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Bill Wright's new photographic study continues his series on American Indian tribes in Texas. Historian John Gesick contributes a historical essay that tells the story of the tribe's migration from the woodlands of the northeast to the deserts of Texas and Coahuila, Mexico.Wright and Gesick followed the Kickapoo during the summer as they worked as migrant farm workers and to their sacred homeland of Nacimiento, Coahuila, where they still live in traditional wickiups and practice the religion of their forefathers.Among the many highlights of the text, is a Kickapoo story in the oral tradition, relating Col. Ranald MacKenzie's raid into the Kickapoo hunting camp near Remolino, Mexico, in 1873--a story never before in print; a description of the Kickapoo social infrastructure, detailing the construction and meaning of their dwelling, language, religion, and political organization in Texas and Mexico; a recounting of Wright's and Gesick's experience when they accompanied three young Kickapoos on a hunt and the significance of deer to the tribe.The Kickapoo of Texas pride themselves in safeguarding their traditions amid the overwhelming momentum of western culture. Historical photographs of the tribe collected from family albums as well as from national museum collections document the visual history, and Bill Wright's contemporary photographs illuminate the present life and culture. Mary Cristopher Nunley, Ph.D., anthropologist and Kickapoo scholar, in her introduction to "The Texas Kickapoo" provides an insight and understanding into the Kickapoo culture. ... Read more

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For a long time the Indians had been disaffected but no one was energetic enough among them to combine them in taking measures for their rights. Every time they had petitioned the Legislature the laws by the management of the interested whites had been made more severe against them. ... Read more

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No Native American groups placed more emphasis on the horse in their lives than did the Navajo and Apache of the Southwest. They Sang for Horses, first published in 1966 and now considered a classic, remains the only comprehensive treatment of the profound mystical influence that the horse has exerted for more than three hundred years.

In this completely redesigned and expanded edition, LaVerne Harrell Clark examines how storytellers, singers, medicine men, and painters created the animal’s evolving symbolic significance by adapting existing folklore and cultural symbols. Exploring the horse’s importance in ceremonies, songs, prayers, customs, and beliefs, she investigates the period of the horse’s most pronounced cultural impact on the Navajo and the Apache, starting from the time of its acquisition from the Spanish in the seventeenth century and continuing to the mid-1960s, when the pickup truck began to replace it as the favored means of transportation. In addition, she presents a look at how Navajos and Apaches today continue to redefine the horse’s important role in their spiritual as well as material lives.

This classic work is a must for historians, readers interested in Native American folklore and mythology, and anyone who has ever been captivated by the magic and romance of the horse.

Co-winner of the 1967 University of Chicago Folklore Award ... Read more

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Enhanced with a new epilogue and photographs
In a newly revised edition enhanced with a new epilogue and photographs, LaVerne Clark's They Sang For Horses: The Impact Of The Horse On Navajo & Apache Folklore, is a fascinating and informative study of how the acquisition of the horse transformed the mythology and cosmology of the southwestern Native American cultures of the Navajo and Apache. Chapters include: The Acquisition of the Horse; The Gift of the Gods; The Magic and Ritual of the Raid for Horses; The People's Ways for Keeping Horses Holy; The Horse's Powers Over the People's Health; The Horse's Role in Folk Customs and Other Ceremonies. A strongly recommended addition for any academic or community library Native American Studies reading list or reference collection, They Sang For Horses also features an extensive bibliography for further readings, as well as a "user friendly" index. ... Read more

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Did a group of thirteenth-century Japanese journey to the American Southwest, there to merge with the people, language, and religion of the Zuni tribe?For many years, anthropologists have understood the Zuni in the American Southwest to occupy a special place in Native American culture and ethnography. Their language, religion, and blood type are startlingly different from all other tribes. Most puzzling, the Zuni appear to have much in common with the people of Japan. In a book with groundbreaking implications, Dr. Nancy Yaw Davis examines the evidence underscoring the Zuni enigma, and suggests the circumstances that may have led Japanese on a religious quest--searching for the legendary "middle world" of Buddhism--across the Pacific and to the American Southwest more than seven hundred years ago. ... Read more

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From a traditional perspective
First of all I would like to thank anthropologists, whom are ever so eager to pick at the culture and beliefs of the Zuni religion and people. I stand in awe at the mere interest in people like us.

