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Zuñi Folk Tales
Classic Account Of Native American Folklore By The Pioneer Ethnologist And Adopted Member Of The Zuni Tribe. According To J. Frank Dobie, Cushing Had Rare Imagination And Sympathy. His Retelling Of Tales Are Far Superior To Verbatim Recordings.
- GenresFolklore
474 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1901
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 30, 2018
I don't know if it's primarily because I'm too familiar with the styled by now or if it's a genuine difference in this collection, but I can't say that the stories were quite as strange as I was hoping it would be based on the few Zuni entries in the Storytelling Stone collection. Few of these stories take place in the early cosmology, or touch on the wilder stuff that appears there. That said, they're still plenty enjoyable and interesting on their own. They almost universally cover either the twin War Gods, who are kind of oblivious but generally do good things, or a boy who goes on a quest to win the right to marry a girl, or the bumbling trickster coyote. Lots of tricksterism and animal relatives and magic, and a decent amount of violence although nothing like so bleak as the Arctic stories.
This collection is interesting because the stories were translated in the late 1800s, so they have a formality to the language that extend perhaps a bit less approachable or fun. There are a few footnotes, some of which are rather interesting, and made me wish there were more context given about some things (especially in cases where the footnote would refer to mythology, stories that seems like they could easily have been included here but were not for whatever reason). The most interesting thing to me was that one of these stories is actually an Italian folktale, which the translator volunteered during a storytelling session on tour in England with his Zuni sources. He says that years later, visiting his friends in Zuni, one of them started telling a story that he soon realized was a variant of this story.
The contrast between his version of the Italian story and the Zuni variant is remarkable for several reasons. First, because it is the only story where the role of the individual author can be discerned. Every other story in all of these collections seems like an almost inevitably must have been transmitted through the generations with only slight room for each storyteller to provide creative interpretation. Otherwise, how could we possibly observe the regular patterns of phylogeny that we do? Second, because it reveals specific things about the priorities of Zuni storytelling, or at least that storyteller, that aren't necessarily obvious from the others until you see the contrast. He spends a few paragraphs putting the ethnicity of the storytellers and the origin of their animals in Zuni terms, then launches into a layered back story of the relationship between the mouse, the cock, and the grandmother, explaining each of their desires and the way they see the world, before setting off the chain of begging them except the punchline of the Italian story. Then he finishes by using the story to explain anatomical features of all cocks and mice today.
That last feature is interesting, because it's something that comes up in almost all of these stories and never in a way that makes a lot of sense. All of the stories about coyote end by explaining a specific feature of the anatomy of the inside of a coyote's mouth. It just puts that stupid trope about how folklore and mythology is a prescientific way of explaining the world is really kind of strange light. If the purpose of that story was to answer a question your annoying grandson was asking, that kid must be pretty weird. The cock and mouse example suggests that the explanation is really the point of the stories much as a traditional coda, something that's more lighthearted and humorous than an alternative to evolutionary biology.
There is a strong misogynist tendency to these stories, at least the way they are told here. Young, unmarried women are very explicitly the reward for young men's heroic behavior. Older women are disrespected and annoyed by the young boy orphans who are constantly foisted onto them. Women are frequently murdered for what seem like no reason or extremely obviously bad reasons (the last story is an egregious example of this, with a Mary/Christ analogue getting chased out of her house and shot to death because the Sun loved her and didn't want her to be shared with the random entitled assholes in her village). And the stories rarely find this an offense worth commenting on, unlike the murder of livestock or theft of goods in many other stories. On the other hand, like in the Arctic, babies are highly valued in the stories – any time an old woman or a wild animal comes across an abandoned orphan, they are extremely excited about it, not upset by the burden it will pose to them (especially remarkable given the way children treat their grandparents and adoptive parents in a lot of the stories).
This collection is interesting because the stories were translated in the late 1800s, so they have a formality to the language that extend perhaps a bit less approachable or fun. There are a few footnotes, some of which are rather interesting, and made me wish there were more context given about some things (especially in cases where the footnote would refer to mythology, stories that seems like they could easily have been included here but were not for whatever reason). The most interesting thing to me was that one of these stories is actually an Italian folktale, which the translator volunteered during a storytelling session on tour in England with his Zuni sources. He says that years later, visiting his friends in Zuni, one of them started telling a story that he soon realized was a variant of this story.
