The town officials all serve for one year without compensation. They
are chosen by the religious officials in December and are generally
invested with their offices on January 6, when the important officers
receive canes symbolizing their authority. The canes now in use are
generally the so-called Lincoln canes. These are sprinkled with corn
meal and blessed by the town chief and sometimes other functionaries,
usually in the town chief's house. There is usually a council in
addition to the elected officials, of varying composition.
The civil officials have rather restricted functions. They settle
internal disputes of a secular nature such as land disputes, theft,
murder, domestic disagreements, etc. Murder is very uncommon and
apparently sometimes is compounded by a payment to the family of the
victim. The civil officials also are very useful in acting as a screen
to the real government, the theocracy. They are the go-betweens between
the theocratic officials and the whites, particularly the government. So
well do they serve this function that whites who have lived for years in
fairly close contact with the Pueblos are often unaware of the existence
of the town chiefs and other ceremonial officials.
The grouping of officials can best be illustrated by specific
examples. Isleta has a governor, lieutenant governor, a lieutenant, head
war chief, six war captains or assistant war chiefs, two majordomos in
charge of the irrigation ditch, a town crier (life-long office), and a
council of 12 men.
The Tewa have a characteristic organization scheme which runs through
both secular and religious offices, of a head man and two assistants
called the right-hand man and the left-hand man. San Juan officials are
governor and three assistants plus right-hand man (lieutenant) and
left-hand man (sheriff), the outside chief (war captain) with five
assistants who act as police, and a crier who holds office for life. The
war captain plans the winter dance series, guards ceremonies, and
repairs the ceremonial houses. Some of the other Tewa towns have one or
more fiscals who are connected in Spanish towns with the church but here
have only the function of burying the dead.
Jemez has a governor, lieutenant governor, two fiscals with five
assistants, two war captains with six youths as assistants.
Cochiti has a governor and lieutenant governor, war captain and
lieutenant, fiscal, lieutenant, six little fiscals and six helpers of
the war captain.
Acoma has a governor, two lieutenant governors, three fiscals,
majordomo or ditch boss, and three outside chiefs.
Although the war captain is an annually appointed officer with police
functions, who corresponds to certain Spanish officials, it is clear
there has been some sort of amalgamation of functions here. The war
captain as a policeman does not obey the governor but the town chief as
head of the religious organization. They are intimately connected with
ceremonial organization, often plan dances, repair religious or
ceremonial houses, often have ceremonies of their own to perform, and
must be present at every meeting of the medicine societies, whether
members or not. In fact, at Cochiti no secular official may be a member
of a medicine society. (Parsons, 1920a, 1923c, 1923d; Goldfrank, 1927;
White, 1932, 1932a.)
Religion
The religion of the Pueblos may be summarized under the heading of
three or four fundamental cults. These are, first and preeminently,
particularly in the west, the Kachina-death weather control and
fertility cult, the curing-animal supernatural cult, particularly
developed in the east, and the war hunting cult. Possibly the last is a
relatively modern fusion of two separate cults due to a decline in the
importance of the two activities, but in many ways they seem to be
intracately associated. Each of these cults has its organization which
is responsible for carrying out the activities and rituals connected
with it. These organizations are to some extent parallel and sometimes
interwoven. In similar fashion functions of each organization are
somewhat blurred so that the curing and war societies may at times
exercise weather control functions, while the kachina cult sometimes
exercises curing and even war functions. The emphasis also varies from
place to place so that, for example, the Hopi medicine societies are
preeminently weather control societies with the curing function
distinctly in the background. There are at best many loose ends which
cannot be tucked into this neat scheme, but a scheme we must have to
effect any concise statement of Pueblo religion and ceremonial, and
certain broad generalizations may be made validly on the basis of these
categories.
The weather control group or kachina cult seems to be the most
fundamental aspect of Pueblos religion, although the kachina cult itself
is probably a later overlay upon an older weather control organization.
The kachina spirits are supernaturals who bring rain and good health.
