Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/472

 430 Reviews,

relation between this social system and the logical system found with it. The Zuni present an example of a similar form of classification carried to a higher degree of complexity. Among them the notion which society has of itself and the idea which it has of the world are so interlaced and confounded, that their organisation has been justly qualified as " mytho-sociological." Every being and object of nature, sun, moon, stars, heaven, earth, and sea, with all their phenomena and all their elements, inanimate beings as well as plants, animals, and men, are classed, ticketed and assigned to a determinate place in a system unique, solidaire, and with all its parts co-ordinated and subordinated to one another according to the degrees of relationship.

In its present form the principle of the system is a division of all space into seven regions — -the North, South, East, and West, the Zenith, the Nadir, and the Centre. Everything in the universe is divided among these seven regions. The wind, the air, the winter, the pelican, crane, grouse, sagecock, evergreen oak and other things are assigned to the North. To the West are assigned the water, the springtime with its humid breezes, the bear and coyote, and the tender spring-grass ; to the South, fire and the summer ; to the East, the earth, seeds, the first frosts which ripen the crops and complete the year, the deer, the antelope, the turkey, and so forth. The North is the region of war and destruction, the West of peace and hunting, the South of agriculture and medicine, the East of magic and religion. To each region is attributed a special colour, yellow to the North, blue to the West, red to the South, white to the East, motley like the play of light and shade in the clouds to the Zenith, and black to the Nadir. The Centre, the navel of the world, partakes of all.

Now the important thing to observe is that this partition of the universe is exactly that of the clans in the pueblo. One division of the pueblo corresponds to the North, and has its appropriate colour, one to the South, and so on. Each of these divisions, except the Centre, is a group of three clans bearing totems corre- sponding to the animals or other objects of the region to which it belongs. The Centre is represented by a single clan, that of the Parrot-Macaw, " the all-containing or mother-clan of the entire tribe, for in it the seed of the priesthood of the houses is supposed to be preserved," as Mr Cushing explains. In the author's opinion the evidence goes to show that all these clans are derived by