THE FAVORITE NUMBER OF THE ZUÑI
By ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS
LENOX, MASS.
IN the briefest acquaintance with Zuñi custom and tradition one is struck by the prominence of the numeral four, by its in fact obsessive character. It was on the first day of a recent visit to Zuñi I began to notice it. I had happened on the last of the summer so-called rain dances—the kokokshi. In the forelocks of the male figures in the dance were four yellow feathers, the bead work on the heel band of their moccasins represented the four-armed cross, their dance had to be repeated four times, I was told, in four plazas of the pueblo. Accompanying the dance or, so to speak, during its interstices, the koyemshi fooled about, and those antic figures the Americans call "Mudheads" numbered ten; but in their formal exit from the sacred plaza the koyemshi marching two by two divided into two slightly spaced sets, four in the first, six in the second. As I learned later, six and ten also play special rôles in Zuñi numeration, but they are, it is fair to say, quite minor rôles. As for eight and twelve, they figure too, but they figure as multiples of four.[1]
It would be tedious, if not impossible, to review the role of four in all the vast range of Zuñi ceremonial or mythology.[2] Let me give but a cross section of it, as it were, as it appeared to me in connection with the special subjects I was engaged in studying—the crisis ceremonial of Zuñi life, Zuñi beliefs and practises in connection with birth and growth and death.
I begin, remote as it may seem, with a rabbit hunt. But the quadrennial sacred rabbit hunt, the hunt with the koko or gods, is in an important part a phallic rite. Upon its proper performance and the correct stage-managing of the Chakwena, the Rabbit Huntress, depend the plentifulness of rabbits and of humans. Four days before
- ↑ For example, formerly after killing a Navaho all members of the expedition party were "sacred," i. e., called upon to plant prayer plumes and precluded from sexual intercourse four days, but the actual slayer was sacred eight days, four days for the slain man, four days for himself, and the priest of the Bow was sacred twelve days, four days for the slain, four for A′hajuts, the elder war god, and four for himself.
- ↑ I may refer passim to Cushing, F. H., "Zuñi Creation Myths," XIII. (1891-2), Ann. Sep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol.; Ib., "Zuñi Folk Tales," New York, 1901; Stevenson, M. C, "The Zuñi Indians," XXIII. (1901-2), Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethn. For the prominence of the same numeral among the Hopi, see Fewkes, J. W., "The Ceremonial Circuit among the Village Indians," J. Amer. Folk-Lore, V. (1892), 39-41.