To comment on this hypothesis with regard to previous posters on this topic I would like to remind one in particular.Customer comment mentioned their disappointment in the reaction of the tribal council and governor with Davis' ideas.It is obvious you are well educated and spoken for, which in by all means is great! Big ups to our own people going out into the where's of the world to grasp at an education.However, I cringe at the idea that somehow you lost your sense of identity as a Zuni or you grew up in a "mild-kosher" version of a traditional household.If it were any other Zuni with an absolute upbringing in the most traditional drenched settings of Zuni life, you would have sided with the outrage expressed by our tribal council minus the small misinterpretation that was obvious.They show only disagreement because like a traditional Zuni would, every bit of our story and every bit of our prayer describes our history as the A:Shiwi. Not the A:shiwi who met up with two E'nidashakwe and made sure Sha'la'ko blesses new homes every year. Everyone who heeds these ideals would defend it to the death just like we did when the Spaniards arrived on the land.Our religion has not tangled in with Catholicism and is almost as pure as it had begun.

To understand the criticism of Zuni religious leaders on this idea, one would have to have lived a full Zuni upbringing.Some would take this as a mockery of our religion only because they know of nothing else but being Zuni.Frank Cushing was a "learning peg" for Zuni people because he befriended the people and turned around only to back stab his adopted tribe.Our religious teachings, prayers, stories are said to be for "eyes and ears only".Having our most sacred rites and rituals presented to the common and academic peoples was the biggest breach in our beliefs.However, some Zuni elders and religious leaders say that some of the items described by Cushing were only fabricated gestures or ideas that would've awed him into cease firing all his questions that the people didn't really want to answer.Other elders also mention that another anthropologist, whether it was Ruth Bunzel or another, bribed Zuni people for their secrets on medicine, rites and ritual at the most vulnerable times like during drought and famine.Some even say she returned sexual favors for leaked information.Another idea was that our language is hard to understand, talk and translate to begin with, so how would we know that the information collected by anthropologists after Cushing are accurate?Only our practicing Zuni people would know.All men once initiated into Kiva societies are reminded that what happens in the society is kept secret by all Zuni men and leaking such information is punishable by certain means.
This stated, Davis' research citings from past anthropologists, which are deemed by our religious leaders as inaccurate, makes for inaccurate theories.Her research, however, is obviously a work of academic excellence in that she pulls out from under everyone this creative idea.Traveling to Zuni 10 times and reading Bunzel, Stevenson, and Cushing is just not enough to deem a unique southwestern tribe that buddhism might be part of their ancestry.However, this tribe holds true to their creators, deities and tradition with closed lips on our actual ceremonies.This said, there is no anthropologist in the world that could ultimately understand and document the full beliefs and customs of the A:Shiwi.Speaking on behalf of the people thinking the like, we hope the greater human race wouldn't believe one person's theory as opposed to thousands of years of history inside the hearts of thousands of proud Zuni people.Also that of the Japanese who probably had people in their communities that were just as set a back as we were.

*waiting on a rebuttal publication with more scientific research as well as from the point of view from Zuni's side of the dirt road.

Thought provoking
Links between Asia and the Americas have long been suspected, presence of the sweet potato in Polynesia for example, yet little scholarly work has been available for the general public on this topic. This book takes a careful, scholarly approach to this controversial topic, yet does it in a gentle, disarming manner. A good scholar, the writer brings up many questions for others to pursue, while outlining her thesis steadily, point by point. The book covers links between Japan and Native America through archeology, comparitive linguistics, art, religion and even dental morphology. Yet despite a weight of evidence supporting her thesis, she never gets preachy, never talks down to her audience. Instead she takes a gentle tone of increasing interest in the idea that Japan and the Americas before Columbus had a meaningful and lasting connection. This book is well written, thought-provoking, insightful and a very good read.

