Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/209

Rh were less likely to describe local differences in costume, songs, or dance-figures, because they, or at least Casteñeda and Jaramillo, did not write their accounts for a number of years after the occurrence of the events. It is also probable that the erection of the Spanish quarters in the Valley of Zuñi indisposed its people from performing their dances, the meaning of which is wholly symbolical, and which have in their eyes the significance of a religious act. The "cachinas" in the pueblos of the Rio Grande are for the most part strictly private; entrance into these not always decent ceremonies is permitted only to the initiated, and under vows of complete secrecy. I am convinced that, although neither Coronado nor Casteñeda and Jaramillo mention the dances, they were still zealously performed in the winter of 154041 in the seven pueblos of Zuñi; not participated in by the people as a whole, but that the secret fraternities of the priests, the medicine-men, the soldiers and hunters, each fraternity by itself, performed its festive dances and invocations in its smoke-filled estufa, before the altars on which stood the colored images of the sun-father, "Ya-to-kia-Tâtschu"; the mother, "Yao-na-kia Isita"; the divine hero-brothers, "Mai-tza-la-ima" and "Ahuiuta"; and the terrible god "Achi-a-lâ-topâ."

The picture which this life in the plain of Zuñi afforded was a peculiar one. Over the white covering of snow projected the pueblos of Matzaqui, Halona, and Pinana like little hills of clay, with thin clouds of smoke rising from them. Villages were visible at once from the southern edge of the basin, and at the foot of the colossal mesa, which stood