They were created at the time of the first emergence of the people from
their underground home or shortly thereafter. Some of the Pueblos say
that part of the people fell in the water and were drowned after the
emergence, thus becoming the kachina. Usually it is said the kachina,
who thus represented the dead, formerly returned to earth and visited
the living, dancing for them in the villages. To see their dead
relatives made people sad; furthermore, whenever the kachina came, they
took back with them some of the living, which still saddened those upon
the earth. Finally the kachina gave the people masks and costumes they
now wear so that they could dress like the kachina and perform the
dances of the kachina. Then the actual kachina would return in spirit,
bringing the rain with them. While wearing the mask, the person
impersonating a kachina becomes for the time being the actual embodiment
of the spirit which is considered to reside in the mask. Thus the
impersonator is charged with supernatural power and becomes dangerous
for ordinary people to touch until he has been discharmed at the end of
the performance after removing the mask. Today the dead are said to
become kachina and return with the rain just as do the old kachina. When
a prominent ceremonial leader dies, it is said the clouds will gather
and it will rain because the kachina have come for him. Occasionally it
is said also that the dead return to the earth mother, who live below
ground or below a lake, in the original subterranean home of the peoples
of the world, but this does not prevent them from becoming kachina also,
for these spirits are associated with lakes and in some obscure way with
the earth mother. Usually the kachina are conceived of as living in the
west where they live as do the people upon earth, having the same sort
of organization and performing the same ceremonies.
Sometimes some of the kachina are conceived of as not being ancestral
beings but to have been created or to have existed at the time of the
emergence. There does not seem to be, however, any distinction in
attitude toward these pre-existent kachina The recent dead in any case
are not supposed to be impersonated nor are specific kachina
impersonations supposed to represent specific dead. There is no real
ancestor worship involved.
In some places such as Cochiti there are other spirits called
shiwanna or rain clouds, who are spoken of as if they were separate from
the kachina. Even here, there is some vague association and in most
towns the rainclouds and kachina are identified, the rainclouds being
merely the mask behind which the kachina move and bring bowls of rain
which they pour upon the earth. It is not the cloud that rains.
Other supernaturals are supposed to have power to produce rain. The
war gods or god especially are powerful rain makers. The functions are
less specific, however, and they are not supplicated by the rain maker
groups.
In general the kachina are masked in impersonation, but this is not
universal. There are unmasked kachina ceremonies in most Pueblos and in
the east the number of masked performances is relatively small. Added to
the fact that there are fewer types of masks or impersonations in the
east, and that the mask is virtually non-existent at Taos, not being
worn in dances, it is reasonably evident that the center and probable
place of origin of the kachina cult is not on the Rio Grande but to the
west. More specifically, its main development probably took place at
Zuni and thence spread to Hopi, Keres, and Tewa, the last being the
least affected. This is not to say that the whole kachina cult is a
purely Zuni creation: Zuni is merely the place where the kachina cult is
most firmly rooted with more masks and ceremonies, and where presumably
more of the development took place than elsewhere.
Associated with the kachina are one or more, generally two, clown
groups. These are supposed to have been created in various ways,
according to native theory, but the primary purpose they serve seems to
have been to prevent people from being too saddened by seeing the
kachina and also to act as heralds, police, and general assistants of
the kachina. They almost always appear only in association with the
kachina, performing various clowning actions, including obscenity,
burlesque and satire, as well as more serious functions, acting as
police, bringing in the kachina, and often having important rituals of
their own connected not only with the weather, but with curing and
sometimes with war. In addition, it is often suspected that they have
close association with black magic. They are sometimes classed as
kachina themselves of a special sort. Their close association with
kachina has yet to be explained on both historical and psychological
grounds, as well as the problem of their dualism. This dualism runs
through much of the kachina organization and requires explanation before
the history of Pueblo ceremonialism is adequately explained. It appears
most strongly where the kachina organization is least developed but is
present everywhere and seems most closely associated with the weather
control aspect of Pueblo religion.