Would critics of Zuni Enigma exercise consistent standards of proof?
I am flabbergasted at the number of reviewers who think Davis did not prove her case.And I am thus 'gasted for two reasons.One, she scrupulously avoids asserting that anything she presents is a proof.Two, what she does present, is a level of evidence that I think is about ten times greater than the levels of evidence that are considered "proofs" of many other great modern dogmas.The Clovis-First religion, which is only crumbling now after a human-generation... has stood for those decades upon a depth of evidence that is matched or exceeded in just about any random chapter (perhaps page) of Davis' book.

Maybe a nice "swim" requires a person become acclimated to the water before plunging in.In this case, I wonder how these reviews would have been different had the reviewers read Before Columbus, by the late Cyrus H. Gordon before reading Zuni Enigma.Gordon had the stature, institutional affiliation, and perhaps the gender, to convince an otherwise sceptical person to consider the very linguistic arguments that critics feel so cozy criticising.And concerning linguistic arguments, Gordon was no lightweight.When all is said and done, I think Gordon, Davis, and others going all the way back to Ignatius Donnelly, will end up being proved right in the matters of many of these linguistic contentions.

Beside the need for adaptation to the temperature of these proverbial waters, there is another normalization required in the interests of fairness.Many of the native peoples of the American southwest, and of central America, claim that they arrived here after migration from across the western ocean. If this is their claim, on what basis does one set impossibly high standards of evidence for the proof of that claim?Do we think that the ancestors of these people were incapable of building and sailing a boat across the Pacific?Did these critics similarly object to the claims that an Irish monk sailed a crude boat across the Atlantic in the 6th century?When linguistic and other forms of evidence proves this latter claim correct, will they repent?I doubt it.But I expect to live to see the day when such proof becomes generally accepted.

And if a critic has any standard of evidence that is not met by Davis, I wonder what the critic would do with I.J. Gelb, of the University of Chicago who wrote A Study of Writing, wherein he concludes, on the basis of, ehem, lingustic evidence... that all of the languages well-known to him could be traced back to a Proto-Sumerian pictograph?Would these critics apply the same standards to a male researcher, who was a member of an august institution like the Oriental Institute? I rather suspect not.I think that these sneering double standards masquerade as wisdom when what they really are is smugness and herd instinct.

Davis herself, did some of her early studies at the University of Chicago.Many scientific heroes originated there. Harlan Bretz and M. King Hubbert come to mind these days.That the University of Chicago is an academic Olympus goes without saying.But when Davis turned up the first hints of these linguistic similarities between Zuni and Japanese in 1960, one of her advisors at UofC is alleged to have recommended that she not waste her time on this subject.In spite of the Olympian stature of UofC, I cannot help wondering who that Bozo was who thus advised her?What has he done that compares in its potential significance (and ultimate correctness I should add) to Davis's work?Even if one sets the bar so high that one can honestly claim they are not convinced of Davis' theory today, on what basis could one have felt so justified back then?What great paradigm shift was underway then, toward which Davis should have been steered for her sake and for ours?I dunno.It looks like a dead mind advising a living one. Please keep such advisors away from the students...

Women in the sciences.I did not go looking for this, but here is another rather angry thought.Perfectly good science rejected, seemingly because it does not bow to modern dogma.Nancy Yaw Davis is not alone. I would name many other women but for fear of making them guilty by association, and life is hard enough...

