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Zuni: A
Native’s Cosmological View of the World
Michel A Rizzotti
This short
essay allows us to display the splendor of Zuni mythology.
In many respects, the Zuni represent a beautiful example of
the aboriginal cultures that thrived in North America. It
allows us to disclose the Zuni's conception of the "world"
which was inaugurated long before the so-called "civilized
world" made its imprint on the whole continent.
The Zuni Pueblo exemplifies the natives'
struggle for survival against the onslaught of colonization
which began several centuries ago by predominantly Christian
settlers. What remains of the aboriginal cultures today
shows how detrimental immigration was to these cultures.
Ironically, a great part of the pilgrims that came to the
New World had fled injustices and religious persecutions in
their own countries. They nevertheless came armed with the
belief in the superiority of their predominantly
Judeo-Christian precepts, which they finally managed to
impose on North America as a whole. The faith in their
divine cause justified their fight against the aboriginal
people who had lived on these lands for centuries. The Zuni,
like many other "Indians", were labeled by the new
immigrants as the "heathen", the "savages", and the
"pagans". As a result, they were categorized as the profane
reality; i.e., the adversary who had to be decimated.
Fortunately, the Zuni managed to survive.
The metaphorical aspect of Zuni language is
at the core of its cosmology. In their rituals and their
everyday life the Zuni use numerous metaphors to depict how
"everything" is related to the "same thing". Language is a
dynamic principle of the whole Zuni mentality.
Finally, among the many native cultures of
North America the Zuni still live by the "word" of a
compelling cosmology. Their self-enclosed cosmos is a
typical example of what Emile Durkheim calls "sociocentrism".1
The composition and arrangement of their collective order is
typical of many other native cultures. But what is
particular to Zuni mythology is some analogies it shares
with the creation myths of Genesis. While the Bible
describes the creation of the world in terms of time;
namely, seven days, the Zuni relate the creation of the
world in terms of space; namely, seven orientations. In
Genesis the seventh day is sacred. For the Zuni the seventh
space is also sacred. The etymology of the Hebrew word "to
swear", for instance, literally means "to seventh oneself".2
In Zuni mythology the seventh space is referred to as the
sacred "Center": it is described as the Middle Place, and
the Middle Time. Similarly, in the Bible the tree that lies
in the "midst" of the garden is a metaphor for the goddess
Asherah. In Zuni Mythology the center is a metaphor of the
Earth Mother.
*
Zuni is the name of a people. It is also the
name of their small Pueblo ─village─ located on the Indian
Reservation in the McKinley county of New Mexico.3
Zuni is situated thirty miles south of Gallup, and about the
same distance west of the Continental Divide.
The Zuni Pueblo are noted for their skills in
making silver and turquoise jewelry. They are also famous
for the ceremonial dance of the Shalako.4
The Pueblo lies in a small valley of the Zuni
River which takes its source from the Little Colorado. It is
one of the oldest farming communities in the United States.
They are the descendants of the people of the "Seven Cities"
of Cibola. They were given that name by a Spanish expedition
led by the Franciscan Friar Marcos de Niza in 1539. His
embellished accounts of the Seven Cities of Gold lured
another expedition led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado the
next year. The first expedition of the Spaniards apparently
mistook the golden reflection of the mica, the material that
the Pueblo used to cover their windows, for the precious
metal.
The Spaniards didn't find any gold, but
nevertheless they tried to impose their rule until 1680. At
that time a Pueblo revolt tentatively liberated them from
the colonial rule. Since, they have earned a reputation for
being a fiercely independent people, deeply religious, loyal
to their traditions and proud to speak their language. This
is one reason why the Zuni survived through the centuries
despite the attempts made by the missionaries to convert
them.5 Of the seven cities that the Spaniards
discovered in the sixteenth century, only Zuni remains
today. The village, as seen today, bears the marks of
acculturation and modernization.
Zuni cosmology is closely akin to its
environment. Their whole culture reflects the beauty of
nature that is all around them. Like many other native
people of the continent, the symbolic representations of
their fauna and flora are omnipresent in all their art and
rituals. What makes Zuni cosmology particularly noteworthy
though, is their semantic description of space. The movement
of the sun, the moon, and the stars, altogether with changes
in the winter and summer solstices, have inspired a
"dynamic" conception of the world.
