Show 1 I THE Zim LANGUAGE AND FOLKLORE It was an early June morning with hot sunshine but clear invigorating I air when we started in a fourmule I ambulance on our trip of thirty miles to Zaiii i There were four of uMr Cashing a young lieutenant the artist art-ist and the writer We were soon high up on the wooded uplands of the Zuni range enjoying on the ascent backward views over great i plains expanding away to the blue distance of Arizona mountains The forest scenery of the mountain heights was in delightful contrast to the dusty plains dry waste The road wound through shady groves of tall sturdy pines their trunks marked with clean red bark also cedars with bark in queer gray scales like the back of an alligator The woods stood not with closed ranks like an Eastern forest but open and parklike interspersed inter-spersed with beautiful grassy Blades just the places for grazing deer Time sped quickly in listening to Mr CuahiLig s wiiiiujj replies to our DciuliUudmous inqmried If you ure luld Ida any primitive people id ignorant ot Us hiaiory dont you believe be-lieve it Bald he They know all about it And the old with wonderful wonder-ful accuracy traditions are banded down among the Zuirs tae tales repeated re-peated thousands of times being transmitted Lorn father to son without the change of a single word for generation gen-eration after generation Reliance on written words seems to impair the retentive power of the memory of lettered races and the marvelous memorizing capacity of illiterate pea plea is illustrated in the handing down of the grand old Northern sagas by the Icelanders until the acquisition of the alphabet enabled them to be recorded by that great author Snorri Sturlueon also the transmission for generations among tae same people of the moat intricate i intri-cate of genealogical details involving I involv-ing the history of widely branched families for centuries and covering all the lands in Scandinavia In the same way the Zonis have an extensive unwritten literature it the expression may be permitted They have a vast accumulation of fables I and folk lore and the past of the nation is given in what may be I termed the Zuni i Bible This sacred work is publcly recited at rare but regularly recurring intervals It fain fa-in four divisions corresponling to four books and each of these iu divided into four chapters Its recitation reci-tation occupies two long evenings It is in perfect rhyme and rhythm and is highly poetic When Mr Gushing first came to Zuiii i the charge of the Bible was officially entrusted to an aged whitehaired and blind old man a veritable native Homer This was the sole duty of the bard and he was supported by the public He died and the succession Came to one of four whoin he bad trained up These four are in turn continually instructing youth qualified for the high trust by birth and lineage To acquire and record this wonderful wonder-ful work the Zofii i Bible would be a Homeric task Mr Gushing has several sev-eral times had the privilege of listening listen-ing to its recitalit is very often recited informally but to memorize I it and write it down would demand I I the closest application ro get it repeated often enough for such a i purpose would need the use of the nicest diplomacy The Bible begins with the mythical origin of the people peo-ple and then enters upon what is evidently genuine history This is brought down to comparatively recent times but the work ends before the era of the Spanish conquest is reached The story of the Zufiis is told from the time when their home was on the shore of the great ocean to the westward probably in Southern California and the various changes of abode are given during their migration to their present seat in the land of Cibola as the country of the Zoiiis after much historical controversy contro-versy is BOW fully proven to be by Mr Gushing The sites of the seven cities of Cibola described by Coronado Coro-nado and Friar Niza have been accurately ac-curately fixed by Mr Gushing they are in the immediate neighborhood of the present pueblo of Ztmi i which was established upon its present site not long after the Spanish conquest having been removed from its location loca-tion near by The accuracy of the information possessed bytbe Zuuis concerning the rained towns where their ancestry lived is maivellGus These towns were successively settled and abandoned for variousoauseachief among which were the pressure of hostile people and the choking with sand of the springs upon which they depended The history of these places which are innumerable mostly back in obscure ob-scure antiquity as is certified by times imprint upon the ruins The region in which these ruins are found covers a large part of New Mexico and Arizona Every investigation investi-gation of rums claimed by the Zunis as theirs their locations often having been unknown until Mr Cushing was told that the Zaili3 once lived in certain places to be distinguished by certain marks and featureahaa verified ver-ified their statements their accuracy always proving unerring The language of the Zuiiia i is the I reverse of barbancally orudeoa might perhaps be expected of an aboriginal tongue It has a finely ordered struc Lure arid is very expressive abounding abound-ing In delicate shadings and allowing > fine distinctions of meaning The order 0 f sentences resembles that of Latin and German rather than that of English The Zafiia are fastidious in their requirements for the correct use of the language and ore intoler 44 01 a = 7 ant Of ungrammatical l speech and strange to say they have an ancient or classical language spoken centuries ago handed down in the many sacred songs and used today m their religious observances This dead language l bears a similar relation to their speech of today as AndoTon to English It is not understood by but is familiar people > 1r the common only to the priest and leading men So here too is the Church the conservator con-servator of ancient erudition On every hand are met startling resemblances to the familiar viiizi tions of the East The folk lore tee recital of whose tales and fables he gins after the frost comes and fills the long winter evenings at tbe firesidee offers many parallels Some of their fables are in substance almost al-most exactly identical with fables of J330P For spellu and incantations the Zuiiis use short rhymed couplets just as our Saxon ancestors Their religious ceremonials are strangely like the Egyptians and Greeks A striking analogy botweeu the Zuiii i and Northern mythology is found in the characterization of the spirit of evil The Zoiiia have two names for the Evil One meaning respectively the maliciously bad and stupidly bad In the same way the NortL ern mythology has two evil spirits Loki the cunning demon the spirit of intelligent wickedness who often dresses evil in an alluring guise and the strong but blind H dur in whom the evil coming from the posses = ion I of power by ignorance is I typified Hodur killing unwittingly his beautiful beauti-ful bother Baldur with the lance of mistletoe placed in his hand by the sly Loki In view of these many resemblances the query has been raised if the story of the lost Atlantis J the sunken continent might not be something more than a myth Might not this the older continent be the anceatral home of the oldest races of the Eastern world Or do these resemblances re-semblances simply Ihow that for the mental development of man there are certain set forms that these repeat re-peat themselves everywhere and that the human intellect passes through regular stages of progression of which these similarities are marks These are questions which ethnology may answer some day when it has become a more positive science Sylvester Baxter in Haipers Magazine |