I admit that what one will take as proof is necessarily highly subjective. But it ought to be, at least, consistent, and I therefore wonder what facts of pre-history are conceeded by those who criticise a book like this.Any dolt can criticise, and the hyper-critic can seem smart when in the company of the perceptually-deprived majority.But it takes real smarts to see proof, or the suggestion thereof, BEFORE everyone else in the academic field has made up their minds.

I therefore propose a test.Like the old Turing Test, I propose to separate researchers into two camps. Those who accept Zuni Enigma as extremely valuable research that has either proved it's thesis or has come darn close to it, and those who don't.My prediction is this.The latter group will occupy all the tenured positions when, in a decade or so, hard-core genetic tests, and other types of evidence prove Davis to have been right all along. Whereupon anyone who points out that she was right and they were wrong, will be kicking the establishment in the shin and will therefore be seen as undeserving of tenure.(So who will dare present that eventual proof? Outsiders who did not know that they were not supposed to publish such things, in Journals patrolled by editors who, hopefully, will not know that there are toes in danger of crushing.)

And so it goes.Thank goodness that Davis got her book published.And thank goodness that Amazon.com assures that just about anyone can get their hands on a copy.This topic is too important to fall into the shadows.

If anyone can spare the dime, I suggest that they use this website to procure an old, worn copy of Gordon's Before Columbus. It makes a wonderful primer to this subject.

Japanese/Zuni origins
I believe the premise Ms. Davis puts forward stands a good possibility of being proven someday.Unfortunately, this book doesn't prove it.Only after reading the book several times did I become convinced there's probably some solid fact behind the Zuni origin she proposes.
One of the problems with the book in my view is the temptation Ms. Davis indulges to become an apologist for the Native American past.This leads her into directions she needn't have followed with time better spent supporting her own premises.Her attempts to find unlikely possibilities to explain evidence of NA cannibalism are one example.The fact is we humans have such things in our history.All of us. There's no reason, nor any excuse for attempting to mitigate such facts, nor to apologize for them.
The Zunis are a strange people.I've read some of the other reviews suggesting Zunis look the 'same as other Indians in the southwest', which I'd disagree with.The various tribes, including Zunis don't look the same as one another.People who live in this area can usually tell a Zuni or a Navajo (or Acoma, Laguna, Mescalero) from one another from a distance.To suggest the tribes look alike is probably a matter most southwesterners would find objectionable.I'd say Zunis look more like Japanese than, say, Mescaleros do, or than Navajos do.
In any case I think the Davis book is worth reading because of the interesting premise.I wish she'd had the time to pursue the matter further than she did.

An intriguing historical theory, not fully proved
This book develops Davis' theory that some Japanese, possibily motivated by a religious quest, migrated to North America and interbred with Native Americans, producing the people known today as the Zuni.She describes many points of physical and cultural similarity between the Zuni and the Japanese, though she does not provide direct evidence for a voyage across the Pacific.While Davis does not fully prove her case, her anthropological detective work has opened up some interesting leads. Some of this material may seem dry and technical to non-anthropologists.The book is well illustrated in black and white. ... Read more

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Fascinating account of the Apache experience
This is the fascinating and absorbing life story of a Mescalero/Chiracahua Apache man -- one who, when he was just a small child, knew Geronimo. Told in his own words, the story is annotated by a white ethnologist, Opler, whomade a study of the Apache people over several decades and knew this manvery well (the first section of the book explains the culture andhistorical context), so that all references made by the speaker can beunderstood by any reader.As he recalls events of his life, he draws thereader deeper into his experience: from his respect and love of the oldApache ways, to the stress and anxiety created by tribal and familydisruption caused by government interference.He speaks often and atlength about the uses of spiritual power as found in plants, animals, andthe earth.This book was apparently written as a textbook for culturalanthropology at Stanford University, but it also deserves our attention forits humanity and for the intriguing story it tells. ... Read more

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For the most part the legends here told are drawn from original
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White Otter's heart was bad. He sat alone on the rim-rocks of the bluffs overlooking the sunlit valley. To an unaccustomed eye from below he might have been a part of nature's freaks among the sand rocks. The yellow grass sloped away from his feet mile after mile to the timber, and beyond that to the prismatic mountains. The variegated lodges of the Chis-chis-chash village dotted the plain near the sparse woods of the creek-bottom; pony herds stood quietly waving their tails against the flies or were driven hither and yon by the herdboys--giving variety to the tremendous sweep of the Western landscape.

