Zuni Folktales

Opening

Or, The Maiden of Mátsaki and the Red Feather

(Told the First Night)

In the days of the ancients, when Mátsaki was the home of the children of men, there lived, in that town, which is called “Salt City,” because the Goddess of Salt made a white lake there in the days of the New, a beautiful maiden. She was passing beautiful, and the daughter of the priest-chief, who owned more buckskins and blankets than he could hang on his poles, and whose portholes were covered with turquoises and precious shells from the ocean⁠—so many were the sacrifices he made to the gods. His house was the largest in Mátsaki, and his ladder-poles were tall and decorated with slabs of carved wood⁠—which you know was a great thing, for our grandfathers cut with the tímush or flint knife, and even tilled their cornfields with wooden hoes sharpened with stone and weighted with granite. That’s the reason why all the young men in the towns round about were in love with the beautiful maiden of Salt City.