Reading Assignment, Text: Chapter 4, "The Zuni," pp. 114-155

Between A.D. 900 and 1150, groups within the Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) culture began to shift from pit houses to clusters of contiguous-room pueblos closely associated with circular underground kivas. Many villages in the Zuni area were organized around a central area consisting of a public building and a large ceremonial chamber, known as a great kiva. These communities were then linked in a trading network centered at Chaco Canyon in the San Juan Basin; the ruins of one of the outposts of the Chaco Canyon civilization is located on the Zuni Reservation. After the San Juan Basin was abandoned during the 12th century, the people of the Zuni drainage began to trade more with the people of the Mogollon culture, and, between 1250 and 1300, probably for defensive reasons, people began to coalesce into much larger pueblos with 250-1,200 rooms. Zuni Pueblo was founded about 1350, and between this date and 1540, when the Spaniards arrived, people from the Mogollon cultural tradition joined the Zuni. By the end of the prehistoric period, the population of this region had consolidated at Zuni, Hopi, and Acoma, with the Zuni people living in a core area along the Zuni River.

The Zuni pueblo of Hawikku was the first Southwestern pueblo to be sighted by Europeans in their search for the famed Seven Cities of Cibola. At this time, the Ashiwi (Zuni people) lived in six or more villages, and only consolidated their entire population at the time of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680. Fearing reprisals after their role in the revolt, the Zuni took refuge on mesa tops. When the Spanish reconquered New Mexico in 1692, the Zuni moved back into one of their villages, Halona, which became an amalgamation of previously independent towns.

This consolidation may be responsible for the complexity of modern-day Zuni social and ritual organization. As with other Western Pueblos, Zuni is a theocracy. Traditionally, the Zuni social, religious, and political system was a complex structure that interconnected the ceremonial/religious cycles to the kin/clan system. Their elaborate ceremonial life was organized by six esoteric cults, twelve medicine societies, six kiva groups, and twelve priesthoods. The Cult of the Ahayuda, or Twin War Gods, is one of the most important of the six esoteric cults. According to Zuni myth, the Ahayuda were born in a waterfall when the Zunis badly needed military leadership on their way to the Middle Place, where the Zuni now live.

The Katsina Priests, another one of the six esoteric cults, bestows fecundity. Each priests has a distinctive personality and name. The Koyemsi, or Mudheads, show the results of incestuous brother-sister parentage in their grotesque appearance and uncouth behavior. These sacred clowns were said to possess black magic, including love magic.