Zuñi Breadstuff

by Frank Hamilton Cushing

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

736 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.