The kachina organizations and the kachina dances are intimately
associated with those religious structures known as kivas. These are in
many respects men's club houses as well as religious structures. Their
organization in connection with the kachina cult approaches that of a
men's secret society, for in many of the Pueblos the women and
uninitiated boys are theoretically and in some cases actually in
ignorance of the true nature of the kachinas, believing that the
impersonations are the actual spirits materialized upon earth.
Although the kachina cult as such is not universal or fully developed
among all the Pueblos, the kivas and some sort of attendant organization
are to be found everywhere, and function as a rain and fertility cult,
whether they equate specifically with the kachinas or not. Since the
great bulk of the kachina ceremonials and dances, as well as the kachina
organization are associated with the kiva, while no other cult or
organization has any direct relation with the kiva, it may be postulated
with some certainty that the kiva and kiva organizations are an earlier
and conceptualization of the rain and fertility cult which to the west
developed into the kachina cult. This cult has not yet spread to all the
Rio Grande pueblos in fully developed form.
It is in the kachina and kiva organizations that one also finds an
expression of dualism. In the east, the Kiva organization is on a dual
principle; that is, the entire population is divided in membership
between two kivas. This finds its best expression among the Tewa and
most easterly Keresan peoples as well as at Isleta. Taos has some sort
of dual organization which is not yet fully understood.
This division of the Pueblo into two parts, or moteties, has usually
been described in connection with social organization. It is true that
it looms as large in the consciousness of the people of the Rio Grande
as does the clan among the western Pueblos, but it has no real relation
to the social organization. In some places the moiety or dual division
to which one belongs is determined by the membership of one's father,
but this is far from universal and there is no moiety or kiva on
marriage, and there is no regulatory function in marriage. A woman will
join her husband's moiety or kiva on marriage, and, in case of
intermoiety marriages in some Pueblos, the children will alternate
between the kivas, the eldest to one, the next eldest to the other, etc.
All this is hardly characteristic of any type of social organization and
the moiety is evidently a ceremonial device associated with the kiva and
with rain and fertility functions.
The clown organizations fall in with this dual division everywhere
except among the Tewa. In most eastern towns they are definitely
connected with the kivas by a variety of associations and in both east
and west they are associated with the kachina. At Isleta the clown and
the kiva organizations are identical. Elsewhere the two clown
organizations are connected with the two kivas and also have the same
division into winter and summer associations that is found among the
kivas. It is entirely possible that the clown is the unmasked prototype
in the east, out of which developed the western kachina. At Acoma and
Zuni one of the widespread clown organizations has become identical with
the kachina society and lost its clown functions. Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi
do not have the dual kiva or moiety system. Acoma and Zuni have, or
formerly had, six kivas connected with the kachina organization, but
these kivas are themselves aligned into two groups upon certain
occasions. The aberrant clown group of Zuni, the koyenshi, may have
developed to take the place of the clown group absorbed in the kachina
organization. (Parsons, 1920, 1920a, 1923d, 1924, 1925a, 1929b, 1932;
White, 1932, 1932a; Goldfrank, 1927.)
The Pantheon: The Pueblo pantheon varies relatively little
from town to town. There is no real grading or hierarchy of the
supernaturals in the Pueblo mind. They are ordered, not by the character
of their powers, but by the sequence in which they emerged from the
underworld into the present world. This sequential aspect is therefore
intimately connected with emergence myths. The type of these myths is
rather similar throughout the Pueblos, although the specific content
varies considerably. The Pueblos have no account of a real creation;
rather, the various spirits, animals, and people emerged from a sort of
underworld. The people emerged in different orders; so, too, did the
various spirits which have power, over the universe. In these emergence
myths, which include a description of a lengthy period of migration
before the people finally settled in their present locations, occur the
incidents which led to the founding of the present order of society and
which afford the justification of the customs and rites practiced.
Consequently there is an ordering or hierarchy of spirits which has
nothing to do with their various powers and importance.
