Zuni

An indigenous nation inhabiting modern-day western New Mexico whose inhabitants came into contact with Spanish explorers in 1536, the first of a series of encounters characterized by misunderstandings and violence.

Like many of the Native peoples of the Southwest of the modern-day United States, the Zuni succeeded by learning how to adapt to an often difficult environment. Their homeland, along a tributary of the Little Colorado River now known as the Zuni River, encompassed both mountains rising to almost 9,000 feet and lowlands. Archaeological evidence at Hawikuh, a community occupied from 1300 to 1680, suggests that Zuni lived in concentrated communities; Hawikuh, for example, had approximately 370 separate rooms and 1,000 graves. Other archaeological evidence suggests that Zuni had become proficient basket makers by approximately A. D. 700 and that families probably inhabited dwellings approximately 10 to 12 feet across clustered in groups, quite likely reflecting the fact that kin groups lived together. Digs at certain sites have revealed storerooms used to preserve corn, a basic part of the diet of the indigenous peoples of the region, as well as ritual centers (known as kivas) used for extensive periods of time. The material record suggests that the population of the region increased substantially by 1300; some early villages had been abandoned, but others, notably Zuni, grew. Despite extensive archaeological efforts, scholars remain unclear about any clear link between the ancient Zuni habitations and modern-day Zuni, although there seems little doubt that Zuni today are the descendants of people who lived in the region at least 200 to 300 years before the Spanish arrived.

Like all other peoples, the Zuni developed their own religion. It included an indigenous cosmogony based on the relationship between the “Raw People,” divine forces that can take anthropomorphic form, and the “Daylight People,” human beings, one of whose tasks is to tend to the raw people. Corn, so vital to the Zuni diet, plays a central role in the Zuni traditional religion. It is the duty of the Daylight People to propitiate the Raw People, who manifest themselves in a variety of ways, including corn plants, rainstorms, deer, bears, and kachinas.

Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, ca. 1927 (Library of Congress)

Zuni first encountered Europeans in the late 1530s when Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca arrived in Mexico City (see Tenochtitlan) and reported that he had seen great cities to the north during his long trek across the North American interior. Spanish officials in Mexico authorized a mission to go north to find the truth of these claims. Although a Franciscan missionary named Marcos de Niza traveled into the region in 1539, he did not venture into the Zuni land after an African slave (see slavery) named Estevan was killed by Zuni on an exploratory venture, a fate quite possibly caused either by misunderstanding or some unknown act of aggression toward the Zuni. In 1540 Francisco Coronado traveled into the Zuni homeland and battled the Zuni until he could lay claim to Hawikuh in July. From there he continued on his mission to find the mythic Seven Cities of Cibola, a venture that eventually took him as far east as modern-day Kansas. Although he never found the treasures he believed existed, he returned through the Zuni homeland in 1542 and labeled it Cibola, a name that stuck. Coronado left a group of indigenous peoples from Mexico with the Zuni in 1542, and they remained there for four decades, or so later Spanish explorers claimed. When those later adventurers arrived in what they called Cibola in the 1580s, they had better relations with the Native peoples than had Marcos or Coronado. Among those later visitors was Juan de Onate, who traveled there in 1598.

During the early 17th century Spanish clerics turned their attention to the homeland of the Zuni, establishing a mission at Hawikuh in 1629 and a church at Halona (on the site of modern-day Zuni), thereby planting Catholicism in the region, although at the time there was, of course, no way to know how successful this religious import would become among the Zuni, who continue to practice their traditional religion today.

Further reading: Dennis Tedlock, “Zuni Religion and World View,” in William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 9, Southeast, ed. Alfonso Ortiz (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), 499-507; Richard B. Woodbury, “Zuni Prehistory and History to 1850,” in Southwest, ed. Ortiz, 467-473.