The beauty of the surrounding landscape is
overwhelmingly present in all of their artistic endeavors.
Not surprisingly, Zuni cosmology reveals that "the beautiful
is dynamic".6 This dynamism is also revealed in
their lore and in every other aspect of their collective
life. Everything in their social arrangement reflects the
aesthetic and kinetic aspect of nature. Zuni cultural life
is in effect a metaphor of the "dynamic" in nature, and
everything is symbolically arranged in its image. Their art,
their elaborate rituals, their dances and their pantomimes,
everything is a mimetic expression of their perception of
the cosmos as one and "the same thing".
Zuni society is based on a system of symbolic
classifications described by Frank Hamilton Cushing as "mytho-sociologic".7
Zuni mythology and cosmology are so closely intertwined with
their social and religious order that they are in effect the
"same thing".
Social life was originally divided into
regions according to a "four-cornered world".8
The number and orientations of these spaces reflect the
basic composition of their cosmological perception of the
world. All the members of the Zuni Pueblo belong to one or
the other of these respective regions. The divisions
involved all of the Seven Cities of Cibola. These areas are
systematically parted into clans, which are split into
totems depicted as animals. These totems are then separated
into parts or attributes of the animal. Each member of the
Pueblo belongs to a clan, and each member of the clan
assumes the name of the part or attribute of the totem.
Through this intricate classification, which they believe is
made according to the "mirror" image of nature, each Zuni
participates in the cosmological and social life of the
Pueblo.
Zuni society is matrilineal and matrilocal.
The mother's household is the basic social unit. The
children have to marry outside their parents' clans and when
they marry they live in the household of the bride's mother.
This pattern was the traditional norm.9
What impressed the Spaniards during their
first expedition to the "Seven Cities" was the architecture
of the villages: the multi-story dwellings were harmoniously
built one on top of the other. The only access was an
opening on the roof accessible through a ladder that leaned
against the outside wall.
Although invisible to the visitor, these
villages were divided into several orientations. These
partitions have an important significance to the inhabitants
since they position each member in relation to the whole
community. Each quarter is placed according to a spatial
direction. They reflect the four fundamental orientations of
the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter solstices:
namely, the north-east to the north-west, and, the
south-east to the south-west. In addition, two other
orientations complete the foursome order of the world: the
zenith -the above- and the nadir -the below. The whole
cosmic reality is finally rounded out by the seventh point
described as the "Middle". The "Center", for the Zuni, acts
as a synthetic metaphor for all the orientations.
This classification is meant to reflect the
dynamic movement of the planets in harmony with the Zuni's
whole cosmological perception of life. This kinetic movement
of the planets inspired the concept of "directionality". The
four orientations represent the daily movement of the sun in
concert with its seasonal change on its axis during the
winter and summer solstices. In addition, the zenith and the
nadir become a six-fold "directionality", and, finally, with
the seventh point at its center, the whole arrangement
inspires a dynamic multi-dimensional quality of space.10
The beautiful and the dangerous
Zuni mythology does not escape the dichotomy
between the sacred and the profane. These two principles are
categorized as the "beautiful" and the "dangerous".11
Their interaction reflects an aesthetic and dynamic
vision of nature, and numerous metaphors are used to portray
the "balance" of nature:
the sacred vs the profane
the beautiful vs the dangerous
the dynamic vs the dull
the colorful vs the dark
the clear vs the indistinct
the multi vs the plain
The duality is also expressed in terms of
time and space:
morning vs evening
summer vs winter
above vs below
Furthermore, according to Zuni beliefs, there are two types
of beings:
the cooked vs the raw
The cooked ─or ripe─ are called the "daylight
beings" because they live on cooked food and live under the
special protection of the Sun Father. The second group of
beings rely on the raw food as well as the cooked food
prepared by the daylight people. The daylight people are
also split into:
the valuable vs the poor
Women are valuable by virtue of their gender,
whereas men have no value until they are initiated into the
religious Kachina Society. To the Zuni, "poor" literally
means "without religion".12
The Water Skate
The number "four" is a key number in Zuni
mythology. It is central to the origin and foundation of
Zuni. According to their creation myths, the first people
traveled through the darkness of the four underworlds before
they reached the surface of our present world. At that time,
they were blinded by the light of the sun. They spent four
time periods ─four days or four years, depending on the
version─ searching for the Center. The "Center Place" was
finally found when the Water Skate, with the magical powers
given to him by the Sun Father, stretched out its "four"
legs, one on each of the "four" directions of the sunrise
and sunset of both the summer and winter solstices. The
place where he rested his heart and navel marked the "Center
Place". This point also identifies the heart and navel of
Earth Mother.13 The "Center" revealed by the
Water Skate is the site on which the Zuni village is built.
