Zuñi Breadstuff

by Frank Hamilton Cushing

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. ...is a place of painful thoughts," say the narrators; but it stands always the same, for its builder was He-Of-Large-Muscles. At sunset the men file in from the field. The women have spread or rather strung the feast out on the lowest roof. Ten or twelve great bowls in a row, smoking hot with stew, every one as red with chile as its rising vapors are with the touches of sunset. There is a row of breadstuff, thin as paper, flaky as crackers, red, yellow, blue, and white, piled up in baskets down either side of the meat bowls. Outside these, two other rows, this time of blankets and stool blocks. The first man whose head appears up the ladder is besieged with polite invitations to "Sit and eat; sit and eat," from as many pairs of lips as there are women on the housetop. When all are seated, a sacrifice is made to the household fire. Up to this time the talking has been rife; now it ceases altogether. Everything except eating seems tabu until the feast has disappeared, and the cigarettes are rolled and lighted. Then talking resumes and long into the night continues. At the second or third hoeing, which takes place usually after one of the late summer rains, they "hill" the corn much In ancient as our Eastern farmers do. times a sort of broad pick-axe or hoe made from the scapula of an elk and bound with rawhide to a wooden handle (pl. III, g), or a hoe of hard wood similarly fastened to the handle and surmounted by a heavy stone (h), was used for this purpose. Autumn comes and the "corn children" have been taken in to meet their "father and mother," the yii'-po-to and the mi'k'iaP-jban-ne. A while later, another search is made through the field, this time for such corn as...

34 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_H...

Reviews

[Greg]

I had a lot of fun with this book. It's part of my "people and grains" reading series, in which I'm trying to investigate the idea that grains have been a primary food for so-called "hunter-gatherers," and that meat played a relatively small part.

This book does have many passages that bear on that question, in particular legends about the forebears of the Zuni who were believed to have migrated and fed primarily on wild seeds until they were given the "seed of seeds," maize, and shown how to cultivate it.

Zunis prized hunters and ate meat, but Cushing goes out of his way to point out what a small portion of their meals it made up and how gauche it was to overindulge in it. A Zuni stew might be flavored with a small amount of shredded meat, or a single stick of jerky would be made to last a whole meal as a kind of lollipop/serving utensil.

One surprise from this book came from the personalities of the Zuni. They sound like they were a hilarious bunch and loved to give their white brother from "Wassintona" a hard time. The passage about Cushing's introduction to "rat-brine" near the end cracked me up, wherein his adopted elder brother implores their traveling companions to raid a wood rat's nest to brew up some of this brine. Cushing's disgusted face, as his elder brother imagines it, displays an irrepressible excitement and hunger for rat-brine.

Definitely a fun read, and gave me so many ideas for what to do with cornmeal!

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent choice for those people interested in Native American cultures and creation myths. Truly a classic.