In the main the supernatural powers and spirits of the Pueblos do not
command or dominate one another. Each spirit or class of spirits, or
supernatural beings has its sphere of influence and its functions.
Within this sphere it is supreme, but it has no influence or effect upon
that which lies outside its sphere. Consequently there is no rigid
scheme of ritual or observance ordered with relation to the differing
importance of the spirit or class of spirits.
In view of this we find that, although the spirits or pantheon of the
Pueblos are very homogeneous, the importance assigned the various
spirits varies from town to town. Thus the important war gods of Zuni
become mere mythological personages at Taos.
The spirits of the Pueblos all exhibit anthropomorphic
characteristics. Like the Greek gods, they have been known to mingle
with men in human form. Even the spirits conceived of as animals have
only to remove their skins and they will become men in shape and
appearance, although retaining their supernatural attributes and
powers.
The Pueblo spirits may be classified as cosmic, including Sun, Moon,
Earth, Stars, Wind; animal: including the prey animals, Puma, Deer,
Wolf, etc., Water Serpent, Spider; and ancestral or human, including
most of the kachina, Skeleton and the War Gods. "Sun is a traveller, and
begets sons, and tests them; certain stars have once lived as men or
women on the earth, not to speak of the very human war spirits who are
yet associated with the stars; Earth is a benevolent mother; Spider, a
resourceful and ever helpful grand-mother; Wind, a malevolent old woman;
Salt and Turquoise are touchy beings who run away from careless men;
Coyote is a trickster who not merely cheats the other animals but
beguiles girls into marrying him; Paiyetamu or Taiowa is a seducer of a
higher class, a youthful musician; the Water Serpents act as police to
men; Mountain Lion is the great hunter; the Bears are doctors.
"Identified with direction are the cloud beings or spirits of rain
fertility, par excellence the kachina, including warrior spirits
such as the shalako or salymobia of Zuni or the
towae of the Tewa, and the Water Serpents of Jemez. The zenith or
the east is associated with the Sun; the nadir with the Mother who lives
underground. At Zuni, less definitely among Keres and Tewa, the animal
supernaturals are also assignable to the directions Mountain Lion
to the north, Bear to the west, Badger to the south, Wolf to the east,
Eagle to the zenith, Mole or other burrower to the nadir." (Parsons,
1924, p. 146.)
A few specific examples may illustrate the scope of the pantheon. The
Tewa have the Mother or Mothers, here not clearly separable from the
corn ear fetishes by which they are represented; Sun, Moon, Stars, all
more important than in most Pueblos; and lightning, Universe or World
Man, Fire Flower Woman, Wind Woman, Wind Man, Ragged Woman, Mean Old
Woman, Mean Old Man, Salt Woman, Spider Woman, Cactus Grandmother, the
Cloud Beings (Oxuhwa or kachina) who are the dead and send the rain when
kachina dances are performed, the Grandfathers, War Spirits, Two Water
Serpents, and Poseyemu. (Parsons, 1929b, pp. 264-276.)
At Laguna, the Sun is head of the pantheon, associated with his son,
or perhaps himself as a youth. The Sun Youth is the "handsome lover of
many maidens." Then follow, Moon, Stars, (e. g., Milky Way, Morning
Star, etc.), Twin War Gods, associated with a star, Storm Clouds,
Lightning, Earth Mother, most authentic deity and the central figure,
and the kachina.
At Acoma there is the Sun, father of the twin war gods, Masewi and
Oyoyewi; the Kachina, anthropomorphic rain spirits the k'obishtaiya, the
ill-defined but powerful spirits who dwell in the east; the Mother, who
is perhaps most important, and who lives, as elsewhere, at the place of
emergence; Moon, Stars, Clouds, Lightning, the Four Rain Makers of the
cardinal directions; the Hunting Gods, among who the Cougar is
paramount; and the Medicine or curing gods. (White, 1932, pp. 66-67.
Also cf. Parsons, 1924, 1932, 1923d, 1925a; Goldfrank, 1927; White,
1932a.)
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