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BY MRS. TILLY E. STEVENSON.

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BRIEF ACCOUNT OF ZUÑI MYTHOLOGY.


The Pueblo of Zuñi is situated in Western New Mexico on the Rio
Zuñi, a tributary of the Little Colorado River. The Zuñi have
resided in this region for several centuries. The peculiar geologic
and geographic character of the country surrounding them, as well as
its aridity, furnishes ample sources from which a barbarous people
would derive legendary and mythologic history. A brief reference to
these features is necessary to understand more fully the religious
phases of Zuñi child life.

Three miles east of the Pueblo of Zuñi is a conspicuously beautiful
mesa, of red and white sandstone, tō-wā-yäl län-ne (corn
mountain). Upon this mesa are the remains of the old village of Zuñi.
The Zuñi lived during a long period on this mesa, and it was here
that Coronado found them in the sixteenth century. Tradition tells
that they were driven by a great flood from the site they now occupy,
which is in the valley below the mesa, and that they resorted to the
mesa for protection from the rising waters. The waters rose to the