The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona; being a Narrative of a Journey from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the Villages of the Moqui Indians of Arizona, &c

Abstract

THE Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona have this general name from living in towns (Spanish pueblo, from Latin populus). Near a river, or oftener on the top of a steep-cliffed mesa or table-rock, may be seen these picturesque communal settlements, with their close rows of flat-roofed dwellings, walled with stone and mud, rising in terrace above terrace reached by wooden outside ladders, the whole forming a fortification strong enough to resist a sudden attack of the Apaches or Navajos of the plains, whose ravages in old times led the ancestors of the present Moqui, Zuñi, and other Pueblo tribes to resort to their peculiar architecture. Though these peoples were brought more or less under Spanish rule from the sixteenth century, and had to conform more or less to the Roman Catholic Church, the general barrenness and inaccessibility of their region saved them from being Europeanised to the obliteration of the native culture, like the nations of Mexico proper. In the Pueblos the archaic system of society, framed on maternal descent and exogamy, is still in full vigour, while the complex native religion seems almost as perfectly preserved as if the missionaries had never made the Indians wear silver crosses to their necklaces and march in procession to church on Corpus Christi. Thus it has come to pass that now, when the country has become United States territory, and the traveller bound for San Francisco passes close under the mud-walls of Laguna, there is made accessible to anthropologists a remarkable phase of barbaric society among a mild and intelligent people, where its study can be followed into the minutest detail. A few years ago, Mr. Cushing's papers in the Century Magazine, describing his life in Zuñi, excited wide interest. Now we have another instalment of Pueblo literature from Capt. Bourke, the officer selected by Gen. Sheridan to examine the manners and customs of the Indians of the South-Western Territories, and who in August 1881 went with a party to see one of the great rites of the Moqui religion, never before witnessed by a white man.

The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona; being a Narrative of a Journey from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the Villages of the Moqui Indians of Arizona, &c.

By John G. Bourke, Captain Third U.S. Cavalry. (London: Sampson Low and Co., 1884.)