NE summer
solstice
.
sunrise
.
NW summer solstice. . center . .
SE winter solstice
.
sunset
.
SW winter solstice
The numerical sequence of number "four"
becomes, with the extension of the zenith and the nadir,
number "six". The number "six", with the addition of the
"Middle", finally adds up to the sacred number "seven". The
arrangement completes the spherical balance and dynamic
"directionality".
zenith
:
.north-east
: .
:.
north-west . .
center . . south-east
. :
. :
south
west :
nadir
All six orientations are centered around the "Middle" place
where Zuni is built. Yet under the center of the village
itself is another center. In the fourth underground, in the
house of the chief priest, below the altar, lies a
heart-shaped rock, which is described as "the heart of the
world". Its arteries reach out toward the same four
directions as did the Water Skate when he stretched his four
legs to find the "Center".
The significance of the "center" remains in
effect equivocal. More specifically, polyonymous, since the
"Center" has many different names. It is, simultaneously,
the "middle", the "center", the heart, the navel of the
Water Skate, and the center of Zuni and the world. The
"middle" is all these things because, as the Zuni say, they
are all "the same thing".14 This way of thinking
is quite characteristic of the Zuni. The words describe
different things, yet they are all ─related to─ "the same
thing".
At the beginning of the "world" there were
both the spatial "center" and the temporal "center": the
"Middle Place" and the "Middle Time". They may appear as two
different concepts, but to the Zuni they are "the same
thing". Accordingly, the Zuni name for the village is 'itiwana,
which means "Center" but also "winter solstice". The first
is the "Center" in space, while the second is the "Center"
in time. Therefore, all the symbols that relate to their
cosmological "world" are a succession, a repetition, and a
substitution of metaphors into a whole "dynamic asymmetry"
that reveals -or relates- that everything is "the same
thing".15
This polyonymous aspect of Zuni symbolism is
best depicted by the dynamic relation between the beautiful
and the dangerous. The beautiful is described as having a
"multi" quality as opposed to the plain and indistinct
aspect of the dangerous. The beautiful is multilayered,
multicolored, multitextured, multisensory, and multilingual.
Although the tautology of Zuni language may
appear redundant at first, a closer look reveals that the
repetition suggests the idea of relatedness. It is not the
expressions by themselves that are meaningful, but rather
the connection between them in relation to the whole
cosmological outlook.
Zuni ritual life is filled with this "multi"
aspect of meaning. This aspect of their culture is equally
applied in their profane arena. The Zuni Tribal Fair, for
instance, which is considered a mundane activity, is
organized in the same manner. The symbolic representations
of sacred places, objects, sounds and colors, repeated
incessantly during the dance, become a meaningful repetition
that links each symbolic part together in one cosmic being,
as "the same thing". The symbols are parts that are related
to the whole order of things.16
To the Zuni, the sun and the moon are "living
beings". As such, they play a significant role as they move
across the sacred space. Some of their rituals and dances
duplicate the planetary movement. Every single aspect of the
environment is described as a living being. Both the "outer"
and "inner" spaces are fused together into the sacred
ritual. Celestial objects are not seen as external but as
active participants in the ceremonial. The cosmos is
perceived as one whole intertwined entity. Accordingly, the
whole array of symbolic representations operates in
connection with the principles of "continuity" and
"similarity", based on the idea of unity and balance of all
life. To the Zuni, the whole "world" is a dynamic "being"
with a "multi" facet quality.
