That without casualty to the Zuñis an understanding was in some way soon reached between them and Vargas, the chroniclers of the expedition agree with this Zuñi legend; and before the end of the century the Indians had all descended to the plain again and were gathered, except in seasons of planting and harvest, chiefly at three of their easternmost towns, and the central one of Hálona Ítiwana, the Zuñi of today. After the reconquest at least some of the missions were rehabilitated, and missionaries dwelt with the Zuñis now and again. But other chiefs than those chosen by the priestly elders of the people were thenceforward chosen by the Spaniards to watch the people—gobernador, alcalde, and tenientes,—and these in turn were watched by Spanish soldiers whose conduct favored little the fostering of good will and happy relations; for in 1703, goaded to desperation by the excesses of these resident police, the Zuñis drove at least three of them into the church and there massacred them. Then, according to their wont, they fled, for the last time, to the top of Thunder mountain.
When they finally descended they planted numerous peach orchards among the cliffs and terraces of Grand mountain and Twin mountains to the northward of Zuñi, and there also laid out great gardens and many little cornfields. And with the pretext of wishing to be near their crops there, they built the seven Sónoli ‘Hlúëlawe (the "Towns of Sonora"), so named because the peach stones they had planted there had been brought from Sonora, Mexico. But their real object was to escape from the irksome and oft-repeated spyings upon and interdictions of their sacred observances and mythic drama-dances, which, as time went on, the Spanish frailes, supported by the increasing power of the authorities at Santa Fé in the first half of the eighteenth century, were wont to make. So, in hidden and lone nooks on the mountains, where their fine foundations may be seen even now, the Indian priests had massive kivas built, and there from year to year they conducted in secret the rites which but for this had never been preserved so perfectly for telling, albeit only in outline, in the following pages. But even thus far from the mission and its warders the plume-wands of worship, which in earlier times had been made long (each one according to its kind as long as from the elbow to the tip of one finger or another of him who made and sacrificed it), now had to be cut short and made only as long as the hands and the various fingers of those who made them; for the large plumed messages to the winds and spaces often betrayed the people, and they must now needs be made of size convenient for burial or hiding away in crannies or under bushes as near as might be to the shrines of the sacred precincts where once the fathers had worshiped so freely.
Toward the end of the century, between 1775 and 1780, the old Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which now harbors only burros and shivering dogs of cold winter nights and is toppling to ruin in the middle of the grand plaza of Zuñi, was built and beautifully decorated with carved altar pieces and paintings, gifts from the King of Spain to the Indies and work of resident monks as well. Its walls were painted—as the more recent plasterings scaling off here and there reveal—by Zuñi artists, who scrupled not to mingle many a pagan symbol of the gods of wind, rain, and lightning, sunlight, storm-dark and tempest, war-bale and magic, and, more than all, emblems of their beloved goddess-virgins of corn-growing with the bright-colored Christian decorations. And doubtless their sedulous teachers or masters, as the case may have been, understanding little, if aught, of the meanings of these things, were well pleased that these reluctant proselytes should manifest so much of zeal and bestow such loving care on this temple of the holy and only true faith.
In a measure the padres were right. The Indians thenceforward did manifest not only more care for the mission, but more readiness to attend mass and observe the various holy days of the church. To be baptized and receive baptismal names they had ever been willing, nay, eager, for they were permitted, if only as a means of identification, to retain their own tik‘ya shíiwe ("names totemic of the sacred assemblies"), which names the priests of the mission innocently adopted for them as surnames and scrupulously recorded in the quaint old leather-covered folios of their mission and church. Thus it chances that in these faded but beautifully and piously indicted pages of a century ago I find names so familiar, so like those I heard given only a few years since to aged Zuñi friends now passed away, that, standing out clearly from the midst of the formal Spanish phrases of these old-time books, they seem like the voices of the dead of other generations, and they tell even more clearly than such voices could tell of the causes which worked to render the Zuñis of those times apparently so reconciled to Spanish teaching and domination.
For it is manifest that when, as the meaning of his name informs us, the chief priest of the Kâ´kâkwe, or mythic drama-dancers of a hundred years ago, entered the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and was registered as "Feliciano Pautiatzanilunquia" (Páutia Tsani Lúnk’ya), or "Felix Of-the-sacred-dancers-glorious-sun-god-youth," neither he nor any of his attendant clan relatives, whose names are also recorded, thought of renouncing their allegiance to the gods of Zuñi or the ever sacred Kâ´kâ; but that they thought only of gaining the magic of purification and the name-potency of the gods of another people, as well as of securing the sanctification if not recognition of their own gods and priests by these other gods and priests.
That this was so is shown also by the sacred character almost invariably of even the less exalted tribal names they gave. Thus, those belonging not to the priesthood, yet to the "midmost" or septuarchial clans, as "Francisco Kautzitihua" (Káutsitiwa), or "Francis Giver of-the-midmost-dance," and "Angela Kahuitietza" (Káwiti Etsa), or "Angelina Of-the-midmost-dance Little maiden;" and those belonging to yet other clan divisions and the Kâ´kâ, like "Manuel Layatzilunquia" (Laíyatsi Lúnk‘ya), or "Emanuel Of-the-flowing plume Glorious-tall-bearer," and "María Laytzitilutza" (Laítsitilutsa), or "Mary Of-the-soft-flowing-plume Little-bearer;" and, finally, even the least sacred but mythically alegoric clan names, such as "Manuel Layujtigua" (Lá-yúhtiwa) or "Emanuel Plume-of-lightness," a name of the Eagle clan and upper division of the tribe; and "Lucia Jayatzemietza" (Haíya Tsemi Étsa), or "Lucy Of-green-growing-things-ever-thinking Little-maiden," which, alluding to the leaves of growing corn and vines when watched by the young unmarried girls, is one of the Corn or Seed clan names belonging to the southern division. Only very rarely were the colloquial names one hears most often in Zuñi (the sacred and totemic names are considered too precious for common use) given for baptismal registration. I have found but two or three. One of these is written "Estévan Nato Jasti" (Náto Hastiŋ) or "Stephen Old-tobacco," a Navajo sobriquet which, in common with the few others like it, was undoubtedly offered reluctantly in place of the "true and sacred name," because some relative who had recently borne it was dead and therefore his name could not be pronounced aloud lest his spirit and the hearts of those who mourned him be disturbed.
But the presence of these ordinary names evidences no less than that of the more "idolatrous" ones, the uncompromisingly paganistic spirit of these supposedly converted Indians, and the unmodified fashion of their thoughts at the period of their truest apparent allegiance, or at least submission, to the church. Hence I have not hesitated to pause somewhat in the course of this introductory sketch to give these examples in detail, particularly as they evidence not merely the exceeding vitality of the native Zuñi cult, but at the same time present an explanation of the strange spectacle of earnest propagandists everywhere vigilantly seeking out and ruthlessly repressing the native priesthood and their dances and other ceremonials, yet, unconsciously to themselves, solemnizing these very things by their rites of baptism, officially recognizing, in the eyes of the Indians, the very names and titles of the officiators and offices they otherwise persecuted and denounced. It was quite of a piece with all this that during the acts of worship performed in the old church at that time by the Zuñis, whilst they knelt at mass or responded as taught to the mysterious and to them magic, but otherwise meaningless, credo, they scattered in secret their sacred white prayer-meal, and invoked not only the souls of their dead priests—who as caciques or rulers of the pueblo were accorded the distinction of burial in the church, under their very feet—but also, the tribal medicine-plumes and fetiches hidden away under the very altar where stood the archenemy of their religion!
So, in following farther the Spanish