This was a day of peace--such as comes only to the Indians in contrast to the fierce troubles which nature stores up for the other intervals. The enemy, the pinch of the shivering famine, and the Bad Gods were absent, for none of these things care to show themselves in the white light of a midsummer's day. There was peace with all the world except with him. He was in a fierce dejection over the things which had come to him, or those which had passed him by. He was a boy--a fine-looking, skillfully modeled youth--as beautiful a thing, doubtless, as God ever created in His sense of form; better than his sisters, better than the four-foots, or the fishes, or the birds, and he meant so much more than the inanimate things, in so far as we can see. He had the body given to him and he wanted to keep it, but there were the mysterious demons of the darkness, the wind and the flames; there were the monsters from the shadows, and from under the waters; there were the machinations of his enemies, which he was not proof against alone, and there was yet the strong hand of the Good God, which had not been offered as yet to help him on with the simple things of life; the women, the beasts of the fields, the ponies and the war-bands. He could not even protect his own shadow, which was his other and higher self.

His eyes dropped on the grass in front of his moccasins--tiny dried blades of yellow grass, and underneath them he saw the dark traceries of their shadows. Each had its own little shadow--its soul--its changeable thing--its other life--just as he himself was cut blue-black beside himself on the sandstone. There were millions of these grass-blades, and each one shivered in the wind, maundering to itself in the chorus, which made the prairie sigh, and all for fear of a big brown buffalo wandering by, which would bite them from the earth and destroy them.

White Otter's people had been strong warriors in the Chis-chis-chash; his father's shirt and leggins were black at the seams with the hair of other tribes. He, too, had stolen ponies, but had done no better than that thus far, while he burned to keep the wolf-totem red with honor. Only last night, a few of his boy companions, some even younger than himself, had gone away to the Absaroke for glory and scalps, and ponies and women--a war-party--the one thing to which an Indian pulsed with his last drop. He had thought to go also, but his father had discouraged him, and yesterday presented him with charcoal ashes in his right hand, and two juicy buffalo ribs with his left. He had taken the charcoal. His father said it was good--that it was not well for a young man to go to the enemy with his shadow uncovered before the Bad Gods.

Now his spirits raged within his tightened belly, and the fierce Indian brooding had driven him to the rim-rock, where his soul rocked and pounced within him. He looked at the land of his people, and he hated all vehemently, with a rage that nothing stayed but his physical strength.


Download The Way Of An Indian Now! ... Read more

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Originally published in 1935 under the title "The Texas Indians." The text was retitled, enlarged and revised in 1963.Here is the Indian's story - not a tale of blood, thunder and war, but a study of his home life, manners, and religious customs. A through ethnological treatise, "Indians of the Southwest" tells of the Indians' arts and sciences and of the laws by which he lived before the advent of white man. In vivid readable style, this volume reports actual eyewitness accounts of those who saw and took part in marriages, deaths, burial rites, feasts, and celebrations. Here are seen the exultations following war, the scalpdances and tortures, the sacred ceremonies of the New Fire, and the Green Corn Dance. And, with great beauty and understanding, the author unveils the story of the American Indian and his religion. This is a fascinating anthropoligical anaysis of Native American cultures. ... Read more

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A collection of over 20 academic/scholarly papers and articles on Navajo culture, collected/edited/compiled by noted directer of NCC Ruth Roessel, including the uses of Ore in their culture, weaving, cross-cultural education, rugs, boarding school, sandpainting, the Hogan and more. Outstanding unique reference. ... Read more