The contrast between his version of the Italian story and the Zuni variant is remarkable for several reasons. First, because it is the only story where the role of the individual author can be discerned. Every other story in all of these collections seems like an almost inevitably must have been transmitted through the generations with only slight room for each storyteller to provide creative interpretation. Otherwise, how could we possibly observe the regular patterns of phylogeny that we do? Second, because it reveals specific things about the priorities of Zuni storytelling, or at least that storyteller, that aren't necessarily obvious from the others until you see the contrast. He spends a few paragraphs putting the ethnicity of the storytellers and the origin of their animals in Zuni terms, then launches into a layered back story of the relationship between the mouse, the cock, and the grandmother, explaining each of their desires and the way they see the world, before setting off the chain of begging them except the punchline of the Italian story. Then he finishes by using the story to explain anatomical features of all cocks and mice today.
That last feature is interesting, because it's something that comes up in almost all of these stories and never in a way that makes a lot of sense. All of the stories about coyote end by explaining a specific feature of the anatomy of the inside of a coyote's mouth. It just puts that stupid trope about how folklore and mythology is a prescientific way of explaining the world is really kind of strange light. If the purpose of that story was to answer a question your annoying grandson was asking, that kid must be pretty weird. The cock and mouse example suggests that the explanation is really the point of the stories much as a traditional coda, something that's more lighthearted and humorous than an alternative to evolutionary biology.
There is a strong misogynist tendency to these stories, at least the way they are told here. Young, unmarried women are very explicitly the reward for young men's heroic behavior. Older women are disrespected and annoyed by the young boy orphans who are constantly foisted onto them. Women are frequently murdered for what seem like no reason or extremely obviously bad reasons (the last story is an egregious example of this, with a Mary/Christ analogue getting chased out of her house and shot to death because the Sun loved her and didn't want her to be shared with the random entitled assholes in her village). And the stories rarely find this an offense worth commenting on, unlike the murder of livestock or theft of goods in many other stories. On the other hand, like in the Arctic, babies are highly valued in the stories – any time an old woman or a wild animal comes across an abandoned orphan, they are extremely excited about it, not upset by the burden it will pose to them (especially remarkable given the way children treat their grandparents and adoptive parents in a lot of the stories).
October 11, 2023
The introduction alone is worth the reading
The introduction by J.W. Powell, Washington City, and November 1901 is worth the price of the book alone. It sets the tone of what a Folk- tail is in this context and tells want Mr. Cushing is about to do. It also shows that some of the tails as with other collections are hybrids of native and Christian stories intertwined. Even those that are attributed to Gilgamesh were imported and corrupted.
The 33 tales collected from 1879 to 1884 are transcribed by Frank Hamilton Cushing, a professional anthropologist who lived with the Zuñi Pueblo people from 1879 to 1884. You may find these tales a bit more sophisticated than many of the other Indian folk tale collections.
The tales, even though interesting and each with an ending moral will start to repeat a theme; each one has a poor schnook that is told not to do something or is tricked into doing something. That something is never explained to the schnook until it is too late. Some deal with the underworld, and many with talking animals.
The introduction by J.W. Powell, Washington City, and November 1901 is worth the price of the book alone. It sets the tone of what a Folk- tail is in this context and tells want Mr. Cushing is about to do. It also shows that some of the tails as with other collections are hybrids of native and Christian stories intertwined. Even those that are attributed to Gilgamesh were imported and corrupted.
The 33 tales collected from 1879 to 1884 are transcribed by Frank Hamilton Cushing, a professional anthropologist who lived with the Zuñi Pueblo people from 1879 to 1884. You may find these tales a bit more sophisticated than many of the other Indian folk tale collections.
The tales, even though interesting and each with an ending moral will start to repeat a theme; each one has a poor schnook that is told not to do something or is tricked into doing something. That something is never explained to the schnook until it is too late. Some deal with the underworld, and many with talking animals.
January 30, 2024
Cushing was an ethnologist who spent a great amount of time among the insular Zuni around the turn of the 20th C. Here he presents a sympathetic rendition of a rich and strange tradition of folk-lore and mythology, providing a fascinating glimpse into the world and views of a proud, ancient culture that exists among us still today.
August 10, 2017
Great food for the imagination in preparation for another New Mexico trip.
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April 17, 20221901
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews