Cibola 34

Reader (4)

In all the land and kingdoms of Cí­bola, which includes many regions,
constituting a great country more than three hundred leagues across, reaching
all the way to the South Sea, all of it quite populous and containing an
infinitude of nations, there is not a single idol or temple to be found; they have
naught but to adore God in the sun and in springs of sweet water.
BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS
Apologética Historia Sumaria

The Zuni polity would appear to be heterarchical, indicating a lack of
unidimensional hierarchy and a presence of multiple and noncongruent sources
of power . . .
KEITH W. KINTIGH
“Leadership Strategies in Protohistoric Zuni Towns”

In the first period of the conquest . . . marvels were attributed to America’s
plants. . . . For the Indians, herbs speak, have sex, and cure. It is little plants,
aided by the human word, that pull sickness from the body, reveal mysteries,
straighten out destinies, and provoke love or forgetfulness. These voices of
earth sound like voices of hell to seventeenth-century Spain, busy with
inquisitions and exorcisms, which relies for cures on the magic of prayer,
conjurations, and talismans even more than on syrups, purges, and bleedings.
EDUARDO GALEANO
Memory of Fire, Vol. I: Genesis, translated by Cedric Belfrage

The living human or animal body is referred to in Zuni as the shi’nanne (literally ‘flesh’), while the life force, essence, breath, soul, or psyche is the pinanne (literally ‘wind’ or ‘air’). So, although breath is ultimately lodged in the heart and is thus a body-soul, under certain circumstances – such as during trancing, curing, singing, and dreaming – it can behave as a free-soul and leave the body. . . . Although the pinanne . . . arrives at birth and departs at death, it is never solely possessed by the individual during his or her lifetime. Rather, it remains closely connected to the sacred power suffusing the ‘raw’ world from which it came and because of this constant contact it acts as a strong moral agent.
BARBARA TEDLOCK
“Zuni and Quiché Dream Sharing and Interpreting”