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Since the 1960s, large-scale cultural resource managementprojects have revealed the former presence of extensive and variedBasketmaker III populations across the entire northernSouthwest. These discoveries have resulted in a greatly expanded viewof the BMIII period (A.D. 550-750) which immediately proceeds thePueblo phase.Particularly noteworthy are findings of Basketmakerremains under those of later periods and in sites with open settings,as opposed to the more classic Basketmaker cave and rock sheltersites.Foundations of Anasazi Culture explores this new evidence insearch of further understanding of Anasazi development. Severalchapters address the BMII-BMIII transition, including the initialproduction and use of pottery, greater reliance on agriculture, andthe construction of increasingly elaborate structures.Other chaptersmove beyond the transitional period to discuss key elements of theAnasazi lifeway, including the use of gray-, red-, and white-wareceramics, pir structures, storage cists, surface rooms, fulldependence on agriculture, and varying degrees of socialspecialization and differentiation.A number of contributions addressone or more of these issues as they occur at specific sites. Othercontributors consider the material culture of the period in terms ofcommon elements in architecture, ceramics, lithic technology, anddecorative media.This major synthesis of recent work on BMIII siteson the Colorado Plateau will be useful to anyone with an interest inthe earliest days of Anasazi civilization. ... Read more

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Pueblo Nations is the story of a vital and creative culture, of a people sustained by ages-old traditions and beliefs, who have adapted to the radical challenges of the modern world. Written by a respected writer, educator, and elder of the Jemez Pueblo, this rare, insider's view of the history of the 19 Indian Pueblos of New Mexico illuminates Pueblo historical traditions dating from millennia before the arrival of Columbus and chronicles the events and changes of the European era from the perspective of those who experienced them.
Drawing on both traditional oral history and written records, Sando describes the origin and development of Pueblo civilization, the Spanish conquest and occupation, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and the response of the pueblos to Mexican independence and conquest by the United States. Sando offers several portraits of notable Pueblo leaders whose contributions have helped shape the history of their people. He looks at internal developments in Pueblo government and presents a detailed account of the unremitting struggle to retain sovereignty, land, and water rights in the face of powerful outside pressures.

This new edition is fully indexed and updated. ... Read more

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A beautifully written history from a unique perspective.
As a member of the Sun Clan of the Jemez people, Joe Sando was in a unique position to research and write this history. As a scholar trained at Eastern New Mexico State and at Vanderbilt, he developed his skills as an historian. As a person he retained his empathy and humanity while confronting the unjust policies that have been visited on the Pueblo peoples by the Spanish, Mexican and United States governments.If you are interested in a well-balanced, incisive history of the New Mexico Pueblo people (the Hopi are not covered here), this book is worth the money to buy, the effort to read and the time to understand. ... Read more

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In "Navajo Land, Navajo Culture," Robert S. McPherson presents an intimate history of the Diné, or Navajo people, of southeastern Utah. Moving beyond standard history by incorporating Native voices, the author shows how the Diné’s culture and economy have both persisted and changed during the twentieth century.

The Navajos encountered here live according to the traditions of a livestock economy, where religious values provide the core philosophy and where the world is imbued with spiritual significance. The land--the rugged canyon, mesa, and mountain terrain of the Four Corners region (where Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico meet)--is of fundamental importance. The Navajos' dependence on the land, and love for it, pervades their account of life in this desert country.

During the twentieth century, as the dominant white culture increasingly affected their worldview, these Navajos adjusted to change, took what they perceived as beneficial, and shaped or filtered outside influences to preserve traditional values. With guidance from Navajo elders, McPherson describes varied experiences ranging from traditional deer hunting to livestock reduction, from bartering at a trading post to acting in John Ford movies, and from the coming of the automobile to the burgeoning of the tourist industry. Clearly written and richly detailed, this book offers new perspectives on a people who have shaped their own destiny while adapting to new conditions. ... Read more

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