Zuni Folktales

In the days of the ancients, when Mátsaki was the home of the children of men, there lived, in that town, which is called “Salt City,” because the Goddess of Salt made a white lake there in the days of the New, a beautiful maiden. She was passing beautiful, and the daughter of the priest-chief, who owned more buckskins and blankets than he could hang on his poles, and whose portholes were covered with turquoises and precious shells from the ocean⁠—so many were the sacrifices he made to the gods. His house was the largest in Mátsaki, and his ladder-poles were tall and decorated with slabs of carved wood⁠—which you know was a great thing, for our grandfathers cut with the tímush or flint knife, and even tilled their cornfields with wooden hoes sharpened with stone and weighted with granite. That’s the reason why all the young men in the towns round about were in love with the beautiful maiden of Salt City.

Now, there was one very fine young man who lived across the western plains, in the Pueblo of the Winds. He was so filled with thoughts of the maiden of Mátsaki that he labored long to gather presents for her, and looked not with favor on any girl of his own pueblo.

One morning he said to his fathers: “I have seen the maiden of Mátsaki; what think ye?”

“Be it well,” said the old ones. So toward night the young man made a bundle of mantles and necklaces, which he rolled up in the best and whitest buckskin he had.

In forgotten times, in the days of our ancients, at the Middle Place, or what is now Shíwina (Zuni), there lived a youth who was well grown, or perfect in manhood. He had a pet Eagle which he kept in a cage down on the roof of the first terrace of the house of his family. He loved this Eagle so dearly that he could not endure to be separated from it; not only this, but he spent nearly all his time in caring for and fondling his pet. Morning, noon, and evening, yea, and even between those times, you would see him going down to the eagle-cage with meat and other kinds of delicate food. Day after day there you would find him sitting beside the Eagle, petting it and making affectionate speeches, to all of which treatment the bird responded with a most satisfied air, and seemed equally fond of his owner.

Whenever a storm came the youth would hasten out of the house, as though the safety of the crops depended upon it, to protect the Eagle. So, winter and summer, no other care occupied his attention. Cornfield and melon-garden was this bird to this youth; so much so that his brothers, elder and younger, and his male relatives generally, looked down upon him as negligent of all manly duties, and wasteful of their substance, which he helped not to earn in his excessive care of the bird.

Long, long ago, our ancients had neither sheep nor horses nor cattle; yet they had domestic animals of various kinds⁠—amongst them Turkeys.

In Mátsaki, or the Salt City, there dwelt at this time many very wealthy families, who possessed large flocks of these birds, which it was their custom to have their slaves or the poor people of the town herd in the plains round about Thunder Mountain, below which their town stood, and on the mesas beyond.

Now, in Mátsaki at this time there stood, away out near the border of the town, a little tumbledown, single-room house, wherein there lived alone a very poor girl⁠—so poor that her clothes were patched and tattered and dirty, and her person, on account of long neglect and ill-fare, shameful to look upon, though she herself was not ugly, but had a winning face and bright eyes; that is, if the face had been more oval and the eyes less oppressed with care. So poor was she that she herded Turkeys for a living; and little was given to her except the food she subsisted on from day to day, and perhaps now and then a piece of old, worn-out clothing.

Like the extremely poor everywhere and at all times, she was humble, and by her longing for kindness, which she never received, she was made kind even to the creatures that depended upon her, and lavished this kindness upon the Turkeys she drove to and from the plains every day. Thus, the Turkeys, appreciating this, were very obedient.

In the days of the ancients, in the town under Thunder Mountain called Kʻiákime, there lived a most beautiful maiden. But one thing which struck the people who knew her was that she seldom came forth from her room, or went out of her house; never seemed to care for the people around her, never seemed to care to see the young men when they were dancing.

Now, this was the way of it. Through the roof of her room was a little skylight, open, and when it rained, one of the Gods of the Rain descended in the raindrops and wooed this maiden, and married her all unknown to her people; so that she was in his company every time it rained, and when the dew fell at night, on his ladder of water descending he came, and she was very happy, and cared not for the society of men. By-and-by, behold! to the utter surprise of the people, whose eyes could not see this god, her husband, there was a little boy born to her.

Now, he was the child of the gods, and, therefore, before he was many days old, he had begun to run about and speak, and had wonderful intelligence and wonderful strength and vivacity. He was only a month or two old when he was like a child of five or six or eight years of age, and he would climb to the housetop and run down into the plaza and out around the village hunting birds or other small animals.

Now, far above the Town of the Cliffs, among the rocks of red-gray and yellow⁠—red in the form of a boulder-like mountain that looks like a frozen sandbank⁠—there is a deep cave. You have never seen it? Well! to this day it is called the “Cave of Átahsaia,” and there, in the times I tell of, lived Átahsaia himself. Uhh! what an ugly demon he was! His body was as big as the biggest elk’s, and his breast was shaggy with hair as stiff as porcupine-quills. His legs and arms were long and brawny⁠—all covered with speckled scales of black and white. His hair was coarse and snarly as a buffalo’s mane, and his eyes were so big and glaring that they popped out of his head like skinned onions. His mouth stretched from one cheek to the other and was filled with crooked fangs as yellow as thrown-away deer-bones. His lips were as red and puffy as peppers, and his face as wrinkled and rough as a piece of burnt buckskin. That was Átahsaia, who in the days of the ancients devoured men and women for his meat, and the children of men for his sweetbread. His weapons were terrible, too. His fingernails were as long as the claws of a bear, and in his left hand he carried a bow made of the sapling of a mountain-oak, with two arrows ready drawn for use. And he was never seen without his great flint knife, as broad as a man’s thigh and twice as long, which he brandished with