The Zuni's conception of time shares the
polyonymous principles also. The "world" was created in the
"beginning" of time, and the beginning is re-enacted,
re-created, and re-lived in the ritual. Past, present, and
future coexist. There is no temporal separation between the
time of creation and the here and now of the ritual. It
accounts for the symbolic "presentness" of Zuni cosmological
life represented in the 'itiwana, the "Center", the here and
now of "time" and "space". The creation of the world in the
past is transcended into the present and in the future by
following the ways of the ancestors.
*
The Zuni Pueblo is a good illustration of the
"cosmos" as a self-enclosed, self-sufficient social and
cultural reality, comparable in many ways to the religious
reality of Israel. In a similar fashion, the word "Zuni"
stands for the people, the village, the language, the
religion, the mythology and the social organization.
Yet this sacred "cosmos", as typified here by
the Zuni, has been categorized by the settlers as a profane
reality. A reality that was an obstacle to the development
of the New World. As such, the natives were viewed as the
"adversaries" to the colonization of the "promised land" and
were excluded from the mythological fabric of the nation.
_____________
1 "It has
quite often been said that man began to conceive things by
relating them to himself. The above allows us to see more
precisely what this anthropocentrism, which might better be
called socio-centrism, consists of. The center of the first
schemes of nature is not the individual; it is society. It
is this that is objectified, not man...It is by virtue of
the same mental disposition that so many peoples have placed
the center of the world, "the navel of the earth", in their
own political or religious capital, i.e. at the place which
is the center of their moral life. Similarly, but in another
order of ideas, the creative force of the universe and
everything in it was first conceived as a mythical ancestor,
the generator of the society." From Emile Durkheim & Marcel
Mauss, Primitive Classification, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1963, 86-87.
2 See Gen.
21:31. Originally, the Sabbath was apparently related to the
Babylonian day of moon cult called shabattu. See Max Weber,
Ancient Judaism, New York, The Free Press, 1952, 149.
3 In Febuary
1988 the population was 8299. Data from the Zuni Area
Chamber of Commerce 1989.
4 Gregory C.
Crampton, The Zunis of Cibola, Salt Lake City, University of
Utah Press, 1977, 56.
5 "The Zuni
faith, as revealed in this sketch of more than three hundred
and fifty years of Spanish intercourse, is as a drop of oil
in water, surrounded and touched at every point, yet in no
place penetrated or changed inwardly by the flood of alien
belief that descended upon it." Frank Hamilton Cushing, from
Zuni, Selected Writings of Frank Hamilton Cushing, edited,
with an introduction by Jesse Green, Lincoln, University of
Nebraska Press, 1979, 181.
6 Barbara
Tedlock, The Beautiful and the Dangerous: Zuni Ritual and
Cosmology as an Aesthetic, in Conjunctions: Bi-Annual
Volumes of New Writing no.6, New York, MacMillan Publishing
Co., 1984.
7 Frank
Hamilton Cushing, Ibid 185-193.
8 Barbara
Tedlock, Zuni and Quiche dream sharing and interpreting,
Dreaming, ed.by Barbara Tedlock, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1987, 107.
9 This
custom is not strictly applied anymore.
10 Jane
Young, Signs From the Ancestors, Albuquerque, University of
New Mexico Press, 1988. For more insight about the Zuni
cosmology see Ms. Young's book.
11 Barbara
Tedlock, Ibid.
12 See
Barbara Tedlock, Zuni and Quiche Dream Sharing and
Interpreting, in, Dreaming, ed. by Barbara Tedlock,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, 108-109.
13 It is
interesting to note that the Zuni word for Earth Mother -'awitelin
tsitta- has the same root as the word "four" -'a:witen'-.
Jane Young, Ibid. 99.
14 Jane
Young, Ibid. 106.
15 Barbara
Tedlock, The Beautiful and Dangerous, Ibid. 259.
16 When Zuni
people pray, they ask for "more"; namely, more rain for
their crops. All is related to the concern that the Sun
Father continues his daily journey and that the rain falls
in abundance. The sun's light coupled with water and Earth
Mother are the essence of all life. "More" is also related
to the idea of "everything" associated with the desire for
the accumulation of things and prosperity. The Zuni pray for
more success in hunting, many children and a long life, as
well as an increase in jewelry sales. | 
