Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1916 — The Oldest Town in America [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Oldest Town in America

THREE hundred and sixty-six years ago the intrepid Spaniard Coronado’inarched a little army northward from Mexico across the deserts of Sonora and Arizona until in what is now the western part of the state of New Mexico, he found and conquered and occupied a group of Pueblo Indian towns whose fame had reached him under the designation of the “Seven Cities of Cibola,” or Zuni. As the years went on one or another of the seven allied towns was abandoned and its inhabitants moved to the central one of the group, Halona, “Place of the Ants.” For over two hundred years now, the whole Zuni tribe has concentrated itself in this settlement which is to Americans as the Pueblo Zuni, and to its inhabitants as Ittiwawa, “The Middle Place,” for in native belief its site marks the exact center of the earth, writes A. L. Kroeber, professor of anthropology in the University of California, in the -American Museum Journal. With the possible exception of two or three other Pueblo settlements, Zuni is thus the oldest inhabited town in the United States, far surpassing in antiquity Jamestown, Plymouth and other early English settlements, as well as Sante Fe and St. Augustine of Spanish foundation. The tribe numbers 1,600 souls or as many as it could nuster after it had gathered itself together after the first disastrous shock of Spanish contact. The houses are still built in the prehistoric way of stone masonry, mortared and plastered with clay, and rise densely clustered, terraced one above the other to a height of four or five stories. Live Life of Long Ago. The life too of the Zuni, runs in the current of long ago. They have borrowed from the American his shirt and his overalls, and have learned to like his coffee and sugar, his bacon and wheat flour. Sheep and donkeys they obtained long since from the Spaniards, and many today can boast -of owning horses and wagons. But inwardly and in all his relations with other Indians, the Zuni is still purely aboriginal. He does not know whether today is Sunday or Wednesday, whether it is January or July; or what the American names of the store keepper, missionary and government agent are. He knows these people by nicknames which he or some friend has given them, and he reckons time by the number of days to the next ceremonial dance ordained by his priests. He supports himself as his forefathers of the Immemorial long ago did, through raising corn by hand culture in sandy patches where it would seem that the grain would not even sprout. In the middle of the plaza around which his town is built stands a decaying, roofless and gutted Catholic church, which his forefathers built of adobe under the direction of Spanish missionaries; but two centuries of Christian regime have not influenced the inward spirit of the Zuni. He knew that soldiers stood back of the priest and therefore he obeyed him, yet he hardened his heart against him; and no sooner did Spanish and Mexican authority relax than the Indian quietly shook off the hateful yoke of imposed religion, and reverted openly to the ancient native ceremonials which he and his had kept alive by secret practices in hidden underground rooms within fifty yards of the walls of the missioii. Such tremendously tenacious conservatism has kept the Zuni substantially where they were before Columbus discovered America. They are not hostile to Americans, in fact their native code of politeness requires that every one should be treated with courtesy. They are merely indifferent to ourselves. All that every Zuni asks is that he should be left alone to support himself, to practice his religion, and to live his life as his fathers did, without interfering with anyone and without being interfered with.

It is no wonder then that these remarkable people have long attracted extraordinary attention from anthropologists and students of the aboriginal. Frank Hamilton Cushing, whose genius in certain directions has never been equaled among any of his colleagues, took up his residence at Zuni nearly forty years ago, and became in every reuse a full member of the tribe, looked on as such by the Zuni themselves. He took part in their war expeditions against the hated Apache and Navaho raiders; became a member ofone of the six sacred Kivas, and was initiated Into the religious society of the priests of the bow. A host of other students have followed fnhis footsteps and the list of anthropologists who have visited Zuni Includes most of the eminent names . In America, such as Powell, McGee and Mrs. Stevenson, to mention only some of those no longer living, as well

as Tylor and other famous foreigners. Know Little of These People. With all this study accomplished, one has however to be at Zuni only a few days before being aware that our knowledge of the life of the people is very incomplete; in fact that in many respects the ground has scarcely been scratched. Mrs. Stevenson for instance has published a quarto volume four inches thick on the ceremonies and religious system of the Zuni, yet any tourist in a week can see rituals enacted with full pomp to which she barely alludes. It is not that the studies that have been made are in their nature superficial. In fact many of the published accounts are intensive in their detail. It is the Zuni life of culture that for all its aboriginality, is so intricately complex that no volume however thick could hold all that is to be said about any one of its several phases. No one knows exactly, but there must be nearly two hundred gods and mythological characters that are impersonated by distinctively masked and costumed dancers. There is not a month, and at certain seasons not a week, without a public dance in the town, and at no time a day without some sort of religious ritual. The family life of the Zuni is lived precisely as if no white man had yet set foot on American soil. The people are divided into sixteen clans each named after an animal or plant Descent in these clans is not from the father as we inherit our names and as titles and royal succession descend in Europe, but from the mother. A Zuni is of his mother’s clan but he recognizes his relationship to his father’s people by calling himself the child of his father’s clan. Along with taking precedence over the men in carrying the group names, the women own the houses. A .man may, by the labor of his own hands, erect a new house for his wife, from quarrying the rock to laying the roof, while she does nothing more than plaster the walls; yet let a divorce and separation take place, and the property unquestioningly belongs to her. The Zuni are as monogamous a people as we. They look with repugnance not only upon polygamy, but also upon subsequent marriage with*, a former wife’s sister or relative. At the same time, divorce is easy. Persons have only to separate. A man tired of his wife leaves her. For a woman the procedure is not quite so simple owing to her property right in the house; but at that, she need only nag and abuse her husband until he takes his little bundle of clothes and returns to his natal home., If misplaced affection or stubbornness prevent him from taking the hint, she can have recourse to the more drastic method of simply installing his chosen successor, in which case nothing remains fqr the deposed husband but to leave quietly. It would certainly seem as if the Zuni had long ago achieved for themselves some of the most radical portions of even the ultra-feministic program.

Typical Indian Village in New Mexico.